Watching as the truck grew larger in his
field of vision, Ryan turned just a split-second before the
front end of the truck would have scraped the front end of his
bike. The truck passed close enough to his right that he could
have reached out and touched it if he’d been so inclined. Not
wanting to have his fingertips cut off, Ryan didn’t bother
trying to test that little hypothesis.
When he heard the unmistakable sound of
grinding, shifting gears coming from behind him, Ryan glanced in
his left rear-view mirror. Sure enough, there was the truck
again, just starting a slow turn and coming back around for him.
+Don’t these fuckers know when to give
up?!+
+No. They never give up. I’ve been
fighting them for about a year now, and they just keep coming.
They don’t give up, believe me.+
+Sounds like something personal.+
+It is. And please, don’t ask me
anything more about it.+
+I’ll keep that in mind. Just
remember: I’m here if you ever decide you
do
want to talk about things.+
+Thank you, Ryan. I’ll make sure to
remember that.+
+Good. Oh, and Sho?+
+Yes?+
+I want you to lean back as far as you
can in about seven seconds.+
+What? Why?+
+Because there’s a car just about to hit
us.+
+What?!+
Ryan, grinning slightly insanely as he
saw the car bearing down on them, had decided that the best way
to get that damned truck off their backs was to put something
almost the same size between the two vehicles. The guy in the
car was shouting abuse at him, and if Ryan had cared he might
have taken the time to yell some of his own.
+Sho. Lean. Now!+
Not waiting for Sho’s acknowledgment,
since he knew that his passenger would do what he wanted –
either before or after Ryan’s head slammed into his nose – Ryan
lunged backwards. As the bike’s forward wheel started tipping
skyward, Ryan felt Sho leaning back behind him. Ryan just hoped
that his luck was going to hold out, since this crazy little
move was going to take a lot of it.
Good luck and good timing—the same as
most of his more audacious stunts had taken. Not to mention good
planning, but that wasn’t so much a factor here as it had been
when he’d he’s actually had the time to make a
plan. Lunging forward when his front wheel had cleared the hood
of the car, Ryan rode up and over the windshield, across the
roof, and down off the trunk. Laughing, slightly insanely,
slightly triumphantly, Ryan twisted his throttle open and roared
off, confident that he’d made good his escape.
That confidence lasted until he
heard the loudest, most aggressively unpleasant crashing noise
that he’d ever heard. Even the ones in
Speed
had nothing on this. Turning to look behind him, Ryan saw that
the car he’d leapt over was now a twisted wreck.
"Well
that
ain’t good," Ryan muttered, already starting to search for some
other way to get the nutbars in the truck off his back.
It was going to be one hell of a
challenge to find something that would be able to keep those
guys away when they were willing to ram a car out of their way
just to get to him and Sho. But maybe finding something bigger
to stick in between the two vehicles wasn’t quite the way to go.
Maybe it wasn’t a bigger obstacle he needed to put between him
and the truck, but a lot more distance.
Looking around, Ryan smiled slightly; he
was just coming up on one of the rare overpasses in this part of
the city. With a little doing and a whole lot of luck, it
probably would be possible to put enough distance between
himself and his unwanted pursuers to make them give up chasing
him entirely. Sho’d said that these Chronos types didn’t give
up, but then they’d probably never met anyone like him before.
Just as they made it to the middle of
the overpass, Ryan spotted the car. It had a nice, shiny white
paintjob, which meant that the owner probably wasn’t going to be
happy with him for doing what he was about to. But then, he
didn’t know the owner, and the fact that there was a huge truck
bearing down with the intent to crush him and Sho into bloody
paste with metal bits made it really hard for Ryan to even
pretend to care about something like that.
Popping another wheelie and narrowly
avoiding smacking Sho in the face with the back of his head,
Ryan rode diagonally over the hood of the car and flew over the
railing of the overpass.
+Okay, I’m gonna need you to work with
me, Sho. When we hit the street, you’re going to have to help me
get this thing’s balance back.+
+Ryan…! I mean- you just-!+
+Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, I’ve seen
this in the movies.+
+Ryan, you can’t-+
+Look, are you going to help me with
this or not?+
+I will,+
Sho said, still sounding a bit
shaken.
+Good, now lean in the opposite
direction.+
+Right.+
When the dirtbike slammed into the
roadway, Ryan and Sho both worked in tandem to right it again.
Knowing that it would be easier for the guys in the truck to
find him if he came right out the other side of the overpass,
Ryan turned a sharp U and shot out from under the
opposite
side. Since they’d no doubt be looking for him to come out on
the right, where he’d jumped off the overpass, they’d probably
get a fair distance into the city before they managed to realize
that he’d done no such thing.
XxXxX
"I don’t
believe
this!" Delcasse snarled, slamming on the brakes so hard that for
a second Razell was half afraid that his foot would punch a hole
in the truck’s floor. "Jumping the car was crazy enough, but
that?!"
"Calm down, D. We’ll call some of the
others, and they’ll help us catch up to that little stuntman
wannabe," Razell said, trying to calm down his fellow Zoanoid.
"I’d better report in to His Excellency and call for some
backup."
Hearing Delcasse’s grumbled agreement,
in addition to some grumbled obscenities, Razell turned to the
comm setup on the dashboard. "This is Razell, reporting in, Your
Excellency."
"What is it, Razell?" The deep voice of
Lord Imakarum Mirabilis echoed back over the comm.
"We’re still in pursuit of the escaped
human, Your Excellency, but you’re not going to believe what he
just did."
"What is it?"
"Well, he kinda just jumped the railing
of the overpass we’re on."
"He did what?" Lord Imakarum’s voice was
soft and flat and deadly and brimming with all sorts of unspoken
threats that only a Zoalord could really convey.
And not just any Zoalord, either—the
only other Zoalord that Razell knew of who could express those
kinds of wordless threats with any kind of success was Dr.
Balkus, and he was just really damn scary from the get-go. Lord
Imakarum’s face – gentle and obviously Japanese, while still
being average-looking as far as Razell was concerned – could
catch you kind of off-guard when he started getting all intense
and scary. He just didn’t look the type to do something like
that.
And that was the
really
scary part.