[quote=“strop”][Ooc] and here I was about to say, "vos would be kicking himself for not packing heat LOL
Question is, he’ll never catch up to Hasira in this state. What’s he going to do with all that firepower? I think I have an inkling…[/quote]
[ooc] Well… there are other vehicles out there…
Hi guys, sorry there was such a long delay. The final results will be released very shortly (this week!). After a lot of family business over the Christmas, I’m back to sleepless nights writing the climactic scenes of the rolling battle around Green Hell.
“[size=200]T[/size]hat was not the plan, Roland,” Jack gritted his teeth. “THAT WAS NOT THE PLAN!” With a bit of extra vindictive sting in his throttle foot, he pushed his Combi into the back of another cop car, nudging it sideways and sending it spinning. Sticking to fourth down the second half of the Foxhole, his free hand flew over the keyboard of his mod computer. “You thought my normal jokes were bad? You won’t like me when I get mad! Time to give them a serve, Jack Cossack style.”
In the M3, Aixa’s hands flew up in confusion. “I’ve been booted off the line! Somebody’s got a stronger connection!” She frowned, oblivious to the increasingly sideways progression of the M3 through Adenauer Forst. “At least they aren’t hacking the BSLL Network anymore.”
The satisfied smirk on both Agent Decker and Black’s rapidly slid off their faces when the radio chatter on their speakers keeping them updated on the track conditions was replaced by an annoyingly loud phat ghetto beat. Which was then accompanied by Jack’s voice.
"EPIC RAP BATTLES OF BSLL!
AGENTS DECKER AND BLACK!
VERSUS!
ME, AHAHAHA!"
“What the fuck?” Agent Decker started. Agent Black looked down at her computer interface, only to discover that she no longer had any control over her comm channel.
"BEGIN!
So, you’re coming for me? Alright, let’s have some fun!
That’s so cliche, men in Black, excuse the pun!
You’re compensating for something, you sure make me laugh
I mean, you drive a Normandy, that’s a diss enough"
“Is this guy for real?” Agent Decker snarled, face twisting in growing rage. Clearly he had never met Jack Cossack before, else he would not have bothered to ask, because yes, Jack Cossack was always for real. And had plenty more lines left in the tank, too.
“You’ve got beaten by a Caddy that’s half a century old
When I’m done, all that’ll remain of you is a twisted manifold
For you, it’s my C0M81 that is the Green Hell today
I’ve been in Top Gear, and you, you would lose to May
And you’re still trying to fight, trying to challenge our might
It’s like you’ve made like aviators, and got high
Black and Decker are such tools, they are, from what I can see
Two morons who are butthurt 'cause they couldn’t get into the league.”
Just for emphasis, the soundtrack ended with that really annoying repeating airhorn sound now popular on frat party doof doof tracks. Agent Decker was now a fine shade of crimson, little bits of frothy spittle flying out from the corners of his mouth. He picked up the radio, and started shouting into it,
“Hey asshole! You know what?
I’m a bona-fide super cop.
Resistance is futile, you might as well stop,
Before I literally destroy you lot-”
At this point, Agent Black grabbed the radio off him and terminated the transmission. “Please stop. That’s just lame.” Agent Decker’s eyes bugged out, but Agent Black, ice cold, stared him down as she rearmed the EMP hook. “We’ve got better weapons than that anyway.”
Jack Cossack took the opportunity of the brief straight of Metzgesfeld to glance in his mirrors again, and saw the telltale vent pop open, a sign the grappling hook was about to fire again. He promptly hit the brakes, winding down the window and drawing alongside a surprised Agent Black and Decker. “Hi!” he said cheerily, but his malevolent grin and wild eyes told a different story. “Don’t feel bad! I’m a big believer in the power of positive feedback!”
And with that, while Agent Black was fumbling to switch from the EMP controls to her MP5, Jack tossed his still-transmitting radio through the window, where it clattered to a stop right next to Hasira’s radio.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Jack hooted, before putting his foot back down and drifting around the fast left kink. Hasira wobbled, running off the road as both Agent Decker and Black fumbled for the radio, panicking that it might be a grenade. A little over one second later, they realised it was not, as a horrible screeching started blaring through their speakers, swelling in volume until the speakers exploded. Sparks flew and smoke filled the cabin, leaving a faint acrid aftertaste of burning electronics.
Ears still ringing, Agent Decker hauled Hasira back onto the road, plunging into Kallenhard. “Fry that fucker,” was all he said.
“With pleasure,” Agent Black replied, peering down the digital sights of the EMP hook.
Jack knew that the tight narrow roads and unforgiving corners of Kallenhard, would leave him easy prey to Hasira. His hand went to the spare fuses he had. Even if the hook hit him, he hoped that his shielding would at least prevent everything from getting fried, and then him arrested, or worse, killed. Passing Miss-Hit-Miss, it was only another five seconds, and then he would have to brake for the slowest corner of the track, Wehrseifen. He had no choice.
From behind, there was a flash. He braced for impact, and there was the telltale lurch and WHUMP of the claw punching through the bootlid of his car. A moment later, there was an enormous crackle, and his radio shorted out, and his engine died. The wheels locked up, turning the car into an unguided missile, sliding ungracefully into the barriers. “Oh, that’s going to leave a mark,” Jack winced as sparks flew, the Combi grinding the rail, then bouncing off onto the other side of the road, mounting the embankment and nearly tipping over, before coming to rest in the runoff from the tightest left hander. Behind him, Hasira rounded the corner, then took off, chasing down other quarry, but even as the sirens from Hasira faded into the distance, the sirens from the hordes of German police pursuers grew louder.
Popping open the fuse box, Jack muttered under his breath as he wrenched the burnt out fuses and plugged the new ones in, before turning the ignition. When it failed to turn over, he reset the fuel lines and tried again. Sure enough, the engine coughed to life, and he threw the car into gear just in time to see a police 911 plunging into the corner. With no way to further hamper Hasira’s progress, Jack’s race was mostly over, but his mission was complete: there was no way Hasira could effectively communicate with the outside world anymore.
“The Combi’s done!” Der Bayer concluded as Jack was no longer contactable via radio. “And the M3’s struggling!” With the van being so capable, he had resorted to acting like a bumper stop for the M3, tyres worn, brakes overheating, bushings stuffed to the point the car could no longer take any of the corners properly. Leaving the town of Adenau behind, he lined the van up on the left of the road to Bergwerk, then stuck to the outside line. The van lurched slightly as the M3 bumped into it, then they turned in tandem, tyres screeching and paint rubbing as the van forced the M3 to stick to the artificial inside line.
“We’ve got access again,” Kristina informed Der Bayer over the BSLL radio channel. “We’re going to try and hack the drive systems and shut down Hasira’s engine.”
“How long will that take?” The cogs of Der Bayer’s Bavarian dual-clutch sequential brain (the one that worked, of course), were turning.
“About five minutes, but we have to be in range!”
“Five minutes? Even like this, there’s no way we’ll outrun them for that long. We’re going to have to hold them off somehow.”
“I’m next!” The gravelly Scotsman accent of Vos announced, and sure enough, now they were on the steep climb of Kesselchen, the Kodiak’s massive weight was holding it back, and the van, drafting air off the comparatively more powerful M3, blew by. “I’ve always wanted to stick it to these assholes anyway. FIONA, COME IN!”
In seconds, the Kodiak had dropped back into the distance, but behind them, Hasira was still closing in. It would only be a matter of seconds now before Vos would be roped into a direct confrontation with the Agents. It was a matter of seeing just how much damage Vos could do.
“Fuck! They’re on my ass like shit on Velcro! Fiona, where the hell are you?”
“Were kinda busy boss…”
“God dammit!” He yelled at himself.
Shortly thereafter, the Hasira got within PITing distance of his Kodiak, but instead of taking him down clean, Black half climed out of her window and aimed the trademark snub-nosed barrel of an MP5K downrange at Vos.
P-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-yah!
P-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-yah!
P-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-yah!
-click-
After a few seconds of automatic fire, the Kodiak was filled with shards of glass, smoke, and riddle with bullet holes.
“Enough!” Vos shouted, as he slammed his breaks to the floor.
Vos’ sudden stop plowed Kodiak’s rear end into and over the Hasira’s hood and coming to rest rear wheel deep in the passenger compartment. The impact nearly knocked Black from the Hasira and threw her weapon from her hold, sending it tumbling down the track.
“Hey asshole!” Vos yelled at Decker. “I moustache you a question!” He snarked before laughing hysterically at himself. “You think I need knew tires?” He joked once more before laughing again.
Moments later, Vos heard the thunderous crack of Desert Eagle punching half-dollar size holes in the Kodiak’s cab. “Oh, fuck you, that was funny!” He yelled while putting the gearbox in neutral and flooring the gas, pumping gallons of putrid black smoke and occasional fireballs into the Hasiras cab.
Moments later, Deckers window rolled down, and his head shot out coughing and puking through the burned remains of his moustache. “God damn, son.” Vos yelled before putting the Kodiak in gear and flooring it and burning out off the Hasiras hood, throwing bits of glass and steel-reinforced carbon fibre into its cab.
Stunned by the brazen attack at Mutkurve, Agent Decker wiped his face clean, paling as his fingers felt something they had not felt in over twenty years: his bare upper lip.
“THAT IS THE LAST STRAW!” he yelled, but he did not even have to shout anything at Agent Black. Her face looking very much her namesake, her eyes shone and teeth were bared in frightening contrast, framed by her increasingly loose hair whipping around her face. She leaned her seat back, hauling out a much larger looking contraption: an M249. Kicking loose shards of glass away from the broken windshield, she deployed the tripod and hauled the barrel of the machine gun down onto the hood.
Vos, his chassis a little the worse for wear after running his rear end onto Hasira’s front end, was having even more difficulty, the wheels refusing to stay quite on the ground around Klostertal. He checked his mirrors to see why Hasira hadn’t taken another shot at his rear end, hoping maybe they had backed off, only to see it still stubbornly twenty feet off his tail, except now with a whacking big machine gun on the bonnet.
“Oh, shit.” Was all he could say.
Where the MP5 went “p-d-d-d-d-d”, the M249 was more like bashing a hammer in one’s ears ten times a second. Vos’ world turned into an apocalypse of banging, thudding and shattering. 5.56 bullets shredded the Kodiak’s body, frame, seats, punched through the cabin and into the dash, clattering into the engine bay. Instinctively, Vos ducked and covered as much as he could while still held into the seat by his harness as everything fell to pieces around him. Hands no longer on the steering wheel, the car ran wide through the Karussel, plowing into the barriers, but he didn’t even notice as the car pinballed around the hairpin, leaving bits of bumper behind.
Just as suddenly as the onslaught had started, it stopped as Hasira roared by and towards Hohe Acht. Vos uncovered his head and took the wheel again. If his car had holes in it before, it was more hole than whole now. Everything rattled. The engine coughed and moaned, mortally wounded, and despite the dash being completely shattered to hell, he was sure it was leaking at least three different kinds of fluid. And the car was dragging heavily to the left too, and with the “pukka-pukka” of loose rubber, he knew that at least one tyre had been shredded. But more remarkably, he didn’t have any bullet holes in him, and the car was still sort of alive. God Bless the Kodiak.
It was good to be alive. Even out of the action as he was now, each breath he was able to take, was another moment closer to seeing the look on Agent Black and Decker’s faces before he put his boot through it.
“That’s not good,” Der Bayer, catching glimpses of the action in his rear view mirror as the van dipped and bobbed through the twists of Hedwig Heights.
“What? What?” Hannah strained to see, but was too dimensionally challenged to get a good view through any of the mirrors.
“It appears the agents have brought out a machine gun.” He frowned to himself. “And we won’t outrun them on the straight.”
“Not good?” Hannah exploded, “We’ll be fish in a fucking barrel! Hey, how long do we have to babysit this Beamer for anyway?”
“Hold your horses!” Kristina, on cue, radioed back. “Decrypting takes a lot of processing!” There was a bit of muffled conversation on the other side, and then she added, “It’ll take another three minutes.”
“I can hear everything you’re saying,” a muffled Noah called from the back, “And I’m not particularly inspired, since by our data we’ll be on the straight in two minutes.”
That was one minute in which Hasira had them in their sights with nowhere to go. What were they going to do?
Way up the front, Kai and Sam were oblivious to the troubles behind, already streaking down the straight. With more and more police cars and armored vans peeling through the entrance onto the road, what was once a clear stretch of road going into the left kink of Antoniusbusche, became more like a two hundred mile an hour dodgem course. The comparatively lumbering pursuers had no chance, and the two part time pro drivers, part time daredevils laughed maniacally as they carved lines around the cars. It was an affair made doubly difficult by shrapnel, spike strips, caltrops and what Kai could have sworn was burning glass on the road. After running off the road for about the thirtieth time, he couldn’t tolerate it anymore, and started yelling randomly through the radio:
“STOP MED AT SMID’ LORT PÅ VEJEN!”
“English, please,” Sam radioed back, accidentally-on-purposely running a little wide through Nordkehre and bumping into the front of the Mephisto, pushing it into the runoff again.
“Det’ ikk’ radiobiler det her”, Kai shot back. “A’ vejen!”
Just then, Kai heard a new voice on the radio. “Hannah says you guys need to come back and cover us, or we’re going to be swiss-cheese.” It was Tesla.
Cocky grin plastered on his face, Kai thumbed the switch: “Sorry, can’t help. Driving Mephisto. Can’t let baby get hurt.”
There was a short pause, then Tesla radioed back. “Hannah says if you don’t come right now, she will take Mephisto back.”
“You realise you are asking me to violate the sacred law of Driving The Correct Direction around Nordschleife?”
“Kai!”
“Can’t hear you over racing Sam!” He grunted as they came together again over Hatzenbach, Sleipnir’s downforce advantage giving it the inside line.
“The vein is showing…”
“Funny how that isn’t my problem!” Back on the tail of Sleipnir, Kai had a look on the inside into Hocheichen, but no luck, the S was far too tight and he had to brake earlier. It was kind of annoying how twice the horsepower couldn’t be harnessed on this segment.
Suddenly, a whole new voice exploded through the speakers. “CRAAAAAAASH!” It was the primal roar of Hannah herself, with an urgency that made the hairs on Kai’s neck prickle. It was a yell that conjured images of fire and explosions, that screamed a matter of life and death, that needed no words. Instinctively, Kai slammed on the brakes, left hand twiddling with the traction control dial. Once disabled, he yanked the handbrake, pulling Mephisto into an about-turn, engine bouncing off the limiter with the clutch in. Then he dropped the clutch and, tyres screeching, shot off in the opposite direction.
“Hey dude what gives?” Sam radioed one second later, when he realised Mephisto was no longer in Sleipnir’s mirrors. “Just coz you turned around doesn’t mean you’re winning now!”
“Change of pace,” Kai replied vaguely, eyes focused on the road ahead. In Sleipnir, Sam shrugged. “Alright, what the hell!” Then likewise threw his car into a one-eighty with a battlecry.
Not far adrift, Leo, driving the formidable Thanatos Estate in the eye of the storm, was a picture of calm, but he had allowed a furrow to appear on his forehead. In that furrow contained all the mounting concerns and doubts. Was there a plan apart from driving around the circuit until his wheels fell off? Who were the real threats? And why did every police car and van he pass have officers pulling out guns? If those explosions he saw earlier were any indication, the longer this went on, the more likely it was that he’d get mixed up in the crossfire, and that would be much more than he bargained for. He had been here to race, and he had done that. And, he thought while swerving violently to avoid what appeared to be two cars going very quickly in the wrong direction, this was no longer a race, but a destruction derby.
Reaching the tipping point of decision, Leo hit the brakes, pulling into the pit lane on T13 and slowing to a stop. Yes, this was definitely the sensible thing to do. Then the doubt started creeping in again. On this part of the course, he could see the hatchback Brimstone had also stopped, on the runoff on the other side of the road. It was empty. But as he debated whether to get out or stay in the car, several cars ran by in quick succession, followed by the cops, the wind battering his car even through the fence.
“Get out of my fucking way!” Yuri, not-at-all pious driver of the Gemina, yelled at nobody and everybody in particular. “Fucking pigs, race or get off the road!”
Trying to prevent a response to the provocation, Rubik of the Mutant tugged at the sleeve of the mystery Italian driver, “Hey, maybe we should stop, this is getting very out of hand.” But the Italian driver was in a world of his own, consumed by his burning pride as a racer. “Never, we do not stop, we drive!” Rubik and Mister Greasepaws both responded by covering their faces with their hands. The Gemina, going into a blind corner, briefly dipped out of view, and when it reappeared, it was spinning in the wrong direction, tyres smoking.
“ATTENTIONE!” the mystery Italian driver shouted, swerving and just managing to avoid a spike strip. The Gemina, unfortunately, was done in, and slid to a stop in the grass. The occupants of the Mutant got a perfect view of several cops scrambling towards the Gemina, hauling Yuri, still yelling curses and threats and flailing his fists about, out of the car and onto the grass.
Meanwhile, Leo thought the better of his stop and hope for the best policy, and went to restart the car. But before he could move, a police car screeched to a halt behind him, lights blaring, and two cops popped up in his window, guns at the ready, yelling “Halt!”
Leo put his hands up.
Much further back in the course, the backrunners were having much more trouble. Lagging further and further behind, Aaron Cottam flogged his car for what it was worth, which, really, wasn’t very much. Pushing just a little too hard through Hedwig Heights, the surrounding police were treated to a view of the Elegance running into the sand trap.
“Haha, damn, is it hot in here or what,” he said to himself, trying to convince himself of his own bravado, and hoping nobody would notice that he was actually sweating like a pig. He glanced in his mirrors, surely at this pace, Hasira would be coming and then what would he do?
A moment of inattention was all it took. The line through Eschbach, being blind and downhill, was difficult enough to see, but Aaron took it to a whole new level, plowing through the grass on the left, understeering and sending him bouncing back across the road towards the barriers.
“AHHHHHHHH!” He screamed, locking the wheels under braking. The heavy Elegance, in a final act of inelegance, plowed unapologetically into the barrier with a dull crunch.
Shaking his head, Aaron tried to collect his wits and restart the car. In his moment of need, the car betrayed him, the engine coughing but refusing to fire up. All around him, the sounds of sirens came closer.
“Well, it’s been a good life!” Aaron said to himself. “But I’m too young to go to jail!” With that, he vaulted the barriers and took off into the woods, just in time for three cop cars to slide to a stop, six officers vaulting the barrier behind him and yelling at him to halt, in the name of the law.
Back on the track, the thick of the chase, from the van helping to keep the M3 on track, all the way back to where Hasira was runing through the backmarkers, was inundated by a bevy of police cars, two dozen sets of sirens wailing in disharmony. Thankfully, without the ability to radio, there was no way to coordinate the approach to disable the cars, and with so much traffic, Agent Black could not get any clear shots off without risking hitting a cop, at least, for now. First in line, the raving maniac, Reece, refused to give way to anything and anyone, and given his car was over two tons with him sitting in it, this strategy was perfectly fine, as none of the police cars even had a remote chance of getting past without the giant croc’s tail lashing out and sweeping them off the road. But as the race for survival wore on, the skinny 245s became a telling factor, running ragged, after holding up so much force. As much as Reece pushed the car, it could simply not go faster, and the cars behind were starting to bunch up. There was a little too much Lunacy for the Lunatic, and the moment one police car, bumped by an errant line from another police car, shunted his bumpers over the blind apex of Eiskurve, the rear end let go. With only bad camber and a crest with the road dropping away, there was no saving it, and the Lunatic spun off onto the runoff, bouncing over the grass before lurching to a stop, wheels bogged firmly. From that position, the driver of the Lunatic had no intention of restarting the chase, and watched as the rest of the cars rushed by.
“What are all these slowcoaches doing on the road!” Agent Decker grit his teeth in frustration. “Especially this barge!”
His ire was directed at the Ruby red estate wagon, a far cry from the Thanatos, but rather, more like a rocket with about as much manuverability. Sliding this way and that, its overwhelming power and weight meant it spent more time bouncing off the cop cars in the corners, shunting them off the road, than it did actually driving. Georgi Truchev was well past caring, the torque steer of 1500 horses through the front wheels so unmanageable that he wasn’t even bothering to hold on to the steering wheel. The police had wised up, and had decided that giving Georgi as much berth as possible, that was, avoiding him entirely, would probably bolster their chances of stopping him.
“I’ve had it with these motherfucking cops on this motherfucking ring!” Decker shouted.
“I’m on it,” Agent Black said, lining up a clear shot now the cops had cleared off. A moment later, the EMP hook lanced out, punching through Ruby’s frame, and the charge shot through. Ruby lurched, and the engine died. Suddenly losing drive, Georgi looked up, eyes aflame with indignation, but Agent Black wasn’t done. Switching to the machine gun, she pointed the barrel down and let rip. Bullets shredded through Ruby’s rear bumper, ripping the rubber from the rear wheels. With no rubber on the back and bald rubber on the front, Ruby had nowhere to go but straight into the barriers lining Pflantzgarten, bouncing harmlessly from side to side, sparks flying until the car ground to a stop.
“Another one bites the dust,” Agent Black smirked.
Agent Decker punched the air. “NEXT!”
Rayyan Balls’o’Titanium Rawat checked his mirrors before braking for the tightening right hander at the end of Pflantzgarten. “Uh oh,” he commented. Hasira, and half a dozen cop cars were bearing down on him, and he would recognise the machine gun mounted on Hasira’s hood from anywhere. In a flash he was on the radio.
“Rogue Squadron, this is Wingnut. Requesting backup.”
“Negative!” The reply came after a few seconds. “We’re still engaged! Black Box has initiated hostilities, I don’t know how that thing goes so fast!”
“Split up the wing and run a decoy so one of you can break free! I’m in trouble!”
“I don’t know how to break this to you, Wingnut but,” the pilot grunted as the jets screamed into overdrive, the Harrier pulling a tight loop then activating the hover jets to change direction suddenly. “We’ve already lost Smokin’ Joe, he was hit and had to eject.”
An icicle stabbed through Rayyan’s chest. “Did he have a chute?”
“Affirmative. Another wing is on the way, ETA five minutes. You’ll have to hold out to then, sorry.” The radio went silent.
Rayyan knew what to do. He fished another blunt out of his breast pocket. Juggling the wheel in one hand and a lighter in the other, he lit up and took a long drag. Much better. Now, it didn’t seem to matter whether the cops ran him off the road before he got to the straight, or Hasira shot him full of holes on it.
“OH MAN DICK MOVE!” Niall shouted as bits of fiber glass and foam sprayed through the cabin. “What gives, I’m not even shooting!”
There was not a panel on the Centauri that hadn’t either been beaten or thoroughly ventilated. Somehow, the Vindicator stubbornly refused to die, fuelled by the spirit of Rock itself. That was more than could have been said for the flimsy RB-02, the lightweight having given up the ghost and rolling off the road, boxed in by three cop cars. But more cops drew closer to the Vindicator, sidearms drawn and firing away, the pops of pistols echoed by the pings of bullets ricocheting through the cabin. Unfortunately for Niall, he was not aware that the cops had been cleared to engage an old red coupe, which was supposed to be driven by armed and dangerous international terrorist, Vos Roo’ka. It was just too bad for Niall that nobody who could provide proper identification had a working radio anymore.
Vos, for that matter, had pulled every single gun out of his secret compartment, and, limping along at less than highway speeds, smoke pouring out of his Kodiak, was in the process of emptying every single one of his magazines into the black armoured vans that had moved in to take him down. “I’m not fucking stopping for NOTHING!” Reaching for the heavy wooden stock of the M79, he popped a grenade in, and with a flick of the wrist, snapped the launcher shut and pointed it squarely at the window of the nearest van.
“YIPPY KAI YAY MOTHERFUCKER!” he yelled, pulling the trigger. The launcher kicked, and half a second later, the shockwave of an explosion, with blooming yellow fire, slammed into the Kodiak, lifting one of the wheels off the ground with the force. The van, its windscreen shattered and cabin caved in, swerved off the road, tipping onto its side and out of the chase. The other vans responded by closing in, masked soldiers in full body armour hanging off the sides, poised to jump.
“Not on my watch you don’t,” Vos muttered, reaching for the AA-12 automatic shotgun.
Far on the other end of the course, Enry felt he was doing pretty okay. His Achernar was fast enough that none of the cops, nor Hasira could catch it, and with his traction control and all-wheel drive, he had more agility in even these conditions, even if there was no way of telling how it would all end.
The million thoughts running through his head as he closed on the end of the straight was suddenly wiped out by one single thought: dodge.
He slammed the brakes and almost lost the Achernar to the barriers as a scarlet red and dusky blue flash almost literally blew him off the road going the wrong way. He dumped about another liter of sweat into his scarf as his car rocked to a stop on the road, facing the opposite direction. God he loved his traction control right about now.
“What, what’s going on?” Not knowing what to think or even which way he was going, Enry planted his foot on the gas, the Achernar taking off like a scalded cat once again down the straight. “Wait for me, I don’t want to die!”
On the other end of Dottinger Höhe, Strop also felt he was doing well. Three laps around Nordschleife at full chat without crashing was something of an achievement to him, not to mention he hadn’t been shunted off the road, taken a grappling hook up the ass, shot to pieces or blown up by a missile. Life was good. Now all he had to do was survive the straight and hope that Hasira’s engine would get hacked and die, and then that would take care of one lot of murderous psychopaths. He was drawing a bit of a blank as to what would happen after that. Hm.
Anyway, straight! Shifting into top gear, Strop pushed the throttle down and watched the speed climb, ears pinned back by the sheer force of acceleration. Two hundred, two forty, two sixty…
BANG!
The whole car shuddered, and steam erupted from the bonnet. The engine choked, and lost drive.
“Oh no. No no no no.” Strop looked around the cabin in a panic, racking his brain for something, anything he could do, but he knew all the while that there was nothing. The intercooler had blown its pipe again, and now he was royally fucked. Between getting shot and looking for an alternative, he knew which one he preferred.
“Big Bertha, this is Peapod! I’ve lost power on the straight!”
There was a silence, and then Hannah radioed back. “Oh, fuck me. Tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope. Steam everywhere. Keeping it planted but the engine’s gonna lunch itself any second. Requesting urgent extraction.”
“Are you kidding? We don’t have enough time to stop and pick you up!”
Behind his ninja mask, Strop’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say anything about stopping.”
The M3 ground its way through the inside of Galgenkopf for the third time, but now firmly pressing against the side of the van. Tyres squealed as the car carved a line faster and tighter than it was capable of, and then they were on the straight and accelerating! Tesla, arms wrapped around her head, peeked through the gap in the mirrors, counting the seconds until the black menace appeared. One… two… three… there it was. They had a four second lead, which, doing the quick math, was never going to be enough. Der Bayer kept it planted, allowing the M3, with the superior top speed, to run ahead, while they scanned for the stricken Peapod. It did not take long to spot the giant plume of steam.
“Holy shit he’s really going to do it!” Hannah gasped, spotting a black suited figure kicking out the window and clambering onto the roof of the car, still doing a good two hundred and fifty. “Get us closer!”
The moment Strop let go of the B pillar, the wind threatened to pick Strop up and fling him off the roof. Slipping to the back, he grabbed the rear wing and held on for dear life while the van closed in. With the gas pedal jury-rigged to the floor, Peapod maintained speed but the engine was starting to clatter and shake. Behind, he could see Hasira starting to close in, and, oh god, that really was a machine gun on the bonnet.
The van window opened, and Hannah’s head popped out. “STROP, HURRY UP AND JUMP!”
He could barely hear her over the deafening wind. He looked down at the road blurring by beneath him. He had precisely one chance at this, and suddenly he was very conscious of everything. The sun emerging from behind the clouds of the blue sky, of the chain of events that led to this moment, of his girlfriend, his family, back at home, of the job and career he left behind, and the infinite futures that hinged on a single action.
He didn’t want to die.
Coiling up into a spring, Strop mustered every bit of residual ninja left in him, and launched. Three pairs of very wide eyes stared at him as he rose into the air, as if in slow motion, flying over the road at over fifty meters a second, before he was picked up by the fierce current, and flung towards the van.
Strop slammed into the front windshield of the Transit van, and bounced off, skidding along the roof. He turned over, desperately scrabbling for a handhold, and wedged fast in the double rear wing. Curling into as small a ball as he could, he heard his heart thundering and the blood singing through his ears as the scenery roared by, the van picking up speed in a futile attempt to distance itself from Hasira again.
Moments later, the rear doors opened, and he could vaguely hear Noah yelling “GET IN!” This time, there was no hesitation. Grabbing hold of the wing, Strop kicked up and swung his legs over, body following as he kicked around and into the van. Once his body was in, he let go of the wing and tumbled onto the floor of the cargo hold. Noah immediately moved to close the doors, but Strop held up a hand.
“What the hell?” Noah asked him incredulously. In the background, Peapod fell into the distance, a cloud of metal erupting from the engine bay, sending the bonnet flipping end over end into the sky.
Without replying, Strop banged on one of the panels in the cargo bay, and lifting it off, hefted out a rather large contraption with a cylinder on one end as large as his thigh, and a barrel on the other end as long as his arm. “And what the hell is that?” Noah asked him “That’s not a gun is it?”
Strop fished out another cylinder from the compartment, slamming it into the top of the body. “Noah,” he finally said, eyeing the closing Hasira. “You’ve been filming this whole thing haven’t you.”
Noah blinked, also eyeing Hasira nervously. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Strop hefted the large gun thing in his arms, lifting it so the cylinder on the end slung over his shoulder. “Don’t miss a thing.”
He then marched to the open doors of the van, wedging a hoof fast in the door frame. In Hasira, Agent Black squinted through her visor. “Is that…?”
“If it looks like one, it probably is one. Just ice the pervert,” Agent Decker said.
Strop swung the gun looking thing around, pointing it directly at Hasira. “HEY, GUESS WHAT?” he called out, not caring if Agent Black and Decker could hear him or not. “FUCK YOU!”
Then he pulled the trigger.
Projectiles lanced out of the gun, flying through the air. Agent Black and Decker had no time to react before they were hit by a hail storm, paint splattering all over the bonnet, the trim, the cabin, their visors.
“Wait, what?” Agent Black frowned, feeling the impact against her armour but not the pain, but not realising why her vision had been obliterated. She wiped her visor, smearing more oily paint across her visor, turning her vision into an amorphous, blobby landscape.
“JUST SHOOT!” Agent Decker screamed, also effectively blinded. Agent Black pulled on the trigger of her machine gun, but nothing happened.
“Shit, it’s paint! The SAW’s jammed!”
Scrabbling around while still accelerating, Agent Decker found his Desert Eagle and handed it to Agent Black. “You know what to do!”
Still being peppered by high velocity paintballs, Agent Black ducked for cover behind the dash, taking off her visor. Either way, this was going to hurt, but nothing got in the way of their mission. Taking a deep breath, she emerged, whipping the hand cannon up and firing off several rounds before she copped a ball to the cheek. It splattered, but half her face was left numb and stinging.
In the van, Strop almost lost his balance as he saw the gunfire from Hasira. A bullet punched straight through the doorframe, pinging around the cargo hold, causing Noah to yelp, dive forward and shut one of the doors, taking cover behind it. Strop knew it would do nothing, but he too took cover behind the door, waiting for Agent Black to emerge, while Agent Decker was still driving blind. They came out simultaneously, Strop raining down another hail of paintballs on Hasira, but Agent Black blocked out everything and squeezed off another clip. One shell pinged off the barrel of the paintball gun, forcing it out of Strop’s hands, and he dived to the floor of the van. Sticking to the floor, he picked the gun up again and fired wildly, but it was nowhere near as effective.
Hannah looked back into the cargo compartment, and saw once the element of surprise was over, the battle was swinging in the Agents’ favour. She picked up the radio. “Tell me you’re already done! We can’t hold out any longer!”
“Fifteen seconds!” Aixa pleaded. “Just fifteen seconds!”
Agent Black switched from the Desert Eagle to a Steyr TMP, and was peppering the van with 9mm bullets. It didn’t have enough power to punch through the body of the van, but it was more than enough for bullets to clatter around the cargo hold, forcing Strop and Noah to stay firmly pinned to the floor. No longer concerned about copping paintballs to the face, Agent Decker flicked up his visor and accelerated alongside the van. Agent Black took the Desert Eagle, and promptly blew a hole in the rear tyre. Der Bayer fought the drag, but that much van was simply too unstable at that speed.
“I’m hit!” he radioed. “I can’t stay with you!”
“Get clear,” Kristina radioed back. “You can’t do any more good back there!” She opened the box, Aixa glancing at her wide eyed as she lifted out her AR-15. If it came down to it, she knew what to do.
“Sorry.” Der Bayer was forced to slow down, leaving the M3 to the mercy of Hasira. The vents opened, and the EMP hook charged up once more. They were just seconds away from the end of the straight now, closing in on the left kink where the M3 would have to slow down, and come into range.
“I have you now!” Agent Decker declared triumphantly.
“Look out!” Agent Black shouted, pointing ahead. Over the crest, emerging from the other end of Antoniusbusche, a red streak blurred towards them. For a single moment, the Agents had a horrifying moment flashing back to the green streak that took them out a couple of weeks ago on a highway in the middle of America. But this time, it would not be so.
Decker punched a big red button under the console, and hidden jets fired up from underneath the car. Hasira leapt six feet into the air, easily clearing Mephisto as it shot by beneath.
“Huh?” the bizarre sight barely registered in Kai’s mind, preoccupied as he was with scanning for the van. Sam, fifty meters and one second astern, was not so lucky. First barely avoiding the M3, he crested Antoniusbusche going the wrong way just as Hasira was coming down from its booster flight, and was treated to the sight of a flying car heading directly for his windscreen.
“Shit!” With no room to move, Sam yanked the wheel, swerving off the road at precisely the worst spot on the course. Doing over two forty over the crest, the car left the ground, turning sideways in the air. The car bounced into the grass, then sickeningly, pitched over, flipping up and turning end over end. The wheels were wrenched from their sockets and flung in every direction as Sleipnir tore itself to pieces, coming to rest in a smoking heap on the side of the road.
“Aixa!” Kristina locked up the brakes trying to outdo herself in a futile attempt to distance herself from Hasira.
“So close! So close!” The progress bar on the decrypter was full, but the algorithms were still running, that final unknowable part of the loading time, ticking down the seconds until they knew whether they were in or not. Meanwhile, Hasira, having landed, had its EMP hook armed and was bearing down upon them.
Agent Black peered at the targeting system, egging it on. “Come on, lock!”
Barely a car length separated them as they completed the third lap. The M3 was almost crawling now, even the squeaks and moans of every fatigued part fading in intensity as the car slowly died at the prospect of starting a fourth lap.
“I have a lock!” Agent Black cried out, squeezing the control trigger. There was a flash, and the EMP hook lanced out.
The rear windshield shattered as the hook punched through the M3’s cabin, lodging itself firmly in the dash between Kristina and Aixa.
“Aixa!” Kristina yelled.
A blue fire enveloped them, like lightning sparking through the car. Their hair stood on end and every nerve tingled. Then, as quickly as it had started, it was gone. So too, was their power, and the laptop.
Hasira sailed past, gliding through Nordkehre, and down the road. In a rage, Kristina picked up the AR-15, and peered down her sights, before she realised that Hasira was not speeding up.
“We did it!” Aixa cheered. “We shut them down!”
Sure enough, Hasira was no longer getting away. It had no drive left. “I can’t believe we actually pulled that off,” Kristina breathed. Then she noticed that the cable and the hook was still firmly attached to her car. She jammed on the brake and pulled the car to the side. The tyres screeched as the cable snapped taut, pulling Hasira off kilter. It spun off the road, dragging up divots in the grass until it finally came to a rest.
“No! NO!” Agent Decker punched the steering wheel. “Come on!” As much as he wrested the controls, Hasira was dead, having served and been terminated by another master. “It won’t end like this!” He snarled, snatching his Desert Eagle back. A mask of cold fury, Agent Black reloaded her machine pistol.
Kristina saw the doors of Hasira opening. “Hey, watch it, they’re getting out-“ was all she managed before a hail of bullets whizzed and pinged around them, shattering the front windshield. Aixa screamed as she was showered in shards before Kristina threw herself over her. Reaching over and opening the door, she undid Aixa’s restraints and looked into her eyes. “Aixa, listen to me. I’m going to hold them off. When I say go, you head straight for the barriers behind the car, jump over, and keep going. Okay?”
Terrified, Aixa nodded. Kristina held her AR-15 at the ready, counting the bullets and waiting for a gap. The moment the hail stopped, she popped her head up. “GO! GO! GO!” Peering through her sights, she could see a couple of pairs of feet hidden behind the frame of the car. As the door opened and Aixa bundled out, a pair of hands popped up, gun pointed at them. She peered down the sights and opened fire. The stock kicked into her shoulder, and the 5.56 rounds thudded into the door. Another hail of bullets hit the car, but instead of taking cover, Kristina scanned and saw the suppressed muzzle flash of the TMP. Aiming to the other side of the car, she squeezed off a couple more rounds. She had to keep Aixa safe until she was clear.
Even as the hail of bullets from the machine pistol stopped, the powerful slugs from the Desert Eagle punched straight through the steel body of the M3. Kristina counted seven rounds, then kicked the door open, rolling out of the car and crawling behind it, putting the whole car between her and the Agents. Bobbing up to take aim again, she frowned as her vision was obscured by a thick spreading layer of smoke.
Smoke grenades, just what she needed. Quickly, she analysed her options. The road to Hatzenbach was narrow, lined by barriers and a thick treeline, so the smoke would quickly obscure the road. If she couldn’t track both Agents, they could easily jump the barriers and flank her. If she stayed, they would definitely go around and most likely approach her from both sides, so she couldn’t track them at once. If she went, she would be exposed and relying on the assumption that they didn’t have infrared vision to go with those smoke grenades, and seeing the kind of heat they were packing, that did not seem at all safe. But Aixa was still in the area, completely defenceless. This was the worst tactical situation, but at least she had priorities.
Keeping the gun raised to her shoulder but scanning visually, Kristina started to back away from the car towards the barriers. A sudden flicker of a shadow through the smoke had her whipping her gun up, but there was nothing to shoot at. She backed up a few more steps, but sure enough, more bullets whizzed around her, thudding into the grass, and she dived back behind the car. They had her pinned. Scanning the barriers, she guessed at the clearest line of sight and fired off a few more rounds, punching holes in the barriers in the hopes of hitting one of the Agents, but if she had, there was no response.
The merest whisper of neoprene on fabric was all the warning she got. Instinctively, Kristina whipped around, but the barrel of her rifle was intercepted by a gloved hand. With the barest of motions, the rifle was levered out of her grip. Instantly, her hand went to her ankle sheath, whipping out the KA-Bar, but Agent Decker had drawn first, Desert Eagle pointed directly at her face at a distance of just a little more than three feet. Kristina was sure it was no coincidence that he chose to stand just out of her reach. He motioned with the gun, and understanding, she dropped the knife, where it clattered next to her foot. Not satisfied, he jerked his head at the knife, and scowling, she kicked it away.
“Shame I have to kill you. You have some real fire in you,” Agent Decker smirked. Kristina, her hands raised, couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Oh, what’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Kristina smirked. “Just your face. It’s like half your manhood falls off without your compensation moustache.”
“Bitch,” Agent Decker snarled. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Big words for a small man,” Kristina shot back, unflinching.
“Too much to handle?” This time, it was Agent Black, from behind Kristina. “I bet this will solve your attitude problem. Say hello to your girlfriend.”
Kristina’s blood ran cold as she heard Aixa’s voice. “I’m sorry,” she choked, before Agent Black jabbed at her throat with her knife, for emphasis. “Not so mouthy now are you?”
“Don’t you dare!” Kristina growled. “She-“
“She what?” Agent Decker mocked. “Doesn’t have anything to do with this? Is innocent? Doesn’t deserve to die? All wrong!” He threw his head back and laughed. “Don’t think we don’t know who she is, who your connections are. We know ALL about everything you do, like everyone else here. You’re all dangerous.” He held his gun up, pointing it at Kristina’s face again. “And you, especially, must die.”
Aixa struggled some more, trying to pull the knife away from her neck, but to no avail. Agent Black tightened the grip. “You want to die first?” “No, please!” Aixa begged, sobbing hysterically, and earning a slap from Agent Black.
“That’s it?” Kristina asked, racking her brain for more time, more options, anything. “That’s all you’re going to enjoy? You really don’t have any manhood?”
Agent Decker frowned for a moment, then drew the hammer on the Desert Eagle back with a click. “Don’t care. Goodbye.”
A black blur vaulted over the barrier and tore across the grass, flying towards Agent Decker. Preoccupied with subduing Aixa, Agent Black was not keeping watch, so did not warn her partner of the interruption. Agent Decker had enough time to glance up with a “Huh?”
A pair of hooves knocked the gun from Agent Decker’s hand, driving his hand into the window frame of the M3. He screamed in surprise and pain, clutching his hand. Without thinking, Kristina leapt backwards, spinning around, hands closing around Agent Black’s knife hand and pivoting around, wrenching her arm back, controlling the knife and bringing her elbow around for a snappy arm break. But instead of the satisfying crunch of bone, the arm seemed to twist and go light, as Agent Black jumped up and back, kicking Aixa forward to stumble face first into the grass. Agent Black formed an arc, flipping backwards to tumble neatly to the ground, crouched and in stance. The knife bounced off into the grass, but nobody was paying any attention to it anymore.
Strop, in all his ninja horse glory, shook his leg as he stared down Agent Decker. Regaining his composure, Agent Decker’s lips curled upwards in a snarl. “If it isn’t the horsey gimp.”
“Cop beaten up by gimp. Makes for a good headline,” Strop retorted.
“Aixa, get out of here,” Kristina barked, still glaring at Agent Black. Aixa didn’t need telling twice, scampering away as fast as her shaking legs would take her.
Back to back, Kristina and Strop stood at the ready, stalked by the murderous Agents. “Excuse me for asking,” Kristina murmured to Strop. “But are you actually any good in a fight?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Strop replied, with the barest hint of a twinkle in his eye.
Jack could not just get the hell out of there. His mission gained some new objectives. He had his sense of duty, ya know? And that sense of duty required breaking the most sacred of laws. He stopped when he could do so without getting arrested, and made a quick U-turn. He did not care about the Nordschleife and its sacred laws. He did not care about the Green Hell’s status as every motorist’s Mecca. It was time to desecrate all of that shit and go back. Going wrong way was the right way of doing things now. He speeded along the Ring, going a bit slower, and sacrificing the perfect racing line, just to avoid a headon collision with any cop or Russian going the usual direction. His heart thumped as he raced back to the Testis crash site.
…
…
…
“There it is” said Jack as he noticed the wreckage of the old racer. He stopped at the place. The remains of the car were not looking very promising. An average person would say “Nobody could have survived that”. Jack was no average person. Besided, he has heard of that accident back in 2010, when an '85 Pontiac disintegrated upon a high-speed impact with an overpass, and the driver somehow survived. And it’s not like he lapsed into a permanent coma, he was fully conscious afterwards.
Therefore, Jack had to look for Roland and for 8bs. He walked past the mangled metal which kinda resembled Testis’ body panels, he walked past the engine which decided to leave the car, with the 2-speed deathbox still attached, he walked past the heavily deformed wheels. And then the spotted them. Both of them lied on the ground, with cuts and buises everywhere. Roland was one step closer to impersonating Van Gogh, 8bs was one step closer to impersonating Lord Voldemort. Or Michael Jackson. Their bones were broken, hell, Roland had a broken bone sticking out of his leg. Damn. What most surprised Jack though, was the faint pulse on their necks. They were still alive. The cake was no lie. And then he found Roland’s radio communicator. He turned it on and tried contacting with the mod squad. Well, it was not working. Let’s smack the radio and try again.
“Requesting medical assistance at Nurburgring. 2 people, including one moderator, state critical.”
“What in the fuck? Jack, you’re alive?! What happened to you?” Bayer’s voice ensued the radio was operational.
“Assistance granted, the med squad will be waiting outside the race track in 4 minutes.” The HQ replied.
“Ask what happened to Roland and that hobo fella. And give a good smack, you know, on my behalf, to those two fuckwads pretending to be agents, alright?”
“Why isn’t your radio working?”
“Ask those two. My radio proved instrumental in disabling their communications. I don’t even feel sorry” Jack replied while giving the first aid to the fellow competitor and the fellow mod.
“Alright. Stay well”
And then Jack put 8bs’ nose and Roland’s ear into some ice, transported them into his Skoda, and with some stuff he normally uses to keep suspects in one place, he secured those two to the floor of his spacious trunk. Just in time, since the german officers started arriving at the place.
“well, I gotta go” - and he started up this car and THEN began to get the hell outta here.
…oh shit!!! am i dead??..is this heaven??? A Skoda trunk?! Man what a hellllllllll… and i knocked out.
[OOC: what a [i]green helllllllllll]
(ooc) Oh my… Enry’s heading straight towards the fight between Kristina, Strop and the power tools, i wonder what’s going to happen there 
[ooc] actually enry is headed in the wrong direction 
I’ll set up a map to show everyone what’s going on.
[quote=“Kubboz”]
[OOC: what a [i]green[/quote]
helllllllllll]
[ooc] lol! with no offense to you and to skoda! 
[OOC] Okay guys, I had to take a bit of a break today from writing to get back to planning, because, as you know, things are complicated in the story right now 
Here is a map of where everybody happens to be where last we left off the action. Apologies for the size, Nordschleife is a big place!
On the plus side, I have one more night of big writing to do, and then finally, I will be able to reveal the final results in the Crazy Wheels stakes, and therefore, the FULL results of the BSLL! (And then those of you who want to stick around for the post-league resolution, you are welcome to read the epilogue). How will it all end!?
Damn! I was hoping I could simply run away from the German Police! Ah well, it had to end some way or another, at least I didn’t end up like Roland and 8bs…
[ooc]Technically there are a couple of slight inaccuracies or liberties in the map:
I’ve got like a 13 point plan set up for the resolution of this debacle, which will hopefully be posted Thursday evening!
(ooc)I don’t understand what happened to Enry, he avoided Kai and Sam, who where travelling in the wrong direction, and ended up chasing them? If that happened, the X90 should have passed on the straight maybe ten seconds after Sam, or did i get confused?
[ooc] Where the hell is Vos on that map?
Enry was chasing Kai and Sam (arguably, if I saw someone turn tail and go the other way as fast, I would probably have joined too), and is now going the wrong way around towards the road block (as of snapshot of map)
https://31.media.tumblr.com/cb0f9a37f552ec996afa8b9f42c43e53/tumblr_nhrjnezO0h1taipczo1_400.png
[ooc] Nice catch.
[OOC] Nothing else matters as long as the bitch and the moustache DIE!
[OOC] that would be ex-moustache, seeing how Vos burnt it off earlier
Planning completed, writing commencing!
[OOC] His name can still be moustache! 
With each passing foot, Vos’ anger grew. Each rattle, each pop and each his drove him to madness. His ride was all but done. How, the name of all things holy it had not burst into flames and consumed him in one last hellish display of defiance was something he would never know.
While reloading and re-arming his arsenal, he heard a quick blip over his coms. “Sir…” -brief static- “We’ve picked up more incoming traffc.” -slightly longer static- “…And… It’s not just police…” Vos’ heart sank. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this… But, apparently, there are vehicles spilling out all over the track. They have cameras. Someone leaked the story. This entire thing… This… Everything is being televised live…”
[ooc] I probably should have set firmer rules from the outset, but as this was an impromptu exercise, I’m going to have to redact as I see necessary, which is always less satisfactory:
Nope, sorry, not allowing this to be televised live. That breaks the rules of the universe. Currently, Nordschleife is under military contention. Any civilian who is somehow in the area may be recording snippets of this as amateur footage, but the reason the area was eerily quiet (you may have forgotten I mentioned this in the story before), was because it was an international law enforcement ambush (with a very tentative cooperation that got completely broken when a lot of unauthorised parties started doing a lot of unauthorised things). And when something like that takes place, people in the surrounding area get evacuated. So those people will definitely be thinking something is up, but if a television crew even so much as approaches this area, they’re going to get shut down very quickly. And aircraft will be shot down (since everybody is already trying to shoot each other down).
The overriding law of the universe is consequence. If this goes on the news, and people manage to put two and two together beyond unfounded rumours, then you would think that there would be legal consequences for all participants involved. That’s too much, and I’m not prepared to foist that on everybody here. And it will completely screw up the bits I do have planned, and I’m not prepared for that either
Trust me, there WILL be parts of this that do get televised, but sufficiently confusing and disjointed such that this won’t happen.
p.s. given that a BSLL 2 will happen, there will be just as much madness, but I will be setting actual universe rules, and they will actually be enforced. If anybody breaks those rules, they will face in-universe consequences with much more permanence, which may affect their tournament results. This will encourage people to think carefully with what they decide to do in character. For example, Tom adding those jump jets to the Brimstone after round 5? I’d go back and add about 250kg of internal weight to the model and alter the results from there. Flagrantly get into trouble with authority? You may miss any number of races or even, if bad enough, be ejected from the tournament. Rayyan hitting on other player characters, well, that won’t necessarily carry any consequence on the results 
That kind of thing.
