To her credit, Fursona didn’t completely freeze this time.

And to my credit, I tried to explain why I wanted her to jump off my perfectly good sailboard. “You can drive! If you can take over that car, you can follow the right convoy, and I can tail the left! I can’t do it without you!”

She stared at me for a moment. “Not a Dive Bomb?”

“No. Split Ends. We keep in touch, and as soon as we know which convoy to follow, we break off.”

“Okay,” she said quietly. She gathered herself as I dipped low, trying to stay in the last SUV’s blind spot. I couldn’t tell if I’d succeeded, but I tapped her on the shoulder as we got to within a few feet of the skylight. She flinched, then hopped off my sailboard and through the sunroof with a crash.

The car swerved and skidded, but I had other things on my mind. The Second V’s surfboard sliced through the air, blade humming, and I barely pulled up in time to avoid it. The very tip of the blade caught my sailboard’s tail, and I had to deactivate and reactivate [Solar Wing].

[Gutsy Drop! +1 Badass Point]

Worse, the left-hand convoy was pulling farther and farther away, and the Second V was already looping around. I had three jobs to Fursona’s one.

First, I had to keep tabs on the left convoy. Easy peasy, except they kept accelerating to put distance between us.

I also had to handle the Second V’s attacks against me. He surged toward me, then broke off as I whipped a [Starlance] at him. It pursued, chasing him into an alley before fizzling out. As I waited for him to show up again, I thought about the third job—and the hardest.

I had to keep him away from Fursona.

In her Roo-sona fursuit, she didn’t have a single ranged power. He hadn’t shown any either, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any, and if he did, he’d take out her car without ever being in danger. I couldn’t let that happen!

So, instead of zipping off for the far convoy, I waited to see what the Second V would do. As I did, I whispered into my mic. “Fursona, how’s it going?”

“Great. Just great. I’ve got the car, and I’m back in line, but I’m not sure if they know I’m here.” A gunshot cracked in my ear through the headset, and Fursona yelped. “Scratch that! They know I’m here!”

“Do you need help?” I asked, just as the Second V appeared in hot pursuit of her car. “Cancel that. You do need help! Incoming!”

I tore off after her, firing [Starlances] the whole way. One. Two. Three. The first hit as I cast my fourth, and the Second V started trying to evade in mid-air. The second caught him, too, but the third and fourth missed.

[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]

[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]

Then, suddenly, I was over the convoy, and the anti-air fire intensified. The whole world seemed like muzzle-flashes as guns went off below me. First one, then another, then a third bullet hit me, knocking me off-course, spinning me around, and most importantly, hurting—a lot. I screamed in pain; I’d have bruises tomorrow from this!

[HP 2/12]

Then I crashed into a car—luckily bouncing off the hood and landing on the SUV’s front window. As I caught my breath, I glanced through the cracked windshield and saw Fursona’s plastic eyes staring back at me. “Uh, hi.”

[HP 1/12]

“Hi,” her voice said in my ear. “Get in here!”

I fell through the shattered sunroof, crunching shards of glass under me. “Okay, so, Split Ends didn’t work. He headed straight for you; she’s gotta be in this group.”

“Yep. Can you do something about that?” Fursona glanced back and gestured at my face. I looked in the mirror and realized I was bleeding—and not just a little. My nose looked like a fountain.

“Through the superhero damage? Really?” I said, [Quick-Time Changing] into Rainy Day. As I used [Virga] and glared at the unconscious henchman I’d just noticed—who’d woken up when the heal hit him—something thumped against the car.

[Flashy Fitting-Room! +1 Flamboyance Point]

[Medic! +2 Cunning Points]

[HP 3/12]

[Doctors Without Borders! -1 Cunning Point]

It wasn’t enough, but I didn’t have time to heal the rest. I poked my head through the ruined skylight, then pulled back as the Second V’s surfboard screeched across the SUV’s roof, showering me in sparks. “Plan?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Okay, uh, we haven’t tried this before, obviously, because how could we have possibly practiced this, but,” Fursona said. She was rambling, and I waved her on as the SUV rocked and the back windscreen shattered. “You can be a turret in the sunroof, and I’ll try to catch us up to other cars. We’ll stop them, and if the convoy turns to fight us, that’s the one with Tractor-Beam-Girl!”

“Got it!” I poked my head out again, and when the Second V once again tried to decapitate me, I hit him with a [Wind Front] that popped him into the air and off to the side. I grinned; the extra control from Rank Two was already paying off!

[Badass Move! +1 Badass Point]

But knocking him around wouldn’t stop him. He couldn’t have much superhero damage left; I needed to hit him, not keep him from hitting us. The villain dove, and I charged up a [Thunderhead] as he did. Then I ducked back into the SUV.

[Pause for Effect! +1 Drama Point]

This time, his blade caught a gap in the roof and peeled it like a potato instead of scraping against the metal. The thin metal body curled into a perfect spiral, then flew off to bounce along like a spring in front of us. Fursona grabbed the wheel and spun, putting us into a spiral as bullets slammed all along the car’s side—we’d pulled up next to another SUV, and its passengers kept right on shooting.

“Oh shit!” Fursona said as our car slammed into the other, jolting me across the back seat. “Buckle up, buttercup!”

“Har har!” I popped back out. The [Thunderhead] had almost finished, And the moment it did, I held my breath, hoping…hoping…

Yes! The Second V dove toward us, a manic smile on his surfboard as he aimed low enough to peel another layer off our car. The moment he got in range, I used [Ride the Lightning] and sent a tendril of lightning rippling toward him. He couldn’t dodge—his blade was already in our back hatch—and it caught him straight in the face.

[Electric Lightshow! +1 Flamboyance Point]

A second later, his surfboard tipped, spilling him onto the asphalt. He tried to get up, then collapsed. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear any words. It almost looked like the word ‘made,’ but I couldn’t be sure.

“One down, one to go!” I cheered. Fursona whooped from the front seat, and we sped off toward the rest of the convoy. With the Second V out of the picture, we had a window to start finding Tractor-Beam-Girl, and Fursona pushed our busted, smoking SUV to the limit to catch up with the next car.

Shockingly, after our fight against the Second V, it felt massively under-protected. A single hench stuck his head out of the sunroof, leveling a gun and firing a bust that slammed right into our windshield. It held though Fursona could barely see the road. But when I tried to pop out and use [Wind Front], the minion opened fire, his gun sending bullets flying wildly at us.

“We need a plan!” I shouted.

“I’ve got one! Switch to Understudy!” As Fursona pulled our car closer and closer to the henches’, I started a slow transformation. It took too long—valuable seconds we didn’t have—to switch, but eventually, I returned to my pink-and-purple dress and familiar tourmaline wand.

[HP 8/12]

“Okay, now what?”

“Bulletproof power windows. Lower, fire, raise. Try to knock out a tire.” Fursona spun the wheel, and we rocketed around a corner, wheeling on the cracked sidewalk. The SUV shook, and when we bounced off the curb, a rattle in the engine wouldn’t stop. “Hurry. This thing’s gonna come apart!”

“Got it!” I readied the power window button, then waited until we’d pulled up next to the other SUV. The window dropped, I fired a [Starlance], and bullets sprayed against the car’s side, leaving dents and ringing my ears. But the henches’ ride wobbled for a moment before the driver recovered.

“Again! Fast!” Fursona’s whole suit shook as she wrestled with the wheel. Even armored against bullets, 3V1L’s SUVs had never been built to take this kind of abuse, and her entire concentration—and all her strength—was taken up in the fight against the broken power steering and trashed alignment. Or something like that; cars weren’t my thing.

My thing was fighting villains.

The window dropped again, and this time, I fired two more [Starlances] at the front wheel. The moment I did, the SUV jumped in place, then swerved. Fursona cranked our wheel again, but too slowly—we slammed into the henches and skidded across the asphalt, engines both smoking and steaming from a dozen leaks. Then we hit the side of a building and stopped with a jerk.

[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]

[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]

[HP 5/12]

I pulled myself together and limped clear as Fursona thrashed to free herself from our driver’s seat. One of the henches had gotten out by the time we did, and he sat there, mouth agape beneath his helmet. I pointed. “I know, I know, they forced you. Get these guys out of the cars. There’s one in ours, plus however many you had.”

Then, I started helping Fursona out. It took a second—and a few [Spotlight Strikes]—to free her, and the moment she came loose, she pointed at me. “We need to fly. We can still catch them!”

[Stylish Strike! +1 Flamboyance Point]

“Seriously?” Fursona accepting a ride on the sailboard was one thing; Fursona demanding one was totally different.

“Yes! Hurry!”

I used [Solar Wing], and she hopped on. A moment later, we zipped through the air after the retreating headlights. As we tore past smokestacks and the kind of stores that had barred windows and cages over the doors, ducking street signs and the highway overpass, I held my wand ready. Only two cars remained. Just two; Tractor-Beam-Girl had to be inside one.

The camera drone caught our pursuit as we lanced across Adams Street and into Poudre North. The buildings slowly shifted from industrial factories and plants to towering apartments and sprawling stores. I readied my wand for a shot from maximum range, but before I could, both SUVs whipped left, right, and tucked into a parking lot. A quartet of henches exited the first, surrounding the right side of the second with guns drawn. I pulled up. “Think we can Dive Bomb?”

“No. Get us out of sight. Third V’s still there somewhere,” Fursona said.

I pulled up, gaining a few hundred feet of elevation. Then, the door opened, and the Third V appeared. She turned, reached in, and grabbed something. A familiar something. Even from this high up, I could hear the [Beeps] as Tractor-Beam-Girl used the kinds of obscenities that Fursona had already poached for the Episode. The henches grabbed her and hustled her toward an abandoned big box store. As they disappeared inside, the Third V looked along the horizon. She paused, then shook her head and disappeared inside.

“Whew,” Fursona said. “Get us back on solid ground, and let’s crack this egg.”

[End of Act One: Act Two in 3 Minutes]