Highway To Hell

Right as the zyr tried to ram Arin, she pulled the emergency brakes - there were two for some reason - and was missed completely.

A quick second later she watched as the Zyr went flying off at a diagonal that was not conducive to staying on course.

"Eat ocean, mother fucker," Arin said as she unlocked the brakes and drove backward to get enough distance for the ramp.

When she finally took off, lava spraying along her car in a very photogenic manner, it was to find the zyr had landed on a black promontory as was making their way back toward the track, albeit with one ruined tire and a missing aileron.

All that for so little? Fuck.

Arin's jump took her clear past the zyr at least, so there was that.

A quick flick of the eyes brought up the leaderboard. Not counting the racers who had been crossed off for totaling their cars, she was now in 76th place, and the zyr was last.

"I just have to beat the zyr... I don't have to win... I just have to beat the zyr..." She groaned. "I want to win though!" Slamming on the throttle, Arin took off as the zyr's tires reinflated and they returned to their pursuit. She didn't just want to win. She wanted to beat some answers out of Paragon X.

The island was huge enough that they only needed one lap from start to finish, and as she sped along, little popups telling her she was approaching the "Sacred Left Handed Tor" or "The Tentacle of Dread Goddess Elepandushanrith" which turned out to just be another lava flow with a minor jump.

Slowly, as the damages mounted and more cars were disabled, Arin's lead crept up, until she was in 21st place with two hours to go.

But then, she was panting. Sitting saddle-straddle in what was functionally a four-wheeled deathtrap had not done wonders for her disposition towards ground car racing.

"Come on, you little worm, get out of my way..." For the last mile or so, the racer in front of her had been drifting constantly toward Arin's front.

I so wish I could use my powers... 

Having gotten acquainted with her car beyond reason, Arin felt reasonably certain she could pull one of her opponents e-brakes... assuming she didn't mistake it for one of the the metallic regulators that were centimeters away, keeping the churning explosions of the engine from frying its driver...

Yeah... not out to kill anyone. Except maybe X.

She was barely able to trick Little Worm - who turned out to be a dendroid bundle of vines with bug-like sensory leaves - into overdrifting when a sudden blare of alarm sounded in her comms.

ALERT

Unexplained Disaster Event Occurring. Racers are to gather for extraction at designated points.

A new map of the island popped up, a live satellite feed with markers showing every racer's position. Arin scowled when she saw Paragon X was in first place, but then she watched as the leading cars started to turn around, racing for the beach that was going to be her extraction point as well.

Those nearest drove onto the sands and stopped moving, their drivers exiting the vehicles. To Arin's horrified realization, a grouping of dots behind her along the road suddenly disappeared as the satellite footage showed her a massive pyroclastic flow.

Thirteen racers... gone like that...

The zyr was not amongst them, having gotten out just ahead of the grey cloud of ash and death.

Can't win'em all... a murderous corner of Arin's mind thought. What would happen to the racers if the race was canceled? Would she have to compete again?

Those were her thoughts as she drove onto the evacuation beach, her vehicle rumbling to a halt as it buried its wheels in the black, rocky sands.

Another alarm blared as she stepped out, this time the volcano was losing another section, one ahead of them.

The various responses of the many aliens to this news told Arin a lot.

One racer, who resembled a glassy-eyed moth man with yellow, dusty scales instead of hair, held up four spindly arms in prayer. Another that looked like a ball-shaped equivalent of a junkie Einstein with four legs and no visible arms, jittered with anticipation, projecting excitement more than anything else as they jumped up and down to see the explosive flow.

But Arin didn't have long to take in the various reactions, as a new explosion took place... at the top of the mountain, on the side facing the beach.

The only natural rise in the mountain kept the cloud from heading right for them, funneling the new flow into the recent one, but a different threat began to speed its way right for the helpless racers: a cascade of lava, kilometers wide.

"Oh fuck..." Arin said, joining the staggered chorus of similar reactions in alien tongues.

Mothman stood, approaching the red-hot doom, and Arin reacted, running forward and tackling him.

"What the hell are you doing?" she shouted.

"Ta is angry, I go to give my life so she may show mercy-"

"Yeah, fuck that," she answered as soon as the translation finished. "Get back there and stay alive." She threw moth man back toward the crowd.

She looked around. The beach was mostly flat, sloping towards the ocean in a horseshoe-like shape.

I need to block the lava...

She needed metal. A lot of metal.

Fortunately, she had cars.

Reaching out with her hand as well as her powers, Arin grabbed a car and planted it nose-first into the volcanic sand, forcing it as deep as she could, but not getting very far.

"I could use some help here!" she shouted.

As if breaking them out of a daze, several aliens started to gather near her.

"Dig me some holes. If we can make a wedge, we can block the lava..."

Several species hurried to obey as soon as their translators finished, and with each new hole, Arin picked up a new car, planting it as close to the others as possible to make sure lava was more likely to go around than through...

"Hey! Hey! What are you doing?" Arin shouted.

A bat-like alien had started messing with the bolts of the first car she'd set down, using some kind of multitool before removing a massive thing from the frame.

"Put that back, Batty!"

A high-pitched set of chirrups and clicks assaulted Arin's ears, until her translator finally spat out. "Fuel tank. Very explosive. You understand, rodent-human-alien?"

"Fine, fine, keep going." Arin didn't like being called a rodent. "I'll call you Tech then."

Tech made the all-too-human gesture of rolling their eyes, and their ears too, before resuming their work.

Twelve cars later, Arin had a decent-looking wedge... full of recently non-explosive holes.

In desperation, and with her psionics growing weaker, Arin resorted to lifting the rest of the cars into position to block the holes, hoping Tech would get to their tanks in time. The one car she didn't place was the zyr racer's car, which she placed just behind the wall. It wasn't like they could drive away, given how deeply their wheels were stuck in the sand.

"It's not going to work," a garble-stitched voice said in English, coming to stand next to her.

"It's better than anything you've done!" Arin glared death at Paragon X. "Why are you even here?"

"I know your powers better than you do, human." Paragon X ignored her question. "Reach down. There is metal enough to form a shelter."

"Mother fucker..." Arin turned away. The lava was almost upon them. She had seconds to decide whether to trust Paragon X enough to completely drain herself for the sake of survival... "Graaaagh!"

Arin did as she was told, closing her eyes and reaching into the rocky sand... and she found it.

Metals, with all their glorious magnetism, in tiny fragments. Dust and rocks... little things... but if she drew them together-

Arin's paragon armor began to shine purple through her race outfit as she seized as much of the sand as she could, a ball of mostly-iron forming at the core of her binding field...

And when she opened her eyes, she warped her field, slithering the iron sands amongst the vehicles as she sought to fill every space she could.

Once she could no longer see lava through the car barrier, she took one step forward, lifting both fists as she concentrated with all her psionic might, collapsing and intensifying her fields until they began to fuse the iron together with the vehicles, filling every spot-

A sudden scream drew Arin's attention, a molluscoid alien fleeing the lava as fast as their mucus-membraned pseudopods would let them. The lava had started to flow around the cars, and a tendril had wormed its way into the tiny zone of safety...

The whole world started to rumble. More sand started to gather, the displacement causing some racers to sink down for several centimeters. A new wall formed, redirecting the flow towards the ocean, before rising to form a semi-dome that protected everyone from their glowing death.

Arin was stunned. She knew it wasn't her. It couldn't be her. She was mostly spent... But as she tried to find the source of the magnetism, she found nothing.

Of course, I can't see the source... we're in the middle of it.

But there was one way to tell.

Every alien looked up at the dome with emotional reactions... all except one.

There was a popping noise as suddenly the brain-can of the zyr racer popped.

And when she looked, Paragon X raised a single finger to the front of their mask, holding it in front of where a human mouth should be... in a clearly human gesture.

"Shh..."