Carramba High Road Rally Day 1 Silverknight 3

Team Silverknight
Lost in the Woods


“Did they say that it would actually be on a road?” Maelin asked, holding on to the seat’s arm rest as well as unconsciously having put her other hand over Gordon’s arm next to her. He could actually feel her squeezing the armor, and half wondered what exactly kind of freaking jerboa had that hand-strength?

“Well normally,” Bethany said, giving half a grunt and pulling the safety harness around her body more for comfort than out of fear she was going to be injured. “The town is available to drive up to, they have cars and busses and stuff… According to their website.”

“A magical township has a website?” Magg asked, with a smirk.

“Everyone has a website,” Foxx laughed.

“Well not everyone likes spiders, so…” Nabib had pushed his way through the big book on his lap to a chapter on “snares and hold spells” but didn’t find this ‘web sight’ that they were talking about.

Piers sighed, reached behind and down to where Nabib sat, and pushed the book shut.

“It’s a technological version of the Mage-Net, Nabib, not a spell to capture something… Man, you have the shortest memory.” He was on the edge of chastising the fez wearing man, but then again he hadn’t found Wonder yet with his senses either. Of those in the Silverknight vehicle, he should have been able to do that, easily! While they tromped around for a bit, Piers quietly explained to Nabib that they’d already looked at ‘web sites’ with the pictures of the dragons.

Piers correctly guessed that Wonder’s spells and wards had been updated specifically for the Rally, knowing that not everyone would really be able to get there or find the place easily already.

The vehicle had been transformed when they nearly drove off one of the curving cliffs that their route had to take. Vax had muttered something about how amazing it was that anyone could travel these roads at all, let alone ones like they passed: someone was having a mobile home transferred from a cheaper state, and that meant ‘over the mountains’ because that’s how California rolled. It was apparently still quicker and safer to move things from Arizona or Nevada this way, than head all the way south and go through Mexicali.

But it did mean that they, as a Rally participant, had to either back up out of the way for the two big-rigs that hauled their long cargo, or just get out of the way however they could. Vax was pretty certain their transformation surprised the driver of the first rig, but the carrier just kept going at a snail pace around each curve. Instead of just waiting it out and returning to the road with the vehicle in car form, after the second rig had passed, Vax decided to hike through the trees.

“I can’t even imagine the amount of damage you’re doing to the nature trails,” Foxx muttered. But instead of replying verbally, Vax just turned on the cameras that were aimed at all angles around the vehicle, and played the results on the main screen in holographic form. Turned out, Vax could move without breaking too many trees, though the soft and crumbly dirt did have a visible set of deep foot prints coming off the road.

Birds didn’t think too much of this, they scattered into the air from their resting spots, but returned to mainly the same branches – even if some of those trees were still swaying a bit after springing back from being pushed aside.

According to their onboard heads-up display, they were heading due north toward Lake Arrowhead, and that should be approximately where they were needing to be. But the lake wasn’t exactly small, nor were there any markers out in the middle of the actual hills for it. They had to go by GPS, which Bethany asserted was perfectly fine. She didn’t sound like she thought it was perfectly fine, though. Truth be told, her navigation equipment wasn’t able to work through Wonder’s warding.

Nabib had begun verbally going through the lists of things he could put up on these web sites, in order to emulate the Trusty Tome. It was too hard to put all that information up in a persistent way on the Mage-Net, which was of more use for instant communication and notes than the encyclopedic knowledge that technology could afford. Piers wanted to talk about the slight differences between their worlds versions of each of those things; they were different, after all. With magic being out in the open and all but pervasive in his own world, they had little need to prevent normal people from glancing over mages shoulders – people without magical sparks couldn’t properly read nor perform any of the spells anyway. Then he got a strange look, “Nabib, what… is that sound? Is that your fez?”

The swarthy man looked left to right, his eyes suddenly growing quite comically round. He bit his lip, and looked like he was about to hide behind the book again. To be fair: it was big enough for him to do so, no one knew how he possibly carted that thing around all the time.

While it was magical, he had to put it down sometime…

A tiny-tiny sound, like delicate holiday bells, could be heard near his fez. And even though he was more tan than any other humanoid without fur in the vehicle, he blushed a good strong red while it rang.

“…. Yes?” Nabib admitted. But he still seemed incapable of doing anything about it.

Piers sighed. “Could you answer it then? I mean, is it alerting you to something? Is someone calling you?”

He stiffened, tried to look serious. “Why, yes! Yes I think so!” Finally he put the book more firmly on his lap (and somehow it didn’t fall off, even though the craft was still lurching somewhat constantly) and with great hesitation he reached up with his left hand, plucked the dark green and gold trimmed fez from his head, and put it carefully to his ear.

“… Yes?” He said into the tassel. It flipped around, straightened out a little, into what could only be considered a magical headset.

They couldn’t quite make out what was being said on the other end, but it was a female’s voice. She sounded excited, and not just a little bit accusatory.

“I – did …. They did? Really? That’s amazing!” Nabib seemed to lose focus on the team around him, and leaned back a little. “I hadn’t seen it, no. That’s impressive. All there, yes? Good – well yes I mean good for them they… No, I didn’t! I mean – they could have…”

Foxx stood up and leaned over to Piers and whispered, “who is he even talking to?”

As Piers shrugged, Gordon and Her who was still on his shoulder had clearly overheard this. The little angel-creature fluttered into the air, and flew down to Nabib’s section of the cabin. Nabib was animatedly discussing something, or more accurately seemed to be stammering his way through an apology for not having done something.

Her came back up to roost on Gordon’s right shoulder once more, and looked at Foxx slightly below them. “I think he’s talking to his girlfriend,” she said. Maelin beside them craned her neck to see the mage, who was definitely still talking into the fez – or at least listening and wincing – with what looked to be a mixture of exasperation and terror on his face.

“I’d believe that,” Maelin said with a smirk. “She sounds awesome. Think we’ll get to meet her?”

“Looks like,” Piers said, “I think I just heard her yell something about Wonder…” He turned to look up at Bethany, “could you open the feed from Carramba?”

When Bethany did so, it seemed to startle Nabib almost enough to drop his fez – it slipped out of his fingers and even as he fumbled for it across his lap and over the book, they could hear his female friend’s voice, along with a lot of others. He scrambled with it in his fingers more firmly, and pressed it back up to his ear, cringing.

“Yes, we’re… We’re on our way now,” Nabib announced to her, carefully and slightly louder than he’d been. “But I have to… go – now…” They could sense she was still somewhat irate, but wasn’t openly yelling at him – it actually sounded more like she was yelling over other people.

That would be because she was in Wonder, waiting for them – and Feng’s team had reached the place first. On the Carramba Rally feed, several reporters were interviewing the fluffy lion morph and his team mates, in front of his gorgeous Lambdis. The Wonder central square was clearly visible, banners and lots and lots of flags were everywhere.

Nabib indicated in his own hesitant way that he could see the feed, which was not meant for eating even though that’s what feed was, and that they would be there as soon as they could be. Everyone else heard, quite distinctly, that they’d best be there next. Nabib shook the fez a little, its tassel coming loose from its ‘microphone’ pose, and he put it back on his head. He shrank from the looks that the rest of the passengers gave, even though no one was angry or accusing him of anything.

“So…. That was your… friend…?” Maelin prodded, but it was Foxx who suddenly turned on him.

“That was Melora?” She exclaimed. “Of course it was Melora, you’re Nabib!” She smacked herself in the forehead. “Seriously I never even thought I’d get to read all of the Illustrated Adventures, there’s a bunch of them that haven’t been imported yet. If I’d known we were going to be on the same team, I’d have brought one and get you guys to sign it.”

With that, Nabib blushed again but seemed happier. “Well, yes, Kate’s books certainly do sell well don’t they? Even among muggles?” He wondered whether they called non-magical furries muffles, and then started giggling to himself because of it. “They’re not wholly accurate as ‘documentaries’ are, but,” he chuckled a little, “they’re definitely more truth than fable.”

“Can you get any kind of triangulation on Wonder,” Vax asked when things calmed down a little more, and noticed that the transformed vehicle had ceased walking. It was still upright, and swayed slightly with the trees around them doing the same.

Bethany gave an encouraged grunt. “I’ll – oh I know. Hold on a sec.” She kept the feed patched to the cabin monitors in addition to having it spring up in front of her on her own viewer. “Unless they have some really weird magic that changes how it looks from inside their wards…It’s live, we should be able to get at least some kind of simulation on the area.” She pushed a few buttons on the console, and apparently her head-jack allowed her to manipulate it just by thinking. The television broadcast was enthusiastically recapping and thus switched between several of the local reporters and back home at Carramba’s CCTV station. “Vax, pan the cameras outside upwards a bit. Step a few meters to both sides and forward and back. Thanks.”

Only a few moments went by, as the broadcast was coming to a close and switching back to a more sedate old-timey romantic comedy. But that was apparently all Bethany needed. She superimposed the views from their robot with the camera angles and still shots she’d captured while she could. A lot of little blue and green lines appeared on the images.

Nabib put his hands on the edges of his book, but instead of opening it, he leaned forward to look at the displays. “That’s extremely pretty,” he said. “What is she doing?”

“Triangulating,” Gordon said. “We’ve got a view from our location looking up,” he pointed at it isolated on one side of their large screen, “and another over the town square at Wonder,” he indicated the main view, “and a third from Carramba. We know the scale of people in each one, and can estimate perspective. With all three of those, we can match up what the cloud formations look like, and determine how to get there with it.”

“Kind of like telling a dragon to teleport using a star chart,” Bethany said, still concentrating but able to multi-task. “When you know what the stars look like and maybe some shadowed features like a mountaintop or a tree line, you know where they’ll wind up. It’s caused some issues,” she smirked, “but for the most part if you’ve got a good memory, or have an image to look at, you can’t really get all that lost.”

“But you’re not telling this vehicle to teleport!” Nabib said, a bit worried.

“No, that’s Pepper’s car…” Magg muttered with a half-hearted grunt. “Don’t know how we’re supposed to win against that.”

“The same way we didn’t get to Wonder first,” Vax replied, and they could tell he was grinning. “They don’t necessarily know where it is, and they’ll have to get through the wards in order to enter it anyway.”

Piers nodded. “If there are more than just visual wards to keep the place from being seen, they may have other means to keep out teleporters – apparation is almost always the first thing people try.” He gave a private, slightly gloating, smirk. “So I wonder how they’re going to get into the place, if the town is warded against exactly their mode of travel…”

While the others chatted, Bethany gave a flicker of a smile, “got it, Vax; feeding you the route now.”

“Not that far away, I’ll shift down to wheels when we get to the road.” They trudged over two more hills, heading nearly due east, found the road – the same road that Team Fluffy had been down an hour earlier. Thankfully they didn’t need to crisscross the area more than once, for the location to come into view.

“Oh there it is,” Piers said, and nodded toward the signage that became visible with the intersection of that street. While it looked almost too narrow to be a public road and not just a private house drive, they knew it was where they needed to go. The trees and rocks they passed may have been slightly different for this team’s arrival, but none of them would know that.

Fluffy and his people were sipping sodas or beer, hanging out at the corner of the town square, and waved as Silverknight drove in. The lion laughed, they could hear him through the window, as groups of people spotted the second team to show up. The transformable vehicle crew were all but surrounded when they pulled into their spot in the wide parking lot.

The requisite television crews were there in a jiffy, some of them hardly done interviewing Team Fluffy. As the team disembarked and pushed their beacon to activate its timer, Magg and Foxx had to actively shout to get the people out from around them. “We’ve got to get checked in!” Foxx yelled, “once we do that, we’ll give plenty of interviews and photo shoots!”

The crowd mostly parted, and allowed the bulk of the team to pass. Her had fluttered up and over everything, it was unclear whether anyone even knew she was on the team.

Nabib kept ducking behind Magg, since the off-worlder was easily half again bigger than the mage. But sooner than he expected, Nabib heard the dulcet tones of ‘his girlfriend’, Melora Nightwind. She was an oddity even at Wonder, because it was clear she was hardly Human enough to pass at many major Wizardry schools. Her skin was blue-tinted white, and her hair was a lustrous violet-black, which matched the lovely snug gown she wore. Oddly though, on her head were a pair of bat wings in place of her ears – they were the same color as her luminous skin, and were actually quite attractive. At least, Nabib seemed to think so, when he wasn’t so worried about what other people would say.

Somehow, he tucked the Tome into his robe’s sleeve where it vanished, and greeted Melora with a fancy bow and a slightly guilty smile. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. But she leapt into his arms anyway, nearly bowling him over and causing the crowd to laugh heartily. Some of them started to recognize them, like Foxx had, as the more-than-slightly comedic stars of their very own magical comic book. Given that Wonder had an entire store dedicated to exactly that sort of thing (which had a good number of muggle books as well) they would be in for some celebrity treatment.

As Maelin and Piers also managed to duck into the check-in area, Bethany and Gordon held back, waiting for Vax to be ready. While they stood outside the driver’s door, Gordon felt a little tickle on his neck, and chuckled a bit when the Monarch girl stretched and perched back on his shoulder.

“Hope it didn’t smell too weird, I hope your wings aren’t scrunched,” he muttered, “and I’m glad I didn’t pack the helmet; it would have gone in there and you wouldn’t have had any room.”

Monarch didn’t seem to understand a word he’d said, but still she gave a flutter of her bright, unscrunched, wings in response. As they unhooked Vax from his web of cybernetic connections, Gordon and Beth could hear mutterings of locals. It was pretty easy to tell they hadn’t seen anyone like him, some weren’t sure what to do or say. That was perfectly fine; Vax had a bearing about himself that was almost as regal as any of the royals on the other teams, and knew how to deal with people who gawked.

That, and when he gave a little nod of his head, a horse-like silver device came walking toward him. “Wait until it’s close enough,” Vax told Gordon, “and then I can get in more easily.”

“Get… in – oh, you did bring it.” Gordon’s green eyes just lit up behind his black-rimmed glasses.

Vax was, if anything, true to his name sake: a robotics genius like himself would hardly bat an eye at creating such an elegant solution to his leg issues. A centaur in the making, the silver colored ‘horse’ walked carefully toward its controller and knelt. Where the head would be on a normal horse, however, was a socket fitted with another of his rubbery-looking gaskets and a good number of wires. Those wires came to life by themselves, attaching to his spine jacks. Within moments, Vax’s legless torso was hooked into the horse, hidden panels slid around his torso and arms, and he was a silver knight.

The crowd apparently thought that was pure awesome.