Tyson Jerell Williams was a driver.

  He liked speed. He liked running. He liked driving. He loved moving.

  There was something about those moments of movement and power that drove him. Those singular bursts, each better than the last. It was like his heartbeat. It was ecstasy.

  He drove and his wheels fought against the black and concrete floors. His mind buzzed with joy. He would win.

  “Alright,” his communications device said. “We knew that the Steel General would be likely to attack today. The hero team meant to oppose him is on standby. But he’s not here yet, so we need you guys to keep driving, understand?”

  “Copy,” Tyson replied.

  The Steel General was a Major A villain. He was a tinker, which was a rare thing for superheros and supervillains, but he thrived in the position. Giant robot men were his go to weapons. They looked like old sci-fi robot designs and were designed with aesthetics in mind rather than efficiency. They had an oval head stuck upon a thick steely neck. Their torso was a big and clunky rectangle, and they had four fingered hands and flat legs attached to them with the same material that held their head to their torsos.

  They looked silly, but when something was thirty feet tall and you had to crane your neck to look up to it, it suddenly didn’t matter how goofy it looked. It was scary.

  Apparently there was a reason as to the design and building of these robots. One was that the Steel General had already built a factory to make these things out there somewhere. And he also used hydraulics to move the limbs and the torso. The liquid was something of his own concoction as was the robot design.

  It meant that these strange looking robots were a combination of his greatest creations.

  As to why he was attacking the Spin, well that was easy. Apparently, he was an extremely petty guy and his ex-girlfriend was a big fan of the Spin. She had actually gone to the Union and warned them about this possibility, and apparently, she was right to be worried.

  The Spin was currently in Old York City, the abandoned carcass of New York City after it had been destroyed in the upheaval. The real New York was about eighty miles into the sea on a man made island.

  And while this place had long since lost the right to be called a historical site, it was still a bit of a shame to see these big robots rumbling through it. Roads cracked and buildings were smacked down as the two of them raced.

  Motor Maniac had seemed to lose his competitive spirit, only driving to avoid the giant stampede of humanoid metal. Tyson laughed and pressed open his communications line.

  “This your excuse, Motor? Finally got a good reason to lose?”

  “Fuck you!” Motor replied.

  Tyson chuckled and pressed the gas.

  The Spin was always full of strange people. There was always the risk of death, and while this was a particularly large villain attack they had happened before in recent memory. Here were people willing to drive, no people needing to drive.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The two cars soared through the open streets. There had been multiple routes decided outside of the official one. The official one had traps and dangers set on it, but if the villain attacked, they were told to switch to one of the escape routes that would lead them to the other side of the track.

  This route happened to lead them to the finish line.

  Two men, partially insane but sane enough to know it, pushed their vehicles ahead as fast as they could.

  “Boys, what are you doing? We discussed this, take the exit route right now or both of-”

  Tyson flicked off his coms and pressed pedal.

  He was an addict and a lover of speed, of movement.

  He was In Need of Speed.

  Tyson laughed, making a sharp turn with as much control as he could muster. The robots were close now. One slammed their feet into the ground ahead of him. He flipped a switch in response and his tires expanded immensely. All four had a diameter half as wide as the car and were able to run over the robot's feet without problem.

  It reached down to try and punch Tyson, but he could see it coming. He had a camera in front of him, displaying a full sphere of vision on a compact board. He swerved into a turn and managed to flip his car in the process.

  That was fine. It was a planned move he had done numerous times. He landed right side up again.

  That maneuver ate at his speed if anything.

  [Vehicle compromised, core engine system damaged.]

  Tyson kept on driving. Spin cars were a feat of engineering, something only tinkers would come up with. They were designed to take immense damage and still keep going. They weren’t designed to last a year, a month, even a day, only an hour at most.

  It was half an hour of absolute speed, free from legal consequences driving at an inhuman pace.

  The robots thundered behind them. Some of them were even throwing buildings, but what was that to their cars?

  The Steel General might have been a better tinker, but his robots were built to fight. INOS and Motor Maniac had built their cars for one thing, speed.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THOUGH WE ARE CURRENTLY UNDER SIEGE FROM THE STEEL GENERAL, IT SEEMS LIKE THE TWO COMPETITORS HAVE CHOSEN TO KEEP THE RACE ALIVE. THE AUDIENCE SEATS ARE FAR ENOUGH FROM THE MAYHEM TO BE CONSIDERED SAFE SO PLEASE DO STAY SEATED.”

  The announcer's voice came in from the outside, the droids probably.

  It was done because the officials knew that they couldn’t stop and if they couldn’t stop them from racing, then why cancel it?

  There was more to it ofcourse. The Union expected the General to be hiding among the masses. No one knew where he was and the man had always hid his face from the public. His girlfriend had described him, but even that was a vague image, nothing definite.

  Still, right now facial recognition was being run on the crowd to see if any one of them matched the descriptions. The live feed was on a thirty second delay and almost all transmissions, outside of the preapproved ones, were being disrupted.

  This was normally done to prevent illegal streams on private networks. Streamers, Video bloggers, and even piracy sites were an active problem for the Spin, and their solution would also be an obstacle for the Steel General.

  Another robot stomped down ahead of them. It reached for them, one hand coming down on Tyson, the other on Motor Maniac.

  Both swerved into each other’s direction, nearly colliding with precise control and slipping through the robot’s legs.

  This one had come from the front. How?

  Tyson looked to his front. There was a group of bots heading down towards them from ahead.

  He flipped open his coms.

  “Off road!” He spoke, then he flipped them off.

  Then both cars turned and started down the broken and unsafe roads of Old York City.

  Tyson smiled. This was going to be one hell of a race.

  New chapter tomorrow.

  Thanks for reading. Leave a rating or a review and a follow if you're enjoying the story. It helps a lot.