Mad Max: Road to Salvation: Volume 3

Episode 1: Refueled PT.1

A/N: I'm back! Sorry this took so long folks and I aplogize if this chapter is lacking in any way! I haven't done a chapter of this story in quite some time so please forgive if I am rusty.


-WITH MAX: 1 DAY AFTER THE BREACH-

Max sat in his daughter's room, silently watching over her, and still going over previous events in his mind. The breach had been contained, innocents had been saved, and one criminal had been captured. But the circumstances of Torchwick's arrest did not sit well with him once had time to think, and thus he was left with several important questions. Some of those questions were also pondered by a few of his fellow warriors. Yet with all his cautious skepticism there was some cause for relief, he would soon have the opportunity to personally interrogate the prisoner with Washington's assistance. Of course, there would be a measure of restraint for when Torchwick would soon be interrogated. His thoughts then wandered to Bruz's efforts in recent times, current intel revealed that a small group of infiltrators was planning to make moves during the competition. But how could they be dealt with, and what steps should take with the festival being less than 1 week away? Even with all of his experience in dealing with adventures that bordered on the insane, he still felt uneasiness about his current situation as a whole.

As the Road Warrior further pondered the matters of the road ahead, he heard the sound of footsteps behind the door and instinctively drew his classic shotgun. The door creaked open to reveal a half-sleepy/half-surprised Bruz lazily walking the halls.

"Oh, hi Boss." Bruz said groggily as he looked his step father in the eye. Max took the gun out of the teenager's face and holstered it once again with an annoyed look on his face.

"Do you have anything to tell me?" Max said impatiently.

"No, just checking on little sis. I do have a question though, why haven't ya moved yourself and little sis into Mum's house yet?" Bruz waved a hand dismissively.

"…Moving isn't an option right now. Anya would be too exposed." Max replied in a tired voice.

"*Yawn* If you want, I could take over watching little sis. You need the rest, I have a week off. Mum would agree with me if she was here right now, and you know it." The young mechanic crossed his arms.

"Fine, …keep her safe." Max sighed.

"Till my dying breath." Bruz replied as he took Max's place keeping an eye on the little girl asleep in her bed. With that done, Max went to his room a short distance away to get some sleep for the night. His thoughts of what was coming continued to relentlessly plague his mind though. He pulled the sheets aside to find Glynda unconscious in the bed to his surprise. With a sigh the road warrior undressed himself, revealing the various scars that covered his battered and beaten body from all his years of survival in the unforgiving wasteland. He looked outside to see the broken moon in the sky, shining down on the school from above as if the eyes of fate itself were looking upon the events surrounding the school.

The veteran wastelander pinched the bridge of his nose as he sat down on the bed, having removed his attire. He put his hand down and then carefully put a palm to Glynda's shoulder, the woman instinctively grabbed his hand while she slept. Max gently clasped her hand and began to lay down on the bed to relax for the night. Only to find himself tossing and turning, unable to rest easily. The road warrior only knew one better way to soothe his nerves, driving the interceptor. Climbing out of bed again, Max set his feet on the floor and began to stand up. As he did so he felt a hand grab onto him from beneath the sheets of the bed. With a quiet sigh, Max turned back to see Glynda still asleep, her manicured hand squeezing his own tightly. After gently prying his wife's hand off of him, Max reequipped his gear and headed for the garage, determined to ease his mind.

-DOWNTOWN VALE-

In a penthouse at the heart of Vale's downtown sector, a certain crime boss had called his lieutenants together for an 'important' meeting. Around the table several colorful individuals had gathered, each of them varying in expertise except for their ability to drive. At the head of the table sat the infamous gangster and street racing enthusiast, Orion Cross. Beside him was his lovely yet deadly right-hand lady and enforcer, Raquel Graves.

"Ah now that everybody's here, we can get to business. I made it clear in the messages I passed along what this was about, but just in case any boneheads here forgot, one of our buyers is getting impatient on the next delivery." Orion said in a relaxed tone.

"Why do I have a feeling you're going to make our job overly complicated?" Raquel said sourly as she leaned back in her chair beside the boss.

"Anyway, he wanted three truckloads of weapons and ammo in three days. So, I said we'll do it in 24 hours for double the pay. SO, I want you all to gear up for a smash-and-grab operation to hit 4 VDF armories. Get eight rigs to pull some trailers, four gunships and a few extra armored vehicles to defend the shipment." The suave leader ordered.

"Boss you can't be serious! Setting aside the problem of where we are going to find that much hardware, do you how much heat that'll bring especially since Atlas is here?! Or have you forgotten about that guy in black who was ballsy enough to kick in the door of one of our warehouses, and the war fleet in the sky?!" A large and well built lieutenant exclaimed in concern.

"Calm the hell down Sully, relax. I've got this all planned out with my dear boo Raquel and her lovely sister Octavia Le Bleu's help." Orion tried to placate his distressed heavy hitter and gestured to a woman sitting the shadows beside Raquel.

"Half-Sister!" Raquel added.

Ignoring her sister's outburst, Octavia leaned closer to the table, revealing herself to be the splitting image of the deadly beauty sitting right next to Orion. She sported a buxom figure and well-maintained physique though not as muscular as her more combat experienced sister. Her hair was short and well maintained, accompanied by an eyepatch over her left eye, a dark blue woman's blazer with a tie, dark black cargo pants and fashionable leather boots. "Ah yes, thank you mister Cross. Now as you are all aware, we are going to need to meet the demands of our buyer in short order. That means acquiring all of these separate loads of weapons and ammunition, which the VDF has in ample supply. The sites we will be hitting are located throughout the city, though some are more secure than others. I will be assigning the separate groups to their-"

"Shut up and get to the point sister!" Raquel snarled.

"Tch, is my precious little sister mad someone broke her favorite toy?" The smooth business woman teased her half sister.

"Don't keep bringing that up you unless you want my fist in your face!" Raquel seethed with fury.

"Then don't interrupt me, it's that simple." Octavia wagged her finger.

"Why you-!" The deadly beauty was about to attack her sister but Orion put a stop to it.

"Chill out, gorgeous. We'll get payback for that soon enough. Got it?" The suave criminal calmed his violent right hand lady.

"Fine." Raquel huffed and crossed her arms, and began glaring at her sister.

"As I was saying, we have to acquire the necessary supply of product to meet demand, therefore we will strike the four VDF locations almost simultaneously with the appropriate teams. Now before we can begin the operation, we'll need our dear little Anita to deal with some extra cyber security measures the VDF may have in place."

"Hey wait up! Why all the extra loads?" Another one of Orion's lieutenants asked.

"That's in case the so-called Road Warrior hits us during the run, dumbass. We lose at least one part of the shipment to him, it'll be no biggie. Now before this can go any further..." Orion explained to his other subordinate, and then looked at a young blonde girl with short pigtails, who was busy working at a computer. Her attire consisted of round opaque glasses, black jeans, hi-top sneakers, a white coat with red T-shirt, and fingerless gloves. With a sigh he watched on in boredom, tapping his fingers on the table expectantly as the girl kept typing at her terminal, until his patience ran out. "Anita." He called out to the girl, but received no response. "Anita!" Orion barked.

"Y-yes boss?" Anita said timidly as she looked at her employer.

"Have you been paying attention kiddo?" Orion asked in a kind tone.

"We're going to do a heist, right?" The young girl said shyly.

"That's right, and miss Le Bleu has the perfect little job for you…" Orion trailed off.

-HOURS LATER-

The road Warrior had spent a good portion of the night with his thoughts as he cruised around the urban sprawl of Vale. To him it seemed as if the weight of the Remnant itself was slowly falling upon his shoulders, and yet there was only so much he could do. For the most part his drive seemed to have its intended effect, as Max found some relaxation with the hum of the interceptor's mighty V8 engine providing ambience. The machine itself proving to be welcome company for him on his solo patrol for the night. Suddenly a call blurted out over the police scanner, and Max turned up the volume to get a better description of the situation. "All units be advised, several local VDF garrisons have been attacked. Be on the lookout for stolen military freight and cargo, suspects are heavily armed and extremely dangerous. Use of force has been authorized, any units engaging the suspects are advised to do so with extreme caution." Having heard the alert. Max narrowed his eyes in anticipation for a battle, and stomped on the gas causing the interceptor to roar proudly in response.

A large explosion rings out as a VDF armory erupts into flames, a large convoy of vehicles driving away from the carnage. The group of vehicles rolled on down the road with a thunderous roar as the VDF arrived on the scene, the authorities being too late to catch even a glimpse of the culprits. With the stolen military cargo in hand, the group of heavily armed gangsters made their way across the city through less traveled routes where they would have less chance of being noticed. Little did they know; a familiar black car was hot on their trail.

Max kept out of sight of the heavily defended convoy of vehicles, forming a strategy for the situation as he did so. He knew there had to be three other convoys of vehicles somewhere and all of them were going to converge on one location eventually. Though that left him with the problem of simply intercepting this shipment, or allowing it to lead him to the rest of the cargo. An itch at the back of his skull gave him the impression that he was expected to hit it in some way. Another problem was the gunship, if it were to bear down upon him, he would have no defense aside from using his lightning dust to short circuit its weapons. He couldn't do this alone, not this time, not if it was that same faction he'd dealt with in the past. Knowing his alone time was over, the Road Warrior tuned the radio to the frequency of his fellow fighters and made a call for back up.

"This is Max, does anyone copy?" The road warrior asked.

"Well hello Maxxy, what's up?" Mari replied.

"No time for messing around, are you aware of the attack on the VDF?" Max asked the foxy faunus.

"Yeah, I was just about to go looking for you actually." She coolly responded.

"Then listen, I need some assistance dealing with a convoy of thieves, and you and the others have to track down three other convoys of stolen equipment. If I catch one of the suspects, I'll tell you what I find out. Understood?" Max explained.

"No worries, I'm on the case, tough guy! Just tell us where to meet up so we can help out!" The foxy faunus said cheerfully.

"Good, over and out." Max replied and hung up the call. The road warrior, now knowing that backup was on its way, Max began his assault on the convoy. He took then by surprise and tossed a thunderstick at one of the rigs. In the confusion, the drivers of the assault trucks surrounding the rigs attempted to train their mounted weapons on the interceptor. Max did his best to avoid the turret fire while also avoiding a hail of rounds from the gunships above him. The road warrior gritted his teeth as he swerved away from an explosion that was caused by a rocket that the gunship launched. Max stomped the pedal and engaged the nitrous, spouting blue flames from the interceptor's exhaust pipes. The bright flames obscured the assault truck driver's view, causing the truck to get torn up by a stream of rounds from one of the gunships. The driver took an armor piercing round to the head, making the now driverless truck spin out and crash off the road.

Max charged ahead and tossed another thunderstick at the same rig as before. The driver radioed his allies to take out the black car, but they simply kept missing the nimble vehicle. Any of the few bullets that did hit the interceptor ended up ricocheting off of the car harmlessly. The road warrior bashed against the rear corner of a truck, attempting to spin it out but the heavier vehicle hardly budged. The gunner focused on Max, but the road warrior drew his shotgun and fired a flame dust shell at the exposed gunner. The man freaked out as the fire covered him and rapidly attempted to put out the flames. Max braked hard as the gunship fired at him, narrowly avoiding being ripped apart once more. Seeing the air vehicle nearly miss a building, Max seized the opportunity and swapped to lightning dust. He immediately fired a round at the attacking gunship, forcing the pilot to fight for control of the vehicle. With the gunship out of control, Max fired another round at the twirling air vehicle, forcing it to crash into a building and explode in a huge ball of fire and burning scrap metal. The remaining assault trucks attempted to attack the nimble black car by ramming it. Max used his nitrous and shot forward as both drivers swerved out of each other's way. The road warrior raced to the front of the convoy and threw a thunderstick at the lead truck's cab. The rig driver panicked as an explosion rocked the cab, causing him to swerve frantically. Max tossed another thunderstick at the truck's unarmored left front wheel, destroying the tire and causing the truck's driver to finally lose control. With the tire gone the truck skidded along the pavement and began to violently flip over. Max boosted forward to avoid being crushed by the truck, just barely sliding under it as the truck rolled onto its side. The rear rig driver screamed in fear as he jumped clear and his truck crashed into the wreck in front of it. The two assault trucks followed suit and slammed into the pile of ordinance and twisted metal.

Max pulled to the side of the road and stopped, feeling somewhat satisfied at the vehicular carnage he'd wrought. He briefly glanced in the rearview mirror to see a man crawling away from the wreckage. Seeing the potential intel he could gain from the survivor, Max reversed towards the man on the ground. He then stepped out of the interceptor and calmly walked over to the man on the ground. With a quick move, Max reached down and flipped the driver onto his back before putting a boot down on the man's torso.

"Where are the rest of the trucks going?" Max asked in a stoic tone of voice as he stared at the driver.

"As if I'd tell you lawman!" The truck driver spat at the road warrior.

"Wrong answer." Max growled as he slammed his boot down on the man's shoulders, snapping them.

"Bwaaaaaah!" The driver howled in pain.

"Now talk or you'll regret it." Max growled impatiently.

"I don't know anything seriously! Wait what are you doing?!" The man screeched as Max dragged him over the interceptor's rear left tire. The road warrior then hopped into his war machine and reversed slowly until the driver's skull was slowly being crushed by the tire. The driver flailed and begged helplessly as Max proceeded to continuously go back and forth, slightly increasing the amount of tire that crushed the man's head as he did so. The torture went on for several minutes until Max finally heard a loud enough confession from the driver. Max stepped out of the interceptor again and then leaned down to the beaten driver.

"Now where are they going?" Max asked one more time.

"The industrial district, that's where they plan on delivering the shipments to a buyer, at warehouse 15! That's all I know, now please stop! I don't want to die like this!" The driver cried pathetically. Max simply stood up and stomped on the man's face, knocking him out cold.

-END PART 1-