Chapter 3: The Chase?

2:30am,

Mistral,

The Haunted Mire,

In the shit.

"Drive drive drive drive drive!" Ally screamed, as the eight legged horror scrabbled towards them with alarming speed.

Corrin threw The Beast into forward gear and pinned the pedal to the floor.

"I meant backwards you dick!" Ally yelled, as the Beast lurched forwards and jammed it's bonnet up under Death's abdomen.

"Oh I'm sorry!" Corrin replied, as giant legs scrabbled against the sides of the car seeking purchase "I couldn't hear you over me saving our lives!"

Screech!

Ally and Corrin screamed in fear as Death scuttled backwards, reared up on its back legs and drove a serrated, white chitin tipped foreleg through the roof of the Beast, separating Corrin and Ally and missing both of them by a hairsbreadth.

Ally raised an eyebrow at Corrin, then he put the Beast in reverse and hit the gas, rolling backwards over the muddy ground and dragging Death's legs out from underneath it.

Boom!

The giant spider crashed to the ground as lightning cracked and streaked across the night sky, sending mud flying in every direction. Corrin brought the Beast to a stop some twenty meters away from Death and Ally rolled down her window, allowing her access to the heavy harpoon gun that she had mounted to the outside of her door earlier in the night.

She grasped the handle, squinted her eyes against the rain, focused the gun's sights on the frankly terrifying mass of legs and fangs that was scrambling to its feet off in the distance and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The entire car shook and jumped backwards as a six foot long, heavy duty bolt trailing a length of industrial strength wire, flew through the night and lodged itself firmly in Death's midsection, eliciting a shriek of pain filled rage from it's fanged maw. Which was now connected to The Beast by a nearly indestructible cable.

Ally sat back down and Corrin opened his mouth to speak, and then left it hanging open as words failed to come to him. A brief moment of silence stretched between them as Ally stared out the windscreen, wide eyed with disbelief. After several moments with only the rain and Death's furious shrieks to fill the silence Corrin finally found his voice.

"Was that.." He trailed off, pointing meekly towards the harpoon which attached them to Death.

"Uh-huh." Ally grunted, nodding her head.

More silence.

"So, um." Corrin began.

"Yeah?" Ally asked, as Death finally righted itself and focused on the Beast.

The Grimm shrieked and launched itself towards the Beast.

"Oh shit!" Ally and Corrin screamed as one, before exploding into action.

Corrin slammed his foot down on the acceleration as Ally pulled another harpoon, this time with an explosive tip, out from a mount on the inside of her door and leaned out the window to reload the harpoon gun.

The Beast lurched backwards and then came to a sudden, jerking stop as they hit a rock the size of a house, knocking Ally painfully against the window sill and sending the harpoon spinning out of her grasp. She shook her head and swore as Death landed where they had been only moments before, splattering her upper body with mud and coating the Beast's windscreen and bonnet with it as well.

"God dammit!" Ally exclaimed, as she eyed the empty harpoon gun.

She grunted as she hoisted herself into a sitting position on the window sill and pulled out her sub-machine gun, sighted and pulled the trigger all in one motion.

Blamblamblamblamblamblam!

Her gun barked and the muzzle flashed as a stream of white hot bullets flew from the barrel and slammed into Death's hide. Some of the bullets pinged off of Death's white armoured sections but others found gaps in the armour and threw up big puffs of blood that looked black in the dark light, yet flashed bright red whenever lighting flashed across the sky.

Death shrieked again and threw itself from side to side before leaping over the Beast and scrambling around the side of the rock which had so rudely interrupted the Beast's retreat several seconds before.

Ally yelped as Corrin hauled her back inside by the back of her coat as the wire connecting the Beast to Death snapped taught and dragged them after her, scraping Ally's side of the car along the rock and filling the cabin with sparks.

"Oh shit here we go!" Corrin yelled as the Beast slammed down onto all four wheels again and was pulled off after Death.

Corrin pulled the lever and put the Beast into hover mode in case they hit any rough patches filled with rocks or boggy sand and Ally once again tried to load her harpoon.

Thunk, clunk, click!

"Gun's loaded!" Ally called out, as she leaned out the window and tried to spot Death off in the distance.

There followed a few brief moments of silence as Death, several dozen meters off in the distance and shrouded in darkness, hauled the Beast across the landscape at a frightening pace.

"Dammit it's no good!" Ally called, as the wind whipped her hair backwards and rain pelted her face "I need you to slow it down for a second!"

"Alright!" Corrin replied, putting his hand on the lever which transitioned the Beast between hover mode and wheel mode "I'll call when I'm about to do it, we just need to reach a clear spot first!"

"Okay, just say when!" Ally said, aiming the harpoon gun in Death's rough direction.

A tense few moments passed, as the Beast was jostled this way and that, narrowly avoiding hundreds of dangerously jagged rocks thanks to her dust fuelled hover engines. The sea of rain slicked rocks finally abated and levelled out into a plane of mud covered, flat ground.

"Alright here we go!" Corrin yelled, pulling the lever and dropping his foot onto the accelerator as the hover engines retracted and were replaced by four heavy duty tyres.

The wheels spun, throwing up showers of mud, hauling the Beast backwards and snapping tight the wire connecting it to Death. The giant Grimm was caught off guard by the sudden resistance and was subsequently yanked backwards off of its eight, deadly feet.

Corrin threw the Beast into forward gear and accelerated towards Death's writhing form to give Ally a better shot.

"Go now!" Corrin yelled, as they drew near to Death.

"Yeah yeah I got it!" Ally replied as she levelled her harpoon gun's sights on Death.

She pulled the trigger and the Beast was once again thrown backwards as a harpoon was hurled towards Death. A harpoon which missed its target by a hairsbreadth. Somehow, at the last possible second, Death had squirmed to the side, whether or not it had been on purpose was impossible to tell, and had avoided the harpoon. The resulting explosion however, it did not avoid.

Ally hit the detonator and Death's smoking carcass was thrown bodily backwards, right over the edge of a straight drop which had been concealed by the terrible weather and the dark night. The wire snapped tight once again and began dragging the Beast towards the edge, eliciting profanities and screams from Corrin and Ally.

Ally ducked her head back inside as they slid closer to the edge before coming to a vertigo inducing stop, teetering over the edge with the front half of the car hanging off of the edge of the cliff. Several dozen meters below Death's corpse could be seen lying on the ground, it's eight legs still smoking from the explosion.

"Seatbelt. Now!" Ally commanded, and Corrin obeyed without question or wisecrack.

The Beast stayed balanced there for a single, full second before gravity finally asserted its dominance over her and dragged her off of the cliff.

Ally and Corrin screamed as they plummeted towards the ground, gaining speed with every passing second before finally losing it all when they struck the ground.

Boom!

The bonnet screeched and crumpled like paper as the windscreen was blown in by the force, pelting Ally and Corrin with tiny shards of glass even as the two airbags deployed and smashed their faces in, slamming their heads back into the seats behind them and rendering them both thoroughly unconscious.