Chapter 9: The Storm Realm

"There's no track!"

Those were the first words that Terra heard as she came through the portal. It was an odd sensation, traveling through the dimensional portal. Not exactly uncomfortable, but overall not that pleasant. It was nerve-wracking enough with all the shaking, and Terra was quite surprised that her car hadn't fallen apart. But now, to hear that there was no track? Well, that was almost the last straw, so to speak. She didn't trust this mysterious Tezla anyway - he seemed to think that she was one of his own personal playthings, and saw no problem in meddling with her life - but this made her absolutely furious. Her quiet anger, much different from the one that that insufferably irritating Metal Maniac had, boiled beneath the surface; causing her to privately curse the old man for causing her death.

Or not, apparently, since a track appeared out of nowhere, lost in the gloom of storm clouds that hurled lightning bolts at the orange surface. One by one in a series of clunks the cars made contact with the alien asphalt, and soon they were speeding down the straightaway.

"Does anyone know what is holding this track up?" Kadeem asked from where he was in the lead position. Terra shrugged, a brief smile crossing her face as she heard her brother tell him in a flat tone of voice to go ask the Accelerons.

That thought was so unexpected that it might as well have struck her across the face, and the girl almost slammed down on her brakes. Brother? Taro wasn't her brother. Why she wasn't even supposed to exist, and even if she was he would no doubt be as ashamed of her as the man they both were supposed to call father was. Terra was a flaw in an otherwise perfect equation, the one thing that was keeping him from living what Hollywood tabloids would deem a perfect life.

The girl was driving on autopilot at this point, hands and feet doing what they were supposed to do but the mind a million miles away. She ignored the storm that was swirling by them, the winds threatening to rip their cars from the track, even Monkey's scream of mental anguish when Gig jokingly asked who informed the group that they were getting paid for risking their necks. No, her mind was in the past. Or rather, to be more specific, her past.

The girl that called herself Terra Kitano had been born in a back alley in Los Angeles. Her mother had been sheltered by a local gang that was sympathetic to her plight, and one of the female gang members had acted as the midwife. She was an only child. Or rather, as far as she knew she was an only child. Some deep, almost primal instinct told her that she had siblings, and Terra was pretty certain that those instincts weren't talking about Taro. No, it had to be someone else. But who?

Regardless, right now Taro was her only confirmed sibling. To be more accurate, he was, in fact, her half-brother. Taro's father had tricked Terra's mother into believing that he was a single man, and the two had begun a relationship. When the scandal broke loose, Taro's father cut off all communications with his lover. What neither of them realized, however, was that Terra's mother was pregnant with his child.

Nine months later Terra - and possibly another sibling or two, she wasn't certain - had been born. The young mother and her child moved out to the east, away from the Kitano family. Terra grew up on the streets, the daughter of a poor, working-class mother. She didn't have a formal education, could barely read or write or do math for a while. Her dear, sweet mother taught her what she knew, but it wasn't much. And then the unthinkable happened.

At the tender age of six, her mother died and she was homeless. Terra was on her own, and soon learned the ways of the street. She survived a few years as a beggar and a thief until finally she had been framed for a crime she hadn't committed: burglary. The illegitimate Kitano was a pickpocket, true, but she only stole enough to buy food for her belly and not a penny more. Besides, breaking into homes wasn't her style. But still, she was convicted and sent to a juvenile detention center.

Quite honestly, Terra saw it mostly as an improvement. Sure, the food was bad and her freedom was gone, and the cells were searched each night; but at least she had food three times a day and a roof over her head. And they started to give her an education. But being locked up took its toll, and she became a dark and bitter person.

She spent five years in that place. Five years where officially she wasn't Terra Kitano, she was prisoner number CR-S02. Terra hated that serial number hated it with an ugly burning passion. Granted, the social worker, therapist, and doctors she was assigned to go see addressed her by her name as much as possible, as did a few of the guards, but officially she wasn't human. She was nothing more than a number in the system, a statistic to scientists, and a criminal to the world.

Some of the people, including the warden of the prison, were rather sympathetic to her plight. It was hard not to feel sorry for the girl, as it did seem that the entire world was against her. He even slipped her twenty bucks when she was finally released. Terra was pretty certain that doing so was against several laws, but it was nice to know that someone cared. They all knew that she wasn't going home to any sort of family.

The girl ended up hitchhiking and walking across the country, doing odd jobs along the way. She even ran into Taro once, although the girl doubted that he remembered that particular encounter. Eventually she wound up in Virginia, collapsed in a scrapyard in the middle of the night, and then woke up to the sight of Uncle Tom making her some breakfast. She'd stayed with him ever since.

The onset of foggy clouds covering the track caused her to shake her head and try to clear it. Terra couldn't afford to be distracted, not here. Scarcely had that thought crossed her mind did she swerve to the side to dodge the green and black vehicle that rushed out of the fog to pass her, failing to adjust its course in time to ram into Welded like it had originally intended. Those must have been the Racing Drones that Kadeem, Lani, and Gig had mentioned.

Sighing she readjusted her car so that she was back in the middle of the road once more. The lightning grew a bit more intense as she made it out of the foggy area, just in time to see Monkey's car get vaporized by a stray EMP shot. Before she could slow down to pick him up, however, Wylde went rushing past her, and the driver's seat from Rolling Thunder got caught on the edge of Spine Buster.

Honestly, Terra pitied the teen. Wylde wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and he had one mean temper. Spending half a Realm in his company wasn't something she'd personally want to do. The girl sighed, moving over into the adjacent lane to dodge the seat that went flying down the track only a few moments after Monkey scrambled into the car.

They then went whizzing past a car that was parked in the middle of the road, something that Terra suspected was Wylde's idea and not Monkey. The car happened to be Taro's, after all, and Monkey wasn't the type to abandon his teammates.

Her brother, sorry, half-brother's car wasn't in good shape. From the looks of the vehicle and the driver, added with the smell of burnt metal and charred flesh, it was easy to tell what had happened. Taro had been hit by lightning, frying the engine in the Roadrunner and knocking him out. He'd have some nasty burns when he came to, not to mention any other injuries sustained during the whole event.

If Terra had been a spiteful person, she'd have left them there. And, truth to be told, for a moment she did debate doing that. But eventually she sighed and pulled Welded to a stop, crying out in pain as a smaller bolt of lightning licked the side of her vehicle. It burned, worse than fire, and the shock that ran through her threatened to stop her heart. Thankfully it didn't, but Terra could clearly see bright red burned areas on her hands. Judging from the pain in her legs, they had gotten burned as well.

But the girl was used to pain by this point, and so awkwardly climbed out of her vehicle and began to hook their cars together with a cable. When she was finished, she checked the engine, hoping that some miracle had happened and her engine hadn't been fired to a crisp. Everything looked good, although she would definitely need to make repairs when she got out. If she got out.

Terra instantly pushed those thoughts out of her head. She had to get out of the Realms. Failure wasn't an option here, and Terra wasn't planning on failing now.


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