Chapter 21: Chrome Realm (part 1)
All of a single day had passed since the Swamp Realm opened when the alarms rang out in the middle of the night, startling the drivers from their slumber. Groans and muffled curses could be heard as they reluctantly climbed out of their warm, comfortable beds and quickly changed into their clothes. Soon the three teams had assembled in their respective garages, though in truth everyone knew who was going to be racing. None of the Teku or the Metal Maniacs had been able to repair - or in Vert's case rebuild - their cars to the point where they would be safe to drive. And although several of the Metal Teku also had damage to their vehicles, they had managed to get their cars into driveable conditions.
Thus, it came as no surprise to anyone when Tezla announced that Verity, Gale, Talia, Terra, and Aurora would be racing this time around. The rest of the drivers didn't really have anything to do, and the vast majority of them went back to bed. Vert, Nolo, and Shirako wandered up to the conference room to watch the Realm, while Tork pulled the camera feed from his sister's car up on one of the screens in the garage and was splitting his time by watching it and working on his car. Taro had gone back to his room, choosing to view the footage being broadcasted from his half-sister's vehicle using his laptop.
The Metal Teku quickly climbed into their respective vehicles, driving onto the track and towards the jump into the other Realms. Talia considered taking another verbal swipe at Nolo as she passed him, but decided to save it for when she won this Realm. She hadn't been that happy about having to let him take all the glory in the Swamp Realm. The girl had to even the score, and what better way to show her older brother that he wasn't any special driver by winning an Accelecharger as well?
The dimensional portal quickly swallowed the cars up, sending them sailing through the transitory dimension before expelling them out into the Racing Realm. The girls quickly saw what awaited them, and as one they came to a quick decision. All of them hit the brakes, coming to a screeching halt.
"Yo, nice place." Gale eventually said as she took a look around. "A little bit trippy for my tastes, though."
It was like being stuck in a hall of mirrors. Everything - the walls, the track, giant orbs that were floating in the air - appeared to be made out of gleaming silver metal, polished to a shine. Countless reflections of the girls and their cars danced along the walls, some perfectly proportionate and others strangely warped.
"Wow," Aurora whispered. "Do you know how many shamrocks I could buy for Greenie if I had this much silver?"
Vert, of course, groaned when he heard this, while Nolo and Shirako both kind of laughed. Like most other occupants of the Acceledrome, the two younger members of the Teku found Aurora's nickname for Vert absolutely hilarious.
"I don't think it's silver." Terra eventually said. "It looks more like chrome."
"Silver, chrome, I could care less," Talia replied. "Let's just get going. We've already wasted five minutes, and it wouldn't surprise me if Drones start popping up in a few moments."
"Heh, you mean like those Drones up there?" Aurora asked innocently, jerking her thumb at a group of the green and black monstrosities that tore out of a side-route and ended up right in front of the girls. Talia swore under her breath and hit the gas. Techtyte went from zero to one twenty in mere moments, the other girls quickly falling into line. But they drove with the tiniest bit of apprehension, hyperfocused on their surroundings. With all of the reflections, it would not only be easy to almost crash into each other but the surrounding environment as well.
"Keep an eye out for the skid marks the Drones leave," Verity ordered as she took the point position. "Since they're flat, they won't show up on the reflections as much, if at all."
Her advice was the result of a minute of intelligent observation, realizing that the paths with skid marks would be the ones to follow. With the sterile cleanliness of the mirrored Realm, the tiniest bit of pressure would leave dirt, smudges, and marks for the girls to follow.
Of course, that meant that the Drones were flying blind. And as most things that are flying blind are wont to do, they crashed. Rather badly, in fact. One moment there was nothing wrong, and then suddenly the small squadron of Drones was awash in green flames that scorched the mirrors, and billowing black smoke that choked the unnatural air, creating a huge inferno that blocked the girl's path.
"Well then." Terra simply said, while in her car Aurora grinned.
"That was epic!" She yelled, causing Lani to wince.
"You do realize that we just lost our way." Talia wondered, a touch of exasperation in her voice. "Not only can we not get through that pile of flaming junk, we also don't know what are reflections and what aren't reflections."
"Oh." Aurora seemed to visibly deflate. "I hadn't thought of that."
"Think a bit after we back up," Verity suggested as she looked over at the cars. "That fire's pretty hot."
And it was, hot enough to scorch the mirrors. Unbeknownst to the girls, the chemical composition of the air in the Chrome Realm did not contain enough oxygen to fuel a fire of that size or scale for very long, and thus the flames were being fed primarily with a few chemicals that kept the mirrors from corroding over time. Burning this chemical created compounds that would hasten the corrosion of metal, and their cars were being exposed to it. With the protective seals on their vehicles, all of the Metal Teku should be safe. All of them for Terra, that is. Her car, made as it was out of junk parts, was much more at risk for being corroded.
But the girls weren't aware of this and were more concerned with the flames. Or, as Aurora so aptly put it, it was best for them to focus on getting to a safe distance to ensure that the flesh wouldn't melt off of their faces. She, for whatever reason, seemed to think this extremely morbid thought was rather hilarious, judging from her failure to muffle the giggles and snickers coming from Road Rage.
"How much time do we have left?" Verity asked nervously as she looked at the blaze. The girl really didn't want to get stuck in a Realm like poor old Kadeem was.
"About 45 minutes," Lani replied a moment later.
"So, in other words, we've progressed perhaps four miles from the portal in fifteen minutes." Talia sighed and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. "Anyone else hoping that this is one of the shorter Realms the Accelerons came up with?"
"Aw, dude, I hope so," Gale said. Terra, up until this moment, had been largely silent, trying to postulate a way for them to get through the wreck. She had come to the conclusion that there was no way for them to do so. Which meant that if they couldn't go through the wreckage, there had to be a way around it. But how to pierce an unpierceable illusion?
"Gale." She suddenly said. "Theoretically speaking, is it possible to map this place by using sound waves? If not the entire Realm, than just the surrounding area?"
"Yo, why didn't I think of this before?" Gale cranked the volume up on her car while setting the vehicle's built-in computer to track the sound waves and translate it into a hologram. The picture was blurry, but she was able to make out the general layout of this small area of the Realm.
"If we go back fifty feet, there's another track that diverges off of this one." She announced.
"Got it. You take the lead for now." Talia wanted to win, but she wasn't going to mess around. "Everyone, go as fast as you can. We've lost a lot of time, and we need to make up some ground."
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