Thanks to: Readergirl99, shiningpearls, 6000j, Steinbock, The Littlest Mouse and Shadow914 for the reviews.

They're fixed! I can see reviews on the page and reply again!

WARNINGS: Swearing, near-misses, car crashes, whip-lash jumps of highs and lows... A crazy ride all round to be honest. Hopefully you get to the end of this chapter feeling like you were strapped into the back seats of Henry the Mini the whole time.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Off the Pace

Countryside, County Dublin

Artemis had assumed the race would take part on the grounds surrounding Marigold Manor, but as it turned out, they had to follow in a eight car convoy, some two or three miles to a section of road blocked off by yet more of Devlin's friends. Or possibly employees of friends, as they seemed to have access to large, agricultural vehicles they had used as a blockade and a vehicle with large forks on the front Dom presumed would be useful for rescuing overturned cars; which seemed more and more like a probable occurrence as they wound their way to the start line.

They pulled off the main road onto a narrower lane, with a carpark full of cars not taking part. It appeared the race had gathered quite a crowd of onlookers.

They filed over a black and white cheque sprayed onto the tarmac, Romeo accelerating away at the front uphill.

"Well," Artemis said, peering over the lip of the window at it. "That must be the finish line, I suppose."

"You think?" Dom muttered.

The thick, overly warm air flowing through the windows was crackling with pre-thunderstorm tension.

Quite thematically appropriate, thought Artemis as he gazed out of it.

Dom didn't consider the pathetic fallacy of the weather. He was more concerned about how a downpour would affect the road surface after the hot weather. The tarmac would certainly be greasy and Henry's tyres were probably not all above the legal limit for depth of tread...

A little further on, people were gathered behind the only concrete barrier on the route; large, cuboid blocks topped with heras fencing, that some florescent-jacket clad youths were busily attaching long, colourful pool noodles to. Given the degree of the turn and the fact the foam arms were set along it at roughly 3ft height from the start right through the apex, Dom could guess what they were for; drifting.

"This is the track – we're driving it in reverse," he told Artemis. "Try get a good look at things. I don't think we're going to get a trial run so it'd be good to start making notes now."

They didn't know that Romeo had already given out copies of the race's layout to his driving buddies and that they were, in fact, the only car in the running without a track map or pace notes to go off.

Artemis tried to work out what he was looking at, but he had to admit it was all starting to look very different to how it had on the video game... For one, there were small numbers of people every few turns, all cheering and waving at the cars who honked and flashed their lights in response. Dom didn't join in. He was concentrating.

Having been drawn last, they had to wait at the top of the track until the other three sets of cars had run. Over the radios the somewhat self-proclaimed marshals were using, they could keep track of what had gone on. Smash at corner eight. Overturned vehicle in the ditch past corner eleven. The route was a winding one with thirteen corners that that incorporated both tarmac, gravel tracks and a short section of cross-country downhill over a field, leading to a challengingly narrow gateway and an immediate ninety-degree left turn. To make things worse, that was where the slalom was set up; cones, threaded with red and white tape. Five corners, starting and ending with a sharp right. The ground was currently hard and dry, dust flying up from the wheels, but by the time the heats had started, thunder was rumbling on the horizon and the darkening of the sky was not just down to the advancing hour.

The wind changed, a cooler breeze blowing through the car and rustling the papers of Artemis' notepad. He wound the window up halfway.

Neither of them spoke very much whilst they waited.

"Rain's coming," Dom said, eventually.

"Yes, I think you're probably right there," Artemis agreed.

"That'll mix things up a bit."

"Ah... quite."

There was a certain air of awkwardness in the car. As though it had all suddenly become quite real; the consequences looming over them like anvils hung by threads.

They were a long way from the basement of Fowl Manor and a virtual screen now.

The track was claiming its victims, although they heard over the static rushes that nobody had yet been seriously injured.

Only one set of cars had both finished; Devlin coming out in first position of that race, and as the only racer who had beaten another car, rather than won by proxy due to their competitor crashing out.

"OK Fowl – you're up!" the starter master shouted.

Dom touched the wires together and Henry the Mini coughed into life.

Artemis thumbed his notebook almost nervously and they pulled level with the other car.

"You alright, Tim?" Dom asked, quietly.

"Well," he said, with a grimace. "There's no turning back now."

"We could claim engine problems," the junior bodyguard shrugged.

"After the trouble we took to get here? Not an option!"

Dom thought that actually, it had taken a lot more trouble on his part than Artemis', but he didn't mention it.

He was glad he had thought to pick them up a pair of motorbike helmets from the garage. Artemis had seemed more keen about the idea once he had seen the other teams all wearing them and the track seemed pretty unforgiving - it wouldn't take much to rattle their heads off the doorframes, or even the ceiling in his case; especially in the event of a wipe out.

"On your marks..."

Dom touched the accelerator lightly, sending more of a wheeze than a rumble through Henry's engine.

Come on, old boy. Don't let me down now, he thought, giving the steering wheel a squeeze.

"What do you want me to do?" Artemis said, hurriedly. "I've no notes to go on."

"... get set..."

"Then use this as a practice run," Dom said, eyes on the marshal with the flag. "Just like the game. I'll tell you what I want you to put, then in the next race you'll be able to read them back and give me some pointers."

"If we win, that is," Artemis said, just a trifle of nerves in his tones as he gripped his Parker pen tightly.

Dom glanced across at him.

"Oh ye of little faith," he grinned, then floored the accelerator.

"...GO!"

Dom whacked up the clutch and the car's tyres bit into the ground, wheelspinning rapidly and covering the spectators and their opponents in a mixture of pulverised, dry sheep manure and tiny chunks of gravel as they leapt onto the track in front of the other car.

He worked mostly on reverse memory as he slung them around corners and pushed the Mini almost to flat out on the straights, spitting a stream of coded pace notes that Artemis jotted down best he could, his pen jerking over the page, his normally perfect handwriting barely legible.

"L-5 minus, 40 into Crest," Dom rattled out.

They hit the humpback bridge a little too fast, the momentum launching the car into the air and landing it heavily on its suspension. The wheels scraped the arches with a hissing complaint and Artemis yelped in alarm.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry - won't do that again," Dom spat rapidly through gritted teeth.

"No problem, just conentr..."

But Junior patted the steering wheel fondly and the Fowl suddenly got the impression that he hadn't been the intended recipient of the apology.

"Tim - make that last note a caution and jump, into a crest, 50, R-3 minus..."

The Fowl scribbled on frantically.

There had been a tricky moment where their opponents had threatened to run them off the road and Dom had been forced to push Henry's flank into their vehicle to keep them at bay. The other car's wing-mirror had pinwheeled off into the distance, but the little, red Mini drove on with barely a scratch.

They tried for an overtake several more times, but Dom predicted their attempts, blocking and driving so defensively that after several hair-raising (on Artemis' part) they made it to the end of the track both in one piece and in first position without ever losing the lead. He had been too careful for the crowd's liking on 'Corner 13' and missed every one of the pool noodles. But they had made it down. And, most importantly in Artemis' eyes - they had won.

They heard over the radios at the finish line that the driver and navigator – siblings, as it turned out – had been pulled out unharmed from their car after they crashed trying to make up time at the five-bend slalom.

Dom felt a tentative sense of relief as he spun them around in the carpark to head back up the track for the second race. Not so much at the status of the other team, but at the fact he had managed to get them through the first heat without damaging either the car or the humans in it.

Artemis was elated. Not only at the result, but at the fact he had managed to make what he believed to be useful notations on the track's layout.

They spent some of the break going over the jumbled notes and refining them from Dom's memory so that by the time their second race came around – against one of the teams that had also only won because of a competitor's crash, both boys were feeling much more confident about the whole thing.

"The way you drive is fantastic!" Artemis gabbled as they waited for the starter to call them into position. They were to drive first of the two races of the heat this time. "No other driver here is a patch on you, I'd say!"

"Well let's not get ahead of ourselves," Dom said, his family's natural, guarded pessimism and superstition against celebrating too early, shining through. "We still have this race before we get to the final."

Artemis looked across at the other car. The young man Devlin had called out for being drunk last year glared back at him briefly, his navigator drawing two fingers up to his eyes and then pointing them at the Mini. Dom ignored him entirely.

And then they were under starter's orders once more.

They didn't get as good a start as last time, but they were still ahead up until the third turn. Remarkably, Artemis was even calling out the navigation fairly correctly.

"OK, straight 100, into turn three - that's a big right - ah - a R6..."

"Tim - quicker!" Dom snapped as he flew around a corner that was definitely sharper than a sweeping bend. He'd already blasted through the R6 five seconds ago and was coming up on the...

"40, R3 plus off-camber, 60, L5 minus - care - 50!"

"Better!" Dom praised him.

It all went south at the sections affectionately known as 'The Humps Mark 1'.

The section was made up of a series of low to medium rises, followed by the humpback bridge, which carried the rough farm-track over what was currently an almost-dry river bed. 'The Humps Mark 2' were towards the end of the track and much more violent, but without the danger of smashing into any drystone wall structures.

McCormack came up behind them so fast and close on the first rise that he sailed, airborne into the back of them. The rear window smashed, showering glass into the interior of the car. Dom swore and swerved to avoid the large rock he had clocked in the initial drive up as an exhaust snagger and they were hit with a great bang of crumpling metal on the rear of the passenger-side.

Artemis shouted a curse; his pad dropped, forgotten, into the footwell as he gripped the doorhandle and the side of the seat.

"Brace - sit tight!" Junior yelled as they were knocked off course despite his best efforts.

Artemis gritted his teeth as the car juddered over the rutted ground so violently that he felt like a bead in a rattle.

To Dom's credit, they didn't spin, but they did career off the track and at the last second avoided crashing headlong into the drystone wall.

Unfortunately, though they missed entirely wrecking the car, that also meant they missed the bridge entirely and dropped down into the riverbed.

"Come on, come on, come on," Dom coaxed, as Henry climbed valiantly up the other side.

But the little car roared itself to a standstill with his front wheels barely clearing the bank, spinning futilely.

McCormack's jeer echoed briefly through the window as he flew over the bridge with a series of unnecessary revs of his engine.

Dom cranked the handbrake on and slammed the heel of his hand on the wheel in frustration.

"Fuck!" he barked, as the tail lights of their opponents disappeared away into the coming dark.

Artemis pinched his nose through his visor and Dom turned to him.

"Are you alright?" he asked. "Not hurt or anything?"

"Well I believe my pride is about to take a battering," he sighed, unbuckling his jammed seatbelt to retrieve his notepad from around his ankles. "Damn we should have won that..."

"We should. But we'll have a job even getting the car out now," Dom said, with an annoyed growl.

"They'll be too far ahead to claw this back anyway," Artemis said, dully. "Although I suppose we could rely on being chosen as the wild card."

"I dunno about that either to be honest, Tim," said Dom, clicking his tongue against his teeth. "I heard something go bang underneath as we hit the bottom there. We need to take a look at that and see if we're even going to get home."

Artemis wondered how the hell he'd managed to identify one particular 'bang' amongst all the others but he nodded his head numbly and tossed his navigation notes onto the dashboard.

"Anything I can do?" he asked, looking thoroughly defeated.

Dom was surprised at the offer, but he took it up instantly.

"Yeah," he said. "Come sit here with your foot on the brake in case the handbrake fails. I want see if I can to take a look under the car while it's propped up like this. May as well take advantage. I saw some portable wheel ramps down in the carpark, but I doubt Devlin is going to let anyone lend them to us."

Minutes later, the Fowl was in the driver's seat, doing as he was told by a Butler, for once in his life. And the aforementioned future Blue Diamond was clambering into the stagnant river bed, somewhat precariously, to peer under the rear of the car.

"Looks like the muffler took the brunt of it," he called, trying to get a good look without getting covered in the copious amount of half-dried, congealed cattle manure clumped and spattered all over the vehicle from their trips up and down the slalom across the field. "We'll have to lose the whole catalytic converter, but he'll get us back to the manor alright. It'll be noisy, but we'll make it."

Artemis didn't bother telling the boy he may as well have been listing the car parts in the lost language of Atlanta for all he knew, but the phrase 'back to the manor alright' struck him as good news. He tried to hide his abject disappointment at their failure. What he hadn't told his companion was that he hadn't taken up the challenge of competing just for the experience. There had been an additional prize up for grabs for himself should they actually outright win the race. He had neglected to mention it given the initial apparent impossibility of the task, but after that first heat he had begun to nurture a more than vague hope...

"Just need to get us out of this hole first," the young Butler continued.

"Do you have a plan for that?" Artemis called.

"Yeah – it's called; you do a hillstart and don't fuck it up and squash me while I push," he laughed.

Artemis didn't see what was exactly amusing. He hadn't been all that good at 'hill starts' in his lessons. In fact, he had once 'reverse bay parked' the car he was practicing in into a bunch of rhododendrons whilst attempting one. He didn't mention this now. Junior knew full well of course, having almost fallen out of his 'scout' position in the boughs of a nearby tree from laughing upon witnessing the debacle.

"Junior, are you sure about that? I rather fear I'm going to be in enough trouble with The Major when he gets back as it is, without adding 'flattening favourite nephew with his own mother's stolen vehicle' to my rap sheet."

There was a few moments silence when suddenly Dom noticed something through the gap around the edge of the crumpled boot of the Mini.

"Actually," he said. "I have a better idea."

The 'better idea' turned out to utilise the tow rope The Major had insisted Theresa put in the back of her car after finding out his brother had used the original one to build a rope swing on the banks of the river. He hadn't been surprised to hear that, of course, but he was surprised to find that Beckett hadn't replaced it, nor put together a comprehensive 'crash kit' for the car. So along with a basic mechanic kit Paul had since sold the majority of, Henry the Mini had once rivalled Bertha the Bentley in terms of containing almost all the items required to fix approximately 75% of problems they may come across on the road. Well, not the handguns or smoke grenades of course, but a great many things besides that - including a crowbar Theresa had once used to fend off a ill-advised pair of muggers who had approached her in a supermarket carpark at closing time when Dom had been around five years old. He had cheered when she cold clocked one of them and said sternly to the other; 'If you don't leave us alone, I'm gonna let my little boy beat the shit out of you with this whilst I watch. And if you don't believe me, I suggest you risk taking another step forward.'

The man had dragged his friend out of the way and she had reversed out of the carpark without another word. Dom had been quite disappointed he hadn't got to have a go, actually. But then his mum had given him a choc ice and cleaned the blood off the steel bar in the kitchen sink whilst she rung his Uncle Myles to ask what license she would need to - legally - carry a firearm. 'Hypothetically speaking', she had added when he had predictably been about to ask for the remainder of the evening leave to drive over and deal with whatever situation she had managed to land herself in this time. Dom had dobbed her in quite merrily that weekend when she had dropped him off for babysitting and Myles had grudgingly approved of her methods.

It was just a shame that crash kit wasn't all present and correct now, Dom lamented, back in the present.

Still, a rope was a good start and Dom was a Butler and a student of Madam Ko's Bodyguarding Academy and therefore far more resourceful than your average teenager, who may - as Artemis was considering - have just sat down to wait for someone to come along to assist him in the seemingly impossible task.

A noise like an acorn falling onto the roof from a tree echoed through the car, swiftly followed by several more. Fat, heavy raindrops began to explode on impact with the windscreen and Artemis leaned out of the window to shout to his determined friend.

Great timing, he though testily.

"Junior - are you sure about this? Just get back in the car - we'll wait for one of the others to come up and ask for a pull out..."

Dom certainly must have heard him, but gave no answer as he hooked the rope to the front of the car, then around a tree, then attached it back onto the rope itself using a carefully winded length of paracord he had informed the disinterested Fowl was called a 'prusik loop' and a karabiner, which he procured from the pocket and the waistband of his combat trousers respectively. Artemis was well used to his family's family of Butlers producing random items from their person, but he was somewhat impressed that Junior had both the knowledge and everything he needed to build what he called a 'Z-Drag'.

"Junior..."

"Stop asking, Tim - yes I know what I'm doing!" he shouted back, as the rain began to pound his t-shirt flat against his skin. "I've done it before - it'll be fine. Well it was a boat last time actually, but still, same principles!"

"I'm just not sure it's going to work - the physics..."

"I don't have enough cord to make a brake prusik," Dom continued his explanation regardless - and if he didn't know better, Artemis would say the future bodyguard was enjoying this more than he should have been. "But I'll brake it manually and this will make a 3:1 pulley system, so that should be enough..."

"How much does this car weigh?"

"With you in it?" Dom frowned, calling back over the noise of the rain on the bonnet. "Uh... six fifty, seven hundred kilo maybe?"

"So you're expecting - factoring in pulley ratio - to pull almost a quarter ton with your bare hands?" Artemis asked, a little sarcastically.

"Ah, it'll be reet," he shrugged, with a grin. "And if it's not, I'll build us a 4:1 Pig Rig and we can start again."

The Fowl thought the boy was probably overestimating his own abilities somewhat, but as his job was to sit in the predominately dry car and drive it forwards, and not to stand outside in the tremendous rain that was throwing itself down from the heavens with gusto, risking what he suspected would be at the very least horrendous rope burn when this inevitably went wrong, he didn't say anything.

Junior ran across in front of him, pulling the tow rope which was now bent back and forth in something resembling the letter 'Z' if one tilted their head to one side and looked at it from above.

"OK," he called, setting the line of pull at a forty-five degree angle. "Start him up! Let the handbrake off slowly and keep the accelerator on until you're clear – just try not to run the rope over, alright?"

"Or yourself," Artemis added, starting the car after a few coughs of the engine.

"Yeah, or me!" shouted Dom, taking a firm grip of the rope, slick as it was with the water from the skies.

"Any other tips?"

"Yeah - rev the tits off it and don't whack the clutch up!"

"Rev the..." Artemis repeated incredulously.

"Sorry - I mean depress the accelerator until the rev-count is over 4000rpm and bring the clutch up gently... sir," the young bodyguard said, his face a mask of mischief as the rain ran down it.

"Oh shut up..." the Fowl grumbled, but watched the RPM meter carefully all the same.

"On three... Ready?" Junior bellowed, over engine and storm. He took several, deep breaths - filling his lungs with the heavy air, nostrils revelling in the unique scent of fresh rain on dry ground.

"Ready!" Artemis rattled back, gripping the steering wheel tightly.

Co-ordination, don't fail me now, he prayed silently.

"One..."

There was a massive flash of lightening overhead and the wind whipped rain through the open window, stingingly.

"Two..."

Artemis couldn't believe the young Butler was laughing, but that's what it looked like in the amber light cast by the dying sun reflecting off the purple clouds above.

"Three!" he practically whooped, throwing his weight into hauling on the rope.

Miraculously – or at least that's how The Major would have described it – Artemis did not stall the car.

The rope, tree and indeed Henry's front towing eye creaked and complained under the noise of the engine, but the Butler boy put his back into hauling downwards into the riverbed, making use of the gravity assist, the water beginning to rush past his ankles as it streamed off the heat-cracked fields into the natural drainage channel before it had a chance to soak in.

And, with physics on his side, the Mini inched forwards out of the dip and onto the flat.

Artemis even remembered to press the brake and avoid running over the line and pull the handbrake on to stop it rolling back.

"Yes!" howled his young accomplice, scrambling up the bank and pumping his fist into the air. "Fuck yeah! Good teamwork!"

He held his clenched hand out to the open window and Artemis grabbed it, quite full of the thrill of success.

"Well done, old chap - I didn't think we'd get out of that for a moment, but here we are..."

"Bump it, you idiot," Junior laughed at him. "You're supposed to bump fists - like this."

He rapped their knuckles together, drawing back his hand with an added 'woosh' sound effect.

"Ah - a 'fist bump', I have heard of those. I suppose this makes us 'cool'?" Artemis asked, with a bemused chuckle. The storm seemed to be having quite an effect on the other teen. He was buzzing with the exhilarance of it - giving off quite a similar vibrant, manic energy as the rumbling skies above.

"We were already cool," he said, with a wink. "Now we're pretty damn awesome."

"Quite - just a shame the rest of the world fails to see that," Artemis said, a little wryly.

"Ah, fuck 'em!" the young bodyguard grinned, springing off to disassemble the pulley system.

Dom worked quickly, chucking the various bits and pieces through the rear window onto the back seat.

"I'll have to get the exhaust off when we get to the finish," he said, slinging himself into the passenger seat and wiping both hands over his head, water spattering from his short hair over the interior of the car and soaking into the seat from his sodden clothes. "I'll jack him up if they won't lend us the ramps."

"Wait – don't you want to swap back?" Artemis said, hand on the driver's door somewhat reluctantly.

Another flash of lightening came and Junior began to count the seconds out loud.

"One... Two.."

He didn't get to 'three' before the thunder crashed in, rolling towards them through the thick air in a throaty rumble.

"Wooh! That was closer - it's coming this way!" he said, excitedly.

"Yes - are you not going to drive?" Artemis asked, snapping his fingers as the boy's attention was lost out the window to the skies once more.

Dom blinked, coming out of his storm-induced madness slightly. "Ah - I don't see the point. We already lost, so it's not like you can make it any worse."

"Charming," the Fowl said, a little haughtily.

"Hey, I just meant this is probably your only chance to drive in a real-life rally, so..." he held out one hand to the windscreen and shurgged. "You may as well."

"Well, when you put it like that," Artemis said, with a small smile.

"And I'll check your notes," he said, grabbing the raindrop-stained pad from the footwell. The Parker pen had been lost to the mysterious portal that was 'under the chair' and he cracked open the glovebox to find one of the many semi-functioning biros his mother left all over the place and certainly at least one of in there. "You know - just in case by some miracle we do get picked as a wild card."

An empty cassette case rattled out and he caught it before it hit his shins, grinning suddenly.

"What?" asked Artemis.

"Can you drive ok with music on?" he asked, scribbling a pen on the edge of the book quickly to check it was working, before slamming the glovebox closed and sliding on his seatbelt in rapid succession.

"Well of course I can drive with music playing..." Tim said, huffing.

"Good," said Dom and after a moment's fiddling with the radio, pressed 'play' on the cassette player.

The six bar guitar solo was joined by the drumbeat and then the vocals of AC/DC's Bon Scott burst out of the slightly fuzzy speakers.

Living Easy, Living Free...

Season ticket on a on-way ride...

Artemis didn't think he had heard the song before, but Junior clearly had - slapping his hands on the dashboard in time to the drums as the Fowl pulled them back onto the dirt track, the Mini's extra lights flickeringly illuminating the way as they rattled their way down the track.

Sheet lightening lit up the countryside for a split second, thunder following it barely a second later.

Junior spun the volume all the way up and whooped like a hooligan once more, shooting his friend a grin which doubled as carefully watching for signs he wasn't making the inexperienced driver too uncomfortable, despite his excitement.

Highway to Hell indeed, Artemis thought, with gritted teeth.

As it happened, Dom regretted his generous offer fairly soon after they pulled away from the bridge. It was much more nerve-wracking to be sat next to the Fowl driving when threat of coming off the road badly was not so virtual as it had been in the basement.

Admittedly, Artemis made it safely down the slalom despite the slick grass and through the narrow gate – albeit at a sedately speed – and even over the second set of humps, which he took slowly because of the damaged exhaust pipe, of course, and not because the thought of hitting them with enough speed to become airborne as Junior had done earlier on some of them, had much the same effect on his nerves as his own driving had on the young Butler.

It was only as they neared the end and Dom's sharp eyes picked up something off the side of the track that he changed his tone from 'lightly encouraging' to the 'calmly urgent' tone his family often employed in stressful situations.

He slapped the radio into silence suddenly.

"Ah - thank-you," sighed Artemis, relaxing slightly. "I was beginning to see what you meant by audio input disrupting my driving concentration..."

"No - not that. Sorry, I'll leave it off - but listen," he said. "McCormack's car was green, wasn't it?"

"You're the observant one, Junior," Artemis said, gripping the steering wheel and speeding up incrementally as he concentrated fully on his driving now. "You tell me."

"Alright," said the younger teen, for it was true after all. "I know it was green. And I think I just saw it in that ditch back there."

"In the ditch?" Artemis repeated, the implications of this new information dawning rapidly.

"Yep. And since they don't seem to know how to build a Z-drag and everyone seems to be hiding from the rain instead of helping, it looks like it'll be staying there for a while."

"So you mean..."

"Just stay on the track, Tim," said Dom, his mouth even drier than it had been a minute ago because of the Fowl's lack of driving prowess. "Just keep us on the track 'til we get to the end."

As they approached the concrete barriers, the crowd - bored of waiting by now - broke into a confused roar of cheering as the Mini trundled past, the loud-speaker operator somewhat bemusedly heralding their crossing of the spray-paint finish line.

It was not quick, it was not 'cool', but they had finished in one-piece - relatively speaking, that was - and once again, more importantly, first.

Romeo did not look pleased when they arrived, exhaust pipe trailing sparks along the tarmac and informed them shortly that if they couldn't get their car in a roadworthy condition by the time McCormack's was shifted and the second semi-final was done, they would be disqualified.

They were not, of course, offered the use of the mini-ramps as the Devlin and his penultimate opponent revved away up the track back to the start line. So Artemis manned the jack – or rather, he stood by it somewhat aimlessly and miserably in the still-relentless rain – and peered under the car at his bodyguard's nephew, who was using a hefty monkey wrench for not quite the purpose it was intended.

He had originally asked around for some 'baling twine' to affix the dangling exhaust pipe to the chassis temporarily, and almost got into a skirmish with some of the spectators for stating they could hardly claim to be from agricultural stock if they didn't have scrap of string between them.

Thankfully, one of Romeo's friends who had been on the receiving end of Junior Butler's fighting prowess the previous week, quietly discouraged the young farmers from making any moves the freakishly strong teen might think it necessary to defend himself from.

"Can you fix it?" Artemis asked, between the loud 'clanging' noises.

"What, here?" Dom shouted back. "No chance. I carry a lot of shit in my pockets, Tim, but not a welder."

"I see," said Artemis. "But you can get us roadworthy?"

"Yeah, should be able to. Well, track-worthy," Junior answered. "If I can get it off, he'll drive just fine without for now. Won't pass an MOT, like. But he's good for one more lap, I'd reckon."

"And get us home, I hope," added Artemis.

"Ha – I'll tell you that when we finish!"

There was a final, loud clunk and the teenager crawled back out from under the car, now coated in a mixture of rust and dirt and dragging a misshapen lump of metal work and pipes with him. That to went straight into the boot, apparently 'to maintain the weight distribution in the car', although Artemis was not sure how much difference it would really make. Either way, once the wheels touched down again and the jack joined the rest of their limited mechanic's kit, to Romeo Devlin's chagrin after he arrived at the base of the track having trounced his driving opponent once more, they were ready to race again.

"Alright," he said, moodily from under an umbrella his navigator was holding. "But you two sissies better not cry about the new rules."

"What new rules?" asked Artemis. "I thought you already read us the rules at the start. You can't change regulations halfway through an event."

Romeo had indeed read out a whole ream of legislations, which had included no ramming or deliberate acts of sabotage; something Artemis would have brought up about McCormack, had they not subsequently won.

"I can when it's my event," sneered the Devlin. "And the new rules are there are no rules. Anything goes. We've picked the wild card, so I guess we'll see you two chumps at the top."

"Anything goes?" Dom spoke up suddenly. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah I'm serious – why, you scared, baby brute?"

"I'm not scared, but I'm not fucking stupid either," Dom said sharply. "Anything goes in my book means someone's probably going to end up seriously injured – or worse."

"That's right, clever puppy," Romeo laughed. "Looks like we finally agree on something."

Dom ground his teeth in frustration.

"You happy with those terms, Fowl?" Devlin asked him.

"I'm not," muttered Dom.

"I wasn't asking you, minibeast," he snapped. "I was asking Fowl. So – you happy with that or are you going to wimp out? Plenty of cars willing to take your place as another wild card if you're not man enough."

"Of course we're racing," Artemis said, confidently.

"Tim..." Dom said quietly, turning to mutter in his ear and touching his elbow in a way he'd seen Pa do to his charge when he thought Mr Fowl was making a rash decision. "This isn't clever. Someone's going to get hurt. Most likely us."

"We're racing," Artemis said again, firmly; ignoring him as principals often did their bodyguards.

Romeo laughed. "That's the spirit. Now tell your dog to get his tail out from between his legs and get up to the top. The final starts in ten minutes."

"Well, I guess you're driving," Artemis said brightly, turning to his companion as Devlin swaggered away.

Dom jutted his jaw slightly and exhaled heavily through his nose.

"Guess I am," he said, as he got into the car and slammed the door with a little more force than necessary.

Well, that was a rollercoaster of highs and lows!

I love a good storm. Standing out in the rain and wooping at the thunder. Awesome.

QotC - Thinking of cross-posting a previous chapter of this fic over to my fic set Lil Rems, as I know a there's a fair number of people who have that set for update alert notifications but are maybe less active on FanFic these days and might otherwise miss seeing this fic. So which chapter, if any, would you choose to cross-post to get people interested? I'm thinking maybe half of 'Chapter 16 - Evasion', up to where Jim drops Dom off at The Manor with Pa.

Really value your thoughts - particularly the seven or so of you who are the main reviewers of this fic - so let me know if you have any ideas!

Wolfy
ooo
O

15/06/20