Quatro hadn't even selected his next missile for basic personal defense when Amanda came driving up to him in her dune buggy. The vehicle was a stark solid green with a portrait of a striking pit viper on both sides and as he'd observed before, a small circular opening in the hood.

"I'm with you," she said to him over the second radio channel.

"Stay behind me," he advised.

The two of them headed back up the road Amanda had been chased down, made a wide U-turn, and headed up the highway entrance ramp. Two enemy vehicles were waiting dead center in the middle of the highway. Bikes, actually. It was the distinctiveness of the motorcycles themselves that gave away the identity of the drivers.

Hello Target Numero Quatro. I'm Constable Droid Designate Quatro. Charmed to meet you.

Daniel Grimm, leader of the single largest gang in the United States calmly sat on his skeleton themed Harley Davidson chopper, his face masked behind black-and-white skull war paint. Beside him on a white street bike was his lieutenant and top enforcer, a fellow with a mohawk by the name of 'Crunch'. He had on a sleeveless leather vest with the title VICE PRESIDENT in red bold letters beneath the Stunt Devils patch over his heart. Hugging him tightly was an almost completely tatted, slender brunette passenger wearing bug-eye sunglasses and holding an Uzi submachine gun in her free hand.

Quatro looked over at Amanda driving beside him one last time. The snakes looked fierce and the driver behind the bars of the dune buggy's steel roll cage made the snakes seem like amateurs.

He got on the PA system to address the criminals, "Daniel Grimm, you are under arrest! Get off the bike and put your hands in the air! This is your one and only warning!"

Grimm and Crunch looked at each other, then both fired freeze missiles.

"He stayed on the bike," Quatro growled as the blue projectiles snaked through the air towards them as if alive.

"Wouldn't you?" Amanda asked honestly.

"No."

Dodging freeze missiles was close to impossible. Instead of risking it, Quatro activated his armor ordinance and successfully deflected one, then looked over and saw Amanda's dune buggy still with him and knew she had done the same. Bullets pelted off the hood and bulletproof domed windshield of the hover bike. Up ahead, the gang members were standing their ground, shooting at them. Grimm ducked and two of Amanda's fire missiles flew over his head and continued down the highway. He then rose back up and rested a quadruple-tubed rocket launcher on center of his ape handlebars. He nodded to his VP and in response, Crunch tossed aside his empty pistols, spun around and sped off.

Quatro selected, aimed, and fired a single homing missile at the escaping street bike. He figured that was all it would take, and it had the added benefit of killing two birds with one stone. The missile sailed true, but the most unbelievable thing happened. Crunch leaned as far as he could to the left without tipping or falling off the bike. His passenger instinctively leaned all the way to the right. The homing missile streaked between them and exploded on the ground about twenty feet ahead of them. Crunch and his passenger zoomed through the subsequent smoke plume, leaning back into a normal sitting position and kept driving.

"Stunt Devils," the droid grumbled with a negative shake of the head.

With everything going on, Quatro's audio sensors barely picked up what Grimm yelled just before firing.

"It's Mister Grimm to you, robopig!"

Eight or more swarmer missiles soared towards Quatro and Amanda in a wide net. That was when Quatro understood. The freeze missiles weren't intended to stop them, they were a means to get them to deplete their armor ordinances and therefore, be vulnerable to the real attack. They weren't just depending on their showy high flying acts and tricks, they had coordination and strategy. A 'pack' mentality. Quatro analogized himself with a tiger hunting wolves.

"Get ready!" Amanda yelled as the missiles were closing in.

One of the missiles sailed inches over Quatro's hover bike. Another exploded against the ground to the right of him, but he swerved out of the way of smoke and dodged two more. Keeping pace with him, Amanda's dune buggy fishtailed almost out of control while missiles blew up all around it. She veered right into his path. Luckily for both of them, he wasn't driving a car and hovered right over her. Instead of becoming a sixty-five-mile-an-hour meshed wreck when they crossed paths, they merely switched lanes. If he was having any lingering thoughts of switching over to a normal patrol car after the tournament, they were instantly crushed within that moment.

When they recovered, he looked up to see the Stunt Devils logo on the back of Grimm's vest getting further and further away. Something blurred through the air to Quatro's left followed by a loud hollow, metallic ringing sound. He looked over at the dune buggy now on his left and groaned. A melon-sized device with a red blinking light was stuck to the dune buggy's front bumper. Amanda, in the right-side driver's seat of her foreign car, wordlessly returned his gaze and shrugged. Then she and her car were blown apart right before his eyes.

"Pit Viper destroyed. Four team members remain," came the announcement.

Invitation to Twisted Metal (2023)

Darkside