Or: Plot significance~

Drake and Eve were lounging in Site 63’s Common Room Number 6 and playing a fighting game, Drake furiously mashing buttons while Eve merely tapped out precise sequences of moves.

“Son of a bitch! How are you already so good at this game!? This is your first time playing!”

“I’m the wizard yo,”she said with a smirk, “California,” she said with a giggle to complete the reference.

“I… I don’t get that reference…” He muttered, tossing his controller away.

“Its from the Wizard, that movie about that Video Game wizard who wants to go to Cali. It had Christian Slater and Fred Savage.”

“... Nope. Never heard of it. If I hear wizard, I think Oz.” He leaned against her and began to play with her hair. “Hey, I had an idea….”

“You finally gonna ask me out?”

He fell into her lap, incredibly shocked, “Wait wha-!?”

She smiled, putting her arms around him. “Oh fuck it,” she grabbed his head, pulling him into a deep kiss. Drake’s eyes widened, then slowly closed as he melted in, shifting positions to better embrace her.

‘I could… I could get used to this….’

‘Hah! You owe me six dollars!’

‘Son of a LIZARD WHORE!’

‘That would be your mother as well.’

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP’

“Heh... that was fun...” she said, pulling away from him.

“What…. was that?” Drake panted, curious but not altogether unpleased.

“A kiss, duh.”

“I…. does…. will…. gah…” The normally talkative lizardman found himself tongue tied, unable to form a proper sentence. “I… I liked that…. wanna… wanna go out?”

She giggled, kissing him again. “Yes I do,”

“Great!... So, about my idea….” He cuddled against her and started to clumsily braid her hair. “I was thinking…. I wanna see how fast I am compared to everyone else here…. think a race would be a good idea?

“A race?”

“Yeah, just think about it! I mean, we can have this massive event! There’d be land speed and airspeed and water speed… I don’t know if that’s the right term…. And there’d have to be size classes too, but still, I think it’d be awesome.”

Drake’s eyes were wide and glowing with excitement, arms waving and tail wagging as he delivered his spiel.

“Thats sounds lame Drake,” she said shaking her head.

“Oh come on, you just don’t wanna see me totally leave you in my dust.” she just laughed, hugging him close to her.

He turned the embrace around, drawing her into his chest, “So, y’think Doc Mind would let this happen?”

“I suppose if you asked nicely,” she said, nodding her head.

“Maybe… probably not, she’s way too uptight for this kinda thing”

One week later...

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THIS IS YOUR LOVELY ANNOUNCER, DOCTOR STABLE MIND, SPEAKING! ALLOW ME TO WELCOME YOU TO THE FIRST EVER AEC TRANSCONTINENTAL GRAND PRIX!”

“Holy shit that did work.” Drake muttered, still shocked at how much of a racing fanatic the Head Researcher was.

“HERE WE HAVE EIGHT CLASSES! LAND SPEED, AIRSPEED, WATER SPEED, HEAVYWEIGHT, MIDDLEWEIGHT, LIGHTWEIGHT, MICRO WEIGHT AND MULTICHALLENGE! ALL PARTICIPANTS, PLEASE HEAD TO YOUR DESIGNATED STARTING POINT!”

“Hey Beth, it says here you got into Middleweight/Airspeed. You should probably get going. See y’round, love.” Drake gave his new girlfriend a kiss on the cheek as she left, glancing down at his own classification of Heavyweight/Multichallenge.

“The hell is Multichallenge, anyway?” he muttered, making his way through the assembled crowd.

“MULTICHALLENGE RACERS! YOUR GOAL IS TO DEFEAT ALL OTHER COMPETITORS, NOT JUST ON LAND, BUT IN THE AIR AND IN THE WATER AS WELL! WE WISH YOU POOR SODS LUCK; WE ALSO SPICED UP THE HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS ROAD WITH TRAPS!”

“Oh son of a-”

Meanwhile, with Elizabeth, things were considerably more calm. “Why did I get my self dragged into this...?” she asked with a sigh, shaking her head.

“Trouble in paradise?” a voice asked. Elizabeth looked over and spotted a girl with rainbow hair stretching out her wings in preparation.

“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” she said shaking her head, “I’m Elizabeth.”

“Name’s Rainbow Dash, AEC 1, at your service. So, your boyfriend drag you into this?”

“Yeah... Drake’s idea of fun,” she said with a sigh.

“Drake’s your boyfriend!? The last time I saw him was when he… uh… broke Site 34.” Rainbow shouted, then trailed off.

“So, you’ve had run ins with him before hmm?” Beth asked, moving closer.

“Yeah, he landed in our Site when he first got here… he broke our Site the third day he got here too….” she muttered, “Lotta people died… least they were all kinda the dickish ones…”

“This world has a lot of death ya know,” she said with a sigh, rolling her eyes.

“Still, I had to watch a lot of people die, some of them that I actually knew. But hey, enough of this depressing stuff, yeah?” Rainbow held out her hand, “May the best flier win!”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile, shaking her hand. A second later, pegasus wings sprouted from her back.

“Woah what the!? How’d you do that!?” Rainbow asked, “Those weren’t there a second ago!”

“My little secret.” she said with a wink, heading to the starting line.

Rainbow goggled, then shook herself and took up position beside Elizabeth, shifting into a sprinter’s crouch, “Tch, don’t get cocky there! I’m the fastest flier in all of Equestria!”

“ALRIGHT RACERS! LET’S START US ALL OFF WITH THE MIDDLEWEIGHT AIRSPEED TRIALS! RACERS! ON YOUR MARKS!”

The starting line rose on a massive platform, ascending to nearly a thousand feet above the ground.

“GET SET!”

The gates blocking the path fell open as a massive light descended and flashed red.

“TEAR IT UP!”

A gong sounded and the light flashed green. And with the rippling of over fifty sonic booms at once, the race began, shattering the start platform and bringing the Grand Prix to a wonderful beginning.

“TEAR IT UP!”

Drake watched the race begin, then shifted into his AEC form, optimized for maximum land speed. As the Heavyweight gates opened and his light flashed green, he sped out into the hot, dry Badlands, tearing up dirt as he sprinted at just below mach 1, forcing his way into the middle of the pack.

Up ahead, explosions rang out as the various AECs all competed for first place, using their various abilities to try and slow each other down.

The group of seventy five massive beings thundered down the dusty earth, some creatures only the size of a car, others as large as the massive dragon racing along beside Drake.

“I WILL ADMIT! I NEVER THOUGHT I’D TEST MYSELF LIKE THIS! HOW FUN!”

“You ready to lose, fire-breather!?”

“ARE YOU!?”

“LET’S ROCK!”

And Drake burst forward, organic rockets blazing into existence and driving the SUV sized lizard forward into mach 2, breaking into the second-place gathering of racers.

“Come on, step it up!”

“Can’t catch me!”

“Here we goooo!”

“FUCK YEAH!”

Tensions ran high, muscles strained and feet pounded away at the earth. Then, up behind Drake came the roaring of a massive engine.

“WHAT’S THIS? IT LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT’S NOT QUITE ALLOWED ON THE TRACK! IS THAT AEC 92010 IN HIS TRANS AM!? AH WHAT THE HELL! I’LL ALLOW IT!”

Inside the golden super-car, a man with a massive pompadour scoffed and turned off his radio, tuning out Stable Mind’s announcing.

“Tch, y’think they’d figure out that racing’s in my blood by now. Ah what the hell, you’re just a voice pal, YOU DON’T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT RACING!”

The golden car broke the sound barrier again, shooting forward into mach 3 with a barely heard shout of “PLATINUM NITRO CHARGE, BABY!” and a roar of blue flames.

“IS THAT EVEN LEGAL!?”

The amassed group of Heavyweight racers simultaneously sped forward with a mighty roar, all trying to outpace the TransAm on foot.

On an abandoned hillside, not far from the raceway itself, a figure clothed in black sat with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a large rifle propped up in the other.

“HQ, this is Black Adder. Subject is approaching position. Over.”

“Black Adder, hold position for package drop. Over.”

“Sir yes sir.” The figure drawled, dropping his rifle in favor of a large bottle of beer, drawn from a cooler at his feet.

“Shoulda taken guard duty again but nooo, had to have some excitement. Never mind the fact that I’m probably gonna die today….”

The rifle’s logo, a stylized G, glinted in the sun.

Elizabeth sped along at an easy mach 1, drastically outpacing many of her competitors. Up ahead she saw Rainbow Dash flying along on her back, a lazy grin on her face as she flew, taking first place with no effort.

The sight of it irked Elizabeth. It irked her very much. So much so that that she sprouted an extra pair of wings in an effort to catch up.

Mach 2.

Rainbow began generating a rainbow contrail.

Elizabeth started heating up

Mach 3.

Rainbow’s contrail blazed into existence like a solid beam of light.

Elizabeth’s contrail burst into flames.

The race went on, many of the other air racers complaining about the two far in the lead.

Far away, a large package dropped out of the upper atmosphere on a trajectory set not too far from where the mysterious man had set up his little ‘camp’.

As it accelerated, it deployed a parachute, descending on a controlled course and landing with a soft whump next to the man known only as Black Adder.

“Well well well, looks like the package is here. HQ, I’ve received the package. Further orders?”

Black Adder, we have confirmed package drop. Your new orders are as such: Open the package and let whatever happens, happen. HQ out.”

“Hmph. Whatever…” The black clad figure approached the steel, beer keg sized container with slight trepidation. After a moment’s deliberation, he kicked open the container, allowing a disgusting orange-gold ooze to splash out of the pressurized barrel with a disgusting splorch.

“Ew….” he muttered, lightly toeing it with his boot.

A moment of silence.

And then everything went black as the pile of ooze surged upwards and consumed Black Adder, leaving nothing behind but the man’s mirrored aviator sunglasses.

The ooze quivered and squelched, forming into the approximate shape of a horrifically mutated cheetah, consuming the rifle and growing a massive barrel along its spine in the process. A harsh buzz emanated from its throat, static fizzling in and out as it ‘spoke’.

‘Genesis… will… conquer…”

In a shady lab deep underneath the Eastern Ocean, a shadowed figure steepled his hands, leaned back, and grinned, light glinting off of immaculate teeth and a gleaming white suit. Burning orange eyes narrowed in gleeful malevolence.

“Well then, let’s see how our little friends on the surface deal with a new…. Genesis, eh?”

Author's Notes:

And thus the plot begins to appear.

Huh.

Another cliffhanger. Who knew?