Dewy streets lined in piles of garbage and kicked cans were all Lula and Erin could see, under the hazy dusk of Undermine’s iconic Hovel Hill. It was so greasy and gross there, it was almost like it were accompanied by its own sleazy saxophone solo…
Well. This time, it actually was. Erin blinked a silver coin into the open case of a busker on the side of the road and kept going.
Lula adjusted her goggles. “Is this it? The guy we were following last night at the hotel.”
Erin nodded. “Yeah, just down this road. The base of the Gaspunk Griefers. Out of all the places that could get their hands on MagiGuns, I was really hoping one of them wouldn’t be here.”
“We can still talk to them…? Undermine is supposed to be good now, I don’t really want to…” Lula rubbed her head, but Erin knew better than to trust people who held money in higher regard than anything else. “We can talk to them. I just… well, let’s see how it goes.”
Ten goblins sat around in their hotrods and trikes, engines blazing, flame-decals roaring in that dimly lit alley clogged by engine smoke. A few hulking hobgoblins held spike-strewn baseball bats over their shoulders, and everyone went quiet from the raucous laughter they had been embroiled in as Lula and Erin walked in… and right up to the boss.
““Hiii!” Lula gave a big toothy grin, and held out her hand to shake. “I’m Lula Tinkerbolt. What’s your name?”
The goblins looked at her, looked back at each other, then at her, then at them again, back and forth.
The Gaspunk Griefer boss snorted. “Who let in a rat from The Heaps? Somebody get her outta here!”
Erin stayed quiet. Lula had best handle this.
She frowned, and was sure to reach her little hand out just a little bit further. “Bit rude..." she mumbles before continuing, "I uhh… I hear you have some bad guns… we wanted to discuss doing a trade!"
The big boss cranked his gearstick and burned rubber around Lula and Erin, drifting in a tight arc inches away from them until he stopped inches away from her face. “We ain’t trading anything…”
“But… you have a price, right? Everyone has a price…” Lula could see Erin nodding from the corner of her eye, surely this goblin could be bought. But he was savvy to little tricks like this. He pulled out a can of Kaja cola from his cupholder and held it out to Lula.
“You know what this is?”
She nodded. “I do! It’s Kaja cola. Drinking it makes you smart, right…?” She beamed an innocent smile… but that smile would soon turn sour. The gob-boss cracked open the cold one and slowly poured the Kaja over Lula’s head and heard his boys burst into fits of laughter once again. “SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED SOME SMARTS THEN, GIRLIE!” He bellowed. Erin gritted her teeth and tried to step in, but Lula shook her head.
“Check under your seat...” Lula mumbled with a sad frown.
“Hahaha… what’s she onto now? Gonna find a whoopee cushion?”
“Maybe..." she pursed her lips.
The goblin laughed a little bit more, but felt this unexplainable unease run down his spine. He looked under the cushions and soft pillowy upholstery and shook his head. “There’s nothin’ here! Haha…” But then, he slid the chair back.
He saw a large lump of what seemed to be clay under here. “What the fuck…”
He looked up and saw Lula holding a remote. She wore a toothy grin again even through the strands of her cola-soaked hair.
“How about that trade then?”
The gob-boss shook his head. “No, no… wait… when’d you do this? What even is this?”
“High grade explosive seaforium… you parked outside the Gallagio last night…”
“B-but I just went for a piss!”
Lula's grin turned to a frown. “Hand over the shipment… I know you have it in the boot of your car… I checked it while you were ‘busy’...”
“Wait… wait!” The gob-boss sputtered. “Y-you’re the insane woman who threatened to blow half of Opportunity Point up over a vending machine. Right? You’re crazy!”
Lula looked down and shook her head. “I’m not crazy… Vendie needed my help…”
All eyes were on Lula, and the gob-boss did his best to play it off.
“Just one freaky little girlie and her ginger bitch friend, is it? We can take you…! We can take you! We’ll never hand it over!”
“Lula…?” Erin asked. Lula had tried… and she really didn’t want to do it this way. But here goes.
“Do it.”
Erin threw out her arm and yanked the goblin from his seat in the car, and Lula pressed the button on her remote.
BOOM!
The car, and the shipment, all went up in smoke.
“N-no!” The gob-boss called out. “Boys, get them!!”
Lula and Erin looked at each other. “Back to the car?” “Yeah!”
They ran down the road and Erin made sure they got to their car before the others could catch up. She sat in the drivers’ seat, and Lula mumbled as she looked over. “Why aren’t I…?” Erin snorted. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive!” She pushed hard down on the pedal, but the car’s wheels only screeched and nothing happened. Lula counted a few moments before saying “You’ve still got it in park…” Erin snorted. “Of course! Yeah, I got it.” She moved the gearstick and drove again, but ended up backing them into a nearby wall with a loud crash.
“You’re a mage! All you do is teleport everywhere, let me drive!” Lula shouted, and Erin snapped her fingers to swap them over. Lula shifted into drive, hit the gas, and blasted them away as a whole fleet of Gaspunk gangoons screeched down the roads behind them.
Tyres raced over rattly gravel and pot holes older than the city itself as they blasted through the district. Lula yanked the steering wheel one way and swerved out of the way of a vegetable vendor’s stall while the gang just barreled straight through it. Stop lights and road directions were ignored as they raced into the heart of the city past The Incontinental.
“Why are we going this way?” Erin asked, finally able to take a breath from bracing herself.
“I have to pick up Alaina from the store! I told her we’d pick her up after…”
Erin’s eyes bulged. “You’re picking her up now?”
“It’s not like I planned to get into a high-speed car chase…! If I don’t pick her up she’s gonna think I forgot about her!”
Meanwhile, downtown in Pleasant Heights, Alaina waited by the bus stop with three bags full of groceries digging deep into her fingers and sighed. “I wonder if she got caught up in traffic?"
Erin felt a hot flash of light pass above her and saw a bright violet blast swirl and strike a nearby building, glassing it and causing it to crumble. “Shit! They’re shooting at us now!”
Lula locked in, focusing her driving skills to steer past falling rubble and magic shots which struck the road and would have dug sharp crystals into the car’s tyres if she wasn’t able to avoid them in time. Erin saw another shot come close, and ripped one side of a billboard off so it would swing around and block it, creating a gaping hole where the head of a goblin depicted advertising car insurance was.
One of the gangoons punched it, and green flames shot out from their car. They rocketed forwards and soon Lula could see them overtake her. They rammed into her car a few times and scraped her against the wall of a tunnel underpass. The paint on both sides of her car peeled off, with sparks flying everywhere. She slowed down and gritted her teeth. “Please be wearing seatbelts…!” Lula steered her car into the back of theirs to nudge it just enough until they spun out, and they crashed into the wall.
“We’re almost there…” Lula said. “I can’t stop to pick her up!”
Erin nodded. “Got it!”
Alaina stood on the edge of the road and spotted a car coming out from the tunnel absolutely blasting towards her. “That must be Lula!”
She held her hand out so Lula would know where to stop, but only saw her get closer and closer without slowing down. “Lula…?”
In a single moment, Lula shot past Alaina and Erin reached out to slap her hand. With a puff of magic, Alaina appeared in the back seat.
“Oh! Thank you for picking me up.” She smiled, and looked back to see a slightly concerning number of cars chasing them. “Who are they?”
Lula adjusted her rear-view mirror to see the cars begin to catch up. “Just the gang members we went to go see… they’re kinda angry… anyway how was shopping?”
Alaina snorted. “Fine, thank you. I bought stuff for carbonara tonight.”
The thought of Lula’s favourite meal strengthened her will as she deftly drove and managed to lose the criminals down a back alley. Lula breathed a relieved sigh. “I think I did it…”
But when they stopped to listen, the sound of a revving engine didn’t deaden. It got louder.
Lula turned to see two lights blaring through the fog of an adjacent road, one she thought a car would be too narrow to pass through. But by the sound of metal scraping on the sides of either wall, Lula grit her teeth and her car would not accelerate fast enough to be clear of it in time. “Hold on…!”
A crazed laugh echoed out. “I SAID I COULD TAKE YOU!”
The gob-boss squeezed his car through the alley at top speed and smashed into the side of theirs at top speed.
The three of them were flung to the side, and Lula’s airbag deployed to keep her mostly safe while the others were flung across their seats and the dashboard. The gob-boss accelerated into their car and pinned them in before pulling something out of his holster.
“This is what you get for fucking with the Gaspunk Griefers!”
Lula turned, everything in slow motion. The sparkle of his MagiGun breaking through the smog, blooming white-pink from the muzzle. A shadow passed across her.
“Keep your hands off my wife!” A voice boomed.
Alaina kicked the gob-boss’ hand upwards, causing the shot to fly wide and obliterate a chunk of the flyover above them. She grabbed his hand and crushed it and disintegrated the gun at the same time, surely breaking his hand. Erin struggled with a bloody forehead to push the other car away just far enough that Lula could once again drive off.
Lula rubbed her head. “These guys call me crazy…?
By the time she had rounded the corner to the Venture Co’s junkyard district, the blaring horns of the Gaspunk Griefers rang like the horns of war for one final showdown.
Lula drifted around huge mounds of trash, through lumberyards and slicks of oil, all while Erin pulled things from the environment to block any direct shots.
A Griefer car rattled close to them and tried to aim point blank, but as Alaina hopped from her car to the other she ripped off the steering wheel and jumped back before hearing them swerve away. The goblins bailed at the last minute before their car spiralled into a nearby wall and exploded into a comically large mushroom cloud.
Three more cars still tailed them, and Lula was running out of room. “I can’t shake them…!” She reached around in the car for anything she could use, then noticed a hatch which had been broken and bent inwards by the gob-boss earlier. With a screwdriver from her toolbelt, she managed to pry it open and found the fuel tank sitting underneath..
Erin felt a MagiGun energy bullet fly past her as her power waned and she couldn’t keep defending them. “Lula, if you got anything up your sleeve, please do it now!”
Lula gave a grin and focused for her last effort. “I just found it… watch this…!”
She jammed her screwdriver into the fuel tank causing it to start leaking onto the road and swerved so it lay in a great line. Then she tore off the metal hatch that exposed the tank and reached out the side of the car, scraping it along the floor at speed to eventually cause a spark that lit the oil slick. The pursuing cars all stopped behind the wall of flame… all but one.
The gob-boss and his broken hand sped through the flames and nearly came close.
“Lula!” Erin shouted.
A wild look in the gob-boss’ eye proved he was out for blood, that this had become personal. He hated this little engineer and her friends and everything she stood for and he would bring her down! But Lula never gave him the chance.
With a finger plugged into the fuel tank hole, she accelerated towards the conveniently-placed half-constructed bridge that was shaped like a ramp, and clutched her wheel tightly.
“Lula… that’s a dead end. Are you serious?” Erin cried, and Alaina spoke for Lula as she was far too focused to. “She’s always serious… just don’t look down!”
Lula punched a big red button on the dash and lime-green nitrous flames burst from her tailpipes. They accelerated instantly and the sheer insanity of this move made the gob-boss gasp and slam on his brakes, as he saw her car sail across the Undermine skyline and soar over buildings and roads.
Alaina leaned forwards and tightly gripped Lula so she couldn’t fly from her seat.
Erin weaved a spell, and prayed it would mean they wouldn’t be made a pancake on the floor.
Lula held her breath… had she calculated this right?
Two cars sat with a space between them at the Undermine garage, and when Lula’s car fell it landed perfectly in between them.
Lula put the car in park, and finally took another breath.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit…” Erin gasped, over and over.
Alaina smiled, stepping out of the car, gently opened Lula’s door and offered her a hand to help her out.
Lula gave an amused scoff and took Alaina’s hand, before being swept up in her arms and lifted into the air for a kiss.
"I can see why they don't want cars on the streets of Stormwind..." she chuckled as Erin opened up a portal home for them both.