Life is like the road... One minute, you're a vision of power in motion. The next, you're a twisted heap of torn metal and flesh for all the world to stare at. I thought my broken bones and forks days were over when I helped Mo take Adrian Ripburger down and then left her alone to take her rightful place in Corley Motors, but right now all I see before me is asphalt, sparks, and pain...

     I don't know how long he'd been sitting in the room, but it musta been a while. I sat up in bed and saw him from the corner of my eye, my left hand slipping up under my pillow for my pistol even before my brain identified him as being a human being. The loud, decicive click of his pistol's hammer made me freeze in my tracks, but it didn't ease the pressure any.

     "Don't move, PoleCat...", a voice said from behind me as another person made his presense known.

     There was something about that voice... Memories of sirens and machine gun fire echoed in my mind, the voice echoing along with it, cheering and hooting as bullets danced around my feet. Only then did I see the faint flash of red and blue lights coming from my roof. Damn!

     There was a click and then a long droning hum as the as yet unseen rifle at my back jacked in a shell and prepared to send me to meet the great polecat upstairs. I froze, my mind racing at a thousand miles an hour trying to come up with a plan, and my still healing body trying to find a nice position to be found in afterwards. The cop with the pistol smiled, his teeth outlined alternately in red and blue, and pressed the barrel of the pistol to the furrowed path between my eyebrows, while Trigger-Happy pressed the barrel of the rifle to my brain stem. My mind began to join my body in its own version of Last Rites.

     Suddenly there was a pressure on my body, heavy and demanding, smelling of hot tires and unwashed skin. The weapons at my head disappeared with a pair of muffled moans and the presense that had pounced on me jerked me forcibly from the bed. Before I could get my aching muscles to respond, I was jerked backwards and shoved out the door, barely having time to grab my clothes off of the chair. I felt a hard strike across the nape of my neck and saw countless bandaged feet moving my way as blackness swallowed me and I heard the sound of revving motors. Motors I recognised... Motors I hated... Motors that could only be found on Cavefish motorcycles.

     Damn Motorcycle Mummies... Good morning, Ben!!

     I lost track of the minutes and miles as they dragged me, kicking and screaming, behind their bikes, my torn and bruised muscles raped by the hard links of their tow-chains. By the time that we pulled into their cave, I was well past numb, my once proud leathers hanging in red, dripping tatters on my slumped body. I tried to ask them what was going on, but they just dumped me wordlessly into a small caged pit in the floor and slammed shut the lid.

     Alone with my pain, I dreamed...

      I watched with my usual callous cover-up as Mo's limo faded into a grain of sand in my rear-view, her father lying in freshly churned dirt, and my boys falling in behind me like a door of flesh, leather, and steel closing on her forever. Although I hated leaving without even so much as a goodbye, I still felt glad. She would have softened me eventually, and I didn't need that. The PoleCats didn't need that. In today's age, you gotta keep rolling.... You slow down, you die. I rubbed my shoulder, working out the pain, as I remembered Adrian Ripburger almost teaching me that lesson with his front bumper.

     Although I had seen him fall to his death, the feeling of doom had still, at this moment, refused to fade. The whole episode in my life seemed to wrap up too quickly... Too nice. Too neat. Something wasn't---

     They came from nowhere, high-tech bikes with no wheels, huge moving blades with their riders almost permanantly graphed in with wires and tubes making archeic things like pedals and handlebars seem like a dying dream. I swerved, and the PoleCats followed, the BladeBoys turning to match our every move, riding close. The diamond-edged blades that protected the low-slung pilots like a roll cage loomed dangerously near, making me sweat. One good hit from one of these blades could take a leg off.

     I tried to move further left, these menaces on my right, and heard the shudderingly familiar sound of the screeching, pnumatic Cavefish motors coming from my intended escape route. We were trapped. Dreading it more and more, I looked into my left rearview mirror and saw an army of these identical yellow bikes, their silent riders poised with malicious intent behind the secluded handlbars. Like a madman, I slammed the throttle on my bike, hearing the old motor whine and moan like a banshee...

     They must have taken this as a starter's pistol, for both groups suddenly merged with our ranks, steel clashing against steel, flesh pounding flesh. I aimed my bike for a slight hump that emptied into a ditch and punched the throttle to the floor, feeling my blood race as the rise neared. I hit the bank and felt the bike start to lift, turning my front forks back toward the road as it did so, pulled back, and leaned hard, my bike suddenly lying in at a vertigo-inducing pitch, the heavy mass following the momentum as it turned the bike one hundered and eighty degrees in the air and the tires hit the pavement with a screech, the accellerator still pressed against the frame.

     Fire belched from my rocket as the tires found purchase and I raced into the mixed mass of cycles that was following me, a demon enfleshed. Bikes scattered in every direction as I rode with abandon, a lead pipe appearing to leap from my saddlebag and into my waiting hand. A few quick swings and Cavefish and BladeBoy cycles fell, blood quickly soaking the welded elbow bend in the pipe, and the sound of gutteral coughing, moans, crashes, and flames coming from the carnage behind me.

     The rest of the PoleCats saw me moving methodolicly toward them and veered off whenever possible, their once adamant opponents now more concerned about the killing storm called Ben than the others. I liked that, since that made sure my guys were safe. I kicked the cycle into a high wheelie and raced on, noting the sudden inward motion of the other two groups. They were looking for some real trouble, but luckily I was prepared.

     Whenever possible, I'd use the rounded nose of a Cavefish cycle as a moving ramp, taking a kind of sick pride in the hollow cruch of bone as the bandaged riders were crushed beneath my tires, and using the cavefish cycles to ward off the razored fins of the Bladeboys. I hopped the bike from cycle to cycle like this until I made my way to the edge, signaling the others to take off in the direction of Corley's gravesite. As soon as I was clear of the fight, we left the war behind, BladeBoys and Cavefish each blaming the other for my escape.

     Silent as ghosts, we rode, each of us inwardly shedding tears for the five PoleCats we no longer saw among us...

     Voices mumbled above my cell, and I heard the sound of a faucet being turned on. Drop by drop, a trickle of water streamed into my hole, painfully slow in its arrival, but with the right angle, I was able to catch some in my mouth. I was thankful for the returning moisture, but just as I began to quell my thirst, it ceased. Muffled laughter filled the room and my only escape was to drown myself once more in memories...

     There were answers here. Had to be. I don't normally enjoy politics, but when it comes to your colors, it helps to keep track of the "heads of state". By mere accident, I had discovered that Suzi led the Vultures, and that she did not hold any hard feelings towards the PoleCats, so there was no connection to the attack there. I scratched my roughly stubbled chin in thought. Sarah S. never took the BladeBoys out into areas anywhere near Cavefish territory, preferring to stay due north of what we bikers call Dante's Ladder, which streaches down Highway 9 between the Kickstand and Old Mine Road.

A slight smile crossed my lips. Melonweed was right in the heart of the ladder and the near-impossiblity of my assault on Todd's junkyard made me feel as if we had reached a calm in the storm. So, as long as Todd kept his glass jaw, it looked like we had a place to hide out. By sheer irony, we passed the Melonweed directional sign and I motioned at it and leaned left, cleanly taking the exit to the dead little hamlet, but a shuddering thought hit me as we passed Mo's old shack... Why had she chosen Melonweed as a hide-out?

Were the territories actually shifting around?

My fears became flesh as I spotted the familiar markings of the Vultures on the broken remains of the shed that Mo had called home, and the dark, muddy trails of the Vultures' flightless plane in the mud ahead. I screeched to a halt in the center of the road and held up my hand, listening as the PoleCats did the same. How had I missed those signs before? And why had the Vultures detoured into MelonWeed before coming to capture Ripburger? Something was definately off balance here, I just couldn't quite put my finger on it---

Feeling a bit unnerved, I signaled to ride on, not choosing to give my original intent of commandeering the junkyard any substance at the moment. The dark semi-dome loomed ominously enough even during the day, so I felt it would be better if we rested a bit before fighting to set up housekeeping.

I heard shuffling above me, the water stops dripping, and the grating opened. Two Cavefish climbed down a rope ladder and stood before me, homebrew weapons at the ready. One carried a laser-guided fucused shrapnal thrower (known around here as a "Shredder", for obvious reasons.), while the other carried a 'poon, which was basically a rocket-propelled toilet plunger. Didn't know what their plans were - maybe they intended to shred me in the five inches of water that stood at my feet, drain it, and then use the plunger if I was still stubborn after death. Truthfully, I really didn't wanna find out.

The one with the plunger stepped forward. "I'm gonna break him up a bit... You stand by to shred if he even BLINKS hard." Closer still he came, and only then did I realise that his face was lacking both bandages and goggles. There was an unearthly amount of scar tissue built up on his skull, but I swore to myself that I had met him before. He grinned evilly, and raised the plunger to my chest. I had the pleasure of shooting a Cavefish poon once... Five-hundered pounds of torque in one of those babies. At the range of a few feet, it would bruise my spine if shot at my chest, but this fool had it pressed to my shirt. I was a goner. His buddy stepped forward some to enjoy my fear too, his face also bare.

I only got to look at him for a moment though, for the plumber-wannabe turned quicker than anything, positioned the plunger below his buddy's chin, and pulled the trigger. I was sprayed with blood at first as the body fell foreward, then (as an added irony) pelted by the now ricocheting Cavefish cervesa. I pressed harder against the wall, unsure of what to do.

"I should'a popped you for stealing my ramp, PoleCat, but I need your help.", he rasped as he knelt by the body.

      We rode out past The Kickstand and on to a little shack buried deep in the woods. Dredz was the first to scope the place out, the small laser pinpoint of his pistol tracing out moving grafitti as he walked, his dredlocks moving almost like antenne, tasting the air around him. There were two quick yowls, feline in nature to the casual observer, but PoleCat in nature to those in the know. The coast was clear.

     We hunted and foraged for a month before deciding to ride again. None of us had a fear of riding, but if territories were shifting, we sure didn't want to run across any moving vans full of weapons. Jackson, our Seargent-At-Arms, had ventured into nearby towns to gather intel, disguised as a computer programmer named Tim, and on the morning of our departure he strolled back up to the cabin to deliver the bad news in person.

     "Doesn't look good, Ben...", he started as he taped together a small pile of papers that rapidly formed a map. "Melonweed is gone, as is Las Gatos -" We all bowed our heads in defeat. 'Las Gatos' roughly translated to 'The Cats', and had been the territory of the PoleCats for long before Father Torque lead the gang. Its fall was our own, and to make matters worse, would cause us more pain to come. The shack that we had called home for four weeks was now, according to the map, dead center in BladeBoy territory.

     "- I do have a plan, however, which may help us...", he finished with a halfhearted smile.

     I stank. I don't mean normal biker stink either - no... This was different. The Cavefish rebel has wound the bandages of his former 'brother' around my body, even supplying me (thankfully) with head wrappings and goggles. I stank of death and decay. An unseen smile crossed my lips as I recalled a movie that I had seen in the RetroTheater a few years back. I leaned close to my benefactor while we walked and whispered "...and I thought they smelled bad...on the outside..." He motioned for me to be silent as a mass of bandaged bodies became visable, my goggles blinking the number of each CaveFish as we passed. The brother who had helped me escape thusfar was Brother 14, I knew that from my readouts, and he had informed me as I was dressing that I was brother 184. Seems he had chosen a rookie that no-one knew very well to accompany him to my cell, and that the misfortunate CaveFish's body would be mistaken for mine because of our shared build.

     The crowds grew thin again as I reached a part of the cave that I faintly recognised. Ricky's ramp was back in the same spot that I had stolen it just a month and a half ago. Something in my mind clicked. Ricky's ramp? My host had told me in my cell that he should have popped me for stealing HIS ramp... But CaveFish were communal, as far as I knew...one for all and all that jazz. They didn't believe in personal property. "Myron?", I hissed as soon as my goggles showed no nearby activity. He froze and turned around.

      Jackson's plan, at first glance, seemed insane. Now, just feet from her door, it seemed ludicrious. We were marching right up to Sarah S. and her followers like lambs excitedly awaiting the shears..