[center][h3]The Convoy[/h3]
[b]Location:[/b] Peach's Castle, Out Front[/center]

A very very very bored Bowser was sitting still in the bowser mobile waiting for everyone to be ready. He had his feet on the dashboard and his hands folded behind his head as he stared up at the sky and tried to avoid being driven insane from the periodic beeping of Blazermate’s sentry. 

After a while however, the beeping turned from annoying to almost hypnotically peaceful. He could almost doze off to the sound of it...

Bowser awoke to the sound of Kamek shouting [color=DeepSkyBlue]”Young master are you alright?!”[/color]

The king bolted upright and looked around for his son till he spotted a scratched up jr roll up in his wheeled clown car. 

[color=SpringGreen]”I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it jeez.”[/color] jr responded, brushing of the concern.

A relieved bowser snapped his fingers, summoning heel to heal his son. While the rabbid did his thing Bowser asked [color=FD0000]”Did you get him?”[/color]

[color=SpringGreen]”Huh? Oh! Yeah.... Well kinda?”[/color] jr responded before showing the king his now filled pokeball with the not pikachu inside.

[color=FD0000]”Good job.”[/color] Bowser with a thumbs up before asking Kamek [color=FD0000]”Are they done yet?”[/color]

[color=DeepSkyBlue]”Ah, well… they’re closer to being done?”[/color] the magikoopa responded hesitantly.

[color=FD0000]”Gahhhh. You know what? I don't care, we are leaving!”[/color] a new very frustrated Bowser  responded before hammering his fist against the horn of the Bowser mobile a few times to get everyone’s attention. [color=FD0000]”MOUNT UP ALREADY YOU MOOKS, OR GET LEFT BEHIND!”[/color] he ordered the team, before stomping his foot to the gas. The bowser mobile roared as it lurched into motion, wheels tearing up the earth as its master bade it head east, taking the mage and medic along for the ride.

[color=SpringGreen]”Hay wait up!”[/color] Jr call after him before his making his own tiny vehicle wizz after the titanic muscle car.

The Centurion looked up and narrowed his eyes as Bowser led his koopa troop forward. Agoston was thinking the same thing. He was just staring blankly at the sky and not really doing anything! Bowser’s initiative reminded Agoston of his own.[color=f26522]”Yes!”[/color] He shouted, hunching  clumsily into his drill kart. He took a moment to prevent himself from sitting on his slightly tattered cape.

[color=f26522]“Come forth! Galeem isn’t going to destroy himself!”[/color] With that he put his boot down on the pedal sped after the koopa troop. One hand on the steering wheel, he used his free right hand to point dramatically over the horizon.

The kart wobbled uncertainly, and he put his pointing hand down on the ground and pushed off of it to steady it. 

[color=f26522]”Forward!”[/color] He shouted back over his shoulder, pushing the kart like a skateboard every few seconds.

The first shout Tora could dismiss as Bowser being somewhat petulant, but after he rolled out with Kamek and Junior, and the Centurion echoed the call to leave, the Nopon couldn’t dillydally any longer. “Meh!? Are going?” As fast as his tiny legs could carry him, he rushed to his landship. One by one, the vehicles began their engines and started to roll out, but Tora couldn’t reach the pedals without squashing himself against the floor. He needed Poppi--both to drive and for other reasons, but at the moment to drive. “Poppi, where are you!?” he cried out, scanning the fleet of karts and other contraptions for any sign of his mechanical partner but turning up nothing.

However, the sound of jets turned his gaze skyward. The artificial blade cruised in from the direction of the scrapyard, expertly decreasing her boosters’ power until she landed softly on Tora’s landship. “Right here, masterpon!” she said, holding up her new pokeball to show him. Tora peered at it quizzically, unable to see anything interesting about it. “Poppi caught little brog-creature inside. Will make good pet, I think.”

The sound of a motor roaring by caused both to look behind Tora, just in time to see Peach drive by after Bowser and Agoston. An expression of relief could be glimpsed on her face as she got up to speed; perhaps she was grateful Bowser hadn’t offered her a ride in his giant, spike-ridden roadster. To Tora, however, the sight confirmed that every moment not in motion was another moment he was falling behind, and as the team’s tank he needed to be up front. “That nice, but come on! It go time!” Kamek mentioned hostile ‘cars’ in the area ahead, after all, and if those resembled karts in any capacity, the speed and weight of a collision could be terribly injurious. Moving to the back of the landship with his shield, the Nopon swapped places with Poppi, who put her more human proportions to work operating the vehicle. After a false start and its ensuing cloud of smoke, the duo took off after the party’s leaders. Everyone else would surely follow suit.

[hr]

The road ahead started off easy, with a few slow turns over mostly grassy field. Any animals, pokemon, or monsters of low import could hear the convoy coming from a ways off, and made sure to clear the road before Bowser’s enormous rumbler could steamroll them. Before long, the ground began to incline slightly upward, leveling off again after a couple dozen feet of altitude. From there, past the cylindrical pastel-covered ‘hills’ that marked the borders of the new Mushroom Kingdom, the terrain got a bit dicier. The road itself degraded in quality and started evidencing the twists and turns that Kamek spotted before, as well as the rocky ravines and rises that necessitated them. This continued for a good way. Nobody really planned for the dust kicked up by the convoy’s collective wheels across the highway, which the low-profile, minimal-protection karts sported little defense against. As the terrain got rougher, there even appeared a jump that everyone needed to speed up to make, or else fall into a craggy pit. Still, the going never got truly hazardous until the lead vehicle rounded a plateau into an open area and got some unwanted attention.

Instantly, the bowsermobile caught the eyes of the area’s denizens, and a few vehicles turned to speed the convoy’s way. They grew nearer and nearer, their offroading kicking up a whole lot more dust than the highway-bound convoy. Once close enough, their individual features could be made out; two appeared to be ordinary [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rage/images/8/8e/Road_Rage_vehicle_type_1_Scout.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120204175601]buggies[/url], fairly shoddy in construction, while two more looked [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rage/images/e/ea/Buggy_Transparent.png/revision/latest?cb=20111016080242]similar[/url] but sported mounted guns, while the [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rage/images/8/84/Rat_Rod.png/revision/latest?cb=20111002183927]last[/url] -much sportier than its fellows- bore both guns and blades. None of them really oozed deadliness or sturdiness, but even the unarmed ones posed a serious threat to the smaller karts thanks to their size alone. Even worse, given the karts’ general lack of protection, those mounted guns would be a problem despite the difficulty of aiming them.

Once in range, music began to blare from the enemy vehicles. Raucous, grating, and overall nasty, it still couldn’t drown out the rattle of gatling fire that followed soon after. Since the guns could only be aimed where their host vehicles pointed, they could only fire in the heroes’ general direction, but sooner or later one or many of those shots would have to hit their marks.

Tora grit his teeth and held his shield steady. So these were cars. Being much bigger than any of their own vehicles save the Bowser Mobile, any sort of impact would be disastrous for a convoy member. His foes knew it, too. Why else would they be gunning straight for them? The Nopon waited as the enemies grew closer, biding his time until the right moment arrived to strike.