"I hate it how the traffic is always terrible even at this time of day…" It was only 4:15 PM in Seattle, Washington, yet vehicles were already backed up past the horizon. Derek Porter usually loved his short-haul job, but his weekly cross-town run from Tacoma to downtown Seattle always gave him headaches. All he ever did was sit in his 18-wheeler, barely moving on I-5. Nothing interesting happened. Ever.

Today seemed to be no different than all his previous hauls. For lack of anything better to do, Porter just stared out the front window at the seemingly endless line of automobiles. Suddenly a flash and a black streak in his side-mirrors caught his attention. Derek’s head snapped towards the mirror, but he saw nothing. His brow furrowed in confusion, he turned back forwards. The man quickly shrugged off what he had seen, classifying it as the sun off a windshield for now.

It was about this time that a flying black object rocketed past his cab. Close to two seconds later, four more black streaks flew in pursuit of the first object. Derek gaped for a moment at the unbelievable scene, then said the only thing he could think of. "Damn. Doesn’t that just beat all…"

"Whoo! Yeeee Haw! Isn’t this great, Derv?"

"Oh yeah, Val. I’m having a blast…" Dervish sure didn’t sound like he was having a blast. Normally, the Shetland Sheepdog loved high-speed chases about his hover-bike Valkyrie, but this time there was too much at stake to enjoy the ride. He and the bike were out as a decoy, to draw incoming robot flyers away from a disguised Rover big-rig carrying some very important cargo. If there was one thing Dervish didn’t like, it was being bait.

"Val, I’m getting sick of these pesky flies. Any suggestions on where we can swat ‘em?"

"Any parameters for the search?" Val asked while making a nauseatingly fast turn through traffic.

Seemingly unfazed by the darting, Derv answered, "Try and leave civilians out of it…and make sure any reinforcements won’t even be in the same ZIP code as DJ and the truck."

"Check," the hover-bike responded. It only took a few seconds before Valkyrie let out an exclamation of, "Bingo!" into the Sheltie’s helmet. A green wire-frame of the upcoming vicinity instantaneously popped up on the inside of Dervish’s visor as Val described the location. "Up ahead on I-5 is a stretch of freeway near Seattle that’s closed for construction. I figured that it would be—"

"Cut right to the chase, Val," Derv interrupted as they shot between a pair of semi-trucks. "Why are we going there?"

The wire-frame map quickly contorted itself into a close-up map of the construction zone. "Because this particular stretch of road contains two, count ‘em, two tunnels. One of them has been remodeled, but the other one is still under renovation for a ‘weak tile’ problem."

The Sheltie’s mind went into high gear, processing the information. Soon a slow grin spread across his muzzle as a plan panned out in his mind. "Val, let’s try and burn ‘em to the tunnel. Keep ‘em in sight, though. I just don’t want to get fried on the open road between here and the first tunnel."

Val let out a chuckle and replied, "I hear ya Derv. Hold on!" As soon as the bike had crossed the plane of orange signs marking off the construction area, it let out a maniacal laugh and kicked in its afterburners.

It took less than a minute to arrive at the first, renovated tunnel. But in that time, the four robots behind them had amazingly almost caught up with them. Dervish was just ducking under the first laser bolt to be fired at them as they entered the tunnel. As they were rocketing through the tunnel, Dervish commented, "Val, you’d better turn on your rear camera. This is gonna be good…"

Not waiting for his companion’s response, the Sheepdog reached down and pressed a button on Valkyrie’s control console. This immediately caused two spiked projectiles to shoot horizontally out of both sides of the bike. An ultra-strong cable was being used to keep the two objects connected. This cable abruptly snapped taut as the projectiles implanted themselves in the two sides of the tunnel.

Realizing that a trap had been set in front of them, the robots attempted to veer away from it. Two succeeded, but the third was caught in the midsection by the cable. Despite the ludicrous speed the robot was flying at, the makeshift trip-wire held, and caused the robot to be torn off his bike, not to mention it’s lower extremities. The upper half of the robot was flung to the ground where it shattered into hundreds of pieces, while the bike lost control and flew directly into the ceiling, exploding on impact.

"Derv, there’re only two of them left back there!" Val exclaimed. "We only got one of them, and there were four before! What happened to the last one?"

Realizing the tactics the robots were using, Dervish abruptly slammed on the air-brake just before exiting the tunnel. The two robots behind him did not have any time to react to the odd move by their target, and so they shot ahead of him. "What are you doing, Derv!?" Val yelled into the helmet.

"Just watch and see," the passenger replied cryptically.

Due to the tremendous speed the two robots were traveling at, and their lack of sophisticated air-brakes, the robots shot out of the tunnel. Suddenly one of them was incinerated by a laser blast from above, and the last robot shot down to street-level.

The two mechanical beings were examining the burnt hulk of their compatriot when Dervish and Valkyrie shot past them. Dervish soon noticed the two robots forget about the wreck and start accelerating towards them. The Sheltie, trusting Val to keep them from being shot, purposely let the robots get relatively close to him, as he had a plan in mind for the next tunnel.

Before long the group of flying machines were in the second tunnel. Acting before any of his pursuers could do anything about it, Derv twisted Valkyrie into a barrel-roll around the hemisphere of the tunnel. As he had expected, the pressure used to keep Valkyrie floating was enough to exploit the tunnel’s aforementioned ‘weak tile’ problem.

The tiles of the tunnel promptly began to dislodge themselves from the ceiling and started to rain down upon the two pursuers. One of the robots was lucky enough to make it out of the tunnel still intact, but the other one blew up in the tunnel after a sharp piece of tile ruptured its bike’s fuel tank.

"All right!" Val exclaimed. "Three down, one to go! Got anything planned for the last one, Derv?"

"Of course," Dervish replied calmly. "Now give me complete control, and boost power to the hover-jets before we hit any walls, OK?" Once he saw the light indicating he had complete control of the bike the Sheltie quickly flipped a switch with his thumb, locking out Valkyrie’s control for the time being. Then Dervish did two things: First, he drew his coiled whip from his belt. Then he aimed the bike directly at an oncoming building.

Val’s very worried voice sounded in Dervish’s helmet. "Derv!? What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"

"Just don’t let us hit any walls, Val. That should be the only thing you’ve got control of, right?"

"Right," Val replied nervously. "This is gonna hurt, isn’t it?"

"Yep. Well…you won’t be hurt as long as we don’t crash. But I’m gonna be pretty sore tomorrow morning if all goes to plan." They were almost to the building wall when he shouted, "OK! Here we go!" Tightening his thigh-grip on the bike, Dervish twisted Valkyrie so that it’s hover-jets were pressing against the building. As he had been told, Val maxed the power to the bike’s hover-jets, effectively bouncing them off of the building wall.

As they hurtled towards the last robot flyer Dervish snapped his wrist, attaching his whip to the robot’s left leg. Having only a split-second to react, the Sheltie used both of his hands to hold the whip and pull it taut as the enemy flew by. He screamed in pain as both of his shoulders were dislocated, but he still held on.

Both of the flying machines were now spinning around each other, still accelerating. After about three spins, Dervish let go of his makeshift cable to the enemy, sending it flying uncontrollably into a concrete wall where it exploded in a massive fireball.

Thankfully Valkyrie was able to avoid crashing into any walls by using his jets very carefully. Eventually the pair slowed to a stop near the flaming ruins of their last pursuer. Unable to move his arms, Dervish slumped forward on the bike and used the windshield to edge his helmet up enough so that he could fling it off. He did so, then used his nose to carefully press a button in front of him.

Soon enough, Valkyrie’s small monitor lit up with the face of DJ on it. The black and brown marked German Shepherd’s face cracked a grin when it saw Dervish. "Hey Derv," DJ said in his slightly southern-accent. "Thanks to you we’re all safe at Base 4. I take it you got rid of the bad guys with your usual flair and excessiveness?"

Despite his pain, Dervish grinned and nodded to his friend. "Hey, did you expect anything less of me Deej? Heh…I got it all on film, too."

DJ chuckled and shook his head. "Honestly Derv, I have no idea why you put up with all the pain you get by going to such extremes."

"It’s all about the fans, Deej. They like the flashy stuff, y’know."

At this, the Shepherd laughed. "And how many fans do you have out there exactly, o orange one?" Dervish only glared at DJ, prompting the Shepherd to prod his friend some more. "Y’know, it happens to be in my opinion that you do all the ‘flashy stuff’ for the sole purpose of trying to impress certain ladies we both happen to be affiliated with…"

The Sheltie shot his friend a tired glance. "Don’t even go there Deej. I’m in too much pain to defend myself from such cheep shots at the moment. Just….just get someone down here ASAP with some medical knowledge, OK? I want to get my arms fixed up and be back to base by the time reinforcements arrive."

The Shepherd was already waving over someone off screen. He quickly asked, "Alright, Derv. Help is on the way. Where are you at?"

"I don’t know! I was too busy saving your tail to watch street signs!"

"Whoah there, fella! Settle down! We’ll just have to use the homing beacon. We’ll be there in a few, OK? Hang in there, buddy. The cavalry is on it’s way!"

After that last remark, the screen abruptly went black again. Dervish sighed and placed his forehead on Valkyrie’s handlebars. "Hey, Derv?"

"What, Val?"

"Want to examine the replay tape now, or wait ‘til we’re in the presence of---"

"Shut UP, Val!"