She was humming.

Not because the lava zone had given her any particular reason to hum.

The smoke was still thick, the boulders were still falling, and the volcanic path was still sinking the instant it passed under her wheels.

She was humming because of the particular way his truck had been slowing down back there, and because of the exact spot on the path where it had happened, and because of what those two facts meant when put together. A small mystery, perhaps, but then the mind likes to pretend small mysteries are harmless.

She accelerated.

The damaged right panel protested the acceleration in the same tired way it had been protesting everything. She ignored it.

His truck was ahead of her.

The distance closed when her high speed has enough straight road to work with, steadily and with a confidence that almost felt rude.

The next section of path opened into a wider channel between two volcanic formations, wide enough for two trucks, and she took the left line as she drew level with his cab and then passed it.

She leaned out the open window as she went by.

"Proxy~! Were you thinking of rescuing me?"

A burst of heat rolled across the path behind them.

"I want you to know if it wasn’t for the bet I’d happily play your princess in distress!"

"I was not-" he exhaled. "I just got distracted for a bit."

She kept her eyes forward and let the engine carry her.

"Uh huhh," she said.

She pulled ahead.

The path curved right, and she took it along the route she had already chosen.

The volcanic rock started to sink.

When she came out of the turn, she was two lengths in front, and the smoke was thin enough in this section to see properly.

A boulder dropped to her right, struck the lava, and threw splatter across the path but not into it, and she drove through the spray and kept going. One has to respect the path when it decides to nearly kill you, but not so much that it notices.

He passed her on the next corner.

She had taken the inside because it was shorter and because she had the speed to hold it.

He had taken the outside because that side of the curve had a wider flat path nearly in the lava, and a truck with high endurance could use that path without the same risk her own truck carried with low endurance.

He came through the corner at a constant speed, and his nose was at her door and then past it and then ahead of her.

He said nothing.

She glanced toward him, then back to the path.

"Hey hey, someone’s serious." she said.

"The way you drive is too straightforward," he said. "That makes it predictable."

She kept one hand steady on the wheel.

"And?" she said.

"And," he said, "you’re never winning the bet like this."

She smiled at the back of his truck.

Then she started planning the next straight.

It came two curves later.

A long stretch opened between two volcanic ridges, with enough room on the path for both of them and no eruptions visible on either side. She held the accelerator down for the full length of it.

Her very high acceleration put her alongside him quickly.

Her high speed kept her there, then pushed her ahead.

His truck fell back by half a length and then a full length as the straight continued.

She did not lean out the window this time.

A rock rattled against the side of the path.

She shouted, at a volume that would carry, "You are eating dust~!"

A very brief pause.

"Temporarily," he felt the need to shout back too, for some reason.

She tightened her grip on the wheel for a second, then loosened it.

"That’s mighty confident for someone losing!"

Another pause. A more managed one.

"We will see that in the next zone." he said.

"Proxy."

"Mm."

She let that sit there for a moment, enjoying it for what it was.

Then she looked ahead.

"Nothing," she said, warmly, and accelerated into the lead.

The volcanoes answered by becoming significantly more involved in the race.

The first boulder dropped in the center of the path ten meters ahead, and she steered around the crater before the shockwave reached her..

The second came down to the left and the third to the right almost at once, and the lava on both sides erupted at the same moment, the sideways splash crossing the path from two directions at once.

She drove through the gap between the splashes, and it was narrow enough on both sides that the heat came through the windows at the same time.

His truck appeared in her peripheral vision.

He had taken a different path through the falling boulders, not the one she had taken, but one that reached her by another route.

They came out of the boulder cluster side by side at matching speed, and there was no room for either of them to be anywhere else, so they stayed there.

A fourth boulder came down directly between them.

Both trucks went outward at the same moment.

She went left, he went right, and the boulder’s impact crater was behind them by the time it finished forming, and the path narrowed again, and they converged back to the same position because the path only offered one position.

The zone, in its own way, was very committed to the concept of equality.

Neither of them said anything.

The zone did not leave room for it.

The smoke thickened for the next forty seconds, and she drove on instinct and path memory.

A bit of ash struck the windshield and slid away.

When the smoke thinned again, the zone boundary was visible ahead, a clear line in the air where the volcanic rock and orange glow ended and something else began.

She was ahead by half a length.

The truck lifted.

Not from a ramp. Not from a jump.

The wheels were on the volcanic rock and then the weight on them changed, the stone fell back, and her truck rose without any mechanism she could identify, moving forward while the ground moved away from it.

His truck rose beside her.

She looked at him through the side window.

He looked back.

A tremor ran through the cab.

"Are we..." she said.

"...flying." he confirmed.

"Is that good?"

He looked ahead at the zone boundary, and at the next zone beyond it.

"Probably not," he said.