Xaviers!

The day of the big race...

Various dune buggies are parked on display near the course for the race. Various people are milling around, not really paying attention to anyone but their own cliques other than the occasional derisive glances at the other teams. The Santa Clarita dune buggy is super snazzy and in pristine condition. The Hollydale one... not so much. There's also a fair number of spectators wandering around and getting in position to watch the race.

"Think anyone would notice if I scratched up their stupid smug paint job?" Bruce pondered aloud.

“Don’t you dare, Tosh! Don’t even think of tearing into their stupid, ugly, terrible, cheating, myopic paint job. I’ll need you as the distraction so I can do it.” (Laughter)

Meanwhile the Santa Clarita jerks are standing together in a group. They're exactly as preppy and smug as one would imagine, occasionally glancing over to the crummy Hollydale buggy and laughing haughtily.

“They are going to eat my dust. On like. A totally literal sense.”

"Your dust is too good for them, babe. Seriously, what kind of people laugh at the team with the sea monster in it? I could fit their smug faces in my face." Laughter.

Bear skipped over to her bus, which had somehow been migrated from the bar parking lot.

Reaching inside, she pulled out a bundle and returned to the gang.

“One last touch.” She said, as she passed out the colorful racing coveralls she had been working on all night.

One of the Santa Clarita jerks glances over and laughs, "Hey, Bait-breath! Looks like your uniform's here. They going to have you pull that broken down buggy so it'll actually move?" The rest of the group laughs.

"Alright, alright, everybody calm down. Settle this properly. With a race!" the organizer says loud enough for everyone to hear. "On your buggies everyone!"

Haley, somehow managing to make overalls risqué, climbed into the buggy. “Jerks won’t know what hit them...”she mumbled to herself as she glared over at their smug faces...

...and slowly started to try and loosen the lug nuts on the wheels of her opponents’ buggy with her mind.

Bear took her spot on the edge of the track, binoculars in one hand, walkie-talkie in the other, and a sack of “emergency supplies” at her feet.

“Test, test, 123!” She said, talking into the mic.

The lugnuts are tightened pretty well, and Haley is presumably trying to be at least somewhat subtle, but after some frustrating jerking around with her telekinesis she manages to loosen them a little bit before some of the jerks notice her staring and she's forced to stop for the sake of subtlety.

Not too long after that everyone who's not a racer is shooed off the starting line and the organizer, carrying a racing flag and a starting pistol walks up in front of the line of buggies, most of them puttering in idle, one of them clanking and coughing. "You all know the rules. First one to make it around Lover's Rock and back here wins! On my mark! Ready... Steady..." he says, aiming the gun into the air. "Go!" The gun goes off with a bang that sounds a little too real, but there's no time to think about it too much as everyone takes off.

Haley's buggie bounces and jerks in place for a moment until it finally finds it's gear and gets going with a couple moments delay. Ahead of her the Santa Carlita buggy seems to be running just fine, the tire still hanging on despite the loosened lugnuts. Well enough to let them swerve and side-swipe one of the other racers who goes off the track and hits a dune at an angle, going airborne and spiraling a little too much before crashing into a little shack full of beach balls, umbrellas and other assorted thing. As the other racers pass them everybody kind of expects them to be standing in the wreckage, annoyed but safe, but they don't. It's just a flipped buggy in a whole mess of debris. A sad trombone sound plays for everyone to hear.

Bear turns to the wreckage, momentarily horrified and thinking someone needs to help them immediately.

But it fades suspiciously quickly.

“Ooo, those darn Santa Corita jerks!” She says into the walkie talkie.

Bruce, also far too into the collective sitcom delusion to react properly, stopped shoveling popcorn into his maw long enough to reply, "How are they not disqualified? C'mon!"

The race continues, the Santa Carlita jerks pulling ahead, as expected. Haley's buggy barely holds together and it's only thanks to her telekinesis that it doesn't just fall apart as everybody pulls around the large, vaguely heart-shaped rock. The Santa Carlita buggy buckles a little, but the wheel still hangs on, only tilted a little bit. Haley is still trailing, but that turns out to be rather fortunate when suddenly the sand ahead of the racers shakes and rises up when suddenly a giant shark bursts out of the ground with a tremendous roar. The Santa Carlita buggy tries to swerve and the wheel finally gives out and the buggy suddenly veers off, tumbling across the sand and losing more bits and pieces, including the driver.

The rest of the racers are less 'lucky' as the shark-man swipes at the foremost one and bats it aside, which sends it crashing into another while Thressher frees one foot from the sand and stomps down on the last non-Haley-operated buggy, crushing the front and sending the driver into the air. Razor-sharp teeth snap and the poor driver goes tumbling in two directions at once with a spray of blood. The two halves land in the sand and instantly de-rez in a mess of pixels.

Meanwhile Haley is headed straight for the shark-monster and her method of keeping the buggy in one piece doesn't exactly lend itself to sudden steering...

Bruce only gaped for a few moments before recognition set in, followed by a rush of fear for his girlfriend.

"Oh no... Haley!" he yelled as he bounded off of the bleachers and towards the sudden chaos. The fact that Thresher was bigger and tougher than him didn't even cross his mind.

Bear likewise snapped to focus, her eyes going wide for a moment before closing and narrowing.

She reached into her bag by instinct, pulling out an LA Dodgers souvenir ball, and let loose at the giant, massive shark thing,

Haley, sweat forming on her brow from the effort of holding the car together, tried to just slam on the brakes, eyes wide with fear as the shark monster bit a man in half and she was suddenly acutely aware of how familiar the creature looked.

But where the hell had he come from? Why did he stir such vivid, unpleasant and foreign but very real-feeling memories?

Clamping down on the brake-handle she hears something snap and the buggy not really slow down at all, the steering handle instead snapping to one side and the front-wheels suddenly are at a perpendicular angle to the direction she's going and it begins to flip up. Fortunately, she's gripping the whole thing with her telekinesis and that makes it less prone to such trivial things as 'gravity' so she flips up as much as she flips over, the momentum carrying her into the air and in an arc over the giant shark. Teeth gleam in the sun again as Thresher opens his mouth to repeat his previous move, but before his jaw can snap close around Haley a vintage baseball slams into the side of his head and jerks it to one side, letting Haley safely pass over his head while his teeth close around thin air.

“HALEY!”

Bear took off running towards the carnage, her first aid bag slung over her shoulder.

Haley, once the car had flipped, focused on bringing the thing down in one piece and softly so she didn’t break anything on herself, and then made a point to get out of the car as quickly as she could.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!" Bruce roared, spitting a crackling lightning ball towards Thresher.

Haley lands somewhat safely, although the same can't be said for the buggy as it falls apart underneath her. Thresher is right behind her, turning around to pick up the small blonde girl when Bruce's ball of electricity hits him right in the chest and staggers him long enough for Bear to get to Haley.

“C’mon Haley, we need some distance!”

Bear fished into her emergency bag, rifling around desperately for something to throw, settling on a metal bandage roll and suture scissors.

Bruce kept foolishly charging the heavily armed cybernetic hulk. His only goal was to keep Thresher focused on him.

"Hey! Over here you glorified half-toaster! Pick on someone almost your size!"

"Weak little fish." Thresher rumbles as the bandage roll bounces off his head with a noticeable thud just before the scissors hit and stick right in his skin. Instead of doing anything about that though he turns towards Bruce and throws a punch right into his path.

Feeling he was the faster combatant for once, Bruce tried sidestepping the blow to deliver a shock punch to Thresher's side. Unfortunately, this left the brave sharkman wide open.

Bear led Haley away as best as she could, picking up a few beach rocks and pelting them rapid-fire at the roaring monstrosity.

Thresher might not be fast, but he's big and he knows how to fight. Bruce would have probably managed to avoid the blow if he hadn't opted to then stay close to try and deliver his own strike. Thresher's body twists around to follow Bruce's movement and adjust his strike, connecting with Bruce's shoulder and sending him flying before he can discharge his electricity. Bear's projectiles are starting to leave marks on Thresher's skin, at least in the places where they don't impact cybernetics and get stuck in the metal.

Thresher turns towards Bear and let's out a roar, the maw full of razor-sharp teeth opening wide enough to fit a person. Thankfully he's too far away for that, but instead something unfolds from the cybernetics on his shoulder and after a moment of charging a plasma beam shoots out. It misses Bear but it stays active long enough for him to sweep it across the sand, triggering a line of explosions in it's wake and knocking Bear back amidst a cloud of sand.

It said a lot about Bruce's durability that the blow that sent him flying didn't instantly shatter his shoulder. He landed several feet away and rolled a few more.

"That's gonna leave a mark," he groaned as he climbed to his feet, favoring his un-punched arm until popping his shoulder back into place. "So... punching isn't such a good idea."

He charged another ball of electricity and launched it at the plasma cannon.

Bear kept running, but did a cartwheel to quickly grab more ammo from the beach ground.

Once she was upright again. She launched a backup high speed rock to Tosh’s electricity at the exposed plasma cannon.

Bear's projectile shoots through Bruce's ball of electricity and impacts the shoulder cannon, cracking it just enough that the electricity manages to really do some damage, the gun fizzling and starting to smoke.

Thresher roars in response and with an almost casual gesture sweeps up a trashed buggy and under-hand hurls it at Bear, clipping her shoulder and sending her sprawling into the sand. He raises his other arm at Bruce and a segment on his forearm snaps out and fires three small missiles at the other shark.

Bruce thought unusually fast and put the rest of his current charge into his Thunderclap(TM) maneuver, clapping his now crackling hands together to send out a concussive wave to deflect or detonate the missiles early. He did, however, forget to brace himself and began to topple back onto the sand.

Bruce got a helping hand in the form of a gentle telekinetic shove to hopefully keep him upright. Haley stood back some distance one hand steadying the field holding up her boyfriend, her other arm reaching out and twisting as she tried to make the missiles slam into each other as they sped towards the blast from Bruce.

Between the two of them the missiles falter in mid-air until the big thunderclap detonates them. In the wake of the massive explosions there's a temporary lull in the fighting as grains of sand rain down on everybody, the section of beach between the group of heroes and the (not-friendly) giant shark a big crater.

Thresher is the first to respond, his gills snapping open as the shutters implanted underneath them open and after a moment unleash a massive sonic blast that seems to be focused into a cone, knocking everybody back with ringing ears, more sand rushing past them with enough force to leave nasty scrapes.

Bruce crossed his arms in front of his face, using his massive hands to keep sand out of his eyes. He kept his footing this time but left furrows in the sand where the blast pushed him back. Ears ringing like smoke detectors, he gave a long grunt and said in a crackling voice, "That... all you got Sho?"

He brought his arms back down and spat another lightning ball.

Ear brought up her arms to her eyes, protecting them from the sandblast.

Frowning, she picked up a handful of wet sand, shaping it into a compact ball. Concentrating, she enveloped it in a shimmering TK field, aimed carefully, and let loose at the newly exposed gills.

The ball of sand is held together long enough by Bear's telekinesis to strike Thresher's gills, the sand spraying into the mechanism inside just before Tosh lands his ball of electricity. Thresher suddenly chokes up, clutching his neck and letting out a chocked roar.