Without thinking, Crash hurled it backward. It struck the Emperor's personal hover-kart just as he was activating the final trap: a massive rotating crusher over the finish line.
The sky over Terra-Lock, the orbital junkyard of Emperor Velo XXVII’s racing coliseum, was the color of bruised chrome. On the starting grid of the Hyper Spaceway, five karts idled with a low, predatory hum.
The countdown began. Three holographic numbers burned in the vacuum of space above them.
Cortex’s face turned purple. Crash just shrugged, held up a single Wumpa fruit, and bit into it with a crunch that echoed through the silent, beaten arena.
