He downshifts as he gets closer, dropping from fourth to third, then to second.  He checks one final time.

"Still clear?"

"Still clear."

"Copy."

He pulls in almost on top of the portal, kicks the kickstand down, and performs the Ritual of the Selfie Stick.  Camera on, confirm it's recording.  Other sensors check out as well?  Good.  Okay.  Poke it through.

The portal comes out in an oddly-lit garage.  Klieg lights point at a lift for a vehicle, tools are scattered around the floor.  It seems that this garage opens out into a raceway.  If the refresh rate and Xavier's eyes are fast enough, they'll catch cars nyooming around the track.

"Nothing exotic coming up.  Looks like some kind of, uh, PIT stop garage thing.  Fast cars going around the track.  No surprise."

"No editorializing."

"Just the facts, ma'am.  It's a fact I'm not surprised."

"Wise guy.  Safe to recon?"

"No way.  If one of these cars pulls in and goes for me, I'll be road pizza."

"Got it.  Check the other side and get out."

The other side of the garage looks like a mechanic had carefully arranged all of his tools, and then let his apprentice in to work unsupervised for a month.  Tools are strewn haphazardly across work benches.  There are a set of sawhorses and what could be a welding setup if you squint, use your imagination, and pretend that OSHA isn't real.

Xavier doesn't get a new bike today.  He does lock his Raleigh to a nearby tree out of habit, then laughs at himself.  Who's going to steal a bike next to thirty-some DRT ops?

Then it's time to quit biking around.  Keep the cordon, prep the report, review the footage.  Call for an esper.

They have a pretty steep list of requirements.  They need:

The ability to scout a dungeon.  Some psych backlashes preclude this.
The ability to either avoid every car perfectly, including the possibility of specifically aggressive cars
OR
The ability to be immune to a car's worth of kinetic energy.
Ideally-but-optionally some kind of transport power to navigate the dungeon quickly.

Unfortunately, this is a Confluence.  The esper team they want isn't going to be the one they get.

In the end, they settle on an esper with a seemingly infinite amount of durability.

Sure, that might as well happen.

They are incredibly grateful to Juggernaut for her contribution to having a usable city and the surrounding highways back.  Her mission is to enter this portal wearing three cameras and a sensor pack, scout the dungeon, assess the general conditions of the dungeon and see what they'll need in terms of a strike team to take it down.  She is NOT under ANY REASONABLE CIRCUMSTANCES to destroy the core; not all of the carnapper cars have been controlled.  The core should be avoided and indeed, ignored, lest the dungeon decide that it's time to exit stage left, pursued by a Juggernaut.

(If the dungeon is disappearing anyway she should simply leave.  If smashing the core is a truly free action, she may do that while leaving.  But humanity cannot afford to trade Melee 5 espers to dungeons at a 1:1 ratio.)

Just so long as they're clear that, while she will try to prevent the sensor pack from getting pancaked if she gets hit by a car, she absolutely cannot guarantee the sensor pack won't get pancaked if she gets hit by a car. Cool? Cool, let's do this.

The logistics quartermaster has a pet theory that the likelihood of any given piece of equipment returning is inversely correlated with the Melee rating of the esper taking it out.  Melee 0?  Almost certainly fine.  Melee 3?  Fine more often than not.  Melee 5?  They'll be lucky if it's usable when it returns.

However, in the interest of having his city back, he's going to refrain from discussing his theory and simply acknowledge that fast-moving vehicles are known to damage things and she knows she'll do the best she can.

There are few enough cars on the road that she can just walk into the portal whenever she's ready.

All right, how's it looking in there?

Medium-loud.  The sounds of a NASCAR rally are easily audible, minus the cheering of screaming fans.  As described previously, she's in a very disorganized garage.  If April is handy, she'll notice that some of the tools don't actually make sense - there's a 4-way tire iron that has a screwdriver head, for example.

The roll-up garage doors open out directly to a asphalt speedway.  Esper eyesight will note that the wall curves smoothly up from the floor, and there are tire tracks on the walls as well as the actual floor of the speedway.

Heh.

You know what's among the many things April no longer fears?

Strolling down the middle of the road.

Is April sure?  Because she can definitely hear the roar of a number of engines approaching her.  She's only got a few seconds to get out of the way.

There's plenty of room to pass her, right up that wall.

The lead car, unknown to Juggernaut, is doing extremely advanced calculus.  It can smash through her but at these speeds it's likely to lose control and lose first place, the only thing that matters.  If it swerves around her it's possible that its closest competitor could leverage its brief lack of focus on [fast] to overtake it.

The first chance is likeliest to make it lose.  It swerves slightly, missing her by less than eight inches.

The second-place car uses the lead car's swerving to gain an edge, and it manages to roar out a lead.  It flashes a bright azure light for a moment as it takes the lead.

The fourth car plows into Juggernaut.

Too bad for the fourth car.

It doesn't do worse than make her stumble briefly, but her pants are once again going in the garbage after this dungeon. She doesn't know why she bothers. Anyway, she can pick up to a light jog and see how much track there is to see. She's pretty sure her sensor rig isn't totaled yet.

If she looks around at the smoking remains of the vehicle that was shattered upon her craggy shores, she'll notice that it appears to be liquefying and melting into the asphalt of the racetrack.  And she'll hear a new engine absolutely screaming as it goes from zero to however fast these dungeon cars can manage to go.

"...what, do these things respawn?" she wonders aloud. "Fucking wild."

The dungeon doesn't answer her.  If she's willing to walk a few hundred feet, she'll find that the cars are now willing to avoid her even when it loses them a positional advantage in the race.

Darn right they are.

She keeps jogging around the track, making mental note of the layout and keeping an eye out for anything weird. Is it one big loop or are there branches? Does it squiggle? Giant disco ball chasing the cars like a boulder trap from an old movie? Anything?

No branches yet.  There's a LOT of squiggling - there are places where tire marks are on the walls and even the ceiling.  Aside from that, the only traps seem to be the fact that in order to survive the dungeon, you need to survive being hit by a dungeon car running well over a hundred miles per hour.

Yeah, she's aware some people have trouble with that.

She keeps jogging. Any more pit stops or other landmarks of note? Any more cars think today is a good day to die?