Team Shift Happens
Previous Chapters:
The Plan / Getting the Truck / The Email
A Trick and a Wager / I Hate Scorpions!
Let’s Get This Party Started / First Arrivals
Shitbox Rally Starting Party, 7 AM Local Time
Things were starting to get interesting as everyone had a chance to interact. Kayden had made a lot of burgers in the last hour, not that he minded, and was now watching over the campsite while eating a burger, taking a break from cooking for a while. It was while he was chewing a bite of his triple burger that he spotted Ambay of Team Witchlight wandering toward the middle of the camp.
Rukari smiled as Andreas repaid him for the bottle of moonshine with a few packages of snus. He emptied out the ashes in his pipe, which had gone out a while ago, put the pipe away, and opened one of the cans, putting a portion tucked into his upper lip, close to his double-set of canine teeth. “Thank you,” Rukari said to Andreas, setting the cans near his murdaira for now as he finished whittling the cork ball. With that done, he set it aside near the rifle-cannon, picked the cans back up, and tucked them away into a pouch on his belt. He’d share this with the others later, but for now, he just wanted to relax.
Kaylie glared in Janne’s direction as he set off the horn on the Bogatir, and then nearly blinded her as the lights started flashing on the Claussient and caused her left arm to give a really nasty twitch. When he tried ‘stop, record, and eject’ to no further effect, she growled loudly at him. Before she could decide whether he was doing this on purpose or whether things were just not working properly, Janne asked everyone if they had any AAA batteries. “Rukari!” Kaylie yelled, “What batteries does your cassette player use?”
“Two double-A battery,” Rukari replied.
Luckily, Team Slow came to Janne’s rescue with a pair of somewhat old, well-used AAA batteries, and afterward, his mysterious device was no longer creating a problem, as the horn stopped blaring, the lights stopped flashing, and Kaylie didn’t have any further interference with her arm. She stared at Janne, pointed to him with her chrome left hand, and said, “If you even think of weaponizing that, I swear by the Twin Suns of my homeworld, I will punch you. Left handed. Square in the chest.”
When Chicota of Team Mravolinski-Chitco asked Rukari if he could get a bottle of moonshine, Rukari shook his head. “Neyi. Takes much time to make, and is much needed for our team. Vikasi sehaal. Make a trade, maybe then we give bottle of Neihzmarin vo Jailehn.”
Kivenaal watched all of the teams from a bit of a distance. He knew he should be more social, but at the same time, worried about how he’d be received given his physical differences. In a way, he was tempted to go talk with the people of Team Witchlight as Elist had horns on their head, so there was at least some common ground, but while he didn’t know the deity, he could tell Kira’s robes were a little special, and that made him more than a little nervous. He was already running from his past, had seen the death of his world, had been captured by his own people because of what his physical form represented. He didn’t need someone else telling him to embrace his heritage, that because he looked like one of the Valraadi deities, he should embrace it and let it become part of him. Likewise, he was avoiding Charlotte of Team Blazers, as he had a general sense that there was more to her than she was letting on. It was a gut feeling, but he’d learned in the Last War to trust his gut, to trust his instincts. So, for now, he would observe those two teams from a distance, until someone from them interacted directly with him. He pulled the brown paper bag of oven-roasted honey-glazed scorpions out of his messenger bag, reached into the bag, and popped one in his mouth.
Malavera could almost feel Ambay staring at him. He’d been staring at him for almost five minutes now. With a sigh, Malavera reflexively hit the screen lock shortcut on his laptop’s keyboard, then turned around and asked, “Can I help you with something?”
“What are these machines?” Ambay asked.
Malavera, for a few moments, stared at Ambay with both heads wearing a puzzled expression. Then he shook himself out of it, realized that a while ago, he was the same way, and replied, “New here, too? These are what the humans call ‘cars,’ though some of them can be put in different classes. Generally, if it has a large open box at the back, like ours, it’s a truck. If it’s a large closed box, it’s either a wagon or a sport-utility-vehicle. That last one, we call it an SUV because it’s shorter. That,” Malavera said, pointing to the atomic-pink brick, “is a van. Not all of them are like that, but generally, they’re meant to carry cargo, not people, and even when they have seats, they’re not the most comfortable thing to ride in. As for how they work, these are carriages that pull themselves,” Malavera said.
“By magic?” Ambay inquired.
“Not really. I mean, there’s a saying that any sufficiently advanced technology can look like magic, but no, these don’t use magic to move. These are powered by an engine, which turns a set of gears, that turn the wheels. An engine is, to put it as simply as I can, a number of chambers to contain explosions that then push a piston that turns a crank,” Malavera explained.
When Ambay wandered off, Malavera sat back down at the table, opened up his laptop, logged back into his user session, and continued updating the Shitbox Rally social media page.
(OOC: Obligatory translations: Neyi = No. Neihzmarin vo Jailehn = Unfreezing water of moonlight, which is just a fancy way of saying moonshine.)
(Also OOC: @Knugcab Hope you don’t mind that I made your remote also irritate Kaylie with her robotic arm. She’ll calm down once she realizes that the teleportation device wasn’t deliberately weaponized and won’t be used in that way.)
. Highly energetic and joyful. Doesn’t want anyone to be hurt during this. Good with tools but a complete dumbfuck when doing stuff himself. Admires Connor for intelligence and capablity to stay calm under stress.
