04 March, 2022 /// 9:07 AM PDT
“Turn right! A right right here!!” Tanuki bounced in her seat frantically, pointing in a vague direction towards a clearing in the thick dry shrubbery.
Streaks of tan with accents of olive drab and varying shades of off-white darted past Mel’s peripheral vision as the yellow, red, and blue Dauer flew down uncharted gravel roads. The coupe’s nose lurched downwards as Mel leaned substantially into the brakes. She stabbed the clutch pedal, mashed the throttle once with the ball of her right heel, and pulled the shift lever from fourth into third in one smooth movement, and the midrange snarl of the boxer-6 exploded into a roar. Turning the wheel to the right and getting back on the throttle, the gravel trail slipped away from under them and gave way to a vague path of packed sand.
As the sun above rotated about the Dauer’s axis, its rear tires started to break loose. Snapping the wheel towards the left, Mel navigated the tricolor coupe through a long right-hander in a controlled drift. Jets of sand and dust were tossed sky-high by the rear wheels as she coaxed the car back into submission.
“I see them!” Tanuki chirped. “We made it! Hurry up, Mel!” Indeed, after a gentle left-hand turn, a massive flat clearing in the desert seemed to open up right before them. At least a dozen vehicles, fifteen to be exact, were parked in random empty patches devoid of prickly, dead flora. Various articles of camping equipment including tents and portable BBQ tables were strung out, about, and in between, but what really surprised Mel was the people… rather, things… she saw. Bipedal canids and felines, some normally sized, some gargantuan and built like brick shithouses. A centaur. Lizard man. A catgirl and a child with more white hair than her own father. Swedish hillbillies. She’d heard of them in many bedtime stories from childhood or maybe the odd DnD campaign her friends would beg her to try. But seeing them in person left her absolutely dumbfounded, and all higher brain functions failed her. This was no time for mind-breaking scientific discoveries or sanity-questioning, however, and she redirected her attention to more pressing matters.
Out of all the possible empty spots she saw, Mel located a vacant spot between a white wedge-shaped van with a giant “1” plastered on its side and a beat-up, boxy, orange liftback sedan. Navigating through some inexplicable train of thought, she decided that this was the best possible place to park. The Dauer roared over bumpy terrain and made a beeline straight for the two seemingly empty cars. Mel grabbed the handbrake and yanked it upwards as she sharply steered left before immediately countersteering to the right, and again the German coupe entered a drift at a steep angle. Plumes of dirt thirty feet in length shot out from the spinning tires, sandblasting the minivan and the liftback, including its interior and the unfortunate occupant inside.
“Come on, Mel, we’re late!” Tanuki shouted, pushing her door open and bolting towards the crowd gathered before an eight foot tall giant of a… two-headed wolf.
“WAIT!” Mel called out to Tanuki, who was already halfway towards the driver’s meeting. With a turn of the key, the boxer engine gently rumbled to a standstill and the minute vibrations transmitted through the steering wheel faded away. Mel pushed her door open and was immediately welcomed with angry shouts from the owners of the orange liftback, freshly caked with dirt and sand. “Oh, fuck me…” she mumbled to herself, before shouting multiple variations of “sorry!” back at them as she caught up with Tanuki.
As the brief meeting progressed, Mel found her confusion growing more and more profound by the second. Location-tracking rings capable of teleportation that could automatically translate languages into the wearer’s native tongue? Casting spells? A gateway? Why did they mention Earth specifically? Just as she was barely starting to make sense of what was truly happening, the meeting was already over, and the teams were dismissed.
“Tanuki.” Mel’s stern voice caught the attention of miss twin tails, who turned to face her and tilted her head.
“Yes?”
“I demand an explanation! What in the bloody hell did you sign us up for? You wanted me to escort you somewhere… Crug… whatever, correct? So what’s the deal with these lunatics going on about magic spells and teleportation? And why…” she bent over, her voice growing softer as she whispered in Tanuki’s ear, “… the hell are there talking cats? This isn’t a furcon, is it?”
Tanuki snickered, and again came that stupid laugh. “AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! BAKA!” She smacked Mel across the back of her head. “The world is a far stranger place than you’d like to think, Mera - Melanie! But I’m not your teacher taking you on a little field trip. I don’t have time to explain everything to you!”
“Oh, come on now!” Mel groaned, sinking her face into her hands. “You brought me into this mess. I didn’t have a choice! I have every right to know what’s going on!” She crossed her arms and stared down at Tanuki, standing nearly 10 centimeters over her. But even with this considerable disparity in height, she didn’t budge in the slightest.
“Stay by the Black Rabbit’s side, and it’ll take you in,” Tanuki swore. She gave Mel a single pat on the head, causing her to recoil in surprise. “Just do as I say, Mel! Maybe you’ll survive and make it through! AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
“Alright, fine.” Mel reached out and handed the registration papers to Tanuki. “I’m going to check on the orange car to make sure I didn’t bury its crew alive, poor bastards.”
“You go do that, I’ll get us checked in!” Tanuki took the papers from Mel, who quickly broke off and chased after the orange liftback’s crew. The spirited war criminal suddenly found herself alone, as the other teams had already returned to their vehicles to catch some rest or take inventory one last time. She spun around looking for the two-headed werewolf and quickly noticed him approaching the Dauer, hurriedly running over.
She knew Malavera was a giant compared to humans, but she didn’t get a true bearing of his size until she was standing next to him. He absolutely towered over Tanuki, the vertical distance between the top of their heads being just under 3 feet. They briefly exchanged greetings, Tanuki being unusually quiet and more polite than usual, even bowing slightly.
Tanuki looked down at the various insurance and liability papers, injury and personal loss waivers, and other assorted documents for Mel and herself, respectively. When she was filling her own forms out, there were countless queries she struggled to complete and some that she left outright blank. She was a nomad with nowhere to call home, a stranger with nobody to call her family. A merciless extremist who knew no other way to achieve her goals but deception and violence. Would this rally solve any of those? What was it that she was truly looking for? Would she find the answer here? This period of deep introspection was short-lived; Tanuki snapped back to reality after realizing Malavera was waiting for her, and passed the papers to him.
A minute passed, and Malavera finished reading both of their documents. He produced a registration sticker and handed it to Tanuki. “T- thank you…” she bowed slightly as she accepted the sticker with both hands from the towering, two-headed werewolf, who simply nodded in acknowledgement. The ground rumbled under her feet as he walked off towards the next tardy team and she watched in awe, running her thumbs over the sticker. SHITBOX RALLY ‘22 was emblazoned across the sticker in bold letters that sparkled in the morning desert sun. This rally would only be a “vacation” for her, but maybe she could find answers as well.
“Ugh!” Mel’s voice caught Tanuki by surprise, who yelped and jumped slightly. “Those guys in the liftback were pissed off! I’m gonna help them clean out some of the sand later, they’re busy for now.” Noticing Tanuki’s reaction, she changed her tone of voice, fearing what would come next. “Oh, have I startled you?”
“Ahah, not at all! I was just zoning out for a second,” Tanuki scoffed, brushing her bangs out of her face. She presented the sticker to Mel with an outstretched hand, holding it right in front of her face. “Look at this! Black Rabbit Corp. is now an official privateer rally team! I must admit, I’m impressed with your work, Mel!”
“Yea, sure thing,” Mel said halfheartedly, “but it’s not like I had much of a choice. Anyways, I need your help. I noticed some teams are forming alliances with one another. If we want a real shot at winning this or even just staying alive, we’ve got to do the same! Who knows what we’ll encounter along the way. I’ve lived most of my life in Australia where every other critter you see tries to kill you, but what if it’s worse over there? We’ve got to be ready for anything, and forming an alliance will prepare for the worst!”
“The hell would I do that for?” Tanuki shot back, frowning and crossing her arms. “I didn’t get this far relying on others to save my ass! Split-second decisions can make the difference between life and death, and if some little brat slowed me down, I cut them off! I’m not putting my life in the hands of probability or anyone else for that matter, especially these people!”
“Look Tanuki, would you rather apologize to those poor bastards I buried in sand yourself or help me find another team?” Mel snapped. “You heard what… what’s that two-headed wolf’s name?”
“Malavera! Weren’t you even paying attention?”
“What Malavera said! Our vehicle can only get us so far through rough terrain because it’s only 2WD. We need to find someone… anyone with a 4WD vehicle that’ll be able to unfuck us if we get bogged down!”
Tanuki’s eyebrows wrinkled as she scowled. Whatever expression of annoyance or anger she wore was hidden behind her sunglasses and mask, but Mel could still feel the pressure as if it exuded from her body. “And how do you know they’re not going to backstab us?” Tanuki countered almost instantly, the confidence in her voice equalling that of her stance. “How do you know they won’t magically disappear whenever we need them the most? How can you guarantee they won’t sabotage us, steal from us, harvest our kidneys and sell them to discount Chinese surgeons? There’s a saying in my line of work, Mel. The instant you trust someone else is the instant you stop trusting yourself.”
“Look, if it’s every man for himself, nobody is going to last more than a second out there. No amount of firepower or magic is going to change that. We need to look out for one another! Unless~, of course, you don’t mind getting caught in a bingle and are forced to use this little teleportation ring. Poof! Right back to the very hellhole you’re trying to escape from. And besides,” Mel added with a smirk, “not everyone here is a mad warmonger like yourself.”
Tanuki insisted on remaining independent and was very stubborn about doing so, but she wasn’t stupid. She spent some moments in silence, entwined deeply in thought, then communicated her final decision. “Alright, fine then. But if anyone shows so much as a sign of weakness… if anyone starts dragging us down…! Then it’s over!”
04 March, 2022 /// 9 Sun LJT
The strange Crugandr night was dimly lit and pleasantly cool, but not overbearingly chilly to the point that longer, thicker tops and bottoms would be required. Mel was especially thankful of this fact since she was still wearing her short shorts in response to the sweltering Nevadan climate from when the rally first started. Traipsing over lush alien overgrowth that brushed against her mostly-bare legs and maneuvering between monumental husks of textured wood, she finally came upon a new clearing in the campsite. There sat the odd liftback sedan from before, and now she could get a much better up-close view of it.
The orange paint, probably far more vibrant when it was purchased new in a bygone era, had lost its luster to the unforgiving decades and was now a dull shade of its former glory. It chipped at the fenders and scratched at the bumpers, but given its age, it was as if each one had its own story to tell. Not a single headlight glass was left intact; if they weren’t cracked, they were significantly fogged up, almost as bad as the plastic headlights of 2000s cars. And yet even with the slightly sagging rear suspension and the rust eating away at the rocker panels, it still stood dormant. It was a constant that remained intact amidst countless years of harsh mixed climates.
“Greetings, stranger,” an unknown male voice suddenly spoke.
“Fuck me!” Mel screamed and leapt back, throwing her arms up in a defensive stance and taking two full strides in reverse. Her eyes darted around and swung around with her head as it scanned the immediate area around her. The unexpected voice was unusually nonchalant and could have bored Mel to death if she had heard it in literally any other situation, but its suddenness and proximity caught her completely off-guard. Her eyes settled on the speaker who uttered it, a rather inconspicuous-looking man a fair bit taller than herself. “Jesus! Where the hell did you come from?”
“Ms. Melanie Lyon,” the man said. Mel noticed a halo-shaped LED light mounted on his temple, which momentarily glowed and pulsed in a yellow color before it turned into a constant shade of cyan. “May I inquire as to why you are here?”
“Wait, how the hell did you know that?” Mel glared at the man, who remained expressionless, and crossed her arms. “Just who are you, anyways?”
“My name is Connor,” the man replied calmly. “As I specialize in aiding law enforcement and criminal investigation activities, I have automated facial and vocal identification and recognition capabilities. In addition, I am able to perform a database sweep of criminal records using these parameters.”
“CONNOR!” a new voice shouted from behind the orange liftback, and both Connor and Mel looked in its direction. A second man in a very casual attire appeared, briskly walking over to the two of them with a giant socket wrench in his hand. He stopped beside Connor and gave him a good, solid pat on the back. “What did I say about scaring people?”
“My apologies, Tim,” Connor said calmly, then turned from him and faced Mel. “I must apologize to you as well for scaring you.” Mel was still slightly suspicious of him, but she could strangely feel some element of innocence from him after hearing his apology. With how unassuming he looked, she was almost sorry for being so cross with him just moments before.
“Hey, go check on Valentin. When he’s finished with his dinner, ask him if he can have a look at that AC fan again. We don’t want to be sweating our balls off later.” With this command, Connor headed back to the car and started conversing with a third figure that sat in front of the campfire who was having a meal. The wrench-bearing man faced Mel and smiled. “I see you’ve met Connor, our beloved team baby.”
“Quite the character he is,” Mel remarked in amusement. “How did he do that, the analysis? He said something about facial recognition, but I don’t see how he could’ve done any of that.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s an android made to help cops, so he has a bunch of scanners and stuff built in.” The man gestured to his head, tapping his temples. “I guess he saw you as a potential threat until he flagged you as a cop. Does that answer your question?”
“Not in the slightest.” Mel watched Connor as he wandered around the campsite. First talking dogs and cats, and now androids; she’d truly seen everything. “By the way, I didn’t have the chance to get your name earlier.”
“The name’s Tim. Tim Redwood.” He reached out with his vacant hand. “I never thought you’d actually come… ”
“… Melanie. But call me Mel,” she smiled, gently shaking Tim’s hand. “I’m a woman of my word. Where’s the rest of your team?”
“Over here. Come, I’ll introduce you.” Tim motioned Mel to follow him with his freed hand, and the two of them walked towards the orange liftback. “You’ve already met Connor here, but I’m not sure if you met Valentin yet. HEY!” He slapped the hood with a loud bang, catching the attention of this ‘Valentin’ peacefully having his dinner beside the campfire. “It’s her.”
“What? Oh, okay.” Mel heard a slight accent from his voice, something Scandinavian. She was immediately taken back when she saw him stand up and rise to his full height, finding herself having to lean back just to make eye contact with him. Fair-skinned and very lanky, perhaps his most impressive feature was his hair of prodigious length that was almost as tall as Tanuki.
“Mel, this is Valentin, and Valentin, this is Mel,” Tim introduced. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meal to finish. Also, where’s Constantin…?”
“So you were driving that tricked-out rally car earlier,” Valentin said, recalling the events that transpired hours ago.
“Yeah, that’s me.” Mel nodded, then briefly hung her head in shame. “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened earlier. I was in a hurry and didn’t want to be late to the meeting!”
“Ah, no hard feelings,” Valentin smiled. “I hope our future correspondences will be peaceful and amiable. Though the inside of our car is still quite sandy. I managed to get most of it out of my hair, thankfully.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Mel said. “After the meeting, I promised to Tim I’d come back and help you guys clean your ride out. It’s the least I can do. That’s why I brought this.” She held up her toolbox, which contained numerous socket, crescent, and allen wrenches in metric and imperial sizes.
“Well, how very nice of you. I’ve just finished my dinner, so shall we get started?” Valentin asked, opening the rear starboard door of the liftback. Mel peered inside and could instantly see the extent of the damage caused by her little drift entry earlier. A thick layer of sand coated nearly every carpeted surface, from the floor mats to the fabric padding of the rear bench seat. It was as if someone had driven through a sand dune then left all the windows down in the middle of a sandstorm. Sitting on the rear bench seat was an absolute unit of a man wearing a lövhögen-pattern BDU and boots caked in dried sand and mud. He was almost as tall as Valentin and shared his complexion, hair color, and eyes, but the greatest difference was that he was built like a brick shithouse. His shoulders spanned almost half the width of the entire bench seat, and the shape of his jaw and face in general made him look like a toned-down Swedish derivative of gigachad.
“Hey! I’m trying to eat here!” he frowned at Valentin, but instantly relaxed his gaze as soon as he saw Mel. “Oh, hello. Who might you be?”
“There you are,” Valentin chuckled. “Tim was looking for you earlier! Constantin, this is Mel, the driver of that sports car I told you about. Mel, this is Constantin. Don’t be scared by his getup, he looks hardcore but in reality he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known!”
“Well, hello Mel,” Constantin reached out to shake Mel’s hand with a firm grip, which she returned with a similar tightness, to his surprise. “Good meeting you.”
“You’re a big guy,” Mel commented, respectfully eyeing his physique. As Constantin stood next to Valentin, she started to notice minute patterns and similarities between them manifesting, most notably in their upper facial structures. “Wait a moment, are the two of you siblings? Cousins, maybe?”
“What, just because we’re Swedes you think we’re related?” Constantin laughed heartily.
“Well, your eyes look similar to one another. Maybe the hair too. By the way, Valentin, I used to have my hair super long like yours back in primary school,” Mel reminisced, brushing her bangs out of her face. “It was too much of a hassle to wash, and besides, this is the longest the department’ll let me keep it. It looks good on you, though!”
“Why, thank you,” Valentin smiled. “Yes, it does require quite a bit of care to maintain. Anyways, let’s get started!”
With the painful exchange of formalities over, Mel and the team of the orange liftback could finally get to work in cleaning their sand-filled interior. Pulling out the carpets and floormats was easy enough, and merely giving them a few rigorous shakes and smacks against the tree trunks was sufficient in removing most of the loose sand.
Cleaning the rear bench seat was a slightly more involved task, as beating the fabric wasn’t enough to remove the sand. Mel and Constantin had to undo the four bolts holding it to the bare floorpan with socket wrenches, two of which were stripped and required brute force with a crescent adjustable wrench. Finally, after liberal amounts of swears were spouted from Mel’s and Constatin’s mouths, the bolts came off and the bench seat came loose.
“Valentin!” Constantin called from the port side, holding up his end of the bench seat. “Go help Mel carry the seat out.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine!” Mel lifted up the right side of the girthy, generously-padded bench seat effortlessly. To remove it from the vehicle, she pushed her end and walked across the inside towards Constantin, who pulled it out of the door opening. From there, they could clean out the rest of the sand on the inside and lean the rear bench seat on its side to easily remove whatever trace of dirt would be left between the cushions, again by beating them into submission.
Eventually, Mel and the rest of Tim’s team managed to remove most of the Nevadan dirt and sand that had been thrown inside by her drift maneuver during the first drivers’ meeting. “So, what do you think?” Tim asked the Australian detective as she dusted her hands off and reorganized her toolbox.
“You all seem like a nice buncha mates.” Mel looked up at the young American. Constantin was finishing up his meal, Valentin was shining a flashlight in the engine bay and attempting to troubleshoot the aircon issue, and Connor sat beside the campfire in deep contemplation. “Connor is… quite interesting. He’d be a big help in my line of work.”
“They’re a real bunch of bastards alright,” Tim agreed as he sat beside Mel on the trunk, ducking beneath the tailgate, “but they’re my bastards. I was talking about our car, though. You do know what it is, right?”
“Of course! An eighth-gen Anhultz Dione liftback, it was my mum’s first car and she kept it through most of my childhood. It was a total shitbox, of course, but it never died on her and we could always count on it.” She brought her legs up and sat criss cross, leaning against the rear side window. “Just sitting in here takes me back! I’m surprised there isn’t a V8 under the bonnet though, don’t you yanks like doing that to these?”
“Hah, the thought has crossed my mind a few times,” Tim conceded with a chuckle. “We actually just got this car recently. I had one just like it, but it broke down and traded it in for this less-broken one. But I was always afraid of fucking it up, so I decided to keep the engine stock.”
“It’s a solid car nonetheless,” Mel said as she closed her toolbox shut. “A little rough around the edges, but I would definitely count on it for a rally such as this!”
“I wasn’t able to get a good look at your team’s car earlier. It’s a German car, right?”
“Yeah, an ‘85 Dauer 632 S. The old man’s always wanted one, so after many months of searching I finally found one here and bought it. It’s Dauer’s first front-engine sports car, and although the handling isn’t as good as their rear-mounted models, it’s still absolutely bonkers to drive!”
“Heh, our cars are pretty much polar opposites. We’ve got the slow reliable shitbox, you have the fast unreliable one. Though I’ve heard Dauer engines are pretty reliable, no?”
“The motor is reliable, yes… for an 80s Dauer. It’s still one of their first fully-aluminium engines, and while they certainly learned some lessons from the 70s, it still likes to shit out head gaskets every once in a while.”
There was a period of unbroken silence for some time, and the two of them found their eyes inevitably drawn to the foreign night sky that slowly rotated over their heads.
“Hey Mel?” Tim looked towards Mel, his expression now serious. “Thanks for helping. I really mean it.”
“Yeah, of course!” Mel smiled.
“After this rally… when all is said and done… I’ll get this piece of shit fixed up, and I’m thinking maybe I could take you on a ride somewhere. You down?”
“Oh?” Mel turned towards Tim, surprised by this proposal that came out of the blue. Her initial expression of surprise turned into a smug grin. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Redwood. After all, we still need to make it out of here… that is, if one of these giant felines doesn’t make us their supper first.”
“Right, for sure! No worries…” Tim said with a trace amount of dejection in his voice.
It wasn’t very obvious, but Mel could still notice his shoulders slump and his head hand slightly, as if in defeat.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. The corners of her mouth betrayed her cool, collected projection as they started to curl upwards.
“Hey, by the way, where’s the rest of your team?” Tim asked.
As if on cue, Valentin knocked on the tailgate glass and bent down. “Uh, guys?” he said, looking inside to see a very surprised Tim and Mel. “Oh. Hate to ruin the moment, but I think someone’s looking for you, Mel.”
Mel leaned outside and saw Tanuki conversing with Connor and Constantin close by, the two of them very cautiously escorting her towards the Dione. Her bouncy steps made her braided twintails swing rhythmically and the strap of the HK416 slung across her back bite into her shoulders. She saw Mel’s head full of platinum-blonde hair peeking out and started waving enthusiastically. “My beloved driver! Come on, we need to prepare for the next stage! Finished helping your friends here?”
“Wait, she’s your teammate?” Valentin and Tim simultaneously asked, looking at Mel incredulously. Constantin came over and whispered something into Tim’s ear. The smile on his face was gone as he looked at Tanuki, then at Mel, then back at the masked face.
“Yes! Everyone, this is my… navigator, Tanuki,” Mel said, carefully setting her legs on the ground to avoid getting pins and needles and standing up besides her teammate. “Well, you heard the boss. It looks like my job here is done, and it was a pleasure meeting you all!”
“Boss?” Tim, Valentin, and Constantin glanced at each other, sharing a profound mutual confusion.
Both parties bid their farewells without much incident or drama, for the night had already matured substantially and it was time to prepare for the next stage. Mel and Tanuki walked together through the dense undergrowth back to their site, consisting of the brightly-colored Dauer 632 S and a dying campfire. “So, what do you think?” Mel asked. Tanuki cocked her head sideways towards Mel, then looked skywards with eyes lost in thought. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Hmph!” She crossed her arms and scoffed. “They seem harmless for now. Their little robot helper and that Constantin guy are impressive, but they’ve yet to prove themselves. I’d like to see how they handle this upcoming stage! Then we’ll talk.”
“Yeah, alright…” Mel sighed and buried her hands in her pockets. “We should clean up our site before going to sleep. Make sure everything’s packed up so we can just get up and leave without wasting time picking up after ourselves.”
After repacking all of their supplies and equipment for the night, Melanie and Tanuki finally brought their very long day to a conclusion. After putting out the campfire, they clambered awkwardly into the Dauer’s cramped hatch and fell soundly asleep.
