RK Series Racing; Stage 11 Camp; Part 3
After the little trip to the bike shop, Valentin returns to the other three team members, who apparently have been putting in their share of work on keeping the crowd at bay and satisfied, which with their newfound understanding of the record being accidental, was a surprisingly pleasant task to deal with.
They even managed to free up enough of a gap to source some local street food, which ended up being similar to a hot dog, but instead of the hot dog bun a pretzel-strick-thing was used instead.
“Oh you’re back! Want one?”, Tim said, holding up one of those Pretzel-Hot-Dog-Hybrids. “It’s cold by now, but should still be good.”
“Uhm… sure.” Valentin answered, initially hesitating a bit at the strange combination. Though it didn’t take all that long for him to realize that what he had was not all that bad, even cold.
With little in the way of conversation, the snack was had, followed by the team largely returning to the usual business, which by that time had at least the most eager visitors taken care of, making the following ones much more casual in nature.
Only a few minutes pass until the railway official from earlier returned, approaching the team with a friendly wave.
“Greetings again. How have you been liking the party so far?”, he inquired.
“We’ve been sitting here for the better part of… like what…” Tim started, struggling to pinpoint how long exactly they have been here.
“… three hours according to this watch.”, Constantin added while looking down at the gifted watch displaying around 7 sun.
“Huh. Felt longer than that. Yeah. Three hours of us dealing with random people and that overly energetic painter.” Tim continued.
Valentin fell back into the bench he was sat on and crossed his arms, which made it obvious that he wasn’t exactly enjoying the experience here.
“We really need to do a better job at making important people feel welcome here.”, the official muttered, half aloud and sunk into his thought process for a bit. At some point, he pulls out a booklet titled ‘Scheduling of the southern Longitude and Silver Line Special.’, flips through it a bit before closing it up again.
“Uhm… i heard that you are on a… pilgrimage eastward. May i ask where you plan to stay tomorrow evening?”, the official asked politely, pocketing the booklet again.
“Our next scheduled overnight stay is in the city of Keepitz.” Connor stated, calm and stoic as always.
The official though for a bit, straightened up his posture and then spoke: “I am deeply sorry for the unpleasant experience at this here event. I am hereby offering you first-class access to tomorrow’s Silver Line Special, departing at 1-03 sun tomorrow morning, complete with peace and quiet, freshly prepared meals and other amenities.”
Immediately, Tim’s eyes lit up in excitement, but Valentin wasn’t all that impressed initially, which was painfully obvious.
“Damn this is too good to not pass up. We don’t have to pile up into the hottest Dione in the history of ever, we’ll be getting food, nobody’s bothering us and you get a break from ten hours a day of watching random signage go by.”, Tim rambled in excitement.
Valentin thought about it a little while longer, eventually agreeing to the trip aboard the train as well.
“Great. I very much hope that the trip will be more pleasant than whatever this turned out to be…”, the official explained, followed by a detailed plan on how Robert would be taken care of.
“You are free to vacate the event whenever you wish. Have a nice evening.”, the official added before silently disappearing into the crowd.
The team itself didn’t wait long to set the plan into motion, folding themselves into the car one by one before raising steam, which naturally attracted great attention from the public.
Not even ten minutes later, the Redneck Railcar slowly reversed out of the station at a wee bit above walking pace, hundreds of people walking along the platform to see the vehicle in motion.
The signal happened to be showing “clear” already and they reversed out of the station at what could not be more than 10MPH, going back and back until arriving at the sheds where Robert was to be laden into the streamlined box car.
The process itself went without issue as it has been done once before, but now that their own ride was stored in a box car, they had no idea on how they could get back to the station for accommodation.
That issue effectively solved itself as a small consist with an 0-4-0 shunter and a singular twin-axle coach rolled up to the group, backing up towards the parked box car Robert was in. The engineer got out and handed the group a small slip explaining that he was appointed by the official from earlier to get the team back to the station. “All aboard, lads.”, he chucked as he climbed back into the cab, followed by the group of four entering the coach. The interior wasn’t exciting by any means, consisting of simple cloth covered seats in 2+3 open arrangement with wood paneling on almost every surface.
A little later, they arrived back at the platform where Robert once was, being greeted by another person in formal attire which obviously belonged to some form of hotel.
“Greetings. Kevin McMahon from hospitality of the End of the Line Inn. As a reward for your achievements, you will be staying in the Queen’s Suite for tonight.”, he speaks in a polite and clear voice, similar to Connor, but with more sincerity to it.
The group gets off the train which almost immediately heads back out of the station to return to it’s work at the yard.
“Why exactly are you here?”, Constantin asked in distrust.
“I am responsible for making your stay as pleasant as possible. If you follow me, i shall lead you to the place you will be staying in.”, Kevin replied before showing the way to the Inn near the parked cars.
On the way out and across Queen’s Garden, they walked past a few of the competitor cars, among which was the Bricksley.
Kivenaal watched as Valentin, Connor, Tim, and Constantin followed a man out of the station, wandering right by several cars including the Bricksley. Kaylie was still making Malavera work on the truck, watching as Malavera struggled with the wing-nuts on top of the air cleaner housing. Jayde had gone on a small cycling ride around Trugarde and was coming back toward the truck at that moment. He knew Rukari was getting all of them a room in the Second Guardhouse Tavern and Inn. Nova had already voluntarily given up use of the armor, which now laid in the usual pile of pieces in the bed, and was with Kayden at that point. Then he spotted Kayden making his way back from the market, carrying food in his hands.
Kayden had to admit, the pretzel-wrapped hot dogs were pretty damn good, because he’d already eaten five of them, and was contemplating eating the sixth one he had in his hand. He shrugged, decided it was worth it, and took a hungry bite as he wandered back over to the truck. His sister was still ordering Malavera around, guiding him through changing an air filter, the third or fourth thing she’d had him fix on the truck already. Jayde parked his bicycle next to the truck, and after looking around, spotted Kivenaal still sitting on the roof of the station. Rukari had gone to the tavern already. Then he spotted Valentin and remembered his sister had told him to take a better look at that ankle.
He picked up his pace a little, to a light jog, and made it back to the truck just after RK Series Racing had passed it.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Kaylie asked, staring at her brother.
“In the market, having some food,” Kayden replied defensively. “Seriously, you of all people know-”
“Yeah, I know. I still hate it, but I know,” Kaylie responded. “If you grab your med-kit and hurry, you’ll catch up to Valentin.”
“I’d prefer to wait until he gets settled in, honestly. I’d rather have a certain expectation of privacy, not have Valentin feeling like he’s being worked on by a half-wit, washed-up doctor in some back-alley pub,” Kayden said.
“How long did that one take for you to come up with?” Kivenaal quipped from the roof.
Kayden’s response was to flip Kivenaal the middle finger. Kivenaal’s response in kind was to spit the wad of peppermint chewing gum he had in his mouth at Kayden’s hand, missing by a few inches and landing a gum splat on the sidewalk. “Really, Kivenaal?” Kayden asked, staring at the gum wad. “You know someone’s going to step on that at some point, and they’ll hate the person who put it there.”
“I’ll gladly take the credit for that, then,” Kivenaal replied. “Better than getting asked a dozen different ways whether I want to go share a bed.”
Kayden sighed, grabbed his medical kit out of the truck, and headed toward the End of the Line Inn, only to groan as he stepped in Kivenaal’s wad of used chewing gum. “Thanks a lot, Kiva,” he grumbled.
“You’re welcome!” Kivenaal quipped as Kayden wandered toward the inn.
While the three humans (and Connor) approached the Inn with Kevin the concierge leading the way, they overheard some semi-intelligible mumbling coming from the Bricksley. Connor naturally had what amounts to a transcript of the entire conversation that happened there, but Constantin was only to make out a few snippets.
“Hold on a second. Shift Happens want’s something from us.” Constantin said, already having stopped and turned around to face Kayden.
The others followed suit a step or two later, all eventually facing Kayden.
Kevin, aware of Valentin’s innate caution around shapeshifters, even in half-form, made a somewhat panicked attempt at protecting Valentin from more discomfort by physically dragging him by the waist to face away from Kayden again.
Valentin, not having expected this at all, had to try very hard to not be knocked prone by the sudden movement.
" 
Holy mother of…", he exclaims as he is being swung around. " 
What was that for!?"
“I was made aware that you were afraid of shapeshifters.” Kevin replied, somewhat shocked.
“Bloody hell does that warrant dragging people across the plaza!? He’s the reason i am here to ‘write history’ in the first place!”, Valentin blared back while making finger quotes, thus dropping both crutches.
“I’m very sorry. So sorry…”, Kevin tried to reason with him, scrambling about the floor to get the crutches back into Valentin’s hands.
As Valentin started yelling, there was a loud, heavy ka-thump against the hood of the Bricksley, done with enough force to make the front suspension creak, before Malavera’s half-growl of pain could be heard. Kaylie tried not to laugh as Malavera bonked both heads on the underside of the hood, though looked in Valentin’s general direction and called out, “Do I need to apply a torque wrench to someone’s lug nuts, Valentin, or are you okay over there?”
Jayde grabbed his staff out of the bed of the Bricksley, misinterpreting the grab as a hostile action until he heard Kevin explaining that he’d been told that Val was afraid of shapeshifters.
Kayden, on the other hand, saw the whole thing and sighed. Some people were just ridiculous in how they handled things. “You do realize,” Kayden said, crouching down, grabbing one of the crutches, and handing it to Valentin so he wouldn’t be as unsteady in the moment, “that Valentin has an injured ankle, and that little move might have just made things worse?” He then motioned over to Jayde, still visible over the crowd. “Jayde over there was the one who gave him those crutches. Yes, he’s concerned about shapeshifters, especially ones he hasn’t met.” Kayden was trying hard not to lose his temper in front of Valentin, though it was also a little obvious that Kayden was struggling, as even though he was trying to remain looking relaxed, his hands were tense enough that his claws were out.
Kevin continued to apologize profusely, over and over again as the other crutch was handed back to Valentin. After that, he kept going with apology after apology, even going as far as dropping to knees in an attempt to make peace with his group of guests and Kayden.
Valentin, while still obviously agitated and mentally furious at Kevin, didn’t exactly know how to deal with the situation, nor did any of the other members present.
Kevin himself just stayed at the floor, repeating “I’m sorry.” like a broken record.
Kayden sighed, managing to let his anger go, his claws sheathing once again. “Listen,” Kayden said, not knowing the man’s name, but hoping to get his attention regardless, “I understand why you did that. In some certain circumstances, picking someone up to move them is the right call.”
By that point in time, Jayde had made his way over as well, in his usual slow, limping progress, every left step punctuated by the thump of his walking staff on the cobblestone path. “Everyone makes mistakes, Kevin. The most important thing is to learn from them,” Jayde said, leaning on his staff as he spoke. He looked over to Valentin, then asked, “Are you okay, Valentin?”
Kevin remained on the floor a little while longer, though silent as he mentally recovered and collected himself to return to his work as a member of hospitality. Eventually, Kevin rises back up again just to end up directly in front of Jayde, who had slowly made his way over to the group.
“Yes… right… learn from mistakes.”, Kevin replied, still a little shaken from the self-inflicted incident.
Jayde then turned for Valentin, asking if he was okay.
“As okay as one can be, i think… Managed to stay upright, at least…” Valentin muttered, checking if he still had all of his belongings as well as if he was physically affected by the sudden jerk.
“Nah, i’m good.”, he confirmed, moving the right crutch over to the left to free up a hand with which he neatened himself up again as best he could.
A moment of silence was broken by Kevin, trying to get back to work and redeem himself.
“Shall we continue to the Suite?”, he asked, followed by approving nods of the members of RK-Series Racing.
Jayde nodded and then said, “Then I shall return to the truck. Watching Malavera fight with the air cleaner has been mildly amusing.” He turned and made his way back over to the Bricksley, weaving expertly through the crowd as he walked.
Kayden, on the other hand, was left in the awkward position of not quite being part of the group, but needing to talk with one of the members of that group, and trying to decide whether it was better to follow them now, or go back to the truck, wait a few minutes, and try again later. He looked back at the truck, then with a sigh and a shake of his head, decided to follow the group to the hotel.
to be continued in the post immediately below. 32k limit does that…
