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29/7/3251 /// 4 and 15 Sun LJT
As the saying goes, every dog has its day. Yet despite being one of the most capable cars of the entire shitbox rally dossier, the Dauer’s purported episode of fame was nowhere to be found. The temperamental German was all but the most exacting of mistresses; rewarding and gratifying with discipline and precision, but leaving no room for forgiveness with even the slightest misstep. Even when road conditions swayed in their favor, all it took was one stray bump in the road to upset its delicate balance and send the rear flying out.
“You know what else they say?”
Tanuki screamed as the coupe swerved around a gargantuan six-legged feline, narrowly missing certain death as a hairy limb flew by with a buffeting gust that shook the car. Mel straightened the steering wheel and angled it back on course, the rigid seat bolster biting into her side as the Dauer swerved aggressively in front of the cat. With the speed it carried through the slalom and the sudden change in direction, the coupe lurched from one side to the other and the rear end started to swing out. A quick but disciplined flick of the wrist immediately tamed this oversteer and the coupe jerked violently as the pair of rubber toruses behind them hooked onto the cobblestone road with conviction.
“Can’t teach an old mutt new tricks…”
Mel knew the 632 S like the quivering walls of her vagina. She’d memorized every nook, cranny, contour, and surface, inside and out. She could pull out the transmission and engine in pitch black, blindfolded. She knew the exact position of its center of gravity relative to hers, the different textures of vibration transmitted through the steering column to her hands, the dominant frequencies of the boxer-6 and how they corresponded to the current engine speed; the woman-machine connection was beyond all physical boundaries at this point. No, it was telepathic. The Dauer could quickly make a closed-casket funeral out of any novice driver blinded by their own overconfidence, but Mel was different. She knew its breaking point, its capabilities, its limitations, and how to exploit all three to her advantage in a flamboyant, if not dangerous, driving technique. She knew how to make it squeal, she knew how to push all of its buttons and just how many to push to leave it begging for more. She’d made the Dauer her bitch.
The tachometer needle flicked clockwise in the blink of an eye with the solid thunk of the gated shifter slotting into third. The beast that lay chained under the hood let out a bloodcurdling roar channeled through the dual exhaust in response, an apex predator’s cry that signaled its presence to everyone and everything miles away.
“…but it sure as hell won’t forget any old ones!”
With the throttle wide open, Mel yanked the two-spoke leather-trimmed steering wheel to the right and administered one swift kick to the clutch pedal. Tanuki let out another yelp as she was once again thrown to the left, crashing against the inadequately-padded race bucket’s bolsters as the harness dug into her shoulder. She grabbed whatever handle or sturdy surface was within reach as if she was trying to prevent herself from flying out a window, her nails digging into her palms and drawing blood. The Dauer’s nose swung to the right on a dime and its tail end snapped around like a bullwhip, narrowly missing a steep drop adjacent to this hairpin turn that was an unusual contrast to the relatively turn-free road they’d experienced thus far. With careful throttle input and countersteer adjustment, Mel kept the coupe pointed towards the inside of the turn as its rear wheels skirted mere inches from the end of the road surface.
Without any warning, a blind corner appeared in Mel’s line of sight, one that was just as sharp and abrupt but instead sweeping towards the left. The only thing louder than the Dauer’s boxer-6 teetering near its redline with a thundering exhaust signature and the screeching of the rear tires was Tanuki’s high-pitched screaming as she saw the dense canopy of trees flying straight towards them. Such girthy trunks wouldn’t have so much as a scratch if their coupe were to fly off the road and wrap itself around it, creating a fresh Australian-Japanese flesh and bone puree in the process. With this gap being rapidly closed by the Dauer’s unmatched cadence, what little time she never had to make a careful, calculated maneuver was quickly shrinking by every memory that flashed before her eyes in a slideshow of impending doom.
“Do you have any tricks left?!” Tanuki screeched, grabbing Mel by the shoulder and shaking her in panic. “MERU!!!”
Suddenly, Tanuki’s cerebellum perceived some unexplained change in angular momentum about her. The Dauer stopped rotating and maintained a constant heading. At this exact moment of rotational equilibrium, Mel threw the wheel to the right and kept her foot planted. As the steering wheel turned into a clockwise cyclone blur, so did their surroundings as an incredible centrifugal impulse flung their bodies to the right. In the blink of an eye, the Dauer flicked counterclockwise and its tail end snapped to the right. The screech of sliding tires and the all too familiar stench of burning rubber flooded Mel’s senses, but she remained focused as she instinctively guided the coupe through the sharp left-hander.
Nothing was quite as hair-raising as when the rear right tire started to hang off the side of the road, causing the front left corner of the Dauer to slightly lift up in response through the sustained drift. Lifting her foot off the throttle slightly, Mel allowed the coupe to regain some rear traction and straighten itself in accordance with the contour of the cobblestone road. Once both rear tires regained traction, there was one final transversal jolt as they hugged the road surface and launched the Dauer out of the corner like a gravitational slingshot flinging a spacecraft into unknown stretches of the night sky.
“CRIkey!” Mel gasped, glancing once in the rear view mirror and even craning her head to look behind her briefly for only a moment, still processing the caliber of the maneuver she had just executed and the finesse of how precisely and smoothly it had been carried out. She wiped the perspiration off her brow and continued sending the Dauer through gently sweeping curves that they flew through without breaking a sweat. “I can’t believe I just pulled that stunt off! Fuck me, I’m never doing that again!”
“Are you kidding me? That was AWESOME!” Tanuki cheered, grabbing Mel by the shoulders and giving her a couple rough shakes of encouragement, as if beckoning her to turn around and do it all over again. Whether it was darting through southeast Asian jungles, running between thick undergrowth and high-powered rifle rounds that zipped by around her or having first-row seats to a live ‘blind’ rally stage where the span of milliseconds made all the difference between staying on the road or getting eviscerated by a stray tree trunk, Tanuki enjoyed it all the same. Bloodthirsty, daring… the naive might say suicidal, but perhaps batshit insane would suffice.
As the Dauer careened down the straights, leaving behind it a wake of burbling boxer-6 exhaust that rumbled the ground and a pressure-wavefront that threw up loose plant debris into airy vortices, the silhouette of a majestic, sprawling skyline gradually emerged from the horizon, taking up their entire line of sight the further down the road they flew. The 632 S could handle breakneck speeds without breaking so much as a single drop of perspiration, hurtling down streets of rustic pavement with ease and with a composure that only beckoned Mel to push it even harder.
Further down the road that trailed off into the distance, Mel noticed a lone vehicle making its way down the stony path at a leisurely pace. The thick clouds of black smoke it tossed into the sky was the first thing she noticed, and as they got closer, she heard the lumpy, thunderous, fire-belching exhaust note that pounded at her chest with each powerful beat of its prodigious iron heart. She slowly let off the throttle and braked slightly, moving to the right side of the road to let the vehicle pass on the opposite side.
“Stupid bastards, what the hell are they thinking, hogging the road like that?” Tanuki growled, reaching for her handgun conveniently tucked in the door handle. “Worry not Meru, this bad boy speaks a language anyone can understand!” She rolled down her window slightly and aimed her handgun outside, pointing it skywards.
As the distance between both vehicles rapidly closed, Mel got a better look at the peculiar mechanical monstrosity sharing the road with them. It was much more sophisticated than the legged, animal-drawn carts and whatever self-propelled tractor or carriage preceded it, yet still many decades removed from their own Dauer. She caught a glimpse of a brass-era roadster, a four-wheeled primordial beast that produced more smoke and noise than actual speed, pulling a carriage of similar antiquity. Tanuki’s eye caught a glimpse of a particularly large shotgun being carried by one of its even larger crew members, and without letting out much of a sound, very quickly retracted her handgun back inside.
The roadster and carriage quickly transmuted into a blur of colors that shot by in an instant without much event. This was not the last of the numerous vehicles cluttering the road, however; as Melanie continued to navigate the Dauer through more sweeping high-speed turns closer and closer to the city before them, the steady stream of giant lizards and self-propelled steam tractors to and from their destination only continued to grow denser and slower, forcing Mel to step on the brakes and match the flow of traffic around them. Carefully darting around gargantuan reptiles and multi-legged felines to avoid getting flattened, they finally arrived at Trugarde.
4 and 35 Moon LJT
Tanuki had ceremoniously elected to spend the night at a local inn after having raised complaints about an aching back and neck from sleeping in the Dauer’s stiff, cramped cargo area, a suggestion that Mel accepted with enthusiasm. A dinner at the adjacent tavern was a welcome change of pace from the usual scuffed camping meal that was delicious albeit having a consistency not unlike that of throwing random ingredients into a blender and letting it rip. Now they retired to their room, preparing to grant their weary, banged-up bodies some precious hours of rest before embarking towards Keepitz the next day.
“Time really flies, doesn’t it?” Mel remarked, recounting the past few eventful days and countless experiences she’d shared with Tanuki thus far. She stared up at the inn’s ceiling in contemplation, taking in the incomprehensible softness and warmth of the mattress she had fallen on. Spending a night here would make it exceptionally hard for her to go back to sleeping in the cramped back of the Dauer. “I can’t believe we’ve already gone through 11 stages… we’re just over ⅔ of the way through! All of those long, sleepless nights… all of the teams we’ve met so far, that one time the pack of Dyre ripped through our camp and the grueling drive immediately after, that night in Samirarie…”
“Hey, what were you two doing in that room?” Tanuki raised an eyebrow and closed the distance between Mel’s face and hers, staring interrogatively. “When Charlotte and I came back later that night, the two of you were out-cold… and completely na-”
She was quickly silenced when Mel shot her the bitchiest glare she could conjure at that moment. But Tanuki was unfazed and merely let a smug grin take over. She already knew what happened that night; anyone with half a brain cell could have figured it out the instant they walked inside. All she wanted was a confession from Mel, to get back at her from what happened a few days earlier.
“Hey, speaking of time… you remember what’s gonna happen soon, don’t you?”
“Hmm?”
“Come on Meru-chan…” Tanuki sneered with that snide timbre in her voice. Mel could never tell if she was being serious or just fucking with her 95% of the time. Her bed creaked as she sat up cross-legged and cocked her head towards Mel on the other side of the room. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?”
“Oh, come on,” Mel sighed. She lazily rolled over to face Tanuki, still lazily sprawled out on her side as she lay on the plush mattress that seemed to swallow her figure up. Glancing at the still-masked, still-wearing-sunglasses girl, still as lively as ever, she couldn’t seem to decipher what exactly was formulating inside her wicked mind. “I’m beat, Tanuki. What is it?”
“My vacation, of course!” Tanuki declared triumphantly, raising her arms as if she was basking in the virgin rainfall that came after the excruciating months of dry summer heat. Her excitement wasn’t as contagious as she’d hoped, however, as Mel still remained just as confused.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing this whole time?” Mel asked, her last words trailing off into a silent yawn as she stretched her arms and legs.
“Haaaah?” Tanuki folded her arms and glared at her clueless Australian partner, somewhat miffed at her nonchalance. “Getting there is only half the battle. The destination IS the vacation itself!”
“What are you talking about?” Mel mumbled. Her eyes fluttered and grew heavy, and anticipating what was soon to come, she began crawling under the starchy covers. “Hmmm… can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Did ya think this was just some big road trip for me? Baka! My real R&R hasn’t even started yet! Well, perhaps I wasn’t specific enough earlier. Trugarde is beautiful and lively, but perhaps it’s a bit too busy for me. In a city this big, there just might be some little bastard waiting to slip a cyanide pill in my drink when I’m not looking or drop a grand piano on my head when I’m trying to sunbathe! That’s why I decided to stay in Keepitz! No hustle, no bustle, and most importantly, no Interpol! Two well-deserved weeks of rest couldn’t have come sooner!”
“Mmmmmyeah…” Mel nodded. “Wait, what? Two weeks?”
“Of course, because I’m an international businesswoman, it would be foolish for me to have vacations just for the purpose of travel. Where haven’t I already been?”
“Tanuki, what the hell are you saying?” Mel rubbed her eyes as she sat up groggily, brushing the platinum blonde strands of hair out of her face.
“You remember what I told you when we first met, right? This isn’t so much of a vacation for me as it is peace of mind! I can’t catch a damn break… I’m always on the run from Interpol, bounty hunters, or bastards like you! This isn’t exactly the most glamorous or easiest line of work, you know! I’m human too! I still need my precious me time every once in a while!”
“No, I get that.” Swinging her slender legs off the bed, Mel glared and leaned towards the ever-playful Tanuki. “I’m talking about the other thing you said. Each stage lasts only one day, probably two at most. Two weeks? What the hell is going on?”
“Usodesho? You’re kidding me, right? Did you really think I was gonna have a two day vacation? AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” Tanuki’s laugh felt eerily different. Cold. Biting. Mocking? That was a given, but this time it was just like that fateful day back in El Paso.
Mel brought her fingers to her temples, shutting her eyes and dedicating all of her mental faculties to deciphering whatever plan Tanuki was now conjuring up. “So… if we’re staying here for that long… how the hell are we going to get back? By the time you’re done with your little vacation here, we’re going to be stuck here with our thumbs up our arses because everyone else will be long gone! There won’t be a portal waiting for us!”
“Well, you’re sure as hell not staying with me!” Tanuki scoffed. “That’s not why I brought you here! Though it would be a lie for me to say I didn’t enjoy your company, this is my vacation and my vacation only!”
“So what the bloody hell am I supposed to do? Finish this rally all by myself in these dodgy ass lands? How will I not wrap the Dauer around a tree without a navigator? You can’t leave me alone!”
“Of course, you remember why you’re here, don’t you? You agreed to escort me through Crugandr for my vacation! You agreed to those terms we set! After this next stage, your duties as my trusted bodyguard and driver will conclude! Though I must admit, you’ve done a far better job at escorting me than I ever would’ve expected! You should be proud of yourself, Meru-chan!”
“As if I had a choice, you cunt! You left me completely in the dark about what I was to expect for this journey! You can’t leave me alone, not this far in the rally… you’re leaving me for dead!”
“Oh, but how could I do that to my own beloved escort who’s been faithful to me for this long?” Tanuki gasped for dramatic effect. “You know, if you weren’t one of those pigs I would’ve already hired you as one of my personal bodyguards! You’ve more than proven yourself worthy of such a special role! Because of that, I know Meru-chan will be okay!”
Mel sat on her bed, immobilized and completely mute with shock. Every rotten word that came out of Tanuki’s mouth left a bad taste in her own. She gripped the bedsheets as she grew dizzy with confusion, a delirium that surely melded into more primal, more intense emotion as the agonizingly long seconds passed.
“So that’s it? You’re going to go on your little weekend retreat while I fend for myself against man-eating, great-white-sized wolves and god knows what else? I need you!”
“And I needed you too,” Tanuki shot back instantly with a cheeky smile that Mel wanted to slap right off her face along with those sunglasses and that mask. “My dear driver, oh how I’ll miss you! I wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for your driving! I trust you’ll be able to get back just fine by yourself, no? AHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”
Mel grew sicker and sicker by the moment the longer Tanuki spoke. That’s what it was. Sickening. Like some toy she no longer found entertaining, Tanuki had just tossed Mel away and left her for dead. How could she have not realized it earlier? She was merely an expendable resource to Tanuki. A means to an end. Disposable. That’s what it was. She’d played her like a goddamn fiddle.
That bitch.
“You KNOW you can’t leave me here all alone!” Mel shouted. “Don’t you remember the deal we made back in El Paso? If anything happens to me, you are fucking DEAD! They’re not going to bother taking you alive. Not with an officer’s blood on your hands.”
“AHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! So now you’re threatening ME?” Tanuki’s cackles were wicked and scratchy, sounding no worse than someone dragging their nails across a chalkboard. She rested her head on her hands. “Hey, Meru… has anyone told you how cute you look when you’re angry?” Her sweet and doting voice was anything but; Mel’s eye twitched as the brittle chains of her willpower snapped one by one, barely holding herself back from flying across the room and bashing Tanuki’s face until it caved in and looked more like a smashed grapefruit than a head.
“I knew it… all of you terrorists are the same. Black Rabbit doesn’t leave anyone behind? What a load of bullshit!”
“I didn’t recruit you for being a bitch!” Tanuki snapped back, her patience worn thin.
So had Melanie’s. As if some switch had been flipped, she leapt across the room and drove a knee into Tanuki’s sternum. Pinning the war criminal to the bed, Mel grabbed her neck with both hands and squeezed with every ounce of her strength. Adrenaline and rage coursed through her veins as her fingers sunk deeper and deeper into Tanuki’s neck, crushing her windpipe and twisting the skin under her vice grip as if she was trying to wring a towel. She wanted to hear Tanuki’s stifled, wispy breaths turn into silence, see her eyes bulge from under those aviators that seldom came off her face, watch as her skin grew blotches of deep blue and then purple the tighter and longer she squeezed her neck. Nothing would bring Mel greater satisfaction than seeing that warmonger’s bloodied, mangled, twitching body on the floor, gargling for mercy at her feet.
Yet no matter how much pressure Mel applied or how tightly she squeezed, even as she started to use her own bodyweight, Tanuki offered no resistance. She remained motionless and simply stared right back into Mel’s burning eyes with a silent but intense gaze, even after her breaths had been reduced to faint, high-pitched whistles that escaped from under that elusive face mask. The passage of seconds was distorted and drawn out to what Melanie felt like was an agonizing stretch of many minutes, yet it seemed like no amount of time was sufficient for Tanuki to finally succumb to Mel’s vice grip.
Mel’s sight started to cloud, shapes and shadows in her vision distorting and shrinking immeasurably. Her forehead and temples started to throb as if her brain was bulging and bursting past its rigid confines. Loosening her grip on Tanuki’s neck, she grew lightheaded, dizzy from the overwhelming outburst of rage and passion that pulsated through her entire body and left her nauseous. She lifted herself off Tanuki’s limp figure and collapsed off her bed, coming to a rest on the floor where she sat against the bed frame, body and mind nothing short of broken.
Wrought with an overabundance of emotion, she curled into an upright fetal position, slowly rocking back and forth as she felt an immense hopelessness start to take root. There was little she could do to reverse the course of action she now realized she was barreling down. It was all a lie from the very beginning. As soon as she stepped into that warehouse back in El Paso, she’d resigned herself to a preordained fate that lay fixed outside her reach, an unwavering universal constant. And in her denial and desperation, she lashed out at Tanuki. But as she now came to realize, it wasn’t just that she couldn’t bring herself to kill Tanuki. Even if she did, not a single thing would have changed.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Tanuki cackled and sputtered as her chest rose and fell with deep, heaving breaths. She coughed violently and loudly in between gasps, her fingers stroking the tender, bruised skin on her neck. “To let yourself go… to set your conscience aside… and let your emotions take control? But I knew you couldn’t do it… you stupid bitch…”
With the final sliver of hope dashed and an immense dread starting to sink in, Mel’s sight blurred as her eyes became glassy. As her breaths grew sharp and labored, a wet sniffle escaped from her now-stuffy nose. Before she knew it, Tanuki’s arms wrapped around her chest and she held her breath, bracing for a retaliatory knee strike in the gut or elbow in the face. But the blows never came; instead, she was gently hoisted up onto the springy mattress. The broken, battered, bewildered Australian was laid down with care, locks of platinum blonde hair falling in front of her teary eyes.
Tanuki pulled Mel close and embraced her from behind, one arm around her waist. And with these most unexpected midnight maneuvers from the last person she’d expected to display such gestures, she finally gave in.
“There, there.”
Tears endlessly cascaded from Mel’s eyes as she buried her face in the pillow, muffling her raw, violent sobs that made her convulse and tense up with each gasp and whimper. What little strength she had left finally yielded and snapped under her mounting despair and grim realizations that reared their ugly heads, now coming to fruition. How foolish it was of her to place her trust, let alone her own life in the hands of a war criminal with so much at stake. How fucking stupid it was of her to fall victim to her charms and charisma, for her to think that maybe, just maybe, the claims of her ruthlessness and heartlessness were not well-substantiated, for her to take a chance. Tanuki’s melodic whispers provided a much-needed respite for Mel from the last few minutes’ suffocating barrage of betrayal, anguish, and hopelessness that had tormented her and brought her a suffering and desperation so great it had finally pushed her over the edge.
As Mel continued to weep silently into the pillow, now stained with her tears, Tanuki only pulled her closer and closer, so much so that she felt her bosom press against Mel’s back. She ran her fingers through Mel’s silky, golden strands of hair, carefully brushing them away from her face.
“Everything will all be over soon.”
