Team VSmgAB & Team Shift Happens
Prologue 3.1
Prologue 3.2
Campsite Power Speech
Friendship! :D’s sentient cars.
Pre-Race Camp
April 1st, 2023, Shitbox Rally Starting Location, Nevada, 08:57 AM
Takaraya groaned as he got out of bed, having had his first proper night in the Home Unit. The climate control system had done wonders to keep the interior at a comfortable temperature through the night. He pulled on his uniform clothes, then opened the door and headed toward the trailer attached to his vehicle, opening the roll-up door and grabbing the plate of leftover burgers from yesterday’s cookout.
He made his way back to the Home Unit, popping a couple of burgers into the microwave and turning it on. A moment later, the microwave, climate control, and LED strip lighting suddenly shut off. Takaraya sighed, set the plate down, then headed back outside to talk with Valentin.
He first checked to make sure the plug was still connected, and it was, then approached Valentin and, looking a bit guilty, admitted, “Valentin, I… Might have tripped one of our breakers. Left our climate control on and tried to reheat a burger.”
For Valentin and the remainder of the team, the morning was relatively uneventful, especially considering that Valentin was already awake at about 6AM, joined shortly thereafter by Norse. Breakfast was crude, but functional, consisting of what loosely could be called “bread”, but actually was closer to a bread-shaped cracker with minimal toppings.
Soon after, they were joined by the ‘speshul forces’ and Constantin, who themselves also had breakfast of similar quality, albeit with more variety.
Thus, a little circle formed around Robert the Generator Railcar, with completely random chit-chat between the various members and Mary being lost in fantasies again, even if Valentin remained awkwardly quiet.
At this point, an unexpected, yet totally familiar click came from within Robert, prompting Valentin to check. Sure enough, circuit breaker #3 was tripped, belonging to Shift Happens.
Now realizing his mistake of welding the driver-side rear door shut, he unfurled himself from the other rear door, already noticing Takaraya on his way here.
“That happens. Did you turn off the overload or otherwise ensure that it won’t immediately trip when i try and re-enable it?” Valentin inquired with a voice about as hoarse as one would have after 40 years of extensive chain-smoking.
Takaraya smiled lightly, then admitted, “Climate control is still on, but we lost power when I tried to reheat breakfast in the microwave.” He understood that Val’s voice was rough as hell after yesterday’s events, he’d even half-expected that to happen.
Valentin just raised a finger, indicating to Takaraya to wait for a moment, after which Valentin went around to the other side, crawling through what once was the rear bench and over to the breaker panel. With the breakers being a simple switch, re-establishing power was not hard at all, as he closed the acrylic lid back up and reappeared from within the car.
“Should be good.” he said, now even garnering interest from the remaining group.
“You sound like absolute dogshit…” William commented, remembering what Valentin should sound like.
“Tell that to Kaylie and the sentient cars.” Valentin replied, trying his best to avoid elaborate wording in an attempt to not make the situation worse than it already is.
“Sentient cars!?”, William, Rohan and Hans called out, somewhat in unison and immediately getting up to look around for them without luck.
“Yeeeah… you’ll see at the driver meeting.” Norse added, filling in for Valentin in this case.
The group of soldiers just looked at each other, then at Constantin for confirmation.
“Get all the intel you can. You did not try and thus stayed oblivious.” He commented in a tone of elitism, which was not particularly well received by the recruits.
“Yeah, those sentient cars are the reason my son is suited up in his environmental-protection suit today,” Takaraya grumbled. “He brought it with him because that suit is the chassis for his AI assistant, Layara. He’s worn it once before, and that was to park it in the Carry All. Now he’s wearing powered armor out of nerves and fear. Because what we really need is the 500 kilogram wolf running around in 1100 kilograms of armor. He probably weighs as much as some cars here do, and that’s concerning, because while he is trained to use it, he doesn’t necessarily remember about the extra weight. Thankfully, he sticks to the vehicles, and they’re built for people to wear armor and drive them.”
He then looked to Valentin and said, “Thank you for taking care of the breaker. I’ll try to remember in the future to turn the climate control off before trying to reheat food.”
From Valentin’s point of view, the conversation was ended with a simple thumbs-up as he returned to the others.
More talking between the others with usable voices followed until 10AM, where the driver’s meeting was set to take place.
As such, they all got up and headed over to the HD-GV Home Unit and watched Malavera do his thing before returning to their cars, each of them wearing their respective language and teleport rings.
With the important things done and departure time approaching, each half of VSmgAB went about packing up what needed packing up, the military half of which unplugging early to ‘get it done’.
At about 9:30AM, Valentin disabled power supply to anyone who was still plugged in by that time, followed by him unplugging any remaining cable, leaving them there for the customer teams to fetch.
What followed were the last preparations to the trailers and cars before they were to head through the rift.