Team VSmgAB & Team Shift Happens
Prologue 3.1
Prologue 3.2
Campsite Power Speech
Friendship! :D’s sentient cars.
Pre-Race Camp
Stage 0 Drive
At precisely 10:00AM, everything was ready for the rift, with all four steam-powered cars fueled, steamed, coupled up to their respective trailers and even lined up in the order that they would be driving in.
“Radio check?”, Valentin spoke into the CB handle, which came out on the three other cars as little more than static given the innately limited quality of CB communications and Valentin’s still-ruined voice.
“Nothing Heard,” the last car in the lineup, who’s radioman was assigned to be Constantin himself, called out through it’s radio.
Valentin handed the microphone over to Norse, who in turn repeated the process.
“Now we’re Loud and Clear.” Constantin replied, followed by the other two cars confirming signal acuity.
“Please tell them that we are starting the event now. They are to just follow the car in front,” Valentin said to Norse, who in turn relayed the information to the remaining team, them in turn conforming the message.
Soon after, they headed inside, provoking a wide range of feelings, depending on who you ask.
The Schrant brothers have both seen this unfold last year already, which made the rift a fairly familiar experience to them.
Norse could not help but wonder what exactly is happening at the moment.
“So this is what you meant by ‘a location never seen before’?”, he inquired, followed by Valentin simply nodding in response.
Norse “Do you know what the other end is like?”
Val “Ehhhh…”
Norse “Kind of?”
Val Nodding
Norse “What’s it like, then?”
Val “You have the E-Mail.”
Norse then pulled out his phone and, no surprises there, realized that the rift has no internet. He did, however, think far enough to involve the remaining team into this little yes-or-no game by grabbing the handle.
The game went back and forth for a good 45 minutes, even though the information Valentin had about the other end was known less than 20 minutes into the guessing process.
Once that was done, the four steamen went mostly silent until the convoy had to be halted.
“Looks like we might be here a while. Hillbilly Rollers has a dead clutch, they’re trying to fix it right now.”, Kalie announced over the radio for everyone to hear, followed up by: “Ignition to ‘off’.” from Norse for just the three other steamers to hear.
A short while later, the group of eight was gathered up near one of the cars, wondering as to how one could fill the time with.
They eventually settled on what amounted to strength training led by Constantin, with the two civilian members joining as well.
Initially, few problems arose as the group did what Constantin instructed them to do, but soo after, people started ‘tapping out’ to exhaustion, with Rohan quitting first, followed by Norse, then WiIlliam.
The remainder kept going, eventually narrowing it down to Just Jacques, Valentin and Constantin.
Eventually, Constantin more or less ran out of stuff to do and ended the session for the two remaining ‘contestants’, leaving the already finished recruits (especially Mary) in amazement how a walking twig the size of Burj Khalifa could keep up with who they considered to be the strongest member by quite the margin.
A polite nod from Valentin and a good swig of water for all ended in them practically twiddling thumbs until the convoy was to move again.
The remaining drive was uneventful, save for a little conversation within “Ramona”, which was less of a conversation but more of a semi-coherent rambling from Mary about how Valentin was the person to be with in her opinion.
At some point, the rift cleared up and revealed what was somewhat known from the earlier guessing came: A cold and snowy landscape in which they would make camp.
to be continued