Machinas Con Passione’s Shitbox Adventures, Take 2: The Tale of Ryouchi Katou.
Featuring: Team VSmgAB
(Written with @Elizipeazie. )
Daytona Beach, Florida.
Halifax Medical Center.
Bright lights. A mechanical beep. The life sapped drab monogamy of white walls surrounded by white walls. Or, as you may know it, the backdrop to a normal checkup. “Alright, I just want you to follow my finger. Okay?” It was an arbitrary check, to see if Ryouchi could focus on a moving object, but one that he’d failed numerous times as of late, owing to the concussion he sustained during his latest race. The cherry on top of a pie that was the miserable season he’d already found himself in, trying to adapt to a new car, new series, and new way of doing things, but dealing with the constant setbacks of parts failing, fenders bending, and the sky becoming the floor for a brief moment. To say Ryouchi’s confidence was at a low would be generous.
At the very least, he’d recovered enough to follow a finger, though doing so without entering a melodramatic tirade of mental anguish proved to be difficult. “Alright, you have no other symptoms, right?” Ryouchi nodded at the doctor. While on paper, Ryouchi’s reasons for having yet to start a race in the ongoing NASCAR season was not being medically cleared, the truth was that Ryouchi hadn’t bothered getting himself cleared until Giacomo urged him to. While he’d had seen the value of a sabbatical after a nightmarish season like the one he had, Giacomo, as usual, lacked the nuance or even basic mental faculties to process why someone might be in a bad mood after crashing enough times to rack up a small fortune.
“Alright. I think it’s safe to medically clear you for competition, your license will be renewed by tomorrow. Glad to have you back on the track.” Ryouchi wordlessly left the emergency room, greeted by his mom, the reason he had such a big target on his back in the first place, but in a way the only person who truly understood what he was going through. Upon noticing he’d re-entered the waiting room, she smiled up at him, wordlessly beaming the expectation that everything went well into Ryouchi’s mind. She was right of course, everyone at MCP figured that he must have healed by now, but nobody had the heart to bring it up. “So? Feeling better?”
3-50 Moon, Shitbox Rally Camp.
Ryouchi, it turned out, was not feeling better as he stirred awake, not feeling any more rested then his stint sleeping in the tin box that was the Faenza during the rift journey. still being stuck with that feeling of something poking his back 5 different ways. In a moment of nighttime paranoia that befalls the best of us upon waking up in the middle of the night, Ryouchi quickly, yet steathily, shot out of his sleeping bag and began shaking it mercilessly, hoping to shake out whatever sticks or bugs had gotten in during his sleep. While at first, he wasn’t able to shake out anything other than the odd dust bunny here or there, a beetle, or, was it a roach? Some flying insect that he couldn’t really make out rocketed past him, and out of the tent he had been sleeping in, into the great unknown. The question of how the beetle had actually gotten inside at all, though, was quickly answered when Ryouchi noticed that his once secure tent was completely ajar, and the sounds of people talking were growing increasingly animated in the distance.
Thinking on his feet, Ryouchi quickly looked around for anything he could improvise as a weapon, and quickly rolled up his sleeping bag to confront the intruder, only to find Giacomo and Johnny obsessing over car talk, speaking loud enough so that anyone who was still awake could hear them, and anyone who wasn’t was bound to be soon. “All I’m saying is that, if you look at the statistics and consider his pace, Vittorio Brambilla deserved to race at Ferrari! Why does his brother Tino get to do it but the driver who can actually win in Formula One can’t?” Ryouchi is taken aback for a moment, honestly amazed that this conversation is even happening in the middle of the night. It sounded like Giacomo was trying to argue that Vittorio Brambilla deserved to drive for the Scuderia… but why do you need to have this conversation now?
“Uncle, he didn’t even drive a Formula one car until he was almost 40, what’s the point of hiring someone that far along? Clay Regazzoni was already at the team at the time, and he was also nearing his 40s but with twice the experience!” Ryouchi quickly separated himself from the discussion, which was quickly turning into a heated, loudly whispered argument between the two, and left to clear his mind for the time being. It wasn’t long, though, until he found himself approaching a hulking, humanoid mass not too far from the camp. Squinting his eyes, he slowly approached the figure, wielding his bedroll as a weapon, steadily making inroads as he approached, until he snapped a twig about a meter from his target, to seemingly no response. His neurons actively frying from the stress of enduring the encounter, Ryouchi creeped forward ever so slightly, letting out a strained “H-hello?” Into the forest
Likewise, after having been forced awake because of a breaker being tripped, Valentin just could not return back to sleep. For almost an hour, Valentin laid in his ‘bed’, staring holes into the roof of his compartment, somewhat regretting the lack of windows up there to see the stars.
Eventually, Valentin just gave up trying, heading out of his trailer again.
There, he was met almost instantly by Rohan and William, who were currently doing their laps around camp as part of their patrol rounds.
“Can’t sleep?” William inquired.
“Not at this time. Shift Happens tripped their breaker a while ago… Could not return to sleep since. Now i am trying to kill time until tired again.” Valentin replied, taking a look around the mostly quiet camp, save for a couple figures in a heated discussion somewhere in camp, “might take a stroll for a while to kill time.”
“Well then… good to know i guess.” Rohan commented just before the two left for their next lap.
Soon after, Valentin found himself just beyond the invisible boundary that made up camp, taking in the scenery of moonlit mountains surrounding him, the snow-covered surfaces making it surprisingly easy to see.
Eventually, he was spoken to, which prompted him to turn around to face the someone that was talking:
“Umm… Hi?”, Valentin replied, confused as to what Ryouchi was doing with his bedroll.
Upon realizing the humanoid cryptid he thought he was pursuing in the dark was indeed just a very tall Valentin, Ryouchi’s fight or flight response quickly died down, though the panic had now given way to an awkward silence that now permeated the air between the two, broken only by the faint sound of the wind and whatever animals happened to be basking in the midnight air. Ryouchi stood there for a moment, taking in the awkward silence, sweat visibly dripping down his face, before suddenly dropping his bedroll, and trying to salvage the situation. “Oh, uh… ahem. I’m Ryouchi. Hello. I don’t think we’ve officially met yet.” Scooping up his bedroll, he quickly glanced from the scenery to Val and back, and inferred that, just maybe, he had met a fellow loner. “I uhh, see you’re also walking around by yourself, I do that too! Really clears my mind, maybe that’s something we have in common?” Ryouchi offered his free hand to Val, hoping to find an ally, or maybe even a friend, during the weeks ahead.
Similarly, Valentin also did not dare break tension between the two while inspecting Ryouchi to the best of his abilities given the limited visibility. Him dropping his bedroll had Valentin think of fetching it for him, but he was unable to act on that thought on account of Ryouchi already scrambling to collect it again.
“Uhhh… Valentin Schrant. No, we haven’t beyond power usage. I just cannot sleep after another team tripped their breaker. Need to kill time somehow…” Valentin spoke, accepting the rather awkward handshake.
He would have gotten out on a bike ride, but it would have been a frankly stupid idea to do so at night, in an unfamiliar area and without sufficiently cold-proof kit. Knowing this, he settled for the next best thing: A walk in the relative safety of being close to camp.
Ryouchi scratched his head, Might as well at least attempt a conversation, he figured. “Cool, uh, same here. I’m sure you can imagine that hanging out with Giacomo can be a handful sometimes. The guy, well, I don’t know if he “gets” it. Like, most people “get” it, he doesn’t. It’s just, y’know”. At a loss for words, Ryouchi demonstrated Giacomo’s personality by pretending that his free hand was a car, his bedroll was a cliff, and making engine sounds as he drove his hand-car-thingy off of his cliff-bed, with the car inevitably hitting the bottom and exploding, articulated using mouth sounds. “Like, most people would see that there’s a cliff and get that you should probably stop, but Giacomo doesn’t try to even lift because he thinks he can jump the other side… So, anyway, yeah, I like to take a break from it all by just going outside and just taking it all in, yknow?”
“I get more than my fair share of weird behavior from others. When your ‘normal’ is everyone else’s ‘abnormal’, ‘freaky’ or whatever you want to call it, people are bound to embrace their curiosity. You get used to it eventually…” Valentin remarks, not knowing Giacomo in person beyond possible talks regarding power use.
Ryouchi considered it for a moment. Standing out like Val did probably invited the bizzare from time to time, Ryouchi had witnessed people’s… Overbearing curiosity on a few occasions, courtesy of Giacomo asking first and thinking later. “Yeah, thats true, you can’t really stop some people. I just wish the guy would, just, I dunno, slow down? Seems a bit ironic, I know, as a racing driver, but I don’t see the point of acting without thinking. Then again, I probably wouldn’t be here if he didnt have that “action man” kind of way about him, so maybe it’s better to be in between, like, you know when it’s go time, but you’re also not callous towards what other people are feeling. Maybe thats asking too much, heh.”
Valentin thought for a moment, trying to make sense of the convoluted wording coming from Ryouchi. In failing to come up with a deeply inspuring or helpful answer, he just let out a “Mhm” in confirmation. A moment of relative quietness was broken again: “When people get excited, boundaries generally loosen up.”
“Hm… So maybe if I calm him down he’ll stop being so unbearable! Why didn’t I think of that?” Apparently, that had given Ryouchi the lightbulb moment he’d been looking for, as he nearly sprinted off to camp, before stopping himself, seemingly remembering that it was nighttime, and slowing back down to a walk. Before leaving, he turned to Valentin. “Thanks man, I think you just helped out more than you realize!” Should… someone… stop him?
“Uhh… You’re welcome?” Valentin returned. Once Ryouchi was gone, Valentin stayed behind for a while longer before eventually returning to bed himself.
Machinas Con Passione’s Shitbox Adventures, Take 2: The Tale of Ryouchi Katou - FIN