Team VSmgAB & Team Shift Happens
Pre-Race Camp (VSmgAB + Shift Happens)
Stage 0 Drive (VSmgAB)
Stage 0 Camp; Part 1 (VSmgAB)
Stage 0 Camp, Arrival. (Shift Happens)
Stage 0 Camp, The Range (VSmgAB + Shift Happens)
Stage 0 Camp, Shiverwind Point, Nehmenweld, 2-and-42 Moon
Kaylie slowly woke up after a rather pleasant night with Jayde, carefully moving the larger lion’s arm off of her and sliding out from under their shared covers. The magically-insulated tent had kept their body heat in, making the tent pleasantly warm, and Jayde’s sound-deadening spells meant no one had heard the pair of them “warming up their tent” earlier. Or the second, or third times they’d had a bit of fun under the covers.
She pulled on her heavier winter clothing, her stomach lightly protesting at how long it’d been since she’d last eaten, then slipped out of the tent and zipped it shut behind her so it’d stay warm.
Kaylie opened up the trailer behind the Home Unit and climbed inside, quickly grabbing a bag of grilled chicken pieces and closing the trailer back up before walking into the Home Unit itself to reheat them. As soon as she opened the door, she was assaulted by the rush of warm air escaping the vehicle, shaking her head as she realized they had the temperature set for 80 degrees Fahrenheit. With a glance at Takaraya and Kasiya, still dozing in their bunks with two still wide open up above them, she walked to the far end of the living space, opened the microwave door, and punched in a time. She hit “start,” and no sooner had the light gone on inside the box, all the lights went out in the unit. Even the quiet rushing of the fan pushing warmed air through the unit went silent.
“Shit,” Kaylie said under her breath, walking swiftly-yet-silently out of the Home Unit, then jogging across the camp toward the sleeping trailers.
Over at VSmgAB, nothing of note was happening for the time being. Valentin, Norse, Constantin and Jacques all were asleep, with Rohan and William playing some crude games while sheltered from the cold by the trailer AC.
Mary and Hans, meanwhile, were touring camp and doing half-laps around the perimeter, split by a walk through the center, right past the orange half of the soon-to-be train.
As Kaylie made her way to the trailers, Hans takes a look around as if he heard something.
“You found anything?” Mary inquired in curiosity.
“Not really…” Hans replied, looking around some more, “thought i heard something, but the wind sure does things, it seems…”
Kaylie slowed her pace as she got close to the trailers, trying to minimize the amount of noise she was making as she knew people were sleeping inside them.
“Damn it,” Kaylie muttered to herself. “Now how am I supposed to find which one has Val in it?”
Not having noticed Kaylie earlier, Hans and Mary just went about their lap, taking a few long minutes to come back around to approach the center where all of VSmgAB was set up.
In doing so, it was not hard to spot Kaylie for real this time, which created some confusion.
“Can’t sleep, kitty-cat?”, Mary barked out with zero intent of insulting Kaylie, though it did gain her a punch to the shoulder by Hans.
“Really?” she asked, not knowing what she did wrong. Nor did Hans bother to elaborate.
“Need help?” Hans inquired towards Kaylie, who seemed to have issues of sorts.
Kaylie raised an eyebrow at Mary’s comment, though understood it wasn’t intended as an insult. When Hans, however, asked if she needed help, Kaylie nodded. “Yeah. Val’s probably going to be upset with me, I tripped the breaker while trying to reheat some food,” Kaylie admitted. “Normally, I wouldn’t bother Val at this time of the night, but… I know Takaraya and Kasiya had the temperature in the RV set a bit hot, and with the power out, I don’t know how long it takes for the RV to cool down.”
“Oh right. Tall lad is at the tall end of the trailer, right here.” Mary noted, walking Hans and Kaylie over to the tail end of the orange ‘RV’ trailer.
She then, rather delicately so, knocked on one of the polycarbonate windows behind which Val was sleeping. Not much could be seen through them despite not being tinted due to the general darkness around the area, only dimly lit by diffuse lighting from the lights strewn across camp.
Unsurprisingly, this did little in getting Valentin out of his comfortably heated bed that he actually fits into.
A couple subsequent attempts at this also failed.
“Uhm… Is he dead?” Hans inquires, somewhat jokingly.
“I hope not…” Mary replies, already worrying HARD about her crush.
Kaylie looked over at the two of them having knocked very lightly on one of the windows. She pulled the glove off of her right hand, then knocked on the door to Val’s bunk, being very careful not to damage the trailer or scratch the paint.
Kaylie’s attempt pretty much copied that of Mary earlier and thus has equally little effect on Valentin within.
Eventually, Mary lost it and ‘broke in’ via simply heading around the end of the trailer and opening the hatch that led into Valentin’s comparment.
Immediately, they were met with a small, but noticeable wave of warmth which exchanged itself with the cold outside.
Still being near-enough blind to what was inside, Mary had a ‘stroke of genius’ and pointed a gigh-power flashlight into the compartment, which immediately filled the entire thing with more than just daylight.
Nothing exceptional can be seen in there. On the far wall from the door, a thick oversize mattress was placed atop which Valentin was sleeping, still unaware of anything happening surrounding the trailer. He was engulfed in an equally oversized blanket, forming a cocoon of lanky human, feet facing the door. Looking around the corner, a couple suitcases were visible, one of which was open and revealed a slew of neatly-packed, formal-looking clothing within.
“He’s evidently not dead.” Mary mocked, pointing deep into the trailer to Val, still breathing.
“No shit sherlock. How are we to get him awake now?” Hans grumbled back at her, also peeking inside.
When Mary flooded Val’s compartment with a bright flashlight, Kaylie gave a wince and a half-muffled growl. “Twin Suns!” she spat, shaking her head. “Can’t see shit now.” She looked in the vague direction of Mary, then said, “Please, warn someone next time when you’re going to pull the fucking sun out of your pocket and aim it where others might be looking. Finding my way back to the RV is going to be fun later.”
Upon hearing Kaylie go de-facto blind due to Mary’s flashlight, she instinctively turned it back off again, before pointing it to the ground in search for a lower-power setting.
“Stupid overcomplicated fuckface shit…” she grumbles with relatively little regard for being quiet, though remains at reasonable volumes.
Hans eventually did the same in an attempt to help, locating an ‘eco’ mode earlier than Mary.
The now substantially less blinding light was pointed back into the trailer.
“I have an idea…” Mary said looking around the place for anything pole-like. She did locate a steel bar, originally meant as part of the coupling mechanism for the two trailers once they are on rails. With it, she literally poked at Valentin in an attempt to wake him up.
“We did establish that he is not dead, right?” Hans noted, seriously questioning Mary at this point.
“You have any better ideas?” Mary remarked, continuing the prodding for a while, without success.
Kaylie sighed. “We’ve dealt with this once before. Val sleeps like a rock. He slept through a steam whistle once, after all,” Kaylie said. She paced quietly, trying to think of a solution to this particular problem.
Potentially Sensitive Content - Unintentional SFW Intimacy
Mary and Hans were just staring into the trailer, at a loss for ideas to get Valentin going.
Eventually, the were both startled by Valentin rolling over to the other side, thus now facing them, but still feet first.
A moment of thinking later, Mary grabs the initiative again, crawling inside.
“What are you doing now?” Hans asked, wanting to know what she was up to.
“Saw a prank video where someone got woken up with a nose held-shut. Might as well try.” she replies, carefully making her way to the other end.
“You sure he isn’t gonna just sleep through it and asphyxiate?” Hans said, having seen what Valentin was casually sleeping through already.
Mary just went ahead with her seemingly foolhardy plan, holding Valentin’s nose shut.
For more than a minute, exactly nothing happens, sparking some worry in both soldiers, until their plan proved successful, as Valentin instinctively ‘smacked’ her away, rolled over to his back again and took the mother of all breath to compensate.
“It worked!”, Mary called out cheerfully, practically staring at an incredibly confused Valentin while also perched lengthways across both of his suitcases. Realizing that waking up to a random female person next to you might come across as intrusive, Mary quickly made her way out of the trailer again.
Kaylie watched as Mary managed to wake up Valentin with a clever nose-pinch, then shook her head. “That’s certainly a new one,” she said. She waited until Valentin finished waking up, knowing it was pointless to do much until he’d fully woken up.
A few moment passed in which Valentin took a few more deep breaths, followed by him noticing that he is really cold for some reason.
A peek down to the other end revealed why, thus almost entirely skipping what would be an extensive delay in him waking up.
An act of commendable contortion followed as Valentin turned around within his little cabin and, somewhat violently, slammed his door shut again.
“Someone’s pissed…” Hans noted, befuddled by what just happened.
“Awww…” Mary followed.
From within, aggressive movement can be heard as Valentin hurried to change from just a set of black sweatpants to something even remotely fit for the frigid temperatures of nighttime Nehmenweld.
“I don’t think you’re getting power back anytime soon…” Hans told Kaylie, not knowing that Valentin frequently bends over backwards to not cause disdain amongst his peers.
Kaylie shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time things have gone wrong on one of these events,” she said, in response to Hans. “I mean, worst case scenario, I switch the plugs between the Carry All and the Home Unit. After all, while Kasiya and Takaraya are generally easy-going, I know I’d never hear the end of it for tripping the breaker and leaving their sleeping space to get cold.”
“Might want to get going, then…” Hans commented, not confident that Valentin would come back out of his little hiding spot.
As if on cue, Valentin opened the hatch again:
“Need somethin… …?..” Valentin inquired, still groggy, but surprisingly coherent considering how long he has been awake for.
Mary and Hans then basically hid themselves behind Kaylie to avoid being seen as the reason why Valentin was forced out of bed.
Kaylie grimaced, then admitted, “Yeah, sorry to have to wake you up, Val. I tripped the breaker trying to make a midnight snack. Let’s just say that the microwave is getting a note stuck on it to make sure the climate control system is off before using the microwave.”
Valentin took a moment to process the request, then made his way out of the trailer with an amount of gracefulness never seen before.
“Second trip, by the way…” he grumbled, before closing up the door to his compartment and making his way over to Robert.
Within, he referenced a little cheat-sheet that had been taped to the lid of the breaker panel box and then re-enabled mains power to the HD-GV Home Unit.
With a hearty ‘thud’, the door slammed shut again, followed by Valentin locking it.
“Anything else?” he inquired, still obviously not 100% awake.
“Yeah, we’ll try to avoid doing that again, but obviously, can’t make any guarantees. We can only try to prevent it,” Kaylie admitted.
When Valentin asked if Kaylie needed anything else, Kaylie shook her head before answering, “No, not really. I’ll go reheat some food, then get the heat turned back on over there.”
“I’ll try and get back to bed, then…” Valentin grumbled, dragging himself back to the trailer, disappearing within soon afterwards. Likewise, the two recruits returned to doing their laps around camp.
Kaylie returned to the Home Unit, making sure to pause the climate control before reheating her snack, then turning it back on once her chicken was warmed back up. After a quick meal, she put a note on the door of the microwave reminding people to turn off the climate control unit before using the microwave. With her snack finished, a note put up on the door, and the Home Unit returning to the intended temperature, Kaylie returned to her tent and crawled back under the covers with Jayde.
to be continued