Machinas Con Passione’s Shitbox Adventures Part 3 - Episode 2: Arrival in Nevada
Resuming from the previous scene we left our protagonists off on, we find Maria, Luci, and Loris crowded around the unconscious and very likely severely brain damaged Giacomo as the three try to sort out whether Giacomo was just taking an extended nap or if the Lynwoods should start fighting over who’s legally responsible for his death sooner rather than later.
Maria had started her examination immediately after dropping her bag (which, upon a second look from Luci, had to have outweighed the diminutive doctor) and screaming at the top of her lungs. Said examination seemed to lack a certain… Legitimacy to it, seeing as how most of her efforts involved frantically slapping Giacomo, peeling open his shut eyelids and sticking a gloved finger up his nose, before opening his wallet and stealing anything that hadn’t already been taken by Loris.
“Thought healthcare was supposed to be free?” Luci asked the doctor, who was wrist deep into the pocket where Giacomo’s checkbook was. Maria, without missing a beat, replied with a barely thought up excuse. “Oh, uh, he’s American.” She looked up at Luci, checking for any signs of realization, and found none. Luci merely nodded, making an offhand remark about the sad state of affairs in America.
Looking up at Loris to see if any brain activity was present definitively revealed that the smartest person in the room was in fact the one impersonating a medical professional while shamelessly robbing a man in plain view. He simply scratched the back of his head while looking around. “Yeah, 'merica and such. Sure sucks.”
“Doctor, is he ok? What d’ya think?” Luci asked, eyes watering with worry over the man she had robbed and assaulted not even 3 days prior. Maria looked at Giacomo, who was about as far from OK as you could reasonably get, and back to Luci who seemed like she would burst into tears if the answer was anything other than an emphatic yes.
Maria sighed. While sure, she never liked Giacomo and couldn’t tell if he was an asshole or the stupidest person alive, some tiny little sliver of human decency, maybe her last sliver of human decency, tugged at her to at least help Giacomo get back home and get ideally as far from these two idiots as possible. To do that, though, she’d need to get Giacomo awake in the first place.
“Alright. Give me one second, I need to get something first.” Maria looks at the Lynwoods once more, trying to judge if these are really the best people to leave an unconscious body around. It went without saying they were not. “Right, and… Don’t touch the, ah, patient. He’s not dead yet, so don’t get any ideas.” The twins simultaneously sighed in relief. Did they seriously think he was dead?
A squeal of the tires later quickly followed by a loud crash and the flickering of the lights in the house signaled the departure of Maria, as Luci and Loris stood there awkwardly in the following silence. “Right. Well, I’m goin’ for a smoke Luci. Don’t kill the man now.” Loris grabbed a pack from his lifetime supply of Lucky Strikes as he stepped out the back door, as Luci picked up the remote, displaying some vile British “television” to pass the time. You know the sort.
It wasn’t 30 minutes later before another crash signaled the return of Maria, who brought with her a second duffle bag that was full of rather improperly stored medical equipment as she got to work trying to revive Giacomo. The usual routes showed no avail, poking with various needles, dumping a whole container of pepper, and tickling his feet with feathers all saw Giacomo in his continued state of living death. It wasn’t until Loris came running back into the house that this would change.
“Oi! Luci! Someone dropped a quid!” Seemed to be the magic words, as soon as they were spoken, Giacomo’s eyes shot awake. Apparently money could do more than make the world go round, it could revive greedy washed up Italian businessmen as well. Giacomo sat up, frantically looking around and shouting “DOVE?!” “DOVE?!” At the top of his lungs. Maria, already having enough of his antics, punched him unconscious once again, bringing us back to square one.
Maria sighed. Looking at the Lynwoods and realizing she probably had some free time on her hands now that she had just robbed the local hospital, figured she should probably try to needle some information out of the two. Not before turning off the absolute filth that was on the television though.
Maria, finally able to think now that that ear melting sound had stopped, finally got around to asking the question that had been on her mind since she arrived. “So… how did you guys meet Giacomo?” Rather than respond, the twins immediately huddled into the corner, whispering amongst themselves yet doing a poor job of keeping even a little quiet as their entire conversation regarding how they should lie to the former doctor and some tidbits about a rally that did not sound good to Maria.
Loris spoke up first. “Right, We’re the Lynwoods, I’m Loris and this is Luci, we’re the greatest rally drivers of all time! And that right there, that is our financier. He loves rallying, you know. Car’s in the garage, we’ve got a big BIG race coming up, y’know.” A slight realization began to creep into Maria’s head, and she did not like it. Giacomo’s incoherent mutterings about shitboxes and rallies as soon as Loris mentioned racing further deepened the pit of despair in Maria’s stomach.
Oh Dear God.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
The Day After.
Luckily for the crew, Maria was able to go through the many things she had stolen off of Giacomo and found out that Giacomo’s flight home was scheduled for the day after, with arrangements having apparently already been made to ferry the car to Daytona Beach in advance. Loris did some last minute work to ensure that the car, in fact, did drive and was off to get the Arnoux loaded up, while Luci and Maria did their best to make Giacomo look like he had eaten in the past 4 days before tossing him into the back of an Uber. They never found where Giacomo had parked his rental, but who cares? It was probably already stolen.
Handwaving the strict baggage check and many suspicious looks given to the four by the airport inspectors, the flight went off without a hitch and Giacomo was finally able to have a single saltine force fed to him. Progress!
The team survived the flight to Daytona, got the boring bits of filing out paperwork, being cavity searched and waiting for the ferry to drop off their “car” before realizing that they’d probably have to get Giacomo home.
A dollar was placed into Giacomo’s wallet, which seemingly was also enough to wake him up, and they soon made it to his house, handwaved again the fact that Giacomo had clearly been brutally assaulted, and made their preparations to go to Nevada. Loris and Luci have not been informed there will be aliens, and are still completely clueless as to what they are about to get into, but that’s part of the fun, right?
3 WEEKS LATER.
SHITBOX RALLY 2024 PRE-RACE PARTY.
The team fucked up.
After Giacomo insisted on a bonding road trip for all of his new friends (alot of lying was needed to get to this point, as you might imagine), the three decided to go on a field trip together, and quickly found out that sourcing your parts from a junkyard is not a good idea. The engine powering the Arnoux was sourced from an old crashed soviet formula car, which in turn had sourced the engine from an already old at the time soviet shitbox, meaning that the word “Reliable” didn’t even show up in the manual. Combine that with the fact that the fenders and bodywork like falling off, and the lights are so horribly wired they barely work on a good day, and the team considers themselves lucky to even arrive 30 minutes before the start, and are already mired deep under the hood before roll call even begins.
Yee-haw.
Machinas Con Passione’s Shitbox Adventures Part 3 - Episode 2: Arrival in Nevada - FIN
