Team Firulais
Stage 6: “Mind Reader’s Hell”, “Champion Andrés Defeated”, and Ángel as a “Bold Action Man”
(Mentioning @Happyhungryhippo [The Rhino Squad] and @Knugcab [Team Hillbilly Rollers])
Early Morning at Lauda.
Ángel:“GYAH! Ack! W-What…?”
Ángel said to absolutely no one as he woke up from a nightmare.
Ana:“Wake up, Jap.”
Ángel:“えっと…おはようございます、かな？”
(Pronounciation: Etto… ohayōgozaimasu, ka na?
Trans.:“Uh… Good morning, I guess?”)
Tómas:“We were waiting for you to wake up. Where were you last night, by the way?”
Josué:“Don’t tell me you took another ‘Accidental Dose of Booze’.”
Ángel:“You guys know I am not even interested in Alcohol. It is more likely from you to buy and drink booze than me.”
Josué:“Remember when we were at Tokyo on the trip to Nevada?”
Ángel:“I… Honestly don’t. I just remember having a mind reading incident while I slept on the Trip to L.A…”
Andrés:“Anyway. How did you sleep?”
Ángel:“Fine, I guess.”
“That is a lie…”, Ángel thought for himself.
Josué:“Well then. We’ll go down to take breakfast and we’ll get on the road a bit early. Remember, don’t call too much the attention, Ángel. We are in trouble already for that since we came to this country.”
Ángel:“Alrighty. But first, I could go into one of the rumoured magic stores here in Lauda. Maybe they’d have a cure for these Unintentional Mind Readings, but, besides I believe it’s unlikely, I doubt they even know what a Yumeisotitanian is. Oh, and, before I forget, guys, this rally, this event ain’t a race… It’s like the Mongol Rally, if you get it—”
Josué:“What the hell is the Mongol Rally?”
Ángel:“A charity rally that goes from England to Mongolia. There’s no prize, just the reward of having fun with your family, friends, other people… Unshitting your Spring or Summer Season, in some way.”
With that statement, they showered, changed clothes, and went down to take breakfast.
It all began after Marie did her usual things and began stealing from everyone, a bit jealous about Chantal. Ana and Josué got to joke about it, but Ángel was nervous.
(Tómas ain’t present… He arrived just as Ángel was wondering where Thomas was.)
Distracting Ana, he came down to tell Thomas (not to be confused with Tómas) about the situation, but given his nerves, he spoke to him in Japanese (Thomas must have been lost in translation at that point), and only after telling him in English, Thomas ran back to the Hotel.
After that, Ángel came back to join for breakfast, but not without trying to fix something that came with the Aurora first… The Heater and the A/C didn’t want to work, so he tried to fix it… Which didn’t work, but at least he didn’t worsen their situation: see, only Ángel knew it, but, the Heater was stuck in the fully on position, so, he’d secretly disconnected it as soon as they arrived to the US (before they even got to Aetherii)… for both safety and to not annoy everyone, specially on the hotter stages.
And after breakfast, he told his team he’d go on the search for the mentioned magic store or supplier.
An hour or so later, in Downtown Lauda…
Ángel had found his store. He wouldn’t check them all, just the first he could find. As said before, he’d look for some sort of cure for his issues…
Take in mind (an unintended pun may be done whenever I say those words with Ángel…), such cure doesn’t exist, or is capable of existing. Not even temporary solutions are on existence. And given Ángel’s race of ascendency, if the local storekeeper knew only a bit about Aetheriian Magic, about Yumeisotitanian magic, he’d know even less, if anything to a very minor degree.
Ángel:“P-Please. You m-must know how to help me with this. Couldn’t t-there be a way to…?”
The owner denied with his head, replying that he “didn’t know about Yumeisotitanian Humanoids”, but he’d “research about it, and hoped that he (Ángel) would hop again at Lauda afterwards”. Ángel, while definitely not able to find a cure (because there isn’t one), was at least a bit relieved by the fact he finally had a friendly encounter with the locals, as the ones at Menes, and at Thornes hadn’t worked out so well.
Ángel:“Oh… OK. Спасибо.”
(Спасибо [“Spasibo”] = “Thanks” in Russian.)
With that, he left back to the Hotel, and they began their trip to the next destination, Björnes.
Road to Björnes.
They left with high hopes of making up some time this time, but, it seems the tire curse hadn’t “braked”, or, at least, it did, but, only for a short period of time.
They’d have another flat tire. The 4th in just 6 stages. It seemed that whenever Ángel wasn’t driving (he hadn’t driven since Stage 1), misfortune struck the Firulais… And Ana had seemed to have enough as she was changing (or trying to fix) the tire as best as she could.
Ana:“Está maldita maldición me tiene mamada hasta los ovarios, carajo!”
(I better not translate this…)
Andrés:“Hey, Ana, calm down, you seem… Stressed.”
Ana:“Well, of course I am! Ángel painted my T-Shirt, my hair, and now we have yet ANOTHER flat tire, due to HIM not changing some 19-year old tires, these tires are as old as me! Ángel, malparido, ya verás cuando te toque manejar a ti!”
([…]“Ángel, you son of a b!tc#, you’ll see when you get the turn to drive!”)
Ángel:“Ana, calma. Si has visto, todos los equipos han tenido por lo menos un problema. La mayoría han tenido pinchazos.”
(“Ana, Calm down. If you’ve seen, all teams had at least one issue. Most had flats.”)
Josué:“Si, pero si nosotros hasta este punto hemos tenido 4 pinchazos…”
(“Yes, but we had 4 flat tires up to this point…”)
Josué spit a fact. He, same as Ana, was tired of so many flat tires. At least they changed the tire, again, and managed to do the rest of the stage without any other major inconvenience. Well… I said “major”…
Ángel (on the radio):“I don’t know if anyone can hear me, but, uh… Our wipers somehow have decided to work at will, Josué is pulling the lever, and the wipers just won’t go off. They aren’t squeaking or anything, but they don’t want to go off.”
Josué:“How much horsepower does this thing have?”
Ángel:“I think it had like 60… something, maybe a bit less, from the factory. When I tested it on the Dyno, it did 57 or something like that, not bad for a 4-pot, not bad for a 1.4l engine, and not bad for a car with 42 years of age.”
Josué:“So, 57?”
Ángel:“Yup, 57. Well, 56 now. The wipers just don’t want to shut down.”
Björnes.
Ángel:“Этот город… дарит мне атмосферу Владивостока. Если бы здесь не было жарко, я бы чувствовал себя как дома.”
(Pronounciation: Etot gorod… darit mne atmosferu Vladivostoka. Yesli by zdes’ ne bylo zharko, ya by chuvstvoval sebya kak doma.
Trans.:“This city…gives me Vladivostok vibes. If it weren’t hot here, I would actually feel at home.”)
Tómas:“这个地方让我想起了我的父母。”
(Pronounciation: Zhège dìfāng ràng wǒ xiǎngqǐle wǒ de fùmǔ.
Trans.:“This place makes me think of my parents.”)
It truly wasn’t exactly the best place to sleep, or to do anything. But at least Ángel got the vibes. Plus, the weather helped him to adapt to the conditions in Okinawa, which he expected to be a lot warmer than Vladivostok. Why Okinawa? Ángel would move there after the rally ended… He needed to feel closer to his family, after several years of living in Russia.
However, the thing that made this day “Mind Reader’s Hell”, was yet to come.
Afternoon at Björnes.
“Mind Reader’s Hell” begins.
It all seemed to be a good day for Ángel, despite the morning incidents and the flat tire, and the seemingly stuck in “ON” position wipers (which turned off as soon as they shut the car down, but would turn on again, whenever they turned the car back on). However, later in the afternoon, he would suffer a catastrophic mind reading incident.
The incident left him in such a shock that he later insisted for the other people in his team to drive for him in the next stage (Stage 7) as well as the next stage after that in which he would drive… He needed a little break.
He didn’t knew if telling Mirage from Timeloss, or the people of Shift Happens. He didn’t knew if trying to meet new people; while Marie wasn’t at all in the list of people Ángel would like to meet here, after the breakfast incident at Lauda, Ángel felt like talking to Janne might be a good idea (because he didn’t knew the occult things were… Fake). He could also come back to the Chitcos, or try chatting with his own team. But he didn’t know what to do. He was so altered by having 2 mind reading incidents that lasted over a minute in just 2 days, that he was essentially crumbling. He ultimately recurred to a very very short talk with Kivenaal, from Shift Happens, the victim of the mind reading incident prior to the one of today. The talk was about what Ángel had seen, and let’s just say that what he said didn’t improve much the situation. He told Kivenaal exactly what he saw, in his own words. But that hurted Chantal even further, or, so he saw it… So he preferred to not mention what he’d seen in Chantal’s Mind… for now, at least.
What he knew was that he would have the usual Pokemon Match of the Night, and that he’d make dinner; he did said thing first, making Bolognese Pasta, with surprisingly good results; even Ana said it was good. And then came the Pokemon Match with Andrés, for the tent…
In Andrés’ head, this was the music that sounded when he faced Ángel in this game…
…and this is the music that Ángel hurd in his head when facing Andrés.
(Note how they both come from the same game… Just that Andrés’ can be found very early in the game, and Ángel’s is the theme of what is, essentially, the final boss of the game…)
“Why do I hear boss music?”, he wondered. And, boy, it was their longest battle to date. The match lasted almost half an hour (imagine how much strategy they had in place)… And for once, a miracle happened.
Ángel:“Did I just…?”
Andrés"Condamner."
(“Damn.”, in French.)
Ángel:“私の勝ち ！ とりあえず勝てた！ 実際、私はアンドレスに勝ちました！ ついに ！”
(Pronounciation: Watashi no kachi! Toriaezu kateta! Jissai, watashi wa Ando resu ni kachimashita! Tsuini!
Trans.: “I win! I won for once! I actually beat Andrés! FINALLY!”)
Andrés:“Very well played, Ángel.”
The disasters of today were forgotten a bit by this one moment of happiness, as Ángel screamed of joy in the same tone a Japanese TV Game Show Host would.
However, Ángel had gotten so accostumed to the Aurora, that he honestly preferred sleeping in it rather than sleeping in a tent, so, he allowed Andrés to actually sleep in his tent for tonight.
Ángel:“Next time, we will actually dispute for that tent, though.”
Andrés:“I’ll make sure you don’t defeat me next time.”
Ángel:“Sure, Champion Andrés…!”
Ángel said jokingly (making a bit of a reference to the game they were playing), before they both noticed something… Someone had broken into their car’s trunk… Guess who was looking for booze.
Ángel:“おい ！そこで止まって下さい！”
(Pronounciation: Oi ! Sokode tomatte kudasai!
Trans.:“Hey! Stop right there!”)
Ángel shouted as he saw Marie doing her usual things again… And, for once, someone caught her “in fraganti”. They began chasing her thru camp, and said chase lasted long enough for Tómas to join as well. During said chase, one question arose…
Andrés:“Why the hell are we chasing her ? I mean, didn’t you say you don’t like Alcohol ?”
Ángel:“I said that, but I’m doing this for both Ana and Josué, and for you too, because Imagine how infuriated will Ana be realizing her beer got stolen.”
Tómas:“I mean… I’ve seen what happened between her and Chantal, so, I’m coming with you guys.”
Ángel:“彼女を驚かせようとします…”
(Pronounciation: Kanojo o odoroka seyou to shimasu…
Trans.:“I’ll try to catch her up by surprise…”)
Andrés:“What ?”
Ángel:“Uh… Nothing. You two go and persuade her, I’ve got a plan with some bold action.”
Without thinking it too much, Ángel would take a detour from the main chase, and divert into the next point the chase would arrive to. Marie wouldn’t notice, but Ángel did the tactic perfectly… By tackling her. It was good enough to stop her and make her fall over. “I’M THE BOLD ACTION MAAAAN…!”, would say Ángel before tackling Marie from the side, and, as said, the plan would go perfectly…
…Until the beer bottles shattered upon impact to the ground.
Ana (from the distance):“…What was that?”
Ángel:“Oh, crap.”
Marie:“I didn’t do anything, he broke them!”
Ángel:“Nuh-uh, SHE did, she was trying to steal it!”
They both said, pointing at each other.
Ana:“Andrés, is that true ?”
Andrés:“They both broke it.”
Ángel (almost at the same time as Marie):“何 ？”
(Pronounciation: Nani?
Trans.: “What?”)
Marie (almost at the same time as Ángel):“WHAT?”
Ángel:“I mean… You could’ve as well just asked for it, we are a bit more loose on this than the…”
…but again, Ángel wouldn’t finish before the person he was talking to left, in this case, Marie.
Ángel:“…rest. sigh”
Ana:“Well… You were the one who broke the beer, so, get those hands ready, we’re not cleaning any of YOUR mess.”
Ángel (a bit… annoyed):“…Really?”
So, Ángel would have to pick up the pieces of Glass by himself, by Ana’s Orders… Making himself some cuts in his left hand which he easily recovered from with some gauze and medical tape. After all, the beer wouldn’t have shattered if Ángel wouldn’t have made such an abrupt -yet brutally effective- move.
After that, and some more, they all went to sleep… Except Ángel. By 4 Moon (a very rough equivalent to what would be 10-11PM on earth), he was still awake, looking at the stars, wondering what to do. While the advice of telling the others that the rally wasn’t a race was… Working (?), the one about not overthinking about stuff continued to “not translate”.
And, again, Collabs are open as usual.
