Machinas Con Passione’s Shitbox Adventures Part 3 - Episode 3: Journey to Menes.
(Featuring @Knugcab and @MrdjaNikolen )
Ah, the rift.
Fewer places of dystopian comfort exist, places where you can find yourself immersed in what is simultaneously the most soothing and terrifying series of images, twisting and warping to reveal candescent streams of light, dark, and shapes impossible to understand to the human eye constantly shifting into forms both recognizable and not.
The only person who actually tried to put any effort to take the scene in was Maria, however, as Loris and Luci were to preocupied being scared shitless at the fact that they had just driven into a portal with no idea of what to expect other than the “trust me bro, everything will be ok” Giacomo gave before promptly screaming at the top of his lungs (which had surely been heard by more than just his fellow teammates) the second they drove into the portal, driving Loris and Luci into the stupid parade that was now making its way to Holsia via the rift.
Maria tried to understand what the Lynwoods were saying, she really did, but whether it was just a result of their Scouse affliction or their adrenaline spike causing them to be incomprehensible it was hard to get really immersed before some random English blubbering put Maria out of her attempt at relaxing.
“MATETHEFUCKISTHATITHOUGHTHISWASARALLYNOTABLEEDINACIDTRIP”
and
“FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK”
Were the highlights of the conversation.
As for Giacomo, he had already fainted, pen and paper in hand (nobody on the team is entirely sure as to what exactly he was drawing) and was currently snoring almost as loudly as the Lynwoods were screaming when a cloud of smoke ahead signaled a problem that would put the caravan to a halt.
Pulling over, the MCP team would split up for a bit, and seeing some familiar faces nearby, Maria and the now awakened Giacomo would make their way over to the Hillbilly Rollers, winners of the first Shitbox Rally, and break the ice with Giacomo apparently fidgeting in his bookbag for something. Wait, he had a bookbag?
Maria would be the first to break contact. Her most vivid image of the first rally was that pink Freeway Star, a van that could burn its way into the mind of even a blind man. Wanting to catch up for a bit given the time they had to burn, she approached the trio and introduced herself, partially curious to see if they would remember her given her complete change in appearance since their last meeting. “Hillbilly Rollers. Remember us? Well, I’m sure you remember Giacomo, I mean, how could you not, but it has been a while. How’s everything?”
Giacomo, meanwhile would fish around in his book bag and revealed that he’d brought an olive branch for the team, a formerly ice-cold bottle of Birra Moretti that he had neglected to put on ice, so it had admittedly gotten a bit warm, but it should still do the job. “Did you run out of pink paint?” Was all he could ask.
Pink paint?", Andreas said. “Yeah, dodged that bullet but for some reason this POS all of a sudden stinks of old butter!”
“I bet it is Chanty’s fault!”, Marie said.
“Who the fuck is that Chanty you’re talking about all the time?”, Andreas asked. “Is it your imaginary friend?”
“No fucking way I would call her a friend…”, Marie grumbled.
Maria massaged her brow, being reminded of Giacomo’s incessant need to eat in the car. “Oh Christ, tell me about it.” She then noticed the Birra, as Giacomo was struggling to get the lid off, it was all she could do to sigh. “I get the feeling this Chanty would get on well with Giacomo.”
Giacomo looked up, having cut his thumb on the lid in his attempt to open the Moretti. “What? What’s wrong with imaginary friends?” Maria was very close to chewing out Giacomo for being halfway through his lifespan and still believing in imaginary friends, but upon seeing his expression of geniune concern, backed off, for now. “Nothing. It’s perfectly normal.” She said before taking the beer, cleaning it off and offered it to the Rollers. “Here, uh… don’t drink it until we get to camp. Maybe you guys have a cooler in that rolling discotheque of yours.”
Marie was looking at the beer, almost drooling. “Ohhh, that looks interes…”
“YOU HEARD WHAT SHE SAID!”, Andreas told Marie, while Janne got out of the car, opened the tailgate and pointed to the minibar inside. “A bit awkward to get to”, he laughed, “but go ahead and put it in there!”, at least it could be fun to see someone struggling with it. “Proper 70s”, he said. “A show winner in 1979!”.
Standing at a hulking 5 foot 0 (152.4 cm for the non americans), jumping up into the Icarus’ rear was quite the ask from Maria, seeing as how the bed was nearly as tall as she was (give or take a bit of exaggeration). “Yeah. Real marvel of engineering.”
“Anyway”, Janne said while Maria was trying to get to the minibar in the back of the Icarus, “What is happening here? Seems like we’re standing still more than we are moving. At least the Icarus is still running like a champ.”
“I must admit that I was sleeping until now, so I have no idea!” Giacomo declared a bit too excitedly. “I’m sure some team has failed to account the rigorous trial of the rift, a journey that I have planned every mile of! Machinas Con Passione would NEVER enter a car that explodes before the rally even starts!” He declared.
As the two talked, Maria found the task of lifting herself to the admittedly suave interior of the Icarus to be a giant pain in the ass that involved lots of jumping, multiple failed attempts to lift her waist over the bed and, eventually, a running start that ended in her toppling over, shouting “PORCA PUTTANA!” and many other swears that I dare not replicate in this post. Upon hearing Giacomo’s utter baldfaced lie she turned to him with an expression of pure shock. “Did you forget the TWO fuel stops we made? WE caused more of a holdup than anyone else the first time!”
Janne tried to hold his laughter back. “Yeah…”, he said and managed to not burst out into laughter. “…yeah, I know how you only bring quality vehicles to this.”
“Yes!” Giacomo said, getting overly excited for a moment… “This will be the year! I will have the shitbox crown!” Maria, seeing that this was very close to sending Janne over the edge, decided to save Giacomo the shame by forcefully turning him around and pushing him towards the Arnoux. “Yes. Yes. This is the year. Let’s go before you embarrass us any further, I think I see Loris going after your crisps.” This was enough to get Giacomo sprinting towards the Lynwood and out of earshot of the two. Maria, slowly going red faced in her own attempt to keep herself from laughing, decided to follow him as she waved the Rollers goodbye.
After getting underway, the team managed to make it all of 5 minutes before a light hiss began to emit from the radiator, silencing the team as a slow horror crept up in the car as they realized that something, somewhere, had broken and broken terribly.
It took all of 30 seconds for their horrors to be realized when the radiator cap burst from the engine, piercing the hood and windshield, bouncing around the cockpit and causing a chorus of terrified screams and panicked movement for a moment before the rogue radiator cap eventually slowed its momentum, landing neatly in the lap of Loris.
Simultaneously, the radiator was spewing its contents quite literally everywhere, and while the MCP team were scrambling inside of the cockpit the car delivered a nice coat of coolant to any team unfortunate enough to be nearby.
The first team on the scene is team Mravolinski-Chitco, and their first-hand account of their encounter with the phenomenon that is MCP is described, in full detail, below.
Meanwhile MCP team is approached by Pi and Bong. They decided to have argument while arriving
-I really dont think this is smart idea.
-Its fine
-Lets be real: if they dont freak out at sight of someone armored from head to toe and some sort of human centaur, i dont know what to say
-We will try to appear friendly and our looks will be ignored…for most part
As the duo had reached MCP quartet of chaos, they decided to now talk to first person they encounter
-We are from team Chitco. Armored dude is Bong and im Pi. I believe i had likely met some of you and…i think we might be able to help.
Loris, who had already gotten to work screaming swears into the engine bay, was stopped mid “FU-” by the arrival of Pi and Bong. Having been raised with some level of manners (read: British) and not wanting to shout at complete strangers who, despite very clearly not being of this world and maybe even being an affront the to crown itself were still very kind in offering to help Loris who, in all honesty, was completely hopeless without it.
“Right, ah, I’m happy to take the help mate, these muppets here…” he gestures towards said muppets, which include his own flesh and blood. “Not exactly keen on fixing a car they’ve never touched before.”
Bong had looked in the direction of engine bay, acknowledging thats area where problem is located
-Her charisma is not going to solve that engine problem you have…whatever it is.
Whatever the fuck that might be, we are wrong people to help.
-They were smart enough to bring mechanic. We will just do what he says would be needed to repair the car
With that, Pi was noting Loris and his efforts of sort to fix the thing.
It was a relatively simple job to patch up in the short term, and Loris was nothing if not simple, so the job was completed without much of a headache while Giacomo excitedly got out of the Arnoux upon recognizing the duo, happy to see his fellow “Shitbox Veterans” (not sure if this will catch on, but Giacomo is seemingly keen on making it into a thing) and began bombarding them with questions of how life has been, if they really think they can beat Giacomo and if they were ready to taste defeat at the hands of the Mighty MCP. It seems he took it as a chance to blow up his ego.
Bong had decided to satisfy the curiosity of Giacomo.
-Life seems to be very fine so far. As you see…she now looks tad bit more presentable and it was i that did most of the work
He was obviously gesturing towards Pi
That he was, the work that went into fixing Pi over time had made it so that Loris had to double take to notice that there was anything out of the ordinary with her. That was, until Luci, who had also gotten out of the car to stretch her legs, pointed out the obvious fact that Pi’s legs were in fact split at 90 degree angles, and that she had 4. The decision for which of those bits of information was more upsetting to Loris can be left up to you, dear reader.
Alas, conversation between Pi and Bong broke the brief silence.
-Ofc noone compares to my perfect daughter Jakasxandra…
-I doubt it
-Shush
Bickering continued for some time before Pi cut it down
-Well…we dont like to lose, but are aware that our vehicle likely isnt recipe for victory either. Due to fact its pretty much the same one we entered in original rally, you can easily confirm so yourself.
Now does that guarantee that you will beat us? Hard to tell as im not as much into cars as…his daughter.
-I told you my daughter is perfect.
Pi glared at Bong
-Ignore the daddy. Wouldnt be surprized if Nevadan sun fried his brain
-HEY!
-If we dare to say that we have chance against you, its likely through you breaking down more often than us. Our vehicle is big enough to carry lot of stuff including his ego but weighs noticeable amount and, from what i gathered, doesnt have much power.
Bong glared at Pi as it was he that was being called out
Giacomo was all too familiar with the Kontir Cunningham, one of the cars on the grid that managed to double as a live-in house while performing it’s duties as a motor vehicle, and it was one that proved impossible to kill, as one of a handful of cars that managed to keep coming back year after year. Giacomo wished he could say the same about the Aerodynamic Wedge Shaped Beast but… The less said about the current state of the dustbuster the better.
Either way, Giacomo had his sketchpad in hand, and began capturing the scene of Loris and Luci bickering over how to fix the radiator, as Maria had now gotten out of the car herself to try and corral the twins into fixing the damn car.
Between the five of them, someone was eventually able to figure out the correct amount of tape needed to keep the radiator in a functional state for long enough to make it to camp, and after fetching some water, the car was returned to the land of the living after a few hard kicks from Loris, and travel through the Rift could continue.
Before heading out, though, Giacomo would offer Pi and Bong his drawing. “Take this as a memoir of when you helped the great Machinas Con Passione win the rally! You’re sure to be the first ones I mention in my victory speech!” …. Had anyone told him it wasn’t a competition yet?
Drawing was taken and the duo was on their way back.
The car was, at this point, functional, and with the engine roaring (sputtering) to life the signal was given for the caravan to continue, and bar a few incidents (including one where Giacomo, shocker, annoys a fellow member of the rally) the rest of the trip to Menes would go on without a hitch.
SHITBOX RALLY CAMP - STAGE 1 - MENES
After an eventful run through the rift, the MCP squad is finally able to settle down after a full stage’s worth of travel, and having settled down after arriving at noon, they unpacked the trunk, looking to get camp set up early to avoid the pain in the ass of having to fend off whatever variety of insects may come out at night, and quickly found that Giacomo… had neglected to pack a tent. With that, the MCP squad would have to source one from the local town, and whatever supplies would be needed to keep a quartet of barely functional morons alive for the night. Luckily, Giacomo did at least have things of material value, so even if the currency wasn’t exactly one to one, the team for once made sure not to inconvenience the locals while they stayed in Menes.
Other than that, the rest of the downtime for the day was spent working on a long term fix to the car and annoying anyone unfortunate enough to get close during said repairs. I twas about the time that Loris accidentally tore a hole in their radiator while trying to fix it that the reality of their situation slowly sunk in. This was going to be a long rally.
MCP’S SHITBOX ADVENTURE’S - EPISODE 3 - FIN
