Post by Beruto on Feb 10, 2020 18:13:01 GMT -8
The past few weeks had seen Beruto becoming restless in stationary home in West City. All of his friends were either out and about, traveling or had up and disappeared entirely. Violet, the strange purple haired girl which Beruto had met months back, when he first arrived in West city, had completely vanished on him, leaving the red haired teen to wonder where she had gone to. Unfortunately where ever she was, there did not appear to be cellular phone reception as none of his messages or calls ever got through. He really did hope she was all right. Kite too had disappeared on Beruto, but at least in the silver haired boy's case, Beruto could keep track of him more or less. It turned out that after their disastrous film debut, the other shirtless teen had decided to do some traveling on his own while Beruto did some more work on his RV, a fact the red haired boy learned through a text message only a few days ago. Cade was another of his far flung friends which Beruto wanted to reconnect with, and again, through exchange of messages, the red haired boy learned that the shirtless man was currently down in the South Islands area. Winter was also coming on, and the always shirtless teen did not like the prospect of being in a chilly northern city during the inclement weather, so taking a trip south was looking more and more enticing.
In the past few weeks Beruto had been building up a reserve of cash to take with him on the trip and getting the Eagle 5 in proper running condition for the land voyage. In addition to checking the vehicle out mechanically, the red haired boy had also taken the time to get a global positioning system gadget to mount on the not inconsiderable dash board, which would in turn allow him to navigate with much greater ease and avoid getting lost for days on end, which had resulted in Kite's and his a fore mentioned unpleasant film debut in Oolong City. Now Beruto would be able to navigate reliably simply by entering his desired destination into the little gadget and letting it do all of the tedious work of planning the route. Additionally, the boy was conscientious enough to give the owner of the auto repair shop plenty of notice that he would be taking the winter off. With his backlog of work taken care of, and snowy weather on the horizon, not to mention it already being uncomfortably chilly, Beruto finalized his plans for departure. He would first head to a place called "Pilaf Land" to pick up Kite. Frankly the destination sounded like a giant amusement park, which was later confirmed when Beruto picked up a brochure for the place. Once he had Kite on board, the two would head south to meet up with Cade in the Southern Islands. Being islands though, the trip would no doubt involve taking a few car ferries in order to make the hop from the main land, as Beruto was dead set against even looking for let alone installing the flying options for his RV.
With his preparations made and the day for departure upon him, Beruto set about his final tasks before leaving, namely stocking the fridge for the trip, checking the tires and giving the whole of the Eagle 5 a once over to make sure all was in order. Once satisfied that the vehicle was in tip top shape and with nothing else holding him here, the boy climbed aboard his mobile home, started the engine and rolled out. At least that's what he hoped would have happened, but the RV had other ideas. The starter motor cranked away for a good twenty seconds before the engine even started to show any signs of life, which was a little alarming, the little powerhouse of a motor wasn't designed to run under that kind of load for long and if it routinely took this long to start the engine, Beruto might very well find himself having to replace a burned out starter, or worse, stranded in the middle of nowhere. The engine grumbled to life however and after a minute to warm up, was running smoothly, spinning the generator which in turn maintained the charge in the RV's traction batteries.
With the batteries already fully charged, there was no more reason to delay and with that, the red haired teen was off, slowly pulling the recreational vehicle out of the parking lot and into traffic. It took nearly an hour to escape the congestion of the city and finally get out on the open road, but once on the highway, the lumbering motor home which was so ungainly in the tight streets of the city, cruised like the wind down the open lanes of the interstate, easily doing near eighty miles per hour without serious effort. Even at that speed though it would take a few days to get to his destination, so Beruto had had his little dash board mounted navigational assistant plan out a couple of stops along the way where the young man could park and spend the night. The first was a scenic park about fifty miles from the border. The evening was uneventful and after a good night's sleep, the shirtless teen was off on his second day of travel.
Again though the engine took is sweet time getting started, but after sufficient cajoling from the starter motor, eventually rumbled to life. There was clearly something wrong with engine, after a full day of travel it should be sufficiently run in to not have to require such a long time to start. Once running though the engine performed normally which indicated to the red haired boy that the issue might be with the choke. Thankfully the engine was simple enough in that regard, the engineers, while they were mucking up the electrical end of the design, hadn't found the time to overly complicate the relatively simple engine by adding in a fuel injection system. Beruto couldn't imagine the horror of having to diagnose a problem with, let alone fixing such a system. Hopefully the issue with the choke was as simple as adjusting a cable, which the teen intended to do the following evening when he was settled. The over worked little starter motor had other plans however, and after Beruto stopped for gas around lunch time, the intrepid motor gave up the ghost. It did however just barely manage to get the engine started, which unfortunately for the red headed teen, fooled him into thinking the motor was still working. So driving along, blissfully ignorant of the true condition of his mobile home, Beruto continued on past several service stations, on through the day and into the early evening where he parked for the night.
The next morning found the choke control cable properly adjusted, and had the starter motor not burned it's self out in it's last heroic effort to start the engine the previous day, the engine would have turned over and started normally. Unfortunately as Beruto broke camp, packed up all of his gear and climbed into the driver's seat, he had no idea that his recreational vehicle was effectively crippled. Oh sure, he could drive for maybe twenty miles on the traction batteries, but at this point in the trip, he was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. The nearest service station was a full ten miles beyond the farthest limit that the traction batteries could take the vehicle, even in the best of conditions. So when the engine failed to even crank, there erupted from the deep woods, a stream of obscenities which would make the likes of the most vile mouthed rap singers blush. When the storm of verbal toxic waste finally subsided and several trees had been the unfortunate recipients of a trunk shattering fist or two, Beruto cooled off and turned his attention a little more calmly to the problem at hand. He had twenty miles of usable range in the traction batteries, and according to his global position navigational assistant on the dash board, needed to travel a minimum of thirty miles just to reach the nearest town. With an obvious ten mile gap in those calculations to make up, the shirtless teen sighed and went into one of the side storage lockers to fish out something he didn't think he would actually need to use to early.
"Well I bought this damn thing for this very reason." he grumbled to himself as he hauled a set of heavy chains out of the compartment and followed them with an X shaped, leather harness. Then headed around to the front of the RV, Beruto proceeded to connect the chains to their mounting brackets hidden under the front of the vehicle by the large bumper. Then to the ends of the chains was connected the harness and in the space of just under a half hour, the shirtless teen was trussed up like some sort of bipedal pack mule. Knowing he might some day have to put his phenomenal strength to work in this fashion, Beruto had sent away for the harness, at considerable expense and when it had arrived, made some modifications, most notably, a remote control which would trigger a handy device in the cap called a Brake Buddy, allowing him to engage the RV's brakes without having to be in the driver's seat.
And so, harnessed up and looking like he was single handedly pulling along one of the stones for a pyramid, Beruto trudged off, with his mobile home in tow. Ten miles would be quite the challenge, especially if the roads were hilly, which being in the woods, they of course were. By the time the boy had made it just two miles, he was dripping with sweat. Lunch time saw him reach the four mile mark, and astonishingly, not a single car or truck had driven past him all morning. A break for lunch was in order before the muscled teen pressed on. One monster peanut butter and banana sandwich later, and Beruto was off once more, determined to make it the rest of the ten miles before dinner. That unfortunately didn't happen. While the down hill sections of the journey were easy enough and amounted to little more than running ahead of the coasting motor home, the up hill sections were grueling and left the boy feeling like his pounding heart was going to explode out of his chest. Dinner time rolled around, and while he had not achieved the full ten mile goal, he had completed a very respectable eight miles. Feeling he owed himself a treat, the red headed teen took a ham steak out of the fridge and cooked that for his dinner. The delicious meal was accompanied by his favorite, mashed potatoes and for veggies, a mix of carrots and peas.
With dinner out of the way and an extra half hour of time thrown in to rest, Beruto resumed the near herculean task of hauling his mobile home another two miles to get it within range of the traction batteries. Illuminated by the rig's head lights, the shirtless teen trudged along, sweat pouring off of his muscled body in veritable buckets. Finally though, nearing eight in the evening and in pitch blackness except for the illumination from the RV's head lights, Beruto passed the ten mile mark and drew to a halt. Packing away the harness and chains, the boy was too tired to drive the remaining twenty miles, instead and treated himself a nice long shower and then tossed himself into bed.
It was surreal, in more than a day not a single car or truck had driven by on this forested road, not in all of the time Beruto had been on it. Indeed, the muscled teen was beginning to think they had closed the road at both ends as soon as he had gotten on it, or he had been abducted by aliens for some nefarious purpose, which somehow involved using him to pull ridiculously heavy loads up and down hills like a modern day Sisyphus. At last though, with a good night's sleep behind him, the boy was ready to drive the remaining twenty miles into town and hopefully once there, get a new starter for the mobile home. Thankfully the traction batteries were in good condition and the recreational vehicle hummed along under their power. The overly complicated design of the rig had actually come in handy in this instance. What had been intended as a fuel saving measure head in fact saved Beruto from three or four days of hauling the RV the thirty miles himself. With the battery's power though, the red haired teen was able to drive all of the way into town and make it into a local mechanic's shop before breakfast time was over. More good luck came the exhausted teen's way when it turned out that the mechanic had the starter motor he needed in stock and with a relatively light work load that day, had the motor installed by lunch. With a major hiccup of his journey behind him, Beruto was off once again that afternoon. The engine started up without a problem and the shirtless teen was able to once again drive along with confidence that his house on wheels would get him to his destination with a reasonable modicum of reliability. With another day's travel, Beruto was cruising past bill boards and signs for all sorts of bizarre attractions, but none so strange as a giant amusement park called Pilaf Land, the came name as the country it seemed, at least according to his dash board mounted navigational aid. While he had led a decidedly sheltered life in the little farming town where he'd grown up, the travels he under took for the General had never taken him to his strange country, so Beruto actually didn't know much about it, which made the signs for the attractions all the more mind bending. You would think that this Pilaf character was President of the Universe by the way he seemed to be idolized in this strange place. Close enough to his destination now though, Beruto sent a text message ahead to Kite, informing him of his arrival and within an hour he would once again see his traveling friend. An added bonus popped up as well, Cade was doing some traveling of his own and in the time it had taken Beruto to make the trip to Pilaf Land, Cade had managed to get to the same place, which of course meant that Beruto wouldn't now need to take his RV on any ferries to go to the southern islands, which suited the boy just fine, the RV was intended to roll, and arguably fly, not float.
Word Count: 2492
(Recreational Equipment and Resistance Chain are in effect.)
In the past few weeks Beruto had been building up a reserve of cash to take with him on the trip and getting the Eagle 5 in proper running condition for the land voyage. In addition to checking the vehicle out mechanically, the red haired boy had also taken the time to get a global positioning system gadget to mount on the not inconsiderable dash board, which would in turn allow him to navigate with much greater ease and avoid getting lost for days on end, which had resulted in Kite's and his a fore mentioned unpleasant film debut in Oolong City. Now Beruto would be able to navigate reliably simply by entering his desired destination into the little gadget and letting it do all of the tedious work of planning the route. Additionally, the boy was conscientious enough to give the owner of the auto repair shop plenty of notice that he would be taking the winter off. With his backlog of work taken care of, and snowy weather on the horizon, not to mention it already being uncomfortably chilly, Beruto finalized his plans for departure. He would first head to a place called "Pilaf Land" to pick up Kite. Frankly the destination sounded like a giant amusement park, which was later confirmed when Beruto picked up a brochure for the place. Once he had Kite on board, the two would head south to meet up with Cade in the Southern Islands. Being islands though, the trip would no doubt involve taking a few car ferries in order to make the hop from the main land, as Beruto was dead set against even looking for let alone installing the flying options for his RV.
With his preparations made and the day for departure upon him, Beruto set about his final tasks before leaving, namely stocking the fridge for the trip, checking the tires and giving the whole of the Eagle 5 a once over to make sure all was in order. Once satisfied that the vehicle was in tip top shape and with nothing else holding him here, the boy climbed aboard his mobile home, started the engine and rolled out. At least that's what he hoped would have happened, but the RV had other ideas. The starter motor cranked away for a good twenty seconds before the engine even started to show any signs of life, which was a little alarming, the little powerhouse of a motor wasn't designed to run under that kind of load for long and if it routinely took this long to start the engine, Beruto might very well find himself having to replace a burned out starter, or worse, stranded in the middle of nowhere. The engine grumbled to life however and after a minute to warm up, was running smoothly, spinning the generator which in turn maintained the charge in the RV's traction batteries.
With the batteries already fully charged, there was no more reason to delay and with that, the red haired teen was off, slowly pulling the recreational vehicle out of the parking lot and into traffic. It took nearly an hour to escape the congestion of the city and finally get out on the open road, but once on the highway, the lumbering motor home which was so ungainly in the tight streets of the city, cruised like the wind down the open lanes of the interstate, easily doing near eighty miles per hour without serious effort. Even at that speed though it would take a few days to get to his destination, so Beruto had had his little dash board mounted navigational assistant plan out a couple of stops along the way where the young man could park and spend the night. The first was a scenic park about fifty miles from the border. The evening was uneventful and after a good night's sleep, the shirtless teen was off on his second day of travel.
Again though the engine took is sweet time getting started, but after sufficient cajoling from the starter motor, eventually rumbled to life. There was clearly something wrong with engine, after a full day of travel it should be sufficiently run in to not have to require such a long time to start. Once running though the engine performed normally which indicated to the red haired boy that the issue might be with the choke. Thankfully the engine was simple enough in that regard, the engineers, while they were mucking up the electrical end of the design, hadn't found the time to overly complicate the relatively simple engine by adding in a fuel injection system. Beruto couldn't imagine the horror of having to diagnose a problem with, let alone fixing such a system. Hopefully the issue with the choke was as simple as adjusting a cable, which the teen intended to do the following evening when he was settled. The over worked little starter motor had other plans however, and after Beruto stopped for gas around lunch time, the intrepid motor gave up the ghost. It did however just barely manage to get the engine started, which unfortunately for the red headed teen, fooled him into thinking the motor was still working. So driving along, blissfully ignorant of the true condition of his mobile home, Beruto continued on past several service stations, on through the day and into the early evening where he parked for the night.
The next morning found the choke control cable properly adjusted, and had the starter motor not burned it's self out in it's last heroic effort to start the engine the previous day, the engine would have turned over and started normally. Unfortunately as Beruto broke camp, packed up all of his gear and climbed into the driver's seat, he had no idea that his recreational vehicle was effectively crippled. Oh sure, he could drive for maybe twenty miles on the traction batteries, but at this point in the trip, he was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. The nearest service station was a full ten miles beyond the farthest limit that the traction batteries could take the vehicle, even in the best of conditions. So when the engine failed to even crank, there erupted from the deep woods, a stream of obscenities which would make the likes of the most vile mouthed rap singers blush. When the storm of verbal toxic waste finally subsided and several trees had been the unfortunate recipients of a trunk shattering fist or two, Beruto cooled off and turned his attention a little more calmly to the problem at hand. He had twenty miles of usable range in the traction batteries, and according to his global position navigational assistant on the dash board, needed to travel a minimum of thirty miles just to reach the nearest town. With an obvious ten mile gap in those calculations to make up, the shirtless teen sighed and went into one of the side storage lockers to fish out something he didn't think he would actually need to use to early.
"Well I bought this damn thing for this very reason." he grumbled to himself as he hauled a set of heavy chains out of the compartment and followed them with an X shaped, leather harness. Then headed around to the front of the RV, Beruto proceeded to connect the chains to their mounting brackets hidden under the front of the vehicle by the large bumper. Then to the ends of the chains was connected the harness and in the space of just under a half hour, the shirtless teen was trussed up like some sort of bipedal pack mule. Knowing he might some day have to put his phenomenal strength to work in this fashion, Beruto had sent away for the harness, at considerable expense and when it had arrived, made some modifications, most notably, a remote control which would trigger a handy device in the cap called a Brake Buddy, allowing him to engage the RV's brakes without having to be in the driver's seat.
And so, harnessed up and looking like he was single handedly pulling along one of the stones for a pyramid, Beruto trudged off, with his mobile home in tow. Ten miles would be quite the challenge, especially if the roads were hilly, which being in the woods, they of course were. By the time the boy had made it just two miles, he was dripping with sweat. Lunch time saw him reach the four mile mark, and astonishingly, not a single car or truck had driven past him all morning. A break for lunch was in order before the muscled teen pressed on. One monster peanut butter and banana sandwich later, and Beruto was off once more, determined to make it the rest of the ten miles before dinner. That unfortunately didn't happen. While the down hill sections of the journey were easy enough and amounted to little more than running ahead of the coasting motor home, the up hill sections were grueling and left the boy feeling like his pounding heart was going to explode out of his chest. Dinner time rolled around, and while he had not achieved the full ten mile goal, he had completed a very respectable eight miles. Feeling he owed himself a treat, the red headed teen took a ham steak out of the fridge and cooked that for his dinner. The delicious meal was accompanied by his favorite, mashed potatoes and for veggies, a mix of carrots and peas.
With dinner out of the way and an extra half hour of time thrown in to rest, Beruto resumed the near herculean task of hauling his mobile home another two miles to get it within range of the traction batteries. Illuminated by the rig's head lights, the shirtless teen trudged along, sweat pouring off of his muscled body in veritable buckets. Finally though, nearing eight in the evening and in pitch blackness except for the illumination from the RV's head lights, Beruto passed the ten mile mark and drew to a halt. Packing away the harness and chains, the boy was too tired to drive the remaining twenty miles, instead and treated himself a nice long shower and then tossed himself into bed.
It was surreal, in more than a day not a single car or truck had driven by on this forested road, not in all of the time Beruto had been on it. Indeed, the muscled teen was beginning to think they had closed the road at both ends as soon as he had gotten on it, or he had been abducted by aliens for some nefarious purpose, which somehow involved using him to pull ridiculously heavy loads up and down hills like a modern day Sisyphus. At last though, with a good night's sleep behind him, the boy was ready to drive the remaining twenty miles into town and hopefully once there, get a new starter for the mobile home. Thankfully the traction batteries were in good condition and the recreational vehicle hummed along under their power. The overly complicated design of the rig had actually come in handy in this instance. What had been intended as a fuel saving measure head in fact saved Beruto from three or four days of hauling the RV the thirty miles himself. With the battery's power though, the red haired teen was able to drive all of the way into town and make it into a local mechanic's shop before breakfast time was over. More good luck came the exhausted teen's way when it turned out that the mechanic had the starter motor he needed in stock and with a relatively light work load that day, had the motor installed by lunch. With a major hiccup of his journey behind him, Beruto was off once again that afternoon. The engine started up without a problem and the shirtless teen was able to once again drive along with confidence that his house on wheels would get him to his destination with a reasonable modicum of reliability. With another day's travel, Beruto was cruising past bill boards and signs for all sorts of bizarre attractions, but none so strange as a giant amusement park called Pilaf Land, the came name as the country it seemed, at least according to his dash board mounted navigational aid. While he had led a decidedly sheltered life in the little farming town where he'd grown up, the travels he under took for the General had never taken him to his strange country, so Beruto actually didn't know much about it, which made the signs for the attractions all the more mind bending. You would think that this Pilaf character was President of the Universe by the way he seemed to be idolized in this strange place. Close enough to his destination now though, Beruto sent a text message ahead to Kite, informing him of his arrival and within an hour he would once again see his traveling friend. An added bonus popped up as well, Cade was doing some traveling of his own and in the time it had taken Beruto to make the trip to Pilaf Land, Cade had managed to get to the same place, which of course meant that Beruto wouldn't now need to take his RV on any ferries to go to the southern islands, which suited the boy just fine, the RV was intended to roll, and arguably fly, not float.
Word Count: 2492
(Recreational Equipment and Resistance Chain are in effect.)