mission report for argle_fraster
Mission report for argle_fraster
Delivered by: astrangerenters
Title: The Legend of Yuya: The O-CART-rina of Time
Groups/Pairings: Tegoshi Yuya/Kamenashi Kazuya; Jimmy Mackey; Kato Shigeaki; Yamashita Tomohisa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Bad language. Non-sensical plot. Stupidity of all involved.
Summary: The latitude and longitude were correct. He was in New York, USA. The day was right, August 15th. But somehow 1969 had become 2458. Which made zero sense. And of course there were zombies outside.
Notes: Hello there, argle_fraster! This story contains Tegoshi, Jimmy Mackey, and shopping carts and is organized according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so what else is there to say? This may be the most ridiculous story I've written in my life, and I hope you will enjoy it!
Tegoshi Yuya knew his time machine was a lemon when he set it for 1969 (Woodstock! Yay!) and it hurled him forward to 2458 (Holy Balls, What?!).
Okay, so maybe he should have done some more product research. There were dozens of books on the market for that very thing. Every Tom, Dick, and Hiroshi had a book out now. How to select a dealership, how much of a down payment to make, are you willing to pay enough to send yourself back to the time of the dinosaurs, etc. Time machine selection was all about the chronometer inside, not the whizz bang special features of the machine itself. After all, a time machine - a good time machine - wouldn't fuck up so spectacularly.
But Tegoshi hadn't had time for books. He'd had to sit idly by at the office and listen to the assholes three cubicles down bragging about their adventures every day. "Last night I went back and fought alongside Oda Nobunaga." "The other day I took a long lunch and went back to junior high school to hook up with my hot science teacher." They didn't make any more money than he did, and they sure as hell weren't working as hard as he was. Finally, he'd had enough, going to the used machine dealership in the shady neighborhood south of the tracks.
He'd had 130,000 yen in cash, and the guy had twirled his invisible mustache and sold Tegoshi a sixteen year old model. The thing still had its original paint job, a shimmering silver, and on the demonstration ride they'd gone back to last Tuesday to observe Tegoshi himself at work eating a pathetic chicken teriyaki bento in the break room by himself. He'd been so annoyed that he'd signed on the dotted line just so he could go back in time and force his past self to not be such a loser.
But he decided against that as soon as he got the machine home and installed in his living room. Why go back and see what his life was like without a time machine in it? The sleazeball at the dealership said the thing had enough of a charge for five hundred years in either direction, not bad for such an old model, and if Tegoshi could get some better parts, he could get it fixed up a bit. He decided his first run would only set him back a century. Free love, good music, all the stuff that was lacking in the present and forcing people to escape in any machine they could get their mitts on.
He wasn't a complete idiot. The first rule of time travel was blending in and not causing trouble. Interfering in the time stream was a huge no-no, and the government arrested any asshole who tried to go back and buy Sony stock at its IPO or any creepers who went back in time to have sex with their great-grandma "by accident." Time tourism was just that - tourism.
So to blend in at Woodstock, 1969, he took his remaining cash and hit the party store, shilling out serious money for some bell-bottom pants and a floral print shirt to match his Internet image search for "sexy hippie dude." He got dressed, winking at himself in the mirror and feeling pretty sure that everyone he met would beg him to drop acid with them.
He'd set the machine perfectly, exactly the way the douche at the dealership had explained. The chronometer read August 15, 1969, and he'd entered in the latitude and longitude for New York. So when he pulled the lever and the machine whirred and booped and beeped, he expected to open the door and find a bunch of high as a kite topless girls willing to blow him after he lied about being Jimi Hendrix's roadie (he had big dreams, okay?).
Instead he opened the door and found his time machine surrounded by a bunch of zombies. Zombies! No fucking joke, zombies. They were shuffling and moaning and one's arm fell off as they "arrrrrgh"ed their way slowly towards his time machine. He slammed the door with a high-pitched wail of fright, whole body shaking as he stared at the chronometer and tried to understand what the hell had gone wrong.
The latitude and longitude were correct. He was in New York, USA. The day was right, August 15th. But somehow 1969 had become 2458. Which made zero sense. And of course there were zombies outside. He could hear their moaning even through the metal walls enclosing him. Tegoshi desperately tried to engage the cloaking device, maybe throw the undead off a bit, but it only made smoke come spilling out of the panel in front of him.
"What the hell?" he screeched, banging the panel with his fist. "I bought bell-bottoms for this, you stupid machine!"
He started to cough, the smoke rapidly sucking all the oxygen out of his rather small enclosed space. He tried to pull the lever again, but it wouldn't move. The machine didn't make a sound, and the folks who wanted to eat him outside (and not in the way he'd imagined when he'd left home) started to shake it.
"Nooooo!" Tegoshi complained. It wasn't so bad that he was stuck in 2458 - he'd find someone and hitch a ride back. But zombies...why were there zombies in the future? What had gone wrong? Had someone messed with the time stream here and the government didn't know?
There were shotgun blasts then, and he crouched down with a squeak. Thank god, Tegoshi thought, someone was coming to his rescue! As soon as the zombie gurgle moans died down, he gathered his courage and decided to open the time machine door. But then his entire world was rotating, and he screamed as the machine toppled over.
"Help!" he shouted, coughing through the smoke and banging on the door (which was now the floor beneath him). "Help, I'm alive in here! Hey! Zombie killer, help me!"
There was a screeching sound, and Tegoshi was on the move. This time he wasn't traveling through time - he was being dragged through the present. This...sucked.
~*~*~
PHYSIOLOGICAL
~*~*~
He must have passed out from all the smoke, because the next thing Tegoshi knew, he was out of his piece of shit time machine and lying on top of a musty sleeping bag. He woke up with a groan, aching everywhere. Where the hell was he, he wondered, blinking in confusion. There was some red nylon fabric overhead as far as he could see - a tent. He was stuck in a tent.
He sat up, suddenly frightened. There'd been zombies and his time machine was busted, and he had to get home and away from this crazy place. The tent unzipped, and a guy with black hair and a judgmental as hell face poked his head in.
"You're awake," the guy said, and he looked pretty smug for someone who looked like he'd barely eaten in a week.
"I'm awake," Tegoshi parroted back. "Now what did you do with my machine?"
"We needed the metal."
Tegoshi blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
The guy came into the tent the whole way, and he gave off the scent of way too much cologne - it seemed that was an attempt to hide body odor. Tegoshi prided himself on smelling good at all times, even if he worked in a dead-end job. But here in the future where there were zombies and tents (he hadn't seen too much else yet), baths were apparently hard to come by.
"The metal," the guy explained, sitting down on the ground and staring at Tegoshi like he was born yesterday. Well, he was born a lot earlier than that. "We need to reinforce the south gate, so thank you for your donation."
"What fucking donation?"
"Settle down, tiger," smug douche told him. "Don't you know how lucky you are to even be alive? You should be thanking God that Pi and I even found you in that weird ass port-o-potty."
Tegoshi scowled. "My time machine is not a port-o-potty!"
"Well, nap time is over, and you can talk semantics with the boss. You're on his territory now," the guy said, getting up and opening the tent flap. "Come on."
Tegoshi got to his feet in a huff. No time machine? Not like he had the know-how to fix it, but he'd put all his extra money into buying it and he hadn't even gotten where he wanted to go. He followed the jerk out of the tent to find an entire village of shitty looking tents and metal contraptions.
There were dozens of dirty, hungry-looking people shuffling around, moving only a little bit faster than the zombies he'd originally discovered upon arrival in this hellhole of a century. The ruins of a large suspension bridge loomed over the encampment, one massive tower marking the center of the village. It was there that the guy brought him to a massive tent marked with a sign labeled "MACK ATTACK HQ," and Tegoshi wondered if he was better off taking his chances on the outside with the zombies.
The first thing Tegoshi noticed on the inside of the tent was the smell. It was like weed times a thousand, and he nearly puked. There were plush (if mostly stained) carpets lining the tent floor, cheap tablecloths adorning some tables with a buffet of junk food, and a throne area consisting of piles of pillows and beanbag chairs.
At the center sat a tall-looking guy in aviator sunglasses holding a goblet labeled "Number One Pimp" in sparkly red lettering. There were half a dozen women every color of the rainbow lying around his purple leopard print beanbag chair slash throne, dressed in skimpy bikinis that would probably turn Tegoshi on if he wasn't so furious that this asshole had ordered his time machine turned into scrap metal.
"Shige!" the Number One Pimp crowed happily as Tent Douche escorted Tegoshi up to him. "And Sleeping Beauty!"
Some of the women looked up at him, bored and unimpressed. "Hello," Tegoshi said, crossing his arms, feeling a little out of place in his hippie clothes. "I'm Tegoshi Yuya, I'm a time traveler from Japan, and I believe you have my time machine."
The women helped Number One Pimp to his feet, and he towered over all of them. His head nearly brushed against the top of the tent. "Shige, did I give this fashion monstrosity the right to talk?"
Tent Douche, apparently named Shige, shook his head. "Ah, I'm sorry, boss. My apologies. This is the guy me and Yamapi found down on Route 7, the one in the port-o-potty."
"It's not a port-o-potty!" Tegoshi protested.
Shige just rolled his eyes. "Tegoshi, you're a guest inside the boss' tent, show some respect."
"I don't know what any of you people are talking about! I just want to go home!"
Tall guy held out his goblet, and the women who weren't busy making out with each other scrambled to refill it with some grape soda from the buffet table spread. "So it's clear you've hit your head, these things happen," he said. "Let me tell it to you straight then. My name is Jimmy Mackey. I'm the king of this place, and you are here because my crew saw you had something valuable. That something valuable is now going to help reinforce my south gate, keep the chompy chomps out."
"The chompy chomps being the zombies," Shige supplied helpfully.
"But you can't do that!" Tegoshi protested. "That's my time machine!"
Jimmy Mackey took his goblet of grape soda back from one of the sexy ladies, laughing hysterically. "You really do think you're a time traveler, don't you? That's cute, really. I guess everyone has a different way of emotionally handling the fact that the chompy chomps have overrun the planet. I guess we can let you stay until you emerge from your state of obvious distress."
"But I don't want to stay here," Tegoshi said. "I'm not from your time!" And he definitely didn't want to live in a place where zombies ruled the earth. Tokyo in his time wasn't looking so bad in comparison.
Jimmy Mackey just smiled, slithering over across his puffy pile of pillows to wrap an arm around Tegoshi. And because he was so tall, Tegoshi came up to the dude's chest. "Now little one, you're trying my patience with your talky talky mouthing off. This is Mack Attack HQ. I run this place. Let's compare, shall we? We have you in your weird little clothes spouting your weird little ideas about time travel. And then we have me, king of this place, one of the last settlements of mankind. I have snacks, I have ladies, I have ladies who will hand feed me snacks. I think you will accept my hospitality with a smile and a 'thank you very much, Jimmy Mackey.'"
Shige was looking at him rather urgently. Tegoshi was definitely not getting his time machine back. He was stuck here or he was stuck outside with the..."chompy chomps."
"Thank you very much, Jimmy Mackey," Tegoshi mumbled.
"That's the spirit, my tiny new friend," Jimmy said, shoving Tegoshi back in Shige's direction. "Okay Shige, how many tents extra do we have right now?"
Shige shook his head. "Two, maybe three tops. Ryo never came back from that expedition to the 7-11."
"Rats!" Jimmy complained. "And he said he was going to bring me some Cheetos! Poor Ryo. Now he's a chompy chomp's Cheeto."
Tegoshi shuddered at the implications of that. Shige spoke up again. "So should I just set up the new guy in Ryo's tent?"
"No," Jimmy said, sitting back down on his beanbag chair. "Not yet. He needs to earn his place here. We'll run a race at the end of the week. Let him earn his tent...and my begrudging respect."
"Race? What race?" Tegoshi asked, wishing he'd brought his sneakers. He'd been on track team in high school, which seemed like a really long time ago now that he was in this crazy place. But if it came down to running, he'd earn the hell out of that tent.
But Jimmy Mackey raised his hand, and he and Shige were both apparently dismissed from Mack Attack HQ. Shige looked rather annoyed that he'd gotten the job of being Tegoshi's minder.
"Alright," Shige said. "Boss has spoken. You can have whatever food you can beg off of other people for now, and it's not too cold out at night so you won't die from exposure. But you'll have to earn a place among us so we know you can be trusted."
"So I can't even have a damn tent unless I win this race? What kind of race?" Tegoshi asked him.
"The most basic of the basics," Shige said, looking surprised that Tegoshi was this out of the loop. "You must have really hit your head when we knocked over your port-o-potty."
Tegoshi didn't bother to argue this time. He was obviously stuck in a place surrounded by complete idiots.
"We're a micro-economy dependent on quick runs out into the wild for supplies. The boss needs us to hone our skills so that we can bring something back to the community. Everyone needs to prove they can pull their weight."
"Just tell me what kind of race already, damn it," Tegoshi said.
Shige smiled. "The sport of kings in a world gone mad. Shopping cart races."
~*~*~
SAFETY
~*~*~
Maybe he had hit his head at some point, Tegoshi thought. Because how the hell had he ended up in a place like this, dressed in bell-bottoms, sleeping in the dirt under a decimated bridge in a future overrun by zombies? Shige had been nice enough to share his food, what little there was. Most of the good stuff went to their "benevolent" leader, who only seemed to be in charge because nobody else had a cup that said "Number One Pimp" on it. It was a community lacking in ambition, Tegoshi figured.
Teams of two went out from the settlement all the time, but rangings were going farther and farther now as the food supply dwindled and they'd exhausted most of the surrounding areas. Shige and his partner, Yamapi, had a shopping cart they'd nicknamed "Akkun" and they went out every other day in search of food or scrap metal to reinforce the fence surrounding the settlement. That was how they'd found Tegoshi in the first place.
In order to earn his rightful place in the community, Tegoshi had to prove that he was competent enough to steer a shopping cart of his own. The problem was, of course, that teams needed two people. Shige had told him to look around the settlement, introduce himself to the locals and hope that one of them had lost a partner recently.
The shopping cart race required a driver and a passenger. The driver steered the cart through the obstacle course against an opponent's team while someone sat inside the cart wielding a bat. Out in the wild, it was the first line of defense against zombies. Thus far, nobody seemed terribly interested in joining Tegoshi's team.
He'd been turned down by a woman named Becky, one of Jimmy Mackey's harem of ladies - she was the "smart" one as opposed to the "hot" one, the "one with the big jugs," the "skinny blonde," etc. Becky had her sights set on a guy named Zac who'd just lost his partner Vanessa on a ranging - she asked Tegoshi if it was "too soon to swoop in on a hottie widower" and he'd simply moved on without comment. Humanity sure had gotten nasty in the future.
He'd been turned down by a guy named Nakamaru, whose partner Taguchi had blown out his knee and couldn't go on runs for a while. He'd assumed that Tegoshi was a lunatic, judging him on his clothes - it wasn't his fault he'd only packed one outfit and it was from a party store 300 years in the past! And who was this Nakamaru to judge him? He wore a sweater vest and penny loafers.
He curled up in the dirt night after night, partner-less and miserable, as the race date loomed ever closer. He'd be racing against Shige and Yamapi, who spent most of the day trash-talking Tegoshi while he drank flat Diet Coke that Jimmy Mackey had rejected from his buffet table.
It was the day before the race, and if Tegoshi couldn't wrangle up a partner, he was to be cast out of the community for good. He'd even swapped his bell-bottoms for a pair of ugly jean shorts that Yamapi didn't fit in any longer (despite the trash talk, he was kind of a nice guy in comparison to the rest of this crazy place). So in new pants and a new level of desperation, Tegoshi started opening tent flaps and introducing himself.
He was finally directed to the far side of the settlement, in a particularly dark and inhospitable looking part of the camp completely under the shadow of the bridge. There he met Kamenashi Kazuya, who Tegoshi thought was almost as pretty as himself (too close to call without a mirror - only Jimmy Mackey had those in his tent). Kamenashi was quiet, cheerless, and on the verge of being booted from the community as well. After his partner Koki had succumbed to the zombie infection and tried to eat Kame's face, he'd had to be put down. Now Kame sat alone in his tent, miserable and grumpy and mostly unwilling to help out.
And probably not the ideal partner, if Tegoshi had to say so. For one, Kamenashi was a skinny thing, wiry and thin. Tegoshi was the track team star from high school - he was the obvious cart runner. He needed someone on deck who could wield a bat - Kamenashi was nearly skin and bones. He probably couldn't even lift a bat.
Even so, he settled down inside Kame's tent and stared at him until the man finally spoke up. "What do you want?"
"Doing the cart race tomorrow," Tegoshi explained. "Need a partner."
Kame snorted. "Everyone else said no, huh?"
Tegoshi rolled his eyes. "Please, I've got at least twenty people willing to sell their partners out for a chance to race with me." That was a lie. "And fifty more wanting to make out with me when I cross the finish line."
Kame raised an eyebrow at that.
"Hey, how would you even know what's going on outside? You're just sitting in here like a loser. Look at me, right? I'm not moping like you. I'm not even from this century. You assholes took my time machine and made it a fence. I can't get home and there's zombies out there who probably think I look delicious. Truth bomb - I would be delicious," Tegoshi said. "Look, dude, you can just sit in the cart and get in touch with your feelings all you want. I'll win this, okay? I just need someone's ass inside the cart."
He was rewarded with an even more suspicious raised eyebrow before Kame finally cracked a smile. It was kind of scary. Like when your dentist smiled at you after testing the drill. "I like you."
"Most people do eventually," Tegoshi admitted, and since he was here in another century entirely, there was no way to really disprove it.
And so he and Kamenashi became cart partners. Jimmy Mackey apparently preferred the namesquish "cartners" but Tegoshi would rather drink his own pee than call Kame his cartner. They were let out of the compound with a loner cart Yamapi had found at a long-abandoned grocery store. If he and Kame won the following day, they'd get a fancier cart courtesy of the cart corral behind Jimmy Mackey's tent.
Tegoshi discovered that despite his melancholy and his 95 pound frame, Kamenashi was really good with a bat. As Tegoshi practiced pushing the shopping cart through the dirt surrounding their encampment, Kame swung the bat around, knocking over invisible mailboxes and bashing in invisible zombie heads, not missing a beat even as Tegoshi turned the cart, using some fancy footwork as he pretended they were being hunted down by the walking dead.
They ended the day with a high five and a newfound friendship. Or more like Tegoshi believed he actually had a fighting chance the following day and would spend the following night inside a tent instead of outside as a human mosquito magnet.
Race morning arrived, and there was a knot in Tegoshi's stomach the size of Jimmy Mackey's ego. Kame met him at the starting line with the loner cart, looking nervous. Sure, they'd practiced the day before, but that was outside and not against an opponent. Even now Yamapi was gleefully pushing Akkun to the start line, Shige inside the cart with a two by four and a cracked football helmet on his head.
A small crowd of curious onlookers gathered, and the race route would take them all through the compound. Jimmy Mackey had a giant flag with a topless woman crudely drawn on it, ready to start the race. "Okay everyone," Jimmy called to those who'd assembled. "Some dude wants to join our settlement, but he has to prove his worth, blah blah blah. Gentlemen, start your engines!"
Tegoshi sighed. "It's a shopping cart."
Kame gripped the bat tightly. "We can win this. We'll win it for Koki."
"Kame, dude, I seriously wasn't here until a week ago. I don't know who he was!"
Kame started on a long and dramatic rant about his lost friend who'd regrettably become a chompy chomp, and Tegoshi so didn't care. Mercifully, Jimmy Mackey waved the boobie flag, and Kame fell back into the cart with an "oof!" as Tegoshi started pushing. The crowd was clearly cheering for Yamapi and Shige, seeing as how a Tegoshi victory would be another mouth to feed in the community.
They weaved in and out of the orange traffic cones that had been set up along the route, Kame knocking several of them down with his bat for bonus points. He could hear Shige screaming at their side, shouting about Tegoshi's bell-bottoms (even though he wasn't wearing them any longer). But what Shige had thought would be disheartening only spurred Tegoshi on, zooming past tents and piles of scrap to find Jimmy Mackey waiting for their arrival at the finish line, ready to wave the boobie flag again, most likely because it was a boobie flag more than anything else.
Kame knocked down one last cone with his bat as Tegoshi pushed his cart past Akkun in the final seconds, hearing Yamapi complain sadly as the crowd started to disperse immediately upon seeing Tegoshi's victory. But Tegoshi didn't care. He had a tent! He wasn't going to die!
He gave Kame a high five, and gave Jimmy Mackey the finger. The leader of the community begrudgingly called for silence.
"Alright," Jimmy Mackey said, holding aloft a cheap looking bottle of liquor with an ancient looking label that read "Boone's Farm" on it. "Alright, you can stay, both of you." He tossed the bottle of liquor and Tegoshi caught it. "Consider that your last freebie. From now on, you two earn your keep on the outside. Peace out."
As he set up his tent that night, Tegoshi snuggled up with the bottle of alcohol he'd won so easily. He was stuck here, but victory had brought with it a strong desire to have a "Number One Pimp" cup of his own. He might not ever get home, but he decided to make the most of a bad situation. First the tent, Tegoshi vowed, and next the whole settlement.
~*~*~
LOVE AND BELONGING
~*~*~
Tegoshi discovered rather quickly that zombies were scary as shit. He had of course encountered several on his first day here in 2458, but now he and Kame were willingly going out in search of sustenance, right into zombie territory. He'd already lost track of how many they'd killed, and he'd gotten desensitized fairly quickly to brains exploding in his face courtesy of Kame's bat.
If there was one good thing about Kame, Tegoshi discovered as the weeks went on, he was good at planning. Tegoshi had always hated planning. He was just an impulsive guy - see: dropping 130,000 yen on a piece of shit time machine because everyone else had one. So where Tegoshi would push the cart out of the settlement and think of heading in a vaguely southern direction, Kame had drawn a bunch of crude maps that would guide them where they needed to go.
Today they were heading north by northwest to an abandoned tire factory. Some folks in the settlement liked pimping their rides a bit, adding on better rubber to the wheels of their shopping carts. The more rubber they could snag, the better swag they could trade it for back at the settlement. Tegoshi found himself getting stronger the more he had to keep pushing the cart with Kame on board and a bunch of crap in tow.
Most of the teams went out in search of food or better yet, guns and bullets. But people never saw the big picture, Kame explained. People never thought about the extras. So teams would go out and never come back because they'd go to a mini mart that had been thoroughly raided already and get themselves ambushed for no good reason. So Kame had them go to tire factories and used car dealerships for rubber, schools and bookstores for pens and paper and reading materials.
The plan was to set up a sort of general store for bartering at the settlement. Jimmy Mackey was the go-to person for trade, but Tegoshi and Kame had entrepreneurial spirit. They were going to take over by the end of the month, Tegoshi was sure of it.
"You're smart, Kame," Tegoshi said as he pushed the cart up a hill. "So how come you haven't taken over the compound already?"
"It was because of Koki," Kame said, and Tegoshi was worried he was going to start crying or something, but instead he just sighed. "I couldn't do it alone because Jimmy's got so much power and all those ladies, and Koki...he just had no business acumen. He spent most of his days trying to hook up with Jimmy's girls. No dice."
"Sucks to be him," Tegoshi replied, scanning the horizon. "There, is that the factory?"
Kame checked his half-assed map again, nodding. Tegoshi urged them on with a spring in his step. They hadn't been to this place yet, and as they rolled up, Tegoshi could see that a fire had nearly destroyed the entire stock ages ago, maybe just as the zombie apocalypse got started. Kame hopped out of the cart, and they wandered around the factory floor in search of a few tires that had survived the blaze. Between the two of them, they managed to find three huge tires. Two would fit with Kame in the cart, the other would go underneath. They were in rubber business.
It was odd, Tegoshi thought as they started the long trek back to camp. Now that he had a life here, he wasn't as depressed about not being able to get home. Sure, his grandma would miss him, and she always sent him cookies in the mail, but life was different here. Any day might be his last, courtesy of a chompy chomp with a hunger for his delicious Tegoshi-ness. In his real time, he had a dead end job, no chance for advancement.
Here he had a tent that he'd earned with his own skills, a business partner, a future. Sure there were zombies. Sure there was Jimmy Mackey's douche face. But for the first time in a long time, Tegoshi felt like he belonged somewhere.
Three dead zombies later, they got back to camp, and within a few days he and Kame had gotten their general store set up. He could see Jimmy Mackey looming in the distance, trying to get people interested in going to the zombie-infested outlet mall ten miles away to grab him some John Galliano underwear in exchange for "some dope-ass grape soda." People abandoned Jimmy's set-up in droves, and soon Tegoshi and Kame had gotten themselves a spare tent to store all the extra snack items and goods they'd received in trade.
He was lying in his tent one night some time later, clutching the knife he'd gotten from Shige in exchange for some boring ass books from a public library (Tegoshi was pretty sure he'd come out the winner in that deal). His tent flap unzipped, and he was immediately on the defensive, knife in hand. But it was just Kame, looking creepy and weird.
"Kame," Tegoshi said, "the hell are you doing here? I need my beauty sleep if we're hitting up that cigar store tomorrow."
And then Kame was suddenly all snuggly beside him, clinging to Tegoshi's sleeping bag like Yamapi clung to the bags of pork rinds he pilfered from Jimmy Mackey's stash. "You're a jerk," Kame informed him. "You just blindly say what's on your mind and you don't care about the consequences. You showed up here with your big mouth and your ego and you changed my entire life."
"For the better, I should say."
"I don't know what I'm feeling," Kame admitted. "I don't know if it's because I haven't gotten laid in a few years or what..."
"It's probably that," Tegoshi interrupted him. He usually liked girls, but he had to admit that he was easily won over by flattery from either gender. "That and my beautiful face."
Kame curled up at Tegoshi's side, and for someone so thin he was nice and warm, if a bit pointy. "I just wanted you to know how much you've helped me, how good it feels when it's just you and me and the cart, out there, facing whatever dangers the world throws at us."
Tegoshi recalled his earlier goal, why he'd tried to go to Woodstock in the time machine in the first place. He realized that dream had never been fulfilled, but yet here was someone who he didn't totally hate and thought was kind of smart coming on to him. He didn't have to lie to Kame the way Jimmy Mackey's girls lied to him and put out because he had the best tent and the best food. No, Tegoshi could be honest with Kame. Could trust him more than he'd trusted anyone else.
He still wasn't going to call him his cartner though. That shit was just stupid.
Tegoshi unzipped his sleeping bag, wiggling over in the dark so Kame could join him inside. "Okay then," he told Kame. "Got any rubbers?"
"With me? What? It's all in the spare tent and..." He felt Kame freeze beside him. "Oh. You weren't talking about the stuff from the tire factory."
"I was not."
Kame said nothing. Tegoshi snickered.
~*~*~
ESTEEM
~*~*~
Okay, so now he and Kame were both successful business partners and successful bed partners. For the very first time, Tegoshi discovered that he was happy in his professional and personal life simultaneously. It felt pretty damn good. And way more fulfilling than life had been when he'd gotten that stupid time machine, thinking a visit to Woodstock would be the cure for all his ills.
And as Tegoshi and Kame grew their business and influence throughout the camp, the Mack Attack HQ was losing its leverage. Even now Jimmy Mackey was having a difficult time keeping track of all of his ladies and various grape soda-fetching minions. The stack of pillows inside his tent quickly depleted, sold off in order to buy himself food because he wasn't skimming off the top on most of the trade now.
Finally, Jimmy had apparently had enough. Tegoshi and Kame were just returning from a ranging, cart full of yoga mats and exercise equipment, when Jimmy came running up. Everyone gathered around, gasping in shock as Jimmy walked up to Tegoshi's shopping cart and pushed it over.
"Hey!" Tegoshi complained. "What's the big idea?"
"Boom, you've been challenged!" Jimmy squawked at them. "Cart race. Tomorrow. And when I school your asses, you're done. Out of this settlement, for good!"
"We're bringing commerce to this backward-ass settlement!" Tegoshi shouted. "You're just jealous!"
"Of a little girl in bell-bottom pants?" Jimmy said, looming over them like a black cloud. A black cloud with an obnoxious face and a boobie flag. "I doubt that. Anyhow, see you bitches tomorrow. It's on!"
Tegoshi looked down at his jean shorts. "I don't even wear those pants anymore!"
Kame patted his shoulder. "Here's the shot we needed. Jimmy hasn't raced in years. He hasn't had to. We'll get him out of here ourselves."
"Haven't you watched any movies, Kame?" Tegoshi asked, immediately realizing that no, Kame hadn't, seeing as how he'd grown up in a zombie apocalypse situation. "The bad guy always cheats!"
And so the bad guy did.
Tegoshi and Kame arrived with their cart at the start line the following day, and found Jimmy Mackey sitting inside a blinged out shopping cart with spinners on the wheels and reinforced steel plating on every side. He had three girls in bikinis ready to push him around, and Tegoshi rolled his eyes.
"That's not fair, and you know it."
Jimmy just took a sip from his "Number One Pimp" goblet and laughed. "I make the rules around here, and I always have. And I always will, midget. You'll rue the day you crossed me, blah blah blah. Come on, let's get this over with because I've got some epic porno mags needing my attention inside my tent."
Bum knee Taguchi had been chosen to serve as judge slash referee for the race, and he seemed pretty excited to be holding the boobie flag. Tegoshi knew he'd have to work all the harder - the boobie flag was a pretty big deal around here.
The race started and Jimmy Mackey's shopping cart somehow shot flames at them as it pulled away from the starting line, making Tegoshi squeak in surprise as he narrowly avoided the loss of all his leg hair. "Come on," Kame shouted, "I know we can win this!"
Duly spurred on, Tegoshi took off, whipping the cart around the corners of the settlement. Of course, Jimmy had the unfair advantage. He'd ensured that Tegoshi's side of the race course was littered with dirty underwear that could get stuck in his wheels and halfway through the race, a wall of metal had been set-up. A shimmering silver metal Tegoshi distinctly remembered as part of his time machine.
The bastard hadn't even used it to reinforce the walls of the compound. He'd saved this for one final "haha," to make Tegoshi lose his spirit and remember the life he'd left behind. Too bad Jimmy Mackey didn't know the new and improved Tegoshi Yuya all that well. With Kame urging him forward, Tegoshi ran his heart out, dodging underpants and even bottles of pee Jimmy had placed along the path.
They were getting into the final curve, Tegoshi gaining on Jimmy and his three cart pushers. "Kame," Tegoshi said. "Take out the cup!"
"You got it!"
With an elegant swing of the bat that Jimmy thought was meant for his head, Kame smacked the "Number One Pimp" goblet right out of Jimmy's hand. "Noooooo!" Jimmy screamed, ordering the girls to immediately turn around and retrieve it. This enabled Tegoshi to scream in joy, pushing the cart to its absolute limit and crossing the finish line as Taguchi waved the boobie flag and the entire settlement erupted into cheers.
He and Kame hugged as Jimmy Mackey's shopping cart came limping over the finish line, the enormously tall man inside the cart looking completely lost as he clutched his beloved goblet.
"But...but...how could I lose?" Jimmy was muttering, and already his harem girls were abandoning him, walking over to stand behind Kame and Tegoshi in solidarity.
"This has been a referendum on your crappy leadership," Tegoshi informed him. "You're finished, Mackey. It's off to the chompy chomps with you."
Jimmy blubbered. "You can't put me out there. I can't live without my beanbag chairs and my life of chompy chomp-free luxury!"
"Should have thought about that before you left a bunch of piss on the roadway!" Kame snapped at him.
Now that power was obviously transferred, the citizens didn't seem to care much at all, moving back to their tents now that the big cart race was over. Tegoshi and Kame watched with some measure of satisfaction as Yamapi and Shige dragged Jimmy Mackey over to the south gate, locking him out. For the next few hours they heard him outside crying like a little girl before he finally screamed at the settlement that he was "too cool" for this place and was going to seek his fortunes elsewhere.
Tegoshi assumed he'd be zombie food within six hours.
"Well," Kame said as he and Tegoshi got settled inside what had been Mack Attack HQ. "Looks like we're in charge of this place now."
Tegoshi plopped himself down on a beanbag chair and smiled. "It's good to be the king."
~*~*~
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
~*~*~
The settlement thrived. Without Jimmy Mackey hogging all the food and all the hot ladies, people started to get along better. They weren't starving so they had enough strength to outrun the zombies while looking around on the outside. They found other settlements scattered across what had once been New York State, setting up trade routes and bringing even more wealth into their encampment.
Plus, Tegoshi had Kame which turned out to be better than he'd even thought. Initially, they hadn't made much sense, but between Kame's mind for planning and Tegoshi's obvious charisma, they were unstoppable. And, to be quite honest, having sex with Kame was the next best thing to having sex with himself.
So of course as soon as Tegoshi had turned his life around, stopped missing his real time and the people who lived there, Shige and Yamapi found a time machine along the road, dragging it back behind their shopping cart one day.
Tegoshi ordered them to open it, and out came an extremely large man in a military uniform. He introduced himself as Nagase Tomoya, time cop, before throwing up in the dirt. Apparently it had been a bumpy ride to the settlement, and Yamapi just shrugged.
Nagase and Tegoshi met inside the "Tegonashi Palace" - they were still trying to think of a better name. Nagase looked concerned. "We've known for a while about the future zombie outbreak, but we didn't realize anyone had actually gotten stuck here. Sorry for the oversight on that."
"Yeah," Tegoshi said. "Little late to be noticing that I've been trapped here for months, but whatever."
Nagase took a sip from the "Number One Pimp" goblet - Tegoshi preferred guests to use it as a sign that he was only half as megalomaniacal as Jimmy Mackey had been. "And we don't know the exact cause, if it was something a time traveler messed with or just the way the world's meant to go. But that's why I'm here. You don't have to suffer in a place like this. I'm here to take you back."
Tegoshi leaned back against the cushions. He didn't want to go back. Sure this place was insane, but now it was home. He'd have to play a little unfair. He'd have to find his inner Jimmy Mackey.
"I'll go back to my real time on one condition."
"What's that?" Nagase asked.
"You just have to beat me in a race," Tegoshi said and smiled. "A shopping cart race."
Delivered by: astrangerenters
Title: The Legend of Yuya: The O-CART-rina of Time
Groups/Pairings: Tegoshi Yuya/Kamenashi Kazuya; Jimmy Mackey; Kato Shigeaki; Yamashita Tomohisa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Bad language. Non-sensical plot. Stupidity of all involved.
Summary: The latitude and longitude were correct. He was in New York, USA. The day was right, August 15th. But somehow 1969 had become 2458. Which made zero sense. And of course there were zombies outside.
Notes: Hello there, argle_fraster! This story contains Tegoshi, Jimmy Mackey, and shopping carts and is organized according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so what else is there to say? This may be the most ridiculous story I've written in my life, and I hope you will enjoy it!
Tegoshi Yuya knew his time machine was a lemon when he set it for 1969 (Woodstock! Yay!) and it hurled him forward to 2458 (Holy Balls, What?!).
Okay, so maybe he should have done some more product research. There were dozens of books on the market for that very thing. Every Tom, Dick, and Hiroshi had a book out now. How to select a dealership, how much of a down payment to make, are you willing to pay enough to send yourself back to the time of the dinosaurs, etc. Time machine selection was all about the chronometer inside, not the whizz bang special features of the machine itself. After all, a time machine - a good time machine - wouldn't fuck up so spectacularly.
But Tegoshi hadn't had time for books. He'd had to sit idly by at the office and listen to the assholes three cubicles down bragging about their adventures every day. "Last night I went back and fought alongside Oda Nobunaga." "The other day I took a long lunch and went back to junior high school to hook up with my hot science teacher." They didn't make any more money than he did, and they sure as hell weren't working as hard as he was. Finally, he'd had enough, going to the used machine dealership in the shady neighborhood south of the tracks.
He'd had 130,000 yen in cash, and the guy had twirled his invisible mustache and sold Tegoshi a sixteen year old model. The thing still had its original paint job, a shimmering silver, and on the demonstration ride they'd gone back to last Tuesday to observe Tegoshi himself at work eating a pathetic chicken teriyaki bento in the break room by himself. He'd been so annoyed that he'd signed on the dotted line just so he could go back in time and force his past self to not be such a loser.
But he decided against that as soon as he got the machine home and installed in his living room. Why go back and see what his life was like without a time machine in it? The sleazeball at the dealership said the thing had enough of a charge for five hundred years in either direction, not bad for such an old model, and if Tegoshi could get some better parts, he could get it fixed up a bit. He decided his first run would only set him back a century. Free love, good music, all the stuff that was lacking in the present and forcing people to escape in any machine they could get their mitts on.
He wasn't a complete idiot. The first rule of time travel was blending in and not causing trouble. Interfering in the time stream was a huge no-no, and the government arrested any asshole who tried to go back and buy Sony stock at its IPO or any creepers who went back in time to have sex with their great-grandma "by accident." Time tourism was just that - tourism.
So to blend in at Woodstock, 1969, he took his remaining cash and hit the party store, shilling out serious money for some bell-bottom pants and a floral print shirt to match his Internet image search for "sexy hippie dude." He got dressed, winking at himself in the mirror and feeling pretty sure that everyone he met would beg him to drop acid with them.
He'd set the machine perfectly, exactly the way the douche at the dealership had explained. The chronometer read August 15, 1969, and he'd entered in the latitude and longitude for New York. So when he pulled the lever and the machine whirred and booped and beeped, he expected to open the door and find a bunch of high as a kite topless girls willing to blow him after he lied about being Jimi Hendrix's roadie (he had big dreams, okay?).
Instead he opened the door and found his time machine surrounded by a bunch of zombies. Zombies! No fucking joke, zombies. They were shuffling and moaning and one's arm fell off as they "arrrrrgh"ed their way slowly towards his time machine. He slammed the door with a high-pitched wail of fright, whole body shaking as he stared at the chronometer and tried to understand what the hell had gone wrong.
The latitude and longitude were correct. He was in New York, USA. The day was right, August 15th. But somehow 1969 had become 2458. Which made zero sense. And of course there were zombies outside. He could hear their moaning even through the metal walls enclosing him. Tegoshi desperately tried to engage the cloaking device, maybe throw the undead off a bit, but it only made smoke come spilling out of the panel in front of him.
"What the hell?" he screeched, banging the panel with his fist. "I bought bell-bottoms for this, you stupid machine!"
He started to cough, the smoke rapidly sucking all the oxygen out of his rather small enclosed space. He tried to pull the lever again, but it wouldn't move. The machine didn't make a sound, and the folks who wanted to eat him outside (and not in the way he'd imagined when he'd left home) started to shake it.
"Nooooo!" Tegoshi complained. It wasn't so bad that he was stuck in 2458 - he'd find someone and hitch a ride back. But zombies...why were there zombies in the future? What had gone wrong? Had someone messed with the time stream here and the government didn't know?
There were shotgun blasts then, and he crouched down with a squeak. Thank god, Tegoshi thought, someone was coming to his rescue! As soon as the zombie gurgle moans died down, he gathered his courage and decided to open the time machine door. But then his entire world was rotating, and he screamed as the machine toppled over.
"Help!" he shouted, coughing through the smoke and banging on the door (which was now the floor beneath him). "Help, I'm alive in here! Hey! Zombie killer, help me!"
There was a screeching sound, and Tegoshi was on the move. This time he wasn't traveling through time - he was being dragged through the present. This...sucked.
~*~*~
PHYSIOLOGICAL
~*~*~
He must have passed out from all the smoke, because the next thing Tegoshi knew, he was out of his piece of shit time machine and lying on top of a musty sleeping bag. He woke up with a groan, aching everywhere. Where the hell was he, he wondered, blinking in confusion. There was some red nylon fabric overhead as far as he could see - a tent. He was stuck in a tent.
He sat up, suddenly frightened. There'd been zombies and his time machine was busted, and he had to get home and away from this crazy place. The tent unzipped, and a guy with black hair and a judgmental as hell face poked his head in.
"You're awake," the guy said, and he looked pretty smug for someone who looked like he'd barely eaten in a week.
"I'm awake," Tegoshi parroted back. "Now what did you do with my machine?"
"We needed the metal."
Tegoshi blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
The guy came into the tent the whole way, and he gave off the scent of way too much cologne - it seemed that was an attempt to hide body odor. Tegoshi prided himself on smelling good at all times, even if he worked in a dead-end job. But here in the future where there were zombies and tents (he hadn't seen too much else yet), baths were apparently hard to come by.
"The metal," the guy explained, sitting down on the ground and staring at Tegoshi like he was born yesterday. Well, he was born a lot earlier than that. "We need to reinforce the south gate, so thank you for your donation."
"What fucking donation?"
"Settle down, tiger," smug douche told him. "Don't you know how lucky you are to even be alive? You should be thanking God that Pi and I even found you in that weird ass port-o-potty."
Tegoshi scowled. "My time machine is not a port-o-potty!"
"Well, nap time is over, and you can talk semantics with the boss. You're on his territory now," the guy said, getting up and opening the tent flap. "Come on."
Tegoshi got to his feet in a huff. No time machine? Not like he had the know-how to fix it, but he'd put all his extra money into buying it and he hadn't even gotten where he wanted to go. He followed the jerk out of the tent to find an entire village of shitty looking tents and metal contraptions.
There were dozens of dirty, hungry-looking people shuffling around, moving only a little bit faster than the zombies he'd originally discovered upon arrival in this hellhole of a century. The ruins of a large suspension bridge loomed over the encampment, one massive tower marking the center of the village. It was there that the guy brought him to a massive tent marked with a sign labeled "MACK ATTACK HQ," and Tegoshi wondered if he was better off taking his chances on the outside with the zombies.
The first thing Tegoshi noticed on the inside of the tent was the smell. It was like weed times a thousand, and he nearly puked. There were plush (if mostly stained) carpets lining the tent floor, cheap tablecloths adorning some tables with a buffet of junk food, and a throne area consisting of piles of pillows and beanbag chairs.
At the center sat a tall-looking guy in aviator sunglasses holding a goblet labeled "Number One Pimp" in sparkly red lettering. There were half a dozen women every color of the rainbow lying around his purple leopard print beanbag chair slash throne, dressed in skimpy bikinis that would probably turn Tegoshi on if he wasn't so furious that this asshole had ordered his time machine turned into scrap metal.
"Shige!" the Number One Pimp crowed happily as Tent Douche escorted Tegoshi up to him. "And Sleeping Beauty!"
Some of the women looked up at him, bored and unimpressed. "Hello," Tegoshi said, crossing his arms, feeling a little out of place in his hippie clothes. "I'm Tegoshi Yuya, I'm a time traveler from Japan, and I believe you have my time machine."
The women helped Number One Pimp to his feet, and he towered over all of them. His head nearly brushed against the top of the tent. "Shige, did I give this fashion monstrosity the right to talk?"
Tent Douche, apparently named Shige, shook his head. "Ah, I'm sorry, boss. My apologies. This is the guy me and Yamapi found down on Route 7, the one in the port-o-potty."
"It's not a port-o-potty!" Tegoshi protested.
Shige just rolled his eyes. "Tegoshi, you're a guest inside the boss' tent, show some respect."
"I don't know what any of you people are talking about! I just want to go home!"
Tall guy held out his goblet, and the women who weren't busy making out with each other scrambled to refill it with some grape soda from the buffet table spread. "So it's clear you've hit your head, these things happen," he said. "Let me tell it to you straight then. My name is Jimmy Mackey. I'm the king of this place, and you are here because my crew saw you had something valuable. That something valuable is now going to help reinforce my south gate, keep the chompy chomps out."
"The chompy chomps being the zombies," Shige supplied helpfully.
"But you can't do that!" Tegoshi protested. "That's my time machine!"
Jimmy Mackey took his goblet of grape soda back from one of the sexy ladies, laughing hysterically. "You really do think you're a time traveler, don't you? That's cute, really. I guess everyone has a different way of emotionally handling the fact that the chompy chomps have overrun the planet. I guess we can let you stay until you emerge from your state of obvious distress."
"But I don't want to stay here," Tegoshi said. "I'm not from your time!" And he definitely didn't want to live in a place where zombies ruled the earth. Tokyo in his time wasn't looking so bad in comparison.
Jimmy Mackey just smiled, slithering over across his puffy pile of pillows to wrap an arm around Tegoshi. And because he was so tall, Tegoshi came up to the dude's chest. "Now little one, you're trying my patience with your talky talky mouthing off. This is Mack Attack HQ. I run this place. Let's compare, shall we? We have you in your weird little clothes spouting your weird little ideas about time travel. And then we have me, king of this place, one of the last settlements of mankind. I have snacks, I have ladies, I have ladies who will hand feed me snacks. I think you will accept my hospitality with a smile and a 'thank you very much, Jimmy Mackey.'"
Shige was looking at him rather urgently. Tegoshi was definitely not getting his time machine back. He was stuck here or he was stuck outside with the..."chompy chomps."
"Thank you very much, Jimmy Mackey," Tegoshi mumbled.
"That's the spirit, my tiny new friend," Jimmy said, shoving Tegoshi back in Shige's direction. "Okay Shige, how many tents extra do we have right now?"
Shige shook his head. "Two, maybe three tops. Ryo never came back from that expedition to the 7-11."
"Rats!" Jimmy complained. "And he said he was going to bring me some Cheetos! Poor Ryo. Now he's a chompy chomp's Cheeto."
Tegoshi shuddered at the implications of that. Shige spoke up again. "So should I just set up the new guy in Ryo's tent?"
"No," Jimmy said, sitting back down on his beanbag chair. "Not yet. He needs to earn his place here. We'll run a race at the end of the week. Let him earn his tent...and my begrudging respect."
"Race? What race?" Tegoshi asked, wishing he'd brought his sneakers. He'd been on track team in high school, which seemed like a really long time ago now that he was in this crazy place. But if it came down to running, he'd earn the hell out of that tent.
But Jimmy Mackey raised his hand, and he and Shige were both apparently dismissed from Mack Attack HQ. Shige looked rather annoyed that he'd gotten the job of being Tegoshi's minder.
"Alright," Shige said. "Boss has spoken. You can have whatever food you can beg off of other people for now, and it's not too cold out at night so you won't die from exposure. But you'll have to earn a place among us so we know you can be trusted."
"So I can't even have a damn tent unless I win this race? What kind of race?" Tegoshi asked him.
"The most basic of the basics," Shige said, looking surprised that Tegoshi was this out of the loop. "You must have really hit your head when we knocked over your port-o-potty."
Tegoshi didn't bother to argue this time. He was obviously stuck in a place surrounded by complete idiots.
"We're a micro-economy dependent on quick runs out into the wild for supplies. The boss needs us to hone our skills so that we can bring something back to the community. Everyone needs to prove they can pull their weight."
"Just tell me what kind of race already, damn it," Tegoshi said.
Shige smiled. "The sport of kings in a world gone mad. Shopping cart races."
~*~*~
SAFETY
~*~*~
Maybe he had hit his head at some point, Tegoshi thought. Because how the hell had he ended up in a place like this, dressed in bell-bottoms, sleeping in the dirt under a decimated bridge in a future overrun by zombies? Shige had been nice enough to share his food, what little there was. Most of the good stuff went to their "benevolent" leader, who only seemed to be in charge because nobody else had a cup that said "Number One Pimp" on it. It was a community lacking in ambition, Tegoshi figured.
Teams of two went out from the settlement all the time, but rangings were going farther and farther now as the food supply dwindled and they'd exhausted most of the surrounding areas. Shige and his partner, Yamapi, had a shopping cart they'd nicknamed "Akkun" and they went out every other day in search of food or scrap metal to reinforce the fence surrounding the settlement. That was how they'd found Tegoshi in the first place.
In order to earn his rightful place in the community, Tegoshi had to prove that he was competent enough to steer a shopping cart of his own. The problem was, of course, that teams needed two people. Shige had told him to look around the settlement, introduce himself to the locals and hope that one of them had lost a partner recently.
The shopping cart race required a driver and a passenger. The driver steered the cart through the obstacle course against an opponent's team while someone sat inside the cart wielding a bat. Out in the wild, it was the first line of defense against zombies. Thus far, nobody seemed terribly interested in joining Tegoshi's team.
He'd been turned down by a woman named Becky, one of Jimmy Mackey's harem of ladies - she was the "smart" one as opposed to the "hot" one, the "one with the big jugs," the "skinny blonde," etc. Becky had her sights set on a guy named Zac who'd just lost his partner Vanessa on a ranging - she asked Tegoshi if it was "too soon to swoop in on a hottie widower" and he'd simply moved on without comment. Humanity sure had gotten nasty in the future.
He'd been turned down by a guy named Nakamaru, whose partner Taguchi had blown out his knee and couldn't go on runs for a while. He'd assumed that Tegoshi was a lunatic, judging him on his clothes - it wasn't his fault he'd only packed one outfit and it was from a party store 300 years in the past! And who was this Nakamaru to judge him? He wore a sweater vest and penny loafers.
He curled up in the dirt night after night, partner-less and miserable, as the race date loomed ever closer. He'd be racing against Shige and Yamapi, who spent most of the day trash-talking Tegoshi while he drank flat Diet Coke that Jimmy Mackey had rejected from his buffet table.
It was the day before the race, and if Tegoshi couldn't wrangle up a partner, he was to be cast out of the community for good. He'd even swapped his bell-bottoms for a pair of ugly jean shorts that Yamapi didn't fit in any longer (despite the trash talk, he was kind of a nice guy in comparison to the rest of this crazy place). So in new pants and a new level of desperation, Tegoshi started opening tent flaps and introducing himself.
He was finally directed to the far side of the settlement, in a particularly dark and inhospitable looking part of the camp completely under the shadow of the bridge. There he met Kamenashi Kazuya, who Tegoshi thought was almost as pretty as himself (too close to call without a mirror - only Jimmy Mackey had those in his tent). Kamenashi was quiet, cheerless, and on the verge of being booted from the community as well. After his partner Koki had succumbed to the zombie infection and tried to eat Kame's face, he'd had to be put down. Now Kame sat alone in his tent, miserable and grumpy and mostly unwilling to help out.
And probably not the ideal partner, if Tegoshi had to say so. For one, Kamenashi was a skinny thing, wiry and thin. Tegoshi was the track team star from high school - he was the obvious cart runner. He needed someone on deck who could wield a bat - Kamenashi was nearly skin and bones. He probably couldn't even lift a bat.
Even so, he settled down inside Kame's tent and stared at him until the man finally spoke up. "What do you want?"
"Doing the cart race tomorrow," Tegoshi explained. "Need a partner."
Kame snorted. "Everyone else said no, huh?"
Tegoshi rolled his eyes. "Please, I've got at least twenty people willing to sell their partners out for a chance to race with me." That was a lie. "And fifty more wanting to make out with me when I cross the finish line."
Kame raised an eyebrow at that.
"Hey, how would you even know what's going on outside? You're just sitting in here like a loser. Look at me, right? I'm not moping like you. I'm not even from this century. You assholes took my time machine and made it a fence. I can't get home and there's zombies out there who probably think I look delicious. Truth bomb - I would be delicious," Tegoshi said. "Look, dude, you can just sit in the cart and get in touch with your feelings all you want. I'll win this, okay? I just need someone's ass inside the cart."
He was rewarded with an even more suspicious raised eyebrow before Kame finally cracked a smile. It was kind of scary. Like when your dentist smiled at you after testing the drill. "I like you."
"Most people do eventually," Tegoshi admitted, and since he was here in another century entirely, there was no way to really disprove it.
And so he and Kamenashi became cart partners. Jimmy Mackey apparently preferred the namesquish "cartners" but Tegoshi would rather drink his own pee than call Kame his cartner. They were let out of the compound with a loner cart Yamapi had found at a long-abandoned grocery store. If he and Kame won the following day, they'd get a fancier cart courtesy of the cart corral behind Jimmy Mackey's tent.
Tegoshi discovered that despite his melancholy and his 95 pound frame, Kamenashi was really good with a bat. As Tegoshi practiced pushing the shopping cart through the dirt surrounding their encampment, Kame swung the bat around, knocking over invisible mailboxes and bashing in invisible zombie heads, not missing a beat even as Tegoshi turned the cart, using some fancy footwork as he pretended they were being hunted down by the walking dead.
They ended the day with a high five and a newfound friendship. Or more like Tegoshi believed he actually had a fighting chance the following day and would spend the following night inside a tent instead of outside as a human mosquito magnet.
Race morning arrived, and there was a knot in Tegoshi's stomach the size of Jimmy Mackey's ego. Kame met him at the starting line with the loner cart, looking nervous. Sure, they'd practiced the day before, but that was outside and not against an opponent. Even now Yamapi was gleefully pushing Akkun to the start line, Shige inside the cart with a two by four and a cracked football helmet on his head.
A small crowd of curious onlookers gathered, and the race route would take them all through the compound. Jimmy Mackey had a giant flag with a topless woman crudely drawn on it, ready to start the race. "Okay everyone," Jimmy called to those who'd assembled. "Some dude wants to join our settlement, but he has to prove his worth, blah blah blah. Gentlemen, start your engines!"
Tegoshi sighed. "It's a shopping cart."
Kame gripped the bat tightly. "We can win this. We'll win it for Koki."
"Kame, dude, I seriously wasn't here until a week ago. I don't know who he was!"
Kame started on a long and dramatic rant about his lost friend who'd regrettably become a chompy chomp, and Tegoshi so didn't care. Mercifully, Jimmy Mackey waved the boobie flag, and Kame fell back into the cart with an "oof!" as Tegoshi started pushing. The crowd was clearly cheering for Yamapi and Shige, seeing as how a Tegoshi victory would be another mouth to feed in the community.
They weaved in and out of the orange traffic cones that had been set up along the route, Kame knocking several of them down with his bat for bonus points. He could hear Shige screaming at their side, shouting about Tegoshi's bell-bottoms (even though he wasn't wearing them any longer). But what Shige had thought would be disheartening only spurred Tegoshi on, zooming past tents and piles of scrap to find Jimmy Mackey waiting for their arrival at the finish line, ready to wave the boobie flag again, most likely because it was a boobie flag more than anything else.
Kame knocked down one last cone with his bat as Tegoshi pushed his cart past Akkun in the final seconds, hearing Yamapi complain sadly as the crowd started to disperse immediately upon seeing Tegoshi's victory. But Tegoshi didn't care. He had a tent! He wasn't going to die!
He gave Kame a high five, and gave Jimmy Mackey the finger. The leader of the community begrudgingly called for silence.
"Alright," Jimmy Mackey said, holding aloft a cheap looking bottle of liquor with an ancient looking label that read "Boone's Farm" on it. "Alright, you can stay, both of you." He tossed the bottle of liquor and Tegoshi caught it. "Consider that your last freebie. From now on, you two earn your keep on the outside. Peace out."
As he set up his tent that night, Tegoshi snuggled up with the bottle of alcohol he'd won so easily. He was stuck here, but victory had brought with it a strong desire to have a "Number One Pimp" cup of his own. He might not ever get home, but he decided to make the most of a bad situation. First the tent, Tegoshi vowed, and next the whole settlement.
~*~*~
LOVE AND BELONGING
~*~*~
Tegoshi discovered rather quickly that zombies were scary as shit. He had of course encountered several on his first day here in 2458, but now he and Kame were willingly going out in search of sustenance, right into zombie territory. He'd already lost track of how many they'd killed, and he'd gotten desensitized fairly quickly to brains exploding in his face courtesy of Kame's bat.
If there was one good thing about Kame, Tegoshi discovered as the weeks went on, he was good at planning. Tegoshi had always hated planning. He was just an impulsive guy - see: dropping 130,000 yen on a piece of shit time machine because everyone else had one. So where Tegoshi would push the cart out of the settlement and think of heading in a vaguely southern direction, Kame had drawn a bunch of crude maps that would guide them where they needed to go.
Today they were heading north by northwest to an abandoned tire factory. Some folks in the settlement liked pimping their rides a bit, adding on better rubber to the wheels of their shopping carts. The more rubber they could snag, the better swag they could trade it for back at the settlement. Tegoshi found himself getting stronger the more he had to keep pushing the cart with Kame on board and a bunch of crap in tow.
Most of the teams went out in search of food or better yet, guns and bullets. But people never saw the big picture, Kame explained. People never thought about the extras. So teams would go out and never come back because they'd go to a mini mart that had been thoroughly raided already and get themselves ambushed for no good reason. So Kame had them go to tire factories and used car dealerships for rubber, schools and bookstores for pens and paper and reading materials.
The plan was to set up a sort of general store for bartering at the settlement. Jimmy Mackey was the go-to person for trade, but Tegoshi and Kame had entrepreneurial spirit. They were going to take over by the end of the month, Tegoshi was sure of it.
"You're smart, Kame," Tegoshi said as he pushed the cart up a hill. "So how come you haven't taken over the compound already?"
"It was because of Koki," Kame said, and Tegoshi was worried he was going to start crying or something, but instead he just sighed. "I couldn't do it alone because Jimmy's got so much power and all those ladies, and Koki...he just had no business acumen. He spent most of his days trying to hook up with Jimmy's girls. No dice."
"Sucks to be him," Tegoshi replied, scanning the horizon. "There, is that the factory?"
Kame checked his half-assed map again, nodding. Tegoshi urged them on with a spring in his step. They hadn't been to this place yet, and as they rolled up, Tegoshi could see that a fire had nearly destroyed the entire stock ages ago, maybe just as the zombie apocalypse got started. Kame hopped out of the cart, and they wandered around the factory floor in search of a few tires that had survived the blaze. Between the two of them, they managed to find three huge tires. Two would fit with Kame in the cart, the other would go underneath. They were in rubber business.
It was odd, Tegoshi thought as they started the long trek back to camp. Now that he had a life here, he wasn't as depressed about not being able to get home. Sure, his grandma would miss him, and she always sent him cookies in the mail, but life was different here. Any day might be his last, courtesy of a chompy chomp with a hunger for his delicious Tegoshi-ness. In his real time, he had a dead end job, no chance for advancement.
Here he had a tent that he'd earned with his own skills, a business partner, a future. Sure there were zombies. Sure there was Jimmy Mackey's douche face. But for the first time in a long time, Tegoshi felt like he belonged somewhere.
Three dead zombies later, they got back to camp, and within a few days he and Kame had gotten their general store set up. He could see Jimmy Mackey looming in the distance, trying to get people interested in going to the zombie-infested outlet mall ten miles away to grab him some John Galliano underwear in exchange for "some dope-ass grape soda." People abandoned Jimmy's set-up in droves, and soon Tegoshi and Kame had gotten themselves a spare tent to store all the extra snack items and goods they'd received in trade.
He was lying in his tent one night some time later, clutching the knife he'd gotten from Shige in exchange for some boring ass books from a public library (Tegoshi was pretty sure he'd come out the winner in that deal). His tent flap unzipped, and he was immediately on the defensive, knife in hand. But it was just Kame, looking creepy and weird.
"Kame," Tegoshi said, "the hell are you doing here? I need my beauty sleep if we're hitting up that cigar store tomorrow."
And then Kame was suddenly all snuggly beside him, clinging to Tegoshi's sleeping bag like Yamapi clung to the bags of pork rinds he pilfered from Jimmy Mackey's stash. "You're a jerk," Kame informed him. "You just blindly say what's on your mind and you don't care about the consequences. You showed up here with your big mouth and your ego and you changed my entire life."
"For the better, I should say."
"I don't know what I'm feeling," Kame admitted. "I don't know if it's because I haven't gotten laid in a few years or what..."
"It's probably that," Tegoshi interrupted him. He usually liked girls, but he had to admit that he was easily won over by flattery from either gender. "That and my beautiful face."
Kame curled up at Tegoshi's side, and for someone so thin he was nice and warm, if a bit pointy. "I just wanted you to know how much you've helped me, how good it feels when it's just you and me and the cart, out there, facing whatever dangers the world throws at us."
Tegoshi recalled his earlier goal, why he'd tried to go to Woodstock in the time machine in the first place. He realized that dream had never been fulfilled, but yet here was someone who he didn't totally hate and thought was kind of smart coming on to him. He didn't have to lie to Kame the way Jimmy Mackey's girls lied to him and put out because he had the best tent and the best food. No, Tegoshi could be honest with Kame. Could trust him more than he'd trusted anyone else.
He still wasn't going to call him his cartner though. That shit was just stupid.
Tegoshi unzipped his sleeping bag, wiggling over in the dark so Kame could join him inside. "Okay then," he told Kame. "Got any rubbers?"
"With me? What? It's all in the spare tent and..." He felt Kame freeze beside him. "Oh. You weren't talking about the stuff from the tire factory."
"I was not."
Kame said nothing. Tegoshi snickered.
~*~*~
ESTEEM
~*~*~
Okay, so now he and Kame were both successful business partners and successful bed partners. For the very first time, Tegoshi discovered that he was happy in his professional and personal life simultaneously. It felt pretty damn good. And way more fulfilling than life had been when he'd gotten that stupid time machine, thinking a visit to Woodstock would be the cure for all his ills.
And as Tegoshi and Kame grew their business and influence throughout the camp, the Mack Attack HQ was losing its leverage. Even now Jimmy Mackey was having a difficult time keeping track of all of his ladies and various grape soda-fetching minions. The stack of pillows inside his tent quickly depleted, sold off in order to buy himself food because he wasn't skimming off the top on most of the trade now.
Finally, Jimmy had apparently had enough. Tegoshi and Kame were just returning from a ranging, cart full of yoga mats and exercise equipment, when Jimmy came running up. Everyone gathered around, gasping in shock as Jimmy walked up to Tegoshi's shopping cart and pushed it over.
"Hey!" Tegoshi complained. "What's the big idea?"
"Boom, you've been challenged!" Jimmy squawked at them. "Cart race. Tomorrow. And when I school your asses, you're done. Out of this settlement, for good!"
"We're bringing commerce to this backward-ass settlement!" Tegoshi shouted. "You're just jealous!"
"Of a little girl in bell-bottom pants?" Jimmy said, looming over them like a black cloud. A black cloud with an obnoxious face and a boobie flag. "I doubt that. Anyhow, see you bitches tomorrow. It's on!"
Tegoshi looked down at his jean shorts. "I don't even wear those pants anymore!"
Kame patted his shoulder. "Here's the shot we needed. Jimmy hasn't raced in years. He hasn't had to. We'll get him out of here ourselves."
"Haven't you watched any movies, Kame?" Tegoshi asked, immediately realizing that no, Kame hadn't, seeing as how he'd grown up in a zombie apocalypse situation. "The bad guy always cheats!"
And so the bad guy did.
Tegoshi and Kame arrived with their cart at the start line the following day, and found Jimmy Mackey sitting inside a blinged out shopping cart with spinners on the wheels and reinforced steel plating on every side. He had three girls in bikinis ready to push him around, and Tegoshi rolled his eyes.
"That's not fair, and you know it."
Jimmy just took a sip from his "Number One Pimp" goblet and laughed. "I make the rules around here, and I always have. And I always will, midget. You'll rue the day you crossed me, blah blah blah. Come on, let's get this over with because I've got some epic porno mags needing my attention inside my tent."
Bum knee Taguchi had been chosen to serve as judge slash referee for the race, and he seemed pretty excited to be holding the boobie flag. Tegoshi knew he'd have to work all the harder - the boobie flag was a pretty big deal around here.
The race started and Jimmy Mackey's shopping cart somehow shot flames at them as it pulled away from the starting line, making Tegoshi squeak in surprise as he narrowly avoided the loss of all his leg hair. "Come on," Kame shouted, "I know we can win this!"
Duly spurred on, Tegoshi took off, whipping the cart around the corners of the settlement. Of course, Jimmy had the unfair advantage. He'd ensured that Tegoshi's side of the race course was littered with dirty underwear that could get stuck in his wheels and halfway through the race, a wall of metal had been set-up. A shimmering silver metal Tegoshi distinctly remembered as part of his time machine.
The bastard hadn't even used it to reinforce the walls of the compound. He'd saved this for one final "haha," to make Tegoshi lose his spirit and remember the life he'd left behind. Too bad Jimmy Mackey didn't know the new and improved Tegoshi Yuya all that well. With Kame urging him forward, Tegoshi ran his heart out, dodging underpants and even bottles of pee Jimmy had placed along the path.
They were getting into the final curve, Tegoshi gaining on Jimmy and his three cart pushers. "Kame," Tegoshi said. "Take out the cup!"
"You got it!"
With an elegant swing of the bat that Jimmy thought was meant for his head, Kame smacked the "Number One Pimp" goblet right out of Jimmy's hand. "Noooooo!" Jimmy screamed, ordering the girls to immediately turn around and retrieve it. This enabled Tegoshi to scream in joy, pushing the cart to its absolute limit and crossing the finish line as Taguchi waved the boobie flag and the entire settlement erupted into cheers.
He and Kame hugged as Jimmy Mackey's shopping cart came limping over the finish line, the enormously tall man inside the cart looking completely lost as he clutched his beloved goblet.
"But...but...how could I lose?" Jimmy was muttering, and already his harem girls were abandoning him, walking over to stand behind Kame and Tegoshi in solidarity.
"This has been a referendum on your crappy leadership," Tegoshi informed him. "You're finished, Mackey. It's off to the chompy chomps with you."
Jimmy blubbered. "You can't put me out there. I can't live without my beanbag chairs and my life of chompy chomp-free luxury!"
"Should have thought about that before you left a bunch of piss on the roadway!" Kame snapped at him.
Now that power was obviously transferred, the citizens didn't seem to care much at all, moving back to their tents now that the big cart race was over. Tegoshi and Kame watched with some measure of satisfaction as Yamapi and Shige dragged Jimmy Mackey over to the south gate, locking him out. For the next few hours they heard him outside crying like a little girl before he finally screamed at the settlement that he was "too cool" for this place and was going to seek his fortunes elsewhere.
Tegoshi assumed he'd be zombie food within six hours.
"Well," Kame said as he and Tegoshi got settled inside what had been Mack Attack HQ. "Looks like we're in charge of this place now."
Tegoshi plopped himself down on a beanbag chair and smiled. "It's good to be the king."
~*~*~
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
~*~*~
The settlement thrived. Without Jimmy Mackey hogging all the food and all the hot ladies, people started to get along better. They weren't starving so they had enough strength to outrun the zombies while looking around on the outside. They found other settlements scattered across what had once been New York State, setting up trade routes and bringing even more wealth into their encampment.
Plus, Tegoshi had Kame which turned out to be better than he'd even thought. Initially, they hadn't made much sense, but between Kame's mind for planning and Tegoshi's obvious charisma, they were unstoppable. And, to be quite honest, having sex with Kame was the next best thing to having sex with himself.
So of course as soon as Tegoshi had turned his life around, stopped missing his real time and the people who lived there, Shige and Yamapi found a time machine along the road, dragging it back behind their shopping cart one day.
Tegoshi ordered them to open it, and out came an extremely large man in a military uniform. He introduced himself as Nagase Tomoya, time cop, before throwing up in the dirt. Apparently it had been a bumpy ride to the settlement, and Yamapi just shrugged.
Nagase and Tegoshi met inside the "Tegonashi Palace" - they were still trying to think of a better name. Nagase looked concerned. "We've known for a while about the future zombie outbreak, but we didn't realize anyone had actually gotten stuck here. Sorry for the oversight on that."
"Yeah," Tegoshi said. "Little late to be noticing that I've been trapped here for months, but whatever."
Nagase took a sip from the "Number One Pimp" goblet - Tegoshi preferred guests to use it as a sign that he was only half as megalomaniacal as Jimmy Mackey had been. "And we don't know the exact cause, if it was something a time traveler messed with or just the way the world's meant to go. But that's why I'm here. You don't have to suffer in a place like this. I'm here to take you back."
Tegoshi leaned back against the cushions. He didn't want to go back. Sure this place was insane, but now it was home. He'd have to play a little unfair. He'd have to find his inner Jimmy Mackey.
"I'll go back to my real time on one condition."
"What's that?" Nagase asked.
"You just have to beat me in a race," Tegoshi said and smiled. "A shopping cart race."