Tj22-5
"Good morning!" said Foreman Majima through his megaphone, to all seven of his staff who attended today.
"Good morning," came the less than enthusiastic response, sounded noticeably slurred as it came from each of them out of sync.
"I SAID GOOD MORNING!" screamed Majima, again into the megaphone, producing a rather nasty squealing noise in addition to the shrill tone of his own voice. Everybody snapped to attention now. "Need you at your best and brightest today! And that's why today's gonna be Majima Construction's inaugural forklift race!"
Nishida immediately broke out into a sweat. He knew, full well, that he was the only one on staff with a forklift certification. The others certainly knew how to drive them, but the paperwork to apply for certification was just so hard to get through, and the workplace safety commission were fairly strict about their background checks…and if he were found to be involved in this, he'd probably lose his, too.
Majima either didn't notice, or didn't care, about the state of his "junior associate executive leader." "Now since this is our first time doing somethin' like this, I wanna extend my thanks to Mr. Gary Buster Holmes for bringing me the idea!"
Gary, already seated in a forklift that looked entirely too small for him, raised one of his heavily-muscled fists. "Let's have us a quickie!" he yelled, obviously meaning "Let's have a quick race!" and not what actually came out of his mouth.
Majima pointedly ignored the gaffe. "Gary says they do this shit at the harbor in Amihama all the time, and if they can do it, so can we! LET'S SEE SOME HUSTLE!"
The remaining six "racers" scrambled towards the formation of parked - and already dented and dinged - forklifts. Nishida was the first to reach one; he had to make certain that he didn't get the one with the crooked left wheel. The next was Minami, clad in a mesh high-vis vest over his usual no-shirt-at-all. He claimed the most damaged of the forklifts and honked "shave-and-a-haircut" on the horn the second he was seated upon it (to which Gary honked back the "two bits"). The line-up to the impromptu starting line - a hastily spray-painted dotted line on a metal road plate - was a glorious clusterfuck of minor collisions and very concerning scraping noises. By the time they had all positioned themselves in something resembling a starting grid, Majima's forklift - number 56 - was right up front. He leaned out the side of the driver's seat to a timid-looking Majima Family grunt in a black suit and hard-hat. "Akanishi! Ready with the starting flag!" The grunt named Akanishi readied a green flag and an air horn, and with a few toots and a very enthusiastic wave, the racers were off.
Forklift number 56 immediately blasted off the starting line, going roughly twice as fast as everybody else on the starting grid. Nishida, who started in second place, had forgotten that his boss had modified his forklift with a nitro tank. He floored it as hard as he can, but his forklift struggled to reach 10 miles an hour. Minami's forklift was right behind him, swerving drunkenly, but otherwise keeping pace. By the first corner, Majima was out of sight, having drifted ahead past a pile of cement sacks.
The wail of the forklift engines, being pushed to their limits, echoed off the scaffolding and concrete barriers of the Kamurocho Hills site, as well as the occasional metallic clunk of exuberant racers trying to run each other off the road. The remainder of the pack had only gotten halfway into the second straightaway, when Nishida heard a sound a lot like the screech of a pterodactyl, or some kind of movie kaiju. With a great woosh, Majima's forklift zoomed past the entire pack, cackling madly the whole way through. All of them were now one lap behind.
Nishida tried to push his gas pedal harder, but it had already bottomed out. Minami was now driving backwards, somehow, and still moving just as fast; he gestured rudely at all the drivers behind him (in front of him). Gary, bustling through the crowd with a series of clunks and bangs, managed to overtake Nishida on the inside of the next corner, reaching the head of the pack (Majima excluded); Nishida, in an effort to avoid hitting Gary, nearly slammed into Minami's backwards vehicle instead. The other four racers gallantly tried to avoid the mess, but all but one could not navigate around it, and were brought to a stop. Seconds later, the pterodactyl noise approached them again; Majima was about to lap the pack again, and this time, his forklift was beginning to catch fire. Akanishi gallantly ran after him with an extinguisher in one hand and the checkered flag in the other, but his legs could barely go half as fast as a normal forklift, let alone the Number 56. Only Gary and Nishida could continue the race; the entire rest of the pack was out of commission. Minami's forklift had somehow tipped over in the commotion, and was now leaning on one of the concrete walls, looking just as tired as Nishida was.
Some minutes passed before the forklifts were all replaced into their normal parking spots. Number 56 now sported a sleek "black and white" paint job (once the smoke and halon had cleared), Nishida's forklift had a few additional dings and scratches, Minami's was now all but totaled, and somehow, despite it all, Gary's had not a scratch on it. Despite Nishida's plea for his boss to come to his senses and treat the construction equipment with respect, the forklift races continued until only two of the vehicles remained operational. And from that point onward, Majima Construction ran their daily warmup races with Pocket Circuit cars instead. Which became a whole different can of worms…
