#no incidents. clean sheet. no red cards. PROPER SHIT

[effervescentdragon]

congratulations to kosovo for being the only normal ex yu country and the only one to win today ❤️🤝🏻

[funkymeihem-fiction]

Chapter 7

Junkrat returned from the other side of the van, re-buttoning his shorts and adjusting his belts. “Piss break, last chance!”

Mei didn’t even glance up from where she had been going through her phone’s files, holding up a bottle of clear liquid and waving it from side to side. “Hygiene.”

The wiry junker rolled his eyes, protesting aloud with a “Tchuh! Really?” but cupped his hands together anyway as Mei doused him in sanitizer. “Been wipin’ my ass without sanitizer for years and I’ve been fine, ya know.”

“Jamie, just…no. I understand not wasting water, but we’re all making concessions about our cleanliness levels here, please meet me halfway.”

He grumbled and scrubbed his hands together, wrinkling his nose at the chemical smell before flinging them off. “Ugh. Lemony fresh.”

They had stopped on the side of the road, in the middle of another large flat expanse of rocky outback desert. The early afternoon sun was brutal enough that Mei had finally relented to tying a rag over her head for fear of her hair simply combusting into flames, and sweat was streaming steadily down the layer of brown road dust that had caked onto her face from the open windows. She was perspiring so much that it was washing away the protective layers of sunscreen sprays, and she was sporting a tan on top of a rather painful sunburn, her once icy-pale skin looking a bit more like a freshly boiled lobster. She looked a mess, but Junkrat had swooned over the appearance and declared her ‘almost a quarter of the way to looking like a real junker’.

Roadhog had the hood of the van popped, rummaging through the engine and occasionally taking pieces of it out, shaking off clogged dust from the breeze, and putting them back in. Junkrat was busy re-applying the layers of dirt on his hands by wiping them against his shorts as he loped to the back of the vehicle, hopping inside and holding his ear to the large tanks of gas in the back, prodding them with his peg leg and listening to them slosh. Mei twisted around in her seat to look back at him.

“How are the gas levels?”

“We’re gettin’ low. Good thing we’re coming up on the next stop. Few hundred more kilometers and we’ll reach Lucky’s Knob Station, where we can top off and supply up…hope they got beef jerkys and tea bits, don’t want to run out.”

“Lucky’s Knob?”

“Yeah! It’s owned by a bloke named Lucky, set up just below a great big cock-lookin’ rock formation.”

“…Of course.”

“It’s a junker stop, it’ll have petrol, a shop, and a scrap heap. It’ll also have a lot of junkers. Uh, maybe you should wait a bit in the car? Or you could be in charge of the pump for us? You know, stick around the van, we’ll be in and out before you know it.” He rubbed the back of his neck uneasily, fingers coming away sooty and black.

She couldn’t help but rankle a bit at that for some reason. Innocent suggestion though it was, it almost sounded like he was trying to give an over-eager child an ‘important job’ to do to keep them out of the way. And after the incident with the dog, she couldn’t deny that she felt the need to prove she wasn’t so incompetent. “Or I could go in the shop,” she offered quickly. “I can buy some supplies. Just make a list for me, I’ll go in.”

“Ehhh…” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Plus I have to go to the bathroom,” she lied quickly, searching for some semblance of a reason she might need to go in a junker shop.

“We’re literally on a bathroom break, right now.” He gestured out to the surrounding desert as if the connotation should have been obvious.

“Well, I-I want to go to a proper bathroom,” she winced a bit at herself, becoming more aware of how petulant it sounded. “With, you know…ah, toilets.”

Roadhog’s deep chuckle rumbled from the front of the van outside. Of course he would find all this amusing.

She coughed, abruptly facing the front to hide the deepening shade of pink across her cheeks. Much like Junkrat, she couldn’t keep a poker face for the life of her. “So! Just make a list and I’ll go in the shop. I’ll buy what we need and come right back.”

“Well, I guess it would give me and Roadie a bit more time to go over the scrap heap, see if there’s any good parts we can use. S’pose it might be all right, if you’re just in and out real quick-like. Maybe if we made you look a bit more local, though. You’re still real obviously a tourist.”

“How do you intend to make me look more ‘local’? I’m not going to like this, am I.”

“Can’t just have a tourist wandering into a junker shop without getting into trouble. You gotta look like a junker.”

“Oh dear.”

“What was it you said earlier, ‘bout making concessions about your clean levels? Hehehe. Oi Roadie, got some grease ready?”

Junkrat jumped to the front of the open van, arms disappearing into the engine and both hands coming out fully blackened, and then Mei was suddenly being pulled through the open door, standing in the sand as the disgusting black ichor was smeared across her cheeks and arms, stained into her poor headscarf, and scrubbed into her hands.

“Get it real good in there, under the nails! No proper junker got clean nails!” he urged, rubbing his blackened thumb under her eye as she squinted unhappily. “And uh, I assure you this is not me copping a feel on ya, just need to get your chest and arse…”

Mei slapped his hands away. “I can get that myself,” she said quickly, saying a brief prayer for her deceased garments, as she ruined her tanktop and leggings with more splotches of black ooze. "Do I actually need to look like a junker or is this just because you want to see me all greasy?"

“I choose not to comment on that question! Hmm…needs more. Wait, I got just the ticket!” He ran back to the van, bustling and clanging about, before reappearing with a pair of driving goggles, latching them onto her headscarf before pulling the glove off his flesh hand and rolling that onto her as well. Tapping his narrow chin like a thoughtful fashion designer, he snapped his fingers and undid one of his belts, pulling it from his narrow waist and wrapping it about her. Mei looked and felt like a very strange and very filthy doll that was being dressed up as something she wasn’t, but she bit her tongue and stood still as he finished his adjustments.

“Ta-daaaa! Roadie look, it’s our Junker Mei!” he announced, stepping away and waving both arms to the disheveled and confused woman behind him.

Roadhog gave her a thumbs up.

---

The van had long ago crested the hills that started to separate the lowland plains into a much rockier badlands area, with rising buttes and shallow canyons. One of them in particular stood out from the rest, a great red sandstone rock formation that must have stood for eons in the middle of an ancient and long-dead inland sea, when the canyons had been marine trenches. The seas had eaten away at the rock for eons, scraping and scraping, pebble by pebble, sand by sand, until all but these cliffs remained. Perhaps the highest pinnacle of them had stood above the waters, leaving a rounded wide head at the top of a long, narrow shaft…

Mei readjusted her glasses as she looked up at it. “Okay. It really does look like one.”

“I told ya, it looks just like a great big rocky donger. That’s Lucky’s Knob, and we’re coming in on the station.”

At the bottom of the offensively-shaped escarpment was something that resembled more of a small town than any gas station she had seen. There was a cluster of ruined buildings that had been hastily repaired and re-shaped with pieces of cars and metal and old shipping containers, surrounded by sheet metal walls and gates. Several of the structures were mechanic shops, and at least one with several chimneys spewing out thick black smoke might have been some sort of foundry, which for some reason was directly next to (and spewing fumes into) an establishment that looked like a pub or drinking room. And in the center of it all was the gas station, which seemed surprisingly intact compared to everything around it. There were still pumps for the petrol, an overhang to keep off the sun and rain, and the main station shop was just inside, underneath a light-up sign that had been rigged to spell LUCKY’S with letters that were clearly purloined from other scavenged signs from long ago.

The station was also infested with junkers, the most people she had seen in several days. They were all shapes and sizes, with many missing pieces of themselves as usual, and all were covered in dirt and ash. They stood smoking and chatting with one another, playing cards outside the bar, working on their numerous vehicles by the mechanic shops, and judging from what little she could see in the shop’s windows, there were quite a few of them inside as well.

The van sputtered into one of the wide gates and pulled up alongside one of the gas pumps, hissing as it came to a stop. Roadhog’s motorcycle came rumbling up behind them before switching off as well. They were officially at their first junker stop. Mei sat transfixed in her seat, grease-painted face peering out the windows, watching wide-eyed as a brawny man wandered by with the limp body of a dead kangaroo slung over one shoulder, sending a suspicious glare her way before vanishing into the pub kitchens.

“You can still wait here, if you want,” Jamison offered blithely, scratching at his gold tooth with a fingernail.

She frowned back at him, “No. I’m going in and I’m going to buy our things.”

“And use the bathroom,” he grinned.

“…Yes! Yes, and use the bathroom. Inside. The bathroom…” she trailed off lamely, knowing her bluff had been called as the man giggled madly.

“Arroight, darl, don’t get in a twist. Just go on into the main store, pick these up if they got ‘em.” He shoved a crumpled piece of paper into her hands with a hastily-written list. “I’m going to go get a few parts from the scrap heap so this piece of shit don’t break down too soon. I’ll be round back if you need me. Come right back to the van, and if anyone gives you shit, you gotta look tough and tell them to fuck right off. You’re a junker now, love! You gotta act like one!”

“Okay. Look tough, I can do that. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Oi, Mei…”

She looked at him.

“Have a great piss!” he gave her the wink and the gun, hooting and cackling madly as he loped off.

“Xiăo huài dàn!” Mei called after him, making a rude gesture.

She climbed out of the van, looking down at the list. Junkrat’s wild handwriting and numerous misspellings aside, it was an easy list; more water and drinks, a jug of coolant, toilet paper, another tarp, some new books for Roadhog, and a few other items. She grabbed an empty backpack and shrugged it on before slamming her door and taking a deep breath, ready to give to herself a little pep talk. She immediately inhaled a face full of stinking fumes from the blacksmithing area as the wind changed, and she coughed before simply dashing out of the smoke and towards the gas station shop.

Roadhog stood quietly at the gas pumps, refilling the tanks as he watched her go.

The bell above the door jostled and chimed as she went in. The inside was a dreary place, dimly lit with flickering light bulbs and poorly insulated, with an untidy amount of sand and dust on the floors, blown in from the outside. But that was easily explained away by the holes in the metal ceiling and the bullet scars in the walls. An old junker with an eyepatch and a metal jaw sat idle behind the counter, ignoring the flies buzzing around him as he read his magazines. The store itself was little more than randomly places shelves of goods, and a smaller area at the back with a few refrigerated storage units. It really was just a gas station after all, though Mei felt distinctly out of place, trying to ignore the other junkers already browsing through.

She went through her list quickly enough; drinks, supplies, and a jug of engine coolant that had been underlined, so it seemed important. The only thing available for Roadhog in the book bin was a few torn magazines and some pulpy romance paperbacks. They were the kind with red lipped women swooning and fainting against burly men with perfectly windswept hair, usually in a field of flowers or on the top of a cliff somewhere. Is this what Roadhog read to pass the time out here? Making a mental note to buy him a better collection of reading materials, she grabbed a few of them anyway. The refrigerated food and the glass bottles felt like heaven to her, and she couldn’t stop from literally hugging one against her cheek, enjoying its cooling touch. It melted away some of the dark grease on her face and the label came away black, but she scrubbed at her cheek to try and correct it before moving towards the food and snacks.

To her delight, there was a tin of oatmeal that wasn’t too far past its expiration date. And not only was there oatmeal, but there was a large package of beef jerky. No doubt Junkrat would love those, so she leaned down to the bottom shelf and snatched them up. As she lifted back up, she took a step backwards and found herself slamming into another person, who stumbled and almost fell onto the display. Mei whirled around in horror, finding an older woman with tanned and leathery skin, wearing black leather biking gear with far too many skulls on it, and with a wild shock of frizzy dyed white-blonde hair that was dark brown at its roots. She was tall enough that she dwarfed Mei when she straightened to stand.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! Excuse me!” Mei squeaked automatically, going to grasp her by the arm to help steady her once more.

The woman flung her off, and was immediately joined by another junker dressed in similar black leather and skull-emblazoned biker clothing, half his face taken up by cybernetic parts, including a false eye and ear. He was just as tall as Junkrat, but far more top heavy, and his bicep was tattooed with a skeleton being kissed by a voluptuous woman in a red dress, much like the kind would be found on one of Roadhog’s pulp romances.

“Excuse me. Please,” Mei tried again. “It was an accident.”

The woman stared her down, her eyes a vivid and extremely poisonous shade of green, nearly as bright as Jamison’s own. “Yeah. An accident, shoving ladies down.”

Mei blanched visibly. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m very sorry. Are you all right?”

The biker lady seemed emboldened by her apology. “I’ll get better once you hand over those jerkies and then turn about and piss off.”

“Oh. Ah, of course. Here, it’s all right, you can have them. I don’t mind. Sorry again.” She hurriedly set the package of beef jerky down on the shelf before turning to go.

“And that other tin.”

Mei bit her tongue and quietly put down the tin of oatmeal as well, backing away.

The blond woman stared her down, motioning to the jug of coolant in her other hand. “That was mine first too.”

Mei tightened her grip and held the bottle behind her, not liking at all where this seemed to be headed. She met the other woman’s eyes and pointedly shoved it into her backpack. “I’m sorry, but my friends need this. It’s ours.”

“No, see, I had me eye on it the whole time before you took it. So it’s mine.” The frizzy-haired biker woman smiled unpleasantly.

The barrel-chested man turned on her, cybernetic eye whirring audibly as it focused. “Ours.”

Mei licked her chapped lips, trying to remember what Junkrat had told her. She had to seem tough. Stalwartly, she puffed her chest up and picked up both the oatmeal and the jerky again. “No. Now you’re just trying to bully me. I had it, I was buying it. And the beef jerky. And the oatmeal. Um…sorry.”

Her gaze darted, looking to the man behind the counter for help, or the other junkers perusing the shop, but none of them seemed interested. The little gesture of desperation only seemed to refuel the aggressive junkers’ efforts, and the man stepped forward to block her path as the woman slithered around behind her.

“Nice tan lines, love. Never seen a ‘junker’ so soft and white under her shirt straps before,” He leered a grin, reaching out his mechanical hand to prod hard at her arm with a metal digit. “Yeah, real soft, actually. Fresh sunburn too, musta been so pale. Ooo, fancy.”

She backed away, trying to shove his hand off her. “Excuse me!”

The junker followed her, his hand still around her upper arm before sneering aloud in amusement, “Oi, Tilda, she’s wearing a fancy real brassiere too! Aww, it’s gettin’ all mussed. Here, lemme get that for ya!”

The woman behind her laughed derisively as the man ignored Mei’s attempts to shrug him off, hooking a finger around her bra strap and pulling the elastic until it stretched up and out, and then let it free, leaving it to snap back against her flesh with a sharp popping sound.

“Qīfu rén!”

The can of oatmeal hit him square between the eyes, bursting open and showering him with dried oat grains. Mei clenched a fist, slamming it as hard as she could against the forearm that was holding her. It did little to dissuade the oatmeal-covered bully, who narrowed his eyes down at her and started to snarl a retort.

He never got the chance.

Mei’s punch had been mostly ineffective. The same could not be said of the gigantic spike-gloved fist that came hurtling in from the side, a blur of movement just before it slammed into the man’s head with a sound that she could not even describe, a flesh-and-bone crunch as metallic knuckles met human cranium. It knocked the skull away first, and then the features followed slowly as if being dragged after, his meaty face twisting grotesquely as he went flying away from her. He literally spun like a football, droplets of liquid red whirling after him, going airborne as he was knocked away into the far wall with a painful thud.

Roadhog snorted and drew his bloodied fist back, offering his other hand out to help the startled climatologist back up. She grasped onto it and pulled upright, only to whirl back around as there was a loud clicking noise. Tilda, the woman with the shock of fried white hair, had pulled out not one, but two sets of cobbled-together semi-automatic firearms. Mei couldn’t even begin to guess where she had been hiding them.

“Oi, biggest and last mistake you ever made was sockin’ my man!” Tilda’s green eyes blazed, aiming her guns at the massive bulky wall of Roadhog as he stood in the way.

Mei lifted a placating hand. “W-wait! I’m sure we can still talk this out!”

“Tilda, you drongo! Biggest mistake was you drawin’ on me mates!” A familiar voice interrupted.

A peg leg slammed into the ground next to her, Junkrat’s towering form joining Roadhog’s, his grenade launcher lifted and ready. Apparently Junkrat and this ‘Tilda’ knew each other, and by the expressions on their faces, their relationship was not at all friendly to begin with. And not only that, but there came a series of rapidfire clicks, clinks, clatters, and clacks as every single junker in the shop drew their weapons. Each and every one of them was bristling with some sort of firearm, from the clerk’s shotgun, to makeshift pulse pistols, and what she was almost certain was a junker version of a bazooka, all aimed at the brawlers. And Mei.

This did nothing to encourage the situation, and merely caused Roadhog to pull his massive firearm as well, slamming a handful of scrap into its ammunition packet as he turned on the rest of the shop, while Junkrat and Tilda faced off against each other, still spitting insults and curses. Mei’s stomach dropped as her muscles tightened, face going clammy and pale under her grease paint, adrenaline surging through her. If this escalated any further, the shop would be rapidly reduced to a smoking hole in the ground with all the inhabitants still inside it. She could only think of one thing to do, so she held her handful of money in the air and waved it like one would wave a surrendering white flag, as she started backing away towards the counter.

The old man at the counter, who she could only guess was the eponymous ‘Lucky’, watched her warily, his shotgun still pointed at her junker companions. She held up both hands plaintively, then slowly placed the handful of money before him. “W-we just want the things in the bag, it should cover the spilled oatmeal too...and some extra. I’m sorry for the trouble.”

Lucky glanced down at the handful of crumpled bills and coins, seeming to count it out in his head, before sitting back and pulling his shotgun back behind the countertop. “Get the fuck outta here, take them with you.”

She nodded, then carefully approached her junkers again, hands raised. She hesitated to even touch Junkrat, who was literally growling as he stood off against Tilda. But she took his arm and very gently went to urge him back with her. He took an unsure step, peg leg clacking thudding noisily against the ground.

She very nearly lost his attentions again when Tilda snickered behind her, voice taunting. “Yeah, s’right, run away like you do from everything else, trash rodent.”

Mei had to head him off at the pass when Jamison’s trigger finger twitched on the grenade launcher, pulling him hard along as she whispered hurriedly, “Let’s go. Jamie, please, I’m asking you. Let’s just go.”

With an unhappy grumble, he let himself be pulled towards the door, his enormous bodyguard covering their exit as Tilda finally turned her attentions to her still-unconscious partner who lay in an upside down heap in the corner. Mei half-dragged him outside and didn’t stop half-dragging him until they reached the van, and hurriedly threw the shopping pack inside, climbing in after waving to Roadhog. Junkrat threw another hateful look back at the station shop, then reluctantly climbed back into the driver’s seat.

---

Mei grasped her chest in relief, slumping down into her seat as she let out an exhausted sigh. “That was the most stressful gas station situation I’ve ever been in! I really do not understand junker culture at all. When Bobbero tried to kill you, you acted like it was all a game. Now when that Tilda woman insults you, you’re out for blood and then the whole shop is ready to blow each other to pieces?”

“Yeah, that’s how it is. It’s easy, darl. I like Bobbero. I don’t like Tilda. And Tilda don’t like me. Rankly old hoon should have kicked the bucket ages ago, and now she and her lugs wanna start shit with you? Ffft, if I ever needed a reason…”

“I’m fine, really. Just glad nothing happened. It’s over, let’s just get back on schedule and move on,” she moaned, massaging her forehead.

There was a sharp rap at her window as Roadhog’s still-bloody knuckles met the glass. Rolling it down, she peered up at him curiously.

“There’s a problem,” he grunted.

She looked in the direction his mask was pointed. Tilda was standing outside the mechanic shop, with the half-conscious form of her junker companion slumped over her, speaking to a very large group of other junkers near their motorcycles, all dressed in almost the exact same uniforms with the same skull motifs and colors. At the same time, the entire crowd of them all glared over at the van. Their expressions, especially Tilda’s, were quite murderous.

“Huh. Didn’t know Tilda had made that many friends since we left,” Junkrat muttered.

“That’s a biker gang, isn’t it. We just angered an entire biker gang.” Mei slumped down into her seat, covering her eyes with both hands.

“Oh yeah, they’re going to be right up our arses as soon as we try to make a break.”

“Over a disagreement in a gas station? We were just buying drinks and toilet paper, for goodness’ sake!”

“People been killed for less, darl. Especially over toilet paper. Actually, I got a story about that, if you want to hear…”

“Maybe later. Much later. Thanks.” She pondered a moment, watching Tilda’s gang mill about and prepare their motorcycles, before turning back to Jamison. “Do you have a map of the canyons ahead?”

“The map? Uh, pretty sure it does, why?”

“I think I have an idea. You still have all your bombs with you, right?”

Junkrat’s expression lit up, and Mei could have sworn she saw little hearts appear in his pupils. “Have I ever mentioned how much I love ya?”

She gave him a little half smile. “A few times. Either way, I think you’re going to love this.”