Match of the Millennium

Description: Aranha goes back to Bastion Village to lick his wounds after his early elimination from KoF. When he arrives, he receives some surprising news.

[KELLY]
It's a decent evening at Bastion village. The sun is has mostly set, coloring the sky with reds, oranges, and purples. The heat of the day has begun to bleed away, and the insects only seen towards twilight begin to appear. The clouds off on one horizon are dark from a coming storm, and the light rumble of thunder can occasionally be heard, though it is clearly some ways off.

In the villages training area, despite the waning time of day, a lone figure stands before one of the training dummies. She moves with very smooth movements, striking the dummy with a series of palm strikes, ending with a very limber kick with the flat of the top of her foot that impacts its head cleanly. Stopping for a moment, Kelly reaches down to grab a water bottle, taking a swig as she catches her breath and wipes sweat from her forehead.

[ARANHA]
Aranha was tired, jet lagged, beaten up which thanks to his gift from Tessitore was pretty much healed except from the mental aspects. Aranha had business here in Bastion Village and it would nag at him if he didn't take care of it today.

As he walks through the village, he carries a large duffel bag on his shoulder weaving around Darkstalkers and the rare human here and there as he makes his way to his dwelling. He stops when he hears the sounds of the training dummy getting hit. A decision to make a detour is made and when he opens the door, he sees his sister sipping from the water.

"Hey, sis!"

The duffel bag is dropped at the doorway and he moves in for a hug.

"I don't have to ask what you've been up to. I could hear it."

[KELLY]
The hard and tired expression on Kellys face abruptly softens and she gives a warm smile as Aranha comes out. She gives him a biiiig hug!

At first she gives a somewhat guilty look "Yea.... i've been putting in a lot of extra training time lately...". She goes over to somewhere to sit down "I saw the match. It looked like you got some real good hits in on Ryu, though looked like you took some nasty hits of your own. How are you feeling?". She offers him the water bottle in case he wants a swig.

No, it's not vodka! She only did it that one time!

[ARANHA]
Aranha doesn't take the bottle. He remembers that time. It was a good thing he cleaned up the spit take from that prank. It is also why he's paranoid about what he drinks.

As for her putting in practice time, as far as he was concerned that was nothing to be guilty about. He liked the fact that she was training. It helped keep her in shape and if there was one thing that both the Majigen Series and sharing memories of another realm with his alternate self had made clear, he won't always be around to defend her and learning how to fight was a tool in the box for her to prevent that from happening.

"Yeah. It was like he could strike me at will during that fight. I'm not quite used to that. Man I'm grateful he's on our side."

He looks at the bottle once more then says, "No thanks."

[KELLY]
Kelly nods, snickering..... she knows that prank is WHY hes paranoid, and much as she doesnt mean to make him paranoid..... it was just too good!

"Well, he IS a bonified ninja, and has a huuuuge rep. Kinda good that he lives up to it too. Besides, the rogue never has a lot of hitpoints, but has a heck of a crit strike with their backstab!" She grins at him, unable to resist the comparison. It's not often she sees him in a 'party', and that seemed the best role for him "Would have been interesting to see all of you fight at once".

Taking another swig of water, she addresses the elephant in the room... at least, thats in her mind "I... I've finished my application for the competitive scene. It wasn't in time for Kay Oh Eff, but i've gotten to a point i think i can do it now!". She perks up a bit, like a load was taken off saying it.

[ARANHA]
While he didn't play it often, he did look over the rules every now and then. There were times where Kelly would want to run a game or do two man randomly generated dungeons. It paid to know what she was talking about. It allowed him to banter with her in this particular instance.

"Hey now! I took some fighter levels too. And in addition, rogues are usually hard to hit to make up for their Aych Pee totals. Hayabusa has crazy To Hit."

What remains unsaid for /both/ of their sakes is that most rogues don't also have a healing factor too. Especially considering the source of them.

The fact that she has apped for the competitive scene is a surprise but that /also/ explains why she's been putting in so much work.

"Word?"

He lets that single word sit there for the sake of tension. His sister isn't the only one with pranks though.

"I'm proud of you. If you enter the competition and something seems sheisty to you, feel free to call me or bounce if you feel you have no other choice."

[KELLY]
Regeneration is easy! He's a tiefling! "You just rolled more ones is all.... it was one of THOSE nights!".

The moment of tension makes her veeeeeery nervous...... and when it finally passes she smiles wiiiiiiiide and glomps "I'll do my best! I want to learn. I want to finally be useful..... who knows. Maybe sometime i'll be the one protecting YOU from some big mean mother hubbard!".

Kelly abruptly stands "I wanted to show you something..... i think i finally got it....". Moving over to the training dummy, she assumes a relaxed combat pose, eyes suddenly glowing faintly. Her hands and feet also gain of glow of their own, a bluish white hue.....

After a moment of concentration, she moves in! A palm strike is sharply delivered to the center of the dummies torso, and with a twist, she uses the moment to spin up and over, landing an axe kick with solid force right to the dummies collar bone, leaving a biiig dent!

The attack complete, she hops back as the glow fades. She gives him a look, like a kid whos just figured out how a tape recorder or some other household device works....

[ARANHA]
It's not quite executed like his or any of his usual variants of it. He in particular prefers to head hunt with the hand strike, but striking where it's open is also legitimate even if it's to the torso. The mechanics, however, has just enough similarities to what he does to realizes what she's trying to do. He's replaying it over and over. in his head as his jaw drops open.

Aranha immediately catches on to the potential implications. That if she could mimic his particular attack, she could possibly mimic others. He bring himself together just in time to say, "That was awesome, Kel, but if you ever learn Johnny's nut punch, don't use it on me when we're sparring."

[KELLY]
Kellys eyes beam as he speaks. His expression says much more than the words. She sits back down next to him "Oh, don't worry about that. Wouldn't touch that move with a ten foot pole, and even if i did, in sparring you don't WANT to actually inflict excess pain. If thats anything like i imagine, you can't strike there and NOT cause pain".

"I've been trying to get the torque right after the initial strike. The timing on that has been giving me the most trouble. Kept going forwards too much and hitting the dummy with my side instead of my foot". She finishes off the water in the bottle, looking a bit distant. She gives him a sad smile "Wonder what sis would say if she saw me now..... ". She leans her head on Aranhas shoulder "Sorry.... don't mean to be a downer... so much seems on the verge of happening....". She looks at the distant stormclouds, in her mind the classic symbolic sign of future events

[ARANHA]
And with that, Aranha breathes a huge sigh of relief. And he'd probably like to imagine, all of the males of the world breathing a sigh of relief. Hell even the women too. All the times he's been hit there in fight halls and street fights, not fun.

"One thing my teacher always said was that every attack begins with the footwork. It took me awhile before I /truly/ understood what he meant."

Unfortunately he doesn't really have time to give a demonstration. But he's at least planted a seed in her mind to think about and even if it doesn't show itself in the attack itself, it will make her a better overall fighter in the long run.

When she mentions Karen, Aranha is quiet, at first. His hand goes to the spider shaped soul shard pendant around his neck. At one point it held the power to bring people back to life and now he couldn't bring Karen back to life with it. Would she even want to be alive again? His lips curl into a frown as he really never stopped mourning her. Just distracted himself with other things instead.

"I just hope that she found the peace that she never could quite find in life."

He moves towards his duffel bag and picks it up. He stops and turns towards Kelly and says, "Don't let me distract you any longer from your training. And remember if you need to crash in any spots in either Southtown or Metro City while you're traveling around as a fighter, you have the keys to both of my spots. Just text me when you're heading that way. Can't guarantee I'll be there but it'll save you on hotel costs."

[KELLY]
Footwork makes sense. If you aren't in position to do something, you can't do it to begin with.

Kelly nods in agreement with his statement about Karen, not bringing it up further. She knows he misses her equally as much.... Moving on as seemlessly as possible, she says "Actually, i was about to go and have some semblence of dinner when you came. It's getting dark anyway, and i've worked up a heck of an appitite!". She gives a nod and pats her pocket, which has the jingle of keys in it, her grin returning "Yea. That'll come in handy at least until i have some kind of winnings to live on!".

She stands "Come on! I got a bunch of the fresh vegetables that recently were harvested. I imagine you could use a meal after the match!".

[ARANHA]
As soon as Kelly mentions the vegetables, Aranha's stomach growls. His body knows what its priorities are. Food and sleep. After the long travel from Chicago, it was good to be at one of his homes. Sure, he could've feathered but that just seemed like a frivolous use of it to him.

"That sounds good. Let me drop off my bags and wash up and I'll join you."

With that he's off. He has a wash basin with his name on it.

Log created on 17:35:44 08/18/2017 by Aranha, and last modified on 13:17:06 08/19/2017.