Description: ...And then some people embrace danger. There are an enterprising few individuals that have elected to go through Taizhou's treacherous post-apocalyptic Huangyan district, leaping from building to building, navigating the black clouds and soot-choked region to the relatively idyllic intact city area. Unfortunately, Taizhou seems to sense when she is trod upon. For lonely heroes seeking the path to Nirvana, even the very ground you're standing on will become a trial. In a series of underground detonations, the buildings on which Aranha and Wing stand collapse. Detonations following them like unholy spectres, can the enterprising duo make it to the Huangyan/Luqiao border alive?
"Smoke curling into the early morning air, turning the sun's rise into a bleak and dreary morning, all seemed to be calm and uneventful with the stealthy approach into Taizhou, with none of the serious reported incidents of others attempting to get into the city. However, it is not without cost; to approach Taizhou through its raw wound is to see the dirty worst of the city. All parts of Huangyan are ravaged, if not by natural disaster, by engineered ones.
Every part of the district seems to be in a long decrepit state, and it is near perpetually on fire. The air smells of scorched brick and rank brimstone. To approach Taizhou in this method is to invite Hell.
Then, the world begins to spin.
A dust cloud floods the streets far below, filling the area of fire and jagged steel below with all-obscuring grey. Slowly, the former solid concrete you stand on lists dangerously. The building tilts and collapses, suddenly all parts of its structure becoming potentially lethal in a serene freefall towards the street. In the near distance, another building turns into a massive plume of dust, the earthshattering crack reaching the ears only seconds before chunks of what used to be an employee's break room begin to hit the ground with thunderous peals. All of a sudden, fire-rated doors become ironic scythes neatly cleaving abandoned cars in half.
The source of the chaos seems to be planted explosives. More importantly, these explosives seem to be detonating in direct relation to the position of a single source of intrusion--you. The Luqiao district is only a couple of miles off, but the stretch seems to have just gotten a lot longer."
The awful din created by explosives is silent for just a moment. The dust and smoke takes some time to settle and from it appears a light skinned African American covered in singed clothing and wearing a backpack on his back. He takes a few moments to look around the bombed out cityscape.
A realization sets in that even if he spots the explosives, which isn't very likely due to the pains taken to obscure them from his sight, he isn't going to be able go through without explosives going off. There were points where explosions triggered near him rather than underfoot.
With a sigh, the African-American looks around before mumbling to himself, "What was it that D.L. Hughley said?" He doesn't actually say the quote but he finds himself saying, "Well... This is as extreme as it gets."
With that, Aranha is off, breaking off into a dash as walls detonate in his wake, as he vaults over a car and then slides under an abandoned bus in the direction of a fire escape to a building that by some miracle still seems to be standing.
This shit is real.
Some may have traversed the wastelands surrounding Taizhou out of confidence in their ability to avoid the deathtraps said to populate them. Wing Xiaoping, would-be Queen of the Streets and inadequately-notorious terror of Pacific High, didn't consider the alternatives. Admittedly, she also doesn't have the means to consider them, not really considering herself a professional fighter and not engaging in serious enough crime to turn a profit; in her heart of hearts, for all that she romanticizes the true spirit of the gangster, she delights much more in day-to-day intimidation than actually breaking the law, and wouldn't have the courage to face real punishment. For all that, however, and though only boneheaded determination sees her through this lonely life--
"...Nngh..."
Boneheaded determination is still determination.
"...This is fucked up."
Hood pulled up over her tightly bound hair, Wing holds one baggy sleeve to her snub nose, shielding herself from the fire and stench. Her watering eyes cast out about her, the young girl trudging stolidly along the girders of half-shattered buildings, having long since decided the roofs of these bombed-out edifices were preferable walkways to the infernal streets below. It doesn't occur to her that perhaps she should have found some different means to enter, and she does not, as per usual, bother to hide the fear in her eyes as she surveys the multitude of potential threats in this environment: the lingering flames, the thick smoke. In a strange way, the delinquent is gratified to be experiencing first-hand what's been wrought her, in the country of her deceased parents.
~ Grandpa... you fuckhead... you ever seen anything like this...? ~
It occurs to Wing instead that the world is much bigger than she thought.
Crime, too.
"What the f--"
The girders beneath her suddenly begin to quake violently; a detonation beneath immediately revealed to be the culprit. Screaming with girlish abandon, the Queen of the Streets rushes to the end of the steel even as it begins to collapse beneath her, leaping headlong toward the ledge of the opposing building; even as she scrambling up, however, a second detonation is triggered. As she flees desperately toward the edge of the roof, dodging showers of debris, her gnawing paranoia is confirmed with a third explodes almost directly beneath her, sending the chunk of roof upon which she's standing hurtling up in the air, her diminuitive form clinging to it as she wails piteously.
"I'm too hot to diiiiieeee--"
The piece of debris is cast off the side of the collapsing building, as it so happens throwing her free of the wreckage and most likely saving her life, and instead soaring over one parkour artist's head to crash into the side of the building that he was just about to scale. The fire escape's ladder is shorn from the stone, clattering noisily to the ground, and Wing's wail only continues as she is flung down away from the shattering wall.
As the stone collapses behind her, the girl falls flat on her face right at Aranha's feet. "Ggmphh!" Dragging herself awkwardly up, at first she moves slowly, shaking her head dazedly, but after a moment seems to remember she's in the midst of a war zone and straightens, gasping and jerking her gaze about with a maniacal tinge to her eyes, her smudged face still all-too recognizable. "Hrrghh, where are they!? I--"
Only then does she seem to notice Aranha's presence.
"I... y... you...?"
There is a long silence, in which Wing blinks rapidly.
"You... you're..."
And then she points, eyes widening in characteristic fury.
"You're the one trying to blow me up!"
More explosions elsewhere. It was an indication that he wasn't alone. But he didn't have time to contemplate it beyond whether or not they were going to get him blown up. They were too distant to be of concern to him until they get closer and then all of a sudden a chunk of stone flies over his head and takes out the fire escape. Aranha finds himself biting back a multitude of curse words.
To Aranha's credit, he doesn't give in to the urge to curse the moment he sees Wing at his feet. No he's looking for alternate routes away from this location. His search however is interrupted when Wing levels an accusation towards him.
His response? "Hey Sure-not Holmes. Use your eyes for just a second. Look at my path. Do you think I would blow myself up for fun?" He indicates all the singe marks on his clothes from getting introduced to different incindiaries on an ongoing basis.
"Anyway, I don't have time for dealing with you." He steps around Wing and dashes about five feet before moving to a wall that crumbles before he can even reach it. So much for getting up on top of that particular building.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
With that, Aranha searches for other buildings to scale which he hopes will give him a better idea of who is attempting to blow him up.
"Don't give me that shit," spits Wing in response to Aranha's cowardly attempt to distract her with reason. "I haven't forgotten your face. You're my nemesis! Nemesis!" she shouts, stomping her feet as he proceeds to ignore her entirely and engage in more practical, if equally futile it seems, matters. "Ever since I first kicked your ass, you've wanted to destroy me."
But while Wing can deny the past, she has more difficulty denying the present, particularly when a fourth explosion triggers in the midst of the half-destroyed building from whence she was flung, seemingly an after-effect of the building collapsing in on itself. "Umm," she says, for once in her life sounding hesitant, "you think that there's someone out there controlling these explosives? Or that they're, like, automated? I thought that buildings were safe, but-- even with all the fire, maybe the roads are less likely to be booby-trapped."
Wing throws back her hood to regard the shattered remnants of civilization before her, eyeing the abandoned vehicles worriedly. Despite her words, she does not seem too keen on taking to the street herself; she glances back at Aranha quickly. "Wh, whatever," she manages, immediately beginning to glare again. "You're one of those freerunning guys. The roofs are bullshit anyway." Not deigning to elaborate on that point, Wing crosses her arms and edges out of cover, her gaze on the least-mangled vehicle against the curb, one somehow spared most of the devastation. "It's not that much farther to Luqiao. You can walk the rest of the way through these bombs, but I'm fucking taking one of these cars."
"Actually if I recall correctly, I'm up Two Zero, your lowness." Another explosion occurs and the PK capoeirista cringes slightly before turning in that direction. He then turns towards to the destruction surrounding them. "But to answer your question, yes. Yes, someone is controlling them or they are triggered through proximity rather than direct contact."
Aranha then steps over the rubble of the wall he would've climbed had it not been blown to bits. "To be honest, I don't think there is a safe location until we get past this." He turns back just in time to see Wing eying the car which seems to be in ok condition. He steps down to the other side of the blown wall. He can't help but mumble. "I bet that car's booby trapped. Nothing's ever that easy."
Is Aranha wrong or is the capoeirista too genre savvy for his own good?
"...Ughh..."
Warily, Wing continues to eye the car from afar, beads of sweat forming on her brow. After several moments of hesitating, she reaches down to pluck a brick from the road and gingerly hurls it in the car's general direction, bracing herself as it clatters against the side of the door. Nothing happens; after a few moments, the girl relaxes. But she continues to stare at the car for several moments, clearly unreassured.
"...Hey, wait!"
Abruptly, the Queen of the Streets turns around to stare up at Aranha, and then hurries to clamber up the collapsed side of the wall, half-scampering up through the ruins. "Wait, wait, hold on." Breathing heavily, she ascends to the top, looking up at the man with a slightly queasy expression. "Hey, uh... look... whatever your name was... this place..."
She looks over her shoulder, regarding the devastated landscape with slightly wild eyes. But after a moment she takes a deep breath and seems to calm herself, the otherwise irrationally violent girl subdued at the apocalyptic visage before her.
"...look, I'm... I'm not going back."
There's pride burning in the eyes she turns toward him, a pride that is ever easily pushed toward rage. For the moment, however, the little terror seems to have herself under control.
"There's no way for me but forward. But I... I'm..." She glances aside for a moment, squinting as, uncharacteristically, she seems to want to choose her words carefully. "I just don't think it's a good idea to travel alone. I'm thinking maybe... you know... we can put our differences aside for a little bit. Until we get to Luqiao. Until..."
Wing always looks small-- but for a moment, as the young girl looks back at the burning streets, for a very brief moment, she no longer seems to be trying to make herself look bigger.
"...the fires die down."
There's nothing to be queen of here.
As Wing follows him, he finds himself questioning the motives of his would be ally. "Besides, a kingdom holds no value for a queen that is dead?" He shrugs, smiles and continues moving forward cautiously eyeing each foot of ground with suspicion. Barking dog can be heard in the distance coming closer and closer and then...
*BOOM*
The traceur turns around and sees that same car that Wing had been looking at blown onto it's side. The burnt remains of a rottweiler next to it. The air is heavy with the stench of death and destruction and Aranha finds himself shaking his head. "Well... That means some of these are at the very least heat sensitive."
He continues going towards the final stretch when he thinks of his previous dealings with an event held by Seishirou. "It's all well and good that you want to put our differences aside but I think it's fair to warn you that there might be consequences to that path. I was in the tournament that he ran on that boat. The objective of the first match was to get on the boat and prevent the opponent from getting on. My opponent decided to bargain her way on and so I figured out a loophole that would fulfill the conditions but still grant her access to the boat in the long run. Because she sought out to bargain with me, her next match ended up getting her thrown into the ship's trash compactor with other people who tried to bargain. If there was no winner within a certain amount of time, they all would get crushed. While it would be safer I'm sure, there's no guarantee that it won't get us punished either."
He continues starting out with a light jog, before saying, "While I wouldn't mind have someone watching my back, I figured it would be fair to warn you so you knew what to expect."
Wing looks vaguely ill, regarding the now smoking, capsized car.
"Uh...?"
Uncharacteristically, the petite thugette stays silent as Aranha explains his experiences with the previous tournament, following in his footsteps as he continues on through the rubble. When she heard the call to forge a new world, she didn't think much of who was doing the calling. She only knew that strong people would be a part of this organization, and that, being strong -- in her not-so-humble opinion -- she could profit off this somehow. It hasn't quite sunk in yet that whoever was responsible for this devastation is also whoever she would be hoping to benefit from after proving her ability. But the sadism that her pseudo-nemesis describes is certainly food for thought.
Honestly, she's mostly just impressed.
Yet she does, moreso than she usually seems capable, appear to be taking what he says very seriously. The last thing Wing wants is to be humiliated in public. She doesn't plan on losing for any stupid reason, or being at the mercy of some nefarious goon if she doesn't have to be. An embarrassing concession like traveling with this guy, as long as nobody's watching, isn't really a problem. Of course, if he'd refused her, an insult like that couldn't go unpunished, and she'd've kicked his ass and left him here to die. Or so she tells herself, as she listens.
"...Yeah... I see what you mean."
Words you will likely never hear again from her.
"Well, /I'm/ not scared," she announces, more smugly than circumstances justify. "If those assholes try to pin me in a corner, I'll just win. Anyway, it was my idea for us to travel together, so you don't have to worry about it. If they get on our case about it, I'll just say so, and take responsibility."
Now that's really something you'll never hear again.
"D-Don't get the wrong idea," she cuts in quickly; if he turns around, he'll see she's actually blushing slightly now, her face tightening in a flare of defensive anger. "I just refuse to, you know, be in your debt. This is mutual benefit, here."
Admittedly, she might change her mind later, but--
It seems clear from her eyes that principle has little to do with it.
For all the anger there, Wing seems very relieved to not be alone.
"So... for now... I got your back."
Because she's not brave.
The girl wipes the sweat from her brow with her sleeve as she veers away from a small pillar of flame, roaring up from some of the nearby debris. And as he begins to jog, she picks up the pace, following close, glancing behind her to make sure nothing follows.
She just hates being afraid.
"Pull your weight and there should be no..." A sound from above of a detonation sending chunks of rocks falling down upon their heads. "Oh fu.."
There is no time for words at this point. Only action as their newfound alliance is about to be tested. Aranha whips his arm outwards sending a web of blue chi up above Wing's head. If she turns around, she'll find a boulder pinned to the wall by a blue chi web before it drops to the ground with a dull thud.
"Shit's about to get real!" Aranha shoots forward a couple steps when a dumpster he runs by explodes propelling the dumpster at him while a trip wire catches his feet. It's one of those /rare/ instances of where he gets so fixated on the obvious things that he misses out on the smaller things.
There's not much he can do about that dumpster that's about to land on his back.
"Aaahh...!"
Wing instinctively rears back at the sound of the detonation above them, only to stumble amidst the rubble they've been picking their way through. Falling back on her butt, she winces and tries to rise only to stare up in mingled awe and terror as a boulder hurtles toward her-- only to be immediately pinned to a wall by a burst of Aranha's blue chi. A shudder passes through her, and she looks down, as though unwilling to recognize that someone has just quite possibly saved her, only to see that her hands are trembling.
This is not something she understands.
An environment that itself seeks to destroy them...
Maybe no one's out there. Maybe it's just them.
Normally, Wing would succumb to her paranoia and assume someone lurking somewhere is specifically targeting them. Maybe if she were indeed alone, she would. So grateful for company, even if this company, that she has little room in her head for her usual irrationality -- self-aggrandizement, really, a narcissism that would love to assert the world is centered around her, that people care enough to despise her -- instead Wing faces the much more terrifying notion that there's no meaning to this. This landscape doesn't hate her because she's somehow important.
It's just full of hate.
She can't seem to stop her hands from trembling.
Then Aranha stumbles, and Wing's chin snaps up. In this critical moment, a dumpster, flames rising from where an explosion has launched it into the air, plunges down at her newfound ally. And maybe-- well, maybe she'd at least hesitate to save him, under other circumstances. She'd take a moment to think about it, before decided that if he died, there'd be no one she could humiliate afterward.
But Wing is too scared for that.
Who dares make her hands tremble like this? Who dares so shame the Queen?
"AaaaaaaaAAAAAAHHH!"
All at once Wing is boiling over with fury, as through the curious alchemy of her heart, her fear becomes humiliation becomes uncompromising rage, a rage directed not at any observer but at the very world itself, at the environment that would bar her path. Thrusting out her fist, shaking now not with fear but with gathered energy, the force she projects funnels directly into the air before her, sending a blast of wind that knocks the dumpster off its course and crashing several meters away from its target. She staggers up to Aranha, gingerly picking her way around the wire.
"Hey, did it get you!? Hey!"
She leans down, fortunately not realizing that she is unable to keep her voice from quavering with worry, the worry that she might be left alone here after all. And unthinkingly she reaches out her hand as though to help him up, or check if he might be injured-- only then does she freeze as she becomes aware of the care that she is showing, and blanches, frozen in place, unable to retract a hand that has already been offered. She remains awkwardly silent for a moment, clearly mortified to be so concerned.
"...Well, are you okay or what!? Asshole!"
But there's no going back, after all.
Wing's blushing again.
And for Aranha's part, while he's grateful for the assist in terms of keeping the fiery garbage away from him, he's guided more by frustration. He's frustrated that he can't use the environment to his fullest. That every attempt at moving through this warzone has been stymied at every turn. Frustration at himself for being unable to pick up on something that he normally would've caught on his slightly above his worst days. He's frustrated in not being able to figure out where the traps are.
He slowly climbs to his feet as he reminds himself that he's been in warzones before. As 'Welcome to Metro City,' the song he has chosen for his unofficial themesong, says, he's been through Metro City war. He's been the Southtown war. And he has moved easily through them. But he can't for the life of him figure out what is so different about this particular warzone that keeps him from doing what he does best. Move. The result of it is that even with the falling buildings surrounding him, he feels more claustrophobia in this war zone because of his movement avenues being taken away than he feels when he rides an unusually tight elevator with a bunch of occupants stuffed in.
It's Wing's worry that returns him to the present. "Yeah... I'm good." He pauses before adding as an afterthought "Bitch. Let's go."
"Fuck you!"
Still flushed slightly, Wing stuffs her hands in her pockets as Aranha gets to his feet. There's no hint of her gloating over having possibly saved his bacon, and there's no thanks for him having helped her moments before. For the next few miles, this kind of thing will be par for the course; it's best for them to save their breath, most likely. Still, it says something that Wing is too distracted by their current circumstances to even lord things over him a little bit.
Nothing is more hollow than the confidence of a bully.
Still, for all the weaknesses these challenges expose in the girl, she somehow made it this far all by herself. And however much the immensity of the devastation here might overwhelm here, there's no hint of even hesitance at the prospect of continuing deeper. Most of Wing's actions are motivated by concerns of what other people will think-- out of the desire to convince herself, through the fear and respect in others' eyes, that she is strong and important. Nothing complicated about that, and not an indication of any deep issue either; it's just being an asshole. A violent manifestation of particularly virulent insecurity.
"...Yeah..."
But it seems, perhaps, in the face of this real danger--
"...Let's go."
--like there might be some real conviction in there, too.
"I gotta take you on a tour of Hell before I send you there."
Ooooor maybe she's just waiting for her chance.
Log created on 22:42:35 04/04/2010 by Wing, and last modified on 01:50:45 04/13/2010.