Description: In an attempt to get into Taizhou by way of Mount Kuocang, Hayato and May Lee run into one another coming out of the forest as the near the top of the mountain. It looks like everything is going just fine until somebody sets off an explosion that brings what seems like half the mountain tumbling down toward the two fighters. But they both have the power of Burning Spirit on their side, and aren't about to let a few rocks stop them.
Hayato Nekketsu is a man far too manly (and impatient) to deal with having a guide show him where to go. He's not completely stupid though, so he at least brought a GPS device with him. And a map and compass, just in case, packed in a backpack with his other supplies. If all else fails, the fact that he's trying to get to the other side of a mountain kind of helps. It's a bit hard to miss, and you want to be going up, then down. Simple, right?
Of course, there's the whole forest to deal with, not to mention the hiking and climbing. None of that really bothers Hayato, though. It's just a bit of brisk exercise compared to some of the training he's done. It's sure taking a while, though. And a GPS will tell you where you are, but a guide might have been able to point out the /easy/ way up the mountain. But that would be cheating. And see? Now the teacher has made it to the edge of the treeline, and the rest of the route up the mountain is easy to see. And he only got lost once. Okay, maybe twice. Well... look, he made it, okay?
SOME TIME AGO
"... and a flashlight, and a compass, and a portable fan, and a DVD player..." May Lee murmurs to herself, squatting in the center of a spiralling collection of hiking and camping supplies. She actually has a little checklist in hand, though instead of using a pen to make marks next to each item, she using wee Kamen Rider Femme helmet stickers to mark her progress down the list. The Kaphwan Dojo is far more spacious than her own apartment; with her masters' blessing, she has taken over a goodly portion of its floor for this endeavour, and being able to look up now and again at the smiling visage of Kim Kaphwan makes this whole ordeal easier to coast through.
"... and marshmallows, and a stick, and a machete--"
"Five hundred push-ups," Jhun Hoon crisply calls out from one of the dojo's side rooms.
"But--"
"/Seven/ hundred push-ups; /true/ Tae Kwan Do brooks no knives, no swords, no blades at all--not even machetes."
"But the jungle--!"
"/One thousand/ push-ups!"
NOW
May Lee no longer believes in machetes. For that matter, she doesn't really believe in jungle guides either, because all of the ones she talked to insisted on bringing a machete along to hack through the underbrush. Instead, the young heroine is using what God and Kim Kaphwan gave her to clear the way, chopping through vines, slender green growths, anything and everything blocking her path with the edges of her gloved hands. Each strike comes with a loud ki-ai--
--given how damn much jungle there is, though, it's difficult to say whether she's even audible to Hayato as she works her way through.
It takes her hours; she has a GPS device, but the GPS device also doubles as a portable gaming device, and 'Here We Go--Decade vs Den-O! Ride Through The Ages!' only just came out yesterday and if she's /late/ in beating it and getting all of the secrets, the other members of her 'Rider fan-club(s) will probably spoil it all for her, and God forbid she let some stupid thing like a jungle expedition lead to such a terrible end.
Actually, it's nothing short of miraculous that she /does/ finally reach the treeline, and not so long after Hayato, at that; starting way earlier paid dividends.
She is dressed for the occasion in a deep blue safari jacket with a red, frog-embossed t-shirt beneath, white hat, white slacks and a pair of white-framed sunglasses resting just above her eyes. And her blue gloves, of course--and her bulky white belt with Korea's symbol in its big round buckle, of course.
"OH MY GOD!" she squeals, the dismay and shock in her voice rippling so powerfully through the jungle that a flock of birds takes wing over the tree tops. A second later, she practically hurls herself out of the trees and into view.
"/This isn't how Climax Deka worked at ALL!/"
Conveniently for Hayato, his usual red track suit is quite suitable for athletic exertion, so he hasn't had to change his wardrobe much for this trip. He does own other clothes, though, really. He did, however, go with a sturdy pair of hiking boots for the occasion. They've protected his feet quite well so far, which is good, because as he stands there looking up the rest of the mountain it's clear that there's still a lot of hiking to go.
The teacher turns around at the sudden shout and the flapping of startled birds. He wasn't expecting to run into anybody else on this remote route. He looks about for a moment before spotting May Lee, and then after a moment of thought recognizes her. "Well, wasn't expecting to run into you out here!" Hayato gives the Korean girl a friendly wave and begins walking in her direction. It was, admittedly, getting a little bit lonesome way out here. Someone to talk to wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
May Lee yelps again; this time, it's wordless, more of a thing of raw surprise than the loud disappointment of the last moment. She doesn't quite know why as she does it, but she can't quite help scrambling to find a back pocket to tuck her 'GPS device' into while searching for just the right excuse to explain that she was dilligently hiking through the forest and not, like, goofing off, and yes, she has a pass to be out--
When her eyes snap up to Hayato's face, their doe-like qualities quickly seep away and her rapid-fire search for answers comes to a halt.
"Well, I wasn't... expecting... to run into /you/, either," she haltingly says; her voice goes up and down in pitch a couple of times as she speaks, lending the sentence an odd and palpable nerve-ridden quality.
Also, the word 'you' is stretched out a little weirdly, which really doesn't help.
Also, also, she follows it by smiling a bit /too/ broadly, which would normally actually be pretty natural for her but right now leaves her looking like she's got something to hide.
As Hayato draws closer he's able to see May Lee moving to stow the GPS device when something catches his eye. "Hey... is that Here We Go--Decade vs Den-O? Rid Through The Ages!? I didn't think it was out yet!" Yes, he was able to identify it from just that brief glimpse. Hayato is liked by his students for many reasons, and it doesn't hurt his standing with them that he's a big fan of video games. And how could someone with as much Burning Spirit as Hayato not like Kamen Rider?
Unfortunately, all this time out in the open has provided an opportunity for Hayato and May Lee to be spotted by someone higher up the mountain. Quiet conversations are had as safeties are deactivated and word is sent back to base. Now it's just a matter of getting confirmation. A finger hovers over a switch as the scene shifts back to Hayato and May Lee...
"Wh--whhhhhy yes! Yes it is!"
May Lee presses a hand over her heart; by now, it isn't beating /too/ quickly, but it's rapid enough to invite a continuance to her flusteredness. It's sort of difficult, pin-pointing how she's /supposed/ to take this, because it's pretty much never happened before.
At least Hayato isn't /actually/ her teacher, this might be double weird if he was.
"It's--I can--they--" She swallows a little and forces herself to not only turn and begin marching towards the mountain but to spit out, "--totally ruined the Climax Deka story by trading Kiva out for Decade and--and--"
She sucks in a big breath of air. Ninjas, land-locked island, terrorism, war, right, right--what would Black do?
She exhales loudly, wheels around towards Hayato so that she is walking backwards and tries her best to sound authoritative in saying, "I'll--just have to explain it to you later, because there are /ninjas/ to get to!"
Now, Hayato has dealt with a lot of teenagers. And when he's not distracted, say by a video game, he can tell that May Lee is definitely nervous about something. Come to think of it, she seemed pretty nervous the last time they met, too. But his time with teenagers has also taught Hayato that it can be a bad idea to push them before you've had some time to get a good read on them and, ideally, a fairly good idea of what they're actually worried about. So he doesn't press the issue. "That's a good point. At least it looks like it should be pretty straightforward from here."
Speaking of ninja...
*KABOOM!*
That is the sound that comes from further up the mountain, accompanied by a rising cloud of dust and smoke. And not far behind it are some chunks of rock that were actually launched by the explosion. Most of them are fairly small, raining down as pebbles. Then a chunk of rock the size of a bowling ball goes flying past Hayato's head. "....Oh, crap."
"Yeah--I mean, if we made it through the /jungle/ without anything bad happening, we /have/ to be safe! Ninjas /love/ jungles; they're like the tigers of the human wor--"
*KABOOM!*
May Lee ends up being a little less fortunate than Hayato, because not only is her well-reasoned discourse on the habits and practices of ninja rudely interrupted by an explosion, she's faced with a hurtling chunk of rock with a piece of pipe crudely shoved through its center. All she can do to avoid losing her haed is throw herself gracelessly to the ground with a squeal of surprise.
Her sunglasses are knocked from their secure place against her brow, but since they end up resting all crooked the world is half tinted and half lit, which is just /strange/. Thank God they aren't rose-coloured; the metaphoric implications would be staggering.
"Mou..." she mumbles as she slowly pushes herself upright. She is a bit rattled from the rough landing, and her front is covered in dirt besides.
At least her GPS device is safe.
No serious injuries have been sustained from that first part of the blast. That's good. But Hayato is still looking up the mountain, because now the ground is starting to rumble. And the dust is getting closer. With the occasional large boulder leading the pack. That's bad. A blade from a wind turbine comes bouncing ahead even faster, scything through the air with a combination of a wooshing noise and metallic pings. It flies past the two fights, bounces again off the ground, then shears right through a tree behind them and keeps on going.
Hayato reaches down in an attempt to grab May Lee by the arm and haul her to her feet. There isn't really much time to be nice about such things right now. "Looks like we've got half the mountain coming down on top of us. Get ready to move, fast." One of the leading boulders comes bouncing down a fair distance off to their right and smashes into the tree line. And keeps going, only now accompanied by the sound of crashing trees. Doesn't look like retreating offers much in the way of safety.
At least getting in step with running alongside Hayato is reasonably effortless; May Lee has done so much running in her meager eighteen years that she could probably do it in her sleep, by now.
For that matter, she could probably compose and sing a medley of Kamen Rider themes in her sleep, prepare a dish of spicy kimchee in her sleep, and manage a solid 35% three-point shot average in her sleep, too, but none of those skills are anywhere near as pertinent now.
"/This isn't how ninjas work/!" she shouts to try and ensure that she'll actually be heard over the din. "What are they even--"
She swings the edge of her right hand through one of the smaller boulders, neatly splitting it so that its halves fall to either side of them.
"--/doing/?!"
One huge boulder comes dangerously close, and it's large enough that trying to run to the side might not be enough, especially with the erratic bouncing. So instead Hayato steps quickly toward it as it hits the ground, then gets a hand on it as it bounces back up, plants his feet on the ground for a moment and shoves it off onto another trajectory. He then has to quickly step to the side as another smaller rock goes bounding past. "Trying to kill us, probably!" And yet he sounds remarkably cheerful. Nobody has actually gotten /hurt/ yet, so the teacher isn't feeling all that upset.
And at least it looks like the dust at the point of the explosion is clearing up. So that means Hayato and May Lee just have to deal with all the boulders that are currently grinding down everything in their path on the way toward the bottom of the mountain.
"But where are the shurikens?! The trip wires?! The /ninja magic/?!" May Lee shrieks. She doesn't have the build to do anything at all like Hayato; even cutting that one in half has left her hand stinging so badly that she is shaking it out as she runs to try and rid herself of the discomfort. She can't help but be impressed, though--maybe if she begs Kim /really hard/, he'll teach her how to--
Like half of a maintenance truck is tumbling dangerously towards them--towards /her/, really, forcing her to leap into the cab-less bed and ride it a few feet down the mountain like the world's most dangerous sled.
"/Ninjas/! /Don't/! /Do/! /This/!" she insistently shouts as she windmills her arms and sways madly back and forth to try and maintain her balance; finally, she manages to spring clear of the thing, and thanks to the extra momentum she...
... well, ends up a little further up from where she started, which will probably put her just about level with Hayato if he remained moving.
At least she sticks the landing, though, and at least she has the wherewithal to keep running as soon as she touches down.
Hayato has some personal experience with ninja that don't quite fit the standard mold, but May Lee seems so upset about all this that he decides not to bring it up. "Well, we didn't see what set off that explosion, right?" The teacher stumbles for a moment as he ducks one rock, then suddenly has to backpedal to avoid running right into another one. "Maybe they used some kind of ninja magic to send all the rocks tumbling down."
Oh, and here comes on an entire wind turbine, having fallen over and started rolling down on its side. The blades were sheared off pretty quickly, but the bulk of the tower is still mostly in tact. Hayato makes a leap to clear it, doesn't quite make it, and finds himself running in place on top of the spinning shaft for a few moments before he manages to leap off and hit the ground running.
"Hopefully!" May Lee shouts as she, too, has to spend a little bit of time running in place atop that turbine. If it weren't for the ninjas acting so un-ninjalike, this would actually be kind of fun, because one time, in Tae Kwan Do camp, she had to do something /exactly like this/, only there was padding under the log, and also, it was a log and not a ruined turbine tumbling down a freshly detonated mountain.
"Hah--aah--Mr. Hayato--" she gasps after landing beside the Burning Phys Ed. Teacher. "We--what if we worked together to just... /force/ our way up the mountain? Two--two burning hearts, one powerful strike to take us through the debris!"
Hayato takes a quick glance up the mountain. Buring Spirit is all well and good certainly, but... okay, it doesn't look like there's any building sized chunks of rock left, and in fact much of the rock slide is already past them. All that takes just a moment before he grins at May Lee and gives her a thumbs-up. "Sounds like a plan!" ...No, no it really doesn't. But this is Hayato we're talking about. "Let's go! That way looks good!" He points to a bit of relatively even ground leading further up the mountain, and that seems to pass through a slightly thinner part of the remaining rockslide.
The teacher waits a moment for May Lee, and then he's off! He takes point, being both a bigger target and just now demonstrating that he is capable of punching a rock hard enough that it explodes into fragments. Fragments which are still rocks, and kind of hurt as they bounce off his face and body, but considerably less than being hit full on by a giant lump of stone. "It shouldn't be too long, I think we're through the worst of it!"
May Lee, meanwhile, just begins to spark. Or, more correctly, her right side begins to spark; crackling lines of electricity are tracing the lines of her musculature as she tries to get her other arm fixed securely around Hayato's waist. It's awkward, what with the running and the punching and the boulders, but she has to hold up her end of the deal, and shrinking the amount of space the two take up will help.
May Lee is /not/ capable of turning boulders into fragments the way that Hayato is; splitting smaller ones with precise chops or even kicks, sure, but to consistently mime the Burning Phys Ed. Teacher takes a little more.
That is why, as the tail end of her bright red scarf begins to peek out from beneath her collar she exclaims, "LIGHTNING BLOW!" and lunges into thrusting her right arm forward. Small as she is, the lunging will probably leave her lunging awkwardly forward as she struggles to keep pace with Hayato upon landing, but the /important/ thing is that the first boulder she touches following her shout explodes into a shower of sparks and pebbles, and so do any /others/ that make contact with her outstretched hand.
Between the two of them, clearing a path should be...
... well, hopefully, there won't be any more turbines. Those are almost certainly /conductive/. Otherwise, though, they are in a good position now.
There are still more rocks to deal with, but between the two of them Hayato and May Lee are able to make fairly short work of them. And then before long all the rocks have either stopped moving, or are behind the two fighters and continuing to crash down the mountain. Hayato slows to a stop, then takes a moment to catch his breath. Then he raises a fist. "If there's any ninja still up there by the time we get there, they're going to be really sorry!" Though it's probably unlikely that they'll have to worry about this particular tactic again, at least. How many times can you blow up a mountain?
Hayato cracks his neck, flexes his hands a few times, and grins at May Lee. "Looks like we showed them who they're dealing with, huh? Now we've just got to finish climbing... the... mountain." His enthusiasm drains a bit as he looks at the hike that's still ahead of them, and he sighs briefly. "At least going back down on the other side should be easy."
"And /no amount of logs in the world/ will save you from Justice when we get up there!" May Lee adds with the aid of youthful spirit, heroic passion and gloved hands cupped around her mouth. She massages her right arm afterwards; that much time spent channeling lightning chi is rather uncomfortable, she tends to go to short, pseudo-instinctual bursts more than anything else.
"The hard part is already over--we can climb this mountain no sweat!" she assures. Now, when her grin is turned on Hayato its breadth is borne from pure enthusiasm, and with the way her scarf is flying freely in the breeze it all has rather a dramatic cast to it. "I even brought climbing pitons with me!"
And they all have Kamen Rider Black's helmet on their ends.
Log created on 18:52:58 04/12/2010 by Hayato, and last modified on 00:35:05 04/14/2010.