Description: An epic tale of life and love, of dancing and defeat. Also some people almost crying but not quite, and also also SEXY TIME. Kind of?
Untz untz untz untz.
While Alexandria, Egypt is certainly among the more cosmopolitan and less traditionalist or restrictive cities in the Islamic world, but there are probably some things you're not going to find in a predominantly Muslim city on the Egyptian coast. For example: you're not going to find the latest and greatest Dance Dance Revolution machine. Lots of synthy JPop-y beats which you can slam your feet to are not in great demand even in that tourist paradise. It is one of those great experiences -- humiliating yourself by looking like a total dork trying to get better than a C in public on the easiest song in the world because you've never tried it -- that people all over the world miss out on because they don't have the ridiculous technofetishist masochism that is a hallmark of Japanese culture.
Well, when Farah's first year university friends found out she'd never done DDR, that just had to be fixed.
They're not all Japanese, the gaggle of young women who surround the raven-haired Egyptian. Southtown's universities are as cosmopolitan as schools like Pacific, so interspersed with identical-seeming Japanese girls are a few Africans, a Chinese girl, even an American or two. They are all exhibiting that worrying group behavior that makes young straight men terrified of them: excited low-voiced intergroup discussion followed by loud giggling and, occasionally, pointing into the crowd. But this is one of Southtown's bigger and more popular arcade venues, meaning that this behavior mostly goes unnoticed by people too busy playing Saturday Night Fight Super Turbo Neo Rage Alpha X: Championship Edition on head-to-head candy cabinets.
Right up until Farah, in all her exotic, sexy glory, steps onto the machine and picks a random song.
She gets the latest incarnation of 'Paranoia', among the hardest of DDR's recurring songs. Her girlfriends prepare to laugh and play along and probably watch her fail so hard she falls on her face, breaks her jaw, and dies when a bone splinter heads into her frontal lobe.
About 130 seconds later that part of the building is totally silent. The game informs her that Farah has performed the song at the 'B' rank. On her first time playing the game, ever.
She turns around to look at her dumbstruck friends, smiling like a total fool. "Did I do it right? That was actually quite fun!"
Oh god, she's one of THOSE.
This arcade is not Wang's arcade. He has a favorite; a modest little place that's closer to Gedo, with a cozy, comfortable feel and fine dining options available nearby, so that one can easily keep their strength up during a hard day's play. Read: it's dark and hot and there's a McDonald's right across the street.
However, it's every man's duty to better himself, to explore new vistas, expand horizons, get out and experience all life has to offer! Specifically, this other arcade, which has many wonderful qualities which distinguish it, first and foremost being how none of Wang's friends are here which is good because they are /turbojerks/ and he is going to have an amazingly fantastic time without them, so they can just go to hell!
Long Wang is currently sulking over a soda, staring moodily into space, certain that he is the unhappiest human being ever to live.
And then, in what feels like an instant but is actually slightly more than two minutes, his day dramatically turns around. The chatter of the arcade dies down, and Wang's attention is grabbed just like everyone else's. There is an /angel/ here, and she is /dancing/. On DDR!
The song ends. Wang slowly rises to his feet, jaw slack. Almost as if in a trance, he shuffles forward, oblivious to the normally terror-inducing 'pack of older girls'. And he struggles to find something to say, something worthy of this /transcendant beauty/, reaching for words, any words capable of expressing the emotion that has been unleashed from his heart! "Ah...ah...um..."
Instead, he panics and falls back to safe, comfortable ground before he can stop himself. "Only a B? I guess that's not bad." He pauses a beat, and unleashes with a snotty expression of disdain. "For a girl, anway."
He may be oblivious, but the 'pack of older girls' is not necessarily oblivious of Wang. In fact, the Red Sea seems to part for the Chinese youth because a few of those girls, fresh from mani-pedis and cucumber overnight masks and an Avon catalog's worth of home beauty regimen take one look at the approaching figure and quite literally scramble out of the way before he touches them. It's quite ungainly and unladylike, in fact, which makes a few of the nerdier young men in other parts of the arcade who see it feel a combined double hit of smug superiority and deep despair. The fact that they close ranks afterwards to lean in and gossip (and to see how Farah reacts) has the decidedly troubling effect of basically erasing Wang's escape route. His current paths away from the DDR machine itself consist of 1.) plowing through the girls like a Zerg-rushing Korean Starcraft player or 2.) suddenly deploying a jetpack and flying over their heads.
Farah, meanwhile, blinks and turns when she's addressed. Partly because someone just clearly spoke to her, and partly because she can feel Wang's presence as he approaches. It's that psychic power of hers, a rare and useful but occasionally troubling gift, and the conflict of emotions in Wang's heart yanks her awareness to him. What she sees is a tiny Asian greaseball teenager with a chip on his shoulder, at least visually. But somewhere inside him, well...
Let's just say Farah's a sucker for a fixer-upper.
And then he implies that her performance was 'not bad for a girl' and her internal monologue downshifts and starts accelerating. ~ Poor thing. Victim of a patriarchal culture where he has to look macho in front of other guys. He doesn't even know what he's saying. I bet if he just got to know a woman he'd leave those sorts of attitudes behind. ~
Because she is an idealist, *Farah actually believes these things to be true*.
Thus what comes out of her MOUTH is this:
"Well, this was my first time ever. Do you play?" A hand comes up and reveals enough coins for some head-to-head, two-player action. Because fate is unkind, she is holding them at chest height, just above the hint of decolletage shown by her too-big overshirt.
She is smiling at Wang.
"I'm always looking to improve."
Unfortunately, Wang's backpack does not have jets, though it one degree of seperation away, being modeled after Boba Fett's helmet. Not even its soft, rotund glory can help him now that he has descended into what very well may be the heart of nerdkind's collective nightmares.
And yet, in the middle of it is a gleaming ray of light, a hope to guide Wang's path, to carry him safely from hell and into heaven! She's /looking at him/! A part of the greasy little teen's mind can't help but fistpump and consider the mission a success. It's all he could have hoped for, isn't it? Several other parts hate that first part but can't do anything because it's too late now. If you're already on fire, why not walk across a bed of coals? Where's the harm in that?
And then, something unprecedented happens. Farah...Farah smiles. A girl /smiles/ at him. Possibilities open up, his brain working overtime to calculate what this could mean. Could this...could this lead to getting to a base?! Wang is not actually sure what they mean, exactly, but they have to be great if everyone keeps talking about them! And from there...she's basically his already! A happy life together! A modest home, with heirs to his legacy as BIG BOSS, the greatest covert operative that has ever lived! Facial hair!
Thankfully, this train of thought is nicely derailed when he finally realises that Farah is dangling money in front of her boobs and challenging him to a dance battle. This has to be intentional. Some kind of a test? There's no way a woman could do that on accident, since it is widely known internet fact that every female alive is a conniving, traitorous slut who only wants you for your money/power. Or...is she already trying to put him in the friend zone?! This is potentially disasterous! Before anything else, this crisis must be averted!
"I could show you a thing or two." Wang does his best to leer, which looks sort of like if Han Solo were sucking on a lemon, then adds, "If you're even capable of learning anything." Inwardly, he's congratulating himself for being sufficiently jerkish so as to guarantee a favorable response. This is /foolproof/.
Unless Wang's game is rusty. He finished with this version of DDR so long ago and moved on. Gosh, it's been out for, like.../at least/ a month.
Perhaps if he really knew what was going on in Wang's head, he might not be charging ahead quite so heedlessly of danger. She has plans for him, Farah does. They don't involve any bases unless they actually don uniforms and whip out some bats and balls (giggity) to hit a few. In point of fact, his hormone-driven reaction to her is sort of a blind spot on her mental radar for whatever reasons. It may be because Farah has dedicated herself to a higher purpose, as far as she's concerned. It may be because she hasn't had many friends growing up, and practically no dealings with the opposite sex. She's not clueless -- she knows how things go down, she's the product of a mother and father and they had 'the talk' among other things -- but she just doesn't think it's important. Certainly, if she did, she wouldn't be dangling 50 yen coins in front of her cleavage.
What she sees in Wang is someone with problems, and as she decided long ago, she is a Problem Solver. She is going to make this work. If she can just get in his head, make him think, get him involved, she just knows she can turn him around. Show her a thing or two? "Of course you can," the dusky-skinned young woman says evenly, because it's the truth. This will be her second time EVER playing DDR. If Wang can't show her a thing or two, then she'll be sorely disappointed in Bemani, for having designed a game that can be eaten and devoured like ripe fruit in a mere 5 minutes of play. She's not much on video games, but even Farah knows that would be a colossally stupid way of making a game.
In go the coins. Back steps Farah onto the pad, tapping away to the random song select. "I guess we'll have to see what it is you can teach before we'll see if I can learn anything, hmm?" It's one of those weirdly stated, purely innocent comments that could be a veiled come-on or a verbal smackdown. YOU JUST CAN'T KNOW.
What song will get picked? How will Wang dance? SHOW ME YOUR MOVES.
It is perhaps unlucky that Farah's actual intentions are as unclear to Wang as his is to hers. Surely, if he knew (and believed) that anybody could think thusly, it would stop him in his tracks. Unlucky for them, at least. Anybody watching gets a /show/.
At the moment, he's fairly sure that the dusky desert dancer is still testing him, gauging whether or not he is worthy as a mate with thinly veiled sarcasm and challenges to his manhood. That's good! It may be difficult, but Wang is nothing if not willing to claim with full confidence that he can overcome any challenge, even to himself if neccesary!
"Fine! Get ready!" Wang responds with as much force as he can muster, which is less than he would like with every single person in the city watching (which he can no doubt prove scientifically that is not just what it feels like shut up).
Finger tapping lightly on the buttom, song after song goes flickering past, Wang dismissing each in turn. He has a song in mind, which should make his intentions clear and impress the lady in one fell swoop. At last, he finds it.
'The Booty Call: Turbo Remix', famed for its unprecedented .95 BPS (booty per second), general difficulty, and complete lack of anything resembling tastefulness.
Wang makes sure to smirk in a poor attempt to hide his nervousness before the song starts. Thankfully, the opening croon of 'Booty booty booty booty booty! Booty call! Booty booty booty!' erupts, and the boy becomes a /machine/.
Skills last utilized in his 96-hour DDR marathon begin to rise again, as his feet slam down again and again, the only wasted movement arising from mistakes which he quickly recovers from, moving on as though they never happened. Heaven forbid he actually /express himself/ in any way, shape or form.
Two minutes, forty-five seconds later, with a last triumphant, auto-tuned call of 'BOOTY!', the song ends. Wang stands, panting, almost completely unaware of everybody around him, up to and including Farah. His entire mind is focused on one thing and one thing alone, the current key to all his hopes and dreams: the score that's slowly ticking up.
The instant that little letter appears, Wang begins to cough violently, doubling over, turning, and learning on the little rails for support.
Behind him, the screen displays what is perhaps his greatest shame: //only an A//. He hasn't even noticed Farah's, yet.
It is like some ridiculous, monk-like stillness settles over Farah once the actual song gets chosen. Dancing, fighting, whatever it is that she does, her Soul Power demands that Farah throw herself into it with abandon. She takes every challenge -- EVERY CHALLENGE -- seriously. Whether it's someone engaging her in a street fight, or a tiny, oil-covered Chinese boy with a massive chip on his shoulder determined to prove that he, among all the men stumbling into the Amazon Village, should be dated challenging her to DDR in the thinly-veiled guise of teaching her how to play. Once the competition has started, she latches on and doesn't let go. This is the same sort of verbiage that is applied to, for example, attack dogs savaging a small animal to death in their terrible maws.
All that being said, the song gets picked, and she does give a slight "...oh, my," before the music starts. It's not just the girls behind them at this point. The entire arcade is watching this battle. There are people outside pressing their faces to the glass to get a glimpse. It's pretty intense.
Which makes it all the better for Farah, whose psychic abilities drink in that intensity and energy and magnify it within, burning like a fusion reactor. The key to her powers, one even she doesn't know about, is that when people get psyched about something, her ability to do it goes up *merely because they have an interest in the result*. It's terrifying.
During the almost 3 minutes of the song, the girl is a whirlwind of motion. It's not just her legs stomping away, oh no; that Bagua and dance training mean her arms are looping through the air, her hips are swaying, and a really too perfect for this world ass -- or 'booty' as the song seems to imply -- spins mind-bending circles. Perhaps the best part about this is that Farah, through quick sly glances, is actually modelling many of her steps *after Wang's movements*.
The 'S' that pops up under her side of the screen, once Wang looks up, plays a little fanfare and glows gold. Looks like it's Decoy Octopus for you, Wang.
"Hgkkk, hgkkk, hgkkk," Wang continues coughing and wheezing like anybody has to after accidentally inhaling some of their own spit. However distracting as that is, he already has a smooth recovery planned. The coughing slows enough for him to get a couple words out: "Asthma, ghk, I'll be, ghk, fine."
With difficulty, he straightens and sees the screen again.
He immediately double over again, coughing perhaps even harder this time in the wake of Farah's supernatural dance abilities. Can any man stand against that? This...this raw, unknown power?!
Wang has lost this day; it's obvious that he would have won, were he on the top of his game, even though it's just as obvious that Farah purposefully concealed her true power in order to lure him into her cunning trap. The oily teen cannot guess at her true motives, shrouded in the mysteries of womanhood as they are, but this is no deterrent. She is a woman with spirit, with intelligence, with curves! No price to pay will be too great, no obstacle that is not worth overcoming!
By the time he finishes his inner monologue, Wang has even pretty much recovered from his coughing fit! "D-don't...don't think that this is over!"
Try to imagine the movie "Carrie." Imagine a woman shouting, in a terribly shrill tone, "They'll all laugh at you!" You probably don't need to go as far as the pig's blood, really. The sweat and... other things... flowing across Wang's skin are enough. The girls who came with Farha are laughing insanely at this situation. The people around them in the arcade are elbowing, nudging, gossiping, cackling. To them this is the funniest of situations; the bratty-seeming, arrogant young arcade kid just got his ass thoroughly kicked by a newbie, a GIRL newbie, a FOREIGNER GIRL newbie, who is in the middle of the standard 'oh, did I do that?' look of surprise which, to be fair, is genuine because she seriously has no idea how she did that, other than by watching Wang a bit and just using what dance technique she already knew.
For a moment, she stands there, eyes closed, drinking this in on multiple levels. She can feel it from so many people... the scorn, the schadenfreude, the pity, the 'glad-it's-not-me' directed at poor Wang. And she might not understand his motives -- perhaps it's for the best that she doesn't understand his motives -- she also knows that he got up and challenged her and in the process she learned something, which was valuable to her. Accepting and meeting challenges is, to Farah, the highest form of compliment.
If Wang sneaks a glance at her, she actually looks for the briefest of moments like she might cry.
It doesn't last long. Violet eyes shoot open, blazing with the inner fire of a soul pushed to retaliate against a world that doesn't meet its expectations, and she whirls on the group with a speed and a fervor that stuns them into instant silence. "How many of you got up here and played, huh?!"
The sharp non-sequitur seems to have the desired effect, because the laughing stops. It's as if Farah just raked the crowd with eye lasers which she, in fact, kinda did on a metaphorical level.
After a moment of that terrible silence, she turns back to Wang and produces more coins, enough for a rematch. "I know it's not over. Let's go again... show me what you're really made of."
Is she even from this PLANET?!
The mockery of his peers, their endless laughter. It is not unknown to Wang, rather it is a familiar quantity, though never quite on this scale before. Somehow, it puts it rather in a league of its own, making the boy flush deeply, choking back tears of his own, quivering slightly with the effort. He can't even run away; there are so many /people/ in the way.
But somehow, after what feels like an eternity, it is revealed that hope has not yet fled. Unexpectedly, Farah turns on the crowd, seeming to defend him, which brings its own rush of conflicted emotion and desperate confusion. Does she really care? Is she really that kind? Or is this another trap, designed to lure him in? Or perhaps she's simply recognized the true strength that Wang is certain lies within him, if only the world would stop getting in the way for long enough to let him unleash it.
Regardless of her reason, Wang is certain of one thing, at least. Even if she's giving him another chance, he's already lost. Even with the crowd silenced for a time, he's too shaken up; how can he focus after this...this humiliation? It's hard enough to think, let alone keep playing. But like always, Wang has a plan. It's hasty, and there might be holes in it, but he doesn't have the time to go over it in greater detail.
"No." Head bowed, Wang stares at the floor as he struggles to speak. "Not here, not now." Abruptly, he leaps at the railing and rebound back on top of the machine, only slipping a little before he steadies in an ideal 'escape' position. "But you'll see! I'll be back and you'll see my skill!" And things will be /different/. "J-just..." And here Wang finally falters, voice lowering a little as his desperate confidence begins to run out. "Just tell me your name first!"
Is it a trap? Is she really just setting him up for future public humiliation, sowing seeds that will eventually rise into a poisoned tree of terrible evil, its fruit nothing less than the utter public destruction of Wang Long, an innocent who did not bring his public humiliation on himself in any way by desperately challenging a pretty girl just to actually converse with her?!
Who can say?
At first, she seems disappointed that he's not going to give her a rematch. Genuinely disappointed! Perhaps it's not a trap after all! But when Wang says -- despite his "> FLEE" menu choice and his parting line that sounds a little bit like Cobra Commander reminding the GI Joes that someday he will beat them or perhaps Dr. Claw shouting NEXT TIME GADGET but that's neither here nor there -- that he will come back and face her a second time, Farah seems mollified. Perhaps even more incredulously, she appears ready to take him at his word, too, because she doesn't scoff, or snort. She just keeps smiling that sort of too-pleasant, no-way-that's-real smile.
"Alright," she says simply, putting the coins back in her pocket and adjusting her stance, hip swaying out to the right a bit, right hand palm down on it, elbow bent. It's a very Shakira-style pose. It infers that her hip regions don't prevaricate and tell the truth at all times. "But I'm going to be practicing too. Don't let me down... I'm expecting a challenge."
There's a metallic series of clanks followed by the clacking sound of her sandals hitting the tile floor of the arcade as Farah steps down from the machine, then turns around to look at Wang, people on the floor around her scrambling backwards out of the Charlie's Angels-style curve of her hair whipping after her in the turn. For a brief moment, those dark violet eyes bore into Wang from afar, as if she's drilling a pipeline right down into his soul.
Which she kinda is.
~ He could be something, ~ she decides. She can see it... the spark. A spark which, for all their likely being better at video games or probably damn near anything else, nobody else in the room seems to have. She actually lifts both eyebrows in surprise, as it's the spark she normally associates with martial artists. Quon had it, El Fuerte had it... even Juri, for all her psychopathic mayhem, had it, in a twisted and evil way. Somewhere deep inside Wang, he's got it too.
~ ... very deep, ~ she admits. Farah's an idealist, not an idiot.
"I don't suppose you..." she starts off, before shaking her head and deciding not to follow that line of inquiry. Time to see if he's an actual fighter later. For now, she accedes to Wang's one request. "Farah. Farah Tenjou."
Every brilliant yet misunderstood genius, whether in reality or fiction, understands the need for tactical retreats. Wang would be proud to stand in the company of such men of vision as Cobra Commander and Dr. Claw, except for how they aren't as good as him and are failures. But aside from that.
Success! Farah has taken the bait, and allowed him the time to make up for his temporary disadvantage. There are so many /variables/ that, given sufficient time, Wang can manipulate and cooerce into all but assuring his eventual ultimate victory, which remains a sweet, tantalizing image. He will return, and he /will/ make Farah understand who is the boss, who is /in charge/, and she being a woman will instantly fall for him and everything else falls into place from there like dominos. Sexy dominos.
For the moment, even in a full rear-ward advance, Wang ekes out a little victory. He has her name! And she didn't even ask for his in return! Yes!
Except...it doesn't really feel like a victory. Even though that goes about as well as it could, there's just something about her stare...it's unnerving, somehow. Wang couldn't say why, or how. He tries not to dwell on it, either, as he springs off of the machine and makes his own escape as fast as his legs can carry him.
Log created on 20:25:53 08/17/2010 by Wang, and last modified on 01:49:38 08/18/2010.