Description: Farah is a believer in destiny and chance meetings. She hopes that someone who has provided much guidance for her will be there, waiting, just taking a nap on that there park bench as she feels tense and unsure about some of her recent self-expressions in battle as to who she is and what she can do. Nearby, an overworked man just finishes a shouting match with someone else. These two concepts seem to have nothing to do with one another, and yet...
If Farah had to characterize her experience with fighting, fighters, and the people she's met since she came to Southtown lo so many months ago, it would be at this point 'confusing.' There are so many people whom she has met, some good, some bad. She's had so many battles... some in her favor, some not quite so much. And inside she's struggled with so many conflicting feelings. When she ran into Rose so long ago in Genoa, and that woman encouraged her to be a shining star that encourages others, she thought she could do it without reservation. Farah would make herself the best she could possibly be and hopefully, in so doing, bring others along for the ride.
But it didn't quite work out that way. Though she can control her Soul Power abilities to fight with, she perhaps hasn't mastered their hold over her heart. In the way that young people are idealistic, they often miss the nuances of things, and when you are literally using the power of your emotions to fight, then the result is not always without risk. Loss and pain, feelings of self-doubt and frustration, they sink in deeply to her subconscious. And always there, looming, is the first other fighter she really ran into with the same power: Juri Han, a dark spectre that haunts Farah's nights even now.
But with all that has happened in the past few days, the young woman feels as if she needs to talk to someone about it, and surprisingly, realizes she has all too few people she could go to. And so once she got off the plane, and had a moment to change clothes and rest, it was to the park she found herself coming. It was a longshot; she didn't have much in the way of data that would actually support her theory. Yet this was the only place that made any sense.
As it stands, she's now standing next to an unoccupied park bench, looking down at it with a thoughtful and somewhat disappointed expression. Considering the bench has nothing on it in any way, this might strike onlookers as... somewhat strange.
Off a ways away, there's a few men yelling about something or another. Disagreements. Angry emotions. There's a whole lot of that to go around - it's an especially unpleasant atmosphere for a place that's progressively gone back to becoming more and more peaceful since the days of the invasion.
One of them breaks away from the group and just shakes his head. A handyman, of some sort - a handyman with a very bad combover and for some reason a rusted length of pipe thrust through a toolbelt pocket. A handyman in a most sour of moods, which may be palpable to one so attuned to others' feelings and emotions. Maybe almost as palpable as the sound his left shoulder makes when he rolls it around some.
With a shrug and a sigh, he ambles along down the path towards Farah's way, where the young woman is standing and - apparently - looking at the bench with longing, not sitting on it. As the man draws nearer, a thought comes to his mind that this staring at a bench means only one thing, and one thing only. One of several things that he intensely dislikes, but realizes there's not much he can do about.
"Uhh... hey," he clears his throat as he draws near, standing on the opposite side of the bench from Farah as he looks down at it, "something, uh, something wrong with the bench?"
The dusky-skinned woman who is in fact staring at that bench, breathes out a long sigh, then turns somewhat when Rust arrives to ask about it. She doesn't seem shocked to see him, perhaps because she could sense someone getting nearer, and perhaps that is why she slips so easily into sharing with him what's on her mind: "Only that he's not on it," Farah says with a faint smile, looking at Rust, then down at the bench and becoming silent again for a moment or two. She'd really hoped to find him here, but in the end her luck just wasn't that good. "Of course," she adds cryptically, "it's the middle of the day. It's not as if you'd spend the whole day in your bedroom, right?"
Well now she just sounds insane.
For a moment, the young woman looks up at the sky, lips moving a little bit as she mentally runs down the places where he might be, and then her expression falling a little as she processes the answer is 'practically anywhere'. If it were Wang, the arcade would be a first guess, but... then there's a blink, and she turns back to Rust, who presumably hasn't wandered away just yet, and puts a hand to her mouth. "...you must think I'm crazy. Sorry... I'm so wrapped up in my own thoughts I'm just talking and not making sense at all, huh."
Indicating the bench with a hand, Farah smiles a bit. "I have a... friend. I don't think he actually has a home. He just sleeps here, on benches. But I wanted to talk to him, and hoped I might find him..."
Denji, where are you?
Only that... who's not on it? The confusion on his face is far clearer than the meaning of what she says, tilting his head as he looks for cracks or any other signs of weakness on that bench. Maybe one of the legs? He crouches down while she mentions spending the whole day in someone's bedroom, a pop in his knee as he shrugs at the thought. His left hand goes for one of the bench legs, giving it a good tug to see if it's loose or breaking, or what.
"Huh? Uh... no problem." Especially no problem if the bench isn't broken in some form or another, because hell, this bench not being broken would be the best thing that's happened (or rather, not happened) to him all day. That's a fact, a fact for the next edition of Ripley's Believe it Or Not.
Rising up off the ground to better address Farah as she mentions her friend, he just nods along. A homeless guy of some kind? Well, Southtown has no shortage of vagrants, that's for sure. He knows a few by name, acquaintances he helped maintain a shelter for once some time back.
"Ahh... can't say I've, uh, seen anyone sleeping 'bout here today," the man says as he scratches the side of his head. "What's his name, uh, what's he look like? Guess I could, I could drop a message if I see him."
"Denji... Akiyama, I think," the young woman responds. The first name, she's sure of; the last name, mostly a guess, as she remembers him talking about the mountain shrine that is his home, and a mention of an Akiyama Shrine. At the idea that Rust could leave a message for him, however, she laughs and shakes her head. "It's nice of you to offer, but I don't think it would accomplish much. To be honest, sometimes I'm not entirely convinced he's real." For a moment, the girl looks between Rust and the bench, seeming to consider something carefully for a moment, before she sits down on the bench herself, crossing her legs and placing her hands in her lap.
"Well, rather," she continues, looking up at Rust from her seat, "I know he's a real person but he seems to come and go from my life solely at moments of importance." The first person she met in this town who was a fighter like her, someone that took it seriously, was trying his best to get into that world. The first person she met when she thought to talk about her invitation to the King of Fighters tournament. "Maybe that's just my overblown imagination... but it would be nice if it were true, wouldn't it? If life gave us just the right person for just the right situation exactly when we needed it?"
She considers what she just said, looking up at the perfect stranger she met exactly where she was hoping to meet someone else, at exactly the time she came to find him.
She extends her hand upward for a handshake, guessing that Rust -- who she guesses is American -- would prefer, as a greeting. "My name is Farah Tenjou. It's a pleasure."
Not entirely sure if he's real? Either way, he tries to commit that name to memory... Denji Akiyama, whoever or whatever that is. It's not one he's familiar with. That she says she's not sure he even exists is a touch worrying to think about, though. Dementia?
As she takes her seat, he waits for any telltale signs of fatigue or wear on the bench. There's no creaks, or cracking, or anything of the sort - when the tension passes, he sighs quietly. Thank you, whoever is responsible, for ensuring that this bench is not broken. He really did not want to have to stand around and fix another bench today.
As Farah continues he looks back up again as she describes him as someone coming and going from her life at moments of importance which sounds... kinda-sorta like someone he knows. Knew. He's still scratching the side of his head when she talks about how if life gave just the right person for just the right situation exactly when they needed it.
"Ah... oh!" He clears his throat after a brief awkward pause. "Howard Rust, I, uh, I'm a teacher over at, over at Pacific High." He extends his right hand to meet hers for the handshake. Something about that surname seems familiar to him, though, where has he heard it? His grip on her hand is not strong. Is it restraint?
"And... uh, occasionally," by which he means 'all the time,' "the guy they send when someone's angry 'bout... well, just 'bout anything. One of our students, yesterday... kinda got rowdy, busted some things up. Sent me to fix everything."
He grouses a little more as he draws his hand away after the shake. "Far as I know, kid's family ain't... ain't paying a cent for it."
Doesn't sound like a very fair or equitable situation, now does it? Farah blinks a few times as Rust describes that scenario, moving her hands up from her lap to cross behind her head, fingertips drifting over the back of the bench slightly. For a moment, her thoughts rush back to her mother the journalist, the sort of woman who as a teenager would have done a scathing exposé of the repair racket going on at Pacific High and how all right-thinking citizens need to step up and ensure this never happens again! The thought makes her smile somewhat, despite the nature of the handyman's story.
"I suppose that's the privilege of money... I mean, historically, money seems to buy an awful lot of people freedom from responsibility for what they do." It's a bold move, considering the man works at Pacific, to imply that many of its rich-bitch students are douchebags who should be out here building new benches rather than assuming someone else would take care of it. In her heart of hearts, though, the Egyptian believes that he would agree with her, though perhaps he wouldn't use the word 'douchebag'... nor would Farah, come to that. "Pacific is the school that most international students go to, isn't it? There are a few students I know at university who went to Pacific but didn't want to move into their university program..."
There's a pause, and Farah glances up at Rust, then back down to the bench for a moment, before back at the person with whom she's having, for the most part, a pleasant conversation. Intuition does the rest, and one of the benefits of psychic abilities is that your intuitions are often right on the money. "But I think being a person who fixes what others have broken is an honorable way to spend one's life. Probably more so than fighting, anyway," she says at last, glancing off to the side. Apparently not even Farah's immune to letting her thoughts come out unbidden.
It sort of comes with the territory when you're part of a rich kid's school - you get a couple who have yet to really learn how to act appropriately in a manner befitting being a citizen of the world. It's the teachers' jobs to help educate them towards this... and considering one Mr. Rust's class often entails physical labor and actually doing things with your hands, it's probably no surprise he generally has a bit of a hard time.
Nothing compares to his first year in Southtown. Oh holy hell that was awful times. Those kids were absolutely hopeless back then.
"Yeah... uh, not a lot at a time," the man elaborates, "but you get a couple kids from... diplomats, businessmen... think there was one who was royalty." A whole load of youngsters from powerful people! Enough interesting stories about their backgrounds and antics to share with the guys back home.
Is being the effective whipping boy among his fellow school faculty and being sicced on just about anything that breaks - especially benches - really that much better than fighting? He's not sure what to think of that.
"It's... uh, it's a living," he says somberly. It is true that he is paid a bit better than the average for an educator, a salary some people with better educational credentials than himself would probably murder him in his sleep for.
"Uh... do you mind if I take a seat?" He asks of Farah as he eyes the bench in front of him. "Been on my feet 'bout... 'bout all morning."
She actually seems surprised that Rust would ask her permission to sit down; her intuition was not only is he likely responsible for keeping some of these benches in shape, but that this bench *in particular* bore his stamp. After all, even the intimation that something might be wrong with it opened up that combination of frustration and pride that Farah has come to associate with craftsmen in Rust. After all, when your job is to make something better, you can both appreciate the opportunity to continue improving it... and feel annoyed that it's necessary in the first place. Regardless, Farah sweeps out her hand to encompass the rest of the bench, perhaps all the invitation that Rust needs after a hard Sunday's worth of work.
"Royalty... haha, I'm not sure I could ever teach royalty." Farah puts her hands back in her lap and sits up a bit, actually leaning forward and looking out over the park toward the Seijyun campus. That school, too, she's heard about... where style and social maneuvering are part of the tacit education, the production of quality Japanese ladies. Farah herself was raised by a feminist and a sociologist in an Islamic state... her ideas of what's 'appropriate' for women are different from Japanese ideologies, that's for sure.
Turning to Rust, she smiles pleasantly. "I mean, I come from some wealth... not a lot, but enough so that small things were never my concern. And I know every day I sometimes look at myself and go, 'If you were poor, would you be worrying about this?' It's a challenge, but I make it a point to take that challenge on. Someone who's actual royalty, or something close to it... in a way I feel sorry for them a bit. When you've been so insulated, the world must actually seem like a very scary place."
There's a moment of thought, before she shrugs at Rust and leans back on the bench again. "I suppose that's where you as educators come into the picture, isn't it? But it can't be easy on you..."
"Thanks," he says with a nod at the gesture as he sits down on the bench. There's another pop from one of his knees that he flexes out when he takes that seat. He's still half-expecting something to bend or creak under there, because that's just been the flow of his day so far. It feels sturdy under his seat, though, a good thing. Such a good sign! If this thing not breaking is the only really good part of his day, that'd be just fine by him.
Not that there's anything wrong with the conversation going on between them, of course.
He quietly listens to what Farah says with the occasional bits of nodding. His face isn't too expressive in comparison, but, he's already a bit tired. It shows on his face pretty plainly - he didn't get much sleep the night before while waiting to see what some bills would come out to for his dad's hospital stay.
"Ah... pretty much." He says as he raises a hand in something of a shrug. "I mean... y'know, don't get me wrong, I'm doin' something with my life, y'know, somethin' good. I'll, uh, I'll admit, don't always have kind things to say 'bout... 'bout some of 'em, but there's some good kids in there."
He makes eye contact with a turn of his head, placing his own hands on his lap as he leans forward a little. "It's kinda a, a hard juggling act, what I've been doin', I mean... I'm a fighter too." His build might've been a good cue. Especially that length of lead pipe. "I got a, I got an invite to that big King of Fighters thing, and... and y'know, that's got me excited, but, it ain't easy. Gettin' ready for that, holding a job," he gestures with his thumb over to one of the people he was yelling at not long ago, "dealing with... that guy." The hesitation is because he wanted to hold back unkind language in case they were listening.
He's already sure he's in hot water given what they were just yelling about earlier. Calling that guy out outright might get him fired on the spot.
"I grew up poor, always wanted... y'know, more. Had to work a good long while... and... well, back then I didn't know I'd be a teacher, lemme tell you."
Farah's old enough to understand the idea of 'white guilt' and its transferance to other sources of privilege -- including money -- but smart enough to know that the circumstances of one's birth aren't your own fault, and so she shouldn't feel bad that Rust had to work his way up to where he is now. Still, it's hard to be the person who just mentioned she grew up wealthy, and then hear that the person sitting next to you did not. She takes in what Rust has said, and smiles a little bit when he's quick to say that Pacific has its share of decent people too. And then, well...
"Perhaps we'll see each other in the tournament," is how Farah chooses to respond to Rust's sudden mention that he's not only a fighter, but is planning to head to the KoF tournament too. Bringing up her right arm, she puts it elbow-down on her knee and puts her chin in her hand, looking away distractedly. "The person I was coming here to find -- Denji -- and I started a team with someone else we know, actually, though we could use a few more. I just... mmm." Here, she cuts off. She has no plans to try and recruit Rust; it sounds as if he's got people in mind. But she also doesn't want to burden this relative stranger with her own problems, especially since it seems like he has more than enough of his own to keep him company.
Leaning forward a bit, she turns to the left, looking Rust over carefully as she chooses her next words. "Have you always been a fighter?"
"You too?" He seems surprised at this notion, but, then again, this is Southtown where almost every other person is a fighter, or knows a fighter, or was a fighter... etc, etc, etc. He sits up when he asks this, even as she leans forward to put her head in her hand and the resulting elbow on her knee. She goes through the trouble to explain why she's in fact looking for this Denji of hers.
She reads him well, he's about to say that he might be full up when she cuts off, though he wonders if something's wrong. Is the bench getting loose on that end? Please don't say the bench is feeling loose and unbalanced on that end. Please, for whatever you're thinking, don't say the bench is feeling loose and unbalanced over on...
Good news is, it's not the question he thinks she's about to ask. He leans a bit forward again as she pops her question.
"Uhh... off 'n on." That's the best way to put it. "Pretty big gap where, where I was retired... maybe 'bout a year or so ago, I got in... four Neo League fights, before the invasion... hurt my hand during it."
He thinks better of taking off the work glove on his right hand, but he holds it up to illustrate it. "Been taking Kyokugen to, uh, to toughen it back up." And the rest of him. He stretches out his legs thinking about it, especially the one with the sore ankle from when an eleventh hour counterattack by Megane in a friendly spar not only hammered one of his legs, but sent it kicking out the opposite ankle.
He's very happy not to be putting so much weight on that right now.
The invasion... by the time Farah was ready to come to Southtown, the turf war of the various criminal factions had long since been over, the people of the city getting back to their lives. In fact, it's probably thanks to people like Rust, Farah observes to herself, that the city appears in many ways as if it had never happened... though she lacks the experience to make the gaping wound of Geese Tower's absence salient. She doesn't ask how he hurt his hand; in truth, she expects an effective war zone would provide plenty of opportunities for breaking his hand in many nasty ways.
Instead, she focuses on his answer to her original question. He did it, he left it, he came back to it. Leaning back with a distant look, she nods at the answer and launches into her own story. "My father is Japanese, actually. Knows judo... was even a professional fighter for a while until he left it to get a doctorate." She pauses, then turns and smiles at Rust. "Is there some sort of connection between leaving the fighting world and becoming a teacher, maybe?" She thinks briefly of her father in front of a class of Egyptian university students, lecturing about antiquities and ancient cultures, all the while wearing the doughty white gi of the judo practitioner, and unexpectedly laughs when the image crosses her mind. "Sorry. I just pictured my father punishing poor grades with body slams."
Tilting her head somewhat, she grins at Rust, tilting her head in the direction of Pacific, even if it's across the city from here. "I suppose royalty would complain if you started punching them to drive lessons home. What's Kyokugen? I admit I don't know much about fighting styles. Mine is very... personal, in many ways."
He nods along with what she says about her father being a judo user... come to think of it, he's seen someone by that surname on TV years and years back. Fancy meeting their kid here, he thinks as she narrates, if she's him. Now that he dwells on that name, there was something about her first name that he's trying to remember about what was so important. Farah, Farah... uh, in what context did he hear that name?
He just shrugs at the connection about leaving the fighting world and becoming a teacher. Come to think of it once you're too old to fight, all that experience you got left is probably good for teaching and maybe some second-rate celebrity endorsements. He turns his head when she starts laughing, but straightens out when she explains what it's about - almost in time for /her/ to be tilting her head the same way.
"Kyokugen? Uh... kinda famous karate style, really... really physical." That's about the best way he can put it succinctly, although Takuma would probably burst out of nowhere and beat his face in to heap more convincing praises about it. "And, and I do mean really physical, uh... few days ago I headbutted in some nails." He closes his left eye as though it remembers what happened, as he points to it with his left hand.
"One of 'em I hammered in with my eye, and... and, what I'm saying is... don't hammer nails with your eye." These are words of wisdom just about anyone should heed, as eyes were not made for hammering nails or, really, much of anything. Except for driving points home with hard stares, but, that's splitting hairs.
"I only, only enrolled recently though. Up 'till then, almost everything I knew, self taught." He pats Ol' Rusty with his left hand, that length of pipe sticking out of that poor ripped toolbelt pocket. "So I guess... it's been pretty personal for me, too."
It's probably for the best that Takuma isn't here, because Farah's reaction is not a shocked look of 'gosh, you're iron man tough!' but 'wow, that sounds like something a cult would make people do'. In fact, she seems incredulous that it is even POSSIBLE to hammer a nail into something with your eyeball, let alone without causing yourself massive injury. But she's trying to be as diplomatic as possible, so after a moment of obvious contemplation as to the best route to take, she ultimately says: "If it's a style that can somehow get you to pound in a nail with your *eyeball* then I guess... Kyokugen might be the path to help with your hand."
Definitely fortunate that Takuma isn't here to hear this.
"I learned a little Baguazhang... have you ever heard of it?" she asks, turning toward Rust with a look of curiosity on her face. "It's sort of like tai chi... all about moving in circles and using momentum. I use some of that. But I also learned how to dance as a young girl and that factors in too, and there are... other abilities." She keeps silent on the specifics there, for now; her Soul Power has been enough of a trial for her lately, and Antoine's attempt to overcome the girl's feelings of loneliness and isolation left her more confused and exhausted than reassured... for now, anyway.
Looking out at the park, she drinks in the scenario for a moment, before continuing on. "It's easy to get lost in all this, I think. Maybe it's good that you have so much to balance. Maybe it'll keep you grounded and not let your mind wander..."
These days, you never know what people can do with their bodies. Even Mr. Rust here continues to find new surprises over what people have been training themselves to do - not just 'fling pretty lights' but 'make your body do things bodies normally shouldn't do.' Arguably, he's a fine example of the latter, able to tense himself up like he's some sort of statue. Difficult to be moved... and further difficult to move shortly after the fact. Not a lot of people can do that.
"Baguazhang?" He meets her gaze when she mentions that word, mispronouncing at least one syllable despite her stating what it is clearly. "Maybe?" He's heard of a lot of fighting styles, in his earlier years he was a compulsive professional fighting TV water, something that's cooled off a bit in recent times since he's been sitting around watching the television a whole lot less.
He nods along with talking about... moving in circles, momentum, must be some interesting stuff to watch. Maybe he should look up and see if she's on the televised fighting circuit to see what it's like, he thinks, although he wonders what she means by 'other abilities.'
"Maybe... but, y'know, sometimes you just... you just let your mind wander on what if, I mean, even I do that." He clears his throat. "'scuse me. Uh... like, for example, I got a friend who, who another guy says doesn't use the same kind of chi other people do, or whatever," he tries to illustrate with hand movements of a very vague nature that don't really seem to infer much of anything, though one of them has him moving a hand away from his head. It's probably an accidental gesture with more meaning than he realizes.
"I mean, I know, it comes in all kinds of... colors. Shapes. Sometimes it's all like, fire. Or lightning. Or wind... or... wool." The look on his face suggests it's probably not best to talk about his experience with woolen chi. "And this other friend is all... how it's not chi, and I can't... I can't really comprehend the hell he means by that, I mean, it's... purple, it hits you like, like a ton of bricks.... dunno how that's different."
Well, that's... interesting. The problem with an inexact explanation, of course, is that it's... inexact. Still, Rust's description of what exactly is going on with this friend of his does pique her interest, and it's obvious from the physical reaction she has; the moment of stopping fully, then leaning a little closer, and then leaning back again, looking reflective about the whole thing. "Perhaps I'll get a chance to meet him someday," she says carefully. Hits like a ton of bricks... from Farah's perspective, it's chi that does that, and she secretly wishes she knew a bit more about it.
After that, she is silent for a moment, letting what Rust says sink in. The violet-eyed gaze turns to Rust for a moment. It's hard for her to get a read on the man. Just based on her five senses, she sees someone uncertain and unsure interacting with others... someone used to dealing with people who are angry or indifferent. But he keeps at it, and her sixth sense tells her that there is something more here. She doesn't know what.
Someday she'll find out.
Slowly, she hauls herself off the bench, standing up and turning around to face Rust with a smile. "Thanks for taking the time to talk to a perfect stranger," she says at last, after a silence that seems to go on a little too long. "I really do hope we get to see each other in the tournament. I'd like to see your skills sometime."
With that look on her face, a part of him hopes she knows what he's talking about. Maybe she could shed some light, he thinks, he's not completely all into the ins and outs of whatever sort of colors are flying out of people these dies like the younger crowd is. He swears, sure, you had a few prodigies here and there when he was younger but nowadays it's almost like every other kid can do it and then he's told one person he knows /doesn't/ use the same as they know and he's really lost.
That silence passes a little uncomfortably when he looks to her as she regards him. He wonders if he sounded a bit off his rocker, especially with the guarded way she suggests she might meet him one day. For all he knows, that new friend and teammate of his - Quon - might simply be speaking out of inexperience with how people handle chi outside of where he was trained.
Maybe he'll never know.
"Ahh... no problem," he says a bit quietly. Disinterested in tone? Nah, there's not really much else to do while cooling his heels. He takes the added amount of space on the bench to stretch his legs out a bit, though. "Yeah... maybe you'll get to see 'em." It's about as encouraging as it sounds - he's not sure how far he'll be able to go when stacked against enormously famous and/or well-known fighters who have undoubtedly gotten invitations themselves. He's one of those fringe people. He'll never know why they invited him specifically.
"Maybe on, uh, TV." He offers with a shrug. "I'll be sure to, to watch a match with you in it, if I can... if I can catch it."
Farah is reluctant to leave, at least for a moment. It was a chance meeting with someone who set her on her current path. Since then, it's been one chance meeting after another, each with their own impact. And somehow, this has been yet another in a long series. Her reflecting on it makes her pause. Maybe it's for the best that she didn't find Denji here today. Maybe it's for the best that she ended up here, talking with Rust, instead.
And then she has a slight smile. "If you like. I'll try to do the same." And then she's waving as she turns, heading off to wherever her day takes her.
Log created on 13:57:44 11/21/2010 by Rust, and last modified on 18:59:36 11/21/2010.