Description: Zach pays a visit to an old haunt and runs into one of his teammates. Matters are discussed and benches are delivered.
It's the YFCC! Home, or at least employer to several up-and-coming fighters as well as one or two veterans, the Youth Center has provided a place for Southtown's young people to go to for fun, martial arts instruction, help with classes, and in darker times a place of shelter.
For Zach Glen, it is a place of employment and was until recently a refuge of sanity in what felt like a largely insane world. Zach was only occassionally a tutor, and more often a janitor and handyman. Very rarely he provided instruction for those with wilder gifts, being intimately aware of such situations himself.
Today, though, he is just passing through and picking up a thing or two before heading off into another destination unknown...
Compare Zach's wandering trails and trials to one Howard Rust's generally structured life. Get up super early, get on the school grounds, make them look nice... teach, lunch, teach some more, yell or get yelled at, make school grounds look nice, brief errands, Kyokugen, grading, bed. Repeat.
Today, one of these small errands is seeing him back over to the YFCC to drop off something someone who worked there asked him to do as a favor. Unsurprisingly, it was repairing a bench. He is very displeased about having to deal with benches so much more than a mortal man ought to, but, nonetheless, there is a bench. It is fixed.
He's carrying it in by his lonesome with the help of his remarkable upper body strength over one of his shoulders, setting it down once only to get the front door open so that he can take the thing inside. It does scrape loudly against the top of the doorframe on the way in, more than announcing his arrival.
In case one of his knees, shoulders, or elbows popping isn't good announcement enough when it comes to this man, anyway.
"Hey... hey, got this bench fixed, right here," he says to whomever's around. He did make sure to call in advance.
Zach blinks once or twice when he hears Rust's voice over some of the din. He peers around the corner and eyes Howard Rust with a bit of surprise, his ponytail flapping and dangling with the motion. "Uhhhhh..." Zach falters for a bit before leaning back behind his corner. There is a bit of hurried conversation.
"Baseball diamond," Zach finally answers as he fully comes around to deal with Rust. "Out back." He grins a bit. "Want some help with that?"
"Ahhh... hey, Zach," the man nods in greeting. It should be noted this man, conspicuously, is wearing a white martial arts gi and matching belt. An initiate in some sort of martial art or another? He sure is starting late, being forty and all.
"Thanks, ah... yeah, I should be, should be okay." He clears his throat, the fatigue in his voice made evident. "Why do people just... keep... breaking these fucking things." Making his displeasure with the bench known, he takes a look about and clears his throat again. "Ah... 'scuse me, guess there's, uh, kids here."
He grunts at the thought. "How's work been?"
"An adventure," Zach says with good humored crypticness. If that's even a word. "People keep breaking them because they make handy weapons," he says after a moment of thought. He looks at Rust for another moment, noticing the thing that was nagging him at first.
"That's..." Zach gestures vaguely at the gi and belt, "Not typical teacher's clothes, even at Pacific I thought." Zach scratches at his temple, "Did you get on at a dojo somewhere?" Zach doesn't know /much/ about such things, but he hangs around people who do. And there's also that crazy old man, though Ryuhaku Todoh hasn't plagued him lately...
"Yeah... yeah, they... they kind of do," the teacher is forced to concede. They're big, they're heavy. A bit unwieldy, but when you consider 'big' and 'heavy' it makes sense. It still sucks that almost every time someone tugs his sleeve, it's over some other broken bench. He's sick of them. He is sick of them so very much.
The bench bumps up against a bend, forcing the man to stop, crouch, and re-shoulder the bench as to get the thing through as Zach mentions the martial arts uniform. "Ah... yeah," he nods, "been doin'... doin' Kyokugen." He rises again to the sound of complaining, crackling knees. "Wasn't gonna, gonna have time to go back home 'n change between... between this 'n that."
The Kyogugen name gets Zach's attention. He blinks in surprise at Rust. "Those guys are seriously hardcore," he comments as he looks around. The mere /mention/ of that name is rumored to be enough to summon Todoh and his insane wrath. He does a halfway decent job of keeping the concern off of his face, but Rust might pick up on it anyway.
"What made you go there?" He asks curiously.
"Uh... yeah, they are," no fooling, when Takuma basically enforces he does all the work he has traditionally done with tools by his own two hands. Especially his right hand - where Zach might be able to see that horrible burn scar on it from the days of the invasion.
He's also got a fairly sizable splinter in his forearm. He either doesn't care or hasn't noticed, and both are very realistic scenarios when dealing with this man.
"Well... almost all my life, never... never really had formal instruction on how to fight." Sure, there were a couple tips picked up off of friends, but never a formal teacher-student sort of thing. "And... y'know, when the King of Fighters invite came in, I was thinkin'... maybe I should. Maybe I should." He re-shoulders the bench once more as he starts to traverse down a hallway out towards the back with the baseball diamond.
"The guy's daughter, uh, what's her name... Yuko?" He's snapping his fingers on his left hand. "She did this demonstration at, at a corner and... well, rest is, uh, history."
"You mean Yuri," Zach supplies helpfully as he nods. "Can't say as I've had any kind of instruction either." He shrugs. "I mostly just wing it, since the thing I felt like I really needed to know, I couldn't find anyone who could give me a straight answer on." He smiles, trying to recall the last time he accidentally wrecked property values, "But then I figured that out on my own too, which is good for the neighborhood."
"Yuri, yeah," he's always been really bad with names for whatever reason. Maybe he just has other things in mind as opposed to names... or how much clearance space he has to move this bench through the way out towards the back of the community center, as he hits another tight corner.
"Yeah?" The teacher turns his head around as Zach mentions he's been mostly learning as he's gone along too. He supposes the two are a lot alike that way. "Uh... hey, one of the guys I got, I got for our tournament... did we talk about that?" He can't remember if he has actually gotten in touch with Zach on this as he grunts and sets the bench down to think about the best way to guide it down this hallway.
"Said you, uh... did something different with, with those colors you shoot, and... and, uh, what the hell is he talking about when he says that?"
Zach looks utterly confused for a moment. "I don't know what who said about the energy I use, but do you mean this stuff?" Zach asks as he turns a palm up and concentrates, summoning a faint glimmer of psychic energy around his hand. He holds it there for a moment before exhaling and banishing the effect.
"So I guess I'd have to know who said what about what before I could answer any questions."
One of Rust's knees start to ache at the sheer sight of that faint glimmer of purple, that trademark color Zach's known for. There are surely many other colors like it, but that one's Zach's... in so far as the teacher is concerned.
"Uh... Quon, the... the kid who got himself drunk behind the wheel," he grunts out, "he told me how he met you, 'n... about how that wasn't what he had, I've no idea what he meant by that," the teacher mentally shrugs when he hefts up the bench again, pretty sure he has the clearance to get through this corner.
"I mean, I'm guessin'... where he and his buddy Antoine were raised, nobody flung anything of, of that color or anything like that."
Zach scowls and pulls his cap off to scratch his head. "You're not explaining very well," he mutters as he thinks about it. He knows Antoine, Quon, and at least one other dude lived in/learned at the same school/dojo/temple place. Then it hits him.
"H'okay," Zach says after a moment. "I assume you know about chi, right?" Zach asks before explaining. "It's the energy that flows through all living things. The birds, the bees, the plants, the trees, they all have it as well. It's typically what fighters tap into to throw fireballs, like the Kusanagis do, or lighting, or blasts of energy like those Ansatsuken fighters do." Zach pauses as he thinks about how much it taxes him to throw energy around. "Although I wouldn't be surprised if some people knew how to borrow energy from the living things around them to help with that."
"With me so far?"
The teacher isn't even really sure how to explain what Quon meant because he's not even really sure what Quon meant, other than simply assuming it was a consequence of him being raised in a different fighting style. He may also be getting a little ahead of himself, given he's also trying to get this bench out to the baseball diamond... come to think of it, why didn't he just go all the way around out back?
The things you think in hindsight.
As Zach gives the lecture on chi, the older man nods after another loud bump of bench against wall. He could've sworn this corridor was a bit wider when he looked down it... hm. Hopefully he's not leaving marks against the wall either.
"Yeah, I'm... I'm with you, sorry, just movin' this," he grunts.
"Now," Zach continues as he switches into teaching mode "Some fighters, like Alma Towazu, Ingrid Holmann... I think that the Psycho Soldiers team uses it. I /know/ Athena does..." Zach trails off thoughtfully for a moment. "Anyway, we tap into something completely different. There's a couple of names for it. Soul power, psychic energy. There's a group out there that refers to it as psycho power, but those guys are noone you want to mess with if you can help it."
Some fighters like... well, Alma's a name he's heard of - who hasn't? - always been very showy, very... open, on the camera, like he were almost some sort of televangelist or some such. The teacher nods along, unaware that he has met at least one of these names in person from certainly bizarre circumstances.
"Yeah?" A lot of people call chi different things so he's at least a little skeptical it's anything truly different in itself, until Zach starts listing off names. Namely, psychic energy, which gets him thinking in the completely wrong direction just as he's physically /walking/ the right one.
"Psychic energy, uh, that," he shakes his left hand, "you mean stuff like... relationships, predicting lottery numbers?" Because he sure as hell could go for something like that right about now!
Zach looks blankly at Rust for a moment then answers with a solid "No. It doesn't work like that." Zach rubs his chin for a moment. "Though some of us seem to... be able to get a read off a person. Get a general grasp of who they are without having to talk to them. I've heard of some folks being able to read surface emotions, or have like a danger sense of some kind. But no predictions, really."
Zach chuckles, "Though /that/ would have saved me more than a bit of trouble. Some of us, though, just have a lot of energy to throw around that doesn't come from anywhere but ourselves. When I first learned about it... well, I learned the hard way about it."
The disappointment on Howard's face is palpable, which may lend very strong credence to what Zach describes from there about being able to get a read of person - even with the notable descriptor 'some of us' instead of something like 'people like myself.' That Zach speaks as though he's heard others like him can do this, but yet not himself, just kind of cements it further.
The older man is almost dejected at the thought, as if wondering how one actually calls that 'psychic' if it doesn't do the things psychics on TV claim to do, that momentary cynicism about TV psychics leading to the idea they may actually be for real talking to Zach...
...Only to learn, or perhaps remember, that it's still all a fantasy. He stops to scratch the side of his head as Zach continues, realizing there's still one very big problem not many of them would have an easy answer for.
"No predictions, huh," he finally vocalizes his disappointment in a sort of sullen tone as he continues to walk with Zach continuing to explain about having 'learned the hard way.'
"Hard way?" He asks as he looks over his shoulder. "I, uh... I don't follow what you mean by hard way."
Zach lets out a long sigh. "I found out that I had this ability after I literally levelled the house I was in. I was having an arguement with someone, it was during finals and things were pretty stressful. It just... rushed out of me. Guy ended up with a three month hospital stay. The house was a total loss." He shrugs as he looks at a spot on the floor. "There were other... episodes, but those are getting fewer and further between nowadays."
"...Seriously?" The shop teacher stops where he's walking. "I mean... getting upset like that'd... make you do that? I've, uh, I've heard of bad temper problems. I had one when I was a kid," he says, although the level of magnitude between the two is, by far and wide, completely different between 'sending kids to school nurse with bruises' and 'destroying house, someone going to hospital for three months.'
"I guess, uh... it's good if it's not happening as much?" It's the closest he can offer to condolences when he's not sure he completely follows the idea of someone just flying off the handle so hard that things explode with the snap of a finger.
"It... the power responds to will," Zach provides. "And from what I understand, the first... display is usually the most dramatic. Although," Zach shrugs here, "I've been told that my display was pretty spectacular compared to most. Which, I guess, goes with how they /also/ say that I have an enormous amount of power for someone of my experience level, and that I just need to learn how to use it better."
Zach collects himself a bit more. "And I guess it takes everyone by surprise that first time. I spent... the better part of four years just learning how to /not/ let it explode out of me. These last three years trying to hammer it into something that sort of passes for a fighting style." Zach shrugs again. "Nineteen wins, thirty-seven losses, and six ties. And that's just the 'official stuff.' Doesn't even count Taizhou, or the invasion of Southtown, or that trip to Metro City."
Responds to will, huh, the teacher mentally echoes in his own mind when Zach talks about this as he continues along at a much slower pace compared to his usual very slow pace. It shouldn't be long, as there's the sunlight down the tunnel. It does cast an eerie sort of shade on the corridor between the two men as they talk about Zach's history and personal challenges.
"That sounds... that sounds rough," the teacher says as one of his knees does its damned hardest to make him want to walk faster, as though keeping at this slow pace would cause it to cramp. It has opposite of the desired effect, assuming knees by themselves ever really had any such thing as desire.
His skin crawls at mention of the invasion of Southtown, readjusting his grip on the bench with a heft and a shrug (and a shoulder pop). "Is... is, uh, fighting all you can do with it? I mean... if you could do what you say you could do with it," even though Zach just said it's other people like him that could do it and not himself, "hell, that'd make you good at... at a lot of jobs."
And also a whole lot better with women, he bets, being able to come close to reading what they're really emotionally thinking. He sure wishes he could've done that when he first asked his ex about moving out to Japan with him.
Zach winces as much at the question as the shoulder pop. "I dunno," Zach says after a moment. "I've tried to do some of that other stuff, but it hasn't worked all that well. I think part of the problem is that I lack the ability to efficiently fine-tune my energy. Other psychics say that I tend to stand out. A lot."
The possibilities are endless to a simple working man such as himself. Being able to read people to that degree, hell, that'd make someone a top tier criminal investigator, he bets. Or an interpreter, being bilingual is a huge thing back home now with the whole illegal immigration issue. If everything Zach says is true, it'd be amazing... but yet, he... can't?
"Huh." The teacher thinks about the idea of... fine-tuning, efficiency, that sort of concept is lost on him - as it would be to virtually everyone who isn't like Zach over there, or the aforementioned Alma or Ingrid.
"I'm guessin', uh, standing out is more of a, of a... psychic thing, or something," he comments, "you're short enough you could probably just blend into about any crowd... actually, uh, before I forget." He raises a finger. "Before I forget."
...What was he going to do before he forgot? He forgets, hanging his head for a moment. Oh, right! "Yeah, should've, uh, should've said this earlier... 'bout that kid Quon. Before he got arrested, I got him to, to agree to be part of our team. I, uh, I'm pretty sure he's not gonna be in jail for long, since he's a minor."
Even knowing why Quon did that, he's still troubled by the idea he feels the need to do it to be safe. He's not sure what to say about the person whom factors so very heavily into that particular stress. "That ain't all, either. My dad got sick and I went back to the US to, to visit him, see... this was before Quon. Met his training buddy, goes by the name of... ah, dammit, what was that name. Antoine!" His head perks up. "Antoine, see... I met his old master. Back in my twenties, and... and he kicked my ass. His master. Antoine 'n I fought in his honor, and... after that I got him to agree to take part too," the teacher continues as he comes up to the door that should lead out to the baseball diamond.
He's willing to let Zach open it for him if he's up for that, there's not much room in this hallway to put this bench down. "But... he doesn't have an invite, dunno if, uh, if he has no mail address for it, or... or if he won't be able to compete."
Zach, not using any ability other than to see, is already leaning for the door to allow Rust and the bench out. "I've met Antoine. Seems like a nice guy," Zach says amicably. "And yeah. I get the impression that some psychics can pick other psychics out of a crowd. It's like a presence thing, I guess. I dunno, never really experienced it before myself."
He rewinds conversation. "And I fought Quon in a Neo League match before, though... why's he in jail?"
"Thanks," the older guy nods as he heads through the door to get this bench out to the baseball diamond. He can already tell how much he likes this grass compared to whatever all-season grass they use at Pacific's fields. He /hates/ that grass. It makes him sneeze everywhere, and now he has to endure that all morning, every morning. It's hellish.
"He's... he's afraid of a bad crowd," the teacher decides to put it mildly, "someone some friend of his is a part of, I'm hopin' that... that I helped get that all sorted out." He likes to think he did the right thing, saying what he did. If only he knew which direction that relationship was going to turn from there, if only he knew.
"But... assuming he gets out of jail without, without too heavy a fine, or sentence, or what have you... and if Antoine gets an invite, I think we got us a team," the teacher says as he starts to set down the bench to its final resting place. By which he would mean if he vocally called it such, 'somewhere people will sit in it and not break it so I don't have to see this thing ever again.'
"I mean... they're young, prone to doing stupid things, like... like Quon did, but I'm sure you and I can give 'em a good push. Their master's no longer with us," he adds a bit sullenly as he stretches his arms out and rolls his shoulder out. This shoulder still needs to be ready for today's demands that Kyokugen asks for.
Kyokugen asks for a lot out of you, and only occasionally is it money.
"Might as well help 'em make up for, for lost time, you get what I mean?"
"Not entirely sure what I'll be able to bring to that particular table," Zach says after a moment. "In terms of mentoring, I mean." Zach shrugs, "But we can at least keep them out of too much trouble, I'd bet." Zach looks across the field.
"Though we should probably see about getting Quon out of the slammer, first." He tries to think of who he could call to see where he could start with that. He has no /idea/ who Quon's run across. It is very likely that he would not react very well to that particular revelation...
"Well, you know what it's like to, to lose control, right? If all you said's right," the teacher says - not in a skeptical tone, more matter-of-fact as he grunts loudly in stretching out his arms and legs. You generally should stretch before doing any sort of vigorous exercise, and now's as good a time to remember this. Especially when you are fighting against stiffness in your own body with alarming frequency, sometimes.
"He's a minor, so... so I don't think he's gonna be in there long. If it comes to it, though," the man grunts, "money's already a problem... gotta figure out," he extends the fingers on his right hand with every point, "travel fees... hotel stays... medical bills... maybe Quon's bail," the teacher sighs and rubs his head.
"My money's 'bout all spoken for and I'm working two jobs... guess maybe it's time to look at the league again." Unless Zach can magically predict lottery numbers after all, of course. He looks back up towards Zach. "It's nice catchin' up, but, guess I need to get going before the master gets pissed at me for, for being late."
You don't show up late to work. You don't show up late to lessons. You don't show up late to anything, period. These are hard lessons Rust learned growing up.
"Better get going, then," Zach says. "And I wouldn't sweat the money just yet. You're not the only one with a bank account." He shoves his hands in his pockets and heads back for the building. He still has some things left to do inside yet. "Don't puch yourself too hard, though. Training's no good if you end up breaking yourself doing it."
Log created on 19:42:06 12/09/2010 by Zach, and last modified on 20:16:59 12/10/2010.