Description: A chance meeting between Zach Glen and Frei at the Sunshine City Japan Rail station results in a discussion of enchanted weapons, feelings of foreboding, and what the immediate future holds for each. Both fighters seem resolved to do what they can despite a growing unease with the direction events are taking...
Sad as it makes him to admit it, Frei's trip to Sunshine City didn't help him even a little bit.
It's been weeks, now, since he faced off against the assassin Gen with Aranha at his side at a temple not far from here. In that strange ruin, a pervasive and unsettling feeling of encroaching darkness had a tight grip on his throat, in the proverbial sense. It was hard to even be upright, talking, and breathing during that fight; the oppressive aura seemed to assault him from every possible angle. Though the fight itself was not so awful -- a few lucky breaks in the end gave Frei and Aranha a narrowly-won win, particularly with Frei handicapped as he was -- the aftermath left the chi-sensitive sage feeling particularly nauseous. Even now, with the talles part of the temple barely visible above the rooftops blocks and blocks away, there is still an unsettling feeling of dread in the air, to him.
Right now he's sitting outside on a park bench at the outer Sunshine City public transit center. Because this is the Japan Rail stop for the commuter line back to Southtown, it's kept in relatively good shape because it sees a lot of use. The sound of trains and buses is muffled by concrete noise-absorbing dividers, leaving a small patch of tended-garden arrangements here and there, boxes that would be filled with blooming flowers were it not winter, and evenly-spaced wooden benches. As it is, Frei is waiting for his train back home, and here he sits, staring down into his lap. What's in it? A tessen fan, a normal enough-looking iron fan with markings along it when opened, decorations in the form of waves and bursts of scarlet-orange fire.
Zach has been, for the past couple of months (since that YFCC event anyway) a regular sight. He rarely stays in any one place for more than a few minutes, but he is often seen running through it doing roadwork or endurance training. The psychic knight errant is jogging by the transit station, right in front of Frei.
He's wearing sweats, with an odd bundle tied to his back in a way that may suggest a sword to the sage. However the bundle is wrapped up in cloth in such a way that Zach would not be able to draw it quickly or even easily if it /was/ a sword.
Zach gets several feet /past/ Frei before he realizes who he passed. He slows to a walk and turns around, waving to the taller man. Zach is smiling; he hasn't seen Frei since Taizhou.
All things considered, the amount of time that Frei appears to continue navel-gazing even while Zach is sitting there right next to him smiling away might border on the offensive; when someone like Frei gets lost in thought, he REALLY gets lost in thought. The fan actually gets turned over and then back again a few times, before the drifting sun and the obstruction thereby seem to make him squint a little at the change in the light, causing him to look up. He actually seems surprised to see someone standing there, which likely means he hasn't processed who it is, before he blinks a few times and realization dawns.
"Ah... fancy meeting you here," Frei says, somewhat distractedly, folding up the fan and slipping it inside a pocket absently. "Good to see that you didn't come to any great harm in Taizhou," is the best he can think of to say. Frei's last memories of Zach are also memories of 'Ullr,' the man who turned out to be Jiro Kasagi... and a man who would, thanks to the machinations of various individuals, never leave that ruined Chinese city. He's dealt with his grief, but the reminder is still sobering, keeping him producing more than a wan sort of smile. "Were you here for the Center's tournament?"
Zach rubs the back of his, slightly embarrassed. He has no doubt in his mind that Jiro's last stand helped him to escape that place. Luckily, Frei steers the conversation to a much more pleasant topic.
"Yeah," he says with a nod. "Helped a couple of ladies tear apart a machine shop in the process. One of them was that Kanzuki lady, though I never really got the other one's name. She had this wierd mist thing going." Zach tilts his head to one side. "It was a pretty good fight, actually. Can't remember who won, though." Zach never bothered to find out that the match ended in a tye. The winning or losing of it was secondary in importance really.
"Mnn... hopefully, it's the people of Sunshine City who are the winners in the end," Frei says, guardedly. He doesn't really know the results of any fight but his own; the Center volunteers were handling things like 'paperwork' and frankly, he had his own problems to worry about. The entire thing was another of Alma's altruistic ideas, probably a whim that struck him out of nowhere and which, in customary form, he followed as far as he might. Frei brings a hand up and brushes dark red bangs out of his eyes, glancing across the train yard to Sunshine City itself. This place... it really, really has two sides to it. The gleaming pretty side of the inner city, carefully manicured, and then the remnants of Sunshine's promise, scattered around it like ruins...
He pauses, and visibly shivers a little bit, as if he had a chill.
Turning back to give Zach the once-over, he espies the wrapped bundle around the psychic fighter's back and inclines his head at it in the universal sign for curiosity. "Suddenly taken up a weapon?" he asks, smiling a little bit before withdrawing that decorated fan from his shirt and flipping it out with a flick of the wrist, looking at it with... well, it's almost a grimace rather than happiness. "I picked up this little trophy of war a few weeks back off, of all things, a giant chi-powered robot panda."
Zach looks at Frei quizzically for a moment before realizing what the monk refers to. "Sort of?" Zach says with a bit of uncertainty. He pulls the bundle off his back and unwraps it, revealing a rather exotic looking wakazashi with violet trims and highlights. It matches Zach's hair, and his energy signature. "I found it... in Taizhou," he says briefly. "In the foundry. It... reacts to my power. Gives it a little boost," he explains. "I try not to use it much."
Without standing up, Frei leans forward, eyes narrowing, as he puts out a hand and traces a finger down the side of the wakizashi, giving it an appraising look for quite some time. It might not be chi, but the 'sense' of it is the same; some force channeled, perhaps even trapped and maintained, but the suggestion is that it is 'holding' power, directing it in certain ways, controlling it. Perhaps entirely unexpectedly, after staring somewhat at the sword that Zach is holding, Frei leans back and sighs, resting against the tree he's been sitting with his back toward this whole time. The fan snaps shut in his hand, an almost distracted-seeming motion. "That's..." he says, before pausing and then sighing. "You know, I didn't expect to see something like that today, but..."
Here, a hand comes up and runs through his hair, a gesture expressing the chi sage's great frustration. Even before the fight in the temple, he was set on this course; after it, he feels like there's even more need. But so far... no progress. "It's too different. I hoped if I could really study these... whatever they are's Seishirou Ryouhara and company seem to have built, I could make some headway, but it's all wrong. The technique is all wrong."
Zach tilts his head to one side. "I... don't pretend to have a clue of what you're talking about," he finally says, wrapping the sword back up. "I try not to use it because other than 'pointy end goes in the other guy,' I have no idea how to use a sword properly. I only sort of know how to throw a good punch." Zach shoves his hair back with a consternated look on his face.
"Maybe you just need a bit more time to work with it?"
With a sigh of frustration, Frei shakes his head. "No... I don't think so." He pauses, glancing at Zach, trying to decide if he really wants to say something or simply let the young man get on with his life, uninterrupted. King of Fighters must be coming soon, after all, and if it does Zach will likely have plenty on his plate. Still...
"There's something in the air," Frei says at last, quietly. He's normally not afraid of being overheard; he travels in strange enough circles that any casual listener wouldn't know what he was talking about. "I can't explain it. Just an unsettling feeling. There was a... a locus of it here in Sunshine," he explains, before grimacing at the image that comes into his head. A force, dark, beneath the surface... maw and claws, rending and tearing, bringing destruction wherever they go.
Looking up at Zach, Frei decides to be totally candid about it, in the end. "I've been looking for a technique to bind chi powers. Not to just... trap them temporarily, but to suppress them. I just haven't been able to find an example that illustrates the principe.
Zach thinks for a moment. Suppression... He raises his left hand to scratch just above his ear when it hits him. "I... might actually have something that could help you with that," Zach says with a hint of uncertainty. He eyes Frei critically for a very long moment. "My dad gave it to me, said it'd help me learn some new ways to use what I have. It was my grandfathers, he told me. We were... very much alike apparently."
He looks around. "I didn't bring it with me, though. It's an off day," Zach continues. "I'm not sure how it works, and I know Alma was curious about it, but it..." Zach scrunches up his face, trying to find the words for it. "It kinda wraps my power up in a blanket. Makes it harder for me to get at it, it feels like."
There's a moment while Frei listens to Zach's description of the item he owns but isn't on him. It does seem like good place start, but ultimately he sighs and shakes his head. "That does sound... useful," he says, finishing diplomatically enough. There are times when Frei himself has wished for a dial to just... turn down the volume for a time. Given what he knows of Zach, the young former YFCC janitor certainly would want to every now and then.
Shaking his head, he takes a breath and then exhales slowly. "But that's not... my specialty area," he says with a rueful smile. He wouldn't really know where to start, examining something specifically designed to work with Psycho Power. There are similiarities with chi, but as differences as there are similarities. Perhaps both. "I'd hoped to go to India and study under a yogi there named Dhalsim, who's said to be very enlightened, but I couldn't track him down."
Zach looks a little crestfallen; he likes to help people out where he can. He shakes it off fairly quickly, though. "Well, if you change your mind," he finally says, "I'll be around for a little while before King of Fighters kicks off. Are you entering?" he asks of Frei while adjusting the wakazashi bundle on his back again.
King of Fighters... "I was invited," Frei says guardedly, glancing off in the distance. "Well, lots of people were *invited*. I'm not sure." Of course, Frei's ties to many people and organizations means that there are plenty of people who might contact him, and a few who might just put him name on a team roster without even saying anything at all, confident that the chi sage would want to work in that capacity, overall. He chuckles and shakes his head. "It does seem like big tournaments are the best time to find out new information about this sort of thing, doesn't it?" He holds up a hand, all five fingers out, and starts counting off on them. "Both of the Jinchuu tournaments... the last World Warrior tournament... I wasn't even participating in a few of those, but I still ended up feeling the results."
It's almost as if, once you get a lot of fighters concentrated in one place, their weight starts to distort the natural order of things.
There's a pause, before Frei glances at Zach, then looks away, biting his thumbnail in consternation. "Zach... be careful, if you're going to be in the KoF tournament," Frei says at last, turning back to look at the young psychic with a concerned expression. "I know it's just a feeling I have, and it's not like I can see the future or anything, but... something is wrong. I don't have any other way to describe it."
Zach stares at Frei for another of those long moments. It's almost as if the shorter man were staring at something on the other side of the monk. "Yeah," he says finally, with a short nod. "Things have been... hinky for a while." Zach looks away, staring off to the side.
"I've been getting, I dunno," Zach explains, "Gut feelings, I guess. Taizhou was the first time I /noticed/ it, but when I look back at a few other things, maybe I was acting on them without really noticing. But I'm getting that feeling again. Maybe it's why I've been on such a kick to train lately."
Zach turns back to Frei with a concerned look on his face. "You watch yourself too," he says earnestly. "Seems like we may be in for a mess."
Log created on 20:10:14 02/07/2011 by Frei, and last modified on 23:39:51 02/07/2011.