Description: Aranha confronts Naerose about what is going on that she might know. Naerose just wants to go to the pool. A short dialogue, plot stuff. This is one of those segments that takes place in a larger episode. Watch it!
While the Rogue team won their first match of the King of Fighters, Aranha felt ill at ease. The Rogue team leader's experiences before that particular fight might've had something to do with it. In particular the weird energy he felt at the Abandoned Temple in Sunshine City, and what he and his team mate Naerose encountered at Stonehenge.
The feeling he felt when Tomoko began to manipulate the energies was so similar to the natural state of the Abandoned Temple. A feeling of wrongness that he didn't have experience nor the sensitivity to identify. Plus there was a change in the witch's nature during the fight.
Both were things that the capoeirista wanted to get a handle on and so through exchange of texts, Aranha's waiting in the lobby of the hotel they are staying so they can talk about what happened.
Was one of those texts to Naerose? Was it was it? She's totally late. I mean totally. Not the hour, minute, or second time seems to indicate any idea of what time she's supposed to show. She's like twenty minutes late, but worse yet, when she does come through it seems less like she's going there to meet Aranha as she's supposed to and more like she just happens to be heading through anyway. She stops when she notices him and is all wavey wavy,
"Hey, whats up?"
She's been spending a fair bit of time away herself, having watched the first match and cheered, well for a while, actually she only really cheered during the first match, got distracted by a leaf in the wind the second match that blew her toward ahotdog stand where she promptly got a part time job selling hotdogs. . and lost it. All before the match finished. She returned only to learn the after math then wandered off for places unknown. Now she's standing in front of Aranha with a biiig smile.
Aranha regrets not adding mention of food to those texts. But really, does Aranha want to be paying for her food all the time? Not really.
Anyway Aranha looks up and finally sees the witch and motions for her to sit down on one of those cushy chairs surrounding a wooden coffee table. "Hey, Naerose. Can I talk to you for a second?"
As for Aranha, he leans back and stretches in his own chair.
"Oh Yeah, I wanted to totally mention something, I mean it's kind of awkward," She says and then lowers her voice, lowers the brim of her hat, lowers the top rim of her shades, really talks softer, more quiet and stuff. She murmurs to Aranha, "So ah.." She starts, looks around and then says,
"Where did you get these team mates? I mean seriously, did you hear that guy that came after Varavette? He's totally mean! He called her something to be used and was all. I dunno, he acted like people were totally like disposable cups. Seriously Aranhaha, he's like. I dunno, totally a downer."
"Oh you mean, Shiden."
The capoeirista is silent for awhile as he thinks about what he could say about the Japanese fighter. To be honest, Aranha didn't quite like the way Shiden does things even if his methods for dealing with Varvara were similar to how he deals with Naerose. Of course their perception are the main difference which in turn shape their interactions. Where as Aranha sees Naerose as human being(albeit a ditzy and often quite infuriating one) Shiden sees Varvara as a tool and unfortunately with Varvara's lack of awareness and intelligence, it makes her easy to become nothing but a tool.
When the capoeirista finally gets his thoughts together he responds. "Actually, Shiden came to me. Told me that he knew I was looking for team mates and that he and Varvara were a package deal."
Well that explained it. Not. But anyway,
"Not much to do about it now, I just thought I'd point it out, I mean. It's kind of mean. Maybe I'll see if Varvara minds, or not, I guess it's like none of my business? Well okay, I'm glad we had this convesation."
She looks suspiciously like a witch headed to the pool, but doesn't actually even start to leave, almost like she was taking a moment to do a impression of herself.
"Say, do you know where.. power comes from?" Asks the witch. She seems to be looking in the direction of the pool. "I don't mean like, the power someone has when they'er a leader, I mean like what makes one person able to punch a hole in a wall and not someone else." She glances back at Aranha.
That's a surprisingly deep question from Naerose. His eyebrow slowly moves up in disbelief and then after he has a few moments to recover from the surprise his eyebrow returns to its regular position. A few more moments are taken to think about that question as he thinks about various people they know, even the people they both knew(regardless of whether Naerose remembers them or not).
Eventually, he's prepared to respond. "There's a whole bunch of factors." He then starts counting them off one by one on his fingers. "Genetics, training, upbringing, diet, personal drive, some might just have that have that unidentifiable 'it' factor that gives someone that type of ability."
"I guess."
She says, but then continues, "I did a report on this once, I think for a class." (see Chi research logs by Naerose Delphine.)
"I mean even energy just to move around, we have num nums, right? Well okay, that grow on trees or come off of some furry thing that ate something that grew on trees. . And then there are those that like I dunno, learn to just take the energy directly, only not for long.. I mean like, you use it to move your arm, or to power a fist, or to make a fist punch through a concrete wall. Then what, right, then it just goes back, you know? It's there one moment, you use it, it's returned. Borrowed. Some people have power from within, like the soul, but lets not talk about that."
She nods a few times, then says, "And there are deserts and vast oceans.. Just like, I dunno, life? So right, what .. oh right, sometimes you can trace the currents through the world, maybe through the air, I dunno. It's weird." She yawns a little,
"Remember that one time.." She sounds like she's talking about a life time ago, "And we totally ran into this old lady? She was such a trip! Anyway. The whole reason I wanted to go there was I was like.. umm.. Lets say, sailing the wild blue yander and came across this huge, I mean huge.. I dunno gathering of power. I was like wow! and I thought neat, and so I went to this place that was all stoney and hendgy, or something, so but it's a normal ahh.. node? And it wasn't the huge gathering I thought it was, it was this freaking old lady."
The witch lets that sink in and doesn't wait for a reply before saying, "I know right? Usually you just borrow a little and do something but she's got like, a purse, full of it and then, then she spends it and does something crazy, no wait, everything she did was totally crazy." She shakes her head, "Man I have no idea how she did that."
Aranha is silent as Naerose talks and in a way it reminds Aranha of those times when he talked to the chi sage and it's interesting to hear a perception of it from another source. The surprise however is that it's coming from Naerose and that it doesn't seem all that scatterbrained as he would've thought it would coming from that source.
Then Naerose goes into her explanation of why she went to Stonehenge this time with more clarity, and had Naerose explained it like that, Aranha would've attempted to shoot Frei an email before the two left for England.
"I see." He pauses for a second and then speaks again. "If we take a combination of what precious little the old lady would tell us, and what you were able to figure out. The location seemed to be the gathering spot for it. And if we take what she said about it being beneath the surface, she just pulled that energy from there. But like you I have no idea how one would go about doing that. It also makes me wonder if there are other gathering spots around the world."
"Huh? Oh there are lots of them. They're called nodes, well I call them that, prolly someone else does too, anyway, you have the ley lines, which are like the current of energies and nodes where they gather. That place we were at is actually a natural node. Everyone knows that." She says with a totally straight face and continues, "But it was off, you know? Like how did she manage to draw so much energy there? There wans't anything buried there though, and frankly I think the reason we were drawn there wasn't cause we were like drawn there, but cause we were drawn to her. " The witch seems to ponder a moment and says, "I am starting to wonder if she wasn't expecting us... I mean, she had enough power, why bother going back for more, she could of driven us off, she didn't need a body guard.. She didn't need to attack us." The witch looks over at Aranha, "Probably she was just looking for us." Big grin, "I wonder if she has any sagely advice on what to do when your team won't buy you more food."
Pause.
"Before you suggest we go check out other nodes, you should know that's not as easy as it sounds. I mean some are obvious, like stone hedge and say, the pyramids, but like, others not so much, in fact.. I think that they're not even constant, like sometimes a place is a node.. sometimes maybe a little later... Not so much." She shrugs, "Honestly, I dunno, I kind of skipped out on learning all of this stuff." As if a voice echos in her head, but she puts words to the thought, "You need to find what drives you." She shrugs again.
That right there is a lot of food for thought. But there are a few things that Aranha thinks aren't exactly accurate then there are some things he's not quite sure about. "I dunno. I didn't feel anything drawing me there. My motivation for going was making sure you were going to be okay. So if anything, you were drawn and I pretty much came along for the ride."
Aranha shrugs before going on to the next topic. "Anyway, I think it might've been possible to talk things out with them however, they were the first ones to make threats and they were also the first ones to attack. Add to that the fact she would never answer my questions directly, I don't we would've liked the answers." He takes a moment to rub his chin. "To be honest, if I were in her position and I'd taken the moves she had taken, I would use the body guard as a way of conserving power so I could use all that power for something bigger."
He wants to suggest a place to check out even in the face of Naerose cutting it off at the pass. He thinks instantly of the Abandoned Temple in Sunshine City and even if it was, as Naerose described it, a temporary node it was something that should probably be checked out. "I think I encountered a node recently which was one of the reasons I tagged along. There was an abandoned temple in Sunshine City that gave me a feeling of wrongness similar to what I felt when that change came over her while I was there. It seemed to have a bad effect on my team mate. Who has incredible chi sensitivity."
"Wrongness..?" Naerose asks, looking perplexed, "I dunno anything about that, I mean, that place we went, seemed fine to me, just , I dunno, super charged? Then there was that crazy old lady, I dunno anything about the temple, I guess, maybe I should check it out." She responds and then asks, "Where is that ahh old temple?" She scratches her cheek, thinking about rural locations without fast food and shuddering, I mean shuddering. Then she glances at the pool again and says,
"Hang on, why do you care? " She'd ask, what are you looking for Aranha, she really would, but instead she says, "You must have a reason, where as I have only a raisin.. Which I think is the point.. or something." So aranha wasn't drawn there, she instead suggests, "Well maybe it wasn't about drawing us specifically but just to see who showed up. Kind of like a free food sign. " Which would be like a naerose magnet.
"I could be remembering incorrectly, but I remember you saying that there was something off about the situation around the time she started..." He seems uncertain about how to put it. Uncertain about whether or not he's getting the details right. "... tapping into the energy node. I couldn't identify it but I felt something was off there and had a similar feeling when I was at the temple the difference being that feeling was a constant feeling at the temple, and at Stonehenge it only happened when the old lady started getting weird... er."
"My senses aren't exactly strong when comes to that type of thing, so I don't know if I'm sensing same type of thing or two different things and my senses are only telling me that something isn't quite right."
He stares Naerose right in the shades with a serious expression on his face. "As for why I care, you are on my team for this tournament and regardless of whatever negative feelings I have for you, I need to make sure that anyone I'm fighting alongside of is ok. I figure I need to look out for you because when it comes down to it, who else will?" That right there is what illustrates the difference in Aranha and Shiden's leadership styles.
"Huh?" She asks, looking confused, "But I'm perfectly fine, mostly just curious." She shrugs a little, adjusts her shades which should totally be against the rules in poker, but in face to face interaction, well you get used to it.
"Anyway, that shiden guy is kind of mean, I don't get it. Oh also what happened to the short chinese girl who was always angry? I think she looks like a bunny. I'm totally going to tell her so." The witch smiles as though she thinks that would be a compliment, but then again it's hard to tell what she's thinking, "Oh right, where is that temple? I think I'll check it out. "
"Ummm... I don't think you should tell Wing that." That's something that he knows is perhaps the thing that only he could get away with and quite frankly, he's not all that inclined to say that to her. "But either way, it's at the Abandoned Temple in Sunshine City, but I don't think you should be go alone, just in case. Take me with you, take Varvara with you, but make sure there's someone who isn't all that chi sensitive just so that if it starts having a weird effect on your body there's someone to help get you out of there."
Shrug, "Okay, we'll go together and make it a picnic, that is an idea I can get behind, but I'm pretty sure the short chinese girl was born in the year of the rabbit, I'm sure she'll be flattered. " In her own way Naerose smiles like things will always work out because to her they do. After all, what could go wrong, Wing getting pissed? She's already pissed.
"Why are we in metro again, some tournament right?" She scratches her head and asks, "I mean, what is the big deal, why are people so .. " She scratches her cheek, "All up and in arms over this sort of thing." She looks around, "They get prety serious." Yawn. "I'm going to the pool now, okay?"
"Yeah. We're here for a tournament." Probably best that he doesn't get too specific because while Naerose is good at this type of thing she seemed to be the type to not get excited about the King of Fighters. Plus she'd probably phase it out of her mind again.
He just shrugs. "Take it easy, Naerose."
Log created on 11:35:18 02/17/2011 by Naerose, and last modified on 14:02:33 02/19/2011.