Description: Quon comes back from his training to find a physically broken. After catching up on what has happened, they find a problem in the fact that Antoine hasn't been around that much lately.
Let's put it so very lightly. The hospital situation in regards to Takuma and the retrieval of Yuri? A mess.
Let's leave it at that.
The Sakazaki family modus operandi as to how to best escape any and all responsibilities for collateral destruction? Run like hell - fortunately, Rust's still got a day or two of rental left in that lodge left. The bad news is... well, everything else. Nearly all the people involved are in various states of grievous injury, and all of them have probably already chosen whatever part of the lounge to crash on to try and catch their breath/recover in lieu of anything resembling, oh, /proper health care facilities/.
Mr. Rust is laid out pretty bare in what was his bed while the whole team was staying there (sans Antoine) - a bag of broken bones and pain and frankly life sucks to be perfectly awake and conscious after eating a particularly bad Zach blast and Takuma's most powerful techniques pretty much back to back.
It looks ready to rain outside, and the day is growing late.
And then there is Quon who between the fact that he was a reserve in the King of Fighters fight and the fact that he was training while the majority of the team was caught up in the Sakazaki drama. As a result Quon may be the only uninjured member of the team right now.
The moment Quon returns from his training session, he instantly lays eyes on Rust and cringes. "Man... You look like you got into a fight with two 18 wheelers and lost." He gives Rust another once over and yes it looks as bad as he originally thought. "Are you ok?"
It's a trial for him to even really crane his neck with Quon walking in the door. To this, he gets what he can muster most with the movements of his head, a frown and a small shake of his head. This in itself might be able to communicate matters enough, but he decides to speak as if to punctuate just how bad things are.
"N-no," he mutters pathetically, "I'm, I'm... really... not."
Quon watches as Rust attempts non verbal communication via a head shake. Needless to say, he can see that this doesn't quite work out that well for the teacher. He can absolutely see the agony the shop teacher is in. What Howard Rust verbally says, pretty much confirms it.
He looks around for a moment before looking about at the teacher once more. "Jeeze... What happened?"
"Takuma," he mumbles as his head turns back the other way with slow, measured movements, "Zach... Yuri." He winces loudly at putting pressure towards where he's broken (which is to say pretty much virtually every goddamn place). "N-Not, so much... Yuri, more... Takuma... Zach."
"God damn, all, all... all he needed to do, was... was... call /back/," he growls, "'n, 'n... we coulda... squared... it away, but... no, guy just... busts a god damn zoo apart... Zach, Zach drove an ATV into, into the hospital... ugh."
He coughs once, and tries to shake his head again. "'m, 'm not... gonna lie, Quon. That was... that was the, the fourth-worst day of my life."
Quon is listening to all of this with a raised eyebrow. There's a few moments of silence. In this time, Quon is trying to figure out what to say to this. His first instinct is to say, 'Wait... And you say that me intentionally getting myself arrested was stupid?'
Thankfully for all involved, Quon tells his first instinct to shut the hell up. Listening to instinct tends to work well for him during fights but not quite as well during social situations.
What eventually comes out of his mouth is, "Well I could see how that would be in the top 4."
What's more worrying, perhaps, is what he might consider the /top three/ if this isn't the worst of the lot!!
"I'm just, just... ready to, to go home already." He pathetically warbles on, risking extreme pain in flexing one of his knees to work out some stiffness. This coming storm front has done his joints absolutely no favors whatsoever.
"I mean... tourney's, tourney's over for us, we lost... and now, and now... this, this bullshit." He actually manages to work towards a proper angry tone in between his sad wheezing and pained groaning.
Quon looks down to the ground as he shakes his head. The Chongquan Prodigy finds himself at a complete loss for words as to how to deal with the madness. Quon can't help but be grateful that his sifu wasn't as crazy as the Kyokugen crew. While he could possibly handle the workout regime, dealing with this type of stuff would send him running.
"While you're emotionally ready, it doesn't look or sound like you're physically ready to." He takes another look at Rust's bruised and battered body. "Give yourself more time to recover and then we'll head back. Anyway, what happened with Takuma afterwards?"
"He's... he's, pro'ly, uh... here, somewhere," the older man groans out, kind of fearful of this fact, "he, uh... he... got beat down pretty... bad, too." Some would wager that it was far worse than what Rust suffered and that he should man the [eff!] up, but...
"But, uh... y'know, I've... I've been... ah, wonderin'. Quon." He clears his throat. "'scuse me. Quon, uh... it's been, it's been... kinda gettin' at me for a while, and,"
He just gets it out, "have you... seen... Antoine 'round, at all, lately? I, I haven't heard a, a peep."
Quon shrugs. "I have seen much of him. I've just been leaving notes for him here and there as far as plans on code Takuma." Quon stops for a moment and rubs his chin. "I just thought he was either on one of his training sessions or sightseeing kicks. Every now and then he'd go off alone but he'd usually come back."
"I don't know why I haven't seen that much of him."
Oooooh, great, is what Howard would say if he were in far better shape. He even visibly thinks to slap his forehead into thinking that there is, all of a sudden, a grand new problem - it's really been one problem after another this entire trip, and so far, there's nothing approaching a happy ending in sight for anyone involved.
"Y-you got his, uh, you got his... e-mail, right? I mean... address, address." He repeats himself a little louder, another grimace as something settles so painfully! He's just about ready to cry because, oh my god, the pain. He never wants to go through that particular episode ever /again/. Ever, ever, ever.
"My, uh, my cell... wallet... both're, both're still back at, back at... the hospital." Which is going to be providing some rather big complications if they decide to force /him/, of all people, to pay for the damages - unless Yuri was sneaky and thought to swipe them as soon as he left his room.
"I, I got, I got no way to, to contact him... could ya, could you try?" Mr. Rust rolls his head back a little. "Last, last thing I need to hear is that... is that he went and, and... got himself... arrested, or... or somethin'." He frowns. "I was, I was pretty sure I said that, that we ought to have... y'know, kept together, given... political... issues, recently, and... grhgsdbsgadgnle."
Ok... Now that was something Quon perceived as a low blow. One that Quon in particular didn't quite appreciate. His lips turn downward into a frown. His hands begin to shake with anger. His breathing becomes heavy and when he finally speaks, his voice is low.
"I will email him after all, we do need to make sure he's alright but..." He takes a deep breath before he speaks again, with a tone that makes it clear that he's struggling not to scream at the teacher. "But like I said before. I got myself arrested because first of all, I didn't know what was in the crates and figured if it was something harmful I'd rather have someone who was capable of dealing with whatever it was, doing so. Secondly, I didn't know if they were going to murder me once I made the delivery. So if you'd rather me becoming a patsy that unknowingly was responsible for the deaths of numerous people or dead myself then let me know right now and we can go our separate ways once we get to Southtown."
Quon turns his back on Rust and begins making his way towards the door he entered and has his hand on the knob.
"W-Wait, what the... what the hell does that have, that... that have to--" His voice is so weak that he can't interject with Quon's angry response to what was, he thought, one of the likely worst case scenarios as to why they haven't actually heard from Antoine at all. He'd like to not think he was murdered, or enslaved, or what have you - what other explanations are there other than that?
When Quon gets to the end of his retort, it brings up a new possibility - separate ways. Antoine's always been a wanderer. Maybe when news broke out of their first round loss, he went on and ahead and decided to just go on with his travels from there... maybe there is nothing at all wrong, maybe that's just what Antoine's decided to do. Not much of a point in being here much longer, is there?
His own mood sours that much more between the recent Kyokugen family drama and whatever it was Zach was doing - there's really no denying that things are falling apart right at the seams. There's no apology offered when Quon has his hand on the knob, just a raised hand that Quon might not even see that suggests 'wait,' but... he thinks differently of it, lowering his arm down with a groan.
He'll have to bump this day up to number three after all.
And with no objections or apologies forthcoming, Quon turns the knob, opens the door and walks out slamming the door hard enough to shake the building as he continues on his not so merry way.
Of course, Quon will still have to return. His bags and plane tickets are still there. Plus he'll still need a place to sleep.
Log created on 21:19:24 02/21/2011 by Quon, and last modified on 06:53:21 02/22/2011.