Description: One of the lost logs of the King of Fighters TP. Ayame and company chase down Aranha to drop some knowledge on the ex-thief. But can they overcome Aranha's rooftop superiority and what exactly does Ayame have to say?
It was a four days ago that a weakly secured computer in the Media Events Scheduling division of the King of Fighters enterprise became subject to an unauthorized access. The data breech was minor and when it was later detected, it didn't raise any alarms internally - just part of the schedule about where fighters are going to be and when, as part of the ongoing tournament media blitz. It was information that would be public in a couple days anyway, so nothing to worry about, it was decided.
But for interested parties, it was all the information they needed. "Looks like they'll be flying him out to Peru for some tournament related exhibition match. We'll reconvene there."
That was four days ago. Aranha's Tournament sponsored exhibition event came and went without much ordeal - it was likely he did quite well in it, a cut above most of the fighters assembled for the event - as one of the most talented practitioners of a South American style of martial arts. Staged in a beautiful coastal village built along the cliffs of Peru, overlooking the vast ocean, the venue for the fight couldn't have been better given its South American theme.
But in the scheme of things, it was the aftermath that was probably of great importance to the young man. His instincts would give him a bit of a warning, that sense of being watched. A figure or two darting through the shadows of nearby buildings would only further his suspicions, though it might have been hard to get a fix on them or guess what they might want. That was before the ambush! Three men and one familiar girl, all trained fighters, try to jump Aranha as he leaves the event's location. The girl he would recognize immediately as Shioe - the cell phone maven from the beach battle only a few weeks prior. Their intent seems to be obvious - to coral Aranha by use of superior numbers. Does this have to do with the fight on the beach? Are they still interested in finding out what he knows after savagely stabbing him in the side back then?!
Still, the ex-cat burglar would be able to give them the slip. The strange, steep nature to the town, and its cliff-clinging stuctures, are a perfect place for him to exercise his expertise in parkour.
"Argh! You let him get away!" It's Ayame's voice. He should have known she'd have something to do with this... And so the chase began as the small group set off to try and run Aranha down. One by one, the ambushing team started to lose ground, not able to keep up with the agile Aranha. But there is at least one that seems to be keeping pace, though unable to gain ground. "You can't ditch me so easily!" she calls after him.
A random check over his shoulder would reveal Ayame to be his primary pursuer. While not as gifted in parkour as he by a long shot, she is able to utilize her own bag of tricks for scaling walls, springing over obstacles, and swinging ropes over the occasional outcroppings to help her cover a lot of distance with a single leap. It doesn't seem like the strawberry-blond is likely to catch up with him, but he's also not losing her yet... It may take an unexpected act of nature to intervene!
Aranha doesn't need super powered sense to know that something isn't right. The light and shadow interact in ways that it shouldn't if all was well. Not enough light here and there and it's easy to put together the fact that he's being followed. The question is how does he handle it? Does keep going as nothing is wrong but draw him in a place of his choosing or try to give them slip by something so completely bat shit, no one will be willing to follow him.
Aranha chooses the bat shit option, but as soon as he makes the decision, the ambush is sprung on him. A long suffering sigh is let out and he looks around until he's satisfied that he has their faces etched in memory though Shioe doesn't take much work since he has already encountered her. He then takes he takes one of the pursuers by surprise by throwing water in his face.
And then Aranha's off in a sprint, as he bounds off/from building to building to make his get away. And that's when he proceeds with Operation: Are you out your damn mind? He loses one of them with an insanely long jump as he grabs onto a piece of masonry. He didn't have much faith in his ability to hold on. Next one chickens out on a three story drop. The third one's grip slips and as for Shioe an insane dive through a window and booby trapping the window sill with shards of glass to make grabbing a hold of it a dangerous proposition. However Ayame with her gadgetry allows her get around most of the pitfalls he set up for the others.
Aranha pulls out his cell phone and starts making a phone call as he runs. His plan has little hope but right now it's all he has. But since he's only just ringing, he has time for a shout. "What the hell do you want, you fucking nutcase!?"
Hello Mr. Pot, I've taken the liberty of dialing Ms. Kettle for you. She's on line one.
The intensity of the chase demands the best Aranha has at his disposal, and Ayame is being forced to think fast at every turn, reacting to the cunning tricks executed by the escape artist who keeps managing to stay one step ahead of her. The determined thief seems to be chasing him with all she's got, too, occasionally taking a more daring leap of faith across some gaps than she would have ever been inclined to do otherwise. Below on the right are the twisting streets and alleyways of this scenic town. On the left is a steep drop down to where the ocean meets with the cliffs below. There is little room for error here!
"Would you believe-!" Ayame shouts back, pausing in her exclaimation as she backs up and takes a running leap to land on the narrow windowsill of an adjacent building, then begins scaling up the rusted drainage pipe to get back up to the top. "That I just want to talk!?"
The split second Aranha pauses for even a moment to manipulate that phone of his, a small throwing knife finds itself imbedded in the wooden eave right near his head. Talk indeed!!
Even still, for all her efforts, it seems like in the end, Aranha is going to get away. She can't quite keep up with him, and though she is tricky, the time it takes to manipulate her tricks of the trade is slowing her down just a little each time. Any minute now and he will slip far enough out of her view to be able to duck out of sight all together...
Ayame slides to a stop, staring across the way at Aranha, only to detect a significant gap between the building she's on and the one she needs to get to. "How did he... get across this..." she murmurs beneath her breath, gasping for air for a moment. It seems too far to leap by her estimation. He's going to get away for sure!!
Fate and Mother Nature aren't on Aranha's side right now, it seems. It starts as a distant rumble, like the sound of a large, diesel truck traveling along the road. Only, this is no truck, and as the rumble gets louder, that becomes abundantly obvious. "W-what?" Ayame stammers. And then the earth shakes, beginning with a violent jolt that nearly takes the girl off her feet.
A small radio tower atop the building across the way tips over, its top end landing on the building she's stuck on, providing a quick, if risky way across. "Well, well, that was fortunate." Ayame scrambles across, only to have the metallic tower crumple out from under her as the next violent jolt rocks the area. A last second leap has her making it to safety as the twisted metal falls to the the ocean so far below. "Or maybe not so fortunate..." she murmurs, wiping her brow with relief.
A glance forward has her settling her eyes on Aranha, the girl looking like she's wavering for a moment... Is whatever she's chasing after him for so important that she will keep at it instead of finding a safe place to stand in this violent earthquake!? Sucking in her breath, she resumes chase. So apparently, the answer is yes.
"Damn."
That's pretty much the only thing that Aranha can say in response to the sequence of events that has him on the ground due to the violent earthquake and then watching as radio tower forms a bridge to his location as he manages to get up from the ground. The chase is obviously back on and the Dancing... No at the moment, Leaping Spider continues running and continues his the conversation with her. "And to answer your question, no I wouldn't. If your people wanted to talk, they wouldn't have sent you."
Aranha reaches into his pocket and puts the bluetooth receiver on his ears and speaks softly into it so his conversation is less likely to be heard clearly over the distance they have between each other. "Hello. Could you tell me where the closest junk yard is to..." He glances at the street sign and gives it to the operator. Meanwhile he continues to leap to the next building. Hoping that he can hold Ayame off long enough to get to his destination... As soon as he finds out where it is.
The initial violent jolts that have sent plaster and stucco into the ocean below, and littered the streets with debris falling from the tightly packed buildings. Ayame steps to the ledge of the building she lands on, resuming her pursuit of Aranha, only for the damaged edge to fall out from beneath her feet. "Ack!" Freefall is prevented by pushing away from the wall and grabbing hold of an outcropping sign pole and using her momentum to swing around and down to the street below.
Looking up from where she lands in her three point crouch, she locates Aranha through the dust kicked up by tumbling rubble. "Heh," she replies with a grunt, "Good point!"
It is here that she's closer that Aranha might notice an accoutrement that isn't quite normal loadout for the girl - what appears to be a sheathed sword at her side, affixed to one of her belts. Has she decided to come after the young man with even heavier weaponry than usual?
Dodging around a falling light pole, Ayame resumes the chase. She gets the sense that Aranha is trying to make his way to somewhere specific, but what that might and why, she can't tell. All she knows is that if she lets him out of her sight for even a few seconds, he may very well disappear, and then she'll have to start this entire endeavor over again!
Aranha continues to run and leap and manages to get to another one of those buildings however the handhold that he attempts to use ends up giving way before he can manage to muscle himself up to the top of the building.
If Aranha is anything, he's adaptable and he manages to kick off the wall and drop into a roll to distribute the impact and preserve life and limb. He then continues to move from place to place using a tree to get up on an awning and then using that to get back up to the rooftops.
After a few moments he finally receives the directions to his new destination, the junk yard. He doesn't take those directions exactly but he does use them as guidelines and using alleyways and rooftops he moves a bit closer to the junk yard.
With Ayame closing in, will he be able to make it to the junk yard in time?
It becomes clear rather quickly that the earthquake isn't going to be a short thing in passing. This is no minor tremor or little shakeup. That it's still going fifteen seconds later already marks it among the longer earthquakes there can be. That it's still shaking this violently... well, for a moment, Ayame considers if the whole coast is about to drop into the ocean, which would, unfortunately, make this entire exercise in pursuing the agile Aranha rather irrelevant.
But best not to rely on life-ending natural disasters to shirk her responsabilities here... Ayame redoubles her efforts, springing over a crushed car, landing on the other side just in time to see her target veering off with sudden purpose and direction, as if he now had a destination in mind rather than simply escape. "Where could he be going..." muses the girl between gasps for breath as she starts to sprint after him, rounding the last corner she saw him to catch another glimpse-
He's up on the roofs again?! Ayame keeps running, uncoiling that flexible length of chain she keeps around her waist, using it to wrap around a bar overhead and swing herself up, then leap, clinging to the edge of the roof with her fingers, and very tiredly pulling herself up to the rooftops that Aranha has taken the chase to. It takes a moment to get her bearings, and the roof wobbles beneath her feet as the building is shaken about like some kind of toy structure atop the buckling earth. Cracks begin to appear in the streets. "Hmn... Tomoko caused that storm, could this be another one of them..." she muses as she resumes the chase.
"You're going to listen to me even if I have to beat some sense into you first!!" she calls after the ex cat burgler, undoubtedly not doing a whole lot to encourage him to hear her out at this rate...
"Has anyone told you that you suck at diplomacy, Ayame?"
No sooner than the American ex-thief asks Ayame that rhetorical question, he puts on a burst of speed to vault over various objects on the rooftops before leaping into the trees that managed to somehow remain standing in the face of these violent quakes. From the trees hits the ground and rolls again to preserve his body and then after that, it's a straight dash to his destination.
The obstacles become sparse and as much as the capoeirista dislikes it, it leaves him highly vulnerable which is one thing he does not want to present to someone like Ayame. Unfortunately sacrifices must be made and Aranha will have to hope that he has enough foot speed and enough of a gap between them to make it hard for the gadget wielding pursuer to take advantage of it.
He finally gets to the junk yard and then he begins eyeballing the area. Those piles of car wreckage give him a bit of a manueverability advantage in this environment but the one thing he really intended to take advantage of was the electromagnet which would be used to lift the cars.
The question does make her blink as she finishes hefting herself up via a window sill then springing the rest of the way up onto another rooftop. "He might have a point there..." She's just in time to see the young man use the nearby trees to get to the ground without injury. "Oh for the..." she growls, running forward to spy the trees. Sucking in her breath, she follows in an identical manner, springing toward the tree, hands gripping the trunk as she flips around it at an angle and then flips forward to land on the ground in a half-crouch, glancing back and forth to make sure she isn't being ambushed in the process. It seems like others she was working with are quite a long ways behind by now. Chatter in her earpiece makes it clear that the damage wroughy by the earthquake has seperated them for the time being. "Fine." the strawberry blond retorts with a grunt.
She leans forward into another run forward, beginning to feel the exhaustion of pursuing Aranha along nearly the entire length of the town. He's in open sight now, though, but his own speed easily rivals her own and all she can do is maintain pace for the time being. Her right hand shoves up the cloth over her left arm, exposing the small crossbow hidden there, getting ready to take a shot with that numbing poison Aranha has been exposed to before should she get within range...!
But he makes one more turn, passing through the open gates of a large, fenced off area. The pursuing girl glances up at the grungy sign identifying it as the junk depo. "No fair retreating to home!" she calls after him tauntingly as she pours on a little bit more speed and finally stumbles forward into the large lot piled with piled up car wrecks. Slowing to a stop, Ayame glances around, blood rushing in her ears after such a draining chase across town. The earthquakes have finally settled and aside from the occasional low rumble of aftershocks, there doesn't seem to be any immediate danger of further collapse.
"Can't run forever!" she yells, taking a few more steps forward. Was that movement over to the left? She veers off a little in that direction to scout around for him.
He made it. He takes slow breaths as he attempts to get his heart rate to something more reasonable. It's not often he runs that kind of distance, even if his movements through the quaked-out environment were efficient. Now, he has to bide his time as catches his own breath.
The next question is how to lure Ayame right where he wants her? Every now and then he darts in out of hiding throwing assorted debris at the female rogue. His objective isn't to attack and injure, yet. No he intends to harass and anger her, to attack her mental state and possibly create an exploitable weakness since because of his previous experiences, there aren't that many exploitable weaknesses and the ones he knows about are very well covered.
Each toss of a random object comes from farther and farther in as he hopes to encourage her to come in deeper.
When Aranha finally comes out of hiding for a reasonable amount of time he's sitting behind the levers of the giant electromagnet.
Though Ayame mostly stays in the open, she's moving slower now, checking out the sources of noise around her. Sometimes it sounds like just some junk settling its weight after the recent earthquake, but other times she's pretty sure it's Aranha she's detecting. Circling back around another pile, she stalks deeper into the junkyard. Keeping an eye on the piles closer to the fences that might offer a chance of escaping into the surrounding treeline, she suspects the young man has chosen to take his stand here for a reason, though the purpose isn't clear to her at first.
"Now, now," she calls out as she continues to prowl, peeking around another corner she expected to discover him, only to find another empty canyon between stacks of cars. "We can let that whole incident at the beach go, right? I mean, I was just trying to get some answers. I didn't expect that mean girl to stab you so... and if that costumed Blanka hadn't interferred, I'm sure we could have wrapped everything up without it being such a big deal. But enough ifs and maybes, right? That's all in the past!"
Springing up on top of some smashed cars, Ayame makes her way up to a higher altitude from where she can get a better perspective. No... no activity near the fences. And what was that noise she just heard closer into the center that sounded like stubborn, rusty metal being pushed againts its will? Her left hand slips down to her side, hovering over the slung pouch where she keeps her trusty collapsed staff, a smile of confidence crossing her lips as she's certain she's getting near.
"Besides, I really do have something you should know this time. And, if I'm feeling generous, I might even tell you. Maybe not though," she contemplates. "Depends on how cooperative you end up being." She leaps down between another two piles and waits, holding her breath, hearing only silence. He has to be here, she's certain! Wait, another noise? Ayame spins forward around a disabled tractor to come face to face with Aranha situated behind some levers.
Eyes dart from him along the length of the contraption he's seated in, only to come up to notice the giant electromagnet used for hauling car wrecks around with the greatest of ease. "A-ah..." Ayame stammers as she realizes how she's been lead along.
Good thing everything on the machine is labeled. Makes things a hell of a lot easier for him.
Aranha doesn't give Ayame time to register the fact that she's been strung along for too long before he moves a lever to turn on the the electromagnet and then another lever to lower it above her. There might be a chance to escape the magnet if she acts quickly enough.
No matter the result of what happens with the contraption, he's going to make himself perfectly clear. "If you want to talk, then talk. I'm not going to cooperate with you directing your weapons at me or you having your people trying to capture me."
He lets his fingers lightly touch one of the levers before he says, "So cut the bullshit. What do you want to know and what is it do you believe I should know? The only games I feel like playing right now is poker and craps."
"Well. This will suck-" Ayame retorts the instant Aranha pulls the heavy switch to power on the junkyard behemoth. Turning, she scrambles, as she finds herself being pulled backward, victim to the number of iron accoutrements she has stashed on her person. Whipping her hand down to her stowed staff, she snaps the weapon out, expanding it to its full length, and wedges the ends of it into two of the adjacent smashed cars, creating a crossbeam that she can cling to as her back is drawn toward the magnet above.
Wrapping her left arm around the makeshift monkeybar, she begins jettisoning as many of the incriminating items she has as possible. Two knives drawn and flung before they threaten to tear one of her belts asunder. The chain around her waist is particularly problematic to unravel, and the girl has to spin herself around once to loosen it and finally ditch it, allowing it to smack against the magnet above. An iron, sharp edged fan is extracted from beneath her blouse and released, followed by a set of three, heavy blades linked by a ring, who's exact purpose isn't entirely clear just by looking at them. Fortunately for her, the titanium in her staff is unaffected, and once she finishes shedding the steel-ribbed black hair ribbon from her head, she seems to land relatively unaffected, albeit extremely ruffled by the demands of the electromagnet. "Hey!" she exclaims back toward Aranha, "That's dangerous!" She unwedges her staff by collapsing it back into her group, then shakes a fist toward the young man, looking irritated now.
"All right, all right!" Ayame exclaims, not advancing on Aranha now, but staring at him evenly. "I don't really know what your issue with the old bag of bones was, but suffice to say, she must have crossed you in some way in the past. She happens to be part of a small group of people that are going around, attacking fighters, harming those psychic sorts, and infecting the rest they can get their hands on with some kind of frenzy inducing contagion." She pauses, standing up straight, expanding her staff, then proceeding to lean against it idly, one end propped against the ground. "Maybe you already know all that. Maybe you didn't. Doesn't matter, really."
She glances to the side then, rubbing her chin in thought. "The thing is... those people are part of a larger plot. Some kind of plan to bring badness into this world on a pretty large scale. And, well, someone has to do something about it otherwise the whole world is going to be in for a real hell of a bad time." She shrugs a little, eyes shifting back to focus on Aranha. "I know you prefer to stay out of things." She grins, "It's part of your charm. But... I also know you've got a sister you'll do anything to keep safe... and if these people get what they want? There's not going to be a damn place on this planet that's safe. That earthquake we just experienced is just an indicator of the kind of power these people can muster."
Ayame stands up straight again, resting her staff over her shoulders then. "I'm offering you a chance to get revenge on that Tomoko and to help put a stop to what those bastards are up to. You have what it takes, at least..."
It's amazing how diplomatic Ayame becomes when you relieve her of most of her weaponry. Unfortunately this type of trick probably won't be usable again if he should ever encounter the rogue again which knowing his luck will be soon. He had to admit that the look on her face was priceless. His original intent with coming into the junk yard was to relieve her of the gadgetry that was the only thing allowing her to keep up with him and then to use that delay to make good his escape but with her willing to talk, it made him all the more inclined to stay.
A good portion of what she says, he knows. What's telling is what he didn't know such as the infecting people with a frenzy inducing contagion and the whole attacking psychics. How much of that is true, he doesn't know but based on the news he's been watching and stuff he did know there's enough truth in it that if she is lying, it would be hard as all get out to determine.
It turns out that Ayame also knows all the right buttons to push and though he doesn't visibly react to her invoking his sister, he knows that she knows it had an effect. After all, they both knew each other way too well to think otherwise.
It eventually comes around to what Ayame is willing to offer and that offer ends creating more questions for him. "Have what it takes? Why me? Your people already have someone with a comparable skillset in someone like you and you possess certain qualities that I don't. After all there was a reason Belmounte wanted you and not me."
Now that they're standing there facing each other, albeit with a little distance between them, it's clear that Aranha had pretty much run Ayame out for all she's worth. The girl is trying to cover for it, hiding the need to catch her breath as best she can, but she definitely didn't have a lot of chasing power left to her. When it comes to city-spanning escape hijinks, the young parkour artist has her beat, though she would never admit it of course. With a few minutes of rest, she might be ready give chase with renewed vigor... so there is some risk in staying to talk with her. Perhaps she's stalling.
But either way, she isn't advancing now, seeming to prefer the exact amount of space between them them just as much as he does. She's quiet after she speaks, having summed up some of what this is all about but without going into exact specifics yet, allowing him to retort without interruption. It's only when he brings up a name from the past that Ayame blinks in surprise, having been caught off guard by that reference perhaps. She recovers, expression becoming sober for a moment, eyes unfocused as she thinks back on previous experiences. "Elle huh... that she wanted me working for her probably speaks better for you than me..."
She shifts her expression back into her know it all grin, "But that's besides the point. You're right in that some of our skillsets overlap. I don't want to suggest that I won't be busy with my own tasks in trying to slow down these people. I hate getting involved, myself, but when it comes to world-ending catastrophes... I guess I don't have much of a choice, eh? But nah... for this, it takes someone with a bit more on the line than me. I could try to change sides, for example. I don't have anything to lose but myself. And you're almost the same that way... but not quite, and we both know why." Of course, he has his sister he's gone through incredible dangers to protect before.
Ayame shifts, collapsing her staff and tucking it away. Her hand drops to her waist where a leather belt has kept that sheathed sword at her side. The sheath itself is turquoise in color, made of some kind of stone and finely dyed leathers. Hefting it up and detatching it, she grips it in her hand for a moment. "I was given this. It's a weapon that will help even the score against those monsters. But it isn't for me. I was instructed to pass it on to someone who I felt would use it right."
She glances to the side then, scowling, avoiding eye contact. "I hate your guts and still think you're mostly a waste of burglering skills, but I still think that with the right tools, you'll do the right thing to protect someone you care about. I guess that's why I decided to toss this thing your way."
The capoeirista is silent for awhile as he studies that sheathed sword that managed to escape getting pulled by the electromagnet and then the person carrying it as if looking at her in a new light. After all never in a million years would he think that he would hear something to that effect from her. Then again, he was also shocked that she said that he seemed too smart not to have a plan.
"You know. I'm flattered that you thought so highly of me." He pauses to give himself time figure out what to say next eventually settling on. "Now I can help but wonder who your benefactor is. Passing along weapons like that right there doesn't seem to be Elle's style and Marise doesn't seem like the type I could see trying to avert worldwide devastation."
He then looks at the scowling menace right at the face that seems to be trying to avoid his own. "And what happens after I use this 'tool' to prevent armageddon? Any expectations of me or this weapon?" He always lived cautiously living by the philosophy of an uninformed man is often a dead man and with his own experiences he regards the other rogue with more caution than usual. Plus an unexamined gift could be poisonous to him. If he spoke German, he would have noted some humor in that line of thought.
Log created on 21:54:01 05/16/2011 by Ayame, and last modified on 10:15:19 05/06/2012.