Description: Honoka (last name smudged out) is patiently waiting for something or another on the harbors of Southtown. Howard Rust is kind of on the prowl to pass time as he hopes to find a lead in the Gaia Tournament. The two chew the fat about just how dire things have gotten across the seas over in Metro City, among other things, all while volcanic ash overtakes the landscape. It's almost like people could get used to this, but... could they really?
Even with Fuji-san spewing out lava and plumes of thick black smoke... life must still go on. Many shipping routes have been altered, but companies with headquarters in the area can't just reroute -- they need to move their products out of this hotbed first. So, even on a Friday night, there's a lot of activity here, a lot of product to move before things can safely wind down for the weekend.
Amidst the dock workers, there is one person just sitting around... flicking a yo-yo about. Dressed in a dark gray dress jacket ... well, she is quite overdressed for dock work, that's for sure. It doesn't seem that anyone wants to bother with the young woman as she looks idly out across the harbor. Despite the relatively complex yo-yo tricks she's executing with ease, she looks preoccupied somehow.
Years and years ago, when he first came here, Howard Rust used to make a habit to go jogging around these parts on weekends... and all the trouble he'd get into as a result from it. He was just a high school teacher then. He had big dreams that maybe he could've had something more.
Here we are, years after the fact.
5tThere's not so much leisurely jogging as much as there is a careful, cursory examination of the whole place while he wears a flu mask to try and stop himself from inhaling the worst of what's in the air. Lord knows his lungs have an open door policy for just about any particle that wants in there. Maybe his friend Frank might've come back this way, to have something new to say about the goings on.
There's a lot of catching up to do. Yet, Takuma's out of town and virtually none of the students have swung by the Kyokugen Dojo lately, most of the YFCC upper management are out and around, quite a few of his friends have already decided to just flee the city entirely... and most the offices he'd need to go to to get some new paperwork done to replace the stuff that got destroyed? Closed. All he can do is pass the time, maybe see if he doesn't just accidentally wander into someone or something involved in the Gaia Tournament. As he told that visitor who helped himself into his home... that's probably the only lead he's got.
Dressed in a somewhat garish, mismatched yellow-and-blue variation of his regular outfit (what self-respecting fighter doesn't have a few recolors of their everyday outfit?), all the way down to that horrible hairpiece suddenly being a deep blue hue for no readily apparent reason, Howard already has Ol' Rusty drawn, resting on one shoulder. Southtown wasn't exactly the safest place to take a walk in even in better times.
Looking for trouble? Looking for /something/, without knowing what. Just keeping an eye around town's about all he can do now, as he treks along the piers and past the warehouses, largely staying out of everyone's way. (The pops in his joints are another story entirely, they are distracting and not at all respectful for what's going on.)
"Something... like that," he murmurs aloud, the subject lost to pretty much anyone other than himself, waving a free hand in the air with his pointer finger out, head slightly bowed, "all the way from," he whirls a finger around, then points further away... stops... and shrugs, hissing through his teeth.
"D-Doesn't make sense," he says as he looks up to better see where he's walking, where he just happens to pass by a young woman playing with a yo-yo. He stops to watch the tricks for a bit - he's not sure he's seen that one she's doing right now before.
Some people futz around with switchblades, some people with Rubik's cubes... Honoka idles her time with yo-yos. Her current series of moves involves using her left arm as an axis to orbit around -- the yo-yo goes over, then back over in the opposite direction and under, to subsequently get trapped in a cradle of string. Repeat, in slightly different configurations and modifications, season for flavor -- that's Honoka's standard recipe for thinking about something entirely different.
It'd be hard for her to ignore the murmuring taking place behind her, especially with the loud popping noises that occur throughout the garishly-dressed man's approach. Honoka chooses to anyway, though.
Until noticing that the loud popping noises stopped at a position roughly behind her, anyway. Doesn't stop the motion of the yo-yo though -- in fact, as she knows she now has an audience, the pace of her yo-yo slinging intensifies. Whipping the little red yo-yo through the air, she raises her arm up, swinging it like a ski lift first to one side, then the other, and then back again -- but with this motion she vaults off the wooden piling she'd been using as a seat.
Landing right in front of Howard Rust with a flourish, and an overexaggerated bow. The yo-yo's orbit ends at her hand as she ends the bow. The young woman looks up to her audience of one: "Thank you, thank you..." she says with an impish smile. Straightening up, she snaps the yo-yo string into the form of a baby's cradle, and rocks the yo-yo back and forth therein. "What doesn't make sense?" she asks, before crossing her eyes at the mask on his face. "... I should probably get one of those masks, come to think of it," she muses aloud.
He actually has to take a step back when she vaults off because he thinks he's about to be collided into. Given his years of residing in Southtown and who knows how many fights, well... that's a hard habit to break.
"Ah, d-don't mind me, I was... watchin'," He holds up his free hand for an awkwardly long time after the fact, slightly lowering it as he stretches out one of his knees. It's somewhat hard to make out his voice beyond the flu mask. He wasn't very good at being clear before...
"Y-You were listening to... to me, uh," he rubs the back of his head, "you, ah, y'know of the whole... floodin', at Metro, right?" Who the hell doesn't? "And, and... the seas freezing a ways 'way from, uh, here, right?" Thailand being the popular point media points out as to where it all really originates.
"I, I just... I just don't get it," he doesn't seem to include the whole 'Fuji eruption at the same time' thing, or... whatever's going on in Paris, as he throws a hand up and shakes his head.
"Y-Yeah, you... you don't wanna mess 'round with... the crap that's in the, the air," he gestures upwards with a weird bit of a whirl to his finger, as if there were the need to pick out a specific large ash particle flitting through the air, "back when, when I worked construction... shit, can't begin to, to say... how much asbestos dust mighta been in the air..."
Honoka blinks, a bit confused at the meandering gait with which Howard ambles through his varying thoughts. At two or three times, Honoka looks like she's about to start speaking, but is about a half-second late each time. And the young woman is polite enough to stop talking, be patient, and listen.
"I... knew -of- the flooding, and the ice, and the missing people in Paris..." she states tentatively, watching Howard's expression closely to see if she should stop talking and let the guy continue. "... I... yeah. Wow! I'd never thought about that. I... cough here and there but I'd never given it too much thought."
A flick of her wrist and the cradle resolves back into a plain old piece of string, just in time for it to get sucked up into the yo-yo. "Do you... live near here? It's not really, uh... well, sorry, I didn't mean to say it wouldn't be =safe= here, but it's..." She looks around for a moment. ".. kinda not safe here?"
Honoka stops for a moment, then gets a closer look at her conversational partner. "Oh. Hey. I think I'd seen you on TV or something before... " She gives a gently laugh at her own expense, figuring her concern for his safety might be misplaced, in retrospect.
He's good at either cutting people off or being cut off. There is rarely a middle ground, given the occasionally infuriating way he speaks. The pauses, the stutters, the dragging of sentences out into oblivion with no clear ending as to what he means to say. Perhaps the aforementioned asbestos dust he was just talking about is to blame.
It's hard to gauge his facial expressions about it all, given the flu mask. His eyes are at least continuing to make polite contact even with all the little illustrative gestures and stretches of his limbs to relieve any stiffness that attempts to settle in.
He nods at the mention he lives here - that or he's just trying to show that he's still listening, assuming his mind is wandering elsewhere? Hard to say... though there's a bit of a tilt of the head about it not being safe, as if ready to ask.
She turns the cut-off tables on him by going into whether or not she's seen him before.
"Uhh, y'might've?" He clears his throat. If he still has to clear his throat even with the flu mask on... this must not be a very good flu mask. "'scuse me. Sorry." He pats his chest.
"'m Howard Rust, 'm just... kinda... passin' by," which is mostly true, "but, uh, uhh, back up a li'l," he flits his fingers a bit, "y'mean... not safe as in... normal, regular 'not safe' 'cause of some rough types here, or..."
That laugh didn't seem really reassuring.
Honoka watches Howard's eyes with interest -- eyes she can read, his mask less so. Still, she's finding conversation with the man to be an interesting challenge -- she talks with folks of all ages at the circus, and she's... not as upset as others her age might be.
Maybe that volcanic ash isn't the only thing in the air, though -- as she seems to have picked up some manner of his stream-of-consciousness speech. Cheeks tinting pink as he calls her on that, she shakes her head, "No, no, it's alright!"
Securing her yo-yo to a wristband, she takes a step back once she's asked to back up a bit. A second step. ... Then she realizes that's just a curious turn of phrase she hadn't heard before. "Oh. Well, no, I just mean you're walking around like it's not safe, with a rusty ol' pipe in your hand." She tilts her gaze to address Ol' Rusty, before looking back at Howard, that impish grin returning. "Surely you don't plan to hit -me-, do you?"
"Just... just had a, a couple bad run-ins." That's actually putting it very, very mildly. "Between... ah... here," he gestures in a direction that, factually speaking, probably isn't exactly pointing towards North America, but goes with it anyway, "'n all the way over... in Metro... uh, bit north of it, too."
Also understating.
"'s more that--"
She asks if he's going to hit her with that pipe of his. Rather, does he plan to? He casts an odd glance and shakes his head.
"'m not a, a mugger," he murmurs as he rolls his free shoulder for another nasty bit of joint popping, "look, I, I just got... a, a lot on my mind, I don't mean," he shakes his head a few times, free hand lifted upward, palm facing outward, and once again not getting around to finishing what he means by not meaning something.
Honoka smiles broadly. She isn't exactly sure what led her to initiate this conversation -- was just something she felt she should do. But as the man talks she realizes -where- she remembers Howard fighting. "Metro City," she states, once he points.
Folding her arms behind her back so as not to appear quite so standoffish, she nods attentively, waiting for Rust to stop... stopping himself from completing his thoughts. "You just got back from Metro City, yes. I did see... something of that. News reporters suck, though. So maybe could you do me a favor... and tell me about Metro City and what's -really- going on there, then?" She glances off to the side -- not having seen Rust approach, she had no idea which way he was going.
No harm in asking: "And maybe we can keep each other company till you get to where you were headed?" She can take care of herself, of course, but Rust still insists on keeping his pipe drawn, so ... safety in numbers, right?
News reporters sucking... he casts a side glance at mention of that. Sure, he's been frustrated about how it is nigh-impossible to get pretty much any information going. It's the sort of thing that makes him seriously regret not having learned how to operate a HAM radio - probably the only reliable source of communication available now.
He nods slowly about the whole Metro City thing, relaxing his shoulders a bit as he exhales loudly, starting to say something as she segues into that other question.
"Y-Yeah, sure, I... I don't mind," he does mind that he doesn't have an extra set of flu masks on hand... granted, things as they are, it's likely impossible now that there'd be any to buy. Those kinds of things get snapped up quick in these circumstances, and he's lucky he still had at least that one after that gas mask got obliterated a while back.
"Okay, well, uh... what you, what you might've heard 'bout Metro, with the... with the rain?" He shakes his head. Is he denying what's being said, or--
"Even... even worse than you'd think, I mean... 's rain... wind... hail... and, and it just got... worse, every day. 's breakin' more than just... records. Heard they're makin' new scales for, for hurricanes now," he explains, "we're talkin'... big, big floods," he raises a hand up, "shit gettin' knocked down... left, right." He holds his free hand up straight with his forearm, waving it back and forth and having it fall over.
"One day, roof on, on some buildings... might be there? Less than... less than twelve hours later," he snaps his fingers, "gone. Couldn't... ah, build a, a b-barricade to last against the water, or the wind. Even... even the breaks in, ah, cycles? Still pretty rough."
"Some friends of mine 'n I managed to, to just get out on a helicopter, I... I don't think I ever saw any... press." And he sure as hell would not blame them, remembering how towards the end even he was getting tossed around out in the street by the storm. He murmurs something inaudible before speaking up again, looking to her.
"Then, there's this... this Gaia Tournament, y'hear 'bout it? Yeah... I, I fought in that, out... out in that weather. In a boat... that... that was before it got... insane, I mean... flooded streets. Everywhere." He already covered that, but he really, really sees it fit to go into great detail on this.
"Y-You woulda had to have seen it..."
Truth be told, Honoka hasn't really been paying attention to the outside world much. This is why she's been talking to Mr. Rust, after all -- not because of the implied threat of getting a pipe to the head. "Mm-hmm," she responds attentively, walking along with the man as he recounts the stories of the ever-increasing amounts of rainfall in Metro City. "That sounds terrible! I imagine someone with a powerboat would probably be quite the life-saver over there. I had no idea how bad it was..."
Gears begin to turn in Honoka's head as she listens to Howard tell more and more about Metro City, her attentive replies tapering off for a few moments. Thinking about... something.
Until something catches her ear. "You fought on a boat? In the middle of a raging storm?" Honoka shakes her head with a bemused smile. "That must be something... My family used to have a boat. I used to run the rigging." A faint, wistful expression crosses her face for a moment. "I... I hated doing it, but looking back, I learned so much from that. Any kind of knot... pretty much child's play to me now."
She pauses for a moment, then thrusts a hand out to the man. "I'm so dreadfully sorry. You said your name was Howard... Rust, was it? I'm Honoka, and my manners are terrible!" Her cheeks turn a faint pink again, at that.
"I'm curious, Mr. Rust... do you have any family out there in Metro City? Anyone who you might've lost contact with?"
"If only," he murmurs about the whole powerboat thing. What he wouldn't have given - if he had anything, at the time - for one of those to get around the gigantic city grounds with. It's not really all that better here in Southtown. This air is unsuitable for breathing, flames are spreading... if things keep up there could be a full-on evacuation of the entire city coming up, like there has been in some other nearby parts of Japan.
He nods along at mention about growing up. Oh, man, who doesn't go through a disagreement with parents about being brought into busywork when you didn't want to do it? (Just about every kid, ever, ever, ever, ever.) He rubs the back of his head, his free hand - even gloved - still daring to touch... that... disgusting thing that resides on his scalp.
Even worse is when he reaches out with said free hand to shake it. Seriously, even without evidence of grime or filth aside from whatever soot might have collected in that thing in the interim, it's probably gross. Like, it has cootie-cooties. The cooties that cooties go 'ewww, you have cootie-cooties' from. Why would anyone put that thing on their head, let alone touch it?!
"'s all right," in all fairness he didn't ask, a bit too pre-occupied with what he was thinking as he walked along the distance of the harbor, stopping only once again to flex out one of his knees.
"N-Not in... Metro, no. But... I, I lost contact with... well, all my, my friends here," he gestures broadly, "wasn't... easy. No... no phone, no e-mail, I mean... nothin'."
If he was mugged, that probably more than explains the pipe still being out, resting on his shoulder.
"Most of 'em are, well, pro'lly worried sick, uh," for really good reason given he disappeared completely off the radar thanks to... certain people, "haven't, ah, had much luck... catchin' 'em, I mean, the, the guy I train under? Outta town, like... some kinda vacation," but that's just how Takuma is, really, "'s not easy, since, ah... it's, it's just hard to get... anything, out."
He pantomimes a cellphone. "Even, even before I lost mine, shit wasn't goin' out, like, at all... TV ain't pickin' up nothin', g-good luck with the radio." He frowns with his eyes. Presumably, also his mouth, but it's obscured. Pure frustration.
"'n you got... you got everyone just bein' all, end of the world, end of the world... end of the world, runnin' with their, their heads cut off."
He kinda seems like he's walking with his head cut off, in some form or another, given the aimless trudging through the rough harbors of Southtown in search of... whatever.
"Ain't been... easy, tryin' to just, just pick things back up..."
When you work at a filthy place like a circus, dirt and grime add up all the time. Honoka doesn't seem overly flustered at shaking the man's hand, but then again, she's got a travel bottle of hand sanitizer in her pocket. Which she discreetly makes use of as she listens to Mr. Rust's meandering speech.
"... Oh. I'm sorry to hear that..." she states -- quite honestly, in fact. She may be ignorant of the rest of the world but she's not an unfeeling monster.
Honoka continues to listen attentively, though she does give him a bit wider berth once he starts flailing his arms about, like one of those fan-driven, attention-getting monstrosities one might see outside a car dealership. She bristles just a smidge at the casual profanity, but it's not enough for her to consider interrupting to chastise the man over. No sense in being rude, really.
"End of the world, right. This is troublesome, like we're in the end times. I suppose... that's where religion really comes into play. Christians have their churches... the Shinto and Buddhists have their temples." And Honoka quietly leaves her own religious preference unstated.
Off in the distance, a boat horn blares. A rather distinctive one at that. Honoka looks at the yo-yo on her wrist -- which has a watch face -- and frowns at that. "... Ah... right. I was supposed to be waiting for that boat. I apologize, Mr. Rust... I really need to go now. It's been an enormous pleasure to meet you! And... good luck in that Gaia Tournament, mm? I'm glad to have finally met someone in it!" The young woman takes a step back and bows to the teacher.
Yeah, there's been big talk about what comes after all this nonsense. With the tone he takes on quoting what the general mindset of people seems to be, he doesn't quite seem so apt to buy into it... and yet, here he is, wandering about the harbor as he is, discussing how much of a disaster it is in Metro.
"I don't--" He starts, as the boat horn cuts him off, seeing him turn his head sharply as though this boat horn's more distinctive than some of the other ones he's heard, even if they're all functionally the same in these parts. "When'd they get that... that loud," he mutters as Honoka checks her watch.
"Huh? You were wai-- oh. Oh." He nods slowly. "I, I didn't mean to... ah, to pull you away from," he starts on a mutual apology, though he's drowned out by the enthusiasm in her voice and never quite finishes that sentence. "Y-Yeah, likewise, just... stay safe, people're goin'... crazy... y-yeah... thanks."
More like 'good luck finding them and not being found by them.' He'd love to have a face to just come up to have a chat with about all that, but the manner of his inclusion was via a mysterious individual Jiro claims wasn't human... his arrival to Metro City to participate in round one saw him be mysteriously found even though he narrowly escaped a very frightening, strange situation he hasn't quite gotten the full grasp of... for all he knows, any further stage of that will be the same. Some guy comes out of nowhere, says he's to be somewhere to fight these people... it's impossible to get the initiative on any of it, it seems.
He returns the bow in a sign of assumed mutual cultural respect, a consequence of having been around these parts for years, and backs away to wave her off with his free hand as he continues on his way.
Not too far from here, sitting empty, is the very pier that he fought that lady who'd entangle herself in his life through the Southtown Invasion. As Honoka leaves, he decides to go stand around the edge of it, to face the crashing waves and the open ocean beyond.
To say nothing of the ash-covered skies, the nasty grubby soot that flits down (occasionally with bits of lit flame), or the uncomfortable air.
He stretches out one of his legs again for good measure to pull that kink out. He's hoping whoever's left in Metro, so far, has been able to help stem back the tide. Bad as he might feel for getting out now, he knew he had people here who had no idea where he went... he couldn't leave them hanging, either.
Still... all said and done, back to work. Right? Gotta get those new papers in place once those offices open again, gotta try and ride out whatever's going on here, gotta help his friends best to his ability...
...
...Gotta get something good to eat. When's the last time he had a decent meal, come to think of it? Even if half the things he saw within the last week or so is enough to make anyone lose their appetite.
...
Will things ever go back to business as usual, in the wake of all this?
Log created on 20:35:13 09/05/2014 by Rust, and last modified on 23:58:04 09/05/2014.