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Kwik Stop Rooftop, Tuesday Afternoon

Sometimes, you just needed to get some air. When you were a vertically-inclined... something, you took that literally. Sometimes, anyway. Dante had draped himself against the roof of the Kiwk Stop, his feet dangling down over the wall, a cigarette between his fingertips. No rain yet, so it was basically like the universe wanted him to hang out here, right?

He'd been lounging up there for at least ten minutes when he first heard the noise. Mewing. Angry, slightly desperate mewing. He tilted his head up and found himself eye-to-eye with a scrawny looking cat-- and it was definitely a cat, not a kitten.

"Huh," he said. "Thought the island would only have fat plump housecats." Like Anders' cat. Lach-something.

The cat skittered further down the roof until it was sitting right beside him. It was scruffy, too. Dante reached out lazily and scritched it behind the ears. It didn't run. Hell, it leaned into it, purring. "At least you haven't lost your taste for a fun time." Or maybe it just liked him. Stray cats usually did, and he liked them right back. Better than the fat ones.

"Well, my roof's your roof," Dante said. He took a drag off his cigarette with his free hand. "No need to purrsuade me."

[[ open! i blame fanon. ]]

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To be completely honest, the island wasn't really the best place for AT riding. But it wasn't like Ringo was going to stop riding every day.

Besides, there was at least a decent amount of variety, and while there wasn't much point in getting up to top speed, and while she couldn't get truly huge air, that just meant she could spend time working on precision and control.

So she was almost entirely focused on landing on the very edge of the roof as she jumped to the Kwik Stop. She wasn't used to encountering other people on the roofs, so she nearly noticed Dante too late. "Whoa!" she exclaimed, shifting her weight and bleeding speed into a wide spin that somehow managed to look graceful even while her expression looked like she wanted to flail.

"Sorry, sorry!" she declared once she came to a stop a few feet away. "Didn't expect anyone to be up here."

The cat scrambled, pulling away from under Dante's hand and skittering back away across the roof. Dante, on the other hand, hadn't moved an inch during the entire thing, with instinct telling him his reflexes would do the work if he needed them to.

Instead he just eyed her and tilted his head.

"What the fuck is that?" he said.

"Huh?" Ringo asked.

"Oh." She lifted one foot, casually balancing on two wheels as she reached down and tapped the AirTrek she was wearing. "You mean these?" She brightened, always glad for an excuse to talk about her favorite thing.

"They're called AirTrek," she explained.

"Yeah, that doesn't actually tell me anything," Dante said. Because. Well. It didn't. "You're jumping around on the rooftops in inline skates?"

And chasing off the cat. He'd have to bring it something if he saw it again.

Ringo would totally apologize to the cat later. If it would let her.

"Well, they're not really inline skates?" Ringo pointed out. "They have motors in the wheels," she wiggled her toes and spun the wheels of the AT she was holding off the ground, generating a high pitched whine. "So you can do a lot of stuff that isn't really possible with just a pair of skates."

~~Somewhere, Bayonetta took notes.~~

"Seriously?" Dante said.

Yes, seriously. And he wasn't even really sure if that was a 'that's stupid' seriously or 'that's stupid, but in a cool way' seriously.

"I know!" Ringo declared excitedly, totally missing his tone of voice. "Awesome, right?"

From the corner of his eye, Dante could see the cat popping its head back up. See, that's why he liked strays. They were scrappers, and not afraid of much of anything.

"Sounds kinda dumb," he said. "Where the hell do you get something like that?"

Dumb? Ringo's eyes went wide. How could he say that?

"They're, um, kind of popular back home," she answered. Then, because she couldn't help herself: "And they're not dumb. They're amazing!" So, uh, take that, Dante.

"That's a real convincing argument," Dante said, making a finger gun and pointing it at Ringo. "Sounds like a kid's toy."

Well, if he needed convincing... Ringo grinned. "I could maybe show you a couple of things, if that's how you feel?" she suggested.

"Though I don't want to scare your cat again."

"The cat's his own cat," Dante said, waving towards it. "But sure." He sat back again. "Convince me."

Ringo shot the cat one more glance, then slowly turned in a circle, studying her surroundings. It still wasn't the best environment for anything really complicated, but she should be able to put something together.

She glided over to the edge of the roof, considering, then nodded to herself and stepped off the edge. A couple of seconds later there was a high pitched whine as she rocketed back up the wall, throwing herself upward in a long arc a dozen feet above the roof's surface. She landed smoothly, a quick spin helping to translate the vertical momentum to horizontal and zoomed across the roof, carefully avoiding the cat, who did not seem best pleased with her antics. Across the to the opposite edge of the roof and then a leap into a flip across to the next roof over where she once again sped along to the edge only to pirouette into a change of direction, speeding back toward the Kwik Stop. Another complicated flip landed her on a trajectory straight toward Dante without slowing down. Hurtling toward him, she threw herself into a quick, twisting jump about five feet from him to arc over and land on the other side before coming to a stop.

She turned, grinning, ever so slightly out of breath, and raised an eyebrow as if to say 'well?'.

Dante still hadn't moved when she'd come rocketing towards him, but he had totally looked up to catch the vertical end of that jump.

Huh. Okay.

"There's easier ways to get around than tuck and roll," he said, craning his head to look at her.

But that had been kinda cool.

Ringo snorted. "There are easier ways to get around than running around on rooftops, too, most of the time," she pointed out. "But," she grinned wide, "most of them aren't nearly as fun."

"I dunno. I could think of a few," Dante said, and while he couldn't actually think of any that were dirty, he was smirking anyway. "But hey, that was sort of cool, I guess."

That smirk made Ringo's cheeks color ever so slightly, but she ignored that. "More than sort of cool," she shot back.

"Though, to be fair, this isn't really the best area to really show off. You need to get into a real city if you want to let loose."

She studied Dante for a moment, thoughtfully. "What are you doing up here, anyway? Just sitting around?" Cause the roof was kind of an odd place for that.

"Thought I'd get some air," said Dante, who had most definitely seen that blush there, Ringo. Not that he was in the mood to do anything with it right now. "Hey, look." He held his hands up. "Air."

Lots of it!

"I kind of feel like I'm supposed to say something mocking to that, but given what I'm doing up here, I don't think it'd really work." Besides, Ringo didn't usually do mocking all that well.

Sorry, Dante. Guess you were going to have to pick up the slack on that front.

"Yeah, you looked busy hopping around on your inline skates," Dante said lightly, draping his arms over his knees as he sat forward. "Scaring the crap out of the cat. Is that how you get your kicks?"

Ringo looked over at the cat for a moment, clearly considering her answer. "Seems like the cat's fine to me," she pointed out with a little grin.

"But, yeah, ATs are pretty much how I get my kicks." She didn't mind admitting it, either. "What about you?"

"Beating things up and getting laid," Dante said easily. Hey, he was a simple guy.

He took a last drag of his cigarette and threw it off the roof. "But I guess there's more boring stuff to do with your life than play a ballerina on wheels. How long you been doing that?"

That beating things up line had Ringo looking him over more thoughtfully. She wasn't an expert in fighting without ATs, but she could size someone up pretty decently, and now she had a reason to.

Still, he had asked a question. "Um, since I was four or five, I guess?" she answered. "I don't really remember not doing it, you know?"

Dante, on his end, simply stretched back out again. If she was going to size him up, might as well give her something to look at.

"So they are kid toys," he said.

Hmm. Maybe Dante would make a good rider. Ringo might bring that up later.

"Hmm, I suppose. I mean, they are for having fun, after all." Ringo shrugged, not feeling particularly insulted or anything.

"Though you have to admit that not many kids could do what I just did."

Dante shrugged. "I dunno," he said, "Have you seen reality TV these days? Parents'll make their kids do anything."

Or maybe that was just his ~~demon-infested~~ reality.

"I haven't really?" She wasn't a big TV person.

"But if you think it's so easy," she grinned over at Dante, raising an eyebrow in challenge, "want to give it a try sometime?"

"Never said anything about easy," Dante said. He lifted his chin. "Not that I couldn't fucking do it."

Oh ho! Ringo knew that tone of voice. It made her smirk.

"Yeah?" She looked down at Dante's feet. "What size do you wear, then?"

Dante was happy to swing one of those boots over until they sat on the edge of the roof and she could see them. "Not saying I will," he said, "But maybe I'll get bored."

"Bet I've got a spare pair that'll fit you," Ringo declared with a grin.

"You know, in case you get bored."

She waited a beat, then added, "Assuming you're not just all talk."

Dante rolled his eyes. "Are you trying to rile me up?" he said. "Because there's nicer ways of doing that."

"But this one's a ton of fun," Ringo shot back, totally unapologetic.

Dante put his foot back where it had been. "You've officially got a weird sense of fun."

Admittedly his wasn't completely normal either, but in another way.

Ringo snorted in amusement. "I bet yours isn't that far off from mine," she accused playfully.

"Never did get into inline skating," Dante said.

Because he'd been busy running from demons.

"Unless you mean something else."

"Eh, that's just details," Ringo responded with a shrug, doing a little spin in place. "If I weren't doing this, I'd be doing something else that involved speed and airtime."

"Could've become a fucking ballerina or something," Dante said, looking back down at those... things.

So fucking weird.

She looked around the roof thoughtfully. "You spend a lot of time up here?" she asked. She wanted to know where to find him to give him a pair of AirTrek and see if she could goad him into trying them out.

"First time here," Dante said. He darted a quick look her way. "I'm in Room 322." He tilted his head. "Some of the time. If you get bored."

Threw in a little smirk again.

Edited 2015-09-15 19:48 (UTC)

Ringo sort of smirked back at him. "I'm pretty good at keeping myself entertained, but I might swing by some time."

They were totally talking about different things.

Eh, depended on how fun whatever she wanted to do was; Dante was pretty easy.

Y'know, for multiple interpretations of the word.

"Happy to hear it," he said easily. The smirk morphed into a grin that held only a little hint of unhinged.

"Well, I suppose I should let you get back to petting your cat," Ringo decided with a grin.

"Again, not my cat," Dante said, glancing over to where the cat had been. It was still there. "But we'll see how he feels about it."

"Uh huh." She probably wasn't going to stop calling it that, anyway.

Ringo swayed back and forth, limbering up again, then spun on one foot and took off across the roof. "Later!" she called, waving without looking over her shoulder. She flipped over to the next building and accelerated off.

Dante shook his head. "Now that's fucking weird," he said.

The cat hopped back into view next to him. He looked at it. "Don't you think?"

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Kwik Stop Rooftop, Tuesday Afternoon

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