Warehouse District, Thursday Afternoon

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo hadn't actually walked to the warehouse district in, well, almost since she'd first arrived on the island. It was a sort of AirTrek playground for her, so she always rode out. But today she wasn't alone, so she'd walked.

Back at the dorms, she'd stuffed a pair of ATs into her backpack and swung by Dante's room before heading to the warehouse district. It wasn't strictly necessary just to show someone the basics, but she thought of it as her space, and she'd take any advantage she could get in case the two of them started bantering again.

Slinging the backpack off of her shoulders, Ringo sat down on a set of concrete steps and began unlacing her sneakers. She could get the ATs on with her eyes closed, so she let her eyes wander around, and was struck by something for the first time: the immediate area was marked with her road. There were gouges in concrete walls, dents in dumpsters, worn spots on metal railings. Each of them caused by hundreds, or even thousands, of repetitions of a trick. Like a well-worn path in the grass.

She doubted anyone else on the island had the eyes to see those marks. They didn't know what to look for. But if someone from back home saw this? They'd know. It was an oddly comforting thought, and Ringo found herself smiling a happy little smile before she remembered that she wasn't out here alone today.

[ooc: For the one, but if you want to catch Ringo out practicing, feel free.]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

Hey, these were some funky shoes, but they were still shoes, right? -- Don't worry, Ringo; Dante was at present way too busy trying to figure out the actual ATs now that his boots were off.

He'd put them on once before, then forgot about them. And okay, it wasn't hard, but it was complicated enough that it took all of his focus.

While he sat perch-sprawled on a dumpster, of course. This was still Dante we were talking about.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Need a hand?" Ringo asked as she finished securing hers and stood up, body automatically shifting from one foot to the other to make sure that they were comfortable.

She didn't even sound snarky as she offered. Because AirTrek was serious business!

[rebelseekspizza]

"Nah, I think I got it." Dante stretched his leg out and squinted at it. "It's not comin' off so far."

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo snorted. "Well, that's a good start." With a soft whine, she let her wheels take her over to Dante's dumpster. "Probably want to get your feet under you, though. You know, to make sure."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Somebody's got to learn some patience."

Pot, kettle, Dante.

He hopped off the dumpster without taking too much care; it was a small miracle (or a blatant flaunting of physics) that he wound up perfectly upright without rolling away or tripping all over himself.

[soniaroadsqueen]

Eh. Physics. Who needed that?

"They feel okay? Not pinching anywhere or anything?" He probably would have said something, Ringo.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shot her an amused look.

After a beat, he said, "They're fine."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Okay." Ringo beamed. "Then let's do this!"

"The first thing you want to do is get used to basic movement. The pair you've got has brakes, so you want to lean your weight forward to accelerate, and lean back to brake."

Easy, right?

[rebelseekspizza]

"Like a segway." And look, now Dante was sounding a little more skeptical.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Like a what now?" Ringo asked, frowning as she slid forward.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Never mind," Dante said. He shifted his weight forward, and-- "Woah!"

Okay, that was fast. He leaned back quickly to compensate, but not before winding up a few feet further away than he'd planned.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Oh, right, you'll want to be a little careful until you get used to them," Ringo warned belatedly. "Tiny movements until you get a feel for how fast they can go."

"The pair you have aren't top of the line or anything, but they'll still get you over fifty or sixty miles an hour if you know what you're doing."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Right, these things have a hair trigger," Dante said.

Which he was totally going to try and push to the limit the second he had anything remotely to a handle on it, but now he tested it with a very slight lean.

Yeah, that was slower.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, look what we have here," Kathy said, leaning over a warehouse rooftop to grin down at Ringo and Dante. She was at an angle that would have spelled disaster for almost anybody else, but Kathy was fine, casual and relaxed with no sign of toppling over. "Is this an AT party and I wasn't invited? I'm hurt, Ringo, I really am!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo rolled her eyes. Hopefully she did it hard enough for Kathy to see from the roof. "Well, you certainly weren't doing anything to get Dante properly up to speed, so I had to take things into my own hands."

Yeah. That was totally what was going on.

Really, Kathy. All the time you spent with Dante, you would have thought you could have taught him how to appreciate AirTrek properly. What? Did you have something more interesting to do?

[rebelseekspizza]

Yeah, it was suddenly really hard for Dante not to laugh for some reason. Who knew why?

"Aw, you know you're always invited," he called up. "Just got to get your ass out the door first!"

[spin_kick_snap]

And Kathy was turning pink and shooting Dante looks for equally obscure reasons.

"I figured you'd get offended if I taught Dante how to use his ATs better than you could," she said, flipping down from the root to join them on the ground, bouncing between two other warehouses on the way down. "I know how competitive you are, Ringo."

Reaching into her backpack, she fished out her own pair of ATs and sat down to pull them on. "Let me guess, though. He got used to them in a disgustingly short amount of time?"

YOU WERE TOTALLY OP, DANTE. TOTALLY.

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo heaved a totally theatrical sigh. "Of course he did." And then he'd just acted like it was easy!

"I'd be more upset if it didn't mean there might eventually be enough people to form a team on the island." Hear that, Dante? You were totally going to get recruited!

[rebelseekspizza]

"I never said anything about joining any teams," Dante said quickly. "I like my loner-time."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I thought all the teams did was race a lot," Kathy said, finishing up the straps and hopping--yes, actually hopping--to her feet. She stood perfectly still on her ATs, like they were just another pair of shoes. "Like up and down the sides of buildings and things. Oh, and fight. Are we going to fight one another?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, there is a lot of racing," Ringo allowed. "But it's only one of the four major types of AT competition. It's officially known as Dash. The others are Disc, Cube, and Balloon, and each one emphasizes a different set of skills."

She glanced over at Kathy with raised eyebrows. "And I guess we could do some fighting techniques, but it'd only be basic stuff." She shrugged. "Most people need to get some custom work done on their ATs if they're serious about fighting."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Besides, I remember what it was like the last time Kathy and I fought," Dante said.

Both in good and bad ways.

"Thinking the inline skates are just going to tie things up."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're just like a big brick wall," Kathy groused. "You don't even feel it when I hit you. We'd have to make it into some kind of points system, where no one has to take you down in order to take you out."

Because otherwise there would be no way for Dante not to win, unless they wanted to take the fight to whole levels beyond fun.

"So what are Disc, Cube, and Balloon like?" she asked. "Dash is the only one that sound relatively straightforward."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Cube is basically a one-on-one competition. When teams face off in Cube, they pair up opponents. It's like a, what's that thing on TV? A cage match? Relatively small, enclosed spaces with a fight to submission or unconsciousness." By her expression, Ringo wasn't a huge fan of Cube. Even if it had been her specialty for most of her life. "So probably no Cube with Dante."

"Disc is a team vs team game where the goal is to throw a disc between players to get across the play-area to the opposing goal. There are a lot of team tactics in there for both offense and defense."

"And Balloon," well, if Ringo's expression were anything to go by, Balloon was the best! "Balloon is another team game with huge play areas. The specifics are kind of involved, but basically you set a lighter-than-air balloon loose at the beginning of the match, and it's anything-goes to be the first team to grab it."

[rebelseekspizza]

While Ringo talked, Dante got rolling idly until he made it down to Kathy's side. "Sounds like you people spend a lot of time coming up with games to play with inline skates," he said. "You sell tickets?"