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

[soniaroadsqueen]

Yes! More speed! Ringo grinned.

"One thing to know is that if you're going too fast, your brakes will take a while to slow you down. So if you're going to go fast, you probably want to learn to power slide." She surged ahead, then twisted her hips so that her wheels were perpendicular to her direction of travel, kicking up a spray of gravel as she skidded to a halt.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Now that is definitely like a motorcycle."

Which was why it took him all of zero effort to manage it. It wasn't like he was the type to get his legs tangled up in each other.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Hey, not bad!" Ringo declared, looking impressed. "Looks like we might get to the fun stuff earlier than I'd thought."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Hey, I know how to roll just fine," Dante said.

It was his inclination towards overkill they had to curb, here!

He tapped the ground with one skate. "Just gotta keep 'em all facing in the right direction."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, for the basics, anyway," Ringo agreed with a grin. She planted one foot and put her weight on the other, surging around in a rapid pivot to demonstrate. "Sometimes doing different things with each foot is helpful."

She turned around, gliding backwards slowly. "You feeling comfortable enough to try something fancy?" Well, relatively fancy.

[rebelseekspizza]

Now that Dante had figured out the basic sensitivity of the damn skates, he was moving around with rather more speed, stopping only (and loudly) when he came too close to a wall.

He turned at looked back at Ringo. "Oh, I'm always comfortable."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Uh huh." Ringo didn't sound convinced, but she did sound amused.

"Then let's see how you handle a few jumps." One great thing about the warehouse district was that there were all sorts of interesting terrain features. Like the waist-high loading dock that Ringo sped over to, leaping up to land in a quick spin on the elevated concrete.

[rebelseekspizza]

Okay, the wheels under his feet were something new, but jumping, Dante could do.

He jumped up after her, higher than should really be possible, hit a nonexistence surface in the air and somehow - somehow wound up on the large airconditioning unit right above her.

Showoff.

At least it took him a second to get stable?

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo's eyes had gone wide. "Did you just jump off of the air?"

That wasn't a 'that's not possible' stare. That was a 'how did you learn to do that so quickly' stare!

[rebelseekspizza]

Genetics. Really weird, screwed-up genetics, baby.

"Yep," Dante said. He felt the unit creak under his feet, so he hopped back off and landed next to Ringo.

It didn't take him as long to find his feet this time. "But hey, nice trick."

[soniaroadsqueen]

If that's how it was going to be, well, it was clearly time to try something more advanced.

"Okay. Next let's try a grind." Not that kind. "The trick is to get your foot on a rail, or something else narrow, so that you have one wheel on each side. Then you twist to keep the pressure up and your ATs will drag you along."

Ringo jumped over onto a railing that ran along the edge of a raised walkway, sparks popping from the friction as she sped down the metal bar. Not really that fast, but fast enough to leave Dante behind if he didn't follow suit.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante was wearing weird-ass inline skates and running around a bunch of old warehouses. He was definitely not thinking about the other kind of grinding right now, thank you very much.

Anyway, this thing was more complicated. Definitely. His first attempt to leap onto the railing failed; he had to flip backwards and land back on the floor, or he might've fallen-- cough-- very uncomfortably.

The second attempt was more successful, but by then, Ringo was already a little whiles away.

[soniaroadsqueen]

As the distance opened up, Ringo had turned around, now sliding backwards down the railing and watching Dante. "Control speed the same way you don normally!" she called back at him.

She reached the end of the rail, and without looking threw herself into an arching backflip to land on the ground, where she kept sliding slowly backward, clearly giving Dante a chance to catch up.

[rebelseekspizza]

So... leaning more? Right. Leaning more.

...the speed at which he came barreling down the railing a few moments later was probably not advisable to anyone who'd only been wearing AirTrek for ten minutes.

He hit the ground hard at the end of the railing, twisting his feet around for another hard stop. Had to figure out how to make that more fluid.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"You okay?" Ringo asked, not even teasing as she asked. She didn't actually want Dante to get hurt, after all.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Perfect," Dante said, kicking off and sliding into an already much smoother glide towards her. "What's next?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Well, if he said so. Ringo grinned and shrugged. "How about a wall-ride?"

She turned around, heading straight toward a wall, but rather than hit it, she jumped, planting her ATs against the surface at an angle and letting them push her up and over in a diagonal line.

"You basically just want to transfer your forward momentum into enough inertia to keep your wheels pressed against the wall so your ATs can keep pushing you along." It could get a lot more complicated than that, but it was a good start.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Can you repeat that in English?" Dante called.

Not that he probably needed the instruction. He could do that a little bit without AirTrek already.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Jump against the wall hard enough that your wheels can push you along. You're basically trying to fight gravity." Well, most people had to fight gravity.

[rebelseekspizza]

There. Normal English wasn't that hard, right, Ringo?

"All right," Dante said, snapping his fingers. "Gravity and I aren't really on the same page anyway."

He pushed off, hit high speed pretty quickly, and launched.

He executed the maneuver perfectly, but whether it was the Air Trek, well, that was up in the air. (Heh.)

[soniaroadsqueen]

Well, of course he did.

"Those are the two big ones," Ringo allowed. "Though you'll want to practice them a bit. For instance, you should be able to wall-ride up onto the roof without too much trouble. And you should be able to land on a rail to grind if you jump off the roof."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, I saw you do that before," Dante called. "Scared the shit out of the cat!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"I'm pretty sure your cat is tough enough to get over it," Ringo pointed out with a slight grin.

"Anyway, once you get the basics down, part of the fun is in elaboration. Add a spin to your wall-ride, grind with only one foot, use flips for transitions, that sort of thing."

[rebelseekspizza]

A lot of that didn't actually sound unfamiliar to Dante at all. There was a little something in the back of his instinctive brain that was trying to push it further, figure out how the AirTrek could potentially be used as a weapon.

He wasn't all that aware of that little something. It just kinda was.

"Not my cat," he said. Took a breath. Took off towards the wall again, hitting it with the skates, running along it for a couple of seconds before pushing off and flipping onto the ground.

"...Okay, these aren't bad."

[soniaroadsqueen]

If he asked Ringo while she was in a generous mood, she could talk about the combat applications of AirTrek for hours. But one of the reasons she enjoyed Fandom so much was that no one expected her to fight. She'd spent most of her life acquiring those skills, but she was happier not having to use them.

So she grinned at his grudging response. "That's one way to put it." She quirked an eyebrow. "Want to see some more of what's possible?" She wouldn't be able to walk him through all the steps, but he seemed to be picking things up pretty quickly.