fandomtownies | Various rooftops around town, Monday afternoon

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ringo noyamano

Various rooftops around town, Monday afternoon

The influx of newbies, along with the slightly cooling temperatures now that August was at an end, really seemed to have boosted Ringo's energy. Sunday she'd went for a really aggressive ride in the warehouse district, and today she was practically itching for another long day of AirTrek.

So the rooftops of Fandom were filled with the high-pitched whine of AirTrek motors, and the whooping laughter of a teenaged girl flinging herself from rooftop to rooftop in a series of insane twists and flips. Her hair, in its usual pigtails, flew behind her like a pair of streamers in the wind.

Every so often she'd drop to street level, skip down some steps or slid up a rail, and then leap back up to the rooftops.

What a beautiful day.

[ooc: Open if anyone wants to catch her either on the ground or on the rooftops.]

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As far as Faith was concerned, the only real way to calm her nerves about settling into a new city was to run from rooftop to rooftop until she felt herself relax. Which could be a while.

That was why she was up here on the rooftops too, dashing from one to the next with nothing but her heavy footfall and the sound of her breathing giving her away. And, of course, the blur of white and red that was her body as she ran and flipped and spun.

What she wasn't expecting, on this little trip to the rooftops meant to relax her, was to round a corner and almost collide with someone else in the weirdest shoes she had ever seen.

She managed to keep herself from hitting Ringo head-on only by somersaulting forward and to the side, then emerged from the roll with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

"What - what is that?"

[[probably SP heavy after the next hour or so but I couldn't resist.]]

Ringo was just as surprised as Faith, responding to the near collision with a last-minute kick against the ground to launch herself into a high flip. Sure, with Faith's somersault it was kind of overkill, but now they were doubly safe? She landed, spinning in place to bleed off speed without going anywhere, and eventually came to a stop.

"Whoa, whoa, sorry about that! Didn't expect anyone else up here."

"Faith, right?" She hadn't misremembered that, had she?

They could (and would, definitely would) talk about AirTrek in a second.

[ooc: No worries! I love SP, anyway, and this promises to be way fun!]

"Yes," Faith said - or panted, really. There were a lot of things going on and she had forgotten to prioritize breathing. "Faith. And you're Ringo?"

She'd recovered from the somersault in a sort of three-point landing, with both hands and one knee on the ground; she took this opportunity to straighten up into a standing position and shake her hair out of her eyes.

"I should have expected - I mean, you did say you like rooftops."

Ringo shook her head, sending her pigtails swaying. "Yeah. You said something like that, too. Should have been paying more attention." She looked Faith up and down. "You okay?" The other girl looked fine, and her agility had been really impressive, but it was okay to double-check.

"Yeah," Faith said. It was true - she was startled, but not sore. She'd had worse collisions that were actual collisions. "You?"

She'd missed the 'spinning in place' part of Ringo's recovery since she'd had to roll forward, but she was still more than a little impressed by the other girl's moves. Based on what she'd seen, she doubted Ringo was hurt.

"Fine." Ringo grinned. "Your little dive gave me plenty of space."

Her grin widened. "Nice moves, actually."

"You too," Faith said at once. The last Runner she'd met with moves like Ringo's was Celeste, and Faith had a sneaking suspicion that even Celeste would have landed face-first after that kind of a fall. Hesitantly, she let herself grin back at Ringo, and then her gaze fell to the ATs. "I've never seen those before."

"AirTrek?" Ringo grinned as she followed Faith's gaze. "Yeah. Apparently no one else has them, but they're pretty common back home." She lifted one foot so that Faith could get a better look at one of the two-wheeled boots, with it's mostly-covered assembly of motors and gears.

"They're pretty awesome. A lot of speed and power without being, you know, stuck on the ground."

Faith glanced from the ATs down to her own red running sneakers, which were about as simplistic as shoes got. "I can't believe you can actually move on them, honestly," she said, but she didn't sound unimpressed, just... awed, mostly. "Aren't they heavy? I feel like I'd be weighed down."

"Well, they're definitely heavier than what you've got." Ringo could appreciate the simplicity of shoes like that. "But they provide enough extra boost to offset the weight." She grinned. "Besides, I don't think I could run up the wall of a three story building."

Faith had to grin at that. "You'd be surprised," she said. "Maybe not run, but you could find a pipe to climb up or something."

Which was how she had gotten up here, yes.

She flexed one foot out in front of her, studying her sneaker. "I like feeling like I'm basically barefoot," she said with a shrug. "It's like I can go faster if I really know the surface I'm running on?"

"Sure, I can get that." Ringo glanced down at her ATs. "After a while you kind of learn what different things feel like under your wheels, but it's not quite the same as feeling it for real."

"But I'm willing to make that trade-off for speed." She shrugged and grinned. "I like speed. And air. Air's good." And you could often convert the one into the other with a good jump.

"The air is really cool," Faith admitted, much as she hated to point out a flaw in her precious sneakers. "Where'd you learn all those moves, anyway?"

"Oh, I've been riding for most of my life," Ringo answered easily, doing a little spin in place just to keep in motion. "Actually, maybe my entire life?" She didn't really have memories of not riding, so she'd probably been put in ATs about the time she could walk.

Faith grinned. "Sounds familiar," she said.

Because she couldn't let Ringo show off without doing a little trick of her own, she nodded toward the next rooftop over. "Race you?"

Ringo eyed the distance for a moment. Then grinned. "If you think you can keep up." Sure, it was kind of a rude thing to say to someone you'd basically just met, but she sort of sensed a kindred spirit in Faith.

Faith didn't think it was rude. Competitive, sure, but she liked that.

She set off at a run for the next building. The jump was too big to her to take on its own; she needed something to spring off of for added momentum. Fortunately, there was something - a wide exposed pipe? She was moving too fast to take note of what it was - that she was able to leap off of to carry her over to the other side.

She was already mid-roll by the time she landed on the other building, turning her momentum into motion, and got to her feet

Edited 2016-08-29 21:53 (UTC)

Ringo took a second to set herself, making sure that her wheels had solid grip before she leaned forward. There was a high-pitched whine from her ATs as she exploded forward. She didn't need a springboard to make the distance, and she could probably make the jump on speed alone, but it'd be better to have something to give her some vertical lift.

Fortunately, there was a spot on their starting roof with a little bit of a wall. Ringo was able to hit it with her right foot extended, bending her knee to keep from absorbing all of her forward momentum, but letting her AirTrek drive straight up, taking her into a backflip that managed to arc across the gap on the momentum she'd already built up.

She was grinning hugely as she spiraled through the air in an arc a good dozen feet above the roofs before landing. She spun once to bleed off some speed, but let her ATs keep rolling.

Because if Faith were anything like her, one rooftop wasn't going to be far enough.

Faith had to hand it to Ringo: that backflip was unbelievably cool. Faith hardly ever did backflips.

But yes, she was thinking the same thing - and as soon as it was clear Ringo wasn't coming to a full stop, she didn't either, but used the momentum of her forward roll to push herself forward.

There was scaffholding on this roof which she gladly used to her advantage; she leapt up to grab a hanging ladder rung and swung over a puddle, which, honestly, even Faith could admit was just shameless showing off. The moment her feet were back on the ground, she just darted forward, straight and fast enough to make it across the gap between this rooftop and the next one.

People on AirTrek didn't often grab onto things. It was a lot more bouncy? Something like that. So Ringo had to swing wide around the scaffolding, spinning up on one foot to keep the angle tight. Which actually gave her a pretty good view of that jump for the ladder. "Nice!" she called, mostly on reflex, as she leaned hard into her turn to get going back the right direction now that she was around the scaffold.

She stayed low, and let her ATs whine up to full speed which sent her on a nearly flat arc between buildings.

"Thanks!" Faith yelled back. She didn't usually like talk while she ran, but she was having fun and it wasn't a real competition, right?

Well. She wanted to win. But she also knew it didn't really matter if she won, so.

"You too!"

With another piece of scaffolding coming up, this one around waist-high, she sped up only to slide down underneath it, which slowed her down enough to catch her breath for a second and watch what those ATs could do.

That little drop in speed let Ringo pull a tiny bit ahead, which meant that she had some breathing room to do a bit of showing off herself. And there was another convenient bit of scaffolding coming up to use for it, too. This one a little over twice her height.

Ringo twisted her body back and began to spin, like a top at a 45-degree angle, while still hurtling forward. At the last possible moment she ducked low and slammed a heel down, using her leg as a fulcrum to convert that angular momentum into linear momentum. And it was pointed almost straight up.

Most of the spin poured into that launch, Ringo kept a slow, controlled tumble, arms and legs fully extended as she arced up over the scaffold and came to a clean landing on the other side facing back toward Faith. She let her ATs continue to carry her backwards, toward the next roof, as she shot the other girl a grin.

"I'm starting to see why you wear those things," Faith shouted across the gap as she charged forward again. She couldn't do anything fancy while she was still picking up speed, so she just leapt across the gap between the rooftops and landed neatly on the next roof without much fuss, and kept running.

By the time she was almost at the next building straight ahead, she was going fast enough to do one of her favorite tricks. Rather than jump directly over the wide gap, she veered to the leftmost side of their particular rooftop and ran directly at the wall of the much taller building next door, her speed allowing her to run horizontally across the wall for five paces with her shoes never leaving the brick wall. Then when the gap between her position and that next building was small enough, she shot back to the right, landing on the rooftop that was her destination and burning off her excess momentum in another quick somersault.

"You should get a pair yourself!" Ringo called excitedly. "Especially with moves like that."

She wasn't far behind Faith, doing almost the same thing, except her wheels let her toss in a little spin while she was skimming along the wall, and her landing was a couple of paces short of where Faith's feet had hit the rooftop.

Ringo wasn't actually trying to show off at this point. In fact, she was trying to get a feel for how much work it had to take to do moves like that without AirTrek.

"Nah," Faith called back. "They're awesome, but I'd never hear the end of it back home."

She was slowing down now, and if it looked like Ringo was too, she was just going to stop and catch her breath. "But I'm willing to call it a tie."

Ringo shook her head. "If I'd just been wearing shoes you would have totally smoked me." She grinned. "But I'll take a tie if you're offering."

"For now," Faith said. "But we should have a rematch once I know the layout a little better. So I can totally smoke you."

She grinned right back. "You were pretty great too. I need to learn some of those more showy moves." Like the spinning and the backflips. "Most of my tricks are more practical, but I should know how to do that stuff for when I'm just having fun."

"Yeah. I mean, there's a certain type of fun in just, um, being practical? You know, knowing that you've got the perfect route? But some of the flips and spins can be a lot of fun, too."

"Definitely," Faith agreed. "I guess the thing about being practical is that it's really fast, but if I'm not on a deadline I want to get some air."

Ringo beamed. "That's exactly how I feel."

"There's a bunch of old abandoned warehouses on one side of town, and they make for a pretty sweet little playground if you're not in a hurry."

"That sounds perfect," Faith said, sounding genuinely thrilled by the thought. "I'll check it out and maybe once I get used to the layout we can take another shot at that race."

"Yeah." Ringo grinned. "You're on."

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Various rooftops around town, Monday afternoon

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