ArchivedLogs:High Rises and Hotdogs

High Rises and Hotdogs
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Dramatis Personae Kaori, Zach
In Absentia	2013-09-18 Base jumping followed by street food.
Location <NYC> One Court Square - Queens
[Queens - One Court Square ] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Court_Square Queens is not nearly as active a borough as some of the others in New York, at least from the hustle and bustle of big business. It was not empty by any stretch, but just like any other part of the city, most people never really bother to look up. The top of the building held radio transmitters for local radio stations, and is pocked by the normal air intake systems, with the access door that was normally locked, held open with a pry bar. The normal low barrier protective fencing had been vandalized before many had even arrived, a bolt cutter showing precisely why the large section of fencing is missing. Atop this fifty story building is an unlikely gathering, at least unlikely to people of normal minded inclination. It is definitely a restricted area, and without a question trespassing to be up here, but for the adrenaline junkies gathered, breaking one law isn’t much different than breaking other laws. Up this high, the temperature is lower even than the current fall like seventy degrees, and most people up here are keeping warm in preparing their chutes, occasionally stopping to check the tachometer to register the wind speed. It is going to be a good day for a jump, the weather called only for a one mile per hour wind, nothing dangerous to the coming chutes, and the thermal island of the city beneath isn’t causing any massive updrafts that would slam them back into the building. A few of the people glance nervously over at a young man probably barely legal, who isn’t wearing the chutes everyone else was putting on. He does not even appear to have brought anything other than his comfortable clothing, a light windbreaker, worn over a black shirt pronouncing “F*CK the Police”, and a pair of beaten up jeans tucked into a pair of black boots. Zach isn’t exuding the nervous energy of some of the others present, not allowing their worries and concerns to affect him. He isn’t planning on letting any cops near enough to arrest him ever again after all, and he has no chute to slow him down if he needs to evade pursuit. He does at least grab a styrofoam cup to pour himself some of the coffee from a thermos as everyone else preps for their jump. He had a slight grin across his lips as he occasionally glances towards the others, glad at least that so many others would be jumping at the same time for him to get a bigger rush out of. Kaori made her way here having finally wheedled her way into the right message boards and contact groups. She pulled on a lightweight balaclava before entering the building, and made her way up the recommended, unwatched service stairs, all fifty floors. She emerged huffing and puffing under the strain of her gear bag, but not much more worse for wear. Her hair is bunned in a tight knot, making a lump in her mask on the back of her head. Aside from being definitely the tiniest person here, she is also the only one in a mask, and stands out for it. She unpacks quickly, donning safety harness, pads and helmet - worn right over her balaclava. Once deployed, the helmet is obviously a Hello Kitty design, in bright pink, complete with long, fuzzy ears. All of her safety gear is bright pink as well, worn over a black jumpsuit. She hauls her chute out of the bag, and kicks the duffel aside. Apparently it’ll just be a one-use. Then she begins going through a meticulous pre-flight check of every clip and fastener. As she does, and speaks through the helmet, muffled, but audible, and obviously a girl, for multiple reasons. “What’s up, punks? Thanks for letting me tag along.” “You ‘Little Miss Kitty’?” One of the guys asks, probably a forum moderator called SlickChute. “Damn straight!” she says brightly, giving a double thumbs up. Her visor is up, and it’s clear she must be grinning from ear-to-ear, even if it can’t be seen. “Who’s all of you?” she asks in a happy tone. With the ppfft of a spit take on seeing the Hello Kitty safety gear on the SWAT team looking girl, Zach blinks a few times, followed by the chuckle on hearing the handle given her. “Well at least that explains the avatar.” Shaking his head as he wipes off some of the coffee spittle with the back of the windbreaker sleeve, he glances over the other guys to make sure this isn’t some joke. With no one else bringing enlightenment to the situation, he just sighs and shrugs. “Tag on the board is ‘Speed Freak’,” he says still with some amusement at the appearance of the girl. There’s some muttering from the group on the Freak aspect being true, though he doesn’t seem too concerned on it. “You planning on robbing a bank midway through the jump with that get up? Or just afraid of the media and cops that much?” Zach seems a little dismissive of both of those problems, though as he mentions it the other jumpers look a bit more nervous since they hadn’t worn the same protections. “Better bet is to scatter the dispersal of the jump, landing as a cluster is more likely to draw the pigs than an individual. But unless you can strip that all and disappear into the crowd you’ll just have someone snap your picture with a camera phone the minute you land and every step of the way after.” “I like to keep my options open,” she says, ‘grinning’ around at everyone, sparkly eyelids flashing in refracted light from her visor. “But safety first!” She pats her harness, and seems to be finished with her pre-flight. She looks Zach up and down and asks, “Where’s your stuff? You going tandem or something?” The other jumpers do indeed seem quite comfortable letting New Girl and Crazy Guy chat on their own. Per Zach’s suggestion though, most start fanning out across the rooftop, looking for open vectors. As the others split off and away from the two, Zach has a bit of a smirk, knowing that he makes the others a tad uncomfortable. “I don’t need any of it. I’m the freak after all.” Shrugging at that, as the others start prepping their own vectors, he starts stretching out, letting out a few pops of cricking bones. “So I get all the free fall rush you guys get for a few seconds, without the couple of minutes of floating around waiting to land.” He pulls a coin out of his coat pocket and flips it, catches it and checks the facing. “Heads this time.” He shrugs again, not having any particular meaning behind the statement as he puts it back in his pocket. “Holy shit,” Kaori says through her faceplate, wide-eyed. The language might seem a little incongruous coming out of the Hello Kitty helmet. “Are you invincible mutant? Like Luke Cage? That is so BAD ASS.” She bounces on the balls of her feet in her excitement, unconsciously drifting toward Zach’s setup space. She’s small, maybe he won’t mind sharing a vector. She watches the coin with some curiosity, but his gearless jump has more than captured her attention. “Pft, I wish. Granted if I was invincible and jumped from here, it would put a hole through the street and take out traffic for weeks.” Zach shakes his head at that as he steps up closer to the ledge. “I just don’t have to worry about things like terminal velocity, especially the terminal part.” He pats her Hello Kitty helmet and shrugs. “Means I can get away with doing stunts you helmeted types would splatterfest on, and merging back into the crowd of people doesn’t require me losing a parachute and safety gear.” He figures he doesn’t need to mention certain other aspects to her at least. Stepping up onto the ledge, Zach looks down to the ground without fear. “Just remember not to judge your safe distance by me. I don’t have one to worry about, and trying to race me down won’t be too healthy for you.” Licking his finger and holding it up to the air, he does his own wind speed check, preferring it to the tachometer at least. Kaori cocks her head to one side (making the fuzzy ears bob), and finally nods. “Huh, yeah I guess that makes sense. Still. Cool that you don’t need a chute.” She edges to the lip of the roof, and glances over briefly, down at the street. The kitty head turns back and says, “Well, if it’s a race, guess I better go!” And with no further ado, she bounces up to the lip, and over the edge. WHOOSH. Gone. Several other people on the roof seem to take this as their cue to do the same. Shaking his head at the challenge to race him, Zach does the appropriate crazy thing and dives off the roof like a swimmer into the deep end. Without the need to worry about a ‘chute, he can ignore proper things like how to angle to have the chute facing skywards. With the wind whipping around him, the unprotected mutant zips down the building face with unrestricted ease. A few faces are seen behind the mirrored glass in more well lit rooms, most turning to look out at the base jumpers. As he gets within range of Kaori though, she suddenly starts falling slower, as if suddenly weightless till she almost stops midair as he goes Rocketing past her, though he is shooting away from the building now at an impossible angle of attack. Kaori flails, and /laughs/ loudly through her helmet at the rushing wind, as she starts to slow down. Apparently she suspects the ‘foul play’ and isn’t overly concerned by it. When Zach rockets past however, she starts trying to swim downward, doing something like a crazy starfish, swimming the breaststroke, downward. Within just a couple seconds of falling though, her altimeter chimes in with a helpful suggestion, and she goes along with it. BASE jumpers never get much time to drop, so Kaori yanks the rip cord and is yanked to a halt for a moment when her chute flies open behind her. She dangles there, watching Zach’s descent intently, rather than scanning for exit strategies. At least there aren’t any cops in sight yet. In free fall, there really isn’t much in the way of things to grab on, things to push off of, or much to do aside from shift your body about in the presence of the wind. Yet there are distinct shifts in Zach’s flight, jerky looking, but distinct shifts. Each shift comes with a small flash of silver reflected off something small metal and shiny from his hand as he adjusts his flight course with practice. He was definitely staying up in the air for far longer than someone without a chute ought to, with a fairly controlled circling descent pattern like you’d expect from a bird of prey riding a thermal, if nowhere near as clean a motion. A bird does drop a few feet from the air as it flies too close to him, and with a protesting squawk flies away. Still descending at a good clip, even with her chute open, Kaori pulls the guide ropes into a hard bank, hoisting herself into a braking maneuver. It looks like she’ll /just/ miss the horizontal flag pole sticking out several stories above street level, but then she turns suddenly /towards/ it. Her chute and lines wrap around it, pulling her up short, making her swing way out in front of the chute, skimming along the face of the brick building next to her. At the apex of her swing, she mashes down hard on the quick-release latch of her harness, and she pops free. Reaching back, she grabs onto a loose bit of webbing, and pendulums back the other way, now running her feet along the vertical surface. Towards the other end of the pendulum she leaps free, leaving behind chute and harness entirely as she sails through open air, finally putting her hands on a heavy cable stretched across the street, probably left there to display seasonal banners and whatnot. She flips around the cable like a gymnast, and makes a twisting, turning dismount to slide down the drain pipe she must have been heading for all along. With the girl drawing so much attention with the gymnastics routine, Zach’s descent while spectacular in its own right is almost tame in comparison. As his feet are almost to ground level he stops mid air and a penny rockets out of his hand towards the heavens. A few camera phones snap away at him anyway, though most people were pointed towards the ninja hello kitty routine. Others had already descended a couple blocks away in the dispersal in any direction, drawing attention over the area instead of one place in particular. Shoving his hands into his windbreaker’s pockets, Zach sets to moving through the assembled gawkers to stand next to a wall to lean against as he watches the girl to see how she plans to extricate herself from the situation. It should be interesting to watch anyway, and he is obviously amused by the situation, having expected more focus on himself. Kaori lands with barely a thud at the bottom of the drain pipe, and throws up double peace signs for the people snapping photos. She pulls on the helmet, leaving just the balaclava and stuff the hard shell into a pouch pack on her back which holds it snug against her body. She sprints down the sidewalk, past gawking pedestrians and brushes past Zach. “C’mon, slow poke!” She’s enthusiastic, but keeps her voice down in case he decides to just play it cool. Then she ducks down the alley, pelting at full speed. She’s pretty quick for a short-stack. Moving down the alleyway she indicates, Zach starts sprinting once out of the direct rush of onlookers. Without taking any extra speed, he’s still pretty quick moving, long legs and general athleticism helping out. Sure there are dumpsters and trash, but it isn’t as if that is too big an impediment unless you’re trying to drive a truck through. “So crazy bank robber ninja acrobat who likes hello kitty. Check.” He shakes his head, and gives a chuckle as he books it after her. Kaori laughs, a sound so delighted, clearly the voice of a happy young woman. “Check, check, and…” she ducks and rolls, putting a dumpster between her and the street they just left, now that they’re almost at the other end of the alley. Her coveralls come off as tear-aways it turns out, and the balaclava too, all getting stuffed into said dumpster. Underneath, she’s wearing skinny jeans which show off muscular legs, and Doc Marten boots. She also has on a red t-shirt which says, “Some Dudes Marry Dudes. Get Over It.” Her hair is put up in a remarkably neat ballerina bun, but is also super-bright, neon green in color. She winks at Zach, inverts her helmet sack to it’s normal teddybear-backpack form, puts the helmet back in, and slings it onto her back over both shoulders. The whole thing only took seconds. Hands in pockets, she hops up and continues the way they were headed. “Come here often, Speedy?” “Your secret identity is safe for now?” Zach watches the clothing swap, and nods to himself about the breakaway nature of some of the clothing. “Still good idea on that stuff, I may have to get some breakaways.” There is a slight snerk at the pickup line, and he just grins at that. “I don’t get into classy joints like this. Must be the classy lady I’m following.” The windbreaker he is wearing comes off showing the tank top beneath, with the tattoos running up his arms. The jacket at least folds up into a small bag that he drops into his pants pocket, with just the slight bulge of its presence now. “They must not like the clip on tie.” “Oh, I bring all the boys here,” Kaori says, beaming. She uses a couple steps to spin slowly, taking in the whole of the alley as they make their way. “They let me in because my dad owns the place.” Her accent makes it obvious English is her second language, but she seems very fluent nonetheless. She giggles and makes a show of peering around the corner of the alley like a spy. People walking by give her strange looks. “Hotdogs,” she whispers. For no reason. “At 2 o’clock. I want them.” Out on the street, a hotdog vendor is indeed doing a brisk business. And all the idle chatter? BASE jumping. Kaori seems to practically vibrate with giddy energy, probably still coming off the adrenaline of the jump. “I knew I wasn’t all that special. Getting my hopes all up.” Zach tsks and shakes his head, coming along behind. “Probably just bringing guys like me here to get on your daddy’s nerves.” He nods matter of factly at that, and as she talks of hot dogs, he brings his wrist up to take a glance, though no watch on it. “Says it’s half past freckle on wrist, so probably close enough to two.” Listening to the idle chatter, Zach keeps his ears perked for mention of mutants or police just as a matter of keeping abreast the situation. Getting in line for a hot dog himself, he glances to the bouncey girl. “I think I’ll go with the zen master. Ya know, One with everything. How bout you?” Kaori makes a face. “Ew, gross. Onions and relish? Blech. Just ketchup and mustard. And seaweed if they have it. Sometimes they do.” She grins, perhaps anticipating the average response to putting seaweed on things. Her ear twitches when a passing patrol car flips on its sirens, and accelerates hard down the street, but ultimately flies past their location. She gives Zach an impish grin. “So, you buying me lunch, or what?” Giving a shrug at her ew gross comment, Zach replies “Hey, theres more calories at the same price. Food is good for you.” He glances to the vendor’s list of stuff, then shakes his head. “I don’t think this one has either nori or fresh wet seaweed, you’re out of luck unless you wanna go dredge the hudson for some. But that’ll probably kill ya.” The sound of siren’s causes a twitch in Zach as well, with a clenching of his fist and a bit of anger in his gaze, but as it passes he calms back down. “Well I mean you managed to swing getting into this joint cuz of your father, far be it from me to skimp the bucks.” He makes a face at her at that, though its somewhat forced to make up for the twitchiness of the siren. “You know ‘nori’ huh?” She grins. “Smarter than you look.” She follows him to the hotdog guy, apparently content to let him do the talking. She catches a fragment of a conversation going by, something about ‘one guy didn’t even have a /chute/’, and Kaori elbows Zach subtly, pretending to frown. “Whatever, my drop was way cooler.” Kaori notes Zach’s tension as the cops blow past them. “Fuckin’ cops,” she mutters, almost under her breath. She doesn’t seem quite as agitated as Zach, but there’s no love lost for her. “Hotdogs are pretty good though. Maybe… best American food. I think.” She seems to consider this a very serious topic. “Don’t let anyone else know. They might start expecting me to have better manners and be less of a jerk.” Zach gets up to the front of the line and puts in the order for the hot dogs, and two bottles of coke and then waits for it. “Your landing was cooler, my fall was.” He shrugs at that, and as the hot meat and cold beverages are handed to him, he passes Kaori’s to hers so he has free hand for his own. “Corrupt bastards,” Zach replies to her fucking cops comment. “Do they count as American food? Hell, I don’t know if anything counts as American food outside of corn, tomatoes and potatoes.” He thinks then shrugs. “I don’t remember, was an episode of something on the food network.” Cramming the fully loaded street food into his maw, he chews it down abit, and wipes his mouth off on his arm, as he looks back to the napkins on the stand. “Sometimes I wish I had extra arms, would make this easier.” Kaori laughs at the notion of Zach being a jerk. Fooded and beveraged, Kaori moves them further down the sidewalk, where they'll have a little room to chat. Kaori takes an enormous bite of hot dog, and doesn't wait to keep talking. Through full mouth she says, "I dunno," and shrugs. "All food is American!" She giggles and then her eyes go wide as she nearly chokes. She coughs a couple times though and gets it under control. Chew, swallow, and then, "Oh! I met a boy like that the other day! Octopus hands. What's the word?" An undulation of her shoulders is apparently the best she's going to manage for pantomiming tentacle arms while holding dog and coke. At the choking, Zach glances between the bottle of coke in one hand and the hot dog in the other, and decides the bottle of coke is better for patting her on the back to help dislodge it. “Yeah, most food is eventually American, like the rest of the world is American too. Probably some sorta special invasion force bringing McDonalds and Snicker’s bars.” Raising a brow at the talk about octopus hands, he snorts and shakes his head again taking a bite of the hotdog to give him a moment to think. “Its a tentacle I think. Ya know like calamari stuff, but without the breading or the marinara sauce.” He nods again, and wolfs down the rest of the hot dog so it can be out of the way. Kaori makes a face when Zach says McDonald's, “Yuck, but ok, Snickers are really good, sorry.” She grins, and chows down on her dog while Zach does the same, finally one hand free again, she opens the coke and takes a swig to wash it all down. “This too!” She says, as if she’d forgotten the coke. She holds it up like Vanna White and makes a plasticky smile, before tipping it back for another long sip. Glancing over her shoulder, she notes another police car zipping down a side street, and nods at Zach. “So look. I should probably get going. And I’m gonna want to call and ask you out on a date. But you haven’t given me your number yet.” The glitter on her eyelids, eyelashes and /in/ her eyebrows sparkles as she bounces lightly, apparently somewhat eager to put some distance in before the police get too thick. “You forgot to include the trademarked Ahhhh,” Zach says as he swigs back some of his own Coke and lets out the aforementioned “Ahhhhhh”. Finishing the coke bottle, he tosses it towards a trashcan, as the cop car goes by and he is sorely tempted. “Uh phone number, right.” He glances at the bubbly girl a moment as if weighing it over, before pulling out one of the prepaid type cell phones. “Umm, here this one’s number is here,” he says popping it over to the config screen. “I don’t really do the whole contract thing, cell phone tracking and such.” He offers a shrug, knowing it sounds like paranoia. “Just gonna call to find another hot dog joint?” Kaori pulls out her phone, and starts typing away, mumbling the string of numbers in Japanese as she types. Hers looks like one of those expensive Stark brand smartphones, wrapped in the brightest, sparkliest, pinkiest silicone case ever made. Phone back in her pocket, she squints up at Zach for a moment, not sure if he’s joking about another hot dog joint. “Uh, no. /I/ found this one. You have to find something next time. And something fun to do. I’m probably more dangerous than you, so think of something good.” She grins a truly shit-eating grin, showing off perfectly straight, white teeth. “See you soon, Slow Poke!” With that, Kaori tenses, crouches slightly like she’s about to take off in a sprint, takes two steps and drops right back into a leisurely walk, hands in pockets. “Yeah, but I also paid for it. So I think it counts still.” Zach looks like he isn’t sure for the moment, but raises his brow at her being more dangerous. “Um, right. Watch out for mobile bacon.” He shakes his head again and heads off in the other direction, double checking street signs so he can get back to where he had his dirt bike stashed.