Post by Rei Kai on Nov 28, 2016 7:24:39 GMT
I did it.
The words had been bouncing around the inside of Rei's head for the better part of an hour now and they were still no closer to making sense than they had been when his victory had been announced.
Rei had been in such a daze in the aftermath that one of the orange robed monks had been forced to collect him from the stage. The announcer had cracked a joke about one too many blows to the head, but in retrospect Rei wasn't even sure the joke was all that far off the mark.
The silent novice had led him by the arm to the stairs opposite from where he had originally entered, then down a short stone pathway to a door half hidden by a panel of what looked like white paper emblazoned with a crimson kanji in the middle of a thin circle of red.
武
Though his father wasn't exactly big on education, this particular kanji was one of the few his father had beaten, almost literally, into his head over the course of the last year. It read 'Bu' as in the first part of Budokai. A single syllable, but to his father it epitomized Martial Arts as a concept, glorifying its history and techniques. It was also the symbol that adorned the center of his back and a space just over his heart. The sigil his family had adopted generations ago for their particular brand of martial arts.
No pressure at all.
The panel was not paper at all, he quickly realized as they passed into the waiting room itself. Opaque to those on the outside, it was fully transparent on the inside. This allowed fighters in the contender's waiting room to look out on the event itself without being seen by the crowds or by their competitors. Rather fitting for a barrier originally intended to symbolize the separation between the 'Budo', the warriors, and the general public.
"You will wait here until the preliminaries are complete. Then you will be asked to present yourself as we draw lots for the tournament itself. Be well."
With that the monk offered a timid half bow, tucked his arms behind his back and retreated from the warrior's hall, leaving him in silence.
The room was a simple one, a couple of wooden benches lined either side, with a few wash basins and privacy stalls for competitors to clean up after difficult bouts. While much if not all of the tournament grounds had been modernized in ways large and small over the decades and centuries this small room seemed almost untouched, as though it had stood unchanged since the very first tournament. That was impossible he knew, it had been leveled at least once at the twenty third tournament, and likely several times since, but the sense of history was unmistakable.
Only one thing stood out in the severely stark building, though it was only as he drew closer that Rei could make out what he was seeing. At a glance, the wall opposite the door looked as though someone had gone wild with a blade, slashing thousands upon thousands of small cuts all along a surface that should have been as smooth and plain as the other two. But as he neared and his eyes adjusted to the light Rei began to realize just what he was looking at.
It was graffiti.
The wall bore names, thousands if not tens of thousands at least. Nearly every spare surface on the wall had someone's name or initials carved into it, with larger names containing smaller names within them as later participants no doubt struggled to find room amidst the chaotic mess. It wasn't art, at least not intentionally, but it was beautiful all the same. Generation after generation of the most superb fighters leaving their mark to those who followed after.
"Learning about that was probably the most awed I've ever felt in doing this job."
The voice nearly had Rei leap from his own skin. He'd grown closer to the wall, caressing a finger over its jagged surfaces in search of his father's name when the woman behind him had spoken. Though the Voice of Battle never seemed to speak quietly, she was apparently silent as a mouse when she wanted to sneak up on someone.
"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to." The girl giggled. Her apology didn't carry even a hint of sincerity, especially not with that glint of amusement twinkling just behind her eyes.
And she was most definitely a girl. Up until now Rei had only ever seen her at a distance, or when he was in such a daze that her looks hadn't really stuck him. But in the cramped room she had still chosen to approach so close that she was nearly within arm's reach when she'd startled him, and there was no mistaking her femininity.
Her red hair was cut relatively short and coiffed along her right side which accentuated the bare shaven scalp that ran the entirety of the left side of her head until just passed her ear. It was a rather severe look, but Jin was clearly aware of that fact, offsetting it as she did with a barrage of cosmetics that deepened her eyes, accented her brows, shaped her cheeks and colored her lips a glossy pink.
Most distinct of all however, were her eyes. They were blue, but it was an almost startlingly unnatural ice blue. On anyone else they would have been cold eyes, but that humor was still there, inviting him to join in on her laughter, relieving any tension he might have felt as she offered her hand.
"We didn't get a proper introduction before, I'm-"
"The Voice of Battle? Right?"
That comment raised one of her sculpted eyebrows as they shook hands, and for the briefest of moments he felt uncomfortable as those cool eyes raked him from head to toe, as if judging him in an instant. "I prefer to go by Jin rather than that marketing ploy, but yeah, that is what a lot of people call me."
"Sorry. Some of the others called you that and I wasn't sure if I sh-"
"No, no. It's fine. I generally don't need an introduction anyways, so it's kind of charming to meet a fighter who only knows me by my stage name." Jin grinned before continuing. "Speaking of, I have to say I'm impressed. No one on staff could remember the last time a legacy candidate was made it through the preliminaries round, let alone one of us had never even heard of."
"Legacy candidate?" Rei asked, head tilted to one side in obvious uncertainty.
"You really have no idea, do you?" The girl giggled once again, walking past him with a sashay to her hips that made it impossible for Rei to ignore the shortness of the skirt that hugged them or the bare midriff exposed just above.
"When the tournament was first founded it took all comers. Two hundred would show up and compete in back stage preliminaries against one another. Eventually there were too many contestants, so they were graded out in various ways, punching machines, tournament guardians and so forth. For the last few hundred years the tournament has been a combination of invitational, returning, legacy, champion and wildcard competitors."
"Some get here by winning other less prestigious tournaments and thus winning their own invitation." Jin continued to explain, one slim hand stroking its fingers across the names engraved onto the wall in front of her. "Others, like your father, are previous finalists and are entitled to compete in tournament year after year so long as they continue to make it through the preliminaries."
"How did you...?" Rei began to ask, only to bark a short laugh at the silliness of his own question.
"Kind of my job you know."
"Right." He conceded quickly, trying to move on to a different topic even as embarrassment burned at his cheeks. "So my father was a returning competitor, and I'm a... Legacy competitor?"
"You'd think he'd have explained this to you."
"You'd think he'd do a lot of things."
"Good point." She nodded. "He doesn't exactly seem like the most approachable fellow. In six years I've covered him I've never managed to catch an interview."
"Wait, six years?" Rei asked in surprise. "Just how old are you?!"
In any other tone it might have been a fair question. At a glance Rei would have pegged her age somewhere in the late teens or very early twenties, but even his highest estimate would have had her announcing the tournament when she was barely fourteen or fifteen. Was that something they did? After all they were letting him fight, was it so strange to think they'd let a young, pretty girl do the announcing?
Unfortunately for Rei the incredulous tone he'd chosen clearly struck a nerve. Her face darkened, head tilting forward to allow her to stare at him from beneath hooded eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to rephrase that?"
"I... uh, I didn't..." Rei stammered.
"Oh Kami, I've trained a laconic brute for a stuttering boy." She sighed.
"La... laconi...?"
"Laconic. It means your father is short with his words. Which is probably why he didn't explain what a legacy candidate was." Jin said with an exhausted sigh.
"Oh! Right. I'm guessing it's kind of what it sounds like?"
"Mhmm." She said, arms crossed over her chest as she continued to give him a skeptical look. "Any fighter who has reached the preliminaries in the previous year is allowed to nominate someone else to take their place as a returning competitor. Your father actually gave up his spot in the tournament to allow you to compete. Quite the sacrifice."
"Right. A sacrifice."
That earned him a dirty look, something that she appeared to have in abundance for him this evening. "You think it isn't?" Jin gestured to the wall with one hand as she fumed. "Every year those who make it through the preliminaries carve their name into that wall. Some people are up there twenty, thirty times, some only once. In over seven hundred tournaments, nearly three thousand years, only twenty thousand names have ever been carved there. Your father sacrificed another chance to leave his mark so that you could do so instead."
"I didn't mean-"
"I know." She said abruptly, much of the tension appearing to bleed out of her in instant as she looked back in his direction. "Sorry. I know I don't know your circumstances, but to be here is an honor so few have had... I just get worked up." There was a slight pause as she drew a breath and regarded the wall once again. "Did you know they actually summoned Shenron to repair this wall? Age 1727 the temple was damaged by a hurricane. Former competitors, even rivals, spent half a decade searching for the dragon balls just so they could restore this... this monument."
"I had no idea." Rei said in obvious awe.
A brief moment of silence passed between the two of them then as they stared at the sprawling mass of different scripts. Rei's eyes studied the wall, his gaze flowing from one name to the next, though inevitably they found their way to the woman at his size and he found himself surprised at the way she blushed when she finally realized he was looking at her.
"Y-your father's signature is up there." She said, looking away from him. "There is a knife in one of the privacy stalls if you didn't bring one of your own."
"Thank you."
"If you actually want to thank me, you could do it with an interview." She chimed, her voice suddenly cheerful and singsong while those cool blue eyes were full of expectation.
"I- I suppose I could."
"Well how about right now?
"Don't you need a camera man, microphone, lighting, all that?" Rei replied, suddenly aware that an interview with her would be worldwide, perhaps even interstellar news.
"Oh I've got it on me." That drew a look so skeptical that it took Jin a few seconds to even figure out what he seemed so concerned about. Okay, yeah, her outfit might be a bit skimpy, but that was no reason for him to call attention to it. "It's all in capsules you blockhead."
"Do you even have-"
"You really aren't good with women are you?" She interrupted before Rei could finish asking if the too tight outfit the promoters had her wear even had anywhere she could be hiding capsules. "They're in my... dammit!" Jin cursed and snatched up her bag from next to the entrance. A small green light was blinking on the handheld communicator poking out of the top of it, and after a few taps she uttered a frustrated sigh. "Rain check. They need me in the production office."
"Rain check then." Rei responded. "It was nice to-"
"Just don't lose okay. Not until after my interview!" She shouted back over her shoulder.
"- meet you." He finished, staring after her in bewilderment.
This day was just getting stranger and stranger.
((Word count of 2,197 with my good old fashioned human self requesting Zenni with the Human bonus to it.))
The words had been bouncing around the inside of Rei's head for the better part of an hour now and they were still no closer to making sense than they had been when his victory had been announced.
Rei had been in such a daze in the aftermath that one of the orange robed monks had been forced to collect him from the stage. The announcer had cracked a joke about one too many blows to the head, but in retrospect Rei wasn't even sure the joke was all that far off the mark.
The silent novice had led him by the arm to the stairs opposite from where he had originally entered, then down a short stone pathway to a door half hidden by a panel of what looked like white paper emblazoned with a crimson kanji in the middle of a thin circle of red.
武
Though his father wasn't exactly big on education, this particular kanji was one of the few his father had beaten, almost literally, into his head over the course of the last year. It read 'Bu' as in the first part of Budokai. A single syllable, but to his father it epitomized Martial Arts as a concept, glorifying its history and techniques. It was also the symbol that adorned the center of his back and a space just over his heart. The sigil his family had adopted generations ago for their particular brand of martial arts.
No pressure at all.
The panel was not paper at all, he quickly realized as they passed into the waiting room itself. Opaque to those on the outside, it was fully transparent on the inside. This allowed fighters in the contender's waiting room to look out on the event itself without being seen by the crowds or by their competitors. Rather fitting for a barrier originally intended to symbolize the separation between the 'Budo', the warriors, and the general public.
"You will wait here until the preliminaries are complete. Then you will be asked to present yourself as we draw lots for the tournament itself. Be well."
With that the monk offered a timid half bow, tucked his arms behind his back and retreated from the warrior's hall, leaving him in silence.
The room was a simple one, a couple of wooden benches lined either side, with a few wash basins and privacy stalls for competitors to clean up after difficult bouts. While much if not all of the tournament grounds had been modernized in ways large and small over the decades and centuries this small room seemed almost untouched, as though it had stood unchanged since the very first tournament. That was impossible he knew, it had been leveled at least once at the twenty third tournament, and likely several times since, but the sense of history was unmistakable.
Only one thing stood out in the severely stark building, though it was only as he drew closer that Rei could make out what he was seeing. At a glance, the wall opposite the door looked as though someone had gone wild with a blade, slashing thousands upon thousands of small cuts all along a surface that should have been as smooth and plain as the other two. But as he neared and his eyes adjusted to the light Rei began to realize just what he was looking at.
It was graffiti.
The wall bore names, thousands if not tens of thousands at least. Nearly every spare surface on the wall had someone's name or initials carved into it, with larger names containing smaller names within them as later participants no doubt struggled to find room amidst the chaotic mess. It wasn't art, at least not intentionally, but it was beautiful all the same. Generation after generation of the most superb fighters leaving their mark to those who followed after.
"Learning about that was probably the most awed I've ever felt in doing this job."
The voice nearly had Rei leap from his own skin. He'd grown closer to the wall, caressing a finger over its jagged surfaces in search of his father's name when the woman behind him had spoken. Though the Voice of Battle never seemed to speak quietly, she was apparently silent as a mouse when she wanted to sneak up on someone.
"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to." The girl giggled. Her apology didn't carry even a hint of sincerity, especially not with that glint of amusement twinkling just behind her eyes.
And she was most definitely a girl. Up until now Rei had only ever seen her at a distance, or when he was in such a daze that her looks hadn't really stuck him. But in the cramped room she had still chosen to approach so close that she was nearly within arm's reach when she'd startled him, and there was no mistaking her femininity.
Her red hair was cut relatively short and coiffed along her right side which accentuated the bare shaven scalp that ran the entirety of the left side of her head until just passed her ear. It was a rather severe look, but Jin was clearly aware of that fact, offsetting it as she did with a barrage of cosmetics that deepened her eyes, accented her brows, shaped her cheeks and colored her lips a glossy pink.
Most distinct of all however, were her eyes. They were blue, but it was an almost startlingly unnatural ice blue. On anyone else they would have been cold eyes, but that humor was still there, inviting him to join in on her laughter, relieving any tension he might have felt as she offered her hand.
"We didn't get a proper introduction before, I'm-"
"The Voice of Battle? Right?"
That comment raised one of her sculpted eyebrows as they shook hands, and for the briefest of moments he felt uncomfortable as those cool eyes raked him from head to toe, as if judging him in an instant. "I prefer to go by Jin rather than that marketing ploy, but yeah, that is what a lot of people call me."
"Sorry. Some of the others called you that and I wasn't sure if I sh-"
"No, no. It's fine. I generally don't need an introduction anyways, so it's kind of charming to meet a fighter who only knows me by my stage name." Jin grinned before continuing. "Speaking of, I have to say I'm impressed. No one on staff could remember the last time a legacy candidate was made it through the preliminaries round, let alone one of us had never even heard of."
"Legacy candidate?" Rei asked, head tilted to one side in obvious uncertainty.
"You really have no idea, do you?" The girl giggled once again, walking past him with a sashay to her hips that made it impossible for Rei to ignore the shortness of the skirt that hugged them or the bare midriff exposed just above.
"When the tournament was first founded it took all comers. Two hundred would show up and compete in back stage preliminaries against one another. Eventually there were too many contestants, so they were graded out in various ways, punching machines, tournament guardians and so forth. For the last few hundred years the tournament has been a combination of invitational, returning, legacy, champion and wildcard competitors."
"Some get here by winning other less prestigious tournaments and thus winning their own invitation." Jin continued to explain, one slim hand stroking its fingers across the names engraved onto the wall in front of her. "Others, like your father, are previous finalists and are entitled to compete in tournament year after year so long as they continue to make it through the preliminaries."
"How did you...?" Rei began to ask, only to bark a short laugh at the silliness of his own question.
"Kind of my job you know."
"Right." He conceded quickly, trying to move on to a different topic even as embarrassment burned at his cheeks. "So my father was a returning competitor, and I'm a... Legacy competitor?"
"You'd think he'd have explained this to you."
"You'd think he'd do a lot of things."
"Good point." She nodded. "He doesn't exactly seem like the most approachable fellow. In six years I've covered him I've never managed to catch an interview."
"Wait, six years?" Rei asked in surprise. "Just how old are you?!"
In any other tone it might have been a fair question. At a glance Rei would have pegged her age somewhere in the late teens or very early twenties, but even his highest estimate would have had her announcing the tournament when she was barely fourteen or fifteen. Was that something they did? After all they were letting him fight, was it so strange to think they'd let a young, pretty girl do the announcing?
Unfortunately for Rei the incredulous tone he'd chosen clearly struck a nerve. Her face darkened, head tilting forward to allow her to stare at him from beneath hooded eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to rephrase that?"
"I... uh, I didn't..." Rei stammered.
"Oh Kami, I've trained a laconic brute for a stuttering boy." She sighed.
"La... laconi...?"
"Laconic. It means your father is short with his words. Which is probably why he didn't explain what a legacy candidate was." Jin said with an exhausted sigh.
"Oh! Right. I'm guessing it's kind of what it sounds like?"
"Mhmm." She said, arms crossed over her chest as she continued to give him a skeptical look. "Any fighter who has reached the preliminaries in the previous year is allowed to nominate someone else to take their place as a returning competitor. Your father actually gave up his spot in the tournament to allow you to compete. Quite the sacrifice."
"Right. A sacrifice."
That earned him a dirty look, something that she appeared to have in abundance for him this evening. "You think it isn't?" Jin gestured to the wall with one hand as she fumed. "Every year those who make it through the preliminaries carve their name into that wall. Some people are up there twenty, thirty times, some only once. In over seven hundred tournaments, nearly three thousand years, only twenty thousand names have ever been carved there. Your father sacrificed another chance to leave his mark so that you could do so instead."
"I didn't mean-"
"I know." She said abruptly, much of the tension appearing to bleed out of her in instant as she looked back in his direction. "Sorry. I know I don't know your circumstances, but to be here is an honor so few have had... I just get worked up." There was a slight pause as she drew a breath and regarded the wall once again. "Did you know they actually summoned Shenron to repair this wall? Age 1727 the temple was damaged by a hurricane. Former competitors, even rivals, spent half a decade searching for the dragon balls just so they could restore this... this monument."
"I had no idea." Rei said in obvious awe.
A brief moment of silence passed between the two of them then as they stared at the sprawling mass of different scripts. Rei's eyes studied the wall, his gaze flowing from one name to the next, though inevitably they found their way to the woman at his size and he found himself surprised at the way she blushed when she finally realized he was looking at her.
"Y-your father's signature is up there." She said, looking away from him. "There is a knife in one of the privacy stalls if you didn't bring one of your own."
"Thank you."
"If you actually want to thank me, you could do it with an interview." She chimed, her voice suddenly cheerful and singsong while those cool blue eyes were full of expectation.
"I- I suppose I could."
"Well how about right now?
"Don't you need a camera man, microphone, lighting, all that?" Rei replied, suddenly aware that an interview with her would be worldwide, perhaps even interstellar news.
"Oh I've got it on me." That drew a look so skeptical that it took Jin a few seconds to even figure out what he seemed so concerned about. Okay, yeah, her outfit might be a bit skimpy, but that was no reason for him to call attention to it. "It's all in capsules you blockhead."
"Do you even have-"
"You really aren't good with women are you?" She interrupted before Rei could finish asking if the too tight outfit the promoters had her wear even had anywhere she could be hiding capsules. "They're in my... dammit!" Jin cursed and snatched up her bag from next to the entrance. A small green light was blinking on the handheld communicator poking out of the top of it, and after a few taps she uttered a frustrated sigh. "Rain check. They need me in the production office."
"Rain check then." Rei responded. "It was nice to-"
"Just don't lose okay. Not until after my interview!" She shouted back over her shoulder.
"- meet you." He finished, staring after her in bewilderment.
This day was just getting stranger and stranger.
((Word count of 2,197 with my good old fashioned human self requesting Zenni with the Human bonus to it.))