Literally Pirateninja (shadowcat) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-05-12 16:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kitty pryde (shadowcat), obi-wan kenobi |
Hey, fancy meeting you here.
Who: Kitty and Obi-wan. Featuring the Three A-Meth-Gos. Part 2/2!
What: The further adventures at the warehouse. Featuring dangerous falls, fighting methheads and smuggled guns!
Where: The warehouse
When: Right after this log.
Status: complete
Rating: PG-13 for blood
“Are you okay,” Obi-Wan asked. “No double vision? You can walk, right?”
He was leading Kitty back to the stairwell, knowing he ought to do the smart thing and call it a day. He could leave his goal of surviving another great fall in the locker room for now. He’d met his other goal, which was not getting the girl killed.
"I'm fine." She smiled reassuringly, "A little worked up though." Aheh.. Okay that was a blush. She followed him to the stairwell, thinking about that. Huh. Adrenaline juuuunkie.
“Worked up?” Obi-Wan asked. “I think you need some ice...” His eyes flickered upward. He came to a sudden halt. What was this his ears were picking up? Whispering? Scraping noises?
"Uhm." She blushed deeper, wishing suddenly that Xi'an didn't want to take things....slow. She halted alongside him, "What?" She lowered her voice, eyes narrowing, "What..?"
He hushed her on impulse. Letting his arm drop from her side, Obi-Wan took a few of the steps to the next floor up. God, I hope it’s just rats.
But he didn’t see tails and little feet with tiny claws. He saw beat-up Nikes. I wish I hadn’t looked!
Obi-Wan jumped back down the steps, landing lightly on his feet. He took Kitty by the elbow, thinking of nothing but her safety, not because he didn’t think she could handle herself, but because he didn’t want to give her the chance. “We need to move down to a lower level,” he whispered. “Quickly.”
She glanced up in the direction he jumped from, but didn't argue. The quarters were cramped, there was no room to fight. She wasn't sure why she wanted to fight, but it felt like the right thing to do. She followed him down.
He wasn’t nervous. Not exactly. He didn’t know if they were in danger or not yet. He’d worry about getting to away first.
But those thoughts began to change as the footsteps followed them. Obi-Wan picked out two--no, three--separate pairs of feet. “Shit,” he muttered directly into Kitty’s ear.
Kitty balled up her fist, "Its too tight in here. If we can't get to the bike....we can use that to our advantage, but I'd feel better with more room."
She was taking in the shape of the stairwell as they moved, "I hope you have a plan."
It seemed like he would have a plan.
He did, but only half of one, because the stairs ended after one flight, and they certainly hadn’t made it down to the ground floor. Now he didn’t know where he was, but at least, there was a door. “Through here,” he said, pulling it open. He glanced inside. It was a nice wide open space. “Let’s hope there’s a way out through here.”
Because the only other way he knew was to go up two floors, drop down through the hole in the floor, and then it was back to the beams and the catwalk. For now, he followed Kitty.
He also got a good look at their pursuers: three gangly-looking twenty-somethings, all male, with red-rimmed eyes. Basically a worst case scenario.
"They're on something, aren't they." It wasn't something Kitty was particularly knowledgeable of. The closest she came to drugged up was when she had a cold. She walked out into the space. It was a dead end. She slapped her palms against a wall and pushed. Come oooooooon!
It was, unfortunately, something Obi-Wan was extremely knowledgeable of, in the sense that there was one point in his life when he would have hated to run into himself.
He ran up behind Kitty. and gave the wall a pound. “I really wish we’d figured out how to do that,” he said, anything but joking.
"I know I could pull us both through if I have to. I didn't leave my clothing behind, right? I could pull a person." That would have been funny, but embarrassing. She shook her head, "I can't do it. I'm sorry."
He only vaguely heard the missing clothing part. But he was man. It registered.
But his focus was on other things, like how he was getting ready to charge the door. He still had the element of surprise on his side. The knob began to turn. Obi-Wan gritted his teeth. He began to run.
With the full weight of his body, he threw himself against the first of their three pursuers . The kid fell against the wall with a OMPH that echoed in the stairwell. Obi-Wan realized he was more solid than he thought. Knock over first, ask questions later. He waved to Kitty, hoping she would understand it was a signal to prepare to move back up the steps.
Kitty winced. She darted at the first man's jumping up, planting her hands on the guy's shoulder, flipping over him, and slamming her foot into the next one's face. As he went down, she spun on her heel, breaking his nose and swinging her other leg out and cracking her other foot into the side of the first man's head.
That hurt like hell, by the way, and only served piss him off. She rolled off the second man and darted up the steps! "I think I pissed him off!"
Obi-Wan tore up after her. “Where the HELL did you learn THAT?”
"In my dreams!" She continued up the stairs, busting through the door to the roof and slamming it shut once Obi was through. The truth was that had been entirely on instinct. She wasn't sure she could execute it consciously.
So they’d bypassed everything and gone straight to the top. Obi-Wan looked around. There was a light breeze and it rustled through his sweaty hair with difficulty. He walked to the edge and looked over. This was much higher than thirty feet. “So, now what?” he asked.
She looked out with him, "Uhm. Good question. There's no way we'll make it down..." Oh hey! "How far do think that other roof is there?" She pointed. Maybe they could make it. Maybe.
She was pointing to the other half of the building, which was divided into two sections. It was a ten foot jump. “Yeah, I can do that,” he said. He was pretty confidant by now. “You think you--”
And of course, he was cut off by the door flying open, and the reappearance of two of their three newest friends.
She thought about fighting, but the looks in their eyes made her hesitate. They didn't appear to be feeling pain right now. Dream-training seemed a lot less awesome right now.
"Go go go!" Kitty backed up to get some running distance. Not waiting for his answer, she bolted the distance to the gap and lept. She hit the other side, rolling, before crashing through a skylight!
She fell in a shower of glass and wood, landing hard. She groaned, cradling her arm. Lesson #1: check for skylights when jumping onto roofs.
He’d been running just behind her and skidded to a stop, gaping in horror as she disappeared through the unseen glass ceiling. Had he just witnessed her untimely demise?! He didn’t have much time to think. Unfortunately for him, stopping dead in his tracks also meant that jumping in after her was no longer an option. The first of the gangly delinquents threw his arms around Obi-Wan’s neck, yanking him backward into a choke hold. Then the second one starting going through his pockets. Priorities...
Obi-Wan clawed at the arm pressed against his windpipe. Wiry as the kid had seemed from a distance, there was plenty of muscle left. Obi-Wan changed tactics, ducking and wrenching sideways to free himself. He pulled the kid’s arm behind his back and gave him a swift kick to the thigh, which brought him down his knees. With the second kid was caught off guard, it was just enough time to get in a solid kick to the ribs before it was time to RUN!!!
Which he did. He ran back to the rooftop door--which of course swung open at just the right moment to reveal Contestant Number Three! This was the first kid Obi-Wan had knocked down the stairs. Apparently, he had needed a few extra moments to catch his breath.
So, stairs were out. It was back to jumping the gap, was it?
No, it wasn’t. The other two were back on their feet, looking pissed as hell. If they caused any interference as Obi-Wan ran for the gap would likely send him straight down to the ground, instead.
Hmm, down to the ground...
Kitty wriggled her fingers, and winced. She wasn't sure of her arm was broken, but it hurt. She pushed herself to her feet, brushing glass off of herself and checking for any serious cuts. One on her good arm, another in her leg, and miscellanious scrapes and bruises and cuts on her exposed skin. She was lucky; a pile of jagged metal was only a few feet to her left.
"Obi?!" She plucked the shard in her arm out and hissed, limping towards the door. She was hoping he didn't decide to come after her.
Back on the roof, Obi-Wan was really learning the meaning of the saying think fast. Also, batshit crazy. He ran in the opposite direction, away from the crater Kitty had made, straight for the side of the building. And he jumped.
If felt different this time around. Though perhaps if he had payed more attention to the sensory details last time, he might have thought it felt exactly the same. It felt as simple as taking a step down the stairs. He placed one foot neatly on the ground, followed by the other, and crouched low, just to check his ankles for any sign of injury. He stood up, saluted the boys back on the roof, and ran back into the building to find Kitty.
This was actually a completely different section than before, it may as well have been a second structure altogether. It was also in much worse condition. Obi-Wan found a stairwell, and began to tear up it, calculating that she was on the top floor.
A rather vicious part of Kitty that she would be horrified by hoped the boys would be stupid enough to follow him down. The door she found opened into a whole new section of the building. She was wrong from earlier. This was the industrial nightmare. She looked for a stairwell, ruefully thinking over the day so far. She wasn't crazy. She'd ran through a wall, and there was a WITNESS.
Or maybe she was crazy, for jumping a ten foot gap without checking what was on the other side.
How was she going to explain this if she had to walk into the ER? Maybe she could say she was reenacting footloose and crashed through her window.
“Kitty? Kitty!” He listened for sounds, any sign that she was alive. Between the third and fourth floors, the stairs were broken, and he was forced to take a detour back into the building. The room was full of cobwebs and boxes, and discarding clothing and razor blades, and a few old needles. He looked upward, hoping to God the floor above wasn’t as dangerous. Using a crate to boost him up, Obi-Wan pulled himself onto a partial catwalk and planned his next step.
There, that was a stairwell. She started down it only to find that the stairs were broken, and so entered the fourth floor. This whole area would be awesome to film a zombie apocalypse film. She even had a signed copy of the Zombie Survival Guide.
This floor looked more empty. There were boxes and crates, labeled with painting of a three-headed dog. She peered in one, then backpeddled, "Oh..oh shit." There were guns in that crate!
There had to be a way down, because she really, really wanted to get out of here now. This floor was well kept up. The stairwell had probably been destroyed on purpose, but if people were running guns there had to be a way to get them up and down. Maybe some kind of elevator or trolley system.
Obi-Wan spotted an air vent. Or what looked like one. It was some kind of chute, at least. It use a pipe to pull himself upward and climbed inside, where he discovered there were notches built into the panels, notches built for climbing.
“Kitty?” he called again, as he reached the top of the chute. There was something covering the hole, something heavy but not bolted down. He pressed against it with his shoulder until it began to budge. A moment later, his head popped out of the fourth floor like a periscope. He spotted her. “There you are!”
"Hey, fancy meeting you here." Kitty looked worse than she was, despite the grin plastered on her face. Falling through glass would do that to a person. Her arm was bleeding and her other arm was held close to her body. A piece of glass was sticking out of her right leg, blood soaking her jeans.
"You know how to take girls to the nicest places. We need to get out of here."
She glanced back at the crates, "And place an anonymous tip."
Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what curse he wanted to use. Nothing seemed adequate to express what it was like to see her like this. For a moment, he was just stunned into silence. As he hurried toward her, the silence somehow grew, like an aura of intensity. What had she found?
He took a knee and opened one of the boxes. What did the Cerebus logo mean? He looked back up at her with wide eyes and slowly rose to his feet. “Let’s go. Now.” And he pointed to the chute.
"That's a good idea." She probably needed to drop by quick care, "As fun and exciting as this is, I don't want to be here when the guys that own those things show up." She made her way to the chute and peered in, then crawled in. She wanted to slide down. She could use her feet and hands to slow her descent, but with the condition of her left arm still unknown, she didn't want to risk it.
So it made for slow going. She tried to lighten the mood, "Methheads, gunrunners... for an abandoned warehouse this place sees a lot of action."
Obi-Wan followed her down. “Really? I thought it was a slow afternoon.” He climbed off the catwalk and, offered a hand to bring her down to the floor. By the looks of her, she wouldn’t be riding her bike back into town. Hm, what were they going to do about that?
She wasn't about to leave her bike. It was hers, her only, her precious. And it would defeat the point of an anonymous tip. They didn't need a trespassing charge. If she was slow and careful she could ride it, "Maybe it will pick up. Ninjas, a sith lord. It can be a party."
They were back in the stairwell now. Obi-Wan had one eye on the steps, the other on the shards of glass sticking out of her body. He was terrified of dislodging them, and they took the steps gently.
One of his eyebrows perked at the mention of the sith. Oh ha ha, he thought, very funny. He didn’t care for the teasing about that, but he he had to admit there was something pleasant about it, not to mention having someone who needed him for a guide for the first time in forever and ever. And it was a plus that it happened to be a pretty young woman.
She was regretting removing the one from her arm, which was why the one in her leg was staying put. Her back and side stung, but she was hoping those were smaller. Remove with plyers and be embarrassed about, that sort of thing. One can hope.
She wasn't sure how she'd explain this to her girlfriend/roommate.
"I dated a cop in London. I didn't get into nearly this much shenanigans with him." The bar fight didn't count. She let him lead her, too worn out to protest, and deciding he seemed to know what he was doing.
“That’s because he was probably a good man,” he replied, meaning it as a joke and it making him sort of sad at the same time.
Kitty looked at him, then patted him on the shoulder, "A good man, but also a jackass. Jerk with a heart of gold and a sailor's mouth."
She felt a little confused. If her date with Xi'an hadn't gone so well..Obi would not at all be a bad thing to pursue.
Obi-Wan nodded. “Sounds like London,” he said, smiling a bit.
They were outside now. He’d been very worried they might run into the Three A-meth-gos again, but the coast seemed clear. “Alright. And now to get you some medical attention. Though I don’t recommend that low-income clinic with the crazy blonde nurse.”
"Crazy blonde nurse? She didn't seem that crazy when I had that cold." Maybe she was only crazy around cute guys, "I think I can roll my way to freedom. That bike won't fit in your trunk and I'm not leaving her."
Yes her. She even had a name!
“Just a suggestion,” Obi-Wan replied. “But if she starts planning your wedding while she’s checking your lymph nodes, I run like hell.” He was clearly speaking from experience. Very dark, disturbing experience...
Obi-Wan looked at his car and then the bike. “You really think you can ride that out of here? You’re sure, now?”
"I'll keep that in mind," Kitty replied, chuckling. She walked up to her bike and got on it, wincing. She darted her eyes, "Yeah, if I'm careful."
“I’m going to look pretty pathetic, following you in a Camry.”
“You mean you don’t already?” She winked at him, “I kid. I’d appreciate that, actually.”
“Well..” He crouched down and reached beneath the car to fish out his keys. He’d thought better of keeping them on his person during their parkour session. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you off the street quickly as I can when you fall off.”
"Gee. Thanks." She looked down at her arm, "I don't suppose you have some rags or something?" Maybe she could fashion a turniquette. It would be better than passing out.
Obi-Wan scanned the backseat and, spotting something, dove in. He reappeared with an lady’s scarf. Hopefully, Mrs. Higgins wouldn’t miss it.
He started on her arm, and it was obvious that this wasn’t the first time he’d tied one. You pick things like this up, over the years, especially when you have a tendency to get as high as possible and pick fights with complete strangers. He didn’t miss those days.
“I have to admit,” he said. “You’re nothing like I pictured.”
"Is that good or bad?" She held still while he worked, and she had to admit he wasn't all that much like she pictured either. She winced, and hissed a little. Screw it, she didn't have to prove she was tough. This hurt!
“Stop looking at it,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to be so young. Maybe you just look really good for your age.”
Kitty shot him a dirty look, "I'm not that young. I'm twenty-three." Which okay is young but still older than she looks! "I just got all the schooling stuff out of the way earlier than most people my age."
Which was her way of bragging a little.
He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not going to argue how impressive you are. Even if you hadn’t run through the wall. I wish someone like you had my back a long time ago.”
She smiled at him, “Something tells me you’re more than capable yourself.” She pointed at the scarf, “This is really good work.”
He returned the smile. “I’d love to stay and chat, but let’s make sure you don’t bleed to death, hm?”
“Allright. Lets get out of here.” She felt like she needed a long nap.