basic_powers | Seattle, the invitation for Dinah

Oooh neck and neck and they're halfway through the blue-marked 'beginner' course. The implied rule seems to be that you stick to the blue-marked areas. They're coming up to the harder areas now, the walls now have holes in them, in varying heights and sizes.

And Beauford just went handsprung into one feet first, catching the outer seam of the padded wall, using it to swing forward, get both feet on the wall above the hole and fully launch himself to the next well.

Dinah, with no formal parkour training, doesn't bother going over. She picks the largest hole, halfway up, and dives through. After somersault off the floor that sneds her through the next at a run to scale the next. Having her hands forward, it gives her the opportunity to swithc into a kong vault, going for the next wall.

The next wall is hanging from the ceiling as it turns out. So Dinah won't have to scale it to get to the pedestals coming up, one smaller and one that looks to be higher than the clearence of the hanging wall will allow for. And she won't have to look up as she kong vaults through the second wall, as a thump of hands landing and then pushing off means that Beauford landed on the top of the second wall, and has leapt through the hole in the third hanging wall to land on the pedestal to somersault into a run.

Dinah grabs hold of the bottom of the hanging wall, and she swings herself under and up, landing on a smaller pedestal to the right of the larger. It's then simple to spring up onto the larger one.

And then she's just racing across to the other end - on a flat, she's got speed on her side.

If this were just a flat space ahead, she would! In a few more yards ahead, the pedestal drops out into floorspace again. Beyond that, is a series of not-padded swiss cheese structures meant for climbing, one medium and one very large cylinder to the left, and two rectangles to the right, all interconnected.

There's one shortcut, a series of balance beams going over all of this to the huge cylindrical pedestal at the end. To get up there, Dinah would have to make one HECK of a leap upwards to catch the end of the bar and pull herself up.

Dinah has the two seconds of pedestal to decide on this, and decides that yes, she's going to try, launching herself into the air at the very edge, not without a very quick prayer - if this fails, she'll forfeit the run.

Her fingers hit the run, and she grabs the opportunity, swinging her legs up and over onto the beam, from which she launches into a run again.

Even that slowed her down, however, so it's still going to be close, and now she can't see Beauford.

She'll spot him down below in a second as she moves from the first beam to the second. Or at least the flash of movement as he leaps from one of the small pedestals inside the large swiss cheesed cylinder to a curved wall, executes a spotless run up the side of the inner side of a small curved wall to butterfly leap to the second larger inner pedestal.

For whatever reason, he's opted to skip that obvious shortcut and save what few fractions of a second he had in the lead earlier. He doesn't see Dinah either for now, either, but from the looks, he's just got a few climbs left to get to the end.

Dinah catches sight of him, and grins. She could sprint the rest of the beams, but they zigzag back around and the end is right ahead of her, so she leaps from one straight to the next and uses that momentum to launch herself down, over the final largest pedestal and into the door marking the end. Hitting at high speed, she tucks her head and rolls, and is well clear of the end before she thinks to turn around and look for her companion.

There's a split second before she hears a grunt, then sees Beauford land in a cat-jump onto the giant pedestal grinning.

"Well, DAMN I am out of shape." He laughs, pulling himself up the rest of the way to stand on the pedestal with Dinah. "Guess I'm buying."

"Yeah, you are," Dinah says, too flushed with the excitement of activity to gloat over competition. "You'll just need more practice. Next course?"

To that, he just smiles and points to the wall, where there's a door in red, reading 'Advanced Course' about three feet above the pedestal.

"I usually can't find anyone to practice with is the problem."

"Well, if you keep losing and having to buy the drinks, I can't see that being a problem."

Hey, it keeps her in shape, too. What with all the alien invasions and supervillains she's been dealing with, it's been a while since she had a good ol' fashioned run through the city.

Dinah grins at him and head straight through the door.

Oh hell, he's going to have to pull out everything now isn't he?

Beauford just grins, following after her into the Advanced Course, where there is a certain lack of straight run areas, save for the walls. Still, an hour later, there is no clear winner to the run through the course, and no real need for one.

Just that towards the end, they're both sweaty, decently tired and grinning.

Dinah is laughing with every pant now, hands resting on her knees.

"Please tell me you weren't kidding about the sweet potato fries."

"I wasn't. We do make those at Q57. And I think this week we might have some nice cheese and jalapeno cornbread this week." Beauford teases as they walk back down to the changing rooms.

Yeh, he's just going to enjoy breaking his promise not to spoil the menu at work for her.

At least now he's not putting her at a disadvantage.

"If this is as good as it sounds, you can have an entire evening at the other bar on me," Dinah tells him, even as she disappears into the ladies.

After all, he's technically going to have to buy everything anyway.

Fifteen minutes and a good shower later, he's waiting by the desk for her, grinning.

And he figures he'll end up buying things anyways. Dollars from the 80's might get a little weird reaction, so this is going on his card, and Dinah can foot the bill at Milliways later to pay him back.

Now to take buses to the good gay bar! It's already getting dark out, it being January and all.

Dinah wishes she had a wig as she pulls her hat down tight over her wet hair-plastered ears, trudging towards the bus stop.

"How many buses do we take to the bar?"

She hopes it's not many.

"Two, one's the bus that brought us here, and another one at the transfer sta-" Beauford starts to explain before someone bullrushes him from behind an alley getting a swift punch into his left side.

What follows is an extremely pained groan from him before the punch-happy maniac faces Dinah in a skimask.

"Give us all your cash, an nobody else gets hurt!"

'Us?'

Oh look, he brought a friend to the party.

Dinah is more surprised by Beauford taking a hit than anything else.

By the time the grown happens, she's already subconsiously moved a foot back, into a subtly wider stance - but now she's just confused.

She looks from the ski mask, to Beauford, to the skimask again.

"...I really don't want anyone to get hurt," she says.

"....what the FUCK??" He was actually taken by surprise, and right now he's sputtering.

Dinah will probably figure out later why he went down so easily. Right now, he just looks pissed off.

"You heard me, give us the money!"

Dinah assumes he has the good sense to at least stay out of her way, now. She sighs, rubbing at her face with her mittens, which she doesn't even bother taking off.

"Look," she says resignedly. "I haven't got time for this; I'm hungry."

And she steps forward, past the guy in the ski-mask, apparently wanting just to get on. That this puts her between him and his friend probably isn't something she's considered, right?

Right?

Probably not, seeing as his friend starts to take a swing at her.

Beauford however is moving out of range for this fight, still holding his side.

Ski-mask however is turning towards Dinah, since she seems the more fiesty of the two...

Wait. That doesn't make sense, going after the fighter? Why not hit up the groaning mark.

Because you never turn your back on a standing opponent, would be Dinah's answer. Especially not her.

The swing is blocked by a mittened hand that appears from nowhere as Dinah folds herself into his arm, setting them both up for a seoi nagi that sends friend flying over her shoulder, and into ski-mask.

Now she just has to hope they're smart enough to stay down or get out of here.

Yeh, they're trying to get back up. That is until Beauford staggers up to them and takes both of their wallets and masks.

How does Dinah feel about stealing from thieves?

Or about Beauford growling like that.

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