In search of new paths (DarkChao)

A bright light shot into the tiny room quickly, almost as if to attack something hiding in the moist darkness. As it’s essence bounced off of gasoline on the concrete floor and reflective metal objects on the wall, light taps echoed fluently through the area, sounding slow and controlled. Old, metal vehicle parts lay on the ground as the tapping of footsteps grew. The entire old garage seemed to be a mess, even for a repair shop. Rusted car doors, useless tools and scrap metal lined foot by foot of the garage.

As the clacking of footsteps from outside the room grew louder and then slowed, another set of footsteps suddenly rung through the recently lit room. “Karaza!” a female voice shot out loudly, obviously wanting to be heard. “Karaza, please don’t do this.” it came again, now sounding more compassionate and much less demanding.

The large metal, dented door swung open suddenly, and a man walked in, not paying any attention to whomsoever was calling to him from behind. The man was not human, a fact easily distinguishable by his unnaturally white skin. He wore a tattered black t-shirt, and a pair of black jeans. He had a thick, grey vest over his worn shirt, and black leather gloves clung to each of his hand. As he moved quickly through the room, the tips of his black hairs dangled slightly above his shoulders.

As this figure approached what he was looking for, the second pair of footsteps came flying around the corner, into the door. As the woman entered, the man she had called Karaza turned around with a hurried look on his face. The woman also had white skin, only it had a much more beautiful complexion than the man’s. Her dark brown hair swung far past her shoulders and she raced to the first figure. She was wearing a long black skirt, and a thick white sweater. She was sweating slightly under the heat of the strong lights.

“Khana, listen, I know it bothers you when I leave you alone, but you don’t have to cling to me all the time. We’re in this huge city for a while, so go shopping, or something.” Karaza’s voice was firm, but his plea was easily detectable. He frowned as Khana shook her head in disagreement.

She put her hands to her hips and sighed lightly. “Karaza, why do you always link everything to shopping? It’s so stereotypical that it makes me sick. Am I not allowed to be worried for you?” she took her hands off her hips and crossed them under her arms. “One of these days you’re going to pick a fight and get yourself killed, and then what? Did you forget? We’re on a journey, together.” she stressed together until her tongue could not roll any further. Karaza looked at her with another impatient look and then turned his attention to what he had been so intently focusing on earlier.

As he turned around, he grabbed a key off of a red tool counter, and started moving towards the bike in the center of the room. The motorcycle sat on the cold floor, the only thing in the room that seemed to in decent shape. A shiny black racing bike, covered with silver trimmings. The shield curved over the front of the bike to protect the driver. On top of the black leather seat, there lay a small black helmet. Karaza slipped over to the racing bike, and threw the helmet over his face.

“Oh, come on, Karaza.” Khana pleaded with her friend. “You can’t go racing through the city for kicks, someone could get hurt!” she moved quickly over to him and tugged lightly at his arm to get him off the bike, but he did not move and pulled his arm away from her.

“Khana, what do you want me to do?” he said calmly as he lifted the helmet’s visor. He had a smile on his face, but his friend did not seemed cheered up. “Look, Khana, I have no choice.” he held out the note and passed it to her. She looked down at it and frowned. For it read, in clearly printed, bold letters:

Karaza,

I am traveling through this town, and purely by chance, I have heard gossip from street folk speaking of a menace terrorizing the city with his presence. After further investigation into the matter, I have determined that you are that figure.

The people tell me that you are unreasonable, and the you do not abide by the law. They have asked you to leave several times, but you refuse. Unfortunately, I feel that it is my responsibility to drive you out of this town, even if I have to do it forcefully.

Normally, I would not take such actions so quickly, but the citizens here are desperate. I’m afraid that the time to negotiate has passed, and now actions must be taken. I’m sorry, but this is my decision, I must help these people.

Meet me and the intercontinental bridge at noon on this coming Saturday. I do not want to harm you, and so I figured we could have a race instead. Bring some sort of vehicle and we shall race overseas. If I win, you leave the city and promise never to bother innocent folk again. If you win... well, then I suppose it’s up to you.

The intercontinental bridge, noon, Saturday, be there.

- Zelit

Khana frowned and shoved the paper back into Karaza’s hands. “Come on! You can’t possibly think that this is the best way to go about this! He sounds reasonable, why can’t you just talk to him and work it out without doing anything relatively dangerous?” her face turned suddenly pink over as a glimmering smirk swirled onto Karaza’s face.

“Oh, a second ago, you were screaming at me for being hard in the head, and now you’re worried about my safety.” he said with a light hearted laugh. He continued grinning slightly, but his expression grew continuously more serious. “Khana, this guy is obviously convinced that I’m some sort of pestering monster, and even if he is ‘reasonable’, he’s not going to stop until we have that race. But it’s ok, I’ll knock him around a bit, and he’ll leave with his tail between his legs.”

“You mean,” Khana interrupted. “if he has a tail.” Karaza looked at her with a mocking stare as he curled his lips. “You said that he would go running with his tail between his legs.” she repeated. “That’s if he has a tail.” once more, Karaza shot his companion an annoyed look.

“Khana!” he shouted lightly so that she knew that he had recognized her attempt to stall, as it was nearing twelve o’clock. “It’s a figure of speech. I don’t know why you’re so concerned. I’ll be fine, and this guy’s going to be a pushover. I’ll kick him around for a few minutes, taking care not to run into any passing cars, and then it’s all over.” He lowered the visor on his helmet and hopped onto his bike.

As he pressed a tiny button emerging from the concrete wall beside him, the red garage door opened with loud mechanized sounds, causing echos to flow dramatically down the halls of the abandoned repair shop. Light flourished majestically into the building as the door clicked into place. Khan shielded her eyes and ran over to where Karaza’s vehicle stood. As she approached him however, there was a roar and the motorcycle’s engine started up suddenly.

“Karaza, don’t do this,” she stopped as the bike made a horribly painful, ear wrenching sound. Another two puffs of smoke, and the bike started moving out of the garage door and onto the car- littered street of the large, busy city. Khana sighed heavily as she saw Karaza raise his hand to act as his good bye. After a moment of pondering, she started walking towards the door, deciding that it actually would be a good time to go shopping.

OoC: Hey man, I know you were waiting for this, so I hope I set it up all right. The intercontinental bridge itself is over a portion of the ocean dividing... uh, two continents I guess, but it's very long, and red. So if the two are racing, they'll have plenty of time before they have to turn around and start over. I just figured that they would start off racing, and then end up in a tie, and then start over as a high speed battle or something, ok?

OoC: Yes, that's fine with me.

Zelit sat himself upon a bench overlooking the glimmering ocean on the bridge. He hated to wait. Minutes passed, 12:10; his foot almost involuntarily started tapping the ground in firm beats. An hour flew by, 1:10; he was growing impatient. He stared at his bike. It was green and gold, with almost pearlescent style paint. It shimmered even when rusted. There was a shield crawling over the front end for acceleration; also for the rider's well-being. There was a small vinyl on it consisting of a black rose with fading purple pedals. He was sick of waiting. He strapped himself in the bike, and the engine purred as he twisted the keys. Just as he was about to ride away on his motorcycle and vanish off into the distance, a distant roar was heard.

He turned around in his fur-coated seat. It was dark and rainy, so all he saw was very shiny headlights. He was almost blinded as he fell off his bike onto the black shadows of the road; his eyes paining. Within seconds the bike pulled up next to his. He stared at the character, the headlights rendurring him viewable. He stared at the figure and his features; he didn't look human.

"Karaza, I presume?" Zelit inquired, "Look, I don't want to harm you, so I hope you're here to race. I really also am kicking myself for forcing you to leave. But these people's pleas are too great. And if you would choose to fight me; I wouldn't. I've trained with Master Kyrias, a great fighter. He's taught me a bit of his knowledge, probably enough to take you on. So, are we here to race or what?"

Karaza stared in disbelief. Kyrias.. Maybe I should race him. If it really is Kyrias, he won't be as easy as I thought.

OoC: Sorry I took awhile to reply, school sucks. >> And sorry my posts are really short, I don't have enough patience to write really long posts. xD

OoC- Naw, no problem, just glad we're finally going to do this.

BiC- As rain draped the pavement of the long bridge, Karaza stared at his opponent through the tinted visor of his black helmet. “Kyrias, huh? I suppose it doesn’t matter. What makes you think that all this is up to you? You think that if you don’t want to fight me,” he twisted his voice into a mild whine. “that you don’t have to. Bah! I’m here, and I’ll act however I please. If I fancy a fight over a race, then I’ll fight, wether or not you approve.”

Zelit frowned, and he tried to shield his eyes from the light rain to make out his foe’s face. His white skin shone light grey due to the dark colour of the thin clouds above. “I’m sorry then, but I won’t fight you, I came here to race. You do whatever you wish, but I won’t engage in combat.” he sounded like he was going to speak further, but he stopped and the result was a muffled squeak, he doubted however, that Karaza had heard the tiny sound.

“Meh, whatever you say, but remember, this was your idea. If you accidentally take an unexpected swim, don’t come crying to me.” Karaza shrugged his shoulders, he personally didn’t care about whoever the man who stood before him was; the thought of some action was the only thing that drew him to the meeting.

Suddenly, there was roar as one of the drivers began revving his bike’s engine. Zelit quickly followed and within a several, muffled seconds both racers were accelerating off of the start of the bridge and onto the main portion.

The rain made it hard to see, but streaks of sunlight broke through the dismal shadows of the grey clouds to allow minimal vision. As the race began, both Karaza and Zelit swerved onto the lane that was moving the same direction as them. Karaza on the right, Zelit on the left.

Karaza turned his helmet to see how his challenger was faring, only to see that he had slowly fallen behind. At least ten feet behind his foe, Zelit realized silently that he would have to speed up. He leaned forward to gain momentum. As he lowered the distance between the two, he locked himself behind Karaza in order to pick up speed by cutting the air resistance around himself, otherwise called drafting.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Karaza asked aloud, knowing that Zelit could not possibly hear him. He frowned lightly, angered that his opponent was gaining speed as he did. With a sudden movement, The back end of Karaza’s motorcycle suddenly picked up off of the ground. Zelit tried to move out of the way, but before he could manage to, Karaza caused his back wheel to swing to the left, and he performed a complete clockwise turn. Before he hit Zelit’s vehicle, he lowered his wheel so that it hovered only barely above the ground.

Zelit cried out as his motorcycle started spinning in the air, completely knocked off balance from the attack. He received a large shock as the bike hit the ground, but he was lucky enough that it landed back on it’s wheels, and he was able to stop it’s spinning.

As Karaza slowed his bike and turned it around, he raised the visor on his helmet and smirked, “Coming or not?” he taunted. Zelit looked around, and saw people standing outside their cars holding cell phones. Within a few seconds, he could hear distant police sirens coming from the nearby city. And again, he raced off towards Karaza, knowing that he wasn’t in for a clean race.

OoC- Anyway, the police will more than likely get involved for a little while, but sooner or later, they'll shake them off, at least that's how I see it. Anyway, looking forward to your next post.