Baltimore, Thursday Night

[spin_kick_snap]

Banzai leapt over the edge of the building, pausing for a moment on one hand to let her quarry move into position, and then shifted her weight a fraction of an inch to let gravity take over. Freefall. A moment when she was almost flying, albeit in one direction. Hurtling four stories to the ground and loving every minute of it. She makes a noise only at the very last moment, turning her quarry's face up to hers. His expression is comical in its disbelief, which turns to pain a second later as she lands handsdown on his shoulders. If she really wanted to, she could probably dislocate his arms or maybe even break his collarbone. But that wasn't Banzai. She didn't like hurting people, not even scumbag drug dealers that liked to hit working girls.

The hitting women part really had her tempted, though. Just a little more pressure than usual and snap, crackle, pop. No more hitting people for him!

But she'd been Social Justice Warrior, not Social Vengeance Warrior, so she refrained. She hit him with just enough force to numb both his arms, forcing him to drop his briefcase with a gasp. From there, she flipped behind him, dropped low, and lashed out with her foot. He hit the ground with a cry and she kicked herself up into a standing position and dover for the briefcase, knocking it away from his grip.

That's when his three bodyguards decided to wise up and get involved.

They had guns, of course. Jerks like these always had guns. Fortunately, Kathy wasn't where they thought she'd be. She'd taken off just as soon as the briefcase had gone skittering into the shadows.

Spin kick. Hand spring. Cartwheel, backbend, roundhouse. Down went one of them. Hammer kick, vault, flying leap, gymnastic ribbons around his wrist and yank. Down went the second. Layout salto. Spin kick. Forward lunge. Spin kick.

And down went the third.

"Looks like it's just the two of us now," Banzai said, grinning at the dealer. "Do you wanna give up? Or let a little girl kick your ass, too?"

He whimpered and put his hands above his head.

Under her mask, Banzai grinned. God, she loved this.

[NFB. For anyone out in Baltimore, though thread with gunslingerpose comes last chronologically, please!]

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[spin_kick_snap]

Banzai spun around to see Gorgon standing in the shows. "Lurk much?" she asked, putting a hand over her thudding heart. For a moment, she'd thought it was danger that she hadn't spotted. Already flushed with exertion, she couldn't blush at his compliment but she could grin at him. "Well, this spot is definitely mine."

[gunslingerpose]

"You got here first. I'll let you keep it," Gorgon decided. He was magnanimous like that. "You need to borrow a road flare, or were you gonna hunt down a payphone?"

He had road flares. He was willing to share.

Still magnanimously.

[spin_kick_snap]

"A road flare would be appreciated," Banzai said, holding out her hand. "I was going to use the pay phone three blocks over, but this will do nicely."

She really needed a better system than running to the nearest payphone, but she wasn't about to steal everything from Gorgon.

[gunslingerpose]

Gorgon just smirked as he produced the flare from his pocket.

"You know, pay phones are going the way of the dinosaur," he shared. "You don't see as many of the damn things around these days, have you noticed?"

He passed the flare over.

"And then what?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Then I'll probably get one of those stupid Tracphones that you pay by the minute and don't have to buy a service plan for," Banzai said, pulling out her lighter to spark the fuse.

Thank you, Reno!

"Of course, I don't really remember a time when they were ubiquitous, either."

She'd come of age long after the age of the cell phone, Nikolai. Sorry.

[gunslingerpose]

Banzai, you were making Gorgon make faces at you, again.

"I don't want to think about that," he decided. "Next you'll be asking me what a cassette tape looks like. Or telling me that you don't remember a time before DVDs."

... She wouldn't remember such a thing, Nikolai.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Cassette tapes?" Banzai asked, deliberately sounding empty-headed. "Aren't those what go in 8-tracks to make them play? They plugged in with the cord of the cordless phones?"

[gunslingerpose]

"That's right," Gorgon replied, his tone dry and one eyebrow cocking upwards. "And since we didn't have remote controls back then, we'd have to send carrier pigeons who would deliver the signal to the guy with the semaphore flags standing next to the turntable."

Two could play, Banzai. Two could play.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Where did the smoke signals come in?" Banzai asked, looking at him curiously. "Before or after the telegraph?"

[gunslingerpose]

"No, no," Gorgon made a big show of looking up toward the sky above, since a simple eyeroll would be lost behind the goggles. "The telegraph was all just science fiction in the talking pictures. What we really used was two tin cans tied together with string."

Honestly. Children these days.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ooooh, you had talking pictures!" Banzai said. "I would have pictured you sitting in a theater with the silent films and a little man playing the piano whenever something thrilling was going to happen."


Braaaaat.

"There," she said, placing the lit flare down, directly between the dealer's legs, a little close to the seam of his pants for his comfort, no doubt. Better than he deserved. "Perhaps we should go, before we are noticed?"

[gunslingerpose]

"If we haven't been noticed by now, people aren't looking out their windows," Gorgon snorted. "But they're getting better at knowing that wherever we're at, they don't want to get in the way. You have a particular direction you're heading, Banzai?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I was thinking of swinging to the west a bit, to do a long arc before heading back to the island," Banzai said, bouncing up from the street to a stone windowsill a story above them. "Wanna join me? Or would that be too much like partnering up?"

[gunslingerpose]

"I'd say I don't do teamups, but that's a blatant lie," Gorgon sighed, and then took a leap straight up to rest in another sill nearby. "Sure, I can swing West. You in any sort of hurry, or can I grab my bike?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Can I get a ride?" Banzai asked, eager. "I've only ever been on a motorcycle once, for class, and we only learned to hotwire it, not actually drive!"

[gunslingerpose]

"Just so happens I have a helmet that might even fit you," Gorgon mused, pursing his lips as he looked her over. "You ever ride a bike before?"

Why the hell not? He took Allie around on it pretty frequently. And anybody who needed a quick lift home rather than walking through rough streets. And, shit Banzai seemed kind of excited about the idea of riding a motorbike.

It was fucking adorable.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Are you kidding?" Banzai said. "My mother would have skinned me alive if I'd ever sat on a bike. And the streets on the island aren't really suited for it."

Her grin was brilliant in the streetlight. "But she's not here and this isn't Fandom."

[gunslingerpose]

"Both of these things are true," Gorgon laughed. "And like hell I'd take my bike out on those stairs."

That would be hell on his baby.

"Alright, then. It's pulled up the next alley over, back toward the 7-Eleven. You wanna ride, you better keep up."

As if she couldn't. Anyway, he was launching himself up to the next rooftop and taking off at a run all the same. Rooftop chases, he was learning, were some of the best fun he had on the job.

[spin_kick_snap]

"You think I can't?" Banzai asked, springing off the stone frame.

And, for the time in months, stumbling and going to her knees.

That's what happened when you suddenly developed four tiny cloven hooves beneath four delicate little legs, all wrapped up in thick cotton and rainbows.

[gunslingerpose]

"I think you-- the fuck?"

Did she just shrink? Vanish? Something else? Gorgon skidded across the rooftop a little on one heel, and then backtracked at a run to investigate... the mysterious lump in Banzai's pile of clothes. He bent over once he'd made it back that way, reaching for the tunic of her gi, picking it up off the ground.

"Banzai? You in th-what the fuck."

That word really was all-purpose.

[spin_kick_snap]

And there, staring up at him, was the grumpiest klipspringer that ever was. No more than twenty inches tall at the shoulder, she danced around a bit, the pavement hard and unyielding beneath her tiny hooves.

"Mah," she protested. She was not a fan.

[gunslingerpose]

"Mah," Gorgon agreed, staring down at her. "Shit, we're not even on the island right now. Unless your power-set actually includes 'randomly turning into a tiny fucking goat' and you never mentioned before."

Okay, she was more like some kind of little... deer... antelope... thing.

The point remained, though. The hell was going on, here?

[spin_kick_snap]

She was not a goat! She was a klipspringer! And she was going to stop her front hoof at him to teach him to not confuse the two again!

"Mah!" she insisted, hopping in a circle around Gorgon. "Maaah!"

[gunslingerpose]

"Well, at least we know you're still half superball," Gorgon noted, watching her as she pronked about. "Look, I'll google it, okay? But I don't speak... whatever you are."

He heaved a sigh, and then leaned forward to collect her clothes from the pavement, wadding them into a ball and tucking them under one armpit. All the better for... not losing her underwear, mostly.

"What the hell do I do with you?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Wait, was he going to reneg on their deal? Dammit, Gorgon! You'd agreed to take her for a motorcycle ride! The fact that she was now an adorable ruminant should not have any bearing on the promised bike ride.

"MAH!" Banzai stomped her foreleg again, wagging her tail furiously. "Mah!"