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Post by Gambit on Jul 5, 2011 16:25:52 GMT -5
Gambit, in his turn, was also aiming for higher ground because it was his preferred mode of gaining vantage and expanding visual range. He went his own way, approximately estimating Shade's location and direction, and used the bo staff to propel himself upwards, where he caught a partly broken horizontal beam and pulled up onto the framework of what used to be a part of the wall.
"I'm goin' higher!" he shouted, informing Shade, wherever she could be. "Want ya t' keep up."
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Post by Shade on Jul 5, 2011 16:37:56 GMT -5
Shade had made her way a little higher on the stairs. They were intact more or less, but not all of them, so she had to make a small leap of two or so stairs that had been concrete once but that had been broken down to bebris. She hopped across the gap and, hearing Gambit shout, located where he was and used her powers to briefly glance through the staircase, up, seeing him make a leap up a part of wall. She chuckled to herself, feeling challenged in a fun way. He was faster than her, stronger and more agile, but she had been picking up on some the last few weeks and despite the fact that he could be a rather ruthless instructor to the edge of being annoyingly exhausting, she had also rediscovered one of the qualities she had always liked about him: the fact that whereas he could very well provide a strong shoulder than needed, he was also a guy one simply could ruffle with now and then. Get physical.
A small smirk appearing on her face she ran a little faster, following the staircase up to the second floor, then the third. The boots hardly made any sound on the dusty floor.
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Post by Gambit on Jul 7, 2011 14:10:35 GMT -5
Gambit had to give it to the man, the costume significantly reduced the sound of footsteps. Given more time, Shade could probably creep up without being heard.
However, he could guess that she was going up the stairs. He followed suit; one of the stairs had collapsed since his previous visit here, it took a fraction of second longer to react and adjust his step, and he changed his path a bit but soon he, too, was on the third floor. The wind was already strong there. He stopped to look around, spinning his bo staff and then resting it against a column nearby.
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Post by Shade on Jul 7, 2011 14:27:12 GMT -5
Since Gambit had not tried too hard to keep up and track her down so far, Shade had had a bit of a headstart. When he made his way to the third floor, she managed just in time to hide behind a column. Her breath going a bit faster from the running, she tried to stay calm, her back against the column, listening for his footsteps. There were more steps, the once that they had taken upstairs were broken and unusable to the next floor, at least for her, possibly not for him to pass the gap between the steps. But there was more stairs, right ahead of her, to the right of the column. She was closer to it than him.
She waited, waited, didn´t move. Tried to make out where he was exactly. On the other side of the column that much was certain, as well as the fact that he was a few metres away from her. She tried to estimate the distance to the stairs. About a dozen steps. She waited another moment, then made a sudden dash for them.
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Post by Gambit on Jul 8, 2011 2:14:14 GMT -5
Gambit waited, looking around. He had a feeling Shade was somewhere close, but with the wind, it was hard to say for sure.
"Dere somethin' I wantcha t' take a look at," he said.
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Post by Shade on Jul 8, 2011 2:22:45 GMT -5
She was lucky and he didn´t spot her right away, not turning before she could squeeze herself behind a wall near the staircase. Not using her powers right now, she was really pleased with the costume so far. She had, over the year, made it a habit to move without much of a footfall, but these boots silenced them down to almost no sound at all.
She stayed behind the wall, muscles tense, ready to run. Gambit would use little tricks like that sometimes, saying the game was up only to metaphorically stab her in the back as soon as she gave up her cover. "What is it?" she called out to him without showing herself.
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Post by Gambit on Jul 8, 2011 7:17:44 GMT -5
So she was close, indeed, and even closer than he had thought. With anyone else, it would have Gambit worried; Shade was harmless, and he was only glad that she now had better means of protecting herself.
He walked to the side. "Dis part of de buildin' here," he showed where he was headed, "once had most functional parts crammed into it. Ventilation, waste disposal, special purpose elevators, what not. One elevator is still here."
He stopped at an opening in the wall, peeking inside. The thing was like a mini-labyrinth, a big vertical shaft filled with small bridges, closures, gaps, ladders, wires and stairs.
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Post by Shade on Jul 8, 2011 8:34:23 GMT -5
Apparently he wasn´t up for testing her in the boo-you´re-dead-never-trust-an-enemy-way right now, so Shade left her place behind the partly torn down wall and walked over to him to have a look into the shaft, one hand at the side, not because she was scared of heights but because the shaft ran down all the three stories they had been running up - and ran on for another one as she noticed as she turned her head and looked up.
"So..." she said, drawing the word a bit, wondering whether or not she liked where this was going. Three stories were high. "let me guess, you want me to climb for the rest of the way."
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Post by Gambit on Jul 8, 2011 9:05:44 GMT -5
"Down, yes," Gambit said. "Worse - I'll be timin' ya. So I go first, you go next, den we repeat. Until I feel you've improved. Den we take what remains of your costume for a paint job."
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Post by Shade on Jul 8, 2011 9:38:34 GMT -5
Shade was still looking down into the labyrinth of ladders and all kinds of other things. This place had obviously been abandoned a long time ago, the shaft now used to store all kinds of stuff. It seemed cluttered in some places but that at least reduced the danger of losing grip and falling to a certain death... or certain breaking of bones at least.
"All right," she said, rubbing her hands, adding in thought that she would look rather clumsy in comparison to Gambit, but she didn´t care. "lead the way."
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Post by Gambit on Jul 8, 2011 11:31:05 GMT -5
Gambit took out his cellphone and set the timer. "Meetcha downstairs, den," he said and, swinging his bo staff to have it propel him in a leap inside the network of shelves, blocks and pipes, started his way down to the ground.
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Post by Shade on Jul 8, 2011 14:31:18 GMT -5
Shade followed him with her eyes, for a moment distracted by the the ease with which Gambit flung himself into the labyrinth of things, already on his way down before she could even grab for the end of a ladder."Show off." she chuckled to herself before concentrating on the things ahead. The ladder she was holding on to now led a few metres down to a narrow sort of shelf so that was where she went first, hurrying a bit but for now also scouting the area. She could still speed up at a later run which didn´t mean she was being overly slow, just that she was not trying to break her neck.
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Post by Gambit on Jul 10, 2011 4:41:44 GMT -5
Gambit knew he was at an unfair advantage here, and not just because of his innate gymnastic abilities - he knew this particular place well, and it wasn't so much training, more like polishing of his skills. Which didn't mean it was useless, of course.
However, this was not a competition. At worst, it would mean that he'd be able to get down without so much as a scratch on his knees, while Shade would probably find a few places tricky, where some hanging and sliding and jumping down could be required.
He was down soon, emerging from the network of the factory constructions above and stopping near the old elevator.
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Post by Shade on Jul 10, 2011 5:38:49 GMT -5
As much as Shade now and then enjoyed watching Gambit when he did his running-climbing-fighting-looking-badass thing (which was something she had not had the chance to watch too often before the amnesia), she didn´t allow herself to be distracted by it now. She knew she would never reach his level of agilty and skill in this, but that only challenged her further. Whining now and then was a given, but it all came with a fierce sort of ambition that did not allow her own pride to have him see her break down and the whining was directed against him as much as it was against her when she felt her limits reached.
The ladder ended in thin air, but there was a protrusion, wide enough to stand on it comfortably at the end of it, maybe 7 feet under it. Shade climbed down the ladder and then used the wall as a small support for her feet when they kicked into nothing, while her hand still used the bottom ladder steps. She noticed absent mindedly that there was a bit more power in her arms by now, allowing her to at least not lose grip immediately. She hopped down onto the protrusion, not too elegantly, but made it without losing balance, then looked around to see where she could keep climbing down.
It took her considerably longer to get down there than Gambit and when she arrived she had bumped her legs and elbows a few times, finding however that the costume dulled the impact. She didn´t notice that there was a small scratch on the back of her hand when she hopped down from the last bit of scrap stored at the bottom of the shaft.
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Post by Gambit on Jul 10, 2011 8:17:15 GMT -5
"Dere she be comin'," Gambit greeted her with a grin, glancing at his timer and then back at Shade, "still in one piece. Had fun?"
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