OOC: I'm guessing that we all go to Keith's shop, as two people are there already. But that is just a guess. Also, as we never specified what time of day it was, I posted this as if it was evening; because, you know, zombies, night, scary.
[EDIT] Wow
, this is longer than I intended. You can just read the last few paragraphs if you don't want to read it all.
I’m going to bring in two characters if you don’t mind.
Name: Aria ‘Andromēde’ Abernethy
Age: 27
Appearance: At five feet and change, one hundred pounds and nothing, Aria (nicknamed Andromēde by her Martial Arts instructor) has shoulder length blonde hair. She has a cute, slightly upturned nose and a nice smile.
Personality: She is very nice and polite. Doesn’t dismiss the possibility of the paranormal, but doesn’t believe in it either.
Other Info: Never handled guns in her life. She is an English major who wanted to learn self-defense. Born in the United States to Greek parents.
Name: Mike Barzilai
Age: 35
Appearance: Tall at six feet five inches, Mike has broad shoulders covered by corded muscles. His muscle isn’t the sculpted muscle of a professional weight lifter but the wiry cords of an athlete. His black hair is cut out to about two inches. He usually wears a dark gray greatcoat because the pockets are massive.
Personality: Is kind of a joker now that he is no longer in life threatening danger as many things in life that are important to other people just seem pointless and superficial to him.
Other Info: Retired Navy SEAL (honorably discharged at the age of 29 due to being shot in the right hip [he occasionally walks with a small limp, even after the rehab]). Has a very well taken care of black 1967 Chevy Impala. He has been a practitioner of Tae Kwon Do since he was six years old and was a black belt in it before he was seventeen. In the Navy, Mike learned SCARS (Special Combat Aggressive Reactionary Systems) and Krav Maga. Once leaving the SEALs, he continued on with Krav Maga and became a Master (able to teach it correctly) in a few years due to previous experience with the SEALs and also learned the Japanese sword fighting art of Kendo just because he wanted something to do as his military pension and income from teaching martial arts was more than enough to life on.
IC: A single rivulet of sweat ran down his left temple, beading on his chin. His breathing came slow and steady, despite the thin sheen of perspiration covering his face and arms. A cutoff muscle shirt covered his chest and stomach, but left his muscled arms bare. His feet moved slowly, side to side, never crossing, matching his opponents move for move.
She was his polar opposite. Where he was tall, she was small. He had a solid quality about his body; she looked as though a steady breeze would blow her over. His features were all angles and sharp corners; hers, soft and rounded. More sweat covered her face and her breathing was more ragged and uneven than his, but only slightly. She made the first move, coming in with a right feint at his chest as her left hand swept the ground for one of the many psuedo-weapons that littered the floor.
He ignored the feint and charged as she got off balance to grab the weapon. He hit her low in the stomach, her breath leaving her body in a whoosh. She tried to bash the foam brick into this head, but he had trapped her wrist against his side and she wasn’t strong enough to pull free. She dropped the brick and stuck one of her legs between his. He tripped as she danced out of the way, sprawling face first into the mat.
He rolled onto his back, coiled the muscles in his abdomen and snapped them straight as fast as he could, allowing him to regain his footing with minimal fuss. A knife came at his shoulder, held downward in a tiny fist. His right forearm deflected the blow to the side. But that was just a diversion as a knife held in the other hand came at his belly. Anticipating this, he grabbed her wrist as it passed and pulled it down to his right hip, throwing her off balance and causing her to miss her strike. Next he twisted his whole body around, grabbed her under the shoulder with his left hand, lifted her from the ground and slammed her to the ground with enough force to make the breath leave her body once again.
His forearm went to her throat and she slapped the mat three times as a sign of defeat. The man stood, noting the sharp pain in his right hip as he did so, offering his hand to her once he was up. She ignored it and pushed herself to her feet. ‘Come on Aria, don’t be such a sore loser. I have been doing this for slightly longer than you.”
Aria was his best student, but she had some defeat issues. As in she hated it. She strove to be the best, to never lose, and compared to all his other students, she was the best; but she wasn’t better than him. The rest of the class had left almost twenty minutes ago, but Aria had stayed after for her usual sparring session. “You cheap-shotted me, Mike,” she said with a tone that was half complaining, half accepting.
“No such thing as a cheap shot in a fight,” Mike replied as he grabbed a towel. He tossed one to her. “Nice going with the trip, but you should have gone for a choke hold and not the knives, the won’t always be there.”
“I’m not strong enough to keep a choke hold on you,” she said in a rare moment in which she admitted that she wasn’t good enough to do something.
“I’ll see you on Friday,” Mike said as he disappeared into his actual home to get his Kendo sword. Mike rented the whole basement of an apartment building, and probably paid less money for more space than the other tenants. His gym, where he taught martial arts classes every day except Sunday, occupied most of the floor, almost the first three quarters of the floor. He had installed walls to separate the gym from his home, which consisted of a living room/ kitchen and then a bedroom with a connecting bathroom.
The floor of the gym was covered by a foam mat to make the falls hurt less and most of the wall had been covered with a similar material. One of the long walls had six flags hanging along it. The two largest ones were a British Union Jack and the American Stars and Stripes. To the right was first a flag with the coveted trident symbol of the SEALs and then the Israeli flag. To the left was a Korean flag followed by a Japanese one.
The far wall was covered with sparring equipment: hogus (body armour), helmets, groin cups, mouth guards, and various forms of gloves. Facsimiles of samurai swords were mounted along the wall above them. Along the same wall was stacked various psuedo-weapons; foam versions of common instruments you would find in a real fight out on the street to teach the students what to do in a
real fight. Because learning what to do when everyone obeys a set of rules is all well and good, but when you get into a real fight, there are no rules and no referee to step in to stop things if they get out of hand (unless the police happen to get there by that time, of course).
In the corners opposite the doors there were changing rooms with two showers in each. Mike could hear the water rushing as Aria used one of them to clean up. He too decided to step into his shower, as he was covered in sweat and Kendo wouldn’t get him all that sweaty. Besides, showering always felt good, always helps to clear the mind. The shower only took him three minutes, and he dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, grabbing his Kendo sword on his way out to the gym.
He had been going through his routine for over ten minutes before Aria left the changing rooms, said good-bye, and left up the stairs. Mike decided to call it quits, sheathing his sword and changing from sweats into blue jeans. As he bent over and grabbed his sword, Aria’s voice came down the stairs to him, “Uh…. Mike, you should see this.”
“What is it?” he shouted back.
“Just come up and look, would you?”
“Fine,” Mike stepped out into the failing light of the evening, sword sheathed in his hand, to be greeted by the sight of Aria. Her hair was still wet from the shower and she was wearing a red sweater and blue jeans. She gestured over to his car, a 1967 Chevy Impala. There were two men over by it. One had a slim jim stuck down the side of the window, trying to unlock it; and the other guy was screaming at him to hurry.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Stop that!”
The man with the slim jim in the door looked wildly around him, then went back to work, muttering, “No, can’t stop, need to get away. Can’t stop. Get away, away from them.”
Mike walked up to the man, grabbed his wrist, and placed him in an arm bar. Then he used his forearm to push on the nerve bundle on the back of the forearm and shoved the man’s face into the dirt. The other guy’s eyes widened and he turned and sprinted down the street screaming, “We have to get away!”
“What do you think you are doing?” Mike snarled in the man’s ear.
“We have to get away, they’re coming. They want to eat us. THEYARECOMMINGTOEATUS!” his words came faster and louder until he screamed.
Mike let him up, “Get out of here.” He turned around and shook his head, “Freaking junkies.” He would have been pissed if they had stolen his beloved car. He had replaced the stock windows with bullet-resistant glass (as there is no such thing as bullet-proof glass) and had packed the insides of the metal housing with phone books that had been torn in half. Much cheaper than metal plating, and good enough to stop anything but full metal jacket military sabot rounds fired from a sniper rifle. [Yes, that does actually work.] Mike looked at Aria, “You need a ride? I need to pick up a package and it is only a block or two from your house.”
“Sure,” she said. “Wait. How do you know where I live?”
“Maybe because I’m psychic,” Mike said with a smile. Aria glared at him. “Or maybe because you have to put down your address on the liability waiver that you have to sign to be part of my class. Your choice, but I personally prefer the psychic one.”
She rolled her eyes, but said, “Sure.” They both got into the car and Mike drove it for almost four miles before he reached the store. Along the way, they saw a lot more freaked out junkies and a couple of people so stoned out of their minds that they were shambling slowly along, dragging their feet as they went. When Aria commented on it, Mike replied, “Must be the first National Junkie Convention.”
He stopped outside of a nondescript shop. It was across the street from another place, the real place that Mike wanted to go to, but he had to pick something up from this store first. Aria looked inside the store, at the shelves stripped bare and people fighting over the scraps that were left, and asked, “What is going on?”
“Good question,” Mike stepped out of the car and went into the store to talk to Adam. “Hey, what’s happening here?”
“Zombies, apparently,” Adam replied.
Mike snorted, but then said, “Your serious, aren’t you?”
“Well, that’s what the news seems to think. You want that package?”
“Uh, yeah. The money’s at the usual drop,” Mike said. Adam grunted and pushed a button under the counter. A large steel door hidden in the back opened with a click. Mike quickly went over to it and grabbed the duffel bag. It made slight clinking noises as he picked it up. He shouldered the door closed, nodded his thanks to Adam for acquiring the item, and went back to his car. He popped the trunk and placed the duffel inside before unzipping it to make sure all the parts were there. They were, so Mike pulled up the bottom of the trunk and placed the item and all of its accessories beneath it.
He stuck his head in the window to talk to Aria, “It’s zombies, apparently.” Her reaction was the same as his. “I just have to get a couple more things, then I’ll take you to your place.”
“Mind if I come?” Aria asked. “It feels kinda weird to be sitting alone in someone else’s car.”
“Sure, why not,” Mike answered. He snagged his leather greatcoat from the backseat, walked across the street, knocked on the door, and said, “Spumoni.” The door swung open as Aria arched an eyebrow at him. “This guy like’s his security,” Mike said to the unasked question. He saw the general chaos and said, “Not here too.” He shook his head as he walked over to Keith, who was with two women. One of them had probably just stopped talking, but as no one was talking right then, Mike said, “Keith, could I have my key, please?”
Mike rented a storage locker from Keith at a hefty price, but it was a good place to store things that might not be wholly legal to own. It only had a set of chest body armour, a souvenir that he had acquired from his SEAL days, a SIG Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol with twenty clips (fifteen rounds per clip), a SIG Sauer P228 semi-automatic service pistol that he had taken with him from the service with another twenty clips (thirteen rounds per clip), and a large case that was securely fastened.