Day 1, Morning Orientation
You held your aching head in annoyance, it hadn't even been five minutes on the ride to the hotel and there was already some kind of rivalry brewing between two contestants. The first was a man with dusty blonde hair and bright blue eyes that gleamed behind his glasses as he laughed confidently in the face of his new enemy. The "enemy" in question was a tall and lean-muscled albino with piercing red eyes, he hissed a laugh as he pushed the blonde roughly wanting to pick a fight. The two began hollering insults at one another, each one more vulgar than the last. The other riders shot disapproving glances at the new-found rivals as their arguing became louder and louder. Your eye twitched in irritation as you gripped your temples and hung your head, hoping to drown out the madness. Just before you thought things couldn't get any more obnoxious, the contestant next to you flopped his head over onto your shoulder, snoring loudly. Seriously, how could anyone sleep through this ruckus?
Then suddenly, silence. The whole bus was hushed in an instant. Even the snoring man next to you fell quiet. You raised your eyes to see a tower of a man smiling childishly as he tightly gripped the two aggravated men by the shoulders, emitting a menacing aura around him.
"How about we stop the fighting, da?" He said so calmly, his accent giving away he was Russian, "It would be a shame for you both to lose your voices so early on in the game." The way he ended that phrase almost sounded...threatening.
" 'Ey! Back off lard-ass!" The blonde, whom you assumed to be American from his mannerisms, sneered as he shoved the Russian's hand off of him.
As for the albino, he took a nearby seat, snickering to himself as if waiting for his rival to be pounded in the face. You raised your head back up to take one last look at the contestants before the bus reached your stop. The snoring man next to you appeared to be of Mediterranean descent from the look of his tan-olive skin. Next to the Albino sat a ginger wearing a pair of Scottish Plaid pants. He was hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees as he pulled a cigarette from the carton in his coat pocket, but just before he could take out his lighter a voice buzzed over the intercom.
"Would the red-head in seat E-4 please put away the cigarette and lighter? This is a smoke free environment. Thank you."
The plaid wearing man grumbled to himself before tucking away the cigarette and sighed.
"Oh ho ho ho boy! Man! You got busteeeed!" The loud American laughed obnoxiously, "But that's what'cha get wh-OH SHIT!" He screamed as the bus driver purposely slammed on the breaks as he parked in front of the hotel you were to be staying in. As soon as the doors opened, you grabbed your bags and rushed outside.
You stared in awe for a moment then entered the high-class hotel. It was even more beautiful in person. The floors were polished to the point where it looked as if you were walking on a mirror, an ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling, the furniture was so ornate you could hardly bring yourself to sit down. As you looked wide-eyed around the lobby, all sense of reality was washed away. The commotion of the other contestants became a dull roar as you zoned out into your own fantasy.
"It's pretty amazing isn't it?" A familiar Italian voice chimed happily, snapping you back to the bustling lobby.
"Oh! Um...Yeah, guess it is." You turned to see Feliciano smiling cheerfully back at you. Before you could respond, a bright light flashed and blinded you temporarily, instinctively drawing your gaze to the source. You ended up focusing your (colour) eyes on the reflective strips of fabric that trailed down the Italian's running pants, each one in the shape of a lightning bolt. Slowly the cogs in your head began to click and turn, putting together the puzzle of why he looked so damn familiar. You scrunched your nose and hazily kept staring at the lightning-printed pants as you thought.
"A-ah...E-excuse me...Miss pretty lady?" Feliciano's voice asked nervously, "Why are you staring at my pants?"
"AHA!" You pointed your finger at him and met his gaze, "NOW I GOT IT!" Your loud and confident volume caught the attention of the majority of the others in the lobby.
"G-got what?"
"YOU'RE HIM! YOU'RE WHITE LIGHTNING!" You smiled and laughed.
White Lightning was part of the famous trio "The Defiants", along with Shinobi and Blitzkrieg, the three runners were the celebrities-no gods-of the Parkour world, and for you to even see one of them was and honour in its own. Before you could get another word out, a wave of fans and contestants swarmed the Italian, forcing you off and away conveniently to the front desk. You sighed softly as you watched Feliciano be bombarded with papers for autographs, grabbed at by multiple hands, and even one overzealous fan had the courage to try and lick him, but you turned back to the desk, assuming he had to deal with that every day.
The secretary at the front desk slid a small packet of forms for you to fill out with spots for you to record all the necessary information. You made quick work of all the spaces until you reached the last one.
Alias.
You smiled to yourself and stared at the blank line. Having an alias as a free-runner was like a secret identity, it was your second life away from all the stress of the world, and it wasn't until recently you had actually come up with that "second life" you dreamed of leading.
Blizzard.
You scribed the name across the line before turning in the packet and receiving your room key. The secretary smiled and bid you farewell with an "Enjoy your stay", you smiled and quickly strode to the elevators, riding up to your floor. The bell chimed and the doors opened. You began wandering down the hall, searching for your room. Other contestants and clients roamed about, holding idle conversations as you pushed yourself past them to your room. The numbers 502 labeled the door, the same numbers that matched the tag of your key. Upon entering you were once again awestruck. Your suit was thrice as big as your apartment back home! The bedroom was humongous with a king sized bed and flat screen, the living area was connected to the fully equipped kitchen, and the bathroom had a nice jacuzzi tub and a shower big enough for three people. Why you would need a shower that big was beyond you, but nevertheless, it was awesome. You dropped your duffel-bags, ran, and belly-flopped on you new bed, bouncing up and down a few times before settling. Almost instantly you fell asleep from the cozy down comforter.
It was a few days before the announcement of the chosen contestants for the contest, you and Matthias were lounging about in your apartment discussing possible alias' for you to take on.
"What about 'Whirlwind'?" Your danish friend suggested, "I mean, you like to do all those rolls and flips, so it'd sound kind of cool!"
You took that down as a mental note. Whirlwind, it definitely had a ring to it. But, you wanted something, deeper.
"Matthias, remember when we met? How did you feel when I showed you my routine?" You asked.
"Frozen. It was like a sub-zero blizzard hit me."
"That's it then!" You exclaimed.
"What? Sub-Zero?"
"No, Blizzard. When people see me up there they'll freeze and stare."
"Blizzard...has a nice-
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
You shot up from your slumber, sputtering a few times before frantically reaching for the room phone. You slammed your hand down on the phone and brought it up to your ear.
"Hello?" You tried not to yawn.
"Is this Blizzard?" A voice on the other side asked.
"This is her, can I help you?"
"There will be an orientation meeting in ten minutes, please head down to conference room three in your competition clothes."
"Alright." You hung up.
You sprung off the bed to your smaller duffel-bag, unzipping it and pulling out the clothing inside. Now on the floor lay the outfit you had designed yourself, it consisted of a light weight hooded jacket, a t-shirt, your "lucky" worn-out finger gloves, cargo pants, and sneakers. The jacket was a navy-blue with a snow-flake print on the hood, the shoulders were almost a white frost-like pattern that faded as it reached the bottom of the jacket. Both the t-shirt and cargo pants were black with reflective icicles that "hung" around the neck, waistband, and pockets so that you could be identified if there were to be a night-running course. The pair of gloves you had were from when you first decided to devote your life to parkour, you had made them from a pair of batting gloves you had found at a second-hand sports store then cut off half the fingers. Lat but not least you had made small "snow dots" on your shoes from the left over reflective material to try and tie the motif all together. Sure it was a little mismatched, but you were proud of it, and that's all that mattered.
You quickly dressed and dashed to the designated room to officially meet your competitors and start this competition. Inside the conference room sat 15 people, a handful you recognized from the bus ride over. They all chatted and bragged to each other, sharing their adventures, others plotting against new-found rivals, the all around aura of competitiveness filled the room like a fog. You found a seat in an unoccupied chair next to a man with long wavy blonde hair and blue eyes whom was talking with the girl next to him. The girl in question had blue eyes as well but brown braided hair, she looked a little displeased as she listened to the man speak. You continued to scan the room, until a loud voice caught your attention.
"Alllllright! Let's get this orientation started!" A voice from the front of the room called, this time you instantly recognized the figure in front of the room, it was none other than The Gladiator. Dressed in his trademark Roman-print jumpsuit and gauntlets, The Gladiator was famous for starting up the famous Defiants, "I'm just here to give you a quick welcome and the rules to the competition. If you haven't heard of me, which I seriously doubt, I am The Gladiator and I welcome you to this year's Jump City Free-Runner Competition! We were looking for the best runners in the world and here you are now. But don't get cocky now, we've hardly just begun. Now, for those boring things called rules, and just a little heads up, if you break any of these rules, you will be disqualified. Okay! Rule one! No sabotage, do NOT destroy anyone's gear, do NOT push people off ledges, no poisoning food, etc. Rule two! You are to refer to yourself by your alias, and ONLY your alias. Rule three! This competition is a great opportunity to display your talent for agencies, so remember, always look your best! The world is watching. Rule four! You are only allowed outside your rooms between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. The training course is open from noon to 8 p.m. Rule Five! Play nice! Don't wreck any of our equipment, shit's expensive. And...um...well common sense laws apply. And...that's it!" He clapped his hands together and smiled, "You will be assigned your training schedules tomorrow morning, take today to get acquainted, settled, do what you want. Just remember that all rules apply as I stated."
After that long rant you got up and stretched, ready to "officially" meet your competition.
A/N
I tried to make this chapter longer to compensate.
SO, what do you all think so far? Should this keep going?
I'm kind of dividing the story up into "days" and "times of day"
Seeing as this is "morning" the next one should be "afternoon/evening"
Um...So. Thank you to ~RedDeathHots for the names on Italy and Japan.
Sorry for not using Whirlwind, I may use it for someone else though.
Halp. I cant think of aliases.
