Post by Chiura Yutsuko on Sept 1, 2019 20:15:18 GMT
Dawnlight tended to glint rather pleasantly off of well-shined metal, like a reflective promise of the ephemeral joys that the day might bring. Here, though, there were no such little starlit promises hanging in the air. The metallic labyrinths of Ground Gamma were flecked with rust and age; they held little promise and made no offers of bright tomorrows. They were, rather, facsimiles of challenge; of burdensome fates and frightening tasks left unaccomplished. It wasn't the sort of facility that carried the shining veneer of U.A. on its lapel. It more closely approximated the school's grittier underbelly -- the labor and the laments that laid the foundation for the gleaming successes that the world had come to know its students for.
All the same, Chiura found that Ground Gamma held a certain beauty in the dawnlight. Its external facades were harsh, demanding, and unappealing to the average person. In the daylight, they were intimidating by implication; they were a suggestion that, cloaked instead in the dusky cover of nightfall, they would posit something more threatening and more frightening. But then, those were just appearances; at the end of the day, there was little difference between Ground Gamma and any of U.A.'s shinier facilities. Just because it was less conventional in its appearance or its methods, did not mean that it was any less useful.
The serpent woman slithered her way between narrow alleyways in search of a place that would suit her needs on that particular morning. The sports festival was fast approaching, and with it would come the woman's first real opportunity since she had arrived at this school. Sure, she had been elected class representative; that, in and of itself, quantified as both a literal and personal victory. But this meant something different, both to Chiura and to the world she hoped to enter. Class representatives were, wonderful as the honor was, entirely mundane. Every school had them; it wasn't the sort of thing that differentiated a hero from a civilian. The sports festival, though? Success there could translate to a burgeoning career as a saver of lives or an inspirer of masses. It was all that Chiura wanted and then some.
She found what she was looking for; a particular circular pipe that had been laid across two short rooftops, some two stories up. To its right, a sort of metallic trellis -- the remnants of a fire escape that had not survived a fire. The girl, clad in workout clothes, tossed her satchel up onto one of the rooftops before taking several deep, centering breaths. The world slowed around her. The muscles in her body tensed and released. The sound of her own heartbeat slowed.
When she next opened her eyes, they had shifted from a relatively human blue to a decidedly snakelike amber. With a noisy hiss, she bounded towards the ruined fire escape, coiling around the broken bits of metal and using it as a makeshift ladder to scramble towards the top of one of the small one-story roofs. From there, it was a quick trek onto the metallic pipe; she coiled herself around it in several successive circles, so that her entire body clung to the structure like a python on some great tree's lower limb. She panted quietly; sweat beaded on the parts of her body that were capable of such. She reached for the bag she had placed some moments before, and withdrew from it a pair of large weighted dumbbells.
Gripping one carefully in each hand, Chiura lowered her torso down below the horizontal pipe. The world hung in inverted, suspended animation around her. With her bestial instincts triggered, she didn't see in clear, human shapes and colors; rather, she saw the world in shades of grey. She saw heat and cold, refuge and danger, rest and action. Her tongue flitted out from between her lips every few moments.
She gripped the weights tightly before bending at the waist. The world righted itself, and then returned to its strange upside-down nothingness. One, two, three, four. She hissed, the force of her efforts proving exhausting. Five, six, seven, eight. Her heart hammered in her chest. Nine. She wanted to stop, to go home. Her body was heavy, and her human abdomen was not accustomed to lifting such heavy weight.
Ten. She hissed noisily, rising back to the top of the pipe and setting the weights down on the roof once more. The world spun. She took a moment to breathe.
All the same, Chiura found that Ground Gamma held a certain beauty in the dawnlight. Its external facades were harsh, demanding, and unappealing to the average person. In the daylight, they were intimidating by implication; they were a suggestion that, cloaked instead in the dusky cover of nightfall, they would posit something more threatening and more frightening. But then, those were just appearances; at the end of the day, there was little difference between Ground Gamma and any of U.A.'s shinier facilities. Just because it was less conventional in its appearance or its methods, did not mean that it was any less useful.
The serpent woman slithered her way between narrow alleyways in search of a place that would suit her needs on that particular morning. The sports festival was fast approaching, and with it would come the woman's first real opportunity since she had arrived at this school. Sure, she had been elected class representative; that, in and of itself, quantified as both a literal and personal victory. But this meant something different, both to Chiura and to the world she hoped to enter. Class representatives were, wonderful as the honor was, entirely mundane. Every school had them; it wasn't the sort of thing that differentiated a hero from a civilian. The sports festival, though? Success there could translate to a burgeoning career as a saver of lives or an inspirer of masses. It was all that Chiura wanted and then some.
She found what she was looking for; a particular circular pipe that had been laid across two short rooftops, some two stories up. To its right, a sort of metallic trellis -- the remnants of a fire escape that had not survived a fire. The girl, clad in workout clothes, tossed her satchel up onto one of the rooftops before taking several deep, centering breaths. The world slowed around her. The muscles in her body tensed and released. The sound of her own heartbeat slowed.
When she next opened her eyes, they had shifted from a relatively human blue to a decidedly snakelike amber. With a noisy hiss, she bounded towards the ruined fire escape, coiling around the broken bits of metal and using it as a makeshift ladder to scramble towards the top of one of the small one-story roofs. From there, it was a quick trek onto the metallic pipe; she coiled herself around it in several successive circles, so that her entire body clung to the structure like a python on some great tree's lower limb. She panted quietly; sweat beaded on the parts of her body that were capable of such. She reached for the bag she had placed some moments before, and withdrew from it a pair of large weighted dumbbells.
Gripping one carefully in each hand, Chiura lowered her torso down below the horizontal pipe. The world hung in inverted, suspended animation around her. With her bestial instincts triggered, she didn't see in clear, human shapes and colors; rather, she saw the world in shades of grey. She saw heat and cold, refuge and danger, rest and action. Her tongue flitted out from between her lips every few moments.
She gripped the weights tightly before bending at the waist. The world righted itself, and then returned to its strange upside-down nothingness. One, two, three, four. She hissed, the force of her efforts proving exhausting. Five, six, seven, eight. Her heart hammered in her chest. Nine. She wanted to stop, to go home. Her body was heavy, and her human abdomen was not accustomed to lifting such heavy weight.
Ten. She hissed noisily, rising back to the top of the pipe and setting the weights down on the roof once more. The world spun. She took a moment to breathe.
