My Car Became The Church, And I The Worshipper Of Silence There.

[bitemefightme]

WHO: Orion and Avery (closed)
WHERE: Apprassage
WHEN: 6/27
WHAT: Racing the critters.
WARNINGS: What happens when you stick two grumpy assholes in a thread?


Okay, so... his parents are missing. Behind this crazy veil everyone's been talking about. Not that it bothers him too much. But it bothers him enough. So it's with a grumble that he sets out to try and do something easy enough that he actually feels willing to participate in.

So, he's trying to get his hands on a Chocobo. Which is... kind of? Easy?? Nobody around means easy access to people's farms and pets. And he's trying to get one to chill the fuck out. How is he even supposed to ride this thing? All he knows is that this is more frustrating than he anticipated.

Still, after carefully trying to lure it into a false sense of security, trying to feed it a carrot (is that what these things eat?) then opting to distract it with a bowl of bird feed. He manages to saddle it and climb onto it's back, which... the bird instantly retaliates.

Orion holds onto the reigns and saddle for dear life as the Chocobo starts trying to launch him off. And he looks pretty stressed about it. How do you stop this crazy thing???

The Chocobo hauls over the fence and starts running around town with Orion still clinging to the best of his ability. Which ends up being... pretty impressive on Orion's part. He's more than a bit worn out when the Chocobo finally soothes and takes everything at a slower pace, but he succeeded. Somehow.

Trotting around town, he looks for someone to challenge. The first person he manages to find is Avery.

"Hey, you up for a race?" It's asked a little breathlessly, but Orion still manages to ask it with some manner of a smirk on his face. He has something to be proud of, after all, with the taming of the Chocobo he now rides.

Comments

[memoryshifter]

Avery had been riding in order to get his mind off of his troubles, but when some stranger challenged him to a race, he tipped his head. Tempting. And wasn't this one of the things on the list?

"You think you can handle it?" he asks, squinting at the man. He sounded like he was out of breath, like the Chocobo had just taken it all out of him. His own posture is sure and his breath even.

He was maybe the wrong person to challenge, if Orion wanted to win.

[bitemefightme]

Orion scoffs at him.

"Hey, after that ride, I'm pretty sure I can handle anything. You on or what?"

Orion's definitely in it to win. And well, challenging someone who might clearly have a better handle on it than he does? It doesn't bother him a bit. He's always up for a good challenge. And he could use the release anyway. All this former life bullshit has had him down for months.

A harmless race should be fine without without waking Dark up, right?

"C'mon. Or are you chicken?"

[memoryshifter]

Avery levels Orion with a long look, then leans forward to stroke the neck of his Chocobo.

“…you ask, while riding a giant chicken,” he comments, unable to keep from pointing out the fact that the image was hilarious, and if he were a different man, he would have been laughing his ass off.

“Alright, lets go. But you’re going to regret this.”

[bitemefightme]

Orion grins, happy he managed to get his challenger in on this. Time for some real fun.

He takes a look around and points at the locations as he mentios them.

"Alright, so how about we run past the library, then the college, the planetarium, the museum. And we'll end at... the Cafe, I guess. Sound good?"

A race with plenty of obstacles. It'll be worth it. Even if Orion falls off his mount.

[memoryshifter]

Avery nods his head and adjusts himself in the saddle. The course seemed easy enough for him, so he took up the reins.

“Come on, then. And don’t fall off.”

And then he took off, bouncing along on his oversized chicken.

[bitemefightme]

"Yea? Keep up if you can."

And he kicks the Chocobo in the sides to get it going. Perhaps a little too hard, because it started running again at breakneck speed. And Orion lets out a yelp as he finds himself clinging to it's neck.

"Shit, shit, SHIT!" he struggles to steer it. But thankfully, it doesn't seem to be intent on crashing into anything either. He's just got to get it back on course.

[memoryshifter]

Avery doesn't start off very quickly at all, just letting his chocobo friend get up to speed on their own terms and trotting right past the place where Orion diverged from the path. And further. Then picking up speed and pulling ahead just a bit. He's not going to try to outrun an angry chocobo, because that angry chocobo was going to run out of energy soon anyway.

[bitemefightme]

Orion has to struggle just to keep himself upright on the saddle, let alone going on the charted course. And then he watches Avery pass him.

Shit. This just got harder didn't it?

Orion tries to hold onto the Chocobo with his legs, and fights to keep himself upright as he takes the reigns. This is terrifying, knowing he can fall at any second.

But he lets out a yell, and flicks the reigns, and the Chocobo shoots forward, still at the too-fast speed, but Orion's at least able to control it a little better, and after Avery.

[memoryshifter]

Avery smirks as Orion catches up to him, then spurs his chocobo to a slightly faster speed. The man looked extremely relaxed on the back of his giant chicken, too, and about as poised and regal as he could look while bouncing around up there. Hah beat that.

Though he didn't have anything to lose by losing this race, Avery wasn't going to go down easy. He just wasn't going to wear his chocobo out early in the race, especially when his competitor was doing just that.