[04] Pac-Man!

[Ashe]

"Looks like we're going to be seeing each other on the other side," Ander had noted as he looked down at his own PAGER unit as shimmering blue portals opened around them. Playing the role of the gentleman, she found her hand quickly enclosed within his and lead from Trafford's side, her world quickly engulfed in the unsettling feeling that she found sometimes accompanied having her entire being reassert herself.

Her vision finally cleared up as her eyes adjusted to the darkened room they found themselves in. "What do you suppose is the goal in this one?" she asked her companion, looking around at what appeared to be a series of deep blue walls.

Ander held the white device up sideways and scrolled through the information. "Seems that we are in an event called..." he trailed off as he read over it. "2 Pac - Hey!"

She looked up to see him shaking the unit wildly. "What... are you doing?"

He grumbled and attached it back to his hip. "Nothing," he covered while trying to figure out why his unit had turned off suddenly. He feigned a yawn and stretched a sore muscle in his arm. "All it said was 2 Pac, whatever that means."

"What do you mean?"

"I have no idea," he retorted with a shrug. "That's all it said," he insisted once more.

"Huh," she resigned, thinking through the possibilities. "Um... Well, do you know if we are supposed to be working against each other or together?"

The darker haired man grinned. "Could be a battle of the sexes," he pointed out while avoiding the question.

Rolling her eyes, she held a finger up to tap at her lower lip in thought. "Well, the name of the event is some rapper's name," she turned over. "So I guess we are supposed to... rap?"

"Wrap what? There's nothing here," he mentioned, gesturing around them.

She pointed her finger at him. "No, I mean rap. As in the music." Realizing that he wasn't quite getting the point, she let out a disheartened sigh. "Ok, sometimes rappers have these things called battles, right? What happens is they create songs that are glorified rhyming poems and pretend they have some kind of creativity doing it. Occasionally they throw in some kind of catchphrase or chant to get people to walk around repeating it for marketing reasons, but mostly they just use a bunch of insults and dirty language."

"Ok," Ander slowly followed cautiously. "So we are supposed to make rhyming songs? That's it?"

She wrinkled her brow while answering, uncertain of herself. "I suppose. There's a few rules to it though, usually. You can't have a popular rap song without a couple of specific mentions - namely claiming that you get laid a lot, you love the clubs, you have lots of money and love to waste it, and finally, either drug use or how much you love the newest pop culture alcohol, which tends to be something that you take shots of or that goes in a mixed drink. If you mention wine or beer, you're doing it wrong. Only country singers think mentioning beer in every song is a requirement."

"You must follow music pretty strongly," Ander quipped.

She laughed a bit at the assertion. "Yeah, well, it's the universal language," she admitted, her cheeks turning slightly red.

"So..." he continued in thought. "What are the required mentions in songs for music that you do like to listen to?"

Feeling a bit put on the spot suddenly, she felt the air grow slightly warmer. "Nothing, actually. Stuff I listen to tends to be extremely creative and innovative. I like music that is a breakout and new, not that mainstream crap that gets assembly lined out onto the radios every week," she further explained, trying to make a point.

"Relax, I'm not here to attack your music taste," he conceded, holding up his arms in a gesture of surrender, despite her clear bias. "So we make up rhyming songs?"

"Yeah, and they have to be about each other. Imagine some banging drum beat in the background like... this..." she said, clapping her hands together in rhythm so that he could know what to follow. "Let's use that as our base line. Now the point is to sorta insult the other one, but in a funny way. You have to act like you have an entire crowd standing around you cheering because you just told me how fat my momma was or something."

"Alright," Ander spoke up, putting an effort into sounding more confident than he felt. "I'll go first then... You ready?" he asked, taking position and clapping his hands quickly to get the beat into his head.

"O-k, al-right," he began, each syllable falling with the slap of a hand. "Looks like - we fight, I think - that's right. We fight - all night," he trailed off as she burst into laughter, holding up a hand to stop him while shaking her head wildly. "What?" he demanded.

"No, no, that's... terrible," she admitted with a bite to her lip. "I'm sorry," she apologized, her smile growing. "I know it's your first time-"

"That's never hindered my performance before," he insisted, but she continued.

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm the first to be honest about your performance," she laughed. "You are too stiff. You need to loosen up a bit," she instructed, trying to overcome his protests that he wasn't stiff. "Act like you are just the absolute man. Like you are on top of the world. Imagine that you don't have to work a day in your life and people just need to recognize how awesome you are. Imagine that everything you say is just the most hilarious thing in the world. Like you could interrupt even the biggest events without caring how rude anyone might think you are, because you are a voice of a generation and they just can't compare."

"You want me to insult you... with a rhyme?"

"Yeah, bring it," she challenged, getting into this. "Remember to loosen up, like an actual song poem, not whatever that was you were doing just now."

He sighed a deep breath and began, hearing the beat once more in his head. "You've got a big butt, and I cannot lie. But you've got such pretty eyes. You can run your mouth while we're heading south-" he continued, slowly getting the hang of it, but he found himself interrupted again.

"Alright, my turn!" she spoke up excitedly.

"I didn't finish!" he relented.

"Psh," she exhaled, pushing her hand at his face to get him to move back for space reasons. "Let me show you how it's done..." She'd been going over it in her head until she finally came up with something she found entertaining. "Ander probably has one tiny cock, motherfucker, I'll be fucking your shit up and down the block, those other bitches probably see you jerk it in a sock, cause bitch I'm tellin' you that I'll cap you with my Glock! You took up stealing cause you're not that appealing, you couldn't get ass unless you thieved it, believe it, probably convicted of treason, you can't get laid but don't see the reason."

In the middle of the room, she was standing there, throwing her arms around like she'd lost her damn mind. Somehow, in the spirit of competition, she'd given in to the raw energy flowing through her and had unleashed the beast, something that she would have to remember the next time it came down to attempting to use her Ki without putting too much effort into it.

"I bet you get touched less than Tickle-Me-Elmo, you try to get bitches, all you get is their elbow, you can't touch my rhymes cause they're solid like Jello. Hello? I know you want some but I'm tellin' you "Hell no," so let's go, show me what you've got, whip out all two inches of that baby cock!" she finished, finally opening her eyes again to look at her opponent.

He was sitting down.

He was actually sitting down. Her eyes lowered to see him in almost a backwards crawl, as if he'd been shocked so speechless that even movement had become an alien thought to him. His mouth moved but the words just didn't come out.

That was about the time that realization crept over her. "Oh crap," she stammered, the apology forming on her lips.