Arata was making his way down town, walking fast. Faces passed, but he wasn't homebound, unfortunately. Rather, he was heading to the C2 building like every other good, law-abiding foreigner. As he walked, he looked down to his phone every few seconds. It was an older model, but it was still made of Photon Glass and had compatibility with the same sorts of apps and software that the newer models had. Admittedly, Arata never got to make much use of all those functions. Mostly he just used it for the mobile games and to surf the Internet than any sort of actual 'phone stuff' like texting his (lack of) many friends or going on social media. Either way, he wasn't doing any of the aforementioned four. He was just adjusting his timezone, pulling up a translator just in case, maybe finding up a map or t-

[i]BZZZT! BZZZT![/i]

"FWAH!" Arata yelped, fumbling with his attempts at catching his phone. The sudden vibrations loosened his already lax grip on the device, causing it to tumble down and down. Just barely he'd managed to save the device from it's imminent doom. Dammit, he didn't have enough money left over to be careless about this kind of thing!

Lying flat on the ground while holding his phone like a weirdo, Arata answered the spontaneous call to reveal the holographic image of Dr. Richard Queen. The esteemed doctor gave a succinct order to Arata and the two others in the call to make their way to the C2 building ASAP.

"Uwah..." Arata groaned, not even having had the chance to get an explanation or anything. He picked himself up off the ground for the second time today, dusting off his dark hoodie and jeans. How did Dr. Queen figure he was in China anyway? Arata put his phone away when the answer struck him. Of course, the phone had location tracing. Another dumb mistake. He shouldn't have brought it along. The young man looked at the C2 building. Evidently the presence of the ninth was required for some kind of presentation in front of... thousands... of... people...

...Yeah. He [i]really[/i] didn't want to go.

Stage fright was a cruel mistress, wasn't she?

Either way, the Doctor would probably find a way to get him there anyway, so there wasn't much use for fighting the inevitable. He gauged the distance from the ground to the top of the C2 building, and then the building from his current point. Arata curled his fingers into a fist, bracing himself. He took a deep breathe, and exhaled before taking a single step. 

Arata fell.

His limbs flailed as he plummeted to the ground. He gritted his teeth, as he watched the ground below get ever closer and closer. His eyes watered as the air resistance buffeted his face. He cracked a little bit of a grin as his falling speed decreased severely. No, it wasn't that he was slowing his fall, more like he was falling up rather than down. Another instant later, Arata landed on the ground in a crouched position, one hand out in front to keep his balance and the other behind his back. He figured he looked kind of cool like that, maybe. A few people looked at the filthy-looking drifter crouched on the ground oddly as they entered the C2 building. Arata's faced reddened at this development, so he pulled up his hood and stood himself up before entering the building to go find this 'Quadrillion Stage'.