Parkour About Neopia: Taking the Art to the Streets

     Tiny the Tonu, Shenkuu

     So, you know Shenkuu, that place with all the skinny mountains and the hanging bridges and the sheer cliffs and everything. It’s the best place for parkour, I mean it, the best. I like to start up on the highest craggy mountain top I can get to, jump to the trees below, and head off through the branches until I get to a stream. The water, it just goes straight down, have you seen it? Crazy. From the side of the mountain, I can usually get a good horizontal kick going and jump straight out to the mountain next door. You should really see it.

     A goal? No, I don’t really have a goal when I’m going, I just go. Try not to fall. Ha. But if I did fall, I’d be okay, because I’m, you know, a Tonu.

     Mr. Big the Meerca, Moltara

     Yeah, the trick with Moltara, and being a Meerca and all, you’ve gotta be super quick. I mean, so, so fast. You’ve gotta be like a lightning bolt, just zoom, zing, up, down, around the fire, above the fire. You’ve gotta anticipate where the flames are gonna pop up before they even do. Yeah. It’s a tricky job, but someone’s gotta do it. I mean, I think I’m really providing a service to the pets of Neopia, I’m showing them that you can do anything, you can play with fire, but you gotta treat every moment as sacred because, yeah, at any moment you could just be engulfed by flames. That’s really my artist’s statement. Yeah, I’d say that’s my big contribution.

     Well, I mean, it’s all rock down there, so you’ve got kinda limited options as far as the parkour goes. I like to get going in a big circle, just up the stairs, over that big mound of rock, across the fire pit, down the stairs, through the cavern. Do it again. It’s an endurance sport, you know, endurance and agility.

     Sally the Lenny, Meridell

     Well, I’m so glad you’ve asked for my perspective. Yes, I’m really breaking the artistic boundaries here, I’m really pushing the envelope in terms of what’s possible in the world of parkour. And I feel, frankly, like my practice gets overlooked sometimes in comparison with the dangerous tricks of some of my competitors, *cough*, colleagues. Truly, it’s just a little irresponsible to be promoting such foolish actions. Well, yes, I suppose it is art, at any rate, it’s their artistic expression.

     Anyway, yes, please, let me tell you about what I’ve been uncovering here in Meridell. Truly, it’s a revelation. You see, I am a bird, a Lenny, and yes, Lennies can fly. It is a huge misconception that we are landbound, and I don’t know who is responsible for propagating such a vicious, misleading rumour. Anyway, as a flying Neopet, I have pioneered parkour in the sky, bouncing off of the currents of air pushed about by the wind. It does bear a passing resemblance to gliding, yes, that rather coarse action of your common bird. But, you see, Meridell is simply the perfect place to practice my new pioneered practice of parkour in the sky, because the country is so flat and green, and the buildings aside from the castle so short and stout, that you can easily see the wind’s dance in my path through the sky. It’s rather marvellous if I do say so myself. I must just be careful not to bump into Darigan Citadel, floating off in the distance as it does. Sometimes it seems to be much nearer when I finish my exhibition than it was at the start.

     Parkougra the Kougra, Haunted Woods

     Oh, yeah, I did rename myself, thanks for asking. Do you like it? Some people think it’s too clever by half, some people don’t understand ‘cause they never heard of parkour, so, you know, it’s kind of a wash. What do you think? Oh, yeah, thanks for asking about my play in the Haunted Woods, it’s pretty great. The thing about the Woods is, it’s dark there all the time, I mean all the time. It’s just never day somehow, did you know that about the Woods? I never knew it before. But yeah, it’s always dark, but these spooky lights are shining all over the place, shining out of pumpkins, shining out of spooky buildings that look like they’re about to fall over, even shining out of this weird pit in the ground that’s always asking me for food. So the trick about the parkour here, it’s that you gotta take advantage of the light situation, you know, you gotta flit in and out of the light so you take people by surprise, it’s a real show like that. I do get kinda confused sometimes, like, where’d I come from? Where am I going? What if all the lights went out and they tried to trap me here, you know, ha ha… But I’m a Kougra, I was made for this, so I’d just bound right outta there if they tried to set a spell on me or anything.

     Popsicle the Kiko, Maraqua

     *glub* *glub* I’m beset by two challenges here, under the vast oceans… *glub* One, the water disturbs my path and slows the momentum of my movement… *glub* I really only drift, as it were, through the dimly sunlit waters of the city… *glub* Second, I have no legs *glub* and no one informed me that legs were such an important prerequisite for this practice… *glub* Though it is difficult, I persist in my attempt to master this delicate art… *glub*

     There you have it, dear readers. Whether you find yourself in underwater environs, a rural idyll, a fiery pit of despair, or a far-flung land of steep drops, might you, too, try your hand at the difficult yet rewarding artistic expression known as parkour?