It might as well have been a miniature city, and in some parts, it actually was as elaborate sandcastles and buildings seemed to adorn the way. His speed would be desperately slowed down if he had ran on the sand anyway, and made a detour over to the appropriate, cement walking path before starting to run towards the other end of the beach. The path there wasn't particularly easy though and there was a lot of obstacles that Houren needed to avoid; for example, there were some teenagers drinking bourbon (a strangely expensive liquor for teenagers), and clearly intoxicated, they made a game of trying to hinder Houren from his destination but the Fire Dragon Slayer was faster and more lithe, and managed to avoid them easily. Just a little bit down the road, a more rough looking group of teenagers were doing pretty much the exact same thing, but they seemed to be a different class of people. Instead of expensive liquor, they drank cans of a cheap brand and the stench of alcohol was more apparent on them. They attempted to hinder Houren in the exact same way as the posh drunkards, but went one step better as after Houren had managed to avoid and get past them, they began to throw their empty cans at him. Due to their intoxicated nature though, for the most part, they did not manage to hit him and once he had gone far enough, their cans were not even enough to reach him.
The next obstacle that stood in Houren's way were some playing children who were throwing a ball around while shouting incredibly loud. Houren called out for them to get out of the way long before he had reached them, but they did not seem to hear him due to their own voices drowning out his own. It was not in the Fire Dragon Slayer's nature to shout, but he had little choice. He generally tried to get along with children, but such a thing wouldn't be possible. He growled at them, telling them to move out of the way or risk being run over by his immense strength, and that warning was enough as the kids jumped out of the way, with one even starting to cry as he seemed to be under the false impression that Houren was some sort of silver back wolf who had wanted to eat them. He was making pretty good time if he could say so himself, and a quick glance of his watch suggested that he had plenty of time left. He even had enough time to take a short detour and help an elderly lady cross the busy streets before arriving at his destination and obtaining the shock of his life (not really). Apparently, although he had managed to make it to the sign up area in time, he had not accounted for the fact that Jay was not the only weightlifter who had decided to skip the sign ups. The line was very long, filed with sweaty bodybuilders who had cut their sessions short in order to sign up for this competition; the only difference is that they had gone themselves and Jay had hired Houren to do it. It must have been a difference in salary.
The Fairy Tail mage entered the line as quick as he possibly could have, a good move since after looking back, he could see that he was actually one of the more fortunate guys, being slap bang in the middle of the line as opposed to the guy who had just reached who seemed so disheartened that he immediately decided to leave since he knew that there was no way for him to make the deadline which was in roughly another 5 minutes. Fortunately, the sign up booths had about 10 people there who could take registry and the line moved a lot faster than Houren thought it would have been. Before long, Houren was near the front of the line. A lady walked over to Houren but did not address him, instead she spoke to the people behind him, telling them that they were too late to sign up for the competition. In other words, the line was being cut off from behind Houren. Rather than brag or even react, Houren simply stayed in his spot in the line, ignoring the pleas of others to swap, before heading to the registry, writing down Jay's particulars before heading back to the gym where Jay was surely still training, and hopefully with his reward prepared.
1009/1000