xp_logs | Around 10 p.m.

Angelo makes his way back to the dorm, intending just to sit and mope over his apparent inability to talk to Paige. However, when he gets there, he finds it not empty. There is a young guy he hasn't seen before in the room, unpacking.

It was a long flight from Tokyo to New York City, but Shiro finds that he cannot sleep just now. So after speaking with Xavier, he went up to his room to start unpacking. As he's setting away his pants, he hears someone enters and looks up. "Hello," he says, his accent kept thin.

"Hey", Angelo answers, remembering that Professor Xavier announced that they'd have a new student arriving. "You'd be... Shiro?"

"Ee," Shiro responds with a slight inclination of his head. "Are you a roommate or just passing by?"

"Roommate", Angelo answers. "You met Alex yet? He's the other one."

"Not yet, no. I just arrived a little while ago. How many people live in this room?"

"Just the three of us so far. It'll probably fill up before we know it, though."

"_Sou ka_?" Shiro looks around the room, taking in its size, before returning to the task at hand. "Anoo . . . how long have you been here?" he asks, trying to make conversation. Definitely not one of his greatest skills, but he figures that if he's stuck here, he might as well try to get along.

"Just a few months. Alex's been here a bit longer than that, though, and his brother's one of the teachers", Angelo answers easily.

"Really? Hardly seems fair," Shiro responds with a slight grin. "What do you two . . . anoo, do? Powers, I mean."

"Alex has energy that comes out of his hands, and I have... well, Jamie calls it "prehensile skin". I can stretch my skin up to six feet and pick things up with it."

Shiro mouths the word 'prehensile,' unfamiliar with it, before shrugging and unrolling a poster of the singer Hitomi. "That's odd. I have never seen a mutant like that before. Most of the ones with whom I have worked do things like Alex does."

Angelo nods. "Yeah, I think that's much more common. There's a few of us here who have more... unusual powers, though, and we have a separate training class." He pauses, before asking, "So, what do *you* do?"

Grinning, Shiro taps into his powers and begins to levitate off the ground, his body surrounded by a very faint yellowish aura. "I generate heat, to use either as an offensive means or to make me fly." He takes a moment to consider where to put the poster, then, finding a spot, grabs some tacks from his nightstand and pins it up high on the wall. "I can also protect myself from heat and anoo . . . I don't remember the English word. Hooshanshoo, in Japanese."

"What's that?" Angelo asks. "Not the word -- what sort of thing do you mean?"

Shiro bites his lip as he thinks of the word. "Anoo, it's like heat, but it causes cancer and mutations. Like what the bombs that you dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki released."

"Ah!" Angelo exclaims, getting it. "You mean radiation..."

"Ee, that's the word," he says, nodding. "Radiation?" he repeats, his accent thickening as he tries to pronounce it. "Thank you."

"No problem", Angelo answers, grinning. "So... have you met anyone else yet? Other than the people who went to get you, I mean."

"No, just Mr. Summers, Mr. Worthington, Ms. Munroe, and Professor Xavier so far. They want me to speak with Ms. Blaire when I have the chance."

"You should", Angelo tells him. "She's good people, she'll do all she can to help you settle in."

"'She's good people'? Anoo, shouldn't that be 'She's a good _person_'?" Shiro asks, confused, the subtleties of the English language clearly lost on him.

Angelo laughs. "Sorry. Slang. You're right, that way is the right way. I'll try not to do that too much!"

"Americans," he scoffs quietly, turning back to his bags. "What's the food here like? I'm hungry."

"Tends to be good. If you see a girl with green hair wandering around at mealtimes, just try and stop her cooking for you." He hastily adds, "I don't mean that literally. She's a great cook."

"Green hair? Strange." He shakes his head. "Is super-cooking her power?"

"No", Angelo chuckles. "She does something with magnetism. I don't really understand it myself. Her name's Lorna, and she's dating Alex, so you'll probably see her quite a lot."

"Hmm." Shiro's eyes suddenly brigthen as he pulls a long cylindrical wrapped packge out of his bag. "Aa! Koko no desu. I couldn't remember which bag I'd put it in."

"What's that?" Angelo asks curiously.

Eagerly ripping the paper off, he reveals a long black scabbard, holding a katana. Smiling, Shiro carefully withdraws the sword, places the scabbard on his bed, and shows Angelo the blade. "It was a gift from my cousin. It's a master piece of smithery."

Angelo reaches out carefully to run a hand along the blade. "It's beautiful."

"Ki o tsukute. Be careful. It's very sharp." Shiro looks around the room. It's too small to perform any demonstrations without breaking things, so he just puts it back in the scabbard.

"So do you know how to use that thing? I've always wanted to learn, but I could never afford it..."

"Oh yes. I started learning when I was a child. I've never had an actual sword of my own until just now, though. This was a, anoo . . . a 'parting gift'?"

"Right. Well, it looks like a good one."

"It is, I assure you. My cousin knows the right 'strings to pull,' as you say. Do you know if they offer weapons classes here?"

"Not yet", Angelo answered. "Self-defense and hand-to-hand combat, but I think that's it. I've been thinking about offering to teach it when I graduate but... I dunno, would that be too late for you?"

"How can you teach it when you don't know how to yourself?" Exhaustion finally starting to catch up to him, Shiro sits down on his still unmade bed. "The only good katana teachers are ones who've studied their entire lives."

"I don't know swords, but I do know... other weapons. That's really what I meant."

"Really? Such as what?" Shiro sits up straighter, curious. A chance to learn more fighting techniques? Maybe this place won't be as bad as he'd thought.

"Street weapons. Small blades, firearms, that kind of thing. Also some less... orthodox hand-to-hand techniques."

"We should spar sometime, then. See what is better, karate and judo, or your American styles." Shiro grins, a smug look on his face.

Angelo grinned. "Sign up for hand-to-hand combat, and you're on."

"You have to do this in a class now? We can't just challenge one another to a duel? Or is that against the rules?"

"It's... not encouraged. I think we can probably do it outside of class if we tell the faculty in advance and book the gym. Can't just decide to spar and do it, that's frowned on."

Shiro refrains from making another 'dumb Americans' comment. "That's too bad. What an interesting place this would be if all day you saw people fighting on campus."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

x-foliate.livejournal.com

No angst?! What have you done with my Angelo!?

;D

PS. I love the little Angel commentary in the middle for no reason. Mwa.

From:

x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com

That was part of a short OOC conversation that somebody forgot to edit out . . . *pokes Angelo*

And Shiro wants to say that non-angsty!Angelo is not his fault at all. He just got here, he's not causing trouble yet . . .