Noriko and Shiro

[x-kaminari.livejournal.com]

At Jean's request, Shiro comes to visit the new student. She's not openly hostile, but that's not saying much...



She couldn't hold still. She hadn't even been here that long, but already she couldn't sit still. Things weren't as bad as they'd been in Tokyo for a while, but Noriko could feel the buildup starting, could feel the energy rushing around, imagine it twitching down her arms and back up, crawling along under her skin down her legs, and sooner or later it would be bursting out the ends and who knew what would happen then, who would be there. She didn't even want that dreadful doctor to be there when it happened. Nobody could be there, it wouldn't be safe.

Noriko lay flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, wanting to be anywhere but here.

Shiro normally did his best to avoid the infirmary. He wasn't one of the hordes of nurse-wannabes, and he didn't particularly care for the blindingly white sterility of the state-of-the-art mini-hospital. But he'd been specifically asked to come down and introduce himself to the school's newest student, an electrokinetic from Tokyo. The latter bit had piqued his interest, and if nothing else then he considered it his duty to welcome her to New York.

The door to her room automatically slid open as he approached it, but he didn't step inside just yet. "~Excuse me, are you Kikuchi Noriko?~" he asked, his Japanese neither formal nor casual.

Nori started as the door opened then sat up and stared as the young man spoke. She hadn't realized there were any other students from Japan here. "~Yes,~" she said after a second of not entirely processing. "~Who're you?~" Noriko might not be going out of her way to be rude to him, but given the company she'd been keeping over the last few months, her default language was informal at best.

Which was what Shiro wanted to hear; he'd let her set the tone to her comfort level rather than force it on her. He'd learned a few things about civility from Mariko. "~My name is Yoshida Shiro,~" he replied, his language suddenly more abrupt. "~I was a student here, and Dr. Grey asked me to talk to you. May I come in?~"

"~Dr. Grey is an evil, red-haired, screetching she-devil,~" Nori informed him, then shrugged. "~But I guess you can come in. I'm afraid I don't have any spare slippers, though.~" There was, indeed, one pair of slippers that she'd had to go to great lengths in mime to get them to give her, sitting neatly arranged next to the bed. "~Not that anyone in this stupid place seems to care about such things.~"

Shiro smiled and through sheer force of will did not laugh. He tended to walk around the mansion in either sandals or socks, and had chosen the latter for this visit, and padded silently into the room. The door hushed closed behind him. "~It's nothing,~" he said, shrugging off her comment. "~Everyone here acts like this is where they came from, so all the Americans are lazy and don't clean up after themselves. You learn to live with it and survive by insulting them under your breath as they walk by.~"

"~Hnh. Why bother to do it quietly. I don't care if they know I think they're disgusting slobs.~"

That earned a laugh. "~For propriety's sake, if nothing else,~" he replied. "~They'll start complaining if you complain, and then you complain again in response, then it just degenerates into outright name-calling and people who think they know everything threatening to throw you into the lake. It's usually not worth the hassle, ne?~"

"~Again, can't say I care, although anybody who thinks they're throwing me into a lake is in for a surprise.~" Noriko shrugged again. "~So, they sent you here to... what? Welcome me to hell?~"

"~More or less. The common welcome message is 'Welcome to the madhouse,' but far be it from me to steal that pleasure from others.~" Shiro echoed her shrug. "~I could answer questions for you if you have any. I'm not a student here anymore so I supposed I could give you less, anou, flowered-up commentary.~"

The first question that sprang to mind - how do I get out of here? - Nori dismissed. If the evil bitch Doctor had suggested him for her orrientation, it probably didn't matter how 'un-flowered-up' he made his commentary. He'd still probably be relatively gung-ho about the whole thing in general. Instead she asked, "~So, wha's school like in America? Like the movies?~"

Shiro snorted. "~What are American schools like, or what is this school like? There's a difference. This school is populated by hormone-addled mutant teenagers, which adds a whole other level of drama and ridiculousness on top of that already perpetuated by hormone-addled human teenagers. Xavier's is an odd mix of Shiroiwa Junior High and the school from American Pie. More often than not with the pie.~"

"~Everyone here is a mutant?~" Noriko asked, sounding startled. It was possible her father had told her something to the effect, althoug she really hadn't been listening...

Shiro had to wonder under what circumstances had led this girl here. "~Almost. My younger sister is a student here and if she is a mutant then she hasn't yet manifested. If you are lucky then you haven't met Dayspring yet. His wife used to be one of the doctors here, but she isn't a mutant, either.~"

He might wonder, but she really wasn't in a sharing mood. "~No, I haven't met almost anyone. Is he a teacher?~"

"~I . . . don't know, actually. He was, but he's accumulated a number of responsibilities and I don't know if he still does or not. But he's so big that you will inevitably meet either him or his daughter, who is a mutant baby.~" He stopped to let that sink in. If she hadn't had much previous exposure to mutants, then she'd need that moment.

Noriko hadn't and she did, blinking at him for a moment before her eyes widened. "~Wow, really? What's her power? For that matter, what's yours, hey?~"

"~She can move things with her mind and also contact people with her mind. Theoretically, at least, because I don't know if she can even talk yet. In English, that's called~ telekinesis ~and~ telepathy. ~I, on the other hand~" - Shiro raised his right hand, palm up, and with a brief focus of will conjured a tennis ball-sized fireball - "~Make fire. This is a relatively new trick, and I wasn't very good at it when I first learned it.~"

Nori looked at least moderately impressed, but given how guarded her body language was, it would be hard to see how deeply she felt that. "~Not bad, not bad.~"

He took what he could get. Shiro closed his hand, and the fireball extinguished. "~I fly, too, and can see light that most people can't. And you? What is your talent?~" he hazarded to ask. He couldn't tell if she were one of those mutants who is ashamed of their mutation, or a proud one, or one who just didn't care. But he'd learned that this simple question could answer a lot about a person, even if they were so closed like Noriko.

Noriko hesitated a moment, then mentally shrugged to herself. "~I don't really know. I zap people, and it makes me crazy. Lots of fun.~" She could have illustrated the last point by holding up her twitching hand, but if Shiro hadn't noticed the spasms, she wasn't going to pull attention to them.

"~I see.~" Shiro left it at that, not seeing any reason to pry further. "~All headaches aside, there is at least reason to be confident that you'll be taught how to best use your powers by people who know what they're talking about. If that serves as any comfort,~" he added with a shrug.

She didn't much want to learn how to use it, just to stop it, and she'd been doing just fine with that on her own, far as she was concerned. Now they weren't even letting her do that, and the shakes were back, and the buzz in her mind, and sooner or later things would go badly. "~Not much, no,~" she told Shiro bluntly. "~I don't want to be here.~"

"~Few people do, at the beginning.~" Shiro himself was a telling example of that. "~But in many ways, that is a secondary concern. This school exists first and foremost as one of the only places in the world where you can learn how not to kill yourself. After that, then you're free to do as you will, ne?~"

Nori thought she was rather good at that, although clearly some people disagreed. Regardless, she nodded tightly at Shiro and said, "Yeah."

Shiro took that as an invitation to end the conversation. "~I suppose I'll leave you to rest and get used to the time zone difference. If you have any questions, then feel free to look for me.~" He said that non-commitally; he figured that she probably did not care one way or another, anyway. "~And when you inevitably get ill from the garbage that passes for American cuisine, then I could direct you to a sushi bar not far from here. A good one, at that.~"

Rest, or at least sleep, was unlikely to happen, but she wouldn't mind the peace. Noriko wondered how long he'd been out of Japan that he'd think it was even possible for foreigners to make good sushi. But Sharing Time was decidedly over as far as she was concerned - Shiro seemed like not a bad sort. Which put him firmly on the 'dull as toast' side of things. "~Bye, then, Yoshida-san. Thanks for the offer. We'll see...~"