Shiro & Noriko, backdated to last Thursday

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

To kill some time, Shiro visits Noriko in the infirmary. She is still all juiced up, so he shows her to the Danger Room.


Shiro wondered if there was a Jewish delegation he could send a thank-you note to for extending his weekend to four days this week. Maybe he could get Kitty's e-mail address from Doug. With an extra two days off, Shiro had quickly caught up on all his work and even got a little bit ahead. But with Paige back he didn't want to steal her spotlight by completing a year's worth of work ten months ahead of time, so he needed something else to do this weekend.

Balancing half a dozen boxes of different flavored Pocky in one arm, Shiro raised his free hand to knock on the door frame to Noriko's room in the infirmary as the door automatically slid open. "~Hello, Kikuchi-san. May I come in?~"

This time, at least, Noriko wasn't doing karaoke. Of course, Shiro would probably have understood better than Crystal. But, really, dancing to her mp3 player was possibly even more embarrassing, although Nori didn't seem to care about having been caught as she turned towards the door. In truth, it was the fastest way to burn off extra energy without leaving the room. "~Oh, Yoshida-san.~" Pulling the earplugs out, Shiro could hear the fast, peppy J-pop, turned up far too loud, of course. "~Come in, come in. What's up?~" Matching the music, her words were accelerated and clipped, practically tumbling over themselves in the effort to make it out of her mouth.

Shiro raised an eyebrow as he stepped inside and held up the snacks. This was a pleasant change from the sullen girl he'd met just a couple days prior. If that was Puffy coming from the earplugs, though, then he might have to kill her. "~I thought you might like a snack. I run a Pocky racket from my room. But from the looks of it, you might want to refrain from sugar.~"

If someone had discovered Puffy Amiyumi on her mp3 player, Noriko would have killed herself. Or possibly just hunted down whoever had done it and killed them. "~Ah, are you the source that Amanda-san found? Pocky'd be fabulous, although plain Pretz would be better. Sugar's not a major source of energy but, yeah, adding more's not really a good idea at this point.~" Even when she switched the mp3 player off, she bouncing more or less in place.

Eyebrow still raised, Shiro cocked his head to the side, obviously confused by and curious of this girl. "~Anou, are you okay? You seem a bit . . . frazzled.~" He put down the boxes (behind him and out of Noriko's reach) and lifted his head again. There was a familiar burning odor in the air, one he'd gotten used to after coming into his mutation nine years ago.

Turning her back on him, Nori moved to plug the mp3 player into the charger - she'd been using it less than an hour and it was already almost dead. "~Oh, yeah, I'm fabulous...~" If sarcasm could kill, Shiro would have been in trouble. Turning back she caught sight of her hand shaking and quickly raked her fingers through her hair to cover it. Which had the rather unfortunate side effect of staticing her short hair up in every direction for a few moments before the charge resettled.

"~It was mostly a rhetorical question.~" The sudden new hairdo had him raising his eyebrows again, and he reflexively put a hand to his head to make sure this his hair hadn't also decided to defy gravity. "~It's your powers.~" It was a statement, not a question. "~You manipulate energy, like I do, and you have too much stored up and need to burn it off. Haven't you been offered that option yet?~" He shuddered to think what a mini electrical storm would do down here.

Noriko hadn't been an open and cheerful sort of person to begin with, but suddenly her face and body language just closed down - whatever she was thinking she didn't seem inclined to share. "~I'm fine,~" she said shortly, the language unquestionably rude. "~Haven't been offered and I don't need. Everything would be fine if they'd just give me something to kill the buzz.~"

It hardly phased Shiro. He didn't so much as blink, and his language remained as neutral as it had before. "~The best way to kill the buzz is to expel the energy. It's certainly safer for you, and for everyone around you if you don't do it wantonly.~"

"~Oh really? I'd never have thought of that...~" And she was back to using sarcasm as a defense. "~Trust me, it's just better for everybody if I don't do it at all.~"

"~Don't be stupid,~" Shiro spat back, a bit harsher than he'd intended. "~You can hate being here and everyone who lives here as much as you want. I understand that and sympathize. But the least you can do for yourself at this stage is to let go. This school has a room specifically designed to deal with such potential danger.~" He didn't think that lines around honor and duty who affect her at all like they would him, but Noriko was an independent, feisty girl. "~You're not scared, are you?~" he asked, his tone still neutral but hinting at a challenge.

Really, Nori dealt with harshness rather better than the alternatives. "~No, I'm not, and I'm also not some stupid little kid to rise to such obvious bait. What the hell do you mean by 'a room specifically designed to deal with such potential danger'?~" Because, much as she hated to admit it, that sounded promising. But after what happened the first time, Noriko wasn't taking any chances.

"~This school has housed dozens of energy manipulators,~" Shiro explained. "~Do you really think that a mutant school that houses an infirmary and medical laboratory like this wouldn't have the proper training areas for mutants like us?~"

"~Didn't think about it,~" she said with a shrug.

"~Well, you should, because you're here now and the only way to get out quickly is to learn.~" That seemed like a good incentive.


Pointing out that it was not, actually, the only way to get out quickly didn't seem wise, especially if she ever wanted to exercise one of the other, less legitimate exits available to her. Instead she nodded. "~Yeah, ok. So, where is this safe place?~"

~*~

No matter how quietly one tries to walk, each footstep is like a gunshot in the empty Danger Room, the sound bouncing off the metal walls like the a ping pong ball. Shiro had put on a pair of rubber-soled shoes after Jean had given him permission to take Noriko, trusting the room's defenses against potential electrocution but not so much Noriko herself. Just in case. As the door slid shut behind them, he quickly made his way to the control console and pulled up the room's standard energy projection test protocols. The extent of his programming was the Nintendanger Room, which had been a combined effort on Doug's, Marie-Ange's, and his parts. He trusted whatever Scott had already pre-loaded into the system over his own designs.

"~It's fairly simple,~" he called to her, eyes glued to the monitor. "~Just give your best Sailor Jupiter impression.~"

The look she gave him indicated just how lame she thought the Sailor Moon reference was. But, of course, it also gave away that she'd understood the reference to the ancient show, which rather cut into the withering effect. "~I really don't know what I'm doing here...~" she muttered under her breath.

A dozen panels around the room shifted aside, and meter-long metal rods projected out. Shiro pressed one more button, and the tips of the lightning rods illuminated, signaling that the room was ready for Noriko's worst. "~Let out as much or as little as you want,~" he said to her from the doorway to the control room. He wasn't sure if he should stay in the Danger Room for moral support, or back the hell away to avoid getting crispy-fried, so he chose to stay in the middle. Hopefully the lightning rods would do their trick.

Noriko hadn't been understating the case when she said she didn't know what she was doing. She'd only zapped once and it had been out of her control. And the last thing she wanted to do was to lose control the same way, or feel the same things. Moving closer to the walls, she peered at the lightning rods. "~How's it work?~"

Shiro blinked. "Oh." She hadn't even been trained to do something so basic yet. That explained a lot. "~All energy projectors do it differently,~" he explained, "~But ultimately it's all mental. Most people just visualize releasing the energy. I used to imagine flamethrowers and hold my hands out.~" Assuming she had to use her hands. He didn't want to make her reliant on that at such an early stage if it wasn't necessary.

She'd meant the room, but it had been more just making conversation and stalling and his answer was far more useful than the other would have been. '~A flamethrower, huh?~" she muttered, eying her hands. Sighing, she knew she wasn't going to be able to avoid this and, closing her eyes, she cast her mind back to that night, trying to focus only on the physical feeling of her powers and not everything else. The buzz had been intense, much worse than it was today, which was part of why she'd lost control. And, instead of just concentrating in her head like usual, it had moved, sort of. There hadn't been a lot of time to think about it, but now as she focused she could feel a sort of... tingling in her palms. She wondered if she could push the buzz out of her head and down her arms.

Noriko was hesitant and uncertain, which is why when it did come suddenly the blast wasn't nearly as strong as it could have been. But that didn't diminish her reaction, eyes wide as the bolt of electric charge leaped from her hands to arc towards the rod.

Shiro should have expected the loud crack of thunder that accompanied the electric discharge. Then he wouldn't have jumped like a child startled by a Van de Graaff generator. He hissed a curse at himself; hadn't he trained with Storm long enough to anticipate such things? "~Like that,~" he said, forcing himself to recover. "~Do you want to try again?~"

Given she'd had more warning than he and had started anyways, too, smirking at him would have been silly. Noriko did her best to squash the amused little smile and focused on her hands, rubbing at her palms. They didn't even hurt, even with all that energy... '~Yeeees, I guess,~" she said, still eying her hands.

He waved his hand in the general direction of the lightning rods. "~Then by all means.~" He steeled himself, ready for an even louder burst this time.

The buzz in her brain wasn't as intense, which meant it was easier to think, which was good, but it also meant it was harder for her to focus down on it, to find it and pull it out towards her hands. A few seconds passed in which it looked like perhaps she wasn't going to manage another bolt, or would decide against it when, suddenly, the power shot out again, directly into the rod.

"~Cool.~" Shiro didn't so much as flinch this time. "~How do you feel?~" he asked, taking a few steps forward, but not too close in case she went off accidentally. Plus, he didn't want his long hair to static up into a 'fro.

Noriko held her hands out in front of her, staring at them as they were perfectly still. "~I'm...~" She took a deep breath, and then another, her mind almost completely without a buzz. "~I'm good. Thank you.~"

"~This teaching thing isn't so hard. I don't know what Marie's complaining about.~" Shiro grinned at Noriko and slightly inclined his head. "~The Danger Room is not accessible to everyone, so you will need to ask for permission first. And most of your powers training will take place here, too, since it's the safest place for an energy projector.~"

She frowned slightly, but nodded. "~I guess I can live with that,~" she said slowly. She certainly wasn't ready to do any sort of practice or training in a room that wasn't this well equipped.

"~So, ready for that Pocky now?~"

Noriko snorted lightly, but smiled. "~Yeah, ok. Let's go.~"