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[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

Wednesday morning'ish, Shiro helps Haroun with Blackbird repairs. They are snarky, Shiro is much more mature than one would assume, and Haroun is almost impressed.



"Shiro, could you grab that plate and bring it over to Scott? Take the one off the top of that stack." asked Haroun, waist-deep in the Blackbird. "I'm a little busy trying to get this landing strut unjammed. Remind me to have Hank install some extra muscle in my frame sometime. This is irritating."

Shiro did as ordered, wordlessly picking up said plate and giving it to Scott over at the other end of the jet. Engineering was not his thing, but he did whatever he could manage. He fucked things up, he had to fix them. Although the fixing would go much faster if he could still fly.

"When you're done, bring me the orange toolbox off the diagnostics bench." he yelled in Shiro's general direction. "And if it's not too much trouble, a bottle of water? Cooler's next to the elevator."

"Hai, senchou," he muttered sarcastically, retrieving both the tool box and a cool bottle of water. Fixing would also go faster if he wasn't being treated like a lapdog and was actually allowed to do something. "What else?"

Haroun reached out for the bottle. "Grab me the #4 wrench from the orange toolkit." he said. "And if you had your power, you could be doing what Scott's doing and spot-welding the new belly plating on. Since you don't, you get to be gofer."

Shiro dug through the toolbox for the wrench Haroun required and handed it to him. "Aren't I lucky? I have always wanted to be a small furry mammal who lives underground."

"It beats being Fat Boy." Haroun said unkindly, setting the water bottle (now a quarter-empty) down to take the wrench from Shiro. A few moments later, and the sound of a very loud curse in Arabic came from the access panel Haroun was standing in. "I think we're gonna need to rip this out and replace it. I can't get it unjammed, and there's no place to work down here with a plasma torch." He crawled out of the panel, and looked at Shiro. "Sure could use a small, portable plasma cutter right now."

"No, that is Dukes' role." Shiro smiled at Haroun overly sweetly, his white teeth appearing unnaturally bright against his black skin. "What a shame. I wish I could help."

"Yeah, you know, so do we. Step-and-fetch-it is nice, but we could use Sunfire right about now." Haroun said. "I know you're fresh out of Medical and that we're not supposed to be working you hard. I know you're all ripped up about what happened with your family. Believe it or not, I sympathize with you. But if you're gonna keep giving me lip..." Haroun let his voice trail off menacingly.

Shiro stood defiantly, hardly afraid. "Sunfire has left for the time being. So you are here stuck with me. I am more than happy to assist you repair the damage the I am responsible for, but if you are going to continue giving me lip, then you can go find yourself another helper."

"Is that a little fire I hear in your voice, Yoshida-san?" Haroun smirked. "And let's go take a look at how the plate replacements are coming along. And have you thought about how you're going to repair the damage done to Paul? or to Nathan? I'll give you me as a freebie, because I'm in a generous mood and you brought me water."

"If I were in the condition you'd prefer, there would be more fire than just from my voice," Shiro replied, unamused. "Mr. Dayspring and Mr. Beaubier . . . I don't know." He looked away, the feeling of defeat he'd been trying to fight back since Friday creeping back. "I don't think there is anything that I can do. Unless you have another brilliant idea."

"I think it would go far if you would accept who and what you are, but that's just me. You'll have to make that decision for yourself." Haroun said. At least the boy's spirit hadn't been crushed completely - that was comforting news indeed. "Have you talked to either of them yet?"

"That was the point, you know," Shiro said, going back to the cooler to get another bottle of water upon seeing that Haroun was nearly done with his. "Trying to become my own person, not property. I am Yoshida Shiro, not Sunfire. And I refuse to let Sunfire rule me." The fire in his voice died down again when he thought about Nathan and Paul. "I have spoken with Mr. Dayspring and written to Mr. Beaubier, but I have not yet approached him. I do plan on it. And soon."

"Funny, I don't see how he was. I've read your file." said Haroun, tossing the empty water bottle unerringly into a trash can before accepting a fresh one from Shiro. "I don't normally associate your name with third-grade hysterics. We've got the psychologist on staff who specializes in just the sorts of things you were going through. We've got Charles, who has the patience of a saint and the drive to see you do well in whatever you choose to be your life. But hey, you want to ignore the resources available to you and self-immolate, I suppose that's fine too."

"Why am I wasting my time trying to explain my actions to you?" Shiro demanded. "I did something incredibly idiotic, I realize that. You are not the first person to point that out, believe it or not. But here I am, ready and willing to at least try to pay for my mistake. So how about you stop it with the holier-than-thou attitude and fix this fucking jet?"

"Well, probably because I'm older, wiser, an X-Man, and it's my jet." said Haroun with a grin. "And it speaks well for you that you're down here playing step-and-fetch-it for us while we put the plane back together. Be nice if we didn't have to, but that's done with now. That was an impressive burst of power, by the by."

Any spark of fire still burning in Shiro went out by this point. He felt exhausted again, and was ready for another long nap. "I am, or was, samurai. I understand the meaning of 'duty' better than most people." He smiled wryly at Haroun's other comment and rolled his eyes, unsure whether or not to be flatterred. "Thank you. I think. I am actually sort of surprised that it nearly worked. I am told that my powers will not return for quite a while." He didn't sound very happy about that, though.

"You talked to Moira about that? She's the specialist, she can probably help the whole process along - if you want it to, that is." he said. "And I know you fancied yourself samurai. And what about your duty to the school and to yourself to develop your ability and your mind into an educated man? Guess those duties don't matter too much to you."

"What will come, will come," Shiro conceded. "My duty to my remaining family, to keep my sister safe, overrides all other duties. If you have any family, you should understand that. I went about it wrong, but that's what I was trying to do."

"I've got quite a bit of family. Some of them almost died rescuing you." Haroun said. "I don't hear much about your duty to yourself in there. It's always about other people - your sister, your family. What about you? What do you want?"

Shiro winced internally. He wasn't at the point where he viewed the school as a whole as family, but for those select few whom he did respect and admire, he could easily see how they would have been affected. "My duty to myself is my duty to my family, to my sister. She always comes first."

"Lousy way to live your life, kid. Now, grab the tester unit there. I want to see if these new plates are as stealthy as they were advertised. When I tell you to, shine the beam right at the center of the plate, and tell me what the meter records. If the needle swings above the baseline, then they're gonna need to come out. Those, you mark with the grease pen. Got it?" Haroun instructed. "How can you serve others if you have no foundation on which to build?"

Shiro picked up the tester and aimed it at the center of the plater, awaiting further instructions. "Leyu-chan is the only thing of any value that I have left of my family. My parents died when I was a child, one cousin kicked me out, and another refuses to speak with me. I have been fucked up, so the least I can do is make sure my sister becomes normal."

"With such a sterling role-model of normalcy, I can't see how she could possibly fail." Haroun said unkindly. "Go ahead and test this first row, mark the defectives. I need to sit down, my back is killing me." he said, then wobbled over to a lawn chair and sank into it.

"Hopefully by being here, everyone's good qualities will rub off on her and replace all the bad qualities she has taken from me." He started going through the plates, only marking a few as defective. "She has to be here. Things would have been much worse if I had just left her in Tokyo."

"No question there." Haroun agreed. "But that's still a fairly poor strategy. Didn't they teach you strategy in samurai class?" Haroun taunted.

Shiro rolled his eyes and continued testing. "If there were samurai classes, I probably would have had obedience beaten into me and would have committed seppuku rather than leave Japan." Shiro didn't add that he actually knew how to commit seppuku.

"And that would be serving your sister how, tell me again?" Haroun asked. "And start the next row too."

"Where have you been? Didn't I say that I am giving up the life I used to live, that of a samurai? That life harmed her, if anything, it didn't serve her." Shiro began the next row.

"Morocco." Haroun said with a smirk. "You've got spirit, kid. I like that. But I want to make sure that you didn't crush it went you went nuclear up there."

Shiro felt his lips quirk up in a smile. "If anything, the spirit of Japan only became much stronger after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Out of the holocaust arose a new nation, with different values and different power. So it is for me."

"We'll see, Shiro. We'll see." he said with a wince as his back twinged. "Consider this your SCAP ban."

"This mansion will be even less pleasant if I am barred from martial arts," Shiro said as he completed the second row of plates.

"Should have thought of that before you put your sister and several X-Men at risk with your antics." he pointed out. "Hey, slow down, check every plate! We cannot afford to miss a single one."

Shiro rolled his eyes and backtracked, going over the second row again, this time more slowly. "Professor Xavier doesn't strike me as the MacArthur type, though."

"Give him a corncob pipe, and he's the spitting image." Haroun said with a grin. "And, let's not forget, the Rising Sun came out stronger and better for their occupation and defeat. They bore the shame of occupation and learned from their errors - can you do the same?"

Shiro scoffed at the mental image. "I would like to think that I am beginning the journey to self-realization, of learning what I have done wrong so that I can change my shame into pride for a new self."

"There just might be hope for you yet, kid." he said with a proud smile. "Next row, when you wrap up this one."

"The vote of confidence is duly noted," Shiro said, not too sarcastically, finishing up the second row (again) and starting on the third.

(Translator's note: senchou means boss.)