psl with sanctuary peeps

[electro_kinetic]

For Noriko this was just another afternoon to kill now that she was in study hall, her lady period of the day. She felt cramped inside, even though she had plenty of room, simply because the fact of her mutation meant that she couldn't run, actually run, with walls around her. She could hit top speed on the grounds, but barely, and had more than once gone tumbling heels over head in an effort to stop before she left the property. So to mitigate the effect she chose to sit balanced on the windowsill with her laptop on her knees, window open to let the air of a brewing storm in.

Nori could feel the electricity making the air thick, much like the way thermite came together: with the right spark it'd be a magninficent thunderstorm. She reached a hand out and watched with a smile as the tendrils of electricity escaped the normal web of containment touching her hand and slim-fit metal gauntlet. Oh yeah: it'd be a hell of a storm. Noriko smiled. Those were her favorite.

Comments

[pidjes]

Tesla II's storms were the kind that when they came around they were a maelstrom of electromagnetic joy - or a nightmare if you were trying to land. Kyra was going with the sheer defiant joy of being aloft while her passenger did whatever in seven hells he was doing with whatever he had in his hands. The whooping noises were so totally irrelevant.

She was having a godsdamned party. It was like riding a va'quin on Sentarius Major at feeding time during the monsoon season. Delicate adjustments, a thousand curses, that second where your stomach hangs in minute zero gravity for long enough to make you disoriented. Helen was either going to give them a death look or drink a bottle of whatever wasn't smashed by the time they got back.

Probably both.

"Ha. Fantastic. It looks like we have a major wave incoming." Glee. That's what was etched on her face. She was pretty sure frome the overexcited screel his machine was making, she had to be on the right track. "I'm going to catch it." She flicked a glance behind her, practically cackling.

"Hold onto your pretty coat, Princess. Sharp drop incoming!"

And they dropped.

[vampere]

If asked he'd have insisted that what he was working on was a highly technical device. How much of that was true - or indeed if any of it was - is another matter entirely. Especially when as much of his attention is on the storm outside as it is on the device in his hands. Not that he's actively influencing the storm, of course, but it's been entirely too long since he last had a proper body; since he could last feel the push and pull of the forces around them.

It's amazing, the sorts of things you miss, when you end up spending entirely too long as an incorporeal entity. And even if Helen is more than likely going to be a little less than pleased when they return, he figures it's going to be worth every moment.

"Vampire, remember?" he answers, not even looking up from the device in his hands. "A little drop isn't going to kill me."

Besides, they're in an electromagnetic storm, inside a metal ship. If he can't manage to do something in the unlikely event that Kyra loses control of ship then Helen has every right to tan his hide for it. Assuming he were to actually live through the event, but he hasn't died yet and has no intention to do so any time soon.

They drop, and the thrill of it has him grinning, wild and irrepressible - the soft whir and click the device makes at the bottom of the drop passes unnoticed even by him, though the way the electromagnetic fields around them seem to pitch and yaw around them all of a sudden doesn't.

(He's not - yet - aware that something might have gone wrong, that the storm of their now is reaching out to touch one of the past, but to be fair, time travel isn't something he's had reason to think about for centuries.)

[pidjes]

"Well damn," she murmurs under her breath, flicking switches like she might possibly be in ninety places at once. Kyra hollers back at him, "I don't care if you can fart rainbows and survive black holes. Slap that secondary harness on, now."

Her breath is knocked out of her for a moment and she can feel it at the edge of her senses. They're still dropping, far faster than she'd like, g-forces snapping her back hard as she makes a few adjustments. With a grimace as the pressure readjusts, she punches her harness release as something tears along the cargo bay and starts to wrench it free.

Hey, Mr. Indestructible. Her mental voice is rippling with laughter hiding genuine concern. She flies by him like the asshole she is and slams her hand down on a button that activates a force field separating them from the hold as the back half starts to separate. Mm. Definitely going zero-grav,now. How about you hold me tight for awhile and don't let go?

She kicks off, sailing back in his direction as every alarm on the ship starts to scream bloody murder. Altimeter, jacked, oxygen warning, impact warning, fuck the universe warning.

Everything.

Her fist is ready to punch the secondary shielding once she's there. Its designed to keep fragile cargo intact during a crash, which, technically this has become. It's the weirdest swirling of energy she's ever seen or felt. And it feels like it's trying to tear her in every direction at once.

All in all, Kyra wasn't put out by it. She just wished she'd have pulled Tesla in for a pre-flight good luck kiss. The last thing she does before everything goes dark is brush her mind against his as she hits the shielding. Impact reminds her of planet fall tearing through everything in its path.

[electro_kinetic]

Well. Noriko had felt the warp in the electric field--the one surrounding earth, the one she felt as a constant hum like the ebb and flow of a tide--pretty definitely: too definitely to be a mere fluctuation as sometimes happened totally naturally. And as a result she'd hastily set aside the laptop and gazed wildly up at the gray overbearing sky, searching for something. She didn't know what it was precisely, but whatever had made that kind of feeling was more than likely very big, and would be visible.

Nori hoped. The last thing she wanted was to go another round with something like Predator X: a sometimes-invisible giant dinosaur monster that thought mutants made excellent appetizers was fun once. For short periods.

But even Noriko was taken by surprise at whatever the giant metal...ship...thing was that landed suddenly and entirely gracelessly near the baseball field: surprised enough that she was stunned into stillness (rare event that that was) before she lurched into motion at an easy loping run most others would have called a fast sprint. It wasn't anywhere near her full speed, but by the time she hit the clearing between the vast oaks that covered the grounds she skidded a good several feet in the leaf litter trying to stop.

And then more staring. The combination of jeans and a tee shirt and eye-searingly bright blue hair braided to lie along her scalp took most normal people by surprise with Nori, and for once in her life she felt utterly understanding of that feeling. (And not a small part of her was trying to puzzle out whether she should be yelling about aliens before anything else crash landed.)

"...Anybody alive in there?"

[vampere]

"It's a metal ship," he shoots back, as if to suggest that he'll be perfectly capable of cushioning himself from the force of whatever impact happens to come of the fact that this is clearly turning into an uncontrolled fall. But he does as she asks, even as he instinctively reaches for the magnetic fields around them only to find them twisting through his fingers and for a brief moment he's very nearly worried that he can't, that the abilities he's taken so much for granted are falling him... and then the screeching of the ship's alarms make it a moot point anyway, even the magnetic fields of the storm continue to twist and shy away from his grasp.

There's barely enough time for him grab Kyra as she's asked before everything seems to shift, the currents of the storm not so much shifting as tearing loose ... and then they're crashing, despite his best efforts, the force of the impact juddering up through his bones as everything falls dark.

He comes to a moment later and he honestly can't tell if it's been minutes or hours. All he knows for certain is that he's alive and that the ship has definitely seen better days - it'll take a miracle to get her so much as airborne again and that at the best. Of more immediate interest, perhaps, is that the twisting electromagnetic fields of Tesla II's storms are gone, which suggests that either the storm's blown itself out or that something very strange has just happened; he's in the middle of deciding which is the more likely when the sound of Noriko's voice interrupts his reverie.

(Thank small mercies for vampiric hearing, since he's not at all certain he'd have heard it otherwise.)

"Sort of?" he calls back, not even stopping to question whether or not whoever's outside might be friendly. "Just... give us a minute here."

He's alive, although he can already tell he's going to need to put some of his joints back into place, but he's not yet entirely certain of whether or not Kyra is, and that's far more important than where they happen to have come down.

[pidjes]

There's an impossibly long moment where she just hangs there in silence, and then there's a grating, wrenching tear of a breath. It's just bright red pain as she stirs and rolls her head until her cheek brushes his. There's a soft laugh that turns into a wheeze.

"Hnm," she murmured, though nothing else came out for awhile and it did, it was rusty. There was definitely the very particular tang of blood at the back of her throat and one of her hearts was entirely off it's usual gait, there were probably a few fractures, her lungs felt like they'd been smashed, but she could still suck in a few breaths before everything just hurt. So. Still alive.

"Has anyone," she said with difficulty, "ever told you," another breath, like she was divulging the most important shit in the world, "that you have a fantastic," and a swallow, "jawline?" She was just going to stay right here and try and breathe through the silent laughter that followed. "Might be. A little. Jealous."

[electro_kinetic]

"Sort of?" Noriko echoes, coming closer and...well, looking for the door. She wasn't entirely sure where it was on this thing.

"Bang on something, I don't know where you are. Or which bit of this thing is the door," she called, rapping her knuckles on the nearest non-dirt-covered surface with a ringing hollow sound of metal on metal.

[vampere]

Even a grating breath is better than no breath at all. Which isn't to say that he doesn't notice the way her hearts are out of sync and the faint scent of blood beside, but he'll take what he can get, given that they have just crashed. And with any luck, whoever they've found themselves in the company will have at least some sort of medical facility. Helen might be the better doctor of the two of them, but that doesn't mean that he can't manage if he has to.

Right now, however, he's mostly taking things as they come.

"It might have come up a time or two, he answers with a shrug that's accompanied by the soft grate and click of his shoulders sliding back into place; a noise that is shortly echoed and replicated multifold as he rolls his wrists, the bones there following suit.

Then, and only then, does he answer Noriko's comment, raising his voice so that it can be heard better.

"I can get them. Hold on a moment."

First, however, is disengaging the airlock seal, and while he can't quite reach the controls with Kyra on his lap, it doesn't take more than a brief moment's work with his electromagnetism to convince the computer to undo the seal. From there, it's trivial to manage the door: another electromagnetic nudge has them sliding back into their tracks, the side of the shuttle appearing to simply slide open with a soft click and hiss.

[pidjes]

"So little?" Her laugh turns into a series of terrifying wheezes as he snaps himself together. Kyra buries her grimace at the sound of his joints popping back in and wonders if moving might be the shit idea she thinks it is. It feels like someone landed their ride on her chest and hit their afterburners for fun. Probably a shit idea. "For shame."

Maybe a little, just to see if it's just bruising or if her chest is just going to fall off. Kyra really never knows how bad it is until she actually does try. Maybe sitting up instead of dead weight, sure, that'll work. She counts it down slow, gathering her strength, tensing, and--

Everything goes dark for a few seconds. All she catches of Tesla's answer is a moment and the slide of the door. Yeah. That answered that question. Getting up under her own power is not an option.

Now she knew and it was just as irritating as she thought it was going to be. And that's when she realizes that if her head had been in a different spot, she'd have been dead. Kyra looks impressed or would have if her facial expression wasn't swinging wildly between in hot medical shit and totally sitting on Tesla's lap.

[electro_kinetic]

Well the good news is Noriko wasn't too far off of the door when it opened and climbed in, booted feet steady on the floor as she shifted her weight.

"You guys mean to make a giant hole in our baseball field or what?" she asks, with her usual utter lack of preamble and vague sarcasm wreathing her words.

[vampere]

The inside of the cabin, perhaps unsurprisingly, looks very distinctly like it's seen better days for all that is has, technically, survived the crash. Of more interest, perhaps is the fact that the pilot's seat seems to have been abandoned at some point prior to the crash.

"We didn't exactly have time to find the golf course," he answers, offering his best unimpressed look in return. Which, to be fair, might lose a little something in the fact that he's doing it from over Kyra's head given that he hasn't yet shifted enough to get up, but he figures it's at least better than nothing.

There's a pause there, as he takes stock of the assorted injuries between the two of them, and the fact that he's fairly certain that Kyra isn't as well off as she might claim to be. And for all that he hasn't got any idea of what to make of Noriko, he's willing to bet that she has at least some idea of the locale terrain, such as it is.

"And... I don't suppose there'd be anything like a medical facility around somewhere, would there?"

[pidjes]

"Next time I'll be sure to aim for the nearest bar," Kyra said under her breath.

A medical facility sounded pretty good about now, if she was being honest with the whole situation. Only one thing was bothering her.

"...what's a golf course?"

[electro_kinetic]

"You're hilarious," Noriko replied dryly. She appreciated humor, actually: she just didn't choose to show it right then, with two unknown and potentially injured people on her hands. (Better or worse than known injured people, it remained to be seen.)

"We have a medlab up at the school, yes, but if one of you can't walk--and it doesn't really look like either of you should--we're going to need a backboard."

...Though the chick asking about the golf course was a little weird, yeah. Not usually a concern when in pain. "Rich white people game. Knock a ball in a gopher hole."

[vampere]

"What, and ruin a perfectly good bar?" he murmurs in response to Kyra's comment, before turning back to the more immediate questions of managing to get the both of them to whatever sort of medlab happens to be available without making anything actively worse.

(Not for the first time, he wishes that Druitt were still around, but there's nothing that can be done for that.)

"I'll be fine," he answers instead. "Most of it's already healed anyway; I'll just need to do a little... realignment and I'd need either another hand or to be sure I wouldn't make things worse in the process."

Worse for Kyra, that is. He means what he's said about being fine, and though he's being more upfront than he might have once been about the fact that he can heal far faster than most people, he hasn't really had need to hide the fact for far longer than most people have been alive. That and it's the sort of thing that's actually relevant under the current set of circumstances, for all that he doesn't have any way of knowing for certain whether or not Noriko will actually believe him about it.

"And I'm not sure we actually have a backboard. But if you can find a relatively flat bit of metal around here, that'll probably do?"

[pidjes]

"Give me some credit. The bar would still be usable," she said. To the explanation about golf, Kyra was still confused.

"That sounds like an odd game." It didn't matter what she talked about, as long as she talked. Staying awake was a challenge anyway, but hell, she'd been in worse places.

[electro_kinetic]

"Not if you landed it like you did here," Noriko replied, looking at the inside of the plane--plane? Whatever this damn thing is.

"In order," she said, turning to Nikola, "We have a backboard--we have a medlab, we have a backboard. Don't move her, and I'll go get it." She turned back to Kyra. "It is. Most rich white people games are. Can you feel your toes and fingertips?"

Given the answers, whatever the last one was, Noriko turned and darted off at speed, making her a blur among the trees until she got to the door.

[vampere]

"I wasn't exactly planning on going anywhere."

He counts moving Kyra under that general category, although he doesn't bother to really clarify the point.

"And we weren't planning to end up here."

The latter he offers largely as something to fill the space. He might not be able to see what sort of a mess their landing has made of the baseball field, but he's fairly certain things are just as much a mess outside as they are on the inside.

(And once Noriko does hurry off, he can't help but raise an eye at her speed, but then again it's not like he isn't aware that Abnormals are a thing.)

[pidjes]

Kyra murmurs a quiet yes to both, but is fairly aware that there was tingling going on, which she indicated, and some numbness. Both were fairly decent, all things considered.

"It's not too terrible," she says a few moments later, well after Noriko's sped off. "I have a head and I'm mostly intact. All the parts that truly matter. I'm sure fields can be repaired much more quickly than...than ships."

[borneinblood]

Given that he's had them for more than a century, Druitt will readily admit that there he's come to the general assumption that he knows how his abilities work. Perhaps he's never put them fully through their paces, but he knows what to expect, and where his limits are; surely that's enough. Especially when he has a suspicion the same could be said for any of the others of the Five, not that he's ever felt particularly inclined to ask.

None of this explains the way something seems to flicker and catch mid-teleport one day, quite entirely out of the blue, and before he has time to so much as consider what it might mean, he's already rematerializing.

Still, he's lucky in at least one regard: rather than any of the less-than-pleasant alternatives, he appears in the middle of the (thankfully empty) basketball court, blinking even as the last swirls of energy he tends to leave behind fade away into nothing. On the other hand, he hasn't even so much as the slightest idea of where he is, much less where it is in reference to where he should be, and after taking a moment to make sure that he hasn't left anything behind in the unexpected turbulence he'd hid mid-teleport (he hasn't), he makes for the nearby building on the assumption that it's as good a place to start as any.

[electro_kinetic]

Strange man coming into the building, meet the equally strange girl coming out of it. Noriko was at an easy loping jog and pulled up short on nearly running into Druitt, rocking back and looking up. She's still holding the door open with one hand, everything up to her elbow joint looking encased in a finely articulated metal gauntlet.

Regrettably, they at the school have had enough unwelcome visitors for Noriko to be more apprehensive than welcoming and thus, the first words out of her mouth are quite blunt. "Who the hell are you?" she asks, keeping her weight on her toes. And why aren't you coming in the front door is the only other thing she'd have asked, but identity seemed more important in the moment. It being helpful in telling friend from everything else.

[borneinblood]

Strange is certainly about right. Druitt is certainly no stranger to people with dyed her - Helen herself had done so more than once, although not to such an... eyecatching shade - but the metal gauntlets are something that he's never seen before. Not that he's in the least bit inclined to ask about them. Not when they aren't relevant to the situation at hand and for all he knows, they could simply be something similar to the devices that James had turned to, as the years had turned into decades and then into centuries.

"Just a lost soul, passing through," he answers with a shrug, as if his presence is nothing that anyone should be concerned about. It is, of course, something of a gamble and he's well aware it, but her reaction should earn him at least a few answers about what he should expect out of wherever this happens to be.

And if he's not yet offering his name, that's little more than habit, at this point. It's safer, sometimes, not be someone hunted on first sight and if he doesn't know where this is, he can't tell even so much as where the nearest Sanctuary might be, and never mind what said Sanctuary might know of him.

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko's first reaction is telling: she doesn't shrink back, nor does she push him forward, but she steadies herself, sinking her weight into the floor and putting both arms against the sides of the threshold as if simply resting against them while talking. She's small, barely five and a half feet tall and not overly heavy, so she still doesn't present much of a physical obstacle to someone Druitt's height.

"No, we've had too many people try that having come here to do us harm," she says slowly. "I won't bar you passage, but I will get your name." Noriko has the bullet scars and the broken collarbone records to prove those attempts to kill her, too, though John would be forgiven if he didn't notice those in favor of Nori looking rather like someone's turned on a bright light inside her chest. She's glowing. Literally.

sorry about the delay on this

[borneinblood]

It is telling. Not that he seems to be terribly impressed by it in the long run - she's neither the first nor the last to stand her ground against him - but it certainly does speak to a certain amount of defiance. It would, of course, be entirely trivial for him to get past her one way or another, but for the moment he stays exactly where he is. As if he's utterly unhurried and unconcerned about whatever might end up happening.

The fact that she's glowing does, admittedly, earn a raised eyebrow, but the rest passes without comment. He has too many scars of his own, both physical and otherwise, to judge someone else for having their own. Especially if she's telling the truth about having seen no small amount of violence.

"John," he answers, because that's always been the easiest part; the part that doesn't see him damned by virtue of his name alone. "Druitt, if it makes a different," he adds a flicker of a moment later, and it's a risk - he doesn't know where this is, or what might come of the admission he's just made - but she looks young enough to not recognize the name of someone once suspected of being Jack the Ripper and John is a common enough name besides.

no problem!

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko isn't aiming for him to be impressed, and lifts her chin to look up at him given his height relative to hers.

And then he gives his name, and the wheels start turning in her head. It takes maybe a minute for her to say something. "That's either an extraordinarily unfortunate name for a man with a British voice, or you are both in the wrong place and much older than you look," Noriko says slowly: she'd have left the quirk of his name alone entirely were it not for the random facts that one picks up when homeless and sleeping in libraries.

[borneinblood]

"You know your history."

There's a raised eyebrow to go with the comment, and if he sounds half-way impressed, it's because he is. True, he knows very little about her and about the place he's just recently arrived outside of, but there have been places where his name garners very little recognition. His abilities, perhaps, but not so much the name that goes with them.

Of course, neither does he directly confirm either of her hypotheses, but that's normal enough, for him.

[electro_kinetic]

"The things one learns while homeless and sleeping in libraries," she says by way of explaining, and steps back enough to let him in.

It's probably going to be one of those places, Xavier's, where his abilities are as unremarkable as tap water, but his name will get him all sorts of looks--there have been many speculations about what kind of mutants variously historical figures have been. It's a recurring thing for a while now.

"Where are you headed? Ultimately, beyond the door."

[borneinblood]

Brief though it is, it's explanation enough, and there's a slight inclination of his head in response, something that's just as much meant as an indication that it's a reasonable way to learn as it is something meant in thanks for letting him in. He might not often use a door, it's true, but that doesn't mean it isn't still the easier method of doing things. And the one that's least prone to potential danger, when he hasn't any idea of the layout of the building.

"A library should do nicely, if there is one."

Not that there aren't other ways of figuring out where - and when, perhaps - this is. But he figures he'll start with that and go from there if he needs to.

[electro_kinetic]

"I'll walk you," she replies, as far as she was willing to go with a stranger on the grounds who...has some questions to answer anyway. But when they passed a classmate she'd be able to tell them to alert the Professor--and Noriko didn't care about having her mental presence monitored, if he was going to do it to this John Druitt too.

"It's across the courtyard. Don't stare at anyone," she adds, tossing it back over her shoulder as she turned away; it wasn't an empty remark made to shock him, but given the hallways were going to be full of mutant teenagers, she wasn't going to walk him through without the warning. (And given they were going to likely pass someone obvious, it would be necessary.)

[borneinblood]

"I should be able to manage that much."

Which isn't to say that he won't very much make note of the various people they pass by, regardless of whether or not they have - what he reads as - an Abnormality that makes them look particularly different from an average human, but he's had a century to get used to the idea. He can surely manage to avoid outright staring, even if he has to draw on the social mores of the time he was born to, rather than the one he currently lives in. And if he ends up assuming this is something loosely similar to one of the Sanctuaries, neither is it anything he cares to mention.

That said, any telepath digging too deeply in his mind is likely to find it distinctly less than pleasant. His current mood is genuine enough, yes. But lurking under the thin veneer of gentlemanly politeness is a veritable maelstorm of rage, and not one that's particularly well-contained, at that.

[electro_kinetic]

She only hums at that; what she thinks and doesn't say is that lots of people should be able to manage that much, and many of them don't. Because people are stupid.

Noriko leads him as promised towards the library, though she stops a passing classmate to send along the message for the Professor to know there's someone passing through. She flicks a glance at Druitt before continuing, ostensibly to ensure he's still there.

"Are you always this calm passing through a mansion with a bunch of weirdo teenagers in it? Because I'm getting the whole suicide-bomber vibe off you. Heavily."

[borneinblood]

That, at least, he might be willing to agree with. Humanity is prone to being more than willing to not see what lies before them, something that can be just as useful as it can be frustrating. Still, he doesn't bat an eye as she stops one of her fellows on the way. Nor does he think much of the message she sends along - not having any way to know that the Professor in question is a telepath, he simply figures it's to inform the man that there's someone visiting.

Her question, on the other hand, earns her a smile that's at once more genuine and more than a little unsettling.

"Mmm, let's just say I'm more than a little accustomed to the unusual."

[electro_kinetic]

She raised a brow at that, cocking her head over. "Define unusual, because we just walked past someone with quills."