for quiteafew

[electro_kinetic]

It's not hard to find Noriko on any given day at the school. Not only does she have electric blue hair braided up into a beaded mohawk--which, thankfully, her manager at work does not give two shits about--but she's kind of the only electrokinetic. Follow the sound of crackling and popping and it will either lead you to her, or to the microwave containing someone's popcorn.

Today she's probably even easier to find; she's in the remodeled kitchen, late, after coming back to the school from the coffeeshop with her work shirt in hand. Her tee-shirt is still on the counter, and on closer inspection she seems to have a massive black eye to take care of and a set of headphones at probably hearing-damaging volume levels in her ears, bent over in front of the freezer.

Dinner and an icepack, that is the plan.

Comments

[electro_kinetic]

"You manifested early?" she asks. "Or were born manifest?"

It's not that uncommon, really. And, hell, he's nice enough--though the pointed teeth get a blink, and a mildly surprised look; those are a part of the whole look about him she hadn't noticed while he spoke. But he certainly hasn't seemed inclined to hurt her, and that's pretty damn rare for strangers in her opinion. "Yeah, that's it. Told you it looked like pond slime."

Noriko just shrugs, though when she lets her shoulders back down one of them pops like it's been dislocated before. Lot of injuries for a twenty-year-old, but all of them actually explainable. "...Will you tell me more about them? I don't know anything much about angels, or alchemy. But I like how they look." They seem to fit him, and she's not sure she could imagine that face without them.

[quiteafew]

"I'm not certain. Much to my parents' dismay I was on the walls almost as soon as I learned to crawl. But I didn't know I could teleport until I was not much younger than you are. I don't know if its because I couldn't, or if it was because I'd never had to try."

The breath he draws in is a little slower, steadying. Even decades later, the memory of Amanda's shrill scream when the rope snapped still sends a sick chill down his spine.

Closing the door, his tail scoops up a dishtowel from where it had been left hanging on one of the oven handles. As he walks over to her, he transfers the towel from his tail to his hands and wraps the ice pack in it. "Did you hurt your shoulder as well," he asks mildly, offering her the ice pack.

[electro_kinetic]

"...How young do you think I am?" she asks, brow raised as she takes the ice and gently presses it to her face with a hiss; it does sting a little to have something cold over her eye, but not horribly. Not enough for her to take it off, because it'll go numb sooner or later. She just moves her braids out of her face, and makes sure they're not getting tangled in that chain about her neck. The ornament on it is hidden by her collar, but it's not overly large.

"Not today," Nori says, shaking her head. She's too quick for that coworker to have gotten more than one good shot in. "Today was just the eye, really. The rest was from...not a really long time ago, but when Stryker's men came through here. Two shots to the back, a broken rib, and a dislocated shoulder. And a hell of a headache from that sedative they darted us with," she explains, watching his face to see his reaction to the list. It's by far not comprehensive of what's been done to her but she is not getting into drug addiction with someone she met less than an hour ago. "Everything was treated by a hospital, it's all fine. My shoulder just pops sometimes."

[quiteafew]

"Fifteen," he guesses, trepidation without fear sneaking into his expression as he tenses again slightly. More noticeable is the way one foot slides behind the other, as though he's anticipating the need to dodge.

Kurt doesn't seem overly worried at first; there's more understanding in his face, accompanied by a slight nod at certain points as though to say 'yes, of course. That makes sense.' Its when Stryker's name is mentioned that his expression turns dark with regret, glancing away as though he can't look at her.

"So do mine, especially when the weather's bad."

[electro_kinetic]

"I'm twenty," she says without rancour, because people have guessed that age before, and she has the wonderful trait of actually looking young. She's actually amused at the way he shifts as if he thinks she's going to be mad about it.

Nori notices the glance away, and tilts herself on the chair--she's got one foot hooked around the bottom of the cabinet to hold herself from falling--to catch his face again. "Nobody blames you for that, you know. Least of all me. It would have happened sooner or later, the way that man hated us." He is part of the 'us' already, because he's a mutant just like them. Older, younger, American or not, that part doesn't change. And she tries for a smile to make him lighten up, even if it's lopsided--thanks to the icepack. "I'll get used to it. It doesn't really hurt, it's just an extra sound effect."

[quiteafew]

"I'm sorry." The apology comes nearly on the tail of her correction, even as the muscles in his legs relax slowly. The rest of him doesn't move, particularly his head where she is closer to his face than he's accustomed to 'outsiders' being.

"Perhaps not," he answers quietly, pale yellow eyes meeting hers more for lack of anywhere to look. "But I have still done things that cannot be taken back simply because I wasn't myself."

He doesn't return the smile, though he tries. Somewhere between the intention and the action it gets lost, leaving a slightly less tense expression with no small amount of gratitude. "Wait until you're my age. That will change."

[electro_kinetic]

"All of us have," she says quietly, simply enough for it to be obvious she means it. "It's part and parcel of what we are." They are born as one person, and change over time--sometime rapidly, and without a guide--into another to deal with their mutations.

"...Wait, how old are you?" she asks, a little taken aback by the comment about his age. Not something she'd have pegged a maybe-thirty-year-old to say at all.

[quiteafew]

"It wasn't for me." He sighs, eyes closing for a brief moment. "I know, Noriko. Even so." Her name is pronounced carefully but correctly, with a slight pause between syllables.

One corner of his mouth twitches upward, and there's a hint of an expression that might be impish, in another situation. "I am nearly forty, and on a rainy day I feel fifty."

[electro_kinetic]

She blinks. A lot.

That was not an answer she expected, and moreover isn't one she's sure she really believes, because as she looks him up and down he does not look forty. Seriously he does not. And she can't really deny that the answer makes something near the pit of her stomach tighten, but Nori does her best to not acknowledge that.

"...For real?"

[quiteafew]

Now, finally, she gets a grin out of him again; bright and broad and sharp with narrow teeth that his lower lip covers the tips of.

"I have good genetics." His eyes are twinkling as he says it, lively in a way that he's rarely hinted at since meeting the X-Men.

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko laughs, and it's a bright and happy sound for someone that looks like she does; it explains part of why she's so casual, why so brightly colored and easygoing when she's not scoping someone out.

"Wow. Just...wow," she chuckles. She's never the one to get the laughs out of adults, but something about Kurt just clicks with her. "You're funny, you know that?"

[quiteafew]

It feels good to make someone laugh again. The last few days have been filled with such fear and heartache that it feels all the better to enjoy a moment.

He lowers his eyes in a show of modesty that's only half feigned. "I only try to enjoy the world and companionship that that God has given me to the fullest."

[electro_kinetic]

Her teeth close on the inside of her lip when he says that, because she knows she shouldn't tease him so quickly, but damn that was asking for it. And he made her laugh, and Kurt looks like he honestly might have needed that more than air.

"Is that what we're calling it now?" she asks, nose wrinkling in amusement. Sometimes she really can't help it.

[quiteafew]

"It is what I call it," comes the speedy retort, chin lifting as the faux-bashfulness fades like morning dew. There isn't much space between them, too little for people who've just met.

Kurt rectifies the situation with a fluid step back, his expression still open. "What would you?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Usually flirting," she chuckles, at surprising ease for being around someone new. Her mutation is fast-acting enough that she can relax on the proverbial dime most of the time and still be just as fully alert as anyone.

She likes the speed of light being what it is.

"But I'll remember that phrase for next time."

[quiteafew]

Kurt blinks, gasping out a short, startled laugh. "Vas? Nein, nein. I'm a flowers sort of man." Or, in one case, the stuffed toy he'd made in his likeness for a girlfriend when he was away. Or--well, he's more creative than he let's on.

Chuckling, he shakes his head. "You can try, but I doubt it will work."

[electro_kinetic]

"How romantic," she chuckles, impish smile in full spread on her face.

"Yeah, well. I suppose you have to be Christian to pull that one off properly," Nori says lightly. "Lucky me, directness has usually worked in my favor. Or failing that, knowing how to cook."

Withdrawal does not make you hungry in itself, but coming off it is an entirely different story.

[quiteafew]

"I have been accused of it before." The back and forth of their conversation has brought a liveliness to his face.

"Well it doesn't ring as well coming from an atheist," he agrees, pulling up a chair and perching backward in it, resting his chin on the back. "Food is the quickest way to a man's heart, I've heard. Or a woman's."

[electro_kinetic]

"I'd never guess," she deadpans, though it doesn't last long as she's still grinning. It's nice to have someone who can banter, because god knows not many people here can with anyone who has a visible injury. And Nori supposes she can't blame them, enough of them have come from abuse themselves.

"Men tend to complain less about whatever you make, though." She lounges on her own chair in probably the closest way to properly sitting that she'll ever get, which is sideways on the chair with one leg bent up for her elbow to rest on. "I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I imagine something created the cosmos, I just have a hard time breaking the logic of the Epicurean Riddle," she shrugs. "Shinto still seems to work."

Some of those gods are not nice. She can get behind that.

[quiteafew]

"I hide it well." Kurt is too privately relieved to have something to smile about to bother with playing coy about it. Even before the nightmare that was his abduction and subsequent attack, finding joy in his heart had become more difficult. He'd intended to use the stay at the old church to unpack the issues weighing on his mind while he was free from outside influence. He'd been at the church three days.

"My apologies for the assumption." Crouching on the chair, Kurt looks perfectly comfortable in what would be a position that would strain the knees of most men his age. When she mentions the Epicurean Riddle his chin lifts, as does his tail minutely before it wraps around one of the chair legs. "I'm afraid I don't know much about the Shinto religion, save that there are many gods in it. If I may ask, what part of the riddle are you having trouble reconciling with the idea of my god?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Omnispotence concurrent with omnibenevolence, to be honest," she says, eyeing his crouch and cocking her head at the position. That...must be comfortable, or he's trying to show off, she can't tell which.

"Shinto is...interesting. Probably the biggest difference is that we don't consider kami--deities, sort of--and people to be separate. Instead we exist in the same world and share and need to work around the same complexities. And kami are suited to different purposes, much like people."

[quiteafew]

"That part of the question assumes many things about God that I am not sure are true. From my understanding, it seems based on the idea that God has not changed since creation. I don't agree with that idea." He notices her attention and slides his legs to either side of the chair back, dropping down in the seat. His back straightens, and a little twitch of discomfort flashes across his face. "Sorry."

On hearing the word kami, his eyebrows draw together. "You are.. Japanese? Or does the word kami mean the same in more than one language?"

[electro_kinetic]

"You didn't have to move," Noriko says, brows creasing when she looks up at him as he moves. "I wasn't uncomfortable--I was just wondering how that doesn't hurt your knees. Or are you double-jointed?" And she means that pretty literally; for all she knows he might quite honestly have different physical features. "You'll learn, I almost never sit in chairs properly. I never sit anywhere properly," she chuckles.

"And no, I'm Japanese," she says. "I was born and grew up in Tokyo. I came to the United States when I was thirteen."

[quiteafew]

Shrugging, he rests the soles of his feet against the 'back' legs of the chair. "I wouldn't know, I've never been to a doctor." Which is now, technically, untrue. He remembers, as though in a nightmare, being examined at Alkali Lake. "It doesn't hurt me." What he doesn't say is that its more uncomfortable to walk and sit like a man: not painful, but still a relief when he doesn't have to.

"Ach, good. I was worried I made a fool of myself. If I may ask, did you come with your family or alone?" Given the recurring theme of abandonment among the mutants he's spoken to, hearing the latter wouldn't surprise him. If nothing else good comes from his time here, the reminder of how fortunate he is that God sent him to his family will stay with him.

[electro_kinetic]

She lifts a brow. "...If you don't want to sit in the chair like a human, don't," she says simply, but without any force. "You look uncomfortable sitting like that, and you don't have to."

When he asks about her conditions of travel, it takes Noriko a few moments to answer. "Alone. My father kicked me out when I manifested, and six months later when he forbade my little brother speaking to me, I left." It took her four years and change to make it to New York and it wasn't an easy trip.