Jean-Paul and Noriko, backdated 1/31/2013

[om_northstar]

Nori takes Jean-Paul up on his offer of speedster training, and they find they have more than a few things in common.



Noriko had seen the unease spread across the school, after the news of Elaine Dupree's murder. She was saddened by it, of course, but distantly. It wasn't as if she was shocked by that particular outcome; there was a reason she'd kept her powers hidden ever since she had 'manifested', like people here liked to say. Mankind really didn't have the greatest track record when it came to accepting differences.

But the news had left her with a measure of restlessness, a desire to do something... and make the most of the time she had in this school, while she could still work on her powers without drawing attention. So she'd headed outside to practice her speed some more, bundled up in a scarf and her too large, once-black, but warm coat.

It was only after giving it a few bursts of super-speed, arcs of blue electricity crackling around her, that she noticed the figure up on the roof, and her eyebrows tried hard to reach her hairline.

The slim, black-clad figure far above leaned into the incline of the roof, balancing on a snowboard for a long moment before letting gravity take over. He streaked down the roof, launching off the edge at a physics-defying angle before sliding to a halt, kicking a wide spray in glittering snow high in the air.

He looked up as the board came to a halt and stepped off with unconscious grace.

"Surge, right?"

"...yeah," Noriko confirmed after a few seconds, blinking a few times. Yeah, she'd just seen that. Snowboarding off of the motherfucking roof. Why not? But she pulled her act together, shoving ungloved hands in her coat's pockets now that her electricity was no longer keeping her warm. "Jean-Paul?" Between the journal picture and the accent, it had to be him, even if she hadn't noticed the ears before.

"Not exactly subtle, is it?" He flashed her a quick smile, then tucked his board under his arm and walked over. "This place driving you insane yet?"

Not exactly subtle, but at least it made him easy to track down, even when you were not trying to at the time. "Not yet," Noriko answered, with a purse of her lips. "I'm giving it a couple of weeks before I begin to feel the effects."

"Taking it all in first? Not the worst idea."

"We'll see," Noriko shrugged. She still had no idea how she would end up feeling about this place. Relying on things here could end up being more dangerous than not, given what was going on in the outside world. "Hey, did you mean it, about helping me with my speed?"

"Absolutely. How are you supposed to enjoy your time here a Mutant High if you have to worry about the world turning fragile in the blink of an eye?"

Noriko really wasn't sure what he meant by that, but her frown wasn't that obviously confused, and she just shrugged. "I'm just really crap at it. I've been trying, but I can't control it. I've had more than a few close calls with trees since I came here." Managing to stop where she wanted to stop was an issue, at that speed.

"I might be able to help," Jean-Paul agreed. "Tell me, when your speed kicks in, does it feel like the rest of the world slows down or more like your body speeds up and you are just along for the ride?"

"Like I'm along for the ride," Noriko replied, without needing to think about it. It was the electricity that powered her up, that much she was certain of.

Jean-Paul grimaced. No wonder she was taking him up on his offer; that lack of control would have driven him batshit in short order.

"How long since you manifested?"

"Over two years," Noriko answered, and knew how long it was to stay out of control. When she gave him the reason why, the glint in her eyes dared him to challenge it. "But I couldn't risk practicing until now." The world out there was a fucked up place.

Jean-Paul shrugged off the challenge. "Hey, if I judge you, it's not going to be on that. Practicing means risking getting caught, and we know how that fucking turns out."

"Yeah, pretty much," Noriko confirmed with a nod, some tension going out of her eyes at his answer. There would have been a time when she would have given anything to be on TV.
That had lasted up until her powers had kicked in.

Jean-Paul quirked a wry smile in her direction. "Anyway, at two years, you've been a speedster longer than I have. But hopefully I can give you some tips. You've got Lensherr as your one-on-one guy?"

"Yeah, but he can't really help with the speed," Noriko answered, shifting slightly on her feet. He had lots to say, sure, but he didn't know what it was actually like.

"Nothing like training for that, I agree." Jean-Paul considered. "About how long does it take you to get up to speed?"

"No idea," Noriko shook her head. "Past a certain point, fast is just fast for me, and I can't really tell." It was hard enough not crashing into anything that she'd never worried about when she reached her maximum speed. "But getting past that point, it happens really quickly. A couple seconds?"

"OK." Jean-Paul nodded. "Meet me in the gym around five. We'll try some basics and see what your reaction times are like."

"Inside? I don't think inside's a good idea," Noriko immediately objected. "Walls are really not my friends for now."

Not when she was pushing her speed; she had too much trouble stopping where she wanted and controlling her bursts.

"And it's all slush and snow outside," Jean-Paul countered. "How well are you going to brake on that?"

"Less painfully than into a wall," Noriko answered, although she hadn't actually tried the latter. Still, it wasn't a comparison she was in any hurry to be able to make. Scrapes and bruises - which she had been getting, and then some - over a concussion, any day. "I've been practicing outside already," she added, sheepishness hidden under her usual defiance. She was black and blue all over.

"Oh?" The boy cocked his head. "What have you tried so far?"

"Just short bursts of speed," Noriko told him. And trying not to fall on her ass, but she'd only been mildly successful at that. "Out in the open, with as few obstacles as possible." Thank the old man for having huge freaking grounds.

"Hmmm." Jean-Paul rocked back on the heels of his boots. "What if I padded the gym?"

Noriko really did almost protest on the grounds of how long that would freaking take, before her brain caught up with that with a very pointed 'superspeed!'. "Worth a try," she nodded. "If we can find enough stuff to do that."

"Oh, yeah. They've got enough gym mats to build a new wing on the place." Jean-Paul's blue eyes went wide with innocence. "Why, it is as if they suspect we will be hard on the equipment or something."

"I can't imagine why," Noriko wryly answered, but there was humor dancing in her eyes, if you paid particular attention. "Alright then," she added decisively. "Gym at five it is. Thanks."

-------

Five swung around to find a rather smug speedster waiting for Nori in the gym. Every wall had a line of gym mats already standing against it, waiting for impact. The floor itself was marked off in five foot demarcations, the bright white tape all but glowing under the overhead.

"Very prompt. I like that in a woman."

"Very efficient," Noriko commented in return, taking in the state of the gym now. "I like that in anyone."

And she was guessing he must've kicked out some of the other students, because it was just the two of them now, and there almost always were people in the gym, that she had seen so far.
She looked back at Jean-Paul and gave him a small smile, too brief to really light up her face and make her look two years younger. "Thanks."

"Ah, don't worry about it. It's easy to reserve gym time if you tell people there's going to be whirlwind of speedster training." Jean-Paul waved her over. "All right. So...I guess, basic question...can you speed up at will? Or does it just happen?"

"At will," Noriko nodded, then figured she might as well spill it all. "I'm on drugs, to regulate it all, otherwise I'd end up unable to control my electricity, and then yeah, it would just happen - that and random lightning." It wouldn't be recommended, even if it had no effect on her brain. "But as long as I take the drugs, I'm good, I can control it."

"OK. So that's not a bad place to start. You have some control..." Jean-Paul considered. This was entirely new. It wasn't like teaching had ever been high on his list of things to do with his life. "I was thinking we start with some targeted braking. I mean...right now, you're only doing it when the stakes include going ass over ears and/or breaking your head open. That can't be the best way to get used to your power."

"I've been trying to practice, but the snow wasn't helping," Noriko agreed, zipping up her hoodie some, so it wouldn't flap around when she put in a burst of speed.

"Right, so I guess we'll start with longer shots and work our way down?" He pointed toward the other side of the gym. "Aim for the farthest mark out and see how close you can get to an exact stop."

She'd been hoping he'd say that, and Noriko nodded, and turned to look at the mark in question. By definition, the closest to the wall. Right. She could do this. The electricity started to arc in blue streaks around her a second before she started to move, working up to a blur that stopped way too short of the mark. She cursed under her breath, and looked back towards Jean-Paul, keeping the electricity going before she tried and stopped back by his side, making sure to get her bearing right so she wouldn't run into him if she failed to brake in time.

This time, she hit the mat plastered to the wall.

Jean-Paul managed to suppress both his wince and his grin, then turned to help her up from the rebound. "Alright?"

"Yeah, fine," Noriko stated, although the look on her face said another story. Mat in the way or not, it had freaking hurt. "So that was the stick," she added, under her breath, but simply swept her hair back from her face, and got back to her starting point.

This time, she stopped slightly closer to the mark, and when she turned around and tried again, a little farther away from Jean-Paul - but ahead of him, instead of past him. She was going to view it as progress, that she hadn't run into the wall this time.

Jean-Paul didn't bother hiding his grin. "Somehow, I did not think one fall would do much to change your mind one way or the other. So is there anything to 'Surge' beyond the obvious?"

"The nickname, or me?" Noriko asked, because he could mean either, and she put in another burst of speed, this time crashing into the mat at the other end of the gym, before the return trip had her stop a lot closer to Jean-Paul than before, something flashing in her eyes as the lightning died down around her, absorbed back into her body.

"The nickname." Jean-Paul marked her stopped distance mentally, a germ of an idea stirring in his head but not coalescing just yet. "You would have to work a lot harder to convince me that there is nothing more to you than the obvious."

That made her lips twitch up into a brief smile. "I was ready to be insulted." Wry humor, and she hadn't been, really. She would have needed a lot more. "Kid I knew saw me use my powers once, decided to call me that," she answered as she turned around to give it another go. The electricity swelled around her again before she launched herself forward, stopping short of the wall, but past the mark, this time. Her trip back had her stop before Jean-Paul again.

"Fearless, aren't you? Wait a minute..." Jean-Paul walked over, examining the marks on the floor. "Do you think it'd be easier to judge distance if you had an upright target?"

Noriko frowned, then nodded. "Probably, yeah." She pursed her lips. "I'm not sure it'll change much for now, given my love affair with the gym walls so far, but still."

"And it would probably be more practical. How often are you running along staring at the ground, right?"

"But it can probably wait until next time," Noriko said, and frowned, before she amended, "If you wouldn't mind making this more than a one-time thing. I can use somebody helping out that knows what it's like."

"It would be a pretty shit offer of help if it was just a one-off deal," Jean-Paul assured her. "I'll have this down in a minute. After that, we can go get something to eat while we wait to see how many shades of black and blue you turn if you want."

Noriko was clearly surprised for them to stop so quickly, but by the time Jean-Paul mentioned bruises, she figured he had a point. Given how sore she already felt, keeping it short was probably wise, even if it went against her instincts.

"Sure," she agreed, a hand coming to her shoulder, prodding at a part of her that would very probably bruise before simply resting there. She smiled a little at the other kid. "Thanks. You eat a crazy lot, too?"

"A lot of the kids here do, not just the speedsters. Apparently, all it takes to defy the laws of physics is enough fuel." Jean-Paul rose a few inches off the floor in a controlled hover, then went to work on the mats against the opposite wall. He blurred into motion, setting off a cacophony of falling pads and ripping tape.

Noriko's eyebrows rose when Jean-Paul hovered above the floor, and she just stared for a few seconds at the blur that set about taking the mats down, before she snapped out of it and went to help put the mats away. She didn't have time to do much before he'd done it all, but she wasn't the type to just stand there and let somebody else do it all.

"So you fly as well, huh?" she asked, with nonchalance instead of surprise, by the time he slowed down for them both to head out of the gym together.

"Speed, flight, and a limited light show." Jean-Paul shrugged. "Weird grab-bag of powers that I share with my twin."

"How does it all fit together?" Noriko asked curiously - if it even did.

Jean-Paul considered his answer as they headed back toward the main building via the connecting corridor. "It is like...we both have a specialty, and then we overlap. We are both speedsters and we fly, but I am best at both. Jeanne-Marie, though, she handles light generation far better than I do...I hardly even make a decent nightlight, and it takes all of my concentration. When we touch though, it essentially sets off a flash grenade."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever see you guys going for a hug," Noriko stated wryly, but she was again thinking of Keitaro. She'd done her best to keep him from her mind from the past couple of years, but seeing so many siblings here made it close to impossible.

"We're getting better at it," Jean-Paul assured her. "But yeah...we do have to be careful about touching. It sucks in a lot of ways."

"I can only imagine," Noriko agreed, pushing open the door to the kitchen and heading straight for the cupboard with the unhealthy snacks. The more calories the better. Thankfully, it wasn't so high up that she couldn't reach it. "Want anything in here?"

"I'm going to cook, but if you want to get a head start, go for it." Jean-Paul shrugged as he rooted a large pot out of a cupboard. "My guess is that you'll have room left after the pop tarts."

"It takes a lot for me to not be hungry anymore, now," Noriko agreed, heading for the microwave to stick six inside. "Can I help with the cooking?"
It wasn't her thing, but she didn't mind lending in a hand. She'd feel better than just watching him do it all.

"That depends..." Jean-Paul grinned. "How good are you with knives and are you squeamish?"

"If it's fish you want me handling, I'm probably still your girl," Noriko admitted, although it had been ages since she'd done it. She was warming to Jean-Paul's grin, though, even if it didn't show. "If it's meat, you're going to have to give me a lot of directions."

"If you can clean shrimp, I'll adopt you as a second sister, how is that?" Jean-Paul ducked into the fridge and emerged with mushrooms, spinach, and a weighty bag of tiger shrimp. "I was thinking sauteed shrimp and mushrooms with spinach over angel hair pasta. Quick fix, calories, carbs, and even some actual vitamins in the mix. Work for you?"

"You got low standards for sisterhood," Noriko pointed out, but her nod said not only that it worked for her, but that she was up to the task, in case her dry humor didn't make it clear.

"Oh, now...if you knew me better, you would be flattered." Jean-Paul set water on the stove to boil, snagged a couple of knives, and came over to help with the slimey work of cleaning shrimp. "I have impossibly high standards most of the time."

"So what, I'm a fluke?" Noriko asked, just as dryly, as she filled the bowl with water and a little ice. Old trick she'd learned as a kid, keep the shrimp as fresh as possible. She joined Jean-Paul again and set to cleaning the shrimp. "I can't tell if I hope my brother's a mutant or not." The admission was as abrupt as she usually was, but it was the first time she said anything about Keitaro out loud.

"Meaning," Jean-Paul answered, "that I have excellent instincts and am just getting in before we go through the tedious business of you showing more of your awesome qualities." He deveined a few shrimp before Nori spoke again. "No good answer to it," he said finally. "Either his life goes to hell, but you have more in common, or you have this huge gulf of life experience between you. You had to leave him behind?"

"Yeah," Noriko confirmed, her brows set in a tight frown as she focused on the shrimp. She hadn't done something like this in years; no wonder it got her talking about Keitaro. "Haven't talked to him in over two years." That admission cost even more.

"That has to drive you insane." And thank God he had Simon's example to draw from on that count, though he was building his own these days. "How old was he when you left?"

"Ten." Her jaw clenched without her meaning it to, but she forced herself to keep going. "He'd be thirteen now."

"Getting close to the age when some of us manifest. No wonder that has been on your mind." Jean-Paul finished with another shrimp. "Three years is a long time to be on your own. I only made it a few months. I wasn't in the best shape at the end."

"Where were you at?" Noriko asked without missing a beat, clearly a lot more at ease with discussing her time alone than her brother.

"Montreal, up in Quebec." He shrugged. The topic didn't come as easily to him as it did Nori, but he'd opened to door and this one and didn't intend to be a coward about it. "I guess I might have lasted longer if I hadn't been manifesting at the time. I think I was, anyway."

"Yeah, the first few weeks were tough for me because of that," Noriko agreed, and sympathized, even if she sounded too matter-of-fact for the latter. "You only think you were?" Weird phrasing, if you asked her.

"I wasn't flying or anything, but I was pretty quick on my feet and I couldn't every get enough food down my neck to feel full." Jean-Paul snorted. "That was one reason it was so easy to run away. Starving on your feet in front of people who are too tight-fisted to believe there's anything wrong doesn't exactly make a body eager to stay where he is, non?"

Noriko pursed her lips in a way that clearly betrayed wry agreement, and glanced at Jean-Paul before she looked back down at what she was doing. "So what happened after the streets?"

"Dumb luck. I got caught shoplifting by an old guy who has a soft spot for lost causes."

"He took you in?" Noriko asked, sounding doubtful. Live on the streets; learn not to trust adults. And yet here she was, and it was a good thing, too. So far, anyway.

"Yeah. This was a couple of years back. He seems like a decent sort, but I have to wonder sometimes. People don't borrow trouble for no reason."

"Borrow trouble?" Noriko echoed with a frown. It wasn't a phrase she knew. As far as she was concerned, trouble couldn't be borrowed and then handed back, and it confused her.

"Taking on other people's troubles on top of your own," Jean-Paul supplied.

Noriko nodded her understanding, and pursed her lips. "It can be pretty tough, watching kids in trouble without doing a thing." She had tended to - do things.

Jean-Paul snorted softly. "If the majority actually shared that view, I wouldn't have ever needed to meet Raymonde."

"Touché," she admitted with a wry purse of her lips that was almost a smile. "You got lucky." She wasn't sure she would have let anyone take her in, but the normal kids, she would have loved for them to have a Raymonde.

"Luck doesn't hurt. Neither does a healthy sense of skepticism."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have trusted anyone," Noriko confirmed, then amended. "It was the mutant thing that made me give the benefit of the doubt to this place."

"It was the mutant thing that made me attend as well, but I was more under the impression that I was being blackmailed." Jean-Paul finished cleaning the last of the shrimp, then transferred them to another bowl for a quick spicing. "I'm still not sure that I'm wrong on that front, but it is probably not for the reasons I first assumed."

Noriko washed her hands and knives quickly in the sink, then went and grabbed her pop tarts from the microwave. "I know I've only known you for under an hour, but I'm still gonna ask." Which meant she'd understand if he didn't want to answer, given the question and what it might or might not entail. "Blackmail you how?"

"It turns out that I'm something of a prodigy on snow." Jean-Paul began melting butter on the stove, then salted the water in the pot as it began to boil. "I've got some sponsorships and fame and all of that good stuff. You can imagine what being unveiled as a some kind of literal speedfreak would do for that."

"Different risks than for us unknowns," Noriko agreed, leaning her hip against the counter as she munched on the first tart. "What do you think their reasons are?" She didn't know if he was right that he had been blackmailed, but she wasn't shutting it down as a possibility, far from it.

"I'm not sure," Jean-Paul admitted. Angel hair pasta went into the pot of water. "My theories keep changing as the perimeters of our experience do."

"But the distrust remains," Noriko checked that she wasn't just making an assumption - or transferring her own distrust onto Jean-Paul.

"Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't think enough of you to answer obvious questions probably doesn't actually give that much of a damn about your feelings on the matter." Jean-Paul flipped some vegetables into the skillet, then a few shrimp after. "People rarely actually do anything 'for your own good' only theirs."

"Just a question of figuring out how long your own good and their own good coincides," Noriko confirmed almost distractedly, as she thought things over.

"Hence keeping one ear out for the headmasters and one eye on the door," Jean-Paul agreed.

"Good to know I'm not being paranoid on my own," Noriko stated wryly, although it wasn't really paranoia if half the world would likely be out to get you if they knew what you were. She finished her second pop tart, then asked, "Anything I can help with now?"

"Grab some plates? This will be ready in a few minutes." The speedster flashed her a wry grin over one shoulder. "Then maybe we can talk about slightly less grim topics over the meal?" Not an admonishment, of course, just an invitation.

"We can try, anyway," Nori replied dryly, her own brand of humor, as she got to her feet to set the table.