(no subject)

[vance_prime]

It's early morning out behind Milliways. The sun is just beginning to peek over the treetops, and the heat of an August day won't set in for a few more hours yet. All is still and quiet.

Which makes it the perfect time and place for Alyx to do her yoga exercises. Usually she doesn't start this early, but she was up half the night because the twins were being fussy, so she figures she might as well.

Interrupt her. We dare you.

[ooc: Subject to immediate slowtime since I gotta go to work.]

Comments

[electro_kinetic]

If Alyx sees Noriko running laps around the lake...well, for one, it'll be impressive, because she's got a lot of energy to burn and is going fast enough to be a little blue-black-yellowy-peach blur that's talking to herself in a rapid patter too fast to be intelligible. But she will have to stop sometime, and that;ll probably be when she faceplants into the ground about twelve feet from Alyx.

There are downsides to this rapid discharge of energy in running.

[vance_prime]

"...Jesus. Are you okay??"

[electro_kinetic]

Alyx gets a muffled 'wmphh' for her trouble, and a wave from one metal-clad arm.

"I'm good," she says once she raises her head, progressively getting less entirely drained. "Just...burning energy. Kind of had to, I woke up this morning thinking a mile a minute."

[vance_prime]

"Thinking about what? The best way to hurt yourself exercising?"

[electro_kinetic]

"No, just...about everything. If I don't discharge the energy I absorb I get progressively faster at everything. Moving, thinking, speaking...pretty much everything. It's like upping the speed on your blender from 'mix' to 'liquefy'."

[vance_prime]

"That's part of your... mutation thing?" Alyx switches positions on the yoga mat.

[electro_kinetic]

"Yeah," she says. "It's...complicated."

[vance_prime]

"No kidding." Another position change. "So aside from that, what've you been up to? It's been a while..."

[electro_kinetic]

"Hitch-hiking across North America to get back to my school," she shrugs. "Things didn't work out so great living with my counselor." How else does one describe 'depowered ex-mutant teacher who tries to teach you the circle of life'?

[vance_prime]

"Yikes." Alyx grimaces. "You don't have transportation of your own?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Nah. I can't drive," she says. "I got there by myself, so...I got back the same way."

[vance_prime]

"I don't suppose there's anything I can do to help out?"

[electro_kinetic]

She shakes her head. "No, I'm there by now. Got back to New York about two weeks ago," Nori says.

"But I have a lot to catch up on. I missed a bunch of school." It's not like she'll fail grades, really, but she's got about five papers to do. "I'm kinda hoping things stay quiet for a while."

[vance_prime]

"I... wouldn't know what that's like," Alyx admits. "I never went to school."

[electro_kinetic]

"What, never?" Alyx is older--and smarter--than her, how does that work?

[vance_prime]

Alyx shakes her head. "I never had a chance to. By the time I was old enough, the Combine had taken over, and my dad and I were in hiding."

[electro_kinetic]

"Jesus, that sucks."

[vance_prime]

"I managed," says Alyx, stretching out flat on the mat. "It's amazing how much you can learn from just tinkering with things and reading every book you can get your hands on."

[electro_kinetic]

"Yeah, that's how I managed to get up to high school senior level at the school. I quit after seventh grade."

[vance_prime]

"Oh? Why?"

[electro_kinetic]

"I got kicked out of the house when I manifested." She shrugs. "I left the island, came to the states for Xavier's school."

[vance_prime]

"You're from Japan originally?" Alyx guesses.

[electro_kinetic]

"Yeah," Noriko nods. "Tokyo, originally."

[vance_prime]

"What's it like there?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Busy," she finally says. "There are people everywhere, or there were."

[vance_prime]

"'Were'?" echoes Alyx with a quirked eyebrow.

[electro_kinetic]

"I don't know how many of them were mutants, so I don't know how many were affected by the Decimation."

[vance_prime]

"...the what."

[electro_kinetic]

"...There was a particular mutant who had the ability to alter reality, and when she lost control of herself, she...I hope inadvertently, wiped out almost ninety percent of us. With three spoken words."

It's not an event she'd like to think about much. Even less, really, because she doesn't know yet how they'll ever get back up to a reasonable portion of the population again. "We're...slowly coming back." Very slowly.

[vance_prime]

Alyx blanches.




"I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

[electro_kinetic]

Well, now she feels awkward. "No, no. Um. It's...it's okay," she says, hesitant. "I mean. It wasn't really her fault--we can all lose it sometimes, she just happened to be a really really bad case."