milliways_bar | (no subject)

The change in the weather and the trees should have been the first thing he noticed, but it wasn't. Half-asleep in the saddle, it's not until Cortez picks up the pace at the sight of the barn that Doc realizes that he's no longer riding through Washington Territory.

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch," he mutters. "About damn time."

He shakes a layer of snow from his hat and coat after dismounting from the horse; once he's made certain that Cortez is situated with fresh water and feed in a dry stall, Doc shoulders his bags and heads for the bar. He's not bathed in some time, his hair is shaggy and his beard hasn't been tended to lately either.

Lighting up a cigarette as he drops into a booth near the fireplace, he motions for a waitrat.

"I want dinner," he tells the rat. "Real dinner, none of that shit I've been eatin' the last six months. And a pot of coffee -- good coffee, if you please."

Doc drops a worn banknote on the rat's tray as it scurries off. He figures it won't hurt to tip from the get-go, after how long it's been since he's haunted these parts.

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"Not if you're in a decent town," Doc replies. "But I ain't seen one of those in a couple of weeks."

Her hair is...interesting. But he's polite enough not to stare.

"Mind if I ask where it was you came in from?"

That answer he gave is enough to have her looking up from her book, hair laying over one side of her head as she takes him in. Definitely not from New York, this guy. Nope. "Remind me never to go."

"Middle of the woods, Washington Territory," Doc replies cheerfully. "Unless you've a fondness for smellin' of pine sap, I don't recommend it."

He will never understand why people settle in a place where it rains so often.

"Never been that far west," she says. "I got to Colorado a while ago, but a couple of my friends are from around Washington. I'm gonna guess way after you, since it's a state. What year are you, anyway?"

Nori's okay with New York City; she's more comfortable in large populations where she can hide and rely on the skills she's got.

"Eight-seven," Doc says. "Eighteen eighty-seven." He smiles, though it's wry. "Oregon's gone on and made themselves a state already. I don't doubt Washington will do the same once it gets divided up by the politicians."

"Wow," says Nori.

"I'm about a hundred and..." she does the quick math in her head, wriggling her fingers. "About a hundred and thirty years after you. Two thousand fourteen. How many states are there for you?"

So sue her, she's not all that up on US History. She's Japanese.

Doc thinks for a moment.

"T'be honest, miss? I ain't quite sure. Most of the territories have gone to states now, but I ain't been keeping track the last few years like I used to."

She snorts out a laugh at that. "Well. I guess that makes two of us," she says, pushing a metal-covered hand through her hair, the fork she's using for the ramen noodles resting on the table. She figures it's just as easy and notably quicker to eat the long noodles italian-style rather than with traditional chopsticks. And no one's going to give her crap for it around here.

"It's Noriko. Nori, mostly. So you don't have to call me miss," she elaborates. "You?"

"Josiah," he says. "Though most folks around here'll call me 'Doc', so if you're askin' for me you're likely to run into that more often."

"Are you a doctor, or just pick up the nickname?" Hey, it's a valid question, hers is Surge and she really doesn't produce power surges in the way most people think. Personally she thinks it makes her sound like a laundry detergent. But then they only halfway use codenames and callsigns to begin with.

"Josiah's not awful."

"I studied medicine in college," he says. "I know enough t'git me by, especially in my time, but I never graduated."

"Hey, you're a step ahead of me, I left school when I was thirteen," she says. "Left Japan, came to the states. I live at a school now, but it's not what you'd call conventional."

She wiggles her fingers with the tiniest creaking sounds of metal rubbing against metal.

"Is it a boarding school, then?" They're not uncommon in his time - in fact, that's general how advanced education works in his era.

"Well, yeah, but not the usual kind. It's a school for mutants," she elaborates. "People who can do...extraordinary things. Like me, I absorb electricity and channel it back out. Hence the metal gloves."

Which are harmless to touch unless she actively wants to reverse that condition, but hey, he's nice enough and she has no reason to electrocute someone in here. "Got there when I was seventeen."

"...that is fascinating," Doc says, glancing down to the gloves. He isn't going to touch them - it wouldn't be proper to do so, even with permission - but he will look, since she mentioned them in conversation. "Does it cause you any pain to come into contact with the electrical currents?"

"Me personally? No, not really. I've been zapped pretty good before, but the electricity itself doesn't hurt me. The side-effects sometimes do, though," she says.

Under her gauntlets on her forearms are the burns from sweat turning to steam from the heat of the current she absorbs. It really only happens when she's wearing the gauntlets, but given she has no independent regulation of her ability it's safer for all parties concerned if she keeps them on. "They're perfectly safe like this; they act like batteries, essentially. The current gets stored in them and if I want to discharge it I can, whenever."

She may be holding one hand up, demonstrating this by making the metal web over with crackling blue-white light. Much like an electrical storm.

"...you're pretty lucky you're further ahead in the future than me, 'cause that would be likely t'git you branded a demon or somethin' in my world." He says. "I ain't as closed minded, though, havin' come here for so long."

"Or something is what my family went with," Nori says dryly. "Hence the leaving. But don't feel too bad, there are still people that see us as some kind of scourge against God. They just tried to kill us and save time."

"That's unfortunate," Doc says. "About your family. Though to be frank, if I may - if they ain't willin' to accept blood as blood, then you're better off without 'em."

"Yeah, well. I moved halfway across the world, and we don't talk. So it works," she says with a little shrug.