tenipuri_xp | [log] Momoshiro, Echizen (Reply)

Date: sometime last week... while momo was moving his concrete bricks outside. *cough*
Characters: Echizen Ryoma, Momoshiro Takeshi
Rating G (well, R if you consider eating old stale gummy worms disgusting)
Summary: Ryoma and Momo go for a walk!

Afternoon training was really pointless, Ryoma thought, when he didn't even have an active power right now to train. Okay, so he could still feel people, and possibly more strongly than before, but there was hardly much he could do with that at the moment. And so he didn't even know why Hanamura bothered. Unless she was sizing him up or something while he sat and tried to relax, meditate, and link with her while she "observed." He couldn't tell, with his eyes closed the whole time, but then, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

He was in the process of making his way to the first flight of stairs on the way to his room when he heard… something really weird. He couldn't quite figure out what it was, but it sounded like someone was dragging something… He turned around to look and sure enough, someone was dragging something. It was Momo, happily dragging cinder blocks out of his room and down the hallway.

Ryoma stopped where he was, smirking. "Building your fort outside for sure, then?" he asked.

A thing about Momoshiro, was that he had been gathering blocks for his own enjoyment really. He hadn't intended on doing anything like build a fort, but Ryoma had made the suggestion and he liked the idea, besides it was a good use of his extra energy. He looked up as a voice spoke to him mid drag, and pulled the lollipop out of his mouth. "Oh, heya Echizen. yeah, I'm moving all the blocks outside. This the last of them." He pointed to the massive sized pile that would have crushed a normal person.

Ryoma nodded, noting the fine pieces of cinder that did indeed seem to have left a path from Momo's door all the way to the dorm exit. "I see," he said, eyeing the extremely large pile of stone. "Too bad it didn't work in your room, huh? Maybe when you can stay upright on your own," he finished with a bit of a wicked grin. "I'd offer to help, but. Well." He smirked again. No chance of that, anytime soon. First off, he didn't really like manual labor. Second, he couldn't lift those without synching Momo first, which wasn't going to happen with his powers gone. Third, even if his powers had been active, he wasn't allowed to synch anyway. So there. He settled for crossing his arms and watching Momo continue to drag the pieces down the hall.

Momoshiro shoved the lollipop back into his mouth and grinned, resuming his dragging, humming to himself. He got only a few more steps down the hall before looking up again and asking Ryoma - with the stick held between his teeth, "Hey, why don't you come with me? I gotta take a trip into town for a few supplies. I'd like the company, that is if you want to come with me. Besides, I owe you a soda. How about i buy you lunch?" He grinned.

Raising one eyebrow, smirk still full force, Ryoma asked, "Lunch instead of a soda? Won't turn that down." Besides, he definitely didn't get out enough - he still felt like he was grounded even though he wasn't, so why shouldn't he go out? He stepped back a bit out of the way so Momo could drag the blocks down the hall unhindered, watching as he went. "Haven't been out in a coupla days, sounds good to me." He followed the slow progress of the taller boy as he went down the hall and out the door, always a few steps behind.

Funny. All these bricks were actually pretty heavy, Momoshiro thought to himself while he dragged. He couldn't help but wonder why. Was he losing his strength? Or was he just over exerting himself? Or did he actually find his limit. He finally reached the other pile of bricks and leaned against it with a heavy sigh. "Man these are heavy," he commented, wiping a hand across his forehead.

"You think?" Ryoma asked, eyeing him. It looked like even Momo had a limit as to how much he could carry. "You're not invincible," he said, pointing with his chin to the pile. "You have limits." He shrugged, then leaned up against one of the blocks beside Momo. "So where're we going for lunch? Pointless to ask if you're hungry now, right?"

Momoshiro shook his head. "Nah, I ain't hungry now. I just ate. I need to work it off. Work it off, or I'll get fat!" He pat his stomach, and smiled, "C'mon, do you have any favorite foods? You know, when I think about it, I barely know anything about you! Heya, my name's Momoshiro Takeshi, you can call me Momo-chan... er-- but you're more stubborn than that, so you can call me whatever you want!"

"Yeah, well, I'd say dragging cinder blocks would work it off all right," Ryoma observed, eyeing Momo. "I dunno - I like most stuff, as long as it's Japanese." He'd spent most of his life eating American food, and while it had its good points, he really liked Japanese food a lot better. "I just kinda eat whatever. And I'm not exactly out much." And why did Momo want to know more about him? "I dunno… what do you want to know? There's not much." He shrugged. Most people wanted to hear about his father, anyway. "And I think I'll stick with Momo," he finished, smirking. Damned if he'd call anyone "chan."

"Japanese, eh? That's cool. I love japanese food. There's this great restaurant that serves okanomiyaki that's SO good. You'll love it, I'm sure. I used to go there all the time, until I ran out of money cuz I ate so much!" Momoshiro laughed and shook his head. "Nah nah, tell me about yourself. Like, what do you like? Games? Hobbies? Animals?"

"You do seem to eat a lot," Ryoma agreed - if what he'd heard was any indication, at least. He paused, thinking now. About himself? "I dunno - I guess I play video games sometimes. I have my PS2 here at least. Read, sometimes… and now they've signed me up for karate or whatever." Without asking, no less - really, they could have at least mentioned it to him before telling him he was supposed to report for class. "I have a cat but she's at home." And damn, if he didn't kind of miss her. Yamato's kitten Luis was cute, though, and he did like seeing her during training sessions.

Momoshiro couldn't help but chuckle at the mention of his appetite. "Games, huh? I used to play video games all the time. How about sports? I used to play soccer. Aww man, and basketball. I kicked ass at both of them. We should play soccer together sometime., it's great, and my strength doesn't really apply cuz my legs aren't quite as strong as my arms. I think. Actually... I dunno! haven't tried yet." He paused and threw the lollipop stick out in the trash. "A cat, huh? What's her name?"

Sports? Ryoma sighed. Well, he guessed he had nothing against sports in general. Just tennis. Though most of them seemed just about as pointless. "Dunno about sports. Never played except for in gym." He considered the thought of playing soccer with Momo - though soccer wasn't necessarily so appealing, watching the older boy try to stay upright might be. Though he wasn't sure if it was worth the effort of playing. "And yeah, her name's Karupin," he told Momo, thinking again about his cat and hoping she was putting up with the rest of his family all right. "Haven't been home since I got here." And really, while he actually really liked being away from home, he did wish he could've brought Karupin with.

"Uwah... Karupin, karupin!" Momoshiro said the name a few times over and smiled. He liked the way it sounded. It was cute. "Sounds cute," he commented, rubbing a hand through his hair, wishing he had brought an extra pot of hair wax to keep it from falling over. "You haven't seen her in a while, hmm?"

Karupin was cute, though that hardly needed saying. "Nope, haven't in a while. Been here a few months now… since July. Better than living at home, for the most part." That was for sure - Niou was here. And his father was not. "Except for Hanamura," he added. She almost made up for the fact that his old man wasn't around, but in a completely different way. There was also the large number of mutants around, and the multiple unintentional synchs he'd gone through, but really for the most part he did prefer here to home.

"Yeeah... I understand what you're saying. Home can really suck. I mean, I hated my siblings and stuff, but I learned to appreciate them long before I left home, so I'm really homesick really easily but--" he shook his head, talking about himself again!! "Its good that you like it here though!! Everyone's super friendly. I bet you have alot of friends!"

"… Right." A lot of friends? Not so much, Ryoma thought. Really, for the most part… he didn't like being around people. Some of them were okay - he had no problem being around Niou, or Momo, or Yamato. An was all right, Bunta and his classmates were sometimes. But… most people bothered him. Especially in large groups. He hadn't really had any good friends back at home - a few people he talked to in school, but no one he'd ever invited home to do anything. Home had been as much of a refuge as it could have been, with his father lazing around. But he had to say something. And there certainly were more here than at his old school he didn't mind spending time around. "Yeah, the people here are all right I guess."

"You guess? Mmm... I gotta get to know them better before I have a concrete descision about their personalities, but they seem good enough, yes." Momoshiro scratched his head and held out a hand in thought, "So, who do you hang out with?"

Ryoma shrugged. At least that was an easy enough question to answer. "Niou, mostly," he said. "Got training with Yamato now so I see him a lot too." He glanced up at Momo. "You, today. Dan and Bunta once or twice." It really wasn't a long list, was it? Well, he spent his afternoons and evenings training most of the time, and he was in his room most other times. "Was grounded for a long time, anyway, and no one else is on my floor except Bunta. And Niou 'cause he's staying with me." And since Hanamura had never said anything about it, that was that. Ryoma was in his room, as she'd requested. She'd never explicitly said he'd had to be alone. Not explicitly.

Momoshiro blinked. "You've been here this long and you don't hang out with people? It's not like your mutation keeps you cemeted to the ground." He stopped in mid step, and pulled at his foot, which had somehow gotten itself stuck to the ground. Something weird was going on with his mutation. Now, he was aware of that whole center of gravity thing, but with all the floating and parts of his body not moving... weird. He pulled. No. Stuck. No matter how strong he was. "Heh... cemeted to the ground," he commented, "go figure..."

"I hang out with some people," Ryoma insisted, crossing arms over his chest. He looked at Momo curiously as he seemed to be·stuck to the ground. His words a moment later only made that assumption truth. "Stuck again?" he asked, eyeing the other with some tiny hint of amusement. It was kind of funny, to see a guy like Momoshiro rooted to the spot. Just like he'd been stuck on the floor the first time Ryoma had met him. "This like the time in the kitchen when you got my Ponta all over you?"

Momoshiro cleared his throat. "Similar, but not the same," he commented, giving his leg one strong tug and fell over onto the ground. "It was a good demonstration of being stuck, don't ya think?" He grinned, looking up at Ryoma.

... Ryoma couldn't help it. He thought it was very nice of himself to raise one hand to his mouth before snickering uncontrollably behind it. It was... funny. "Yeah, a great demonstration. Am I ever gonna get one of you up and walking for any reasonable length of time?" He wasn't sure about that one, but he was hoping that Momo could at least go for maybe an hour or two without managing to become temporarily immobile.

Giving his leg a shake, Momoshiro decided it was safe to move back onto his feet and jump around slightly. He shook out all his limbs and said, "I feel much better now. Yes, we can be on our way!" He nodded and gave Ryoma a thumbs up, thinking to himself that a laughing Ryoma was a good Ryoma.

"Heh. Good," Ryoma said with a nod of his head, still snickering a bit as Momo jumped around. He pushed himself off of the bricks he was leaning against, and set off in the direction of the school gates - a threshold he didn't cross nearly often enough, in his opinion. "Are we just going until you get hungry?" he asked, glancing up at the taller boy. He had no doubt that wouldn't be long from now.

"Nah," Momoshiro said, scratching his head, "We're gonna hang out, you know, like classmates. Heck, we live in the same giant house! We're sorta like brothers now, ya know?" He reached out to give Ryoma thump on the back before catching himself and shoving his hands in his pockets.

"... Brothers," Ryoma repeated, not quite sure that living under the same roof made them any such thing. Nonetheless, he smirked up at Momoshiro as they walked. "You want me to be your brother? Don't you already have one or something?" He eyed the other curiously - it had looked like he was going to do something, but Momo had just shoved his hands back in his pockets instead. Ryoma shrugged, not particularly worried, and looked down the street once they'd exited the gates. "Which way? I don't know where we should 'hang out'."

"Yeah, brothers. I got one. A little brother, and a little sister, but... ya know, when you're away from home like this, you find satisfaction in another kind of family. Stuff like that." Momoshiro closed his eyes and pointed in a random direction. "I'm not used to this area yet, so we can just wander around until we get lost!" He nodded, and started off in the direction he had pointed it.

"Hm. Don't have any of either," Ryoma remarked before shrugging again and following Momo to... who knew where. He only kind of knew his way around, but he supposed they couldn't get that lost. He still had a cell phone, anyway. They'd be fine. He was kind of curious how far he could get before he wouldn't feel Hanamura anymore, too... he hoped it wasn't far. "I guess wandering's fine."

Momoshiro glanced down at Ryoma and continued to grin. "We might discover something really cool! Right? That'd be awsome!" He was forever young and heart, and he couldn't help but wonder, why is that Ryoma seemed so much older and so much more mature?

"... Right." They might discover something? Whatever made Momo happy, Ryoma figured, sticking his hands into his own pockets. "Whatever you say." He watched the other boy as they trailed lazily down the street, having nowhere to go and forever to get there in. Relatively speaking. Did everyone get so weird when they got older? It certainly seemed like it. It didn't make much sense at all.

"Yeah, you know, like some sketchy store, or like... an abandoned warehouse. Stuff like that. Have you ever gone exploring before?" Momoshiro kicked a rock at his shoe and watched it fly a few feet.

"Sure, something like that," Ryoma agreed, watching his own feet on the sidewalk a moment. "Exploring? Yeah, I guess so." He'd found plenty of places back home, when he'd been looking for somewhere to be alone and get away from other people. Especially the ones who'd made his head hurt - and now he realized that sensation for what it was. "Not around here though. Back home. Y'know, just kid stuff."

"Kid stuff? Blasphemy! Exploring is never for kids. You know, it's exploration that discovered Japan over... well... some thousands of years ago. When chinese explorers happened upon this collection of islands. America too! exploration is all about discovery and--" Momoshiro paused. Shit. HE was a big dork, wasn't he?

"Yeah, I know, I know," Ryoma said, glancing up at his overexcited companion. Momo was definitely very strange. But he guessed it wasn't so bad. They were approaching a park now, and a pretty big one at that. It had a playground, bike path, benches and even a fountain. He motioned to it with a nod of his head. "You wanna wander over there?" It looked like they might at least not get too lost that way.

Momoshiro raised an eyebrow at the park. "Aww, hey, a park!" he commented, smiling, "I didn't even know they had one around here. This is great! I wonder if there are any little kids here!" He looked around. "Great idea! Echizen, you rock!"

Ryoma wasn't quite sure he "rocked" because he'd noticed the park, but whatever. He turned down the path and off the sidewalk, taking them by the playground (which Momoshiro seemed to be so interested in) and slowed their pace a little, glancing around at the neatly-sculpted landscape. It was kinda nice, he supposed, for a city park. "What're you gonna do with little kids?" he asked, tossing another glance up at his companion. He'd never found little kids very amusing or entertaining, and preferred to stay as far away from them as possible.

"Nothing, I just think they're cute to watch. They have a certain kind of innocence about them. You know... before everything goes wrong. Like, most mutations don't come into being until adolecence, so all these kids... they don't know what lies ahead for them, but they don't care. They live in the now. They're really.... what all people should aspire to be." Momoshiro nodded and smiled direction of a small kid who couldn't help but stop and stare.

"Hn." That seemed… unusually eloquent for Momo, Ryoma thought - or at least for the impression of him he'd gotten. He shrugged, looking over the group of children. "Yeah, well, none of 'em are even latent yet. We're the only two mutants here." Even with his power gone wacky, he could still feel mutants just fine. Even latent ones. "And you know, there really isn't a very high chance that any of 'em will be mutants. There's not that many of us, comparatively." Yet. They'd been learning in science class about the exponential increase in developing mutants every year. An exponential increase in a few percent of the population might not be much now, but it could be later.

"Yeah, but I mean... you never know. Plus, they don't even particularly care about that either. If they do, or they don't, they don't know yet. I bet some of these kids don't even know what being a mutant means. Probably only the stuff on tv and news..." Momoshiro paused and sighed slightly, "which means what they do know, is probably really negative."

Momoshiro did have a point, now. "Yeah, well, the mutant-haters are just… really loud," Ryoma said flatly. "Doesn't mean they're right." He'd never believed that mutants were so much better than humans - they'd all started out the same, right? Mutants were only better in the way that his dad was better at tennis than other people - just a question of talent. Not a question of divine rights or whatever some of those lunatics believed, regardless of which race they believed was more deserving. He hated stupid people.

"Isn't that what Ryuhana's for, anyway? Integrate us back into society or something, show that we're not dangerous?" That seemed to be the core belief that he'd been taught in class, and it seemed like a fine one to him. Mutants in and of themselves weren't dangerous. Just different. What the hell was everyone else's problem?

Momoshiro looked over at Ryoma and fought the urge to clap him proudly on the back. "Yeah! That's exactly what Ryuhana's for! It... like. you know, there's another school in America started by a professor Xavior and they're doing the exact same thing. Course, hen there's the brotherhood and they're 'human' haters. They're just as bad, no, worse, even, don't you think? Cuz they take advantage of their 'superiority' in order to hurt people!"

"Yeah, I think I heard about that when I was a kid… or something about them, anyway." He couldn't really recall - and he'd never paid much attention to the news when he was younger, anyway, but the representative that had just come to visit was also from the American school, or at least one of its affiliates. "And mutants who hate humans are just as bad as humans who hate mutants. They think they're right because they're the minority, and they're not."

"Yeah, exactly. Cept... uh... you know, those kids from the brotherhood that associate themselves with us... they're really..." Momoshiro furrowed his brow together, "... nice. Which is kind of unexpected, but hey, whatever! Mutants like other mutants and something like that." Momoshiro pulled a hand out of his pocket. "EW. Oh god! A half eaten gummy worm!"

Ryoma just stared at Momo as he pulled the gummy worm out of his pocket, almost on the verge of snickering all over again. Right - his first impression hadn't been wrong. Momoshiro was still a dork. "Yeah, well, I'll bet that's no one's fault but your own," he said, shaking his head a bit with a bemused grin. "You prolly just like kids 'cause you are one."

Momoshiro looked at the half eaten gummy worm for a period of time before shrugging and eating it. "Yeah, well... I'm not gonna object or argue with that," he muttered, around the slightly stale, slightly sticky peice of candy.

"…" Ryoma made a face - no, neither was he, not if the other was eating candy he'd found in his pockets. He rolled his eyes and continued down the path - it seemed to be bringing them full circle, back around to the front of the park. "So are you still hungry, or did that satisfy you for now? 'Cause it's almost dinnertime. And have I mentioned you're weird?"

"Hahahaa, nah, I did it cuz it was there. I mean, what's the point in wasting a good old gummy worm?" Momoshiro scratched his head and grinned. "That's okay. I don't being called weird. it makes me feel special."

"… Special." Well. Momo was certainly… special. In certain terms of the word. "Whatever. You still owe me dinner. Which way now?" They'd finally come back to the sidewalk, and Ryoma glanced around in the evening air. "Ryuhana's that way," he said, pointing out the direction from which they'd come. "We can head back that way, or go the other way… don't care."

"C'mon, this way," Momoshiro exclaimed, throwing his arm in a direction and then marching off. "They have the best food around. You know, really good traditional stuff. Their ramen is absolutely incredible. I can eat like 6 bowls of the stuff if I wanted to! Besides, you said you liked Japanese food the best, so I figure that'd be a good place for you."

Ryoma watched Momoshiro go for a few steps, then took off behind him. "Sure, that's cool," he said - he did like Japanese food best, and if Momo said it was good… well, it had at least a decent chance of being just that. Besides, he wasn't paying. "Sounds better than what we get at school."