tenipuri_xp | RP Log: Kaidoh & Ishida (Reply)

Date: Backdated to 10/20
Rating: G
Summary: Kaidoh and Ishida meet! There is card-house-building and male-bonding over uniforms-missing-pieces! Yay!

Kaidoh walked slowly down the hall, headed for the stairs to return to his room after a checkup in the medlab and a short introduction on how to use his new image inducer. He eyed the small bundle of cloth he carried – what was with this “training uniform,” as Hanamura-sensei had called it? He didn’t want to wear it – it didn’t even have a shirt, for crying out loud! He sighed, hoping to get back to his room and hide it somewhere and forget about it for a while.

As he crossed through the rec room, he was forced to stop and stare at the… well. It was very nearly a complete house of cards, in the process of being constructed by one of the guys in his physical training class… Ishida-kun. They hadn’t really… met past nodding at each other a few times in class, but at least they’d seen each other before. Blinking at the structure, he glanced up at Ishida. “Hey… um. Wow. That’s really neat.” He kept his distance a bit, not wanting to disrupt the other’s work.

Ishida Tetsu was, currently, hunched over a mass of thin paper cards that - when viewed from afar - seemed to be a perfect representation of Daigoji, the Buddhist temple in the southeast of Kyoto. His legs were crossed on the chair he sat on, hands stilled in midair and still holding on to the ace of spades and 2 of hearts that were needed to complete the rooftop, his eyes darting towards the source of noise breaking through his intense focus.

But the second his eyes locked onto the source, his jaw dropped and the cards simply floated down to the table. There was a living zombie in the room, although with a healthy colour towards his skin, and Ishida didn’t believe a zombie would truly wear a bandanna. When real thought caught up to him, his feet had landed on the floor with a hard thud, and shook his shins in a way that hurt, and he stood up quickly and embarrassed.

"Oh! ..Uh. Thanks, ..--" Ishida muttered, eyes darting from each mass of bone, astounded by this certain mutation. Sure, he’d seen it around, in classes and in passing, but this was really the first time to really stop and stare. And he wasn’t going to give up that chance. "..what’s your name again?"

… Ishida was staring at him. Kaidoh felt his face flush and glanced down before speaking. “Uh, Kaidoh. Kaidoh Kaoru. I know I’ve seen you in class and stuff, but we don’t have time to talk or anything and… yeah.” He glanced up again, but the other was still looking at him strangely. Oh well – it wasn’t anything Kaidoh wasn’t used to, he supposed. And at least he was only staring – not yelling or running away or attacking, though Kaidoh had finally learned that those responses were unlikely, at least within the walls of Ryuhana. And now that he had an image inducer…

“So… um… h-how long did that take, so far?” he asked, indicating the cards carefully. “I could never do something like that – it must be hard.” He tucked the training uniform and image inducer further into the crook of one arm carefully, relatively sure that the fabric of the uniform, at least, was less susceptible to ripping than the fabric of his already-frayed t-shirt.

Ishida laughed, softly, and smiled down at Kaidoh, before gesturing to the card houses. Various temples of cards, the finished ones held together - quite cheaply, but Ishida did not want these cards to blow away or some little mutant kid to come along and think it would be amazing fun to knock down his work - with store-name glue. "It’s just a lot of focus and concentration and stuff. I mean, uh, a lot of the buildings, they get knocked down from time to time."

Nodding to the shorter boy, covered in bones, he finally let what was tugging at the back of his mind, free. "..Do those hurt?" It felt weird to just ask that to a guy who didn’t really seem in much pain.

Kaidoh nodded, still quite amazed with the other’s creation. “Yeah… I dunno that I could concentrate for that long, um, sitting down.” He liked moving, and did his best thinking while running – but he knew that definitely wasn’t for everyone. Ohtori-kun, for one, certainly seemed to like his sleep, he thought with a bit of a smile. Not that Kaidoh minded.

He blinked as Ishida’s question – he hadn’t gotten that one for a while. But he supposed it was mostly inevitable, after all. “Um… yeah,” he answered truthfully, trying to shrug it off at the same time. “But I’m used to it by now. It’s only really bad when there’s, um, new stuff,” he added quickly – the pain was bearable now that he’d gotten used to moving around with it, and he’d even started getting… more used to the pain of new growths, he supposed, what with all the work they’d been having him do lately to pull things out and let them re-grow to record his rates and progress.

He paused, thinking about the boy in front of him. He did… something with metal, right? “W-what about what you do. You’re… metal… right?” He didn’t want to seem rude, but there weren’t many other people here with physical mutations and he wondered if other people went through the same things as he did.

Ever smiling, Ishida nodded. A few would think of him as a fairly simple guy, with his smiling and his nodding, his laughing and his short sentences, but it was just because he didn’t feel like going into vast descriptions of anything. If a card-temple was a card-temple, he would declare it as such. They all took a while to create, and it did lead to his legs falling asleep, so -- of course he’d nod.

"Yep. I’m, uh, well, it gets a little complicated, you know? Like, bio.. Metal..-- well, it’s a long word, but it just boils down to my skin getting all hard and shiny." Ishida’s smile kept, but faltered as his temple caved in - a bad placement of cards. "But, y’know, I understand the hurting thing. A little. Not like stuff bursts through my skin or anything, but I do put a lot of stress on my body and whenever I grow, the metal kinda.. -- it hurts, if you believe that." Simple smile, simple laugh, and he began to rebuild again. "So then, what’s up? You want to help?"

Kaidoh nodded – that didn’t sound particularly pleasant, and he could definitely relate. “Ah… okay. I see. That sounds… kind of useful though, I guess,” he said, then winced as the other’s card tower tumbled down. That was sad – it must’ve taken so long to build. “Er, nothing up really, I just got back from a physical. And they’re showing me how to use the image inducer, so I can go out without.. well. I usually have to wear a hoodie and kind of… stay behind Ohtori-kun. It only kinda works.” No one seemed to have noticed his mutation so far, but there had certainly been a few close calls early on.

Did he want to help? “Um… if you think I won’t mess it up. Maybe I should just watch? I can stay for a little while,” he said, coming over to the table carefully as the other boy started rebuilding his tower. Ohtori-kun might not be home from his own training yet – it had been taking a bit longer, as of late.

Ishida simply shrugged and continued on rebuilding his temple of cards, an ace being placed upon a ‘box’ base comprised of kings and queens, the teenager not exactly paying attention to where or how his cards were placed as he smiled at the boy of bones, and gestured with his head towards an empty chair.

"Well, if you feel like this would be an exciting thing to watch, seat yourself. And if you want to try building, -- uh, I mean it’s not like you need focus or concentration..-- just ask and I’ll let you have a go," he spoke softly, his curiosity piqued due to this talk of an image inducer.

Sure, he didn’t need one, what with just having a problem with metallic flesh - what kind of mutation was that anyway, how useless - but it was something interesting and new to hear! But, Ishida wasn’t about to barge into this skittish teen’s personal lif-- "So, an image inducer, huh?" He spoke towards his cards, wincing as his words caught in his chest and came out weird. "That mean you’re gonna go out a lot, then?"

Kaidoh sat in the chair Ishida had indicated, setting his training uniform (or what there was of it) and image inducer beneath his chair. He watched the other place card after card back on his tower, quite amazed – he didn’t think they’d stay up like that if he tried. “Uh… well maybe I should watch first,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, they said the representative from the American schools brought two with him when he came,” Kaidoh said, as Ishida asked about the image inducer. “They said I could, ah, have one on a semi-permanent basis, since… er. I…” Well it was obvious that he was one of the few who couldn’t go out in public without hiding. “I look like this,” he finished, flushing a bit. “I’ve been out a few times before – I go running in the mornings, when it’s still dark. And I’ve been out during the day, just… covered.” Which wasn’t always easy.

"It’s a damn shame that you can’t really, uh, .. Be accepted for looking like that." Ishida spoke quietly to his cards, his heart skipping a beat as his most recently placed joker card threatened to tumble inwards from the force of his breath upon the laminate. Crisis averted, however, and he turned his head towards Kaidoh, to smile and offer a friendly conversation, at least for the most part.

"So, how about those uniforms, huh? You got yours, I can’t really mistake that weird fabric for anything else.." Ishida craned his head up to gaze at the ceiling, humming quietly and brow furrowed, seemingly speaking to himself as he muttered, "I appear to be missing my shirt, for mine…"

Kaidoh shrugged. “Yeah… well… I don’t really blame anyone for that,” he said quietly, studying the card tower now instead of Ishida. He knew he looked horrible. He could certainly understand how it scared people. He was still surprised every time Ohtori-kun said he didn’t mind it at all.

He glanced up as the other mentioned the new training uniforms, blinking. “Yeah… I’m not so… fond of them, myself.” The blush was back – until he processed the second half of what Ishida had said. “Wait – they, uh… didn’t give you a shirt either?”

Ishida let out a quiet grunt and refocused his attention on his card temple, a frown on his face as he slowly and meticulously began creating the sloped roofs. "Do all guy uniforms miss a shirt, Kaidoh-kun? --Wait, no, that can’t be right, can it? I really don’t understand --" A card bent right in half, and Ishida placed it aside with the other ruined cards. "Well, uh." He laughed, shrugged, and began bending another card. "At least we’ll match, huh."

“Er… I don’t think so,” Kaidoh admitted. “Ohtori-kun’s has one, and it’s a guy’s uniform. “I… dunno why yours doesn’t… they, uh, told me mind didn’t because of… well. I’d rip it. I kinda… rip most of my clothes, sooner or later.” It had been happening a bit less frequently as of late, but that was really only because he’d learned to move a little more carefully. It certainly wasn’t for lack of sharp bones. “Maybe… er, does your mutation… well, do you rip things too? Maybe that’s why,” he offered.

“I do tend to rip my clothing a bit, yeah.. Nothing too big, sleeves and sometimes I tear up the back of my shirt if I bend over and I’m metal.” Ishida admitted, frown of thought firmly upon his lips. But, of course, how could anyone at Ryuhana figure out that he rips his clothes sometimes? That’s why he took up sewing.. “I took up sewing because of that. I know, it’s kinda girly, but it really comes in handy.” He flashed a thumbs up, and expressed a loud grunt of disapproval as his elbow slammed into a to-scale replica of the Diet building. Screw this. “-- You want to go train?”

"Oh... Yeah, maybe that's it then?" He blushed a bit. "I can't sew, but Ohtori-kun can... so he helps me with a lot of my stuff." He felt a bit stupid, always having to rely on the other's skills, though Ohtori had said countless times that he didn't mind at all. "It sounds pretty useful to know."

He winced as Ishida's card house came tumbling down, but brightened a bit at the suggestion. "Uhm... train? Sure... that... sounds okay, as long as it's just us. And the doctors aren't around." He wouldn't mind training at all - he hadn't gotten to go running on a regular schedule, and he'd been feeling a bit underworked, having more lab days than workout days for his powers training after classes. "I just... gotta go tell Ohtori-kun, then." He motioned in the direction of his room. "If you want to wait."

Ishida rose to his full height of 6’4”, stretching out a few kinks in his neck and shoulders from having hunched over the stacks of cards for so long, and then simply smiled down to the other teen. “I’ve got all the time in the world, Kaidoh-kun. And it would be nice to finally get some training in.”

Nodding as Kaidoh noted the direction of his room, Ishida raised a hand and waved off the boy’s words. “I should get that training uniform on anyway, you know? We can meet back here, if you so wish.” However, without waiting for the boy to answer, Ishida turned on one heel and left the room, so as to hurriedly change -- which wouldn’t be all too hard, seeing as he only really possessed boots and pants for a training uniform.