tenipuri_xp | RP Log: Ryoma & Yagyuu

Date: Last Thursday, 2/16/2006, afternoon
Rating: G
Summary: Ryoma and Niou went back to Yagyuu's apartment after the mall cleanup on Tuesday, and slept until Thursday. Ryoma wakes up first, and has to actually pass the time with Yagyuu. :D;; Awkwardness ahoy!

Ryoma woke slowly, thinking that he really didn't want to be awake - he felt like he'd been run over by a truck and then some. Everything was sore; he blinked in the bright morning sunlight and sat up, trying to figure out what was going on. This wasn't his bed - this wasn't his house, or his dorm room, though Niou was asleep on the bed beside him, separated by a small barrier of blankets.

Which was just as well, really, considering Ryoma was synched not only to Niou, but Yagyuu as well. Now he remembered - this was Yagyuu's place. They'd come here Tuesday after doing as much as could be done before the "real" rescue team got to the lower levels, and all Ryoma really remembered was feeling incredibly sick and probably falling asleep before he'd hit the bed.

Well, no wonder - he'd spent the better part of nearly four days synched to a rotating sample of six people on average. He was quite sure he didn't want to do that again. Ever. No more than he ever wanted to have to think about the need for another rescue operation like that. It had been like hell down there. Only cold.

Now, though, he was really hungry. Odd, since he was synched to Niou, but maybe not so odd, since he'd also been synched to Momo and Aoi for who knew how long. Yagyuu was in the living room; Ryoma slid out of the bed and padded to the doorway, gaze falling on the back of a brunette head as the other sat hunched over a book. At least he was awake too. "Hey."

Yagyuu placed a bookmark in his novel and set it on the table in front of him. He'd expected Echizen to wake up before Niou, knowing what the phaser was capable of sleeping through and for how long. What he wasn't sure of was how to keep the younger boy entertained, or really how to deal with him at all. He supposed courtesy was as good a place as any to start.

"Good morning," Yagyuu greeted (never mind the fact that it was afternoon). "Did you sleep well?"

"I guess," Ryoma replied as the other set his book down. He felt better than he had before he'd fallen asleep, that was for sure, though that was no surprise. "Least I woke up," he said, with a glance back at Niou - the first time he'd synched Niou in his sleep, he'd stayed asleep for a week. Thankfully that hadn't happened again, though maybe it was because he'd been synching Niou before falling asleep ever since. Whatever. He shrugged sore shoulders and looked back to Yagyuu.

"What day s'it?" he asked - it would be too much to ask for it still to be Tuesday, or probably even Wednesday.

"It's Thursday," Yagyuu explained. "Afternoon." This meeting wasn't as awkward as he had feared it might be, thankfully. And if Echizen was awake, then certainly Niou wouldn't be long after, which would alleviate the awkwardness that was present. "You, ah -- you must be hungry. Would you like anything to eat?" In fact, the boy still looked tired, but surely food would cure that, at least somewhat.

Ryoma nodded - okay, Thursday wasn't too bad. At least it wasn't next Thursday. And if Niou didn't wake up soon, he'd see if the trick he'd tried last time worked. He was pretty sure Niou would wake if he tried hard enough. But for now, he'd let him sleep. Niou needed it.

At the mention of food, Ryoma's stomach growled. "Yeah - very." Though remembering how much he could eat after being synched to Momo, Ryoma resigned himself to the fact that he'd probably still be hungry when he was done. "You got anything?" Preferably that had been sealed - okay, fine, he didn't think Yagyuu was going to poison him with Niou essentially right there, but Ryoma wasn't about to forget the ice-cream-and-Jiroh incident.

"I may have a few things in the kitchen," Yagyuu explained as he stood to look through his cabinets himself. There wasn't a lot -- he hadn't anticipated guests -- but there was at least enough to feed the two of them now, and possibly Niou when he awoke. They'd go shopping if they needed to.

He started by filling the cooker with rice, and let that sit while Echizen explored his options.

Rice was a decent start... Ryoma glanced at the contents of the cabinets from behind Yagyuu, spotting a few staple goods. Fruit, vegetables, bread, tuna, things like that. Well, it was better than nothing. Ryoma was too hungry to think straight, so he opted for grabbing two apples and bit into one, still looking. He didn't know how to make much, but they could make stir fry or curry or something if he felt like cooking. He didn't, particularly, but it looked like that might be their only option.

He took another bite from the apple and sighed. "You got enough stuff for curry?"

Yagyuu looked over the ingredients in his pantry again, and decided that he really didn't, if Echizen wanted to make it from scratch. But he did have the same packages that would be familiar to almost any bachelor or lazy college student. They would have to do, even if he found possession of such items to be embarrassing. "I, ah ... is instant alright? Otherwise I don't mind going to the store; we may have to anyway."

"S'better, even," Ryoma said, taking the packet from Yagyuu once the other found it. Glancing over the directions, he nodded and began amassing some of the vegetables in a pile on the counter. "Need something to boil this in, an' some milk, and something to peel these," he said, figuring it was better for Yagyuu to give him things than to go searching the kitchen. He may not be particularly fond of the other, but he seemed all right for now. And he had let them stay. Ryoma hated to admit it, but he probably hadn't been in any shape to walk the rest of the way back to his house on Tuesday evening.

He shrugged at the other's suggestion of going to the store, tossing one of the apple cores into the trash and starting on the other piece of fruit. "Maybe. Niou's probably not gonna eat much though."

Yagyuu didn't have anything better to do, so assumed he might as well take Echizen's suggestions. He produced a saucepan and vegetable peeler (thankfully, they'd come with the kitchen; Yagyuu wouldn't have purchased kitchen tools on his own), and set them on the counter before getting the milk out of the refrigerator.

The curry was at least be easy enough to make, and Yagyuu supposed it would not be improper to bring up another subject while the ingredients were boiling. "By the way," he said, "ah, your mother called."

"Eh?" His mother? It took a moment to realize that he'd left his phone in his backpack; Ryoma supposed it would've made sense for Yagyuu to answer it if it had kept ringing.

Tossing the rest of the vegetables into the pan to boil, Ryoma scraped the skins into the garbage. "What'd she say?" Well, it was pretty obvious what she'd been calling about. He'd left in the middle of the night and though he'd written a note, he hadn't told her where he was going. Just that he'd be back in a few days. He was half-expecting her to padlock his door and windows when he did get back.

"She wanted to know where you were," Yagyuu explained. "I told her that you had been helping at the disaster site, and that you were uninjured, but would be resting here for a few days." He supposed it made sense for her to be worried if Echizen hadn't given any indication of his whereabouts, and then had been out of contact after the mall was destroyed. She could only assume the worst, really, and Yagyuu had been glad enough to reassure her otherwise. "She did say she wanted you to return at the earliest possible convenience. Shall I assume that that will be quite some time from now?"

Ryoma nodded, figuring that if he was good for anything, Yagyuu would be good at reassuring his mother. He just seemed like the type parents would listen to. Well, some parents, anyway, but thankfully his mother fell into that category.

He shrugged at the question, watching the curry simmer on the stovetop, stirring it idly and thinking. "Gonna stay 'till Niou wakes up," he decided; he was not going to just let Niou sleep for the next six months - horrid though the rescue operation had been, he needed to wake up sometime this week. Ryoma knew the phaser would be all right - but knowing and seeing were two different things, and he'd rather see it was so before he left for the confines of his room again. "I'll try'n wake him up in a coupla hours, I guess."

And in the meantime, he'd have to keep himself occupied here. Oh well. But even if it was Yagyuu's apartment, it wasn't his room at home, and the minor change of scenery (that wasn't the deathbed of nearly a hundred people) was kind of nice.

Fair enough, Yagyuu decided. He didn't mind lending his bed to those who needed it more than he did, especially if one of those was a dear friend of his, though he had to admit that it would be nice to actually see said friend during his stay. Hopefully several days' sleep was enough to recharge Niou's reserves. "Thank you," he said. "I suppose the ... two of you will be leaving shortly thereafter, then?" A shame, if that was the case, though if all Yagyuu could do to help was offer respite, so be it.

He pulled dishes from the cabinets and brought them to the table; there was sense enough in doing this properly.

Ryoma shrugged, glancing at the clock to check how much longer the curry needed to cook. "Dunno - Niou doesn't have to come with me. Whatever he wants." He wouldn't mind some time with Niou that wasn't spent digging hurt, dead, or dying people out of the dark, but it also wasn't like he wouldn't see Niou soon if the older boy decided not to take Ryoma home. Either way was all right, he supposed.

A few moments passed in silence, while Ryoma kept an eye on the clock, stirring every so often. He couldn't really think of much to converse about with Yagyuu - he spent most of his time not thinking about the morpher - but he supposed he ought to come up with something.

Well. Might as well start with the current situation. He was kind of curious... "What'd I break, by the way?" he asked, glancing up at Yagyuu now. "Never synched you before; I thought you just did the morphs."

"Break?" Yagyuu echoed. He knew that some of his colleagues had been suffering from some sort of powers-based malaise -- Mizuki had come by in the previous week, for example, complaining of some sort of headache and malfunction in his ability. As far as Yagyuu was aware, however, his mutation was physical in nature and would have no cause to be affected by a universal psionic event. "It is, ah, 'just' the morphs. What do you mean?"

Shaking his head, Ryoma turned down the heat, giving the curry a few more stirs before looking back to Yagyuu. "S'not just morphing. There's somethin' else, but it's not working right now."

He hefted the pan, spooning curry onto the plates Yagyuu had provided. "Maybe you just can't do it yet - but something of yours isn't working right now." It was definitely Yagyuu's - but Ryoma couldn't tell what it did. It was odd - like synching a void - but it was there. "S'not as big as the morphing part, anyway." It wasn't any of his concern in the first place.

Yagyuu didn't think that Echizen would bring up something like this if it weren't true -- the younger boy didn't seem like the type to intentionally lead people on, especially where it counted. So if he was to be believed, then Yagyuu possessed some additional power -- psionic in nature, if it was malfunctioning. "How can you tell?" he asked.

How could he tell? "Sjust there," Ryoma said - this wasn't a scientific process. Things were either there or they weren't. But then, he probably couldn't expect Yagyuu to know anything about how his power worked. "Been synched to you for the better part of a week," he explained, setting the pan back on the stove. Yagyuu had been helping near them some of the time, not to mention the fact that Ryoma'd been in his apartment for almost three days now. He'd already figured out - mostly - how to turn off the morphing in the course of helping out at the mall, when he'd had time to think about it. "I get full potential - not just what you c'n do now."

Ryoma had never tried morphing someone - and didn't really care to - and besides, the psionic part of Yagyuu's abilities weren't working. There were too many unknowns. "Don't know if it's got anything to do with morphing or not, but it wouldn't do any good to try now 'cause it's not working in the first place." Besides, Yagyuu could figure these things out on his own. Ryoma wasn't here to help him.

So it could be something that Yagyuu couldn't even do yet, which would certainly explain why he didn't know what Echizen was talking about. Fine enough, then. "Perhaps when it's back in working order you can offer some insight," he suggested casually -- it would be far more than what any of the training staff at the Brotherhood were able to do, he was sure.

"Maybe," Ryoma said, hunting in the few drawers for some chopsticks before carrying his plate out into the living room and sitting at the table to eat, figuring Yagyuu would follow him. He probably should've known the other would want help with whatever this "new" piece of his power was - but there was no use thinking about it now, since it was effectively broken for the time being. Regardless, Ryoma was still highly intent on learning how to control his own power first. He didn't like things this way - exposing himself to virtually any mutant power to pass within his range, which was growing - and he didn't like feeling as though his power using him, instead of the other way around. "Later. When m'not under house arrest." Because he still was, effectively, and he would have to be leaving here tonight.

"Later, then," Yagyuu agreed, and joined Ryoma at the table. They would have to save some food for Niou, when he awoke; regardless of whether he wanted it or not. Hopefully some would be left over, but even if there wasn't, making more wouldn't be a problem.

It was still a bit awkward, eating in silence across the table from Ryoma. Yagyuu couldn't think of any other word for it. There wasn't much to talk about -- besides the disaster, there wasn't much they had in common besides Niou, and Yagyuu didn't want to bring that up. So he said nothing until he was done eating.

Ryoma finished not long after Yagyuu - and probably then only because he'd heaped more onto his plate than the other had. He wanted seconds, but they needed to leave some for Niou at least, so he sat back against the wall and stared at his empty plate a minute. Yagyuu didn't seem inclined to talk - which was all right, he supposed - but that meant Ryoma would have to find some other way to entertain himself.

Craning his neck to look at some of the books on the shelves nearby, Ryoma sighed, deciding they weren't the sort of thing he was interested in at all. Figuring there weren't too many other ways to pass time in here, he opted for his last choice. "You got an extra towel or something? I wanna shower."

"In the linen closet," Yagyuu replied, and stood to show Ryoma where it was. He fished a spare towel from the shelf inside and handed it to him. "Thank you for your help," he said ambiguously, and could be referring to lunch or the disaster site or both, and went back to the kitchen to clean up the dishes.

"... Sure," Ryoma said, watching Yagyuu's back as it retreated into the kitchen. Well, whatever. He slung the towel over one shoulder and headed into the bathroom, figuring he might have to spend another hour or two with Yagyuu once he was done, but that at least he'd be clean while he did.