RP Log: Niou & Ryoma
Date: Uh... We'll say Saturday, 6/21
Rating: G
Summary: Ryoma finally asks Niou some of the questions that have been bugging him. They talk about mutancy, and Ryoma asks a lot of other questions and only gets a few answers. XD;
Ryoma glanced at Niou over the top of his DS, only half of his attention focused on the game he was playing. This wasn't the first time they'd met in the back of the library to challenge each other for an afternoon, though Niou did admittedly look much better (and significantly less covered in Band-Aids) than the first time they'd done this.
The half of Ryoma's mind not on the game was, as always, trying to figure out what lay beneath the older boy's ever-changing surface. His changing hair and eye color only bespoke someone who liked to keep everyone on their toes, but his conversation - well, if it could be called conversation, sometimes it was more like trying to pass a test when you didn't know what subject it was on - indicated something more. And while it was usually amusing to play the other's word games, every single time Ryoma left wondering what Niou knew that he didn't, and why he hadn't just gone the direct route and asked for the information that he wanted to know.
He'd been around in the same circles in his head for a while now - he'd even asked for advice, on whether it was ethical or right or whatever to tell someone you knew they were a mutant when you weren't sure they knew it for themselves. But Niou was observant - Ryoma was pretty sure there was very little that went on around him that he didn't notice. He was just too careful about his words and actions, even when they seemed aggravatingly nonchalant, to not have noticed something like the fact that he was a mutant. And while Ryoma wasn't any closer to knowing whether or not said powers had anything to do with his self-professed pastime of "blowing shit up", he'd finally come to the conclusion that there was really only one way to find out.
He sighed, and put the game on pause. "Hey. C'n we just talk f'r a bit?" Well, okay, that came out sounding probably more serious than it had needed to, but there was nothing for it now.
Niou raised an eyebrow, his own side of the battle pausing. (Pausing was not irritating, he reminded himself. Pausing was good. Especially when being taken by surprise potentially meant killing the DS dead for all eternity.) "We c'n just talk f'r a bit and a half if you wanna," he offered generously, with a lopsided grin. It looked like Ryoma had something on his mind -- not that Niou thought that was odd, per se: Ryoma was clearly an intelligent kid. Who thought, unlike some. But he usually didn't seem to bothered with too many questions...
The phaser nudged his whimsical pair of rimless glasses up a little higher on his nose, closing his DS and switching it off without saving. "What'cha wanna say? I'm all ears."
Ryoma made a bit of a face, squirming around until he was in a more comfortable position to talk. He glanced around where they were sitting - no one was near them, but this was definitely one conversation he didn't want to take chances with. With a thought, he enclosed the both of them in a telepathic shield, big enough to hold them, just thick enough to muffle any sound of conversation so they were unlikely to be overheard. Not thick enough that, if things somehow got bad, any explosions or anything of the like would reflect inward.
Then he turned back to Niou, catching the other's gaze through a pair of glasses that Ryoma would've bet money on Niou not actually needing to see.
"I gotta weird question," he started out - might as well put some kind of disclaimer on what he was about to say, though he wasn't sure there was much point. "Wasn't sure I should bring it up, an' I prolly shouldn't, but... well." He tilted his head, waiting for the inevitable... reaction of some sort. "You know you're a mutant, right?"
"..." Niou said for a moment, because okay. Talk about hella unexpected. Sure, he hadn't taken the utmost care with his secret around Ryoma, but it wasn't as if he'd given it away either. And definitely not with the kind of surety Ryoma was talking with here. Earlier on, he'd pretty much deduced down to a good chance that Ryoma was a mutant, but hadn't been aware the other'd been doing the same right back to him. And wasn't that a dangerous thing to miss, for a guy working with the Friends of Humanity? Suddenly, Niou was definitely more interested in this conversation Ryoma wanted to have. "You know I'm a mutant?" he asked back. Yes, Niou knew. But why or how did Ryoma--?
Ryoma shrugged, feigning a lot more nonchalance than he felt. (Actually, he was feeling just a little pleased with himself, because there'd been a moment of silence and he got the feeling people didn't pull one over Niou like that very often.)
"Yeah, I know." But then, there was no way to tell Niou how he knew, short of confessing that Ryoma was one, himself. And while he didn't have a problem with that, he couldn't help but hear his mother's voice in his head every time he told; he heard her telling him that things weren't always safe, that even other mutants might not like him just because they were alike, that he shouldn't tell anyone he didn't need to tell. But somehow, while he'd been trying to figure this whole thing out, he'd just assumed that he'd probably tell Niou that he was a mutant as well. It was only fair - if he was going to pull something like this, then he might as well put all of his cards on the table too.
"I mean, you aren't obvious about it or anything. I just... I c'n tell. Stuff like that. Sometimes other people don't know they are, though. Don't go around makin' it a habit of informing people of stuff like that. But I wondered f'you knew." He shrugged again. "Figured you did. I'm one too. Though you might've figured that, though." There had been an awful lot of "hypothetical mutant threat" talk that had seemed too random to actually be random, Ryoma thought.
Niou sat up, staring at the other for a bit, before a slow smile crept across his face. "You ain't obvious about it either," he chuckled. Well, a concession for a concession: at least Ryoma was playing fair. (Sort of... The point still remained that--) "So, you can just... tell? Just like that? Without goin' into a guy's mind or anythin'?" It wasn't that he had anything particular against telepaths, any more than the guys with super fast healing or unbreakable bones or something. But they did make him edgy. Wasn't every guy that had a handful of secrets that could (theoretically) kill him so close to the surface, after all <3 Niou wasn't scared of being discovered -- was in fact banking on it someday. But he'd been playing this game for so long the finale could at least have the decency to be on his own terms. These potential powers of Ryoma's? Definitely something worth keeping tabs on.
Well, at least the only way Ryoma could've been obvious about it was by... well, synching and potentially exploding. (As long as you counted out the temporary telepathy, anyway.) He shook his head. "Haven't been in your mind," he confirmed. "Seems like s'prolly pretty confusing f'r an outsider in there," he added with a grin, and another shrug. "Wouldn't do that without asking. 'Less it's someone I really don't like." He had his reservations about even that, but... Niou didn't need to know that. Unless he asked.
"But yeah, I c'n just tell," he said, after a moment, with another grin. "Didn't think that was exactly th' source of your magical color-changing hair or anything."
"I'm a chameleon with mutant powers," Niou sniffed, with an assumed haughty air. "Not a human who half mutated a chameleon." There was a difference, of course. Sort of. But a part of him was half busy spinning at the implied news that Ryoma could get into his mind if he wanted. And that he wasn't just an ordinary telepath, either. Because that was great. A powerful little brat, who talked about his powers as if they'd always been a part of him. Fantastic, really.
Niou considered the situation for a moment. Well, it was good that they were on companionable terms, if nothing else. And Ryoma seemed to have ...moral standards. So that was something, too. "Why not 'nless you don't like 'em?" he queried. "I mean, d'ya steal memories or some crap?"
"Right," Ryoma conceded, with a bit of a smirk. It seemed pretty important to Niou to set that record straight, and it wasn't like Ryoma hadn't already figured on it. Whatever was up with the guy's strange desire to change his appearance as often as possible, Ryoma was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with his mutation, and more with the fact that Niou was pretty weird all on his own.
"Why should I?" Ryoma asked by way of answering Niou's first question. "Don't really care what people're thinking, s'not like it's any of my business." Maybe if he had to, he'd do it. But he didn't need to, so what was the point? "An' I don't steal memories or anything. This's just plain ol' telepathy." He paused, wondering how to best say the next part. He finally settled for the simplest explanation, for the moment. "I don't always have it. I mean, I do f'r now. S'just a side effect, so I c'n control what I do got."
He grinned at Niou, leaning forward a bit now. "So what d'you got?"
Niou's brain put two and three together to equal four-point-five. "It's not yours, and you wanna know what I got..." he said. That meant...
He raised an eyebrow. Reaching out slowly, he settled his hand into a V at Ryoma's throat. And squeezed just the tiniest bit -- before closing hard into a phased fist. "I'm harmless," he said, lopsided grin returning, honest as he could manage because -- for all intents and purposes -- it was true. "I got nothin'."
Ryoma opened his mouth, about to reply or ask or something, when the other leaned forward and -
It was hard not to jump at the really freaking weird sensation of... he wasn't even sure, but as Niou pulled his hand out of Ryoma's neck, he swallowed, throat feeling dry; then, "Harmless, huh?" He leveled a look upon the other that said he believed that about as far as the current distance between them. A million possibilities sprang to mind - walking through walls, into wherever he wanted, no one could catch him...
But hold up a sec. This was all assuming Niou would actually want to do stuff like that. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he really was just a guy with the ability to do really nifty party tricks. Not that Ryoma'd exactly seen any evidence to back that assumption up, either. He finally settled into a grin, shaking his head a bit. "Well, s'a nice trick, 'cept f'r the cold hands." And... it shouldn't be too hard to replicate, either, if he had to. "Bet'cha find enough ways t'make it interesting."
"Like a glitch in the Matrix," Niou grinned, leaving it at that. Because really, the fun was more than just getting to do whatever you wanted. That got boring pretty quick. He leaned back in his chair and subconsciously berated his molecules for not being better friends, not really happy with Ryoma's cold hands comment. At rest, his body temperature was on the coolish side by default, thanks to his slowable metabolism. But separate from that, his extremities only got notably cold if he was sloppy about the phasing aspect of his powers. Or, technically, the un-phasing side: the less he bothered pulling himself together after a phase, the looser his molecules hung. Though it wasn't a visible difference, he lost a lot more bodyheat that way. (Granted, being a little cold to the touch wasn't detrimental, but...)
But that was an issue for later.
"So," the phaser said instead, staring at the ceiling for a bit. "You ain't a telepath, but you can be. And y'are, only 'cause you can't control what you got. But what you got is run o' the mill telepathy. Which ain't yours." He sat up again, fixing his eyes back on Ryoma with another lopsided grin. If something wasn't yours, there were only so many ways you could have it. "What'dja do, beg, borrow or steal?"
Well, Niou was certainly on the right track, for the most part. Ryoma considered the question, but none of the words was quite accurate enough. "S'it stealing f'no one loses anything?" he asked, with a bit of a smug grin. But the best way to get this one across without too many word games was to show him - not to mention, Ryoma wouldn't mind seeing another one of those looks on Niou's face. That look that said he was surprised, but he didn't want anyone to know he was surprised.
In any case, it should be safe enough to synch intangibility - Niou's ground state appeared to be solid, and he had to work to do what he did. Ryoma dropped the shield between them, and felt his body adjust to the other's powers - definitely more than just moving through objects, he realized, even as he bit his lip and considered what it took to get that phasing power to -
Not much, apparently, as he fell through the chair he was sitting on.
His first instinct was to swear, but he couldn't, when his lungs couldn't draw air. And it wasn't far to the floor - he would fall through the floor if he didn't -
Solid... Solid! SOLID - "Ow!" Well, he was solid again. And flat on his back. Under the chair. "... That was exciting."
Hearing Ryoma's voice again was a good sign that he hadn't fallen through the world to freaking Brazil or something -- and Niou stuck his head down to double-check. Ah, yep. The kid was still there, and had apparently regained the ability to hurt himself. And nothing else looked too amiss. Niou snickered. Unlike many a mutant, a phaser's when you could phase being able to hurt yourself was a good thing <3 His snickers dissolved into almost outright laughter when he realised he was almost relieved. What a stupid thing to be: whatever happened from Ryoma using his powers was the kid's own problem. (But all the same...)
"Don't be too thrilled outta your socks or anything," Niou snerked, and briefly waved his hand through the side of his own chair to confirm that indeed, Ryoma was not a thief so much as a doppelganger. "So... you're a powers-mimic. What's your limit? Line-of-sight? Live demo? Proximity? You obviously didn't synch everyone in Tokyo when you manifested, or you'd be dead."
Ryoma tried to scoot out from beneath the chair with as much dignity as possible - admittedly, a pretty hard feat - while the other just laughed at him. Ryoma glanced to the side, glad that he'd put up a noise-muffling shield around them - no one seemed to have taken notice of this little... incident. "Still got my socks on," he replied, rolling his eyes, as he finally sat up on the floor, having wiggled out from under his chair.
Well, so much for surprising Niou. More like amusing Niou, he thought, as the other peppered him with questions while he seated himself once more. "Proximity," he answered, when the questions stopped. "Could prolly synch anyone in the building, but we're the only mutants here. In case you were wondering." He gave Niou a sideways glance - the other still looked pretty amused, but he had to admit that if it had been Niou who'd fallen through his chair, Ryoma would probably still be laughing, too. "Dunno when I manifested, really." He didn't exactly feel the need to go into the gory details of the childhood he hadn't known was strange until his parents had told him otherwise. "Wasn't much of a problem 'till I was older. S'why I got the telepathy f'r now. Cuts it off." Nor did he have to go into how he probably would die at this point if he were to walk into a room full of mutants, if he didn't have the link to Hanamura. That wasn't something he liked to think about.
He shifted in his chair a bit, aware that he was answering far more questions than he was asking. But he did have one of his own - "You know the intangibility's not all you got." It wasn't really phrased as a question, but it could be taken as one.
Niou tilted his head, half-feigning curiousity. He did know intangibility wasn't the extent of his powers, but what he wondered about was how much Ryoma knew. Or had. Or could do. "...yeah?" he said, in a way that could be taken as either 'yes, I know' or 'is that so?', depending on what Ryoma felt like. He did know, but wasn't going to say it -- almost through sheer force of habit alone.
Maybe he'd spent too much time around people who'd happily kill him, but it was weird. Even without Niou asking, Ryoma told him things. Sometimes what he wanted to know, and sometimes not. But interesting things. And it threw him a bit, that he never had to particularly dig, though he'd never admit it. The kid was pretty open for a mutant, though the fact he apparently couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been a mutant probably helped with that -- at least somewhat. Most of the mutants Niou'd known over the years had closed up in some way, shape or form, after manifesting. No matter how much they seemed (or tried) to not change, something always did -- and it wasn't just their human status either.
"Yeah." Niou had sounded interested enough in that statement that maybe he hadn't known, after all. Ryoma frowned a little in concentration, trying to feel past the first power and figure out the extent of the second. "Somethin' t'do with... physiology, I guess is the best way t'put it. You c'n slow down." He glanced up again. "You could prolly hibernate f'r the winter if you wanted." Ryoma thought about it for a moment more, then shrugged. "Or you could go all the way an' prolly pretend you were dead... doesn't sound like a good trick 'tpull more than once, though," he finished with a rueful grin. Its purpose served, he cut off the synch with a shield once more, shifting in his chair a little as whatever physiological effects Niou's power exhibited fell away.
"Anyway. Looks like you at least got the one down pretty well." While the concept of phasing through matter was apparently simple enough, it required a significant amount of skill, that much was clear. Skill that Niou already appeared to have. "But you obviously don't... go t'school for it." At least, not where Ryoma did - though, hell, he didn't know how old Niou was in the first place. He didn't look old enough to be in college, but... First things first. "It take long t'get it down?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
In reality, he was a little bit jealous; but then, he was a little bit jealous of anyone who had control, because he still didn't.
"Not really," Niou lied. But three years for satisfactory competence (in Niou's own eyes anyway) was a short enough time compared to Ryoma's 'indefinitely'. And for the very basics, it hadn't taken long per se, so much as just lots of banging into and/or breaking things. "But then 's not like I got it down all perfect already," he added. "The bandaids from before? That was from practice." Well, he amended to himself. Provocation first, and practice second. But still fundamentally practice. At getting hit. Almost subconsciously, he curled and uncurled his right hand into a loose fist, the feeling of Kirihara's energy burn still kind of fresh and not something he'd repeat again for casual fun.
"... Oh. Huh." Well, now that made sense; Ryoma hadn't been sure what exactly he'd thought those Band-Aids had been from. But if Niou was still learning, at least on some level, then it did follow that maybe he wouldn't be able to phase everything all the time. There were probably conditions. Like not being distracted.
"So you can get hurt, then." And then that begged the question - "D'your parents know?" Because wouldn't they have made him go to Ryuhana? And - well, before that, probably, came, "How old are you, anyway?" Ryoma really had no clue - Niou kind of exuded an air that made questions about what he was like when you weren't talking to him seem irrelevant. But just because Ryoma'd been put off by that for their past couple of meetings hadn't meant he was never going to address it.
"Older'n you," Niou snickered. "Though that ain't so hard <3" He was just teasing though, not being that much older anyway -- about three years, if Ryoma hadn't had a birthday for this one yet. The phaser blinked and removed his glasses, holding them up backwards in front of his face and looking at Ryoma through them that way. But they weren't prescription, so nothing was distorted. He squinted anyway -- "I'mma be twen'y by the end of the year. Somehow." -- and loosed a dramatic shudder. Twenty. An adult. What a disturbing thought.
Ryoma made a face, about to retort that he really wasn't a kid. But then Niou mentioned twenty, and Ryoma made a different face, trying to figure out if he was serious or not. It was hard to tell how old he looked, exactly - though that was probably because he kept changing that pretty much every time Ryoma saw him. Older, sure, but... well if he wasn't lying that meant he wasn't in high school anymore; Ryoma wondered briefly if he went to college, then, but suddenly that seemed kind of unlikely... or did it? Niou wasn't stupid. And he'd conveniently sidestepped Ryoma's question about his parents altogether, though Ryoma wasn't sure what that indicated, exactly.
He glanced up at Niou, who was studying him backwards through his (still probably fake, Ryoma thought) glasses. And while he'd been about to ask something much more useful, like where Niou lived and what he did for money, since he was practically an adult, he instead found himself leaning forward and peering back at the other, asking quietly, "So what color're your eyes? Really."
Niou turned his head sideways a bit, to look at Ryoma out of the corner of his eye, and grinned amusedly. The other had looked so intent there for a moment, that Niou'd felt sure he would ask -- well, about something that actually mattered. Though maybe it did, to Ryoma? The kid came across pretty odd like that, sometimes. Either way, there wasn't much harm done: he wore different cosmetic contacts every other day.
Shrugging, Niou set the glasses down and ducked his head for a moment, popping out the mellow green lens over his left eye, and dropped it on the table. More where it came from anyway. With a half-smirk, he faced Ryoma again. Coincidences were funny like that. "My eyes? Same as yours."
Ryoma waited until the other looked up again - and he had to admit he was more than a little surprised. He'd expected brown, maybe - Niou was supposedly Japanese, after all. (Well, so was Ryoma, at least by blood, so maybe he shouldn'tve been so surprised.) He covered it by snickering and scooting back again, saying, "Well now you look three times as weird." It was true, with the one gold eye, one green eye, and hair that was mostly black but not completely, thanks to the bleached streaks here and there. He wondered how Niou did that... how much dye did this guy go through in a week, and how did he pick what to do next? He shrugged. "Looks better'n green," he added, eyeing the hair and wondering what color that was supposed to be. Black looked about right, but the bleached look hadn't been bad either...
Why was he even thinking about this? Who the hell cared what Niou looked like. That wasn't exactly the topic of conversation here, though he'd lost his previous train of questions. "You should be an actor," he finally said, a little disgruntled that he wasn't sure where to go from here. "'Least you got your own costume supplies." Well, hey, that connected decently enough. "So you got a job? I mean, f'you're almost twenty, you're not in school, right?"
That got Niou laughing again. "Haven't been in school s~ince I was y~our a~ge," he said, affecting the tone of a condescending grandfather. But it was true enough -- he'd dropped out as soon as it wouldn't have caused him more trouble to leave than leaving was worth. And so he leaned back in his chair, considering the boy in front of him. He already trusted Ryoma more than any of the Friends of Humanity, but that wasn't saying too much since he didn't trust them much further than he could flick a bus with a broken finger. But... it was still better to be safe than sorry, and he always did prefer to explain later rather than now: "I ain't gotta real job, but." A lopsided grin. "Sometimes I blow shit up part-time. Not a lotta risk involved, y'know?"
"Can't say I've blown anything up myself. Doesn't sound all that safe." Ryoma failed to see how there was not a lot of risk involved in blowing things up - especially if Niou had to do it the same way anyone else did, with good old-fashioned explosives. And the skeptical look on his face probably said as much. "S'it pay well, at least?"
But that aside... from what he'd said, Ryoma could only figure that Niou had either graduated early or hadn't graduated at all. He wasn't sure which it was more likely to be, really, and while Niou would probably tell him, it didn't seem all that important. Either way, Niou definitely wasn't stupid, but there was a lot more to him than Ryoma had first thought. He was still plenty weird, and no amount of information would change that, but there was so much below the surface that Ryoma wondered if he could ever truly fool the guy. Probably not. It was probably stupid to think he could, really.
But at least Niou could be surprised. And that was a start, Ryoma thought with a grin that was mostly for himself.
"The dividends are good enough," Niou said, and picked up his DS again, still watching Ryoma with an amusement of his own: "What'cha smilin' at, Shortstuff? Curiosity satisfied?" For now at least, he added to himself. A kid like Ryoma probably wasn't going to be content with just a little for very long, if the attitude was anything to go by. Maybe next time Niou'd do a little investigating of his own in return.
"Glad you think s'worth the risk," Ryoma murmured, shrugging a bit. There was probably a lot more to it than Niou was letting on, but enough was enough, Ryoma thought, as the other picked up his DS. He could spend all day asking questions of Niou, but they were supposed to be hanging out, not conducting an interrogation. He followed suit and grabbed his own DS, glancing from the older boy in front of him to the screen in his hands.
"Just thinkin'," he finally replied, grin turning competitive. His curiosity was at least relatively well satisfied, given that he had found out what he'd really wanted to know. But the answers had just dredged up more questions, in the end. Well, he figured he'd be seeing Niou again soon. There could be more questions later. For now, there was a video game to win.
Rating: G
Summary: Ryoma finally asks Niou some of the questions that have been bugging him. They talk about mutancy, and Ryoma asks a lot of other questions and only gets a few answers. XD;
Ryoma glanced at Niou over the top of his DS, only half of his attention focused on the game he was playing. This wasn't the first time they'd met in the back of the library to challenge each other for an afternoon, though Niou did admittedly look much better (and significantly less covered in Band-Aids) than the first time they'd done this.
The half of Ryoma's mind not on the game was, as always, trying to figure out what lay beneath the older boy's ever-changing surface. His changing hair and eye color only bespoke someone who liked to keep everyone on their toes, but his conversation - well, if it could be called conversation, sometimes it was more like trying to pass a test when you didn't know what subject it was on - indicated something more. And while it was usually amusing to play the other's word games, every single time Ryoma left wondering what Niou knew that he didn't, and why he hadn't just gone the direct route and asked for the information that he wanted to know.
He'd been around in the same circles in his head for a while now - he'd even asked for advice, on whether it was ethical or right or whatever to tell someone you knew they were a mutant when you weren't sure they knew it for themselves. But Niou was observant - Ryoma was pretty sure there was very little that went on around him that he didn't notice. He was just too careful about his words and actions, even when they seemed aggravatingly nonchalant, to not have noticed something like the fact that he was a mutant. And while Ryoma wasn't any closer to knowing whether or not said powers had anything to do with his self-professed pastime of "blowing shit up", he'd finally come to the conclusion that there was really only one way to find out.
He sighed, and put the game on pause. "Hey. C'n we just talk f'r a bit?" Well, okay, that came out sounding probably more serious than it had needed to, but there was nothing for it now.
Niou raised an eyebrow, his own side of the battle pausing. (Pausing was not irritating, he reminded himself. Pausing was good. Especially when being taken by surprise potentially meant killing the DS dead for all eternity.) "We c'n just talk f'r a bit and a half if you wanna," he offered generously, with a lopsided grin. It looked like Ryoma had something on his mind -- not that Niou thought that was odd, per se: Ryoma was clearly an intelligent kid. Who thought, unlike some. But he usually didn't seem to bothered with too many questions...
The phaser nudged his whimsical pair of rimless glasses up a little higher on his nose, closing his DS and switching it off without saving. "What'cha wanna say? I'm all ears."
Ryoma made a bit of a face, squirming around until he was in a more comfortable position to talk. He glanced around where they were sitting - no one was near them, but this was definitely one conversation he didn't want to take chances with. With a thought, he enclosed the both of them in a telepathic shield, big enough to hold them, just thick enough to muffle any sound of conversation so they were unlikely to be overheard. Not thick enough that, if things somehow got bad, any explosions or anything of the like would reflect inward.
Then he turned back to Niou, catching the other's gaze through a pair of glasses that Ryoma would've bet money on Niou not actually needing to see.
"I gotta weird question," he started out - might as well put some kind of disclaimer on what he was about to say, though he wasn't sure there was much point. "Wasn't sure I should bring it up, an' I prolly shouldn't, but... well." He tilted his head, waiting for the inevitable... reaction of some sort. "You know you're a mutant, right?"
"..." Niou said for a moment, because okay. Talk about hella unexpected. Sure, he hadn't taken the utmost care with his secret around Ryoma, but it wasn't as if he'd given it away either. And definitely not with the kind of surety Ryoma was talking with here. Earlier on, he'd pretty much deduced down to a good chance that Ryoma was a mutant, but hadn't been aware the other'd been doing the same right back to him. And wasn't that a dangerous thing to miss, for a guy working with the Friends of Humanity? Suddenly, Niou was definitely more interested in this conversation Ryoma wanted to have. "You know I'm a mutant?" he asked back. Yes, Niou knew. But why or how did Ryoma--?
Ryoma shrugged, feigning a lot more nonchalance than he felt. (Actually, he was feeling just a little pleased with himself, because there'd been a moment of silence and he got the feeling people didn't pull one over Niou like that very often.)
"Yeah, I know." But then, there was no way to tell Niou how he knew, short of confessing that Ryoma was one, himself. And while he didn't have a problem with that, he couldn't help but hear his mother's voice in his head every time he told; he heard her telling him that things weren't always safe, that even other mutants might not like him just because they were alike, that he shouldn't tell anyone he didn't need to tell. But somehow, while he'd been trying to figure this whole thing out, he'd just assumed that he'd probably tell Niou that he was a mutant as well. It was only fair - if he was going to pull something like this, then he might as well put all of his cards on the table too.
"I mean, you aren't obvious about it or anything. I just... I c'n tell. Stuff like that. Sometimes other people don't know they are, though. Don't go around makin' it a habit of informing people of stuff like that. But I wondered f'you knew." He shrugged again. "Figured you did. I'm one too. Though you might've figured that, though." There had been an awful lot of "hypothetical mutant threat" talk that had seemed too random to actually be random, Ryoma thought.
Niou sat up, staring at the other for a bit, before a slow smile crept across his face. "You ain't obvious about it either," he chuckled. Well, a concession for a concession: at least Ryoma was playing fair. (Sort of... The point still remained that--) "So, you can just... tell? Just like that? Without goin' into a guy's mind or anythin'?" It wasn't that he had anything particular against telepaths, any more than the guys with super fast healing or unbreakable bones or something. But they did make him edgy. Wasn't every guy that had a handful of secrets that could (theoretically) kill him so close to the surface, after all <3 Niou wasn't scared of being discovered -- was in fact banking on it someday. But he'd been playing this game for so long the finale could at least have the decency to be on his own terms. These potential powers of Ryoma's? Definitely something worth keeping tabs on.
Well, at least the only way Ryoma could've been obvious about it was by... well, synching and potentially exploding. (As long as you counted out the temporary telepathy, anyway.) He shook his head. "Haven't been in your mind," he confirmed. "Seems like s'prolly pretty confusing f'r an outsider in there," he added with a grin, and another shrug. "Wouldn't do that without asking. 'Less it's someone I really don't like." He had his reservations about even that, but... Niou didn't need to know that. Unless he asked.
"But yeah, I c'n just tell," he said, after a moment, with another grin. "Didn't think that was exactly th' source of your magical color-changing hair or anything."
"I'm a chameleon with mutant powers," Niou sniffed, with an assumed haughty air. "Not a human who half mutated a chameleon." There was a difference, of course. Sort of. But a part of him was half busy spinning at the implied news that Ryoma could get into his mind if he wanted. And that he wasn't just an ordinary telepath, either. Because that was great. A powerful little brat, who talked about his powers as if they'd always been a part of him. Fantastic, really.
Niou considered the situation for a moment. Well, it was good that they were on companionable terms, if nothing else. And Ryoma seemed to have ...moral standards. So that was something, too. "Why not 'nless you don't like 'em?" he queried. "I mean, d'ya steal memories or some crap?"
"Right," Ryoma conceded, with a bit of a smirk. It seemed pretty important to Niou to set that record straight, and it wasn't like Ryoma hadn't already figured on it. Whatever was up with the guy's strange desire to change his appearance as often as possible, Ryoma was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with his mutation, and more with the fact that Niou was pretty weird all on his own.
"Why should I?" Ryoma asked by way of answering Niou's first question. "Don't really care what people're thinking, s'not like it's any of my business." Maybe if he had to, he'd do it. But he didn't need to, so what was the point? "An' I don't steal memories or anything. This's just plain ol' telepathy." He paused, wondering how to best say the next part. He finally settled for the simplest explanation, for the moment. "I don't always have it. I mean, I do f'r now. S'just a side effect, so I c'n control what I do got."
He grinned at Niou, leaning forward a bit now. "So what d'you got?"
Niou's brain put two and three together to equal four-point-five. "It's not yours, and you wanna know what I got..." he said. That meant...
He raised an eyebrow. Reaching out slowly, he settled his hand into a V at Ryoma's throat. And squeezed just the tiniest bit -- before closing hard into a phased fist. "I'm harmless," he said, lopsided grin returning, honest as he could manage because -- for all intents and purposes -- it was true. "I got nothin'."
Ryoma opened his mouth, about to reply or ask or something, when the other leaned forward and -
It was hard not to jump at the really freaking weird sensation of... he wasn't even sure, but as Niou pulled his hand out of Ryoma's neck, he swallowed, throat feeling dry; then, "Harmless, huh?" He leveled a look upon the other that said he believed that about as far as the current distance between them. A million possibilities sprang to mind - walking through walls, into wherever he wanted, no one could catch him...
But hold up a sec. This was all assuming Niou would actually want to do stuff like that. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he really was just a guy with the ability to do really nifty party tricks. Not that Ryoma'd exactly seen any evidence to back that assumption up, either. He finally settled into a grin, shaking his head a bit. "Well, s'a nice trick, 'cept f'r the cold hands." And... it shouldn't be too hard to replicate, either, if he had to. "Bet'cha find enough ways t'make it interesting."
"Like a glitch in the Matrix," Niou grinned, leaving it at that. Because really, the fun was more than just getting to do whatever you wanted. That got boring pretty quick. He leaned back in his chair and subconsciously berated his molecules for not being better friends, not really happy with Ryoma's cold hands comment. At rest, his body temperature was on the coolish side by default, thanks to his slowable metabolism. But separate from that, his extremities only got notably cold if he was sloppy about the phasing aspect of his powers. Or, technically, the un-phasing side: the less he bothered pulling himself together after a phase, the looser his molecules hung. Though it wasn't a visible difference, he lost a lot more bodyheat that way. (Granted, being a little cold to the touch wasn't detrimental, but...)
But that was an issue for later.
"So," the phaser said instead, staring at the ceiling for a bit. "You ain't a telepath, but you can be. And y'are, only 'cause you can't control what you got. But what you got is run o' the mill telepathy. Which ain't yours." He sat up again, fixing his eyes back on Ryoma with another lopsided grin. If something wasn't yours, there were only so many ways you could have it. "What'dja do, beg, borrow or steal?"
Well, Niou was certainly on the right track, for the most part. Ryoma considered the question, but none of the words was quite accurate enough. "S'it stealing f'no one loses anything?" he asked, with a bit of a smug grin. But the best way to get this one across without too many word games was to show him - not to mention, Ryoma wouldn't mind seeing another one of those looks on Niou's face. That look that said he was surprised, but he didn't want anyone to know he was surprised.
In any case, it should be safe enough to synch intangibility - Niou's ground state appeared to be solid, and he had to work to do what he did. Ryoma dropped the shield between them, and felt his body adjust to the other's powers - definitely more than just moving through objects, he realized, even as he bit his lip and considered what it took to get that phasing power to -
Not much, apparently, as he fell through the chair he was sitting on.
His first instinct was to swear, but he couldn't, when his lungs couldn't draw air. And it wasn't far to the floor - he would fall through the floor if he didn't -
Solid... Solid! SOLID - "Ow!" Well, he was solid again. And flat on his back. Under the chair. "... That was exciting."
Hearing Ryoma's voice again was a good sign that he hadn't fallen through the world to freaking Brazil or something -- and Niou stuck his head down to double-check. Ah, yep. The kid was still there, and had apparently regained the ability to hurt himself. And nothing else looked too amiss. Niou snickered. Unlike many a mutant, a phaser's when you could phase being able to hurt yourself was a good thing <3 His snickers dissolved into almost outright laughter when he realised he was almost relieved. What a stupid thing to be: whatever happened from Ryoma using his powers was the kid's own problem. (But all the same...)
"Don't be too thrilled outta your socks or anything," Niou snerked, and briefly waved his hand through the side of his own chair to confirm that indeed, Ryoma was not a thief so much as a doppelganger. "So... you're a powers-mimic. What's your limit? Line-of-sight? Live demo? Proximity? You obviously didn't synch everyone in Tokyo when you manifested, or you'd be dead."
Ryoma tried to scoot out from beneath the chair with as much dignity as possible - admittedly, a pretty hard feat - while the other just laughed at him. Ryoma glanced to the side, glad that he'd put up a noise-muffling shield around them - no one seemed to have taken notice of this little... incident. "Still got my socks on," he replied, rolling his eyes, as he finally sat up on the floor, having wiggled out from under his chair.
Well, so much for surprising Niou. More like amusing Niou, he thought, as the other peppered him with questions while he seated himself once more. "Proximity," he answered, when the questions stopped. "Could prolly synch anyone in the building, but we're the only mutants here. In case you were wondering." He gave Niou a sideways glance - the other still looked pretty amused, but he had to admit that if it had been Niou who'd fallen through his chair, Ryoma would probably still be laughing, too. "Dunno when I manifested, really." He didn't exactly feel the need to go into the gory details of the childhood he hadn't known was strange until his parents had told him otherwise. "Wasn't much of a problem 'till I was older. S'why I got the telepathy f'r now. Cuts it off." Nor did he have to go into how he probably would die at this point if he were to walk into a room full of mutants, if he didn't have the link to Hanamura. That wasn't something he liked to think about.
He shifted in his chair a bit, aware that he was answering far more questions than he was asking. But he did have one of his own - "You know the intangibility's not all you got." It wasn't really phrased as a question, but it could be taken as one.
Niou tilted his head, half-feigning curiousity. He did know intangibility wasn't the extent of his powers, but what he wondered about was how much Ryoma knew. Or had. Or could do. "...yeah?" he said, in a way that could be taken as either 'yes, I know' or 'is that so?', depending on what Ryoma felt like. He did know, but wasn't going to say it -- almost through sheer force of habit alone.
Maybe he'd spent too much time around people who'd happily kill him, but it was weird. Even without Niou asking, Ryoma told him things. Sometimes what he wanted to know, and sometimes not. But interesting things. And it threw him a bit, that he never had to particularly dig, though he'd never admit it. The kid was pretty open for a mutant, though the fact he apparently couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been a mutant probably helped with that -- at least somewhat. Most of the mutants Niou'd known over the years had closed up in some way, shape or form, after manifesting. No matter how much they seemed (or tried) to not change, something always did -- and it wasn't just their human status either.
"Yeah." Niou had sounded interested enough in that statement that maybe he hadn't known, after all. Ryoma frowned a little in concentration, trying to feel past the first power and figure out the extent of the second. "Somethin' t'do with... physiology, I guess is the best way t'put it. You c'n slow down." He glanced up again. "You could prolly hibernate f'r the winter if you wanted." Ryoma thought about it for a moment more, then shrugged. "Or you could go all the way an' prolly pretend you were dead... doesn't sound like a good trick 'tpull more than once, though," he finished with a rueful grin. Its purpose served, he cut off the synch with a shield once more, shifting in his chair a little as whatever physiological effects Niou's power exhibited fell away.
"Anyway. Looks like you at least got the one down pretty well." While the concept of phasing through matter was apparently simple enough, it required a significant amount of skill, that much was clear. Skill that Niou already appeared to have. "But you obviously don't... go t'school for it." At least, not where Ryoma did - though, hell, he didn't know how old Niou was in the first place. He didn't look old enough to be in college, but... First things first. "It take long t'get it down?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
In reality, he was a little bit jealous; but then, he was a little bit jealous of anyone who had control, because he still didn't.
"Not really," Niou lied. But three years for satisfactory competence (in Niou's own eyes anyway) was a short enough time compared to Ryoma's 'indefinitely'. And for the very basics, it hadn't taken long per se, so much as just lots of banging into and/or breaking things. "But then 's not like I got it down all perfect already," he added. "The bandaids from before? That was from practice." Well, he amended to himself. Provocation first, and practice second. But still fundamentally practice. At getting hit. Almost subconsciously, he curled and uncurled his right hand into a loose fist, the feeling of Kirihara's energy burn still kind of fresh and not something he'd repeat again for casual fun.
"... Oh. Huh." Well, now that made sense; Ryoma hadn't been sure what exactly he'd thought those Band-Aids had been from. But if Niou was still learning, at least on some level, then it did follow that maybe he wouldn't be able to phase everything all the time. There were probably conditions. Like not being distracted.
"So you can get hurt, then." And then that begged the question - "D'your parents know?" Because wouldn't they have made him go to Ryuhana? And - well, before that, probably, came, "How old are you, anyway?" Ryoma really had no clue - Niou kind of exuded an air that made questions about what he was like when you weren't talking to him seem irrelevant. But just because Ryoma'd been put off by that for their past couple of meetings hadn't meant he was never going to address it.
"Older'n you," Niou snickered. "Though that ain't so hard <3" He was just teasing though, not being that much older anyway -- about three years, if Ryoma hadn't had a birthday for this one yet. The phaser blinked and removed his glasses, holding them up backwards in front of his face and looking at Ryoma through them that way. But they weren't prescription, so nothing was distorted. He squinted anyway -- "I'mma be twen'y by the end of the year. Somehow." -- and loosed a dramatic shudder. Twenty. An adult. What a disturbing thought.
Ryoma made a face, about to retort that he really wasn't a kid. But then Niou mentioned twenty, and Ryoma made a different face, trying to figure out if he was serious or not. It was hard to tell how old he looked, exactly - though that was probably because he kept changing that pretty much every time Ryoma saw him. Older, sure, but... well if he wasn't lying that meant he wasn't in high school anymore; Ryoma wondered briefly if he went to college, then, but suddenly that seemed kind of unlikely... or did it? Niou wasn't stupid. And he'd conveniently sidestepped Ryoma's question about his parents altogether, though Ryoma wasn't sure what that indicated, exactly.
He glanced up at Niou, who was studying him backwards through his (still probably fake, Ryoma thought) glasses. And while he'd been about to ask something much more useful, like where Niou lived and what he did for money, since he was practically an adult, he instead found himself leaning forward and peering back at the other, asking quietly, "So what color're your eyes? Really."
Niou turned his head sideways a bit, to look at Ryoma out of the corner of his eye, and grinned amusedly. The other had looked so intent there for a moment, that Niou'd felt sure he would ask -- well, about something that actually mattered. Though maybe it did, to Ryoma? The kid came across pretty odd like that, sometimes. Either way, there wasn't much harm done: he wore different cosmetic contacts every other day.
Shrugging, Niou set the glasses down and ducked his head for a moment, popping out the mellow green lens over his left eye, and dropped it on the table. More where it came from anyway. With a half-smirk, he faced Ryoma again. Coincidences were funny like that. "My eyes? Same as yours."
Ryoma waited until the other looked up again - and he had to admit he was more than a little surprised. He'd expected brown, maybe - Niou was supposedly Japanese, after all. (Well, so was Ryoma, at least by blood, so maybe he shouldn'tve been so surprised.) He covered it by snickering and scooting back again, saying, "Well now you look three times as weird." It was true, with the one gold eye, one green eye, and hair that was mostly black but not completely, thanks to the bleached streaks here and there. He wondered how Niou did that... how much dye did this guy go through in a week, and how did he pick what to do next? He shrugged. "Looks better'n green," he added, eyeing the hair and wondering what color that was supposed to be. Black looked about right, but the bleached look hadn't been bad either...
Why was he even thinking about this? Who the hell cared what Niou looked like. That wasn't exactly the topic of conversation here, though he'd lost his previous train of questions. "You should be an actor," he finally said, a little disgruntled that he wasn't sure where to go from here. "'Least you got your own costume supplies." Well, hey, that connected decently enough. "So you got a job? I mean, f'you're almost twenty, you're not in school, right?"
That got Niou laughing again. "Haven't been in school s~ince I was y~our a~ge," he said, affecting the tone of a condescending grandfather. But it was true enough -- he'd dropped out as soon as it wouldn't have caused him more trouble to leave than leaving was worth. And so he leaned back in his chair, considering the boy in front of him. He already trusted Ryoma more than any of the Friends of Humanity, but that wasn't saying too much since he didn't trust them much further than he could flick a bus with a broken finger. But... it was still better to be safe than sorry, and he always did prefer to explain later rather than now: "I ain't gotta real job, but." A lopsided grin. "Sometimes I blow shit up part-time. Not a lotta risk involved, y'know?"
"Can't say I've blown anything up myself. Doesn't sound all that safe." Ryoma failed to see how there was not a lot of risk involved in blowing things up - especially if Niou had to do it the same way anyone else did, with good old-fashioned explosives. And the skeptical look on his face probably said as much. "S'it pay well, at least?"
But that aside... from what he'd said, Ryoma could only figure that Niou had either graduated early or hadn't graduated at all. He wasn't sure which it was more likely to be, really, and while Niou would probably tell him, it didn't seem all that important. Either way, Niou definitely wasn't stupid, but there was a lot more to him than Ryoma had first thought. He was still plenty weird, and no amount of information would change that, but there was so much below the surface that Ryoma wondered if he could ever truly fool the guy. Probably not. It was probably stupid to think he could, really.
But at least Niou could be surprised. And that was a start, Ryoma thought with a grin that was mostly for himself.
"The dividends are good enough," Niou said, and picked up his DS again, still watching Ryoma with an amusement of his own: "What'cha smilin' at, Shortstuff? Curiosity satisfied?" For now at least, he added to himself. A kid like Ryoma probably wasn't going to be content with just a little for very long, if the attitude was anything to go by. Maybe next time Niou'd do a little investigating of his own in return.
"Glad you think s'worth the risk," Ryoma murmured, shrugging a bit. There was probably a lot more to it than Niou was letting on, but enough was enough, Ryoma thought, as the other picked up his DS. He could spend all day asking questions of Niou, but they were supposed to be hanging out, not conducting an interrogation. He followed suit and grabbed his own DS, glancing from the older boy in front of him to the screen in his hands.
"Just thinkin'," he finally replied, grin turning competitive. His curiosity was at least relatively well satisfied, given that he had found out what he'd really wanted to know. But the answers had just dredged up more questions, in the end. Well, he figured he'd be seeing Niou again soon. There could be more questions later. For now, there was a video game to win.