16951/I Knew It

I Knew It
Date of Scene:	17 January 2024
Location:	Jubilee and Noriko's Apt - College House
Synopsis:	Noriko comes crawling back to Xavier's and her recently old apartment after some time on the streets. Jubilation magically re-establishes couch dominance. Vampires and Sprite don't mix.
Cast of Characters:	Jubilation Lee, Noriko Ashida

---

Jubilation Lee has posed:
A couple minutes ago:

    Jubilee closes her eyes as she steps through the threshold of the apartment, relieved to find that she was still able to walk inside. Such is the un-life of a vampire. Her relief is quickly replaced with surprise. "Wow. Look at this place..." Jubilation mutters to herself, even frowning a little. The apartment has never looked more tidy, even after she moved out of it. Jubilee drops her backpack and luggage at the door and rushes over to the couch, not even bothering to close the door. She drops to her knees and inspects the center cushion. "...What the.... My butt groove is gone...It's like I never even existed."

Now:

    Jubilation bounces up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down while sitting dead center on the couch, determined to mark her territory again by reinstalling her butt groove.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
It was the last thing Noriko did before leaving.  She wasn't sure what counts for what, but remembering that Jubilation was not able to cross the threshold before, Noriko hid a note that said, 'Jubilation Lee, the first of her line, is permitted entry here,' and that was it.  Should the vampire be asked to come pick anything up or wishing to come pick anything up, Noriko didn't want some invisible hullabaloo keeping her back.

Well it's been, actually Noriko isn't sure how long it has been but she didn't last as long as she thought she would.  Time is a difficult thing for her to track, especially when her rhythm has been completely disrupted by a lack of steady food among other needs.  The last time Nori ran away, she ran away with practically nothing on her back and she made it okay, right?  Well that was her reasoning.  Perhaps she forgot how desperate she was, given desperation breeds determination.  She felt pretty desperate this time too, emotionally at least.  But there are things Noriko couldn't calculate for.  Her run-in with the manifestation of her conscience, Jiminy Lee.  Also, yeah that food thing turned out to be a big deal.  Some might say, if she were really serious, she would have gotten out of the tri-state area completely.  It would have only been less than a day's run to get across the country.

But that something kept pulling her back.  Jubilation's words, Nori's promise, all the stupid little kids that obviously must secretly look up to her cool self.  And then all of the memories she wanted to let go continue to draw her back, back to Xavier's, back to this apartment like some dog that can't get the location of 'home' out of its homing system.

Noriko plods her way down the hall with that now dirty black duffle slung over her shoulder.  Her clothing hangs off of her thinned frame ghoulishly.  She takes a break about halfway down the hallway to lean back against the wall and check a little pocket watch, a cheap all mechanical windup piece made in China that she picked up at some corner store.  The parts probably won't even last a year, but that's way longer than any other watch has survived on her person.  After checking the time, she slips the watch away and finishes the journey.  Just as she reaches for the door knob, she realizes that she locked herself out since she left the key on the counter.  Now, the door is actually open, but she doesn't know that.

Instead, she turns and falls to the floor while leaning back against the door and lets out a little sob.  Still homeless.  The sound of the squeaks, she finally realizes they are coming from within the apartment and not a neighbors.  Suddenly, she pushes herself up and opens the door.

"...When I left you permission to come in, I wasn't expecting it was for this."

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    Squeaking furniture coming from this apartment is something of a residential hazard for the others in the building, but it's not usually from Jubilee trying to fast track a butt groove in the couch. When the door swings open, Jubilation's head snap-turns towards the speedster. Bounce bounce bounce bounce. What would she say? What can she say? Bounce bounce bounce bounce.

    "It's not what it looks like!" Jubilee jokes. She relaxes her legs and lets her bouncing stop on its own before she stands up. Her casual, easy-going expression fades as she practically marches towards Noriko..

    Well well well...!

    Couldn't handle it out there on your own?

    I told you so!

    Jubilee doesn't say any of these things. When she reaches the speedster, she instead reaches out with both arms to draw her in for a silent hug.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"I don't even know what it looks like," or rather, what to make of it.  Noriko only knows what it sounded like, but her mind hadn't even gone there either until hearing Jubilation's joke.

"Be ca-" Normally, Noriko would pull back lightning quick if she had this much charge running through her body, even if Jubilation is a vampire now.  But the speedster is notably sluggish in her movement, and after the initial CRACK of monster static charge, she succumbs to the hug, melting into it as she drapes her arms feebly about Jubilee.  The natural buzz of her body is strong today, too strong.

"You were right," Noriko admits at some point mid-hug, her voice soft and hoarse around the edges.  Right about which parts?  Noriko doesn't say, but there's a seeming totality to it.  The words have a certain fullness to them.

"...what were you doing?"  Look, it felt like ages and eventually her curiosity was itching at the back of her mind.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    Vampire or not, Jubilee shrieks at the crack of electricity. Her muscles tense and relax in an instant, leaving behind a faint odor of ozone and flesh. She doesn't pull away, instead choosing to hug through the initial shock and discomfort. In fact, she presses her cheek against Noriko's, as she's done many times over the years, in her usual sunny-side-up sort of way. Not bad for someone who hasn't seen the sun in a few years. "I know," she whispers dismissively, not caring to revisit their earlier conversation.

    Instead, she revisits a private conversation she had with herself.

    "I knew you'd come back," Jubilation continues, squeezing Noriko before finally releasing her.

    Jubilation raises both eyebrows and smiles before glancing back at the couch. "Oh... My butt groove was gone..." she explains, as though it's a perfectly normal thing to be concerned about. "...You don't look so hot, Nori," Jubes adds, turning back towards the speedster. The awkwardness strikes her immediately. "I mean...uh, like, you do. You do look hot. I mean, like, not hot...I...That's not what I mean, like... You're hot...I just..." This is not going well.

    "Are you feeling sick?" is how Jubilee ends it, narrowly avoiding like five different disasters there.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko closes her eyes and wills herself not to burst into tears.  It feels like it's been forever since they embraced, since she smelled-yep, okay, there's that familiar scent, and buried underneath beyond the immediate combustion is the scent she actually missed.  Jubilation's cheek against Nori's buffets the speedster against the wave of her incoming emotion.

"Oh, yeah.  Time sucks that way," Noriko comments on Jubilation's loss of butt groove as if re-establishing it were the perfect order of things and she wouldn't have it any other way.

"Huh?"  Through Jubilation's verbal stumbling, two things become apparent.  Noriko is abnormally slow right now, more so than a human.  And the second thing is, she reacts to everything.  All of her micro expressions and regular reactions are on full display, hinting that the speedster really never has developed a sense of resilient patience necessary for every day conversations, but is subject to her own impulsiveness at all speeds.  Though normally, these would whiz past so quickly that she could at least maintain the illusion of patience.

"I haven't been eating as much."  No kidding.  "It takes a lot of energy to dumpster dive enough to feed a few bears," and she didn't want to resort to stealing, obviously.  "I was rationing."  Obviously, there's a curve Noriko has to keep ahead of to not fall off a proverbial cliff, and obviously, she was slipping well below that curve.  "I think I miscalculated."

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    "Everyone tells me that I better get used to everything and everyone going away like that...So maybe we ought to have a little funeral or something for my butt groove...To truly say goodbye..." Jubilee jokes. "But... I guess I'd rather bounce up and down on it and bring it back to life if I can!" Whatever joy, manufactured or real, that might be hidden in Jubilation's features fades as Noriko mentions dumpster diving. "Oh...Uh...Yeah, I mean, like, I've had my fair share of losers, too. The other night I was so hungry I had some Paul Blart," Jubilee jokes uneasily, comparing Noriko's dumpster diving with drinking the blood of a mall cop.

    WIthout even a moment's hesitation, Jubilation reaches out for Noriko's hands so she can guide her towards the couch. "Here, Nori, sit..." Jubes says, directing her down to the leftmost cushion so she speedster doesn't disrupt her process of reestablishing herself on the center one. Instead of joining her, Jubilee is already heading towards the door. "I'm gonna get you some food... All the good stuff.../bananas/... and /peanut butter/....Oh, and /cereal/....and /Sprite/... Like I'd forget!...Oh, gotta get Twizzlers, too, so it's, like, a balanced meal and all that... Popcorn, too... "

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Some would say there's a long tradition of bouncing on what you love to bring it back to life."  Noriko is, of course, referring to chest CPR.  "I'm told it works-Eww, fatty blood?  I guess mall life isn't as charmed on your new diet."  Not that Nori knows what mall cop tastes like.

Suddenly she is being led along, suddenly she is being guided to the couch, to an undisrupted cushion.  Suddenly Jubilation isn't there.  "Huh?"  It's not that Noriko isn't perceiving them, it's more like they are passing her by and she's left with echoes of deja vu, a strange slipping of event and time.  The food keywords start to pop up and Noriko begins to smile to herself.  Maybe she passed out from hunger and this is a dream.  Maybe this isn't a dream and she's just nuts.  Maybe it's real.  She doesn't care.

"All the good stuff," Noriko mumbles before closing her eyes.  She pulls her feet up to curl up on her side, not even bothering to take off her kicks.  Way too much energy expenditure.  "I'll be right here slipping into a lack of food coma," she jokes quietly.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    With that settled, Jubilee is surfing the halls like she's done countless times. The hidden wheels of her Heelys sneakers turn this hunt for food into the plain old skating inside the halls which she's been warned about countless times. It's fast, frenetic, and absolutely the coolest way to get from point A to point B on campus. Normally, there would be a point C, D, and E, just for fun, but not when there's a hungry speedster. Jubilee goes immediately to the kitchen.

    "Okay... there's some orange juice... some purple...drink.... Oh! Sunny Dee, alright!" Jubilee says with a surfer-girl affectation, just like the TV commercial, before resuming her search through the fridge. "There you are!" she announces as she pulls a six pack of soda from the fridge that still has five cans attached. After a couple more minutes of rummaging, Jubilation has assembled a little cardboard box of the essentials: Sprite, popcorn (popped and unpopped so Noriko can pop them herself, which is always fun to watch), a whole bundle of bananas, and a jar of peanut butter. "...She probably wants something else... Something...more....food....ish," Jubilation mutters, realizing in that moment just how weird this feels. She hasn't eaten human food in a long time.

    ---

    "Jubes, what are you doing?" a voice asks, attached to a kid brave enough to poke his head into the kitchen and interrupt the vampire's work. Jubilee looks up and gestures to the stack of meats and cheeses and lettuce and tomato and even a thick layer of potato chips, sandwiched between two slices of bread. "What's it look like? I'm making a sandwich...." Jubilee replies, glancing down at the plate. "....for Nori...." It's 11 inches tall and looks like it's for Dagwood from the Blondie cartoon strip. "Whoops."

Soon:

    "Nori...Here comes the weird-as-hell airplane that wouldn't fly in a million years...." Jubilation announces as she Kramers her way through the apartment door. She balances the cardboard box of junk food in the palm of one of her hands and a plate with the cartoon sandwich in the other.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
At some point in Jubilation's excursion, after her stomach growls her awake for the umpteenth protest, Noriko pulls herself into a seated position and flips the center couch cushion over.  If she was more cognizant, she would realize that the old butt groove is not facing front of the couch, as it should, but it's there, well preserved...magically.

In her haze, Noriko kicks her shoes off and resumes her position.  Even running this slow, it feels like Jubilation has been gone forever, and Noriko begins to actually second guess the vampire's presence in the dead of night.

By the time Jubilation makes it back, the speedster has padded her way to the shower where she keeps zapping scorch marks on the tile like some kind of science experiment trapped in a bottle.  Normally, hearing Jubilation get back, Nori would race back and act like nothing had happened at all.  This time, she's wrapped a big thick towel around herself, shoulders and all.  She forgoes her flammable slippers and just dumps her body back on the couch.  "Oh wait foood," she lets out at the last second as if some strange momentum had carried her past the plate to the couch.  That's where it was headed anyway so she secures her towel under her arms and reaches out for the sandwich plate.  "That looks amazing.  It's practically begging me to eat it.  I've been dreaming of that sandwich for ages-Just making sure, but you're really here and this sandwich is really here right?"

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    "Yep. I'm here. It's here," Jubilee confirms. "Though...that look in your eye says it's not gonna be here for much longer..." She puts the plate down on Noriko's lap and sits down in the center of the couch, making sure she keeps her fingers away from the area between the speedster's mouth and the sandwich. The box of soda and side-junk is placed on the coffee table. Jubilation, not being a food-eater anymore, starts futzing around with a Rubik's Cube she found on the skate through the mansion. It gives her hands something to do. Each turn brings her one step closer and two steps away from solving that stupid cube. Stupid, stupid cube.

    Jubilee frowns a little and looks down. Something doesn't feel right. There's something wrong. Goldilocks Lee stands up and inspects the center cushion for a moment, rotates it so the groove is facing the right way, and plops back down, not even questioning how and why the groove appeared as if by magic.

    "Just, like... make sure you breathe in between bites. I remember how that's, like, important," Jubes says. She frowns at the Rubik's Cube clutched in her hands. After a couple of sections get stuck instead of spinning around smoothly, Jubilation squeezes the cube out of frustration. A sudden burst of vampiric strength crushes the cube, sending all the tiny colored pieces in every direction. She doesn't comment on it, doesn't apologize for it, and just continues like there was never even a cube at all. Ehem.

    "Feeling better?" Jubilation suddenly asks, hopeful, as she reaches up to pluck a piece of Rubik's Cube that landed in her own hair. There was never a cube.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko isn't really aware of everything that is in the veritable feast of calories that Jubilation brings.  This isn't about pairing delicate flavors together to bring out a hint of bullshit...figurative bullshit.  The leaning tower of sandwich gets Noriko's undivided attention because it's what brings her the most joy, even if she knows tearing into the peanut butter will give her the Popeye strength she needs.

It starts with a nibbling, a never ceasing nibble that gets faster and faster, fast enough to give unwitting audiences a concern over digits going missing in the process, but Jubilation knows that would never happen.  Like a cartoon eating corn on the cob, the nibbling speeds up to devour the entire sandwich in under a minute.  Noriko may still look haggard, but she's obviously no longer in danger of fainting.

Noriko watches the cube solving with passing interest, like a baby seeing bright colors on a screen.  It's there.  It's better than staring at a wall or the box of food she should /already/ be tearing into if it weren't for her need to rebuild her calories.

"Yeah.  Thanks...hey, you know even with all the time in the world, I can't ever solve those things.  I usually just re-stick all the stickers."  Of course Noriko does it so fast that people can't notice, so the revelation of this trick is really for Jubilation's benefit.

Noriko sets the plate aside, grabs a bag of chips from the bounty box, and lounges back, draping her legs over Jubilation's lap so she can't escape.  As if those twigs could keep Jubilation from leaving.  "Did you really only have a mall cop?  Did he catch you or something?"

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    "Puh-lease... No mall cop can catch me!" Jubilee protests, shaking her head rapidly. "You were just saying, like, what you were eating so... I was just kidding around." Without really giving the task much attention, Jubilee has already found the little family of Sprites and plucks one of the cans from the six pack's plastic rings. She tilts her wrist so the can dangles in front of Noriko for the taking. "...Don't forget some throat lube," she teases.

    Yeah, well, I'm sure I'll have it solved one day..." Jubes replies, not sounding all that thrilled at the idea. While Noriko might perceive all the time in the world, Jubilation is quite literally staring down the barrel of infinity. She could probably find time to figure out the Rubik's Cube if she really wanted to. Maybe.

    "Nori..." Jubes begins, trying to gently ease her way into the topic. "...I'm really glad you came back. I knew you would." Her tone is sincere, encouraging, proud.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Oh, how could I forget my throat lube," Noriko says with a smirk and a roll of her eyes.  It's more playful than chiding.  She really is thirsty and sometimes there's no sense in drinking water.

"I'm just saying there's no shame in saying, this isn't worth any amount of my time."  Noriko shrugs, because in her mind, it isn't.  It isn't worth Jubilation's time, infinity or not.  It wouldn't matter if Jubilation could solve it in under ten seconds.  Even though she clarifies, it's unclear whether she caught how Jubilation's undeathspan makes her own comment worse.

The speedster cracks open the Sprite and downs it in less than ten seconds, essentially the time it takes for gravity to do its work.  Then she opens another one and sets it on the side table next to the couch behind her without looking.

At the mention of her coming back, Noriko averts her eyes downward, a shameful gaze into the chip bag.  "I shouldn't have left."  The anger that infused her in their last meeting has faded.  "I also should have never made a promise like that.  It's so limiting," she jests in a half-hearted deflection, clearly not meaning it.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    "Not gonna lie... I miss the bubbles," Jubilation admits, eyeing the can as Noriko cracks it open. She shakes her head and slumps her shoulders for maximum dramatic effect. "...But...I'll find the strength to go on...Somehow..." She grins a little and plucks another piece of the cube out of her hair. When her comment about Noriko's return has the opposite effect that she meant, Jubilation's smile fades. No no no.

    "Nori, Nori...It doesn't matter. You're here now," Jubilee replies, focusing on the speedster abandoning her original plan. That's sometimes harder than making the right choice to begin with. There are a lot of lingering questions, things left up in the air. Jubilee doesn't address them. Instead, she leans in towards Noriko....

    ...and across her lap to take that second can of Sprite. She grins and takes the teeniest sip. A totally normal mortal sip of mortal soda. For a moment, she looks so proud of herself, as though she might even swallow it. The smile disappears in an instant and, bleh, Jubilee loudly spits out the Sprite, spreading a fine mist over the coffee table. Well, she tried.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Has anyone tried to carbonate blood?"  Noriko wonders aloud, but it's a passing thought, more a reaction than anything to respond to.  She has no idea what is involved in carbonation, but at least the thought distracts her from her shame for a moment.

"Yeah," here now, to what end?  Noriko doesn't voice it.  Like a sad puppy, she found herself returning back home after racing free after fleeting feelings or because of them?  Noriko resists the urge to rub greasy gauntlet fingers into her face and instead just face plants into a pillow sham for a moment, letting the pressure ease her bundle of confusing thoughts and feelings.  It's a moment interrupted by feeling the shift of Jubilation against her legs.  Her eyes drift toward Jubes and she grins as Jubes takes a sip.  She waits for it...waits for it.  Theeeere's the spray.

"Nice try."  Noriko doesn't bat an eyelash at the speckled coffee table.  She doesn't bother to clean it immediately either, though she does lean forward to use her-nope, greasy gauntlets, not fingers.  Her instinct to swipe some residual Sprite from Jubilation's chin evaporates into a weird redirection for the peanut butter...which is awful difficult to eat without a spoon.  There's probably one in there somewhere, but this was an emergency landing.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    Jubilee relaxes her mouth and jaw in a last ditch effort to reduce the amount of Sprite able to hit her taste buds, causing trails of the clear liquid to spill out the sides of her mouth and down her chin. She looks truly disgusted. "...I don't know," she says, trying to power through this horrible taste and texture and continue the conversation. "...Carbonated blood... I gotta look it up..." (on the vampire internet?) She drags her forearm across her mouth and lets out one final BLECH!

    Jubilation stands up suddenly, perhaps inspired to do so by the shock of the soda. An impulse reaction. "I gotta brush my fangs....and my tongue..." Jubilee declares, shuffling towards the kitchen. It's a brief pit stop on the way to the bathroom so she can grab a spoon from a drawer. "Spoon!" she announces just before flinging it towards Noriko so she can catch it.

    With that problem solved, Jubilation heads towards the bathroom.... dragging her wheeled luggage behind her...

    DUN DUN DUN!