4081/Doublemint

Doublemint
Date of Scene:	09 November 2020
Location:	Subway Station
Synopsis:	Rave and Noriko meet their doppelgängers before their players lose steam.
Cast of Characters:	Noriko Ashida, Naria Shepard

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Noriko Ashida has posed:
It's evening, but that doesn't mean the streets are no less crowded as the city mills about, each person filing to their destinations and clogging up the arteries of the city.  At some point, it just becomes way more annoying to weave in and out of the population density at high speeds, like trying to squeeze through a crowd of statues without touching any of them.  Noriko is not in the mood for modern performance art tonight.

The conspicuously blue-haired teen is at the hell mouth to this pit of commuting despair.  She's bundled up in some oddly fitting secondhand puffy jacket that looks like some big strapping 'rich' kid tossed in a donation bin, some charcoal colored jeans that have torn knees, some brightly colored mid kicks, and for extra warmth, a black hoodie zipped up underneath it all.

up to a speed with nearly instantaneous acceleration.  One moment Noriko's on the escalator.  The next, the person behind her starts worrying they should take a mental health day.  Her acceleration is near instantaneous as she jumps up on the escalator rail and run-balances all the way down, weaves through a lull in the stream of people and around the corner where no one goes unless they want to be shot or pushed.  There, she stops, electricity crackling over her body for an instant, casting strange bluish light over the tunnel.

Naria Shepard has posed:
High-speed blue-haired girls were a rarity, certainly as far as Rave knew. The 'Neon-bluenette' as she was sometimes called was rather well known for her glowing locks and the whole speed thing as much, if not more, than her music. Fun, but pretty well unique!

Or at least, that's what the girl had been figuring as she'd gone about her high-speed hobby of weaving through the city...right up until the flash of blue light further in the station had caught the corner of her eye. With a world moving practically at a crawl it wasn't the hardest thing for a speedster to look back, re-check and assess the things they thought they'd seen. Any other day she might have taken in for a trick of the light, but that was just it: Rave -glowed-, she was a comet of shining neon rather than the crackling bolts she'd seen from other speedsters.

Oh this definately warranted further attention!

For the people who could even begin to percieve them? It was deja-vu, but the girl streaked into the tunnel mere instant behind Noriko. Faintly glowing eyes and luminous locks were all the more obvious in the darkness, casting that same light over the form of the girl dressed ironically close to Noriko's own attire: a dark hoodie, a pair of running shoes and matching shorts. Rave truely looked like she was 'out for a run'!

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Like a diver checking their oxygen levels, she takes a peek at her charge levels on one of her metal gauntlets.  In particular zones of charge and natural metabolism, it's quite easy to think she has more charge just from feeling the rush of it all.  There's no hiding those gauntlet things.  They appear bulky and probably crazy difficult to get under that clothing.  Probably why she looks like Stay Puff'd ate a Japanese girl who then got her revenge.  Even still, there are rips in her sleeves to allow her to peel it back from the gauntlets.  At her hips, a belt is cinched around her big puffy jacket and all (apparently there's no reason not to just lean into such unfashionable things after having to deal with gauntlets).  Two cans of what look to be spray paint like these are the proper weapons to take into duel.

Noriko's tears off the big puffy coat after belt, like someone claustrophobic just trying to get some of that cool crisp, no regrettably frigid air.  Not a few moments for humans later, she's wrestling it back on.  The modifications really don't help all that much.

The overhead lights gutter about every 30 seconds or so, really inspiring faith in the travelers as they wait for their car.  There are cell phones, tablets, laptops, weird people who still have dedicated music listening machines from the early 2000s.  It's a wonderful place to get a snack.  Once situated, though still oddly garbed, she steps out, catching site of Rave.  Her head tilts at the girl.  "You aren't supposed to be me are you?  Did Rogue put you up to this?"

Naria Shepard has posed:
No puffy coat, no gauntlets, more bare skin and the blue locks luminescence made it look like she was a living glowstick. If it was an immitation, it wasn't a flawless one! That and well...Rave didn't exactly look asian. "I was literally about to ask the same thing, if you were a fangirl or something? Because I've seen some amazing costumes and stuff at shows but...I have no idea who 'Rogue' is."

Head tilting to one side, it was fittingly a very 'mirrored' stance until the 'glowy' blue crossed her arms under her bust, sweeping her eyes over the 'Sparky' alternative and unaware of the rapidly dropping charge of her phone battery. "So are you like...really fast as well? Because I was starting to think I was seeing some weird time-travel thing."

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Fan girl of what?"  How could she not know?  Well Noriko looks convincingly out of the loop.  Folding her arms over her chest, hip popped out to the side with that certain, aggressive teenage scrutiny.  "I'm just me?"

The wrinkled confusion gets a little more pronounced when they start to naturally mirror each other's mannerisms.  When she's asked about whether she's fast...  "Uhhh."  A part of Nori is flashing back to the cheesy Xavier's School educational PSA like videos.  Don't do drugs!  And also don't tell strangers about your powers just like you shouldn't get into vans with strange people or eat their candy.  "You don't have any candy do you?"

Nori checks her charge level as her thoughts race.  "Yeah.  I'm fast.  Wish I could time travel.  Maybe I could.  I don't know.  It's electrical.  Are you fast?"  She's had her own priorities and pretty much takes it for granted that her speed will get her out of anything.

Naria Shepard has posed:
At least Rave wasn't exactly looking like a prime member of 'FoH' or some other mutant/Meta hating outfit, there was kinda an obvious tell or two. Of course, if it was a faux pas to be asking about powers with strange superhumans you just met? Rave hadn't been to that class...or any really when it came to abilities. Sometimes, people ended up just working out stuff as they went along!

Candy? That earns a blink, a tilt of her head the other way and the girl shrugs her shoulders to the other teen. "I mean, I have like half a pack of gum but..." Obviously, the PSA's and vans weren't a shared logical leap either.

"I can't time travel," Rave shrugs, gesturing to herself. "At least, as far as I know I cant. Stuff sort of gets slow, but I can't like...run back to last week or something." An answer, but not to the question asked. For a speedster, it actually takes the girl a moment to blink and laugh. "Oh yeah, -crazy- fast. Like...coffee in New York, breakfast in London fast." A beat, her arms lower, hands moving in small micro-gestures with her words in a hallmark of having far too much energy. "I don't do the whole -bzzzt- thing though, it's more of a...pew-pew with me."

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"I'm good...on the gum," the teen leans to look around them.  It's quick, like an instinctual activation of her speed power.

"Yeah.  Me too.  It just gives me a lot of time."  Nori frowns at not having a better way to explain it.  It's not like she's /creating/ time.  She's just enjoying all the infinitesimal moments in between!  Like a Folger's commercial on repeat next to an endless fireplace video.  It's maddening, and Nori's thoughts slow down for no one.  Not even herself.

Noriko blinks.  "Sorry what?...I haven't gone to London.  I've stuck to the States.  My powers...I can't always control them.  I mean I seem to have the speed down."  But there's a sense that the girls has not tested her upper limits at the very least.  She bites her lips a little.  "I mean it's not like I suddenly speed faceplant down the stairs or anything."  Sure.  She's never done that.

Noriko flits over to look at the time on the next train and back, too fast for anyone else but them to take notice.  "Pew pew?  My stuff I think depends on how much charge I have.  Because, I've gotten overloaded before and it was more like a charged blast.  Then other times I was a ball of lightning.  That's what I'm told.  It can be dangerous if I get too charged or undercharged.  What do you mean pew-pew?"  Her brain hop-skips back again.  Her talking is certainly faster than normal, though her pitch remains the same.

Naria Shepard has posed:
"I get that. First time I tried figuring out everything I could do, I kinda messed up a wall or two. It's a knack though, kinda like learning to sing a song if you've got a little talent already. You just have to work out what the 'words' are." Metaphor or not, the bluenette does listen to the talk of overloading and charge, something she actually could relate to up to a certain point, but the question of her 'Pew' brings a grin to her lips and she glances down the still-empty tunnel for a moment before lifting her hands.

Glowing light surges, dancing between her fingertips before she draws them down and apart, tracing a neon 'love heart' in the air where it lingers for several seconds before winking out of existance.

"It's kinda my thing," she offers in explaination, "I'm sort of a living rainbow of laser awsomeness, but I don't want to go breaking something down here."

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Yeeeeah.  That's what they keep telling me."  Noriko doesn't say who 'they' are, but it's pretty obvious she hasn't been a stellar communicator in this conversation.  "Well I don't know about the words part, but I'm kinda thinking I might be flunking on expelling charges or blasts or whatever you want to call it.  I am working on upgrading my gear though.  Less blisters and torn up feet, more money."  Apparently that's a thing for this speedster.  Not all /that/ durable.

"I've had my powers for awhile, a long while.  Another story, another time....But other people I know, it's like, I can see they're getting better.  It's fun to test out my speed powers though," Nori says, marely masking how stubbornly she clings to the silver lining.

Rave's display of her powers garners a grin in the curious Asian.  "That's cool.  I still haven't found many cool things I can do with my powers besides starting forest fires."  Nori doesn't think that this girl doesn't know her.  That the deadpan sarcasm might be mistaken for her thinking starting forest fires is the next coolest thing.  Nope!

"Well, touching the third rail and absorbing a lightning strike are pretty cool party tricks," Nori says with a wide grin.


"It's kind of cool meeting someone else who is fast.  I met an electrical guy a week or something ago?"  Eh.  Time is really relative for them right?  "And it was weird."