xavier_institute_ooc | (no subject)

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*test drive meme

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THE TEST DRIVE MEME

This is for anyone wanting to test out their characters in the setting before the applications open, see what clicks. Multiples will be allowed for this post, and you can generally assume any threads are a self-contained continuity unless you feel like getting creative.

Just post a thread with your CHARACTER NAME and CANON NAME in the title with a prompt and others will reply. Prompts and threads can be action spam or prose or whatever. These threads can be used on the sample section of your application, as well. Go out and have fun!

We also ask that you please pardon our dust. We're working very hard to get this game up and running and hope to be open by September 1st!

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They said here that home was where the heart was.

So did he still have a home?

Still, this was easily the nearest thing he had. He had no doubt that, if he got on a plane tomorrow, either of his brothers and their wives would have an empty room and open arms. But what would he do then? His whole career had been teaching in America. He didn't have professional contacts there. Would he have imposed on their hospitality?

Besides, he'd left Japan with his shadow. It didn't seem right, somehow, to go back there without him.

And besides that, Xavier's had welcomed him in as a reckless, hardheaded teenager, quick to take offense, over-eager to prove himself. It was here that he'd learned the best parts of himself, and here that he'd been the happiest. It was here, too, that he still had work to do -- less in the sense of a means of supporting himself, and more in the sense of a way to support others. The students were still here, and so, he felt, should he be.

"I suppose it is. It's been some time since I was ever really away from it for long." Long enough that his own accent had faded away into nothing many years before.

"Mm," she hummed, watching the smoke drift up into the sky.

She herself only had dim memories of her former life in France and not all of them were pleasant. Xavier's was possibly the first place she'd ever felt safe and somewhat accepted despite her quirks (but then what's a mutant without some idiosyncrasies?). While she had yet to really find her feet, she supposed that if she were allowed to, she wouldn't mind staying and calling it her home as well.

"You 'ave good taste."

"In a number of things." There was no sense acting modest about the truth, was there? He was discerning about his suits, his tobacco, his alcohol, his literature, his women, his men... Why not be, when one could afford to?

"Yours doesn't strike me as so bad, either. How are you finding it here?"

"Sometimes a bit too American, though that's to be expected," she answered drily, smirking around her cigarette. "But... it is nice to not be the odd one out." Not to mention that given the X-men and their varied tastes in clothing, no one really gives a damn about her always wearing a mask.

"It is America, after all. You can hardly blame it for being what it is."

He took another drag, long and slow, feeling it numb and soothe him as usual.

"If there's one thing they do well here, though, it's finding places for 'odd ones out'." The 'dream' of immigration was hardly as rosy as some might wish, especially for mutants, but even after all these years, he was still sometimes taken aback at the kind of community that people in the margins could have here, at all of the people who thought that the audacity to live openly was simply par for the course.

"The 'grand melting pot of the world', mm?" the former spy quipped, idly blowing smoke rings.

She had vague memories of the various places she'd visited while undercover, the different cultures she'd had to hastily assimilate to blend in. It had been quite the experience to just wander about America and see those same cultures, altered of course, all jumbled together in one place. They stuck out like sore thumbs yet were part of the fabric of the community nonetheless. She had no doubt that if she ever chose to leave the school to eke out a life of her own, she'd adjust to it quite easily, possibly far more easily than she had in her own home country.

"Still, as long as I can find my cigarettes and coffee, I 'ave little to complain about."

"Important priorities."

He wasn't joking, not really. If he couldn't get his brand of cigarettes, he was an absolute nightmare to be around -- he always traveled overseas with as many packs as he was legally allowed to carry duty-free, just in case there was an issue finding them.

Nowhere, of course, was perfect. Not here, and not Tokyo. But this... this was home, and he found an odd sort of contentment in the thought that he hadn't expected to find.

"How long have you been here now?"

"Since the incident with the Sentinels." Though she'd also been comatose for several months thereafter so she couldn't say for certain how long it had been. The events immediately before that were... fuzzy, and the fact that she couldn't remember them exactly made her uneasy, a creeping sense of doubt on who she was trickling down her spine...

Shaking herself, she took a quick inhale of smoke to calm herself, confident she wouldn't show any of it on the outside but wanting to match it on the inside as well. "What about you?"

"Longer."

It struck him that there were people who'd turned up around that time who he'd never really gotten around to getting to know. He hadn't spoken much to anyone at all after that whole incident, aside from classes and missions, for months that stretched into years. Even now, he felt a distance between himself and the arrivals too recent to have ever known him without his grief.

"I came here when I was seventeen. Wanted to make sure I'd make it through college without incident." And he simply couldn't have guaranteed that a Japanese university of comparable quality would have accepted him, no matter what his test scores looked like, if the truth got out. He didn't like hiding -- that was one way in which America had appealed to him. "Suppose I never got around to leaving, even after I did."

"It 'as a way of growing on you," she noted, smiling again. "And you've never been back to your family since?"

He gave a small shrug, blowing out a thin, controlled trail of smoke.

"I visit my brother and his wife in Tokyo, about once a year. New Years, or Obon."

But he hadn't been back there to live for longer than the odd summer in his school days, which was probably more what she was asking about.

"Do you miss living there?"

Did he miss it?

He thought back to the Tama River, kept low in its bed by all the floodgates, glimmering in the summer sun. He thought of the bustle of the city, the glow of the seedy bars and clubs, the simple familiar flavors that were so hard to find here, the constant shifts of Tokyo fashion. The temples, the gardens, the sense that, beneath the hyper-modern facade of the city, hidden away somewhere, lay the beating heart of an old, old culture.

He thought, too, of an old adage: The nail that sticks out will be hammered down. He'd always stuck out, ever since he was a loud and ambitious and willful child, and part of him had always felt trapped by the threat of that mindset -- had wanted to make himself known, and to Hell with the looks old people on the street gave him and the young people's jealous gossip. It was freeing, to be somewhere where different didn't mean useless.

Going back to Japan on his own didn't feel right, but he supposed staying here on his own didn't really, either.

"At times. It's somewhat complicated."

"It always is," she mused, watching some of the new arrivals gawping at the size of the school. No doubt once the novelty wore off, several of the new students would be homesick themselves.

He wasn't about to disagree with her there, but the wording made him wonder a bit.

"And what about you? Do you miss France?"

She smiled and parroted, "It's somewhat complicated." Tapping off the gathered ash from her cigarette, she shrugged and added, "I miss 'earing French on the street. The smell of fresh croissants the baker down the street made every morning. The monthly riots were fun too."

... So perhaps that last bit had been more sarcastic, but nonetheless she was being quite honest. She missed little things that had made France 'home', but on a whole... She had no family, no friends she could recall, no lovers - no one that would cause that aching desire to return to them. Of course there was the spirit of the city that might still tug at her, but she'd grown used to ignoring it. "It's complicated," she repeated.

That was fair enough. Plenty of them had their stories to similar effects, and who would he have been to judge her answer?

"It's been a long time since I lived there. I think here seems as normal to me as anywhere else, at this point."

"Indeed. And it's certainly quite the experience to meet all manner of mutants," she agreed.

God knew she hadn't come across such variety, or any mutant in general before coming to Xavier's.

"They're like humans. Nuisances, mostly."

He was substantially more bark than bite, when it came to the students, but old habits died hard.

"The students? That's when you get creative with punishments," she pointed out with a smirk.

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