capeandcowllogs | Apartment hunting

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Apartment hunting

WHO: Ruka and Jaime the Blue Beetle.
WHERE: the MAC.
WHEN: Shortly after this thread; Thursday the fifth of March
WARNINGS: children?
SUMMARY: Yuugi's missing.
FORMAT: Words.

Ruka waited in the lobby of the MAC for the mysterious Blue Beetle to arrive, anxious. She was very worried for Yuugi -- both for his location and his general health, and that she had taken so long to bother telling anyone what had been going on.

She just hoped it wasn't too late.

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It took Jaime a little longer than he'd anticipated. For one, he wasn't going to go walking into the MAC suited up. For another, he had to power down a few blocks away, and it was almost annoyingly busy on the streets that day. Still, he took the time he needed and walked the rest of the way up to the building.

Inside, he glanced around. Not a terribly busy place, and the only girl he figured would match the voice he'd heard over his comm was sitting not too far from the elevators. He walked up casually and glanced down, clearing his throat.

"Ruka?"

Ruka spent most of her time waiting with feelings of worry. She was not prone to anxious movements, or pacing, or any of the other stress-relieving tics that her brother practiced frequently, and so all her tension just coiled around inside her like a corkscrew, painful and stuck.

At the sound of her name, Ruka looked up with a start. He sounded like the man she talked with over the comm earlier, so she stood, nodding with a difficult smile. "You're... Jaime?"

"Yep," he said, putting on a reassuring smile. She looked pretty worried. Shoulda ran here... "Ready to go up and have a look around?"

She gave another nod, leading the way through the MAC — to and up the too-slow elevator (even if it was state of the art), down the halls, and finally to Yuugi's room.

The door opened easily, and Ruka led the way. "He keeps most of his stuff in the bedroom," she said, standing a little out of the way. "... how does having something of his help you find him?"

Despite the casual air he was putting on, Jaime was getting a knot in his stomach. He never liked being in this building. At least now, he figured, he knew what to do. No sense in worrying.

He stepped into the room, glancing around as she spoke. "I'll show you--but just a second." He set his hand against one of the walls, facing away from her. A tiny electrical discharge pulsed from his palm into the wall, and the lights flickered for a second.

Looking back over his shoulder, he explained, "Just making sure what we do in here stays private. I don't know how many cameras this guy puts in these rooms anymore. But as for using his stuff...I can record and track people's personal energy signatures. His stuff'll be covered in it."

She tensed a little at the lights — the microwave had already been blown out, she didn't want Yuugi to come home and find all of his electrical equipment destroyed — but eased when they came back on steady.

"Energy signatures?" she asked, coming forward a little from the wall. It sounded similar, in a very distant sort of way, to what she could do.

"Yeah, like..." he squinted, glancing up as he tried to figure out how to say it. "How bloodhounds can track people by their own scent? That kind of thing. Except it's something I can see, because of my suit's powers."

Jaime mulled around the room and towards the bedroom, and as he did, Scarab's sensors kicked in, causing his eyes to color bright orange. No trouble picking up a reading here, two days old or not.

"I was thinking about what you said," he went on as he stared down at the room, "about the wall thing? Does your friend manipulate electricity or produce it?"

"Oh. That makes sense." A similar principle, then, but she still wondered how emotions could stick to objects if there were not already spirits within them to hold them in place. It was, however, a thought for another day.

"... produce, I think," she said after a moment of pause. "He broke the microwave just by touching it, and his hand... I only saw a glimpse of it, but... his hand looked like it was electricity."

She remembered he'd just started wearing the oven mitt after the microwave stopped working, but she was sure of what she saw — the thin, white bolts like lightning coming off his hand before he'd gotten it all wrapped in bandages. She just couldn't remember if she'd been able to see his skin beneath it.

"That might be why he's having so much trouble moving around," Jaime mused, blinking his eyes back to normal. "If he's making his own energy field, it might be damaging the natural impulses in his brain. Er, at least...that's what my suit thinks. Won't be sure until I see him in person."

He looked back at her with a resolute nod. "I got all I need to fly out and trace the guy. Yuugi, right?"

"Does the Porter do that a lot? Give people powers that... hurt them like this?"

If Iron Man was trying to give people powers to make heroes, then he was clearly doing a very bad job at it if his imports couldn't walk in a straight line without intense concentration.

She nodded in return. "Yeah, Yuugi. ... thank you again, Jaime."

"I'm not completely sure," he admitted, grimacing. "I mean...I don't even know if the whole giving-people-powers thing was something planned, or it just happens, or...

"Well, all that really matters is just finding him and making sure he's alright, right? And hope the guy didn't take an accidental left turn down the wrong alley."

Another wince. "Which isn't to say he has, just--! Well. We'll see."

Ruka frowned. "If it's not planned, then wouldn't everyone who comes in get something, even if they already have a power of some kind?"

She tried not to, but Ruka couldn't stop from wincing at the prospect of Yuugi accidentally turning the wrong way into oncoming traffic or into a gang fight.

"Yeah. I'll keep watching the comm, in case he decides to answer back, but..."

Jaime didn't want to drag the girl into any kind of danger, but he'd never met this Yuugi guy before. What if he did something to piss him off and mess the situation up more?

"Hey, uhm...when I find him. What should I tell him? Aside from 'I'm not a bad guy, please don't electrocute me'? There anything I could say that would ease his nerves right off the bat?"

Ruka's lips thinned as she thought this over, brow furrowed. Yuugi didn't really talk all that often about himself, and even if she had grown up on stories about him and lived on his couch for a week, she really didn't know anything about him as a person. But even if he was without his weapon, he was still a Duelist.

"His first language is Japanese," she said, digging into her pocket and pulling out a small pack of cards, flipping through them quickly. They were not standard playing cards. "He knows English, but when he tries speaking it sometimes it gets out-of-order in his head and doesn't make much sense when he talks. Do you know any Japanese?"

Finally she separated one card from the rest, putting the rest of the pack back into her pocket. She walked slowly, offering the card.

"... and if you can get close enough without... putting yourself in danger, give him this."

Ruka didn't really know for sure if Kuribbon would do anything to help him, but it was all that she had to give.

Jaime shook his head a little, frowning. "I can't speak it, but I can understand it if I hear it? Don't know how much good that'll do."

He shrugged as she fiddled with a weird deck of cards. Looked kind of like Magic: The Gathering or something he'd seen at school during lunch. Keepsakes, maybe?

The card he handed her looked...really strange. Dustbunny with a rat tail and bow? Kinda creepy. Well, whatever it was, if it helped, he'd give it a shot.

"Alright, sure," he affirmed, nodding. "No problem."

"A greeting might be enough to at least let him know you're friendly?" Ruka frowned, folding her hands behind her back. "Konnichi wa is simple enough. Or konban wa if you find him later on."

How sad was it, that she had lived with Yuugi for a week and still knew barely anything about him? He was even harder to read than Yuusei, though it wasn't like she had Rua's high energy and charisma with these sorts of things. She would just have to work harder at being a good friend, and hope that she would have time to fix things in this case.

There was really nothing else that she could do now for Yuugi at this moment, so she smiled, and bowed politely. "Thank you for this, Jaime. It really means a lot to me. And... good luck!"

Jaime gave her a smile. "I'll find him, and I'll give you a call when I do."

That was that, he supposed. The less time he had to spend in the MAC, the better. "I can find the way out, so...Don't worry too much, yeah? We'll help him out."

Somehow, he thought, grimacing a little as he turned and headed out the door. It was going to be an interesting day.

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