Scene #1741:

Owner	Pose
Glitter	Welcome to Freedom City! Freedom City is a city in the eastern United States, situated on the coast with its downtown between two rivers and suburbs to either side. It's a fairly large city, with a population of about four million people, give or take a hundred thousand or so. There are several gates that go to Freedom City's America, but one is a) actually very close by and b) guaranteed safe by Glitter. It's on one of the little islands near Lonely Point, the far southeast of Freedom City. There are several islands there that don't appear to be used for anything at all; there's a naval station on Lonely Point itself, though. The island is under moderate guard by the US Navy, but generally they don't hassle people coming in unless they're clearly here to start trouble or rolling in tanks or something. Especially when a superhero is vouching, which Glitter is. The actual gate is in a short cave, which has some Naval guards watching it, including one that appears to be in a powered suit of some kind. Outside the cave is kind of scrubby wilderness, which is where Glitter is, sitting in midair on a cloud of sparkles. It is vaguely surreal to see a superhero not wearing the whole outfit, but she's not; she's wearing a pair of jeans and a battered band T-shirt, if Albion is a band, which it probably is. It looks a little big for her; Glitter is a lot smaller than probably expected. She's five foot three, if she stands up straight and has shoes on. She is still wearing the mask, though.
Kenji Kawasaki	Kenji has never been to America. While his world has an America, and it's probably full of weird, supernatural monsters, he's never been there, and he doubts it's anything like this. From the moment he emerges from the cave, he's gawking - fairly obviously, which will be embarassing to him later - at everything. The Naval officers! The Powered Suit! He feels...painfully underdressed, in his leather jacket, leather pants, and tank-top. This is a place full of superpowers and wonders, and he looks like exactly what he is: a delinquent from Japan. It's sobering. He walks into the wilderness and pauses when he sees the sparkles. It's slightly relieving for him to see that she's about as underdressed as he is. The initial impression - all pomp and circumstance - was off-putting, but seeing her dressed down like this made things a lot easier, and infinitely less embarassing. He takes in the image for a moment, sucks in a breath, then puts on his best lopsided grin. "Hey," He offers, holding up a hand, "I didn't bring a mask. I wasn't sure if I'd need one. What's, uh, what's Albion?"
Glitter	Possibly surprisingly, nobody gives Kenji any crap for looking like he does. Maybe Glitter warned them... or maybe they just don't care. It's a warpgate, after all. People of all sorts come through it, and it's not like anyone looking like Kenji is going to have a huge problem out in the city just on looks alone. Though, honestly, they're pretty inclusive anyway. Most people wouldn't have a problem. Glitter grins. Her mask doesn't cover her mouth, just being a domino mask. "You don't need one," she says. "They're just used to seeing me as a superhero, right? I don't, uh, give my real name many places - I mean, a few people know, but not everyone. If I showed up /completely/ out of uniform they might be able to figure it out. Or they'd just ask. Honestly, I probably should have just worn the suit, but it felt weird." Glitter still isn't entirely comfortable with this whole 'double identity' thing. It shows. She steps down from the sparkles, which vanish. She has to look up at Kenji. "It's a band. Celtic rock. It's pretty popular; one of my sisters is a huge fan. I'll dig out a CD sometime if you're interested, but honestly I like some of the other stuff better. I guess you've never been here before? At least with the gate you can skip having a passport."
Kenji Kawasaki	"Oh, cool. I was just, you know, worried that I might blow your secret identity or something somehow." Kenji shrugs, "Like I should get a domino mask or something. Although if we're gonna be flying, it's gonna be...different, I guess. And it won't be like people are gonna be looking at my face." Kenji's hands disappear into his pockets a moment later. "Ah, yeah. This is my first time to America either way. I spent my whole life in Tokyo. It's nice...I mean, cities are cities one way or another, so I don't feel like I missed too much, but..." He shrugs. "I dunno. It's not like I couldn't fly over to America or something but I feel weird doing that, like I'm not really seeing it the way it's meant to be seen if I just skip all the tough stuff with Kojin." He's quiet for a moment, thoughtful. "Ah, uh, no, I've never heard of celtic rock. I wouldn't mind hearing a CD, though...sounds cool." "So where to first?"
Glitter	"You might blow /yours/," Glitter says, "but I think mine is okay. I wouldn't want to fly if I took it off, though. Plus then we get into the name issue, since you know me as Glitter but not my real name, and I guess I could just admit it since Union leadership knows anyway but..." Glitter realizes she's kind of rambling and stops herself. "I never flew to Tokyo, so... same deal. Tokyo's a lot bigger, though. I mean, both number of people and size. It's a /really/ big city, isn't it? Freedom's not that large, it's just the biggest one around here. More hot dogs, less... it seems kind of racist to say 'sushi'. Also we have sushi." Glitter takes a couple steps toward the shoreline. She does not immediately take off, but there's a faint glimmer around her for the last couple steps. It fades when she stops walking. "We can go pretty much anywhere. I don't know what you want to see. Downtown's pretty much straight northwest of here. There's some parks if we head north toward Riverside, I use the Statue to get oriented. If you get caught flying, though, someone /is/ going to look at your face to see if they know you."
Kenji Kawasaki	Kenji laughs, reflexively. "It's cool. I think of America as Tokyo with more hamburgers. I'm not gonna be offended if you think of us as America but with more sushi." That put him at ease, almost immediately. The change in his demeanor is apparent - from the sort of tense, hunched shoulders relaxing to the nervous grin shifting to an easy smile. Apparently all it takes is the recognition of similarity to put him back on familiar ground. Besides, Kenji was never one to let himself get hung up on his own nerves. "We can see whatever. This is your town; I mean, I'm here to see whatever you think is cool, whatever you think I should see." He shrugs. "We can check out Downtown, but I figure we should save that for later. Probably a ton of restauraunts down there and I just ate before coming here, so..." "Y'know. Probably more efficient a route, or something." He scratches his cheek. "Plus, I like parks. I do walk to do more than just get in fights, no matter what my asshole partner says."
Glitter	Glitter's grin comes back. She's way too cheerful about some things. "Sounds good to me." She is glad Kenji is looking a little less stressed. She didn't want it to be an unpleasant trip. "Well, I've never played tour guide before." Glitter sounds thoughtful. "But if you want to see something that's not anywhere else, there's statues, or there's Freedom Hall. It's one of the places that the Freedom League - uh, the most famous superheroes, basically - work out of. They have another base now, so the main floor's open to the public. It has a museum... I've been once or twice." "Either way, though, we have to go that way." Glitter points in a direction that, by the sun, is probably more or less northwest. It's hard to tell, but she theoretically knows where she's going. The sparkling around her gets more intense, and she suddenly kicks up into the air, jerking upward about a foot in an unsteady lurch before her flight settles. "How fast do you fly?"
Kenji Kawasaki	"Pretty fast," Kenji sighs, his hand going up to the back of his neck. He looks away from her for a moment. Well, he'd been expecting that. He might as well get it over with. Kenji holds out his hand in front of him. He mumbles something under his breath, then shoves his hand into his chest, his eyes closing his like he's in pain. When they open, they are on fire. The fire spreads across his body, burning brilliantly in the middle of the underbrush. It goes up through his hair, turning it red. It burns through his clothes, turning the leather white. The fire rings around his chest like an emblem, a circle with a star mark in the middle forming on his tanktop. The fire burns, and burns, and burns, and then, in less than a second, it's done, and he's floating there, eyes aflame, untouched by gravity. "Ohhh, so you DID need me after all!" Comes Kojin's familiar voice from the emblem. Kenji sighs, deflating quite a great deal of the majestic image in an instant. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. Uh, so, Glitter, this is what we mean when I say Kojin's my partner." Kenji flits up next to her a moment later, gesturing at the emblem burned into his chest. It's still burning - like his eyes. If she looks carefully, she might realize it's burned through the tanktop and onto his chest. "Hi," Kojin's voice radiates from the emblem, "Don't mind me. I won't interrupt. I'll just be here, laughing at my host's discomfort like an audience on one of those reality shows." Kenji mutters something else under his breath. It's probably not connected to the first thing.
Glitter	Glitter catches the embarassment. "Well, I can give you a lift, but it might not be comfortable," she warns, while Kenji's got his eyes closed. Of course, apparently she needn't have bothered. Someone catching fire is a /bit/ of a surprise. Glitter doesn't know anyone who does that to themselves, and she takes a half step back, reaching for her own power in case she needs to remember how to smother flame - but it turns out she does not. She ... looks. It's not quite staring. "Well!" she says, recovering as quickly as she can manage. (It's not that quickly.) She dips into an extremely short bow, because she's not sure of the proper response. He seems pretty casual, but he also is apparently a god or greater spirit, and you should be polite to those. "Hello, Kojin. I don't know if the laughing's going to be necessary, though. I'll try to avoid it if it's all the same to you." She almost says something else to Kenji, but decides to do it when Kojin isn't around. Does he ever stop listening? She doesn't actually know.
Kenji Kawasaki	"Yo," is Kojin's response. He certainly lacks in formality for a god. Kenji, meanwhile, stretches his hands over his head. Then he tucks them behind his neck and leans back in midair. He's not just flying; he appears to be unaffected by the local gravity entirely. He's come unstuck from the rest of the world, perhaps, or his shintai form just has that much fine control. "As much as he's an omnipresent pain in the ass," Kenji admits, "I can't really be too mad at him when I get to do stuff like this. Flying is...basically the best." "So, the parks, right? I don't think I can really be subtle like this, so we're probably gonna draw some attention to ourselves. I can't turn off all the fire."
Glitter	Yo indeed. Kenji's fine control is probably better than Glitter's is. She's okay right now - moving herself is pretty much one of the easiest things she can do - but complicated stuff? Nope. "Flying's pretty amazing," she agrees. "It was the first thing I did a lot of, because... well, why /wouldn't/ you?" She smiles again, lifting up a little higher. "Don't worry about not being subtle. You'll see why in a minute." "This way," she says, before taking off. Glitter can fly quite fast, but she restrains herself to make sure that Kenji doesn't fall behind... or pushes herself to keep up, though since she knows where they're going and he doesn't that means she kind of has the advantage there. She does have two minor issues, of course. One is that whatever method she's using to fly protects /her/ from the wind, but not her clothes so much. They tend to flap like she was caught in a windstorm, which is particularly egregrious because her hair doesn't. The second is that she is constantly trailing sparkles, and if she speeds up they get brighter. Kenji doesn't have to worry about being subtle because at her top speed she probably looks like a shooting star. The route goes over a middle-class suburb and, once they're past it, a bay. And then narrows, because Glitter is following the river(s) in. This includes flying over a large bridge, so hopefully Kenji doesn't mind getting spotted - because he's going to be mistaken for another superhero by spotters.
Kenji Kawasaki	"Heh, yeah," Kenji agrees, "Like I said on the radio, one of the first things I did was go up to orbit to look at the planet. There's nothing quite like it." And then she takes off. Kenji gives her a moment, watching her go; then he's right behind her, a trail of fire etched across the sky. If she looks like a shooting star (and, he notes, she does - also explaining why she calls herself /Glitter/ in a handy and satisfying manner), Kenji looks like a full-blown comet, streaking across the sky close to her, if not always matching her top speed. Kenji is very, very fast, too - but then, that's sort of to be expected for someone who can break orbit. And, unlike Glitter's costume trouble, Kenji doesn't seem to have any such problems, despite wearing a big leather coat. The now-white clothing doesn't seem to care one way or another how fast he's going. Kenji does his best to look down. But, well...flying's distracting. It's fun, it's freeing...and it's something he doesn't get to do often. During one of the bits where they're over the bay, he loops over her in a makeshift barrel roll, a grin on his face. "I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN!" He calls over the wind, "ABOUT THE SUBTLE THING, ANYWAY!" Kenji doesn't mind getting spotted like this - for a lot of reasons, not the least of which because his eyes are on fire and his hair is a totally different color.
Glitter	It's pretty obvious why Glitter goes by Glitter the first time you see her in action. Kenji hasn't seen her with her forcefield up (except the minor level she's using to keep wind out of her eyes) so he doesn't see /those/ sparkles, nor is she exerting herself to lift something heavy - but pushing herself quickly also counts. It's a bit of a giveaway. Glitter grins, bigger, showing teeth. She doesn't trust her fine control enough to do aerial maneuvers around Kenji without accidents happening; she's pretty good around things that /don't/ move, but something like that might give her trouble. "Isn't it?" she calls back. "And yeah, I've always been a little noticable!" She tried flying at night to keep her practice a secret. Once, and never again. "Though you're giving me a run for my money like that!" Flying at a few hundred miles an hour (Glitter can push herself faster, but she's having enough trouble with her clothes flapping everywhere as is) makes it a relatively short trip across the bay. She starts to descend on the other side, angling toward... Well. That's certainly a big statue. It's got to be about a hundred feet tall, and looks out toward the bay across the narrows, a sword in its hand pointed downwards. It looks solemn.
Kenji Kawasaki	Kenji, meanwhile, seems remarkably unconcerned about running into anything at speeds that would make other people very, very nervous. If they pass by any birds or anything, the reason for that becomes really obvious. He just sort of...passes through them. Like he's not even there. Or they aren't even there. Both parties in the equation come out totally safe. When Glitter starts angling down, Kenji moves to follow her...but then, doesn't. He hangs there in the air, looking down at the plaza below, studying it with a careful, almost scholarly air. Then he vanishes. Kenji reappears on the ground in front of the statue, hands in his coat pockets, looking up at her. If she's watching the spot (on purpose or otherwise), she'd probably notice the fire burn upwards around the area, and Kenji just sort of...come together out of it. Nooot exactly subtle. "So who is this a statue of?!" Kenji calls up, "It's pretty awesome! It beats the hell out of the Gundam statue!"
Glitter	Phasing through things is a /good/ trick. Glitter certainly cannot do it, being mere physical matter, a pathetic creature of meat and bone. The birds don't seem impressed. Birds rarely do. Kenji is definitely getting some attention now that he's appearing out of thin air in front of the statue. There are in fact some civilians around, some of which are staring at him like they're not sure what to make of him. It's not quite every day that someone like him shows up at the bottom of the statue. Glitter touches down nearby. Glitter isn't all that famous as superheroes go, but she's at least made the papers, and she has her usual mask on and her hair done in the usual way even if she doesn't have the black and pink costume. "I'm with him," she assures the others, which is at least vaguely reassuring and probably won't be taken as if she's trying to form a new superhero team. Probably. Trying to ignore the looks, Glitter walks the normal way toward Kenji. "That's the Sentry Statue. They light it up at night. It's of Centurion, one of the very first superheroes. He died when I was pretty young; we were invaded from another dimension. Pretty much everyone looks up to him." She shakes her head. "Look at me! I wasn't trying to depress you or anything, just - I guess if I had to pick one person who was the spirit of Freedom City, he'd be it. Plus, everybody comes to look at the statue, really. So here it is!"
Kenji Kawasaki	The attention is...new to the young Japanese man. Shinra's activity was secret from everybody. Nobody was supposed to know that they existed; most people didn't have a clue about the vast, supernatural world that surrounded them. In Kenji's Japan, open displays of power were basically unheard-of, and the power he wielded was something he had to hide very carefully, lest he blow the big secret, get fired, and possibly get executed. So to be surrounded by lookie-loos and onlookers, to be observed and stared at, to be examined like this...it's surprising, to say the least. "Ah, shit...did I do something wrong?" He asks, scratching the back of his neck as Glitter arrives. "Should I not have done that?" Slowly, though, the tension eases off him. As Glitter tells him of the Centurion, Kenji's (burning) eyes go upwards along the statue. The kind of person everyone looked up to. The spirit of Freedom City. An icon who had a statue bigger than buildings built in his honor, as if to let the whole world know that he was watching over them in spirit. It's a powerful place. Kenji doesn't need to be spiritually aware to feel the sort of admiration and awe people have in this place. He bets that, if he looked around, he'd see no graffiti, no tag-marks, none of the telltale signs of disrespect and cynicism from city youths with nothing better to do. It's just a powerful place. "...no, it's cool," Kenji replies quietly, "You didn't depress me. Seeing something like this is...I get it, you know? I can just...sense how much people cared about him. How important he was to you guys. I'm glad you showed it to me. It's..." "...it's definitely something worth seeing."
Glitter	"No, it's fine!" Glitter assures Kenji. "They're probably just trying to decide if they've seen you in the papers." She seems, if not exactly exulting in the attention, at least used to it. She even waves. Nobody seems to be afraid of him any more than usual, especially seeing him perfectly peacefully hanging out with Glitter. Nobody's giving him a hard time for being, as Glitter mentally puts it, 'a little bit on fire'. It certainly is a change from a lot of places. There is, in fact, no graffiti here. If there was, it would be cleaned up before anyone else saw it, possibly by Dr. Metropolis and possibly by mundane work crews - but Kenji is right. Nobody does it here. Other places in the city, yes. Other places in the park, even. But not the statue. It's clean, well-maintained. "It's hollow," she says. "You can go up and in it, and look out. I don't, much; I can get a better view flying. But I understand why people do. It's important, I guess; it kind of reminds me what it's all about. But you wanted to see something just in Freedom City? This is it." "But," she adds, "probably not where you want to stay all afternoon."
Kenji Kawasaki	Kenji stares up at it quietly. Obviously they haven't seen him in the paper, so that's probably not a big concern for him. The fact that it was such a common thing here was, again, a little off-putting, but he knew a little about American superhero comics, so it wasn't THAT off-putting. "It's...really cool, Glitter. It's definitely unique." He looks over at her and nods. "Thanks. For showing me this, I mean." "But, yeah, no, this isn't exactly my idea of a hangout spot. It feels...wrong to just kind of chill out here. Like, I can imagine going up and looking at the inside, and I can imagine hanging around it to see it, but something feels weird about just hanging for the sake of being somewhere in this spot. There's tons of place to loiter. This one..." He shakes his head, which, entertainingly, leaves a trail of fire wobbling up for a moment. "I dunno. I'm babbling. What else you got to show me?"
Glitter	Freedom City: where all your comic book dreams come true. "You'd be surprised, it's a pretty popular spot sometimes," Glitter says. It surprises /her/. "But where else, hmm... well, if you want /more superheroes/ there's the Freedom Plaza. But if you don't there's a whole lot of places to go. Anything in a bit city, honestly. If you even just want to look around there's a lot of places. You said you hadn't been to America; anything you ever wanted to do in it? We have all sorts of stuff." "Or we can go get that dinner," she adds. "I skipped lunch, and I know some good places." And, of course, she has the kind of mask she doesn't have to take off to eat. That's important. It might be a little more confusing if she didn't. "I'd race you somewhere," Glitter adds, "but I'm pretty sure you'd win. You're fast!"
Kenji Kawasaki	"I'm cheating," Kenji points out with a wry smile, "I teleported down here, and I don't really worry about running into buildings. You know the place way better than I do, so it's not like I could win any other way." He kicks off the ground and hovers for a moment, hands back in his pockets. "Nah, I never really thought about coming to America. I'm not really the touristy type, y'know? Besides, if I can come back whenever I want, there's no rush." "But," he admits, "Dinner sounds awesome. Where's the best place to eat? The, like, the /essential/ American dinner experience for two?" His face turns a bit red, for a couple reasons, as he digs into his pocket, looking for his wallet. "I, uh, I think I can pay...assuming my money's any good here."
Glitter	"Well I'd make sure you knew where you were going first," Glitter says, with a laugh. "Probably to one of the points of the bay, it's open space between here and there once you're out of the park and its trees. But if you're teleporting you wiill /definitely/ beat me. That makes sense, though. I still really ought to go to Tokyo sometime, just to look around." Kenji asks a question. The advantage is momentarily hers: Glitter's mask at least slightly hides any blush she may or may not have. "Well," she says, thoughtfully, "if it's a credit card it will probably work, but most restaurants aren't going to take yen in cash - oh, wait, extradimensional credit card." She spends a moment thinking about that. It lets her cover for any additional embarassment. "Probably not," she eventually decides. "So don't worry about it. If I ever come to Tokyo you can get me something Japanese then. As for where..." Crap, where's decent and not expensive? Glitter might be slightly blase about paying but she's not exactly all that rich. She spent a lot of money recently. "I don't know if Champion's is going to be full this time of day. Maybe Wading Way Brewery? It's actually a pub, they're not going to ID you unless you ask for beer." Glitter pauses. "I'll, uh, have to take my mask off for that one, I think; I could get into Champion's with it but not Wading Way without causing a fuss. Which means I have to ask if you can keep a secret." She is looking around to make sure nobody is listening, or trying to.
Kenji Kawasaki	"I am pretty good at keeping secrets," Kenji laughs, "On account of how I work for a secret government agency. It's kinda...you know, required." "But, no, seriously. If it's a secret, it's important to you, and I'm not the kind of classless moron who'd go spilling a lady's secrets all over the place. I'm the classy kind of thug." He offers a lopsided grin. "And Kojin won't tell a soul either. Will you?" "I don't really gossip with people. Secrets aren't really my currency." "See? You're cool. You can trust us. And I'll make sure to repay you when you come see Japan."
Glitter	Glitter looks around again for a moment. "Okay," she says. "Hold on a moment." Then she does - something. It looks like they're in, for a moment, a glittery shell. Whatever it is, it cuts out the ambient sound a /lot/. Glitter can't hold it for very long without tiring herself out, but she can do it for a few seconds. "My actual name's Lynn," she says. "If I'm going to have my mask off there I'm going to have to not be Glitter, but you're not from here so it's not much of an issue if you know. I figure I can fly there with you and then duck off for a few minutes to fix things up." Which mostly means 'remove mask, braid hair', and most of that is braiding. She can do it pretty quick with telekinesis now, but not quite instantaneously. Undoing it is easier than doing it. She makes a slightly sharper gesture. The glittering bubble stops being a bubble and turns into a momentary haze before vanishing entirely. "Geez, I really need to practice with that," Glitter says, pinching the sides of her nose in momentarily as if fighting off a headache. She's not. Forcefields aren't /that/ hard... but they do take more effort to hold everything still.
Kenji Kawasaki	"Lynn," Kenji rolls the name around on his tongue as she conjures the force field. "That's a pretty awesome trick. That's way better than anything I can do...jeez, that would've come in really handy a couple times, too." "Anyway...trust me, your secret is totally safe with me. It's not like I know anybody around here to tell, and it's not like I intend to tell anybody anyway." He nods. "And we take our promises seriously." "Besides, if Miss Xiaomu or Mister Reiji heard I broke a promise to a girl, they'd /murder/ me. Seriously..." Kenji runs his fingers through his hair and sighs, looking up at the sky as she pinches the bridge of her nose. It made him wonder for a moment, though not about headaches, but rather about his own (or, well, Kojin's) powers. Did Kojin experience that kind of discomfort? He knew he didn't, but he wasn't sure about the god. "Are you okay?" He asks a moment later, "The nose thing, I mean. Do a lot of people experience pain when they use their powers?" "Are you experiencing pain? Discomfort? Stinging sensations? Mild headaches? Call your doctor and find out if Superpowers are right for you." Kojin chimes in cheerfully.
Glitter	Glitter says, quite seriously, "I appreciate it. It's kind of a /thing/ around here. Your teammates might know, if you have any, or your partners, but a lot of people aren't really open to the public about who they are. It saves a lot of problems." "It's just a pressure," Glitter adds, when questioned. "I'm strong - I mean, that's not a problem. But doing complicated things is still really hard, and air is about as hard as it gets. /My/ forcefield is easy, and putting a field against another object isn't too bad, but grabbing at air is tricky! It's like..." She runs out of words to describe it and kind of stands there for a moment. "It's like trying to hold air," she says, a little lamely. "It doesn't want to stay held. But if you stop it from moving, sound doesn't really get through it, I found that out by mistake." It was obvious when she thought about it; vibrations don't pass through something being prevented from vibrating. Glitter grins. "I'm fine, though. No pain. It takes concentration is all. Want to go, then?"
Kenji Kawasaki	"Yeah, I understand," Kenji confirms, "Like I said, Shinra's in the business of being secret. We don't...really go around telling people what we do or that we even exist. It's easier if the public doesn't know that it's surrounded by ghosts and gods and spirits and demons and alternate realities. People sleep better not knowing about that stuff, I guess." At least he sure did. "Oh, okay. Sorry. You just made a face, and I was wondering." He shrugs a bit sheepishly. "Wanted to make sure you were okay." The idea of trying to hold air was a new one to him. He reaches out and sort of makes a motion with his hand, as though he's trying to approximate the sensation (and he is). He gets it within a single grab. "That's kinda zen," he admits, "The kind of thing Mr. Reiji might say. Air doesn't want to be held." "Ah, yeah! Sure. Let's, uh, let's go."