ic The Red Bridal (IC)

[Electra]

It only took a moment for Danica to pick up on Neko's discomfort and intuit at least a little of its source. Yeah, that would be awkward, she realized belatedly, and launched into her own story with gusto that would hopefully move the conversation well past anything that could press a sore point. "I'm the earthly avatar of a tortoise god!" she told Tori cheerfully. "My mom officially likes tortoises more than anybody else in the whole world, or she did thirty-five years ago, anyway! So when the turtle god wanted to have an earthly avatar, they sent me to her! She was pregnant for eighteen months, it was a whole entire thing!" She scooped up a forkful of noodles, twirling them slowly as she spoke. "I'm super-duper hard to hurt, and I have a pocket dimension inside my shell that I can use as a spare bedroom, and I can make spirit turtles bite people if I need to. Plus I age really, really slowly. I move pretty slowly too, but that's why Ryder and Eira and their science friends built me my scooter!" 

[alderwitch]

Tori also seemed to pick up on Neko's discomfort but she let the older teenager take the lead as she knew Neko better. As she switched the subject, Tori brightened. 

 

"It's reasonable! Tortoises are super neat. I've talked to a couple younger ones but they have this sort of... hmm... like wisdom to them? That's not quite right. They see the world differently. It's a longer view. And a kinder one than most," Tori agreed with a sunny smile. "Though being pregnant for over a year sounds like the pits, if you ask me. I mean, I guess some people like being pregnant but my mum sure didn't. Everytime a birthday comes around, we get to hear how she toiled to bring us into the world."

 

Tori rolled her eyes with typical teen annoyance for a parental figure and their dubious suffering before she finally turned to Neko, her voice a little hesitant. "Uh, so, I'm totally not going to pry but lots of the kids at this school have stuff that they, you know, don't wanna talk about. It's okay. It's totally cool. If you have stuff that makes you sad or uncomfortable, you can just pass and that's a hundred percent okay. Anyone who pushes you on it isn't good friend material, you know? There's like a billion things that Utsawa doesn't like to talk about and I just show up and pester him to watch anime or come play a board game and it's all good."

 

Tori flashed Neko a thumbs up in reassurance before turning the topic back to safer things. "So, do you decorate your inside bedroom and your outside bedroom the same or differently?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Neko sipped her tea and wished unhappily that she could be as inexpressive as her friends, with their small eyes, flat ears, and tails buried inside their backs. Even with her illusions hiding much of her face from their eyes, evidently she wasn't as subtle as she had hoped. Well, you wanted people to understand you, she thought, perhaps they do and better than you could have known. She thought about telling the other girls about her own birth, how she had been one of four and of course the weakest had died as it usually was, and how Saiko and Sainenshō were as far from her was it was possible to be this side of the other world, but decided that was no suitable conversation for friends around the table. 

 

"Danica's rooms are very nice. Lots of - " she made gestures with her hands like fireworks. "Lots of colors. Very bright." She shifted a little in her seat, glad that the conversation had shifted away from difficult things. "I don't know what to do in my room," she said, "I have never had...a place I could build, like that," she added hesitantly. 

[Electra]

Danica's whole face brightened at Neko's admission. "We have _got_ to take you to Hot Topic," she breathed. "They have _so_ many posters and cool lamps and decorations, plus all the raddest clothes, and a big anime section! Not that you have to like anime," she added hastily, "but like, some of it's in Japanese so it might be easier to understand, you know? If we get you stuff that's subtitled, maybe it could even help you practice English? But anyway," she barreled on, "super good place to find fun dorm room stuff. Or we could start at Target, get you some basics, and then get fancy! What do you think, Tori?" 

[alderwitch]

"You could join our anime watching parties! I mean, it's basically whoever I can drag out to take part. Sometimes its my roomie from last year, sometimes I can get Ryder. I usually nag Utsawa and he comes and complains about how it's for children." Tori rolled her eyes. "If you ask me, he can use a little more childish whimsy in his life so I'm making him watch Cardcaptor Sakura. He hates it."

 

That was said with far too much cheer. "But anime is fun. Honestly, it's got something for pretty much everyone. They make it for, you know, adult sensibilities but I don't put on anything that's going to get us in trouble for watching in the lounge. Not even the borderline stuff. And I think we should start at Hot Topic and go from there. I have access to my Mum's vaguely guilty 'sorry you can't come home for holidays, buy something fun' money if we want to make a day of it - if you want. There's one of the older kids that will take money and portal-hop to bring in out of country imports if there's something you really want from another country. I may have used their service a time or two when I was craving sweets from back home m'self."

[Avenger Assembled]

Neko supposed that she should object to being a charity case. After all, she knew that nothing was ever given for something, even by very nice people. But Danica was a friend and Tori seemed very nice herself, her presence a warmth like a summer's sunshine, and so perhaps owing them an obligation wouldn't be so bad. "What is...Hot Topic?" She wound up peering at the other girls' phones, a little bemused, before she said, "Okay. I don't know anything about that, but I like those clothes." When the subject of anime came up, she said, "Okay, I know anime. I watch Astro Boy with my friend Merlin, he show me. It was for kids but it was funny." Even Astro Boy, which Merlin had described as a classic, had been made fifteen years after she'd lost herself, in a Japan that from the pictures was already becoming unrecognizable. "Not, um, the Britain Merlin, but monkey-Merlin. He lives with Owain and me." She nodded at that, looking pleased at the memory. 

 

The local mall wasn't too far away, easily within walking or Segwaying distance for the girls. As they went, Neko was peering up at the buildings around them in fascination, sometimes barely remembering to keep up her disguise. "So big! Not like Tokyo, just...big!" She made a little gesture towards the skyline of City Center across the river. "That is too big. My first city was Hiroshima and I thought it was very big, but that is...nothing." She shook her head, wishing she could tell her friends about how frightening it had been to ride in her cousin's boat all the way from Tokushima to Hiroshima, but how exciting it had been to see the city looming large on the horizon as they approached, even if it was so much smaller than the mountains. "I have question about clothes," she added, "are pants...okay for you?" she asked. "Girls wear them all the time." 

[Electra]

Danica considered that for a second. "Okay, first off," she began, "your friend is British, right? So we better clear up the whole pants question. I've gotten in weird trouble with that one before," she added cheerfully. "When you say pants, do you mean like pants-pants?" she demonstrated by tugging on the fabric of her trousers, "or the underpants that go beneath, like panties? Because I guess the answer is sort of the same," she barreled on, "since you should probably always be wearing underpants and wearing pants-pants is pretty much fine in every situation, but it's still an important thing to know what you're talking about! In Britain they call pants-pants trousers and underpants pants, and that was SO confusing the first time I met a student from there." 

 

She punched the button that opened the automatic doors to the mall. "We can't take too long if we want to be in before curfew, but we can find some fun stuff. Tori probably knows what's popular better than I do, honestly." 

[alderwitch]

Tori nodded her head although she hadn't looked scandalized or laughed; she'd been in the states long enough to be used to the more common differences in slang between the two. She addressed Danica's point first, however, "Sure, but you shouldn't worry about all of that. Focus on what you like first. Doesn't really matter if it isn't what everyone else is doing; especially when it comes to room decorations. Pick things that just make you happy. Eventually, you'll develop your own style and just feel confident in that. Popular changes but confidence is forever!"

 

Tori tucked her phone back in her pocket, taking the lead towards the Hot Topic in question. As they reached the store, she raised her voice to be easily heard over the music, trusting her magic to carry nuance of her words to Neko. "As to pants - or trousers - yeah, it's fine to wear them. You have some older folks especially in upper class feel like it should always be skirts below the knees and low heels but that's not at all common. It's even acceptable for women to wear a dress suit at a fancy event except truly stodgy things. No one's going to give you the side eye for trousers. Jeans are fine for casual and slacks if you want to go a little dressy. You can wear a tuxedo at black tie events, even. At least in America. In Britain, society events are a bit more restrictive and you do have events where trousers are going to get you sniffed at. But, I mean, we still have a Queen so it's not like we're on the bleeding edge of social advancement. Not so sure on modern Japanese customs but I imagine that it's also really dependent on social class and situation. They're, uh, a little less LGBT friendly in some ways but the counter culture push back is pretty strong in some youth cultures so..." Tori shrugged, realizing she was probably offering more information. "No one's going to bat an eye if you want to wear jeans sometimes to try it out at Claremont that's for sure. But no one's going to be huffy if you want to stick to more traditional-for-you looks either. You're a teenager. Figuring out what you want to look like is pretty much a thing you're supposed to spend a lot of time and mental effort on."

 

Tori nodded towards the clerk who probably had almost as many tattoos and a good number of piercings to go along with it. "It's sort of the whole point of this store. From the t-shirts to the manic panic hair dye."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Panties," agreed Neko. "They are very nice!" she said with great feeling. "But I mean trousers, yes." She had been to about to clarify that she just meant that girls everywhere seemingly walked around in pants except for formal occasions, something that would have seemed terribly bizarre to her not so long ago. Zubon were for city girls who were probably all smoking cigarettes and whoring around, at least according to her mother when she was particularly in her cups. The fuku she'd worn to high school had been scandalous enough in her parents' eyes - an outfit she would never wear again - much less what American girls wore all the time now. But that was simply something bizarre, not scandalous - and then she walked into the store. 

 

In Hot Topic, Neko's eyes got big and a smile broke out across her face. The colors, the sounds, the music, the clothes - and best of all, Tori was paying for all of it. She wasn't too proud to take money from a noble girl, especially when all she seemed to want was friendship in return. She walked first up to a big black shirt that bore a striking black and white image of a girl's face with rolled-back eyes floating on a pool of water. "Junji Ito," she murmured to herself, reading the gruesome text. "Oh..." She smiled. 

Inside the store, Neko was happier than Danica had ever seen her in their few days of living together - certainly more excited. The store's fashions definitely fit her aesthetic, all blacks and bright colors, particularly the clothes with creepy art and designs on them. The Japanese art she looked at too, her face a little wistful, but luckily Hot Topic sold plenty of things that were both. She was eager to get her friends to try on new outfits too, admitting out loud that she had never had a chance to do this with friends before! 

[Electra]

"Yay, makeover montage!" Danica cheered. The tight aisles of the store made moving challenging, so Danica parked by the front entrance and began making her very slow way around the store on foot. She made up for her lack of speed by pointing Neko in the direction of various items, posters that way, novelty shirts this way, stay out of this aisle because it's embarrassing grown-up stuff, jewelry up by the counter. She got distracted several times by new novelty items on the shelves, but did her best to pay attention to the focus of their shopping. "There's a dressing room in the back, try some stuff on!"