niteo_logs | "In the end, the very last thing you can believe in

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"In the end, the very last thing you can believe in

Who: Wolfgang Grimmer, Noriko Ashida
Where: Room 803
When: May 23, 2010
What: Grimmer returns some long-lost gauntlets to Noriko

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Grimmer walked towards the front entrance of his apartment, waiting for Noriko to knock. For somebody whom just learned that the research which they'd tracked down for 8 had gone missing, Grimmer was handling himself extraordinarily well. Or more like, Grimmer was making himself stay calm.

Nonetheless, he was about to open the door to wait for her, (in order to make things easier in case she forgot the apartments number), but his attention was quickly drawn towards the broken glass covering the main rooms table. Since he had just arrived at the apartment, and never felt bothered by 'ugly' messes in general, he had hardly even registered it's existence and did nothing about it.

However, the blue haired girl might be bothered by it, sitting at a glass covered table was never a good idea, and pretending to have normal concerns was always a good idea. Grimmer quickly grabbed a rag and a small trash bin, and used the spare amount of time to shove the glass into the trash bin with the rag. Once he was done, he put the rag onto the kitchen counter and walked towards the door, intending to open it up and wait for her.
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Noriko stopped long enough to make some attempt at looking presentable, throwing her hair up into pig tails and shrugging on her Xaier's hoodie. She then took off running down the stairs practically two at the time.

When she found Grimmer's door she knocked, lightly at first, a light rap, but there was a bit of an anxious edge to it. Her eyes had a blue sheen to them, electricity crackling just beneath the surface.

Since he was standing so close, Grimmer was quick to open the door once Noriko had knocked on it. He opened the door calmly, and poked his head out into the hallway, before gaining an almost goofy smile on his face. "You managed to get here very fast!"

He pushed the door wider, and beckoned her inside. Even though Grimmer was much taller than the girl, his general lankiness made his height to be more humorous than actually intimidating.

Her lips quirked, "I can go fast when I really want," she said with a knowing grin, head tilting slight at his strangely cheerful demeanor, but stepping inside.

"So...you have them? Where were they?"

'But...that fast over a pair of gloves?' Grimmer said nothing out loud, and simply nodded quietly. Inwardly, the former spy was upset as he realized how young she was. Almost all the people sent to this strange area were teenagers, or even younger! To place kids into a hell hole like this was an incredibly cruel thing to do.

Of course, telling a person that they were way, way too young to be trapped in this terrible, inescapable situation was simply useless, and would probably only make them upset. As such, Grimmer remained silent on the issue.

"Oh-it's on the table!" Grimmer motioned towards the table in the middle of the main kitchen area, where the gauntlets were placed. It was a small apartment, and judging from the decorations and photos it had been formerly owned by a retired couple. The walls were covered with faded beige wallpaper, and old family photos, cook books and ceramic figures could be found scattered everywhere. Grimmer really did need to clean the place up; once he did, he assumed it would have a very comfortable feeling to it. Such a thing would be rare in this ruined city.

Nori made a rush for them, picking them up and turning them around in her hands to make sure they were all right before fingering a hidden catch and opening them up so she could put them on. "You're a god send, seriously, you don't even know how much I needed these back," she said, locking them back into place and flexing her fingers experimentally.

She gave a small sigh of relief, tension easing from her shoulders, and her eyes returned to their normal dark brown.

Grimmer blinked, taken aback by the girls sudden dash towards the gauntlets. Yeah, that definitely wasn't just a enthusiastic "yes I found them!" rush. "No, no, it was no problem at all!" He laughed, remembering to put his "smiling face" expression back on. Even though it had been decades since he was taught how and when to make expressions, he still preferred to use the names that he had memorized them with.

"Why exactly do you need them? Are they important keepsakes?" That might slightly explain why she needed them so badly, but was hardly a very good one. "Do you know why...eh..."Mr." Joker stole them from you?" Not that the Joker really needed a good reason to steal something valuable from somebody.

"Heh, not really, I kind of hate them," she said with a laugh, twisting her wrist about, "But they um..." she held her hand up and let a ball of electricity form "Help me me control this..." she finished, closing her palm, "I assume he thought it was just the gauntlets that did it, so he took them off me when he dumped me."

Grimmer's perpetual smile morphed into a combination of surprise and awe at the electric ball forming in her hand. At first he suspected that it might have been some trick of light, and turned his head to the side to confirm that. After all, there was no way somebody could create a ball of...electricity in their hand, right?

However, a few seconds later and the ball of electricity still looked like a ball of electricity. At long last, Grimmer allowed himself to voice his confusion. "Is...that electricity?"

She gave a small nod, looking mildly hesitant to confirm it. You could never be sure how someone was going to take it. She tended to lean towards assuming everyone was like father in their sentiments towards mutants.

She drew up another ball, larger this time so he could see it better. "That's my power."

[Gaaah sorry for the late post! The internet went down in my town for a good part of the day, and just realized it was up now.]

"Power?" Although Grimmer had seen some odd things already in Nescrea; zombies, ghosts of dead Czechoslovakian secret police, angry guys on PDA's with weird magical weapons, and one very creepy little girl (just to name a few) he was still surprisingly set in his 'non-magical' views of things. Well, at least ingrained enough that he still managed to feel surprised by Noriko's power. Since his emotional existence was so thin, he wasn't disturbed and his worldly-view was hardly destroyed. He was just...taken aback. What was he going to see next? Somebody summoning a monster from a storybook?

"By power...do you mean magical powers?" Grimmer pointed towards the shape in her hand, keeping a straight face the entire time. "Or can your gloves do that themselves, and only you know how to use them?" Grimmer came from 1998 Germany, so a piece of technology capable of that would still be a very impressive and surprising thing, albeit in a different way.

[That's okay]

"No, not exactly," she said, giving a small laugh, unfastening one of the gauntlets. The electricity was far less focused now, jumping about her hand and occasioning arcing off, "I'm a mutant. Like X-me- er- do they have the X-men in your world? That probably doesn't help. Um...like a super hero. I'm like that. I'm on a team and I help people."

"A super hero?" Grimmer nodded and brought his hand thoughtfully to his chin, as thought debating on how he should respond to this. Within moments a enthusiastic grin formed on his face. At this point, there was really no reason but to take everything he'd seen at face value. Aside, the girl sounded sincere, and the electricity coming from her hand was more than enough proof for the East German.

"So, you actually live like the characters in the comic books? Like...The Magnificent Steiner? That's probably the best job one could ever hope to get!" If Grimmer was going to be stuck in a strange world, where he could not pursue exposing the monsters of Kinderhiem 511, than he'd better meet super heroes to slightly make up for it.

Furthermore, a more serious portion of Grimmer's mind began to speak up. He could hardly take on the Joker and his followers by himself now. But if this girl also planned on defeating him...

"Yeah, like the comics I guess. I don't know who the Magnificent whose-it is, but, yeah. It's not really all it's cracked up to be." She fixed her gauntlets, and the electricity was snuffed out again. "It's a school really. So...you got away from the asshole clown then? How'd you manage that?"

Grimmer nodded. So, the jobs of people with 'super hero' powers and roles were more complicated than what super hero comics featured them as. It made sense, since his career as a spy was also much different than how movies and comics had featured it. For one, he was hardly getting into fights left and right. It usually just involved lots of information gathering, with some tracking, bugging, eavesdropping, occasional manipulation, and the passing of information mixed into it all.

Now that he thought about it, Grimmer imagined that almost all careers could easily be idealized in stories.

The East German snapped back to reality once Noriko mentioned the clown. "Oh, well I never really 'got away from him'. He...said he would bomb a building of schoolkids, so I tried to get over there as quickly as possible. As I was crossing the river, soldiers suddenly appeared and arrested me." He sighed, running his hand through his hair.

"I suspect that "Mr." Joker was responsible for that. I spent about two weeks inside of the prison, before he suddenly appeared again. He got hired as a janitor, and managed to organize a massive prison break. He hacked into the jailhouses systems and had all the cages released. As the crowds were escaping, he announced on the speakers for all his new-found followers to meet him in Nescrea here." Grimmer smiled darkly.

"He appeared for a moment in front of me, before driving off. Long enough for me to realize that he stole my bag, full of some very important research materials. I..managed to escape shortly after wards." The East German left out the part about "blanking out" and Steiner apparently slaughtering the thugs. She really didn't need to know about that; hopefully never. "However, in the end he lost my bag due to that ghost girl." Grimmer breathed in lightly, realizing how much he'd explained all at once. "Fast forward a few days, and here I am now. But I managed to find your gauntlets, so it wasn't all bad."

"Charming man. Reminds me of the sort of people my father used to fund," she said with a frown, "Anyways, I'm glad you got away. Sorry none of us came to help you. What's it like other there? The prison I mean? I've been over there a couple times to get some stuff."

"Your father? What was he like?" Grimmer blinked curiously, before waving his hand in reassurance. "Hm, no, I didn't want anyone to help me, really. I can't put anybody else at risk for getting caught." Everybody here was so young. The last thing he wanted was to put a bunch of kids in danger of getting stuck in the same place he was.

The East German's expression darkened slightly at being asked what the prison was like. It felt like he got stuck in another Kinderhiem 511. Or at least his unnerved, flash backing mind and second personality had believed that. "It was...controlling. But at least they didn't try to take control of your mind." He smiled lightly and tapped his head. Kinderhiem had taken and messed with every aspect of his being; turned Grimmer into a nameless empty person. That prison could not reach so deeply into a person's mind. "As long as your minds not being controlled, and you know your name, than you still have freedom!"

Really, even the suppressive prison in the world could not compare to Kinderhiem 511. Still, his experience in the orphanage had made his mind overly reactive to even the slightest of reminders.

"Him? Um...a bigoted jerk," she said with a shrug, cupping the back of her neck, "Funded anti-mutant terrorist pricks. I guess he probably still does, I dunno. I got out of there once I got my powers."

She smiled at his words, giving a small nod, "True enough."

'So mutants is the name for the "super heroes" of her world?' Grimmer nodded, making note of it in his head. Perhaps his understanding of the English language was slightly off, but that did not sound like a very kind term. Rather, it sounded more or less derogatory. He was feeling tempted to continue referring to her as a “super hero” in his mind and just avoid saying the word altogether.

“That’s terrible…” A deep, angry frown developed on Grimmer’s face as she mentioned being driven out of her family due to her differences. He was always very reactive towards hearing of mistreatment of children, whether through simple bullying, or actual abuse, and this case was no different. Parents had the responsibility of protecting and caring for their children. To allow their ideals to drive them to purposely bring damage onto their children was something that Grimmer could not accept, under any circumstances.

If one were to actually question him why he took this type of abuse so personally, Grimmer would probably be unable to give a genuinely believed answer. After all, his incapability of feeling love caused him to not cry at all over his sons death. This was despite his best efforts to raise his own child, and be a good father in every way that he possibly could. Still, it made him very upset that humans capable of feeling love did not use that emotion to protect their children.

"So...I'm guessing you don't really like the Joker that much either?" Grimmer looked towards Noriko, curious on what her dealings with him had been. If her opinion of him was similar to Grimmer’s, than maybe he might have an ally in this mess.

"Mm, well...they downplay the mutant thing in Japan, so...unless you're one of the big heroes you're just supposed to pretend they don't exist. I don't care though, America's a pretty awesome place. And once I got in at Xavier's it wasn't so bad. Oh, uh...that's a school, from people like me," she explained, "Apparently they would have taken me back if I'd lost my powers like most of my friends did. So...I guess that's something."

"Heh, no, he's not on the top of my friends list right now. He's a fucking whackjob, ad he's making a bad situation worse. I still owe him for stealing from me."

[OOC: I'm really sorry for the late post! I pulled an allnighter on some homework, and got REALLY sick for the next few days as a result : ( ]

Grimmer smiled in realization. "Oh, I thought I recognized your accent! I had a friend from Japan, who moved to Germany to work as doctor and became a first-class brain surgeon. I also went to Japan in the early 80s; it's a very nice country."

However, Grimmer's happy rant calmed down once she mentioned the Joker. "Yeah, I have a feeling that the Joker is going to try starting something big here. And that he will be able to do it too." Grimmer sighed. "The people leading this place are completely incompetent; to manipulate and mess with them would be very, very easy."

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"In the end, the very last thing you can believe in

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