What a busy city, cars whizzing buy, people on their daily march to and fro, a place David only knew about from pictures and videos. He had come here because through his searching he found that their were places in the area that accepted mutants, and maybe where he could learn a little more directly from the source, as opposed to the unknown spin he always found on the net. Then again he spent his life without even knowing they existed, another day couldn't hurt, it was a great time to play tourist.

So where to first? David wandered staring straight up at the sky scrapers, not paying attention to the fact that he was wandering into the street. Next thing he heard was the loud honking of a horn and the squealing of a cars brakes locking up. David quickly looked forward and saw the bright yellow cab coming at him "Oh crap!" He yelled as he jumped to the side. The taxi came to a stop next to him and the driver leaned out, a frustrated look on his face.

"Hey, how about you keep your head down and your ass on the side walk ya moron." The man yelled, staring David in the eyes.

"Oh sorry, I'm new here, not really used to it." David responded, trying to defuse the situation. The man just shook his head and muttered something under his breath before driving away, leaving David in the middle of the street. "He's probably right" David said standing up, embarrassed about what happened.

It was like a tower… no, a monolith. No, wait. Tower was the appropriate word. Boxes leaning, back straining, the Asian trudged the slick city sidewalk, uttering apologies every few steps.

“I’m sorry!” He shouted as he brushed past a man and his girl. The boxes gave a gut-wrenching lurch as he tripped forwards, somehow countering the motion with a hop and a skip back. Shin let out a relief-filled sigh that condensed visibly in the air in front of his face. “Maybe I bought too much…”

He stopped as he neared the curb. A roaring cab-driver caused him to turn David’s way. Man, that was brutal… cabbies these days..

“You alright?” The Japanese boy spoke, standing behind the brunette. “Gotta be careful around these ‘big city’ streets. It’s not like the sticks where drivers obey traffic laws and will stop if they see an old lady hobbling down the crosswalk twenty feet ahead…”

David looked over to the source of the voice, finding a stack of boxes on the sidewalk, wait someone was holding those boxes. "Yeah I'm ok, thanks." He said carefully back to the safety of the sidewalk. The man seemed to be struggling with the load of boxes, "Hey, do you need help with that stuff?" He asked.

Whoever he was he seemed to know the area pretty well, someone david should get to know.

“Heh, I’d appreciate that.” Shin replied, shifting the boxes the best he could. “Here, if you want to help you could take the two on top… I can handle the three below it.” He turned to face David sideways and get an unobstructed view of the boy.

“That is, if you aren’t busy of course. I’m probably going to have to catch a bus here in a minute. I wouldn’t want to be driving you off course on whatever errands you had to do for the day. My name’s Shin, by the way.” He might as well introduce himself before anyone agreed to anything. “And you?”

"No problem"David said with a friendly tone as he reached up and grabbed the top two boxes, pulling them from the stack carefully. David shifted the boxes around, trying to get a comfortable grip while still being able to see.

"Heh, I've got no course anyway, new here, don't know anything about here, or anyone here anyway. My name is David." He said giving him a nod as opposed to a handshake.

Shin returned the nod. “A pleasure. Now let’s see here.” He craned his neck, making a big show of looking around for the bus stop. With every stretch, he clicked his tongue. “Not there, not there… ah, over there.” He swung his head towards the enclosed benches and sign halfway down the block. A group of people stood and sat by it, ranging from a mohawked punk rocker in black leather with zippers in excess to a well-dressed businessman, training his cigarette sights on the freshly-unfolded paper on his knee.

Shrugging the boxes back into alignment, he moved to lead the way. “Follow me.”

David watched as the man looked all around, David cold see a little better, thanks to his height, then again he wasn't quite sure what the man was exactly looking for. "ahh the bus stop." He thought as he followed Shin over to the already waiting group of people.

Once they stopped David looked around to see if a schedule was posted, curious about the times. "So where are we going anyway?" He asked.

“Oh, it’s not far.” Shin replied unhelpfully, looking off down the street. As he stood there by the bus stop, it had suddenly dawned on him that this ‘David’ might be one of those ‘anti-mutant’ types. The type that would smash your box, and your little dog too. For the time being, Shin decided to mask his true face.

“It’s just a school. I’m in the dorms by it.” He turned to aim a Sucrose smile David’s way. It was sweet, but it wasn’t real. “The bus should drop us off a few blocks from there. No worries. Ah—!”

With the sound of exhaled air, the bus pulled up to the stop and the door slid open. The punk-rocker and the businessman climbed on-board, followed by an elderly woman with ‘toilet-bowl blue’ hair and a little girl. Rock music blared from the headphones of a man in a cowboy hat, as the final patron from the bus stop stepped on board. Shin nodded, then turned to David.

“Time for us to step on up.” He boarded the bus and slid a few tokens into the machine, pointing to David and himself. “Two.” The driver nodded, and Shin found a seat behind him on the left. He piled the boxes at his side.

David felt a little better knowing the place wasn't far, it wasn't that he had a place to be, just that he didn't want to stray too far from his goal. The thought of schooling had never crossed his mind, his parents always had high hopes for him, wanting him to go to college and achieve great things, but his curiosity took over and took him here. Maybe the two paths could meet.

Finally the bus pulled up, and the people started piling in. Davids fingers started to feel sore from holding the boxes when Shin boarded the bus, good thing he put in for the both of them, David didn't have any tokens of his own. David went to sit next to him, piling his boxes on the already waiting stack. "What are you studying there?"

Shin shrugged. Time to make things up. “All sorts of things. Government, ethics, law, history… English.” His arm rested on the window at his side, and he rubbed a bit of fog off the window, tracing words in it with his index finger. He traced the name ‘Bill’, then dashed it out and replaced it up above the word with ‘Law’. A drawling voice yawned behind him, and it took all his being to resist the temptation to return the gesture.

“So,” his eyes fell on David curiously. “What brings you to the big city?”

"Sounds like fun." David said as he watched the man toy with the window, it seemed he wasn't very enthusiastic about his classes, then again how many students are. Then he asked something David wasn't quite ready for, but should have seen coming. He was about to answer when he realized maybe he should think about what to say.

In his searches for mutants he always found a loud voice wherever he went, the voice of ignorance. It seemed people were pretty split. Some supported mutants, but many hated them for who they were, and David didn't know what kind of person this man was. So he decided to keep it vague "Oh just looking for some people." He said with a smile.

An oddly-elusive answer from a strangely-evasive response. Hmm… Shin thought. “Some people, huh? Well, if its people you’re after I know a good bar near Central Park. The girls are cute and the taps run cold. The kind of place where everyone will know your name, yeah? But I’m not sure if that’s what your looking for…”

The bus rattled to a stop as they came to a red light. Shin cast a glance out towards the intersection, and the frigid steel giants racing each other towards heaven. In the seat behind him, two girls giggled and exchanged text messages, while hiding peeks in David’s direction. If one were to glance at either girl’s cellular phone, they might gain the impression one of them really liked something. Skimming earlier messages, they’d find the words ‘dude’ and ‘cute’. Upon further investigation…

Shin danced a look their way, then his eyes staggered back to David. A smile slipped across his lips. “Speaking of people.” He looked at them again.

"Heh, no not those kind of people, but then again that wouldn't be too bad of a place to check out." He said jokingly, this Shin guy seemed like a pretty good guy. I mean he went to college, and was pretty friendly, certainly not someone who would hate another person for who they were, maybe he should ask him if he knew of any mutants. Then again telling a stranger your a mutant looking for others is probably a strange thing to say all of a sudden. No David just kept his mouth shut and rode along.

David wasn't paying too much attention when the bus came to a stop, not until Shin mentioned the girls. David tried to give a nonchalant look at them, but in doing to he met one eye to eye, quickly looking forwards as she giggled "Ugh smooth move" he thought to himself.

The bus started moving again. On the upper recesses of the skyscrapers, glass reflected the sun like gold, but down at pedestrian-level things weren’t so bright. They passed a coffee shop where people cupped their hands around steaming Styrofoam, shoveling off the cold to the backs of their minds. A puppy yipped in the window of a car parked on the street as the bus turned onto a much calmer street some ten minutes later. They’d gone from the heavily-crowded main part of the city to a more-residential area, puffing into the stop. Some people exited, and six more boarded, then they were on their way again.

Shin glanced at his watch, watching the second hand move around the 12-o-clock point four times before it pushed into its next destination. Another minute… seventeen more rotations, and finally they were there. Or rather, nearly there. The bus stopped one block from the mansion.

Shin rose.

“Well, here’s my stop.” He said. “Thanks for the help. Did you want to help me carry things to the school, or do you want me to take it from here?” He turned his head to glance through the bus’s window towards the mansion looming a little bit ahead. The fences of the school nearly took up the entire portion of the land by the sidewalk. Whoever had organized the mansion’s defenses sure did a swell job.

The girls got off the bus, brushing past them on there way out with another torrent of giggling.

David silently rested his head back as the bus made it's routes, the routine stopping and going, people boarding and leaving. His mind drifted back home, it was the first time he had ever left, this place was pretty different. The silence was suddenly broken though as the bus stopped and Shin announced that this was his stop. David debated whether to keep going, he was supposed to be searching for mutants, and was getting sidetracked. Then again how much could it hurt just to help the man in, maybe even grab some info on the school for future use.

"Sure I'll help you there." David said standing up and grabbing two of the boxes "Already come this far." David nodded to the driver and carefully made his way down the steps onto the sidewalk, there he waited for Shin to lead the way.