5/24/06 - Forge
---
Another day, another casserole, held under a metallic arm like a briefcase or a very masculine carry-purse. This necessitates the soft, malleable, sloshy parts of the casserole have all slid down in a clump and are pressing against the aluminum foil with such insistence that Forge has, by the time he is near Rossi's door, left a cheese sause drip-trail down the hall. But these are small matters. Forge knocks.
Drips. All over the nice clean floor. Rossi is watering Sabby's gift of plant -- overwatering, in an expression of petty vengeance. The bow is wilting. It is still valiant, manly purple. The plant will die. The bow may also. "Yeah," he yells, propping the pitcher on his knee to roll the wheelchair back. "Who is it?"
"Forge," Forge calls pleasantly through the door. "I've brought food." And he has the good nature not to sound dubious about the word "food."
"Don't break it down," the voice inside orders. One does not want to be hasty with one's assumptions, but. Well. /Forge/. One has heard stories. Rossi nudges the pitcher onto the floor, curses over the embarrassing dampness it leaves across his thigh, and steers to open the door. "Gimme a second. It's locked."
"I promise not to unlock it. Although I can, if you're inconvenienced." Forge takes this time to situate the casserole tray so that it is not pressed up under his arm like a Trapper-Keeper. Whatever it is today. Rather, he holds it like a cookie sheet. Horizontal. This is proper. His right sleeve-cuff is very damp from drips. Ah well.
Too late. Thump. Bump. The sound of heavy deadbolts thunks; the doorknob turns and is shoved aside, knocked back at the end of a straightened arm. Pressed back into the wall beside it, Rossi angles a crooked grimace at his visitor with a flick of a hand in welcome. "C'mon in. Make yourself at home. No Magnetos today. Watch your step. Floor's wet."
"Is it?" Forge asks such things as if the very wetness of the floor is a potential adventure, nay, an adventure in the mere walking. He shoves by -- his clothing takes a brief hitch on the door -- and he is in. "Where should I put this?"
"What i-- kitchen." The final disposition is vaguely appalled. Rossi's gaze drops, trailing the path of dampness out the door. He cranes to investigate the hallway. "Nice. What is it? Soup?"
"Casserole." Forge treads toward the kitchen with the easy saunter of the apartment proof. They are all one to him! "I think . . . turkey-broccoli." He has reached the kitchen. He turns to make a momentary vanishing by one counter or another.
Turkey-broccoli. Rossi mouths the word in tactful silence, poking the wheelchair forward to trail after Forge: albeit a suitable distance behind. The pitcher on the floor is scooped up and rearranged onto his lap as the clear culprit for that damp patch on his sweats. "Thanks," he says. He has the good nature not to sound dubious about the word. "You make it yourself?"
The near inaudible, if audible enough to be unappetizing, clunk of casserole dish on counter and Forge is proceeding back. Only then does he appear to see Rossi at all, as if he were programmed into a track like a mechanical bunny for the racing greyhounds. He has made his curcuit and now he may look the other direction. "No. I don't cook." A beat. "Nice wheelchair."
"Belongs to Chuckie Che-- Professor Xavier," Rossi clarifies mid-step, angling to add one last, malevolent dollop of water to the drowning plant. Water splashes and pools at its base, pouring a river across the wood and onto the floor. "One of his old ones. Who knew a guy could have spare wheelchairs? Like ties, except harder to pack."
Forge's attention draws down to the momentary waterfall. Curious. If not curious enough to actively remark. He merely watches, after all. "I suppose we all have spare somethings. I have spare arms, myself." Just by way of mentioning. "I'm working on a wheelchair prototype. Would you like a new one?"
The cop's brow furrows, and he places the pitcher carefully beneath the waterfall to catch its overflow. "Noticed the metal arm." Keen observer of the obvious, he. "Not intending to be a permanent wheelchair user, personally. Why? What's the new one got that this one doesn't?"
"Whatever I feel like installing. New wheelchair, new door, hey, all the same to me. Can have whatever features . . . " Forge raises his head and examines Rossi's hairline. "I tend to experiment."
"Think you can make one that'll speed up my healing time?" Rossi asks with dry curiosity. His hand does not reach for his hair. It is not receding. Nonetheless, the fingers twitch a little before being folded firmly around the arm of the chair. "Why do you have a metal arm?"
"Unfortunately, probably not. I can make one that'll increase your healing time, however." Forge's eyes finally politely dip a little lower. Eye to eye. There. Socially acceptable. He lifts his metal arm and draws down the damp sleeve to expose it further. "This thing? Got shot."
Green eyes flicker from the arm to the man. "Gosh," says Rossi. "Increase my healing time. Dream come true. --Yeah. No thanks. Appreciate the thought, though. That must've been some bullet."
Forge flexes his metal fingers. They flex. Magically. No creaking at all. "It was. I designed it myself, you see."
"Shot by your own bullet. Having a weird feeling of deja vu," Chris remarks, though there is a hint of humor under the dragging voice. His mouth crooks into an abrupt and fleeting grin, paling his gaze into less sullen color before he puts the wheelchair into motion again. There are papers on the nearby table, spread out in a chaos of analysis and study. "That's some arm, anyway. If I ever blow one of my own limbs off, I'll give you a ring. That your mutation? Shop class?"
"Please, do." Forge, amenable, falls into step by the wheelchair. His gaze coasts over the papers with no initial interest. The written word is so flat. Lacks certain essential tactile, manipulable qualities, indeed. "So small a market for arms. People are squeamish. Not that causing squeamishness is my -- indeed. I can build anything. This is my mutation."
The wheelchair-bound man makes a small sound of amusement -- a snort, couched in more dignified terms -- and comes up short against the table to stretch his free arm across them. "Useful trick," Rossi observes, scraping the papers together into a neater jumble. Sabitha Melcross, reads one. Electricity. Gas. It disappears under a mantle of printouts. "How does that work? Someone asks you to make something, you just ... what? Think about it and do it?"
"Pretty much," Forge says. His eyes case over a familiar name and pause for a fraction. There is the slightest of stiffenings to his posture before it passes. And he is such this casual dude. "Intuitive power. Doesn't require much effort from me. Brain-wise, anyway."
"So if I asked you to make something that would keep telepaths out of my brain?"
Forge laughs. "You and me both. I've churned a few prototypes, but . . . awkward. Awkward to use."
Again the other man's mouth slips towards humor, fishhooked awry over the business of organizing. "You ever figure that out, gimme a call," Chris advises, sinking back into his chair again to lift his gaze to Forge. "You could make a fortune with that solution."
"Already have. With . . . other solutions." Forge passes a gaze reciprocally down to the man shortened by circumstance. "But It's possible. Blocking telepaths out. However, you have to cover a certain surface area. Which means wearing a massive doo-hickey on your head all the time."
"How massive?" asks Rossi, catching a rolling pen before it tumbles off the edge of the table. He feeds it between his fingers, twirls it, and eyes Forge solemnly over that whirlygig of motion. "How doo-hickey? We talking the kind of thing that'd snap my neck? Or would get me shot by my squad room? --Want a beer? Grab one from the fridge if you want."
"Magneto wears one," Forge smirks friendly like. He lays one hand palm flat on the table. "That's about as small as I can get it, in fact. It'd, at the least, make you look like a dork -- and no thanks."
The pen jerks to a halt, stubbed on Rossi's thumb. He straightens. "That purple thing? The -- the pez helmet? That's to keep out telepaths?"
"Mm hmm." Forge taps his fingers in a low sequence. "That's what it's for. You see what it does to his costume, though. You can't just /wear/ that walking down the street."
"Magneto," Rossi says with deliberate, bitter emphasis, "can wear anything he damn well wants to. He could show up in a cape and thigh-high boots and nobody'd say a word. You gonna make fun of him to his face?"
"He'd probably rip my arm out. That'd be extremely messy. And expensive to fix." Forge sighs. "But that's neither here nor there. You and I? Cannot dress like that."
Rossi looks, for a moment, resentful. Just for a moment. Long enough, say, to envision himself in a cape and thigh-high boots. Then he deflates. "Yeah, well." Purple helmet. "You're probably right. For the record, I had a great overcoat. /Two/ great overcoats. I looked hot in that coat. Asshole ripped it up."
"He seems to have an attachment to you," Forge tchs sympathetically. He drums his fingers. His eyes direct, once, toward the pile of papers, and away. "An abusive attachment. Sorry about that. Happens to all of us eventually. To me rather less than I like. No one finds /me/ attractive."
Rossi is faintly incredulous. "You /want/ an abusive attachment with Magneto? --You know what? I don't like the way you said that."
"No. But even an abusive attachment is an attachment. It's like--" Forge reaches up to pluck something invisible from the air, "we are all tied together, but it's usually so tenuous. It might as well not be there at all. Magneto and you, well, you have something tangible."
"Magneto and I," Rossi articulates with great deliberation, "do /not/ have something tangible. In fact, there is no 'Magneto and I.' There's no /we/. There's no-- no /attachment/. If you want him, /take/ him." The writing utensil is tossed to the table; the freed hand is flatted, splayed, across a tattered printout. Lowe Attacked! the article reads. Heroic Rescue By Mutant!
Forge's eyes flick to the pile of papers again before touching on the specific printout. Back to Rossi. Forge is just smiling friendly. "Not my type. I work with expensive machinery, he breaks it. But I don't see any serious -- heavens." Forge is distracted. By something he surely read off the air. He looks suddenly indrawn. Troubled.
Teeth meet. Jaws clench. "Look, asshat. He's more your type than mine, for damn sure. Sounds to me like a match made in heaven. You can just follow him around, fixing the crap he breaks-- /what/?" Exasperation spins out into the aether, thinning to invisibility as Rossi's gaze narrows. "Something up?"
"Forget that." Forge's tone has narrowed grim, if he still seems to be watching the air. "Detective Rossi, I need you to bring out /anything/ in your medicine cabinet that Magneto might've touched. Now."
"The hell do /I/ know," Rossi objects over the hum of his wheelchair, pushed back to free its base from the table's overhanging obstacle. "What difference does it make? If he was going to kill me, he'd just ... do it. The guy's not big on subtlety. SUV at my head, Hummer through the window--"
"That's not what I'm worried about. Please." Please aside, it's almost an order. If a very objective one. "It'll only take me a moment to check."
Exasperation cuts towards Forge again, but it is a token protest, and mute at that. Rossi's jaw sets again -- "Crap," -- and the wheelchair grumbles its cranky way away, steering around the sofa down the short hallway. There is more swearing as it disappears. The bathroom door, it is awkward. Chris has an extensive and creative vocabulary.
Forge tilts an ear toward Rossi's progress and permits himself a very small smirk. Then, with gentle hands which are taking all kinds of precaution not to rustle too much, he attacks the pile of papers.
There is reason enough to swear in the bathroom. Out in the small living room, the collection of notes is a less comprehensive thing. They are assorted and sundry, and while Sabitha Melcross's name appears in them, so too do an unrelated assortment of others: police sheets; crime reports; descriptions of university fraternities; newspaper archive printouts; an autopsy writeup; a picture of Emma Frost. Flotsam and jetsam on the river of information. And a name. Jareth Tarrant.
Forge's survey is quick, punctuated by only brief pauses for a more extensive survey. Those more extensive surveys fall on the description of the university fraternity, Frost, . . . and Jareth. "Huh," Forge says, almost under his breath. "Well."
Timing. Which is to say ... none. Rossi remains in the bathroom, battling with bloody-minded determination the medicine cabinet, its contents, the door, the rug, the sink and its obstruction -- "Fuck this," his voice announces, wedged someplace between frustration and outright annoyance. "You want to see this crap so bad, don't send the /gimp/ to do it."
"Huh." Final. Forge, who has kindly gone through the notes in more or less present order, doesn't have much tidying to do. So he risks a, "Good point. Sorry, Detective. I . . . it's not as important as I thought. Don't mind me. I get these odd twitches. A little mad you know." He takes a step away from the table. "I'll just be going."
In the bathroom, Rossi slumps a bit, drowned in medicine bottles and soundless murmurs of imprecation. A little mad. "Who exactly /made/ that casserole?" he demands, attempting to reverse. "--Shit. I'm stuck."
Like an extremely callous fellow, Forge just opens the door and leaves.
Asshole. Rossi swears.
[Log ends]
See Forge. See Forge visit. See Forge be crazy. Crazy Forge, crazy. See Forge go.
Another day, another casserole, held under a metallic arm like a briefcase or a very masculine carry-purse. This necessitates the soft, malleable, sloshy parts of the casserole have all slid down in a clump and are pressing against the aluminum foil with such insistence that Forge has, by the time he is near Rossi's door, left a cheese sause drip-trail down the hall. But these are small matters. Forge knocks.
Drips. All over the nice clean floor. Rossi is watering Sabby's gift of plant -- overwatering, in an expression of petty vengeance. The bow is wilting. It is still valiant, manly purple. The plant will die. The bow may also. "Yeah," he yells, propping the pitcher on his knee to roll the wheelchair back. "Who is it?"
"Forge," Forge calls pleasantly through the door. "I've brought food." And he has the good nature not to sound dubious about the word "food."
"Don't break it down," the voice inside orders. One does not want to be hasty with one's assumptions, but. Well. /Forge/. One has heard stories. Rossi nudges the pitcher onto the floor, curses over the embarrassing dampness it leaves across his thigh, and steers to open the door. "Gimme a second. It's locked."
"I promise not to unlock it. Although I can, if you're inconvenienced." Forge takes this time to situate the casserole tray so that it is not pressed up under his arm like a Trapper-Keeper. Whatever it is today. Rather, he holds it like a cookie sheet. Horizontal. This is proper. His right sleeve-cuff is very damp from drips. Ah well.
Too late. Thump. Bump. The sound of heavy deadbolts thunks; the doorknob turns and is shoved aside, knocked back at the end of a straightened arm. Pressed back into the wall beside it, Rossi angles a crooked grimace at his visitor with a flick of a hand in welcome. "C'mon in. Make yourself at home. No Magnetos today. Watch your step. Floor's wet."
"Is it?" Forge asks such things as if the very wetness of the floor is a potential adventure, nay, an adventure in the mere walking. He shoves by -- his clothing takes a brief hitch on the door -- and he is in. "Where should I put this?"
"What i-- kitchen." The final disposition is vaguely appalled. Rossi's gaze drops, trailing the path of dampness out the door. He cranes to investigate the hallway. "Nice. What is it? Soup?"
"Casserole." Forge treads toward the kitchen with the easy saunter of the apartment proof. They are all one to him! "I think . . . turkey-broccoli." He has reached the kitchen. He turns to make a momentary vanishing by one counter or another.
Turkey-broccoli. Rossi mouths the word in tactful silence, poking the wheelchair forward to trail after Forge: albeit a suitable distance behind. The pitcher on the floor is scooped up and rearranged onto his lap as the clear culprit for that damp patch on his sweats. "Thanks," he says. He has the good nature not to sound dubious about the word. "You make it yourself?"
The near inaudible, if audible enough to be unappetizing, clunk of casserole dish on counter and Forge is proceeding back. Only then does he appear to see Rossi at all, as if he were programmed into a track like a mechanical bunny for the racing greyhounds. He has made his curcuit and now he may look the other direction. "No. I don't cook." A beat. "Nice wheelchair."
"Belongs to Chuckie Che-- Professor Xavier," Rossi clarifies mid-step, angling to add one last, malevolent dollop of water to the drowning plant. Water splashes and pools at its base, pouring a river across the wood and onto the floor. "One of his old ones. Who knew a guy could have spare wheelchairs? Like ties, except harder to pack."
Forge's attention draws down to the momentary waterfall. Curious. If not curious enough to actively remark. He merely watches, after all. "I suppose we all have spare somethings. I have spare arms, myself." Just by way of mentioning. "I'm working on a wheelchair prototype. Would you like a new one?"
The cop's brow furrows, and he places the pitcher carefully beneath the waterfall to catch its overflow. "Noticed the metal arm." Keen observer of the obvious, he. "Not intending to be a permanent wheelchair user, personally. Why? What's the new one got that this one doesn't?"
"Whatever I feel like installing. New wheelchair, new door, hey, all the same to me. Can have whatever features . . . " Forge raises his head and examines Rossi's hairline. "I tend to experiment."
"Think you can make one that'll speed up my healing time?" Rossi asks with dry curiosity. His hand does not reach for his hair. It is not receding. Nonetheless, the fingers twitch a little before being folded firmly around the arm of the chair. "Why do you have a metal arm?"
"Unfortunately, probably not. I can make one that'll increase your healing time, however." Forge's eyes finally politely dip a little lower. Eye to eye. There. Socially acceptable. He lifts his metal arm and draws down the damp sleeve to expose it further. "This thing? Got shot."
Green eyes flicker from the arm to the man. "Gosh," says Rossi. "Increase my healing time. Dream come true. --Yeah. No thanks. Appreciate the thought, though. That must've been some bullet."
Forge flexes his metal fingers. They flex. Magically. No creaking at all. "It was. I designed it myself, you see."
"Shot by your own bullet. Having a weird feeling of deja vu," Chris remarks, though there is a hint of humor under the dragging voice. His mouth crooks into an abrupt and fleeting grin, paling his gaze into less sullen color before he puts the wheelchair into motion again. There are papers on the nearby table, spread out in a chaos of analysis and study. "That's some arm, anyway. If I ever blow one of my own limbs off, I'll give you a ring. That your mutation? Shop class?"
"Please, do." Forge, amenable, falls into step by the wheelchair. His gaze coasts over the papers with no initial interest. The written word is so flat. Lacks certain essential tactile, manipulable qualities, indeed. "So small a market for arms. People are squeamish. Not that causing squeamishness is my -- indeed. I can build anything. This is my mutation."
The wheelchair-bound man makes a small sound of amusement -- a snort, couched in more dignified terms -- and comes up short against the table to stretch his free arm across them. "Useful trick," Rossi observes, scraping the papers together into a neater jumble. Sabitha Melcross, reads one. Electricity. Gas. It disappears under a mantle of printouts. "How does that work? Someone asks you to make something, you just ... what? Think about it and do it?"
"Pretty much," Forge says. His eyes case over a familiar name and pause for a fraction. There is the slightest of stiffenings to his posture before it passes. And he is such this casual dude. "Intuitive power. Doesn't require much effort from me. Brain-wise, anyway."
"So if I asked you to make something that would keep telepaths out of my brain?"
Forge laughs. "You and me both. I've churned a few prototypes, but . . . awkward. Awkward to use."
Again the other man's mouth slips towards humor, fishhooked awry over the business of organizing. "You ever figure that out, gimme a call," Chris advises, sinking back into his chair again to lift his gaze to Forge. "You could make a fortune with that solution."
"Already have. With . . . other solutions." Forge passes a gaze reciprocally down to the man shortened by circumstance. "But It's possible. Blocking telepaths out. However, you have to cover a certain surface area. Which means wearing a massive doo-hickey on your head all the time."
"How massive?" asks Rossi, catching a rolling pen before it tumbles off the edge of the table. He feeds it between his fingers, twirls it, and eyes Forge solemnly over that whirlygig of motion. "How doo-hickey? We talking the kind of thing that'd snap my neck? Or would get me shot by my squad room? --Want a beer? Grab one from the fridge if you want."
"Magneto wears one," Forge smirks friendly like. He lays one hand palm flat on the table. "That's about as small as I can get it, in fact. It'd, at the least, make you look like a dork -- and no thanks."
The pen jerks to a halt, stubbed on Rossi's thumb. He straightens. "That purple thing? The -- the pez helmet? That's to keep out telepaths?"
"Mm hmm." Forge taps his fingers in a low sequence. "That's what it's for. You see what it does to his costume, though. You can't just /wear/ that walking down the street."
"Magneto," Rossi says with deliberate, bitter emphasis, "can wear anything he damn well wants to. He could show up in a cape and thigh-high boots and nobody'd say a word. You gonna make fun of him to his face?"
"He'd probably rip my arm out. That'd be extremely messy. And expensive to fix." Forge sighs. "But that's neither here nor there. You and I? Cannot dress like that."
Rossi looks, for a moment, resentful. Just for a moment. Long enough, say, to envision himself in a cape and thigh-high boots. Then he deflates. "Yeah, well." Purple helmet. "You're probably right. For the record, I had a great overcoat. /Two/ great overcoats. I looked hot in that coat. Asshole ripped it up."
"He seems to have an attachment to you," Forge tchs sympathetically. He drums his fingers. His eyes direct, once, toward the pile of papers, and away. "An abusive attachment. Sorry about that. Happens to all of us eventually. To me rather less than I like. No one finds /me/ attractive."
Rossi is faintly incredulous. "You /want/ an abusive attachment with Magneto? --You know what? I don't like the way you said that."
"No. But even an abusive attachment is an attachment. It's like--" Forge reaches up to pluck something invisible from the air, "we are all tied together, but it's usually so tenuous. It might as well not be there at all. Magneto and you, well, you have something tangible."
"Magneto and I," Rossi articulates with great deliberation, "do /not/ have something tangible. In fact, there is no 'Magneto and I.' There's no /we/. There's no-- no /attachment/. If you want him, /take/ him." The writing utensil is tossed to the table; the freed hand is flatted, splayed, across a tattered printout. Lowe Attacked! the article reads. Heroic Rescue By Mutant!
Forge's eyes flick to the pile of papers again before touching on the specific printout. Back to Rossi. Forge is just smiling friendly. "Not my type. I work with expensive machinery, he breaks it. But I don't see any serious -- heavens." Forge is distracted. By something he surely read off the air. He looks suddenly indrawn. Troubled.
Teeth meet. Jaws clench. "Look, asshat. He's more your type than mine, for damn sure. Sounds to me like a match made in heaven. You can just follow him around, fixing the crap he breaks-- /what/?" Exasperation spins out into the aether, thinning to invisibility as Rossi's gaze narrows. "Something up?"
"Forget that." Forge's tone has narrowed grim, if he still seems to be watching the air. "Detective Rossi, I need you to bring out /anything/ in your medicine cabinet that Magneto might've touched. Now."
"The hell do /I/ know," Rossi objects over the hum of his wheelchair, pushed back to free its base from the table's overhanging obstacle. "What difference does it make? If he was going to kill me, he'd just ... do it. The guy's not big on subtlety. SUV at my head, Hummer through the window--"
"That's not what I'm worried about. Please." Please aside, it's almost an order. If a very objective one. "It'll only take me a moment to check."
Exasperation cuts towards Forge again, but it is a token protest, and mute at that. Rossi's jaw sets again -- "Crap," -- and the wheelchair grumbles its cranky way away, steering around the sofa down the short hallway. There is more swearing as it disappears. The bathroom door, it is awkward. Chris has an extensive and creative vocabulary.
Forge tilts an ear toward Rossi's progress and permits himself a very small smirk. Then, with gentle hands which are taking all kinds of precaution not to rustle too much, he attacks the pile of papers.
There is reason enough to swear in the bathroom. Out in the small living room, the collection of notes is a less comprehensive thing. They are assorted and sundry, and while Sabitha Melcross's name appears in them, so too do an unrelated assortment of others: police sheets; crime reports; descriptions of university fraternities; newspaper archive printouts; an autopsy writeup; a picture of Emma Frost. Flotsam and jetsam on the river of information. And a name. Jareth Tarrant.
Forge's survey is quick, punctuated by only brief pauses for a more extensive survey. Those more extensive surveys fall on the description of the university fraternity, Frost, . . . and Jareth. "Huh," Forge says, almost under his breath. "Well."
Timing. Which is to say ... none. Rossi remains in the bathroom, battling with bloody-minded determination the medicine cabinet, its contents, the door, the rug, the sink and its obstruction -- "Fuck this," his voice announces, wedged someplace between frustration and outright annoyance. "You want to see this crap so bad, don't send the /gimp/ to do it."
"Huh." Final. Forge, who has kindly gone through the notes in more or less present order, doesn't have much tidying to do. So he risks a, "Good point. Sorry, Detective. I . . . it's not as important as I thought. Don't mind me. I get these odd twitches. A little mad you know." He takes a step away from the table. "I'll just be going."
In the bathroom, Rossi slumps a bit, drowned in medicine bottles and soundless murmurs of imprecation. A little mad. "Who exactly /made/ that casserole?" he demands, attempting to reverse. "--Shit. I'm stuck."
Like an extremely callous fellow, Forge just opens the door and leaves.
Asshole. Rossi swears.
[Log ends]
See Forge. See Forge visit. See Forge be crazy. Crazy Forge, crazy. See Forge go.