Tweak

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Tweak says, "There's no crying in baseball!"

Forge (_maker_) wrote in age_of_miracles,
@ 2008-10-06 00:46:00

Entry tags:

forge, mystique

Thread: Mystique and Forge
Who: Mystique and Forge
When: October 5th, afternoon
Where: The Lair
What: Forge has been Summoned. Big S. duhn duhn duuuuuhn...

Stopping off for coffee was probably a bad plan. Still, Forge was never one for following the sensible route, and besides, he needed the caffeine boost. Being a tiny bit late was probably a far better alternative than either appearing to be as dumb as a post or falling asleep mid-meeting. So, he got his coffee.

Five minutes later, he was standing at the door of Mystique's office, carrying two mugs of coffee in one hand. He might be an idiot, but he wasn't always rude, especially not to one of the boss-people, and it would be rude to show up without coffee for everyone. If she didn't want it, he'd drink it, so there was no problem! He knocked on the door, then paused for a moment.

"Mystique? It's Forge. You wanted to see me..."

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lady_blue
2008-10-05 07:19 pm UTC (link)

"Come in."

One of the things Mystique had always valued was punctuality, respect for authority and the processes related thereto. Of course, there were significant differences between the people at the Lair and her personal employees, and even she didn't expect anyone to jump at her suggestions ... but it was nice to hear the knock on her door while she at least remembered who might be visiting and why.

Her office was small, neat, cut off from her private quarters by a simple sliding oriental-style screen, a mahogany desk facing the door and a remarkably comfortable extra chair provided for visitors. Closing her laptop quietly, Mystique folded one leg over the other and waited.

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_maker_
2008-10-05 07:26 pm UTC (link)

Opening the door, he switched one of the mugs to his free hand before stepping into the room. Closing the door with his elbow, he then turned and walked over to stand by the visitor's chair.

"I got you a coffee, but I don't know how you take it or even if you do, so it's just black coffee."

He might have been kicked out of the army over eight years ago, but you never forgot some things, like waiting for the obvious senior officer to give their orders. Forge stayed standing, although he did hold out one of the mugs towards Mystique.

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lady_blue
2008-10-05 07:37 pm UTC (link)

Coffee ... Mystique smiled slowly, took the offered mug and took a small sip. Good coffee, even, black and strong.

"This is fine," she said, gesturing with her free hand at the free chair. "Please, sit. Thank you for coming." There were times, many times, when Mystique was ruthless, cruel or simply rude; for the moment, though, it wasn't necessary. Besides, she had learned long ago that politesse could be just as effective.

"You've been working with the registration tattoos?"

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_maker_
2008-10-05 07:52 pm UTC (link)

He sat when he was told, shifting so that his leg was as comfortable as possible. Today was not a good day for his leg, although that was possibly something to do with perching on a stool for days on end. Still, he made a mental note to work on the padding around the stump, drank a mouthful of coffee and proceeded to ignore the discomfort.

"I have, yeah. I've been trying to come up with a machine that'll get rid of them, but, uh... Nothing I come up with seems to work. The data I've got just... It's not working," he said, trying not to sound as frustrated as he was.

Everything was theoretical at the moment since he didn't have an actual registration tattoo to test his machines out on, but that didn't mattered. He knew what they could do once they were built, so he knew he'd built twelve different versions of a machine that would remove normal tattoos but not registration ones, and was in the middle of building his thirteenth.

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lady_blue
2008-10-05 08:01 pm UTC (link)

How interesting, the way different people viewed situations. Forge was a mechanical genius, among other things, and his first response to the problem had been technological. Perhaps, for all of her adaptation, Mystique was still a creature of the 19th century. Still ...

"I'm not surprised," she said, mild sympathy appearing in her tone. "They don't come off."

Reaching down to one of her desk drawers, Mystique pulled out a slim manila folder, set it in front of her on the desk. "I've been looking at one for over a month now," she continued, not opening the folder. "Not very many things can defy me for that long. Whatever's at work here, it goes beyond ink."

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_maker_
2008-10-05 08:31 pm UTC (link)

"They should come off, that's the thing. I can make whatever I want to, and I want a machine that'll get rid of them. So they should just jump out of people's skin, except they won't!" Whoa. He hadn't meant to get so worked up, either. Drinking some more coffee, he tried to calm down again. Mystique had mentioned looking at a tattoo, concentrate on that.

"You've got... You have access to someone with a tattoo?" If he could get at a tattoo that wasn't attached to someone he actually liked, like Tabby, maybe he could actually get somewhere with the damn things. Or even new data could help him find out where he was clearly going wrong.

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lady_blue
2008-10-05 08:56 pm UTC (link)

Mystique watched him, golden eyes calm. She held her mug between her fingers, warm ceramic and the smell of coffee, waited for Forge to finish. It was true ... there were many people who shouldn't have had troubles with tattoos. She was one of them, healers or regeneratives, shifters, but from what she had seen, what should happen had absolutely no bearing on what would happen.

A subject on which the less she spoke, the better.

"I do," Mystique answered with a nod, opening the folder to reveal several pages of neatly typed notes, photographs. On top, a dark tattoo stood in stark contrast to what seemed to be a man's pale, unmarred arm. "The man was -" she laughed. "Is a regenerative sort. It gave me the chance to do quite a bit more than I normally would have ... with much the same results that you've had."

A small gesture with two fingers indicated that Forge could at least look at the pages in front of him.

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_maker_
2008-10-06 05:34 am UTC (link)

A regenerative mutant? Dude, that was perfect... He leaned forward and lifted the photographs, glancing at them before lifting the notes and beginning to read.

"This is good data... Oh, man, if you cut his arm off, it still comes back?" he murmured to himself, Ignoring the stab of jealousy at the thought of someone capable of regrowing limbs, he nodded and muttered to himself as he skim-read the pages. It wasn't until he reached the end that he caught on to himself.

"Oh! Sorry, I, uh. Got carried away. Would it be possible for me to get a copy of your data? It could help a lot with my work," he said, pushing his hair back out of his face before continuing, "and if you wanted, I could show you what I've come up with and explain what each one was trying to do."

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lady_blue
2008-10-06 12:07 pm UTC (link)

"I would be interested in seeing what you've done," Mystique agreed, nodding. Forge's mind worked in ways hers couldn't begin to think of, and a new approach to the same problem rarely went wrong. She was thinking biologically, but if he could accomplish something mechanically ...

She took another sip of her coffee. The question, of course, was whether she was willing to subject one of her people to someone else's ministrations, however brutal her own had been. Well, that was what he got for getting sloppy.

She gestured to the folder again. "You can keep that," Mystique told the young man. "And if you have something you think might work ... we'll see about testing it out. I'd rather you not kill my man."

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_maker_
2008-10-06 12:57 pm UTC (link)

Sweet! The new data would be really really useful, and then she said about testing his machines. Oh, man, testing them on not-himself? This just got better and better.

"Kill him? None of the devices I've got at the moment would kill him, unless they exploded beside him or something like that, which they won't. I've been testing some of them on myself as I was building them. Some of them are even pretty painless, although there's one that hurts like a bitch." As he was talking, he lifted up an arm to show her the blank patches in the middle of his own tattoos.

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lady_blue
2008-10-06 01:16 pm UTC (link)

Smiling faintly, Mystique held up her own hand; the colour faded from it, leaving pale peach with an ugly black number inscribed on the skin of her forearm. She shook her hand, and the tattoo faded. If only it were that easy.

"He's survived me," she said, humor in her eyes as she looked at Forge. "He should survive you as well - as long as you keep in mind that I don't take fondly of people accidentally killing my agents." He certainly seemed enthusiastic. It was nice to see that, about something other than blowing up buildings.

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_maker_
2008-10-08 12:05 pm UTC (link)

The fading tattoo thing was really fucking cool. Although he wouldn't change what he could do for the world, he did sometimes wish that his power was a bit more... obvious, really. Hopefully, he wasn't gawking like an idiot, but Mystique's power was just that cool.

"You don't have to worry about me killing your guy. I don't do that unless I'm on a mission," he replied, "so he'll survive me. Promise."

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lady_blue
2008-10-08 02:11 pm UTC (link)

It was hard to tell what Mystique meant by her actions - her mutation was always visible, though she could have easily chosen to hide it, and though she generally adopted a middle form that gave a greater nod to conventionality. It wasn't a question, therefore, of using her abilities or not, and whether she did it to impress or simply to amuse herself was anyone's guess.

"I'll hold you to that," she warned, a general pleasantness in her eyes belying the frown the crossed her face. She didn't need to be strict to mean things. "And I would like to be kept up to date with what you're trying. Two minds, and all that."

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_maker_
2008-10-08 02:28 pm UTC (link)

"Not a problem. I can put all my notes and research into a shared folder on the network if you want, unless you'd rather have hard copies and me explaining everything. Or you can have both, I'm easy."

He couldn't help but flick through the notes as he spoke. He wasn't meaning to be rude, but he was already thinking up how to adjust his existing plans and this sort of thing just happened when he was working on things.

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lady_blue
2008-10-08 03:43 pm UTC (link)

Mystique thought for a moment, and then nodded. "A shared folder is fine," she told the young man. It would meant that Tessa would have access to her information - or however much of it she chose to share with Forge - but that was hardly a problem. "If there's anything that needs explaining, I think I can find you."

Her gaze stayed on him, watching as though it would let her see his thought processes. Then she smiled, straightened. "Now, unless you have any questions for me ...?"

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	_maker_ 2008-10-08 06:21 pm UTC (link)
	"Just a couple. Where's your guy at, and how do I get him here to work on him? Or are you gonna sort that out for me?" He didn't look up until a few seconds after he'd finished speaking, finishing the particular section of notes he'd been reading. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

lady_blue
2008-10-08 09:10 pm UTC (link)

"Oh, he's here." The spider cells weren't really common playgrounds at the Lair, regardless of how morally convoluted the Brotherhood claimed to be. Prisoners and their various customary trappings tended to be a bit much for normal visits days.

"He's safely in a cell, which you'll need me to open." One way, if nothing else, to keep track of what Forge was doing; and it simply wouldn't do for anyone else to have access to the man she was keeping secreted away. The fact that the entire notion was highly objectionable only began to scratch the surface. "When you have something you'd like to try, simply let me know and I'll take you to him."

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_maker_
2008-10-09 10:55 am UTC (link)

"Okay, cool. I want to try the existing devices on him. I know they won't remove the registration tattoo, and I know what they do to normal tattoos, but I want to see what they actually do to the registration tattoos. I can wait to do that until I've got something new to try out on him, though."

He took a drink of coffee once he remembered he had some, although he didn't need the caffeine boost any more. His brain was whirring away quite happily, working through all kinds of different ideas and possible solutions, and he couldn't have slept now if he'd wanted to.

"Give me twenty-four hours. I'll have a couple of new devices to try out by then."

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