xp_logs | Lunch and Strongarm Tactics [Forge, Masque] (Reply)

While sitting in the isolation room waiting for the authorities, even a flesh-manipulating sociopath still gets fed. Of course, when it's one of his victims playing the role of candy-striper, things go a bit differently than anticipated. Masque learns what fear can do, and Forge more than likely earns himself a lecture on ethics. Again.

Meatloaf, store-bought white bread, and a juice box. Forge wasn't exactly impressed with the fare on the stainless steel tray, but then again, he wasn't very much inclined to be impressed with its recipient. This guy calling himself 'Masque' had disfigured - mutilated - over two dozen people. Two dozen that they knew of. Including Forge himself, Kyle, Jay, Doug, and Ms. Munroe.

Forge glanced across the hallway to where Paige was talking to Dr. Voght in the office. Normally, it was her job to bring food to Masque in the isolation room. Given the nature of her power, a solid steel husk provided immunity to Masque's flesh-warping powers. It had been difficult for Forge to convince her to give him a few minutes with the sociopath, but she'd acquiesced. She understood that her partner needed a sense of closure from the whole ordeal.

Placing the tray of food on the small shelf in the door, Forge peered through the double-pane reinforced window. "Lunchtime, asshole."

Masque glared up from the intricate macrame rope he'd been braiding from what had been his top sheet. Apparently his entertainment did not feature highly on his captors' list of priorities. Garrotting that metal bitch wouldn't be very productive, but he had to do something with his hands.

When he recognized the boy's face, though, the afternoon suddenly had the potential to become a whole lot more interesting.

"Well, isn't this a surprise," he leered, easing himself from the bed to hobble to the door. His normal limp was more pronounced after his knee's encounter with a brick wall. "Another one of my satisfied customers."

"Yeah, you do good work," Forge replied sarcastically. "Clean, no infection, if you knew the first thing about medicine or anatomy you'd be able to pull some serious bank with the desperate housewife demographic. You know, wrinkle removal, tummy tuck - you could help a lot of people and make yourself pretty comfortable in the process." He pushed the tray onto the shelf, letting it clang against the sliding door before he opened it.

"My question is: why? Why do this? Hurt people, screw with them, ruin lives? This some sort of sick revenge thing? Someone hurt you, so you hurt everyone?" Forge felt a small twinge of mixed guilt and recognition as he said the words. The concept wasn't alien to him, after all.

"Why?" Masque repeated, contempt dripping from the single syllable. "Why not? I have the power. One power: to remake anyone I want into anything I want. Anyone except myself." He leaned his forehead to the observation window, flattening the dark-veined tumors against the glass as he regarded Forge with one venomous eye. A distorted smile twisted his face. "It's a calling."

"Because you can?" Forge was almost taken by surprise. "I can't even begin to express how messed up that is. I'm not even going to waste my breath explaining how screwed in the head you are. Here's your goddamn lunch." With a smooth motion, Forge reached up and slid the panel open.

The flash of flesh and blood was all he'd been waiting for. Faster than his twisted body would have led anyone to believe was possible, Masque's hand shot out through the slot for the boy's, fingers already clutching in anticipation. Stupid little boy come here to make stupid little speeches; this time Masque intended to be far less merciful.

Shoving the edge of the tray through the slot into Masque's chest, Forge spun away from the expected lunge. Snatching his right arm away, he slammed the forearm of his prosthetic arm down on Masque's wrist as hard as he could. Something cracked between the steel shelf and the myomer arm, and Forge didn't bother repressing a smile. Grabbing Masque's hand with his steel fingers, he gripped tightly and twisted the sociopathic mutant's arm violently, pinning it against the outside of the door.

Leaning in close to the glass, Forge stared right into the black-veined eye of Masque that was pressed up against the window. With a low chuckle, he smiled broadly. "Surprised, motherfucker?"

The strangled shriek of pain was followed by an uncomprehending gape of shock. There was metal pinning his arm, but that couldn't be. Masque knew. He'd covered it himself. His eye widened.

"What did you do?"

"I got better," Forge hissed, reaching across his chest to roll his sleeve up to display the shining metal of his left arm. "You thought we were going to come in here, beg you to make everything right again? That's what you wanted, right? Victims on their knees, humiliated for you? That's what gets your motor running? Let me explain something to you."

Forge flexed his arm, cranking down on Masque's wrist and bending his arm into an unnatural position. "You think you know about pain? About control? About breaking someone's will? You're an amateur. You don't know shit. I survived three weeks with Magneto. Your little headgames aren't more than cheap parlor tricks in comparison, you pathetic little cult leader wannabe."

Masque twisted, hissing in pain as injured flesh struggled against unyielding metal. In desperation, he shoved his second hand through the slot to pry at the fingers around his wrist. No effect. Masque remembered Bliss had dropped him like a sack of bricks; who would have thought the little shit would be so strong?

Forge yanked, forcing Masque's arm straight, slamming him against the inside of the door. "This is a demonstration of what we call leverage," he explained. "Obviously your education's been lacking in a few areas, so I'm going to enlighten you. For starters, let's start on the subject of biochemistry. The reaction of a mutant genome to an induced substance, should be interesting with a power like yours."

Reaching into his waistband, Forge produced a thick metal syringe, holding it up to the window to ensure that Masque got a good look at it. "You wanted us to beg? To feel pain? To break us? Sorry, you're not good enough."

With a jab of his wrist, Forge sunk the needle into Masque's arm above the elbow, depressing the plunger completely. Pulling with more force on Masque's arm, he waited until the other mutant cried out before shoving him back and slamming the small portal closed. "And this, is what we call an object lesson in payback. Lesson begins."

Masque recoiled and pulled his arm, already swelling, to his chest. The syringe had been full; he could feel the cold beneath his skin. Now it was rage and fear that contorted his features, strung through every word.

"This is the place she said would help me?"

Forge leaned casually against the window. "Oh, there are probably people here who have a great deal of interest in helping you. Me? I'm not one of them. I'm going to watch you, and it's going to be interesting. You see, way I figure it, your power doesn't work on yourself, otherwise you'd have fixed that wreck you call a face. But introduce an outside stimulus? Maybe it'll change. Maybe you'll look normal. Or maybe your body will start turning on itself. Can you imagine what the lining of your stomach dissolving must feel like? Or your blood's pH level dropping and feeling your heart and lungs fill with acid? Or maybe your own bones becoming brittle and cracking under your own body weight. I just don't know what's going to happen to you next, and I have to admit," he said with a sardonic grin, "it's fascinating."

"What did you give me?" Masque demanded, unable to resist a wild look at his afflicted arm. Was it fluid from the break swelling his wrist, or something else? The little freak couldn't actually be serious, could he? That would be . . . murder. What the fuck kind of school is this?

He stared at the boy's face through the glass, searching for some sign of a bluff, but his cold brown eyes gave nothing away. Just vicious, vaguely detached interest. And pleasure.

"Enlightenment," Forge said calmly. "Perspective. Because I wonder, you know, you've probably been doing this a while. Twisting people's bodies, turning their own self-image into a freakshow just to get your jollies. Have you ever wondered what it's like? The feeling of your own body betraying you, that familiarity replaced with trepidation? Comfort replaced by fear?"

Idly, Forge tapped his metal fingers on the glass. "You're probably wondering about it right now, I'd guess. That gnawing in your gut. Is it just anxiety, or is it your lower intestine trying to crawl out of your abdomen? Heart beating a little fast? Maybe it wants to become an external organ, on display for everyone. Or maybe it's just that you're afraid, probably for the first time in a long while." He stared hard at the deformed mutant in the cell. "Because you're not in control now, are you?"

"Don't you fucking preach at me," Masque spat, the rage in his voice belied by the stumble that took him back to sit on the bed. "Do you know what it's like to watch your own body disintegrate year by year? To know what it's like to be able to fix any face, any body, except yours -- and be mocked for it?" Masque sneered at him, the red-shot white of his eye wide and visible. "Whatever I gave them is only what they gave to me first."

"Then you already understand," Forge said flatly. "There's a thing in probability study called the cascade effect. A causes B, so B causes C, and it just keeps increasing each time. You're ugly, so the world hates you, so you strike back at them, so they hate you, so you strike back harder. You're not a complete idiot, I figure even you can see where this is headed. Eventually, something needs to stop it." He held up the empty syringe, studying it with a detached look on his face."That's the fun thing about science. For any problem, there's a solution. For every action, reaction. For every choice, consequences. I'm willing to accept them for what I'm doing, are you?"

Forge looked Masque right in the face, unflinching from the deformed gaze that shot back at him. "Do you think you deserve mercy? After what you've done?"

Masque's gaze wavered on the boy, then the syringe, then back again.

"Yes," he whispered.

Forge nodded, twirling the syringe in his fingers. "Then you're going to be very cooperative in a little while. People are going to come talk to you, and you're going to tell them everything you've done. They're going to talk to lawyers, and judges, and you're going to prison. Because I'm pretty sure you haven't stopped at cosmetic modification to get back at the world. Not with the 'because I can' mindset. You're going to go away for a nice long time, and you're going to live. Do we have an understanding here?"

Courts. Legal action. He knew better than to think all of his victims could be cowed into keeping their mouths shut; the years were already adding up in his mind.

But there was no choice. If it came down to his freedom or his life, there was really no contest.

"Yes," Masque grated.

"And if I get someone to look at your arm, you're not going to try anything stupid like making a break for it, right?" Forge kept casually twirling the syringe in front of the window. "Because there are worse things out here than me. Hell, I'm the pacifist around here, or so they tell me."

"Where would I go?" Masque countered bitterly. "As you've taken so much delight to point out, I'm the powerless one here."

Forge snorted. "Are you trying to give me a guilt trip here, you son of a bitch? After what you did to me, to my friends? You're lucky I don't believe in revenge."

"Yeah," Masque snarled back, balling his uninjured hand, "just assault and murder."

"Murder?" Forge's eyebrows rose, then he glanced over at the syringe. "Oh, this little thing. It's saline. You know, a placebo. Anything you're feeling right now is just what we non-sociopaths call paranoia. I just wanted you to know what it's like, that fear you think you're so adept at instilling in people."

Nodding at Masque's wide-eyed reaction, Forge smiled. "What, like I think you're worth a murder charge over, or having something like that on my conscience? Please. You're nothing. I'd rather see you live and get the chance to maybe perhaps become something better than you are. But frankly? For the first time, I have serious doubts about that ever happening."

Masque's face twisted as rage overpowered shock. "You sadistic little son of a bitch," he screamed, throwing himself against the impenetrable door, "You can't treat people like this!"

As Forge walked away, he turned to look at Masque's angry face through the window. Something odd seemed to wash over him as he gave a little half-smile. "Yes I can," he said emotionlessly. "You'd be amazed at exactly what I can do."

As he walked out into the medlab, Forge dropped the empty syringe in a biohazard container before finishing his sentence to himself.

"...when I just really don't give a damn about consequences."