Forge and Amanda, Lunchtime Monday

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

After the morning's emails, Forge decides to try an unconventional method of locating the absent Jennie. It is less successful than hoped for, but reassuring.




Turning the CD player over and over in his hands, Forge tried not to think of what it was telling him. It had been waterlogged - Crystal had admitted that much. Just by touching it, he could feel the transistors that had burned out, the capacitors that wouldn't hold a charge, the isolated circuits practically begging to be resoldered and rewired to perform better than before. The laser unit was perfectly salvageable, although the belt drive could probably be tightened a bit.

What it wasn't telling him, though, was anything remotely related to its former owner. Jennie was now a full week late in coming back from visiting her father, and Forge was beginning to worry. Or more accurately, he'd started to move from three weeks of worry to mild paranoia. Cell records showed that she hadn't used her cell phone since the morning she'd called the mansion, and that call had been made from another phone. Probably her father's, and the call hadn't been recorded to do a back-trace to make certain.

Forge closed his eyes and sighed, sitting down roughly on the bench and placing the CD player beside him. Was it really paranoia when there existed the possibility of folks like Magneto kidnapping his friends, or was it just him being overly nosy when the girl he was ostensibly dating didn't bother to even drop him a phone call or email to let him know when she'd be back?

Thankfully, footsteps behind Forge distracted him before he could think of an answer.

"Hey," came Amanda's voice, before the girl herself appeared, coming around the side of the bench and stopping. She had a book bag slung over her shoulder with a few texts and a notepad sticking out of it and had obviously come straight from work - she was wearing a black knee-length skirt and a plain white blouse, her hair tied back in a neat ponytail. "Sorry I'm a bit late - traffic was a bastard." Despite her own nerves - her track record with the magic so far hadn't been steller - she felt a certain sympathy with Forge on seeing the small worried mannerisms.

"Hey," Forge replied, looking up at Amanda and scooting over on the bench. He picked up the CD player, turning it over and over in his hands nervously. "So... Jennie's been visiting her dad in Europe. And she was supposed to be back, like last month. But she called and said she'd be a few more weeks, and it's been a few weeks, and I'm a bit worried and Ms. Munroe said she'd call but I haven't heard anything yet and..."

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself from rambling, then shook his head. "Maybe it's just me being nosy, hell, for all I know she could be on a plane back here right now. Or, worst-case scenario, she could be... well..." he left the rest unsaid.

"Better to be safe than sorry, yeah?" Amanda took a seat next to him, dumping her bag next to her on the other side. "You talked to the leather brigade at all about this?" she asked, digging through the bag for her notes. She'd been doing a lot of reading since the cockroach incident and had a better idea of what she would need to do.

Forge shook his head. "Ororo knows I was concerned, and I'm sure if there's something there, she'd already have the X-Men scrambling. And yeah, it's likely I'm just being overly worried and she's liable to smack me upside the head for being a dork, but... you said that if it weren't for the..." he held up his prosthetic arm and gestured, "you could have helped when they were trying to find me. That's not the problem with Jennie, right? You could do something to figure out where she is?"

She winced a little at the note in his voice. If she couldn't do this... "I can try," she said, as gently as possible. "But I'll be honest, Forge, since the magic came back... well, things don't work that well. Or at all, sometimes. Things have changed so much, it's like trying to program a VCR when all the instructions are in Korean or something. But I'll give it my best shot, I can promise you that."

Slowly, Forge nodded. "I know. It's just... a shot in the dark's better than nothing, right?" He handed over the CD player, almost reluctant to let it go. "This is hers. She's, um, pretty obsessed with where everything goes and everything's got to be placed just so, so she's probably handled it like a million times. I don't know if that'd be useful, but..."

He shrugged. "Anything you can do, really. I'm at the end of my rope here."

She turned the CD player over in her hands, trying to get a mental image of the owner. "Hey, I'll give it a go. What's the worst that can happen?" As soon as she said it, Amanda mentally kicked herself. "Well, besides plagues of cockroaches and the rest. Um, you might want to move away a bit - I have no idea if I'm going to end up exploding myself or not and I'd rather keep the collateral down."

Obligingly, Forge got up and took a few steps back. "Don't worry," he said with a wry smile, "I've gotten pretty good at recognizing when stuff's about to blow up. I was cooking up a new fuel additive for the Blackbird the other day and whoosh, I'm lucky I've still got eyebrows. But in case you go up in some big burst of flame or something, let me thank you ahead of time?"

Amanda snorted. "You're welcome." She read over her notes one more time, reminding herself of Tante's words about finding her path. Things were going wrong because she was trying to do them the same way she always had. Time for something different.

Closing her eyes, she held the CD player in her hands, focussing on it and by extension, Jennie. Jennie as she'd last seen her in the club, furious at Amanda. Jennie sharing cigarettes whilst they'd both been students still. Glimpses of Jennie at the prom, dancing with Forge. Satisfied she had the girl firmly in her mind, Amanda focussed on the power inside her, the power she knew was there and could do things. It was just a matter of working out how.

Westchester wasn't one of 'hers', but she could feel the tug of New York distantly, feel that city's particular brand of energy. "Show me where she is," she murmured aloud, holding onto the player tightly. Steam was rising from her hands with a smell of exhaust and dank water and cat urine, and she wrinkled her nose a little.

Forge frowned as he heard the motor of the already-broken CD player whine briefly, then blink out in a small spark of smoking electronics. Whatever Amanda was doing, this wasn't like any spell he'd ever seen her perform, or anything he'd read about. She wasn't doing any of the usual ritualistic handwaving or weird mumbling that usually shaped the power she wielded. This seemed... different. Almost more structured, but less at the same time.

Resisting the urge to poke at the now-dormant CD player, Forge arched an eyebrow cautiously. "Anything?"

Lifting her hands from the CD player and grimacing at the redness of her palms - she felt like she'd been holding onto a hot teapot or something - Amanda shook her head. "Nothing specific. There was something..." She frowned, trying to recapture the feeling. "A city. She's definitely in a city. Not sure which, tho'. I've felt something like it before, not that long ago." She tried to remember where she'd smelt that particular combination of odours before, but it could have been any number of places. "Somewhere in Europe, I think."

Forge let out a long sigh of mixed relief and disappointment. "Thanks," he said quietly. "Means that more than likely, she's probably still just spending time with her family. It makes the most sense, I mean, her mom just died and she just found her dad and this whole new family. She probably doesn't want to let that go."

"Sorry I couldn't narrow it down for you. Maybe I could try again later..." Looking down at the slightly-smoking CD player, Amanda doubted it. "Or not - I don't think she'd appreciate coming back to find half her stuff's been set on fire. And she will be back, Forge. It's probably like you said, she's getting some quality time in. Once school starts, she'll back, large as life." She patted him clumsily on the shoulder.

Forge gave a small smile at the thought. "Yeah. What with classes starting next week, she's probably packing her bags and saying her arrividercis to all the locals. I just..." he paused, then shook his head. "That's what she's doing. Just being good old scatterbrained Jennie and forgetting to, y'know, tell anyone."

The confirmation that Jennie was all right brought a definite show of relief to Forge's face. Given the sudden departures of Jay, Jubilee, and Marius, he'd found himself trying to cling a little tighter to his friends these days. But, he reminded himself, his friends did have their own lives after all.

"Thanks for humoring me," he finally said with a small laugh. "She'll probably call me paranoid and smack me upside the head when she hears about all this."

"Or she's planning to surprise you all or something," Amanda agreed. "And any time, y'know? If I can help, you know I'll try." She looked down at her hands, still slightly pink. "Besides, I need the practice any way."

"Practice makes perfect, they say," Forge quipped. "Unless you're Mr. D, in which case practice usually makes concussions."