Amara/Forge: Thursday afternoon

[x-molten.livejournal.com]

Another blonde comes to Forge with a favor to ask, and gets introduced to the blast chamber in the process.

The calm whirring of the wardrobe's automated garment system was a relief to Forge as he loosened his tie. While his classes at ESU didn't require the executive business dress code, he'd chosen to adopt it anyway, as had a few of his classmates. One more thing to thank Marie-Ange for, he realized. From the first day he'd been forcibly escorted to the mall's clothing stores by the Gallic redhead, he'd remembered the concept of "Clothes make the man". Or more aptly, "if you look the part, it's easier to act the part".

Dress business, think business, act business - it all made sense for him as he hung his blazer on the motorized rack, watching as the machine read the microscopic RFID tag and spin the coat into its proper place in the large cabinet. French-cuffed shirt and tailored trousers followed, quickly replaced by baggy cargo shorts and a tank top as Forge let himself relax from the day's classes and prepare for "work".

He smiled when he realized that few other places in the world would let him do his job barefoot in a clown suit if he so wanted, as long as he did it well. Then again, given that most of the other staff members zipped themselves into armored leather bodysuits regularly, they weren't exactly the judgmental types.

Amara walked down the hallway toward Forge's room, fidgeting. She was told that he was the person to go to for security matters and she had a small favor to ask, but she was still growing accustomed to knocking on the bedroom doors of virtual strangers. Standing in front of his suite, she hemmed and hawed, reaching up to knock before snatching her hand back. She repeated this gesture a couple more times until she screwed up her courage. Holding her breath, she rapped softly on his door.

Forge barely paused as he was writing down a list of components to reorder, switching the pen from his right to his left hand and reaching for a nearby remote. As he clicked the button, the door slid open soundlessly and he peered over.

Oh, he thought momentarily. New girl. South America... Amanda... Amunda... Anika...

"Amara," he finally deduced, setting his clipboard aside and rising from the small couch. "Please, come on in. Do ignore the mess, I haven't quite figured out how to best organize things yet."

That would have been the understatement of the year - nearly every flat surface in the small common room of the suite was covered with supply catalogs, shipping boxes in various states of unpackedness, random electronic and mechanical parts and half-built devices, or empty soda cans stacked precariously in makeshift pyramids.

"Just, uh... have a ... um..." Forge turned around, trying to find a spot for Amara to sit, then giving up with a shrug. "What can I do for you?"

Amara tried to hide a smile as she glanced around the room. It reminded her of her father's workshop, in a way. A sprawl of items and tools and projects she would have been lost in, but to her father, it was perfectly organized. He knew where everything was, down to the smallest nail. So she remained near the door, hands clasped behind her back.

"For fear of knocking something over, I think I'll stand. And I would not call it a mess. It seems organized to me. As long as you know where each thing is, does it matter how it looks?" Amara ducked her head, not intending to say as much as she had. But nostalgia has a way of doing that. "I was told to come see you. My emergency cell phone needs some modifications."

Forge smiled, nodding to Amara. "Exactly. Unconventional organization techniques. I don't need silly colored Post-Its to find my stuff. And your phone, you say? What kind of modifications? If you're needing to call... Brazil?" he ventured a guess, trying to remember where she'd said she was from, "You can just relay the call through the mansion's network. These phones will work pretty much anywhere on the globe that has a phone network they can piggyback off of."

Even if folks aren't answering them, he thought bitterly to himself.

"No. Nothing like that," she said, emphasizing her words with hand gestures. "We do not even have phone service in Nova Roma. No, there is a problem with the phone itself. I do not know how much you know about my powers, but my body has a molten form. And during emergencies, it may come on automatically." She hoped Forge could see where she was going, that her explanation was clear and concise. "The cell phones are for those sorts of emergencies, yes? But how can my cell phone be of use to me if I accidentally melt it?"

"Molten form?" Forge's eyebrows shot up in curiosity, and he clasped his hands excitedly. "So you'd need something that can withstand pressure and temperature and... hey, how hot can you get, anyway?" he asked, completely oblivious to any possible misinterpretation of the phrase.

Thankfully, the double entendre slipped by Amara, who was still learning American slang. "Yes. My body becomes molten. It is hard to explain, but I am having problems controlling it." Like the time she was walking the grounds and became startled by the loud crack of a tree branch breaking. It was a miracle nothing caught fire. "I am not sure how hot I can get yet. Hot enough to melt rock?"

Forge whistled appreciatively. "Awesome. You know, if you're not busy, we could go down to the mechanics lab and test it? There's a blast furnace area that can contain some pretty intense plasma fields. I actually vaporized a test cylinder in there once. A kilogram of steel, just -whoosh- in like a tenth of a second. If we want to figure out the extremes of your molten form, I can definitely design a housing and circuitry for your phone that'll withstand them."

"I am not busy. I managed to get on top of my homework earlier, so the rest of my day is free." Amara only vaguely grasped his reply, but she understood enough to know that he was offering her a safe area where she could test the limits of her powers. "I would appreciate your help. I am curious to know what I can do. The last time I used the full extent of my powers, well, let us just say I cannot remember."

Practically jumping up and down with glee, Forge gestured to the door, grabbing his laptop on the way. "The lab's in the basement - I'll just remote connect to the security servers and do my monitoring from there while we run a few tests."

Escorting Amara down the hall and down the steps to the basement-level laboratories, Forge couldn't help but point out the different offices and storage rooms, in the off chance that no one had given the girl the full tour since her arrival.

As the steel door to the lab opened, Forge ducked through and swept his arms open in a grandiose gesture. "And this would be the lab, the grand domain where I am supreme lord and master. Unless Paige is around and says otherwise." The last part was covered by a brief cough and a slight pause before Forge pointed over to the thick-walled chamber at the end of the lab. "There's the blast chamber."

The tour left Amara a bit breathless, but seeing the lab stole her breath entirely. It was big. And complicated. But Forge's attitude was infectious and Amara grinned. "This place is amazing. Like something out of a science-fiction novel. We had nothing even close to this at home. My father's workshop was a tenth this size and hardly technological." She eyed the blast chamber with reserve. "I am supposed to go in there, yes? And try to... 'flame on'?"

"Amazing?" Forge repeated with a smirk. "You should see it when I really get going. I'm an absolute marvel. And you, yes, can step right in there. When I shut the door and you see the green lights go on outside the window, feel free to just... flame on, go molten, lava up, or whatever you do. Just... if you raise a volcano in my lab, Mr. Marko's going to be REALLY pissed..."

The thought of raising a volcano gave Amara pause. The only way to turn on her molten form was to get angry. But if she got too angry... She didn't want to consider the possibilities. So instead she nodded and smiled, albeit a bit tightly. "I am sure you are marvelous. Someone should make you a t-shirt. That way all can know." Looking over the chamber warily, she added, "I will try my hardest." With that, she stepped into the blast chamber.

"I have a hat," Forge's voice answered, tinny and echoing over the small speakers inside the chamber. He stepped back to the control room, safe behind reinforced Plexiglas, and looked at the gauges. "Okay, we have ambient temperature set as our control, ready when you are."

After a few seconds, he tapped the microphone again. "Ready whenever you are, Amara," he repeated.

Amara had closed her eyes upon entering the chamber and opened one to shoot Forge what could technically be considered a glare. "This is harder than it looks when your powers are tied to your emotions," she mumbled aloud to no one in particular. She closed her eyes again and conjured up memories, the most painful she could find.

Being taken in the night. Scared, confused, drugged. A push from behind. Cultists sneering. Selene. Her mother's disappearance. Selene. Leaving her father. Her mother's grave stone, an empty coffin. Too many deaths. Too many dead girls. Sacrifice. Selene. Cult. Mother. No mother. Her father crying when he didn't think she was around. Cult. Selene. The end of her other life. Being pushed. The feeling of fire over her skin.

Without her notice, her hair began to lift, the ends dancing with flames. She could feel heat, a sun beneath her, deep in the earth, a fire she could drag up through the empty places in her body. A cleansing fire. Beads of sweat evaporated on her brow as quickly as they appeared. With a wrenching effort she pulled at the fire and gasped as the world exploded into flame.

She held up her hand, examining her new form, for once unafraid of setting something on fire. And for once it made her happy, that she could do this. "Is this suitable?" she asked in Forge's direction, a small smile on her lips.

Forge's first reply was cut off by the short klaxon burst as the temperature sensors shot into the red-lined area, then settled. "That's, uh... wow." He flipped the monitor from the camera view to an alternating thermal / magnetic imaging view. "You just went from 98.6 degrees - that's normal - to over seven hundred in under half a second. Why you didn't just make a big-ass thunderclap is a mystery for another day. Also why you're only radiating that extreme heat in a really small radius. But from what we're looking at... yeah, I can work with this."

He lingered for a while on the monitors, then turned the camera back on. "I don't know if anyone's told you this, but... wow, you are... magnificent."

If she could have blushed, she would have. She had never been called magnificent before. Pretty, yes. And her father used to tell her she was the most beautiful girl in the world. But since her manifestation, she had been feeling...not unpretty, but...unnatural, maybe, undesirable. Unwanted. And now Forge was telling her she was magnificent. She beamed and if she could have glowed brighter, she would have.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "No one has said that to me before. I do not think I need to call you magnificent in turn. We have already determined you are marvelous." The other aspects of her powers tempted her now. It would be so easy, a small push there equaled an earthquake, a pull there equaled a fault line. She quickly tamped down those impulses. "Do I need to continue being molten?"

Forge made a few adjustments to the sensors, then set the computer to burn a data CD of the readings. "Go ahead and, uh, simmer down whenever you feel like it. I think I can probably have a phone ready for you by the weekend."

Happily, he noted that the seismograph hadn't gone haywire when Amara powered up. From what he was given to understand, raising volcanoes and manipulating that much geothermal energy took almost more power than he could comprehend. Something like that, uncontrolled? Well, he'd seen what Julio was capable of. If he had to make a quick guess, he'd put Amara's power on that scale of potential destruction.

"So," he spoke calmly into the microphone, "how's life here been treating you so far? We've had a remarkable lack of drama lately, you're lucky there."

With a grateful look and a quick prayer of thanks to the gods that nothing went wrong, Amara took a couple of deep, calming breaths. She mentally pushed the magma back down into the earth, slower this time, being careful not to shift the plates she could feel floating on the mantle's surface. When she pulled the power up, she had been very lucky not to accidentally start an earthquake or create a volcano. She would be more careful next time. Her molten form receded, leaving a very relieved girl behind.

"School has been going well. The other students have all been very nice. I cannot complain. I only wish my father had come with me." Amara rolled her shoulders in an effort to release some lingering tension. "Can I leave the chamber now? How dramatic is it normally?"

With a few quick keystrokes, Forge opened the door to the blast chamber and sauntered out of the control room. "It's fine to come on out. And I'm sure the Professor could make plans for your father to visit," he said with a smile, pulling up a stool by one of the benches. "As for the drama, well... being who and what we are, life here isn't often what most people would consider normal," he explained, thinking wryly of Crystal and her sister's overly-sheltered upbringing. "Some folks out there are pretty hostile towards mutants, and that causes some problems from time to time. Plus, you know, the regular strife you get with forty-some people all living, working, and going to school in the same place. Spend too long around the same people every hour of the day, and it tends to make people a little... bonkers."

Amara stepped out of the blast chamber and joined Forge at the bench, pulling up a neighboring stool. "I am used to sharing a small space with the same people every day. Nova Roma is a very, very, very small town, only a few hundred people, and everyone worked and played together. I learned to cope with that years ago. As long as I have access to the outdoors, I will be fine." She began idly braiding her hair, thinking about Forge's other comment. She would have to speak to the Professor soon. "It seems like you also have a good way to escape other people. You could just come down here." She encompassed the lab with a sweep of her arm.

That got a terse laugh out of Forge. "Yeah, but if I spend too much time in here - as I admittedly do, if you ask some people - I miss out on a lot of the fun stuff that goes on as well. Between work, research, school - god, I don't know how some of the people can do it and still balance stuff like X-Men training. It's all about finding a balance to stuff, I guess. Heck, I've been here almost two years and I still haven't figured that part out."

The thought of "escape" stuck with Forge for a moment, and he cocked his head at Amara. "So... Nova Roma doesn't have phones, I assume it doesn't have high-performance sports cars either. I think I could use a drive to escape for a bit. Want to come with?" he offered.

Amara's eyes glittered at the thought. Mr. Summers had shown her the car collection, and she had traveled in the van to New York, but to go for a ride in a sports car? "I would love to." She jumped out of her stool and bounced a couple times on the balls of her feet. "Let us escape! We can find our balance another day."

That much enthusiasm had to be infectious, as Forge found himself forgetting why he'd been tired and cranky in the first place. He reached over for one of the clipboards and scrawled a quick "Out for drive w/Amara, call if lab go boom" note for Paige, and hopped to his feet. "Escape it is! And since this is your first drive in a real automobile, I'll even let you pick the music," he said cheerfully, leading the way out of the lab.

Maybe this was balance, he thought.