xp_logs | Angel and Forge

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Shaken by Kyle's close call, Angel seeks out Forge to see if she can help at all. In fact, it turns out that her help is going to be very useful. The power of photography comes out.

Normally if Angel was looking for Forge, she'd wait until she found him near his suite or in his labs. Today, however, she was knocking softly at his office door. "Forge, do you have a second?" she asked, sticking her head in. She looked worried and she was carrying a manila envelope which she was trying not to bend.

Forge glanced up, still resting his head on one hand while flipping through a stack of news reports with the other. "Hey, Angel. Come on in. What can I do for you?

"I'm kinda hoping that maybe I can help you, you know?" Angel responded as she came in. She fiddled with the envelope one more time before placing it on his desk. "I totally just found out about the whole bad guy threatening Kyle at the rally thing. And it's...I'm scared. From what I've heard about this creep, he's dangerous and he was there and..." With effort, she took a deep breath. "I don't like to be scared and I don't like feeling helpless. So I want to help. I took a ton of pictures throughout the entire day and I know where we can get more. Would trying to find this guy or Kyle in the crowd help at all?"

Forge opened the envelope wordlessly, shaking the stack of photographs into his hands and beginning to flip through them. "No...no ... no... <i>yes</i>," his voice cracked slightly as he caught a glimpse of the frighteningly-familiar trenchcoated figure of Sabretooth looming in the background of one of the photographs. He set that one in a separate pile and continued flipping through, every so often plucking out one photograph and setting it aside from the others.

When he had finished, he picked up the smaller pile and fanned them out across his desk. Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out a map of the fairgrounds where the Senator had set up his speech. "Can you put these photographs in order and show me where you were standing when you took each one?" he asked.

Instantly, Angel came closer to the desk, frowning in concentration at her pictures and the map. "Yeah..." she said, distracted. Reaching out, she touched the pictures, turning them around so she could peer at them. It took a few minutes but she quickly shuffled them around to the right order.

"Earliest to latest, right to left."

Angel grabbed a stack of post-it notes and dislodged a pen that had been stuck in her pony tail. "And these were taken...yeah, I know exactly where I was." Don't forget when, where and why. That had been her dad's motto.

Forge watched as Angel made notations on the Post-Its, mirroring the information on his map. He checked the photos to see where Sabretooth had been standing, looking, and moving. Always with a view of the stage, and yet always with a straight path to open territory.

"Good God," Forge breathed, tracing his finger along the map, the route Sabretooth had taken to case the crowd. "He walked right past about ten Secret Service agents, security personnel, and cops. Walked right through them and they didn't even flinch. He's seven feet tall! He just..."

A rush of memories came back, reminding Forge of just how easily Sabretooth could vanish into the shadows if he wanted. Of the massive killer who would just seem to materialize from a darkened doorway and look at him like he was a fly to be squashed. He remembered nights spent continually working with his back to the wall just to make sure a claw wouldn't find his neck from behind.

Before he realized it, Forge's hands were trembling, shaking the table. He forced himself to calm down, then looked over at Angel. "This wasn't a spur of the moment thing. He planned this, he knew where the cops would be, he knew where security would be, and he didn't do anything to call attention to himself. Running into Kyle was an anomaly, an unpredictable factor. Bug in the machine. If he hadn't, that place would have been a bloodbath."

A small sound escaped Angel as she sat down heavily on the chair next to Forge's desk. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph." There were small tremors in her hands and she clasped them between her knees. "But this guy is all for mutant rights, right? Why the potential killing and stuff? And, like, this is a crazy guy, right? The photos show that he was, well, staking out the place which takes more planning than "Raar, crazy man smash!"."

Forge shook his head. "He's not crazy. Not in the gibbering loon term. He's freakishly intelligent, frighteningly so. You know how I am with machines? That's how good Sabretooth is with killing. But targeting Senator Creed doesn't make sense, unless it's like Scott said, that anyone who's working to bring humans and mutants together would be a good target for Magneto to take out. It'd offend him more than anything else."

"I don't know what's worse--crazy or, well, what he's got going for him." She pointed at the pictures on his desk. "Those are just a sampling. I hadn't gotten done with the rest before I found out what was going on and I can get my dad's as well. You figured it out but would more pictures help?"

"If you've got them," Forge said quietly. "If you don't mind, I'm going to pass these along to the Secret Service folks doing the investigation, and keep Mr. Summers and Ms. Munroe in the loop. Maybe they've got experts, profilers or something, that can deduce more than I'm capable of from these. Something that'll help figure out what he's going to do next, if he's going to try again."

"I was going to be in the dark room again today anyway so..." Angel gestured at the desk helplessly. "And no worries about the pictures, I can always print off the negatives if I want my own copies. Which I don't think I really want now, you know? And I'll get in touch with my dad this afternoon, ask for copies of his as well." She paused. "Thanks, Forge."

"Thank me when it helps catch him," Forge said gruffly, turning his attention back to his reports. "Which, if it does, a lot of people will be thanking <i>you</i> for the help."

Angel looked embarrassed for a second before standing up and scooping up the pictures that hadn't been useful. "I'll drop by later if I find anything more," she said, a determined look crossing her face. Now that she had a goal, she could focus and just stop worrying.