xp_logs | Pub Talk: Forge and Doug, Friday evening

After a month away, Forge heads into the city to catch up with his opposite number in the Snow Valley crew. Small talk and gossip are had, and neither of them really likes Garrison, for totally different reasons.

Forge shook the collar of his windbreaker as he entered the pub Doug had given him directions to. The weather wasn't horrible, but the grey skies seemed to fit his mood just fine. Glancing around, he caught sight of Doug just as Snow Valley's resident linguist noticed him. Giving a mutual nod, Forge headed over past the small tables to Doug's booth.

As he passed the bar area, he looked over at the bartender. "Um, Red Bull. In a pint glass, no ice."

"Vodka?"

Forge arched an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? And dilute it? No, just two cans Red Bull, in a pint glass."

"Want an umbrella innit?"

"Sure, whatever," he responded absently as he headed over to the booth, sliding in across from Doug. "I swear to God, if I were a drinking person, getting blitzed off my ass would sound good right about now. How's things?"

In addition to its vast array of alcoholic beverages, Finnegan's also made a hot cocoa that was something akin to nectar of the gods on a gray, brisk day like it currently was. Doug curled his hands around the large mug and sipped before answering. "Not bad, all in all. How was the 'finding yourself' trip to Scotland?"

Forge rolled his eyes at the 'finding yourself' jibe, and chuckled quietly. "Being able to analyze a problem in a controlled environment is the best way to figure out a solution," he said with a grin. "I had a lot of... motivation, you could say, to get my act together and kit-bash together some coping skills. Granted, putting the entire mutant community on Defcon One terrorist alert halfway through my intended vacation was a bit more of a test than I wanted to deal with, but what can you do, eh?"

"Coping skills are good," Doug agreed. "And I suppose with Doc Mactaggart around, you'd kinda be forced to develop those anyway." He flagged down a waitress so that they could place their orders. "So how's Paige doing?" he asked.

"She's hiding, a bit," Forge explained quietly. "Stressing over Jono, but... in a healthy way this time. She's taking care of herself. Mostly because he gives her shit if she doesn't. They're... they're good for each other. They'll get through this." Forge politely didn't mention discovering through a phone call that Paige had reacted less-than-pleasantly to other recent developments involving her ex-other-boyfriend and a certain English witch, that was no one's business really.

Turning to the waitress, he glanced briefly at the menu. "Oh god, real fries. And they call them fries, not chips! A bucket, please."

Doug nodded at Forge's explanation, then chuckled at his comment about fries. "I'm thinking you might want something to go -with- your fries, dude," he suggested. "Did Moira ever force haggis on you?"

Forge beamed. "Force? Dude, put some tabasco on it, and it's not a bad snack."

Doug grimaced. "Okay, there is obviously -no- accounting for taste. You voluntarily put a sheep's -stomach- in your mouth. That's just gross. I wage savage war on my tastebuds, and I won't do that." He grinned. He'd actually missed bantering with Forge. Somewhere along the line, the other resident genius had become his friend. It was kind of nice, really.

"Wuss," Forge teased, pausing while Doug ordered, then stretching his arms out and exhaling, listening to the tiny pings of his prosthetic as the myomer expanded and contracted. "So get this. Remember when we were working on that bio-interface chip for Haroun, after he got all ripped up? So I licensed it to a medical group for work with paraplegics. Well, here's where I'm an idiot. There's a thing called a restricted-use clause. I didn't bother to file one of those."

"I think I see where this is going," Doug said wryly. "Someone decided to use it on people other than paraplegics? Hooray for legal loopholes," he said, shaking his head. "I take it this is the reason you're pursuing a business degree, to find these sorts of things out -before- they happen to you again?"

Sheepishly, Forge nodded. "I managed to accidentally find out how it's been used. A Canadian government thinktank adapted it with biotechnology - it's actually brilliant stuff. Interfaces with the limbic system and reflexes, increases muscle memory efficiency, all that."

Pausing again as his fries arrived, Forge uncorked a bottle of ketchup and began dousing his fries in it. "So you know that Mountie working with the team? Special Inspector Kane? Yeah, it's sitting in his spine. Small world, huh?"

Doug had fished one of Forge's "bucket" of french fries out and was about to dunk it in the ketchup when he heard the name. The fry slipped from fingers that tightened slightly, and a slight scowl stole across his face. "Yeah, I know the guy you're talking about," he muttered darkly. "He's got your..." Doug shook his head. "Whatever."

"He's a bit of a prick, too." Forge agreed with Doug's heavily implied judgement of the Canadian. "I mean, calling me 'non-essential personnel' and saying I'm not cleared for information."

A sudden look of humility crossed Forge's face. "Of course, the fact that I kind of lied to Doctor Voght to get access to his medical files may have had a contributing factor there. So I got my access to the medical servers revoked, and after a rather humiliating evaluation from the Professor that amounted to 'do this again and you're fired', I'm kind of on a number of people's shit lists. But enough about my screwups, that Kane, eh? I take it you've met?"

"You might say that," Doug grumbled. "You might also say that murlocs are fish-men, or that a nice merlot is 'a bunch of fermented grapes', or the sun is 'a big ball of hydrogen atoms'."

"I don't know what a murloc is," Forge admitted, "but it sounds like there's a bit of a story I'm missing here. Spill." He drained the last of his Red Bull and held up the empty glass for the waitress to pick up for a refill.

"What, about murlocs, my discussion with Marie-Ange about understatement, or meeting Special Inspector Garrison Kane, Royal Canadian blah blah blah?" Doug asked, making the little 'blah blah blah' motion with his hand.

Forge waved his hand in dismissal. "Forget the mucklock-whatevers. Did Sergeant Preston of the Yukon come down to Snow Valley and try and arrest the lot of you, flashing his big maple leaf badge or something?"

"No, he just came down to take Marie-Ange on a date," Doug said in the same dark tone, making it obvious what his opinion of the Mountie was.

"Theywe dawtngh?" Forge mumbled around a mouthful of fries before swallowing. "They're dating? That's... well, I suppose these things happen. Marie-Ange and Garrison? That's as weird as Amanda and Angelo. I leave for a month and come back to the Bizarro Dating Game."

"Well, they -were- dating. Apparently, according to Amanda, they broke up." Doug shrugged in a vain attempt to look disinterested as to the state of Marie-Ange's dating life.

A grin crossed Forge's face. "Well, that's good news, right? So are you and her, you know?" He brought his index fingers together in a sweeping gesture.

Doug shook his head sharply. "Nope." It was a bit of a touchy subject with him, one that Amanda had tentatively broached on a couple of occasions, but he'd begged off. Yes, he was still in love with Marie-Ange, but she'd fairly obviously moved on with her life, and he didn't see much of any sign that she still retained romantic feelings for him.

Ah. Forge knew that look well. That was the look of a man so far in that river in Egypt that he'd be owing Pharaoh his firstborn as back rent. Knowing more than a little something about living in denial himself, Forge felt the stirrings of a cunning plan in the back of his brain. Something to think on later, definitely.

"So then," he raised the glass of bright green energy drink as the waitress deftly handed it to him. "In the past forty-eight hours I have been harassed, arrested, and nearly fired. And oddly? I'm feeling strangely comfortable with all of it. How weird is that?"

Doug blinked. "Wait, back up to the part where you got -arrested-. This requires an explanation." He signalled the waitress to refill his hot cocoa while she was at the table, and he snagged another french fry from the staggeringly large pile in front of Forge.

"Did you know that telling a Customs agent to fuck off and that his security check is racist bullshit can actually get you arrested?" Forge said nonchalantly, affecting a faux-casual posture. "This guy was all in my business about 'had I associated with any mutants while I was out of the country', and I knew that was bullshit, so I called him on it. Well, what's that line about mouth writing checks the body can't cash? Yeah, that." He held up his right wrist that still bore the black and blue bruised outline of where the handcuffs had been cinched too tightly.

"Damn. There's the mouthy Forge we've all missed," Doug quipped, looking at the bruises and chuckling. "And bigoted racist jackasses for the lose. Ah, the TSA, home to racist profiling pretty much since inception." It made Doug glad, but also a touch guilty, at how easily he passed for "normal".

Forge shook his head. "Turns out it was this asshole's personal one-man crusade after the whole Preservers message thing. Charges were dropped, he lost his job, and I got to drive Scott's car. All in all, not the worst of evenings."

"Huh," was Doug's well thought out reply. "Well, go them for doing the right thing, then." He grinned. "And you got to drive Scott's car? You lucky so-and-so. How's she handle?"

"Not as good as mine," Forge proclaimed with pride, "but not bad for being barely-beyond-stock. Oh lord, reminds me of Hank picking me up from the airport in Edinburgh. Apparently he's solved the whole wrong-side-of-the-road conundrum by preferring to drive BACKWARDS. Until you've been a passenger in a car with a big blue monster taking turns around cobblestone streets in reverse, you don't know scary, and I've been nearly crushed by wacked-out gravity manipulators."

This was what the last month had been about, Forge thought to himself. This life was never going to let up, not as long as he refused to hide away from it. There would always be another crisis, another Magneto, another situation putting people he worked with and cared about in danger.

What mattered was seizing those moments between, and refusing to let the events define him, to rebel against living a purely reactionary life. Step one was as simple as sitting down in a pub and catching up with a friend.

Tomorrow could be step two.