xp_logs | Challenge - Forge and Logan, Thursday afternoon

In which Forge learns the meaning of the phrase "your ego's writing checks your body can't cash" after daring Logan to beat his security system.

Forge took another drink from his can of soda, setting it in the rowboat next to him. He floated out in the center of the lake, wireless laptop balanced on his knees and a cooler of sodas and wax paper-wrapped sandwiches wedged into the boat behind him. With his sunglasses blocking the glare from the cloudless sky, he casually activated his remote security programs.

"Mister Three-hundred-pounds-of-adamantium wants to try and beat my security net?" Forge scoffed, scanning through the mansion's ident logs. "Right. As if. I had help from a professional thief and a British black-ops guru, no way some mountain-man brawler is going to outwit..."

He watched the screen as the mansion's access log showed Logan leaving through the front door. "Oh, you're making this easy," Forge muttered. The semicircular driveway and the front lawn were both littered with subterranean pressure sensors that were keyed to specific weight ranges. Forge could tell if a car pulling up was carrying too much weight, for example, if a militant FoH radical got the idea to try and car-bomb the school.

Logan's extra-dense frame registered perfectly on the lawn sensors, and the motion trackers indicated that he was heading for the woodline almost diametrically opposite to Forge's position in the lake north of the mansion. The boy genius smiled and shook his head. "It doesn't matter where I am, man. I could do this from friggin' Aruba. Know your role, Wolverine. I am the man. Whatever, whenever, wherever... where... where did he go?"

Forge slapped the side of his laptop, calling up new sensor sweeps. It looked as if Logan had hit the woodline and literally vanished. "Oh? Oh? You're going to go all ninja stealth on me? Fine. Reset all the motion trackers and--"

A scrolling avalanche of text and numbers flashed across Forge's screen as he swore under his breath and reactivated the filters. Unchecked, the security scanners around the mansion's grounds could pick up a frog jumping across their range, or a flock of birds moving in the trees. Accordingly, he had taken readings and developed a mathematical algorithm to represent the natural wildlife in the area and filter those results out of the sensor readings. That way, anything NOT natural to the area would stick out like a fart in church.

Unfortunately, nothing was sticking out. That only made sense if Logan had gone off the grounds and was trying to circle around outside the perimeter. Forge smiled. "Oh, you can't think faster than me, old man. You may have old age and experience, but you'll see how far youth and raw talent goes. Just dial the perimeter sensors to an active scan..."

For fun, Forge set the sensor suite to Active Record. He wanted a record of this - the day he bested the almighty Wolverine at his own game. That'd go over well at the next staff meeting, he thought.

The boat jerked slightly, and Forge instinctively set the laptop down, closing the screen to keep the sensitive electronics waterproofed. He'd likely drifted and reached the end of his anchor chain and--

--the end of the anchor chain came up in his hand, neatly severed.

"What the fu--"

With a sound of tearing metal, six adamantium claws shot up through the bottom of the metal rowboat, slashing out to the sides and suddenly Forge's stable operating platform became a rapidly-capsizing wreck.

Wolverine poked his head up in the middle of the capsizing wreckage, grabbing Forge by the shirt and holding him above water. "Wolverine one, Maker zero." he said with a truly disturbing feral grin. Then he let Forge to go swim his own way back to shore. "Know your role, indeed." Logan muttered, just loud enough for Forge to hear him. "Like some geek's gonna best me." he said, barely audible as he swam his own way back to shore.

"What the--? Who the--? How?" Forge spluttered, treading water as he watched the boat sink out of sight as his laptop and cooler bobbed to the surface. Hanging onto the cooler as a makeshift raft, he clutched his laptop to his chest and awkwardly paddled to the shore.

Ten minutes later, Forge, soaked to the skin, limped up onto the lakeshore, dragging the cooler behind him before flopping face-down next to where Logan waited in the dirt and grass. "Okay," he began, between deep breaths, "I get that you're a sneaky old bastard. But first off - how in the world did you just vanish off the radar like that, and second - I had to be at least sixty meters out in the water there and I didn't even see you coming! What the hell?"

"You're a smart kid, Forge." Logan said. "But like most smart kids you're convinced you're perfect. And I think you just got a real valuable wake-up call. As for the how - it's an old trick I picked up ... somewhere." he said with just a hint of frustration. "Don't move like a human and your little toys just filter me right out."

Forge just blinked in surprise. He cocked his head, watching Logan slightly shift his posture. If he moved his shoulders, then his hips and balanced his weight like...

"You moved like an animal, so the computer filtered you out. Holy shit, I outsmarted myself," Forge realized, sitting down roughly on the grass. "And that makes sense, because I figured we'd be looking for people coming in on two feet, or low-crawling, or anything else that people do. But hell, there's folks out there who turn into wolves, cats - shit, who knows where Mystique's limits are? That's... I need to take another look at this."

He glared over at Logan as he draped his wet t-shirt over his prosthetic arm, letting the heat vents steam-dry the soaked cloth. "Still doesn't explain how you snuck up on me underwater. What, are you part fish now, too?"

Logan just grinned at that question. "Hollow reed for a breathing tube." he said simply. "That and good lung capacity. I regenerate, kid. My body can get by without much O2. Think you got a security tape that demonstrates that." And as if to demonstrate his point he yawned deeply. Not because he was tired - far from it - but because his body craved oxygen.

Forge just nodded. "Been meaning to test the feasibility of sinking sensor buoys in the lake, just in case someone tries that. I think I just learned that lesson the direct way. I'm..." he paused, uncertain and awkward. "I'm sorry I implied that you didn't know what you were talking about. I can make the security system that'll see anything, but I've got to make sure it knows where to look. You got me there. And I meant what I said, I'll take those comm shifts. Should give me time to work up a usable redesign."

He stood up awkwardly, dragging his cooler towards the mansion. "Because I don't intend to let round two be so easy."

"That's the spirit." he said with a jaunty wave. "Maybe next time you'll see me coming. And maybe you won't." he called out after the retreating boy. Then he laughed and sprung to his feet with a casual nip-up to go find a beer and a smoke. Wolverine One, Maker Zero indeed.