xp_logs | Log: Forge and Janet, Tuesday evening (Reply)

Finally freed from the medlab, Forge manages to head upstairs, and runs into the mansion's tiniest little bundle of perkiness. There's powers geekery and tiny little presents.

Jan flew around the hall, humming, as she completed loop after loop. She grinned and waved at people as she flew around their heads, right out of swatting range just in case someone decided to give it a try. You never knew around here, someone could be possessed or in the middle of going evil or maybe even a demon in disguise.

Shuffling down the hall towards his room, Forge rubbed his head absently. Too long cooped up in one room and he was liable to go insane. Thankfully, the doctors had let him relocate to his lab for the last few hours and complete work on the new prosthetic leg he was sporting. While visually less complex that his previous one that he'd cannibalized for parts over the weekend, he'd managed to integrate an actual hydraulic shock absorbing system, which he could tell even after only an hour was going to alleviate the inevitable chronic back pain that came with extended use.

Being able to sit down at the bench and work helped get rid of the last bits of medication-induced brain fuzziness, as well. But it still didn't explain that incessant buzzing that seemed to shift from one side of his head to the other. It wasn't a headache, as such. More like...

He stopped dead in the middle of the hall, closing his eyes and chuckling. "Hello there, Miss Van Dyne. Enjoying ourselves?"

"I sure am!" Jan said, speaking loudly to be sure he could hear her. "But there's only one of me, silly!" She peered at him, noting the closed eyes. "Are you ok? Do you need to see the doctor again? You're not going to pass out or something, are you?"

Forge shook his head, opening his eyes. Janet was indeed larger - over twice as big as she'd been when she'd first appeared at the school. "Just a little lightheaded. It'll pass in a day or so. Trouble with those of us with rather low body mass and hyperactive brains, we tend to not react well to painkillers."

He headed for the rec room, perching on the edge of the overstuffed sofa by the window. "So, bigger is good, huh? Did you do it on your own, or just wake up and find out you'd outgrown the bed?"

Jan zipped after him, confident now that she knew he wasn't about to keel over and possibly bring her down with him. "I'm tiny and I have a tiny brain!" the tiny girl announced, hovering about a foot away from Forge's face. "I'm not sure how I'd react to painkillers, I mean, how do you dose someone so tiny? And yeah, bigger is great, but it's not big enough, you know? It just happened while all of you guys were out there almost getting stomped on by dinosaurs. What is up with that anyway? Did you guys really almost become dino dinner?"

In response, Forge pulled the bandages down from around his shoulder, showing off the thick black stitches across the bite he'd received. "Yep. From what I gather, the whole thing was some wacko environmentalists trying to scare humanity back into the Stone Age. Had someone who could turn animals into dinosaurs, and there you go. Kyle actually got it worse than me, but he heals, so there's no long-term harm there." I hope, he left unsaid.

"EWWWW!!!!" Jan exclaimed, buzzing back, when she caught sound of the wound "Yeah, Kyle said his fingers were used as a snack. Do you know what the dinosaurs used to be? I mean, there will a whole bunch of different dinosaurs, did one kind used to be a cat and one kind a chipmunk or something or was it just random?" Not used to the craziness the other mansion residents seemed to be accustomed to, Jan was full of questions about this one.

Forge shook his head, tucking the bandages back into place. "You'd have to ask someone who knows all that evolutionary biology stuff. Me, I just stick with mechanics and technology. At least there you know what you're getting when you fiddle with it."

"Yeah, just more machines and technology stuff," Jan said. Some genius. Weren't geniuses supposed to know pretty much everything? "And machines won't just turn into a dinosaur that wants to eat you. Or could they? What if you build something that has a mind of its own and wants to take over the world or something?"

"A true artificial intelligence?" Forge shrugged. "It's theoretically possible, but the more research they do, the more and more complex it gets until it's not really recognizable as technology and starts squeaking into nonconventional biology. I hold it to my credit that of everything I've built, nothing has blown up that wasn't supposed to. Except the Neutralizer. But that was totally Lorna's fault. And Mr. Dayspring's psimitar, but that's because they exceeded the maximum brain occupancy limit. I made him a sticker."

He chuckled and smiled at the diminutive little flying girl. "Sorry, you caught me on my way up from the lab. I tend to go on tangents when I've actively been pushing my power. Doc Moira says it has to do with how my brain works, random leaps of logic and intuition, that kind of thing. So what about you? I understand you're a local here, like Laurie and Tommy. Rough place to be, coming out as a mutant, I'd imagine."

Jan grinned at him "I have no clue what you're talking about, but OK! And yeah, really a pretty bad place to say 'Hey guess what, guys! I'm a mutant!' which is why I never did that. Hiding the wings was no fun at all, I had to miss out on stuff, and being super-careful to not zap people by no touching with hands or wearing gloves, yeah. Bleh."

Now that was interesting. "You grew the wings and developed the sting before you shrunk? It wasn't all one manifestation?" Forge was intrigued now. While mutants with multiple seemingly-unrelated mutations weren't unheard of, usually they all manifested roughly simultaneously. Definitely something he'd have to ask Jay about the next time he gave him a call.

"Didn't you read the journals when I was found?" Jan asked. "Kyle thought maybe the wings were new and just came with the shrinking, but nope, they're always there, and I told him that. Had the wings for almost four years now, first discovered the 'oh look I can sting people!' about three years ago, and now I'm tiny! But I'm supposed to be able to get bigger, I'm not just supposed to be tiny girl all of the time."

"Interesting..." Forge mumbled, leaning forward and squinting to get a better look at Jan. Her wings were buzzing too fast to make out any details, but if the wingspan stayed at all proportionate, they must have seriously been a chore to conceal.

"Did you know," he said cheerfully, "that scientists used to try and say a bumblebee's flight defied all known laws of physics? For years they thought it did, until they discovered the concept of dynamic stall, which actually makes them more efficient fliers because of their small size. Speaking of flight, too bad you're almost graduating. Could be fun to take some readings from Sam's Flight class. Sort of a hobby of mine, flight. Parents work for an aeronautics company down in Dallas. We've got rocket-powered fliers, thermal lift fliers, folks with avian wings, folks who telekinetically fly, air manipulators, and then however-in-the-heck Marie does it. With oscillating wings covered now, all we need is someone with rotary lift, although I doubt we're going to find a mutant helicopter anytime soon." He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "Then again, we could have said that about dinosaurs."

"I still have no clue what you're talking about, but it sounds cool!" Jan said, grinning, turning around so Forge could get a better view of her rapidly moving wings. "I should learn this stuff, I guess, might help me out some. It's nice to know just how your powers work, right? And hey, I'm thinking I'm going to go to a college close by so I can still hang around here and work on getting better at what I can do. I mean, learning how to zap only when I want to would be great! Being small is cool, too, I just want to be able to do it at will, you know?"

"Oh, believe me, I understand control," Forge said, squinting at Jan's wings, then holding out a hand for her to land on. "My power never shuts off. Some days I can't even watch TV without breaking it down in my mind into an assembly of tubes and wires and signal. It's always easier when I have something to focus on. Kyle keeps teasing me about zoning out when I'm working. If he could see what I see, I wonder, it's probably like how he smells stuff. Hey, there's something else I wondered. You've got like, exponentially less body mass than you do at full size. Is it hard to breathe at all?"

Jan dropped down and landed on Forge's hand, automatically beginning to fold her wings back, then stretching them out again so Forge could get a better look if he wanted. "That doesn't sound like fun! How can you enjoy watching something if all you think of is all the stuff that lets you watch the show? It might be nice to know that stuff, I guess, but not if you just want to watch TV! And, uh. no, I can breathe just fine, thanks. Why not?"

"Has to do with air pressure versus container volume, in this case, tiny little lungs. And yeah, sometimes the drawbacks to overanalyzing machines can be a problem, but it's a blessing more often. Lets me do things like build you a terminal to access the journal network. Which, by recent developments, I figured you'd need scaled up. So..." He pulled a small jewelry box out of his pocket, opening it to reveal a half-inch wide screen and keyboard, almost like a doll's laptop. "Doctor Voght mentioned you'd grown a bit, and I figured going back to jumping on keytops would get annoying."

"I have tiny little lungs and tiny little thoughts!" Jan said, eyeing the new screen and keyboard. "Thanks so much! You're the best!" She still had no clue what Forge was talking about, but hey, he was the genius, right? "Next time I grow, I'll try to grow all the way so you don't have to keep making me new ones! I could feel myself growing, and I thought 'Great! Now I can go home!' but nope, I'm still tiny, just not as tiny. I wonder if my thoughts are bigger now... they probably are... tiny thoughts but not as tiny as they used to be..."

"And also..." Forge removed another device from the box, barely the size of his littlest fingernail. "So you don't have to wreck your voice shouting all the time. Especially if someone's about to squash you or something."

That sure would have helped when no one besides Terry and Kyle could hear her, but oh well! Better late than never! Janet took the little voice amplifier from Forge and gave it a try. "Yeah, shouting all the time when I want to talk to people is kind of rough," she said, forgetting that she didn't need to shout anymore, "and I am so into the avoiding getting swatted or squashed or flattened or stepped on or smashed against a wall because, ow, all of that stuff would hurt and probably kill me!"

Shrugging eloquently, Forge bounced his hand, letting Jan take off and hover in the air as he raised himself off the couch. "At least you're not requesting plasma TVs or expensive entertainment centers. I tell you, the entitlement complex on some people..."

"Could you really build those?" Jan asked, wide-eyed. "And even if you can, what's up with asking you for stuff they can buy? You can't buy this kind of stuff..." she indicated her miniscule new pieces of equipment "so it makes sense for you to make it, but a TV? Some people!"

"I can make anything," Forge said, mock-offended. "Except, apparently, an alarm to remind me to be on time for dinner. My genius-sense predicts... leftovers in my future," he intoned, pressing a hand to his forehead dramatically.

The tiny girl giggled. "You're funny. Too bad about not being able to make one, but you know what, I think they just make those... alarm clocks, watches, cell phones... I'm too tiny to use them, but they might save you from the dreaded leftovers next time!"

Forge arched an eyebrow. "Aww, who's a tiny little smartass? You are! Yes you are!" he cooed, poking at Jan with his finger. "Come on, I may have a Peep or two left over that I'd be willing to share."

Jan landed on his head. "Do we have to eat them or can we throw them at people? Kidding! You won't believe I have to do because of my fun last weekend! Did you know that chicks were the first shape for Peeps? And the first colors were yellow, pink, and white and it was more than forty years before they added another color, and that..."