Thirteen Days: Those Also Serve

[x-skin.livejournal.com]

Forge calls Angelo to the lab to tell him about his special suit for the space mission. Anger, self-doubt and mutual reassurance ensue.



Forge barely glanced up to check the clock as he reached into the press machine to withdraw another length of glossy black textile, folding it over his arm as he moved from one bench to the other. Six suits down, more still to go. Plus those with specific alterations, of course. One of which, he realized, would have to be done by hand. An idea entered Forge's head, and he began sketching on a tablet with one hand while his other reached for a phone, hitting a speed-dial button.

"Angelo? Forge. Need you in lab three real quick."

"On my way." Angelo hadn't been doing anything he couldn't put down, so he was in the lab within ten minutes, glancing around at the work. "Hey. What's up?"

"Modifying uniforms for the assault team," Forge explained, nodding with his head over to the folded and labeled suits stacked along one workbench. "Kevlar weave is all well and good for stopping bullets,but it's absolutely useless if someone winds up EV. Extravehicular," he explained, then shrugged. "In case you wind up outside the space station. There's an internal layer like a wetsuit, it'll keep you thermally insulated and maintain a positive air pressure so you don't pop like a grape should the glider or the station lose structural integrity. Outer layer is ablative protection, won't shield very well from anything more than small impacts, but keep in mind that up in orbit, you don't have an atmosphere to protect you from all that radiation the sun puts out."

He held up another uniform, different-looking from the others. "However, the way I figure it, you can get away with lighter protection than the rest. Cyclops said part of the plan is that someone who's in a lighter suit can be more mobile and hit faster and harder." It sounded strange, speaking conversationally to his suitemate about battle plans that would be put in place on a space station carrying a giant laser.

"Let's hope nobody winds up outside", Angelo said grimly. "So I'm gonna be the guy in the lighter suit, huh? How'd you figure that?"

"Because you have the closest thing to built-in armor next to someone like Rogue or Juggernaut, and they're going to be dealing with the heavy hitters," Forge explained, remembering the initial strategies Scott had asked him to design around. "Except that you actually need your skin exposed to be at your most effective. So here's what I came up with."

Forge shook out the uniform's top jacket, which looked like a sleeveless version of the regular X-Men outfit, sporting two red rings set into the shoulders, almost reminiscent of parachute ripcords. "You'll have your arms uncovered, giving you freedom of movement. But if for any reason the station's breached..." He tapped the pull-rings on the uniform. "Yank these, and the compressed-nitrogen cartridges will deploy full coverage sleeves. You might have tough skin, but I don't know how well you'd hold up to hard vacuum."

"Ah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense." He studied the pull rings. "Yeah, I don't know either. Got the same insides as anyone else, an' I still breathe. Here's hopin' that doesn't happen either."

"Breathing, right!" Forge said brightly, moving over to a set of lockers. Reaching in, he withdrew what looked like a slimmed-down motorcycle helmet and tossed it to Angelo. "Garrison made some calls and managed to get a hold of some of these to modify. They're skydiving helmets, I've modified them to be pressurized when attached to the suits, with an integrated oxygen delivery system and onboard communicator. Again, I wouldn't suggest taking them scuba diving, but it'll keep you breathing if something goes wrong. Not to mention there's liable to be some cramped quarters up there. One less thing to worry about if someone whacks themselves on a bulkhead."

Angelo chuckled, catching it and looking it over. "Pretty nice work. An', yeah, wouldn't want anyone's helmet breakin' at the wrong moment."

Smiling and nodding, Forge froze for a moment, then slumped onto a stool, sighing deeply. His shoulders shook briefly as one hand twitched across the work table, reaching for nothing in particular. "I took this job thinking because I knew I could design things to keep you guys safe. And now I'm about to fly you guys up into outer space. How in the hell am I ever supposed to look at anything the same way, Ange?"

Angelo looked at him, then moved to stand next to the stool. "Forge, you're still designin' stuff to keep us safe. You know that - an' you're doin' it better than almost anybody else here could. Just look at all this stuff you've made, on how much notice?"

Forge waved a hand dismissively. "It's not that. This is the easy part. It's just... I've been chewed on by dinosaurs, stuck outside the flow of normal time, and been thrown around by everyone from mad gravity manipulators to sociopathic fleshweavers. The tough part is knowing that my job here is basically the man in the van." He shook his head, running a hand over the fabric of Angelo's uniform. "I completely understand the strategy, and that I'm the last person anyone wants within line-of-sight of Magneto. One snap of his fingers, and I'm shrapnel. I know my part. I just... when I asked Scott why we weren't just defaulting to the nuclear option, I wasn't completely kidding. It'd be just as easy to wire up a bomb, shoot it into orbit on his blind side, and wham - the biggest mutant threat to the planet becomes a scattered meteor shower in the upper atmosphere."

Angelo shook his head. "I wish we could do that too, but we've gotta play it the way we're told, this time. An' the ones in charge want it done on the quiet."

"After the incident with Malice, and the Neutralizer," Forge said quietly, "I still thought that there was something I could do to reach out to him. I believed that he wasn't a bad man, just someone who was acting out of this all-encompassing desire to do what he felt was right for his people. I wanted to believe he could be better."

Suddenly lashing out in anger, Forge slammed one fist into the countertop and practically leaped off his stool to pace across the lab. "Then San Diego! And I wanted to believe he was grasping at straws, and when it didn't work - when his plan didn't incite the big human-mutant war he wants... I thought he'd give up. See things a different way. But now? Now he's ready to wipe another city off the globe, and I know how he thinks. He doesn't expect the human race to just roll over and play dead. He's willing and ready to kill millions, just like that. Someone like that... I just don't know. How do you not just say 'this is it, this is where we put him down'?"

Angelo stood very still, watching him. "If he was on his own, you know what? I'd be the first in there with a plastic knife, or sign up to your idea, for what he did to you, to Lorna, to Marie, to Julio... an' that's just the personal stuff. But there's a risk, Forge, 'cause he's not up there on his own an' we don't know what his new recruits can do. If one of them's got a power that means they could warn him about that bomb..."

Forge nodded in resignation. "That's exactly what Cyclops said. Even if someone could make that kind of moral decision, condone that kind of solution - it's a coin toss. Succeed, fine. Fail, and we'd have given him another weapon to use. He already used me for that once, tried to turn me into someone who thinks like him. And believe me, when the day comes, I fully plan on showing him exactly what he helped me become."

The brief smile on Forge's face wasn't one of pride or happiness - but a lightning-quick indicator of something dark brewing under the surface, a storm just as quickly dispersed as he walked back around to the table, rapping his knuckles against the metal. "But we've got our plan, and that's how it's going to go, right? So long as I can give you guys the tools to stop him and keep him in check, that's my part for now."

There was concern in Angelo's eyes as he looked at his friend, but he nodded. "That's your part, an' you've done it well. It's all goin' to go to the plan an' we'll be home before you know it." There was an edge of trying to convince them both, but mostly he made his voice sound sincere.

"Last person on the ground buys drinks afterwards," Forge replied with a smile before turning back to his machines. "Do me a favor and tell Scott I need to grab about thirty minutes of his time in the hangar? I want his input on the engine modifications that we'll need."

"Not a problem. I'll go tell him now. See you later." He lingered for a moment in the doorway, considering saying something more, but then just turned quietly and headed out.