xp_logs | Forge & Yvette - One Point Twenty-One Gigawatts

After her shocking (or not-so-shocking) experience in Canada with Red-X, Yvette visits Forge's workshop to find out just how resistant to electricity she actually is.

Yvette had visited the medlab before, and she'd been down to the workshop to visit Kevin and help with his sculptures, but the labs were another thing entirely. So many bits and pieces, all of them expensive-looking. Despite the fact she had her usual body-suit, socks and gloves on, she stayed in the middle of the space and kept her hands firmly clasped behind her back, for fear of accidents.

She was, perhaps, a little bit nervous. When she'd mentioned the electrical issue to her powers training teacher, it had been decided she needed to test the range of her invulnerability. Which was why she was here, waiting for Forge to get ready.

"Oh...kay," Forge drawled, poking his head up from behind a complicated-looking generator sitting on a low bench. The goggles over his eyes gave him an almost comical bug-eyed look in conjunction with the birds-nest of hair going in random directions, far overdue for a trim. "Now, if I am understanding things correctly, up in Canada you cut through a mains line to a house, and didn't feel anything more than a little buzz, yeah?"

Yvette nodded. "Kevin and I were digging through the wall to get the people out and I did not even notice the wires until I had cut them. It was like, how you say? The needles and pins?"

"Stands to reason," Forge commented with a nod, walking over to connect two heavy jumper cables to a set of posts on a wooden frame, then turning it to face two curved metal handles at Yvette. "The structures of your skin cells are phenomenal, almost molecularly similar to dense carborundum structures than anything else, yet still retaining organic properties. It's all quite fascinating really. So -if you'll just step onto that mesh pad there, and go ahead and take off your gloves. We'll do a practical test of your electrical resistance."

He paused, pushing his goggles up and leaning his elbows onto the frame, looking over it at Yvette. "Don't worry, nothing's going to hurt you here, I promise. If you feel anything more than that pins and needles, you just shout out, and I'll hit the killswitch, got it?"

Yvette nodded, a little timorously, and stepped onto the pad. It wasn't so much she was afraid of being hurt - taking off her gloves in an unfamiliar setting was never easy. "I know you will not hurt me," she told him as she peeled off her gloves and tucked them into her pocket. "I am just afraid of hurting your equipment by the accident."

With a 'tsk' noise, Forge waved a hand dismissively. "This was like, fifteen minutes of hardware-store kit-bashing," he explained. "I've blown up more stuff on accident in this lab than I can begin to count. Although I'm told by Dani that she's going to thwack me with a rolled-up invoice sheet if I blow out another circuit breaker in the name of Science. Okay, so you're going to hold onto these handles, and I'm going to slowly start increasing current through them, using you as a conductor." He traced the path in the air, from one cable, through the framework, over Yvette, back through the other cable.

"See, I've got a theory that your skin cells don't behave like electrolytes," he explained as he lowered his goggles and moved around the generator again. "You can obviously alter the hardness and refractive index... well, maybe not consciously yet, but someday. So! I'm thinking your body has a variable resistance factor depending on your density. Which I have noticed seems to be tied into your mood, if I'm not mistaken? So as we get started, Evie, how was your week in San Diego?" he asked glibly.

Taking a tentative hold of the handles, her skin scratching the metal surface, Yvette nodded. Most of Forge's scientific babble was beyond her English, but she understood the basics. He was going to make electricity go through her, and see how her mood effected it. At the thought of San Diego, she smiled. "It was very much fun. I like to be helping, and the people were happy for us to do so." Her eyes brightened. "I met the boy who was not frightened by me."

With one hand, Forge adjusted a dial on the generator, watching the needle on the device move to register current. "So I understand," he murmured, a smile matching smile crossing his face. "I think you said his name was - oh, this is interesting. Computer, laser density scan, surface to one millimeter, pulsed-photon, mark." Forge's voice took on a clipped tone as he gave the order to the computer, which was followed by a brief flash of lights as a small grid of glowing lines flashed across Yvette's crimson skin and then just as quickly blinked away.

"-variable differential resistance, interesting. Cam, I think you said?" Forge continued on, arching an eyebrow.

There was a tingle in her hands - not unpleasant, more kind of tickling. Considering she hadn't been tickled since her mutation had gone out of control, it was a strange sensation, and she giggled a little. "Cam, yes," she said. "Short for Cameron. He is living in Oregon." A shy smile appeared. "We have been writing the emails to each other. He says he is liking me."

"Spring is certainly in the air," Forge replied, then cocked his head in thought. "Although technically Spring Break happened in winter for some reason. I think that's thrown everyone off. The very fabric of the universe might be in peril. Mr. Marko's going to start teaching Dance class, Shiro's going to crack a smile, and Yvette," he teased while subtly adjusting the voltage, "is going to start getting giggly about boys."

The tingle increased, so it was more of a buzz. "The electricity, it is tickling me!" she protested, but not at all serious. "Boys are still 'ew'. Especially when they are not brushing the hair." This was said with a glance at Forge's 'do'.

Another flash of lasers, and Forge glanced at the readouts, doing some quick math in his head. "I hear no complaints about my hair. I understand the ladies think it's dashing," he protested, reaching up to brush one unruly lock away from his eyes. "Well, some of them think it's dashing. Okay, Tabitha thinks it's cute. All right, so she giggled and threw a hairbrush at me. Okay, okay, I need a haircut," he recanted, checking the dials again. "Um, all right then. Tickling. You're feeling okay, Yvette? No blurry vision, no funny taste or anything?"

"Nothing like these things, no. It is, how you say? Buzz? Like I am holding the bug that is trying to fly away. It feels..." And Yvette wondered at being able to feel anything new. "It is not the bad feeling. And speaking of the ladies, does Miss Crystal also think it is dashing?"

Forge's head popped up over the generator, eyebrows raised at Yvette. "I think you would have to ask Miss Crystal about that one. Or, then again, maybe not," Forge corrected, remembering Crystal's occasional discomfort with the students asking about her personal affairs. He, of course, had no such awkwardness, not having the burden of the student-teacher roles to deal with. "She seems to like me as I am," he ventured with a one-armed shrug. "I am not certain how much my hair factors into the equation there. So you're getting a tactile response... um, all right. Just for comparison? You're holding onto the equivalent of an unshielded power line right now, Yvette. I think it's safe to say that short of being struck by lightning, you're pretty close to a solid-state resistor. The scans aren't showing any subdermal density changes that would associate with rapid ion transfer - your skin's just repelling most of the charge."

He smiled, turning the dial down until the hum from the generator stopped. "And that's at what passes for low hardness comparatively, for you. I can only hypothesize that at greater levels of skin density, you'd probably not even feel a charge of that voltage."

"So Nori or Mr. Jean-Phillipe, they cannot be hurting me with their powers?" she asked, waiting for his nod before taking her hands off the handles. Their surface was scoured with scratches, but she hadn't done too much damage, given the conversation had kept her relatively relaxed. "If they have the accident?"

Forge held up one finger, then walked around behind Yvette. Cautiously, he withdrew a small black box from his belt, pressed it against the back of her shoulder, then thumbed a red button.

A large spark flew between two electrodes, and the taser whined, then small wisps of smoke began to waft from the grip. Holding it up before his eyes, Forge frowned. "And completely resistant to sudden jolts of current as well. Yeah, I'd say you're probably immune."

"Oh, I did not break your machine, did I?" Yvette asked, turning around to see the smoke wisping up. She'd felt a small impact another tingle, but that was about all.

"Your skin fried my taser," Forge confirmed, shaking the small device, then shrugging and throwing it over his shoulder. "but eh, I've got more of those. Darn things chew through batteries like no one's business. So I think we can call this experiment a success. You, Miss Petrovic, are certifiably unshockable."

"Except when I am reading the journals," she pointed out with a grin. "Thank you, Mr. Forge. This is the good thing to know, I think. Especially the next time I am around the electrical wires, yes?"

"Or if you make fun of Miss Ororo's hair. Here's a hint, never tell a woman that her white hair makes her look 'distinguished'."