Morgan & Nate, and Morgan & Forge

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Morgan runs into an old friend, of sorts.

She hadn't thought of herself as Vanessa in years, but after having Xavier go searching in areas of her mind she'd long forgotten it was hard to not think of that girl. She wasn't Vanessa, that's what she'd decided after walking out of his office. She didn't know that girl, and there was little connection between who Vanessa was and who Morgan is. She was so used to adopting new names that a another was just like putting on a new shirt. It'd been a long session of drudging up every persona she'd ever worn but in the end Xavier had been convinced she wasn't there for nefarious purposes and she had been convinced she really was Morgan right now.

Staying meant familiarizing herself with the layout of the mansion, which in Morgan terms meant finding all the exits, knowing where you could end up trapped and committing the layout to memory because if her life depended on knowing that place like the back of her hand she did not intend to die. She brushed a lock of white hair away from her glowing red eyes as she smiled to herself. The looks she got had nothing to do with blue skin and everything to do with being unfamiliar. It was obvious on the faces of the people she passed in the halls and as she wandered through common spaces. There was almost something novel to it that the blue skin and red eyes didn't faze them. She walked around as herself plenty of times, but this place was the first that didn't double take just because of her appearance. It was almost an uncomfortable thing because the very idea was so alien. She pushed that to the side as she continued to explore what would be her new residence.

Nathan had raided the library for foreign-language dictionaries again - he swore that there were a few new volumes every time he looked, as if someone was anticipating Elpis's needs - and was on the way back to the boathouse when his train of thought was derailed as he sensed....something. Frowning, he let the books float beside him and thinned out his still-ragged shields. There were mental patterns and there were mental patterns, and that was both odd and vaguely familiar.

Morgan had come out of the kitchen, which she decided she would mostly be avoiding since anything that wasn't breakfast food or out of a box tended to explode if she even attempted to make it, and found her way toward the foyer. The closer she got the more she started to recognize the man standing there. Oh, isn't that interesting. Super telepath man could have warned me about this. But then he likely hadn't warned her on purpose she supposed. That little impersonation stunt of hers hadn't escaped Xavier's probing so it had to be intentional when he didn't mention Nathan Dayspring was also here. Morgan slid her most relaxed, faint smile onto her face as she wandered seemingly aimlessly toward him. A polite hello was uttered with a nod of her head as she passed him and she hoped he didn't stop her because there was too much potential awkward there that she didn't want to deal with, even if it was only her own awkward.

New person, Nathan registered, his eyes narrowing as he studied the approaching woman. Not a familiar face, and he had a good memory for faces. But there was something so distinct about that mind, something weird enough to be... He stopped dead in the middle of the hall, eyes widening. "You," he said. "I know you."

A single, white eyebrow arched upward at him slowly as Morgan stopped walking. Hey, great, I'm screwed!. Her head tilted to the side and she wore an expression of mild curiosity but nothing else shown on her face. Of course, showing something on her face wasn't necessarily the thing to worry about, was it? "Oh?"

"You. Six years ago. You were wearing someone else's face at the time." Nathan moved towards her slowly, his expression shading downwards towards incredulous. "I've heard of a small world, but this is ridiculous."

Either catching him off guard dropped his articulation level or he'd lost the art over the past years. It was probably the former. Morgan didn't react to his expression or his words outwardly. Nathan received a small shrug after a brief look of consideration. "Aye, love, perhaps it is, but I didn't know I'd find you here either." The Irish tone of her voice had thickened with the word "aye" but then petered back down to let her rather easily identified Boston accent come back with only hints of Irish under it. "I wasn't wearing just her face either."

Nathan's eyes narrowed. "No, you weren't. And you're lucky she's not due to be in town anytime soon - I think she's still holding a grudge." As was he, when it came right down to it. He didn't blame himself... quite, at least. He hadn't been much of a telepath back then, and there was definitely a mental aspect to this woman's mutation. But it had been a mess, mostly in the aftermath.

"You know, she always struck me as someone who was a grudge holder," she told him conversationally. "I mean, Jesus, what the fuck is in that chick's past? Her way of rationalizing is a bit vendetta like, innit? But, hey, some people wouldn't let a think like that go. Can't say I blame her. But I had a job to do and she found herself too cocky for the situation she was confronted with. I hope you taught her to be more realistic about her personal abilities after that." Her words were oddly without any sort of malice or outright antagonism. Her tone was casual, conversational and she could have been commenting on the weather or a television show for all it shown in her voice, it was the word choice alone which seemed to bait an argument.

"Mm," Nathan said, with a strangely amiable smile. "I've always been curious. Do you have a lot of practice at jumping out of windows and fleeing like a scared rabbit? If I'd been judging you that night, I would probably have given you a perfect six, for speed and technique..."

Morgan smiled sweetly at him as if she thought he was being rather caring. "Well, Nate," and she said his name in a familiar, almost affectionate tone. If she killed her own accent or had the borrowed vocal cords for it she would have sounded just like Domino when she said it. "The thing is to know when to stand and fight and when to cut your losses. Darling Dom didn't know when to cut her losses and run. Pride was a problem of hers in those days," though Morgan said it like she was pretty sure it was likely a problem the woman hadn't likely grown out of. "Finding her and realizing you'd been fooled for a month? And very possibly with the rest of your Pack in tow? You really think I was going to get captured as easily as she was?"

"I somehow doubt it was easy, per se," Nathan said. It was kind of funny. She did rather remind him of Dom - the Dom of about six years ago. "Don't brag so much, kid, it's unbecoming. So," he went on more briskly, "is this your own face that you're walking around with? And to what do we owe the pleasure? Wait, no, let me guess..." His eyes narrowed. "Misbehaving mutation. It's one of the few things that lands people like us in a place like this."

"Wording, love," she scolded in what could have been a playful manner to someone else. "I said 'as easily' not 'easily.' Went down like a hellcat, but the point is she went down and if you hadn't found her however you did she'd have stayed there until I was done borrowing her life, Nate." Morgan was smiling at him. Despite his tone and narrowed eyes she just kept smiling and the more he showed his dislike of her the sweeter it got. "Oh, no, love, not bragging. I just run fast. It's a good ability to have in what was our line of work. Unless it's still your line of work but word I've heard is you're retired from it, yeah?"

Morgan leaned against a wall and shrugged. She looked all too comfortable there with a lock of white hair falling in front of her eyes to remind her she really was in her own body. "Yeah, this is my face. It's not the mutation that's actin' up exactly. I've already talked to the shiny headed one, Nate. He's dragged through my whole past, knows everything, knows why I'm here and says I'm just shiny for stayin' on here. And the job description, or at least what you know of my old job description? Is a need to know basis. I'd appreciate it if you kept it that way." She didn't need to request it and she knew that. Xavier said he'd make sure it wasn't public knowledge around the place, that those who needed to know would and the rest wouldn't be informed. She figured given the old job Natey boy would be spoken to regarding it anyway.

Very, very much like the Dom of a few years ago. Nathan smiled right back at her. #I'm sure you think you're scoring loads of points here,# he projected at her, #but I hate to tell you, it's coming across as mostly bravado.# "And it's not particularly necessary," he went on aloud, no edge to his voice this time. "Charles took me in to help me once, too. As far as I'm concerned, welcome to the madhouse, and I hope he can do something for whatever is acting up." The books floating behind him shifted, stacking themselves neatly. "The need to know may be a little broader than you think, though, just to warn you. This place is a little more than it seems." His smile turned crooked. "For instance, I'm not... precisely retired."

She shrugged and her smile faded until it was more a quirking of one side of her mouth. It was a much more genuine expression for her to wear. In many ways it was her version of a smile since they so rarely managed to stretch completely across her mouth. "Consider it a character flaw," she told him with a gesture along the lines of 'what can ya do?' Her voice took on a very different quality when she next spoke. It dropped the mimic of Dom's cadence and while the Boston accent thickened it was the Irish undertones that really came through. "You want the truth?" She pushed off the wall and stood close enough to almost be intimate but far enough away to not burst personal bubbles. "Aside from a former professional rivalry I've got no problem with you. What I did was business for me and I don't expect it to be anything but personal to you. I don't expect you to like me, trust me or want me around anyone who might mean something to you because that kind of paternal thing you had with Dom wasn't lost on me even before I borrowed her form. I don't expect points from you. I don't even expect you to care about what or who I actually am. Thing is? Don't really care either. That life isn't my life while I'm here and who you think I am is probably not close to who I actually am. But that's true of all perceptions people have of other people, it's not unique to me."

Morgan paused, head tilting and eyebrow quirking. "'Not precisely,'" she parroted back to him. "Clearly I've walked into more than I thought I was. Gotta trust baldy, but if need to know gets too wide and it endangers my guys then I'll have to leave. It'll suck like hell for me, but you do what you've got to in order to protect people."

"Two things," Nathan said, still in that startlingly non-confrontational tone. Even his body language had changed; there was no looming going on any longer, and his arms were loose at his sides, his shoulders relaxed. "I sucked as a telepath back then. I've since had four years of training from the best telepath on the planet. And even so, I am nowhere near the top of the list of most perceptive people around here. You may want to stay a cipher, but it's entirely possible that they won't let you. So you should take that into account, as well. As for what's beneath the surface around here-" His voice was more serious, suddenly, "-I don't think that it's anything that's going to endanger your group. I can't give you my word it won't, because one never knows, but I'd say the chances are slim to none so long as they keep carrying out their business elsewhere and don't show up on the doorstep."

"Perceptive I know," and she let it remain unspoken that it was part of her job to be perceptive. "But even perceptive people are fooled by every day folk who are good at wearing masks, and I mean that generally not specific to me. Ultimately it is up to a person whether or not they allow anyone to know who they really are. Most of the time all you can really tell is that a person's hiding unless they let you in. If someone's worth knowing they'll know, if they aren't they won't. It's kind of that simple. You can know someone all your life without ever knowing them." She was almost thoughtful when she said it, almost making it more a hypothetical conversation. Her voice went from meandering and conversational to serious and business-like, "But we don't do business in the US. It's a rule. No doorsteps happening there."

"That definitely will help," Nathan said, and a grating chuckle slipped out before he could help himself. "Watch yourself around our local cop, though. He's very charming and Canadian, but he works with the FBI."

Morgan's face fell, jaw slack and brow furrowed. "We have an FBI agent walking around?" Suddenly Nate was so entirely endeared to her for the warning she could have kissed him. But she wasn't stupid enough to actually do it. "Charming, eh?" She mimicked a typical Canadian accent with a waggle of her brows. "How straight and narrow is he? Maybe if I give him a good enough conflict of interest he won't be able to do anything about it..." she was kidding and it was obvious from the glint in her red eyes to the twist of her smirk and the genuinely playful tone in her voice. "Besides, technically I haven't done anything for the FBI to get me on. Now international agencies," she trailed off and immediately plastered her best innocent smile on her face. It was scarily dead on.

"Just behave yourself, while you're here." Nathan's tone was an odd combination of serious and tolerant. "The yen for privacy isn't a bad thing. And I won't out you to Dom, next time she's in town. Charles frowns on bloodshed in the halls."

She had the look of an appropriately scolded child. "Aye, sir. Pity, I've really been looking for a good fight. Damn. Guess I'll have to start a bar fight!" She was chipper enough at the prospect that she actually bounced on the balls of her feet. Morgan took a step back so she could hold her hand out to him. "I'm Morgan, by the way. Since, well, you never actually knew who I was."

He didn't point out that he could pretty much guess that she was Morgan while she was here. If she'd been in with Charles, he knew the whole story, and that was good enough for Nathan. He shook her hand, sparing her the so-predictable measuring grips game. "Nathan," he said. "But a very different Nathan than the one you knew."

He got points for not playing the grip game, especially since he had larger and no doubt stronger hands than she did. But Morgan made a face, nose crinkling when she did. "Does that mean I actually have to call you Nathan?" She looked like she'd taken a bite of something particularly foul tasting. She liked Nate a lot better than Nathan. Not to mention one syllable was lazy-friendly.

"Unless you want people wondering why you sound like you know me..."

Morgan grinned, wide and sweet as sin. The transition from just being herself to putting on the ever so familiar mask was quick and seamless. "Then all I've got to do is point out how you have that dead fucking sexy older man thing going on and that I really want to know you in a biblical sorta way even if you are off the market," her eyes went to his left ring finger to indicate his wedding band. "It really is my loss, isn't it?"

Nathan snorted. "There are plenty of nice young men to flirt with around here," he said, stepping around her, his pile of books floating after him. "Try not to break any of them."

Her grin broke and laughter bubbled forth. Morgan spun on the balls of her feet as Nathan passed by her. "I can't even break the Canadian? C'mon, pretty please?"

"Behave," was his parting reminder, as he turned the corner.

"Spoilsport," she grumbled as he disappeared from sight. She'd just have to find non-breaking activities to get her through the day then. Damn.

Morgan goes to find Forge after running into Nathan to get set up with technology and be reminded she can't keep her gun on her.

It seemed that half the mission of going to check in with the school's security specialist was actually finding her way there. After asking a couple students where she was going and being convinced some of them had told her to go in the complete opposite direction on purpose, she eventually found herself in the general area she needed to be in. That was something, right? Shifting the motorcycle helmet she'd been carrying around with her since she got there from one hand to the other, Morgan spotted the actual door she needed. "Score half a point for me." After brushing a wayward lock of hair from her face, she knocked on the door. With her luck no one would even be there.

"Speak the holy command line interface prompt and enter," Forge intoned, snapping his fingers to activate the automatic door without taking his eyes off of his screen. He didn't look up at Morgan, instead focusing on a grid of numbers before him. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to know a parity substitution for 128-bit audio decryption, would you? No, of course you wouldn't, what am I saying? Hi, and you are?"

She blinked at the question and stepped through the door. That was English technically, right? "Uh, no, I wouldn't. If you want to know the most common kink with guys who hire whores in Boston I'm your girl, audio decryption not so much." It was said with a smile and a light tone that suggested she wasn't really serious about the whore comment. "I'm Morgan. I was told to check in with the shiny, shiny security gee- guy." She glanced down to where there was a handgun in a shoulder holster under her leather jacket. That was probably part of the reason why she figured.

"SIG P228," Forge intoned without looking at Morgan or the pistol. "Nine millimeter caliber, thirteen rounds in the magazine, could carry one in the chamber which it's not, safety's on which tells me that you know at least a little bit about weapons safety. However, the modified trigger pull and extra sear plate tension tell me that's not a police or military standard pistol, and I'll wager that I won't find a serial number on it either, which puts you either in the alphabet soup of agencies which you don't come across as, or someone with a more freelanced background."

He finally drew his attention away from the screen, resting his elbows on the deck as he faced Morgan, metal fingers wrapped over flesh and bone. "Which means you're either a friend of Wisdom or Dayspring, and the former tend to show up shooting first from what I understand. Regardless; student, staff, or other?" he asked abruptly.

Unlike the audio decryption question, the fact that he'd pegged her gun dead on didn't cause any change in expression aside from a small smile. Not even looking at her and he got it, that was impressive. Then again, she was in a building full of mutants and after running into Nate she wasn't going to put anything past these people. If she wasn't here on strictly friendly terms she'd already be out of there. With red eyes twinkling from the light she told him, "I'm not sure I really qualify as a friend of Nate's." There was the barest hint of a laugh hiding in her tone. Run into a guy who surely would've gladly killed you for kidnapping his precious little Dom and end up joking around with him? Yeah, it was damn amusing.

"Official other. Always wanted to be an other, gotta say. It's damn exciting. Old 'friends,' shiny guys, other status, what else could I possibly want?" The sarcasm mingled with a good-natured playfulness. Bit high tech for just a school, wasn't it? Then again, Nate said he wasn't exactly retired.

"I'm going to guess you either want a position with the Institute," Forge replied, looking Morgan up and down slowly, "or you've got power control issues that don't merit the kind of medical attention that the Muir Isle Research Center provides. You're carrying a gun, either out of habit or for protection - but let's not beat around the bush. If you're an... acquaintance of Mr. Dayspring, that means you know the kind of crowd that he ran with. A crowd that's come after him on more than one occasion. If you've got the same kind of problems, then I need to know exactly what kind of hell you're going to bring down on this Institute, Miss Morgan. Security here is my job, and I don't like to be caught off guard. The Professor may have already mentioned it, but you won't need to be carrying that," he nodded at the pistol in her shoulder holster, "around here."

"You're hot when you're all business, you know that?" Whether or not she was actually hitting on him was in the land of ambiguity. After she said it Morgan's smile vanished and her posture straightened up a bit. Her voice was completely serious when she spoke. "It's not the powers that need work so much as a side effect of them. One I need a telepath to get on track. I carry a gun out of habit because I've carried a gun every day for the past eight years or so unless I couldn't because of the job. You want to not beat around the bush? I'm just lovely with that. I'm not an acquaintance of Nate's, I was one of his rivals until he dropped out of the occupation. It's highly unlikely anyone who isn't too pleased with me is going to come after me and even if they tried they wouldn't turn up much. The name on my birth certificate isn't Morgan, nor is it any name I've used in the past eleven years. Aye, I might a little distinctive," she gestured with a hand from her head down to an all too uncommon appearance, "but they've also never seen this body. Hell, the guys I work with don't even see it that often and no one I've come across on the job has ever seen it because I usually pick up a default body to walk around in. So you're really not likely to get any hell coming down on you from me. It's not impossible, I won't lie. It'd be damn naive to say it was, but they'd have to capture and break the guys I worked with in order to even have the faintest idea where to look and I purposely didn't give them the name I'm using. A name that's got medical and school records and a social security number."

A glance down at the bulge in her jacket drew only a small shrug. "Wasn't planning to walk around with it. But I'd like to keep it. Y'know, in my room in a gun safe with ammo locked up in a separate safe kinda thing. If you're cool with that. And since it's habit I'd really like to be able to carry a blade on me. Out of sight of the kiddies, of course."

Forge took that all in and nodded. "We have a number of gun safes that can be installed, once we get your living arrangements set up I'll drop a note in Cain's box. Until then, try and be discreet. I appreciate the honesty, and you've probably already heard the spiel, but regardless of where you've been, the Institute's here to help. We do have a significant population of teenagers - young mutants learning to control their powers and find their place in the world." He paused, realizing how much he was sounding like the standard speech Charles would give new students and parents. The thought made him smile, and he chuckled lightly to himself.

"No one's going to ask you to be a role model, but keep in mind that the Professor is also headmaster of a school here. All of which I'm certain you know, so - let's just get you set up on the system. Laptop, cell phone, all standard for Xavier's residents. I'll spare you the boring speech, there's a nifty 'welcome' program on the laptop. So then, shapeshifter?" he asked, suddenly curious. "Is this your default look, then? Curious."

An eyebrow arched at just how much he sounded like Xavier. Were they programming the staff or something? Maybe there was a plug hidden on his head where they hooked in a firewire to download welcome speeches and the like into his head. "I make a shitty role model, but I'll try not to persuade them to a life of crime, taking over the world, drug trafficking, prostitution or assassinations, alright? Or, you know, other shady less than legal stuff I left off the list." With a grin she added, "Can I teach 'em to pick locks and dead fall?"

Her expression calmed into something less overtly serious but never quite reached the seriousness she'd possessed while explaining to Forge why she carried the gun and how much work shouldn't be following her here. "I don't think shapeshifter is quite right, actually. But, yeah, default body. This happened first, the blue skin and the hair and the red eyes. I was a pale redhead before. The mimic thing came soon after. Or maybe it came at the same time but I didn't trigger it, don't know." She shrugged. "Xavier said something about metamorph? I dunno, can't tell you what I do in technical terms, but basically? I copy people. Literally. I touch 'em and then I sorta shapeshift into them, including their vocal cords so I get their voice. Hold on long enough and I get spiffy stuff like mutant powers, which can go haywire especially when I don't know the person's a mutant," her voice trailed off in a way that suggested it had happened to her more than once. "And for some reason a telepath can't really tell the difference between us if I've got a good enough copy. I can think like 'em, walk like 'em and if I study them well enough beforehand no one but me and them will ever know the difference between us."

With a nod toward his hand she asked, "So what's with the metal? Taking body mods to a new and exciting extreme or really wonky mutation?"

"A bit of both," Forge explained, filing away Morgan's information in his brain for later. "A bit of an accident with a bomb decided to deprive me of a hand and leg, so I built new ones." He tugged up the sleeve of his polo shirt to show where the metal met skin at his shoulder. "Ended up having to replace more a few years back, my own design. That's what I do. Machines. I can imagine it, I can invent it. Name's Forge, by the way." He stuck his hand across the desk. "Welcome to the Xavier Institute, Morgan."

She cringed at the idea of a bomb blowing off bits of body. Rank that for one of her top scenarios to avoid right there. Getting shot, stabbed, strangled and waterboarded were the threshold of stuff she'd endure. Getting blown up? Not so much. "So a big shiny brain to go along with the rest, huh?" She decided to not state what qualified as the rest specifically. By time she took his hand to shake it she was smiling. "Nice to meet you Forge. And thanks for the welcome. Hopefully I won't have to hang around for too long but who knows, right?"

"You'd be surprised," Forge replied with a grin. "Now, here's what you'll need to set yourself up on the network..."