Doug and Forge

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Forge drops by Snow Valley and stops by Doug's office. They chatter about various things, including the latest offering from Doug's "weird shit" news searches.


A quick knock on the server room door heralded Forge's entrance, poking his head in to see Doug replacing another bank of hard drives. "Aha, just the man I came to see," the young inventor announced by way of introduction, walking into the air-conditioned room and shutting the door behind him. "Well, actually, I came to see Remy but his office is empty, so I figured hey, while I'm in the neighborhood...oh, right, manners."

He fumbled around in the pockets of his cargo pants before withdrawing a CD in a jewel case and winging it over to Doug like a Frisbee. "I bring tribute. There's a new batch of file libraries for high-end crypto systems. For research use only, of course, and you never got that from me."

"Never got what?" Doug asked as he deftly snatched the disc from midair and slipped it into a voluminous pocket on the cargo pants he was wearing. "I never saw anything, et cetera, et cetera. I can neither confirm nor deny those allegations, Senator."

He turned back to the server rack and tightened a few screws with his multitool, then turned back to give Forge his full attention. "I play second fiddle to Remy? Wow, I feel the love there." He rolled his eyes.

"Hey, we've had security issues. I figure if anyone knows how to stop someone with delusions of godhood from waltzing in and snatching folks..." Forge just shrugged with a 'what can you do' expression on his face. "So how go things in the Weird Shit business?"

"Well, yeah, there is that, I suppose. Frickin' Enchantress." Doug nodded. "And judge for yourself. Just found it this morning." He turned his monitor around so that Forge could see it. "Hope you weren't planning on going out and grabbing lunch."

Forge just rolled his eyes and took a glance at the files Doug had pulled up. "Unsolved ritualistic killing, nice. Says here the body was... oh, photos. Not going to ask where you got them and --" His voice trailed off with a sudden strained gasp. "Okay, this is off one of those sick photo sites, right? You can't actually do that to the human body?"

"Tell that to whoever did this," Doug replied. He tapped a key and brought up a website. "According to this, it's called the 'blood eagle'. All hail Wikipedia. Cut the ribs near the spine, spread them out like wings, pull out the lungs, pour salt in the wounds. Shows up every so often in old Scandanavian literature." He shuddered. "Almost wish I hadn't found the pictures. Victim was one Jay Lee, J-pop roadie slash groupie. Cute enough, at least before this happened." He grimaced and pushed the power button on his monitor. "What say we talk about something a little more pleasant?"

"No kidding," Forge said, glad to rid that image from his mind. "So I'm thinking, if I go crazy and decide to create a big world-destroying laser, big self-worshipping statue or no?"

"Well, that depends," Doug rejoined, grateful for the subject change, no matter how inane. "Are we talking, ahem, 'fully functional', as it were? And how big is 'big'? You of all people should appreciate the need for specificity."

Comments

[x-rahne.livejournal.com]

...So, for Forge, a 'fully functional' statue would actually be a scaled-up robot duplicate with an AI, right?

*facepalm* Now I'm thinking Vision and wondering if it would start hoping to function with Wanda.