xp_logs | Crystal and Forge - On the Phone ; Crystal and Laurie

Somewhere in Jordan, a phone rings...

"Hello, Forge."

"Hey hon. It's me... oh, yeah. You know that. Um. Hi? Did I wake you up?"

"No, I was awake already. Laurie and I are preparing to have breakfast."

"Cool. I just got back from Brazil, actually. X-Men stuff, nothing bad. Actually I got back from Muir because we had to drop a kid off and if I would have thought about it I could probably have dropped by and seen you guys... but yeah, we had Logan with us and we'd been in the jungle and he gets kind of ripe. So..."

"Yes, thank you for sparing our olfactory systems from going through such a horror."

"Ha ha, yeah. So... look, I know that I said some dumb things the other week, and I haven't had a chance to apologize, and I know that we kind of left things unsaid... what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry and... okay, you know, I'm better at this in person. What are you doing this weekend? Because I got invited to Dubai to see the opening of that new hotel complex, the Malik Dubai? I consulted for one of the engineering companies that built it, and they offered me a pair of suites. So... I know you're in that neck of the woods already..."

"Yes, I suppose we are not too fair from Dubai; compared to some of the flights we have taken in the past few months, it would be a fairly short one. I do not believe that it will be problem to alter the tour a bit. I will speak to Laurie regarding the change in our plans."

"Great! I'll email you the registration information. I... I miss you."

"I will look over the information after breakfast and book tickets to Dubai. I miss you as well."

"All right, good, good. Um... sorry, Kyle just sent me another text. He and Kevin are making fried chicken and someone needs to supervise them before they burn the place down. I'll see you in Dubai this Saturday, okay?"

"I will see you then. Enjoy the fried chicken, yes?"

"Mmm, chicken."

Plans are made...

The phone call ended, Crystal left the balcony and walked into the hotel room. "Laurie, that was Forge. We are invited to join him at a new hotel in Dubai starting this Saturday.

"Really? That's awesome! Isn't that the one that's completely computerized? I think I saw something about it in one of those plane magazines." Laurie said, perking up as she gestured for Crystal to take a seat. She'd already laid out several of the guide books they were using for this part of the trip. "So, what do you feel like for breakfast today? One of the guys down the hall said that there's this really good restaurant just down the street that caters to students, so we could probably get something fairly cheap there."

Crystal wasn't entirely convinced that "really good" and "cheap" belonged in the same sentence, but she had learned that it was not always necessarily always a fictional statement. "We will go to the restaurant and see what they serve, yes?"

"Great minds," Laurie replied, getting up to go grab her purse, and retrieve Crystal's while she was at it. "If they don't have something we like, I figure we can try a couple of the others."