xp_logs | Forge and Jubilee - Birthday Trespassing

After a birthday evening out, Forge heads down to his lab to find a surprise ambush.

Jubilee eyed the lab, now decorated in as unique a fashion as she could manage on short notice. If it hadn't been for the reminder she'd set on her work e-mail calendar, she would've completely missed her friends birthday, and thus drastic measures had to be taken.

She was currently stretched out alongside one wall, waiting for him to enter.

Forge walked into the lab, headphones covering his ears and blasting something mostly unintelligible - possibly Dutch - with a deafeningly loud double-bass drumbeat. As was his usual habit, once Crystal had dropped off to sleep, he'd gotten dressed and headed down to finish work in the lab.

Before it registered on him that his lab had been creatively redecorated, his music was drowned out by the sound of an air horn and confetti filled the air around him.

"~Cagada! Filho da puta!~", the string of surprised Portuguese profanity was somewhat shocking, coming from the usually taciturn inventor, who was now prone on the floor as if expecting incoming machine gun fire. His headphones had slipped down around his neck and come unplugged, giving the room a moment of silence before he looked up to see Jubilee perched on one of his work tables. Groaning, he covered his eyes in shame. "All right, you got me, Lee."

Jubilee cackled gleefully, leaning back against his work table. "Did you think not telling us your birthday was coming up was going to save you from displays of friendly affection? Because, dude, you're friends with more than a few spies and a suitably sneaky girlfriend."

"You totally got in while we were just out at Five Guys and then-" Forge broke off before his complete lack of brain-to-mouth filter wound up describing the rest of his birthday evening celebration-with-girlfriend to Jubilee, which his giant mutant brain hypothesized would likely fall into the realm of Far Too Much Information.

Instead, he picked himself off the floor and brushed confetti off himself. "Sneaky, Jubes. But you know if you get confetti in Paige's petri dishes, she's going to scalp you, right?"

"All packed away carefully in order to prevent contamination," Jubilee said, almost as if she were quoting someone. She jumped from her position on the work bench and landed lightly on her feet. "So, since you've already gotten your _special_ birthday present, I suppose you won't be wanting one of the more material type?"

Jubilee grinned wickedly at him, having filled in from the then all the inappropriate things her mind could come up with. It was quite a lot, and several things she thought Forge and Crystal would never in a million years get up to.

Forge made a "gimme" gesture with one hand as the other continued to brush confetti out of his hair. "Nuh-uh. You break in, you pay the toll. Fork it over, trespasser."

Jubilee pulled the ever present slim line backpack she seemed to wear these days off her back and fished around inside for a moment before handing him a small package, wrapped in day-glo coloured wrapping paper. "Trespasser, smeshpasser, lab was totally unlocked. Jean even waved at me when I walked past."

"Redheads are not to be trusted," Forge insisted as he unwrapped the package to reveal a small smoked-glass plaque. "O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.," he read the inscription. "Shakespeare. Henry V, right? Nathan had me read it once. Good stuff. Thank you."

"Thought it suited you, and everyone should have a swanky plaque for their lab, lends an air of credibility to the place," Jubilee replied, looking around at the decorations. The place had been sterile, not surprising considering it was a lab, but she liked the air of brightness the strong colours gave it. "So, how convincing would I have to be to get you to keep the wall hangings? This place was like, let me show you my beakers and dead people, totally bummersville.'

Forge frowned. "I like my lab," he insisted. He pointed to the red line of tape that ran around the floor, delineating areas where on one side, tables and stools were piled high with stacks of dot-matrix paper printouts, binders stacked haphazardly, and reference books marked with Hot Pockets wrappers; while the other side was the polar opposite, everything color-coded, alphabetized (except for those shelves that were date-ordered, and the specimen rack that was organized by descending half-life). It was quite simple to guess which side belonged to Forge and which side to the borderline obsessive-compulsive Paige E. Guthrie.

Jubilee noted the difference, now that Forge had pointed it out. An oversight that Remy's friends in the thieves guild would have had her doing extra work to make up for. Although she still felt the place could do with more then hot pocket wrappers to brighten it. "By the way dude, left over food wrappers are entirely gross. How was Five Guys? I hear they make _awesome_ burgers."

"My chaos is perfectly ordered," Forge insisted, walking over to one of the tables and flipping through a large book of metallurgical formulae. "Professor says it has to do with how my brain works. He described it as a 'holographic cloud mind', very complicated neurological stuff, I kind of tuned out when he started using phrases like 'partial teratogenesis of the corpus callosum' and all that biology stuff trying to explain why I'm one of the six smartest people on the planet. I suppose it matters to someone. Where was I just now? Oh, right, birthday!"

He placed the plaque on top of the one clear space in his half of the lap, a bank of lockers where lab coats and safety visors seemed to be hanging in a totally random order. Squaring it up slightly, Forge stepped back and nodded. "There. Personality," he intoned.

Jubilee simply smiled at her friend and walked toward the door to his lab. "Now, we do the second part of your birthday present. Which just so happens to be one coupon for a night out to Finnegan's, claimable whenever the hell you want it. But also, cake. One I didn't make even, so no chance of being poisoned. Come on 6th smartest person on the planet, you and your giant squishy mutant brain can take at least one night off, especially for cake."

"Doug tells me that the cake is a lie," Forge answered, but followed Jubilee anyway. "I don't know what that means."

"He just keeps quoting something about pie to me, so I would count myself lucky," Jubilee noted, waiting for Forge to exit and then closing the door behind them. "Although, do you have any idea what the hell a Domokun is? I think maybe Emma forgot to put something back together in his brain properly."