April & Forge | Lunch
Aug. 30th, 2022 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsApril brings a thank you lunch to Forge and they talk powers and science.
Music filled April’s ears as she neared the partially opened door to the lab space Forge had claimed as his own, her free hand absently tapping along to the beat as she slipped inside and let the door shut behind her. “Good beat,” she acknowledged with a grin as she moved closer to the workbench he was currently occupying. “And a lunch delivery, so get your hands a wash and come eat while it’s still warm.”
Forge looked at her blankly for a moment, lost in the throes of his power. He could see the math that was her breathing, the way she stood, the alien creature grafted to her DNA. The math didn't make a lot of sense - biology was by far not his forte - but when he was in this deep he could see much. It took an effort of will - a serious one - to push his power back down and let his conscious mind come to the forefront.
"Hey." he said, realizing that he had his music going, in perfect lossless of course, rather loudly. "Felt like a Megadeth morning, as I was working on … well, doesn't matter." he said, looking down at the half-assembled rifle he had on the bench. Looked nasty, even if he had no idea what it did offhand. Then his stomach rumbled embarrassingly loud.
April watched Forge’s face for a moment as he came back from wherever his brain went during a science bender, setting the food down on the clean table closest to her before stepping closer to him and the workbench. Her lips twitched with amusement as his stomach rumbled. “When’s the last time you ate? I know time seems to sprint when I get deep into a project.” She smoothed a hand down an errant ruffle on her yellow blouse as she took a closer look at his work, giving his shoulder a gentle nudge. “You don’t want gun oil on your hands while you’re eating, c’mon. You can dazzle me with your brilliance once your hands are clean.”
Forge, in that moment, made his parents and uncle proud. He just nodded and moved over to a sink to wash his hands before settling down to eat. "Probably been a while." he said. "I keep thinking about installing a blood sugar monitor in my hand but then I decide against it in that if I did that I'd have to kill myself in shame" he commented as he lathered, rinsed, and dried his hands. "Despite my best efforts I cannot, in fact, live on 7-11 taquitos and Red Bull alone."
“Even enhanced metabolisms need things more complex than the best of 7-11,” she agreed, washing her own hands before joining him at the table. “So protein, fiber, something grown in the ground that isn’t just corn and potatoes…” her voice was teasing as she pulled items out of the bag and set them out. “And one yellow shirt as requested, although I don’t think you’re enough older than me to really call me your minion.” The last came with a playful stick out of her tongue before she took a bite of her sandwich.
Forge lolled his eyes at her and stuck his tongue out. "Ba-na-na?" he inquired, then straightened himself out to reach for the real food she'd brought him. "Those buds doing their job?" he asked her around bites of food. "I had a bet with myself that you'd be hearing your own circulation and getting weirded out by it."
“Yeah, they’re working great, although I’ve definitely heard a few of Boris’ quietly lethal doggy farts. At least I have enough warning to open the window now though,” she said with a laugh. “Hearing my own circulation probably wouldn’t bother me. The whole sensory deprivation thing? As long as it wasn't constant. And I usually have them off inside the mansion, it’s mostly quiet enough to deal.” She was tempted to give him a nudge with a pointy elbow for the banana comment, but let it slide. “No bananas, but there’s some pineapple and strawberry in there. Sometimes the most refreshing snack is the one that eats you back.”
Forge quirked both his eyebrows at that. "Maintaining your position as an apex predator by eating that which would eat you first? I can get behind that. Saw Uncle Naze catch a rattler in a noose trap once. Still not sure how that worked, as snakes don't exactly have shoulders, but hey. Made for some tasty addition to his random-critter stew."
“Something like that,” April agreed. “And I like the tingle of pineapple. What’s rattlesnake taste like? Not really something you see on the menu in Queens.” She took a bite of her sandwich, cheeks pinking when an entire slice of tomato made an escape for it. A pinch of her fingers had it corralled and stuffed into her mouth.
"It's pretty good, actually. Gamey, but not like venison gamey. Rattler's just kinda its own thing." he said with a shrug before delving into the depths of - his sandwich. He was a deliberate eater, each bite taken in its full measure before the next was indulged in.
She tilted her head in thought for a minute. “I haven’t had venison either. But I’d try it. Anything once, as long as it’s not one of those peppers that exist just to be spicy and make you regret living.” She took another bite of her sandwich, chewing fully before asking another question. “So the uh… rifle. Free tinkering, or did someone ask for it?”
"Idea came to me over breakfast." he said, glancing over at it. "Plasma shotgun. Should be pretty nasty up close and the generator in it recharges fairly quickly so ammo shouldn't be that big of a problem. If you're spraying and praying with a shotgun, you've got bigger things to worry about than ammo supply."
“Why Forge, are you secretly a giant space nerd?” April teased. “I’m getting Star Trek vibes over here. Set phaser to stun, laser blasts that cauterize on impact. Although I’d hope most of us aren’t in too many situations where ‘spray and pray’ is the best option.”
Forge shook his head. "Can't watch Star Trek. Caught an ep once by mistake, spent a week in a haze trying to work out the math behind a transporter. Came to the conclusion it's not doable practically and safely with any math _I_ could suss out." he said simply. "I like to read SF but I can't watch the shows on TV."
“That’s legitimately terrible news. Is it just the visual that drops you in, or would listening do it too? Because listening to Star Trek like it’s a radio drama could be pretty cool. Are the shows with more realistic tech safe, or do you spend the whole time lost in the fog of trying to make it work better?” Her face had a light frown on it, a brush of light sadness that he was unable to enjoy some of her favorite media and trying to figure out where those limits were for the future.
"Maybe?" he replied with a shrug. "Not tremendously keen on potentially taking myself out of commission that long." he said simply. "I can read the books and so far that's been pretty safe. Just finished up the Expanse before I moved out here." he said. "Even if the Epstein drive makes my brain itch."
“I haven’t read that yet,” April replied. “I was sticking to very light reading outside of my texts last semester. One of my classes was on AIs and had some religious and sociological impact crossover, so it got pretty heavy.” She folded up the empty wrapper from her sandwich and dug back into the bag, handing Forge a cookie.
Forge accepted the cookie with his mechanical hand and began to nibble at it. "You're an engineer, you'll like this. Ponder the effect of being able to produce continual thrust in zero-G." he said simply, then waited for her brain to explode. "Say, one G of continual thrust."
April choked on her bite of cookie, coughing on the crumbles and cheeks turning bright pink as she swallowed down several sips of water. “Phrasing is just a whole thing that passed you by, isn’t it,” she asked weakly, mind definitely flying right past orbital dynamics and into the dark places. “And space isn’t my forte, but I feel like that’s not currently sustainable long-term?”
"We're currently accelerating at one G." he pointed out with amusement. "In a vacuum, where there's not much out there to slow you down, travelling at a leisurely 1G means you could get from Terra to Mars in days, not months." he pointed out. "And with that kind of accel you don't need to worry about transit windows or anything like that."
“We’re also in a fairly steady orbit, without competing gravitational pulls or significantly size space debris,” she countered. “But the idea of faster space travel is pretty cool.” Now composed, she took another bite of cookie, managing to chew it and swallow without issues. “So if you don’t mind me being a little nosy… how easy is it for you to fall into that science fugue you were in earlier, and what’s the best way to pull you back out safely?”
He shrugged again at her query. "Don't let me walk into walls, provide me Red Bull and beef jerky, and wait for my brain to process the thought fully." he said. "As for how easily I fall into it, I'm a lot better now than I used to be." he said wryly. "So what's your gift, while we're talking powers? Besides the agility, I mean."
April wrinkled her nose. “Ah, if you’re familiar with the Spiderman that runs around New York, then that with extras. If you’re not… my dad got bit by a radioactive spider when he was in his teens, and it turned him into a superhuman–speed, strength, senses–with the ability to climb walls. Eventually he made himself web shooters, got dubbed Spiderman, and once he and mom got married ended up passing those changes on to my siblings. I was cloned from my sister May, and the asshole that did it added in some extras. You saw those when we met, the black and blue flesh and ability to turn my hands into basic blunt tools. The papers got destroyed and now I’m here, so I’m not sure we’ll ever find out the whole of what was done to me.”
Forge couldn't help but laugh at that. "That's … a lot." he said with a helpless shrug. "And a good thing you explained because I have no idea who this Spider-Man is."
“It is. I wasn’t actually…” April trailed off. “My first eighteen years of memories actually belong to May. Being here is the first time I’ve actually gotten a chance to find out who I am when I’m not living in her pocket, basically. How to be my own human, I guess. It’s been a very interesting adjustment.”
She slipped her feet out of her shoes, pulling them up to her seat and wrapping her arms around her knees before changing the subject abruptly. “How are you feeling after the electrical stuff? That shock looked pretty rough.”
Forge shrugged. "Was pretty nasty at the time but I'm feeling pretty recovered. Gonna need to build a new backup hand as I'm wearing my former backup hand." he said with a shrug. "I was tired and got careless, and that's what happens when you do that."
“Man cannot survive on red bull and no sleep alone,” April agreed. “I’m glad it wasn’t long-term bad. Are you going to add more bells and whistles to the next hand, or just work on refining what you’ve already done?”
"Not sure yet. I'm resisting the urge to cram the hand with toys and gadgets." he said. "Functionality first, then toys." he added. "Doesn't do me any good to put a psi-scrambler and lockpicks and a weapon in the hand if I can't flex my fingers properly."
“Mm, lockpicks could be useful. A decent knife built to cut through things. I could give you web samples once you’re at the testing phase. If it can cut through my webs then it can handle most standard ropes and zip ties. I’d offer it now, but you’d be SOL in a few hours once it dissolved.” Cookie demolished, April checked the area around her for crumbs and tossed her trash into the bag lunch had come in, holding it out to Forge so he could do the same.
"You are an enabler. A filthy, filthy enabler." he said as he scooped up his trash to dump it into the bag.
“And that’s a problem how?” April replied, grin extra cheeky. “Admit it, you love having someone to talk shop with.” She slipped her feet back into her shoes before standing up and reaching into a long stretch. “Now, do you want total quiet this afternoon so you can fall back into the sweet, sweet arms of science, or do you have something I can work on quietly reverse engineering so I can drag you up to the kitchens for dinner later?”
Forge grinned and reached over to his partially-assembled rifle and pulled a chunk out of it. "Here. You've proven you can be trusted around voltage so you can have fun with that. Just be careful with it." he said with a smirk, brushing his errant hair out of his eyes.
She laughed as she cradled the piece in her hands, depositing it gently on a table before pulling out a small toolkit. “If I fry myself, wait until you’ve dragged me up to medical to laugh please,” she requested, bending over the piece and examining it with her eyes and fingers as she let the music and the sounds of Forge getting back to work fade into the pleasant white noise of discovery.
Music filled April’s ears as she neared the partially opened door to the lab space Forge had claimed as his own, her free hand absently tapping along to the beat as she slipped inside and let the door shut behind her. “Good beat,” she acknowledged with a grin as she moved closer to the workbench he was currently occupying. “And a lunch delivery, so get your hands a wash and come eat while it’s still warm.”
Forge looked at her blankly for a moment, lost in the throes of his power. He could see the math that was her breathing, the way she stood, the alien creature grafted to her DNA. The math didn't make a lot of sense - biology was by far not his forte - but when he was in this deep he could see much. It took an effort of will - a serious one - to push his power back down and let his conscious mind come to the forefront.
"Hey." he said, realizing that he had his music going, in perfect lossless of course, rather loudly. "Felt like a Megadeth morning, as I was working on … well, doesn't matter." he said, looking down at the half-assembled rifle he had on the bench. Looked nasty, even if he had no idea what it did offhand. Then his stomach rumbled embarrassingly loud.
April watched Forge’s face for a moment as he came back from wherever his brain went during a science bender, setting the food down on the clean table closest to her before stepping closer to him and the workbench. Her lips twitched with amusement as his stomach rumbled. “When’s the last time you ate? I know time seems to sprint when I get deep into a project.” She smoothed a hand down an errant ruffle on her yellow blouse as she took a closer look at his work, giving his shoulder a gentle nudge. “You don’t want gun oil on your hands while you’re eating, c’mon. You can dazzle me with your brilliance once your hands are clean.”
Forge, in that moment, made his parents and uncle proud. He just nodded and moved over to a sink to wash his hands before settling down to eat. "Probably been a while." he said. "I keep thinking about installing a blood sugar monitor in my hand but then I decide against it in that if I did that I'd have to kill myself in shame" he commented as he lathered, rinsed, and dried his hands. "Despite my best efforts I cannot, in fact, live on 7-11 taquitos and Red Bull alone."
“Even enhanced metabolisms need things more complex than the best of 7-11,” she agreed, washing her own hands before joining him at the table. “So protein, fiber, something grown in the ground that isn’t just corn and potatoes…” her voice was teasing as she pulled items out of the bag and set them out. “And one yellow shirt as requested, although I don’t think you’re enough older than me to really call me your minion.” The last came with a playful stick out of her tongue before she took a bite of her sandwich.
Forge lolled his eyes at her and stuck his tongue out. "Ba-na-na?" he inquired, then straightened himself out to reach for the real food she'd brought him. "Those buds doing their job?" he asked her around bites of food. "I had a bet with myself that you'd be hearing your own circulation and getting weirded out by it."
“Yeah, they’re working great, although I’ve definitely heard a few of Boris’ quietly lethal doggy farts. At least I have enough warning to open the window now though,” she said with a laugh. “Hearing my own circulation probably wouldn’t bother me. The whole sensory deprivation thing? As long as it wasn't constant. And I usually have them off inside the mansion, it’s mostly quiet enough to deal.” She was tempted to give him a nudge with a pointy elbow for the banana comment, but let it slide. “No bananas, but there’s some pineapple and strawberry in there. Sometimes the most refreshing snack is the one that eats you back.”
Forge quirked both his eyebrows at that. "Maintaining your position as an apex predator by eating that which would eat you first? I can get behind that. Saw Uncle Naze catch a rattler in a noose trap once. Still not sure how that worked, as snakes don't exactly have shoulders, but hey. Made for some tasty addition to his random-critter stew."
“Something like that,” April agreed. “And I like the tingle of pineapple. What’s rattlesnake taste like? Not really something you see on the menu in Queens.” She took a bite of her sandwich, cheeks pinking when an entire slice of tomato made an escape for it. A pinch of her fingers had it corralled and stuffed into her mouth.
"It's pretty good, actually. Gamey, but not like venison gamey. Rattler's just kinda its own thing." he said with a shrug before delving into the depths of - his sandwich. He was a deliberate eater, each bite taken in its full measure before the next was indulged in.
She tilted her head in thought for a minute. “I haven’t had venison either. But I’d try it. Anything once, as long as it’s not one of those peppers that exist just to be spicy and make you regret living.” She took another bite of her sandwich, chewing fully before asking another question. “So the uh… rifle. Free tinkering, or did someone ask for it?”
"Idea came to me over breakfast." he said, glancing over at it. "Plasma shotgun. Should be pretty nasty up close and the generator in it recharges fairly quickly so ammo shouldn't be that big of a problem. If you're spraying and praying with a shotgun, you've got bigger things to worry about than ammo supply."
“Why Forge, are you secretly a giant space nerd?” April teased. “I’m getting Star Trek vibes over here. Set phaser to stun, laser blasts that cauterize on impact. Although I’d hope most of us aren’t in too many situations where ‘spray and pray’ is the best option.”
Forge shook his head. "Can't watch Star Trek. Caught an ep once by mistake, spent a week in a haze trying to work out the math behind a transporter. Came to the conclusion it's not doable practically and safely with any math _I_ could suss out." he said simply. "I like to read SF but I can't watch the shows on TV."
“That’s legitimately terrible news. Is it just the visual that drops you in, or would listening do it too? Because listening to Star Trek like it’s a radio drama could be pretty cool. Are the shows with more realistic tech safe, or do you spend the whole time lost in the fog of trying to make it work better?” Her face had a light frown on it, a brush of light sadness that he was unable to enjoy some of her favorite media and trying to figure out where those limits were for the future.
"Maybe?" he replied with a shrug. "Not tremendously keen on potentially taking myself out of commission that long." he said simply. "I can read the books and so far that's been pretty safe. Just finished up the Expanse before I moved out here." he said. "Even if the Epstein drive makes my brain itch."
“I haven’t read that yet,” April replied. “I was sticking to very light reading outside of my texts last semester. One of my classes was on AIs and had some religious and sociological impact crossover, so it got pretty heavy.” She folded up the empty wrapper from her sandwich and dug back into the bag, handing Forge a cookie.
Forge accepted the cookie with his mechanical hand and began to nibble at it. "You're an engineer, you'll like this. Ponder the effect of being able to produce continual thrust in zero-G." he said simply, then waited for her brain to explode. "Say, one G of continual thrust."
April choked on her bite of cookie, coughing on the crumbles and cheeks turning bright pink as she swallowed down several sips of water. “Phrasing is just a whole thing that passed you by, isn’t it,” she asked weakly, mind definitely flying right past orbital dynamics and into the dark places. “And space isn’t my forte, but I feel like that’s not currently sustainable long-term?”
"We're currently accelerating at one G." he pointed out with amusement. "In a vacuum, where there's not much out there to slow you down, travelling at a leisurely 1G means you could get from Terra to Mars in days, not months." he pointed out. "And with that kind of accel you don't need to worry about transit windows or anything like that."
“We’re also in a fairly steady orbit, without competing gravitational pulls or significantly size space debris,” she countered. “But the idea of faster space travel is pretty cool.” Now composed, she took another bite of cookie, managing to chew it and swallow without issues. “So if you don’t mind me being a little nosy… how easy is it for you to fall into that science fugue you were in earlier, and what’s the best way to pull you back out safely?”
He shrugged again at her query. "Don't let me walk into walls, provide me Red Bull and beef jerky, and wait for my brain to process the thought fully." he said. "As for how easily I fall into it, I'm a lot better now than I used to be." he said wryly. "So what's your gift, while we're talking powers? Besides the agility, I mean."
April wrinkled her nose. “Ah, if you’re familiar with the Spiderman that runs around New York, then that with extras. If you’re not… my dad got bit by a radioactive spider when he was in his teens, and it turned him into a superhuman–speed, strength, senses–with the ability to climb walls. Eventually he made himself web shooters, got dubbed Spiderman, and once he and mom got married ended up passing those changes on to my siblings. I was cloned from my sister May, and the asshole that did it added in some extras. You saw those when we met, the black and blue flesh and ability to turn my hands into basic blunt tools. The papers got destroyed and now I’m here, so I’m not sure we’ll ever find out the whole of what was done to me.”
Forge couldn't help but laugh at that. "That's … a lot." he said with a helpless shrug. "And a good thing you explained because I have no idea who this Spider-Man is."
“It is. I wasn’t actually…” April trailed off. “My first eighteen years of memories actually belong to May. Being here is the first time I’ve actually gotten a chance to find out who I am when I’m not living in her pocket, basically. How to be my own human, I guess. It’s been a very interesting adjustment.”
She slipped her feet out of her shoes, pulling them up to her seat and wrapping her arms around her knees before changing the subject abruptly. “How are you feeling after the electrical stuff? That shock looked pretty rough.”
Forge shrugged. "Was pretty nasty at the time but I'm feeling pretty recovered. Gonna need to build a new backup hand as I'm wearing my former backup hand." he said with a shrug. "I was tired and got careless, and that's what happens when you do that."
“Man cannot survive on red bull and no sleep alone,” April agreed. “I’m glad it wasn’t long-term bad. Are you going to add more bells and whistles to the next hand, or just work on refining what you’ve already done?”
"Not sure yet. I'm resisting the urge to cram the hand with toys and gadgets." he said. "Functionality first, then toys." he added. "Doesn't do me any good to put a psi-scrambler and lockpicks and a weapon in the hand if I can't flex my fingers properly."
“Mm, lockpicks could be useful. A decent knife built to cut through things. I could give you web samples once you’re at the testing phase. If it can cut through my webs then it can handle most standard ropes and zip ties. I’d offer it now, but you’d be SOL in a few hours once it dissolved.” Cookie demolished, April checked the area around her for crumbs and tossed her trash into the bag lunch had come in, holding it out to Forge so he could do the same.
"You are an enabler. A filthy, filthy enabler." he said as he scooped up his trash to dump it into the bag.
“And that’s a problem how?” April replied, grin extra cheeky. “Admit it, you love having someone to talk shop with.” She slipped her feet back into her shoes before standing up and reaching into a long stretch. “Now, do you want total quiet this afternoon so you can fall back into the sweet, sweet arms of science, or do you have something I can work on quietly reverse engineering so I can drag you up to the kitchens for dinner later?”
Forge grinned and reached over to his partially-assembled rifle and pulled a chunk out of it. "Here. You've proven you can be trusted around voltage so you can have fun with that. Just be careful with it." he said with a smirk, brushing his errant hair out of his eyes.
She laughed as she cradled the piece in her hands, depositing it gently on a table before pulling out a small toolkit. “If I fry myself, wait until you’ve dragged me up to medical to laugh please,” she requested, bending over the piece and examining it with her eyes and fingers as she let the music and the sounds of Forge getting back to work fade into the pleasant white noise of discovery.
