Forge and Kyle - Countermeasures
Jun. 4th, 2023 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsKyle comes to talk to Forge about his co-walker, Laurie Collins, Sinister, and countermeasures. It's not a fun conversation for either of them. (backdated)
The last time Kyle and Forge had a conversation, it had been over abysmally bad Chinese-American carry out, freshly imported from Montana by way of Forge's uncle.
This time, Kyle a pair of cans of energy drink that he set down on Forge's workbench, a water bottle still frosted with ice, and had half his X-Men leathers on, with a bandaged right hand, and a laptop that he plunked down right next to the drinks.
"Bottle's mine, I joked about drinking but it's just water. this is a sober convo, I'll get fucked up later. You took at look at that scrubber, right?"
Forge was normally a pretty animated guy. Not today. He accepted his drink from Kyle, cracked it, and took a healthy swallow. "Can see why you wanted this one as a face-to-face." he said. "And yeah. Pretty bog-standard purifier for particulates inside a certain size range. Can repro one easily enough, but that's not gonna be enough, is it?"
Kyle sat down on one of the benches. "There's background I gotta give you, and it's pretty fucking weird, and Darcy's right, of everyone who knows it, I'm the best guy to drop the entire load of shit off." He rubbed the bandages on his hand. "That scrubber was made for Laurie Collins, who had pheromone powers. Basically, anything she was feeling, or remembered how to feel, she could make someone else's body do that. So, not empathy, but like, the opposite. Body makes the chemicals, brain follows. She went to med school, you can probably imagine what she could do with that power, right? Anxiety, fatigue, pain management, acute nausea. Heart attacks." He gave a bared teeth grin. "I know that one from experience. Saw it once, had it done to me once."
"Bio I'm fairly shit at." he said, still keeping things conversational. "That's a pretty nasty power but she has to establish a biochemical channel for her power to ride down, for lack of a better term, right?" he asked. "I mean, if I'm reading the background material right. No channel, no whammy." he said. "Does the vic need to breathe her shit in or is it go on skin contact alone?"
"And now shit gets weird." Kyle said. "We don't know anymore what she can and can't do. Well, we know can. We don't know can't, because her powers have gotten unauthorized upgrades. Um. So. Like. Like, Laurie was up her own ass always, arrogant, but in like, a doctor way, right? Lost her arm on M-Day, got a pretty advanced prosthetic." He pointed at Forge's hand. "Not like yours, and there's some context there you also need, we'll touch on that later, but pretty advanced anyway. Frost Enterprises technology. And then shit just got worse and worse and she got, I dunno.." He started methodically popping his knuckles, one finger after another. "This is some shit, because when I tell you she was one of my best friends, and one of the last people I had after M-Day, that's gonna go from tragic to fucking weird soon. Lemee back up though, because, holy shit there's context."
"I've done worse to people I liked better. Don't worry about it. Tell it in your own way, your own time." he said, showing a perhaps surprisingly amount of compassion. "I get that there's some gnarly personal shit wrapped up in all of this. Fine." he said. "If you think it's relevant for me to know to build a countermeasure, then fine. I'm all ears. You don't want to get into the personal shit, also fine. We can get down to business whenever you're ready."
"No, you need to know the shit, that's the thing." Kyle explained. "Okay, so you were...." He counted on his fingers. "Probably in the military when Genosha's government fell, right? Twenty-twelve, I was just wrapping college, and you're my age..." He rubbed at his face, catching on stubble. "We did that. The X-Men, X-Force. all the X-people. It's scrubbed from news media, obviously, but we did that. We toppled that government. They were kidnapping mutants and turning them into mindfucked slaves. Laurie was one of them. Ended up with some powers shit, briefly had some powers grafted onto her, and just like. Never came back the right way mentally. I mean she seemed fine, but she came back like not only did she have to be the best, but like we were all shit for not seeing that she already was."
He huffed, took a drink of water, and continued. "PTSD, or whatever. So Genosha's powers grafty shit was done by a guy named Nathanial Essex, and he's a real fucking piece of work, and so last year, Laurie got some nerve damage, couldn't use her prosthetic arm, and lost her complete shit and ended up working with him to, I dunno, we don't know what her goal was, but his goal was to turn her into like, the powers cross of her and me. So we don't know what she can and can't do, but we do know she heals like me, and is purple now. Thus the scrubber, but before you open that puppy up, I gotta get you up to date on the other mindfuck stuff that's happened here, because you're gonna open that thing and go "What the fuck, I didn't make this."
Forge did some mental math. "Heard about that, but only about fourth-hand. I was in the rockpile, pretty head-down dealing with our own shit." he said. Welp, _shit_. This was intel he wasn't sure he needed, but it would explain why DARPA and their shadier buddies went a little berserk. He missed it, which he was coming to realize war a complete blessing in disguise." Then I caught a medical discharge and, well, was out of commission for a good long while."
"Yeah, so. When I tell you we don't know what she can do, we don't know what she could do after Genosha and didn't tell anyone, and we sure as fuck don't know what she can do now." Kyle tapped the bandages on his hand. "So Kane and I are working on some Danger Room simulations, because we did run into her and some more of Essex's powers fucked circus a bit ago, but the scrubber... so she had a leak problem as a teenager, she could walk down the hall and every other woman on the floor would get period cramps. So our guy at the time who built devices, he made that thing so she could stop ... you know, that."
"And you're working up to telling me something you're pretty sure I don't want to hear. Your guy. Stark? Hammer? One of those dodgy outfits out of Madripoor?" he asked, just riffing off some ideas before taking another chug of his provided beverage. "Sure as shit wasn't Lone Eagle, I'd probably know about it if it was..." he said, letting his voice trail off.
Kyle leaned against the workbench. "I'm working up to telling you something I don't wanna talk about, because it sucks." He laughed, bitterly. "Of all the people to know about this, you're sure as shit the one. So, M-Day wasn't just ninety percent of mutants died, it was a whole ass dimensional incursion. Alternate universe shit, only way bigger than the portal in the chapel." He pulled a set of flexible headphones off from around his neck and handed them over to Forge. "You know April's cool noise reduction things you made her? I've got, what's the term, the alpha version. Same tech, same smart filtering, same 'oh fuck bluetooth I'll make my own'"
Forge frowned. "Huh?" he said, then started disassembling Kyle's headset. He didn't have a magnifier or anything like that to get a really good look at the tech, but even if he couldn't see the notes, the melody was sure as shit there. "Fuck me." he said as he started to reassemble the cans to give them back. "Your guy was one of my co-walkers." he said quietly. "And I'm different enough from him? Her? We'll go with him. Different enough to fuck with you." he said, matter-of-factly, then handed the headset over. "Would explain why some of that power rectifier tech looked familiar. Great minds really do think alike, I guess."
"He was you." Kyle said, flat and blunt, almost no affect to his voice. "John Henry Forge. Same guy, but not." He huffed, and ran his hands through his hair. "Part of the reason I was kinda hands off for a while with you. He was my best friend, fucked off to Muir Island and then Attilan after some personal shit happened, and then M-Day hit and I couldn't bring myself to see if he was on the list of the dead or not." He shrugged. "Guess he wasn't, the universe just ate him, and left me with headphones and claw proof bathmats." He wiggled his toes at this Forge. "I get stuck in rugs. First thing he made here, because we were roommates for twelve hours, both of us like, fifteen, and he was sick of my shit already."
Forge smiled thinly. "I've had enough magical theory from Naze to know that your co-walker might have started from a common point but life diverges. Very few co-walkers are precisely the same." he said. "And I'm sorry I'm not your friend. We probably would have hated each other if we both had my arrogance." he said with a slight smile. "But doesn't mean I can't honor him in my own way. You need anything, ask." he said. "Claw-proof bath mats, new cans, quality of life shit, I got you." he said, in a solemn manner of a vow to an absent colleague. "Anyway. So my co-walker built the scrubber and now you want me to upgrade it. Can-do." he said. "Probably safe to assume maximum bad and build from there. Not gonna lie to you, this one's gonna take some time and some testing. You said you and Kane were running some test-sims? Give me access to that data, I can use it to tune things." he said. "I'll also probably need April to handle some of the shit work, free me up to work design and different ideas. Medical might need to get looped in as well, I fucking hate biotech." he said, his mind awhirl with possibilities. "More we know about her old power baseline, the more we can extrapolate towards Maximum Bad and then start designing to deal with it."
"He was completely up his own ass most of the time, and still like. I mean the guy saved my life, and he was hilarious and also sometimes a complete butt. You know how that goes." Kyle explained. "I can get you whatever we've got in the Danger Room on her powers. Medical probably has more, and Clarice fucking hates her, so you probably won't have issues getting it. Any edge we have." He let out a huff that rumbled deep into a growl. "This is so weird, because you are him, except totally not. Like, you look mostly the same, he lost his arm and leg too, but he was never military, and my gut keeps saying "Man, you know what she's like, and now she can probably kick my ass cold." and I know that's not helpful. I just. Imagine the least fucking scary person you know becoming the most fucking scary person you don't know at all anymore."
"Yeah. I get how this is fucking with you." he said carefully. "But now's not the time. We need to come at this stone-cold. Forget this girl you knew, concentrate on the monster she's become. She needs to go down - hard - and stay down. That's our goal." he pointed out. "And I can absolutely help with that. You said she works for this Essex guy now, right?" he asked. "What's his deal?" he asked. "I know I'm gonna regret asking, but might help to put some parameters around things."
"Yeah, I got the "Shes not Laurie anymore she's Malice" Lecture I think... " Kyle counted on his fingers. "I think this is lecture number three, and I'm trying to figure out if number four is gonna be from her, or if we're gonna get a "i'm the same person only purple and evil". He laughed bitterly. "Essex is a fucking piece of work. Um. Genetic engineer, I'd say mad scientist but he's fucking effective as hell and stone cold sane. Fucking irony, the fucker also saved my life, but he doesn't get any cred, he also willingly helped enslave half of Genosha's mutant popuation." A snort, and a shake of his head accompanied this. "Genetic engineer, we know he can graft powers onto people, we know he can rework DNA to undo that shit too, because I'm living proof."
He paused, and breathed out heavily and then slumped. "Fuck. Fuuuuuuck. That's... fuck my life. Okay, so. So so so so so I just put some shit together. So he reworked Lau... Malice, grafted some powers onto her, and we've been guessing it's from mine, and it has to be. He was brought in to, um, undo some genetic fuckery done to me, and a couple other people, so fucking of course he has my DNA in detail. Fucking hell, he's also got access to a powers copier and a .... a whatever Jennie is. Lucky. She's lucky and can make the universe her bitch."
Forge took a deep breath, held it for a second, then let it go. "Lovely." he said. "So no residue, can't let him get a hold of our DNA. Fuck, if he got mine..." he said, and then let his voice trail off. "Badness. Anyway. Got a prelim thought or two on the topic, but I've got some really ugly reading to do." he said. "And by make the universe her bitch, you talking reality manipulation or just probability? Latter's a lot easier to deal with then the former. My power really doesn't like it when the underlying math gets rewritten on the fly. Probability I can deal with, there's avenues to go through for that. Everything just has to lead to where you want things to go. Tricky, damned tough, but doable. Also, and I can't believe I'm going to fucking ask this, we've got sorcerers and witches and a goddamned Demon Queen Barbie onboard here. Can Malice or this Sinister guy deal with sorcery or any other kind of magic?"
Kyle snorted. "Lucky for you, you weren't around most of the times he was, and your DNA wouldn't be anywhere left anymore." He frowned. "And like, he met the other you, but that guy doesn't exist anymore, and metaphysics makes me want to hit things, so ima cut myself off there." He picked at his claws, and slid them in and out a few times before continuing. "Fuck if I know about magic. I don't like, think so, but they know about it, because Laurie lived here, so she probably told him. We're assuming everything she knows, he knows and she had access to all our medical records. That's why we're doing so much prep work. I got no illusions about how hard we're gonna have to work if they show up again. Beat her once though. Had to regrow like two fingers, an ear..." He patted himself down, like it would trigger memories. "Couple of teeth, some intestines..."
"I get it, I get it. Tell you what. I'll go review what data we have, start work on a neutralizer of sorts." he said. "And I want you to go talk to Team Magic about putting together a hit squad, assuming any of them have the stones for it." he said, and then sighed. "Can't believe I just advocated for fucking murder, but if these people are as much as an eminent threat as you say, it's probably worth considering. Hell, give Illyana a Pop-Tart and some vodka and she'd probably do it for free, if she could be trusted." he said, then let his feeble attempt at humor die.
"I've got a lot of work to do here. And you could stand to get some regen downtime. Make that pretty girl of yours feed you and play nurse." he said with a smirk.
"Half the Magic People work for Colbert and Sydney. They have more balls than I do." Kyle offered. "I'm leaving murder to the spies, those people scare me. If I get my hands on Malice though..." His claws flexed in and out of his fingers and then he shook himself, head to toe. "The reason we're doing all this is because we have a plan for her. I do lunch with Topaz, she says her team has plans too, and I mean shit, the folks at Muir have an emergency protocol if she shows up. Plans we got. It's tech we don't, and anything you can do to make that little air scrubber bigger, better, meaner, that's gonna do a hell of a long way to keeping us safe."
He picked up the water bottle. "Hey, thanks. For listening too. I mean I just vomited a ton of weird shit on you about another you, and the deep drama in this place, and you took it like a pro. Next time you're feeling social, grab me. Burgers on me. Or I'll get one of Jubilee's restaurant lists and find a real chinese place that won't kill us."
"I'll take you up on that." he said. "And believe me, I've got some ideas. Environment area denial, directed attacks ... yeah. The math is there, just need to tease it out and give it a form." he said. "I've got a lot of work to do."
The last time Kyle and Forge had a conversation, it had been over abysmally bad Chinese-American carry out, freshly imported from Montana by way of Forge's uncle.
This time, Kyle a pair of cans of energy drink that he set down on Forge's workbench, a water bottle still frosted with ice, and had half his X-Men leathers on, with a bandaged right hand, and a laptop that he plunked down right next to the drinks.
"Bottle's mine, I joked about drinking but it's just water. this is a sober convo, I'll get fucked up later. You took at look at that scrubber, right?"
Forge was normally a pretty animated guy. Not today. He accepted his drink from Kyle, cracked it, and took a healthy swallow. "Can see why you wanted this one as a face-to-face." he said. "And yeah. Pretty bog-standard purifier for particulates inside a certain size range. Can repro one easily enough, but that's not gonna be enough, is it?"
Kyle sat down on one of the benches. "There's background I gotta give you, and it's pretty fucking weird, and Darcy's right, of everyone who knows it, I'm the best guy to drop the entire load of shit off." He rubbed the bandages on his hand. "That scrubber was made for Laurie Collins, who had pheromone powers. Basically, anything she was feeling, or remembered how to feel, she could make someone else's body do that. So, not empathy, but like, the opposite. Body makes the chemicals, brain follows. She went to med school, you can probably imagine what she could do with that power, right? Anxiety, fatigue, pain management, acute nausea. Heart attacks." He gave a bared teeth grin. "I know that one from experience. Saw it once, had it done to me once."
"Bio I'm fairly shit at." he said, still keeping things conversational. "That's a pretty nasty power but she has to establish a biochemical channel for her power to ride down, for lack of a better term, right?" he asked. "I mean, if I'm reading the background material right. No channel, no whammy." he said. "Does the vic need to breathe her shit in or is it go on skin contact alone?"
"And now shit gets weird." Kyle said. "We don't know anymore what she can and can't do. Well, we know can. We don't know can't, because her powers have gotten unauthorized upgrades. Um. So. Like. Like, Laurie was up her own ass always, arrogant, but in like, a doctor way, right? Lost her arm on M-Day, got a pretty advanced prosthetic." He pointed at Forge's hand. "Not like yours, and there's some context there you also need, we'll touch on that later, but pretty advanced anyway. Frost Enterprises technology. And then shit just got worse and worse and she got, I dunno.." He started methodically popping his knuckles, one finger after another. "This is some shit, because when I tell you she was one of my best friends, and one of the last people I had after M-Day, that's gonna go from tragic to fucking weird soon. Lemee back up though, because, holy shit there's context."
"I've done worse to people I liked better. Don't worry about it. Tell it in your own way, your own time." he said, showing a perhaps surprisingly amount of compassion. "I get that there's some gnarly personal shit wrapped up in all of this. Fine." he said. "If you think it's relevant for me to know to build a countermeasure, then fine. I'm all ears. You don't want to get into the personal shit, also fine. We can get down to business whenever you're ready."
"No, you need to know the shit, that's the thing." Kyle explained. "Okay, so you were...." He counted on his fingers. "Probably in the military when Genosha's government fell, right? Twenty-twelve, I was just wrapping college, and you're my age..." He rubbed at his face, catching on stubble. "We did that. The X-Men, X-Force. all the X-people. It's scrubbed from news media, obviously, but we did that. We toppled that government. They were kidnapping mutants and turning them into mindfucked slaves. Laurie was one of them. Ended up with some powers shit, briefly had some powers grafted onto her, and just like. Never came back the right way mentally. I mean she seemed fine, but she came back like not only did she have to be the best, but like we were all shit for not seeing that she already was."
He huffed, took a drink of water, and continued. "PTSD, or whatever. So Genosha's powers grafty shit was done by a guy named Nathanial Essex, and he's a real fucking piece of work, and so last year, Laurie got some nerve damage, couldn't use her prosthetic arm, and lost her complete shit and ended up working with him to, I dunno, we don't know what her goal was, but his goal was to turn her into like, the powers cross of her and me. So we don't know what she can and can't do, but we do know she heals like me, and is purple now. Thus the scrubber, but before you open that puppy up, I gotta get you up to date on the other mindfuck stuff that's happened here, because you're gonna open that thing and go "What the fuck, I didn't make this."
Forge did some mental math. "Heard about that, but only about fourth-hand. I was in the rockpile, pretty head-down dealing with our own shit." he said. Welp, _shit_. This was intel he wasn't sure he needed, but it would explain why DARPA and their shadier buddies went a little berserk. He missed it, which he was coming to realize war a complete blessing in disguise." Then I caught a medical discharge and, well, was out of commission for a good long while."
"Yeah, so. When I tell you we don't know what she can do, we don't know what she could do after Genosha and didn't tell anyone, and we sure as fuck don't know what she can do now." Kyle tapped the bandages on his hand. "So Kane and I are working on some Danger Room simulations, because we did run into her and some more of Essex's powers fucked circus a bit ago, but the scrubber... so she had a leak problem as a teenager, she could walk down the hall and every other woman on the floor would get period cramps. So our guy at the time who built devices, he made that thing so she could stop ... you know, that."
"And you're working up to telling me something you're pretty sure I don't want to hear. Your guy. Stark? Hammer? One of those dodgy outfits out of Madripoor?" he asked, just riffing off some ideas before taking another chug of his provided beverage. "Sure as shit wasn't Lone Eagle, I'd probably know about it if it was..." he said, letting his voice trail off.
Kyle leaned against the workbench. "I'm working up to telling you something I don't wanna talk about, because it sucks." He laughed, bitterly. "Of all the people to know about this, you're sure as shit the one. So, M-Day wasn't just ninety percent of mutants died, it was a whole ass dimensional incursion. Alternate universe shit, only way bigger than the portal in the chapel." He pulled a set of flexible headphones off from around his neck and handed them over to Forge. "You know April's cool noise reduction things you made her? I've got, what's the term, the alpha version. Same tech, same smart filtering, same 'oh fuck bluetooth I'll make my own'"
Forge frowned. "Huh?" he said, then started disassembling Kyle's headset. He didn't have a magnifier or anything like that to get a really good look at the tech, but even if he couldn't see the notes, the melody was sure as shit there. "Fuck me." he said as he started to reassemble the cans to give them back. "Your guy was one of my co-walkers." he said quietly. "And I'm different enough from him? Her? We'll go with him. Different enough to fuck with you." he said, matter-of-factly, then handed the headset over. "Would explain why some of that power rectifier tech looked familiar. Great minds really do think alike, I guess."
"He was you." Kyle said, flat and blunt, almost no affect to his voice. "John Henry Forge. Same guy, but not." He huffed, and ran his hands through his hair. "Part of the reason I was kinda hands off for a while with you. He was my best friend, fucked off to Muir Island and then Attilan after some personal shit happened, and then M-Day hit and I couldn't bring myself to see if he was on the list of the dead or not." He shrugged. "Guess he wasn't, the universe just ate him, and left me with headphones and claw proof bathmats." He wiggled his toes at this Forge. "I get stuck in rugs. First thing he made here, because we were roommates for twelve hours, both of us like, fifteen, and he was sick of my shit already."
Forge smiled thinly. "I've had enough magical theory from Naze to know that your co-walker might have started from a common point but life diverges. Very few co-walkers are precisely the same." he said. "And I'm sorry I'm not your friend. We probably would have hated each other if we both had my arrogance." he said with a slight smile. "But doesn't mean I can't honor him in my own way. You need anything, ask." he said. "Claw-proof bath mats, new cans, quality of life shit, I got you." he said, in a solemn manner of a vow to an absent colleague. "Anyway. So my co-walker built the scrubber and now you want me to upgrade it. Can-do." he said. "Probably safe to assume maximum bad and build from there. Not gonna lie to you, this one's gonna take some time and some testing. You said you and Kane were running some test-sims? Give me access to that data, I can use it to tune things." he said. "I'll also probably need April to handle some of the shit work, free me up to work design and different ideas. Medical might need to get looped in as well, I fucking hate biotech." he said, his mind awhirl with possibilities. "More we know about her old power baseline, the more we can extrapolate towards Maximum Bad and then start designing to deal with it."
"He was completely up his own ass most of the time, and still like. I mean the guy saved my life, and he was hilarious and also sometimes a complete butt. You know how that goes." Kyle explained. "I can get you whatever we've got in the Danger Room on her powers. Medical probably has more, and Clarice fucking hates her, so you probably won't have issues getting it. Any edge we have." He let out a huff that rumbled deep into a growl. "This is so weird, because you are him, except totally not. Like, you look mostly the same, he lost his arm and leg too, but he was never military, and my gut keeps saying "Man, you know what she's like, and now she can probably kick my ass cold." and I know that's not helpful. I just. Imagine the least fucking scary person you know becoming the most fucking scary person you don't know at all anymore."
"Yeah. I get how this is fucking with you." he said carefully. "But now's not the time. We need to come at this stone-cold. Forget this girl you knew, concentrate on the monster she's become. She needs to go down - hard - and stay down. That's our goal." he pointed out. "And I can absolutely help with that. You said she works for this Essex guy now, right?" he asked. "What's his deal?" he asked. "I know I'm gonna regret asking, but might help to put some parameters around things."
"Yeah, I got the "Shes not Laurie anymore she's Malice" Lecture I think... " Kyle counted on his fingers. "I think this is lecture number three, and I'm trying to figure out if number four is gonna be from her, or if we're gonna get a "i'm the same person only purple and evil". He laughed bitterly. "Essex is a fucking piece of work. Um. Genetic engineer, I'd say mad scientist but he's fucking effective as hell and stone cold sane. Fucking irony, the fucker also saved my life, but he doesn't get any cred, he also willingly helped enslave half of Genosha's mutant popuation." A snort, and a shake of his head accompanied this. "Genetic engineer, we know he can graft powers onto people, we know he can rework DNA to undo that shit too, because I'm living proof."
He paused, and breathed out heavily and then slumped. "Fuck. Fuuuuuuck. That's... fuck my life. Okay, so. So so so so so I just put some shit together. So he reworked Lau... Malice, grafted some powers onto her, and we've been guessing it's from mine, and it has to be. He was brought in to, um, undo some genetic fuckery done to me, and a couple other people, so fucking of course he has my DNA in detail. Fucking hell, he's also got access to a powers copier and a .... a whatever Jennie is. Lucky. She's lucky and can make the universe her bitch."
Forge took a deep breath, held it for a second, then let it go. "Lovely." he said. "So no residue, can't let him get a hold of our DNA. Fuck, if he got mine..." he said, and then let his voice trail off. "Badness. Anyway. Got a prelim thought or two on the topic, but I've got some really ugly reading to do." he said. "And by make the universe her bitch, you talking reality manipulation or just probability? Latter's a lot easier to deal with then the former. My power really doesn't like it when the underlying math gets rewritten on the fly. Probability I can deal with, there's avenues to go through for that. Everything just has to lead to where you want things to go. Tricky, damned tough, but doable. Also, and I can't believe I'm going to fucking ask this, we've got sorcerers and witches and a goddamned Demon Queen Barbie onboard here. Can Malice or this Sinister guy deal with sorcery or any other kind of magic?"
Kyle snorted. "Lucky for you, you weren't around most of the times he was, and your DNA wouldn't be anywhere left anymore." He frowned. "And like, he met the other you, but that guy doesn't exist anymore, and metaphysics makes me want to hit things, so ima cut myself off there." He picked at his claws, and slid them in and out a few times before continuing. "Fuck if I know about magic. I don't like, think so, but they know about it, because Laurie lived here, so she probably told him. We're assuming everything she knows, he knows and she had access to all our medical records. That's why we're doing so much prep work. I got no illusions about how hard we're gonna have to work if they show up again. Beat her once though. Had to regrow like two fingers, an ear..." He patted himself down, like it would trigger memories. "Couple of teeth, some intestines..."
"I get it, I get it. Tell you what. I'll go review what data we have, start work on a neutralizer of sorts." he said. "And I want you to go talk to Team Magic about putting together a hit squad, assuming any of them have the stones for it." he said, and then sighed. "Can't believe I just advocated for fucking murder, but if these people are as much as an eminent threat as you say, it's probably worth considering. Hell, give Illyana a Pop-Tart and some vodka and she'd probably do it for free, if she could be trusted." he said, then let his feeble attempt at humor die.
"I've got a lot of work to do here. And you could stand to get some regen downtime. Make that pretty girl of yours feed you and play nurse." he said with a smirk.
"Half the Magic People work for Colbert and Sydney. They have more balls than I do." Kyle offered. "I'm leaving murder to the spies, those people scare me. If I get my hands on Malice though..." His claws flexed in and out of his fingers and then he shook himself, head to toe. "The reason we're doing all this is because we have a plan for her. I do lunch with Topaz, she says her team has plans too, and I mean shit, the folks at Muir have an emergency protocol if she shows up. Plans we got. It's tech we don't, and anything you can do to make that little air scrubber bigger, better, meaner, that's gonna do a hell of a long way to keeping us safe."
He picked up the water bottle. "Hey, thanks. For listening too. I mean I just vomited a ton of weird shit on you about another you, and the deep drama in this place, and you took it like a pro. Next time you're feeling social, grab me. Burgers on me. Or I'll get one of Jubilee's restaurant lists and find a real chinese place that won't kill us."
"I'll take you up on that." he said. "And believe me, I've got some ideas. Environment area denial, directed attacks ... yeah. The math is there, just need to tease it out and give it a form." he said. "I've got a lot of work to do."
