Log: Forge and Kyle, while everyone's out partying

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

While the rest of the kids are out trick-or-treating or clubbing, the two newest students spend Halloween being not-social.



Forge frowned as he soldered another wire to the circuit board on his
desk. Every time he'd make another weld of solder, Kyle would grunt
from across the room. So the stuff smelled. It wasn't HIS fault that
his roommate had an oversensitive nose. Not like he was smoking or
burning that crappy new-age incense stuff. Besides, this was
important.

Slotting the circuit board into a curved metal case, Forge leaned down
to position it against the outside of his artificial thigh. Coaxial
input cables attached to the bottom, and three simple input jacks
connected to the top... just like so. He felt a small tingle as the
device came online, and smiled. The feeling wasn't unlike regaining
sensation in a limb after a prolonged period of numbness.

Standing up, he decided to give it a test. Slowly, he placed all his
weight on the artificial leg, then lifted his good leg off the floor
until he was balancing completely on the prosthesis. Experimentally,
he hopped up and down effortlessly. Letting out a whoop, he began
jumping around the room on his artificial leg, enjoying the newfound
sense of balance due to the electronic gyroscope he'd designed. Gas
pistons in the shin and thigh automatically compensated for weight
distribution instantly and silently. Not quite the same as artificial
muscle tissue, but far beyond the simple lever-driven balance system
he'd had previously.

Kyle -had- been reading. Sort of. Admittedly, it wasn't the
whatever-the-hell-it-was he was supposed to look through for those
placement tests he had to take, but it was reading. For certain small
values of reading equal to "catching up on several months of Raw
recaps and drag racing scores."

It sure as hell was more interesting than Jane freakin' Eyre.

Except that even that was harder than hell to concentrate on, because,
for one, Forge was stinking up the room with some nasty thing he was
melting. Whatever it was, it made the inside of his nose itch and burn
and it was taking far more effort than it was worth to not outright
snarl.

When Forge let out the whoop and began bouncing around like a
over-excited pogo stick, Kyle finally did snarl, and covered his ears.
"Dude. DUDE. What the hell?"

Ceasing his pogo-ing long enough to stand on both feet, Forge wiped
the sweat from his forehead and fell backwards onto his bed. "The
thrill of creation, Kyle. You actually gave me the idea, walking
around on your toes all the time. See, these gas pistons control knee
and ankle orientation," Forge patted his shin as he sat up, "so I'm
not walking around flat-footed all the time."

At Kyle's quizzical look, Forge just rolled his eyes and explained
simply, "Less stomping."

Kyle scruched up his face, ate yet another piece of
pilfered-candy-from-the-trick-or-treaters-bowl and stared down at his
feet. He curled his toes, watching the claws slid in and then back
out, and then arched his foot, comparing the movement to Forge's
artifical limb.

"Okay, so you built a thing to make your ankle work?" He tilted his
head. His feet felt normal. He knew damn well they weren't, but it
wasn't like he was thinking about how he walked. Whenever he did
-that-, he ended up half falling over.

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Forge explained. "I mean -
look at your legs. They're all weird and stuff, but at least they
match. It took me most of a year to learn how to walk with this leg,"
he tapped the prosthesis for emphasis, "but still, it's not going to
always match up with the original one. So bit by bit, I'm making it
work better."

Glancing out the window, he saw Ororo leading a small group of
children in costume out to the boathouse. With a sigh, he leaned back
on his bed and dropped the window shades. "Stupid holiday," he
groaned.

"Yeah. All the 'cool' kids go out dancing and leave us here to ...
what?" Kyle said, not entirely suppressing a disgusted snarl. "Eat
leftover candy, try not to get headaches from screaming kids who've
eaten too much sugar and be bored out of our goddamn minds."

He rolled his eyes. "Halloween was a hell of a lot more fun when I
wasn't living in a costume. First person who makes a Teen Wolf joke
gets bitten."

Forge laughed. "Well, I did manage to dodge everyone who was trying to
forcibly recruit people to dress up all stupid and go out to a club or
something." He fished a Snickers out of the small basket by his bed
and threw it across the room to Kyle. "Someone suggested the Tin Man
and the Cowardly Lion. Which only confirms my theory that Halloween's
an excuse for folks to act like little kids with impunity."

"God, it's only going to get worse if someone gets the idea that we
need team sports here. Or a fucking PROM. That's all I need. Sweet
Valley Mutant High." Forge whipped out his PDA and started tapping out
notes on it, plugging a peripheral cable into a port on his thigh to
run a quick firmware diagnostic.

Kyle snagged the flung candy without a second thought, and had it
halfway open and eaten before answering. "You have -got- to be
kidding. And I think they had a prom, or something just as stupid. Did
you read back on that journal thing?" He shook his head. He'd been
-bored-, and had read. A lot. And to Kyle's way of thinking, the
better part of his male classmates were pussywhipped. Or gay. Or both,
in some cases.

Forge nodded. "How much you want to bet it'd be one of those
'attendance isn't mandatory, but all the COOL kids will be there'
things?" He lounged back on his pillow, listening to the diagnostic
program beep quietly. It always felt like a little shiver running up
and down his leg, sort of like a cold line of ice shooting through the
metal struts and supports.

"You do any of that stuff at your old school?" he asked, staring up at
the ceiling. "Sports, dances, all that crap?"

Kyle smirked, which showed off one side of his
moderately-impressively-sharp-canines, stuck out one foot and extended
the claws. "Can't wear shoes, can't dance. I'm not wearing any stupid
suits, and I can't wear dress shoes, so they can't make me go." He
leaned back in his chair, frowned and shook his head. "Dude, right up
until I destroyed 5 years of braces, and man, my folks were so pissed
about that, I couldn't even -throw- a basketball. Fucked up genetics,
turns out apparantly I'm all agile and crap now. I came pretty close
to winning right before leaving juvenile hall.'

Forge snickered to himself. "Juvenile hall? What'd you do, piss on the
wrong rug?"

Flying candy makes a clunking sound when it smacks into the side of
someone's head, Kyle noted. He bounced a second Reese's mini cup in
his hand and considered throwing -it- too before answering. "Long
story. I stole a Porche. Grew fangs and claws in the center. It
sucked. A -lot-" He shrugged, hoping that would end thar particular
line of conversation. Because the -rest- of the story was fucking
embarassing.

Forge rubbed his head, scowling. "Sounds like it," he grumbled,
picking up his PDA and continuing his diagnostics. Once the rapid
series of beeps indicated everything was functioning, he closed the
program and slipped his headphones over his ears. Keying through his
MP3s until he found something sufficiently dissonant and crunchy, he
turned up the volume and laced his hands behind his head, occasionally
raising them to air-drum along with the machine-gun beats.

**

A few hours later, Forge removed his headphones and glanced over to
where Kyle was slowly tapping away at his keyboard. God, the kid typed
slow. Of course, having those big awkward claws couldn't help much. A
speech-to-text synthesizer could probably be a big help, but if Kyle
wasn't asking, Forge wasn't one to do anyone any favors. People always
just ended up expecting more and more, that way.

Slotting his PDA into its recharge cradle, he reached for his laptop.
He'd heard folks running around in the halls, probably drunk or stoned
or god-knows-what after coming back from that party.

Two journal entries down, he paused. "Hey," he called, getting his
roommate's attention. "Hey! Apparently we didn't miss much. Just
fighting demons from hell. Which seems to be a monthly thing around
here..."

Kyle paused in mid-word. Promising to email his mother had been a
-huge- mistake. It took for-goddamn-ever. Also, his stomach was
definitly unhappy, and he considered that it might've been a bad, bad
idea to eat half a bag of candy.

"Maybe its like mutant PMS with the girl with the ..." He paused,
shrugged, and couldn't believe he was actually seriously saynig this.
"magic."

"Well," Forge remarked, slipping on his glasses and scrolling through
the journal entries. "Apparently there's TWO of them that do the demon
thing. The weird punk one and the hottie cheerleader one, and they
don't get along. The magic stuff's actually kind of neat, to be
honest."

At Kyle's raised eyebrow, Forge held his hands up innocently. "Hey,
I'm not picking up a wand and playing Harry Potter or anything. But
there's some legitimate scientific principles behind it."

"One. It smells nasty. Two, its freaky, and three, okay, yeah, she's
crazy hot." Kyle shrugged. "I cut off how much weird shit I can deal
with in a week at magic. My stuff flying around the room I can do. My
roommate having a fake leg, I can do. My other roommate having wings,
sure. Magic, no."

He blinked. "And what the hell is up with the way large number of
freaky chicks here anyway?"

"Hey," Forge snapped back, "this 'fake' leg's going to feel real
enough if I kick your ass with it." He quickly followed the empty
threat up with another candy bar tossed at his roommate's bed. "And I
don't think I've met a normal chick here yet. Hell, other than you, I
haven't even met any of the other guys here. Other than passing in the
halls on the way down to the kitchen, I mean. One of the teachers,"
Forge checked his laptop, "...Summers, yeah. I'm supposed to talk to
tomorrow evening."

Forge closed his laptop and leaned back again, peeling off his t-shirt
and tossing it haphazardly into his wardrobe. While the 'magic' had
its own pull on his curiosity, having to deal with Amanda to learn
more about it was a sacrifice Forge wasn't about to make.

Kick -his- ass. Kyle didn't think so. And then was quickly distracted
by the incoming candy. "I met both of the doctors downstairs, and the
purple girl, kinda." He shrugged. "And a couple of folks just in and
out of classes, and Sam and Alison, oh, and Nate." Kyle paused.
"Nate's cool though, and pretty much saved my ass from ... well, I'm
still not sure what." And not knowing should have bothered him a hell
of a lot more. But that was -way- too much like making an effort and
he had a ready supply of distracting chocolate.

Forge shrugged, reaching up to his windowsill and flipping a few
switches on the device he'd cobbled together early in the morning
before Kyle had woken up. A simple reactive white-noise generator, it
would easily block out the frequencies of his roommate's nocturnal
grunts and snoring. Only downside was that he couldn't listen to his
music, but it was far past midnight anyway, and his first classes
started tomorrow.

At the first sign of yawning, an obvious indication that he needed
sleep, Kyle had flopped over, practically bonelessly and settled down
to get at least -some- sleep. So far, it was looking like Noisy-Ass
Classmates 1, Kyle 0.

He rolled over on his back, dropped his arm over his face and
attempted to -not- hear the random muffled noises, and God, he didn't
want to know that those -were- at all, and grunted. Between that and
his stomach rumbling, it was going to be one of -those- nights.