Amanda, Forge - Thursday afternoon
Jan. 20th, 2005 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsFollowing his 'talk' with Nathan, Forge tracks down Amanda in her usual habitat and they go over her speech. He also surprises her with a project and a deal is struck.
Forge didn't find Amanda in the library and got no answer from her room, so he figured the next likely spot - back porch. Like apparently thirty percent of the student body, the girl sucked down tobacco like she owned stock in Marlboro. Before heading to the porch, though, Forge stopped by the kitchen to grab a soda.
Opening the fridge, he stopped, realizing that he was shaking like a leaf after his conversation with Mr. Dayspring. Had he just talked like that to someone? A teacher? Much less the one who could kill people with his brain? And HAD?
"Dumbest move on the planet," he mumbled to himself, tucking the can under his arm and opening the back door.
Bingo. Amanda was indeed on the back porch, curled up on the swing seat with her feet tucked underneath her and an enormous woollen winter coat over all, Clarice's knitted hat pulled down other her ears. Obviously she had been out here a while, despite the cold. In her hands were some foolscap pages which she was going through, cigarette held between the first and middle fingers of her left hand. As the door opened, she spoke without looking up:
"I'm fine, Ange." Then she did look up and realised her mistake. "Hey, Forge. Sorry, thought you were someone else. Obviously."
"Yeah, lots of folks do that. The other day, Kyle thought I was Mr. Marko, and Jay thought I was Doctor McCoy," Forge said sarcastically. Noticing the papers in her hand, he cocked his head and changed his tone, "Hey, is that your speech?"
Amanda nodded. "Just goin' over it again. Got it pretty much learned, but I wouldn't mind someone else havin' a look at it." She gave him a nervous grin. "I wasn't exactly literate when I got here, an' I'm worried it'll show. Don't want t' fuck this up, not when it's this important."
"Mind if I -?" Forge asked, holding a hand out. He squatted down on the porch next to Amanda, looking over on the paper. "Before today, I'd never met anyone who'd actually been, well, y'know, there. Today I get two. Go figure."
"Two?" Amanda asked, then realised. "You talked t' Nate, did you? How'd it go? You probably didn't give him half the amount of shite I ended up givin' him." She took a brief drag of her cigarette and put it out, knowing Forge probably didn't appreciate the smoke. "But yeah, I was there. Wrong place, wrong time an' fuck all I could do. Fuckers put me in my place right enough."
Forge stiffened reflexively at the thought. "Scared the living hell out of me, to be honest. He's not too keen on the memorial idea. Explained why." He flipped through the pages, reading quickly. "Damn. I mean, that's going to hit people. I mean, wow." He handed the speech back, then looked closely at Amanda. "They shot you?"
"He told you all of it? How they came for him?" Forge nodded and she sighed. "I feel like a right bitch puttin' him through this, but for once I'm right. 'Least I think I am." Another wry grin. "That don't happen often. An' yeah, they did. Rubber bullets, which is why I'm still here. Rubber bullets, metal gun - I can't shield against metal." Amanda frowned. "They laughed at me, when I tried t' stop 'em killin' people. I still remember that."
He nodded. "They came for him, and he thinks that makes him responsible for everyone who died." Forge took a long pull on his soda. "Don't know what to really think about that. Doesn't really make much - you changed your hair." He cocked his head again in that peculiar gesture, looking sideways at Amanda.
She blinked at him, hand going automatically to one of the braids sticking out from under the hat. "Um, yeah, I did. Thanks for noticin'." She nodded at the speech in his hands. "Is it really all right? I've never done anythin' like this before."
"Well," Forge said, "like I said - I wasn't there. This? Says you were. Says what needs to be said. Only thing now is how you get them to listen." He flashed back to what Mr. Dayspring had told him. "Mr. Dayspring really tried to kill Professor Xavier after that?"
She nodded, frowning a little. "Yeah. They managed t' get him back a couple of weeks after Columbia, re-did the conditionin' an' sent him after the X geezer. A warnin', I suppose. Maybe a punishment for us takin' him in. Pete stepped in t' stop him an' they had this massive fight, full powers an' all. Pete used t' work black ops for the government back home, yeah? So he knows his stuff. An' Nate was fightin' the conditionin' even then so he was tryin' not t' kill anyone. Got t' the point where the X geezer could mask me telepathically an' I snuck up behind Nate an' hit him with a sleep spell." A rueful grin appeared. "He always was a sucker for those. Still is."
"Speaking of which," Forge practically leaped
at the chance to change the subject, "I was wondering if you'd take a look at this." He pulled out his PDA and called up a file, handing the device to Amanda. She glanced at it briefly. A spell, obviously, written out in rather crude, simplified notation. One she'd researched for Strange, but... had Forge changed things to it?
"Will it work?" Forge asked. "I don't have what it takes to test it, but if you could..."
Ooh, magic as a distraction. It always worked. "I think..." It was a teleportation spell, meant for small objects. Pulling her packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, she set them on the floor in front of her and read the spell as it appeared on the screen. There was a flash of multi-coloured light, and the pack vanished, only to reappear on the railing at the end of the porch. "Bloody hell," Amanda breathed. "That... I could never do that one - takes too much power. What did you do?" Her look grew curious. "An' what made you even think to try it?"
"Because I didn't know how it worked," Forge said, as if it was obvious. "But it really makes sense, when you think about it. A spell like you've got it written here is just a formula. Insert power source, make it do silly hooja-whatsit, get result. Thing is, most of it's either a bunch of poetic mnemonic devices, or stuff used to call on power." Forge snorted, "You're your own power source, so those parts are redundant. Cut 'em out, you know, like development comments in source code. Makes it more efficient."
Amanda screwed up her face, taking a moment to translate that into English - something she had to do with Strange a lot too. "So yer sayin' you've streamlined the spell? Cut out all the extra stuff I don't need t' worry 'bout since I don't need it?" She chuckled. "You said I was an engine, yeah? I think I've just been hotted up. Do you know what this means? You've basically changed the way I have t' look at magic." Her grin broadened. "I'm gunna be able t' do more with the power they let me have."
"Nothing wrong with that," Forge agreed, "I mean, that's what we're all here for, right? Learning how to use our powers better? Look at me, I don't do anything by myself, not really. On my own I'm pretty much useless - New Year's showed me that." He swallowed down the momentary rush of panic and continued, "But if I can help people like Ms. Blaire, and Shar-, Catseye, in what ways I can? Then I kind of belong, right?"
"Hey, New Year's weren't my most stellar moment either - one hit of the mental mojo an' I'm off in the corner with the munchkins. Couldn't handle going near that thing again. Fuck, I can't even think of it as a person, even tho' that's what it was." Awkwardly patting Forge on the shoulder - nice, safe, vaguely comforting gesture - Amanda switched the subject back to slightly safer ground. "You saw Hank's post? About me Healin'?"
Forge nodded. "Takes a lot out of you, as I understand it. Makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, if you tried to heal someone with their own life force, you'd wind up just moving broken bits around. You've got to provide that power, and since most of your type of magic uses like for like, sympathetic effects, etc - no wonder it wipes you out." He scrolled down a ways on his PDA and frowned. "That's pretty much a basic law there, it seems."
Amanda nodded. "Yeah, it all makes perfect sense. Doesn't stop me feelin' like I can't help any more. Can't belong." She shrugged. "People keep tellin' me I don't have t' prove anythin', make up for anythin', but it's hard not t' want to any way."
Forge was suddenly struck by a feeling of deja vu, given his talk with Mr. Dayspring. "You kind of screwed up with your power a while back, I hear?" He shrugged and looked out over the back lawn. "Seems everyone around here takes their turn at that."
"Got too close to a powerful mystic source an' got meself hooked," she told him frankly. Pulling Rom's amulet from under the layers of clothing, she went on: "This is basically what keeps me from goin' off the deep end again - gives me a steady level of power an' cuts me off if I absorb too much. 'S why I can't do a lot of the spells I actually know; I don't have the juice for it. An' while I was in full junkie mode... I did some pretty shitty things." Tucking the amulet away again, she shrugged. "But I also got brought up as a power source t' someone - it's hard not t' see meself in terms of my usefulness." She gave him a crooked half-smile. "So I know a little bit 'bout wantin' t' fit in, an' tryin' t' make meself useful enough t' be accepted, no matter what I
did."
Far too familiar a feeling, Forge thought. "But you've got friends here, they accept you, make you part of stuff," he said. "You've got Manuel. That's enough, right?"
"Most of the time it is, yeah. Just... the magic will always set me apart from the rest. Fuck, when I got here, most of 'em didn't even believe in what I could do - they figured it was some sort of affectation, the words and the handwaving. Most of 'em believe now, but they don't have a bloody clue what's involved, how hard it can be on me sometimes." The
half-smile grew into something stronger. "You've been the
first person to actually bother, y'know? T' help make things easier. Thanks."
Blinking back astonishment, Forge just tried
to shrug off the compliment. "It's just interesting, really. I mean, it's like an entirely different set of physical laws and processes. Breaks most every rule of science, sure, but it's got to follow its own." He paused, remembering something. "Well, Manuel - your boyfriend - he's an empath, or was, right? So he's got to know what you go through. Granted," Forge rolled his eyes, "he used to be a complete dick from what I can tell, so he probably wasn't a whole lot of help, but still."
Oh, he dealt with compliments just as badly as she did - it was amusing, but Amanda was careful not to show it. It wouldn't do to make Forge think she was laughing at him. And the boyfriend distinction... Heh. "He was a bit of a pillock, yeah," she agreed. "An' he's tryin' now, but a lot of the time he's dealin' with his stuff, so there's not a lot of room for mine. He knows 'bout the headaches an' the rest of it, sure, but 's not like I can exactly sit down an' bitch t' him about Strange settin' me fifty pages o Sumerian translation - or get any help. Not that I'm expectin' that from you, but if yer interested, we could work on this idea of yers some more? The stuff on the database is just the translations I'd done at that point - there's some more spells I wouldn't mind streamlinin'. Could be useful."
Steepling his hands, Forge thought. "If you can explain to me what they do, I think I can do that. Yeah, it's a -" He paused, thinking again. "I'm going to need something from you, though. A deal, kind of." He swallowed and averted his eyes briefly. "I mean, when I first ran into you... kinda hard to not notice, well, um... that is..." Forge coughed something into his hand sheepishly.
Well, she'd noticed something that night. "A deal? Yeah, fine. But yer gunna have t' tell me what you want from
my end of it." She grinned briefly, unable to resist a little teasing. "Unless it's not t' pounce on you like the ravenin' sex witch I apparently am?"
"No!" Forge blurted out, turning bright red and waving his hands. "I mean, yes, you don't have to - no! That's not what I --" He let out a long sigh and dropped his head. "Girls," he finally said quietly, "I don't know how to talk to girls."
Don't laugh. Laugh and you'll break the poor bastard... Amanda swallowed the giggle, and the smartarse remark of 'That's bloody obvious, ain't it?', and tried to think of what to say. "I had noticed that, yeah. An' you want me t' help you learn how?" As Forge nodded, she grinned. "You've got yerself a deal, mate."
"Good," Forge stammered, "I'm going to go work, um... stuff in the shop needs doing. It's a good speech, folks'll listen.
And I'll, um..." he wiggled his PDA briefly, "yeah, I'll have
those ready for you in a few days, just need some time to research and, um… stuff." He nodded to Amanda and opened the door to the inside.
"Thanks for... yeah, just thanks."
"Yer welcome," Amanda replied, floating her cigarettes back over from the railing and digging in her pocket for her lighter. "An' thanks for that. See you out there on Monday."
Forge didn't find Amanda in the library and got no answer from her room, so he figured the next likely spot - back porch. Like apparently thirty percent of the student body, the girl sucked down tobacco like she owned stock in Marlboro. Before heading to the porch, though, Forge stopped by the kitchen to grab a soda.
Opening the fridge, he stopped, realizing that he was shaking like a leaf after his conversation with Mr. Dayspring. Had he just talked like that to someone? A teacher? Much less the one who could kill people with his brain? And HAD?
"Dumbest move on the planet," he mumbled to himself, tucking the can under his arm and opening the back door.
Bingo. Amanda was indeed on the back porch, curled up on the swing seat with her feet tucked underneath her and an enormous woollen winter coat over all, Clarice's knitted hat pulled down other her ears. Obviously she had been out here a while, despite the cold. In her hands were some foolscap pages which she was going through, cigarette held between the first and middle fingers of her left hand. As the door opened, she spoke without looking up:
"I'm fine, Ange." Then she did look up and realised her mistake. "Hey, Forge. Sorry, thought you were someone else. Obviously."
"Yeah, lots of folks do that. The other day, Kyle thought I was Mr. Marko, and Jay thought I was Doctor McCoy," Forge said sarcastically. Noticing the papers in her hand, he cocked his head and changed his tone, "Hey, is that your speech?"
Amanda nodded. "Just goin' over it again. Got it pretty much learned, but I wouldn't mind someone else havin' a look at it." She gave him a nervous grin. "I wasn't exactly literate when I got here, an' I'm worried it'll show. Don't want t' fuck this up, not when it's this important."
"Mind if I -?" Forge asked, holding a hand out. He squatted down on the porch next to Amanda, looking over on the paper. "Before today, I'd never met anyone who'd actually been, well, y'know, there. Today I get two. Go figure."
"Two?" Amanda asked, then realised. "You talked t' Nate, did you? How'd it go? You probably didn't give him half the amount of shite I ended up givin' him." She took a brief drag of her cigarette and put it out, knowing Forge probably didn't appreciate the smoke. "But yeah, I was there. Wrong place, wrong time an' fuck all I could do. Fuckers put me in my place right enough."
Forge stiffened reflexively at the thought. "Scared the living hell out of me, to be honest. He's not too keen on the memorial idea. Explained why." He flipped through the pages, reading quickly. "Damn. I mean, that's going to hit people. I mean, wow." He handed the speech back, then looked closely at Amanda. "They shot you?"
"He told you all of it? How they came for him?" Forge nodded and she sighed. "I feel like a right bitch puttin' him through this, but for once I'm right. 'Least I think I am." Another wry grin. "That don't happen often. An' yeah, they did. Rubber bullets, which is why I'm still here. Rubber bullets, metal gun - I can't shield against metal." Amanda frowned. "They laughed at me, when I tried t' stop 'em killin' people. I still remember that."
He nodded. "They came for him, and he thinks that makes him responsible for everyone who died." Forge took a long pull on his soda. "Don't know what to really think about that. Doesn't really make much - you changed your hair." He cocked his head again in that peculiar gesture, looking sideways at Amanda.
She blinked at him, hand going automatically to one of the braids sticking out from under the hat. "Um, yeah, I did. Thanks for noticin'." She nodded at the speech in his hands. "Is it really all right? I've never done anythin' like this before."
"Well," Forge said, "like I said - I wasn't there. This? Says you were. Says what needs to be said. Only thing now is how you get them to listen." He flashed back to what Mr. Dayspring had told him. "Mr. Dayspring really tried to kill Professor Xavier after that?"
She nodded, frowning a little. "Yeah. They managed t' get him back a couple of weeks after Columbia, re-did the conditionin' an' sent him after the X geezer. A warnin', I suppose. Maybe a punishment for us takin' him in. Pete stepped in t' stop him an' they had this massive fight, full powers an' all. Pete used t' work black ops for the government back home, yeah? So he knows his stuff. An' Nate was fightin' the conditionin' even then so he was tryin' not t' kill anyone. Got t' the point where the X geezer could mask me telepathically an' I snuck up behind Nate an' hit him with a sleep spell." A rueful grin appeared. "He always was a sucker for those. Still is."
"Speaking of which," Forge practically leaped
at the chance to change the subject, "I was wondering if you'd take a look at this." He pulled out his PDA and called up a file, handing the device to Amanda. She glanced at it briefly. A spell, obviously, written out in rather crude, simplified notation. One she'd researched for Strange, but... had Forge changed things to it?
"Will it work?" Forge asked. "I don't have what it takes to test it, but if you could..."
Ooh, magic as a distraction. It always worked. "I think..." It was a teleportation spell, meant for small objects. Pulling her packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, she set them on the floor in front of her and read the spell as it appeared on the screen. There was a flash of multi-coloured light, and the pack vanished, only to reappear on the railing at the end of the porch. "Bloody hell," Amanda breathed. "That... I could never do that one - takes too much power. What did you do?" Her look grew curious. "An' what made you even think to try it?"
"Because I didn't know how it worked," Forge said, as if it was obvious. "But it really makes sense, when you think about it. A spell like you've got it written here is just a formula. Insert power source, make it do silly hooja-whatsit, get result. Thing is, most of it's either a bunch of poetic mnemonic devices, or stuff used to call on power." Forge snorted, "You're your own power source, so those parts are redundant. Cut 'em out, you know, like development comments in source code. Makes it more efficient."
Amanda screwed up her face, taking a moment to translate that into English - something she had to do with Strange a lot too. "So yer sayin' you've streamlined the spell? Cut out all the extra stuff I don't need t' worry 'bout since I don't need it?" She chuckled. "You said I was an engine, yeah? I think I've just been hotted up. Do you know what this means? You've basically changed the way I have t' look at magic." Her grin broadened. "I'm gunna be able t' do more with the power they let me have."
"Nothing wrong with that," Forge agreed, "I mean, that's what we're all here for, right? Learning how to use our powers better? Look at me, I don't do anything by myself, not really. On my own I'm pretty much useless - New Year's showed me that." He swallowed down the momentary rush of panic and continued, "But if I can help people like Ms. Blaire, and Shar-, Catseye, in what ways I can? Then I kind of belong, right?"
"Hey, New Year's weren't my most stellar moment either - one hit of the mental mojo an' I'm off in the corner with the munchkins. Couldn't handle going near that thing again. Fuck, I can't even think of it as a person, even tho' that's what it was." Awkwardly patting Forge on the shoulder - nice, safe, vaguely comforting gesture - Amanda switched the subject back to slightly safer ground. "You saw Hank's post? About me Healin'?"
Forge nodded. "Takes a lot out of you, as I understand it. Makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, if you tried to heal someone with their own life force, you'd wind up just moving broken bits around. You've got to provide that power, and since most of your type of magic uses like for like, sympathetic effects, etc - no wonder it wipes you out." He scrolled down a ways on his PDA and frowned. "That's pretty much a basic law there, it seems."
Amanda nodded. "Yeah, it all makes perfect sense. Doesn't stop me feelin' like I can't help any more. Can't belong." She shrugged. "People keep tellin' me I don't have t' prove anythin', make up for anythin', but it's hard not t' want to any way."
Forge was suddenly struck by a feeling of deja vu, given his talk with Mr. Dayspring. "You kind of screwed up with your power a while back, I hear?" He shrugged and looked out over the back lawn. "Seems everyone around here takes their turn at that."
"Got too close to a powerful mystic source an' got meself hooked," she told him frankly. Pulling Rom's amulet from under the layers of clothing, she went on: "This is basically what keeps me from goin' off the deep end again - gives me a steady level of power an' cuts me off if I absorb too much. 'S why I can't do a lot of the spells I actually know; I don't have the juice for it. An' while I was in full junkie mode... I did some pretty shitty things." Tucking the amulet away again, she shrugged. "But I also got brought up as a power source t' someone - it's hard not t' see meself in terms of my usefulness." She gave him a crooked half-smile. "So I know a little bit 'bout wantin' t' fit in, an' tryin' t' make meself useful enough t' be accepted, no matter what I
did."
Far too familiar a feeling, Forge thought. "But you've got friends here, they accept you, make you part of stuff," he said. "You've got Manuel. That's enough, right?"
"Most of the time it is, yeah. Just... the magic will always set me apart from the rest. Fuck, when I got here, most of 'em didn't even believe in what I could do - they figured it was some sort of affectation, the words and the handwaving. Most of 'em believe now, but they don't have a bloody clue what's involved, how hard it can be on me sometimes." The
half-smile grew into something stronger. "You've been the
first person to actually bother, y'know? T' help make things easier. Thanks."
Blinking back astonishment, Forge just tried
to shrug off the compliment. "It's just interesting, really. I mean, it's like an entirely different set of physical laws and processes. Breaks most every rule of science, sure, but it's got to follow its own." He paused, remembering something. "Well, Manuel - your boyfriend - he's an empath, or was, right? So he's got to know what you go through. Granted," Forge rolled his eyes, "he used to be a complete dick from what I can tell, so he probably wasn't a whole lot of help, but still."
Oh, he dealt with compliments just as badly as she did - it was amusing, but Amanda was careful not to show it. It wouldn't do to make Forge think she was laughing at him. And the boyfriend distinction... Heh. "He was a bit of a pillock, yeah," she agreed. "An' he's tryin' now, but a lot of the time he's dealin' with his stuff, so there's not a lot of room for mine. He knows 'bout the headaches an' the rest of it, sure, but 's not like I can exactly sit down an' bitch t' him about Strange settin' me fifty pages o Sumerian translation - or get any help. Not that I'm expectin' that from you, but if yer interested, we could work on this idea of yers some more? The stuff on the database is just the translations I'd done at that point - there's some more spells I wouldn't mind streamlinin'. Could be useful."
Steepling his hands, Forge thought. "If you can explain to me what they do, I think I can do that. Yeah, it's a -" He paused, thinking again. "I'm going to need something from you, though. A deal, kind of." He swallowed and averted his eyes briefly. "I mean, when I first ran into you... kinda hard to not notice, well, um... that is..." Forge coughed something into his hand sheepishly.
Well, she'd noticed something that night. "A deal? Yeah, fine. But yer gunna have t' tell me what you want from
my end of it." She grinned briefly, unable to resist a little teasing. "Unless it's not t' pounce on you like the ravenin' sex witch I apparently am?"
"No!" Forge blurted out, turning bright red and waving his hands. "I mean, yes, you don't have to - no! That's not what I --" He let out a long sigh and dropped his head. "Girls," he finally said quietly, "I don't know how to talk to girls."
Don't laugh. Laugh and you'll break the poor bastard... Amanda swallowed the giggle, and the smartarse remark of 'That's bloody obvious, ain't it?', and tried to think of what to say. "I had noticed that, yeah. An' you want me t' help you learn how?" As Forge nodded, she grinned. "You've got yerself a deal, mate."
"Good," Forge stammered, "I'm going to go work, um... stuff in the shop needs doing. It's a good speech, folks'll listen.
And I'll, um..." he wiggled his PDA briefly, "yeah, I'll have
those ready for you in a few days, just need some time to research and, um… stuff." He nodded to Amanda and opened the door to the inside.
"Thanks for... yeah, just thanks."
"Yer welcome," Amanda replied, floating her cigarettes back over from the railing and digging in her pocket for her lighter. "An' thanks for that. See you out there on Monday."
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-23 09:19 pm (UTC)This is actually Frito, but Twiller's about five feet away and it seemed more appropiate to comment from this account.
DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE YOU HEATHEN BLASPHEMER!!!!!!!!
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Date: 2005-01-24 03:11 pm (UTC)