st_arkintern | [Closed to Quill] The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.

[Closed to Quill] The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.

Peter Parker is sitting in the cafe, a textbook sprawled out on one side of the table, a graphing notebook filled with complicated-looking equations and the corresponding math on the other. Today's self-chosen subject of study? Lagrangian mechanics.

Peter idly taps his pencil near the bottom of the page and lets his chin sink into the palm of his free hand. If he keeps looking at this, he thinks he's going to lose his mind. He's been trying to figure out this answer for fifteen minutes now, and he's pretty sure that he's made a mistake somewhere, but he can't find where.

Peter folds his arms against the table then lays his forehead against them with an audible groan. Truly, it is a groan of despair.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Quill was on a mission for food in his belly, but he also was on a mission to complete level three of Super Mario Land on the Gameboy he took out from the library.

"Dude, come on" He said with a sigh as he died and would have to start from the beginning again.

He groaned and was about to start again when he saw Peter sitting at the table. Quill's nose suddenly ached. He rubbed his nose and headed over.

"Looks like you're in some major crisis right now," He said as he sat down across from Peter, turning the chair so he was sitting backwards on it and leaning on its back.

As soon as Peter hears Quill, he immediately looks up, just in time to catch Quill, still holding the Game Boy in one hand, rub his nose with the other.

"It's a math crisis," Peter informs Quill when he sits down.

He looks down at his notebook again, then closes it before he can find himself lost in a seemingly infinite maze of numbers again. He shuts the textbook too, then stacks his notebook on top of it.

At least now he has an excuse to take a break.

Peter gestures to Quill's Game Boy. "You having a game crisis?"

"Huge crisis. Worse than math," Quill said seriously as he held out the Gamboy. "Level three is killing me. I'm not even sure if it's possible to beat, really."

Peter looks at Quill, clearly bewildered by this proclamation.

"Of course you can beat it," Peter insists. "You're Star-Lord."

He takes the Game Boy into hand and looks down at it. He found a broken one of these in a dumpster once, but he didn't manage to fix it. It also wasn't as clunky as this one.

Peter looks up at Quill. "You want me to try and beat it for you?"

Man I like this kid

"If you can beat it," Quill said, gravely, "I might start considering you to be part of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course, it would be a probation thing. But the level is pretty hard, so I wouldn't give your hopes up just yet."

"Can it be a dual-citizenship thing?" he asks as he starts up the level. "Part-Avenger, Part-Guardian?"

Peter starts to play. He manages to jump past a series of Warp Pipes with comparative ease, then finds one he can go down into. Then when hitting a series of blocks, he accidentally hits what appears to be open air, only to discover another block that provides him with an easy lift to the top and access to another Warp Pipe.

Peter bites his lower lip as he comes across the Sphinx-Boss at what appears to be the end of the level. It spits out balls of fire (is it fire? Peter can't tell) with great menace. He lets the creature get a few attacks off just so he can get a feel for the rhythm --

-- and then easily jumps over him.

The music changes, and Mario automatically moves forward. Peter looks down at the princess on the screen, and then the text that forms above her.

THANK YOU MARIO.
OH! DAISY

She transforms into a... fly-thing?

Peter hands the system back to Quill. "Is that normal?" The old NES Mario never got this weird.

Edited 2018-05-30 03:33 (UTC)

"Yeah, sure, I don't see why not." He said in reply to the dual-citizen thing.

As Peter played, Qull watched on in silent awe. The kid was good. The kid had moves.

No one must know he's better at video games than me

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, that always happens after that level," Quill replied, having no clue what happened after that level at all. "It's just, you know, been a while since I've had a chance to play. Out saving planets and all that."

"It's just the reflexes," Peter explains. "I'm pretty good at it. I'm not good at saving planets, but I am good at saving princesses, even if they're in another castle."

A beat.

"Does that mean I'm a Guardian now?"

"I mean, you're like, on probation." He said. "You still have to pass like a dozen other tests. One of them is putting up with Rocket for a while and getting him to like you. If he doesn't like you, then the whole ship kind of gets weird."

Well, as much as Rocket likes anyone.

"I like Rocket," Peter says. Even if he's not sure if Rocket likes him back.

That reminds him.

Peter takes a breath.

"Rocket told me Alec punched you in the face. I'm sorry."

Right. About that...

"Nah, don't worry about it." He said, waving it off. "All healed. I got to meet a hot chick named Pike because of it, so it's kind of win-win. but, uh -"

Quill put down the Gameboy. He didn't like real talk and Peter looked very eager.

"I ever tell you Rocket and I and our friends, we absorbed the power stone into our bodies and used it to kill the bad guy?" He asked. "After my universe-reknown dance-off, of course."

"No," Peter says, rapt with attention. This was way more interesting than Physics.

"Yeah, so, once it was taken away by Ronin," Quill explained with that sort of story-teller voice people did, "Someone had to, you know, grab it. So I did and, man. I'm telling you, the power in that stone is unreal. I probably could have handled in on my own, but you know how friends worry, so they we all held hands very dramatically and the power spread out among the four of us and we were able to basically turn Ronin into ash. It was really impressive. You can ask Rocket. He was there."

Wait, I had been trying to make a point. Shit. What was it?

"That's awesome!" Peter can imagine it now. If it were a movie, the camera probably would have dramatically panned around them while it happened.

Maybe Peter doesn't exactly approve of turning people into ash, but the fact that Quill could handle that major amount of power is just a testament to his many impressive abilities.

Right... right. Shit.

"Yeah, well, you know." Quill said, trying to get the words out about how dangerous it was. But the kid thinks I'm awesome. "It's probably because I'm half-Celestial. Most people would have died. I probably saved my friends lives too. Because, you know, saving people is dangerous and stuff."

Gamora does this part better than me

"That's exactly what I want to do," Peter says, still bustling with excitement. "Protecting people, saving them."

Anything that he heard about the potential danger clearly went over Peter's head.

Quill nodded a few times in concession.

"Right. Right?" He said, "Saving people is fun."

He thought about Gamora's stern face glaring at him. Right, job to do.

"But, you know," He continued. "I could have died. We all could have."

He cleared his throat and tried not to gloat about how he hadn't.

Peter boss. He and Quill are obviously very much on the same page with regards to personal responsibilities.

"You didn't, though," Peter points out. "Because you were strong enough."

Kid's got a point

"True, I am pretty strong." Quill agreed, feeling Gamora wherever she was facepalming. "But I only did that, knowing I was strong, you know?"

Peter looks at Quill, puzzled. He's not sure how to respond to this. It sort of feels like Quill is trying to say something without actually saying something.

"Yeah," Peter says, nodding. "But that was your first time holding one of those stones, right? You couldn't have known you were strong enough to handle it, but you did it anyway."

The admiration is clear in Peter's voice.

Another fair point. He clearly sees just how awesome I am. Finally someone does.

He nodded.

"Okay, yeah, I'll give you that too." He said. "I sort of had no choice, you know? It was either that or let the whole planet be destroyed, so."

Peter nods his agreement. "When you have powers like ours, you have a lot of responsibility. I'm sure those people on that planet wouldn't have been able to do anything if you hadn't helped them. Not because they didn't want to help, but because there's some things only we can do."

Peter looks down at his notebook. A crude version of the spider symbol on his suit is drawn in the lower right corner in sharpie.

"I'm really glad that you get it," he says, looking up. "It feels like most people don't."

"People here?" He asked. "I thought this place was crawling with superheroes."

Quill thought back to Alec and rubbed his nose gently. This is probably not going how it's supposed to go...

"Back home, mostly," Peter says, thinking of Mr. Stark and the things he said after the ferry incident. Apparently, there were a lot of people who didn't think he was capable because he was young. "But there's still some people here that think that I can't handle it."

People like Alec.

"I'm still better able handle it than most people." Maybe not some of the more experienced superheroes, yeah, but definitely better than people who didn't have special powers. "But you get that. None of those people on the planet would have been able to hold the stone but you. All of them could have died, but you risked your life to save them, even though you might have died, too. You did what needed to be done because you needed to."

Peter hopes he's not getting too weird. He looks down at his notebook, embarrassed:

"I think that's really heroic."

Quill beamed. If this was a movie, there would be a close up on him and really cool music in the background.

Yeah, I am heroic

"You'll get there one day, dude." He replied. "You're already pretty heroic. You jumped onto a space ship to try and stop a bad guy."

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