It's early. *Too* early. Early enough that Micah may very well be sleeping in his van when he hears that loud, obnoxious *WHUMP* on top of it. It's louder than a bird hitting the van, but softer than a *body*... at least, softer than a body dropping from several stories above.
It's followed, soon after, by a face--upside down, hanging over in front of the windshield. The head is clad in a red ski-mask and big, buggy-eyed yellow goggles--he seems to be wearing a red hoodie in _addition_ to this.
There is a chance, however slight, that Micah may recognize him as the infamously pointless 'NY SPIDER-MAN' from the internet. He's got a youtube channel. Full of him... backflipping over jungle bar gyms. Other pointless, silly parkour crap. A lot of forum arguments about whether or not he's a mutant.
Or, if Micah reads the papers, he might remember the recent blurb in the Bugle: SPIDER-DUDE: TERRORIST OR ULTRA-TERRORIST -- and the description of some kid in a red ski-mask and goggles...
...or, barring all that, he might just be wondering 'what the FUCK is a skater-punk doing on top of my van at 4:30 AM in the morning?!'
Micah is sitting in the driver's seat of the van, kicked back, feet up on the armrest of the passenger seat. He has an ankle foot orthosis sitting on his lap that he is pointing a heat gun (which looks like a big, angry hair dryer) at. Thumbing at a spot over the ankle to push it out a bit, aiming the heat gun at it again. A pile of padding materials are spread across his lap. He may also be singing along /loudly/ to the radio. Could be Rush's "Closer to the Heart". And he might be doing a better Geddy Lee impression than people /should/. Then there's that /thud/. He stops singing. Then there's that..."GAH! Aliens!" padding goes flying as Micah struggles to sit up.
Peter blinks owlishly behind those goggles--not that Micah could see--and proceeds to *dart* back up, immediately out of sight. In the next moment, there's hammering--well, alright, *rude* knocking--coming from the side of the van. Followed by a voice--a very young voice: "Heeeellooooooo! Anyone hoooooome? I need help! With SCIENCE." A pause, then: "...and, uh, I'll totally pay for it."
Peter seems blissfully unaware that this is precisely the sort of thing people say before they knock your door in, knife you, and rifle through your pockets.
Micah shoves the AFO and padding materials into a container on the floor. He is still gripping the heat gun because it is /heavy/. Perhaps 'improvised weapon' quality heavy. He crawls over to the passenger seat and cracks the window just enough to talk through it. He's still brandishing the heat gun. "So...uh... Are you an alien or just some kid on drugs? Because I don't have the kind of equipment in here for making drugs. More kinesiology-science and less chemistry-science in here."
When Micah cracks open that window, he finds himself talking to... open space. No sign of the weird red goggled alien thing. But a moment after he says 'kinesiology-science', that head *DARTS* down--directly in front of the passenger window, right in front of him, dangling from above! He's holding... what looks like a gun of his own. Though it isn't pointed *at* Micah.
And, to be quite frank, it doesn't look much like a gun at all--more like what you'd get if a tiny super-soaker and a caulking gun had noisy, wild sex and weaned the result of their forbidden union on a diet of steroids. "I already got the chemistry part," Peter announces, sounding quite proud of himself. "I just need the wrist mounting that makes it so it doesn't interfere with my *totally* sweet moves. Or screws up my proprioception. Okay, 'proprioception' isn't *exactly* what I need help with, but I just wanted to prove to you that I know what the word 'proprioception' means and therefore you are now obligated to like me."
Micah eyes the object in alien-boy's hand with extreme skepticism. "Okay, I see where you need science-help. Your people seem to have failed at materials science. Kudos on the English translator, though...that's pretty keen. Gotcha a vocabulary and everything." His free hand grabs at his mop of auburn hair, leaving it standing up in awkward spikes. "Seems like you might have had a little glitch in the specialist-locating department, though. I don't do...uh...weapons? What /is/ that supposed to be?"
"It's not a weapon," Peter says, and Micah might catch an edge of indignance in his tone. "At least, it's not *supposed* to be. I mean, I guess it technically qualifies as a /non-lethal/ weapon, but I thought that was the whole point of--look, I need *help*," Peter insists, and then, suddenly, he's... oh, God. He's pulling out *drawings*. He's... scribbled... what he wants Micah to do. And his art is /terrible/.
It's a picture of... is that a red ketchup stain? No, that's supposed to be Peter. Flailing his arms, apparently. One of them has a long, thin line coming out of, connecting to... is that supposed to be a giant letter 'I'? Oh, no--it's a lamp-post. Or a sky-scraper. Apparently... Peter is... swinging?
"Look I basically am holding a piece of *CRAZY-AWESOME SUPER-SCIENCE* here, and I'm about to pay you to help me make it into something even CRAZIER and AWESOME...-r. So don't fight it! Help me! For SCIENCE."
Peter sounds... quite serious.
Micah looks over the...schematics? Let's be kind and call them schematics. "Oh, great, the Etherites are real. And /on my van/," he mutters, mostly to himself. "Look, sir...alien...kid...crazy-person?" He heaves a sigh. It is a sigh worthy of a teenager talking to an extremely un-cool parent. Life is hard. "I can see that you're pretty stressed out here. I'm gonna need you to calm down, and then in the sake of you not getting committed, I'm gonna listen to you describe what you need here. Okay?"
Peter's head darts back up, out of sight. A few moments pass--there's a low, clunking rustle atop of Micah's van--as if Peter is readjusting his position. And then... he jumps down, landing on the street, holding that bizarre looking gun. He hefts it up... and points it at the street-lamp over the car.
And then he *fires*.
There is a curious *THWIP*--and what looks like a single, near-imperceptible stream of gray fires up, the globular tip making a lurid *SPLAT* as it hits the lamp-post above. A moment later, and Peter pulls the gun back--the 'web' has already transformed from a liquid to a solid, one end slipping from the nozzle of the glue-gun, leaving it to dangle. Peter than seizes hold of the cord and *pulls*--it stretches slightly, but in the next moment, Peter's hefting himself up, feet off the ground, *dangling*...!
He lets go, sneakers hitting the cobblestone. He then holds the gun up to Micah, and says, very loudly: "I need you to help me mount *THIS* thing on my WRISTS."
This cannot *possibly* end well.
"Huh." Micah wears a look of honest surprise that the device did /something/. You know, other than firing silly string or something. When alien-boy goes airborne, he tilts his head to follow the kid's trajectory like a cat watching a moth. "Hey, cool. That could actually maybe be /useful/. For climbers or something. You just need the delivery system to be smaller?" Oh no. Curiosity has been piqued.
"Yes! Exactly!" Peter says, nodding his head rapidly. "It's gotta be small enough to not be obtrusive when I move my wrists--cuz, you know, when I'm snatching the cord, something gets in the way and it's like *FWOOSH*, bye bye Spider," he says, dropping one fist down into his palm with an illustrative *SPLAT*. Wait, where's the gun? Oh, he... he *tossed* it. Into the air. Like, thirty feet up. So he could do this with his hands. Wait, WHAT?! Is he *insane*?!
He snags it as it descends like it's an after-thought--like the idea of him dropping this piece of equipment and having it shatter on the ground was never even a possibility. "Pluuuuuus... it breaks apart!" he explains, and suddenly he's *disassembling* the gun. It does, indeed, break apart--the bulk of it is the hilt, triggering mechanism, and the refill canisters--there are six separate ones. They are surprisingly small! "See, it's actually *supposed* to be a boring restraint gun--it shoots out these big 'glops', maybe about ten or twenty to a canister, and they restrain your wrists and legs and whatever. Buuuuut... if you tighten the nozzle down to its lowest setting--you get like *hundreds* of shots from a single canister, *AND* it turns into an *AWESOME* WEB-PISTOL."
"Maaan, now I know what other people feel like when they're talkin' to /me/." He shakes his head, just watching /Peter/ happen. "So, your name is Spider? And you're not part of a biker gang. Fun." He pauses while more words spill out of the kid's mouth. "You know. there are /way/ better ways to restrain people than glops of goo. Don't think I'm comfortable helping you with that, though. I'm pretty much only pro-restraint for consensual purposes. But the other thing." He's practically pressed against the window to inspect the disassembled device. "If the canisters are that small, there's no reason for all that /cludge/ on there."
"Well I mean I might wanna restrain somebody if they're out to hurt somebody," Peter says, "but I don't think that'll be important. Not for now. Mostly I just need to climb and swing and move *fast*. Way faster than I have been. Fast enough to dodge murder-drones." Wait, what? Peter keeps going, as if the words 'murder-drones' didn't just leave his mouth. "But, uh, yeah. I don't--know a lot about mechanisms," Peter admits, and Micah may be able to *feel* the heat of Peter's blush--despite the ski-mask. "I mean, I read a lot about this stuff, but I've never *built* anything, and I remembered seeing your van around the city with that awesome guerilla wheelchair thing on the side and I was like 'whoa I bet he can build *ALL* sorts of neat stuff' and, well..."
He suddenly straightens. "I can leave all the parts with you," he says, "But... I need a jury-rigged version by tonight. Like, it doesn't have to be fancy. Maybe just one wrist--maybe just strap on one canister with some bandages and the nozzle and some sort of trigger? And, uh..."
Now, after *all* this, he finally starts acting self-conscious. "...I only have two hundred dollars. Is that enough? If not, I can totally get more! I make like, a hundred dollars a week. A hundred and fifty if you count my allowance. I can give you all of it, every week, until it's paid off...!"
Sorry, kid, that 'murder-drone' thing is not getting a free pass. It manages to interrupt Micah's gadget curiosity. His concerned and skeptical face is back. "Did you just say 'murder-drones'? Like...drones for murdering? Have you been /not/ taking some very important pills lately? Is there an emergency contact I can call for you? Maybe a parent?"
"Huh? Oh..." It is something frightening to Peter just how *quickly* he can come up with a lie. "Ooh! It's, uh, slang. For, uh, jerks. You know. Dumb jerks. They're like drones. And they murder... fun. So they're... murder drones." SWEET SAVE. "Uh, look, I'm pretty much a complete weirdo, okay? But I really, really need this. It's really important. And I bet it'll even make you famous. When people see me using this stuff and they're like 'whoa how'd you do that' I'll totally tell them 'GORILLA ASSISTIVE TECH, YO'."
"Uh...huh. Kids these days. With their slang." Hazel eyes are narrowed at Peter, obviously /not buying/ the explanation, but choosing to let it go. "Look. Obviously, you are set on this. If I don't help you, you're probably gonna go around scaring random strangers with mechanical skills half to death until someone hurts you. You leave the...uh...prototype with me. I'll come up with something. It'll take a little shopping for parts, because this ain't the kind of thing I /do/, normally. I can let you know how much the parts cost when you come back for it. I'm sure it'll be less than all that," Micah reassures, waving his hands as if to dismiss the litany of monetary concerns Peter had spilled earlier.
Another heavy sigh escapes Micah's lips, as if he's slowly deflating. "I'm gonna open the window to take the gadget. And I'm gonna give you a card with my phone number on it. That's gonna happen /calmly/. Then you are gonna /go home/. And you're gonna call me when you get there to let me know you're okay. I will call /you/ when your liquid rope thing is put together." Peter gets Micah's Serious Look. Because he totally has one. "Deal?"
"O-okay," Peter says, and he sounds a bit dejected, but the fact that Micah is actually *taking* the device is a step up, isn't it? And so Peter waits, hopping from one foot to the other--and when Micah rolls down that window, Peter's immediately hopping forward, the gun reassembled--he put it back together *really* fast!--tilting it slowly, carefully, with *infinite* care through the window--like he expected at any moment for Micah to renege on this offer and peel off into the sunset. Once it's in, he waits--with as much patience as he can muster--for that card. And once he has it, he's stuffing it in his pockets.
"Thanks," he says, and then: "I'll call you in a minute!" And then... he jumps.
...on top of the van. *CLONK*.
...and then off. Gone. Like... he just jumped from the van... to one of the buildings *surrounding* it.
Micah watches the Spider-kid.../jump/ away, shaking his head for lack of a better idea of what to do with himself. He moves to stretch, finally feeling a bit less /on edge/ than he had been for most of the exchange, but gets a twinge in his shoulder for the effort. Probably time to go back into the sling for a while. "Ugh...I can't believe I'm doing this. Either that kid is insane or /I/ am."
|
