nexus_crossings | Trash or Treasure?

Trash or Treasure?

Someone's made a bit of a mess in a little out of the way corner of the main drag of the plaza. An entire picnic table has been taken up with electronic bits and bobs that sit in stacks that don't seem to make much sense to a passer by, but definitely seem as though they were organized in some manner by whoever gathered all of this junk. In front of the table a cardboard box is stuffed to the brim with wires and cords of every kind.

HDMI? USB? A weird curly cord with a plug shaped like an octopus? It's all here and then some. It's hard to know if someone's organizing a donation to a local recycling center or setting up the multiverse's strangest tech themed garage sale.

Eventually Peter shows up (don't ask where he showed up from, the kid has a habit of dropping in when you least expect it) dragging a beat up toolbox over to the table so he can start poking around at his findings. He'd thought there'd been one back at the clubhouse and was very pleased it hadn't grown legs and walked off since the last time he'd checked.

Anyone who wanders close enough to inspect or greet him gets met with the same dirt streaked grinning face.

"Hey, can you hand me that screwdriver just over there?"

[OOC: First of all, https://tinyurl.com/zz5bdme enjoy your soundtrack. Please limit tagging in to one character per person (if you'd like to do more please just ask me OOC!) so I can try to actually do a thread all the way through.]

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Peter looks like he's about to start explaining that he can absolutely be responsible with this kind of device but shuts up when it comes out that Rocket's idea of responsible is much much different than his own.

"So it's not exactly stable, then." Peter frowns. There ought to be a way to properly ensure that you'd only get a flash rather than the risk of a full scale explosion. "Couldn't you cut the power supply by about a third and re-sodder the circuitry? That would put a hard cap on just how big of a bang you'd get I'd think.."

"If you wanna limit your options, sure," Rocket says with a shrug. "Never know when you might need a little more bang for your buck. But it'd be safer, yeah."

Oh. Right. So probably a good idea for a kid like this one, then.

"Get your tools and give it a crack," he suggests with a grin.

"Oh! R-right."

Let Peter just dig around in the piles for some of the parts Rocket was showing him. He's going to end up stripping a completely different cable for the specific wires he wants before rooting around a box full of batteries and power cells looking for one that looks like it'll be about what he's looking for. This is easier said than done, as size is not a great ballpark for how much power something has in a place like the Nexus where hundreds of different tech levels are all merging together. He'll have to test out a few before he selects one out of the stack.

"Do...you often find yourself needing full scale explosions on your jobs?" The casings and powder Rocket was showing off are at least easier to identify. Now all he needs is a circuit board to play with.

Rocket’s not very good at just sitting around watching someone else work, but he also figures the kid won’t learn if Rocket does it for him. He picks up one of the more harmless gadgets to simply dismantle while he watches Peter work, keeping an eye out for anything particularly dangerous, but otherwise letting the kid figure it out for himself.

Well. Aside from occasionally making subvocal hmms and skeptical noises upon seeing which power packs he’s considering. But hey, it’s not cheating, just nudging. With noises.

“Not as often as I used to, but yeah, it’s always a possibility. Sometimes you need a hell of a distraction, or something to bluff with, or you just wanna see some asshole’s ride get blown to pieces. Or to destroy an evil brain-planet-dad guy trying to destroy everyone. It happens.” Rocket shrugs casually, as if he didn’t just say something totally bizarre.

Peter definitely gets more use out of his Int stat than Quill does, even if they do happen to share a first name. His eyes are sharp as they hunt around for the right pieces before getting to work trying to mimic Rocket's set up that he'd showed the human.

He listens a damn sight better too. Picks up on those nudges from Rocket while he's testing out the power supplies.

"That sounds.." Wait what was the last one there? Peter looks up but Rocket's already brushing it aside as though it's normal so Peter shrugs lightly and gets back to work. "Complicated. Have you spent much time in...on Earth, I mean? It's not usually so bizarre there." He hooks up a few wires and then with a soft sigh adds, "Usually."

Someone who actually listens to something that’s not blatantly hitting them over the head with how obvious it is? Yeah, Rocket likes this kid. He’ll go far.

Rocket’s hands slow their work a little, thinking of those long horrible months where it had been just him and Natasha and whoever else was hanging on by their fingernails. His ears slump a little, because even though he got his own family back... yeah, the Boss had been a good human to know, and it’s a damn shame she never got to see their victory in the end. “Little bit. ‘Bout half a year.” He leaves which half unspoken, and if Peter is half as smart as Rocket can tell he is, he shouldn’t need to say. “Spent most of my life in space, goin’ from one planet to the next for work.”

"....Right. I got a bit of the cliffs notes about what I missed." Just as little said about why Peter might have missed half a year.

He turns to his work then, willing his fingers and thoughts to focus enough to keep memories of people no longer here at bay. Some days it's still hard to get out of bed. At least he's got one of those now, again. Life's moving on little by little thanks to the sacrifice of people Peter misses every day.

"I think...I might've done it." He pipes up after a few minutes spent in silence.

Rocket's just as content to work in near-quiet, humming a little under his breath, a tune that Peter may or may not recognize, depending on what radio stations he's listened to. The raccoon lays out the components he's disassembling in front of him in neat little piles, separating power sources from wires from control switches from circuits.

He blinks when Peter speaks, bringing himself back out of his thoughts, the work almost meditative to him. "You think, or you have?" Confidence means a lot, and Rocket would know, wouldn't he?

"Well I definitely Have made something."

Peter leans back from his makeshift workstation at the picnic table so that Rocket can scoot in and inspect his work if he'd like to. Instead of fidgeting with the flashbang Peter's fidgeting with the small screwdriver he's plucked up from the table. Much safer for his nervous habit.

And their collective eyes.

"Whether it's a flashbang or not remains to be seen."

“Lemme take a look.” Rocket was going to inspect it whether Peter allowed it or not, because if this kid didn’t learn it right and blows himself up down the line somewhere, the Boss would claw her way out of the afterlife to drag Rocket back there with her. Fortunately, Peter is fully open to letting the more experienced bomb-maker take a peek, and Rocket picks up the gizmo to peer at it more closely, following the solder marks and wiring.

“Looks pretty good for a first time. You probably wanna put something physical between these two contacts,” Rocket adds, pointing out the spot he means. “It’s safe as it is, but if it gets banged around a lot before it goes off, you can get a short. Other than that, this is one perfectly fine flashbang in theory. Only way to test it for sure is to blow it up and see what happens.” He grins over at the kid.

Definitely only that reason and not that Rocket is getting soft on kids or people in general after everything they've been through. Besides, he's not wrong. Peter scoots out of the way along the bench so he can get a better look around Rocket's fuzzy body to see just what he's inspecting. Rocket's nimble and his little claws track and draw out Peter's work.

"Wher--oh. Oh, right. That makes sense." He should have thought to do that himself, really. The whole point of this was to make the device Rocket showed him safer. He's grabbing up a pencil to make a note for himself as Rocket gives him the all clear.

"Wait like, right here? Right now?" How else are you supposed to test this, Peter? He's at least got his mask he can pull on to protect his eyes a bit better. "Should you like, get a helmet or something?"

No, certainly not, how dare anyone suggest such a thing.

In any case, Rocket is enjoying being the voice of reason and authority, someone that other folks are gonna listen to. He only knows some of the tricks of the trade because he's made the same mistakes himself, but why wait for the kid to hurt himself coming to the same conclusions? Stupid, that's what it is. Better to point it out early and make sure he's not forming sloppy habits.

"Why not right here?" Rocket counters with a grin. "Unless you wanna take it further out, away from folks first. But ain't no better way to make sure you've made a flashbang and not a pipe bomb." He fishes in a pocket to pull out his goggles, placing them over his eyes. Not much he can do about the ears except put his hands over them, which he'll do once Peter is ready to set the device to blow.

Something about Rocket's fangy grin does not inspire reassurance in Peter at all but the raccoon does in fact have a point. It's better to test out here away from others before he goes and tries using something like this on a mugger with a gun or something. He doesn't want to hurt folks more than he absolutely has to.

There's enough of that out in the world as is.

"R..right. Stand back..." Mask on and standing a good ways back with Rocket, Peter triggers it. It's like standing far too close to a firework with the resounding BANG! that belts across the air.

Rocket's cackling is probably what Peter will hear first, once the ringing fades from the blast. The raccoon's fur is standing on end a little, but he's rubbing his hands together in satisfaction, scampering forward to pick up the bulk of what's left to make sure there's nothing more volatile lurking in the wings. "Not bad, not bad. That'd give most folks one hell of a spook."

Peter jumps a good several inches when the flashbang goes off and he's not going to be the only one. It was loud enough to startle people a ways off and while no one's going to be hurt soon enough Peter's going to have to start apologizing in a voice far louder than it needs to be as he tries to talk over his own ringing ears.

He handles calming down The Masses while Rocket busies himself with digging through the remains of the bomb Peter's made.

"It gave me a spook, are you kidding me?!" Peter looks over his shoulder toward Rocket, his mask once more stuffed into his back pocket to hide it from general view as yet another Adult comes over to lecture him on his horsing around in the Plaza.

Oh no oh jeez.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare anyone I'll clean this up right away--"

"Relax, you knew it was comin'." Rocket waves vaguely without turning around or looking up, grinning in satisfaction as he finishes his inspection. No more volatiles, excellent.

Sounds of someone else that isn't just the kid gets his attention though, and Rocket turns around. "It's fine, no harm done. He's with me." Not that most folks tend to view Rocket as a responsible adult - either one of the two - but confidence is key, right?

Rocket turning around means he's going to see the disbelieving look being leveled his way before the man turns it back on Peter as though he'd best explain himself and well right now. But all Peter does is swallow and give a tiny shrug.

"Y...Yeah. He's right, I'm with him. Studying." It's not a lie! He's learning!

"It's practical science," Rocket all but shouts, following Peter's lead. And honestly, what does this dude expect them to do, the bomb's already exploded. They can't unexplode it. ~~Or can they?~~

Ignoring the stranger who has so rudely butted into their very important experiment, Rocket looks back to Peter as if the other guy isn't even there. "You did good. That's exactly how it shoulda gone."

"It's engineering work, for demolitions." Peter nods along, and while the man giving Peter the no-nonsense look doesn't seem overly impressed by the talking raccoon he does seem to realize that he's not going to get anywhere with a lecture.

He throws his hands up with a sigh before wandering off when Rocket completely ignores him. Sure, let's not question people setting off explosives in the Nexus. What's the worst that could happen?

Peter though? He's got a cautious grin growing on his face.

"Yeah? I mean, once I get the hang of it I think it could be a pretty useful thing to have." He's going to have to draw himself out a diagram with everything Rocket showed him before he forgets the instructions.

This is perfect. Rocket's been dying to teach a new generation how to be troublemakers, and since up until now Groot has shown a disinterest in the finer details of explosives, he's been left bereft of a good apprentice. Peter, though... that look on his face says it all. Oh yeah, this is gonna be a good partnership.

"Damn right it will. Hell, once you get used to what you're doin', you might even come up with some new and exciting way to blow stuff up," the raccoon chuckles. "Just run 'em by old Rocket first, huh? I don't want you gettin' hurt." And also so he can mooch off the kid's designs, if he comes up with something spicy.

Peter doesn't know about actual honest to god demolitions grade explosives being incorporated into his work, but flashbangs and other kinds of disorienting things that don't hurt folks permanently or much at all are most definitely going to be something he looks into further.

"Well, I don't have a lot to work with, so I've had to get creative with what I can find lying around." A humie after Rocket's own tiny heart. Kid's a scavenger too. "I'll be sure to let you know."

"Creativity's the most important tool you can have," Rocket assures him with a grin. "You talk to some of them military types, they know how to make somethin' to spec but they're missing one piece, they can't finish. If you know how things work, and what crap you can cobble together to make a big boom, you'll never be unarmed."

That's the most important lesson to take from this, he feels. Whatever else Peter learns from this is a bonus. And Rocket can't wait to see what he does with it down the line.

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Trash or Treasure?

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