nexus_crossings | Time for a big ol' Nexus Block party

Time for a big ol' Nexus Block party

On a sleepy summer morning a wonderful smell begins to waft throughout the Nexus. For those familiar with this place there can only be one explanation but for those new faces to the nexus this may be a strange thing: seeing so many people flocking toward the sweet and savory scents perfuming the Nexus.

There are a few tables set out this morning in the Plaza in front of a small cafe loaded with several carafes of coffee, a myriad of pastries from more than a few different worlds and cultures, and a large pan of eggs and sausage kept warm over a chafing dish. On either end of the table are disposable plates, cups, and cutlery as well as a few welcome pamphlets in a small container. Along the front of the tables is a hand made banner.

Meet and Greet

Manning the tables is Katsuya Suou, red apron on and a cup of coffee in hand. He looks far too cheerful for how early in the morning it is. It's always satisfying to put one of these on and see the throngs of different people stuck in line together to get their food and find a place to sit among the tables and couches nearby.

"Right then, is anyone hungry? I've got more than enough here for everyone so please mingle among yourselves or feel free to ask me anything you'd like."

((OOC: This thread is ALL ABOUT threadjacking and hopping. I encourage folks to tag on each other's comments and mingle rather than to reply only to me. This is a huge opportunity to have your characters interact with people they wouldn't have talked to before. Branch out! Meet new people! Scheme new schemes! Steal the last chocolate croissant!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Blaze is on her way back to a good vantage point, and too concerned with not running people down (this time) to be picky about where she looks, which isn't terribly feasible in this sort of crowd anyway. Ghost's hovering practically over her head to stay out of the way when she casts a glance that takes in the kid on the couch she's passing. The boy looks like a Hunter perched up there with too-full hands.

Maybe it's a kid thing? Tina sure likes to sit on the highest spot - or person - she can get to.

"Take it easy, kid. You don't have to swallow it whole, it ain't gonna disappear."

"I know buh--!!!?!"

Excuse Peter, because he tips forward and has to cough violently from trying to breathe in his burrito instead of consuming it the way normal biologicals do because holy SHIT a robot lady! Not like a suit either, though yeah she's wearing gear and armor. His gasp was mistimed though and now he's drinking desperately to try and get hismelf under control.

Whew.

How completely uncool.

"Owww. I was gonna say I know but I wanted to finish so I could get seconds because some of those pastries look super delicious you know? But thaaaaat is suddenly not as important right now." He scrambles to get down so he can approach Blaze. There's stars in his eyes damn near.

"Please please tell me that's not a costume."

"Hey, are you all right?" She wasn't expecting the guy to choke. Blaze has wheeled around to check on him, but he's talking all right, sliding off the couch and peering up at her just as Ghost peers over her shoulder.

She blinks back at Peter, then laughs and taps her cheek. "What, this? It's my real face, I promise. I'm an Exo. There's a whole lot of us where I'm from."

"Oh my god that is so cool. I know about plenty of people with suits that Look robotic, like Iron Man and stuff but I've never seen a for real robot lady before! Or man, actually. Never seen a robot Person, more like. But wait, you said you were a What? An Exo? That's so neat and oh my god is that your friend?"

Peter waves at Ghost with the same gleeful wide smile he'd turned Blaze's way.

"I'm Peter, by the way. Peter Parker."

Blaze lets him talk, and if both she and Ghost blink at the name he drops, it doesn't break her amused air. This kid may not be the first person to get an obvious kick out of meeting a robot, but he's definitely the most excited yet and it's endearing. It feels strange to meet someone who's so happy just to see you, but Blaze thinks it's a good kind of strange. It's one of the occasional pleasures of being in the Nexus.

Actually, she kind of has the same reaction to alien creatures who don't want to attack her.

She offers a hand. "Good to meet you, Peter. I'm Blaze-37, and this is Ghost. He's, uh, a Ghost. My friend and my partner." There's a little 'hi' from Ghost as he drifts down closer, probably for the the same reason Blaze tilts her head and asks, "So you know Stark?"

"You know Mister Stark?!"

If Blaze thought that Peter looked excited to talk to her he's practically vibrating with energy now at the mere mention of Tony Stark. He's shaking Blaze's hand and not even paying attention even a little to things like volume control or his own expression.

"Yeah, he, uh, helped us out with some repairs not long ago. I guess we don't know him very well, but he's a good man." Whatever he occasionally seems to think. And even if he's deeply confused about who else is a good man. Deeply, distressingly confused.

"Are you a... friend of his?" Ghost asks as Blaze releases her careful grip on the kid. He's a little puzzled. Granted his information on Stark's personal life is limited, but Tony doesn't exactly present himself as a kid person.

"I'm--"

You did not think this through even a little bit, Peter. He shuts his mouth so quickly there's an audible clack and stutters a couple of times before trying again.

"I mean sorta but n-not really no. I uh...I kinda sorta..interned under him. For a while. He gave me a chance to apply myself and so you know obviously I was gonna go all out on it you know?"

On the upside, they have no idea about the things he's actually trying to hide. They're just worried (Ghost in particular) that this means there's a friend of Stark's about who might find out just who else they're keeping company with and spill the beans.

No offense, Peter, but based on the last two minutes you're really good at that. At least from their perspective.

"Hah, I like your attitude. I get it. You've got a head for engineering, huh? What kind of projects do you get up to?"

They have no idea. But they're also not wrong. It's incredibly difficult for a guy this socially awkward already who talks this much to keep his secrets well. Luckily it's easy to just embarrass himself and deal with temporary humiliation if it gets him out of hotter water on fronts he cares about more.

"Oh-! Well, I'm uh. I've been trying to figure out how PINpoints work for one thing. I took one apart and put it back together again and it still works for things like pens and fruit and the like. Haven't got the nerve up to try it on myself yet but i'm pretty sure it's working right."

"Yeah?" Her mouth doesn't move, but she sure sounds like she's grinning. "I could test that for you. A little disintegration won't bother me so much. Worst-case scenario, Ghost'll pull me right back together."

"Not every test run has to involve physical harm, you know."

Peter can grin enough for the both of them, worry not Blaze. That big ol' grin he had on his face when he first spied the Exo and her hovering companion is back with a vengeance. He's nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement to have someone it would be (relatively) safe to test this out on.

"I mean, if you wanted to? That'd be really cool of you actually but I don't want to like accidentally hurt anyone." He's been really careful in setting up his tests so far but there's not a whole lot more he can do before trying it out on himself. It just seems wrong to test it on someone else before he puts his own skin on the line.

"It'll be fine. You have it with you? All I'm doing right now is hanging around waiting for trouble. Besides, I'm the best test subject you'll ever get." She jerks her thumb at Ghost. "If I come out the other side with so much as a circuit out of place, he'll be able to tell."

"That's true. I would like to see if it works too." The little bot is starting to pick up some of their enthusiasm. He's spent so much time lately trying to rein his Guardian back, it's nice to completely agree on a plan, no matter how small.

"No, but I keep my stuff nearby on the wall of lockers over by the vending machines. It won't take long to go get. C'mon!"

With both bots eagerly in agreement with the plan now Peter's even getting excited. He's all but jogging away from the party back out to the fringe of the plaza where a row of feather covered (and bird dropping encrusted) vending machines lives. He pulls out a key and unlocks one of the lockers on the adjacent wall and pulls out his backpack before closing up and turning toward one of the lesser traveled paths.

Once they're a ways off the beaten path he pulls out the rebuilt PINpoint from one of the front pockets and starts poking at the settings on it.

"So I've got two sets of coordinates saved on this thing. One on each side of this street. First one's by that tree and the second one's in front of that bench. I've been sending a bunch of inorganic material through and yesterday moved up to fruits. Both seem to have come through alright, so I think it's fixed."

So Natasha's monitoring the party and Steve's covering the party and that's not counting Katsuya and Jesse and Holland and all the other tough customers mingling in the still-harmless party. Blaze only considers that justification after she's followed Peter out and across the plaza, mind you. But the cafe is surely safe ~~today~~.

Anyway, this is important. She keeps up with Peter in brisk strikes, Ghost only darting ahead once to peep at the boy's locker.

"No imploding fruit, huh? Sounds safe enough to me." Peter has a bot looking over each shoulder before Blaze taps him on the shoulder. "Let's do it."

That's alright Peter has a super hero's number in his phone. If things get dicey he has help they can call on to back Blaze up! While he, of course, stays out of danger like a safe and responsible child should. Obviously.

No electronic lock, Ghost. There will be no breaking and entering that way for these things. It's a good old fashioned lock and key, though Peter does have a Starktech logo patch amateurishly applied to his backpack. The bag seems kinda full but hey he's a student. He's probably got his homework in there. Probably definitely even.

The kid scientist gives both bots a grin with a turn of his head before handing over the PINpoint to Blaze.

"Give them both a shot, and let me know if it feels okay."

With a flicker of blue light, Ghost sweeps a scan over Blaze. "Ready."

"All right, first set of co-ordinates." She steps clear of the others and holds up the PINpoint. There's a flash- and she reappears beneath the tree, apparently no worse for wear as she gives them a wave. Only... something seems a bit off. Are her antennae angling the wrong way...?

"Uh-oh." Ghost sounds dismayed, and he flies straight over to scan his Guardian again, check nothing more is out of place. "Do you feel all right?"

"Fine, why- uh." Blaze tilts her head, trying instinctively to see what's in her peripheral vision. She reaches up, fingers tracing along the flipped angles of her antennae, and realization dawns. "Ah, hell."

Uh oh indeed.

Peter doesn't notice at first until Ghost hovers about at the Exo's eye level, his eyes widening when he sees what's happened. If that was someone's fleshy organic body would their ears be backward right now? Something even more vital??? He feels his stomach drop slightly.

"Can...I mean, is it something you can fix?" He's reaching up for the PINpoint in her hand quickly. "Oh jeez, I...I can fix the PINpoint I think. Must be something off in the calibrations. Oh man..."

"I can fix it. That's all right." Once his scan is complete, Ghost's unconcerned enough that he's flying down to look at the PINpoint with Peter instead. Blaze hands it over easily, quite preoccupied with reaching up to run her hands over the reversed appendages.

"This is weird."

"It might be something simple. Let's take another look."

"It doesn't hurt does it?"

Peter's sure as heck worried about the Exo but when she waves it off and says it's fine just weird he nods before rummaging through his backpack (is that a red teeshirt in there Ghost? Must be but weird material) before pulling out a small eyeglasses screwdriver kit and pulling the PINpoint back apart. He thought he triple checked everything was reconnected properly to the pictures he took and sure enough it's all there good and proper like.

"Maybe I didn't program it right...?" He scratches at his head once the PINpoint is all closed up again so he can turn it on and open up the diagnostics menu.

Edited 2018-09-05 00:50 (UTC)

"Nah, actually I don't feel much from 'em. Circuits must be screwy..."

Perhaps one of the parts he reconnected didn't quite calibrate properly? PINpoints are usually very good at reading the people they transport and making sure they arrive with everything in the right place. But if it got a little confused about that...

"Can I help?" Ghost asks, hovering literally over Peter's shoulder. "Your reassembly looks fine. It must be something in the system..."

"Uh, Ghost?"

"Just a minute, Guardian." She's fine. This is important.

"Oh, uh sure."

The little bot doesn't look like he's got any tiny hands or anything that will be able to hold onto the PINpoint so Peter shifts his grip on the device and holds it up with his hand carefully not blocking the screen so Ghost can take a look at the device.

"Let me know if you need me to hit anything. Or however you uhm. Interface. With other systems."

He's trying not to stare too hard at Blaze's antennae. He feels real bad about it even if it's not that big of a deal. If it had been himself, he keeps saying. How much worse could this have been?

"Hold it right there, please." Ghost sweeps a scan over it, and in a moment it's clear he's projecting more than blue light, as the PINpoint's little screen begins to cycle through information. "

Co-ordinate translation, physical detection, entity differentiation... hmm... oh! Maybe this is it! I think this calibration for the physical translation matrix didn't reinitialize properly...

Blaze will let him carry on talking Peter through the problem: she's listening, but this is verging on more technical than even the robot soldier is interested in. She's not exactly standing around waiting, either: she's pulled out her own PINpoint to get a selfie or three.

Just because she wants to see, of course.

"Blaze, hold still. I'll fix you and we can try this again."

"Sure." Peter's got a pretty steady grip all things considered. Balance is kind of something he's good at. Much more useful than things like common sense in the grand scheme of things, right? Hopefully because only one of those is a power he actually has. "Well, that would do it. If that was off there'd be no way of making sure everything that makes up 'you' would be anywhere near the right orientation on atom reintegration. I'm...kind of surprised it wasn't worse."

Also? Incredibly glad he didn't test it out on himself like he'd been planning on doing. Lesson learned, Parker.

"You fix her, I'll reset the coordinates so we can try this again."

"Exos are pretty good at working with our internals messed around," Blaze says cheerfully, holding still for Ghost.

"...It was a very small error, luckily." Ghost refrains from sighing. A flash of rematerialization, and Blaze is in the same place with everything oriented correctly. She feels at her antennae, then nods approval and strides clear of the arrival point.

"All right, we ready for round two?"

Time for a big ol' Nexus Block party

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Writing Peter makes Me winded

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I don't have an appropriate zomg icon

Ghost is now slightly worried he'll vibrate all the way into another dimension

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The fact he's played by Tom Holland doesn't help this assumption

It's like natural camouflage!

Did someone say science?! Moira not you.

Everyone out of the way we're gonna do SCIENCE

Beep Boop coming through

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time for science mishaps

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