fandomtownies | Luke's Diner; Wednesday [ 01/16 ]

Please don't ask the toaster. Or ask, and properly make fun of him.

"Hello, you!" Andrew said, walking up to the counter. He sat his notebook on the counter and glanced at the toaster. "Artistic differences?" he asked.

"Hey," A.J. said, grinning slightly as he looked up briefly from his work with a screwdriver wedged into a part of the toaster. His attention went back down and, biting his lip, he gave the screwdriver a sharp push. A tinkering sound signaled the start of something flying from the toaster, glinting slightly in the light as it soared over A.J.'s head and landed somewhere else, probably never to be seen again. A.J. blinked, frowning, rubbing the back of his neck. "Uh, I blame the toast entirely. It's between them. I just got caught in the middle."

Andrew followed the shiny object's course through the air. "Yeah, it sucks being the mediator," Andrew said, taking a seat.

"It feels weird ducking out of work for lunch. I mean, I've always brought something with me to eat and kept the store open. You've turned me into a rebel."

Edited 2008-01-16 18:43 (UTC)

"Oh, sure," A.J. grinned, rolling his eyes, "blame me for your turn toward deviancy. It was your idea, I'll remind you."

He broke off slightly with a sigh, giving the toaster a forlorn look before shoving it aside. "I'll get back to you, later," he told it before leaning forward on his arms on the counter and turning to Andrew. "What do you want? I'll get the order in now so we'll have the brain fuel ready sooner."

Andrew wasn't going to argue. It was totally his idea.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said with a grin. "Do you all do grilled cheese? And maybe some soup or something? I'll let you pick it."

"Letting me pick is dangerous," A.J. said, eyebrows lifting. "Almost as dangerous as letting me actually cook it, although grilled cheese is actually one of the things I can do. Any kind of soup? I think we have, uhh..." He took a second, looking up to the ceiling as if that would help him remember. "Chicken barley, broccoli cheese, and chili today. I think."

"I like living dangerously. Danger is my middle name. A life on the edge is the only life for me!" Andrew exclaimed, with a curt nod of his head.

"But maybe the broccoli cheese would be best because chili might mess with my sensitive stomach and the thought of barley in soup kind of weirds me out." He smiled up at A.J..

"Are you sure it's Danger," A.J. asked with a wry grin, reaching for an order pad to scribble it down, "and not 'Danger Except when it comes to Soups'? Or Danger's just maybe the abridged version?"

Andrew grabbed at his stomach and said, "I can't help it if the stomach I was born with contrasts sharply with my chosen lifestyle."

"Point taken," A.J. allowed, biting his lip for a moment as he considered what he wanted, wrote that down too, and shifted to send it back to one of the kitchen boys. "There's always a catch, isn't there? And that should be ready soon. Should we just jump right into it, you think? I actually, like, did research and stuff, on jet fuel. I'm not sure it did me any good, though, to be honest."

"You did research?" Andrew grinned. He was touched, actually. "That's so sweet. I've been reading up on this stuff all morning," he added. "I'm just worried that we're not going to be able to come up with a way to protect the wearer from the extreme heat generated by the combustion of the jet fuel."

He opened up his notebook to a page full of important looking equations and charts.

Edited 2008-01-16 19:45 (UTC)

A.J.'s face burned a little. It wasn't sweet. He was just trying to be helpful, that's all. He let out a light chuckle. "Yeah, that's pretty much the conclusion that I came to, too. I mean, you gotta think, a jet pack works because all the heat and combustion propels whatever its attached to forward, right? So I was thinking, and I don't know at all if it's even possible," A.J., too, now reached for his own sketchbook, flipping it open and trying to find his notes, "but all you'd have to do is find some way to still have that kind of force without all the, you know, burny ow oh-God-it-hurts firepower...."

"Maybe we can make like a little personal blimp that people can strap themselves into and just kind of bob around the sky," he said, frowning. "Though that kind of kills off a little of the thrill factor."

A.J.'s eyes widened a little. "Definitely kills it, yeah. We'd be better off making something that does a short release kick, like a rubber band racer, or something, that wouldn't give you hardly any flight, but it's at least fun."

"I like the way you think, Mr. A.J.," he said. "Really, there has got to be an option better than jet fuel. I wonder if compressed air would work. You probably wouldn't get a long flight time out of it, but maybe it would be enough for a good long jump of sorts."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Andrew," A.J. preened with exaggerated loftiness at the compliment before the facade faded into another grin. "Yeah, I mean, compressed air's probably going to be significantly safer and easier, and here..." He moved his sketchbook over to point something out. "I mean, I don't know if it's possible, but it's worth a try. I got this thing. Compressed air jet pack, see? And it's got these," he circled the part of the diagram he was talking out, "mechanical, clockwork wing things. I don't know why; I like the clockwork stuff. I think I want to do something with it, so that's probably why this ended up that way. Anyway. The wings, so that maybe, if, like, you got the initial boost big enough, you could catch an air drift like a glider or something, but since they're mechanical, you can just turn 'em on, yeah? And then they'll flap and you can fly. I don't know. Seems too simple to work maybe, like all those people who tried before the Wrights hit gold, but it's a really cool design if anything." He grinned a little with a rare spike of confidence. "Almost daVinci-esque."

Andrew was impressed. Really impressed. "I would hug you if I wasn't afraid you might find it awkward," he said seriously, looking closely at the design.

"Are these wings large enough to keep a person aloft? I mean, if we use the compressed air to get off the ground, we don't really have to worry about the initial lift. Are they spring driven?"

The comment about the hug earned a bit of an arched eyebrow; the only reason A.J. could think that would make it awkward would be that there was a counter between them, but whatever. He tried to pay attention to what Andrew was saying. "I guess they could be? I don't know; this is all mostly idea stuff. I haven't really gotten too much into the technicals, but a spring sounds like something that could really be good..."

"I was just thinking back to the lecture in class. Professor Ambrose seemed to think really highly of wound springs as a source of energy. And, if you need to, I guess the wearer could wind it back up while gliding. That would allow you to keep in the air longer."

Andrew was beaming. "This is so much better than jet fuel. And it has that really edgy like... steam punk quality about it. I'm thinking some oversized aviator goggles are going to be a must have in the accessory department."

"Oh, totally," A.J. said, with an approvingly critical nod at the suggestion of aviator goggles, and then broke out in a light grin. "This is better than jet fuel. I can understand gears and stuff a lot better, and besides? So much better for the enviroment."

"I know little to nothing about gears," Andrew admitted. "But I'm a quick study! Do you have any books on them? I also tend to be a very visual learner, if you have time to show me some things."

"I probably own, like, four books," A.J. commented with a grin. "I haven't had to work a lot with gears specifically, but I'm good with tinkering and I've fixed my pocket watch a few times before, too, so, I mean, yeah, definitely up to getting together and seeing what we can try to work out..."

"Great!" Andrew exclaimed. "Maybe we should hit up that junk yard place and see what kind of stuff we can find. I've never been there, but, well honestly, I don't know where else to start. Unless we order some stuff online."

"We should definitely scour the junkyard first," A.J. said with a firm nod. "So much great stuff there; we're bound to find something...."

He trailed off a little as he realized that their lunches were ready. "Oh. Hold on." Retrieving them and bringing their respective orders to the counter, he asked, "Anything to drink, before we get back into it?"

"Root beer?" Andrew asked hopefully.

And drinks were thankfully something A.J. could handle without needing to bother the kitchen staff. He got Andrew his root beer and himself an orange soda before hunkering back down at the counter, picking a fry off his own lunch and looking again between his notes and sketches and Andrew's.

Andrew readily tore into the grilled cheese, making small noises of approval with every bite.

"Have you had any inspirations other than these?" he asked after swallowing a few bites. "Not that what you've done here isn't great, but I know you wanted to come up with another idea or two of something to build."

A.J. sighed, heavily, ruefully shaking his head. "That's just the thing, man," he bemoaned slightly. "My mind for my own invention is still just a complete blank. Couldn't stop on this one; you'll find probably about ten pages of sketches in there, and then when I go to think of what I should do..."

His nose wrinkled, hands going up in a universal gesture of futility before picking up his sandwich for a bit. "'Nuffin'," he concluded through his turkey and swiss.

"What if you built something that could walk on water -- like a huge Renatra fusca," Andrew suggested. "One big enough for someone to ride on."

He took a gulp of his root beer.

"Like a huge what?" A.J. asked, chuckling and half-convinced that Andrew made that name up.

"A Renatra fusca. A water bug," he clarified. "One of those insects that scurries across the surface of the water."

Andrew grinned a little nervously. "I know weird things," he stated. "I think it was in a comic book."

"Renatra fusca," A.J. repeated, thoughtfully, as he committed the word to memory (or, at least, attempted to. He'd probably forget by morning), his head bobbing. "Cool. I don't know, I guess that could be something...I want to make something I might use a lot. I don't think I'll need to walk on water too much..."

"True. And I guess it's not terribly useful." He scratched his head. "Just give it time, epiphanies can't be forced."

He looked at A.J.'s diagrams again and shook his head. "Have I told you how much I appreciate you partnering up with me on this?"

"Yeah..." A.J. had started to mutter, scratching at the back of his neck with concern that the epiphany just wasn't going to come, but Andrew's compliment turned out to be very well timed, diminishing the worry with a light grin. "Yeah," he said. "I think you may have mentioned it. You can go ahead and borrow the book if you want, to flip through some of the designs for ideas. I mean, I've got lots of 'em and there aren't any important sketches in that particular book, so..."

"I'll be very careful with it," Andrew said, flipping over a page.

"So when do you want to hit up the junk yard? Maybe you'll find something there that will give you some inspiration."

A.J. shrugged. "Dunno; whenever's good with you should be good with me. I don't exactly have a rigorous schedule ~~and neither does the mun~~."

"Are you free tomorrow? I have like one class, but no other plans," Andrew said. "Though, they are calling for snow and ice..."

There was another light shrug. "I've got gloves. If it's read bad, we can skip it, but a little snow never hurt anyone."

"It's a plan then," Andrew said, grinning. "Should I just meet you there?"

"Sounds good," A.J. nodded, then grinned back. "I'll bring my wagon. I swear, I always find just...a crap ton of stuff every time I go there. Half of it won't use, but they're still cool."

Andrew didn't ask about the wagon, figuring he would find out tomorrow anyway. He finished up his soup, wiped his mouth with the napkin, and stood up.

"Okay, I should probably get back to work. We were surprisingly busy this morning. With my luck, Mr. Giles will stop in now while I'm out and want to know why."

Smirking, A.J. offered, "Tell him you were abducted by gelatinous giant mutant hamsters with green lasers for eyeballs for a bit, so you were a little busy."

Andrew laughed and put on his coat. "I'll do just that," he said.

"Thanks again, A.J., for lunch, for the help, for all of it." He started to head for the door.

"Hey, anytime. I'll see ya tomorrow, Andrew. Don't work too hard."

Because you can!

I kind of want toast right now. Except that I don't. I don't know. I need my coffee.

Anders: Slightly smoking toaster?

*feels oddly threatened somehow*

*chokes on cereal from all the possible images that pop into head*

Luke's Diner; Wednesday [ 01/16 ]

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