fandomtownies | Stark Industries, Tuesday, Sept. 11

Entry tags:

Stark Industries, Tuesday, Sept. 11

Victor came to work carrying a baggie full of the results of his baking experiment with Sparkle. Maybe it was messed-up android taste buds, but he thought the peanut butter-pickle-sugar cookie combination was surprisingly good. Like, the kind of good that made him wonder if he could sell the recipe in stores.

To ... the kind of people who were not automatically repelled by the notion of cookies with peanut butter and pickles in them, yes. There had to be a couple of them out there.

He kept taking cookie breaks through the day as he worked to get a couple small appliances working again. Jarvis -- quite possibly repulsed by his taste in snacks -- was mercifully silent.

[OOC: Open repair shop, no OCD, want a cookie?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Right," Victor agreed. "And then you have basically a tiny nuclear reactor sitting in your kitchen, and ... probably it's better to just wait the two minutes and make toast the regular way."

Though someday he would solve the problem! Someday!

He smiled a lopsided smile, perhaps realizing toast was not the most interesting topic to discuss. "What's up with you today, anyhow?"

"Absolutely nothing. I don't have classes on Tuesdays so I figured I might come annoy you," Olive said cheerfully. "It was either this or you know, doing something productive like teaching myself some sort of useful skill, but that sounds like work. And this way I get to learn about nuclear toasters and visit you, and that's way better than pretending that I can definitely teach myself to use a crossbow or something using Youtube videos."

"Yeah, see, I know we talked about Karolina being the nicest person on the planet?" Victor said. "But that might not last if you accidentally shot a crossbow into her stuff trying to teach yourself."

It just might, though. Karolina was almost that sweet.

"And it's good you came in before I convinced myself to actually build a nuclear toaster."

"That does sound like something I'd do," Olive mused. "I shouldn't risk roomie wrath. I could practice my nonexistent crossbowing outside, but considering I nearly put Marsie's eye out with a paper plane the one time I was throwing them off the roof, that's probably not a great plan either."

That was a slight exaggeration.

"I think I'm doomed to hide if anything bad happens. People keep telling me that violent shit does, occasionally, go down here."

"Maybe go into the woods to practice?" Victor offered. "And, like, make a lot of noise so the deer know to stay away."

He believed in her abilities so hard, yes.

"And yeah, once in a while," he said reluctantly, tilting his head at her. "Has anybody said the name Umbridge to you yet?"

Olive shook her head. "I don't think so. Is that like, a hesitant-speaking crossway over water or a canyon?"

A pause.

"See what I did there?"

Yes, Olive. It wasn't especially clever.

"I saw," Victor said, and that was such a terrible joke he couldn't manage more than a smile at it. "I wish she were a talking bridge. That's be kind of cool. But actually she's this ... psycho witch who apparently ran the school in an alternate reality? And somehow her world came here for a week back in July."

See, now Olive wasn't all that interested in making desperately stupid jokes. "Okay, wait. So she came here and ran the school? How'd she get it away from the current administration?"

Alternate realities were confusing.

"No, okay, it kind of makes my head hurt," Victor said. He understood alternate realities, but that didn't make them much easier to explain.

"There are two different timelines," he said, gesturing as he spoke. "One is this one, one is where she's in charge. And one day we woke up as our equivalents in her world, and as far as we knew she'd always been in charge. No coup needed. I don't think I knew how she got control in her world to start with."

Did that make more sense? Kind of?

"Anyhow, it sucked."

Olive sort of got it, but the alternate timelines weren't really her worry at the moment. She just trusted that -- details aside, people she knew here had lived through this. "What happened?" she asked, a little more quietly than she'd been. "I mean, during that...time."

Victor kind of didn't want to tell Olive this, all of a sudden. The story made him feel less like a person, and he liked that she mostly seemed to see him as one.

"Topher reprogrammed me so I was on Umbridge's side," he said, and suddenly that toaster he'd set down was fascinating; he kept fidgeting with it. "Tony Stark fixed it, but not before I did some stuff I'm really not proud of."

He looked back to her and added, with some bitterness, "And then, you know, there was a big fight, good guys won, things went back to normal, hooray."

Olive bit the inside of her lip, studying his features carefully. She stamped down on her immediate reaction -- she wanted to find Topher and hurt him, but if it was an alternate universe, that was sort of useless, wasn't it?

That line of thinking didn't really make anything better, but it helped contain the impulse. Plus it wasn't like she was a big physical threat. She could...glare and say mean things! Ooooh.

And then there the question of how easy Victor was to reprogram, because that...sort of scared her. She kept forgetting that he was programmable and reprogrammable at all, and...yeah.

But more than anything, she just wanted to make it better, because she didn't have to be particularly perceptive to tell this was a bit of a touchy subject. And she didn't know how -- her mom or Rhiannon would have reached out to him, but she was so bad at that, so Olive just...fiddled with her coffee cup a little.

"...are you okay?" she asked softly, after a moment. "Like, now? After? It sounds like the kind of thing that, you know, sticks with you, no matter how 'normal' everything goes back to."

Edited 2012-09-11 21:27 (UTC)

Victor set the toaster down carefully, sipped at his own coffee.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah. There was a week or so of wanting to punch Topher in the face until his nose came through the other side of his head, but ... you really can't hold what people do in different timelines against them. So."

He shrugged. "You just move on, right?"

His version of moving on had included a bunch of poking at his code to try to get rid of the vulnerabilities Topher had used, but he knew hackers. No matter how safe your system was, there was always a different back door.

"I think you might be better at moving on than I am," Olive admitted, "since I would like to punch Topher for that right now until my tiny, ineffectual fists get tired, so." She was quiet for a moment, and then added, "This place is really, really good for reminding me that no matter how much things suck at home, my problems are not really life-ending. I'm sorry that happened, Victor."

"I'm really, really good at having unique problems," Victor said, still with a slightly sour tone to his voice. (Not Olive's fault; just down to his memories.)

He did his best to shake it off. "Anyhow, it wasn't actually life-ending. And if the incredibly weird last year of my life has taught me anything, it's that anything that ends without people dying can't be all that bad."

"It doesn't mean that it's easy, but yeah," Olive noted, frowning a little. "Perspective. And you know, I think...most people here probably have fairly unique problems. I mean, my last year was crappy, though yours probably wins by sheer fact of my world not being your world, even leaving aside the actual severity of problems."

She offered a little smile. "I kind of thought just being seventeen was crappy enough, you know? Doesn't seem fair."

"It's not, but there's awesome stuff to go with the unfairness?" Victor tried. "I have superpowers. I got to go to 1907. Spider-Man got sushi for me and I did not totally dork out at him .... too much. I mean, huge pieces of it have been shitty, yeah, but I bet if you'd given me the choice a year ago I would have taken this anyhow."

Which gave him some niggling guilt about his mom, but it was true even considering that.

"Who's Spider-Man?" Olive asked, because that was where she was going to start with that. Going to 1907 seemed normal enough for here, given the whole Rilla thing.

"He is a superhero," Victor said, weighing how much Olive likely wanted to know against the Wikipedia entry he could have written. "Strong, fast, beats up bad guys. He got the name 'cause there's a spiderweb on his costume and he gets around on strands of web. And he says awesome things during fights, which I always liked."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "You seriously don't have costumed heroes in your world at all?" Weiiiiiiird.

"We have guys who go to Comic Con," Olive replied, smiling and cocking her head. "But last I checked, they didn't have actual superpowers like...super-strength or anything. No one in my world has any of that. Far as I know, anyway."

Spider-Man sounded cool if not for the whole 'ew spiders' aspect. Olive was of the school of thought that dictated that if you saw one of those you made faces while gingerly putting it outside.

"I think if I told people back home that I'm friends with people with powers, they'd freak out. In a good way, mostly," she said thoughtfully.

"Would they believe it, or would they think you totally hit your head on something on your way here?" Victor asked.

"I think they'd need a demonstration," Olive said slowly. "Like, my parents for sure would play along but they'd probably secretly wonder what sort of long elaborate joke I was pulling. But they'd probably deal well, at least, if they ever visit! After the initial shock. And Rhiannon -- the cute one from my computer -- would initially think I was crazy but then play collector and try to see how many differently-gifted boys she could hook up with, just to say she had."

What a terrifying thought.

Edited 2012-09-12 02:09 (UTC)

"I wouldn't make out with somebody just because she was playing collect 'em all, but she'd probably get more than a few takers," Victor decided. "And I'd totally show off for your parents, if you wanted. I'm pretty good with parents."

"Oh, I wouldn't let Rhi near you, anyway, I promise," Olive said, and then swiftly moved on from there because really, she needed to shut up while she was ahead on that one. "But, um, what would you show my parents? You'd totally get applause out of my mom for ripping a blanket."

And Rosemary would most likely bring it up in relation to bodices when talking to Olive later, so. There was that.

"That's all it'd take?" Victor asked. "I dunno. Probably I'd zap something."

He couldn't remember if she'd seen his sparks, so he turned a palm up and let the electricity flicker around his fingertips.

"That kind of thing. And I promise I won't let Rhi trip and land on my lips." Because he wasn't letting that one go quite that easily.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject