Participants:
| Scene Title | Everyone Wants to be Peter Parker (Alternatively: Like the Illuminati.. but with pizza?) |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Linus and Magnes meet up in a comic shop, discuss being heroes, and Linus temporarily fills Magnes with envy. |
| Date | February 4, 2010 |
Comic Shop
Later in the morning, Magnes finds himself sitting in a small comic shop in Brooklyn, near his residence of Panucci's Pizza. He's wearing the same clothes as the night before, his Spider-Man symbol shirt and such, except now the shirt smells a lot like perfume. He really needs to buy some new shirts.
He's mostly just hanging out, having a stack of trade paperbacks in front of him, playing Pokemon Pearl on his DS. His blind left eye is the one facing the door, so he doesn't immediately see anyone coming in, though his head bandages is finally removed… not from Linus hitting him, but from getting hit in the head with a baseball bat.
Linus got hit with a baseball bat once, so he knows how that goes.. although that was sometime in middle school. Hey, kids are jerks, right? Now that the sun is back in the sky, feeling rejuvinated, Linus decided it's time to pick up his pull list at the local shop. He wanders in, heading towards the counter - he doesn't notice Magnes right away, his attention focused on something else. He's not wearing the same clothes, though it's pretty close. The jeans are probably the same, but he's got on a Star Trek hoodie, plain black with a communicator design on the front and 'Live Long and Prosper' on the back in white, stylized letters.
"I wish I could play Tetris, but it's too tempting to try and move the bricks with gravity. That's how I messed up my last DS." Magnes mutters to himself, though looks over when he hears the door open. "Hey, you're that guy! What are you doing in a comic shop?" he asks, raising an eyebrow as he saves and closes his game.
Slowly turns around as he hears someone talking to him, placing a hand on the counter for balance as he does. His brow is raised curiously at the other man, until recollection comes over him. "Oh. From last night." He looks around at the store at the question. "Uh.. buying.. comics?"
Linus slowly turns around as he hears someone talking to him, placing a hand on the counter for balance as he does. His brow is raised curiously at the other man, until recollection comes over him. "Oh. From last night." He looks around at the store at the question. "Uh.. buying.. comics?" He clears his throat, looking at Magnes rather intently, double checking to make sure the owner isn't around just yet. "About.. last night, don't mention it, alright? Like, ever."
"Don't worry, I won't. And uh, sorry about the gun. I was a cop for a few months before I resigned for school. Now I just sort of carry one around. Dangerous city, y'know?" So now everyone knows where Magnes stands on gun control laws. He motions over to a chair for Linus to sit next to him, plenty of boxes of comics on and under the table to look through anyway. "Uh, about that woman, the one who wanted to make out with you? She's into drugs. You should keep that in mind if you meet her again."
Considering the manager must be busy or something, Linus shrugs and walks over to the offered chair, slumping down into it. He stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his hoodie, yawning a bit. "Oh, she didn't really want to make out with me anyway. See, I think she got freaked out by something and needed an excuse to get out of there. So, uh, I gave her one." He grins. "Wasn't an accident.. I can control it pretty good now anyway. But thanks for the warning. You said your name was Magnes, right?"
"Oh, well, Old Lucy's is definitely not the place to make everyone jumpy. And you should be careful about what you do in public, you might end up banned from a country. And then there's Humanis First, they could be anywhere." Magnes looks back for the owner, still not seeing him, but Magnes is a regular and of course isn't gonna let anyone steal anything. "The manager here is cool, he knows about me and all. So, what can you do? I wanna see it."
"You didn't see it last night? Well, I tried to make it brief. I just wanted to make it loud. I didn't realize there'd be an army in there ready to pull arms on bottle exploding." Linus double checks again just to be absolutely sure nobody else is in the store before he pulls out an old receipt from his wallet, crumbles it into a ball, throws it in the air.. takes aim, and zaps it with a beam of bright, hot light. "Uh, you read X-Men, right? I'm sort of like Alex Summers. I absorb solar energy, and shoot it." He raises a brow. "Humanis First?" Clearly, out of the loop.
"Yeah, you know, real world equivalent of Friends of Humanity?" Magnes seems impressed when he watches the ultraviolet light zap the piece of paper, then rubs his chin in thought. "Does your ability have any force behind it? Like, weight? You think it's affected by gravity? I kind of want to experiment, but I don't wanna blow the store up… think we could go on the roof?"
"Uh.. I haven't really.. played around with it, too much. I'm not even registered. I've read too many X-Men issues to just up and shout that I'm a mutant, or Evolved, or whatever." He blinks. "The /roof/? Everyone would see us!" He puts his hand back in his hoodie pocket. ".. As far as I know, it doesn't have any force or weight, no. It's just like ultraviolet rays.. intense heat, mostly, very quick and sudden." He hesitates. "I once blew a hole in the side of a car."
"I don't think I'm strong enough to bend light." Magnes raises a hand to cause a stack of books to ascend, then lower back to the table. "I control gravity myself. I only registered when I tried to be a cop. I guess that was kind of a waste. I'm totally over the hero thing. Everyone who wants to save the world seems to be full of nothing but sadness and sacrifices. No one seems to think it's possible to just, like, be the JLA and have normal lives while doing good things." Disillusionment rears its ugly head, and he simply frowns a bit.
"Yeah, I don't even think Graviton could bend /light/." He watches the books go up and down, nodding. "See, that's cool. I just wish I got something simple, you know? Like.. I don't know, Cypher's power." He sighs. "No, I'm a living solar battery. How flashy can you get?" He looks outside the store at people walking past. "Good thing we don't have any Superman's out there, you know? Well, actually, that'd be pretty cool. But then we'd have Lex Luthors. I think it would just escalate. Small scale.. cool. Big scale.. not so cool." He looks back at you, laughing. "So everybody wants to be Peter Parker, oh woe is me, blah blah, instead of being Hawkeye? Shame."
"I can feign super strength and fly around, but no lasers or super speed, and I still get the crap kicked out of me. And trust me, there's definitely a Lex Luthor, but luckily I've never met the guy." Magnes nods at the conclusion that everyone wants to be Parker, sliding the DS into his pocket to pick up a Robin paperback. "I tried to start a group before, but no one believed in it. I have a speedster who'd help for money, but… I don't know, you think there's really a place in the world for optimistic guys like us? Y'know, guys who think they can be heroes without being edited by Joe Quesada?"
"Yeah, sure. Why not? Hell, I'm sure they're out there. I'll tell you one thing, though. I'm not cut out for it. I couldn't defeat a rabbit, Evolved ability or not. I mean, maybe with training.. but.. I don't know, I'm pretty much a coward." He frowns at that self revelation. "I just try to be a normal guy. I go to work, I do my thing, I try not to even think about things like this."
"Last year I was basically a pizza boy, then I went on a hell of a journey. I've had and seen friends die, I've been trained by mentors, time travelled, had an epic battle in the middle of a city; that Tokyo thing was me. A year of living this life, well, it thrusts you into being cut out for it. But…" Magnes shakes his head, still keeping his nose very much buried into his comic. "Above all else, it's the loss that gets me. My girlfriend, she lost her memories, permanently, and well, now she's not my girlfriend, so I guess you can figure that out. Five of the best months of my life, gone because my girlfriend wanted to save the world. There's so many ways we can save the world, ways that don't involve… so much loss, y'know?"
Linus whistles at the list of events, accomplishments, tragedies.. things bigger than his britches. "I'm not saying that there aren't ways to save the world, even ways to do it with nobody getting hurt. I'm just saying.. it's not my responsibility. I'm not Peter Parker, I'm not even Aunt May. I'm Linus Agron. I test video games for a living. That's all! Leave the world saving to the military and the government. They've been screwing it up for hundreds of years, I don't see why it should change now just because some people can shoot laser beams out of their eyes."
"You're probably right. If I've learned anything, it's that I just wanna live life. I miss Claire to death, but I have Delilah there for me. I have my friends and a scholarship to whatever college I wanna go to, starting a band with my friend Sable." There's a pause, and Magnes' eyes widen as he turns to peer at Linus. "Alright, forget the hot girl, the magic scholarship, and even the flying, I wanna test video games!"
"Well, drop out of MIT in your third year and be amazingly good with computers? Or get lucky, I guess." He laughs. "It really is not that glamorous. You think it is, but it isn't. You play the same stupid level over, a hundred times a day, writing reports on everything. It's monotonous and mind-boggingly /boring/. Sure, you get to play stuff in advance, but it all changes before the release anyway. And you get tired of it, fast." He grins, picking up the latest Siege issue. "But, I could probably get you a job interview. If you want."
"Well when you put it that way… I think I'll keep the girl, the scholarship, and the flying…" Magnes laughs and looks back to his book, the manager coming from the basement with an old box of Heroclix to sit them on the table, giving the two a nod before going right back downstairs. "I'm more of a comic geek than a game geek anyway. You should meet my friend Kendall. We could all do something, like start some sort of group, or a secret society, y'know? We could have nachos and rent Blockbuster videos."
"Yeah, flying does sound pretty cool.. maybe I could learn to expel this energy from my feet.. but.. no force behind it. I'd just melt whatever I was standing on." He frowns, but looks up as the manager comes up from the basement and sets down the box. "Whoa, heroclix. I haven't played this in ages. I thought it died out?" He reaches out to pick one up, setting down the comic he was holding. "Never seen this one before. Pretty cool." He waits for the manager to be well out of earshot before talking serious again. "What, like the Illuminati.. with pizza?"
"I hate things that don't have gravity, because that means I can't do anything about them. And by the way, gravity can bend light, but that kind of force is way out of my league." Magnes sits his comic down as well, starting to dig through the box himself. "I think he's cleaning out the basement because no one really plays with these things anymore. And yeah, illuminati with pizza. We'll discuss the inner goings on with the city. We could be like the Avengers, except we do things quiet, y'know?"
"I don't know, man. I'm not really cut out for that. I'm barely suited to be Jarvis, let alone a superhero." He sets one of the Heroclix down on the table, pointing his finger at it. "I've got no trouble melting this thing into a pool of rubber and plastic," He zaps it with that same bright heat. "But if things get heavy, I freak out. Like you saw last night. I ran like a girl. Sure, I could have melted the guns or something, but do I think like that? No. It's not how I'm wired."
"You don't have to be a superhero, y'know. You can just be a thinker. And before I got good with my ability, all I could do is walk on walls and jump really high. You saw that really hot southern bartender with the brown hair? Or maybe it was red. But anyway, I used to have a huge crush on her, hell, I'll always have a bit of a crush on her, but she used to kiss me sometimes, and it made me float. That's how I started practicing my ability. She'd kiss me, then tell me to remember the feeling, and then I floated. That's how I fly, I remember the feeling of her kissing me. Doing the most unlikely things, even if it's just kissing someone, can save the world."
"Alright, alright, you don't need to twist my arm. I'm not saying no, I'm just saying I'm not really sure about it. I'm not opposed to hanging out, just don't go dragging me off to save the world with you." He wipes off the melted figure into his hand, dumping it into the trash. "Yeah, she was pretty hot. So.. I'm going to get my pull box out and pay for 'em when he gets back up here. I'll give you my number, just give me a call or something. I've got a pretty sweet set up at my apartment. Hi def television, gaming heaven."
"I didn't even think of buying one of those yet, my apartment is so small, plus my roommate's kind of, well, she might break something." Magnes shrugs, then smiles and reaches into his zipped up inner jacket pocket for his iPhone, handing it over for the number to be entered. "I've been dragged off to save the world too many times to drag someone else into it when they don't want to."