Who: Anakin and Peter What: Peter has come to Anakin's apartment to work on his dinobot When: Now Where: Anakin's apartment Rating/Warnings: Some swearing. Status: Complete
When it came to Anakin’s home, he traded curbside appeal and gated community amenities for space. But the streets were only sketchy after dark, most of the time. And Anakin had grown up in a junkyard on two planets, it was difficult to scare him off a place.
He’d texted Peter his address and the following key details of information:
Buzz apt 3C. Once inside, ride the scary elevator to the third floor. Knock on the yellow door.
All the apartments had different colored doors, he trusted Peter to find the right one.
Peter could definitely figure out what ‘yellow door’ meant but it was the elevator that gave him pause. When Anakin said ‘scary’, Peter had laughed. Who would be afraid of an elevator? But when he saw that it was a former warehouse, he knew the tech would be terrifying.
And it was. Gingerly entering, he pulled down the safety gate and tentatively pushed a button. The sudden movement was jarring, and he was glad again that he had put all his things in a ratty old backpack. Jansport. The best in the business. Swiftly giving a prayer and deals to all the Gods he knew (which really weren’t many), before too long he was finally on solid ground again, yellow door easily seen.
Knocking on the door, he waited until Anakin let him in and wondered where the hell would he find a goat to sacrifice to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
When Anakin heard the knock on the door, using the Force, he opened without leaving the table he was working at.
The creature that greeted Peter was a baby bantha, roughly the size of a baby elephant. It trotted from side to side in excitement and anticipation for the warm welcome it was accustomed to receive from Anakin’s visitors.
The layout of Anakin’s apartment was longer than it was wide, with brick walls sectioning off alcoves and dubiously safe scaffolding hanging from the high ceiling providing additional use of space above. A few of the large windows were blocked off with particleboards - a causality to the night Anakin first used his growing Force powers in response to a particularly emotional Dream. He was slowly replacing the windows he’d broken that night.
But despite the space, or maybe because of it, Anakin had electronics and mechanical parts - half finished projects, or reject piles - covering a good portion of the flat surfaces in his apartment.
The kitchen, however, was a shrine to how much he relied on Uber Eats to keep him alive. He needed to clear off the empty food take-out containers, but that responsibility kept slipping his mind.
“Close the door when you come in,” he called out from somewhere to Peter’s left.
Peter didn’t really worry when the door magically opened since, well, Anakin probably had rigged something, but that walking ...thing? Slowly entering the room, he looked at Anakin’s pet warily as he put his backpack on the ground.
“..are you actually a mad scientist, guy? Because it’s cool if you are, like respect and all, genetic engineering seems really hard but you have seen Jurassic Park right? None of those movies ended well.”
“Huh?” Anakin said, finally leaving his project and walking around the corner of a brick wall.
“Oh, no,” he shook his head. “Biology is my worst branch of science. That’s a bantha. It’s from a different universe. I call it the Majestic Sand Beast, Majy for short. It won’t hurt you but it’s kind of slobbery.”
Peter made a face and pretended to not have his mind-blown by the ‘different universe’ comment. He was starting to realize more and more that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore, but whatever. After all, spending time on a flying diner kind of was his first hint. Or maybe it was the zombies. Whatever. Was this really the worst thing that could happen to him? Not really. “I don’t think there’s anything majestic about that thing...I mean, it’s kind of a furry marshmallow on legs. Oh! Or like a musk-ox! Those things are cool!” There was limited reading material in prison -- the encyclopedias (from 1989) were oddly informative, and since he was stuck on ‘A’, he learned along about ‘the Arctic’.
Heeding Anakin’s caution about the slobber, Peter inched his way over to Anakin before giving a shake of the head. “Kraglin is about all the animals I can handle. Never been much of a pet person..probably because that takes responsibility and crap. Nice place you have, by the way. If I didn’t think you were a millennial before, I definitely think it now.”
“What gave it away?” Anakin asked. “My birth date?” And if Peter paid attention to the Network, he would see how Anakin liked to keep a running tally of all the thing Millennials have “killed.”
Majy followed Peter, but Anakin moved to intervene. Peter clearly wasn’t interested in showing his pet in attention.
“This place might give you a pet anyways.”
This was how Anakin had ended up with Majy. One morning he woke up and Majy was there.
Anakin started towards the area he’d been working
“So what do you want to do to your dinobot?”
Peter shrugged. “Laser eyes? I don’t know.” He didn’t really. He just wanted to keep tinkering around and he thought Anakin would have cooler tools than Yondu. One eye on Majy, he opened his bag and pulled out the dinobot. Since last time, he’d repaired the damage made by an angry Yondu, and thought it looked pretty damn cool with the random metal patches. Setting it down, he reached into the bag and pulled out small fob.
“I found an old motherboard, and played around with it, so now it can walk.” Which it did, in a lumbering, unsteady way. “Again, not really sure what I’m doing with it. It just feels really good to play around with electronics. I always liked taking things apart ...used to go to the thrift store with my grandpa, buy old toasters and make them work again. Coffee machines. VCRs.” He raised an eyebrow. “That’s what us old people used to use to watch movies on.”
Anakin feigned wonder at the explanation of VCRs. “Was the world really only black and white before colored TV was invented?”
But to the actual reason for their play date-
“So over here,” he pointed at an alcove that looked like a computer graveyard. There were tables in there but it was hard to tell, the pile looked dense enough to be self-sustaining its own weight.
“You can take any part you find in here, these are for frankensteins. I’m serious, take whatever you need. This area,” Anakin gestured to another alcove - it had been where he was working when Peter arrived.
“These we don’t take apart.”
From the looks of it the difference between the two piles was more in their arbitrary designation, rather than physical description.
And, ok, the “work area” had more structure to it. Monitors and towers had just as much dust, but they seem to fit together like an electronic jenga tower at the start of the game.
“This is where we work on code and programs. Tables that way for an open surface and tools are…” mostly all over the place, but he had a few carts with tools so they could be found.
“I won’t help you make A.I.- my ethical position, but there’s a lot we can do that’s still cool and stops before self actualization.”
Peter just gave Anakin a look. “Do I seem like the kind of guy hell-bent on destroying the world with my evil robots?” He blinked a few times before slowly grinning. “You’re not wrong but I’m not that smart anyways.
Making space at the work desk, he poked around for a bit, lifting various items, scanning to see what was actually there. It was a pretty serviceable, and really did have everything he could think of.
“I’m not the best coder,” he said, putting his dinobot down. There was a stool, but he ignored it. He liked standing while he was trying to figure things out. “Maybe I should have gone to school or something, hey? I barely graduated, and only because Yondu and my granddad had some sick co-parenting routine that involved Yondu being around way more than I thought was normal.” This was said in one of those weird teasing/loving tones Peter had when he talked about Yondu. One day, he’d deal with all the emotions he had around this.
“I don’t think you’d do it on purpose,” Anakin said. “I think Yondu might try to take over the world with evil robots if he had them.”
Anakin stood across the table from Peter.
“So let’s see what you’ve got rigged up.” He could suggest parts if he knew what they were working with.
It was strange to be able to talk to someone about Yondu who actually knew Yondu and could undersatnd those nuances. It wasn’t even that Yondu was a bad guy -- he just would totally try to take over the world with evil robots. Fact. Easy. It actually made Peter like hanging out with Anakin more, just over this weird bond they both had with the older man.
Stepping back, he let Anakin look over the dinobot. Peter had already stripped off the outer layer, showing the wiring underneath. “I really want to give it wings. I think that would be hliarious. And maybe a voice.” THat would be cool. “It would be awesome if it talked in song lyrics.”
“Wings are easy, mechanics are straight forward.” He stepped away and went to the ‘mini junk yard’ in his apartment and dragged out a tote of parts. On his way back he picked up a torch, welding masks, and gloves. He dropped it on the table with a thud.
“Do you want a self-learning speech emulator or do you want to just preprogram phrases for it to speak to say at random?”
“Jesus no, I don’t want it to learn anything. I’d be the worst fucking thing for a computer program to learn speech from. I ain’t too damn edumacated, ya know what I’m sayin’?” Peter was joking. Kind of. He really didn’t want to see/hear what a computer would pick up from him. There was a good reason he was responsible for absolutely nothing. “I’d rather just teach it to swear at Yondu. Call him old when I’m not around. That’d be hilarious.”
Anakin nodded and shrugged, “The internet taught InspiroBot, and now it trash talks humanity and… or spews out morbid, gibberish disinspiration.”
He started pulling half cannibalized parts out of the tote.
“Okay… we could do that instead. Which do you want?”
Peter had never heard of InspiroBot before but he wasn’t surprised to hear any of that. Watching Anakin go through spare parts, Peter crossed his arms and thought a bit more about what he wanted. He wasn’t the best with plans, preferring to fly through the seat of his pants more than not. “That one,” he said, pointing to a lighter blue metal. “I want this thing to haunt Yondu in his dreams, so all the colours, every single one of them.” He grinned widely. “This is going to be so fucking cool.”
“Ya, we can do that.” And the truth was, Anakin wouldn’t even deny it if Yondu asked him if he helped. He was particularly apt at withstanding the ire of his elders.