what's up space girl [for chiron_survivor]

[super_cool]

After parting ways with Adia, the dazed cop headed towards the Shopping District to find a motel. Freddy remembers the walk as a series of sidewalks and brightly lit stores passing by in a blur, viewed through hazy tunnel vision. The next thing he recalls with any real clarity is wandering into the lobby of an old and slightly dilapidated building marked HOTEL with a flickering neon sign.

Since then, it’s been slightly reminiscent of when he first moved to LA-- only a lot weirder, and experienced from under the shadow of everything that went down with the heist and in the warehouse. He has no job, no friends, few acquaintances, and so most of his time is spent either alone in his hotel room or wandering the Nexus.

Today, he’s in his room. Adia’s contact information is on the coffee table, next to a bag with the laundered clothes that he still plans on returning to her. He keeps meaning to send her a text message, since that seems to be the preferred mode of communication, and today he actually does:

yo, adia. it’s freddy. what’s up? i have your clothes ready. text me next time you’re in the nexus, and we can meet up.

Comments

[super_cool]

It’s not her fault. He’d been willing to answer whatever questions she asked, an open book, up until he wasn’t.

When Bucky’s head swivels, Freddy simultaneously leans back on the bench, as far away from Adia and Bucky as he can. Quick startle reflexes on this one. And he had those before the gunshot trauma, too.

He’ll wait until the giant bird relaxes before scrambling to sit back up. The change in topic does seem to have been a safe one, as Freddy suddenly seems cheerful again.

“Well, I haven’t seen the Silver Surfer yet, which is too bad because this place would be perfect for him. His story, some of it anyway, is that he’s trapped on a planet far away from home, and the people there shun him because he’s different. Normally, he’d just hop on his board and fly the fuck outta there back into space, but he can’t on account of a barrier that's been put up. So he’s always looking for some other way out.”

[chiron_survivor]

Is it possible for a bird to smirk? Bucky seems rather pleased with Freddy's reaction, but he settles down all the same.

Adia listens with a small smile, her shoulders relaxing. If Freddy is still going to go to the trouble of cheering her up, especially after their awkward conversation, the least she can do is try. "I've never heard of him," she admits. Although if he is stuck on some faraway planet, it makes sense that he wouldn't have shown up in the Nexus. "How is he different? I'm guessing it's not because he likes to surf?"

[super_cool]

It’s actually Earth that he’s stuck on, but that word is not getting mentioned. “I grew up around surfers. Trust me, he’s way too good for them. He’s different because he’s the sky-rider of the spaceways. He surfs the skies, and the cosmos.

“Oh, and he’s, like, literally made out of silver because his molecules got all rearranged when he got the power cosmic. You’ve never seen someone like that here?”

He figures that Adia's staying because she needs a distraction, so he'll keep talking. And he'll get to the superheros that actually are in the Nexus in a bit.

[chiron_survivor]

Good call on not mentioning Earth. She's already struck by the parallels of a misfit who can't return home. "No, never. And if he's made of silver then he'd be especially hard to miss... what makes him a superhero? Does he fight aliens?"

Resting against the back of the bench, she's in no rush to return to her ship and the sad, somber mood that hangs over everyone. And if Jim decides to text her back, to ask for more details about Freddy's encounter with Felix, she'd like to be in the Nexus for that, too.

[super_cool]

WELL, since she asked:

“Hell yeah he fights aliens. He also saved his home planet, Zenn-La, from Galactus. While everyone else was losing their shit, he went by himself to meet with Galactus and was able to convince him not to eat Zenn-La. But in exchange, he had to leave it forever to serve as Galactus’ herald. His life got all fucked up after that, but he still has hope.”

The pathos of the Silver Surfer, Marvel's lonely and melodramatic hero. In addition to fairy tales of romance and found-family like the Fantastic Four, Freddy's drawn toward the weirder sections of Marvel's canon, where the Surfer fits.

[chiron_survivor]

Adia's closest brush with Marvel is being friends with Steve Rogers. But she can sort of understand the appeal of the Silver Surfer, especially for someone who's never been to space. All the same, his origin story has her raising her eyebrows a little in surprise. "Galactus tried to eat his planet? Do you mean that literally?"

[super_cool]

"With ketchup and a side of fries."

Comic books are dumb. They're so dumb. Telling her how Galactus actually uses a machine to convert planets into energy that he feeds off of in order to survive isn't going to sound any less dumb.

[chiron_survivor]

This time around, she's better prepared for Freddy's dry humor. Anything can happen in comic books, but that sounds a little far-fetched. A machine that converted planets into energy would have made more sense to her.

"We don't have anything like that in our comic books. Oh, but... have you heard of Odysseus? He was lost on his way home from a war for twenty years. He wasn't a surfer, but he did sail a ship, and he had all sorts of adventures." She frowns thoughtfully. "I have met a few people who are fictional in my world. Or, at least, from long-ago myth. I can't imagine what it'd be like to meet someone from a comic book or a movie."

[super_cool]

“Odysseus?” That’s a familiar name. “He’s the one who fights a cyclops, but the cyclops thinks his name is Nobody, right?” He hasn’t actually read The Odyssey, but he did pay attention during school.

“That’s from a really long time ago, even for me. When you say long-ago myths, do you mean like the ancient Greek ones?”

Freddy used to spend a lot of time imagining what it’d be like to hang out with movie and comic book characters, but dying a pathetic death in disgrace has shaken his confidence. Rejection from childhood heroes would be a bit much on top of all that, so he actually kind of... avoids them.

[chiron_survivor]

The fact that he knows at all what she's talking about perks her up a little. "That's right," she says encouragingly. "He also sails his ship between two monsters, fends off sirens, and fights a witch. I liked that he used his wits sometimes instead of brute forcing every situation. That's not as common in our stories as I'd like."

She nods when he mentions ancient Greece, although it's with the look of someone who is hearing about a strange coincidence. "Yes. Stories older than the Sacred Scrolls. Our religion and myths have a lot in common with the ones from ancient Greece." She shrugs. "I don't know why. It doesn't make much sense considering we're from different universes. But it's kind of nice, too, to know that I have something in common with some of the people who visit the Nexus."

[super_cool]

“It ain’t all that common in ours either. We got all sorts of stupid shit with nothing but shooting, explosions, and corny one-liners. Ah man, but I love that crap,” he’s more than happy to admit. He means those cheesy 80’s and 90’s action movies, before irony and grim-dark became such big things in Hollywood, the kind you can watch just to rip on and that aren’t taking themselves too seriously.

It’s nice to see Adia brightening, and in return he looks like he’s just gotten an answer right on a pop quiz. He hasn’t read an actual book in years! He may not remember a good chunk of last week, but now there's random details coming back about Odysseus’ story: some he learned in school, some he must have picked up on from references in pop-culture.

“Yeah, that is weird,” he says about the cross-universe shared mythology. “I don’t know shit about ancient Greece aside from stuff that everyone knows, but who did you meet? Not Zeus, right?” he’s joking, even if meeting Zeus probably isn’t entirely impossible.

[chiron_survivor]

"Then you'd like Hercules," she replies easily. "He's from our ancient myths, too, but they made, like, a million movies about him. Ones set in the modern day, even, so you can still have your explosions." Personally, she couldn't stand those movies, where the hero's solution was either to kill something or throw it off a cliff, but she won't go so far as to bad-mouth Hercules himself. Who knows, he could show up some day and then she'd feel bad for talking about how dumb he is.

Freddy's pleasant surprise keeps the smile on her face. It is weird that he should even know who Odysseus is, but like she said, it's nice to have that thread of knowledge in common.

"No, not Zeus." She cringes at the idea. "I did meet Persephone once... she wasn't what I expected." She idly pokes at one of Bucky's feathers as she thinks over who else she's met. "Iphigenia lives in the Nexus. She's from... um, the Trojan War. And Ariadne recently arrived. She's from the myth involving the minotaur. They're both very nice women, I... I tried hard not to let on that I knew who they were. It felt intrusive, y'know?"

[super_cool]

“Oh man, I bet those movies are fuckin dumb if there’s that many," he says cheerfully. He can tell she's not a fan. Adia may have reservations about trash-talking Hercules, but Freddy does not. “I’d watch ‘em, but I don’t know if I’d necessarily like ‘em. I mean you got to understand, there’s movies that are dumb, and then there’s movies that are so goddamn brain-dead and absurd it takes your breath away to realize something so insane and ridiculous could actually get made and be a thing that exists.”

Could the Hercules franchise really compare to the dregs of all that campy schlock from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s? That is a challenge: if Adia’s thinking about those dumb movies, at least it takes her mind off things.

Unfortunately, none of those other names she mentions ring a bell except for the Minotaur, which he remembers as a half-monster, half-man thing. Ancient Greece did have some weird myths, didn't they. Those Hercules movies probably could get pretty bizarre if the creators set their mind to it.

“I did see a comic book character here,” he decides to mention by way of reply. “I wanted to say hi, but...” But instead he panicked and ducked behind a trashcan.

[chiron_survivor]

She makes a so-so gesture with her hand. "There are a couple that are pretty good. I liked the one with Cerberus. But some were so awful that you could tell that everyone phoned it in, and not even the special effects could save it." She shakes her head, amused by Freddy's willingness to put up with bad movies. There is a kind of pleasure in watching something ridiculously absurd and mocking it with your friends. "The absolute worst one was Hercules versus the Nemean Lion. It was literally a guy in a lion suit."

It certainly does take her mind of things, to talk about stupid movies. She's not bothered by the lack of recognition in his eyes when she mentions both princesses. One was a sacrifice, a footnote in a large and tragic war, and the other played second fiddle to the hero of the story. It's another reason she's not thrilled with many of the old myths.

Anyway, it means that both her friends can enjoy their anonymity in the Nexus. She likely would have hid behind a trashcan, too, if she had recognized them at first sight. "Which one?" she asks curiously, glossing over Freddy's reluctance to introduce himself. "Were they in costume?"