strangetrip | Project

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Project | OTA

A curse escape his lips and then a piece of metal went flying through the air. It landed on the pavement of the parking lot and rolled a foot before landing on its side. Quill stood up and looked at the beginning of his project with disdain. It was a chair welded onto a sheet of metal right now and he was currently trying to curve the next piece of metal. There were hunks of metal from various parts of the inn: an abandoned table here, a chair there, the side of the vending machine. After experimenting with some of the items, Quill discovered if he took a side of the vending machine off, it would be replaced the next day. It would be slow going, but maybe in months or a year he'd have enough metal for what he wanted to make.

"Note to self, the fridge door is useless," He said to himself as he kicked the broken metal sheet in frustration.

Building a space ship form scratch is going to take forever

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"Who?" He asked as he turned around to regard Stark. "You mean this?"

He looked back at the metal trying to form something in front of him.

"Haven't you seen a spaceship before?" He asked, but didn't sound annoyed.

"Less of them than I should, more of them than I'd like." His head suddenly ached. He massaged the base of his neck and made a slow approach. "What's your payload?"

"Me? Up in the air." He answered. "I just want to get off the ground more than these guys can provide."

Quill gestured to his boots.

"I miss flying, you know?" He said. "I'm not under any pretense that I'll actually be able to get off the planet or whatever this place actually is."

Tony hummed in acknowledgement, growing more subdued the longer he stared at Quill. “Colonel O’Niell and I are playing with some flight designs. Want in?”

Quill's eyes lit up. He glanced to the hunk of metal and then back to Tony.

"Uh, yeah" He said emphatically. "You were going to build a plane and not let the best pilot in the galaxy in on it?"

“My bad.” It was an effort, but Tony kept his voice light as he raised his hands. “It was a drunken New Years convo.” AKA the night he was desperately putting distance between himself and the Christmas revelations.

"Uh, those are the best convos," He replied to Stark. "So.. have you started actually building anything? Got any tips for mine?"

He looked at what looked more like an art project than a build for a space craft.

"Sure. Show me your design and we'll go from there." Tony pantomimed rolling out a large blueprint.

He looked at the pretend blueprint in Tony's hands.

"Yeah, about that...." He said, trailing off.

Quill gestured to the spaceship as if to say "ta-da!"

Unable to keep himself from squinting (was it pity? was it pained?), the engineer took Quill by the shoulder and turned him back to face him.

"Alright, uh, where to start. First, I'm assuming you wanna use this rig more than once, right? Most space shuttles are a one-and-done deal. Before you say anything, I know, but you'll be sixty before you scavenge enough goods here for anything like you have at home. Go with an ultralight aviation model. Propeller driven. Old hat but they work, not hard to built, you can get fancy." Barely stopping for breath, Tony continued.

"That scavenged goods--aluminum, right? Good. Great. Get as much of that as you can. Next thing you want? Aircraft dope. That can be manufactured. I can toss you supplies for the monocoque. You following?"

Quill stared at Tony like he was speaking another language. Are these spaceship terms? I'm pretty sure they aren't. If it is and I don't know them, I'll never live it down, but if they aren't, then I have every right to be confused.

He blinked.

"You're speaking English, right?" He finally asked.

“21st century English. Don’t worry about it.” The corners of Tony’s lips pinched in a half smile, regarding Quill for a few moments more before turning his head. The ill feeling still lingered in the back of his throat. “It can be done is what I’m saying.”

"It better," He replied. "Because I'm starting to get cabin fever. I don't even need to go anywhere, I just want to fly a space craft again."

Quill was going on more and more jumps with his boots, but it wasn't the same as flying a machine.

"No space craft. You won't get even a tenth of the way to the stratosphere. Point Break and I tried." He clapped Quill on the shoulder in consolation.

Quill looked at Tony.

"You know they can fly close to the ground, right?" He said.

Quill suddenly realized he wasn't really sure what the difference between a spacecraft and an airplane was if one didn't leave the planet.

"How far did you get?" He asked.

If it weren’t for the little light of recognition in Quill’s eyes following his sarcastic query, Tony would have certainly started arguing

“10,000 feet, give or take. Above most bird migrational routes,”

Quill frowned.

"Well... I guess that's better than nothing?" He offered. "They should have really taken into consideration space folk when making whatever this place is. It's pretty short sighted of them. Prejudice, almost."

"You're from Missouri." Tony embarked in the direction of Quill's project, rapping at it a few times, making the metal shudder and ring. "Think of it as getting back in touch with your roots."

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