strangetrip | [EP] Frustration of a Caged Animal

"Yeah, probably." Peter takes the knife by the handle, then looks over at Alec, realizing that he doesn't actually know what to do with it.

And that's when he asks, because that's the easiest way to find out:

"What should I do with this thing?"

"Wow, really kid?" Alec just had a moment of 'kids these days' and didn't like it. He crouched and gestured to the panel which would have the mechanics for the coin reader. "You'll want to open this. So take that- " Alec gestured to the swiss army knife. "And pull out the flat head - it's there somewhere. You could even use the knife, really. And then unscrew the panel."

"Okay," Peter says, nodding. It's weird, a few minutes ago, he was confident he could handle Alec, and now he's doing Alec's bidding.

If this keeps the machine from getting broken, Peter tells himself as he flicks open a few tools before he finds the flathead.

He shoves the unneeded tools back down into the Swiss Army Knife, then unscrews the panel.

"Okay, done." Peter holds the panel up for Alec to see, then awaits next orders.

"Have you never opened up like a radio or something and screwed around with it?" Alec was genuinely interested in the answer. Maybe kids didn't do that anymore, but how useless would that be?

"Yeah," Peter says, sounding strangely more defensive than he intended to. "But most of those things aren't things that I was worried about not being able to fix if I broke them."

But now, Peter's determined to show Alec what he can do; using the screwdriver in one of the corners, he's able to pop out a secondary panel, revealing a stretch of wire connected to a circuit board on the back of it.

Peter briefly looks at the circuit board, then reaches for the phone in his back pocket. It's awkward, but he's able to hold up the panel with one hand while he navigates to his phone's flashlight app.

He turns it on and examines the little of the machine's innards that are now exposed.

"I used to take apart things a lot when I was younger," he says. "Now, mostly, I try and make things rather than modify." The Spidey-suit being one of the more recent exceptions to the rule.

Peter shuts off the light to his camera phone, and instead takes a photo of the circuit board. It was probably a good idea to know where everything plugged in, just in case they got unplugging.

Peter looks over at Alec.

"We can try swapping out the circuit board to see if that's our problem, but we might end up breaking two candy machines instead of just one."

When the kid started to work on the machine, Alec could see the kids brain working. Definitely a nerd.

"Since we don't have any soldering tools, that's probably your best bet." He nodded his head sideways for second. "Assuming of course it's a mother and. Could be a simple mechanically failure. Did the coins look like they we're reading the money or did it look like the failure was from the computer when you made the choice."

Thankfully no one was around to see Alec being smart. It would ruin his reputation.

"I can make a soldering iron if we need one," Peter says, giving the circuit board another lookover. "It's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swj_NtKcF1g>nothing fancy</a>, but it worked in a pinch." In a pinch meaning after he totally broke his webslingers in a fight with some petty thugs and didn't want to wait until his next shop class to get them fixed. "Nothing looks fried on the board," Peter says, once he's completed his survey. "The machine did read the coins. It read 75 cents before flashing 0 afterwards."

"So something's wrong between injection and selection." Alec looked at the panel from where he stood, seeing things in clear and up close as his vision let him see things from further away than most. It looked like maybe there were a few things loose.

Alec's looking at the board super intensely, and Peter can't help but wonder if there was something he overlooked.

"See something I didn't?" he asks, looking from board to Alec.

"First," Alec looked at the kid. Yes, he was holding this information hostage for a moment. "What's your name, kid, and why do you care so much about a vending machine?"

"Peter," Peter answers promptly. "And what if someone else needs a snack? I mean, the inn might fix it overnight, but we can't always count on that to happen. One day the inn might decide to stop fixing things or stop giving us unlimited chicken."

Peter shakes his head.

"We can't just count on everything to stay the way they are forever."

"If I broke the glass... wouldn't everyone be able to take what they want when they want it?" Alec actually didn't follow that line of reasoning this time instead of being a jerk.

But he was right about not being able to count of everything. Alec would give Peter that.

He pointed to the panels. "You have some wires loose." A short pause. "and I'm Alec."

"Yeah, but..." Alec has a point. And he knows it's gonna sound like the same sort of whining he did when Ned was reluctant to turn off the Training Wheel Protocol. "...I mean, can't we just act like we normally do, in the real world, instead of just beating on machines or something?"

Peter has apparently failed to grasp that Alec might actually be one of those people who does smash in candy machines in the real world.

Peter pulls up his cell phone in one hand to check the wires based on the photo, shoves it into his pocket, and then reconnects the first of them. He's thankful he remembered to take a photo first.

"You didn't answer my question, though," he says, snapping the final one back into place. "Did you see something I didn't?"

Alec paused, almost like he wasn't going to answer, but then knelt again and started to point at a few pieces where things were loose or needed to be attached back entirely. Maybe someone had shaken the machine too much and had caused the malfunction.

With laser focus, Peter's eyes narrow on the pieces on the floor. He sets the panel with the circuitboard down, letting it hang from the thick cords that keep it connected to the rest of the machine.

Peter reaches for one of the pieces, and when he does, inadvertently knocks one with a cling under the machine. His hand reaches blindly underneath it for the piece, only to feel the metal panel at the bottom of the machine hanging at an angle.

Peter quickly flips his hand around and pushes up twice. It makes two low, dull metallic popping noises.

"The panel below the machine is loose," Peter says. "We should probably turn it on its side so we can get a closer look."

Alec watched all of this with slight amusement before he paused at the statement. "...You're going to tell me you want to put it on its side carefully, aren't you?"

Already he was standing to help Peter.

Peter gives Alec a look. "Well, yeah," Peter says, reaching up to grab the machine from near the top. The vending machine tilts easily when Peter pulls it towards him, and with Alec's help, guides the machine safely to the ground.

"You still have your Swiss Army Knife?" Three of the eight screws are missing. "We should get the rest of them off."

This time Alec is the one to unscrew the panel. Maybe it was because he felt like the kid was so committed he couldn't just walk away now.

"You have a name?"

It didn't occur to Peter until this very second that he didn't know Alec's name.

"Peter -- Peter Parker." Peter starts to offer his hand to Alec, but withdraws his hand before he can extend it for him to grab. This guy doesn't exactly seem like the hand-shakey type.

Once Alec is done unscrewing the panel, Peter pulls it loose, to reveal --

-- a lot of empty space.

Peter always thought there was something down there to keep it ground-heavy, but apparently not. Now that he thought about it, chances are there was a cooling system that would probably be stored here if these weren't room temperature-friendly candy.

"There's one more panel," Peter says, prodding what's probably the one panel separating them from candy. "And then we can check to see if there's anything else that might be missing a few parts."

"I'm Alec." Alec was pretty sure this was a lot more effort than even a vending machine maker would do to their product for food.

"Alright." He unscrews the panel and gestures for him to try it. "You take a look. Try not to break anything." He was teasing since he had tried to break it, really.

Peter sort-of crawls into the husk of the vending machine. "You know," he says, voice echoing slightly. "I'm pretty sure we could have gotten through here through the back, too."

Not that that made much of a difference now; they were already in it too far for them to go backtracking now. Peter just hoped that no one actually saw them.

Peter pulls out his cell phone and turns the flashlight app back on. And then he spots it -- another weird panel, right near where the candy would drop off. It's clipped into place, so no need for the Swiss Army knife.

He switches to camera, takes a photo of all the wires and where they're connected, and then starts unplugging the cables. And as soon as that's done, he manages to pop it off neatly, revealing a long metal bar that extended the length of the machine and smelt --

Peter sniffs.

-- vaguely burnt.

Still stationed inside of the husk of the candy machine, in the middle of a hallway, no doubt looking as though he was in the process of destroying the very machine he was trying to save, Peter extends an arm out just far enough for Alec to easily get a look at the device.

"Here, can you take a look at this? I think this might be what's wrong."

Alec smelled it before Peter said anything, but he crouched and took a look anyways. "Looks like something's fried. Not sure how we're going to fix that with a knife and some gumption." But the kid probably fixed a lot of things with gumption.

Peter shimmies out of the machine and sits down on the floor.

"I don't know," he admits, feeling a little despondent. "I mean, if there's something wrong with that--" he gestures to the part that Alec's holding, "I'm not sure there's really anything we can do."

It's not like Peter to give up so easily. And maybe, with the internet and the proper tools and a junkyard, it'd be easier for him to have a go at it. But right now, he really doesn't have any of those things.

Finally, he says: "I can probably squeeze my hand in there and get you a candy, though." A beat. "I mean, as long as it's one of the lower-rung ones."

Alec looked at the kid, then the machine, then to kid again. He was trying to decide how desperate he wanted a Snickers. "You're really one of those guys who has to help people and make things right, huh?" Alec was maybe more shocked than critical about it since there weren't a lot of people left like that in his world. Even Logan had a dark side and this kid didn't seem to have any darkness to him.

"Well," Peter says, panting a little (it was really weird and cramped and strangely hot down there). "I- I try to be, yeah."

A beat, and then:

"Did you decide what you want?"

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