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Post by Super Chick on Jan 11, 2023 18:29:44 GMT -7
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At Ben's suggestion of getting them a ride, Maya sat up with some eagerness. "Yes, please!" She said without an iota of an attempt at disguising her excitement. It had been quite a while since she let loose on a dance floor and while this was no New York Ballet, it was infinitely better than allowing herself to be discouraged by the fact her old friend did not make it to meet her. It was important to Maya to reconnect at some level with a few old friends in the city, but none of them felt terribly important to her. Her disappointment, she realized, was much more the sting of being stood up than missing her friend.
She waited for Ben to call for a ride, watching his lips for confirmation that he was actually doing it. Of course, if he was a creep she didn't see coming, Maya felt confident she could take care of herself. However, that did not negate the intelligence of being cautious. She waited for him to close the call and then allowed him to finish whatever pizza he had left on his plate since they had been talking a lot and he didn't seem to be eating as quickly as she did. (Though, to be fair, she did have a head start.) Once he was finished, Maya stood and left the building with Ben making sure to toss her trash in the bin and cleaning the table of any crumbs. She was nothing if not a conscientious customer.
Outside, Maya stood near the curb and zipped up her jacket. "I almost forgot how chilly the weather can get here," she said. Her eyes flitted around instinctively looking for dangers where (she hoped) none existed. The former hero zipped up her jacket and glanced at Ben. She studied him for a moment before saying, "You say you were a physics major? Is science a passion?"
Slim
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Post by Slim on Jul 13, 2023 2:27:20 GMT -7
As much as Ben liked spending time with Maya, this second hangout had been laced with a pretty persistent bit of anxiety that his new friend would somehow suss out his true identity as the Scarlet Spider at any moment. Sure, his memories of Peter’s life were filled with years of pretending to be a normie around his friends, colleagues and aunt, but very few of them had turned out to be a badass vigilante with an Ivy-League education who had spent time with the other persona just moments before. He’d played all this worry off pretty well, but seeing Maya’s excitement at his offer of getting a ride did wonders for making the rest fall away.
Now, the question was whether or not he could dance the night away without it being super obvious that he felt a bit like he’d been hit by a runaway bus. Hopefully the lighting and atmosphere of Flames would be a good enough cover for all that.
Once they were outside, Ben frowned slightly at the low charge on his phone, but it was more than enough to get him through the process of requesting a ride. ”Five minutes,” he announced as he slipped the phone back into his pocket, sharing the ETA that had been given to him for the car’s arrival. She zipped up her outer layer and remarked about the cold, which seemed to imply that wherever she’d been hadn’t had winters as intense as New York. Safe bet that she’d been somewhere south, then. His earlier questions about her life had been met with a bit of polite vagueness, so he didn’t try and pry.
“Yeah, my hoodie budget is through the roof,” he chuckled, though it wasn’t all that much of a joke. Given that a hoodie was kind of the key part of his whole superhero outfit, and they weren’t known for being all that durable, he went through them a lot quicker than he’d like. Since he was crimefighting on a budget now, maybe it was time to go back to his other costume: the one that he’d donned during the days where he’d taken over the Spider-Man mantle. Something to figure out another time, though.
At the science query, Ben brightened a bit, which maybe answered her question before any words did. ”Yeah, for as long as I could remember. As a real little kid, I was mixing whatever I could get my hands on into a bucket to try to make something cool. Shampoo, juice, windex… I’m lucky I didn’t end up with homemade mustard gas. In high school, I kept asking the counselors if I could just take a different science class for every period. Whiiiich… sounds a lot nerdier now that I say it out loud,” he admitted, scratching briefly at the back of his head.
”I think part of it was the idea that… if I chose that life path, maybe I could help people, you know? Make the world better in some way.”
Tag: Super Chick
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Post by Super Chick on Aug 21, 2023 12:29:22 GMT -7
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The pair waited for their ride in the darkness of the street illuminated only by the striking neon surrounding them. Maya reflected on Ben's comment about his hoodie budget. It made Maya recall the Spider-Man-like hero in the alley earlier. He was a Spider-Man, but was he the Spider-Man? And what was up with wearing a blue hoodie over his costume? Did Spider-Man rip his suit and so found a hoodie in the lost and found somewhere to cover his malfunction? Or was he making a fashion statement? Maya felt out of the loop on New York heroes these days, but something made her think that Spider-Man would probably be fine showing a little skin if it came as a result of doing good. Her eyes flickered over to Ben and wondered...
Maya's wondering turned into something different as Ben continued and she found herself enjoying watching Ben discuss his love for science. As he relayed his childhood memories, there was a light that danced in his eyes and pulled at his lips causing him to look a little boyish. This was only accented when he rubbed the back of his neck in youthful embarrassment. It was attractive in a boy-next-door kind of way, exuding a kind of innocence Maya hadn't seen in a while. This made Ben even more intriguing.
He finished by saying he considered a career in science to be a way of helping the world become a better place. This brought Maya away from admiring Ben's boyish charm and landed her full circle into a mode of curiosity. "So, did you stop believing this was possible or have you found another way of helping people," she observed. "You say you are unemployed. So why not pursue your education again? Time is going to pass the same either way. You may as well be doing something you enjoy, bettering yourself so you can improve the world perhaps?"
Slim
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