Vending Machines are More Dangerous than Sharks
Peter
Okay, Peter will admit it: he’s wished he could fight stormtroopers before.
Not like hoards and hoards of them, mind you. But who hasn’t watched Star Wars and pictured themselves zooming into battle on the Millennium Falcon, whipping out a lightsaber, shouting ‘Use the Force, Luke!’ snogging Princess Leia and blowing up a few planets for good measure?
Peter would like to amend that fantasy. He would not like to battle the stormtroopers. He would like to sit down with them for a polite conversation and some cookies, or maybe a quiz night. Or better, never encounter them at all.
A line of stormtroopers open fire onto the walls. The lasers bounce back off the glass. Peter would like to thank whichever crazy dinosaur architect picked out fandomy shenanigan-proof building materials. Harley barks orders, and her soldiers launch grappling hooks into the air. Some hooks slide back down the walls, but some latch onto the metal panelling. One stormtrooper tests the weight of the rope, then ascends the wall.
Peter whimpers, ‘Hermione, are you sure you can’t do the magic teleporty thing onto the street?’
‘Honestly, I think I’d rather be beaten up by a stormtrooper.’ Arya shoves the vending machine against the wall. ‘And would you really prefer to be outside?’
‘Any other ideas to delay our imminent deaths?’ Peter pleads.
‘No.’ Hermione scans the roof. ‘Actually, yes.’ She has the same look of satisfaction on her face that Peter’s friend MJ does when she has a mission-saving brainwave. The air pops as she apparates to the top of the winding stairs. Legolas and Peter chase after her. One glass panel has crumpled into fragments, leaving gaping holes in the side of the pyramid. The witch pokes her arm out of it and aims her wand at one of the stormtroopers who are climbing up the wall. She shouts, ‘stupefy,’ and a white bolt of light knocks a stormtrooper unconscious. They tumble down the side, crashing into a second stormtrooper and knocking them over like dominoes.
‘Damn, you’re smart.’ Peter picks one of Hermione’s holes (oops, that sounded wrong) and webs two stormtroopers to the glass walls.
‘Two for Peter!’ Legolas calls, his voice light with excitement. The elf aims his bow through the gap, and fires arrow after arrow. ‘Three for Legolas!’
Hermione looks as disgusted as Peter did when he ate broccoli for the first time. ‘You count how many people you injure? That’s totally barbaric!’
Legolas blinks. ‘You don’t? How else do you pass the time during battles?’ He releases a slew of arrows without even looking.
‘Ooh, gee, sir, I don’t know,’ Peter cups his chin in his hand, pretending to concentrate, ‘how about FOCUSING ON NOT DYING?’
Footsteps echo around the hall. Snow White screams and scarpers behind an over-turned desk. Six stormtroopers burst out of the corridor and floor into the hall. They must have found the back door that Peter used to escape the T-rex earlier. He shouts a warning to Arya, but she’s already whipped out her sword. The assassin slices through three stormtroopers in one arc of steel. A fourth fires their gun, but Arya holds up her sword and deflects the shot right back at them. The laser burns through their white helmet, and they sink to the ground. Two more soldiers swipe at Arya, but she somersaults out of the way, then impales both at once to make a sword-and-stormtrooper kebab. She glances up. Peter, Hermione, Snow White and Legolas are all gawping at her. ‘What?’ She wipes her bloodied sword on the lab coat, like a chef cleaning a spatula on their apron.
‘You are so badass,’ Peter calls down.
The corners of Arya’s mouth twitch. ‘Six points to Arya.’ Five more stormtroopers flood out of the corridor and open fire. She darts out of the way.
Peter clambers over the banister and jumps off the stairs. He falls through the air, legs flailing, then lands on all fours. His limbs ache from the impact. Arya is trying to pin a stormtrooper against the wall. Peter scrambles to his feet and rushes to help her. The blasting of magic echoes around the pyramid, and Hermione calls out, ‘four to me.’
One stormtrooper is barrelling towards him, gun raised. Their helmet is dented, warping the markings into an ugly sneer. Mr Stark’s voice floats through Peter’s memories: start by making sure they can’t hurt you. Then you can focus on hurting them. And then you can go home and make Wizards of Waverly Place tiktoks or mope after your sulky girlfriend or whatever crap you kids are into now.
Peter leaps to the side and fires web after web. They wrap around the stromtrooper’s gun, coating the barrel in sticky sinew. Peter tugs at the threads, hoping to yank the gun away. But the gun is welded to the stormtrooper’s hand, and the whole stormtrooper comes along with the gun, flung through the air. Peter sidesteps out of the way, and the stormtrooper is slammed into the floor.
Peter glances around the hall. Arya picks up an abandoned gun and squeezes the trigger. Lasers blast in all directions. Some rebound off the glass, some bore holes through the concrete, and some strike stormtroopers’s heads. She grins. ‘I’m on eleven!’
Peter can picture Legolas beaming down at her. ‘Beautiful work, Lady Arya.’
The top of the pyramid is bathed in amber light. Hermione shouts, ‘I’m on twelve,’ but her voice is drowned out by the booming of the guns. ‘I’m on twelve,’ she repeats at twice the volume.
‘Well done, Hermione,’ Legolas calls back, ‘I’m on twelve-and-three quarters. Peter, can you beat twelve-and-three-quarters?’
Peter pretends not to hear Legolas. He cannot beat twelve-and-three-quarters. He cannot even beat two. Blinking back tears, he kicks his stormtrooper in the ribs. The soldier cries out. A second stormtrooper rushes to help their friend and slams the flat of their gun into Peter’s face. His eyes water. The sour taste of blood fills his mouth. His mask is going to need scrubbing clean after this. Peter raises his wrists and shoots web after web, pinning them both to the wall. He doesn’t stop firing until their armour is cocooned in a thick layer of cobweb.
He takes a step back, surveying the battle. Arya is vibing away with the blaster gun, taking out at least one stormtrooper every minute (which might not seem like a lot, but stormtroopers managed to go eight movies and only hit a character of actual importance once, so Arya’s accuracy rating is a hell of a lot better than average). Three stormtroopers are tumbling down the outside walls, knocked back by Hermione’s curses. Snow White is still curled up under the stairs, rocking backwards and forwards and muttering about how this is a terrible end and she hopes her friends can defend and wishes she could sing to her animal friends. And Legolas is weaving his way around the balconies at the top of the pyramid, practically dancing as he pins down stormtrooper after stormtrooper with perfect aim. How can it be that while Peter’s knees ache and his heart is beating like an insect’s wings and his mouth is sticky with blood, Legolas looks ready to shoot a shampoo commercial for Battle Hair by PantenElfÔ?
But aside from Peter’s endless crippling anxiety-driven self-loathing, the lesser threat of the enemy army seems to be going fractionally less terribly than Peter assumed it would. The total number of stormtroopers must have nearly halved. And no one has died in a horrible nasty painful way yet, which is a pretty successful Saturday night as far as Peter is concerned.
Then Arya cries out a warning, Hermione apparates to her side, and the doors burst open.
Harley’s triceratops forces itself through the front doors, thrusting its horns like a battering ram. The barricade of furniture is knocked out the way. A desk skids across the floor. Hermione and Arya dart to the side. Tinsel and glass are sprayed through the air. Harley cackles and eggs the dinosaur on. The triceratops veers to the right and crashes into the vending machine, which topples over and falls onto the girls.
Arya screams more profanities than would be allowed in an R-rated movie. Their legs and torsos are trapped under the vending machine. Peter can only imagine how crushing the weight must feel. Hermione wiggles her arm and shouts, ‘Wingardium LeviOH…’
A stormtrooper snatched the wand out of her hand and tosses it to Harley. She catches it and exams the device, turning it around in her palm. ‘Thank you, White Hermione. You’re a peach. This’ll sell for a fortune on Depop. When we find the Library, I promise not to tippex out all your teachers.’
Harley slides off her noble steed and kisses the triceratops’s cheek. The dinosaur shuffles outside, like a dog being put out in the yard. Stormtroopers are pouring through the front doors. Peter can’t count them, let alone do fight them. The soldiers fire their guns, and Peter ducks behind the base of the hologram. The pew-pew-pewing noise echoes around the pyramid.
Legolas grabs a pane of glass, flips it over like a skateboard, and surfs down the stairs on it. Peter can’t believe his eyes. The elf releases a flurry of arrows, as the glass pane rattles over each step.
‘It’s even more cringe in person,’ Harley giggles. She fires the neon shotgun. A pink slimeball is blasted through the air, and hits Legolas squarely in the chest. The impact knocks him backwards, and he rolls down the stairs, glass surfboard and all, and lands in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. His bow, arms, neck and hair are coated in pink goo. He tries to climb onto this feet but slips on all the slime. Stormtroopers swarm to him, pinning him onto the floor.
‘Stop!’ Harley booms through the megaphone. The stormtroopers lower their weapons, tilting their heads in confusion, like but isn’t shooting heroes at the top of our job description? Harley scowls at them. ‘Weren’t you listening to my rap earlier? Nobody else is allowed to kill any of the heroes. Imagine if I gave their corpses to Mr J for Valentine’s Day, and he was like ‘wow, these are amazing pumpkin, did you make them all by yourself?’ and I was like ‘nah puddin’, some rando army I nicked from Darth Vader made them for me.’’ She clutches her heart. ‘How would that make him feel?’
Peter gulps. ‘Maybe you should stick to giving each other chocolates and teddy bears instead? I have a Bath and Body Works gift card you could have…’
Harley Quinn clearly isn’t into overpriced soap, because the stormtroopers are shuffling to the walls, forming a ring in the centre of the pyramid for Harley and Peter to fight in. Four soldiers grab one of Legolas’s limbs each and drag him to the edge. One stands right in front of Snow White’s hiding place, blocking her from view. Peter hopes she doesn’t break into song about the importance of being law-abiding and following Legolas’s guiding and hiding from triceratops riding and wishing she could escape by hand-gliding or zipwire sliding (Peter was never very good at rhyming in school).
Hermione and Arya are struggling beneath the vending machine. Arya prises her sword underneath it and tugs it like a lever. ‘Are you sure that you can only do magic with the silly stick?’
‘Obviously.’ Hermione shoves the machine. It doesn’t budge. ‘Only the greatest witches and wizards from history can do wandless magic. Even I’m not quite that skilled yet.’
‘They didn’t have a class in modesty at that magic school, did they?’ Arya knees the vending machine with increased anger. The machine is unaffected, although Arya’s knee most definitely is affected, if the grimace on her face is anything to go from.
Harley slides off her triceratops and pats it cheek affectionally. She strides into the middle of the pyramid, heels tapping on the floor, gun raised. Peter’s school did a charity fashion show once, and his friend Liz (well, more like ex-friend. Oops) had been one of the models, and she strode down the catwalk as if she the school gym was her kingdom, the high schoolers were her adoring subjects, the whole scene was built just to reflect her own elegance. Right now, Harley is strutting towards him with the same confidence and grace that Liz had. The stormtroopers egg her on, calling out stuff like ‘squish the spider,’ and ‘put the elf back on the shelf!’ Peter can practically feel everyone’s eyes burning through the back of his head like lasers.
How is it that Peter, who lacks shape-shifting assassin skills or magic wand-waving abilities or the innate ability to do everything perfectly, is stuck fighting the demon clown barbie? He’s barely qualified to fight bike thieves and bank robbers and the occasional robot alien.
Harley is giggling like a kid at Christmas. ‘Just you and me, Spidey. Ready to die?’
‘Not really,’ Peter whimpers, ‘I’ve got so much left to do on Animal Crossing.’ And, you know, save all fandom from the Villain in the Dark and clear his name. But those really feel like secondary issues right now.
Harley clearly has very little respect for Peter’s fictitious fossil collection because she charges at him anyway. Peter kicks her in the stomach, and she folds backwards, guffawing. She fires her gun. An explosion of pink glitter knocks him onto the floor. His back is numb from the impact. He shoots a web at the gun, tugs on the threads, and yanks the gun out of Harley’s hands.
She screeches. ‘Give it back! I spent hours painting that.’ Peter flips the gun over, noticing the pink and blue diamond design on the grip. He resists the urge to compliment her handicraft skills. Harley pounces onto him, and they wrestle for the gun. She claws at his face with acrylic nails. Legolas is shouting directions, but Peter blocks his voice out. Harley’s stronger than Peter thought she was, stronger than a normal human should be. He breaks free of her grip, silently utters a prayer of thanks for the spider that gave him super strength and hurls the gun across the floor.
Peter kneels up and breathes for the first time in about a minute. Hermione cheers.
Then Harley bounces to her feet. She cartwheels, and her leg catches Peter’s neck and pins it to the floor. He wriggles, but she steps onto his back, pushing her boot into his spine. Peter cries out from the pressure. High heels really are a more effective weapon than half the stuff the Avengers use.
Peter hears scuffling. His vision is pretty limited, being pinned to the floor and all, but he can see stormtroopers’ legs flailing about. Legolas has broken free from one of them and is reaching for his ivory sword.
Harley tuts him. ‘Silly little Orlando,’ she coos. Then she screeches, ‘didn’t I tell you that one at a time is more fun?’ A stormtrooper chucks her his blaster gun. Peter hears the thud of her catching it, and the clicking of her cocking it. Peter has seen (and made) many a meme about stormtroopers and their terrible aim before, but he has a feeling that Harley Quinn doesn’t miss.
A stormtrooper yells. And another. And another.
Harley turns round, alleviating some of the pressure from her foot. Peter can stretch his neck up and peer round to the door.
A girl bursts through the front doors, kicking a desk aside with her white boot. And Peter doesn’t know whether to be more excited about the silver belt fastening a white dress to her waist, or about the way her chocolatey hair is knotted on either side of her head like two Danish pastries, or about the whopping blaster guns in each of her hands. She scans the pyramid: Hermione and Arya stuck under the vending machine, Legolas hemmed in by stormtroopers, and Peter lying on the floor in agony/panic/desolation/pretty much all other indications of non-heroic patheticness. And Peter could just squeal with happiness, because she says, ‘Well, somebody’s got to save our skins.’ And Princess Leia points her blasters at Harley Quinn.
‘I love your hair,’ Harley whimpers, ‘did you get extensions?’ She edges to the back of the hall. Her face has the same expression as a naughty puppy who’s been caught chewing on her owner’s shoes.
‘Who are you?’ Legolas calls, ‘what purpose do you have?’
And even though Peter could be killed any minute, and even though his friends are all cornered, and even though he doesn’t exist and has three days to save the world or face nasty scary consequences, and even though his knees ache and his jaw is bleeding and has back is nearly numb, he feels a rush of excitement. Because as Peter watches Princess Leia charge into battle, he’s no longer in this Pyramid of Doom, he is lying on his friend Ned’s couch, and he is watching Star Wars and he is safe.
The stormtroopers must have recognised who she is and what she’s capable of, because Peter can practically feel the fear rippling through the ranks. They waste no time opening fire on her. If twenty guns were blasting lasers at Peter, he would have melted into the floor from pure panic, but Leia ducks behind the desk, completely unfazed. She must eat stormtroopers for breakfast (like, metaphorically, not in a bowl with milk or toasted with peanut butter or anything. You know what he means).
‘Stop it,’ Harley roars at her soldiers, ‘what did we say earlier about upstaging me? You can bet your ass that Princess Leia will be mine.’ The stormtroopers lower their weapons. Peter wishes he could see through their helmets. Are they doubtful? Scared?
Damn right they should be scared. Leia shoots at Harley again and again. Harley darts across the hall and takes cover behind the hologram base.
‘Who are you?’ Hermione shouts.
Leia is a bit preoccupied being shot at and all, so Peter recites, ‘Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.’ Leia charges across the hall as if she owned it. Harley scarpers into the open, blaster raised. ‘General of the Rebel Alliance.’ Harley kicks off from the wall and launches herself at Leia, snarling like a wild animal. ‘Founder of the Resistance. Slayer of a Big Ugly Slug.’ The women struggle, grasping at each other’s limbs and trying to pin them to the floor. ‘The Force is strong in her family. Her father has it. Her brother has it. Her son has it. Her son’s girlfriend who is also kind of her cousin has it. And she absolutely has it.’
As if to prove a point, Leia slams Harley into the ground, and kicks her in the ribs. Harley cries out and lets slip her blaster. Peter realises that his heart is beating in sync with their blows.
Harley tumbles along the floor. Leia watches Peter out the corner of her eye. ‘I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but from now on you do as I tell you, ’kay?’
It takes a moment for Peter to register that Princess Leia just said the thing from the thing and she said it at him. ‘Y-yes, ma’am,’ he stutters.
While Harley is preoccupied writhing in agony and stuff, Leia shoots the stormtroopers restraining Legolas squarely in the centres of their chests. Legolas grabs his slimy bow, and tears across the hall. Peter scrambles to his feet. Snow White is still huddled up beneath the stairs. Peter tugs her puff sleeve. ‘Come on!’
Peter scrambles towards the stairs, and pulls Legolas to his feet. The elf wipes pink goo off his face. Snow White is still huddled up beneath the stairs. Peter tugs her sleeve. ‘Come one!’ Snow White buries her face in her arms.
Leia rolls her eyes, as she shoots stormtrooper after stormtrooper. ‘Could you morons hurry up? I haven’t got all day.’
Peter half leads, half drags Snow White out from under the stairs. The stormtroopers must have decided that they’d rather incur the wrath of Harley Quinn and her glitter gun than let Princess Leia get away, because they open fire on her again. Peter and Snow White sprint across the hall, ducking under the rebounding lasers. Snow White is screaming more than Peter did on the roller coasters at Coney Island. Leia is guarding the door, blasting at any soldier who comes near it.
‘Princess! Legolas!’ Hermione is shouting over the pew-pew-pewing of the guns. Arya kicks the vending machine. It doesn’t budge.
Leia and Legolas exchange nervous glances. The stormtroopers are edging closer to the door. Harley might prefer them alive, but Peter has no doubts that she’d rather compromise on that and kill them than let them get away. The sensible thing to do would be for the people who can escape to get the hell out of there, leave the others, and be grateful that any of them are alive at all. Being sensible has never really been Peter’s strong point, though.
He drops Snow White’s hand and weaves through the scattered furniture to the vending machine. Wrapping his fingers around the corners, he pushes. Hermione and Arya look up at him expectantly, but something’s wrong. His arm muscles burn. He should be able to lift this, no problem. He’s lifted like a whole collapsed ceiling before. But his back is aching and his jaw is throbbing and his arms are tingling and the vending machine is barely moving. A laser is streaking through the air towards his head. Peter rolls out of the way. He yells, ‘use the Force, Leia! Lift it!’
Leia spins round, her eyebrows narrowed from confusion. ‘What?’ A laser grazes her leg. She stumbles backwards, shouting some things that definitely would not be family-friendly enough for a Star Wars movie.
Harley Quinn has slidden onto her feet and is crawling across the floor towards her rifle, growling orders to the stormtroopers.
Leia shoots Peter a look that’s fierier that the lasers and pushes through the doors into the night. Legolas and Snow White dart after her. Leia’s decision is clear: only three heroes (+ Snow White) will be escaping tonight. Peter locks eyes with Hermione and Arya. Hermione is blinking back tears. They’ve realised what is going to happen. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Peter says. Sorry clearly doesn’t quite cut it, because Arya glowers at him even more. ‘We’ll find you both.’ His voice is so fraught that this comes out more like a wish than a promise.
He turns through the doors. The night air is chilled, as if someone had thrown a milkshake over his face (don’t ask how Peter knows what that feels like). Leia, Legolas and Snow White are running down the street. Any dinosaurs must have (very sensibly) cleared out when the stormtroopers arrived. The sun is peeping out from the horizon, and the orange glow silhouettes the rows of stores. Stormtroopers emerge out the pyramid, guns raised. Leia turns round, taking down an enemy with each shot. ‘Find the next portal,’ she shouts, ‘the one to the real world. The stormtroopers won’t be dumb enough to follow us there.’
Peter is about to ask why it is that they’re dumb enough, but figures it’s best not to question that right now. ‘We don’t know what we’re looking for,’ he explains, ‘we don’t get how portals work. We just fall through them and panic and hope we don’t die.’
Leia squeezes the trigger of one of her blasters, but nothing happens. She’s running out of ammo. ‘Well, get how they work quickly! Because I sure as hell aren’t dying in the world’s dumbest theme park saving a child in lycre and a male model.’
Peter scans his memory for what he knows about portals. They’d got here by touching a plastic dinosaur, which for all Peter knows could have been an actual Jurassic Park figurine that Deadpool had ready to use. Hermione and Arya teleported to him through a comic with a picture of him on. Legolas has fallen through the air into Peter’s world after his friend said something about wasps. Hermione wounded up in the batty mansion after she’d stepped into a forest full of wildlife. Maybe the links between worlds were literally that – connections in stories, references to different fandoms, that someone had used fancy magic to push apart into a literal opening.
There must be something along this street, then, that could also be found in the regular world, and someone had made into a portal. He squints. It’s difficult to make out what all these stores are, what with the sky being dark and the signs being smashed up by dinosaurs and everything. Then he catches sight of something familiar: warm brown furniture, a dark counter, a bottle-green sign with a kind of mermaidy girl and a tiara.
Peter veers towards the Starbucks. ‘Let’s try that one.’
Legolas surveys the street nervously. ‘Are you certain? What is… ‘freshly made coffees and sandwiches in-store’?’
Peter tries not to laugh. Of course he’s not certain! He’s being chased through a dinosaur theme park by stormtroopers and a demon clown barbie. He couldn’t be more uncertain. But as more soldiers edge down the street, he really doesn’t have a lot of options. He kicks open the doors of the café, and steps inside.
His vision blurs. Legolas might be smiling at him, but Peter can’t be sure because the world is dissolving into streaks of navy and brown and orange. The pew-pew-pewing of the lasers fades into a hum. And Peter is falling, through depths that shouldn’t even be there, and images drift through the darkness, like, really messed up ones, of bombed-out cities and oil bleeding into oceans and bursting hospital bays, and he lands.