Earth's Mightiest Memelords
Peter Parker felt like he'd crumble right into his sneakers.
Today was the day. The Avengers had been talking and planning this for months, and it was finally happening. The royals of Wakanda were coming to visit the HQ.
Peter was pretty certain he was gonna die. He'd never met a king before. Heck, he'd never even met a president! What was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to wear? Was he supposed to bow or something?
The older Avengers laughed and told him just to be himself, and he'd be fine—that the royal family of Wakanda didn't go in for all that pomp and circumstance—but Peter couldn't shake the cold sweat on the back of his neck as he stood on the landing pad outside Combat.
The strange Wakandan airship made a soft, vertical landing on the pad, like a helicopter but without the wind. The blue glow of the engines powered down, and spines along the ridges of the triangular plane closed up and lay flat like rows of dominoes.
The ramp came down. Peter gulped. Out stepped King T'Challa, in a black suit with an embroidered collar, flanked by two tall, bald ladies who carried spears and glared bloody murder at everyone in sight distance.
Peter stared very hard at his sneakers.
"T'Challa!" called Steve Rogers. He strode across the landing pad, with Bucky at his side, and shook hands with the king in the middle of the pad.
"Captain Rogers." The king sounded pleased as punch. "Sergeant Barnes."
"Welcome to the HQ." Steve grinned. "It's no palace, but we tried to clean it up for you."
The king chuckled. "It's no matter. I trust you are well?"
Steve looked at Bucky.
Bucky smirked. "Getting better all the time," he said warmly, like it meant a little more than it seemed to.
"That is good news." T'Challa smiled.
They started talking business, with terms Peter didn't understand at a speed he couldn't follow, and he started to wonder if he could slip away and hide without being noticed when a girl in a white dress sidled up to him.
She was about his age. Skinny, dark-skinned, pretty, a little taller than him, and smirking like the panther that caught the canary.
Peter stared at the sky and bit his lip hard.
He knew who this was.
The princess.
A real-life princess.
The grown-ups migrated towards the door of the HQ, still engrossed in their conversation. Peter wiggled his hand by his thigh, trying to get their attention, then waved it harder.
Help! he wanted to yell. Save me!
Nothing. They weren't even looking his way.
Dang. Oh dang. Oh dang, oh dang, oh dang.
He was alone.
Peter thought for sure he was gonna pass out.
The girl—Princess Shuri—seemed to get bored of watching her brother talk. She clasped her hands in front of her and leaned over to Peter, and he had to tense every muscle in his body to keep from running away.
"So," she said, in her sweetly accented voice, "you like jazz?"
Peter's brain threw an error message for a second.
You..
You like...
YOU LIKE JAZZ?
Peter's jaw dropped. He gasped. He turned to Shuri with the biggest grin in his whole darn life, and she grinned back with wild glee.
It was best friends forever at first sight.
"No, no, this is how you do it." Shuri made fists and crossed her wrists over her chest.
"Like this?" Peter copied it.
"Yes!" Shuri grinned and puffed her chest out. "Wakanda forever."
"Wakanda forever!" Then, grinning wickedly, Peter flicked his last three fingers up on both hands. "Gottem!"
"Oh, stop it," Shuri cackled and pushed him away by his face.
Peter nearly fell backwards laughing, very pleased with himself.
"No, no, look." Shuri shook her head. "It doesn't count, because it was not below your waist."
"What about this?" Peter hung his arm by his side and grinned.
Shuri wrinkled her nose and smirked at him. "I'm not looking at it."
"Not looking at what?"
"You can't trick me into looking at it."
"I dunno what you're talking about."
Shuri pointed at his hand without looking. "At that!"
"At what?"
Shuri shoved him again. "Enough! Insufferable."
Peter cackled. "Wait, wait, I have an idea. Okay, look. You start with Wakanda forever—"
"T'Challa! T'Challa, T'Challa, T'Challa, look!"
Naturally, upon hearing one's name called so many times—especially by excited children—one would be cautious about facing the speaker. T'Challa turned around slowly, and was met with the grinning faces of two teenagers.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
The two of them were practically vibrating, giggling with some unknown joke.
"Ready?" asked Shuri.
"Ready," said Peter.
They straightened up. Crossed their arms, Wadanda forever. Flipped them downwards, their wrists still crossed, and splayed the last three fingers on each hand.
"Gottem!" they both cried in unison, and then dissolved into hysterical laughter.
T'Challa, of course, was nonplussed. He simply reached into his pocket and pulled out something small.
"Well?" asked Shuri. "What do you think, brother?"
T'Challa lifted the object in his hand.
It was a card, from the game Uno. More specifically, a blue reverse card.
Peter and Shuri lost their minds.
"What..." Tony Stark asked slowly, "the hell does that mean?"
T'Challa shrugged. "I am a diplomat. I've learned their language."
Peter and Shuri leaped and screamed and clutched their heads in agony.
Tony narrowed his eyes. "Well, that makes one of us."
Wanda knew about memes. Pietro chose Slavic hardbass as his exercise music of choice, without a hint of irony. If she ever wanted to escape memes, she'd been born with the wrong brother.
Some of them, she thought were funny. Most of them, however, were just nonsense to her.
Until Peter and Shuri came along, Pietro hadn't had much of an audience for his nonsense. All of the other Avengers were adults, with the exception of Vision, who had an eclectic sense of humor that followed nobody's rules. Pietro had been alone in his shenanigans, and the lack of feedback caused him to temper them. Now, however...
Now, Wanda never got any peace.
It was late on a Saturday morning. The sun was shining. Birds were singing. Wanda had just come down to the Common Room to make herself tea and breakfast.
She'd meant to enjoy the tranquility of this lovely morning, maybe sit on the porch and listen to the birdsong before she started her day. Instead, here she was, in her nightgown, with uncombed hair, staring with immense disappointment into the common room as she clutched her cup of tea.
There was Pietro, doing what she could only assume were character dances from Fortnite at lightspeed.
There was Peter, doing the same dances. On the ceiling.
There was Shuri, recording it all.
Wanda snatched an apple out of the fruit-bowl and decided it would have to do for breakfast. She couldn't deal with this. Not this early in the morning.
Vision, as aforementioned, had a sense of humor all of his own. No one could truly predict it—not even Vision, sometimes—but wordplay, and cleverly insulting deserving persons who knew him as nothing more than a "logical android", were some common threads.
He also enjoyed memes. Well, select ones. Despite having the entirety of the internet within his mental reach at all times—or perhaps because of it—he didn't find every joke circulated on the world wide web to be amusing.
He did, however, enjoy watching short videos of cute animals. He favored cats. And bearded dragons. He enjoyed reading long comment threads in which complete strangers continued a joke, all of their own volition, calling it "a rare sort of harmony that I see quite infrequently in this world".
He also liked the music.
Vision was deeply interested in the more abstract arts. He enjoyed painting, and poetry, and song. So it was only natural, when Tony Stark finally furnished the Commons with a piano, that Vision would be its most frequent player.
It was also only natural that he'd create beautiful renditions of memes.
So if Wanda ever came to the Common Room, led by some sweet music, and found that it was Vision playing some elaborate variation of All Star, Megalovania, or Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley—while Peter and Shuri died of laughter nearby—she really shouldn't have been surprised.
"I tried to stick magnets on his arm once." Peter shuddered. "Man, that glare is scary."
"I nearly had him convinced at one time that pure vibranium is receptive to latent radio waves from small electronic devices. I warned him not to use a cell phone anymore or his own arm might malfunction and punch him in the face." Despite the contents of the story, Shuri smirked and seemed rather proud of himself. "He was quite cross with me when he found the truth."
"I fell from the upper story during training once. It nearly broke my neck." Wanda smiled sheepishly and nodded at Vision. "He had to catch me. I hadn't learned to control my powers well yet. Clint was furious, but I think Kubko spent more time shouting at me."
All eyes turned to Pietro—well-known as The Most Annoying of all of them—who sat with his fingers intertwined behind his head.
Pietro just shrugged and smirked. "What is there to say? I exist, and he is annoyed."
"Yes, but you do bother him often, šialený brat," said Wanda.
Peter sat cross-legged and grabbed his ankles. "I guess the only one of us who hasn't made Bucky mad is Vision."
Wanda furrowed her eyebrows. "Nobody can get angry with Vision."
Shuri nodded somberly. "Vision is the purest bean."
Peter nodded. "Word."
Vision lifted his head from where he was reading off of a StarkPad. "You all flatter me, but I'm afraid you're incorrect."
Immediately, four heads turned his way.
"What?!" cried Wanda.
"You've annoyed him too?" asked Peter.
"How?" demanded Pietro.
"I have," Vision answered evenly, "and I can do it again." He smiled. "In fact, I can do it without even leaving this spot."
"Nooo," drawled Pietro. "No, I don't believe it! You are bluffing! You try to make us look bad."
"It's true!" insisted Vision.
"Well, we'd better have a demonstration, then." Shuri crossed her arms.
"Very well." Vision smiled. "I just...need you all...to listen..."
They did. Vision shut his eyes. The Mind Stone in his forehead glowed a brighter yellow, the way it did when he connected to the internet, or to the systems within the building.
Inside every room in the HQ was a tiny, inconspicuous speaker, somewhere in a corner of the ceiling. They were designed so that summoning the entire team to suit up and meet at Combat could happen at a moment's notice. Only a few senior members held the privilege to the microphone—Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and sometimes Natasha Romanoff—but that message still went through the HQ's internal systems.
And, well, if one happened to be able to project radio waves from a Stone in his head—waves of exactly the sort that would interfere with said systems—and if one was particularly good at talking the AIs protecting those systems into letting him play a practical joke...
The twins, Peter, and Shuri nearly fell over backwards when a blast of noise shook the entire HQ. It took them all a second to realize the ear-shattering blast was a song, and a second more to recognize the lyrics.
SomeBODY once told me
The WORLD is gonna ROLL me
I AIN'T the sharpest TOOL in the—
Distantly, but very distinctly, from somewhere in the dorms, could be heard one James Buchanan Barnes' howl of anger.
"VISIOOOOOOOONNNN—!"
The music stopped. The other newbies ooh'd and aah'd and, thoroughly convinced, applauded Vision and offered lavish praise.
"I am sorry for doubting you." Pietro patted him on the shoulder. "Very impressed."
"Thank you, thank you." Vision nodded and gestured graciously with his hand. "No need to apologize."
Peter was still clapping. "You don't think he's still gonna be mad, do you?"
The answer to that was silence. Then, distant, thumping footsteps.
Bucky burst out of the hallway and lunged for the couch. "VISION—!"
The newbies all screamed.
We'll be right back.
Peter and Shuri were arguing about something. Tony wasn't paying attention, and had lost what the source of contention was about ten minutes ago, when he'd put on AC/DC to drown out the noise with louder noise.
But in a break between the hard rock thrashing, he happened to overhear a snatch of the conversation.
"But you haven't even accounted for the—"
"I have accounted for it, that's what the vibranium is for—"
"—you'd have to do some kind of crazy math to get rid of all the extra kinetic energy—"
"Of course I have done the math, vibranium absorbs the excess and redirects it—"
Tony didn't even look up from his work. "Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does."
The answer was dead silence. Or rather, dead silence with a side of Peter choking on a gulp of water that he'd happened to take at just the wrong time.
The kids proceeded to forget their argument and start yelling about him about how on earth an "old guy" like him knew that, and Tony smirked to himself.
Experiment successful. Results: promising. One more for the database.
It was right after Lunch Break, otherwise known as the single most destructive hour to ever be slotted into the Avengers' regular schedules. Tony took a stroll through the Common Room kitchenette, glancing over dirty dishes piled high on every conceivable horizontal surface, at open food wrappers and chip bags left open to the flies, and at two teenagers still sheepishly sneaking cookies out of the packet.
He'd never been much of a housekeeper before, but the HQ was his own little passion project, and seeing it in such a state of disarray was very annoying.
Not too annoying to make a joke, though.
"Why aren't the dishes in alphabetical order?" he snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Peter choked on an oreo.
Success! Into the database it went.
Tony had to ask for clarification sometimes, of course. Not all terms had an easily recognizable meaning, or were even in proper English.
"Peter!" Pietro hollered over the cabinet door. "Catch!"
Peter's nose was jammed firmly into his phone, but when something came flying at the back of his head, Spidey Sense went off.
He tensed, spun around, and fumbled to catch it.
"Dude!" he protested, laughing, as he pulled the cellophane bag into his lap and started to open it. "Don't throw it at me."
Pietro zipped around and crashed next to him on the couch. "But you break the chips, it makes more of them, yes?"
Peter shoved his grinning face, and Pietro burst into laughter.
Tony turned around and pointed with the blunt end of his pen. "That's 'yeet', right?" he asked, then enunciated it slowly. "Yeet?"
"No," said Pietro. "Is Dorito."
Peter pressed a hand to his mouth to keep the chip bits from dropping into his lap. "Shut up!" he cried through laughter.
Pietro threw his head back and cackled.
Tony was determined to connect with these crazy kids somehow. He didn't exactly know what to do with them—not any more than his own dad had known what to do with him—but he was determined to be better than Howard, and he figured learning their jokes was a good first step.
If he could bridge the gap—if he could learn to speak this crazy language—maybe that would bring him one step closer to that goal.
So he did what any good man of science would do. He listened. He observed patterns. He experimented. Did he understand half the jokes? No. Was he familiar with the original context? No. Did he bother searching it up? Absolutely not. But he was learning, little by little, and if what he said made them laugh, he considered that a success.
Next point of order: define yeet.
Peter and Shuri were snickering at their phones.
Normally, Steve would have ignored that. The two of them shared pictures to each other all the time—usually over-saturated, distorted, and with some caption like "E" that cracked them up for no reason except that it was nonsense—but this time, something seemed different.
They weren't laughing as loud as they normally did. They leaned close to each other, bending over one phone screen, and stifled their laughter as if they knew they were doing something wrong.
So, naturally, because they were trying to avoid attention, Steve just gave them more. He strode right up behind them, crossed his arms, and pushed his voice as deep as it could go.
"What's so funny?"
The two of them jumped. Peter immediately hid the phone screen against his chest. "Nothing!"
Steve raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
Peter kept talking. "It's nothing, Mr. Steve, Captain America, sir! Just a joke. A text. Uh, nothing bad, I promise."
Yep. Something was definitely going on here. "Then there should be no problem with me seeing it, right?"
Peter looked at Shuri. Shuri looked at Peter. Slowly, sheepishly, he handed over his phone.
Steve woke up the screen, which had almost gone to sleep, and was greeted with a picture of...his own back.
It was blurry and out of focus. Looked like it had just been taken a minute ago, while he was talking to Tony and had his back to the kids. Weird.
More telling, however, was the string of emojis under the photo.
A peach, a face with its tongue hanging out, a distressed face, and three identical splashes of water.
Steve didn't know whether to laugh out loud or sigh half his body weight in air.
"All right." He flipped the phone around. "What is that about my rear end?"
Both teenagers jolted.
"Eh?!" cried Shuri.
"How did you know that's what we were talking about?!" cried Peter.
Shuri hissed and swatted at his arm, but it was too late.
"You realize people have been using pictures to communicate since the dawn of time, right?" Steve propped his hand on his hip. "You're not the first generation to invent pictographs. And we all know what a peach looks like."
"Oh." Peter deflated.
"Wait a moment!" cried Shuri. "So...you understand emojis?"
Steve shrugged. "Don't use them often myself, but...well enough, yeah."
Shuri glanced at Peter, took the phone back, and began to type furiously with her thumbs. "So, say, if I were to do this—"
She showed it to Peter first. He dissolved into embarrassed snickers. Then she showed it to Steve.
In the text box was a peach, several eggplants, many more faces with their tongues hanging out or sweat dripping off their foreheads, lots more splashes of water, and more faces of distress.
Steve wrinkled his nose. He selected it all, deleted it, and hit two buttons. When Peter and Shuri got the phone back, they both almost fell over laughing.
He'd chosen a little face, looking green and nauseous, followed by the red circle with a backslash.
"The emojis check out!" Shuri pointed triumphantly at Steve. "This man is not a boomer!"
Steve chuckled. "Nah, too early. The Baby Boomers came after the Greatest Generation, remember? If I'd stayed back then and had kids, they would have been boomers."
"Oh." Peter looked like everything he knew about the world was a lie. "Yeah."
Steve paused. "Also, I'll be keeping your phones for today."
Immediate. Panic.
"What?" yelped Peter.
"Why?" cried Shuri.
"'Cause I can't encourage sending salacious texts about anyone behind their backs." He extended his hand. "Hand 'em over, please."
Peter groaned, but slapped his cell phone into Steve's palm. Shuri followed suit, but had a strange, reserved look on her face.
Steve didn't budge. "The bracelet, Shuri."
She hissed and clutched onto it. "You can't separate me from my tech! I am a princess, I remind you, I am royalty, I outrank you—"
"And your brother is the king," Steve said evenly. "I can bring this to him, if you think I'm being unfair."
Shuri thought about this for a second. She pouted. Then, begrudgingly, she dragged the kimoyo bracelet off her wrist and dropped it into his hand.
"Thank you." Steve slipped them all into his pockets. "You'll get these back before you leave the HQ today, but no sooner."
Both teenagers grumbled, but didn't protest.
"Thanks for having good attitudes about it."
As Steve walked away, Peter—apparently forgetting about the serum's enhanced hearing—muttered, "It's either that or get drop-kicked by Captain America."
Shuri snickered, and Steve smirked to himself.
He wouldn't drop-kick a kid over a cell phone, but Peter didn't need to know that.
It was Saturday night. Movie night. Tony had called ahead for pizza delivery, and jokingly asked the room at large who wanted anchovies, which was met with a resounding "NO."
"No way I wanna be chewing on little bones on my pizza!" declared Sam.
Peter and Shuri immediately broke into snickers.
"Uh, yeah," Peter began, and Shuri joined in. "Can I get that pizza...boneless?"
The two of them fell over on the rug, laughing at their own joke. The adults in the room ignored them, or smiled indulgently and rolled their eyes, and it took a moment before anyone noticed that Bucky, seated at the kitchen island, had spaced out.
He'd lifted a mug of coffee to his lips, but didn't take a drink. His eyes were vacant, unseeing, and his hand slipped down until the mug went clunk on the counter.
Peter stiffened. "Uh, Mr. Steve?" he whispered, tugging on the back of his shirt.
Steve turned around, curious, and then looked where Peter was looking. His smile immediately dropped, and he took a deep breath, puffing out his cheeks as he blew it outward. "Okay."
Peter curled up in a ball on the rug to watch. At least he wasn't the only one creeped out when this happened.
Bucky didn't get flashbacks that often anymore. He used to tell stories about the long-before-time, back when he'd just gotten out of HYDRA and lived with Mr. Steve in Washington D.C., and the tiniest little things like an apple or a song or a familiar smell would leave him frozen in place as ten thousand memories blazed through his scrambled-egg brain.
That didn't happen much anymore. At least, he didn't usually space out; spacing out meant he was remembering something really bad.
There were a lot of bad things to remember. It kinda made Peter sad to think about it.
"Buck?" Steve kept his voice low, his movements clear and nonthreatening, and slid into the bar stool next to him. "You all right?"
Bucky blinked. He shook himself, and a little more recognition came into his eyes. "Yeah." He propped his forehead in his hand and whispered, "Yeah, I'm good."
"Lost you for a second there." Steve squeezed Bucky's shoulder, close to his neck, where it was sensitive. "You remember somethin'?"
"Yeah..." Bucky saw how worried Steve looked and rushed to assure him, "Nothin'—nothin' bad, though! I just..." He raked the fingers of his right hand back through his hair, staring past the counter-top. "There was a song. Something about food without bones. I can't put my finger on it."
Steve's face blanked for a second. Then, he lit up. "The Hoosiers." He snapped his fingers and pointed. "Bananas, right?"
Peter was already interested, but now he leaned even closer to listen. "Bananas?"
Bucky looked at him, put his head in his hand, and grimaced. "It's ringin' a bell. I just can't..."
"Aw, man, it was your favorite song." Steve leaned forward eagerly, his hand still on Bucky's back. "Came out in '35, I think, right when you were draggin' me to every soda joint you could on the pretense that you'd get me to dance one of those days. Some other fella wrote it—Yacich, if I remember right—but our favorite was the Hoosier Hot Shots' take on the radio."
He was losing him. Bucky's frown got less distant, but more frustrated.
Steve paused for a moment. He seemed to be debating something in his head. Then, with a warm look at Bucky, he leaned on his elbow, scooted closer, and quietly began to sing.
"I stood by the fruit store on the corner..."
At that, Peter perked up, and Shuri whirled around.
"Is he...singing?" she whispered.
"Yeah!" he hissed back.
"Just to watch a funny-looking man..."
Shuri shot him a look, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Peter nodded enthusiastically. Cap's voice wasn't anything special—just a low, pleasant baritone—but they'd never heard him sing before. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and they leaned close to listen, almost vibrating with excitement.
"And this is what he said,
I heard every word,
And I'll tell you so you'll understand..."
Steve leaned forward, searching Bucky's face. Maybe he hoped for some sign of recognition, but there was only the same blank, confused scowl as before.
Steve's shoulders slumped. He looked away, maybe so Bucky wouldn't see his disappointment.
Peter deflated. "Aw, shoot," he whispered. "I thought that'd be cool."
Bucky didn't move. His face didn't even change. But, after a blink, he whispered, "I don't like your peaches..."
Steve's jaw dropped. He stared at Bucky with wide eyes, and then, slowly, a grin spread across his face that could outshine the sun in July.
Shuri slapped Peter. Peter was already staring, his jaw in his lap.
Bucky grinned back at Steve, but it was shaky, and he put his face in his hands. "Argh. How's it go?"
"Peaches."
"Yeah. They are..."
Steve leaned forward. "...full of stones..."
Bucky racked his brain. "I like...bananas..." He sat up and blurted, "Because they have no bones!"
"Yes!" cried Steve, throwing both arms in the air.
Bucky only remembered half the words, but he plowed on anyway. "Don't give me..."
Steve helped. "Tomatoes."
Bucky nodded. "Can't stand..."
"Ice cream cones."
Bucky pounded his fist on the counter, stubborn and triumphant. "I like bananas,
Because they have no bones!"
Steve was so excited that he sat straight up and sang the next bit for the whole room to hear.
"No matter where I goooo
With Suzie, May, or Anna
I want the world to knoooow
I must have my banana!"
Bucky put his head in his hand. He seemed overjoyed and awed and a little bit annoyed all at once. This was such a stupid song, but it was his stupid song, and he was finally getting it back.
"Cabbages and onions
Hurt my singing tones..."
Bucky bawled the chorus over Steve, and Steve shouted right alongside him.
"I like bananas,
Because they have no bones!"
They absolutely howled, bumping shoulders and leaning against one other for support, and not until their laughter died down did anyone hear Shuri squeaking.
"Boneless bananas!" she squealed, and then rolled over into the rug, cackling and kicking her feet in the air.
"Is that real?!" cried Peter, after he'd picked his jaw off the floor. "Is that a real old song?!"
"Yeah!" Steve nodded eagerly.
"Oh yeah!" Bucky put his head in his hand. "Aw, man, it's all coming back now. I'd forgotten about that one."
"Uh, yeah," wheezed Shuri, "can I get that banana—"
"BONELESS?" howled Peter and Shuri, and then they fell over into the rug.
Bucky smirked at them warmly, then huffed up a little laugh. "Crazy little punks."
Steve nudged him with his shoulder. "Remind you of anybody?"
Bucky chuckled and nudged him back. "Unfortunately."
And that's the story of the time Peter and Shuri's memeing helped Bucky remember his favorite wartime song.
As with all friends, of course, Peter and Shuri had their disagreements. Coming from different cultures, with vastly different backgrounds, upbringing, and values, it was inevitable. Some things, they compromised on. Some things, they just agreed to disagree. Some things, after a heated argument, they dropped the subject and agreed to never bring it up again.
But there was one longstanding spat that they never did resolve.
"Pietro. Pietro, hey." Peter was lying on the rug in the Common Room, and kicked him in the ribs with his heel.
"Ow! Čo do—" Pietro flinched in surprise and dropped his phone onto his face. He rolled over, now pretty annoyed. "What?"
"Can you kick the trash can out a little further?" Peter pointed towards Pietro's feet. "It's just right behind the table, I can't reach it."
Pietro scowled. "Get up yourself!"
"But you're like right there!"
With a groan, Pietro scooted down and nudged the trash can into view.
"Thanks." Peter didn't bother getting off his back. He just crumbled his water bottle into a flattened lump, tucked his chin in to see, took aim, and tossed.
It hit the rim of the trash can and then fell in, clean as a basketball shot.
"Whoaaa!" Peter pumped both fists in the air.
"What?" asked Shuri, looking up from a hologram.
"Yesss! Did you see that?"
"No." Wanda propped herself on her elbow. "What happened?"
"I just yeeted my water bottle straight into the trash." Peter put his head back to see them, even though it made them upside-down, and grinned. "Clean as heck."
"Hang on," Shuri said tersely, pressing her first finger and thumb together, "did you say 'yeeted'?"
"Is that the past tense of 'yeet'?" Vision asked, glancing between them confusedly.
"Yeah, duh." Peter rolled his eyes. "Yeeted. I just did it."
"It's 'yote'!" cried Shuri.
"No, it's not!" Peter rolled over.
"Yes, it is!" insisted Shuri.
Peter punched the carpet with his finger. "It's a verb, it's past tense, you add -ed to the end, it's 'yeeted'!"
Shuri leaned forward. "It's a verb, it's English, the words change when they are in the past, it is 'yote'!"
"That's not how English works!"
"Is too!"
"Okay, wait, name one word that goes from 'eet' to 'ote', I dare you."
"There is 'wrote'," Wanda said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but that's 'write', not 'wreet'," said Peter.
"It's still not 'write-ed'," insisted Shuri. "The word changes. English does not follow its own rules!"
"Yeah, but that's an edge case!" cried Peter.
"English is mostly edge cases!" she cried back.
"Yeeted makes sense!"
"Yote sounds better!"
"Hang on—one moment." Vision slid between them and held up his hands. "Before we get too cross. Might I propose a compromise?"
"Oh, I'd like to see how you can save this one." Pietro rolled onto his elbow and started to pay attention.
"We have...'yote', correct?" Vision asked, gesturing to Shuri.
She nodded.
"And we have...'yeeted'?" He gestured to Peter.
He tucked one lip under the other.
"Two nonsense words. Put them together." Vision brought his hands together like a little cup, looked up, and smiled. "Yoted."
Peter gripped his head and screamed. "Aaaaargghhh!"
"Nooooo!" howled Shuri, bent over as if in pain.
"Cursed!" Peter's voice was muffled, his face planted in the carpet. "That is so cursed!"
"Bleach!" cried Shuri. "I need bleach for my brain!"
Wanda leaned over to Vision and whispered, "I think you broke them."
"I'm gonna commit self-deletus!" howled Peter, kicking his feet in the air.
Vision just laughed, clear and devious.
They never did make a final decision. They just knew it wasn't that.
A/N: An extra-long chapter today! Hopefully that makes up for the wait in case I don't update the last chapter on time next week. I'm still procrastinating, LOL
[EDIT, 4/15/21: Yeah, I didn't get enough time to write. This week has been a busy one. I'll try to get the update out by next Friday, but no promises!]
As always, my Sokovian is Slovak, at the mercy of Google Translate. Šialený brat means "crazy brother", Čo do is basically "what the", and Kubko is a Slovak nickname for Jacob or James.
The song Steve and Bucky sing is I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones, originally written by Chris Yacich, but the version they're quoting is by the Hoosier Hot Shots. My personal favorite is the one by British vocalist George Elrick, which came out a year later in 1936. Perfect time for Bucky and Steve to be teenagers and laughing about a nonsense song.
If you're looking for a great classical pianist to play memes, I highly recommend Dein0mite on Youtube. Definitely my inspiration for Vision's piano skills.
Reviews are outdated 2015 memes! Tbc...