"We're getting married!" Doctor Newton Geiszler shouted as he came sweeping in to the lab. "She said yes! Yes!"

The sudden loudness that filled the room upon his co-workers arrival startled Doctor Hermann Gottlieb so severely he nearly fell off the ladder he was perched on to allow himself to reach the top of the ceiling-high chalk board. "Newton!" he shouted in frustration when he regained his balance. To his further irritation he realized he had dropped the chalk and had to descend the ladder to retrieve it, thus further delaying his work.

"Sorry," Newton said dismissively just to appease the annoyed skinny man, "but she said yes!" He practically danced over to where Herman was scooping up the broken chalk stick. When Hermann stood upright he found himself almost nose to nose with his exuberant co-worker and took a step backward to try to reestablish some form of a comfort zone. Newton, with complete disregard for Hermann's personal space, placed his hands upon the other man's shoulders and gripped them. Hermann cast a confused glance at the hands on his shoulders before looking back at Newton's grinning face with a reproachful look when Newton began to shake him. "We're getting married, man, isn't that amazing!"

"You have only known her for 427 days!" Hermann scoffed. "That is hardly enough time to get to know someone enough to head into a marriage."
"It is not!" Newton protested. "I know her well enough! Hell, I'd say I know her about as well as I know you and I didn't even have to drift with her first! And what would you have me do anyway? Wait another five years? Sorry, Hermann, I'm not a stickler like you."
"I never — Oh! Forget it." Hermann walked away, he knew that when it came to arguing with Newton Geiszler 90% of the time he would come out on top, forever getting the last word and declaring himself winner. Still, despite the many arguments they had they were still friends and Hermann was actually happy for his friend even if he wasn't going to say it outright. "And I thought I told you not to call me by my first name!" He added. It was something he had always had to yell about before they drifted and became friends and now it was his way of ending arguments, both of them always had to smile about those days.

"Alright, Dr. Gottlieb." Newton mocked, using his best impression of Hermann, and smiled. "Did you finish the calculations yet? I've already built the damn thing, we could have had it done already if you knew what the hell you were doing."

Hermann sighed. "Well if someone wasn't constantly interrupting me then maybe I'd have had my share done weeks ago!"
"What do you mean 'interrupting'!? All I do is talk to you!" Newton interjected.
"Precisely. You never actually stop talking." Hermann told him.
"You know, if you let me just put my music on —" Newton started.
"No! Absolutely not! I have no idea how you even call that noise mu—" Hermann argued.
"It's not noise!" Newton countered.

The argument over Newton's music was an old but true one. It never seemed to fail that on an almost daily basis the subject would come up and the outcome was always the same. Unless Hermann was out of the lab the music could not play. Newton knew this was the way it was going to stay yet he was always the one to instigate the argument. It was just one of those arguments he couldn't win but at least the arguing was better than the silence Hermann would have preferred. It was the real reason he always started it, it was his way of tricking Hermann into talking about something while they worked.

The two worked, and argued on and off, until the sun went down. It was then Hermann decided he needed a break for the night.

"How close is it to done?" Newton asked him from over on his side of the lab.
"I've only got two more calculations to make and then we can begin testing it." Hermann informed him.
"Two! You've only got two left and you're calling it a day! We could be done by midnight! We could have a whole system up and running. Man, you gotta finish it now! Come on! It's gonna be so cool. How can you just leave now?" Newton began rambling.
"Goodnight, Newton." Hermann grabbed his coat and left the lab.

Newton considered chasing after him and forcing him to finish the project, after all it wouldn't be that hard to catch up to him, but he decided against it. No, he figured he would just finish the final calculations himself. It was only two, after all, and then he could run the tests and the next morning when Hermann showed up the whole thing would be finished anyway! Yes, that is what he decided to do.

It took him hours. The calculations Hermann had left incomplete were a little out of his area of expertise and he spent quite some amount of time just staring at the hundreds of numbers and letters written in chalk. When the staring wasn't getting him anywhere he switched on his music as loud as he could handle (which was pretty loud) and took a beer from the mini fridge over on his side of the lab hoping that relaxing a little might help him think better. Hours passed and a beer turned into several but at some point around dawn he declared himself finished and triumphantly he jumped off the ladder and staggered across the room to the machine that was waiting to be tested.

"I'll show him! I did it! Me! Not him. Me!" Newton laughed as he got down on the floor and shimmed himself under the machine. He spent quite a while under it messing with wires and tubes and the like before he pushed himself back out. Covered in a fair amount of grease he stood up and lifted a helmet-like device, similar to the ones used for drifting, and placed it on his head. He switched the machine on and punched some numbers in on a keypad. "Alright. Time to test this baby out."

"Newton Geiszler what the devil are you doing!" came a shout from the other end of the room. Newton spun around and was met with a completely vexed Herman. Newton wasn't sure if the man's anger stemmed from the music that was still playing or from seeing that he had stayed the night to complete the project without him, whatever it was Newton didn't much care at this point and he flicked the machine on.
"Don't you dare!" Hermann shouted, but Newton ignored him.

Hermann crossed the room as quickly as he could but it wasn't fast enough. Newton vanished before his eyes before Hermann ever reached him. He panicked. That wasn't supposed to happen. The machine wasn't supposed to make people disappear. It was supposed to transport their thoughts out to others in attempt to find other beings, like the Kaijus, it wasn't supposed to transport the whole person.
"Damn it." Hermann cursed. He had a pretty good idea what had gone wrong. Whatever Newton had done with the machine he'd made it so that it acted as a teleportation device and Hermann had only one option now. He had to go find him.

Muttering every foul thing he had ever wanted to say about Newton under his breath he reached out and grabbed the second helmet, put it on, and slammed his fist down on the big ,red 'go' button (as Newton insisted it had to actually be a big, red, 'go' button because for some reason he found it funny but the joke was lost on Hermann) and disappeared from the room as well leaving Newton's music to continuously fill the room despite them being absent from it.