"Damn that Commish!" Dr. Coyle pounded on her desk, panting in frustration.
"Just because I've given my lab to support his ARMS foundation, he thinks he OWNS me? He thinks he can BELITTLE me! Well, no more… I'll show you, Mister Brass… I'll show you what happens when you cross… Dr. Gwendolyn Coyle."
Her voice was filled with seething rage, obviously aimed at the champion who had irked her so. He was always bragging about himself, ever the "charmer" while almost always saying something insulting indirectly, or worse, directly aimed at her. She had put up with it for a bit: she admitted she wasn't the nicest either. But now, she had enough. More than enough.
"But…. How am I going to do this…?" She asked herself, digging through a few papers. She was a genius, not much of a fighter (quite yet). Then, she knew. "If I can't beat him up myself yet… I'll get someone to do it for me! Yes, that's exactly what I'll do!" She picked up her phone, calling the DNA Lab.
"Hello? Dr. C?" A man answered.
"Yeah, it's me. Listen. I have a… new request. In the name of scientific interest, of course. You know those tubes of slime we've been keeping in stasis?"
"I do. What about them, Doctor?"
"Activate the projects. Inject the fighter DNA."
"It may unstable, miss… Are you sure?"
"Yes, of course I'm sure! For science, you have to take a few risks!" She yelled.
"All right, all right… I'll activate the project right away. They should be ready in about… two weeks?"
"Excellent. Keep me updated, will you?"
After that, they hung up. "Now, let's create a few backup plans, shall we…?" She talked to herself, her lips curling up as she began drawing some new blueprints.
Two weeks later…
"He does what?"
"Ma'am, I'm afraid he really does act like… a toddler. A slimy, playful and unskilled toddler. I don't think he's nearly good enough to participate yet…"
Coyle sighed. "But… he's so cute…" Yes, aside from beating Brass, the project was also designed by her to be quite the little cutie, one she would definitely root for.
"That is certain, but… It's gonna take a while. Even then, I don't think he'll make it super far… The new tournament is in 3 months. Of course, we'll be training him as much as we can, but he seems… a little slow. Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"I guess… All right. Well, uhh… D-do your best." She said, hanging up again. "No, no, no! Give me a break, would you…" She kicked the wall, before painfully holding her foot and hopping on a beanbag. "Ow…" She sighed again and turned on the TV, watching the news.
"In Britain, the International History Museum has had a supernatural occurrence. After a lightning strike shut off the power, it seemed that two mummies have risen from the dead somehow. While the exact identities of these supernatural humans is unknown, what is known is that they are a mother and daughter pair from what seems to be 1950. They are harmless, however, they keep asking where the father of the family is, who may have been lost. What's also strange about this event is that the family seems to have received a weakened version of ARMS, and it is suspected that, if the same thing happened to the man, he'd receive it as well. A team of archeologists is planning a trip to Egypt to search for the man. The mother and daughter, likely due to their long sleep, are having trouble remembering his name. From the description provided by our translator, he was a goliath of a man and a war hero, also supposedly responsible for starting the World Peace Project. We suspect it is likely to be historical figure Gamal Arian. In other news…"
Coyle raised an eyebrow. "Whoa… Now that is something you don't see every day- hey, wait a minute." She began to think about this. "So, lighting resurrected them, but also gave them ARMS…? So, shocks of electricity can both give control over ARMS, but also take them away for a bit…? And… wait a bit." The gears in her head started turning as she began to draw up some schemes.
"So, if my research is correct… In those times, women were mostly housewives and not workers. That might explain why their ARMS are weakened: they don't have experience fighting. If I were to resurrect a fighter, however…. EUREKA!" Dr. Coyle smirked. "Yes! That's it! If I need someone to beat Brass, I'll need a bigger, burlier and brawnier person than him to be my meatshield. And considering he's a war hero, I bet his ARMS will be huge! Yes, yes, yes! You're a genius, Gwen!" She cackled as she praised herself. "So, he rests in this tomb? Well, dear archeologists, I think I'm making my mark on history today."
She picked up her phone again. "Liam? Yes, prepare the jet. We're going to Egypt."
"Daddy… What's going to happen to us?" A small girl asked her much larger father. She looked almost dead due to her skin being so terribly pale.
"Gamal… Do you…?"
"Yes, dear. She deserves the truth."
"What truth?" The mother sighs, tearing up at her daughter's innocence.
"We've… caught a terrible illness, sweetie. One we can't recover from."
"W-what? We can't… B-but Daddy… Daddy's invincible, right? W-we should be fine!"
"I am most certainly not invincible, my dearest. No man is. I got lucky in the war. I got lucky meeting your mother, and I got lucky seeing you being born, and lucky yet again raising you. But… My luck has run out." The small girl had never seen her father, the invincible hero, cry before. But now he was, holding onto both girls with his massive arms.
"Daddy! Mummy! I don't… I don't want to go!"
"Sssssh…. Monifa…. We'll always be together. Just in a different place. A better one." Her mother soothed. It seemed her parents had... given up?
"But… I wanna live! I wanna be just as amazing as you two! This isn't fair!" She yelled, bawling her eyes out.
"Monifa… Daddy and I have always been proud of you. You've always been such a kind, sweet girl. And besides… It is indeed unfair how short your life is now… But… That doesn't mean you never accomplished anything, right?"
"Huh…?"
"It's true, Monifa". Her father wiped away a tear from her face, then one from his own. "You deserve our pride. Remember that beautiful dance performance in ballet class? Or when you impressed your whole class with that beautiful drawing? Sounds like a wonder child to me."
Monifa sniffled, then smiled. "Are… D-do you mean that?"
Both her parents nodded, holding a hand over their chest. "We promise."
"T-then… Then… Then I won't b-be sad anymore."
"That's my girl. Come on… Let's go visit that petting zoo one more time, yeah?"
"Can we get to see Charles?"
"Of course we can! And Bobby, and Daisy…. Everyone. You can pet until your hand falls off."
The lights in the hospital suddenly flickered, however. Gamal looked on, everything going darker and darker.
"What's…. h-" Suddenly, right before his eyes, his daughter and wife were sucked away by something.
"No! Come back! I can't lose you! Please!" He tried reaching for them.
"-elp! –mal, -el- us!" He tried again, vision blurring from his tears.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" He screamed as he sat up, panting and groaning. What… happened? That… How did he re-live one of his final memories like that? Why was it turned so nightmarish right when it was so perfectly bittersweet, just as he remembered it? And why was his arm... so freakishly stretchy? This wasn't right, this was-
"It worked… It worked!" A female exclaimed. He raised an eyebrow.
"Generating all that electricity finally paid off for our experiment…"
"Yes! And I couldn't be happier!" The female yelled again, he could see her this time. She seemed to be a… scientist of sorts, with unnaturally green hair. He tried speaking to her, but all that came out was a garbled noise. "Oh… I think he's questioning what happened… Must be confusing, being resurrected."
Resurrected? What? But then… he looked in a mirror. "ARGH!" He yelled. What… What had he become? Rather than the man he used to be, the mirror now reflected a goliath mummified abomination, with rotten, purple flesh and piercing red eyes with spiraled irises. The woman… Had she… She really had. She really, really brought him back from the dead, separating him from both his family and his eternal rest.
"BRUAAAARGH!" He roared, his eyes going fully red. "MUMMY!" He began destroying the laboratory equipment, aggressively swinging his arms around. However, he noticed yet another thing: they didn't just look stretchy, they could stretch over long distances and had strange tools attached to them. "GROH!" He sent one of his new tools, a large purple wrecking ball of sorts, towards the woman and her helper, who barely dodged the attack.
"Waaaait! Wait, wait, wait!" She exclaimed, he let his arm retract. He snorted air from his nose, making himself even bigger than before by standing up straight.
"I know I revived you, but I did it for a good reason, see? Do you remember your family?" The monster man snorted again, grumbling something. "Yes, that's good. Listen to this. A man named Max Brass has kidnapped them, and did the same to them as I just did to you. Now, he's holding them captive somewhere to show off like hunting trophies."
The man visibly flinched at that. "Urgh…?"
"I mean it. He's also a champion of the sport associated with those new stretchy arms you got from me. Now, any fighter that beats him gets just about anything they want, money, fame or even his position as leader of the official league of that sport. If you beat him, you'll get your family back!"
"Mummy! Mummy!"
"I knew you'd agree. Don't worry, I'll get you all familiar with this new sport. By the way… You'll need a new alias to participate in these fights." The monster tilted his head, quirking an eyebrow.
"Got nothing? How's… Master Mummy, the Grim Creeper sound?" He then nodded.
"All right… Prepare yourself for training, Master Mummy. Prove old dogs can learn new tricks."
