Violated,
So degraded,
The show has just begun.
Dominated,
By all you hated,
This will make you
ULTRAnumb.
- Ultranumb, Blue Stahli
The teen whimpered softly and unnoticeably as pain ripped through his being. He was still asleep and yet, he could feel the agony tear right through him. Muscle ligaments tore and ripped while the muscles themselves grinded up against each other, becoming denser and stretching so far that they bled.
Bones rearranged themselves into a new order and began to harden, snapping and shifting as they forced Marc's body to grow. Hormones rapidly surged through his vessels as they forcibly enlarged themselves to pump more blood through the boy's circulation.
Marc cried out softly as his body unknowingly changed in his sleep. He jerked his head back and fell off his bed, stifling down one last scream as his body convulsed and twisted.
…
Morning light crept slowly through the curtains and into the room. Tony and Lee woke up tiredly as they yawned and jumped out of their beds. "Another school day…" Tony said tiredly, hardly awake as usual.
"Hm-hm." Lee agreed, not bothering to speak much. He turned to Marc's bed and saw that the 13- year-old was on the floor still asleep. "Tony, go wake up Marc."
"Huh? Why do I have too?" Tony asked, putting on his clothes and getting ready to go into the bathroom.
"Because… um, just do it." Lee mumbled, walking into the bathroom.
Tony sighed and walked over to Marc's unconscious body, he shook his shoulder and said, "Marc, Marc, wake up its time for school." The brown-haired child did not wake. "Marc… come on…" Tony yawned shaking his brother even harder, this time making the youth stir. "MARC!" Tony yelled in the brunette's ear.
Marc creaked open his eyes and growled lowly, Tony frowned tiredly and stood up.
"Jeez, you don't have to be grumpy about it..." The black haired boy looked down at his older brother as he sat up and yawned.
"Hm? Tony, what are you staring at?" Marc asked, his eyes half open. Tony hadn't realized that he was gazing straight at the older teen with wide eyes, at least he was fully awake now.
"Oh... nothing. Just wonderin' when Sleeping Beauty was going to wake up..."
Marc growled tiredly, "Ha ha. And I was wonderin' when Mulan was going to clean up his side of the room."
"At least I'm the badass princess," Tony said as he skidded out of the room leaving Marc alone.
The brunette yawned again and stood up instantly groaning as pain shot up his body. He cringed and grabbed his shoulder by instinct, his muscles were strangely sore and were aching like crazy – wait, correction, his whole body was aching. The spy suppressed a cry as he fell to his knees and embraced himself with both of his arms. Gritting his teeth, Marc took in harsh breaths and composed himself. The aching slowly stopped and left a dull throb in its place making the genius groan lowly under his breath.
Taking in one more breath of air, Marc stood back up and yawned, he took a guess and thought that the strange pain in his body was from him falling out of the bed. As soon as the throbbing calmed he went over to his closet and got out his clothes, looking at his regular cargo pants and blue jacket Marc felt an odd disgusted feeling whelm up inside him. Somehow when he looked at his usual attire he felt pathetic, was this really what his was wearing throughout the year?
Marc threw the clothes on the floor and looked further into his closet, the disgust growing even bigger as he found nothing good to wear. Come on, there must be something! He thought furiously until he reached the end of his wardrobes. He quickly began looking through his brother's closets and smiled, even a young genius like himself could figure out a decent fashion wardrobe.
Taking a little of Tony's clothes and a little of Lee's, using scissors and quick speed, Marc began working on a new wear.
"Tony, has Marc come down yet?" Their mother, Karen Clark asked as she looked at her watch, "It's almost time for you all to go."
"No, mom, he's probably still getting dressed." Tony answered, shoving the finishing portions of his cereal down.
"He's taking an awfully long time, are you sure he's okay up there?" Megan asked.
"Well, we found him on the floor when we woke up… but I'm sure he's fine." Lee said, grabbing his backpack and heading towards the door. "Maybe we should go, he'll be able to catch-"
"Good morning, everyone!" The cheerful voice of Marc exclaimed as he walked down the stairs with his backpack. The Clark Family took one glance at him and immediately, their mouths fell open. It didn't surprise Marc at all that they were captivated by his new look, even to himself he felt strange.
A pair of blue jeans covered his bottom half while he kept his usual shoes on. On his top half was a crimson shirt that had black claw mark colors running from every direction, over the shirt was a black jean jacket that stopped at his torso; the sleeves looked to be torn off and ripped, exposing Marc's bare arms. To add to his devilish new attire, a pair a midnight leather, finger-less gloves hid his palms.
Megan stepped towards the genius and examined his new image. "M-Marc, you look-"
"Stunning? Fabulous? Superb?" Marcus substituted with a smirk on his face.
"No, well yes, but also different." Megan returned his smirk with one of her own, "So… who are you and what have you done with the real Marc?"
Marc laughed. "What? You don't like the new look?"
"Not that we don't like it." Tony snickered, "I actually think it's an improvement!" Marc groaned but kept his smile.
"It's a good change from your normal look!" Lee chuckled as he patted Marc on the back. Suddenly their father, Cal Clark, walked in and immediately laid eyes on his son. He stared for a while and let his morning expression fall; he stared and stared but finally grabbed his car keys and said quietly to himself.
"I must be still drowsy." Karen handed the siblings their lunches and gave them goodbye hugs. "Come on kids, you don't want to be late for school." Cal said as the Clark siblings followed him out the door and into the car.
…
Needless to say that Marc's new appearance captured everyone's eyes at school; the students, the teachers, even a few other staff members who hardly knew the boy were surprised by his new attire. But if that didn't catch everyone's attention, then the slight bigger build he had did.
Marc didn't exactly notice that his body seemed a bit tougher until after P.E when he bench-pressed two times his usual standard. In truth, he didn't pay much attention to it.
By the time lunch had begun, Marc was beginning to feel that same soreness in his body but it was strangely focused on his head. Everything seemed almost too clear for him, so clear that it was beginning to hurt. He heard too many cell phones go off and distant screams were shouting in his strangely sensitive ears, every seat that moved to every bird that flapped its wings, he heard it all too clearly.
The overwhelming smells weren't easy to deal with either. The terrible scents of sweat from the gym found its way into his nose, but the stench of the cafeteria food was what made him want to retch.
And then there were the urges. Yes, urges. Marc couldn't explain them even if he tried. He hated the unnatural feeling that welled inside of him. Marc had thought that he was just hungry, considering that he missed breakfast, but after he had finished his lunch the feeling just didn't go away. He couldn't even describe how he felt it was just… repulsive and weird and hunger. Almost as if something was squirming around in him, Marc sat back in his seat and exhaled, how was he going to make this feeling go away?
"Marc? You okay?" The voice of Lee asked as he approached his little brother.
Marc softly nodded and smiled. "You sure? You look a little down about something."
"I'm fine," Marc stated, "just a bit hungry." Lee sat down next to him and placed his lunch in front of him, allowing the smells to flow through the air.
"Well, if you want you can have my fries or carrots, whichever one you prefer."
Lee offered, pushing his tray of food towards Marc. The 13-year-old looked over the tray and smiled, he grabbed at Lee's burger and immediately started eating it.
"Hey, wait that's mine!" Lee shouted in protest but was completely ignored. Marc continued to gobble down the burger until there was nothing left, he leaned back again, smiled and sighed.
"Thanks, Lee." He said gratefully as he stood up and left, leaving the older Clark to his smaller portions. Lee looked sadly down at his lunch and sighed. "I thought Marc was a vegetarian..." He said quietly to himself. "Now what am I going to eat...?"
…
After school finally ended, nothing was getting any better. The urges had come back and this time with a vengeance, it was actually hurting as if something was clawing at his insides. Marc huffed as he walked through the hallways to get out of the school. If the aching pain all over his body wasn't enough to agitate him then it was what he saw around the corner that infuriated him beyond all levels of anger.
Stopping frozen in his tracks, Marc's gaze landed upon three older class kids, eighth grades he guessed, that were messing around with a smaller boy – wait, messing around would be too small of a word. Bullying, yes, that's the word he was looking for, Marc looked past the eighth grade bullies to whom they were terrorizing and realized that it was Tony.
Taking one step forward, the genius felt something in him awaken, and he gladly took it in and embraced it.
Tony must've seen Marc coming because when the youngest Clark called out his brother's name and alerted the bullies of Marc's presence he began to struggle to get free of their grip.
Of course Marc understood why Tony was acting so defenseless against his attackers, it was all because he had to protect his identity of being a spy, if the 12-year-old had actually beaten up three eighth graders then that would rouse some suspicion. But, nevertheless, this didn't mean that Marc couldn't intervene…
"Is that your geeky brother?" The first tall bully scoffed, putting Tony roughly down. "Maybe he has some more money than you did." He slowly began to approach the brown-haired boy as his two companions followed after him. "So nerd, do you want to make this hard or easy?"
"…" Marc didn't answer right away, instead the smile on his face turned into a vicious smirk as he turned to his little brother. "Tony, I'm going to tell you about an interesting experiment, so pay attention. Okay?"
"What?" Tony repeated, not so sure about what was going to happen next.
"It's called Schrödinger's Cat, it was a thought experiment related to the specifics of quantum physics."
"Quantum phys-waz?"
Marc nodded and turned back to the bullies. "Ignoring us, eh? You think just because you dropped out of your geek wear that you can do whatever you want?"
The first bully seethed as he rose his fist and rocketed towards Marc, "You're dead, you little-"
At that moment, time froze. The fist that the eighth grader had thrown at Marc was easily caught in his hand, the eighth grader pulled back his fist but found it hard to get out of Marc's grip. The brown haired boy smiled as he glided pulled on the fist and got in the bully's face.
Marc's eyes flashed a dangerous intent as he sneered, "You see, a physicist and theoretical biologist named Erwin Schrödinger developed an interesting theory on the state of being." Swiftly, Marc kneed the boy in the stomach and abruptly threw a clenched hand into his face. The two other bullies responded immediately. They charged towards Marc and attempted to grab him but he smoothly dodged it and grabbed the second bully by his arms.
"Schrödinger illustrated that the quantum mechanical concept of superposition, the ability of a sub- microscopic object to exist in many different states, or occupy many different places, all at once..." With all his strength, Marc lifted the eighth grader and slammed him down on the floor, knocking him unconscious. "And that's how Schrödinger's thought experiment began."
Marc smirked and glared up at the last vulnerable eighth grader, Marc carefully stood back up and smiled softly, "He took a cat and placed it in a box with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter and a flask of prussic acid, that's a type of poison." Marc amusingly watched the older teen try to hide his fear.
"Tony, assume that, within an hour, the atom will decay to produce an alpha particle. When the Geiger counter detects the alpha particle, it releases a hammer, which breaks the glass and releases the poison. The cat will have died, right? Well, according to quantum physics, the cat will die only if an observer looks into the box."
"Really?" Tony bellowed, shocked as his brother stood completely still in the face of the last bully.
Within seconds Marc was already close enough to the third bully to knock him out swiftly and quietly. The brown haired spy looked down at the three unconscious bullies and smirked, he then turned to Tony, who was standing impressed against the wall, and asked, "So, what exactly happened to the cat, Tony?"
Tony thought about this for a second then smiled and shouted, "Knock out! It was completely and utterly knocked out cold!"
Marc laughed and walked towards his little brother, putting his arm around his shoulder Marc said, "Actually the cat is confirmed to be both dead and alive, but that works too!"
Tony groaned but kept his smile. The two Clarks took one step and the floor below them vanished, sending the both of them falling down a dirty tunnel.
