55: The Chemist: Making the Best of a Bad Situation
Fanfic
Thirteen Stars Shone in the Sky…
Arin, the Physicist. Son Wu, the Martial Artist. Donatello, the Mathematician. Arnim, the Biologist. Susan, the Politician and Lawmaker. John, the Artist. Albert, the Roboticist. Maria, the Teacher. Emma, the Economist. Dejù, the Analyst. Arkhan, the Recorder. Sarah, the Programmer. And me.
One by one, we watched them die.
We were the hope of humanity, the Thirteen Mortal Gods, the Guardians of the Gateway to Tomorrow, and the New Zodiac. With our genius, our effort, we brought about a new age, a social, scientific, and cultural revolution. In a flash, it was all gone.
Easy as easy, to make them fall…
Mankind, once again, grew greedy. Perhaps we were lazy. It had, after all, been years since we were needed to fight, fix, or fiddle with anything of importance. We had withdrawn, each of us, into our own dreams, those things which we had abandoned to make the world a better place. As a joke, we had set our catchphrase to be 'for the good of all mankind'. Sometimes, I wonder if we did that.
Will we miss them? Not at all!
Still, we did our best. New tech, better education, a more stable standard for people, and wonders that made everything before it (except for the f-ing pyramids, which we never did figure out) look stone age. Even better, we brought about an approximation of world peace! Ish. Eh, we got close enough.
Back to our party, back to our life.
Then, they killed us. One died of poison, another to the SUN (we were pretty strong and hard to kill. They had to use our own research against us to even manage what they did), and so on, until we all died without the others knowing. All except for me, of course. I was the last, and the most socially involved of all of us. Odd, that, given I was the biggest nerd of us all.
Back to our warring, back to our strife.
Even then, it was the disasters that warned me. When major, apocalypse-grade monsters and disasters that you were assured were 'perfectly safe and locked up' started killing whole cities, it's kinda a hard thing to miss, you know? Ironically, for a little bit, I though they had gone mad and started to tear down what they built. They hadn't.
Oops! Pops the First one, Bang! Goes number Two!
Before I could really do anything but find out I was the last of my friends alive, they got me, too. Thanks to my burial plans (cryogenically frozen, the launched into the void between dimensions. TOLD you I was a nerd!) and my powerful, and tastefully-modified, body I got to see what happened even as my body was shutting down and being prepped for burial. It… wasn't good. But humanity pulled through! Sure, they lost a fair bit of what we created, but they managed to find a way. And, given some of the shit that escaped containment… that's saying something!
Oops, now it's Doomsday! What-ya gonna do?
Still, I wasn't all that mad. Yes, I was a LITTLE pissed at the whole assassin thing, but I was older than a millennium! It was time to move on! Life had… been a little dull for the last fifty or so years, to be honest. Yes, I was doing good work, but I wanted a break. A vacation! Dying wasn't quite what I had in mind, but, eh! Could be worse!
Can't talk to mama, she was crying red!
Can't talk to papa, he is walking dead!
Can't talk to brother John, 'cause something ate his head!
Still, in a moment of clarity right before my end, I was okay. I was at peace. And if I was just a TINY bit vindictive about the world screwing us over for no good reason after all we did, and just a LITTLE bit pleased at the disasters they had brought on themselves, who could blame me?
Looking for the stars? They are all long gone!
Looking for the sun or moon? The Day is long past done!
Evil politicians! Kill 'em all right now!
Nasty evil businessmen? Feed the demon cow!
Problems we still got, gotta clean them up!
What's the number we are at? Let us count them up!
1, 2, 3, 4…
Post-Calamity jump-rope song sung by kids to remember the Calamity of Fallen Stars, C 3207 A.D..
Recorded by Atla Morsin of the Temple of the Recorder, 4025 AD
In a flash, I woke up. Where, I didn't know, but it was obviously a city, and, if my history is worth squat (it barely is) it looks to be early twenty-first century, or so. Why I am in the past, I don't know (time travel, while not completely bunked by the Physicist, was proven highly unlikely about 2750) but I didn't care. Why? My body was YOUNG AGAIN!
Indeed, I found myself in an all-new body! Young, less than twenty or so (not even old enough to sleep through the night, really!), not unhealthy, but not all that fit (fitness had kinda… taken off with the introduction of Super-Supplements and Powers-in-a-Bottle, two of my name-brand lines!). It was fantastic!
True, my older body had many more alterations and modifications to it, but most of the truly impressive designs that I and my co-workers and friends had designed had a much better effect on a younger body. Even better, even though I was the Chemist of the group (and had fewer achievements than any other of the hard sciences), I was the driving force behind their work (they may have done the science and designing, but who do you think provided the materials and concoctions!). On top of that, I could tell that this body was not original to this dimension, saving me from having to slot himself into someone else's life!
Quick as I could, I used my intellect (might not seem like all that much [in anything but chemistry] for my home dimension and time, but here and now, an I.Q. of 300 was amazing!) to get money, then turn that money into basic materials. Finding and barricading myself in an abandoned house (and covering up my presence completely. Who knew running from the paparazzi for two centuries would give me so many useful skills!), I rapidly set up my lab and built a perfect Tier One Human Refinement Chamber. Yes, it went up to Tier Twelve, but this body would NOT survive that.
Ten days later, I walked out of the house with nails as hard as diamond (and almost mono-molecular sharp!), skin tougher that Kevlar, hair as fire-resistant as asbestos (and not cancer-inducing) and a rarefied body, to find out what kind of world I was in, what I could do for it, and how I could help his new home of Brockton Bay.
(So, beyond Tony Stark levels of Chemist, with Tony Stark levels of knowledge and skill in all the sciences. This one is interesting, because, for the most part, it will be a business fic in a superhero world. Also, this was inspired by the fact that we really don't see that many awesome chemists in stories, but the OZ serum, Captain America's Serum, the Bernstein method, and several other such things are all chemist made. Makes an interesting idea, don't ya think?)