Super Science
Ch 31: A New Problem, a Different Solution
"Okay people.", Egon stated as he slapped a meeting table that he and the entire staff of NIP were all sitting around. "Now I'm sure you all know why I've called you all here today?", he asked them rhetorically.
"Because…it's your birthday?", Izuku asked innocently.
"No."
"Is it my birthday?", asked Hankyō.
"No."
"Are we getting a raise?", Genus asked hopefully.
"No!"
"You're gonna give me full and unrestricted access to the Singularity Soul?", Hatsume exclaimed in excitement.
"NO!"
"You finally got a girlfriend at 30.", Cho asked while slapping the table as Orpington clucked a laugh.
"Are we gonna do this!?", Egon asked back, already done with this charade.
Then Honey Lemon spoke up and asked cautiously, "Does it have to do with the fact that we were attacked and well underprepared, only getting out of it by the skin of our teeth due to our adversaries not doing their homework on us? The massive damages accrued by the said attack? Or the rapidly developing dragon we have stored away?"
Egon sighs as he runs his nose and answers back, "Yes on all fronts. Going in no order, although the damages we faced were rather extravagant, we are more than able to fix them thanks to our funds and the ones provided by UA as a sorry/donation. On the other hand, if this event has taught us anything it's that we are sourly underprepared for what's to come. We're working with tech and knowledge that I'm sure countries will go to war for! So we have to outfit this facility with all the measures of a small country's worth of military protection. So that is why I want all of you to be firing on all cylinders to make this place as secure as possible! This is a top priority. I'm talking about new tech, security codes, defenses, force fields, anti-warp quirk generators, literally anything you can think or make to get this place as safe and secure as possible!", he exclaimed.
"Yes sir!", everyone around the table replied in unison.
"And…the dragon?", Otto inquired.
"Ah yes, him.", Egon said with a huff before stressing, "Little Torch Wick isn't so little anymore."
"I liked him better when he was the size of a parrot.", Orpington squawked in complaint.
"So you could bully him?", Otto chastised her.
"He tried to eat me!", she fought back.
"Once and only once.", Otto correct her as she tried to peck at his newly grown tentacles.
"We still haven't fully determined how big he'll grow and I don't think we can continue increasing the enclosure sizes for him. Heck, I don't think such a thing could exist! Especially alongside the fact that he can fly.", Izuku lamented.
"And we can't just let him go galavanting off wherever he wants.", Cho added.
"And no country in the world is gonna let us keep a dragon on their soil without wanting to know details.", Hollyhock says.
"I hate to say it but we may have to terminate him.", Genus admits with a somber tone.
Izuku looked down at the table, tightening his fists as tears well up in his eyes as he says back, "I hate to say it, but you may be right."
"Not really.", Hollyhock interjects.
All eyes fall on the smiling woman as Egon asks her, "You have an idea, Hollyhock?"
She nods and tells the group, "More of a working theory. You remember when you gave me a piece of the Singularity Soul?"
"What?!", Hatsume suddenly exclaimed, making everyone look at him. "You gave her a piece of it but are foraying me!?", he complained.
Egon slaps his face and tells him, "Hollyhock has her head screwed on right and doesn't want to make a death ray with it!"
"AH! But why can't I make a death ray!?", he wines like a child.
"Because I say so!", Egon yells at him, causing the man to sit down with a sulk. After calming himself down and pushing back his hair, Egon turns back and says, "Continue Pam."
"Well I took a small sample from the piece and I managed to make a little something I like to call the Reset Bomb.", she explained to them.
"Reset Bomb? What's that?", Egon and Izuku say at the same time.
She then pulls out a folder and opens up to a picture of something strange looking. It appears like a small machine on the verge of breaking to pieces but held up and enraptured by vibes, roots, leaves, and other plant life with a glow at the center that illuminates like a flame.
"When this little device hits any soil it will instantly shoot back up an entire forest of indigenous plant life. Almost like if humans never cultivated it.", she explained to the group, making Izukus and Egon drop their jaws. "If I can make one big enough, tweak it a bit, and send it to the bottom of the ocean, I could potentially make an island that the Dragon could live on alongside any other animals or plants that can't be brought into the public and we can bring ourselves to terminate or keep.", she explained her idea.
Egon shoots up from his seat and exclaimed, "Hollyhock you're beautiful!"
She then took a saddened and serious time as she told him, "Don't thank me yet, there's just one problem with it.", everyone looks at her confused by the comment until she tells them, "I have no idea how or where to test it."
Egon slumps back in his seat, deep in thought as he thought aloud, "That is a good point. Where in all of Japan could we use the Reset Bomb?"
As everyone was pondering on how to remedy this problem, a thought struck Izuku and he pronounced, "I think I have just the thing."
Later
"You know Izuku, I'll be honest, I didn't think you meant here of all places.", Egon told Izuku through the built-in speaker on his high-concentration radiation suite.
"Seriously? Where were you expecting?", Izuku asked back through his suite, as he and Hollyhock set up what looked like a giant mechanical slingshot.
Izuku set the machine into place as the woman punched in coordinates on a device connected to it.
Egon shrugged and then irritated said back rhetorically, "I don't know? One of the several illegal logging sights in Japan. Just not Hokkaido!", he stressed while motioning to the dead zone a few yards away from them.
Dead trees, poisonous soil, and cracked ground that looked dry and mucky were just a few of the wasteland sights starched out before the once prosperous northern part of Japan that was once a hub for new and improved nuclear energy.
"But that's why it's perfect! If the Reset Bomb can turn an environment back to before it was inhabited, then testing to see if it can destroy radioactive isotopes is just what we need.", Izuku exclaimed in excitement.
"I have to agree with him. It's genius.", Hollyhock agreed.
"Pam! I'm trying to be the voice of reason here! This place is a second Chornobyl! The isotopes here are so powerful that, even with clean up, this place will be unsafe for the next 3,000 years.", he exclaimed in a half yell, getting two sets of vastly different reactions to his outburst. Making the man deflate as he told them, "You'd better hope this Reset Bomb is as powerful as you say it is."
After this the coordinates were locked on and each Reset Bomb was primed and ready. Egon had the pleasure of launching them and ended up laughing like a child the whole time, much to the amusement of the other scientists.
Izuku looks at a screen he was holding and said, "Alright, all 12 have been deployed."
Egon lay on the ground of the large flatbed vehicle they were riding on. He was out of breath from laughing and said with a red flush face, "Gotta say. Launching highly dangerous eco bombs from a high-tech slingshot is tons of fun!", Eventually he got up and after calming down he asked, "How long till they take effect?"
"They should start as soon as they hit the soil.", Hollyhock answered.
"Uh, Professor?", Izuku called, making Egon walk up to him as the teen continued, "The isotopes have gone down."
"Already? How far down?", he asked as he looks over his shoulder at the isotope reader in his hand. His eyes went wide as it read virtually nothing, and asked while snatching the device, and poking at it, "Is this thing broken?!"
"No. This is it.", Izuku afrimed.
Soon the three scientists were brought to the attention of a very strange sound. They looked out into the distance and saw all the plant life begin to resurrect from this rotten poisonous death! All around and far into the distance, they saw trees and flowers sprout and bloom up in huge groves and thick canopies.
With eyes wide and isotope reader dropped, Egon could only whisper, "Oh. My. Gods.", before spreading his arms and proclaiming, "It worked….it WORKED! IT WORKED!?"
The man began to jump around for joy as Izuku hugged Hollyhock and told her, "Your invention did it Pamela!", Pamela couldn't help but smile and look on at her work. But before they could continue, Izuku suddenly exclaimed, "Wait!", the two scientists look at the teen as he asks the woman, "Do you have more?"
Even More Later
"And that does it. The entirety of Hokkaido is now radioactive-free.", Izuku told the scientist as he looked at his screen map of the subsection of Japan and the isotope reader.
All around them a sea of new plant life and no harmful radiation. With no fear of mutation from radiation poisoning, they took off their suits and tossed them to the side as they breathed in the new air of a long-gone place.
"And a new forest is growing on top of all of it. At least that means there's plenty of building material.", Egon said in a chipper tone while picking some wild fruit off one of the trees.
"Hollyhock, I hope you're proud, you just reopened an entire region of Japan for those who lost their home.", Izuku congratulated the woman.
"I'm happy to have done my part for the community.", Hollyhock says with a smile at feeling the plants around her sing her praises for giving them back life.
"That's all well and good but I suggest we beat feet out of here before the Government catches wind of the fact their cesspool of catastrophe is now safe for human life.", Egon told them while packaging the fruit and jumping in the driver's seat.
Hollyhock took up the passenger side and Izuku in the back as the tall man kicked their flatbed into a four-wheeler drive to go over the newly roughed-out terrain.
As they drive out of the forest, Hollyhock spoke to Egon and asked him, "That brings up something I didn't get a chance at the meeting. What are we gonna do when our body of government overlords catches wind of what we're doing, and you know they will?"
"Well set up a meeting, establish ground rules, then go public. And from there we'll be able to do more stuff.", Izuku assured her.
"Like making a new island for one dragon.", she commented back while raising an eyebrow.
Izuku smiled with a thumbs up and answered, "That's the plan."
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