Super Science
Ch 18: Dragon
Egon looked over a large sheet of schematics on his much cleaner desk. It was a map of the facility with a detailed outline of all security measures on the premises. Hidden turrets, traps, sensors, Tesla gates, and much more were outlined in the promise of maximum security. After looking it over for quite a while, he fixed his glasses to look up at Doctor Cho's happily excited, smiling face.
He cleared his throat and told her nervously, "While I like the schematics you have for an in-facility security system, Doctor Cho. I'm just a bit worried about how, um, how should I say this? Extreme and fatal it is. Don't you think it's a bit much?"
Cho raised an eyebrow as she leaned in and shot back, "With what we got and are doing here, I'd say it's almost too little. This is honestly the water-down version of what I originally thought up."
"Holy christ!", Egon exclaimed as he thought about the ramifications, watching as Cho said back to glance at him with a smug look. Seeing her point, he told her with a sigh, "Well, I can't argue with that. I'll allow it; if need be, we'll add more later. But add some non-lethal defenses as well. You can't be all gun-hoe for every situation. You may commence construction on it.", Doctor Cho nods and rolls up the diagrams before leaving the new automatic sliding doors made by Professor Hatsume.
Once she left, the doors stayed open as someone else barged in. Egon noticed this, looked up from his desk, and saw Izuku. He was red in the face, shaking like a leaf, and two seconds from crying.
Egon sighed lightly and said, "Oh boy. Yes, Izuku. What have you done this time?"
"I had an accident.", he finally admitted through a shaky breath.
"I thought you were housebroken.", Egon replied with a raised eyebrow.
"Professor!", He shouted back in a mix of panic and anger.
Egon raised his hands and, in a calm tone, told him, "I'm just teasing. What's bugging you so badly?"
Izuku sniffs back his emotions and steadies his voice as he answers, "I was dabbling around with the Evolution and Quirk Splinters, and I made something I had no intention of making."
Egon waits for the rest, but when it doesn't come, he prompts him firmly, "Well, don't leave me in suspense. Tell me what it is."
Izuku walked up to his desk on shaky legs, his emotions just moments from spilling over as fear gripped his heart at how his boss would react to his newest blunder. He reached into his coat and brought out a small creature cupped in his hands, showing it to the man reluctantly.
"Here.", he said with a quiver.
Egon looked down at the little creature, adjusting his glasses, seeming to be nothing but an oddly colored lizard. He chuckled at what Izuku was so scared about showing him and proclaimed, "Is that it? This teeny tiny little lizard is all that you made? I was expecting something far more….", He trailed off as the small lizard took a mammalian gate, sprouted a set of tiny wings, and breathed out a puff of smoky fire. "Dangerous?", He said in confusion. He looked at the boy who was begging to shake and cry while asking him calmly, "Izuku…did you make a-."
The boy broke down into tears, hunching over and covering his face as he wailed, "I didn't mean to. I didn't realize it would happen!"
Egon was shocked by his reaction and almost froze. Luckily, he kept himself together and placed the baby dragon on his desk while he tended to the terrified, crying boy.
Holding his shoulders and petting his head, he told him, "Okay, Okay, let's calm down for a moment. I'm not mad, just surprised. It's not like you tried to hide this from me until it got out of hand or did it behind my back, and you have told me that it was a complete accident. Just give me the rundown of what happened."
"Y-You're not mad?", Izuku looked up with red eyes and a runny nose.
"Just surprised, that's all.", Egon assures him.
Izuku sniffles and gets help cleaning up his face from Egon, who explains, "Well, after testing and gaining the results of the Quirk and Evolution Splinters, I thought about what would happen if both were used on the same creature. No plant I used would work, so I used an animal instead. And to minimize any damage, I used a small baby creature."
He let Izuku breathe and collect himself a bit before he continued, but after five minutes, he gently prompted him, "Go on."
"So I used the fertilized egg case of a gecko. And when it hatched, this came out. And I came to you as soon as I did.", He finally finished.
Egon sat back on his butt on the floor and breathed a sigh of relief, which was close enough for the baby dragon to climb onto his head, down his face, over his body, and across his lap before climbing into Izuku. The little lizard crawled up to his neck and cuddled into it. Observing the animal, Egon noticed how different it was from most reptiles at a second glance. Apart from the wings and mammalian gate, it had distinct claws on all four of its limbs, a head it held upright, two stubs of horns, eyes large enough to be seen from both the side and front, colored a blood orange to red, and its skin was like a mix of scales and regular skin. Still, it was the standard size for a newly hatched gecko.
After he breathed out any stress, he told Izuku in a calm tone, "Okay, good. I know the details. We can work on finding out more pressing things about this new species, like how big it will grow, what it will eat, what temperament it will have, and so forth. After that, we will decide whether to keep or kill it while it's still young and manageable."
"There's no need for that; I have just the solution.", a voice called from the still-open doorway.
Both men looked over and said aloud, "Professor Cephalopod?"
"What do you mean by that?", Izuku asks him.
"Me and Professor Genus were collaborating.", He stared off.
"That's not good.", Egon muttered under his breath.
"And made this.", he finishes by placing a strange Splinter at their feet, which seems to change its brightness while changing to many psychedelic colors.
Egon held up the strange pulsating Splinter and asked, "And this is?"
The professor explained vaguely, "This Splinter does in days what thousands of years of selective breeding do."
"Huh?" Both said at once.
The professor rolls his eyes and explains, "Keep it near any wild thing, and it will become as domestic as a dog in just a few days."
"Well, at least this solves that specific dilemma of this thing turning on us and into a meal.", Izuku stated while admitting the Splinter's strange colors.
As the two men looked at the psychedelic splinter, Otto tried to escape, only for Egon to catch wind of something and shout, "Hold it right there, calamari boy!" Before he could scramble, Egon grabbed the Octopus under his eyes and brought him face to face, where he stated, "What else?"
"What do you mean?", Otto asked back innocently.
Egon squeezed him tighter and exclaimed, "Don't 'what do I mean' me! My IQ may not be half as high as yours, but I wasn't born yesterday! What else did you and Professor Genus make while collaborating?"
Giving a nervous laugh and rubbing the back of his head, he admitted, "Ah, yes, about that. I was going to come to you about something else."
"What!?", Egon growled while squeezing him again.
After contemplating, the Cephalopod tells him, "You're going to have to change Gammoth's feeding regimen."
"Why? To what?", Izuku was the one to inquire, being the primary caretaker.
"An adult amount.", Cephalopod tells him while trying to look away and sweating.
Izuku looks at him weirdly, and Egon adjusts his grip so the two can speak face to face. Izuku asks further, "She's a baby. She won't be an adult for another decade or so."
"About that.", Cephalopod laughs nervously.
Egon squeezed him again and snarled, "About what?!"
After tapping his tentacles, he tried to say, "Well…"
Before he could answer fully, a loud sound, like a trumped being amplified through a jet engine, sounded through the now-closed door. Both men looked at one another when the sound stopped and ran out the automatic door, Cephalopod still in Egon's hand. As they ran, the loud sound rang out once more, and they could follow it right to the front entry foyer, where they saw something that made their jaws drop!
A fully grown, wooly mammoth stood before them and ate the decorative plants while Doctor Genus tried to get a hold of it. Meanwhile, Megan, who was operating the desk, looked unfazed at the enormous prehistoric creature eating everything around her.
After letting the shock and amazement pass, Egon asked rhetorically, "Professor Cephalopod, why is our baby mammoth calf now a full-grown adult mammoth cow?"
"Me and Professor Genus have made several different Splinters for population surging. One of which causes any organism to develop rapidly.", The professor admitted.
Only to be squeezed again as he asked in a repressed, angry tone, "And you tried to hide this from me; why!"
"We needed to run more tests.", Otto explained while sweating before he tried to save himself by offering, "On the plus side, we made sure to spay her before doing so."
Egon gave him a half-lidded look as Izuku informed him, "You know that only works on boys, right?", the professor turned pale.
Egon looked ready to burst a gasket, and even the now fully grown Gammoth could sense it and started to walk away. Izuku stepped back with the baby dragon hiding in his hair, and Genus began to hide behind the desk as Megan tried to make herself look busy.
But no furry came, and he calmed himself down with an irritated sigh. He calmly stated, "Izuku, you are no longer solely responsible for the care of Gammoth. From now on, Professor Cephalopod and Genus will help as well. Understood?"
"Y-Yes sir.", The octopus and man replied quickly in unison.
After placing the octopus on the ground and fixing his hair and glasses, he returned to the facility and said, "Come along, Izuku. Let's run some tests and diagnostics on a new fire-breathing friend."
With that, Izuku followed him to a testing chamber to run tests on the new animal, Leaving Cephalopod and Genus to try and round up Gammoth back into her enclosure. Indeed, this was the first of many strange days to come.