Super Science
Ch 40: Dangerous Experiment
"And that concludes another productive day at the Neo Icon Phoenix Research Facility." Egon proclaimed that she locked up the facility's front door one fateful night.
"Does he always monologue?", Chopper asks while sweat dropping.
"Only when he's in a good mood.", Morgana tells him with a slight chuckle.
Egon whips around with a huge smile and tells them, "You're damn right I am! I've got a hot date with a little lady."
"I get it! You're dating my mom!", Izuku yells, groaning while covering his ears.
Egon huffs while pushing out his chest and stating, "And I'm gonna keep saying it until you stop complaining about it or asking me to stop dating her."
This caused the two to engage in a mini-argument about the topic, which caused awkward energy to hang around the few employees who stayed late. However, the argument between the two owners stopped when a particular subject was broached.
"Hey, uh, why are you bringing the mascot with you?", Hankoyo asked as Peet tried to snap at one of his head tubes.
Egon quickly scoped the bird up and explained, "He doesn't like being left alone."
"But we have dozens of them in the facility.", Chopper states with confusion,
"He just likes people.", Egon shrugs back.
"So you bring the brainless bird but not Otto or Cluck.", Wily inquires as he adjusts research papers into his briefcase.
Egon looks off to the side, sucking air between his teeth, as he says, "I tried...once. It didn't work, and now they live here full time."
"Why's that?", Morgana asks.
Egon sighs, like bringing up an exhausting memory, and explains in short, "House guests are like fish. They stink after three days. And when they came to stay with me, they'd already ripened two days prior."
"Is it also because Otto smells like fish?", Doctorin adds with a cackle as she finishes off her first bottle of booze of the night.
Egon wiggles his hand in a so-so manner, placing Peet on his head, and explains with aggravation, "That's just a small part. But Cluck also got me up at the crack of dawn for food, and Otto kept bugging me for mental stimulation."
Before anything else could happen, a strange person in a hoodie came out of nowhere and practically threw themselves in front of the entryway steps, scraping everyone half to death as they screamed, "Help me!", everyone jumped at their sudden arrival and got ready for a fight or to run. One of them was Peet, who, after falling off Egons head, ran up to the person, jumped on their head, and began mercifully pecking them. To which the person ignored and continued yelling desperately, "Please, please help me!"
"What the? Who are you? What's wrong?", Izuku asks after realizing they are in no danger.
But the person still didn't explain anything as he continued to beg as Peet mercilessly attacked him, "Please help me! Hide me! Before they find me!"
"Before who finds you!?", Izuku asks as he moves back, seeing the person crawling toward them.
Egon places a hand on his shoulder and tells him with his staff, "We'll ask questions later. I'll open the door, you help him inside, and Morgana, you call the heroes-."
But before he could finish, the person suddenly shrieked, "No! Don't call them! They're working with them!"
"The…Heroes?", Izuku asks back, trying to draw the lines.
"Yes!", he exclaimed as Peet still attacked him.
A little while later, the mystery person, now known as a man, was helped into the building by the scientists. After getting him inside one of the division wings, they closed down the building again, making it look closed from the outside. They stayed in the deeper parts of the building, where no light could be seen from within. Once they had the man settled, they woke Otto and Cluck up from their downtime and got back to work trying to figure out this person and what had brought him into such a frenzy, especially over the refusal of help from the heroes or law enforcement. They even had to put Peet in another room to keep from continuing to attack him.
The man in question was about 30 or so, tall and incredibly thin! He was bald, had green eyes, and black skin with a skeleton that seemed to bleed through or be painted upon his skin. He sort of looked like a well-made skeleton costume. He somehow looked tired and out of his wits at the same time. The man was sitting in a testing chamber before a table, drinking glass after glass of water. Izuku and Egon stood behind the one-way glass and observed him.
Izuku was looking over something on a Purah Pad, made by its namesake, when Egon asked him, "So whatcha got on him?"
Flipping through the information he had just gathered, he answered, "His name is Victor Petrov. He's from Russia and is wanted in several parts of the world."
This surprised him and sent Egon on edge, thinking they had just aided a known criminal or terrorist! But taking it in stride, he continued with suspicion in his tone, "Wanted for what?"
"It doesn't say. I mean, it does say, but I'm pretty sure they're fabrications.", Izuku told him with an unsure tone as he handed the pad over to him.
Taking the pad and adjusting his glasses, he looks over the information on the man and is shocked by what he sees! Exclaiming in disbelief, "Geeze, you're right. As seen by the untrained eye, these are fabricated! Why in the world are several countries across the globe trying to get this one guy?"
Before Izuku could theorize on this, Otto comes in and answers, "It's his quirk."
The Octopus handed him a clipboard with printed information about the man's biology. Egon sighs and tells him, "Thanks again for helping us despite it being your time off, Otto."
Otto waves him off and assures him, "It's all part of the job. Anyway, I ran a DNA sample and decoded what his quirk can do."
"And?", Izuku prompts him.
"I've personally dubbed it as Resurrection.", he tells them as they both look over the sheet of paper with all the current information they had on Victor's quirk. " If he touches something after it has long since died, he can bring it back to life no matter what state it's in.", Otto explains, making the two men look on in shock with every word they heard and read to themselves."He could touch a piece of hair and bring back a whole wooly mammoth from it. But we don't need to do that, do we?", Otto jokes.
Egon rolls his eyes and snorts in amusement as he replies, "We don't. But wow! That's quite a power. It's no wonder he's being hunted like an animal. If anyone in the world managed to get their hands on that, they'd be unstoppable!"
Izuku nods, and the two men confront the man to find out the truth and why he is even here. So they enter the testing chamber, where the man just fished off a second picture of water.
Sitting across from him, Izuku starts by asking kindly, "Hey Victor, how are you feeling?"
"Better.", he admits while breathing deeply.
"You don't have to worry. You're safe.", Izuku assures him.
"Thank you again for helping me.", Victor graciously tells them.
"We, um, kinda figured some stuff about you.", Egon admitted.
Victor looks at them both and asks, "Let me guess. My background or my quirk."
Egon put his hands together and answered, "Yes to both. We understand your situation but don't know why you came to us for help."
Victor looks off to the side, a sign that they are in for an origin story, and the man tells them, "Ever since I was young, my mother told me I was special. Though I didn't know how much she truly meant it.", he started but could see in the men's eyes that they were already getting tired of hearing it, or just tired. So Vitor sighs and tells them, "I'll spare you the details, but one day, a friend of mine was killed in an accident, and well…I brought her back. From then on, I was hunted down no matter where I went. I got to a point when I tried to kill myself."
Both men became highly uncomfortable by this, especially Izuku, who had previously experienced this! But seeing that the man was very much alive and that Izuku was too awkward to ask, Egon inquired carefully, "I'm guessing your quirk works just as much on you as it does on others."
"Precisely.", Victor told him with a dry and crazed chuckle. Then I heard about your facility, and I came here as fast as I could so I could ask—no—so I could beg you! Please! Help me!" He suddenly threw himself across the table and grabbed the two scientist lab coats.
Pulling the hopelessly desperate man off and seating him back down, Izuku horrifiedly asked, "What do you want us to do? Try and kill you."
"I want you to take away my quirk.", he answered quickly.
"Take away your…what?", the two scientists ask before looking at one another.
He gets down on his hands and knees before them and pleads, "Please! I know how amazing you all are! You're smart and have some kind of ace up your sleeves getting you this far after such a short time. So, please! Do anything to rid myself of this nightmare!", he begs as tears fall from his face.
The two scientists quickly excuse themselves from the room. Once on the other side of the door, Izuku asks in stress, "Egon, what'll we do? No one's ever attempted to extract a quirk from a person. I'm not even sure such a thing is possible. Science is already determined. It's no different from eye color and height."
Egon opens his mouth to agree but stops and thinks briefly before replying, "I wouldn't think so. The Nomu had multiple Quirks, so it is possible."
"But we have no idea how to do that.", Izuku argues back.
Egon puts in a thinking expression as he takes his brain from an idea. He sees the hallway sign that leads to the Singularity Soul and smiles as he tells his ward. "Maybe not, but we have to try.", Egon then pulls out his phone. It picks up quite quickly as he says to the other end, "Hatsume, I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we need your help.", the man says something on the other end. Egon tells him, "I'll spare you the nitty gritty, but in short, we need to extract a quirk from a living person.", suddenly the line goes dead, and Egon calls out loud, "Hello?"
"Say no more. I'm on the case!", Hatsume suddenly exclaims after appearing from nowhere, making the two men jump in fright so bad they nearly wet themselves.
Frantically looking around and at the one-eyed man, Egon sputters out before realizing, "How did you...you stole the Super Speed Splinter, didn't you?!", Hatsume just sticks out his tongue while putting his hand on his head, trying to act coy. But Egon just sighed, exhausted, while rolling up his sleeves and telling him, "We'll talk about this later. Let's get to work."
The hours of the night went by quickly as all the scientists still at the facility worked as hard as they could plan, design, and make a machine capable of performing an unnatural feat of nature and science! Hatsume was in his element and was buzzing around as he made this contraption! Egon couldn't tell if it was the caffeine or the Super Speed Splinter he had forgotten to take from him. It also helped a lot that they had an army of robots to do the work of a hundred men and a few Splinters that helped with aiding in brain function and construction. Including a strange Splinter that allowed someone to construct anything like it made of Legos, so long as they knew how to put it together. Things were going well…too well. And that foreboding feeling manifested in a message from Morgana.
"Um, sir, there's a small militia out by the front of the building.", she said over the speakers.
Egon quickly took out his own Purah Pad and brought up the security cams from the outside. As the woman said, a small militia from what seemed to be another country stood outside his front entryway. So he stopped what he was doing and cleaned himself off before meeting with the army. Once he reached the front, he took a deep breath and unlocked it.
Stepping outside before the army and their tanks, he asked innocently, "Can I help you boys with something?"
"We're looking for a man named Victor Petrov. He looks like a skeleton and is a wanted fugitive in several countries.", the frontman, no doubt the leader, told him in a thick accent.
Egon placed a finger to his chin and, shaking his head, told the man, "Sorry, I haven't seen anyone like that."
But before he could turn around to leave, the man yelled, "Don't lie!"
"Who's lying?", Egon asks back while keeping calm.
"We know.", he insisted.
"Know what?", Egon insisted back.
The man then took his own iPad device and turned it around to show aerial footage of Victor racing towards the facility and being brought inside as the leader stated, "We know!"
Thinking face, Egon raised his hands while acting calmly and admitted, "Alright, alright, you got me! I'll bring him out, so there's no need to get violent."
But the leader wasn't having it as he approached the front steps as he tried to force, "No. We will come in and-."
But he didn't even get a chance to finish as every security measure at the front of the facility suddenly sprang to life and pointed their laser-guided lights at the leader and all the soldiers present! Upon seeing this, the leader froze in his tracks and slowly backed away, but the laser lights did not go away.
Upon seeing Egon's smug expression, he gulped while grimacing, and the scientist repeated, "I said I'll bring him out. So let's not get violent, yes?"
Taking a deep breath, the leader agreed, "Yes."
Once he was back inside the building, he stood in one of the darker parts and leaned against a wall while releasing a stressed breath from fear. After calming down, he looked over to his side, seeing nothing at first, but continued to stare until Izuku suddenly appeared out of the air, thanks to the Invisibility Splinter. Izuku smiled awkwardly at him, and Egon rubbed his head as he thought.
After thinking about their predicament, he told Izuku, "Get the dragon."
Izuku nods and vanishes again. After a few minutes of what seemed to be a stalemate between the foreign troops and the NIP security system, Egon reappears once more. He stands boldly before the aggravated troops and proclaims, "Sorry to keep you boys waiting, but here he is!" while motioning off to the side of the building.
When the soldiers do, instead of seeing their quarry being brought out to them from a different part of the building, they see something that locks them in place with fear! Between the darkness of the night, the city lights casting a vague casting alongside the red glow of the laser-gilded weapons, they saw the shape of a huge creature with eyes that burned like hellfire and bore into their souls! Without warning, the hideous shape breathed deeply and exhaled a stream of flames so massive and hot that none of them could scream before they were all engulfed!
When the fires settled from Torch Wicks' charred mouth, the only thing left of the invaders was nothing but a pool of molten blood, bone, and molten metal from the tanks. Nothing remained of them. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Izuku pets the now elephant-sized dragon, telling him good job and returning him to his enclosure.
Egon sighs with relief at seeing their potential problem taken care of while saying to the puddle, "You get what you deserve. Bitches.", after spitting at the molten pool of death, Ehon presses a comlink on his ear and says, "Send some cleaning bots to scrape up the mess out in the front."
Almost immediately, a whale squad of bots appears and begins cleaning and disposing of the evidence. By morning, it would be like nothing had even happened.
Egon walks back into the building and back to the division wing, where Victor is hooked up to the machine that will hopefully extract his quirk. The machine is so large and concluded that much of its inner workings go over Egon's head. He just hopes this monster will work.
As he approached the hooked-up skeleton man, he asked, "Professor, what was all that noise?"
Egon waves it off with a kind smile and tells him, "Oh, nothing you need to worry about. But on a more serious note, listen, Victor, what we're about to do is completely experimental, highly dangerous, and comes with a high chance of you dying. We've never done something like this before and have practically thrown this machine together in the last few hours. No tests have been made, even with all the synthesized scenarios for the outcomes. There is also a huge chance of this not working at all or killing you. Are you sure you want to go through this?"
Victor closes his eyes, nods, and affirms, "I'm sure. Even if my Quirk was taken and I survived, I wouldn't have a life to go back to.", he then looks down at the huge machine with metal parts and strange tubes connected along its body and hooked up to several parts of his own as he asks, "Just explain how it works."
Izuku, who just returned from putting up Torch Wick for the night, explains to him, "We found these things called Quirk Centers, and they're basically what everyone has in determining where their quirk manifests the most. We'll hook up to those spots and use a machine with a reversed polarity charge to bring it out. This site will be used from the large crystal structure you see on the other end. The crystal will be used to suck up and store away your Quirk."
"Could you dumb that down.", Victor asks him, his brain already short-circuiting.
"We're going suck your quirk from special unseen holes in your body using the power of that huge crystal to remove and store it away.", Izuku says in more simplified terms.
"That makes more sense.", Victor finally relents with acknowledgment.
Then, Doctor Orpington came up with her mechanical device. Reading off a clipboard, she announced to him, "There's a 5% chance of full success with no death. There is a 27% chance of it working with you dying. There is a 67% chance of it not working, and you just die. There is a 30% chance of this not working, and you survive. And a 59% chance of this machine exploding and-."
"OKAY! WE GET IT!", Wily yells at her, seeing how uncomfortable she was making everyone with her analysis.
Doctorin then took up the front and told Victor in no uncertain terms, her voice very regretful and somewhat nervous as she doused her mood in more booze, "Listen, kid, I won't lie. I've crunched the numbers, and this will hurt like hell. I've made a sedative geared toward your specific bodily functions, and we'll sedate you with it…but I can't promise anything after that."
Victor told her and the rest of the staff without hesitation, "I told you to do it anyway."
Doctorin shrugs after taking a long sip from her bottle and relents, "So be it."
As Egon goes to the controls for the machine, punching it all he needs to show the greatest leg of success, as Chopper and Doctorin prep Victor for the procedure, Wily comes up to his side with Izuku and inquires, "Professor Egon, are you sure about this? You're using the thing that started and is keeping this place afloat."
Egon stopped thinking up his mile-a-minute calculations and typing as he leaned down his head and sighed deeply. After which, he told the short old man, "It's for a special cause. Besides, we're not copying a quirk; we're taking one out! We'll need everything we can use to pull this off. Besides, we've already established that there's more, and we know where to look.", he and Izuku did not look thoroughly convinced. So he rolled his eyes at their twin concerns and assured them, "I've already got Puhra and Robbie working on setting up an expedition to dig up more."
The two of them already knew how passionate and on par their new coworkers were. They had only been here briefly and managed to simultaneously turn the place upside down while making considerable leaps in research. They just left yesterday for their trip, but knowing them, they'd probably send back several veins of the Singularity Soul and an alien to boot.
Izuku was the first to relent. He said, "I guess you're right. This is what a hero would do. Goodbye, Singularity Soul. Thanks for everything so far."
Wily was not so pleased but had no room to argue. So he just sat there and stewed in his frustration. On the other hand, he'd have his name on the title of being one of the first people to extract a genetic trait. So that brightened up his mood ever so slightly.
After typing the last few numbers into the machine, Egon put on goggles and announced, "Begin!"
The machine burst into life, and the Singularity Soul also began to glow an even brighter white to the point it became the spotlight. Things seemed to be going well at first, with red energy being Pooler out from the tubes attached all over Victor and slowly being drawn into the Singularity Soul. The scene attached to the machine showed the progress going from 5 to 30% in a slow yet concise manner. Then things started to go wrong once it was 40%.
The machine began to whirl, buzz, and expel excess heat far faster than before, to the point that the sound became overwhelming. Victor, who had been holding up well so far, spat out the mouthguard he was biting down on as he began to scream in pain! Fear and anxiety gripped the scientist, and some wanted to stop the procedure, but Egon refused! Not knowing what would happen if they stopped mid-way through and the potential consequences it may hold!
So they continued as the machine ran faster, and Victor screamed louder and louder! Soon, the machine began to fizzle, buzz, and short-circuit wildly and dangerously! But Egon yelled for them to keep going! The machine was only at 70%, and every moment was like hell! Suddenly, the machine began to burst and catch fire! The scientist rushed to keep it under control, and Egon wanted to stop it once things caught aflame!
But it was Victor who swayed him and yelled to keep going! So reluctantly, he agreed. And the process finally hit 90% as the Singularity Soul began to die and change color. Victor kept screaming as blood began to pool out from all his orifices!
Finally, it hit 100%, and the machine stopped. Fireboys came in to put out the flaming machine, and the energy kickback nearly knocked the facility's power out!
Turning the emergency stop on, Egon jumped from behind the controls and yelled, "Victor! Victor! Get him out of there!"
Izuku and Doctrine spring into action as they rip the man away from all his hookups and place him on the ground, where Chopper gets to work checking his vitals! As the staff surrounded the man's smoking and bloody body, the machine was burning faster and faster as the fire bite worked to put it out!
After a few horrible seconds, Izuku asks, "How is he?!"
Chopper pulls away from him and says, "He's alive, but barely."
At that moment, Victor stirred and weakly called out, "P-Professor. D-Doctor."
"Yes, we're all here.", Izuku told him, taking his hand to reassure him.
He breathed heavily and ragged as he barely mumbled out in a whisper, "Did…did it work?"
Izuku sniffles back tears and confirms, "Yes. Yes, it did. Your Quirk is gone."
Egon waved his hand, and Wily brought over a mirror that Izuku had held up to his face.
Victor could barely open his eyes, but when he did, he saw himself without black skin and a skeleton that bled through his body. Now, he saw an ordinary Russian man with delicate skin and blue eyes.
A smile crept onto his face as he barely managed to say, "So…this is how I look…I'm…glad."
With that last word, Victor took his last breath, closed his eyes, and left this world—a smile still on his peaceful face. The scientists gathered around the man and parted with his passing in silence, shedding tears as they did so.
"He's…gone.", Chopper said with a tone of disbelief.
"Oh, Victor. I hope you've found peace.", Izuku sniffles.
"Um, I hate to break up a mournful moment like this, but what are we supposed to do with the Singularity Soul that now houses the Resurrection quirk?", Hatsume put forth.
They all looked at the Singularity Soul and saw how it drastically changed! Instead of glowing white, it glowed as dark black with white parts, almost like it had Jones showing through. But no bones were ever seen on any living creatures, just a strange assortment of shapes and lengths. It looked like Victor before his quirk was taken. And it dawned on them. The procedure may have killed him, but it worked in storing his quirk.
Without a moment of hesitation, Egon walked up to the Singularity Soul, picked it up over his head, and threw it down with all his might! Smashing it to bits and causing a group gasp from everyone else!
Turning around with a ragged expression, breathing heavily, and a serious look on his face, he told them in no uncertain terms, "I want all the fragments collected and destroyed. This quirk doesn't exist in any records around the world, and it will stay that way! No one is to speak of what has happened tonight! Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir.", They all said in unison.
Calming down after this, he said to the staff in an exhausted voice, "Good. Then, clean up the mess and go home. You all deserve a good rest. I'll cremate Victor's body."
Just as the cleaning bot came in to collect the mess and Egon went to put Victor's body on a stretcher, Izuku spoke up and offered, "Can't we just…bring him back?"
Egon turned to him, a somber expression on his face as he asked back, "Do you think he'd want that?"
Izuku looked down at the peaceful face of the dead man, a single tear running down his face as he answered back, "Yeah, that was a stupid question."
As the body was covered and sent off to the blast furnace, Morgan came up and said, "Um, sir. If I could make a suggestion.", Egon had her attention, and the woman offered, "Do you think we should erect a statue in honor of him? For his sacrifice to science."
Everyone perked up at that idea, and with a sad smile on his face, Izuku chimed in and stated, "That's a wonderful idea. We'll do that soon. First, let's get the ever-growing dragon out of here before he outgrows the whole facility.", The other staff laughed a bit at the joke, and this ended a tragic and monumental day for the laboratory—a day that would never be spoken of or only be known again decades later.