Thursday, March 13, 2397
New Avalon, Zeta Cygni

Professor Henry Utonium (Hank to his friends, and to himself) watched over the nearest bank of meters and gauges, and smiled. Cliché though it may have been, everything was going according to plan. Total success was now not just a foregone conclusion, but completely inevitable. Very soon, Big Fire would gladly hand him his well-earned place among the exalted ranks of their Magnificent Ten.

This was the culmination (of a sort) of the most intensive, difficult, and illegal research project ever conducted, focused on a subject most believed to be either impossible to attain or merely a modern bioengineer's fairy-tale.

The idea, originally conceived by a man named George Byron who ran a company called Bioteknix on the planet Yamaki, was as simple as it was breathtakingly bold: to reverse-engineer Omega-2, the Forever Virus, from blood samples acquired from the two former 3WA operatives codenamed "Lovely Angel". This was supposed to be impossible. Omega-2 had been specifically designed to resist reverse engineering, and no records of its creation existed. Corporations including the mighty GENOM itself, galactic juggernaut of biotechnology, had tried and failed to replicate it, to the point where even Maximilien Largo, a man well-known for his powers of monomania, had given up.

As such, the Bioteknix Corporation had made no headway on George Byron's pet project for over a decade. Not until Big Fire had taken the place over to use as a front company had there been a chance that it could be accomplished. And Byron's vision for the end product had been so limited! "Sell it and make a lot of money" was his whole ambition - for the end product of what would have to be the greatest feat of biological engineering in the history of the galaxy! Used properly, Omega-2 could be the key to galactic domination, and all this idiot wanted to do was sell it to the highest bidder. No, it simply would not do.

All this Hank Utonium had made clear to the Magnificent Ten, who served as a rough equivalent to a board of directors for the greatest criminal conspiracy ever created, during his efforts to keep Project Eternity alive. The Ten had been skeptical - they knew as well as anyone else about all the failures in similar attempts - but Utonium had managed to convince them that, with sufficient funding, his genius would prevail where GENOM's greatest minds had failed.

The initial stages seemed to go well. The genetic samples were so badly deteriorated thanks to Byron's primitive storage methods (by comparison with the state of Big Fire's black arts, anyway) that neither one represented a complete entity any longer, so Utonium had averaged them together, filled in the gaps here and there with baseline human figures, and created a single prototype. The intention was to study the prototype's development in an accelerated growth scenario, note the point in its development at which the second-generation characteristics of Omega-2 began to assert themselves, then perform a series of experiments to isolate the just-activated parts of the code, then develop a retrovirus to apply them to a living subject.

Unfortunately, the prototype had been thoroughly defective. Not only had the desired Detian characteristics proved maddeningly elusive, impossible to pin down, they had also expressed themselves incorrectly. The prototype suffered from a documented second-generation Detian disorder known as Edgerton's Syndrome. It experienced the regenerative aging freeze too early. After wrangling with the problem for almost three years, Utonium had given up in disgust, had the prototype stored (too expensive to throw away, and it might yet prove useful for baseline testing), moved the operation to a more compact, better-equipped secret laboratory in Claremont, and started again.

The second time, after a series of discouraging setbacks in the inital gene-sequencing stages, Utonium had decided that the task was, in fact, impossible - that despite his boasting to the Ten, he would fail just as GENOM had. So, with that in mind, he had dug into history and borrowed a page from the playbook of those same megacorp geniuses who had failed before him, in an attempt to salvage victory from the ashes of his defeat.

The foundations for this effort were cast centuries ago, back in the early, heady days of GENOM's biotech divison, and Dr. Ian Astbury's Project ICZER. Only two of the type were ever produced; they were originally given numeric designations, but currently preferred to be known by the names Artemis and Selene, respectively. After the second went into operation, and soon thereafter proved as difficult to control as her even more freewilled (and conscience-afflicted) predecessor, the project was dropped in favor of more mundane, less godlike bioroid products. After all, if a normal bioroid decided it wanted to go rogue, the situation was much simpler to resolve. Supposedly Astbury's data had been destroyed when Largo canceled the project. The secrets of ICZER creation were considered lost.

But Hank knew better. So did the rest of Big Fire, come to that - one of their own Magnificent Ten, calling herself Atros Eternas, was confirmed to be a more contemporary, and far more sinister, example of the ICZER type. Somehow, the ancient secrets had been revived, and Hank Utonium had immediately set out to make them his own. This would probably not mollify the Ten, but it would certainly give him a better position from which to negotiate regarding Project Eternity's failure. Much better.

Better enough to enable him to join - or possibly even overthrow - the Ten.

He turned from the three identical vats dominating the room, each containing one of his current subjects, to a small tank mounted just above the primary control console. This was the fruit of his efforts, a concoction of his own devising. He'd delved fully into the details of ICZER production, and distilled the core of the project, its very superessence, if you will, into this compound. Injecting it into the suspension fluid of a standard bioroid tank during the gestation period would endow the end product with the renowned powers of an ICZER - to a lesser degree, perhaps, but that's why he was making three of them. He hadn't decided on a proper name for the compound just yet, and had, in an up-too-damn-late moment of whimsy, dubbed it simply "Chemical X".

Utonium ran his right hand through his short black hair and turned back to the gauges, needlessly confirming all was well, and then went over to the tanks themselves. Within each was the fully-formed body of a girl in early adulthood, perhaps nineteen Standard years old by Earth reckoning. Each floated silently in the middle of her tank, drifting only slightly to and fro as the fluids flowed around her. Their eyes were closed at the moment, but as soon as they opened and saw him, his neural programming ensured that they would be fully and unquestioningly loyal. Just the sort of traits he'd always wanted in a companion.

Okay, so maybe he wanted more than just three nubile super-powered generals/bodyguards at his side when he joined the Magnificent Ten. But with this kind of power, anyone who asked improper questions could be made to mind his own business quite readily.

The steel door to the lab banged three times.

"Go away!" Hank announced loudly, not bothering to turn around as he adjusted the fluid density for the final phase, rendering the vats translucent rather than transparent. "Can't you read the sign? I'm very busy right now!"

He turned to look immediately afterward, as multiple locks on his fully-secured door buzzed and clicked open in rapid succession, and the door slid open with a loud whirring hiss.

"Oh, but Professor Utonium," the visitor chided as he stepped inside, "I am afraid my business is most urgent."

"D-Dr. Jojo!" Hank took a step back from the advancing newcomer despite his own size advantage.

Dr. Mojo Jojo, jack-of-all-trades scientist and would-be galactic system conqueror, was most definitely not human. A native of Heston's Planet, he was a greenish-pallored simian, looking as always like a chimpanzee dressed as a white-and-purple caped comic book supervillain. Even with the heels of his white boots and the tall, turban-like dome on his head, he stood barely a full meter in height.

Hank cleared his throat and attempted to affect a bit of composure, quickly advancing the tanks' visual status from heavily-clouded to nearly opaque. "I, ah, I mean, why, Dr. Jojo! What a privilege to see you. Please, come - "

"Spare me your pitiful attempts at hospitality, Professor Utonium," the chimp grumbled, his voice even deeper than Hank's and as excruciatingly-enunciated as ever. "I am here to conduct an assessment of your current research activities, and to report the results of my assessment to the Magnificent Ten."

"Oh, is that all!" Hank chuckled nervously, suppressing the urge to wipe his forehead with one hand. "Well, you can just go along and tell the Magnificent Ten that everything down here is just A-OK!"

"I believe I shall be the judge of that," Mojo replied irritably, marching over to stand in front of the dull, featureless tanks with his hands clasped behind his back. "It is no secret that Lord Hanzui does not trust you, since he finds your ambition untrustworthy, which means, in his view, you are not to be trusted."

Utonium snorted, finally giving up his failed attempts at congeniality. "Well, if that makes me a bad bet in his book, I'd hate to see what he thinks of you."

Mojo turned to regard Hank from the corner of his eye, then gave a small smile. "I am... an acceptable risk. He is aware of my ultimate goal to displace him, which will take place when the time is right for him to be deposed. BUT!" He raised a quick finger. "He also knows that until that time comes, my keen intellect and genius, not to mention my far-above-average superior brainpower, make me a valuable and powerful ally."

"Plus you save him the trouble of leafing through a thesaurus," Hank muttered.

"You, on the other hand," Mojo continued, turning to pace toward the primary control console, "are held in low regard by everyone who is aware of your history and background."

"WHAT??" Hank spat testily. "A criminal conspiracy has trouble with MY record?! Compared to most of them, I'm Professor Squeaky-Clean! I haven't even been convicted of anything!"

"The problem," Mojo responded, calm as ever, "has nothing to do with your actual activities, Professor Utonium. You most assuredly share the ultimate long-term goals, aims, desires and overall plans of the Big Fire organization. Nor is there any doubt concerning your capabilities, limited though they may be when placed beside my greatness." Hank swallowed any snide remarks he may have had about Mojo's ego. "The difficulty lies in your, how can I put it? ... Personality fit, perhaps. Your temperament and overall people skills."

"Temperament? Just what are you going on about, Dr. Jojo?"

"You fail to intimidate!" the simian snapped, still glaring at the console. "You are harmless, unthreatening, non-conducive to fear and completely lacking in the ability to scare anyone! There is nothing even remotely frightening about you. You look and sound like the father in a prime-time situation comedy that would appear on the television, if the television happened to be turned on during the prime-time hours and tuned to a channel that was airing a situation comedy program!"

"Of course. That makes me all the more insidious!"

"No it does not! It makes you stupid and laughable! Big Fire cannot be seen as 'that nice guy down the street who smokes a pipe and gives the little children advice during their baseball game.' Big Fire must command respect at all times! Respect through fear! Fear through intimidation! Intimidation through reputation! And that reputation comes from doing mean things! There is no room in the ranks of Big Fire for someone who is always so... NICE."

Hank put his hands on his hips. "Oh, now that is just absurd!"

"Perhaps," the monkey replied in his previous calm tone, turning to face Utonium. "But no more so than an attempt to, say, create a cheaply-reproducible version of the ICZER bioroid process in order to seize power and cover up the failure of your 'Project Eternity'. Eh, Professor?"

Hank's rage shattered. "Buh... wah... how - "

"Oh, PLEASE, Professor, give us some credit. Surely you did not believe that such ancient, sensitive documents could be accessed without someone being alerted, now, did you? Lord Hanzui has been aware of your project from the start." Mojo regarded the half-full tank above the console. "'Chemical X', indeed. And I see you also programmed the neural matrices for loyalty and courage. Yes, a trio of unstoppable, blindly loyal enforcers would be very effective and unstoppable at enforcing your will." He tapped at the nearest keypad and turned toward the vats. "Well, let us see how they are coming along, shall we?"

"No, wait - " Hank started, but he was already too late.

Dr. Jojo's eyes widened as the vat fluid went from nearly opaque to nearly transparent. Then they narrowed, and turned to regard Dr. Utonium with a glare of undisguised contempt.

"REALLY, Professor Utonium. I believe I can say, without a hint of doubt or hesitation, with a great deal of authority, and completely ignoring the obvious irony of the phrasing, that YOU are ONE SICK LITTLE MONKEY."

"Well," Hank chuckled nervously, "what can I say? I've got to watch out for my needs, too." His nervousness gave way to confidence as he continued. "But what you think about it is irrelevant. As you can see, my girls will decant within the hour, and once they're out neither you nor the 'Evil Messiah' nor anyone else will be able to stop me."

"I seriously doubt that will ever be the case," Mojo stated flatly, folding his arms over his chest as he marched back to the door. "In fact, I fear that your precious experiment will never even come to its full and completed conclusion."

"Oh, really. Do you expect me to just shut it down?"

Dr. Jojo stopped immediately outside the door, spun around, and fixed Hank with an evil, toothy smile.

"No, Professor Utonium, I expect you to DIE."

With that, the door slammed itself shut with a loud clang, followed by a second slam as the inside blast doors followed suit. A loud sizzle from the outside keypad came immediately afterward, but even that was instantly drowned out by a klaxon's blare, flooding the lab with red light from flashing beacons on the main panel.

"What?? No!!" Hank raced to the controls and tried to key up a status display, and was granted only an "Access Denied" message. His head snapped up as he sensed movement from the corner of his vision, and he fixed his gaze on the tank of Chemical X. It had, only moments ago, contained enough of the compound to make at least ten more of his super-bioroids.

As he watched, its contents were completely drained into the active vats.

"NO!!" Hank whirled around and started toward the vats, but pulled himself to a stop and backpedalled furiously when he saw them. The normally tranquil fluid was churning violently, bubbling with a seething chemical rage, flinging the girls about within them; the girls' previously calm faces were twisted in silent agony as their bodies reverted to a less-defined state in the swirling chemical bath, their forms shrinking rapidly as the tanks were clouded with a sickly peach color.

Every warning light and display in the lab was flashing angry red as Hank's back slammed into the wall next to the sealed door. He pounded futilely on the access keypad and succeeded only in adding one more flashing red light to the chaotic din of the lab.

Then, despite the blaring, churning, squealing ruckus, he heard all three vats crack at once.



"You never answered my question." Eiko Rose tried to fix an angry glare on her husband, but the playfulness in her eyes had no choice but to shine through.

Martin Rose, for his part, smiled down at her as they both continued walking. "That's because I'm not as dumb as I look."

"Sometimes."

"Nobody's perfect."

"True enough. But you still have to answer the question."

"Aww, c'mon, hon," he groused. "You may as well bring up some other catch-22 question, like whether some dress makes you look fat, or whether I've stopped beating my kids, or - " He stopped cold in mid-rant, staring directly down the street. "Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?" Eiko glanced to him, then in the direction he was looking, and saw what had made him stop: a greenish chimpanzee wearing a cape and a turban, dashing across the street. "Hey, isn't that - "

"Yes," Martin stated. He let his Lens become visible, inset on the back of his left hand, and from it manifesting his Darkwing costume over his clothes. "Dr. Mojo Jojo, evil scientist by trade, in with Big Fire's thinktank. Running around Claremont in broad daylight. That can't be a good sign."

"Right," Eiko nodded grimly, pushing back a sleeve to expose her own Lens, which was mounted in her left armlet. "We'd better get after him."

"No," Martin replied, brow furrowing. "I didn't like that grin on his face. You get after him, see where he's going - just follow, don't confront. I'll backtrack and see if I can undo whatever he just doo'd. Follow my Lens if you lose him."

"How come you always get first crack on rescues?"

"Because I can replace my limbs if they go missing."

"Oh yeah."

They parted, each racing in opposite directions. Martin jogged through a series of dank, narrow alleyways, bounding over traffic whenever his path intersected a city street. After the third intersection, he slowed his pace; the trail wasn't clear enough to follow by sight or heat residue, and he shifted his mental focus to trying to detect what sort of mischief the simian maniac had wrought this time. He closed his eyes, spread his arms, and listened...

The next building forward was emitting a faint churning rumble, accompanied by an occasional, equally faint thumping, all to the beat of a rhythmic snarl. He dashed a few steps forward, hopped up onto the second-floor fire escape platform, and pushed the door open, finding a rectangular stairwell.

Yes, this was definitely the place - the irregular thumping noise was more distinct, like someone pounding on a large metal plate, and the snarl was obviously a muffled warning klaxon. It seemed to be coming from above, so he hurried upward, taking each flight in one bound. He started using the outside walls as push-off points after finding the landings too slick to use effectively (translation: he fell on his can after the first jump). The ruckus continued to grow clearer; he could now detect it easily without boosting his senses.

He was fifteen floors up when he finally caught a flash of red under the stairwell door. Pulling it open, he immediately found the source of the disturbance: a large steel door with a flashing "Danger" sign above it, and red emergency blinkers on either side, at the far end of the hallway. He closed the distance in moments and hammered on the massive entryway, immediately sensing its tremendous heft, and noting the destroyed keypad on one side.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME??" he bellowed. "HEY, IN THERE!!"

The room's only response was a muffled crash, followed by a sudden and far more forceful FWUMP that rattled the door, walls and floor.

"Ahh, nutbunnies," he grumbled. Much of the noise within the door immediately went quiet - apparently, he'd arrived just in time to witness the flash point of whatever crisis had been brewing, and it was all "move along, nothing to see" from here. That klaxon was still growling somewhere inside, but the churning and pounding had fallen silent.

Then, he detected a faint, unhealthy crackle. He put a hand flat against the door and felt a renewed sense of urgency, as that slight noise was now clearly a combination of an arcing electrical short and the beginnings of a fire.

He managed to wedge his fingers into the lone vertical seam down the center of the door, and growled with the effort as he tried to force it open. For Eiko, he mused, this gate would be wide open already. He pulled, and nothing happened; he paused, then tried again, still with no results; he tried a third time. A loud scream of scraping metal let him know he was finally making progress, and he peered into the two-inch-wide opening.

Another, thicker-looking door peered right back.

"Okay, no more Mr. Nice Autobot," he muttered, giving up on that approach. He jogged back up the hallway, stopping and turning to face the door from exactly forty-nine feet away. Closing his eyes and holding his arms straight forward, he took several slow, deep breaths, focusing himself as a bright ball of electric-blue appeared and grew between his hands, until it was nearly, but not quite, touching either. He then opened his eyes, gritted his teeth, and spoke.

"Thunder Sword."

The sphere leaped and stretched forward down the length of the hallway; for just a moment, it was a fifty-foot-long bolt of straightened-out lightning from between Hammer's hands and the barricade, and then winked out of existence. All that remained was the residual heat in the corridor and a perfectly circular hole through both sets of doors, five feet wide and a foot and a half from the floor.

Martin appreciated his handiwork for a moment before crumpling to his knees, propping himself up on his arms and gasping for breath. He afforded himself about ten seconds of recovery time - not enough, but it would have to do - before clambering back to his feet and rushing to the door to look inside.

Almost the entire room was coated with a thin sheen of some sort of reddish, clumpy fluid. What he immediately guessed to be the control console for whatever had been here was now a charred shambles, still losing datapad keys and output components as they flashed and popped. The sparks were setting the scarlet gel clinging to the console on fire, and the flames, in turn, were filling the room with a thick haze and slowly wending their way down to the floor. The fluid coating seemed to originate from the center of the room, where what looked like the bases of three bioroid growth vats now sat empty, with only jagged rings of glass circling their rims; the remainder of that glass was all over the floor, coated with techno-mucus, and even embedded in some of the walls.

A particularly large piece had jammed itself into the back of a black-haired, labcoat-wearing man sprawled face-down to the keypad side of the doorway.

"Ouch," Hammer winced. He started to reach toward the fallen scientist when he noticed that the fellow's left arm was visibly bent in a counter-jointed fashion. Even the fellow's jet-black hair couldn't disguise the large, bloody head wound; only now did Martin notice what must have been the massive lid of one of the tanks, lying propped up against the nearby wall, with a round-red smear on the closest edge. "Double ouch. Definitely an Exced - "

A loud, fluttering burst brought his attention back to the console, cutting him off in mid-quip. The fire had just reached the floor, and was overtaking it with a vengeance, turning the haze into a black, choking smog.

"Welp, move it or lose it," he grimaced, pulling his scarf up as an impromptu air filter. He gathered up the other man, remarkably whole despite the smashed elbow, partial impalement, and head injury, and carried him through the hole, taking him several long strides down the side hallway to carefully settle him on the floor. As he quietly confirmed the previous diagnoses, a cacophony of echoing footsteps came from farther down the corridor - most likely the fire department, Hammer guessed.

Then, his head snapped up to look back toward the hole, now emitting thick smoke, blistering heat, orange light and the crackling roar of the fire.

Did I just hear - ... ?

His pulse quickened as he hurried back to the door. Standing just outside, he blinked, converting his vision to the classic "edges" view, and peered through the smoke and flames, all the way to the back of the room where the storage tank for the spare vat fluid was taunting the fire to come closer.

And there, on the floor just outside the central vats' remains, were three small human outlines.

Hammer sighed and slumped his shoulders. "Knew I was missing something," he grumbled. He couldn't transform to his Rotofoil hovercraft mode to skirt over the fire - there was nowhere near enough room, and the opening was too small anyway. He grasped the insides of the hole, steadied for a moment, and then launched himself into the room, bounding over the flames to land in the center of the nearest vat's base. He slipped on the fluid coating the base, flipped backward, and dropped gracelessly on his face.

"Ow. OW! Argh!" he added, catching the side of his waist on the jagged glass. "Ow! Bad landing! No biscuit!"

He pushed himself up to his knees and rapidly took stock of his surroundings. The area around the vat bases, ironically, was the only place not burning - the initial burst had flung the goop all over the room, but left about two feet of dry floor around the vats themselves. Just outside of the tank bases lay his current objectives: the naked, only barely stirring forms of three apparently kindergarten-age girls, all miraculously unharmed in the eye of this storm.

He also stole a glance back toward the storage tank by the back of the room, and saw the fire rapidly overtaking it, giving him just a moment to note the large, clear "FLAMMABLE" sign before the fire covered that, too.

"Right. No pressure." Ignoring the insistent sting at his side, Hammer pulled off his cape, gathered up the three girls, and wrapped them in it, hugging them to his chest. With one last look around, he dashed back toward the door as fast as his feet would go, hoping to make the exit before the tank went.

He came close, but not close enough.

Hammer clutched the girls tight as the shockwave caught him from behind. He squeezed his eyes shut and curled his body around his cargo. Fire and heat enveloped him, and the rush of searing wind threw his hat off to the side as it flung him out the hole like a cannonball. He never got a chance to see the startled looks of the just-arriving NAFD hose company, though most of them were hurled completely off their feet by the blast anyway.

He was now very thankful for both his flame-retardant costume and the long, straight hallway leading from the lab; instead of ending his rocket-propelled trip with a bone-crushing impact, he instead got to bounce and roll down the hall like a purple Sonic the Hedgehog, his charges tucked safely in the center. He realized, to his dismay, that even with this questionable advantage, he hadn't slowed down very much, and he was quickly running out of hallway.

It was a good thing, then, that instead of the steel stairwell door, or the ferrocrete wall beside it, his tumble was stopped with a much softer impact.

"OOF!" Martin and Eiko said in unison, hanging briefly both in midair and mid-collision before dropping to the floor in a painful heap.

"Nnnn," Eiko muttered first, pulling herself out from under her husband to prop herself up against a wall, lightly feeling herself from collar to waist. "Nn. Nhg. Great, my whole front side's gonna be a solid bruise for a week. Guess this is what I get for losing the monkey so soon."

Martin, in turn, let out a long, low groan as he rolled to his knees, still clutching his cape-swaddled armload and trying to ignore the burns on every exposed part of his body. "At least you saved me the indignity of a back brace. Thanks, honey. I'll get you a truckload of ice cream to make up for it, though you'll have to get to it before I bathe in it."

"What'cha got there?" Eiko leaned forward, rising to her knees for a better look.

"Somebody's science project," he replied, gently unwrapping the cape from around the girls' heads, loosening his embrace to take a good look at them. There was a little scuffing on their smooth, light cheeks, but they were otherwise completely unharmed - not even their hair (one reddish, one blonde, one black) was singed.

Eiko moved up beside Martin and smiled softly. "Oh, they're adorable."

Martin chuckled. "No argument there. Lucky I got to them before Mojo's sabotage could finish the job." Dragging himself to his feet, he turned to look back up the hallway. At the door, armored firefighters were spraying in foam and getting ready to make their entry into the lab. Nearer, paramedics were tending to the scientist.

Martin put a hand behind his head and scrubbed off some burnt hair. "I wonder what the hoek this guy was trying to do?"

"Science Project" - a Future Imperfect Mini-Story by Martin F. Rose
Excerpt from the unfinished Future Imperfect story Deja Vu All Over Again
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

(Can I ask who the "prototype" was? Or is that a secret you still want to keep?)

but yeah, the ministory does wrap up a few loose ends about
character origins that I wondered about, seriously.. Powerpuff girls in SOS?
how the heck did that happen? now we know more or less :D

If the prototype is indeed Rei, which all signs point to yes, this also explains the backstory of who had the bright idea to try to reverse engineeer Omega Two which led to her creation in the first place :)

Very nicely done, it was nice to see old faces like
Marty and Eiko again after so long. :)

_____________________________________________
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. THERE IS ONLY WAR.
-kinda makes sense if you think about it.

With the benefit of hindsight and insomnia, this makes perfect sense. =)

>Dr. Mojo Jojo, <...> A native of Heston's Planet,

I must be slipping. I didn't cotton on until the third read-through. <snicker>

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.