Part 14: Weird Science

A thunderous crash echoed through the makeshift laboratory, as voices shouted. Everyone in the room turned to the entrance of the tunnel.

“They must’ve followed us! Professor, we’ve gotta split!”

“OH DEAR. YOU GUYS DID REMEMBER TO PUT THE INCREDIBLY CONVINCING FAKE PANEL BACK UP, RIGHT? THE ONE THAT THE SURVIVAL OF PROFESSOR PIZZA’S PIZZAS HINGES ON?” The three looked at each other in confusion and panic. “NEVER MIND THAT! BRACE FOR AMBUSH!!!”

The professor manned the keyboard as the device above the rod shook with voltage as it charged up. Wing Guy grabbed an anti-matter rifle from under the desk and braced behind the counter.

“Professor, what are you doing?!” Oliver shouted.

“I’M GLAD YOU ASKED, NEWCOMER! SEE, AS PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED, MOBIUS RESPONDS TO STIMULI ON A TECTONIC LEVEL, FOR IT IS ALIVE! IF THE STIMULI IS JUST RIGHT-” He angled the device and overclocked it to the point where it began to glow red and shake with force. A powerful, radiant crackle of electricity struck the rod in a terrifying display. The professor trembled with a pulsating excitement as the ground began to slowly open up.

“MARVELOUS!!! MY HYPOTHESIS WAS CORRECT!!!”

BOOM!!!!!!

Chunks of earth and metal flew everywhere as the carefully-placed explosives detonated. The room filled with silt, as everyone ducked for cover. For a split second, there was a calm before the storm, as the silhouettes of many, many figures made way into the room.

“Open fire!!!” a person’s voice yelled in the distance.

Suddenly, the room was filled with chaos. Bolts of plasma and sprays of gunfire filled the room at every angle, obliterating the control panels and shattering the vats full of specimens and serums. As the professor turned around, two sublimator blasts ripped straight through his meatball body, one after the other, sending him hurtling back into the control panel, a smoldering heap of fried meat.

“Professor!!!” Oliver yelled in shock and horror. He attempted to peer over the panel, but the incoming fire was too much. He sat behind the counter, terrified for his life as the wing guy returned fire. Naruto scurried away in the foray through the narrow opening in the ground.

“There’s too many of them!!!” Marcus yelled, as he returned fire. Oliver looked at the clutter, as he found the book of incantations that had been thrown to the ground. He went for it in a mad dash, a shot barely missing him, leaving a burning scorch mark right where he just was. The glowing optics of enforcers peered through the misty room, as they entered. Oliver desperately searched through the index, as he desperately flipped through page after page, accidentally tearing them as he went. He finally got to the right one, dropping it as they moved closer. He read through the various incantations on enchantment circles.

“…Kak… har… kak… harda…” He went over the pronunciation quickly a few times, before poking his head out.

“Kakhardakhan shjran-… k’ashe!!!!!” He yelled at the top of his lungs, gesturing to the circle on the wall. It began to glow, as mechanical enforcers piled against the wall, one after the other, pinned by the arcane magnet. Their weapons and various mechanical devices were pulled to the gravity circle, as the gagues and nose ring painfully ripped out of the wing guy’s face. He screamed in agony, clutching his bloody face, as a second barrage of gunfire erupted. Living enforcers from the civilian legion tumbled into the room. Suddenly, a second circle poking out from underneath a poster directly across from the other one caught Oliver’s glance. He narrowed his eyes, and at the perfect moment, gestured to the other circle.

“Kakhardakhan shjran k’ashe!!!!!”

The second circle activated, as the eldritch magnets violently ripped the robots apart into a storm of shrapnel with a horrible noise. The organic enforcers fell back, trying to navigate the hazard.

“You two alright?!” Oliver yelled. The wing guy moaned with pain.

“I think so! The professor’s hit!!!”

“I know!” Marcus ripped the door off of what was left of the cabinet and desperately rummaged for another weapon. The smell of burning chemicals filled the room, as Marcus pulled out a bottle of a caustic cleaner, which splashed onto his skin.

“Ow! Dammit!!!” He dropped the bottle, which leaked a mysterious cleaning agent from a smoldering hole.

“Wait, this is bleach based!” Marcus glanced at the label, as he kicked the bottle towards the reinforcements. “Oliver! Search through your side for something ammonia! I’ve got an idea the professor told me never to do!!!” Oliver desperately rummaged around, as the armed men and women began to run closer to them.

“Bleachbleachbleachbleachbleachble- ammonia!!!” Oliver slid the bottle to Marcus, who tore off the plastic cap.

“Catch!!!” He lobbed the open cleaner at the other bottle, as the substances sizzled and filled the room with a burning, noxious gas. The enforcers from the civilian legion coughed and hacked, and begin to cry out in pain.

“Fall back!!!” the pointman yelled. The escape tunnel had opened up just enough, as Oliver, Marcus, and the wing guy shielded their burning eyes and put their shirts over their faces.

“Make a break for it!!!” Marcus’ choked up, yet booming voice echoed across the foray, as he scooped Professor Pizza in his arms and ran. The wing guy grabbed Oliver and took off towards the tunnel, leaving behind what was left of the Professor’s lab. As they ran through the tunnel, they heard heavy, perfectly synchronized footsteps on their tail, quickly gaining on them, as a squadron of remaining living and mechanical enforcers chased them through the underground. The trio coughed and hacked as they ran away from the thick, toxic fog. They reached a passageway, as the earthen tunnel began to close in on them. The robots took aim, as they reached the underground entrance of the research station. They dove behind the door, as a spray of crackling bolts erupted between them from their rifles, tearing up the whole area and destroying everything in its path.

Marcus manned the control panels, trying desperately to shut the reinforced hatch door. An underground water main had been blown open, sprayed freezing water everywhere. Their situation looked more desperate as the enforcers bolted for the access point. The overhead door inched further and further shut. It wasn’t going to make it in time.

“Screw it!” Marcus ran out towards the door in the gunfire and began pulling it down faster with all of his strength, the gears and mechanisms controlling its descent breaking one by one. The wing guy suddenly got a scary look on his face, as he took the francium out of his pocket and chucked it under the door, towards the pouring ice water, as Marcus slammed the hatch shut. “Was th-?!” Before any of them could react, a massive, deafening explosion violently shook the room, causing the reinforced hatch to bow out like a popcorn tin in the microwave. Marcus held on for dear life, trying to hold it down, as Oliver raced to the professor. Anything or anyone in that tunnel, or the professor’s old lab, was reduced to ashes. Marcus panted, having barely survived, before collapsing on the ground as the explosion died down. Oliver and the wing guy quickly caught their breath, as they took in the sole fact that they were even alive.

Naruto sniffed the air before venturing out of his hiding space, terrified beyond belief, as he hid behind the wing guy. The beebo was followed by a visible trail of defensive ink. The three looked down at the collapsing pile of meat on the ground. Oliver tried to keep him somewhat together, as they collected the professor’s smoking body.

“We gotta get him to the lab, stat!” Marcus yelled.

“Hang on, Professor! You’re going to be okay!” Oliver desperately clung to the sizzling pile of meat and bread crumbs as Marcus scooped him up. The wing guy ran over and looked down at him, clutching his bleeding face. His eyes said it all. A weak psionic voice filled their heads.

“WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT. I’VE BEEN SUBLIMATED…” His psychic powers diminished with each passing second. “…YOU TOOK POSSIBLY THE LAST REMNANT THAT I, THE GREAT PROFESSOR PIZZA… HAVE LEFT YOU WITH… AND YOU IMMEDIATELY USE IT TO COMMIT ACTS OF WANTON DESTRUCTION THAT DEFINITELY KILLED PEOPLE… I COULD NOT BE MORE PROUD OF YOU HERE IN THIS MOMENT…YOU’VE ALL SHOWN SUCH EXTRAORDINARY ACUMEN… AS MY DELIVERERS… NAY… AS MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY…”

“Don’t talk like that, man, come on!” Wing Guy shouted desperately.

“Professor, please! Stay with us, mate.” Oliver stood devastated, as Marcus plopped him onto a table.

“Help me get this thing on him!” The former deliverers hooked him up to a complex device, as bright green stasis fluid pumped into his crumpled form.

“…FASCINATING… SO THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE… TO FADE…” They all stood around the cold machinery, deep underground, as Professor Pizza slipped away from them before their very eyes.

The various machinery quietly hummed in the lonely lab, in the wake of the chaos. The former delivery drivers looked over their shoulder, expecting more reinforcements to arrive any minute and blow them to smithereens. The air was heavy and tense, as what was left of the professor sat hooked up to all sorts of machines, in a desperate attempt. His meaty body was broken beyond repair. He was no longer alive, but in stasis: carefully chemically preserved on the verge of living and dead, perpetually trapped in the exact moment of death, unable to scream, to think, or even to be. An ancient being, who had existed for so long, a primordial force of logic and understanding, had been reduced to this.

“Guys, don’t let Naruto start eating the professor. This is the second time I’ve caught him now,” Marcus called to the other two. Various odds and ends that belonged to the professor lay scattered around: a bunsen burner, a bunsen chiller, a hamster whose brain had been swapped with a slightly smarter hamster’s, a recipe for self-cooking meatballs, a lengthy book on the ethics of cannibalism… Oliver attempted to tidy up a pile of junk left lying around, before he stopped himself. What was the point? Marcus chuckled, resigned and overwhelmed.

“What’s even going on, man?” Oliver stood next to him, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how. The wing guy sat in the corner of the room, curled on the floor, his beanie in his hands. “Your world’s being eaten by my world… and my world is actually our boss’ weird brother…”

“Yeah, that’s about right.” They both looked at the professor’s broken vessel. “I wish there was more we could do.”

“We’re doing everything we can, man. Besides, shoot, just unplugging him. I don’t know. I don’t know, man.” Oliver paused for a second, shaking his head.

“You know when you left and Wing Guy went missing, and it was just the two of us at the pizza place, his first thought that he suggested was to clone ourselves and put a… a killswitch thingy in them to stop a clone revolt?” Marcus chuckled.

“Yeah, sounds like the professor alright. You know, I- back in the balloon dimension, there was this one balloon I saw, it- dude, it was like round and kinda misshapen… like this,” The panda gestured with his hands. “It was that same braised beef color, and I thought about grabbing it for him. I didn’t know how he’d react… I didn’t, but I, heh, I should’ve.” Oliver forgot about the dimension, how he’d sat there cursing under his breath because Marcus had the cool delivery. Those were simpler times.

“I gotta take a leak, I’ll be right back.”

“Have fun, mate.” Oliver checked his phone for an update from Mabel as Marcus wandered off. Still no word from Iris. Mum was currently staying with Uncle Dave and Aunt Linda, since Dave was having his procedure. Mabel would “probably” be heading down to Sydney with Brett “soon”. Probably, soon, what the hell did that even mean? Why couldn’t anyone ever just listen to him or give him a straight answer? Oliver stopped himself from chucking his phone across the room in frustration. It was all just pure stress and misery. His toe was killing him from when he kicked the bike rack back home; he could tell just by looking that he’d almost definitely broke it.

“Hey, we gotta talk, man. Away from tubby.” Oliver was a tad annoyed, as the tall, abrasive teenager stood over him insulting Marcus, but he sensed the weight in the teenager’s voice. His eyes were tired and dead.

“Sure, what’s going on?” The two began to walk, as Naruto walked in front of him, squeaking and stirring anxiously. It was getting to be that time.

“I’ll feed you in a minute.” The beebo didn’t take no for an answer, walking underfoot and chewing and clawing on the wing guy’s leg. Without warning, the teenager turned around and kicked the creature.

“Back off!!!” Oliver watched horrified as the instant regret set in on the wing guy’s face, as Naruto made a distressed sound and scurried off, his fur ruffled. The wing guy’s bandaged face immediately grew rife with regret. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t run away-”

“What’s going on?” The panda lumbered over, as the teenager lost his cool.

“None of your business, man! Kick rocks!” Oliver stepped in.

“Give us a minute, will you? Thanks mate.” Marcus looked down, taken aback, quickly fixing his zipper, as he gave them some space. Oliver and the wing guy walked into a storage room.

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean to kick him… He got in the way, I didn’t…”

“I know you didn’t mean to, it’s alright, we’ll-”

“No it’s not!” Oliver looked at him intently, offering him a listening ear. Ever since they had to leave, the wing guy had been preoccupied, his only sense of stability ripped out from under him. The layers began to peel back as Oliver saw a scared, hurt kid in front of him. “You’re gonna hate me. God, you’re gonna hate me.”

“I’m won’t hate you, just take a deep breath and talk to me.” The wing guy’s eyes glistened with tears.

“It’s just, your family was so cool about everything and everything they did, and I- I like, loved your home, I really did, and it’s all my fault-” Oliver sat patiently, listening to the wing guy’s word salad.

“There was nothing any of us could’ve done, mate. Not you, or me, or Marcus-”

“No you don’t understand. I- I leaked all that stuff on the Mobian web and it blew up, and now they’re destroying your world… God, what the hell have I done?! I’m such an idiot.” Oliver silently took in this revelation.

“…We don’t know that it has anything to do with that.”

“Mobius is alive, right? It probably got all pissed off and knew.”

“We don’t know that.” This did beg the question: was Mobius truly cognizant and possess intelligence like the professor, or did it simply function? However, now wasn’t the time for that. Oliver smiled at him. “It could’ve been brought on by something inside of Mobius, or one of the other eight billion people in my world, or some distant alien society that we don’t know about. It could’ve even been completely random, like a lot of things here seem to be.” The wing guy said nothing as he looked away, covering his face. The koala couldn’t deny that the leak was also possibly a very real catalyst. “Heh, you know, Marcus actually showed me the leaks the other day. You’re fairly decent with a camera, but your spelling could use some work.” His attempt to cut through the dread of the situation with a weak joke fell flat. The pain, wear, and catastrophe of the past day and a half showed in both of their eyes.

“I’ll tell you what we do know, mate. We know that this has been going on for a long time. You said it yourself. We also know that people are outraged, and that there’s more people in our situation out there.”

“Most Mobians aren’t gonna give a crap. Our culture is screwed up. It’s not their homeworld. They’ve never been there. Why the hell would any of them care? And if it was, they could just find a new world similar to theirs. They c- they could find a new family, right?!”

“But there’s still a lot of people who do care, who are pissed. The data for the censors is off the charts, which means that after your posts, the enforcers have been blocking a lot more content for being anti-Mobian.”

“Still.” Oliver beamed with a warm, yet pained pride.

“Don’t you see what you’ve really done here? You’ve given us, you’ve given my home a fighting chance.”

“Tch. Barely.”

“It’s still a chance. More than we would’ve had otherwise. And we know that for certain.” The wing guy looked away, with Oliver catching a glimpse of his glistening eyes. His shoulders fell. “Come here.”

“Wh- what are you doing?” The koala approached the teenager and hugged onto his leg. The human looked down at him with shock.

“No… what are you doing?… I d-doomed your family… you’re s-suposed to… be mad at me...”

The teenager backed away, before he broke completely, crumpling to the ground and pulling Oliver in, gripping him like a living, breathing teddy bear. Oliver felt his wet tears through his shirt, as he gently patted his shoulder.

“I don’t… deserve… to be here… I’m an idiot…”

“Don’t talk about my friend like that.” The wing guy loosened up, wiping the tears off his face.

“Dammit!” He punched the wall, gripping his hand. The rawness to his voice began to cool over into fatigue, having let it out of his system. The shaky adrenaline from their life-threatening situation wore away. “You think- you really think we can fight this?”

“I really don’t know.” Oliver lowered his ears. “I wish I had a better answer. It’s, heh, it’s a rotten situation. But we’ve got a chance. And we’re in this together now. You, and me, and Marcus. We’ve got to be strong and we’ve got to try… for the professor.”

“…For the professor.” He wiped his nose on his hand, before wiping it on his pants. “Don’t tell Marcus, or anyone.”

“Secret’s safe with me.” Suddenly, as if right on cue, Marcus flung open the door.

“Uh, guys, someone’s in here.” The panic flashed in Oliver and the wing guy’s voice, as the sound of mechanical doors opened from the other side of the research station. Large footsteps ventured down the hall, towards their current location, as they braced for a fight for survival. The red glow of an optic filled the hallway outside, scanning for any signs of hiding life, before a voice called into the room.

“Relax. I’m not here for that. Come on out.” The wing guy’s looked around, confused, as Oliver and Marcus instantly recognized the voice. Oliver and Marcus hesitantly looked at each other, before opening the door. Cyrus stood before them, armed to the teeth.

“I picked up on the distress signal and heard the explosion. Figured you guys were back in town.”

“Cyrus! Please, we need your help, man! They started destroying Oliver’s home dimension, and I think the professor might be dead!” That word still hung in the air like a dark cloud of rain. Oliver hesitated, but put their bad blood with Cyrus aside  to help with their situation.

“And you are?” The wing guy raised an eyebrow.

“Might be?” Cyrus looked vaguely interested, ignoring the wing guy’s question.

“I don’t know. We were hoping he had a solution and the enforcers tracked us, or something.”

“Like I told you, you’re quite easy to track. Might as well have been wearing a neon sign.”

“Please, man, we’re out of ideas!”

“Did they take him?”

“No, he’s here.”

“Take me to him.” The three led the cyborg to the professor, who sat hooked up to the machine. Naruto slowly exited from his hiding place behind the table and stood by the wing guy, sniffing his pant leg. The wing guy slowly put his hand down, and Naruto rubbed his nose against it with a gentle forgiveness. Cyrus’ usually calm and collected eyes widened as he read the diagnostics and scanned his vitals.

“What the hell did you guys do to him?! His numbers are all over the place!”

“I just did what it told me to do! I don’t know!” After much hesitation, Cyrus turned to them.

“He’s not alive, but… he’s not dead. I don’t know. Best bet would be to just end him right now, put him out of his misery.” He adjusted the rifle slung over his shoulder.

“There’s gotta be another way.”

“In maybe an hour or two, tops, he’ll be completely unrecoverable, if he isn’t already.” He scanned the bent hatch door before checking it with his optic, as he gestured to it. “Also, don’t go out there without a geiger counter. Whatever did that was highly radioactive.” The trio nervously looked at each other, as Oliver and Marcus both instinctively took a step back from the wing guy, who shrugged. Cyrus took one of his dreadlocks, which faintly glowed, and connected it to a port on the computer, mentally inputting all sorts of data into the computer and accessing the machine via his neural implant.

“Look, Cyrus,” Oliver interjected. “Is there’s anything we can do, anything at all…” Cyrus hesitated, before disconnecting.

“I’m telling you right now, there’s no way you’re gonna upload his consciousness to a machine. We don’t have the tech here in this lab or the know-how, and his spirit, his… whatever that is, is just too powerful. It’d fry your circuits. Even with access to the multiverse, science currently can’t save him.”

“So you’re saying there’s no options?” Marcus glanced at Cyrus, crushed and disappointed. Cyrus looked into the eyes in his black, pools of fur, before looking away, sighing through his nose as he brushed his dreadlocks out of his face.

“Look, this ain’t exactly my area of expertise. There’s only one thing I can think of. It’s a stretch, but if anyone in the current known multiverse would have any insight on this sort of thing, it’d be her. Though be warned… there’s always a cost.”

“Who?” Oliver, Marcus, and the wing guy looked intently at Cyrus.

“Madam Mibbitt.”