#72 -- Fixed GW/Fantastic Four
Title: Objectives
Author: silvercaladan
Fandom: Gundam Wing/Fantastic Four
Word Count: 2309
Challenge: #72 -- Fixed
Rating: Rish
A/N: Completely AU, sort of like if the superhero serum from Marvelverse existed in the clutches of the Alliance. Reed Richards is NOT out of character, I’ve just emphasized his scientific interest and disconnected attitude more than his sporadic morality. Darker than all of the other fics I’ve posted so far: character death.
Objectives
The Alliance building stank of desperation. It’s the kind of smell that doesn’t really register, except as a creepy feeling. Skittering spiders down the back, paranoia, recklessness, the works. Hell, it was strong enough for me to notice the effects, and I’m paranoid by nature.
Despite the clean, sophisticated look of the place, the Alliance was obviously hurting. They were fighting a war on three fronts, now. More than anything else, that was the source of the atmosphere in this place. That, or I was picking up what I expected to be there and not what is… again.
I’ll say this about the Alliance: their beyond secret military programs are in extremely well-lit and uncomplicated areas. There’s no maze of dingy, questionable recycled metal to traverse here. All of the hallways are white, lit by fluorescent lights every couple of feet, and tiled. No skulking, here. Makes my job that much more annoying.
After all, scientists aren’t normally teenagers with long braids that could get caught in machinery or interfere with experiments. Never mind that said scientist is twitching almost unnoticeably every couple of feet in the bright lights. If the entire military had bases like this, they’d never have to worry about guerrillas sneaking in and planting shit. They’d eliminate half of their problems right there. Its an uncommon man that can pull off a disguise, after all, and I sure as fuck am not Trowa.
So yea, maybe the paranoid atmosphere is just my doing. I can’t help it if I’m more of a keep to the dark kind of guy. But hey, a mission is a mission, and has to be done somehow.
What is it with scientists and trying to destroy humanity, anyway? They always claim that they create shit for the benefit of mankind. Nuclear power was totally created to make electricity, yep. Just like mobile suits were designed for the construction industry. Totally. So yea, lets make a formula that’ll increase all of mankind’s abilities! Let’s make ourselves smarter, long-liven, disease-proof, and strong enough to kill lesser beings with a glance.
Like fuck scientists never see the destructive potential of what they’re creating for their oh-so generous backers.
This group I was after took the cake. As far as all of my sources (and Heero’s and Quatre’s…) could tell, they’d already had a hypothetical formula for the serum. The Alliance just gave them the… resources… to make it with. No word on testing. God in heaven, I hope they haven’t got that far. Eliminating test subjects in a DNA case takes a shitload more than just a bullet to the head. Scientists, those are easy. If I can get to them without being caught.
Humming a nonsense tune to myself in a slightly forced act of nonchalance, I skimmed the clipboard I’d stolen along with the lab coat, and circled random objects. I even paused once to make a disgusted noise at something on the paper that “disagreed” with me. It worked. Everyone I passed was headed towards something more important than watching a guy study his results while walking.
I paused almost instinctually in front of the door labeled Reed Richards. He was my main target, being the scientist whose name headed the report before it disappeared from all channels. Guy must have tried to publish without the Alliance’s knowledge. Bet they docked him something fierce for that. Stroke of luck for the opposition, though.
I have no idea what’s on the other side of the door. Whether there’ll be a pissed off Richards screeching like a woman about information stealing or if there’ll be a guard armed with a submachine gun and an itchy trigger finger. I’m here to deal with the former. The later is more likely.
The door slides inward too easily. I follow it closely, peering around the frame, looking all the world like a kid peeking into their parents’ bedroom.
“Excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing? This is a highly sensitive test area under quarantine to everyone but me.” Reed Richards, check. He’s sharing the lab with a boy about my age, tourniquet on the arm and everything. Test Subject, an unwelcome check. There’s an open glass airlock chamber that leads to another room behind him. Testing arena?
Improvisation time. “I-I… the General sent me down here to help with your progress, D-Dr. Richards. He said my curiosity would serve you better than him…. ” I stutter a little, giving the impression of incompetence, and trail off as if in awe of being in his presence, or as a shy little kid.
Reed eyes me speculatively, supposedly mollified by my blushing virgin and admiring fan act. Maybe that’s why Trowa isn’t here. I’m better with the verbal flattery and winging it. “Sit back and watch carefully; the effect of the new serum upon Johnny’s DNA may be instantaneous. I might not catch everything of import.” Richards turns around again, back to me. Perfect time to waste him. I drift closer, ready to stab the silenced pistol in my hands into his back, when he does… something.
I’m not sure I saw that right. It looked like he stretched out his neck to some obscene length so that he could look at all angles of the guy’s arm without moving his body. Holy shit… he DID. He’s stretching. Fuck fuck fuck. Active superpowers were not part of the plan. Okay, calm. A scientist in the know would not be freaking out right now. Obviously, the first serum didn’t work quite like he’d planned it… though why he’d test on himself is beyond my capacity for reason. Surely there were other grunts like the guy on the table he could have chosen?
So he’s testing out a new serum. He went through an entirely new development and production phase in only a few days. God. Wait, maybe this is an antidote, or a fix to the previous serum. Right. Like the military would let him come up with a “fix”.
“Dr. Richards, what makes this new serum different from the other one?” When in doubt, ask. Especially when viewed as the unknowledgeable but eager assistant. Richards jerked when I spoke, the needle he had in his hand abruptly burying itself in the guy on the table.
The guy let out a word I hadn’t heard in years, since I stopped hanging out so much with Sweepers, and pulled the needle out, tossing it violently across the room. “Reed, you fucker, just because I’m doing this for Sue doesn’t mean you get to play sadistic maniac. That needle was gigantic! Give a fella some warning next time.” I don’t try to hide an amused gaze. After all, I’m supposed to be a bit simple-minded for the great brilliance of Reed Richards.
Richards uttered a deep sigh. Long-suffering, if I’m not mistaken. “No change, Johnny?”
Johnny laughed, relaxed, and jumped off the table. “Nope, feel just as utterly fabulous as ever before. Do I get to leave, now?” Oho. Trouble with the test subjects, eh Richards? Been quarantining them longer than is healthy for any human being, I’d imagine. Don’t want your precious test sullied.
“Johnny, please just get in the testing arena. I want to make sure that nothing’s changed. After the first one, we all felt the best in years, but things were obviously different. What you think and what is doesn’t always match up, especially where you’re involved.” Oh yea, definitely long-suffering.
“Right, like you can talk.” Johnny ran a hand through his hair, and sauntered towards the open doors. “Brilliant. Another night in the fishbowl.”
“Yo, hothead, why aren’t you a quivering pile of-“ The gravelly voice was cut off by the whooshing airlock doors. Great. Two test subjects. The unknown one sounded a little like a gorilla on steroids.
“Um… Dr. Richards?” Softly, this time. He might be pissed at me for making him inject his test subject before he was ready.
He ignored me. Perfect. Facing the viewing window built into the wall, he leaned down to the microphone to give orders to the two within. I couldn’t see through from my position, though it looked like one-way glass. I sidled up, gun at the ready to jab into his stomach. The test subjects would never know that their scientist had been killed, and I could blow them to kingdom come before they ever noticed anything wrong. It was perfect. Until the bastard began to talk again.
“Ben, are you ready?”
“Ready to throw things mercilessly at the bane of my existence? You bet.” Whoa. Gravelly voice wasn’t just that; his entire body was like rock. Like bright orange, volcanic rock. What the fuck have you been toying around with, Richards? Is that even based from a man?
“Aww, Ben, I didn’t know you cared.” Johnny stands nearby, an insolent smirk on top of his indolent stance.
“Commence the test, then.” Richards leans back. I’m shaking in rage and in fear, behind his shoulder. That thing isn’t human. Richards is an atrocity on level with Satan himself. Jesus Christ, what have I walked into?!
The rock thing picks up a regular ball, of the kind that can be bought for less than five dollars at any supermarket, and lobs it at Johnny. Who promptly bursts into a living ball of flame and incinerates the ball upon contact. It’s too much. A strangled sob of sorts escapes from my throat.
“Hard to believe until you see it, no? The General should come down here and educate himself on what we’ve achieved.” Luckily, Richards thinks I’m just skeptical. Thank God for small favors. At least, until a twisted cry draws both of our attention back to the tableau below.
Johnny is on his hands and knees, gouts of flame erupting suddenly and randomly from his body, singeing the ground and everything else. He was huddled as if in pain. I sneak a glance at Richards, but he only looks excited that his new serum is doing something. The monster can’t see. The rock thing ran up to the fireball, regardless of the way the air itself now shimmers and heaves in the arena. The other objects he was supposed to be throwing were slowly melting. Disbelieving, I reach out to touch the glass through which we were looking. I can’t get my hand near. Its like trying to work up the courage to touch a metal pan on a gas stove. The screaming hadn’t stopped yet, and Richards is yelling, and I think the rock thing is yelling, but all I can focus on is the heat.
The fire is getting too bright to look at now. I am not going to die because of some mad scientist’s scheme, so I trampled away all sense of manliness and hid like a baby behind a nearby desk. A brilliant flash bright enough to penetrate both my hands and my eyelids sweeps through the room mere seconds later, somehow deafening as well as blinding.
Tweety birds the size of Mount Olympus are flying around my head, and the vertigo caused by blindness is so fierce that I can’t move. I can’t even tell if there are pieces of me left to move, for fuck’s sake. The gun jabs suddenly into my thigh, the black metal just barely visible as a fuzzy shape in my utterly washed out vision. I crawl haphazardly back towards where I think Richards is. I had a job to do, almost dead or not. Y’know, tile feels a lot rougher when you’re not walking on it.
In my intermittently returning vision, I find Richards lying on the ground by the window, entire body in some sort of non-proportionate funk. A totally unnatural pose, to have your head several feet from your body but still connected by a putty of a neck. Behind the dancing sparkles at the corner of my vision-and what a weird time for the Nutcracker ballet to pop to mind--I see something stumble haphazardly into this room. Kid must have melted off the airlock doors, too. God only knows what else happened to him. Vaguely, alarm bells register in the back of my head. Time to hurry it up; I can recover somewhere where I’m not a moving target.
Ewww… Richards goo. It’s all squishy and mushy and hey, that patch feels burnt. Ha. Serves the bastard right, getting mutated and killed by his attempts to play Omniscient. Poetic justice, if I do say so myself. Still… even with his body lying about in unnatural proportions and contortions like so much ooze…
I steady my reflexively shaking hands and shoot the assfuck as close as I can to the three best areas: brain, heart, and dick. After all, if you miss the first two and the guy still lives, anybody’d kill themselves over losing the last one. Richards is as good as dead. Primary Mission Accomplished.
Dammit. I need to stop talking to Heero.
The C4 I shove underneath Richards’ body feels more natural than anything else I’ve done all day. I mean, I know that this was supposed to be an in-and-out mission, nothing gigantic, nothing to create a show over… but Richards did this to himself. Hey, maybe everyone’ll be too disgusted by the Richards pieces all over the lab to care about recovering his work. Or if Lady Luck decides to make life up to me, it’ll all go down. Regardless, it’s the best I can do under pressure and time.
Richards was supposed to be a dorky, disconnected scientist, after all. He shouldn’t have had working-well, semi-working-specimens so soon into development. I blame intel. So I fall back on the good ole tried and true method: blow ‘em all to Hell and let God sort ‘em out.
Adios, Sunshine.
Author: silvercaladan
Fandom: Gundam Wing/Fantastic Four
Word Count: 2309
Challenge: #72 -- Fixed
Rating: Rish
A/N: Completely AU, sort of like if the superhero serum from Marvelverse existed in the clutches of the Alliance. Reed Richards is NOT out of character, I’ve just emphasized his scientific interest and disconnected attitude more than his sporadic morality. Darker than all of the other fics I’ve posted so far: character death.
Objectives
The Alliance building stank of desperation. It’s the kind of smell that doesn’t really register, except as a creepy feeling. Skittering spiders down the back, paranoia, recklessness, the works. Hell, it was strong enough for me to notice the effects, and I’m paranoid by nature.
Despite the clean, sophisticated look of the place, the Alliance was obviously hurting. They were fighting a war on three fronts, now. More than anything else, that was the source of the atmosphere in this place. That, or I was picking up what I expected to be there and not what is… again.
I’ll say this about the Alliance: their beyond secret military programs are in extremely well-lit and uncomplicated areas. There’s no maze of dingy, questionable recycled metal to traverse here. All of the hallways are white, lit by fluorescent lights every couple of feet, and tiled. No skulking, here. Makes my job that much more annoying.
After all, scientists aren’t normally teenagers with long braids that could get caught in machinery or interfere with experiments. Never mind that said scientist is twitching almost unnoticeably every couple of feet in the bright lights. If the entire military had bases like this, they’d never have to worry about guerrillas sneaking in and planting shit. They’d eliminate half of their problems right there. Its an uncommon man that can pull off a disguise, after all, and I sure as fuck am not Trowa.
So yea, maybe the paranoid atmosphere is just my doing. I can’t help it if I’m more of a keep to the dark kind of guy. But hey, a mission is a mission, and has to be done somehow.
What is it with scientists and trying to destroy humanity, anyway? They always claim that they create shit for the benefit of mankind. Nuclear power was totally created to make electricity, yep. Just like mobile suits were designed for the construction industry. Totally. So yea, lets make a formula that’ll increase all of mankind’s abilities! Let’s make ourselves smarter, long-liven, disease-proof, and strong enough to kill lesser beings with a glance.
Like fuck scientists never see the destructive potential of what they’re creating for their oh-so generous backers.
This group I was after took the cake. As far as all of my sources (and Heero’s and Quatre’s…) could tell, they’d already had a hypothetical formula for the serum. The Alliance just gave them the… resources… to make it with. No word on testing. God in heaven, I hope they haven’t got that far. Eliminating test subjects in a DNA case takes a shitload more than just a bullet to the head. Scientists, those are easy. If I can get to them without being caught.
Humming a nonsense tune to myself in a slightly forced act of nonchalance, I skimmed the clipboard I’d stolen along with the lab coat, and circled random objects. I even paused once to make a disgusted noise at something on the paper that “disagreed” with me. It worked. Everyone I passed was headed towards something more important than watching a guy study his results while walking.
I paused almost instinctually in front of the door labeled Reed Richards. He was my main target, being the scientist whose name headed the report before it disappeared from all channels. Guy must have tried to publish without the Alliance’s knowledge. Bet they docked him something fierce for that. Stroke of luck for the opposition, though.
I have no idea what’s on the other side of the door. Whether there’ll be a pissed off Richards screeching like a woman about information stealing or if there’ll be a guard armed with a submachine gun and an itchy trigger finger. I’m here to deal with the former. The later is more likely.
The door slides inward too easily. I follow it closely, peering around the frame, looking all the world like a kid peeking into their parents’ bedroom.
“Excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing? This is a highly sensitive test area under quarantine to everyone but me.” Reed Richards, check. He’s sharing the lab with a boy about my age, tourniquet on the arm and everything. Test Subject, an unwelcome check. There’s an open glass airlock chamber that leads to another room behind him. Testing arena?
Improvisation time. “I-I… the General sent me down here to help with your progress, D-Dr. Richards. He said my curiosity would serve you better than him…. ” I stutter a little, giving the impression of incompetence, and trail off as if in awe of being in his presence, or as a shy little kid.
Reed eyes me speculatively, supposedly mollified by my blushing virgin and admiring fan act. Maybe that’s why Trowa isn’t here. I’m better with the verbal flattery and winging it. “Sit back and watch carefully; the effect of the new serum upon Johnny’s DNA may be instantaneous. I might not catch everything of import.” Richards turns around again, back to me. Perfect time to waste him. I drift closer, ready to stab the silenced pistol in my hands into his back, when he does… something.
I’m not sure I saw that right. It looked like he stretched out his neck to some obscene length so that he could look at all angles of the guy’s arm without moving his body. Holy shit… he DID. He’s stretching. Fuck fuck fuck. Active superpowers were not part of the plan. Okay, calm. A scientist in the know would not be freaking out right now. Obviously, the first serum didn’t work quite like he’d planned it… though why he’d test on himself is beyond my capacity for reason. Surely there were other grunts like the guy on the table he could have chosen?
So he’s testing out a new serum. He went through an entirely new development and production phase in only a few days. God. Wait, maybe this is an antidote, or a fix to the previous serum. Right. Like the military would let him come up with a “fix”.
“Dr. Richards, what makes this new serum different from the other one?” When in doubt, ask. Especially when viewed as the unknowledgeable but eager assistant. Richards jerked when I spoke, the needle he had in his hand abruptly burying itself in the guy on the table.
The guy let out a word I hadn’t heard in years, since I stopped hanging out so much with Sweepers, and pulled the needle out, tossing it violently across the room. “Reed, you fucker, just because I’m doing this for Sue doesn’t mean you get to play sadistic maniac. That needle was gigantic! Give a fella some warning next time.” I don’t try to hide an amused gaze. After all, I’m supposed to be a bit simple-minded for the great brilliance of Reed Richards.
Richards uttered a deep sigh. Long-suffering, if I’m not mistaken. “No change, Johnny?”
Johnny laughed, relaxed, and jumped off the table. “Nope, feel just as utterly fabulous as ever before. Do I get to leave, now?” Oho. Trouble with the test subjects, eh Richards? Been quarantining them longer than is healthy for any human being, I’d imagine. Don’t want your precious test sullied.
“Johnny, please just get in the testing arena. I want to make sure that nothing’s changed. After the first one, we all felt the best in years, but things were obviously different. What you think and what is doesn’t always match up, especially where you’re involved.” Oh yea, definitely long-suffering.
“Right, like you can talk.” Johnny ran a hand through his hair, and sauntered towards the open doors. “Brilliant. Another night in the fishbowl.”
“Yo, hothead, why aren’t you a quivering pile of-“ The gravelly voice was cut off by the whooshing airlock doors. Great. Two test subjects. The unknown one sounded a little like a gorilla on steroids.
“Um… Dr. Richards?” Softly, this time. He might be pissed at me for making him inject his test subject before he was ready.
He ignored me. Perfect. Facing the viewing window built into the wall, he leaned down to the microphone to give orders to the two within. I couldn’t see through from my position, though it looked like one-way glass. I sidled up, gun at the ready to jab into his stomach. The test subjects would never know that their scientist had been killed, and I could blow them to kingdom come before they ever noticed anything wrong. It was perfect. Until the bastard began to talk again.
“Ben, are you ready?”
“Ready to throw things mercilessly at the bane of my existence? You bet.” Whoa. Gravelly voice wasn’t just that; his entire body was like rock. Like bright orange, volcanic rock. What the fuck have you been toying around with, Richards? Is that even based from a man?
“Aww, Ben, I didn’t know you cared.” Johnny stands nearby, an insolent smirk on top of his indolent stance.
“Commence the test, then.” Richards leans back. I’m shaking in rage and in fear, behind his shoulder. That thing isn’t human. Richards is an atrocity on level with Satan himself. Jesus Christ, what have I walked into?!
The rock thing picks up a regular ball, of the kind that can be bought for less than five dollars at any supermarket, and lobs it at Johnny. Who promptly bursts into a living ball of flame and incinerates the ball upon contact. It’s too much. A strangled sob of sorts escapes from my throat.
“Hard to believe until you see it, no? The General should come down here and educate himself on what we’ve achieved.” Luckily, Richards thinks I’m just skeptical. Thank God for small favors. At least, until a twisted cry draws both of our attention back to the tableau below.
Johnny is on his hands and knees, gouts of flame erupting suddenly and randomly from his body, singeing the ground and everything else. He was huddled as if in pain. I sneak a glance at Richards, but he only looks excited that his new serum is doing something. The monster can’t see. The rock thing ran up to the fireball, regardless of the way the air itself now shimmers and heaves in the arena. The other objects he was supposed to be throwing were slowly melting. Disbelieving, I reach out to touch the glass through which we were looking. I can’t get my hand near. Its like trying to work up the courage to touch a metal pan on a gas stove. The screaming hadn’t stopped yet, and Richards is yelling, and I think the rock thing is yelling, but all I can focus on is the heat.
The fire is getting too bright to look at now. I am not going to die because of some mad scientist’s scheme, so I trampled away all sense of manliness and hid like a baby behind a nearby desk. A brilliant flash bright enough to penetrate both my hands and my eyelids sweeps through the room mere seconds later, somehow deafening as well as blinding.
Tweety birds the size of Mount Olympus are flying around my head, and the vertigo caused by blindness is so fierce that I can’t move. I can’t even tell if there are pieces of me left to move, for fuck’s sake. The gun jabs suddenly into my thigh, the black metal just barely visible as a fuzzy shape in my utterly washed out vision. I crawl haphazardly back towards where I think Richards is. I had a job to do, almost dead or not. Y’know, tile feels a lot rougher when you’re not walking on it.
In my intermittently returning vision, I find Richards lying on the ground by the window, entire body in some sort of non-proportionate funk. A totally unnatural pose, to have your head several feet from your body but still connected by a putty of a neck. Behind the dancing sparkles at the corner of my vision-and what a weird time for the Nutcracker ballet to pop to mind--I see something stumble haphazardly into this room. Kid must have melted off the airlock doors, too. God only knows what else happened to him. Vaguely, alarm bells register in the back of my head. Time to hurry it up; I can recover somewhere where I’m not a moving target.
Ewww… Richards goo. It’s all squishy and mushy and hey, that patch feels burnt. Ha. Serves the bastard right, getting mutated and killed by his attempts to play Omniscient. Poetic justice, if I do say so myself. Still… even with his body lying about in unnatural proportions and contortions like so much ooze…
I steady my reflexively shaking hands and shoot the assfuck as close as I can to the three best areas: brain, heart, and dick. After all, if you miss the first two and the guy still lives, anybody’d kill themselves over losing the last one. Richards is as good as dead. Primary Mission Accomplished.
Dammit. I need to stop talking to Heero.
The C4 I shove underneath Richards’ body feels more natural than anything else I’ve done all day. I mean, I know that this was supposed to be an in-and-out mission, nothing gigantic, nothing to create a show over… but Richards did this to himself. Hey, maybe everyone’ll be too disgusted by the Richards pieces all over the lab to care about recovering his work. Or if Lady Luck decides to make life up to me, it’ll all go down. Regardless, it’s the best I can do under pressure and time.
Richards was supposed to be a dorky, disconnected scientist, after all. He shouldn’t have had working-well, semi-working-specimens so soon into development. I blame intel. So I fall back on the good ole tried and true method: blow ‘em all to Hell and let God sort ‘em out.
Adios, Sunshine.