Post by DiscipleofBob on Jul 31, 2015 12:34:41 GMT -5
Fantastic Four #8:
Honey, I Shrunk the Scientists
By Adrini and DiscipleofBob
Honey, I Shrunk the Scientists
By Adrini and DiscipleofBob
[Baxter Building Lab #4]
The explosion rocked the entire lab. One capsule exploded, followed by the rest in a chain reaction. The light that flooded the room destroyed anything nearby, then knocked over equipment in half the lab. The force was only quelled by Sue's attempt to contain it with her newfound abilities. But while the majority of the explosion was contained, thus saving the four of their lives, a shower of light particles pierced through the forcefield as if it wasn't even there.
When their senses returned, the four were mostly unharmed, except for one small problem. Either the rest of the lab and everything in it had grown exponentially, or they were each less than a centimeter tall.
Equipment was knocked over. Glass shards and mechanical debris were strewn throughout the room, each fragment still larger than the four people struggling to understand what just happened.
"All right. Which of you nerds is responsible for this?!" Janet was livid. Sue and Hank's accusatory gazes immediately turned to a flabbergasted Reed.
"Now I think the last thing we should be doing in this situation is pointing fingers..." Reed tried to reason while backing away, only to be stopped by an invisible corner, which slowly pushed him back towards the three-man lynch mob.
"So crashing a space station wasn't enough for you? You had to try and top that?!" Sue and the others closed in on him. "What. Did. You. Do?!"
"I swear this was an entirely unforeseeable circumstance!" Reed tried to protest. "As cathartic as it would be to seek retribution for our current predicament, shouldn't we focus on rectifying the current situation?"
"Oh, I'm going to rectify something all right," Janet threatened, but before anyone could follow through, a series of chittering noises, gradually growing louder, drew their attention. Their respective tunnel vision had left them originally blinded to the many skittering legs gathering closer.
Four pairs of eyes turn to see an army gathering, an army of ants the relative size of horses, with mandibles that could take off an arm or worse. Apologies, forgiveness, and restitution could wait until later.
While Hank and Janet started to back away, preparing to run from the inevitable horror movie. Sue would have done the same, but recent events had given her more options. The ants scratched at the invisible wall, their antennas probing the unusual barrier, but these weren't people so easily fooled by a trick of the eyes. Sue's powers could only cover so much of an area, and the ants were already starting to climb over the fence. At most, she could buy them seconds.
"Run!" Sue yelled, though it seemed redundant as they were already fleeing. Reed by far had the longest stride, and quickly wrapped his arm around Janet, Hank, and finally Sue. He overestimated his strength, however, when attempting to carry the three others caused Reed's arms to drag behind him and limp like a wet noodle.
"Reed, we can run ourselves. It doesn't matter if you have powers. If carrying us is beyond the limits of your body, then you'll slow all of us down in the process," Hank yelled after their would-be rescuer.
If Reed heard him, he didn't show it. Instead he stretched his legs and torso as long as possible towards a nearby desk, which may as well have been a mountain with its insurmountable vertical climb. He had to let go of Hank so one arm could reach the top. Once he was sure he wouldn't fall, with all of his strength he pulled up Sue and Janet, the latter of which who was still completely speechless as Reed's new rubbery body.
Hank was left alone with the ants circling around him, quickly closing in with each second. Hank had nothing but open floor to try to flee on, but even then the ants were faster, and the most he could possibly reach was a wall to be cornered in.
The ants drew nearer. The ones in front clicked their mandibles in anticipation as Hank was left completely helpless against the seemingly infinite swarm. Finally, Reed's arm wrapped around Hank's torso at the last second and pulled up just as one ant's mandibles snapped shut where Hank had just been.
Reed's arms and legs were contorted between the handles of the desk drawers, entangled in a pulley and weight system to try and get as much leverage as possible. Adrenaline only got Reed far enough to get Sue and Janet up without trouble. It took an intelligent application of force to get Hank up as well. Reed was left in a noodley mess, his arms and legs stretched like rubber taffy to the point where his elbows and knees were completely lost.
"Now what? Can't they climb up here?" Sue asked worried.
Janet shook her head as she caught her breath. "They can, but they're not likely to."
"How sure are you about that?"
Janet scowled. Having been the resident entomologist for years, she had hoped by now the other 'nerds' would take her at her word when it came to her area of expertise. "Well, while they'll eventually explore any areas they can, right now the ants are probably just pissed that their habitats were destroyed. For the moment, they'll behave like typical ants. The soldiers will form a perimeter and protect the rest of the colony, and the workers will try and create some kind of nest for the rest. They'll start foraging for food, but they'll be more interested in stray crumbs on the floor than trying to track us down. We need to stay sharp and make sure they don't just start swarming up here, but we should be fine for the time being."
Sure enough, when Sue peeked over the side of the desk, the insects were swarming on the floor, but not moving very far beyond the remains of the knocked over ant farm. "We're safe... for now."
"All right then. First priority is to figure out exactly what happened so we can figure out a way to reverse it," said Hank.
"Do you really think this is reversible?" Janet asked gravely.
"It has to be," Hank replied, though even he was unsure. He took stock of their surroundings, and luckily most of the equipment on this workstation seemed to be intact, just knocked over. "Reed, pull yourself together and help me get this microscope back up. The longer we wait the less likely we'll have a chance to fix this."
[Central City High School]
"Dude, Alicia is looking at you!" Jimmy said, looking behind them in class. Focused on his chemistry lesson Johnny barely caught what he said. "She is totally into you, man! You should totally talk to her after class."
"After class being the key phrase there, pay attention." But trying to himself, hearing his sister's stern warnings to what happened when people didn't pay attention, he still wanted to look for himself.
Waiting for the teacher to turn to the board he turned around, under the guise of getting something from his bag, to see that she really was. More when she noticed him turn around she waved and smiled, excited. That seemed to settle it.
When the lecture part of the class over, he and Jimmy walked over to their station to do the experiment part of the class. Placing the equipment and supplies in place they left the burner unlit as this was a reaction experiment, not a heat based one. Wordlessly dividing the work they both got things ready to go quickly as they began the active part.
Taking notes for the report it was Jimmy who first saw the growing problem. Moving quickly he grabbed the beaker just before it boiled over and gave away a far worse secret, how it got hot.
He quickly finished up the project and the two turned in the folder before asking to go to the study room for the remainder of the time. Having permission Jimmy instead took him just outside quickly looking to see if anyone else was close.
"I knew it! You're the flame guy! I mean, I had an idea, but the camera was so fuzzy I wasn't sure. That means that Reed is the stretchy guy I guess. Ben must be that golem." His eyes went wide. "And Sue is-"
Johnny didn't even have the chance to deny it, and frankly he wasn't sure he would have. Instead he shushed Jim. As much as he wanted to show off his new powers, Sue was clear that he should keep the flame 'off' until they knew more information. "Yeah, I know!" Johnny whispered when he was sure it was safe to talk. He was excited, sure. It was good to be careful, but this was his best friend. Totally safe to talk to. "It's awesome! I can fly, shoot fireballs, and more. Way better than in the video games."
Jimmy was grinning, also excited. "Can you show me, maybe something small?"
Johnny sighed and looked for something that hopefully wouldn't be missed. They found a small cache of unused P.E. supplies, including a small plastic barrel of dodgeballs.
"The jocks don’t really need these," Jimmy said, picking up a few of the dodgeballs and getting ready to throw them. "Show me."
Johnny smiled and nodded, taking the stance of a major league pitcher, or at least his best impression. Jim tossed a dodgeball in the air, and Johnny focused and hurled a medium fireball to immolate it in mid-air. It fell to the blacktop a smoldering mess smelling of burnt rubber.
"Wow, so cool!" a girl's voice suddenly cried out. Both teenage boys quickly turned around to see the new girl, Alicia, watching with the same kind of awe.
Johnny started to turn red, and not from the flames. But if his 'secret' was already out, he might as well milk the moment for all it was worth. "Jimmy, throw a few more," he said with a smile while winking at Alicia.
Jim was all too happy to oblige, throwing three balls in the air at once. Feeling pretty cocky, Johnny hurled three fireballs to match, one after the other. The first two he hit dead-on, but the third only grazed the ball and kept going, landing on the corner of the dry, wooden bleachers. The teens' excitement quickly turned to horror when the fire started to spread along the bleachers.
Fortunately, Alicia managed to quickly locate a nearby fire extinguisher, rushing to the blaze and putting it out before it got too out of control. A small section of the bleachers was still charred though. "Thanks for the save. That was close," Johnny breathed a sigh of relief when he someone clear their throat behind him.
Johnny turned to see the principal standing behind him, looking down sternly. "I think the three of you should come to my office, now. Your respective guardians will need to hear about this incident."
"Busted," said Jim sheepishly as the three were led away.
[Baxter Building Lab #4]
Reed had always been scrawny. His newfound elasticity meant he could take a lot more physical stress without permanent damage, but it didn't grant him any extra strength. Standing the microscope back up required a clever application of physics, using his own body as a series of pulleys to give himself as much leverage as possible. Eventually he managed to just barely stand the equipment back up.
Meanwhile, Janet, Sue, and Hank had found a pencil and propped it up to the top of the microscope at a low enough angle that Hank could walk up to the lens, albeit very carefully.
"How's it look?" Janet shouted up.
"Glass is a little cracked, but it otherwise works," Hank said after looking down through the scope. "All right. Reed, you're the only one who can reach all the knobs, so adjust the settings for spectrometer readings. Janet, I'll need to analyze you first."
"What? Why me?" As familiar as Janet was with the equipment, that didn't mean she wanted to be the first subject. No one could know if something else was about to go wrong.
"I'm looking through the scope, and Reed and Sue both have too unusual anatomical structures for me to get an accurate reading," Hank explained, though Janet was still hesitant. "Please?"
"You better not use this as an excuse to peek down my blouse," Janet said as she nervously climbed up onto the microscope slide, the giant scope being slowly lowered as Reed adjusted it. Reed flipped a switch, and the light beneath Janet's feet changed to an eerie blue.
"Fascinating," Hank muttered.
When Janet looked down at her own body, she could see her entire mass permeated with shining particles like miniature stars. "What the...?!"
"Working theory," Hank started to think out loud, "The unstable molecules can adapt to all sorts of different external stimuli. Temperature, radiation, extreme climates, anything. Their exact reaction is unpredictable."
"We know that already, Hank. Tell us something new. Please," Janet called out.
"Well, Reed was doing some experiments with other unstable molecule fabric samples. So just like when he tries to do his own laundry, the fabric and molecules making it up shrunk in the superatomic wash of radiation, if you'll pardon the overly simplistic metaphor."
While Reed didn't appreciate his lack of domestic aptitude being used for comparison, he kept the dialogue on point. "So then how did we get shrunk as well?"
"Sue's forcefields managed to contain the majority of the blast. But the unstable molecules can adapt to nearly anything, including her forcefields. They pierced the barriers as if they weren't even there," Hank explained. "So while we weren't hurt by the explosion, we were showered with these altered particles that permeated every part of our being. Janet, you can get down now. Reed, can you extend a leg or something so I can confirm?"
Janet was all too happy to get down and Reed stretched his body under the microscope. Just like Janet, his body was filled with tiny little lights. "Whatever you did, Reed, it's causing the unstable molecules to condense themselves as compactly as possible, and with them, us."
"Okay, so we found the cause, now how about a solution?" Janet asked. The four wracked their brains together.
"Well, the fact that we didn't instantly die from our bodies compressing so small suggests that the entire shrinking process is, relatively speaking, safe. Therefore a similar process to enlarge us should be equally uniform," Hank reasoned.
"We aren't continuing to shrink," Sue added, "If the unstable molecules are really trying to condense matter as much as possible..."
Reed finished, "Then something is trying to push back with an equal force. Newton's third law. The unstable molecules are trying to push us into a condensed form, but the rest of our bodies are pushing back to try and return to a natural state. Therefore, if we can find a way to purge ourselves of these particles, our bodies should naturally return to their normal sizes. Fantastic Voyage style."
"Okay, so how do we purge ourselves? An exorcism?" Janet asked sarcastically.
Sue thought out loud, ""Bicarbonate and magnesium baths? No, that only treats radiation sickness symptoms. Potassium iodide only works as a preventative measure."
"The molecules permeated our bodies on a uniform, molecular level. Just as they adapted to the radiation and 'adapted' to our bodies, they should still be further adaptable. The only question is what kind of external stimuli could cause the molecules to leave our body without destroying us in the process?" Reed went to a pencil that was larger than he was, broke off a graphite shaving and, wielding it like a spear, immediately set to work writing down a series of mathematical equations so complex even the other geniuses could only keep up so much. "We're looking at this the wrong way. A radioactive explosion is what propelled the molecules into our bodies. A similar force is what we need to push the particles further out."
"Bathe in volatile radiation? Are you insane?!" Sue asked before adding, "Of course you are. Never mind."
"We have plenty of ways to treat radiation exposure in the lab and avoid any harmful side effects, which we can apply after the fact," Hank said as he started to follow Reed's line of thinking. "But how are you going to recreate that specific wavelength of radiation?"
Reed pointed over to the wreckage where the capsules were to begin with. "I remember what I was experimenting with. Even if most of the equipment is damaged, I should be able to salvage enough to recreate the experiment on a small enough level, but in a more controlled sample size so to not cause another potentially harmful explosion."
"Oh, I'm loving this idea already," Janet rolled her eyes before sighing reluctantly. "But I don't have any better ideas. We just need to somehow cross the entire room." The difficulty of such a task was gradually dawning on them. More than just one ant farm was knocked on the floor and shattered open. The other half of the room was crawling with escaped insects, to say nothing of the other dangers that lurked, including other specimens, damaged experiments and equipment, and the most basic of domestic office supplies that now presented their own challenges.
[Yancy Street Bar]
"Yer money's no good here," the bartender said with a sneer. Ben grimaced, but said nothing. The last thing he wanted to do was to start trouble here. Walking out without paying for drinks wasn't going to help things either though.
Ben could hear bar stools grind as their occupants one by one got up. Billiard balls stopped clacking as the bearded biker players halted their game. Slowly the many patrons of the bar surrounded Ben. Try as he might to be ignored, the fastest way to draw the attention of an entire Yancy Street dive bar was to piss off the guy filling everyone's drinks.
"I got all you chumps' attention? Good, everybody listen up!" the bartender addressed the entire bar as he stepped up on a wooden soapbox and yanked Ben's hat off. "Dis here's Ben Grimm. He grew up on Yancy Street, but unlike the rest of yous good-for-nothing punks, this bastid actually made sumthin' of 'imself. While the rest of yous is workin' the docks, Ben here went to friggin' space! And as long as I'm tending bar here, he eats and drinks for free, no mattah what kind o' muppet he looks like!"
Ben was too shocked to even really appreciate the sudden burst of applause, hearty grunts of teamster approval, and pats on the rocky shoulder. Before he could even respond, another large mug of frothy beer was slammed in front of him.
For the next few hours, Ben forgot he had ever left New York, despite it being years. He didn't even recognize half the faces there, but they all treated him like one of the boys. At one point the bartender took some time out to show a framed newspaper article, one of many about Yancy Street and the boys who grew up here. The article was a front page picture of Ben Grimm in a NASA uniform about to head to space.
Seeing his younger, still fleshy body brought on a whole flood of emotions. Yes, he missed having his old, regular-sized hands and a face he could actually recognize, but even after as long as he was gone from the Big Apple, as much as he'd changed both physically and as a person, he would always be welcome here at Yancy Street.
The partying went on into the night, and only after a few more rounds did the other patrons start to stammer out the door back home, did Ben notice one man sitting in the corner, staying out of the festivities and making a point not to be noticed. When he had slipped in, Ben couldn't say. Ben also couldn't really excuse himself from being the center of attention until it was almost closing time. When most of the patrons had left and the bartender was busy cleaning up, Ben moseyed on over and pulled a chair over to the booth, since he was too large to fit in anymore.
"Was wonderin' when you'd show up," Ben said discreetly. "When I hadn't heard from ya since I touched down I figured ya went and forgot about me."
"Contact needs to be discreet, and recently you've been garnering a lot of attention," replied the man in the shadows.
Ben shrugged. "What can I say? I don't got a lot of other options right now, on account of being... well, you know."
"The night's getting late, and we've got a lot to talk about," the man said as he leaned forward out of the shadows. The bald, dark-skinned man in the black trenchcoat glared at Ben with his one good eye, the other covered by an eyepatch. "A lot has changed. We're going to need to be very careful and very thorough with how we continue this after that crash. So let's get started, Agent Grimm."
[Baxter Building Lab #4]
"Come on, we don't have all day!" Sue called out from the other desk, the once unnoticeable gap between the two desks only large enough for a pencil to get lost between, now a barely traversable canyon. Reed and Sue managed to cross just fine thanks to their powers, but Hank and Janet were slightly more reprehensive.
"Are you sure you have a bridge up? I still can't see anything," Janet asked nervously.
"That's because Sue's projections are invisible, as we've reiterated," said Reed.
"Maybe there's another way we can cross that doesn't involve Raiders of the Lost Ark level challenges?"
"Last Crusade," Hank corrected. "You're thinking of the third movie with the leap of faith."
Janet rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Henry. I can spend my last moments on Earth the size of a flea, but at least my movie references will be accurate."
Sue sighed impatiently. "Look, I'm not going to let you fall, Jan. You can either walk across this admittedly invisible bridge I have for you, or you can bounce along Reed's body like a trampoline and hope you don't step on anything sensitive."
Reed turned beet red as Janet immediately stepped out on the invisible path. The lack of anything beneath her or knowing where if anywhere the boundaries of the bridge ended made each step more difficult than the last, but eventually she made her way over, followed shortly behind by Hank.
"One meter down, thirty-nine to go," Hank said grudgingly.
Crossing the desks was time-consuming, but otherwise not difficult, at least compared to the swarming ants they would somehow have to bypass on the floor. A swarm they would eventually have to deal with as the relative height and safety of the desks didn't reach all the way across the room.
"So, we're all supposedly brilliant minds here. Any ideas beyond 'hope the swarm doesn't consume us as soon as we get close'?" said Sue, trying to start a dialogue, hoping the shock of their circumstances had worn off.
"I was hoping your forcefields could protect us," replied Reed.
Sue scoffed. "I don't know how long I can hold it for. Even if we huddle up to minimize the size of the forcefield, we still don't know exactly how long it'll take for you to cobble something that will fix all this."
"Sue's right, we need a plan if we're going to avoid getting eaten or worse," said Janet. "This is my workstation. If we're going to find anything, it'll be here." Reed's neck started to elongate reflexively as he scanned the workstation, causing Janet to shiver. "Stop that! This whole thing is creepy enough as is without you doing... that!" She couldn't even begin to think of an analogy for Reed's neck stretching and bending to impossible lengths.
Reed's neck snapped back to normal, and Janet gagged. "Well, do you have any suggestions? What kind of projects have you been working on recently?"
Janet shrugged. "With everything that's happened with the crash and Victor going AWOL I haven't had much time to get real work done lately."
Meanwhile, Hank, lost in thought, suddenly perked up, the invisible lightbulb over his head switching on. He rushed over to white contraption, which at their normal size could be picked up in one hand, but now he had to carefully scale up. "Hank! Be careful, you're going to fall and hurt yourself!" Janet called out. "Let Reed and Sue handle it instead!" This elicited a glare from Sue and a betrayed look from Reed. "Oh you know what I meant," Janet assured them.
"What even is that thing?" asked Reed.
"It was supposed to be a transmitter. I was trying to see if hitting the right frequency would provoke some kind of reaction from my bugs. Maybe start sending specific signals or commands. I never could quite get it to work though. Not sure what Hank thinks he'll be able to do with it."
Hank gasped as he struggled to explain between breaths climbing the device. "Maybe it won't work as intended, but even in its current state, we should be able to modify it to produce soundwaves at some frequency, enough to at least disrupt any insects we come across."
Reed's eyes lit up. "An instectoid stun gun? Fantastic!"
Hank nodded as he reached the top, straddled the microphone, and started to carefully take it apart. "Precisely. The majority of the transmitter's size is just for convenience. I should be able to take the important parts and make something more portable." He briefly paused. "Unless you have any objections, Jan?"
Janet shook her head. "Hey, if taking apart my entire desk gets us back to normal, have at. Don't you need some tools though?"
"No need. At this size, my hands are small enough to do most of the work," Hank said, grunting as he struggled to pry out a particular piece. Bracing his legs against the transmitter and wrapping his hands around the device, he tugged as hard as possible, straining his thin, nerdy little muscles, until finally it finally popped out.
Unfortunately, the force not only made Hank start flailing around wildly to avoid falling down, but the transmitter wobbled back and forth as well, until the whole device tipped over. Hank freefell to the desktop, fearing for his life until he landed on an invisible platform. Then the rest of the transmitter fell, the impact was like a tree crashing down. What might have been a small clatter at normal size instead caused the surface to shake. The quake knocked everyone down, even Hank after his support vanished along with Sue's concentration.
While they picked themselves back up, a tiny yellow light above the workstation blinked on. Then another. Then another. Suddenly a dozen of the lights were flashing. And moving. Electric hums filled the air as black and yellow neon-striped robots took off from the desk shelves and started to descend as a plague of wasps.
To Be Continued...