A New Goo (Flux)

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A little blue glob squirmed it's way up a glass pane. It was surrounded by water, and appeared to be making slow but steady progress. It wasn't that big either. Just one of a few similar globs making it's way around the 4 square foot tank.

Hotwire sat back in his chair and gave a sigh. His new aquaculture lab was coming along nicely. He wasn't planning on setting one up this early into their stay, but he had discovered a half complete lab. With tanks, and a good deal of equipment. Some of it had to be brought up to date, but that was no problem for hotwire.

He wasn't wearing his old outfit... in fact, he wasn't wearing his new outfit either. He was in his diving suit, and his hair was soaked, turning his dark red hair a nice dark brown shade. He tapped the glass a few times. First excursion through the airlock and he already found something in a nifty little crevice. A new species of invertebrate. It was like a comb jellyfish, only it didn't float. It stayed to the bottom.

He looked up. Greenish blue light filtered into the room through the large port windows as some fish swam past. "Fascinating."

"Working some biochem." He said plainly peering over the tank. "Found these guys in a little crag in the ocean crust a good half mile out. Ran them against the computer. No documented matches. I have a new species of bio-luminescent organism here." He said with a smile. He looked over to flux. She looked like she had been swimming as well. Strange.

He then briefly backpedaled and motioned around him.

"Oh! Ah, sorry, I forgot. Check it out. This is the new aquaculture lab. We can do all kinds of biochem work over here. Not so much hard science, but this place can act as a medlab as well." He said looking over his instruments. He began to fiddle with a device with a rather striking green label that read: Bio-Breaker MK:37.2

Hotwire picked up the ingot and turned it over in his hand. The database files he brought over would have some data. With that he picked up his wrist computer and slapped it on. He scanned the bar and cross referenced it. "I see. It appears to be have a very interesting chemical structure. I can understand how some of this works. There appear to be certain biological enzymes chemically attached to the base ingredients of the nutrients. I can figure out how these enzymes work, but I'll need to do a more detailed scan." He said placing the bar inside the device he was just tinkering with.

With a wave of his hand, the device made whirring sound. The bar was sucked up into the device. Inside, it would be thoroughly pureed as the device did it's in depth analysis.

"Well the process should take about 5 minutes. Anything else you want to discuss? I mean... only if I'm not boring you or anything." He said scratching the back of his neck

"Nah. Being the head of the titans like this is a big job. It takes a lot of work to keep going." He said leaning with his back to the table. "Oh, but on the point of you going to highschool, I got Kale working on some magic mojo teleporter so we can get back to jump in civilian identities undetected." He said, the air around his hands almost sparkling as he waved them while describing kales 'developments'.

Shame he didn't see what was going on behind him.

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The little sucker was climbing from his tank. He was fast this time... in fact... he was faster out of water than he was in it. It smelled food. Particularly... coming from that pretty shiny thing making the noise. With that, it made it's way over to the device...

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And whoosh. Sucked in. There were a good dozen or so in the tank. Hard to notice one missing without explicitly counting.

"Don't worry about it. There will be plenty to do once we get the teleporter up and running. And there are those communicators you made for us. That was helpful." Hotwire said with a smile. "Don't worry about there being nothing to do. This first couple weeks will be a bit dull, sure... but once I get the networks up and running in the main room, we'll have movies and video games." He said.

"Hm. In a few days you could help me debug the command center. We need a good center of operations and the main room has a lovely holotable for it. But I need an extra pair of hands or two to help me. Then we'll have a full mission planning and tactical center. It'll be running in tandem with the network once I get it running." He explained.

"I won't be getting to that till tomorrow though. Running the Database insertion process. It's taking all the bases computing power to fit it all in, but my patches are working on compressing it down to the usable levels using the new multidimensional lattice sequencer designed for-" He stopped. He was going off again. Stupid boy. When you're around a girl you don't talk Science... you talk... what do you talk about exactly?

"Ah! Sorry. I'm rambling again."

She responded to his tech ramble with... her own tech ramble... and it was on hotwire's level of thinking! This girl actually knew her stuff. He actually found himself transfixed on flux for the 30 some seconds she was going on. It was all clicking together in hotwires head. Then she looked him straight in the eyes, and the little chibi him inside his skull pulled out the plug.

"I... yeah! That sounds like a great idea. It would probably be better to wait for the teleporter to go up before we make any trips to jump though" Hotwire said.

He mentally facepalmed himself. 'You don't have time to go developing crushes. Especially on your own team-mates.' was what his conscious was ringing. Interteam relationships right now... well they were off the board. Love could make you do stupid things, as hotwire knew. And being the leader of a group of fugitives, he couldn't afford to do stupid things.

Still, it was hard not to think about stuff like that. He, like the others, were teenagers after all. But then she snapped him back into it again. The machine was done. "Oh! Yeah. That means it's done analyzing." He said. He opened the lid on top and took out a pile of what looked like her energy bar, only well ground up into a powder. He picked up a piece of paper that the machine had just spit out and read it over.

"I see. Well this is most interesting. I think I know how to increase the usability, but I'll need you to test a piece of apparatus." Hotwire said holding a hand out beside him. A curved metal plate came over to him. It had a small device on top with a small interchangable test tube on it. Hotwire held it in his hand, and poured some water into it. He then scooped the nutrient bar dust and poured it in there. He then went over to the cabinets and grabbed a few bottles. He added a couple milligrams of this, and a few of that, before closing the vial placing it in a centrifuge. It spun up for a few second before slowing down.

He took the tube and placed it back in the device. He handed it off to flux.  "Put this on your arm. It'll inject the updated nutrient solution which should hopefully increase the efficiency at which you absorb it."

Flux tried to keep track of what he was adding, but it was a bit too fast, and anyway the chemicals here were all stuff of bioartifice, medicinal and biochemical things with names like pleurophotobutinol or similar. Even so... As she was handed the injector, she hesitated a little bit. After all was said and done, the stuff... Seemed to reflect more light than it was given, to shimmer blue oddly in the tube.

She met Hotwire's eyes a moment, and made up her mind. She pressed it to her arm, and with a kssshh it injected the nutrient serum. Cool, concentrated chemical infused liquid met her own substance and began to mix in, spreading through her with a cool feeling that almost instantly hit her tiredness like a blowtorch caressing a snowflake.

Flux gasped and arched her back, eyes going wide as the nutrient shot filled her from head to toe like ink dripped in water until it filled her completely! She wasn't privy to this... But her skin was very gently... Turning blue. The kick of energy made her shut her eyes and emit a little squeak in response to the intense sensations as the substance coated her core and sank into that as well, her hand scrabbling at the desk a moment before she lost her balance and toppled backward with a cry!

When she hit the floor, she splashed and became a gel, all human semblance gone from her appearance for several seconds as she writhed and shifted endlessly. But she wasn't orange - she was sky blue now, and... glowing faintly. It took her about half a minute to collect herself again and an arm shot out from the blue mass, followed by another, then her head and torso. She was shaking, but definition was flowing into the girl's form again, skin solidifying, her hair longer than before, eyes turned blue. She looked up at Hotwire and blinked muzzily as the rest of her took shape, and she was left sitting on the ground, swaying gently.

"Holy monkey moses." she rasped, and shook her head to whip some of her hair from her eyes. "That was freakin' intense. she managed, swallowing, staring at her hands.

Hotwire hoped he got it right. He kept his fingers crossed when she put the injector in... and then it all went downhill. She started writhing in pain, and turned blue. Yep... Hotwire messed up. He reached out for flux as she went toppling back, but to no avail. She just collapse onto the floor in a puddle of blue goo. Oh... that was not good...

"Oh god... please don't be... please don't be..." he said with extremely wide eyes. Then she began to collect herself, much to Hotwire's relief. But she was still blue. Some error in his calculations must have turned her blue.

"Are you okay?" Hotwire asked looking at her.

Hotwire raised a brow at her babbling. Orange Windex. Noted. An immediate need for water. Noted. He began shaking his head. "I don't know what happened. That supplement should have worked. I'm going to have to go back to my principles... or there's some unaccounted for variable I've yet to see." He said putting his hand to his chin.

Then she started glowing. He realized what that meant as soon as she did. He immediately whipped around to face the tank, and began counting.

"...10... 11... there should be 12." He said rushing to the machine he had analyzed her nutrient bar in. There was a thin film of blue around the edge. "Well I think I found my variable." He mumbled, slamming his head on the desk.