30 [ Gus ] Once more unto the breech

  While Doom had been a bit cagey about what he put in my head involving some of his best creations, all in the name of demanding I prove my worth, I had full access to all of the works of the ‘lesser’ scientist Reed Richards.

  Including his Negative Zone dimensional gateway.

  As I stepped back from the mass of crudely assembled, slightly glowing, and alternating between humming and sparking high tech machinery, I noticed Lamarr standing quietly next to me.

  With her arms crossed and a displeased look on her face fighting against the gleam of fascination in her eyes.

  The fit muscular woman had changed into a rich amber colored and slightly oversized hoodie with a dark blue trimmed in gold print on the hood and down the front made to look like she would be wearing an Egyptian pharaoh’s headdress if she had the hood pulled up. However, at the moment the hood was down showing that her collar length blond hair was still wet from a shower.

  The colors looked good on her and brought out her blue eyes, as did the set of bright yellow leggings that showed off her strong legs. Although the worn purple high tops on her feet seemed a little off and they had Turning frowning and shaking his head as he rolled his eyes.

  Lamarr said something to me that I missed and I looked up from her legs. “I’m sorry, my mind is still…” I gestured at the makeshift device in front of me. “What did you say?”

  She tilted her head to look at me for a moment, seeming a little displeased, then shook her head slightly side to side “I said I had picked up from the chatter what it is you were trying to build here, but not why.”

  “Oh, waste disposal.” I gestured to the seven balls of crushing floating Kree robot I had managed to keep sealed up and suspended in force fields while I had been working.

  Her foot was tapping on the floor as she gritted her teeth. “Okay. I’m impressed that you built a dimensional breacher in the time it took me to clean up and get dressed. But first, you destroyed my stuff.” She raised one finger and pointed it at the balls of floating wreckage. “Second, you build something with more of my stuff. Without asking.” She pointed at the negative zone breacher with a second finger, then raised a third before waving all three of them right in front of my face as she leaned in, almost forcing me back a step. “And then you ordered around a bunch of my people that should have been stopping you instead of helping you.”

  She didn’t raise her voice once during her little rant, but near the end, it changed from a lecturing tone of voice into more of a hiss.

  Looking around I could see a crowd of people who I vaguely remember putting to work as quickly as they showed up in the robotics lab, all looking in every direction but at me and Lamarr, while also not going anywhere. Some of them were smirking as well.

  I blinked at them, seeing what Turning had meant about the variety of people in the Aimless. There was even a dog with a set of articulated arms on a harness who gave me a wave before I forced myself to face the displeased foot tapping leader of these people who now had her hands set on her hips.

  “I’m sorry.” looking her in the eye I could see her look a little surprised, so I continued before she could go back to being angry. “I overstepped and abused your invitation into your home. I can only hope that my earnest apology and the reason why I felt such a need to act so rudely will be enough for you to consider forgiving my trespasses against you.”

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  She leaned back from me, her eyes darting down for a moment in thought as she bit at the corner of her lip in a way that fixated my attention as Turning stepped up behind her and began whispering into her ear.

  Then one of the Aimless, Strominger, nervously cleared his throat, “Ah, incoming! The sensor we sent in has something heading toward the portal.”

  Huh? The negative zone is an entire universe, what were the chances of something, anything just happening to close by a random portal… Right. Narrative universe.

  Turning back to Lamarr, I raised a hand towards the gate. “It almost has to be either Blastaar, or Annihilus. I’m pretty confident I can take down either one, but they might kill some of the people here before I can toss them back through the gate, or I can shut down the converter and toss the robot part through to cause a matter anti-matter explosion-”

  She cut me off. “Strominger, turn it off.”

  The AIMless physicist pulled something loose in a shower of sparks and the portal snapped shut. I blinked. “...or you could do that.”

  Lamarr stared at me, then smirked. “You didn’t put a manual off switch on it?”

  I glared at her, then huffed. “No and it obvious to me, now, that I should have. But having everything controlled by a tablet seemed… More elegant.”

  She crossed her arms at me, still smirking. Then began pokeing me in the chest plate hard enough for me to feel it even through my armor. “You are a mad scientist. You get so focused on solving the problem in front of you that you don’t even think that any other problems that might come up. I’m a mad scientist's experiment, second generation at least.” The scorpion DNA infused woman rubbed her upper arms. “I try to figure out what problems your solutions are going to create, and that’s why everyone here made me be in charge.”

  There were nods from all around as well as various sounds of agreement. Several of the people I had Shanghaied into helping me build the breacher gave her pleading looks to which she shook her head in response.

  “No, you can’t keep it. But you can take notes on it as you take it apart, and prepare a new design with multiple means of shutting it down, diverting the portal on the Negative zone side, and preventing anything from getting through.”

  I began to turn to join them, new designs already forming in my head, but a strong grip on my wrist brought me to a stop.

  Turning, I found myself looking down into a huge set of deep blue eyes.

  “You are coming with me. Dinner is almost ready.”

  Turing gave me a warning look from over her shoulders, yeah, thanks buddy, but I know.

  “Never let it be said that I would break a promise to a lady.” Stepping up to Lamarr, I swung out my elbow and she shifted her grip upwards from my wrist, a satisfied smirk on her face.

  Taking a break from Science! to have dinner with a pretty lady didn’t sound so bad, after all, the night would still be young. I can build another portal to the Negative Zone later that night.