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a-kitsune
Today was the day.
Sully had been working at Burrow Prime for just about two years, and although in that time he'd absorbed an awful lot of the odd and recondite knowledge that was Emmet's stock in trade, there was still one secret—the most important one—that the ferret would never have been able to guess on his own.
After today, though, Sully's life would permanently change. For better or worse... was a question with many variables.
Emmet knew this from a flash of light he spotted out of the corner of his eye. For a brief instant, the vial of green fluid Sully kept strapped to his belt shone an azure blue.
The ferret didn't seem to notice it. This was just as well, because Sully hadn't done anything to make that happen.
He hadn't done anything yet.
The flash of light was however proof that, a few hours from now, Emmet's assistant would for the first time successfully catalyze bosonic vinegar.
He would saunter into his cramped workspace at the back of the shop, power up the little motor he'd constructed, and see it spin to life.
No doubt he wouldn't understand precisely what change he made to make it work. And the amount of energy it would generate would be relatively small: a few kilojoules at most. The significance of what he had done would probably escape him.
Because the significance was in the flash of light that had just happened. A tiny amount of energy had left Sully's flask...
...and ignited something in the future.
Sully didn't understand how V-bosons traveled through the membranous sheath that surrounded this universe, connecting disparate points in time.
He didn't understand how a field of V-bosons could be harnessed to project matter between those points in time.
It didn't matter what Sully didn't know. It was now inevitable that he would pass the test, and this meant he could know.
Sully hummed to himself as he disappeared down the steps to the lower workshop levels, overlaying an atonal melody atop the half-dozen tasks on his mind Emmet had given him. His nascent breakthrough was the furthest thing from his thoughts.
Far be it from Emmet to disturb it. The old wombat slunk away down the winding passage that led to Burrow Zero. He took the secret elevator all the way down to the Drop Shaft.
The lights came on automatically as he emerged into the launch chamber, and he finally let out the breath he had been holding.
There was always work to do.
The roughly spherical capsule that was the NECESSITY, model number MAN-001, was Emmet's pride and joy, his whole life's work. It needed to be spotless. It needed to be fueled, tested, its systems diagnosed.
And there was trash all around its cradle, scattered atop the drop hatch! The chamber was supposed to be kept free of contaminants (according to Emmet's own, one-man protocols), but he certainly didn't think a demonstration would be coming so soon!
As the inventor stooped over to pick up a discarded food wrapper, he felt a terrible pang deep in his breast.
At first he thought it was guilt.
He had sworn never to lead Sully down the same path he was on, never to expose him to the same hazards he'd immersed himself in. The boy didn't deserve to be locked up in his obsessions, shouldn't need to risk his mind cracking the way Emmet's had threatened to again and again over the course of the endeavor.
Of course not. Sully didn't deserve to be tormented. He deserved to be a scientist. To stand on the shoulders of... well, Emmet was the diametric opposite of a giant, but the point stood. Emmet had already done the hard work. What harm was there in letting a young genius build atop it? This was the way things were supposed to be.
But the pang subsided into a quivering, an odd oscillation in the fibers of Emmet's being. He could count the number of times he had felt it on one paw, but each instance stood out in his memory with the utmost immediacy.
It was the quiver of power. Power and its gut-wrenching reality, asserting itself at each major step.
Until today, there was the slim chance of salvation from it. A corner of Emmet's mind could pretend that he had not found this secret. He could comfort himself with the possibility that he was mistaken, or insane.
But now there were two who would know, and two observations made a replication, just as two points made a line. Hours from now, up at the surface, a ferret was destined to power up the very rudimentary beginnings of a time drive.
He should stop it. He should go up there and distract him, order him to go home early. Induce a paradox—it wouldn't be the first time. Emmet could always make more bosonic vinegar. He couldn't restore Sully's innocence.
"Innocence."
The quivering grew stronger. The skin beneath Emmet's fur tingled.
"What is innocence?"
Nothing but frailty and ignorance. And for the first time, Emmet thought he understood the meaning of that instability in his soul.
He could no longer pretend to be merely interested in knowledge.
His every movement since that day in his father's shop had been a shout into the abyss. He was waiting for a clear sign, daring the Universe to tell him that he was overreaching himself. Pleading with it to show him his limits, to show him that he had a place! That he wasn't...
He laid his eyes on the fuel cube sitting on its cart, ready to be loaded onto the timeship. Each of its faces was emblazoned with the mark of his own pawprint.
"...that I'm not lost."
Innocence.
Sully seemed quieter than usual as Emmet gave him the grand tour of Sublevel 5, explained the workings of the NECESSITY's completed time drive, pointed out how the cradle and the launch mechanisms operated.
The wombat could have sworn that his assistant was not surprised at all at what he saw, that the final pieces of an almost-solved puzzle were sliding into place, one by one.
But Sully was still Sully. He knew now, but he didn't understand. He was still innocent.
Frailty and ignorance.
Emmet had prepared a demonstration for just this occasion, one that he knew would make an impression on the ferret. He had practiced it until he knew every eventuality, could compute the exact route to every means of escape.
It drilled a perspective into him that he knew wouldn't be lost on the boy.
Sully took his first "test flight" that day. They didn't go back far, only about 20 years or so, at a point in time when Emmet was strenuously beaming signals out of his new satellite array, directed towards the Virgo Cluster.
He calmly climbed up and detached the transponder from one of them, instructing Sully to watch closely. When seemingly nothing happened, they returned to the ship.
What awaited on the other side, back in the present day, defied all description.
Emmet knew who they were. Their message from the Virgo Cluster was meant to be received, and answered. When it wasn't, they took their own initiative.
How Sully kept from fainting was a mystery. As Emmet readied his phase distortion pistol—just in case—the ferret whimpered in fear.
"Boss... I want to go home."
Emmet charged the distorter. "Hasn't it sunk in, ferret? Don't you get it? THIS IS HOME."
a-kitsuneToday was the day.
Sully had been working at Burrow Prime for just about two years, and although in that time he'd absorbed an awful lot of the odd and recondite knowledge that was Emmet's stock in trade, there was still one secret—the most important one—that the ferret would never have been able to guess on his own.
After today, though, Sully's life would permanently change. For better or worse... was a question with many variables.
Emmet knew this from a flash of light he spotted out of the corner of his eye. For a brief instant, the vial of green fluid Sully kept strapped to his belt shone an azure blue.
The ferret didn't seem to notice it. This was just as well, because Sully hadn't done anything to make that happen.
He hadn't done anything yet.
The flash of light was however proof that, a few hours from now, Emmet's assistant would for the first time successfully catalyze bosonic vinegar.
He would saunter into his cramped workspace at the back of the shop, power up the little motor he'd constructed, and see it spin to life.
No doubt he wouldn't understand precisely what change he made to make it work. And the amount of energy it would generate would be relatively small: a few kilojoules at most. The significance of what he had done would probably escape him.
Because the significance was in the flash of light that had just happened. A tiny amount of energy had left Sully's flask...
...and ignited something in the future.
Sully didn't understand how V-bosons traveled through the membranous sheath that surrounded this universe, connecting disparate points in time.
He didn't understand how a field of V-bosons could be harnessed to project matter between those points in time.
It didn't matter what Sully didn't know. It was now inevitable that he would pass the test, and this meant he could know.
Sully hummed to himself as he disappeared down the steps to the lower workshop levels, overlaying an atonal melody atop the half-dozen tasks on his mind Emmet had given him. His nascent breakthrough was the furthest thing from his thoughts.
Far be it from Emmet to disturb it. The old wombat slunk away down the winding passage that led to Burrow Zero. He took the secret elevator all the way down to the Drop Shaft.
The lights came on automatically as he emerged into the launch chamber, and he finally let out the breath he had been holding.
There was always work to do.
The roughly spherical capsule that was the NECESSITY, model number MAN-001, was Emmet's pride and joy, his whole life's work. It needed to be spotless. It needed to be fueled, tested, its systems diagnosed.
And there was trash all around its cradle, scattered atop the drop hatch! The chamber was supposed to be kept free of contaminants (according to Emmet's own, one-man protocols), but he certainly didn't think a demonstration would be coming so soon!
As the inventor stooped over to pick up a discarded food wrapper, he felt a terrible pang deep in his breast.
At first he thought it was guilt.
He had sworn never to lead Sully down the same path he was on, never to expose him to the same hazards he'd immersed himself in. The boy didn't deserve to be locked up in his obsessions, shouldn't need to risk his mind cracking the way Emmet's had threatened to again and again over the course of the endeavor.
Of course not. Sully didn't deserve to be tormented. He deserved to be a scientist. To stand on the shoulders of... well, Emmet was the diametric opposite of a giant, but the point stood. Emmet had already done the hard work. What harm was there in letting a young genius build atop it? This was the way things were supposed to be.
But the pang subsided into a quivering, an odd oscillation in the fibers of Emmet's being. He could count the number of times he had felt it on one paw, but each instance stood out in his memory with the utmost immediacy.
It was the quiver of power. Power and its gut-wrenching reality, asserting itself at each major step.
Until today, there was the slim chance of salvation from it. A corner of Emmet's mind could pretend that he had not found this secret. He could comfort himself with the possibility that he was mistaken, or insane.
But now there were two who would know, and two observations made a replication, just as two points made a line. Hours from now, up at the surface, a ferret was destined to power up the very rudimentary beginnings of a time drive.
He should stop it. He should go up there and distract him, order him to go home early. Induce a paradox—it wouldn't be the first time. Emmet could always make more bosonic vinegar. He couldn't restore Sully's innocence.
"Innocence."
The quivering grew stronger. The skin beneath Emmet's fur tingled.
"What is innocence?"
Nothing but frailty and ignorance. And for the first time, Emmet thought he understood the meaning of that instability in his soul.
He could no longer pretend to be merely interested in knowledge.
His every movement since that day in his father's shop had been a shout into the abyss. He was waiting for a clear sign, daring the Universe to tell him that he was overreaching himself. Pleading with it to show him his limits, to show him that he had a place! That he wasn't...
He laid his eyes on the fuel cube sitting on its cart, ready to be loaded onto the timeship. Each of its faces was emblazoned with the mark of his own pawprint.
"...that I'm not lost."
Innocence.
Sully seemed quieter than usual as Emmet gave him the grand tour of Sublevel 5, explained the workings of the NECESSITY's completed time drive, pointed out how the cradle and the launch mechanisms operated.
The wombat could have sworn that his assistant was not surprised at all at what he saw, that the final pieces of an almost-solved puzzle were sliding into place, one by one.
But Sully was still Sully. He knew now, but he didn't understand. He was still innocent.
Frailty and ignorance.
Emmet had prepared a demonstration for just this occasion, one that he knew would make an impression on the ferret. He had practiced it until he knew every eventuality, could compute the exact route to every means of escape.
It drilled a perspective into him that he knew wouldn't be lost on the boy.
Sully took his first "test flight" that day. They didn't go back far, only about 20 years or so, at a point in time when Emmet was strenuously beaming signals out of his new satellite array, directed towards the Virgo Cluster.
He calmly climbed up and detached the transponder from one of them, instructing Sully to watch closely. When seemingly nothing happened, they returned to the ship.
What awaited on the other side, back in the present day, defied all description.
Emmet knew who they were. Their message from the Virgo Cluster was meant to be received, and answered. When it wasn't, they took their own initiative.
How Sully kept from fainting was a mystery. As Emmet readied his phase distortion pistol—just in case—the ferret whimpered in fear.
"Boss... I want to go home."
Emmet charged the distorter. "Hasn't it sunk in, ferret? Don't you get it? THIS IS HOME."
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1682 x 1300px
File Size 2.8 MB
idkw.....but I'm almost betting that what made the catalyze a succeed....was friendship (you know, typical anime moment..)
....being a responsible "father figure" to the very last moment....before generating a permanent trauma to make him learn the lesson...like when some of your parents find you smoking and makes you smoke the whole box..
huh...so this time the stand by mode for the distortion pistol is a camera instead of a revolver...cool X3
....being a responsible "father figure" to the very last moment....before generating a permanent trauma to make him learn the lesson...like when some of your parents find you smoking and makes you smoke the whole box..
huh...so this time the stand by mode for the distortion pistol is a camera instead of a revolver...cool X3
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