In a Little Golden Age, After the accident to a child during an Inscrutable Machine operation, a senior villain decides to train the Machine's newest members. This is Book 5 of my Little Golden Age.
Lucifer spends a day with the Inscrutable Machine...
As fanfiction apparently doesn't get noticed on wattpad unless it's Porn I am moving all this to ArchiveOfOurOwn. The process will take a few months as I don't want to flood the board.
The remaining chapters of this 20k novella are still here, unpublished and available upon request.
They are also (or will later be published) here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toyloli
NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE
* The Following Episode is part 5 of my #LittleGoldenAge series * The Teen Titans, Justice League etc are owned by DC-Comics * All other characters are original, or copyright Richard Roberts and used with permission.
Penelope
The saying goes that any sufficiently advanced form of science is indistinguishable from magic. What most people don't know, is that the opposite is also true.
In the past month the proverbial shit had hit the fan. On the one hand I now had a way to properly document the mad science that my super power spouted regularly, on the other hand our little group had expanded allowing the Inscrutable Machine (The Youngest Successful Supervillains) to progress from C rank villains to B Rank. Officially, as we set up the newest club members with their own keys and personal spaces within the caverns of the lab, we also established the new structure of the team.
"So, Since Bad Penny insists that the Inscrutable Machine shall be just me, E-Claire and her magnificent self, the official expanded Villains Club will have us on top, then you lot will be the Villains Toybox!" Reviled explained for our new members, "And of course the Villains Club will include the other patsies, minions and henchmen who help out!" The board showed a tiered structure and had been drawn by my helpful friends. I did not approve of it, but it looked something like this:
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I was letting Reviled play 'teacher' and honestly wasn't paying attention as he used an old white-board lifted from the school above (One that really should be in the rubbish) to explain things. The flipside had been filled with information about our more 'legit' business activities. I used my holographic recording system to review the recent machines we'd made. When I wasn't staring at my not quite so recent boyfriend and getting lost in daydreams.
The 'gathered Toybox' included the most useful of our recent minions: Raven had brought her brother Jesse, known as Sin Crow. Both were black magicians, a format that I knew the Justice League disliked on account of evil Demons go Smashy and had the same Goth asthetic.
Then was Cassie Patters, aka Wil-o-wisp, who summoned lightning based creatures. Her friend Will Scarlett also attended, and was being constantly looked at and studied by the new recruit Alinta. Scarlett had speed powers, and not many people understood how. According to him, he had been caught in an experiment by a relative into the speed force. What Will could do didn't look like what the Flash did, but it was fast enough that my blink bracelets struggled to catch him. With Alinta being the young Australian martial artists and an expert in rare animals and artifacts.
The decision to let Alinta, Raven and Crow into the group was a result of the elephant in the room. During a simple crime where this group had met with an overly aggressive hero, Alinta had lost her legs and while she had been stabilized, no amount of magic or mad science could undo the damage. We owed this kid, she was hurt on our mission.
The final member of course was Garfield, the cute looking boy hung off Reviled's words as he chilled with the group, sitting backwards on an old swivel chair and acting as though he was the first Toybox member. In actuality Cassie had insinuated herself into the team weeks ago.
I tried to avoid looking at Cassie. She was not sitting with the group, instead gushing over the scanner / slash / projector device and the ingenious power it contained. I was supposed to be reading her in on it's operation as the closest thing to another mad-scientist our group had. Except she was too busy gushing, smiling and flirting with me to pay attention.
No, that's not fair. I wasn't paying attention either. I mean geeze, when had my little group of nerdy friends become so complicated. Ray and I were Definitely a couple, but it seamed like both of us had cling-ons lusting after us!
Are teenagers actually like this in real life? I thought that was just a television thing.
"Of course the fun part of this is that the scanner is passive, like on all the time as a security system. End of the day we scrub anything we don't flag as important, but see; here's you arriving, and its picking up your battery packs, and Scarlette." The holograms played only over the entry part of the room, with the display on the central unit showing things like atomic mass, weight, energy frequencies.
As Reviled went over the team structure with the new group, Claire was picking up with the legality explanations. "A representative from the League of Villains has been chosen to represent us in Alinta's court appearance. Since, as far as they know, you never actually got to the point of steeling the shrink ray before the Original attacked, you'll be defendants. Unlike Briar and Quinn, who could have been dragged to court by heroes, had we not broken them out and helped during the storm. That'll keep them out of Juvenile Detention for a while."
Some back patting was exchanged between the goth kids at this news, with our attentions split Cassie and I watched the important part of the feed. Alinta was arriving on the recording, entering from the freight elevator that emerged out on the street.
"There it is!" Cassie and I geeked out, looking over the information. Alinta had wheeled in on a chair, a basic kind without any tech fittings for a clean exposure. Here, on the recording it showed the 'ghost legs'. Her original limbs as they had looked, not solid but as raw data. The read-out listed physical and chemical components for the rest of the girls body, but where her legs were it listed 'Etherium' as an element, with nill atomic mass.
"Like a reading of raw energy. I expect with training she could interact with other forms of energy! Like, maybe even ride or control one of my wisps!" Cassie responded, then full on fondled the display screen, running her fingers along it affectionately. "With this baby you could see anything, down to it's basic components. That is sooo amazing Penny, being able to fly around things virtually, look at them from every angle..."
Blushing hotly, I resumed the play to store the rest of the footage for long term.
"Anyhow, my theory is that we can make super advanced prosthetics for Alinta. They probably won't look like real legs, but they'll be able to move like them, freely. She'll be able to run, jump, dance and fight. If you and Raven can help break down the part of this that isn't science in a way I can parse!"
That was when Raven and Crow entered the room, at least in the recording. We all jumped in shock when, on the hologram playing out over the entrance instead of a small goth girl and a slightly smaller goth boy, two large billowing cloaks of darkness entered.
Cassie had frame of mind to watch the screen, "Abbadon, Infernium, Tribidium, Selenium, and a bunch else. It does say Raven and Crow weigh over a tonne each according to the mass spectrometer!" The meeting behind us stopped, and glancing over I noticed Raven and Crow cowering their heads. Not from fear, but embarrassment. I'd known they were bound to powerful demons, who knew my machine could see their demon's so literally.
"Hey! Don't worry too much about it." I said at last, "We already knew what you are. Nobody's judging here, most of my friends have a dark side to their power!"
A moment of hesitation, then Garfield rapped the chair with his knuckles. "No kidding, did I tell you about the time I got stuck underground, as a giant earthworm. Couldn't change until I dug my way to the surface!"
Glancing back at the holograms as the demon kids walked outside of the range of the one projector we used, Cassie and I looked at each other. In all likelihood those two were way more powerful than they seamed.
