The Black Angel [Gratsu]

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

The Backstory, Part 1.

A/N: I'm really annoyed because this part keeps unpublishing! Ugh. 

July, 2006

The Fusion Project began as an idea between three friends Asano Takanori, Kurihara Yuichi, and Okane Gesshin. They spent their teenage years reading comic books in Asano's bedroom, pouring their eyes over page after page. Natural geeks at heart, they were obsessed with the idea of superheroes, and how they seemed to have scientifically impossible traits. Spider Man, who could hone powers of a spider, Magneto, who had the power to manipulate magnetic fields, the Flash, who could run up to a speed of Mach 3, and many more.

No one knows when it exactly happened, but at one point, the love Asano, Kuri, and Okane had for superheroes and comics became something more than just a hobby. No, they wanted to bring them to life. So they could be superheroes, and anyone else they deemed worthy.

They would start a new generation of superheroes. Ordinary, unwanted children who didn't have anywhere else to go would be subject to testing and gain the most sought-after talents in the planet's fictional, sci-fi history.

And thus began the Fusion Project, a secret undertaking in the Hakai Lab in a desolate location in Midwestern Japan, about 380 miles off the thriving Starlight City.

For twenty years the three men worked, perfecting the science of chemical grafting and DNA splicing. It had never been done before, and they had to be crafty.

At first, every project failed. The lightning-based superheroes electrocuted themselves to death, the animal fusions became ravenous hybrids that killed each other off as they fought for dominance, and any sort of superpower seemed to fail before they even finished.

There was only one line of projects that seemed to be a mystery they couldn't crack. The Hakai Lab's pride and joy; the Angel Experiments.

They started as clumps of cells in a test tube, spliced with five percent of avian DNA. It was Asano's idea to try to grow a human who had wings. Someone who could fly was one of the most classic super powers in their comic books.

The first child came out so deformed, one couldn't look at them without feeling like they were going to throw up. They had feathers growing out of their skin, and as their wings grew in, they split the skin of the shoulder blades so badly they bled to death immediately.

Asano quickly realized they had put in too much avian DNA, and reduced it to two percent. The resulting child, when grown to a full-size newborn, looked very healthy. She was a cranky baby, however, who never stopped crying. Her tan wings started off small, slowly growing as the year went on. As she never had a name, Asano called her One, the first experiment.

The three creators were so impressed by the success of their Angel Experiment, they made another in the exact same way. Out came a baby boy with pitch black wings, just as healthy. He too, always cried. They called him Two.

One and Two always screamed when they were around the scientists, even when they were gentle with testing. The scientists could never tell, but One and Two were always in mind-numbing, scorching pain. Their new bones clacked against muscles and tendons, and as their new appendages grew, their skin had to stretch painfully. The only time they could look past the pain is when the babies were together.

They quieted down when they were side by side in their cages, which relieved the scientists greatly. They babbled happily to each other, their conversation completely incomprehensible to the adults. They let the two children be together during testing, and the babies clutched on each other's hands while they were poked with needles and scanned this way and that.