Chapter 9 Firing up the Torch

"You want me to do WHAT?!"

Wincing slightly from the sheer volume the mutated scientist produced, I rub one of my ears as I repeat myself.

"I want you to lace my skeleton with Vibranium."

Vibranium is truly a miracle metal. It's one of the hardest, densest materials out there, but weighs about as much as steel, and the way it deals with kinetic energy is literally out of this world. If I were to lace my bones with it, then there was no force on Earth which could break them.

I could take a punch from the Hulk to the face and only loose a tooth (which would grow back in a minute or two)

Unfortunately, it didn't seem like Stein was sharing my enthusiasm.

"Do you even hear what you are saying! You want me to put metal on your bones! I'm not sure how well you did in Biology classes, but newsflash: metal isn't supposed to go there! You. Will. Die! Even if the procedure to get the metal through your skin, muscles and fat onto your bones doesn't kill you, you'll effectively be suffocating your bone marrow and not last the week. Even if, if, I would be able to get the metal on your bones and not immediately kill you, do you have any idea how hot the inside of your body is? You could melt the metal straight off you skeleton and then what?! I'm telling you it cannot be done!"

At that I frown. Because I know that it has in fact been done. Multiple times, even. For all that Adamantium is treated as a legendary metal that's rarer than an honest politician, there are a rather large number of individuals running around with the stuff inside their bodies.

Though didn't Wolverine die due to Adamantium poisoning, both in the comics and in that (awesome!) movie? I still wasn't sure how my healing factor stacked up to his, and that's not even considering whether or not he exists in this universe (though I think he does, as the Howling Commandoes are a thing, and Logan used to partner up with them occasionally).

So, given Stein's sheer outrage at my suggestion, the chance that lacing my bones with Vibranium will indeed kill me is significant (not to mention that even if it doesn't, it might still end up useless if I turn out to be hot enough to melt it, which is a possibility).

I thought back on my newfound conviction after my road rage incident, and decided to honour it now as well, no matter how disappointed I was by not being able to become indestructible.

No more mistakes.

Giving a deep sigh, I try to placate Stein.

"Fine. No metal on my bones, I got it. But I'm not walking away from this empty-handed Stein. I will use that Vibranium."

"Then build an armour out of it! That's what metal's for!"

"And do you know how to smelt and mould Vibranium to make armour out of it?"

"Well… no, not exactly…"

Giving a deep sigh, I plop back down on the workbench in one of the cubicles that Klaue had stored inside his warehouse. We haven't moved yet, partially because we don't really have anywhere to go, and partially because I suspect people have become aware of my existence, and some of those people will try and track me down.

Once they succeed, I'd much rather sit on a huge pile of military grade weaponry then be caught off guard somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

"I need an edge, Stein. I've been making bigger and bigger waves, but other than getting Extremis, I haven't become more powerful. Vibranium was supposed to be that edge, and now you're telling me I can't fucking use it!" I roar, jumping from the chair, flames spewing from my mouth, the air beginning to shimmer due to the heat I'm giving off.

Stein remains remarkably unfazed (seems that his time with me in the cargo hold while I was experimenting with my newfound status as resident flamethrower has done wonders for his nerves) simply fixing me with an incredulous stare.

"More powerful? Michael, you bench-pressed a shipping container! You throw cars around like they're toys! You breathe fire for God's sake!"

Containing my frustration (and heat) with great difficulty, I slump back down again, my head cradled in my hands.

"There are beings more powerful than me Stein. Hulk and Abomination are just a few of them. Aliens, gods, there are people out there who can lift ten times what I can. And I think that eventually, I'll piss off every single one of them."

Glancing up at the scientist, I gave him a wry grin.

"Indestructible skeleton now making more sense to you Doc?"

Stein seems briefly stunned, before giving a sigh of his own, crossing his arms with a scowl on his misshapen face.

"I'm still not doing it Michael. I'm not going to murder you."

Giving a slow nod, I lean back into my chair (which groans under my weight) as I close my eyes and massage the bridge of my nose.

Seems like I need to revise my Twenty-Seven Step Program. Step 7 had been acquiring Vibranium. Step 8: using the Vibranium (or acquire any other sort of edge) turned out to be significantly harder to complete

"Fair enough. But that leaves us with a cache of miracle metal, not to mention the attention of the criminal underbelly of South Africa. I'm not selling the metal, but I can't use it either. So, what are we going to do Stein? Because this trip of ours seems to be shaping up to be one enormous shit-show."

For a moment Stein remains silent, and I'm thinking he's given up and decided to leave or something, before his voice suddenly jerks me away from my musings.

"Give me three days."

Glancing at him with a raised eyebrow from underneath my hand in confusion, Stein (still with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face) seems to ponder something, before looking back at me.

"You need an edge right? I can't think of a way to make you even stronger than you are now, not without other materials to work from, but I can make you smarter."

Giving a significant look at his massive cranium (which adds almost a foot to his height) I sit up straighter, excitement hesitantly growing inside of me.

"You mean you-"

"Cracked it? Sort of. I could give you my brain size and the increased intellect that comes with it right now, but I doubt you'd go for that, and given how often you get shot at, having a massive brain for a target doesn't sound very smart. What I've been working on for these past couple of months is a way to increase a being's intellect, without giving them my deformity."

"And you know how to do that?"

"Give me three days and I will."

For the next two days, I barely even see Stein anymore, as he is holed up in the cubicle in which I have dumped all of our equipment and which has now been transformed into Stein's makeshift lab.

Which, for the first time in a while, left me with time on my hands.

Time, and a prisoner.

Slowly, as Stein is tinkering away and I look at the stirring Klaue (who passed out from shock shortly after I finally managed to get my hands on his Vibranium) the beginnings of a plan fall into place.

When Klaue wakes up, he sees me sitting not ten feet away from him, and hurriedly scurries away from me until his back hits one of the mounds of crates that are stacked throughout the bottom level of the warehouse.

"Shit! The fuck do you want from me, freak!" Ulysses spits out, grasping the stump of his left arm in pain.

He's clearly wondering why he's not dead yet, but the answer is rather simple; he's still useful. I have no doubt that for taking his arm he'll try to find a way to eventually kill me, so I have no qualms taking him out permanently, but before that he will still help me.

Whether he wants to or not.

Klaue is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world, a rather reputed name in certain circles of the shady underground of selling tools of death and terror.

So naturally, he has contacts all throughout the U.S. Government and Army.

I'm only interested in one though: Erik Killmonger.

Currently in Black Ops racking up quite the kill count for the American government, the cousin of T'Challa could turn out to be the key I needed in utilizing Vibranium.

"Ulysses. Je gaat een telefoontje voor me plegen."

At hearing my request for him to make a phone call, and seeing my fanged grin, Klaue visibly swallows his nervousness.

"En waarom zou ik jou helpen?"

Why should he help me? Well, how to convince him? Oh, wait, I got it!

Without a word, my hand lights up until it's burning a glowing white, air shimmering around it from the immense heat that it's giving off. Slowly glancing from the lightsabre my hand has become to the sweating Klaue, I just raise an eyebrow.

Ulysses is quick to make the call.

All of this is a smaller part in the bigger plan to complete my most ambitious Step yet.

Step 9: Use Wakandan information or technology to make use of my cache of Vibranium

"You really like that damned thing, don't you Doc?"

Stein lets out a tired grin at my grunted assessment and the weary look I'm sending at the syringe (*cough* medieval longsword *cough*), giving a shrug even as he starts prepping my arm (the alcohol dissipates the moment its rubbed on my skin, but between my glowing veins and massive healing factor, the prep work is more a thing of routine than necessity).

"It has grown on me. Watching you squirm away from it every time remains funny."

He's completely unfazed by the glare I send him, and without warning, shoves the needle into the brightly glowing vein in my arm.

"MOTHERFU-"

Thankfully, because of Extremis the pain in my arm quickly vanishes, but it doesn't appear to do anything against the migraine that suddenly explodes in my brain. With a muffled groan of pain I fall of the chair I'd been sitting on, curling in on myself as my head feels like someone is taking an axe to my forehead with an unhealthy amount of sadistic enthusiasm.

While the pain isn't all consuming like the Extremis-transformation had been, this one feels somehow worse, the pounding against the inside of my eyes increasing with every heartbeat, my brain feeling like it's either liquefying or exploding.

Or maybe both.

The Hulk-transformation had taken a little over six hours to complete (with me only conscious for about three of those) while the Extremis-transformation had taken only half that.

This serum took effect immediately, and the pain started to gradually ebb away after about an hour and a half, but the migraine stayed with me for the next two days.

I hadn't quite known what to expect from suddenly having my IQ nearly doubled (and though not exactly off-the-charts, it had been nothing to sneeze at either), but all that I could say about it was… that it was weird.

No, but I mean, like really fucking weird.

It wasn't as if I had suddenly gained tremendous arcane knowledge or something, I didn't automatically just knew new things.

But I understood them.

Before, I had a rudimentary knowledge of why the arc reactor worked, but now I also understood how it worked, understood the way Stark had utilized the fields created by the coils of the reactor to keep itself from blowing up in a spectacular way.

Everywhere I looked, I just understood what it was, how it worked and why it worked, while idea's flashed through my mind faster than they ever had before.

From my kneeling position on the floor, I gaze up in wonder at Stein, who is looking back at me with a tired smile on his face at my amazement.

"This is how you see the world… all the time?"

"Breath-taking, isn't it?" the geneticist replies, and all I can do is nod, as my eyes have fallen on his laboratory, and my basic scientific knowledge (which before had just about grasped the basics of Stein's work) now apparently was enough to extrapolate the functions of most machines, and predict the likely outcome of combining the various chemicals the scientist had stocked in his lab.

I'm drawn from my reverie by the sound of something heavy slamming on the table next to me. Turning around, I raise my eyebrows (still on my normalish face thankfully, it was the first thing I checked for after the pain ebbed away enough for me to regain control over my limbs) at the tower of science books Stein has just dumped on our desk, giving me a somewhat savage grin.

"What is that?"

"Homework."

"What."

Stein simply laughs at my flat reply (the bastard) and turns back towards his laboratory, his earlier tired slump now replaced by an air of victory.

"You didn't think I would just give you the second best brain on the planet and not have you use it? The procedure didn't give you any new information you don't already know, it just allows you to absorb and combine new information on a whole different level of speed. So, get to absorbing. After you're done, its online college courses for you, and after that, chess games with me. Until then, good night."

Staring at the tower of books and the retreating back of Stein, I can't help but call out at the scientist.

"It's noon, you know!"

"Don't care! Go study!"

With a grin (and a killer-headache) I sit down at the desk, and pick up the book at the top of the small hill.

"An Introduction to Molecular Chemistry, by Dr. S. Stein… oh come on, you referenced your own books?! Only asshole professors do that you know!"

"Go study!"

Still grinning, I crack open the book and prepare to enhance my knowledge of the science this wacky universe runs on (because on a fundamental level, something must be different, given the fact that some things that happen in here were considered blatantly impossible in my old one) when I'm stopped by an incredulous snort from the chained up Klaue on the only other office chair in the corner.

"Jullie zijn gestoord. Compleet getikt."

At his exclamation that me and Stein are completely mad, I just let out a fanged grin, channelling the heat in my eyes (ow! ow! ow! stupid migraine) until they are glowing with a hellish light, making Gollum flinch away.

He doesn't interrupt my study session anymore after that.

As I'm reading and expanding my knowledge at an incredible speed, I keep grinning to myself.

"Step 8: Complete."