Tin-man

Days went by in a flash.

It has been a month since Alex arrived in this world.

August 23 2022, Only a little more than a month left to prepare for the eventual Doom. Everything he had done was to solve the problem called the Blood river incident. On October 10, the Blood river incident will be here and he had much more preparation to be done.

Grabbing his phone, Alex waited. He was waiting for a phone call from Mr Thomas, his team leader. His next course of action will be determined by what he will hear from the phone.

"Ring Ring…" The phone vibrated, Alerting Alex of the call.

'As expected, it was the team leader.' Alex thought.

Swiping the touch screen, he accepted the call.

"Hello."

"Yes, It's me," Thomas replied.

"Is it ready?" Alex asked in expectation.

"Hm! I think so." Thomas replied casually.

"What do you mean by that? It would only take a week. The faster we get it done. The faster we can stop them."

Alex said while taking a sip of tea. After transmigrating he was getting used to the tea Emily brings him. He now drinks it every day like an addict.

"I mean it is ready but there is a slight problem. Instead of taking a leave, we will be entering the dungeon in the name of training. And…"

"And?"

"...one more person will be joining us. We have to take the newbie along with us this time. There is no room for negotiation. The training was the only excuse I could make to go to a dungeon. If not for you being absent from work, we wouldn't have been in a tight spot. They would dock our salary if you don't come to work anymore."

"Okay, Okay, This time, it will be okay if we take along the newbie." Alex regretfully yielded to the sound argument put forward by Thomas.

Although it has been a month since Alex came to this world. He only went to work for a week at most. Most of the time he was injured or incapacitated. Besides that, memory loss made it impossible to work in an office environment.

After finishing the tea, Alex put the cup down. After going through so much in the past few days. He didn't even have time to rest.

It was time to cook up the next scheme.

—----

Whenever he went to 'work', Alex travelled with Leo. Today was no different.

With Leo, Alex went towards the Azha river bank. One might think a father was driving his son to school seeing how Alex took Leo with him every day. But it was not the case.

In this world, schools existed only for kids above the age of fifteen. Although it might seem unusual, it was the case.

When every person has a superpower that was hard to control, it was safer for kids to be homeschooled rather than to be sent to school. Or else you could imagine the mayhem a kid like Leo or Theia might cause at their school. No primary school teacher will be able to control kids like that.

So, it was normal to send kids to school at the age of fifteen. And after three years of compulsory education. They will be ready to join a college as a young adult, truly responsible for their actions.

After a while, Alex reached the river banks.

He exited the car with Leo as usual and went to a warehouse nearby. Pressing his fingers on a scanner. He gained access to the warehouse. Leo closely followed Alex into the warehouse. Leo was also used to this routine.

Inside the dimly lit warehouse, you could see an obscure figure running around. It was tall and shabby, wearing an old but clean white lab coat. After prancing around, the figure finally came to rest near a highly advanced computer.

From the glow of light from the computer screen, you could see a handsome face hidden beneath the shabby beard of the man. He was thrilled to see the positive results of his experiment.

And his emotions became even more apparent when he saw Alex. Waving his hand, he walked toward Alex and Leo.

"Oh! Both of you are here. I thought you would come sooner. The results are out. It's just as you said. I can find human DNA mixed with plant and Demon DNA from the sample you have collected. This is a great find. Ha ha ha ah." The man in the lab coat laughed while explaining.

The man was a little weird. But, Who wasn't in Outerworlds.

"And it's impossible to accurately say this, but from the DNA analysis, I was able to infer the age and sex of the Demon. Do you want to know?" The man waited, expecting Alex to ask about the result. Yet Alex stood still unbothered by the over-enthusiastic scientist.

"Why are you not asking anything? Don't you want to know more about my great findings?" The man tried again to induce curiosity in Alex. Yet Alex and Leo looked nonchalantly at the man.

The lab coat-wearing man was disappointed to see this. He wanted to brag about his achievements. But his only audience was totally uninterested in what he found.

"Sigh!..." Alex sighed at the self-proclaimed most intelligent person in the world. AKA Tin-man.

Tin-man was the alias used by the man wearing lab coats. Alex saw him for the first time a week ago. After being released from the hospital after the amusement park incident.

But it was not the first time he interacted with tin-man. To convince Thomas that there are demons in the river. Alex had to request a DNA analysis. And the person who did it was this tin-man, AKA the most intelligent person in the world'.

And that was the reason for their team-up.

For now, Alex needed assistance from a person well versed in DNA analysis. And he couldn't find someone legitimately well versed in that field of study. So, Alex had to be satisfied with the next best thing.

And the next best thing he could find was Tin-man. According to Thomas, he was smart and very intelligent. He can provide anything they need with the added bonus of complete secrecy.

It was a nice deal at that time. So, Alex took it without realising the obvious caveats that came with it.

Tin-man was great at most things related to science. But he had some jarring problems too.

He spends most of the time in labs doing all kinds of experiments related to multiple scientific fields. But the problem is the fact that he couldn't follow simple instructions at crucial times.

If you give him a job when he was doing nothing, he will complete it within minutes and give you satisfactory results. However, if his scientific curiosity senses are tingling, he will be absorbed in his own world forgetting about what was happening around him.

And that was exactly what was happening for the past couple of days. Finding Demon and Plant DNA mixed with human DNA was too much stimulation for Tin-man's poor brain. He worked without sleep for multiple days trying to satisfy his curiosity.

And it led him to find the sex and the age of the human subject that has become a demon. And he was thrilled by forgetting the most important thing. To follow basic instructions given by Alex.

This put Alex in a bad mood seeing the happy Tin-man jumping around. He wanted to kick the tin-head of his to douse his anger.

"HA ha ha… You found the sex and age of the demon. Ha ha ha ha… Very good. Very very good. You have been working hard." Alex said sarcastically. But Tin-man as the name suggested was bad at taking a hint. He was excited to hear Alex praise him.

Nodding his head like a puppy. He was about to show the result of the experiment.

"But, What about the DNA comparison that I asked you to do? The sample I gave you will be enough to test it against the Demon DNA. So, do you have any results on that?" Alex asked with a dangerous smile.

It sent chills through the spine of Tin-man. He suddenly remembered something. The last time Alex met him. He gave him some hair samples to do tests on. But in his moment of excitement, he totally forgot about that.

"I knew that you would forget about it. Let me jog your memory." Alex said while tapping Tin-man on the shoulder.

"You only had one job to do. And you did everything except that. You are incredible. I thought we had a deal, a mutual exchange of skills and resources. But now that I think about it. You were only interested in doing what you wanted. Is this how you cooperate? If so, let me send you to heaven." Alex said while looking at the shivering Tin-man

Leo was thrilled to see an angry Alex and he waited for the show to commence. He wished for the things called popping corn. The things he ate with Emily and Theia while watching movies.