Relics of the Past (Open)

Donût had an inkling of an idea as to how this "Sen" guy felt about the whole "being implanted with Saiyan DNA thing". Considering who he worked for and what he did and where he came from... Donût had an idea that Sen hated Saiyans. He probably hated them with every fiber of his being. If the word "hate" was inscribed on every micrometer of every single one of Sen's cells, it probably didn't cover even a fraction of Sen's total hate for the Saiyan race.

Now, Donût could not really identify with that level of hate. But, he could definitely sympathize with Sen discovering that his body had been violated in a way he never consented to while he was an infant. A negative reaction to that was perfectly understandable. And so, Donût, aka the Unbreakable Mister Steel, stepped toward Sen.

"Hey, bud, ya need a moment? Maybe a hug?"

As he asked these questions, Donût put a hand on Sen's shoulder and lightly squeezed. If Sen let him, Donût had plans to help him get out of that pile of vomit and back on his own two feet.

A lot of things were starting to make sense. Like how a Tuffle was taller than five feet and had the raw strength to hold down a fighter with a power level of over 60,000... while tanking a blow from said fighter with minimal injury.

"I didn't touch anything. Hands in pockets, lookin' with ma eyes and not my fingers, tha whole shebang!"

Donût went from showing his hands to looking around. He didn't like this situation one bit. Why hadn't he seen this coming? It was just like some alien mad scientist to set a booby trap to go off moments after giving some sort of important exposition. He could name at least three movies and five tv shows that had used that plot device right off the bat.

Of course, those mad scientists had been a bit dumber. They'd set a firebomb to go off with a big ol' hermetically sealed freezer in the room that also had an emergency escape mechanism inside. That or a set of guns with limited ammo, or an ominous timer. Mikan seemed to have gone for the "set off immediately after I explain" type of trap. And if Sen's estimate was accurate, they didn't have much time to get out of it. Donût put his shirt over his face to try and filter out the gas a bit, as Sen suggested, and then ran through his options.

Going through the vents was a no-go. They seemed like they would be a tight fit for Donût, let alone Sen. Not to mention, the Destron gas was coming from the vents themselves, so those tight quarters would be full of the deadly gas. The door was probably made of that Tudium stuff, so that wasn't a viable way out. Unless... Tudium melted when exposed to the right mixture. If Sen could synthesize a batch of that gas that had sprayed out in the beginning, or a liquid form of the aerosol...

"If that door's made'f Tudium, ya think it'll melt if ya c'n make sum gas?"

After Donût asked this, he looked down at the floor. There was his backup plan...

"I'll try ta buy us sum time. I think I c'n break tha floor inta tha room below without damagin' tha superstructure too much."

Donût flooded his feet with ki, hardening them within the sneakers. Then he STOMPED... and he STOMPED again... the floor cracked... He stomped and stomped and stomped... letting loose a combo of precise kicks that opened up a hole in the ground. It wasn't enough to climb through, but it could possibly be expanded on... It also let the Destron, which was heavier than air, flow DOWN somewhere. Donût also guessed that whatever lab was below the pair wasn't a part of the booby trap. Which meant that basic lab safety measures when handling a dangerous gas would kick in and...

From below came a robotic announcement.

There, the lab below would pull the Destron that was flowing into it OUT of itself. And nobody would be dumb enough to pump a harmful gas BACK INTO their bunker. The air would flow out, probably make a little environmental problem... But the bunker was in the middle of nowhere, and far from any houses or people. So the pair had a little more time and nobody else was getting hurt.

"Woah, hey!"

Donût let his protests die in his throat after he was picked up and held in a corner. Instead of complaining, he took Sen's advice and covered his eyes with his arms, while closing them behind his shades. He figured whatever chemical reaction was about to take place was going to be bright and quick. Something like a flashbang. It would render you blind, but was harmless most other ways.

He was wrong. What came from Sen's cocktail of chemicals was a complete firebomb. First, all of the Destron pooling on the floor and beneath the lab went up, then the fire trailed up the flowing Destroy into the vents and the distributors. All the way back to the tanks that had stored the Destron in condensed form. Those exploded somewhere, causing the vents to bulge and bust open... but at the end, the gas was gone, and the room was clear.

The door didn't open, though. At least, not immediately. And Donût was left singed and burned. He coughed up some sort of Destron soot, thankfully rendered inert by Sen's concoction, and looked at himself. He had burned hair... and some burns on his skin, but not much else was wrong with him. The metal shrapnel and bits of glass that had burst from the temperature change had apparently just hit his body and bounced off. Such was the benefits of a passive power level in the tens of thousands.

He looked up at Sen, who was still holding him, then back at the ruined lab. The tables were all burned, and a few of the less-hardy materials had melted or shattered. Everything else had a healthy layer of soot on it. The air was a bit thin, too. The vents were busted, and a good portion of the oxygen in the room had been quickly consumed by the fire. It was still breathable, but not for long.

"Alright, well I guess that's one problem solved. Want me ta try tha door? Unless yer ol' dead pal that tried ta kill ya had a favorite password he used fer everythin'."

Donût fell with Sen, striking the floor with a thump, a grunt, and a roll. There was another thump when he hit a table that was barely standing. The table disintegrated into charred remains. Then Donût got up on his feet and took in a breath. He was fine, for the moment... not quite at 100%, but he was alive. And doing a lot better than Sen.

As Sen struggled to get himself into a sitting position, Donût hurried over, knelt down, and reached under Sen's shoulders to try and help him sit up. Or at least not slide back down to the floor.

"Y'alright man? C'mon, talk ta me..."

A bag of grey powder was shoved weakly into Donût's hand. Then Donût followed Sen's finger, which was pointed at a flask that looked like it had a bulb at the bottom. There was a crack in the stem that rose from that bulb, but otherwise the flask was miraculously undamaged. He didn't know what the official term for it was, but he had vague memories of highschool chemistry classes involving that flask... it was one of the ones that you could boil liquid in, or hold hot liquid in without damaging the glass.

"Alright, tha flask, gotcha."

Donût got up and ran, powder in hand, to grab the flask. He had a feeling that whatever was afflicting Sen was working fast, which did not give him a lot of time to fix the problem. It also meant that Sen was going to be getting worse as he explained whatever Donût needed to do.

After getting the flask, Donût looked back at Sen... who was gesturing at a cabinet that didn't look completely destroyed.

"Blue liquid, gotcha!"

He opened the door and saw a lot of bottles with labels in an alien language... red, green, orange... strange shades of purple... And there, tucked in the right-hand corner, was a bottle of blue liquid. Donût reached and grabbed it, pulling it free without any regard for the other bottles that came out of the shelf. One of them, a bottle of green stuff, burst and began to boil away as soon as it was exposed to the air.

Donût put the powder and the bottle on a table that didn't fall apart from his mere touch, and then looked around... fire. He needed fire. There were pipes that were bolted to the tables, a few stood on their own. Those must have been supplying some sort of natural gas or similar fuel to the room for bunsen burners, just like at the chem labs in highschool. Which meant...

He took in another quick sweep of the room, and saw something glinting in the ruins of the table he'd destroyed with his fall. Donût got over to it, and threw bits and pieces of table in a direction away from Sen and himself... hefting until he had what looked vaguely like a burner, if it was designed for someone three feet tall and with a fascination for spirals.

Back to the table. He hooked the burner up to the pipe using some sort of twist-on slot... once he was mostly sure it was sealed, he turned on the gas... and realized he didn't have a lighter or a match on him.

"Crappioli in bad marinara sauce.... uh... uh..."

An idea struck him. He had ki, and he'd seen Jackie summon fire with her own energy. Maybe...

He held a finger up to the flow of gas, and focused the flow of his energy. He thought of a river, flowing out of his finger... and then... he pictured that river as a flowing fire. Warmed by his core, carrying his power and his energy as heat into the world. Like a ki-bullet, but a steady flow...

The fire BURST into being, creating a big spout from the flow of gas before things evened out and the fire was a steady flame that was orange at the edges, and blue at the center. Hot. Hot enough to boil. Hopefully it wasn't too hot...

Donût poured the powder into the flask, then the bottle... he swirled the flask to mix the stuff together until it looked to have dissolved into some uniform, dark-blue gunk. He put that on the burner... and watched the fluid boil.

"Alright, it's heatin' up.... I think it's mixin' 'er doin's sumthin, tha color's changin'. What next?"

He looked to Sen, making sure the big guy was still alive. Was he being affected worse because of the Saiyan DNA? Tuffle bio-weapons and chemical weapons had often been made with Saiyans in mind during the course of the war. Or perhaps Sen's old friend had altered the formula for the Destron to affect him worse? Why would he do that?

Donût did not really consider himself someone that worked great under pressure. His head was never calm or cool, he was always worrying and thinking of the millions of things that could go wrong, or trying to come up with a plan. And yet, he got through them...

For a moment, Donût just watched Sen's body, waiting for him to do something. To say something. Was Sen breathing? Donût couldn't tell. The lighting was a bit dim in the room after the explosion, soot was covering most of the lights and a few of said lights were completely out of commission. The room had turned into something of a flickering land of shadow.

Something that was relatively shiny went flying from Sen's hand, landing on the floor near the counter. A syringe... Or something like a syringe. It had a needle at the end, but it didn't have a plunger. Instead, it had some sort of bubble at the end that was soft to the touch and deflated when pressed.

Now, Donût had never injected anything into himself. He wasn't diabetic, and he most certainly didn't make use of any sort of illegal substances or steroids. But... his mother... she'd needed to inject medicine when he was younger, though they didn't always have enough to afford it. Whenever he and his parents had to choose between feeding his younger siblings or his mother's medicine, she always wound up bedridden and exhausted by even the smallest of things. Pernicious anemia... she'd needed some sort of vitamin injection regularly... And Donût had often watched, or had to help give it. Now, she was able to do it herself every week, and always had enough.

Donût didn't have time to boil some water to disinfect the syringe, so he was thankful that the syringe had a clear cap on the end that covered up the needle. It seemed to twist off when he applied a bit of pressure, and came free with little effort. Donût tossed the cap to the side. Once he'd done that, Donût dipped the needle end of the syringe into the fluid he'd mixed and pressed down on the squeezable ball-thing at the end of the syringe. Out came bubbles... Then he released the pressure he'd applied with his thumb, allowing fluid to rush up into the syringe's reservoir.

After that, Donût pulled the syringe from the fluid, and lightly flicked the edge to push any remaining air bubbles up toward the needle end. Then, he pushed lightly on the ball to push the air out, he went until the tiniest drops of fluid were glistening on the tip of the syringe. It was ready.

Donût didn't know if he was supposed to give the injection intramuscularly or into a vein, but the way that Sen rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm gave a clue. Donût pulled the belt off of his jeans and wrapped it around Sen's arm, then tightened the belt until the veins were sticking out...

"Alright, this is gonna pinch a bit..."

Then Donût put the needle into a vein, and pushed down on the ball-end of the syringe, slowly... pumping the elixir into Sen's body. Once the syringe was empty, Donût pulled it out, dropped it, and loosened his belt from around Sen's bicep. He watched and waited while he put his belt back on.

"I'm really hopin' I didn't just kill ya, fella. I just sorta assumed ya wanted me ta find a vein."

Donût didn't realize he had been holding his breath until Sen opened his eyes, and everything came out as a gasping laugh of pure relief. Sure, Sen had probably been planning on killing him, and was not a particularly pleasant person to hang around... but he'd had a rough life, and a rough day, and Donût didn't want anyone to die on his watch.

So, rather than get sarcastic or passive-aggressive about the 'not getting killed' part of Sen's first sentence, Donût just nodded. He rose to his feet, ready to jump away when the Destron came flowing out of the small opening that the syringe had left in Sen's arm. But it was nullified, harmless. Not that it might have affected him anyways, with how Donût was still standing up fine after exposure to the gas. Despite being smaller than Sen, and closer to the Destron, which had clung to the floor. How was that possible? Maybe a question for later.

"Alright, alright..."

Donût put his hands under Sen's back and legs, picking him up bridal-carry style. Then he turned to the door. On a whim... Donût carried Sen to the sealed door, flooded his leg with ki, and kicked it. The door crumpled, dented, and flew out of its support track into an opposite wall.

"...Oh you gotta be KIDDIN' ME. We coulda just kicked it open?!"

He grumbled all the way out of the bunker about how it would have saved them from any of that Destron scare and all sorts of not-quite swears. Once the pair were outside, Donût began to carefully leap from place to place, carrying Sen to the nearest clinic. He also made sure to inform the authorities about the alien spy bunker full of chemical weapons that was dangerously close to farms and pastures in the Spinach Wastes.

All in all, a fun little romp. It did, however, mess up his busy schedule and caused Donût to be late to an appearance at a rally in the small town he'd been heading towards.