In a certain dilapidated building on a certain human-infested world.
A certain crazy scientist.
"I-It's done...!", limbs trembling, eyes swiveling in-a-frenzy, he held the culmination of his efforts, the pinnacle of his patience...
... a rock.
"Finally... after all these years... those wizened grey-haired morons never realized it... the ultimate achievement... the new era of discovery... it was I who made it all true..."
Holding the blackish mass of stone as he would an infant, he placed it beneath a convulated self-designed microscope.
Shivering, he pressed his eyes against the viewing contraption.
"They never believed me..."
What he saw was beyond what any of his peers could ever imagine. Those that had disregarded him, called him a fool... if only they could see the fruit of his 'delusions'!
For under his greatly magnified gaze, he could clearly discern it... the rock-it lived!
"Reaction to changing frequencies of light... a rudimentary mineral network which can transport an alternative set of 'nutrients' throughout its body... regeneration and growth by absorbing elements in the surrounding medium... locomotion by 'transferring' its structure to surrounding rocks... check! check! check! It satisfies all of the conditions!"
What could this discovery spell for the world? What new revolution would it bring? As he basked in the blinding afterglow of his discovery, his mind began to wander at all the implications of his actions.
At that moment.
A shock reverberated through the room. The ceiling shook, and pieces of plaster rained down the walls.
An earthquake?
Snatching the precious sample from the observation desk, he rushed outside... and stopped in stupefaction.
A red sky. Countless fragments of fire rained down from the heavens. Shockwaves spread as they crashed into the earth in brilliant flashes of light.
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People screamed as they pointed at the sky above them.
Looking up, he found a blazing column falling straight at him.
Is that a meteorite!?
If thosands of these were falling at the same time...
The moment of shock gave way to anger.
"Damn it! Is the world ending? Just HOW can it end before I made my discovery known!? All that EFFORT, all that STRUGGLE, how the FUCK can it end before I leave behind this knowledge!!!"
Even amidst all this chaos, people turned to stare at the crazy man spewing strings of profanity at his impending doom. If they had lived, some of them could have sworn that even until his last breath he had not forsaken his scientific spirit.
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Over the skies of a certain human-infested world.
The 13th Reaper of Death looked on with a conflicted expression.
The reason was simple. The death of this particular world had come too soon.
*Sigh* What were the superiors thinking? Assigning me a job like this?
With a weary smile, he waved a hand, summoning the next batch of souls from the surface of the planet. This was already the thousand-and-fifty-first one. If the world had suffered a normal meteor shower, the numbers would never have risen this much.
Of course, nothing about this situation is normal.
Just as he was about to pass the collected souls to the recycling module, something caught his eye.
Hmm... this soul... is it a human's?
While the soul contained the faint traces of a human's outer appearance, it seemed to be fused with a strange other life-form.
A rock? Its a body design I have never seen before. But there is only a single soul... could it have been influenced by the human's lingering thoughts from when it was alive?
Strange cases like this weren't that rare. Strong emotions and thoughts often warped a soul, and special care needed to be taken in order to set it straight before reassembling it. But a soul changed to this degree was definitely a first.
Even as he watched, the soul's 'humanity' was rapidly detiorating and its inanimate nature becoming more prominent.
If I send it off like this, I wonder what could happen?
Even as he gave himself a wry chuckle at the thought, he started the process of reconfiguring the soul.
However. As soon as he touched the strange soul, a force ripped it away from him. Before he could do a thing, the truant soul had disappeared into a Portal of Rebirth other than his own.
When he turned to look at the culprit responsible, shock registered in his divine eyes.
"YOU!"
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