The Royal Prerogative, 7/7/2000 - Reed Richards' Quarters

[Doom]

It was, Victor Van Damme reflected as he picked his undeviating course through the habitation area of the monolithic Baxter Building, thoroughly repulsive. So much information, so much equipment, such resources as few men of science ever dreamed of, and he was forced to share it all with children. It was a vicious cosmic irony, in his estimation. Most of his so-called colleagues--as though this motley assortment of callow youths and self-satisfied adolescent tinkerers could even begin to aspire to his level of expertise--were content to plant themselves before the nearest window and heave wistful sighs at the summer afternoons that came and went, captives of whatever small genius they had displayed to recommend them to the Think Tank. Or captive to their postpubescent hormonal imbalances, and mooning over each other shamelessly night and day.

Repulsive. Utterly. Americans had no sense of dignity whatsoever. They were universally a race of peasants, a plebian throng with delusions of global ascendency. Nor were any of the other foreign residents very much better; they appeared to have acclimated to the dissipated, indulgent, and wholly frivolous American way of life all too readily. The cretins.

Van Damme had far more constructive ways of spending his time, ways that involved expanding his intellectual horizons and perfecting his already unequalled technical abilities. And it was just such an occupation that found him outside Reed Richards' bedroom at that very moment.

Richards, of course, was not in; his precise location was a matter of supreme unimportance to Victor. He was extraneous to the process anyway, and Van Damme had been tracking his movements for some weeks now for the express purpose of divining precisely when the scrawny, gawky little stick figure of a man was most likely to be away from his quarters. Though in many ways as great a child as any in residence here at the invitation of the American government, in others, he displayed at least faint glimmerings of potential. Far more so than any of the other peons gathered in the Baxter Building. And Victor's interest had been piqued by short glimpses of Richards' scribblings in one of his ubiquitous yellow notebooks. It was, at the very least, worthy of further investigation.

He had possessed the foresight to secure his door after venturing forth earlier that morning for the morning meal, but to Van Damme this was little deterrent. The locking mechanism might have been sufficient to deter the average prankster, but Victor was not Strange Josie or Mad Billy, or any of the other absurdly monikered deviants who made life in this place so much more unpleasant than it had to be. It was a relatively simple matter to bypass Richards' locks--though they were a great deal more sophisticated than those which kept the students of the Baxter Building from wandering out into the general population. It was an interesting piece of work, though no more efficacious for all of that.

As Victor stepped into the room, a small, derisive smile curled his lip. Richards' decor was every bit as puerile as he had expected it to be. Unframed posters tacked upon the walls, a stuffed novelty creature lying placidly on the bed, and a spinning model of the solar system so absurdly out of scale as to be an offense to modern astronomy were but a few of the items that caught Victor's critical eye. But, really, how could he have expected the boy's taste to be anything other than sophomoric? Richards practically gloried in his own immaturity.

But he hadn't come to critique the furnishings. Or the smell of dog that seemed to permeate every corner of the tiny space, for that matter. Wiping a few errant hairs of canine origin from Richards' chair, he settled himself as comfortably as he could on the hard wooden surface and pulled up to the desk. It was, as he had expected, covered in notebooks full of formulae and half-finished writings. Picking up one of these at random, Victor began thumbing through it, leaf by leaf, carefully perusing the workings of Richards' moderately impressive but clearly underutilized brain. Much of it was rubbish, of course, wildly incorrect, impractical, or of no real substance--such as the oft-repeated, entirely delusional mantra of "Reed + Sue" which appeared time and again with tiresome regularity.

There were a few salvagable gems, however. Of course, Richards' calculations in some places were wrong, but not so radically as to make Victor dismiss his efforts out of hand. Opening a drawer at random, Van Damme fished around until he located a suitably sharpened pencil, and proceeded to draw crisp lines through the incorrect figures and misleading equations. He then carefully began to inscribe his corrections above. It might have been easier to simply erase the parts of Richards' formulae that were in error, but then how would he ever learn? And not just about physics, either; it was of equal importance that he was made to recognize Victor's superior intelligence, as well. Because only in Richards had Van Damme encountered a mind that might--might--possibly rival his own, someday.

[Mr Fantastic]

The tiny trip mechanism that Reed had included in his redesign of the (admittedly shoddy) lock mechanism after the last time Victor had broken in to his room had alerted him (via a hastily rigged up and somewhat uncomfortable wire poking device) on where he had been on the other side of the Baxter Building. Now - having made a set of hasty excuses to Professor Storm, none of which had made any sense upon hasty review as he'd run back over to the residential wing of the Think Tank - he jogged hurriedly down the hallway, nearly overshooting the door into his room, grabbed the far edge of the doorway to give himself some deceleration, and fixed the interloper with his best attempt at a fierce glare.

Unfortunately, the way his glasses had come askew while he was running and were hanging halfway down his nose wasn't going to help at all, and neither was the way his shirt had yet again managed to untuck itself without any deliberate attempt on his part, or the floppy-eared and over-enthusiastic form of Archimedes bounding up behind him and just about causing him to overbalance as he leapt up, paws outstretched, looking to see what sort of game they were playing this time.

"Victor!" Reed said, trying his best in the face of these apparently inevitable obstacles, "Victor, you can't keep doing this. If you think there's a problem with something I've done, you need to tell me instead of sneaking around like..." he trailed off as he walked into the room itself, yapping dog bounding around his heels, and caught a glimpse of exactly which of his notebooks Victor was looking through this time. The one...

...in his defense, he'd written all of that on the day - the 13th of September, 1997 - that Sue Storm had sat beside him, all through Dr Molekevic's two-hour flying saliva-filled lectures on the theory and practise of the scientific method, and afterwards had told him that he was 'funny'. And she'd grabbed his hand, and dragged him off to the cafeteria for lunch and...

...well, it wasn't the point, really. The point was that it was something Victor had no right to be in, with all the certainty of the superiority of Einsteinian theories of gravity over Newtonian mechanics. "...like some sort of..." he tried again, before giving up and grabbing for the notebook to try to snatch it out of the other boy's hands. "This is my room, Victor. Can't you just try to understand that, like a normal person?" Archimedes barked loudly in agreement - or at least what Reed was currently going to take as agreement.

[Doom]

It would have been incorrect to assume that Victor was unaware of Richards' unexpected return to his quarters. However, Van Damme's mind was quite disciplined enough to make note of such details without unduly disrupting his concentration on the work before him. He was even aware, on some level, of the yapping of Richards' intolerable mongrel companion, though he would never deign to acknowledge such a creature. True, it would have been far more expedient if Richards had remained absent as Victor went about the work of rectifying his erroneous calculations, but whether he were present or absent made scant difference. The exercise itself was of primary concern.

"Victor!" Reed said, trying his best in the face of these apparently inevitable obstacles, "Victor, you can't keep doing this. If you think there's a problem with something I've done, you need to tell me instead of sneaking around like..."

That was sufficient to cause him to raise his head from the computations in the notebook just long enough to fix Richards with a look of flat umbrage. Who was that gangling whelp to accuse Victor Van Damme of sneaking? He may have exercised a certain circuitousness in accessing the room when he knew the occupant would have--should have--otherwise engaged, but that was simply to eliminate the added distraction that Richards would otherwise have presented. There was no sneaking involved.

Victor smiled sardonically at the flustered junior physicist. No, there was nothing that Richards could say that he would be inclined to take seriously, least of all a rebuke. He was an absurd little caricature, with his crooked glasses and ill-fitting, untidy attire and his vociferous hound constantly pawing at him. If it weren't for his occasional theoretical insights, Van Damme would never have bothered with him at all.

"...like some sort of..." he tried again, before giving up and grabbing for the notebook to try to snatch it out of the other boy's hands. "This is my room, Victor. Can't you just try to understand that, like a normal person?"

His grip on the contested notebook tightened reflexively for a moment, before Van Damme allowed Richards to take it away. It was hardly worth getting into anything so undignified as a tug-of-war over, after all. Victor took another random sheaf of yellow paper from one of the random stacks on the desk and proceeded to flip through it briskly, noting further places where amendments and outright re-calculation were in order. It could take him days to sort through the entire mass of notes--far longer if Richards continued to insist on being a nuisance about it.

"Really," he said evenly, tapping the pencil against the page before him as he puzzled through the mass of equations in an effort to find some way of redeeming them. "If you value your privacy so highly, I'd have thought you would design a better lock." It was ludicrous to expect Victor to accept that normal proprietary boundaries applied to him. He went where he pleased, and did what was in the best interests of all concerned, regardless of whose feelings happened to be bruised in the process. "And what do such arbitrary distinctions even matter?"

After jotting a few additions of his own into the margins of the paper, he fixed the room's designated occupant with a level look--cool, and just short of actively hostile. "Like some sort of what, exactly, Richards?" he inquired, his tone challenging. "If you have something to say, then say it; don't stand there and sputter at me like a broken teapot. I'm much too busy for such distractions just now."

[Mr Fantastic]

For a moment, Reed thought that Victor might try to hang on to the battered notebook, and prepared to tug it right out of the boy's hand. It was undignified, yes, and probably about as mature as attempting to solve Fermat's last theorem on a dare, but goddammit, the stuff in that notebook was private! Except that after a moment, Victor did let it go, and Reed came away with a little more added force than he'd expected, rebounding back toward his bed. He glared at Victor, then remembered himself, clearing his throat and pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Really," [Victor] said evenly, tapping the pencil against the page before him as he puzzled through the mass of equations in an effort to find some way of redeeming them. "If you value your privacy so highly, I'd have thought you would design a better lock." This time, Reed caught himself before the glare threatened, managing to look back over with only slightly narrowed eyes. Archimedes had no such scruples, and let out a short, low growl. Of course he could design a better lock - it was the message of the thing. Really. It was polite. And he could have done much better. Better than Victor. "And what do such arbitrary distinctions even matter?"

Reed stared at him for a second, not saying anything. Man, and people thought he was clueless about how people worked. Victor was... well, he was something else - Reed was 93% certain he truly didn't know enough about how people worked to find any sort of words to describe Victor. Except... weellll.... weird. And unpleasant - definitely unpleasant. He guessed he was kinda smart, but...

He was just going to look over the rewriting Victor had been making to his equations now, Reed decided. Yes - nice, straightforward, sensible mathematics, to stop his heart racing before he said anything that was going to set off another of Victor's 'episodes'. It was okay, he told himself taking a deep but quiet breath through his nose, that the... the... jerk had come into his room without asking, looking through all of his stuff, because it was going to help him to acheive trans-N-zone transport. It was okay, because in the end, it would all be okay, and the world would be a better place. It was o-

"Like some sort of what, exactly, Richards?" he inquired, his tone challenging. "If you have something to say, then say it; don't stand there and sputter at me like a broken teapot. I'm much too busy for such distractions just now."

And for the second time in as many deciminutes, Reed found himself staring in near-absolute disbelief (it would have been absolute, had he not had nearly five years experience with Victor and his... inherent Victorness) at the other boy. "Victor..." he tried, attempting to sound remonstrating, but then gave up with a despairing shrug, looking back down at the equations in the notebook. "Like some sort of jerk," he muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes at the page and wishing he could be more calm and rational and understanding, like Professor Storm. Straightforward, sensible mathematics. That's what he was going to do. Even Victor couldn't be irrational about n-dimensional multivariate polynomials in base 31.

Or at least... so he'd thought. When Reed finally managed to make out what Victor had done to the first set of his equations to determine the correct settings for the superpositioner, he wondered for a second if he was going blind. Well, blinder. But, after carefully rubbing his glasses with the sleeve of his shirt, the 'corrections' were still what he'd thought they were. Frowning, Reed looked back up.

"Victor," he said carefully, in the sort of tones one might use on a very large dog with a leash of rather uncertain durability, "I don't know what you thought you were doing here, but..." and here came the bit where that whole leash-durability issue was going to quickly become rather vital, "...these are wrong."

He checked them over again, before adding, "Totally wrong."

[Doom]

Richards had murmured something in response to his demand a moment ago, but Victor was far too preoccupied with the work in front of him to pay it much attention. If the stringy little stick-man wanted to abandon his previous modes of behavior and attempt to assert himself, so be it. But Van Damme was not going to strain his ears to hear it; nor would he be diverted from more productive tasks even for the short time it would require for him to order the bespectacled irritant speak up.

Really, there were moments when Victor could not remember why he had agreed to assist with Richards' pet project, anyway. True, it had been the course of expedience at the time, as he had proved surprisingly proficient in robotics and telecommunications technology, and had helped Van Damme make great strides in perfecting his autonomous remote control system. It was a vital apsect of his work, and Victor would admit, however grudgingly, that without Richards' assistance, his progress would have been delayed months. Possibly even longer. But equity would only go so far.

"Victor, I don't know what you thought you were doing here, but..." Van Damme did his best to concentrate on the variables before him, instead of his companion's noxiously post-pubescent voice as he stammered out whatever it was that was weighing on his mind this time. "...these are wrong."

A deadly quiet descended. Victor's blue eyes shifted from the papers on the desk to Richards, who was still fumbling his way through Van Damme's earlier corrections.

"Totally wrong."

For a handful of heartbeats, nothing further was spoken, and the tension in the small room rose precipitously. Even the dog appeared to sense that some cataclysmic reaction was imminent. A sickly snapping sound broke the silence as the tip of Victor's pencil split off, after digging a small, jagged gash through the notebook and leaving a faint impression on the surface of the desk itself.

"Wrong?" Van Damme repeated ominously, turning sideways in the chair to look straight at Richards for the first time since he'd stumbled into the room, squeezing the remained of the writing implement in a white-knuckled grip. "Have you somehow lost your rudimentary grasp of physics? Check it again! The calculations are correct! A model of scientific exactitude!"

Victor fumed quietly for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. "And please spare me your smugly rationalist phase-space theory. If I have to sit through another of your tiresome recitations of gibberish of that sort, I may be forced to impale you on what's left of this pencil." Coming from anybody else, that might have been a joke. But the way Victor brandished said pencil would have left any sane person with serious doubts on the matter. "I am right. I know I am right. And your precious theory is nothing more than that: a theory!"

[Mr Fantastic]

There was a crack. Just a soft noise, that would have been barely noticeable if the dropping of the figurative temperature in the room just prior to it hadn't silenced even Archimedes, but Reed heard it like it had been sitting next to the strongest amplifier in the world. It was a matter of total obviousness to deduce what had caused the sound, of course - given a quick inventory of all the nearby objects within the room, the only possibility that could come within a 95% confidence interval was the wooden pencil. Victor had broken the pencil.

"Wrong?" Van Damme repeated ominously, turning sideways in the chair to look straight at Richards for the first time since he'd stumbled into the room, squeezing the remained of the writing implement in a white-knuckled grip. "Have you somehow lost your rudimentary grasp of physics? Check it again! The calculations are correct! A model of scientific exactitude!"

Hastily trying to put the notebook in his own hands back into some measure of order to try to retain some sort of dignity in this conversation, Reed battled with an urge to swallow convulsively. Maybe it would be more sensible to just... let Victor go his own way, and not get into a battle about this, given the way he was looking. Prudent, perhaps. But... this very sensible alternative his mind offered to him ended up, in the final analysis, running right into a wall of irrational stubborness that Reed wouldn't really have liked to have admitted.

Victor was wrong. That was all there was to it.

"Exactitude, maybe," he said quickly, fiddling some more with the notebooks to cover the surges of adrenaline that were trying to make his fingers tremble, "but there's nothing scientific about them, Victor. There's not even the slightest resemblance to anything that actually occurs in the real world..." Which... well, maybe it wasn't the most tactful thing he could have said at the moment. But... it was true! Victor was... well, he was obviously intelligent, but he seemed to think that if he thought it, that made it right.

"You see..." Reed began, preparing to try to explain the principles behind phase space theory for the twenty-seventh time, but before he could, he was cut off gain.

"And please spare me your smugly rationalist phase-space theory. If I have to sit through another of your tiresome recitations of gibberish of that sort, I may be forced to impale you on what's left of this pencil."

Reed eyed the pencil carefully. That should have been a joke. Logically, he knew it should have been a joke - Sue had said more than once that she was going to have to physically smack sense into him if he didn't shut up about theoretical physics, but of course she'd never actually done it. But... when Victor said it? It was more than a little unnerving. He'd never... well, there had been rumours, hadn't there? About what he'd done to people? But he'd never really...

"I am right. I know I am right. And your precious theory is nothing more than that: a theory!"

Scowling in spite of the pencil, which didn't appear to be about to diminish its threat any time soon, Reed couldn't quite help but rise to this bait. "Of course it's a theory, Victor," he said, in tones that might have been better judged if he really had been speaking to a pre-rational child. "That's all any of our suppositions are - theories that explain what we've seen. This theory just fits the data we have better than any of the other ones. That's why we use it. We test it, and it works, so we use it." And it might have been bad enough, had he left it at that. But for all his over-working, high-processing brain, Reed still couldn't help but add, "Even you should be able to understand that, Victor."

[Doom]

Moderately talented physicist though he may have been, Victor was quite certain that Richards entertained few illusions about his place in the pecking order. Given that assumption, cowing the wiry pest should have been simplicity itself. And yet, in spite of all expectations, there he was, standing his ground, umbrage growing despite Van Damme's threats of imminent, physical violence. It was a peculiar time for Richards to decide to grow a spine, to say nothing of inconvenient. Perhaps it had something to do with the coddling he received from the myopic Doctor Storm, and other quarters too insignificant to name.

And what was this, now? Did he really intend to attempt to answer Victor's contentions, when he had made it clear to Richards that such efforts would, to say the least, be unappreciated? Perhaps he really would have to impale him, after all. The jagged end of the pencil would slip quite neatly between his fifth and sixth ribs, without causing any immediately terminal injury . . .

"Of course it's a theory, Victor," [Reed] said, in tones that might have been better judged if he really had been speaking to a pre-rational child. "That's all any of our suppositions are - theories that explain what we've seen. This theory just fits the data we have better than any of the other ones. That's why we use it. We test it, and it works, so we use it."

With every word that crossed Richards' lips, Victor's expression grew darker and darker. The black, creeping fury that overtook him made the likelihood of any articulate reply a very dim prospect indeed. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears, and when the condescending, scraggly little whelp spoke again, Van Damme's vision swam as his rage reached its white-hot apex.

"Even you should be able to understand that, Victor."

Victor made a small, choking sound, and it took every scrap of his considerable will to keep himself from flying off the chair and assaulting Richards bodily. How dare he? That priggish, positivist little waste of space. He was nothing, nothing at all; a cast-off runt, so insufferable not even the American trash that spawned him could tolerate his existence. And he had the brazen temerity to speak to Victor Van Damme, lineal descendent of Vlad Tepes Dracula, noblest of all the Old World bloodlines, with such disrespect? With contempt? Richards was fortunate that Van Damme didn't tear out his eyes with his bare hands and render the rest down to agar for his precious Susan Storm's collection of petri dishes.

Slowly, very slowly, Victor stood up, glaring balefully at the other boy. The broken pencil clattered across the surface of the desk as he released the death grip he had maintained upon it up until that moment. "Do not presume to lecture me, Richards," he bit out at last, voice laden with venom. "Your feeble efforts to affect a wit you cannot genuinely claim disgust me. I understand your precious scientific process all too well. And I understand just as well that it is no more the sole road to wisdom than any other human construct. If you choose to remain hidebound by that which can be quantified and measured, then that is no concern of mine. But I refuse to allow my own intellect to be so constrained."

With one furious, sweeping gesture, Van Damme sent a random stack of yellow notebooks flying from the desk. "And do not forget that you were the one who came to me, Richards! If you are finished with wasting my time, then I am only too happy to consider this inane collaboration severed." With an angry kick to send the chair on which he'd recently been seated skittering out of his way, Victor stormed towards the door, his face set in a rigid mask of affronted dignity.

[Mr Fantastic]

For a moment, Reed considered giving up on the fact that this was his room and just leave Victor to... well, whatever it was that he was doing, which bore a somewhat unnerving similarity to what he'd always assumed a voluntary attempt to ignite your own body and set it on fire would look like. He could just... walk back out again, maybe, and come back after Victor had calmed down a little.

Except that... well, this time it really was his fault. He knew he'd goaded Victor onto the verge of completely losing it this time, just to... well, he hadn't even been trying to prove his point, had he? Scrubbing a hand through his hair uncomfortably, Reed watched Victor's... ominous silence with a slightly morbid, slightly terrified curiosity, and wondered whether there was any possibility that anything he could say at this point wouldn't have a 99.99% probability of sparking a real explosion.

Finally, Victor began to speak, and if the glacial exterior he was making an effort to project had a few glaring fissures showing magma through it, he at least wasn't trying to make good on the pencil threat yet. What he was doing was apparently trying to insult Reed into... bowing down to him, maybe? Reed pursed his lips together, but said nothing. He wasn't going to bow down to Victor, or pretend that he'd won. He wasn't. He had his pride, whatever his father might have thought, and if it had never been enough to let him stand up to the Ben-sized jerks at middle school, he could at least face down bullies at Geek-warts. No matter how crazy Victor was, he was still just another nerd kid, right?

Although it had to be said, there was an element to Victor's crazy that was scary in a completely unique way. He was crazy, Reed was sure of it. Half of what he was ranting about (the half that wasn't insults) seemed to be gibberish, obvious most of all by the way he was talking about 'wisdom'. Wisdom, in Reed's estimation based on observation of the general usages of the word, was something you got with middle-age, like... male-pattern baldness, or pot bellies. He'd never had any particular desire for it, either - he'd always wanted knowledge. Information was better than self-defined certainty, wasn't it? That should have been logically demonstrable, even if it apparently wasn't obvious to everyone.

It should have been. Reed knew it should have been.

He barely considered actually trying to find responses to anything that Victor was uttering - after all, for one, there was no point, since it was fairly obvious the other boy was never going to listen. More importantly, though, by now Reed was feeling more than a little ashamed of the fact that he'd pretty much led Victor into this... well, this rant that made him look like an idiot. It was his fault - and.... even Victor didn't deserve to look this stupid. Well... probably.

"And do not forget that you were the one who came to me, Richards! If you are finished with wasting my time, then I am only too happy to consider this inane collaboration severed."

Watching the dark-haired boy storm past him with a somewhat gormless, jaw-dropped stare, Reed barely noticed the chair Victor had hit before it had bumped into him, somehow managing to tangle his legs together and trip him up so that he ended up in a slightly tangled pile on top of it before managing to get a hand out. "Victor, wait!" he called, considerations of body pain being subsumed by the more pressing need to make amends here. He needed (well, probably needed. Maybe.) Victor to make the N-zone transportation working. And... more importantly... he needed to make this up to him.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said, knowing full-well that Victor would probably take that as some sort of confession of being wrong, instead of the way it had been meant. Reed wasn't wrong, and he knew it - but as much as leaving that impression stuck right in his throat, the blow to his ego wouldn't really matter, in the end, however much Victor wanted to crow about it. It wasn't important enough to make this much trouble over. He could swallow his pride, after all, and be better than Victor. He knew he could. "And you still want that linkage technique for the robot manipulators, don't you?"

[Doom]

So consumed was Victor with his own sense of towering outrage that he scarcely noticed Richards predicamant with the chair he had kicked in the gangling boy's direction just a moment ago. Where had that awkward little scrap of a man, that human afterthought, found the gall to speak to him so insolently? There were many things Van Damme was prepared to tolerate, albeit with customary ill-grace, but a lack of the basic respect which was his birthright could never be countenanced. He simply hadn't been brought up to overlook such slights.

Obviously, it was too much to expect that Richards could possibly appreciate such a thing. His whole, sad little world was tied up in facts and figures, in number and theory. Would he ever realize that these things were nothing more than the means to an end? That controlling knowledge was simply another way of enforcing one's own will upon the world? Victor doubted it. Richards would wither away, in the Baxter Building or another hollow edifice just like it, toiling away in the service of knowledge for its own sake. He was a tool, a minor cog, a born flunky. He existed solely to make the theoretical advances that others would use to imprint their names upon history, while Richards himself had no hope of amounting to anything more than a footnote.

He really should have just brained him with the chair, and spared Richards the pain of the balance of his ingnominious life. It would have been an act of mercy on Van Damme's part.

"Victor, wait!"

Despite himself, he paused at the door, turning stiffly to stare down the tip of his pointed nose at Richards, who had somehow managed to entangle his ungainly frame with the chair. What could he possibly have to say now? Whatever it was, he would be well-advised to speak quickly; Victor was in no mood to tolerate any further impertinence at the moment. And wringing the bespectacled American's neck would undoubtedly prove no more difficult than strangling a scrawny chicken.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said, knowing full-well that Victor would probably take that as some sort of confession of being wrong, instead of the way it had been meant.

Unaccountably, Van Damme's pinched features relaxed, albeit only slightly, at those words. He knew what Richards probably thought of him personally, and he recognized an effort at placation when he heard it. More than that, though, Victor took the other young scientist's meaning well enough. He had not capitulated, only acknowledged that he had gone too far in pressing his point. Van Damme could see that. But the idea that Richards might cleave to his incorrect assumptions had not been the basis of Victor's anger in the first place; he was free to persist in error as long as he liked. So long as he didn't bore Victor with his blind, egregious foolishness. Or attempt to insult him. Richards might almost be tolerable, under such circumstances.

"And you still want that linkage technique for the robot manipulators, don't you?"

And there it was, the reason Victor had agreed to burden himself with Richards' continuing companionship in the first place. It was a matter of expediency. Working together, the two of them had made far more progress in their respective fields than had ever been possible alone. Van Damme could see that, too. And though he would never forget the slanderous way that Richards had spoken to him a moment ago, he could overlook it for the present. There would be time enough to address such things at a future date.

"I do, yes," Victor acknowledged, his expression reverting to a supercilious sort of neutrality. Taking a deep, calming breath, he added, "I may have spoken hastily before. Perhaps I could have chosen my words with greater care." It was as close to an apology as Van Damme could manage, and a great deal more than he had ever previously offered.

[Mr Fantastic]

The alteration in the other boy's expression, if he wasn't actually imagining it, was small - a matter of a slight relaxation of one collection of vectors and a certain rearrangement in the overall direction of others - but Reed was still at least 70% certain that he'd seen it. Probably. And since that fitted with all his best calculations of the ability of unqualified apologies to produce mollification in the majority of Victor-like snits, he let the theory proceed unchallenged, for the moment. It was working, and Victor was no longer storming out the door so maybe, somehow, he'd be able to salvage this.

Reed didn't quite dare to risk it all at this point by smiling in relief, but if you could actually be 'smiling on the inside' (he'd always failed to see how that could possibly happen, and how you could test it to see if it did), that was by most usual methods of measurement where he was now, for a couple of reasons. For one, it boded well for actually getting some kind of work done on the transporter, and if Victor had been ten times worse than he actually was, that goal would still have made keeping him on the project worth the pain.

More importantly, though, apologising had actually managed to make him feel like a bit less of... well, a jerk. Which he had been, definitely. And the fact that Victor had been more of one on any objectively measurable scale you chose to use didn't excuse that at all. So all in all, mollification looked like a matter for cautious optimism.

"I do, yes," Victor acknowledged, his expression reverting to a supercilious sort of neutrality. Taking a deep, calming breath, he added, "I may have spoken hastily before. Perhaps I could have chosen my words with greater care."

Reed nodded carefully, dipping his head in a way that hopefully conveyed as little of anything that could be construed as offense as possible as he began to act on the task of unwrapping himself from the tangle with the chair (previously deferred in favour of the more pressing task of making sure Victor didn't walk out and leave all their work hanging). Judging by the carefulness of the response, it sounded like Victor wanted those linkage techniques even more than he'd guessed before, as far as Reed could make out. And he wanted to ask about that - really really really wanted to ask about it - but some small vestigial organ of common sense that most people who knew him would have thought Reed Richards to be completely devoid of said that that was an idea with a 95% probability of undoing every scrap of progress he'd just managed to make.

"I know I could have," he offered instead, looking back up at Victor and placing his hand on the back of the chair he'd just managed to separate from his legs as a point of steadiness. Steady - he was steady, and not excitable at all. That's what his profile at the Baxter Building had said (they were supposed to be confidential, but they had to know that you couldn't put 30 or so extremely intelligent kids together in one building and not expect them to hack into their permanent records). He was going to think before he spoke, because he was intelligent, and rational, and all of those good things. "Perhaps you'd be..." Reed had to think quickly, if he was going to find something that Victor couldn't screw up out of whatever his weird thing about phase space was, and even his brain couldn't quite manage that feat without a brief pause "...able to figure out the calculations for the 1st order dimension co-ordinate ratification system?"

And on that - hopefully conciliatory - note, Reed stopped, and waited, watching the other boy carefully for any signs of imminent explosions or renewed threats about broken writing implements. And... well, perhaps that hand on the chair was just in case he needed to grab it as some sort of shield. It was a purely rational strategy in the case of a possible scenario, and nothing more. Right.

[Doom]

Richards bobbed about like a stork in what Victor could only assume was an affirmation of his vague references to personal culpability in facilitating the eruption of temper which had threatened to bring a premature close to their working relationship. He then preceded to attempt to extricate his tangled limbs from the chair that Van Damme had inadvertently kicked in his direction. And it had been inadvertent, in retrospect. Victor had been far too angry at the time to have made a conscious effort to direct the course of the impromptu projectile. It was only a happy coincidence that had led to this mortifying predicament--mortifying for Richards, at any rate. Van Damme couldn't say that he minded very much at all; it was only further evidence that the universe held him in its favor, when even an act of blind rage resulted in such amusing and personally satisfactory consequences.

Rather surprisingly, Richards chose to forego any interrogation as to the reason for Victor's singleminded determination to perfect his remote linkage system. Though curious, it was hardly unwelcome. Van Damme was not one to welcome scrutiny of his private affairs, even when it came from someone with whom he worked on an almost daily basis. Richards had all the information that he required to help Victor get the system up and running; that was all he really needed to know. The potential applications of the technology should have been self-evident, even to one as oblivious to the normal chains of everyday causality as the Think Tank's resident star physicist. As to Victor's own personal plans, well, those were quite frankly none of his concern. Illumination would descend soon enough.

"I know I could have," [Reed] offered instead, looking back up at Victor and placing his hand on the back of the chair he'd just managed to separate from his legs as a point of steadiness.

Victor only nodded at that admission. It was so patently obvious to him that this was the case that any verbal response on his part would have been entirely redundant. He was tired of talking about it by this point, anyway. Dwelling upon the past was an activity for which there was a definite time and place, and this was not it. And besides, things like apologies and guilt were useless indulgences. It was occasionally the course of expedience to appear apologetic in the furtherance of his own ends, but that was all. Genuine regret was an alien concept to Van Damme, an emotional weakness best left to those lacking the power to forge their own destinies in accordance with the dictates of their will. Worthy only of peasants and fools.

"Perhaps you'd be..." Reed had to think quickly, if he was going to find something that Victor couldn't screw up out of whatever his weird thing about phase space was, and even his brain couldn't quite manage that feat without a brief pause "...able to figure out the calculations for the 1st order dimension co-ordinate ratification system?"

That Van Damme had noted Richards' pause was noted only in the slight tightening of the skin around the young Flemish aristocrat's bright blue eyes. It was extraordinarily irritating, to have his genius relegated to what were relatively simple tasks in terms of preparing the N-Zone Transporter for its first trial activation, the scientific equivalent of basic grunt work, but Victor could endure it. Plainly, Richards was afraid that he would expose more of the inherent flaws in his beloved phase space theory. That was fine. Victor could easily work around such an impediment.

"Very well," he replied evenly. "If you will show me where you have collected the preliminary data, I will begin working on the necessary equations at once. The fundamental details are essential, are they not? The foundation upon which all else is built."

[Mr Fantastic]

If the visions of impalement by broken writing implement hadn't still been hovering somewhere around the middle of his mind, Reed might have given in to the temptation to hold his breath as he waited for Victor's response. But, as it was, he had one of those uncomfortable (probably due to imminent impalement) feelings that could be just as dangerous to achieving an acceptable outcome as anything else. Who really knew what would set one of Victor's 'things' off, when you stripped it down to a matter of pure probabilities? His best shot was probably to just keep acting like it was all totally normal.

Normal... right. He was normal. Victor was... well, Victor could pass for normal on a good day. So they could be normal, and good.

"Very well," he replied evenly. Reed suppressed an urge to let out a sigh of relief, instead opting for the probably less incendiary strategy of nodding quickly and risking a brief smile. "If you will show me where you have collected the preliminary data, I will begin working on the necessary equations at once. The fundamental details are essential, are they not? The foundation upon which all else is built."

Smiling again, at least as much out of a resolution that he was not going to frown as any real appreciation for what Victor was saying, Reed ducked his head once then turned toward his desk. "Yes. Fundamental details," he repeated. "Definitely essential." Which was, in fact, precisely why Victor was not going to get near to the fundamental basis for this transportation system. The fundamental details had to be right, and sound. But... well, he wasn't going to mess up the progress they'd just managed to make by getting into that again. He wasn't... really.

"They're just here," he said, picking up a sheaf of papers. "The data, I mean." Obviously, Reed. The part where Victor wasn't making him nervous? Apparently more difficult than he'd thought. "Good luck," he added without thinking, then had to hurry to make up for it. "Uh... not that you'll need it, of course."

At least, he told himself as he carefully placed the notebook he'd taken off Victor back in pride of place on the desk (just to the left of the biggest coffee mug stain), it would all be worth it in the end. Teleportation... the N-Zone... once they'd cracked that, whatever Victor had done in the meantime wouldn't matter at all. Not even Victor could ruin the N-Zone...

That was the theory, anyway.


[OOC: and with that, I believe we bid adieu to our argumentatively arrogant little thinkers for a few years. They'll turn up again, of course...]