Destiny's Play
Feb. 12th, 2014 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameFigured as long as I'm posting snippets of fics that may or may not happen, I should put up what I have for the next Theory of Everything fic, which is in serious development hell. To be honest, now that I've written "Princes of the Universe," a lot of this is going to end up deleted and rewritten, so I might as well put it up for posterity.
Destiny’s Play
Chapter One: “Supernova”
Of all the things that happened in Ken’s life, there was one that never made sense: the Professor.
He appeared almost randomly, briefly dropping by every few years. The first time Ken had met him, he was very young and knew that just about anybody could be one of his dad’s enemies trying to attack. But the Professor had been sure to show that he was completely harmless, and Ken had wanted to trust him. But as he got older, Ken noticed that the Professor didn’t—he was forever the same age he was when he appeared that first time, no matter how many years had passed. Ken eventually put together that he was a time-traveler, and the Professor smiled and praised him for being clever enough at such a young age to figure it out. And with knowledge like that, Ken realized he could trust him—after all, if the Professor was a time-traveler and he hadn’t done anything to harm them yet, chances were that he never would.
Still, any one of his visits made Ken intensely fearful about the immediate future. Because every time the Professor appeared, some big upheaval happened in Ken’s life soon after.
It started with his parents’ divorce. Ken had noticed the arguing, even though his parents did everything they could to try to keep him from hearing them. He was too young to know what it really meant, but the Professor had given him as gentle a warning as he possibly could, offering sympathy. It was less than a month later when Ben and Kai filed for divorce.
Then a few years later, the Professor dropped by two weeks early to wish Ken a happy tenth birthday. That birthday resulted in him getting an Omnitrix and Kevin Levin breaking out of the Null Void, rescued by his son, Devlin. Kevin then betrayed him, but Ken had at least befriended Devlin, and his family adopted him.
And so it went, throughout the rest of his life, up until his twentieth year. As the tenth anniversary of the day that changed everything approached, he anxiously waited to see if that harbinger of change would appear again, but he hadn’t, much to Ken’s relief. His birthday passed without incident. The anniversary of his brother’s adoption, not so much. Charmcaster attacked, draining the life force out of Ben. With Ken taking charge of things at home, Devlin traveled to another timeline, retrieving the counterspell from younger and more innocent versions of Ben, Gwendolyn, and even Kevin. The counterspell worked, and they managed to save their father’s life, but Ben was forced to retire. The attack had made it impossible for him to carry on the way he had before. The responsibility fell on Ken, and to a lesser extent, on Devlin, to protect the Earth from anyone who threatened it. It had made for an eventful three months, with plenty of new and old enemies appearing to challenge the two young men, now heroes on their own.
And now the Professor showed up?
Ken felt his stomach drop as the world seemed to stop around him. The Professor saw him, smiled, and made his way over in the blink of an eye.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he said, closing his pocketwatch with a click. “Right on schedule.”
“Professor?” Ken gaped. “What are you doing here? What’s going to happen?”
The Professor grinned. “Now, Ken, you know I can’t give you any spoilers. I was just in the neighborhood of this particular timeline and thought I would drop by.”
Ken sighed and looked at him seriously. “With you, it’s never ‘just drop by.’”
Now, the Professor looked a little more distant. “Very true. I keep forgetting just how intuitive you Tennysons are. In any case, I can’t stay long—there’s work that needs to be done just another timeline over.”
Ken frowned. “What kind of work?”
“Never you mind about that now,” the Professor admonished, looking at his watch again. “It’s hardly the time for that.” He then looked up and smiled once more. “Oh, and do ask your brother about the Map of Infinity.”
“The what?” Ken repeated. But it was too late. There was a flash of blue light, and the Professor was gone.
Gradually, the world began to intrude on Ken’s thoughts again. The city and its noise and people crowded all around him, making it impossible for him to wonder about the strangeness of the Professor’s comment. For him, it was oddly specific. Every piece of wisdom he’d given Ken throughout the years had been impossible to decipher, until now. What was this Map of Infinity?
The next thing Ken knew, white lights surrounded him. Before he could do anything, he was teleported away, finding himself on an unfamiliar ship. Immediately, he readied himself for a fight, keeping his hands close in case he needed to go to the Omnitrix.
“Ken Tennyson!”
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Ken slid out of his fighting stance, but he knew better than to relax completely as Azmuth, creator of both of the Omnitrixes, came before him.
“Azmuth,” Ken greeted, on uneasy ground. While his father had a fairly good relationship with the Galvan scientist, the same couldn’t be said for Ken and Devlin. In the few times they’d met him, they’d both come out of there feeling like he found them lacking. “Did something happen?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Azmuth scolded. “Where’s that brother of yours?”
Ken blinked, caught entirely off-guard. Azmuth was looking for Devlin? “What, you can’t find him? What happened?”
“He’s been avoiding me for this past week is what happened,” Azmuth grumbled. “He completely refuses to answer my calls, and he’s set up an anti-teleportation field in his apartment. I need you to get me in there to talk to him.”
Now, Ken was really worried. It wasn’t that this wasn’t Devlin’s normal behavior; this, unfortunately, was very normal when it came to his depressive moods. And as far as he knew, nothing had happened in the last week that could have gotten to Devlin so badly. He’d even talked to him recently, and he’d seemed fine.
“Of course,” Ken agreed. “I’ll help however I can.”
“Hmph,” Azmuth replied. “I sincerely hope you can, then.”
In a flash of light, they teleported from Azmuth’s ship into New York City, about a block away from Devlin’s apartment. For early fall, the air was crisp, and Ken pulled his jacket tighter around himself, taking care not to dislodge Azmuth, who was standing on his shoulder.
“Why do you need to see Devlin so badly?” he asked.
“So, he hasn’t told you,” Azmuth realized, spurring a look of surprise from Ken. “Never mind that. You’ll see soon enough.”
Grimly, Ken nodded and started walking. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this. He’d had quite a few arguments with his brother over the years, and most of them came down to this city to begin with. When Devlin had graduated high school, he applied to college in New York, despite knowing it was exactly the city where Kevin had started out when he was a kid. And knowing Devlin’s almost masochistic love/hate relationship with his heritage, Ken had called him out on it.
“You know, believe it or not, I’m not my father,” Devlin had spat out that day, effectively ending the argument. He refused to hear anything else about college until he moved out, when Ken tried to offer to come with him. It was only then that Devlin had cooled down enough to give that a reasonable answer—that Ken needed to stay home and learn everything there was about the Omnitrix, so he’d be able to take over once their dad retired. Still, Ken was pretty sure he was the reason why Devlin stopped calling home after a while in his first year, before he eventually broke down and confronted Kevin again, deciding afterward to reopen communications to his adoptive family.
Ken was going to have to play this carefully. He didn’t like what was going on, but he didn’t want Devlin to shut them all out again, especially now, when they needed to work together the most.
“Here it is,” he said, stopping in front of the building.
The apartment building was one of those old models, not the new kind where you keyed in the passcode to get through the door and immediately stepped inside the elevator. Instead, Ken typed in the passcode for Devlin’s room to gain access, then walked through the lobby to get to the elevator. It wasn’t nearly as efficient and the lobby was completely pointless, but it made for cheaper rent and Devlin liked it well enough. The elevator, at least, was fast and modern, bringing them to his floor in the blink of an eye.
As Ken reached Devlin’s door and started to press the call button, Azmuth muttered, “So inefficient.”
“Brings down the price enough for a college student to afford,” Ken whispered, eliciting a snort of either amusement or derision. Or both—he could never tell with Azmuth. Rather than try to figure it out, Ken pressed the button and called out, “Dev? You there?”
“Just a second,” came the answer. Only a moment later, Devlin opened the door, asking, “What’s so important you had to…oh.”
The Galvan on Ken’s shoulder was impossible to ignore, especially with the way he was glaring at Devlin.
“Devlin Tennyson, we have urgent matters to discuss,” Azmuth said.
Devlin looked to Ken, who threw up his hands in surrender. “I had nothing to do with this. He hijacked me.”
Devlin sighed. “All right. Come in.”
Ken walked inside, giving the apartment a critical eye. Everything appeared normal—Devlin’s datapads for school and work were spread on the coffee table, next to a sketchbook and pencil. For a moment, Ken wondered if Devlin had been doing art therapy for depression, but a cursory glance proved there wasn’t much on the page. Instead, there was a third datapad set on the table, this one with a stylus. Azmuth made a beeline for this datapad, and now that Ken saw it, he recognized the logo on the screensaver: a red circle with a white oval stretched out from below like a shadow—a red moon with a white reflection. The logo of Albedo Labs.
“Albedo?” Ken asked in surprise as Azmuth stood on the datapad, holding the stylus. Ken looked at Devlin. “What do you need their lab for?”
Devlin wouldn’t look at him. “It’s…a special project.”
“The Zero Unit system,” Azmuth said derisively. “Just as amateurish as I thought it would be. Too much focus on aesthetics. Albedo always put flash ahead of function.”
"He was your prized pupil," Devlin deadpanned.
"Until one day he decided he didn't have to listen to a word I said anymore and set up his own company," Azmuth grumbled. "Using everything I taught him!"
"Most teachers take pride in their students when they're able to put their lessons to good use," Devlin argued.
Chapter One: “Supernova”
Of all the things that happened in Ken’s life, there was one that never made sense: the Professor.
He appeared almost randomly, briefly dropping by every few years. The first time Ken had met him, he was very young and knew that just about anybody could be one of his dad’s enemies trying to attack. But the Professor had been sure to show that he was completely harmless, and Ken had wanted to trust him. But as he got older, Ken noticed that the Professor didn’t—he was forever the same age he was when he appeared that first time, no matter how many years had passed. Ken eventually put together that he was a time-traveler, and the Professor smiled and praised him for being clever enough at such a young age to figure it out. And with knowledge like that, Ken realized he could trust him—after all, if the Professor was a time-traveler and he hadn’t done anything to harm them yet, chances were that he never would.
Still, any one of his visits made Ken intensely fearful about the immediate future. Because every time the Professor appeared, some big upheaval happened in Ken’s life soon after.
It started with his parents’ divorce. Ken had noticed the arguing, even though his parents did everything they could to try to keep him from hearing them. He was too young to know what it really meant, but the Professor had given him as gentle a warning as he possibly could, offering sympathy. It was less than a month later when Ben and Kai filed for divorce.
Then a few years later, the Professor dropped by two weeks early to wish Ken a happy tenth birthday. That birthday resulted in him getting an Omnitrix and Kevin Levin breaking out of the Null Void, rescued by his son, Devlin. Kevin then betrayed him, but Ken had at least befriended Devlin, and his family adopted him.
And so it went, throughout the rest of his life, up until his twentieth year. As the tenth anniversary of the day that changed everything approached, he anxiously waited to see if that harbinger of change would appear again, but he hadn’t, much to Ken’s relief. His birthday passed without incident. The anniversary of his brother’s adoption, not so much. Charmcaster attacked, draining the life force out of Ben. With Ken taking charge of things at home, Devlin traveled to another timeline, retrieving the counterspell from younger and more innocent versions of Ben, Gwendolyn, and even Kevin. The counterspell worked, and they managed to save their father’s life, but Ben was forced to retire. The attack had made it impossible for him to carry on the way he had before. The responsibility fell on Ken, and to a lesser extent, on Devlin, to protect the Earth from anyone who threatened it. It had made for an eventful three months, with plenty of new and old enemies appearing to challenge the two young men, now heroes on their own.
And now the Professor showed up?
Ken felt his stomach drop as the world seemed to stop around him. The Professor saw him, smiled, and made his way over in the blink of an eye.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he said, closing his pocketwatch with a click. “Right on schedule.”
“Professor?” Ken gaped. “What are you doing here? What’s going to happen?”
The Professor grinned. “Now, Ken, you know I can’t give you any spoilers. I was just in the neighborhood of this particular timeline and thought I would drop by.”
Ken sighed and looked at him seriously. “With you, it’s never ‘just drop by.’”
Now, the Professor looked a little more distant. “Very true. I keep forgetting just how intuitive you Tennysons are. In any case, I can’t stay long—there’s work that needs to be done just another timeline over.”
Ken frowned. “What kind of work?”
“Never you mind about that now,” the Professor admonished, looking at his watch again. “It’s hardly the time for that.” He then looked up and smiled once more. “Oh, and do ask your brother about the Map of Infinity.”
“The what?” Ken repeated. But it was too late. There was a flash of blue light, and the Professor was gone.
Gradually, the world began to intrude on Ken’s thoughts again. The city and its noise and people crowded all around him, making it impossible for him to wonder about the strangeness of the Professor’s comment. For him, it was oddly specific. Every piece of wisdom he’d given Ken throughout the years had been impossible to decipher, until now. What was this Map of Infinity?
The next thing Ken knew, white lights surrounded him. Before he could do anything, he was teleported away, finding himself on an unfamiliar ship. Immediately, he readied himself for a fight, keeping his hands close in case he needed to go to the Omnitrix.
“Ken Tennyson!”
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Ken slid out of his fighting stance, but he knew better than to relax completely as Azmuth, creator of both of the Omnitrixes, came before him.
“Azmuth,” Ken greeted, on uneasy ground. While his father had a fairly good relationship with the Galvan scientist, the same couldn’t be said for Ken and Devlin. In the few times they’d met him, they’d both come out of there feeling like he found them lacking. “Did something happen?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Azmuth scolded. “Where’s that brother of yours?”
Ken blinked, caught entirely off-guard. Azmuth was looking for Devlin? “What, you can’t find him? What happened?”
“He’s been avoiding me for this past week is what happened,” Azmuth grumbled. “He completely refuses to answer my calls, and he’s set up an anti-teleportation field in his apartment. I need you to get me in there to talk to him.”
Now, Ken was really worried. It wasn’t that this wasn’t Devlin’s normal behavior; this, unfortunately, was very normal when it came to his depressive moods. And as far as he knew, nothing had happened in the last week that could have gotten to Devlin so badly. He’d even talked to him recently, and he’d seemed fine.
“Of course,” Ken agreed. “I’ll help however I can.”
“Hmph,” Azmuth replied. “I sincerely hope you can, then.”
In a flash of light, they teleported from Azmuth’s ship into New York City, about a block away from Devlin’s apartment. For early fall, the air was crisp, and Ken pulled his jacket tighter around himself, taking care not to dislodge Azmuth, who was standing on his shoulder.
“Why do you need to see Devlin so badly?” he asked.
“So, he hasn’t told you,” Azmuth realized, spurring a look of surprise from Ken. “Never mind that. You’ll see soon enough.”
Grimly, Ken nodded and started walking. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this. He’d had quite a few arguments with his brother over the years, and most of them came down to this city to begin with. When Devlin had graduated high school, he applied to college in New York, despite knowing it was exactly the city where Kevin had started out when he was a kid. And knowing Devlin’s almost masochistic love/hate relationship with his heritage, Ken had called him out on it.
“You know, believe it or not, I’m not my father,” Devlin had spat out that day, effectively ending the argument. He refused to hear anything else about college until he moved out, when Ken tried to offer to come with him. It was only then that Devlin had cooled down enough to give that a reasonable answer—that Ken needed to stay home and learn everything there was about the Omnitrix, so he’d be able to take over once their dad retired. Still, Ken was pretty sure he was the reason why Devlin stopped calling home after a while in his first year, before he eventually broke down and confronted Kevin again, deciding afterward to reopen communications to his adoptive family.
Ken was going to have to play this carefully. He didn’t like what was going on, but he didn’t want Devlin to shut them all out again, especially now, when they needed to work together the most.
“Here it is,” he said, stopping in front of the building.
The apartment building was one of those old models, not the new kind where you keyed in the passcode to get through the door and immediately stepped inside the elevator. Instead, Ken typed in the passcode for Devlin’s room to gain access, then walked through the lobby to get to the elevator. It wasn’t nearly as efficient and the lobby was completely pointless, but it made for cheaper rent and Devlin liked it well enough. The elevator, at least, was fast and modern, bringing them to his floor in the blink of an eye.
As Ken reached Devlin’s door and started to press the call button, Azmuth muttered, “So inefficient.”
“Brings down the price enough for a college student to afford,” Ken whispered, eliciting a snort of either amusement or derision. Or both—he could never tell with Azmuth. Rather than try to figure it out, Ken pressed the button and called out, “Dev? You there?”
“Just a second,” came the answer. Only a moment later, Devlin opened the door, asking, “What’s so important you had to…oh.”
The Galvan on Ken’s shoulder was impossible to ignore, especially with the way he was glaring at Devlin.
“Devlin Tennyson, we have urgent matters to discuss,” Azmuth said.
Devlin looked to Ken, who threw up his hands in surrender. “I had nothing to do with this. He hijacked me.”
Devlin sighed. “All right. Come in.”
Ken walked inside, giving the apartment a critical eye. Everything appeared normal—Devlin’s datapads for school and work were spread on the coffee table, next to a sketchbook and pencil. For a moment, Ken wondered if Devlin had been doing art therapy for depression, but a cursory glance proved there wasn’t much on the page. Instead, there was a third datapad set on the table, this one with a stylus. Azmuth made a beeline for this datapad, and now that Ken saw it, he recognized the logo on the screensaver: a red circle with a white oval stretched out from below like a shadow—a red moon with a white reflection. The logo of Albedo Labs.
“Albedo?” Ken asked in surprise as Azmuth stood on the datapad, holding the stylus. Ken looked at Devlin. “What do you need their lab for?”
Devlin wouldn’t look at him. “It’s…a special project.”
“The Zero Unit system,” Azmuth said derisively. “Just as amateurish as I thought it would be. Too much focus on aesthetics. Albedo always put flash ahead of function.”
"He was your prized pupil," Devlin deadpanned.
"Until one day he decided he didn't have to listen to a word I said anymore and set up his own company," Azmuth grumbled. "Using everything I taught him!"
"Most teachers take pride in their students when they're able to put their lessons to good use," Devlin argued.