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To The 10th: Azmuth
Title: To The 10th Power
Chapter: Azmuth
1
Character
A little-known but unsurprising fact about Azmuth is that he is the single worst judge of character in the universe.
All right, that might be an exaggeration, but it isn’t entirely unfair. The problem is that when Azmuth hires assistants, he has two criteria: one, are you brilliant, and two, can you keep a secret? He creates amazing pieces of technology and needs someone smart enough to keep up with him, but also someone who won’t give away any of his secrets.
Both of these qualities cause trouble. For one, those who are brilliant may often be arrogant or at the very least are used to more praise and pride than Azmuth is willing to give. For the second, those who know how to keep a secret well may often have a few of their own, ones that may cause him misery.
So in retrospect, it doesn’t come as a shock that one of the absolute last people he’d ever want to give the Omnitrix to—a loud, obnoxious, reckless little human who uses it as a weapon—is probably the only person who should be trusted with it. And maybe the reason Azmuth tries not to trust him so much is because he’s specifically counting on his own failures in judgment.
2
Variables
Neither would ever admit it, but Ben and Albedo were eerily similar even before Albedo’s experiment rendered himself a clone of the other. In fact, this was the whole reason Azmuth hired him.
Albedo was very much what would happen if you took the ten-year-old Ben and jacked up his IQ well beyond the genius level, even for a Galvan. His brilliance and his eagerness to experiment landed him on the Omnitrix project quickly, and he worked wonders on both the hardware and the software. When the Omnitrix was completed, the research group scattered across the galaxy, and the Omnitrix itself ended up in the hands of a loud, rude, but enthusiastic and good-hearted young boy, whom Azmuth came to trust.
It’s not fair to say that Azmuth treated Albedo and Ben differently. On the contrary, he treated them very much alike: he was stern and sarcastic by turns, he was careful with his trust and praise, and he let them try to figure out things for themselves. In fact, Azmuth came to like Ben because he reminded him of a younger, if less talented Albedo, and he hoped the boy might learn to focus his skills and become as good as Azmuth’s assistant. In a way, both young men were experiments in progress.
However, when you’re running an experiment, you have to take into account all the variables. Ben and Albedo were very much alike, but they were also very different. Ben was used to criticism—he got it all the time from his cousin, after all, and he was used to being bullied. He craved acceptance and praise, but his ego was strong enough to take the critical treatment he got from Azmuth. Albedo, on the other hand, was used to being praised—he knew he was good, and he was used to people recognizing him for it. It was a blow to his self-esteem when Azmuth would brush him aside or insist that a project was above his abilities. He failed to see the faith Azmuth had put in him simply by allowing him to work on the Omnitrix at all, because Azmuth would not trust him with its more advanced systems. And when Azmuth allowed the Omnitrix to remain in the possession of an unintelligent human child, Albedo couldn’t understand what that boy had that he didn’t.
It wasn’t until after Albedo trapped himself in a copy of Ben’s body that Azmuth realized the mistake he’d made. But he also knew it was too late to change it. Albedo would have to suffer the consequences of his actions on his own, just as Ben had to suffer the consequences of his decision to hack the Omnitrix. Azmuth could regret the way he’d treated them, but he has better things to do with his time. And in any case, Ben eventually apologized and made up for his mistakes. Azmuth is curious if Albedo will one day do the same.
3
Guilty pleasures
If you ask Azmuth why he allows Ben to keep the Omnitrix and now the Ultimatrix despite all of his criticisms of the boy as reckless and so forth, he will say that Ben has proven he is the best person to handle it. He has a good heart, and that leads him to use the device for peaceful purposes and never to instigate aggression. He is creative and innovative, constantly coming up with new ways to use it to help beings of every sort of race all over the universe. He has proven that he understands what it means to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and he takes that experience and uses it to bring peace and unity to the universe.
What he won’t say is that he simply loves seeing what names Ben is going to think of next for his alien forms. He’s especially fond of the puns.
It’s immature and completely unprofessional, which is why Azmuth thinks Ben would completely understand.
Not that he’s going to tell him that, of course. He’s still got the reputation of wise old genius to maintain.
4
Lesson for the young
On Galvan Prime, the young are taught to respect their elders, for they are the keepers of knowledge. Growing up, Azmuth wasn’t very different from many of his peers. He listened to their lectures and followed their wisdom, believing that it would lead to only good. On Galvan, it was believed that science would forge the path to a brighter future, full of peace.
Disillusionment took a lifetime, not a moment. As an apprentice, Azmuth watched his masters’ work go into weaponry used to promote war, for all they said that it was to ensure peace. As he grew older, he saw the greatest races of the universe for what they really were: corrupt, racist, and hypocritical. One day, they’d just wipe each other out, and he realized grimly that he wasn’t sure whether he dreaded or hoped for that day to come.
One last glimmer of hope remained with him, and he continued work on a project he’d begun in a much more idealistic time: the Omnitrix. What started as a way to let the races see how life was for one another became a way to preserve the DNA of every race in the galaxy, and potentially the rest of the universe. He’d had the chance to hear various legends and myths from across the galaxy, and the tale of Noah’s Ark from Earth stuck with him. If they were dumb enough to kill each other and themselves, well, maybe there’d be a chance for their descendants to try to do it the right way.
But he included a bomb that could destroy the universe, should it be allowed to charge long enough. Let that be the flood, then, should his despair be true.
Every single one of Azmuth’s students has fallen from some degree of optimism to despair, from Myaxx to Albedo to even Ben. It’s the knowledge that Azmuth regrets sharing with them.
5
Lesson for the old
On Galvan Prime, the elders are taught to inspire the young, for they will create the future. Azmuth forgets this part often.
But he’s beginning to remember. He decided to trust Max Tennyson with the Omnitrix, since he’d seen that for all he was a warrior, he was a good man who would never let the device be used for malicious purposes. And when Max asked him to trust Ben with it, Azmuth trusted his judgment, as well as what he’d seen of the boy. Hope is why he started the Ultimatrix, to improve upon the mistakes made with the Omnitrix. Though the bomb still remains, he’s entrusted the boy with the activation and deactivation codes, since he knows that Ben would only use it as a last resort.
Azmuth’s stopped hiding himself from the universe. While he still prefers that his inventions be used for the advancement of galactic society and he refuses to create weapons, he does it out of a renewing sense of optimism that the peace he’d dreamt of in his youth will come. And to his immense surprise, it’s coming, slowly but surely. A young man, destined to become a legend, ended a war that would have destroyed the galaxy and the self-destructive racism that had plagued one of the oldest and greatest races for generations. The source of creation itself was protected from a madman who sought to become a god. His current students are quiet and reverent (with the exception of that one on Earth), but eager and optimistic. Ben, of course, is the epitome of hope and determination. And even his wayward apprentice, Albedo, refuses to give up—even though Azmuth wishes he’d just admit his mistakes already.
This is possibly the greatest generation the galaxy has produced, and he knows he must do all he can to help them avoid the mistakes of his generation.
6
Noah
Azmuth has studied the legends and mythologies of various planets throughout the galaxy, but none have fascinated him so much as the stories from Earth. In his younger years, he was intrigued by the Terran religions favoring the concept of protective, loving gods, especially in their most recent centuries. Many other planets worship their gods because of their power, hoping it will be bestowed on the followers, or at the very least, not turned against them.
The stories of the Great Flood were especially resonant, especially in his more cynical years, and Noah’s Ark was his favorite. But even at his most nihilistic, he never forgot how the wrathful god who’d flooded the Earth had that last hope to start anew and chose someone to save the world. Because of that, he went through so much trouble trying to get the Omnitrix down perfectly. And from the start, he thinks he always knew that it would have to be someone from Earth to bear it. Because only a race who were optimistic enough to never stop believing that their gods would protect them—rather than empower or ignore them—could be trusted to carry the hope of the entire galaxy with them.
7
Confusion
He’s really not sure what to do about Eunice.
Things were so much easier before Ben came around and outright beat him out of his self-imposed exile. People were not to be trusted. Technology was to be used for peaceful purposes only, with safeguards to ensure they weren’t used as weapons of war. Children were loud, messy, annoying, and altogether unwanted especially around sensitive machines. And machines were machines—no matter how advanced the artificial intelligence, it was still a computer, not a living being.
Of course, leave it to Ben to throw yet another wrench into the works and turn the Unitrix into a living, breathing, feeling avatar.
Oh, sure, they’ve explained that it was actually Gwen’s DNA that created the avatar, but who was the one who had the most influence on her? Certainly not Gwen, or Eunice’s personality would be a lot more agreeable when he’s in a bad mood, rather than teasing him for being a cranky old man.
She does her work well, though. Her natural empathy with all living beings makes it even easier to catalogue new species in Primus. And her love of flowers has led to a botany side-project on another artificial planet.
But then she’ll disobey orders. Or she’ll ask Ben for a Father’s Day card from Earth and give it to Azmuth as a joke. Or any number of things that are just so annoyingly Ben-like that Azmuth has to fight not to sarcastically ask her why he doesn’t just have Ben as his assistant then because he just knows they would.
Even worse, there are apparently some teenage girl things that come and go, making her mood fluctuate and making it utterly impossible to be around her.
It’s something he shouldn’t have to put up with. Something that wouldn’t have happened had a certain someone not decided to interfere in things he shouldn’t have (though, as a certain timewalker cheerfully likes to point out, that interference would never have happened had Azmuth called Ben first). And it’s not exactly like he can just let her fend for herself—she’s so cheerfully naïve that she’ll be easy prey, let alone the trouble if someone discovers just what she is.
Primus is really the only place he can put her. A kind of exile, where she can do some good (and he grudgingly admits, more good than just putting the Unitrix into storage). At least until he can figure out what else to do about her.
Or about the several calls she’s made “just to talk.”
8
Sacrifices
It gets worse with all the other strays he keeps having to take off of Ben’s hands. He’s a very busy researcher—he doesn’t have time to be babysitting all the misfits of the universe that Ben Tennyson manages to create and attract.
But the Ultimates were Albedo’s mistake. And Albedo was Azmuth’s. So that makes them his responsibility.
It gives him hope that Ben was willing to sacrifice himself so they could live. Trade one life force for six. An unequal exchange, but the emotions behind it were more than enough to balance the equation.
Still, though, he lets them think that it was Ben all along. Particularly Humongousaur. He doesn’t let on that it was Albedo who first used the Ultimate transformation, that the beginnings of awareness Ultimate Humongousaur felt at his creation were in response to him and not Ben.
Because he knows that Albedo is unlikely to have been able to make that sacrifice.
And the consequences if the Ultimates found out—Azmuth wouldn’t be able to sacrifice that either.
9
The edge of yesterday
One day, between the destruction of the Incursian homeworld and St. George’s defeat of Dagon, Azmuth discovered time travel.
It was simple, really. So simple he wondered why he’d never discovered it before. It was twice as easy as cleaving dimensions.
His plan was simpler. Return to the past. Stop himself from creating the sword. Apologize to Zenith, keep her from leaving.
Paradox arrived, presumably to stop his insane plan. But the timewalker only watched as Azmuth destroyed his machine—the only time he’d ever willingly destroyed something he’d created.
Because he knew it would never work.
Sure, he’d be able to get it to send him back in time, and maybe he’d be able to stop his past self. But it went against everything Zenith tried to tell him, and she’d only leave him, again, and it would be unbearable to take a second time.
It’s probably why he and Paradox are still on speaking terms, that the timewalker didn’t interfere and the love-maddened scientist didn’t activate his machine. That it was broken willingly, left to shatter alongside the pieces of his unwillingly broken heart (which is ridiculous, of course. Emotions are a product of the brain, not the central muscle of the circulatory system. Paradox tells him to stop being so literal).
But sometimes, even the greatest genius in three galaxies has to admit that there are things he can’t do.
And maybe, he has to tell himself, it’s for the best.
10
A place to belong
One day it’s going to hit him. Or maybe it already has. Azmuth is the one everyone turns to when they have nowhere else to go. The refugees, the misfits, and the exiles of the universe—they all come to him, and somehow, they find a place where they belong.
He snorts derisively and grumbles about Ben turning his lab and Primus into an orphanage or asylum, but the truth is that Ben looks up to him the same way. He regards his opinion even higher than his grandfather’s sometimes. So it couldn’t be all his fault.
Azmuth isn’t what anyone would call a “people person.” He’s a hermit—or he was until that particular boy broke down his front door and practically dragged him back into the galactic spotlight. He’s impersonal, even though he remembers all of his assistants’ names and exactly what they’re good at and what their limitations are. He doesn’t care about people, even though he always comes to Ben’s rescue when he knows he’s needed and he took in all of those outcast creatures with nowhere else to go.
He’s the only family that some of them have, the only one they can trust. And it’s not Ben’s fault he’s this way.
Not anymore.
He is never going to be able to hide himself away in a secluded arm of the galaxy, unconcerned with the rest of the universe. Because he’s concerned enough to take its orphans. He’ll never be able to reduce the world to hard scientific fact and statistic because impossible beings call his world home. And he won’t be able to hold a grudge ever again because there is a teenage boy on Earth who still doesn’t feel that he’s apologized, no matter how much Azmuth’s already seen he’s worth forgiving.
And Azmuth is responsible enough (some would say egotistical enough) to admit his own culpability in this. Maybe other people were the catalyst for this change, but Azmuth is the one who decided he would let himself change. Nobody other than he suggested that he take in all of these outcasts and aid those who failed him, and it’s something he can’t turn back from.
Because they’re his home too, now, and maybe he too finally found a place to belong.
Apologies for this taking so long; I've been caught up in a number of things.
Chapter: Azmuth
Character
A little-known but unsurprising fact about Azmuth is that he is the single worst judge of character in the universe.
All right, that might be an exaggeration, but it isn’t entirely unfair. The problem is that when Azmuth hires assistants, he has two criteria: one, are you brilliant, and two, can you keep a secret? He creates amazing pieces of technology and needs someone smart enough to keep up with him, but also someone who won’t give away any of his secrets.
Both of these qualities cause trouble. For one, those who are brilliant may often be arrogant or at the very least are used to more praise and pride than Azmuth is willing to give. For the second, those who know how to keep a secret well may often have a few of their own, ones that may cause him misery.
So in retrospect, it doesn’t come as a shock that one of the absolute last people he’d ever want to give the Omnitrix to—a loud, obnoxious, reckless little human who uses it as a weapon—is probably the only person who should be trusted with it. And maybe the reason Azmuth tries not to trust him so much is because he’s specifically counting on his own failures in judgment.
Variables
Neither would ever admit it, but Ben and Albedo were eerily similar even before Albedo’s experiment rendered himself a clone of the other. In fact, this was the whole reason Azmuth hired him.
Albedo was very much what would happen if you took the ten-year-old Ben and jacked up his IQ well beyond the genius level, even for a Galvan. His brilliance and his eagerness to experiment landed him on the Omnitrix project quickly, and he worked wonders on both the hardware and the software. When the Omnitrix was completed, the research group scattered across the galaxy, and the Omnitrix itself ended up in the hands of a loud, rude, but enthusiastic and good-hearted young boy, whom Azmuth came to trust.
It’s not fair to say that Azmuth treated Albedo and Ben differently. On the contrary, he treated them very much alike: he was stern and sarcastic by turns, he was careful with his trust and praise, and he let them try to figure out things for themselves. In fact, Azmuth came to like Ben because he reminded him of a younger, if less talented Albedo, and he hoped the boy might learn to focus his skills and become as good as Azmuth’s assistant. In a way, both young men were experiments in progress.
However, when you’re running an experiment, you have to take into account all the variables. Ben and Albedo were very much alike, but they were also very different. Ben was used to criticism—he got it all the time from his cousin, after all, and he was used to being bullied. He craved acceptance and praise, but his ego was strong enough to take the critical treatment he got from Azmuth. Albedo, on the other hand, was used to being praised—he knew he was good, and he was used to people recognizing him for it. It was a blow to his self-esteem when Azmuth would brush him aside or insist that a project was above his abilities. He failed to see the faith Azmuth had put in him simply by allowing him to work on the Omnitrix at all, because Azmuth would not trust him with its more advanced systems. And when Azmuth allowed the Omnitrix to remain in the possession of an unintelligent human child, Albedo couldn’t understand what that boy had that he didn’t.
It wasn’t until after Albedo trapped himself in a copy of Ben’s body that Azmuth realized the mistake he’d made. But he also knew it was too late to change it. Albedo would have to suffer the consequences of his actions on his own, just as Ben had to suffer the consequences of his decision to hack the Omnitrix. Azmuth could regret the way he’d treated them, but he has better things to do with his time. And in any case, Ben eventually apologized and made up for his mistakes. Azmuth is curious if Albedo will one day do the same.
Guilty pleasures
If you ask Azmuth why he allows Ben to keep the Omnitrix and now the Ultimatrix despite all of his criticisms of the boy as reckless and so forth, he will say that Ben has proven he is the best person to handle it. He has a good heart, and that leads him to use the device for peaceful purposes and never to instigate aggression. He is creative and innovative, constantly coming up with new ways to use it to help beings of every sort of race all over the universe. He has proven that he understands what it means to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and he takes that experience and uses it to bring peace and unity to the universe.
What he won’t say is that he simply loves seeing what names Ben is going to think of next for his alien forms. He’s especially fond of the puns.
It’s immature and completely unprofessional, which is why Azmuth thinks Ben would completely understand.
Not that he’s going to tell him that, of course. He’s still got the reputation of wise old genius to maintain.
Lesson for the young
On Galvan Prime, the young are taught to respect their elders, for they are the keepers of knowledge. Growing up, Azmuth wasn’t very different from many of his peers. He listened to their lectures and followed their wisdom, believing that it would lead to only good. On Galvan, it was believed that science would forge the path to a brighter future, full of peace.
Disillusionment took a lifetime, not a moment. As an apprentice, Azmuth watched his masters’ work go into weaponry used to promote war, for all they said that it was to ensure peace. As he grew older, he saw the greatest races of the universe for what they really were: corrupt, racist, and hypocritical. One day, they’d just wipe each other out, and he realized grimly that he wasn’t sure whether he dreaded or hoped for that day to come.
One last glimmer of hope remained with him, and he continued work on a project he’d begun in a much more idealistic time: the Omnitrix. What started as a way to let the races see how life was for one another became a way to preserve the DNA of every race in the galaxy, and potentially the rest of the universe. He’d had the chance to hear various legends and myths from across the galaxy, and the tale of Noah’s Ark from Earth stuck with him. If they were dumb enough to kill each other and themselves, well, maybe there’d be a chance for their descendants to try to do it the right way.
But he included a bomb that could destroy the universe, should it be allowed to charge long enough. Let that be the flood, then, should his despair be true.
Every single one of Azmuth’s students has fallen from some degree of optimism to despair, from Myaxx to Albedo to even Ben. It’s the knowledge that Azmuth regrets sharing with them.
Lesson for the old
On Galvan Prime, the elders are taught to inspire the young, for they will create the future. Azmuth forgets this part often.
But he’s beginning to remember. He decided to trust Max Tennyson with the Omnitrix, since he’d seen that for all he was a warrior, he was a good man who would never let the device be used for malicious purposes. And when Max asked him to trust Ben with it, Azmuth trusted his judgment, as well as what he’d seen of the boy. Hope is why he started the Ultimatrix, to improve upon the mistakes made with the Omnitrix. Though the bomb still remains, he’s entrusted the boy with the activation and deactivation codes, since he knows that Ben would only use it as a last resort.
Azmuth’s stopped hiding himself from the universe. While he still prefers that his inventions be used for the advancement of galactic society and he refuses to create weapons, he does it out of a renewing sense of optimism that the peace he’d dreamt of in his youth will come. And to his immense surprise, it’s coming, slowly but surely. A young man, destined to become a legend, ended a war that would have destroyed the galaxy and the self-destructive racism that had plagued one of the oldest and greatest races for generations. The source of creation itself was protected from a madman who sought to become a god. His current students are quiet and reverent (with the exception of that one on Earth), but eager and optimistic. Ben, of course, is the epitome of hope and determination. And even his wayward apprentice, Albedo, refuses to give up—even though Azmuth wishes he’d just admit his mistakes already.
This is possibly the greatest generation the galaxy has produced, and he knows he must do all he can to help them avoid the mistakes of his generation.
Noah
Azmuth has studied the legends and mythologies of various planets throughout the galaxy, but none have fascinated him so much as the stories from Earth. In his younger years, he was intrigued by the Terran religions favoring the concept of protective, loving gods, especially in their most recent centuries. Many other planets worship their gods because of their power, hoping it will be bestowed on the followers, or at the very least, not turned against them.
The stories of the Great Flood were especially resonant, especially in his more cynical years, and Noah’s Ark was his favorite. But even at his most nihilistic, he never forgot how the wrathful god who’d flooded the Earth had that last hope to start anew and chose someone to save the world. Because of that, he went through so much trouble trying to get the Omnitrix down perfectly. And from the start, he thinks he always knew that it would have to be someone from Earth to bear it. Because only a race who were optimistic enough to never stop believing that their gods would protect them—rather than empower or ignore them—could be trusted to carry the hope of the entire galaxy with them.
Confusion
He’s really not sure what to do about Eunice.
Things were so much easier before Ben came around and outright beat him out of his self-imposed exile. People were not to be trusted. Technology was to be used for peaceful purposes only, with safeguards to ensure they weren’t used as weapons of war. Children were loud, messy, annoying, and altogether unwanted especially around sensitive machines. And machines were machines—no matter how advanced the artificial intelligence, it was still a computer, not a living being.
Of course, leave it to Ben to throw yet another wrench into the works and turn the Unitrix into a living, breathing, feeling avatar.
Oh, sure, they’ve explained that it was actually Gwen’s DNA that created the avatar, but who was the one who had the most influence on her? Certainly not Gwen, or Eunice’s personality would be a lot more agreeable when he’s in a bad mood, rather than teasing him for being a cranky old man.
She does her work well, though. Her natural empathy with all living beings makes it even easier to catalogue new species in Primus. And her love of flowers has led to a botany side-project on another artificial planet.
But then she’ll disobey orders. Or she’ll ask Ben for a Father’s Day card from Earth and give it to Azmuth as a joke. Or any number of things that are just so annoyingly Ben-like that Azmuth has to fight not to sarcastically ask her why he doesn’t just have Ben as his assistant then because he just knows they would.
Even worse, there are apparently some teenage girl things that come and go, making her mood fluctuate and making it utterly impossible to be around her.
It’s something he shouldn’t have to put up with. Something that wouldn’t have happened had a certain someone not decided to interfere in things he shouldn’t have (though, as a certain timewalker cheerfully likes to point out, that interference would never have happened had Azmuth called Ben first). And it’s not exactly like he can just let her fend for herself—she’s so cheerfully naïve that she’ll be easy prey, let alone the trouble if someone discovers just what she is.
Primus is really the only place he can put her. A kind of exile, where she can do some good (and he grudgingly admits, more good than just putting the Unitrix into storage). At least until he can figure out what else to do about her.
Or about the several calls she’s made “just to talk.”
Sacrifices
It gets worse with all the other strays he keeps having to take off of Ben’s hands. He’s a very busy researcher—he doesn’t have time to be babysitting all the misfits of the universe that Ben Tennyson manages to create and attract.
But the Ultimates were Albedo’s mistake. And Albedo was Azmuth’s. So that makes them his responsibility.
It gives him hope that Ben was willing to sacrifice himself so they could live. Trade one life force for six. An unequal exchange, but the emotions behind it were more than enough to balance the equation.
Still, though, he lets them think that it was Ben all along. Particularly Humongousaur. He doesn’t let on that it was Albedo who first used the Ultimate transformation, that the beginnings of awareness Ultimate Humongousaur felt at his creation were in response to him and not Ben.
Because he knows that Albedo is unlikely to have been able to make that sacrifice.
And the consequences if the Ultimates found out—Azmuth wouldn’t be able to sacrifice that either.
The edge of yesterday
One day, between the destruction of the Incursian homeworld and St. George’s defeat of Dagon, Azmuth discovered time travel.
It was simple, really. So simple he wondered why he’d never discovered it before. It was twice as easy as cleaving dimensions.
His plan was simpler. Return to the past. Stop himself from creating the sword. Apologize to Zenith, keep her from leaving.
Paradox arrived, presumably to stop his insane plan. But the timewalker only watched as Azmuth destroyed his machine—the only time he’d ever willingly destroyed something he’d created.
Because he knew it would never work.
Sure, he’d be able to get it to send him back in time, and maybe he’d be able to stop his past self. But it went against everything Zenith tried to tell him, and she’d only leave him, again, and it would be unbearable to take a second time.
It’s probably why he and Paradox are still on speaking terms, that the timewalker didn’t interfere and the love-maddened scientist didn’t activate his machine. That it was broken willingly, left to shatter alongside the pieces of his unwillingly broken heart (which is ridiculous, of course. Emotions are a product of the brain, not the central muscle of the circulatory system. Paradox tells him to stop being so literal).
But sometimes, even the greatest genius in three galaxies has to admit that there are things he can’t do.
And maybe, he has to tell himself, it’s for the best.
A place to belong
One day it’s going to hit him. Or maybe it already has. Azmuth is the one everyone turns to when they have nowhere else to go. The refugees, the misfits, and the exiles of the universe—they all come to him, and somehow, they find a place where they belong.
He snorts derisively and grumbles about Ben turning his lab and Primus into an orphanage or asylum, but the truth is that Ben looks up to him the same way. He regards his opinion even higher than his grandfather’s sometimes. So it couldn’t be all his fault.
Azmuth isn’t what anyone would call a “people person.” He’s a hermit—or he was until that particular boy broke down his front door and practically dragged him back into the galactic spotlight. He’s impersonal, even though he remembers all of his assistants’ names and exactly what they’re good at and what their limitations are. He doesn’t care about people, even though he always comes to Ben’s rescue when he knows he’s needed and he took in all of those outcast creatures with nowhere else to go.
He’s the only family that some of them have, the only one they can trust. And it’s not Ben’s fault he’s this way.
Not anymore.
He is never going to be able to hide himself away in a secluded arm of the galaxy, unconcerned with the rest of the universe. Because he’s concerned enough to take its orphans. He’ll never be able to reduce the world to hard scientific fact and statistic because impossible beings call his world home. And he won’t be able to hold a grudge ever again because there is a teenage boy on Earth who still doesn’t feel that he’s apologized, no matter how much Azmuth’s already seen he’s worth forgiving.
And Azmuth is responsible enough (some would say egotistical enough) to admit his own culpability in this. Maybe other people were the catalyst for this change, but Azmuth is the one who decided he would let himself change. Nobody other than he suggested that he take in all of these outcasts and aid those who failed him, and it’s something he can’t turn back from.
Because they’re his home too, now, and maybe he too finally found a place to belong.
Apologies for this taking so long; I've been caught up in a number of things.