Born of History and Science

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EquinoxSol

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Nikola Tesla awoke early, as he did every morning. Sitting up, he yawned and stretched, looking over at his desk and sighing. He hadn't done last night's electricity homework. He dressed in his school uniform, a blue and gold number reminiscent of Japanese school uniforms. Buttoning the shirt up, he brushed his hair with his fingers before grabbing his bookbag.

He walked downstairs, out of the dormitory wing of the school. Since it was still early, no one was at breakfast except for the other early birds. Eventually, though, more students trickled in, but Nicky preferred the company of himself. He finished eating early, and decided that he had time to run back to his dorm room to grab a notebook he had forgotten. However, just before he entered the dormitory wing of the school, an enormous tremor threw him off of his feet.

Letting out a shout, another tremor rocked the school, and Nicky saw that the tremors were actually explosions. Fire filled the main hallway, as well as rubble from the destroyed building. A scream filled the air, from a student farther down the hall.

Nicky shakily got to his feet, seeing the student trapped under a beam, fire beginning to encompass the hallway. Without thinking, Nicky ran down the hall, ducking fire and what he could only describe as hell. Adrenaline rushing through his veins, he reached the fallen beam in record time, and reached under it, trying to lever it up. He didn't know the student under the beam, but he didn't want them to die.

Guess that electricity homework didn't matter, huh? he thought as he pushed the beam off of the student. "Get up," he said, his heart thudding in his chest. "I'm getting you out of here."
 
Tom slid out from under the beam, and only then, did he get a good look at the boy who saved him.

"Y-you!" the seventeen year old clone of Thomas Edison exclaimed.

"Of all the students in this school, it had to be this guy..."

He dusted himself off and took in the destruction of the hallway.

"I can almost guarantee that this is your fault. Go on. Tell me I'm wrong."

All of his teachers told Tom that he should try to get along with the other young genius. They both had similar interests, at least. But Tom looked up to his original, and wanted to be like the great man who invented the lightbulb. That included the long-time rivalry with Tesla.
 
"You are wrong!" Nicky yelled, frowning heavily. If he had known that Tom--the most annoying, presumptuous, asshole cloned, besides John 'Fucking' Kennedy--then Nicky wouldn't have gone to the trouble to save him. "My Tesla Portablé wasn't even in use!" Before he could get into a fist-fight with Tom while the dormitory wing was burning.

Without another word, he turned and ran, ducking beneath falling beams and burning thresholds. He leapt over a fallen wall before he was finally safe, and gracefully landed by tripping over his own feet and landing on his ass. Cursing, he got to his feet and dusted himself off, scowling. A professor ran to him, undoubtedly drawn by the sound of the explosion.

"What happened?" the professor yelled, looking at the destruction. Nicky could only shake his head, not realizing that his eyebrows were singed off.

"It's not my fault!" Nicky finally yelled. He had accidentally caused a few minor fires before, but nothing on this scale.
 
"H-hey! Wait up!" Tom yelled before scrambling in the same direction as Nicky. He didn't necessarily want to follow his rival, but he wasn't terribly keen on dying either.

Edison gasped as he dodged a crumbling wall and jumped over a pile of debris. He'd scraped his arm, but that didn't matter right now. All that mattered was escape. Tom ducked as flaming debris whisked past his head, and his heart began to race as he realized just how dangerous the situation was becoming. Tom met up with Tesla again, just as the professor ran up.

"It sure as hell wasn't my fault..." He muttered.
 
"Go to the office, now, both of you," the professor said, running down the hallway to find another professor. Nicky grumbled, deciding that if he was given detention, he would flip his shit. This most certainly was not his fault, not at all.

Frowning, Nicky walked to the office, sitting down outside of it. "Fuck this shit," he grumbled, his running a hand through his hair. Parts of it, especially the tips, were singed.

"This was probably jerk-off Edison's fault."
 
"Excuse me?" Edison glared as he sat down a fair distance away from Tesla.

"I don't experiment with electricity like some people do. I come up with creative ways to use the electricity we already have. Why not mess around with weird new techniques? Oh that's right. Because they cause fires."

Tom sighed. Honestly, at this point he didn't really care whose fault it was. He just wanted to stop the school from burning down. But God forbid he let Nikola know that...
 
Nicky glared over at Tom as he insinuated that it was his fault the dormitory wing exploded. "You don't do anything," Nicky grumbled loud enough for him to hear. "Your original did. At least mine tried to change the world for the better. Besides, your original stole my original's work! He a dirty, plagiarizing thief!

Nicky knew that poking at Edison's original's character would hurt worse than any jab at his work. Edison was a prideful fool, and Nicky would be sure to make him look bad as much as he could.

A couple seconds later, men in heavy-duty body armor came through the front doors to the school, bearing what Nicky thought to be guns. They made their way to the dormitory wing, followed by what looked like tactical-grade medical personnel.

Immediately, Nicky stood up, running one of the men in body armor. "Hey! What happened? Was it Edison's fault?" The only answer he received was a firm push away from the man, landing him on his ass. Grumbling, Nicky stood, looking like he might chase after the men and try to get more answers, when more professors arrived, one being Nicky's electricity teacher. "Professor Maxwell! Can you tell me what's happened?" Nicky called, waving over at him.

The aging professor walked over to Nicky, glancing at Tom before he said, "No one's certain...Were you in the blast?" he asked, looking pointedly at Nicky's nonexistent eyebrows.

"No...but I saw it, and I had to go back and save it." Nicky glared again at Tom, daring him to try something.

Professor Maxwell nodded before he said, "Well, Nikola, until we know more, both of you stay here, alright? I'm sure more students will arrive shortly."
 
Tom glared at Nicky, unable to even come up with a response. If I remember correctly, without Edison's innovations, Tesla wouldn't have had the basis for his stupid AC current. He grumbled, rather loudly.

"Christ, I just want one day without a major disaster. Is that honestly too much to ask?"

When Edison saw the men in armor, his heart skipped a beat. Why are they here? Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. Maybe it wasn't Tesla's fault after all... He was so disturbed by the idea, he didn't even laugh when Tesla fell on his ass. He just nodded at the professor's request to stay put.

"Hey Tesla... I just thought of something." He muttered in a low voice.
 
Nicky returned to his seat when Professor Maxwell left, wishing for once that he could get a straight answer. When Edison told him that he had just thought of something, he didn't answer, and only threw him a sidelong glance, trapped in his own head some. However, as this happened, the medical staff returned from the direction the dormitory wing was, pairs of them carrying stretchers out of the school. Following them came more medical staff, but instead of carrying stretchers, they were carrying sealed opaque bags roughly the size of a person.

Nicky's breath caught in his throat. Just the sight of the body bags made him want to go and scrub himself, the germaphobe his original was coming to the surface. Shuffling around some, he looked away, resisting the urge to run for the bathroom. Glancing back at Tom, he pulled a pocket-sized container of hand sanitizer, and poured a considerable amount onto his hand, spreading it around to his fingers, wrists, and even up to his elbows. Finally feeling a bit better, he relaxed some, though still felt like he needed a long hot shower.
 
Tom choked down the impulse to tease Nicky for his apparent paranoia, because he felt that this was important. Edison had an observation, and he had to make sure that it wasn't just all in his own mind.

"You know, Tesla... As much as I am loathe to admit it..." He began, not wanting to seem paranoid. "I don't think this was an accident. I think it was an attack."

He nodded to himself, slowly developing the details mentally. "Yes, I mean, think about it. A school that holds the regenerated clones of some of history's most important people. Why wouldn't a terrorist organization attack us? Or rather, why haven't they?"
 
Nicky glanced back at Tom as he heard him speak, his brilliant blue eyes calm and calculating. He had also thought of the possibility of a terrorist attack on the school, and he knew that others had as well. In psychiatrist notes that Nicky had stolen, John Kennedy was secretly paranoid that everyone was out to get him, probably because of how his original died. He even believed the conspiracy theories, that the government had arranged his death. Of course, he couldn't tell Tom that he had stolen John's psychiatrist notes from the psychiatrists' office. That was technically illegal, and while Nicky had never heard of anyone getting expelled, but he was a clone. Nicky had figured that if the scientists wanted to, they could just make another one of him.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, he soon saw some other students arriving, from the side of the school that wasn't burning down. Ignoring Tom's statements, he waved at a pair of students, both boys. One had dark, shaggy hair and was as thin as a stick while the other had long blonde hair that fell past his shoulders. Both waved back, though both did so half-heartedly.

"Hey, Leo, Allen," Nicky said, gesturing for them to sit next to him. The clones of Leonardo da Vinci and Edgar Allen Poe sat on the side farthest from Tom, both of them sharing the same distaste that Nicky had for him. "What were you two doing out of your dorms? Normally you two stay in bed until absolutely necessary..."

Leo looked sheepish while Allen answered for him. "We were spying on the girls' swim team...they had morning practice. We were going to tell you, but...well...you know." He gave a knowing grin, brushing his dark hair from his face. Nicky gave a laugh and shook his head before he was all seriousness again.

"D'you guys know what happened?" he asked, but they both shook their heads in response.

"How many people do you think died?" Leo frowned, looking a bit frightened. "We heard the explosion, but...what happened?"

"Tommy thinks it's a terrorist attack," Nicky answered, nodding towards Tom. "But his original hypothesis was that I caused it. So, I don't trust his observation skills..."
 
Edison snorted and shook his head. "Trust me as much as you like, I don't really care what your opinions are."

The teenager's blue-green eyes scanned the room around him and fixed upon the hallway that was swiftly becoming an inferno.
"I'm more concerned about how this fire started. It just irks me that I don't have enough information."
He turned to the boys, raising an eyebrow.

"Do you know how far this fire has spread? Where were you when the fire started?"
The boys had mentioned the Olympic pool, and Edison wondered if the fire was isolated in any of the other buildings. More importantly, he wanted to know if similar fires had been started at the same time, in other places. Just one more piece to the puzzle.
 
Neither Leo nor Allen knew the answer to Tom's questions, and quickly, Nicky and his friends took to talking amongst themselves. A few hours later, the fire had been contained and the students moved to the commons area in the center of the school.

All that was left of the first class of the academy was fifteen students including Nicky, his friends, and Tom, though five of them were in the infirmary. It was a harrowing thing, to see that so many had died. Most of the girls were crying, and Nicky was mostly silent, realizing the seriousness of the situation. Just the night before, there had been over fifty clones, people that Nicky had been raised with, people Nicky had known and loved.

Eventually, some of the professors brought a small lunch for everyone, though no one was really in the mood for eating. Then, a professor Nicky didn't know stood in front of everyone, and said, "I know everyone is a bit shocked by what's happened...But the fire has been contained. We know that this was a terrorist attack, but we don't know by whom or what their motive was. Until the dormitory wing can be rebuilt, temporary sleeping quarters will be made in here. If they are out of danger, you will be able to visit your friends in the infirmary tonight. Any questions?"
 
Edison frowned and raised his hand.

"I'd like to know about the explosives used, sir." He glanced around, trying to take in every detail. "Were they used outside the school, or from inside? From one place, or many places at once? A bomb? Incendiary device?"

Tom didn't want to press, but a thought had occurred to him. If the devices used were timed bombs, they could have been set to go off at once. But if they were simple explosives going off at once, it would have meant that the terrorists had help from the inside. Or maybe all the bombs were set from outside the buildings. Tom didn't know, and he couldn't make any theories until he found out.

Edison felt a hand on his shoulder- it was his friend, Henry Ford.

"Calm down, Tom." He stated, although Edison could tell he was just as nervous. "It's better to keep a clear head about us, right?"

Tom nodded. No one could think straight under this kind of stress.
 
"We don't know as of yet, Thomas," the professor said. "In the coming days, we will have the police examine the devices used. For now, everyone needs to remain calm. Classes will start again next Monday, so that everyone will have some time to mourn. Rules are also going to become stricter, but we will be discussing those in the morning. Today, the library is open, the psychologists are all here for you, and we, your professors, are always here to help you."

Nicky raked his fingers through his hair, letting out a heavy sigh. "Want to go to the library?" he asked his friends. "At least the chairs are comfier..." He gave a half-hearted shrug, his blue eyes for once not filled with a strange, brilliant light.

Allen nodded, followed suit by Leo, who got to his feet. As they gathered their things to walk to the library, Leo mumbled, "I was working on my next Mona Lisa...now it's gone..." Nicky threw him an odd look before he started walking towards the stairs.
 
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