Turns out when you spend enough money, cleaning a place up is a breeze. I started with 100 million or so. Now I was down to half. Hiring the firm, purchasing the property, getting a crew together, and finally purchasing supplies, machinery, and other necessities.

Worth it.

The guys I hired were all old hands at restoration and cleanup. They got to cleaning out the first building, getting it spic and span in three days. Once they finished up with it, I carted in my supplies and got Sam and his team, a group of machinists, welders, and other mechanically inclined types, to get to work.

------

“Now, this room is off-limits after this,” I told Sam, leading him into a large area in the back of the Main Lab area.

There were four buildings. The north building, the smallest one, would become my main laboratory, as well as my living quarters, with an IKEA sofa bed to sleep on.

The east building would become the main floor for the robotics building, with clean-up crews working on it now before the assembly lines would be added in with armatures and other goodies to set up later.

The south building would be for weapons manufacturing. Mostly focusing on small arms for now. It was taking time to get the permits for that together, so it would remain a bit empty until ASW (Addams, Slant, and Waldorf) could dig through that mess.

Finally, the west building was for computer parts and software. That one was very important, as most of my early money would come from the stuff that would be created there. Even after, so much of the systems that would be used for my robots and weapons would be created there as well. Which meant it had to be the cleanest and most specialized of the buildings.

Outside the west building was a massive round track that had once been used to test the cars the automobile factory would make. I’d use it as well, for much the same reason, but also to test weapons.

The room I led Sam into was in the north building, at the back of the building. We entered it and almost bumped into E-Boy.

“Oh, hey bud. You okay?”

“Scrunch, scrunch,” the tiny silver bot was carrying a large crate. As in, almost a full ton of material.

“Damn that thing is strong,” Sam said idly.

“I made him to be. Okay, what I need is for you to take these panels,” I walked over to a large pile in the center of the room, stacked higher than me in a circle around a smaller area. “And set them up along the walls of the main lab. These are sound-absorbing. Very rudimentary, sadly, and only enough to cover the main lab, but easy to install. The last thing I want is people outside getting bothered by all the noise. It’ll be impossible for us to take care of every building right now, but the less we make, the better.

Sam nodded seriously. “You got it, boss. Anything else?”

“Yes. As I said. After this, no one is allowed to enter this room. I’ll be working here on new ideas and products, so I need absolute privacy. Good?”

“Good. I’ll get the boys on this.”

“Heh. Yeah, get the Boys on it,” I chuckled at that. He gave me a look, then shrugged, walking out of the room.

I smiled, looking over at the large pile of panels. They’d taken hours to make. It was primarily me just mixing chemicals outside, cooling them, cooking them, then remixing them over and over, then pouring them into a mold I’d made with two by fours. Making enough for the main lab had taken up all of my time.

But now I had soundproof… and x-ray proof panels, lined with zinc specifically for Homelander. Not perfect. They wouldn’t absorb all sound, and I was sure it wasn’t perfect on the ‘x-ray proof’ side of things if a non-Homelander supe tried to look inside, since I didn’t have everything I needed for that, but it was still a hell of an addition.

I needed to plan. And I needed privacy for that. So making sure that Homelander couldn’t listen in on me ahead of time was just smart.

On the list of things that could kill me out of nowhere, Homelander was top of the list. Then Congresswoman Neuman, the exploder of heads, followed by Butcher. The list included others, Stormfront, Black Noir, so on and so forth, but it wasn’t worth going through the entire list.

Yes, Butcher. The man was a lunatic. And if he decided killing me got him something, he’d find some way to get to me. It didn’t matter that he was a normal human with only basic technology on his side. He’d find a way.

With that dark thought, I moved over to my computer in the corner and sat down, grinning.

Week one done. My buildings were getting cleaned out, my tech would be getting made by assembly soon. By the end of week two, I’d have enough for my biggest project.

I activated my computer, watching as the screen came to life and the camera of my computer saw my face, unlocking itself.

Three blueprints were displayed there. Internal engines, databanks, false musculature, metallic skeleton.

I needed allies. Ones that I could actually trust completely. But I couldn’t go out and just tell the future members of the Boys to join me. That was a dumb idea.

So instead I’d make them myself. Well. Two allies. The last one was more like a… suit, that I would change into.

I scrolled past a female form and a shorter male one to get to the last. A man, with an overweight and thick build, and a long mustache.

Eggman was going to have his day.

------

The next week was more work, more designing, more building.

I put together the basic blueprint for my new RAM and graphics card design, tested them out on motherboards, put together the assembly line, cleaned rooms, made machines to make the various sensitive parts, hired workers and so much more.

Then, it was time to put the word out. Yeah, I know. Only two weeks to get to selling something like that?

But to Eggman’s mind, the tech I made was trash. And therefore, easy to design and produce. ASW gave me a list of contacts to sell them to, but I knew who would really want them.

I sent them to gamers, streamers, tech reviewers. People who would install the tech into their own computers, and find what I already knew. That my tech was not just the best on the market, but the best by a WIDE margin.

Then they’d see the price. Only a bit over half what even a mid-tier RAM or graphics card was.

And finally, I slapped some LED’s on that. People love LED’s.

There was a very nice boom of conversation when people realized just what I’d sent them. Then, what I was selling them. Orders poured in on my website, ivotech.com. I poured that money into more and more RAM and graphics cards.

Eggman’s tech really was impossible. Technically, the tech I was selling shouldn’t have worked on just any old computer. Something should have gone wrong, the tech was so much more powerful. Imagine taking parts from a modern gaming PC and trying to shove them into the first IBM computers. They just wouldn’t be compatible in any way!

But Eggman didn’t care. He saw the tech, and then he saw ways to bend it to his will.

There was something so satisfying about seeing those numbers rise on my board. I barely had enough supply to make up for the demand. We weren’t household names yet of course. But the west building was busy, and getting more advanced the more time went by.

And as demand grew I would start to expand into CPU's, hard drives, power supplies, cooling systems and finally rolling out my own line of prebuilt pc's that could outcompete anything on the market in both price and performance. This would be the bread and butter cash cow of Ivotech for the foreseeable future.

But it wasn’t my passion. My passion was robotics.

Of course, robotics isn’t just metal and wires.

It’s also bacteria.

------

In my main laboratory, I worked daily. I never saw the outside world, never left the ground of Ivo Industries, never spoke to anyone who wasn’t my lawyers or my workers. My only partner was E-Boy, and my only interest was finding out the laws of physics of the Boys-verse.

Which, you won’t be surprised to learn, were pretty flexible. They had to be, to allow for the things like flying unaided, controlling fire, etc.

I put together a short digital textbook of my knowledge, typing up everything I could. While I had Eggman’s memory, anything new I learned was on me to memorize.

It took me three days to get the main gist of that stuff. Enough to figure out what sort of limits I might hit.

Then I got to work on the next part. Making my allies.

The main lab was broken up into various rooms using steel, plastic, and fencing. One room was dedicated to my biological experiments. Starting with creating bacteria.

The idea was simple. Use E.coli bacteria genetically modified by me to create the materials I needed. It was something that in modern technology was still in testing for things like ‘self-healing’ concrete. For one example, I used a strain of bacteria with an affinity for a polymer I created that would contract and expand based on how much electricity ran through it. A different strain was made for the sensitive material I would need to create sufficient computer systems for my project. So on, and so forth.

Once I had the right range of materials with the right ‘affinity’ bacteria for each one, I ‘fed’ it to the bacteria and placed chemicals in lines along the bottoms of tubs I’d created just for the purpose.

The bacteria went along those chemicals, then died selflessly for my cause.

In a matter of time, the tubs were showing results. Soon, I had most of what I needed for my first project to be created.

I needed an ally in science, first and foremost. And this one would be simplest to make. Simply because he was the smallest.

“The last time I made a robot,” I said to E-Boy, who was watching calmly as I worked. “I was working with but a fraction of my potential genius. Not today. Today, I can unleash my true genius! ...well, 25 percent of it, at least.”

“Scrunch, scrunch.”

“That’s right, my dear boy! Soon, we will have company! MUAHAHAHAHA! YES!”

I slapped a mask onto my face and turned to face a small table. “Time for surgery.”

On the table was a skeleton. Made of a titanium alloy I’d come up with, it mimicked human skeletons in a few ways.

The work was both simple and insanely interesting. Have you ever done something and been impressed with yourself? Because I was. Not in an arrogant way, more like impressed by Eggman.

Pulling together the material I’d made into strands, I began carefully putting it across the skeleton. The work was precise and quick. Soon the metal skeleton was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of strands of green material woven together into false muscles, giving it the form of a short man with no skin. The muscles were attached to power ports lying at significant parts of the skeleton.

Once done with that labor-intensive process, I went through the muscles once more, making sure the work was done perfectly.

“Sadly,” I said to E-Boy. “I was unable to perfectly mimic my prior methods for this sort of thing. So instead, I took cues from another fictional setting. A friend of mine in my original universe was a fan of the series Battletech. And I remembered him explaining the way that series explained how their large machines and robots could move with impressive speed. Myomers. And now, my genius has turned sci-fi nonsense and the half-hearted experimentation of lesser men-”

I cut myself off. “I mean, I did it. God, I need to stop monologuing…”

With the job done, the next part was the false skin. Made of rubber composite, it would allow my creation to mimic human touch almost exactly, with later updates planned to make the results more realistic.

I had E-Boy lift the skeleton, too heavy for me to carry even with the lightweight materials it was made of, and place it inside a ‘bath’ of sorts. The bath had a chemical mixture made to stick to the Myomer. There was also more bacteria within. Once the material attached, the bacteria would dig into it, eating away at it before dying, smoothing out the false skin, and even giving it halfway decent pores and false wrinkles.

As my creation soaked, I reached in with a pair of rubber gloves into the solution and placed a wire into the base of the skull. The wire went to one of my computers. I threw off the gloves and went over to the computer.

The software I’d created was slowly uploading. The robot had solid-state drives situated across him, each protected by layers of firewalls. Over 2 petabytes of processing power.

Just enough to mimic a top-level human mind when applying programming beyond what was known here.

“Don’t let the sheer number of idiots on the internet fool you,” I told E-Boy. “Making a human mind is a fiendishly complex process. And I’m attempting to mimic the mind of a person who is intelligent enough to be of some aid to me. Trying to mimic myself is going to be beyond me for some time… Well, not that long, since I’m smart enough to figure it out, but you know-Wow, just can’t help bragging, can I?”

I pushed that aside. “Regardless. It’s easy to upload knowledge. Any half-assed twit can make a device that can hold movies, textbooks, and the knowledge of how to manipulate chaos energy. The real challenge is processing. I’m not just making an AI. I’m making one that can take a look at the same page of data as I, and come up with ideas based on that! It needs understanding, it needs the ability to make hypotheses I may not. And then, give it a personality, that little bit of flavor!”

I stepped back. “And let it simmer…”

The bath in front of me booped as an air bubble left it. E-Boy watched. I watched.

“...I’m grabbing a bite to eat, this is going to take a few hours.”

I turned and headed to my room, where a bunch of healthy snacks and unhealthy energy drinks lay in wait.

------

Hours passed. I ate. I monitored the progress of the upload. I looked over the musculature as it was covered in slowly forming skin. Then I looked over my other projects. Checked in with Sam and Simmons.

You’d think I was bored. But really, I was never ‘bored’ in the same way I once was.

For one, I had so much to do. Being a genius was intoxicating. Knowledge seemed to soak in. I was always pretty smart, but that was nothing compared to now.

And of course, Eggman’s memories didn’t just hold knowledge. They also had some cool fucking shit.

I remembered Sonic the Hedgehog in action. Knuckles the Echidna, Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, and so many more. I’d even seen Megaman at one point, the Blue Bomber himself.

Planets had fallen to ruin, vast technological empires stretched out before me, powers of the cosmos battled before my eyes.

Pretty wild shit.

So the time passed and I worked.

Eventually, in the middle of the night, I was back at the bath. My creation was finished. Its skin had come together. Its musculature was responding to the fusion core installed with him (Not the best power source, but the best I could make on short notice). And his software had been completely uploaded.

“...I’m tempted to scream ‘It’s alive’ when this finishes,” I admitted, at least to myself. Wait, had I made that joke before?

I watched as the bath began to drain. For a long moment, only the sound of swirling water filled the air.

Then, a pair of eyes snapped open. Blue eyes made of a ceramic composite with cameras within stared around- No. Enough of that. He was alive in all the ways that mattered. Can’t just keep thinking of him in terms of components.

He scrambled, eyes widening and closing quickly. He gasped, short arms scratching at the glass, then grabbed the rim of the bathtub, pulling himself up. I kneeled next to him.

“E-Boy, come help!”

The bot moved over to us, helping me pull the heavy man out of the tub. Once he was out and standing, he staggered.

“I… I don’t-”

“Don’t talk,” I said quickly. I pulled back from the Eggman. He didn’t do ‘comforting’, not usually anyway.

“Come on, over here,” I pulled him along, ignoring his nude form, and sat him down. “You okay.”

“Y-Yes,” he stared at me, blue eyes wide. He looked as though he was trying to remember something. I could almost feel him rolling through his programming, figuring things out. “You… you aren’t Robotnik.”

“And you technically aren’t Snively,” I told him, smiling as I handed him a towel. “But we take the roles we have to. Don’t we?”

That was more than just a dumb line. It was a codeword, basically telling him who I was.

He blinked at me. Then he hesitantly started wiping himself down, looking like he was still reeling. “You couldn’t have made me taller?”

“I did. By a full foot and a half. I can make you taller down the road if you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said with all the dryness of a desert. He finished drying himself up and sighed. “So. You made me. Does that make you my father?”

“Oh, no. That just feels wrong,” I scowled, shaking my head. “Consider me your boss and scientific partner from now on, okay?”

“Boss, hm. What comes with the job? Vacation days?”

“Later on, sure. Right now,” I got up and grabbed a pile of clothes off a nearby table, tossing it towards him. He caught it out of the air. “It comes with clothes, a bed, and anything you might need.”

“How generous,” he put on a pair of underwear. “And look at that, you even gave me genitals.”

Oh yeah, this really was the Boys universe if it could make a Sonic character say ‘genitals’. Next Amy Rose would be telling me to fuck off.

“I’m not cruel enough to Ken Doll you,” I sat against a desk, watching as he changed. “You know what we’re in for?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” he rolled his eyes, putting a shirt on. “Come now, man, I’m no fool. You designed me not to be. We’ll be battling superhumans and we need to create weapons to fight back.”

“For a lot of people to fight back,” I corrected him. “Ahti wants us to clean up the world. We can’t do that by ourselves. And creating an army of robots will just end in complications.”

“You’re afraid an AI may turn on you?” he asked.

“Wow, talk about a question with layers to it,” I said with a sigh. “It is a worry, yes, because I refuse to make anyone who will just follow my orders without question, but I’ll just hope that I’m making AI that are intelligent enough to realize being an evil dick like Ultron is dumb. But I’m more worried about the way people will think. An army of robots under my command? That’s not going to end in anything but an army of supes coming after me in turn.”

“True,” he put a labcoat on, then stopped on the final piece of clothing, looking over at me. “...A false beard?”

“One of my memories of you showed you with a beard. I thought the glasses might help the look.”

He hummed thoughtfully, placing the beard on, its materials attaching to his face. “Well, Mr. Julian Ivo. I can find no reason not to work with you. My only question is if you’ve built me an identity.”

“Most of one. Fellow MIT kid, bit of an alcoholic-”

“Oh, great,” he said sarcastically.

“You needed some bad history. It’s why Ahti gave me an arrest for drug use in my teen years,” I pointed out. “There’s just one thing. I wanted you to choose your own name.”

He froze. Then he pursed his lips. “Hm… I don’t want to be called ‘Snively’ to be honest. That name lacks a sense of elegance to it.”

“Agreed,” I said, though I didn’t say anything else.

He stood to his full height. Four feet tall, bald head, large nose, blue eyes, and a brown beard. He wore a suit and lab coat sized for him, as well as a pair of sturdy boots. He hummed.

“Colin Kintober,” he said at last. “That was the real name of my human self. I’ll take it for myself as well.”

“...Dude, our names are so damn pretentious,” I said with a sigh. “Julian. Colin. Remind me not to name Metal Sonic ‘Quentin’, or ‘Xerxes’.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Colin snarked. “Now. What’s next?”

“Next is simple,” I turned and began walking. “We have you and me as our science team. Now I need to make a business manager. We’re recreating Mecha Robotnik. She’ll be needed.”

“What fun,” Colin said with real relish. “And after that?”

“We meet with the United States Military. And show them a portion of our real power.”