Acid blinked cautiously, then surveyed the soot-blackened walls of his lab, completely unaware tha this face was equally black. He shook his head to clear it, and viewed the flakes of ash drifting from his hair in surprise. Picking himself up amidst the shards of broken glass that now littered his previously-immaculate floor, Acid looked at the remains of his work with a little dismay.
"Oh, dear. Not again."
He felt his face, ensuring that this time his eyebrows had not been singed off. Electrik and Phish would never let him hear the end of it if his eyebrows had vanished again, so soon ... but he appeared to still be in possession of them. With a sigh of relief he turned back ot the scorched room. The initial blast had broken all the light fixtures and windows, and had left an Acid-shaped silhouette on the wall behind him.
Now his professional enthusiasm caught up with him. He began frantically searching for the formulae notes he had been taking. The explosion wasn't quite the results he'd been looking for, but definitely an improvement over last time. His singed whiskers twitched in reaction to that memory.
His lab notes were still relatively intact - charred on the edges, but legible, having been protected by being in the sink. If he could replicate the compound, other techs could take it further and worry about controlling it.
Clutching his precious notes to his sooty and stained lab coat, Acid hauled open the fire-proof, double reinforced metal door that protected the rest of Carrot Corp's labs from his experiments. He rushed down the gleaming white corridor towards the department director's office, leaving a trail of ash and soot behind him. The janitors silently curshed his passage.
Acid burst into the director's office, leaving a black handprint on the door. Director Daskelman, affectionately referred to as Fidget, beamed up at his grimy colleague's appearance.
"Acid! You're getting better! The aftershocks actually reached all the way to the Metallurgy department this time!"
Acid beamed back. "Wasn't it great? I'm a genius. I have the compounds right here for the techs -"
Fidget took the notes reverently. "We should have placed you in Demolitions, I just know it," he sighed. 'You'd knock their socks off, literally."
"Oh, but I'm so close to completing that fur-growth agent you wanted - I figure if I find the compound that makes it fall out, I can counter it with -"
"Yes, yes, most important. I'll just whisk these off to Demolitions, you'll have them back in no time. And then you can start trying to reproduce that chemical that causes that smoke, you know, the one that doesn't affect anything but vision. Imagine - a smokescreen that won't asphyxiate you ..." Fidget smiled dreamily into empty space.
"But the fur-growth agent ..."
Fidget started, then began fiddling with his numerous writing utensils. "Yes, but the smokescreen is more important, can't you see," and he looked imploringly at Acid, quite unconscious of his pun. "We'll give the fur-growth agent to Reimner, just his area of interest. This chemical is so elusive!"
Acid smiled happily at his fellow enthusiast, forgetting all about the fur-growth agent. Then his smile dimmed a little.
"Oh, er, Fidget? I think I'm going to need a new lab ..."