"The Professor wants me to help separate you two, right?" Thea asked again.
"Yes, exactly right." Stein practically wanted to chant her praises.
Thea ignored Stein's desperate expression and sent out a thread of mental power to scan them.
After examining them for two minutes and combining it with her existing scientific knowledge, she sighed. "Professor, due to the nuclear reaction, your molecular structures have completely fused together. This is your area of expertise in nuclear physics—you should know that even if you separate, you won't be normal humans anymore. Your immune systems and hematopoietic functions will both be severely compromised."
Stein looked dejected. "I know we've missed the optimal treatment window. But at the time, our two consciousnesses were tangled together in confusion. We only gradually regained clear awareness recently."
Thea also began thinking hard. In the original timeline, Reverse-Flash had played the good Samaritan, using black technology from his suit to decompose the nuclear energy that formed the basis of their fusion. Did she have anything like that?
Off the top of her head, she didn't have anything quite right. She had a few tech products that were close, but they'd need major modifications. Technology was a bit troublesome, but she had magic! Like separating Miss Abby and Dr. Holland, she could split different souls apart, then find a corpse and perform soul transference—problem solved!
Unfortunately, she was a hero of justice and couldn't do that. The chubby old professor was too rigid to agree anyway. Basically, methods involving soul transference, cloning, and other morally questionable options were all off the table.
Thea could only think of alternatives. Separation from the original body was the only route.
"Professor, do you believe in magic?"
The chubby old professor didn't believe one bit, but lacking better options, as long as it could separate them, never mind magic—he'd try witchcraft or alchemy too.
Nodding reluctantly, Thea snapped her fingers. "That makes it easier. I'll suppress your body, then use illusion to simulate the explosion that day. Your body will think it's experiencing another fission, and you'll separate again."
"Hypnosis, mobilizing my own subconscious...?" Stein went on using scientific methods to forcibly explain Thea's treatment approach, leaving Thea quite helpless.
Believing he understood the treatment steps, Professor Stein breathed a sigh of relief. He'd thought blood sacrifice totems and such would be involved. Thea's treatment method didn't deviate too far from his understanding.
"Will my body... explode from the stimulation?" Stein worried about triggering a nuclear explosion. This location was Star City, with a population comparable to Gotham and Metropolis.
"Don't worry about that. Caitlin, show the Professor." Thea gestured to Caitlin, who began emitting cold air from her palms. The room's temperature visibly started dropping.
"Energy absorption?" Having dealt with various energies his entire life, Stein quickly analyzed that Caitlin's ability wasn't superficial freezing but heat absorption—the polar opposite of his nuclear energy.
He glanced at Caitlin with some surprise and finally relaxed. His self-destruction wasn't instantaneous—the chain reaction needed time. As long as that initial bit of explosive energy was absorbed, it couldn't detonate.
Thea didn't relax her vigilance either. This was Star City, after all. She set up several more barriers—some trigger-based, some energy-absorbing.
"Professor, I'm starting. What you need to do is remember in your mind that you're two separate people."
Stein pressed his lips together, calmed his emotions slightly, and signaled Thea to begin.
"Hmm?" Before he could see what happened, he found himself outdoors. Dark night, pouring rain, a crowd surging around him. This scene was vivid in his memory—this was the timepoint of the particle accelerator explosion.
Citizens around him were all running out. People shouted various things, but only he stood frozen in place.
The particle explosion didn't retreat because people were fleeing. It arrived as scheduled.
A golden beam of energy struck Professor Stein directly, and within that energy was Ronnie Raymond's soul.
Their memories merged together again through the nuclear reaction and the dark matter produced in the explosion.
However, they firmly remembered their mission. Outside, Thea also used mental power to suggest they weren't the same person. This technique was far below Martian Manhunter's level, but she could handle simple operations.
"Not one person!" Two different lives became entangled. Thea's suggestion formed like a membrane creating a barrier between them, while their willpower also began to play a role.
"I'm not him."
"He's not me!"
Both simultaneously rejected each other on the conscious level. Their bodies, which had been trending toward fusion, were deliberately guided apart.
The external manifestation was an energy fluctuation that exploded violently. After the bright light disappeared, two slightly charred people lay on the ground on either side.
"My floor..." Felicity looked at the blackened floor with some heartache. Thea could only laugh awkwardly. She'd only focused on protecting their bodies and hadn't noticed the energy under their feet. Even though no fission actually occurred and it was just a trace of leakage from the initial reaction, it still burned a huge hole in Felicity's villa.
"Miss Smoak, I'll compensate!" The chubby old man Martin Stein shakily stood up. Seeing himself returned to normal, his joy was evident. As a major figure in international physics, he could afford to pay for a floor.
On the other side, Ronnie Raymond also slowly stood up, holding Caitlin's hand, momentarily unsure what to say. Things had changed; people had changed. On the surface, neither had changed, but in essence, they were no longer the couple about to enter marriage.
Thea examined them both again. "Professor, Ronnie, your situation is really very... peculiar. I don't know much about nuclear physics, but both your bodies are weaker than normal people now. After all, you split from one strong individual. And also..."
Seeing both their faces looking grim, she still had to say what needed saying. "Actually, during that day's particle accelerator explosion, from a physiological standpoint, your lives had already ended. It was the subsequent nuclear energy that reconstructed new bodies."
"Nuclear energy is the foundation of your life. This is something that can never be rewritten. You must periodically..."
Thea was still considering her word choice when the chubby old professor urgently interrupted her. "I can figure out a solution! Thank you for your help. I'm leaving first!"
The old professor huffily pulled open the door and left. What nonsense! How could a human body be composed of nuclear energy? The old professor absolutely refused to believe he'd become a freak. Even if he had become what Thea described, he felt confident his knowledge could solve the problem.
It was just nuclear energy, wasn't it? The old man had been researching it for over fifty years and had won every award available in the field. He was confident he could solve any nuclear physics problem.