Reincarnated as The Greatest Scientist in Another World

The harsh midday sun knifed through gaps in Ain's shabby bamboo walls, painting stripes of gold across swirling dust. Zuko sat slouched in a corner of the cramped hut, his once-regal cloak now a ragged smear of dirt and frayed edges.

"What is this supposed to be?" Zuko muttered under his breath, eyeing the cracked wooden plate by his boot. "Even the palace hounds eat better scraps than this."

Ain, cross-legged not far away, didn't flinch. He held Zuko's gaze in silence, his jaw tight. In the corner, Ain's mother sat hunched on a thin mat, her gnarled hands gripping her threadbare cloth — bracing for every word that might pass between them.

Zuko's eyes drifted, landing on something half-hidden under a torn cloth — an old, battered notebook. He leaned forward, plucked it free, and flipped through brittle pages. Lines of cramped writing, strange symbols, sketches of pipes and coiled wires, half-born ideas and stubborn theories.

"What's this?" Zuko murmured, a sly grin twitching at his lips. "A Null who writes? Since when did rats like you scribble secrets?"

Ain's shoulders stiffened. In a heartbeat, he lunged forward, slapped the notebook from Zuko's hands. The pages fanned across his chest as he caught it, hugging it tight.

"Don't touch that," Ain said, voice low, edged with steel.

Zuko only laughed — a dry rasp that didn't reach his eyes. He tossed his hands up in mock surrender. "Easy. I'm not here to steal whatever brilliant trick you're hiding. Just curious if you really believe you can do anything with it."

Ain's fingers dug into the cracked leather cover, eyes locked on Zuko's with that same cold defiance that had burned in him since he first watched moldy bread hit the mud.

"I don't need you to understand," Ain said evenly. "I just need time. And a single crack in the wall."

Zuko leaned back against the hut's splintered wall, boot nudging the empty plate aside. He chuckled, rough and bitter. "Time? Time's the only thing Null don't have. The nobles won't wait while you scratch symbols in the dirt. They'll snuff you out the moment they smell smoke."

Ain didn't answer. He flipped the notebook open again, his thumb resting on a page scrawled with a crude diagram — a tiny generator, half notes, half dream. Lines trailed off into jagged sketches of circuits and turbines, a blueprint drawn in hunger.

At last, Ain's mother found her voice — dry, shaking. "What are you two planning? You'll kill the king? Burn the walls? You'll drag my boy to die in your foolishness?"

"No, Mother," Ain said softly but without flinching.

Zuko dipped his head, a half-mocking bow that still carried a spark of respect. "Mother, all I want is for the Null to live like people — not pigs. If that means burning the walls, then let them burn."

He stood, brushing the dust from his ragged cloak. Sunlight poured through the patched roof, catching on his dark eyes — too young for so much contempt, yet old enough for danger.

"I'll prove it to you, Ain," he said. "You've got the mind. I've got the tongue. I can bluff my way through guards, bastards, even the king's lapdog mages. You build the bones — I'll make sure they don't break."

Ain rose too, clutching the notebook to his chest like a heartbeat that couldn't be silenced. "You want to be my ally?" he asked, voice flat.

Zuko met his eyes and nodded once, a grin flickering at the edges of his bruised mouth. "Not your ally. I'm your nail in the nobles' throats. When they think they've won — I'll be the hammer that drives it deeper."

Outside, the sun still scorched the broken fences and cracked lanes. But inside that tiny hut of bamboo and dirt, a spark glowed — fed by two outcasts who had nothing left to lose and everything left to set aflame.