Chapter 4-||

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Tentacles are an interesting experience. Not Adam's particular fetish, but he knew of whole crowds who would worship this girl.

His body was swung against the other wall again.

Not that he would introduce her to them, poor girl was innocent like a nun at church. Would probably be one of those blushing girls, too stunned to say anything when in a crowd.

The grip on his lower left leg managed to really smack him into the floor. Good swing.

Not that nuns were that innocent. Idealistically they should be, but the few Adam knew about seemed to be attempting to fit into a stereotype instead of following a specific faith or ideal. Sexy nuns were a Halloween classic for a reason.

'Recovery' healed his spine again. That was a good twist really. She could probably open pickle jars first try.

At some point he realized he was upside down and looking into a... well, a fairly adorable face. Well, normally... she was currently sobbing and had that 'eww' crying face some girls got. "Ah, you would be Sveta then?"

These walls were SOLID. He could actually feel his skull crackling with that last swing. Well, they would have to be well built if they took THIS sort of damage all the time. Oh, that last swing shattered the bones in his left arm.

There was no point in trying to talk right now, seeing his blood was making Sveta a bit hysterical. Better to give her some time to cool down.

The floor was metal, and red. Well... no, it was supposed to be normal metal colors, but blood gets everywhere.

Another swing, a separate tentacle latched over his armor trying to pull off his other leg.

It was very convenient to have no furniture in this room. It wouldn't last long anyway, but splinters or whatever would have made this experience far less enjoyable. Not that this was enjoyable... probably. Was he becoming a masochist? Would it matter? 'Recovery' would handle any issues. And Narwhal in a leather or latex Dominatrix outfit would be pretty hot.

Still, he had something of a schedule to keep, and it didn't FEEL like the girl was calming down.

"Sleep."

As her body collapsed to the bottom of her... stripper pole? Who the hell thought this was appropriate?

Anyway, it gave him time to stand up, stretch, and look at his clothes as they shifted into flames and back. At least he didn't get stains or rips. The things he brought in were scattered everywhere, and honestly he didn't want to deal with them at this time.

Walking over to his new patient, whom looked like a bush that wriggled, he gently began feeling into the pile for her face.

This was surprisingly embarrassing. What if he touched something inappropriate? Would he even know? Did this count as cheating? He himself almost turned into an eyeball bush once, maybe their subconscious was related or something. Like mind siblings.

Eventually his hand found her head. He didn't NEED to use the brain really, but it seemed to both feel more comfortable when healing and reduce strain when working with powers... so why not?

Oh. Gross.

Her brain was... well, there were too many. It looked like her power was granting abilities from a previously dominated and harvested alien species (Honestly the tentacle thing was a huge clue), and the 'brain' used to give her full control of her powers had somehow DIRECTLY connected to the limbs.

And by default, all powers were encouraged to cause conflict. Without her mind being involved, attacking everything made the most sense to these crystal brain duplicates.

Removing the power would probably be easier, but if it was only so much damaged in the first place...

Shred half the connection organs, optimize the remaining ones, destroy the remote inward connection, that thing was all twisted up anyway. A few more fixes, crank her body up to 'Enhanced' healing 'Recovery' setting. Now, drop it down to 'Peak' so that anything non-human would get stripped out safely. He would have to remember this combination, it would make cleansing victim's bodies of debris and bullets easy.

Adam blinked.

Apparently, her body STRONGLY desired to be human. No further encouragement needed on HIS end.

So now that her brain was in control, her tentacles had quickly merged into a green woman.

An elf like woman, with firm... assets. And a bum you could bounce quarters off of.

Her hair was now passively curling around his hand. Not enough to hurt even a standard human, but he couldn't pull back due to how strongly it was able to resist motion.

And... great.

Trying to tug away his hand made her nude, shapely body fall onto him.

Thankfully her head was barely ABOVE his waist, but this was still an awkward position.

Adam realized that he should have covered the girl with the prepared blanket he brought AFTER putting her to sleep but BEFORE healing her. Stupid thing was useless over there in the corner.

Not that he could move now, her arms were like steel and wrapped around his waist. Apparently when she was younger she was a cuddler.

From Dragon's triumphant but smug grin, Adam now realized two things.

One, this cyborg was happy that the girl was probably going to be alright. His power suggested so, anyway.

Two, that she was recording this. Probably blackmail.

Meh, things could be worse.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Narwhal gaped at the green elf goddess that just fell all over HER boyfriend.

And oggled.

And... uh.

She hummed, making the scene play in a loop to the side as she went back to work.

Hopefully all future arguments with Adam in the future would involve sexy accidents.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Stupid. Use 'Sleep' on contact FIRST, at least on everyone with auto-attack tendencies.

Adam sighed, his skin regrowing. At least the acid couldn't dissolve his clothing. Not that he had much left. Next patient.

This trip... this trip had been amazing so far. VERY valuable.

Sveta's power had helped Squishy understand secondary mind creation and control, allowing a snapshot of Adam's brain to exist in memory thanks to 'Technomancy' yet still control Kaa and other flame constructs.

Creating anything new or modifying anything still required 'Fire Manipulation', but now he could control existing tentacles and mechanical limbs in his suit regardless of which power was active.

It also helped that his various transportation options would work as expected even if he needed to use another ability or take a nap. He didn't throw out the ANIs (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) yet, because having a cyber brain that could drive a car or control a mechanical snake could be useful at some point.

Still, it was only the first improvement of his abilities.

Each new power scanned not only added refinements to his powers, but the various methods he had to use to get these people humanoid really improved the 'Recovery' shard's ability to change him with 'Enhanced' mode.

Before, his best options were simple mechanical enhancements or layers of armor under the skin, now he had truly inhuman options for his power to choose from. That one guy who was randomly turning into liquid for example had opened the option for non-solid forms, either fully or partially.

Oh, he remembered this place vaguely mentioned in the Worm story line, but other than Sveta and a few others like Burnscar, the size of the facility and range of powers included had been very brief and glossed over.

He ignored Narwhal's wolf whistle.

His girlfriend had shown up, probably to scold him for the 'not covering a girl before healing her' thing, but his ears were spared due to how much his clothing had been damaged. Sidetracked her whole argument.

Still, THIS was getting a bit drafty. And he noticed that the number of female 'assistants' had been going up as his clothing got more and more damaged. And that more than a couple of the previous patients had been very appreciative of the 'eye candy'.

One would think that the giant, mostly nude, saucy girlfriend hologram would be a good deterrent to all the unneeded (but not unappreciated) attention.

However, as each man/woman was being healed into a 'Peak' state... well, they all tended to look like sex symbols. Or models.

So... yeah. Narwhal was treating this whole thing as amazing entertainment, Dragon was mortified, the patients were so happy and proud to have human bodies that many of them were eager to show everything off... it was a test of restraint for Adam in general.

He wasn't someone to take advantage of a girl after recovering from such dark histories as many of these patients have, and him working on their memories alone would disqualify him from starting a relationship even if he WASN'T already taken... but it was a very attractive work environment, so to speak.

The memory thing got easier the longer they continued as well. Man after man, woman after woman, and Non-gender into the gender of choice, he would then hack, splice, and replace memories constantly.

It was needed. Some of these victims had nothing but years of trauma to sleep with, and the ability to rip all that fear, pain, and anguish out and replace it with boring summaries... well, the therapist on staff Jessica Yamada had been impressed.

And still angry, though less so now that he had proven that he hadn't been lying to Sveta or the other occupants of the facility.

The new bodies had been improving as well as he progressed. With more examples and samples of how power grafting could go WRONG, Squishy was able to reduce the odd features the final body would have for each new patient.

The acid dude for example, was not only humanoid but also was no longer translucent. Seeing his bones and organs and stuff had to have been disturbing to the poor guy, although not being a puddle probably impressed him more. That girl who had wooden limbs now just had leaves for hair and a wooden skin color, she even regained the ability to feel surfaces and temperatures.

The harder ones were the people who's power had shoved them into a dimensional pocket and replaced them with a puppet. The powers where all organs and such were one material mostly worked this way, and his ability compromised by increasing the rate of data being transmitted and fixing some sense connections that were damaged.

Adam wondered if Weld existed yet. The man was made only of metal, so he was probably in a similar situation as these dimensionally displaced Parahumans. In fact, maybe this was how Dragon could exist even after 'inhabiting' other hardware. Not like the stuff he made had any restrictions on it. Alexandria, the superman variant, probably worked like this? Maybe?

Anyway, the clothes thing was Dragon's hint, via email. It was Flame Metal, so of course he could prevent damage or repair his rapidly dwindling clothing... but a happy girlfriend was a happy day. And on some level, it was flattering to have this type of attention.

After all, his body was a sculpted creation. Muscles and Steel and Sex Appeal, as it were.

Getting to show off wasn't that terrible.

He frowned before stepping into the next chamber for healing. Maybe Narwhal's exhibitionist streak was more infectious than he realized.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Another day, another power charge. This one filled up Squishy's last reserve tentacle.

Four charges wasn't much of a cushion, but at least his powers were more stable after having cannibalized each other.

The 'Technomancy' ability was getting a bit overpowered though. 'Recovery' and 'Research' were each individually beginning to overlap with it, and 'Conversion' was almost blending into 'Squishy' at this point... she was swishing that wand with her fifth limb randomly almost all the time.

It was something around four in the morning right now, and the last patient that was here had been modified by him to some extent. Not everyone COULD be made humanoid, but at least the final forms had been somewhat flattering and symmetrical, and the place had devolved into something like a permanent fiesta party.

He was in a corner, and Dragon had stayed with him as company after Narwhal had to go to sleep earlier and prepare for the massive paperwork that Variance had caused.

Again.

Most of these patients now had much more stable abilities. Of course, fifty three people had lost all powers (Due to choice mostly, although a few had them removed as the powers were dangerous to themselves and others even after being 'repaired'), and of those that were 'fixed', over half were interested in joining up with The Guild or the PRT.

So... paperwork.

He glanced internally at Squishy. The biggest payoff was here, in his power. Each new scan had helped Squishy gain the references and examples needed to try and repair his original ability to change reality clusters.

And as each ability was scanned, it lowered the cost it took to gain Realm Travel.

It was now finally time to use up these four charges.

Adam Burns pulled at the power charges, a ball of rotating energy in his mind twisting as he began to give it form, to create a new power set that...

Squishy was poking him. What the heck!?

Oh.

So... don't create 'Space'? Why not?

Well, that would suck. If he couldn't control the time vector, leaving could take several seconds or dozens years. Still, what about using 'Space Time'?

Huh. Too narrow.

Well, what then?

With a sigh, Adam tried power creation again.

"Transfer."

In his mind, a circle of burning blue flame flashed into existence, followed by another... four... a dozen... thousands.

Each one showing sky, land, oceans, space... and more and more expanding.

The stars in his mind, the stardust, was rapidly replaced by the circle and oval holes in reality that were vanishing into the distance.

Uh. Vanishing really, really far into the distance.

...And now they were dots.

...Specks.

Gone.

What the hell Squishy?

Adam felt the now six limbed jellyfish shrug.

Eventually, 'Transfer' would not only allow dimensional transfer, but portals, teleportation, pocket dimensions, energy transportation, low level matter conveyance, as well as a list of personal protections related to either space, time, existence, or momentum.

But for now... well, the power set 'Transfer' allowed him to know that, within a certain range, something moved.

Either through space, time, existence in general, or relative to something else.

He groaned. He basically had a power now that you could ask any question you wanted to and it would respond 'Yes'.

Wonderful. Reminded him how useless 'Search' was originally.

So no traveling to another realm today. Visiting the Gray Boy victims would have to happen first, although that had been on his list of things to do before leaving anyway.

Adam watched Squishy boinging along, only her wand left as she spun her tinkertech Beanie hat. It would be best to wait five days so she had a full backup set of charges before enhancing this new ability.

Especially cause the Realm Transferring power that Squishy was trying to recover was originally used by the being who became his powers, and were designed to take the victim to 'interesting' points of space and time in new realities.

Even though Squishy insisted that the 'bad' settings in that reality hopping skill were disabled, she approved him having some charges ready to go before jumping over.

Not that he could if he wanted to. He needed more power scans to lower the cost of finishing his power to something manageable. Even after all the improvements, he would currently have to invest thousands of charges if he didn't get more relevant ability examples.

And making his own dimensional travel ability was unpopular with Squishy. She wasn't quite talking yet, but he got images of people trying to do it in the past and the horrible consequences.

Losing the home reality, spending a literal lifetime going over lifeless planets in search of ANYTHING, landing in worlds with angry deities, landing in space, landing half in one world and half in another, the list of horrors go on endlessly.

So Squishy was really pushing the 'Use the power made by an all powerful entity' rather than the 'cobble stuff together and see if it works' approach.

Her argument was hard to put into words (Then again, she couldn't say any), but the basic idea was 'The asshole made sure the transfer ability worked... mostly because killing people was boring, finding nothing was boring, and being stuck 3000 years in the past or future of that world was also boring'.

Basically, this power was safe and useful because it was required to get each victim in place for the unsafe and useless stuff.

Which was... great.

With a groan, Adam let Dragon force him to mingle a bit with the doctors and nurses throwing this sub-party.

At least she wasn't making him talk to the patients. The tears, worship, and sometimes rage that he hadn't helped sooner was very mentally stressing.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The airship Dragon used to fly Adam home was surprisingly quiet, though at this hour he would have slept happily on anything horizontal with few bumps.

These new ships were being produced in mass quantities now, as thanks to Adams advancements in Tinkertech Dragon now had a series of devices designed to create the two binary fluids needed for Flame Metal and Null Metal construction.

If anyone asked, Variance would claim it was to make sure Dragon could continue developing and maintaining his devices and designs far into the future. If anyone cared about the truth, taking time out of his day to fill those large liquid vats with the two fluids was annoying and time intensive.

It had turned out well, honestly. Dragon was an actual Tinker, or able to fake one, and even with Adams skills in design and advanced ability to hack or program she left him in the dust. The new liquid creation tools were smaller than his design, produced at a rate over a thousand times faster, and needed less hardware from his power replicated in the real world to ensure working even if he wandered to other realities for a few years.

The enhancements to the Garden systems were so advanced that they were slated for a much later version. No reason for other Heroes (Or more importantly, Villains) to get access to the best toys just yet.

So while Dragon kept enhancing his personal designs (Which had the Golden Garden in his simulation reaching ever new heights), he was free to slack off.

Not that he was great at that. Each time he gained free time, SOMETHING interesting would suck him back in.

At this point, while his body shut down, he was in a virtual lab in his simulation, examining the various powers he had scanned and the enhancements to his own power that Squishy had already been working on.

Now, after working on so many Parahumans, he could make some general theories about Shard design and function.

First, 'Organic Computer' was almost the literal definition for those crystal messes. Just like the connection in people's brain, the power shards themselves were... massive, messy, redundant, and unplanned.

Who knew how many worlds were consumed before they advanced enough to actually give useful abilities. As it was, the power he was researching the most (Amy's 'Shaper' shard) was barely even mapped.

The thing was literally covering an earth sized planet, at least one chunk he had found so far (After all, dimensional connections was the bread and butter of these giant gestalt beings), and it had dug in deep as well as sprouting towers of crystal everywhere.

Mass wise, he had only covered a few cities worth of space in depth. Oh, he could do a quick surface level analysis, which is how he determined roughly which areas gave Panacea her various abilities... but even her powers were taking up a tiny fraction of the area he connected to.

When a Shard 'Budded' a power to children of Parahumans, it didn't really create a new planet with crystal on it for him or her, it just allocated a dimensional location nearby.

His wider, more in depth analysis of Amy's power had already stumbled upon the structures belonging to her villainous father, the bone manipulator Marquis.

But back to the point, these power shards were clearly created without an overall design plan. His completed research so far had managed to reduce the non-Parahuman parts used by his Tinkertech in size by over 400% already, the massive structures under Variance Villa already rebuilt dozens of times as he slowly unraveled the mess.

This section of crystal only worked when THAT section of crystal was broken, this area gave errors and bad information that was required to ensure ANOTHER area was unable to function, which would have disabled a much LARGER area. This chunk of material had to be exposed to air or that chunk would get too warm and cause another to get too cold which would slow all data transfer within a 3.55 meter radius.

So... yeah, if someone could map this entire planet, understand it COMPLETELY... it could probably be improved, more stable, and reduced in size by an stupid amount. Not car size, but maybe only the size of Texas instead of sprawling over a whole bloody planet.

Half the damn thing studied so far did nothing. But he could not TRUST that result, because several times the parts that did nothing did so in such a way that a LARGER part was able to do something.

Thus study continued.

His power set 'Recovery' was eating this up. Previously, his ability to heal himself was amazing, but operating on others required some ham-handed methods. Now, having done such research and gained a much larger database of example Parahumans, Tinkertech, and regular humans... his power was rapidly approaching Amy's in versatility and power.

And that was not counting the actual data stored in the crystal that Amy's power used to tell her what changes to expect when creating. THAT stream of information was connected to Golden Garden in his simulation and being indexed, encrypted, and compressed before being stored in his soul memory for further research later.

He wasn't planning on using it directly of course. That junk was made by a giant dimensional space whale, parts of which could make plans spanning decades with accuracy... any information would be used as a reference at best. Better to only use stuff he understood himself, even if it slowed progress substantially as the powers themselves rarely bothered to understand the 'how did I do that' as much as the 'did I solve the heat death of the universe yet?'

It... was not an efficient or scientific method of creation. But on the other hand, the creature was near immortal, almost all powerful, and could leave any universe that was having stability issues. They had time to burn, and this method would probably work... eventually.

Sum up point one: Powers were a set of rules that randomly built up a selection of amazing abilities.

This made point number two important: There were a series of structures that have been refined longest, parts the dimensional entity distributed to all shards as a standard development base from which to build from.

The parts for detecting sophonts, or intelligent life. Structures for converting a selection of sophonts into possible dimensional hosts. Pieces that acted as general databases, storing existing information and using that for future predictions and as references to research the past. Channels that allowed communication, guardians used for defense or attack on lower levels of fighting, and more.

If compared to computers, these beings had something like a standard library set. It was how new powers knew how to request data exchanges, structure duplication, more or less resources, and so forth.

He focused the most on these standardized parts, which was already giving him amazing benefits. With large chunks of the crystal made from those parts, understanding them reduced much of the difficulty in understanding the rest... the actual power itself.

It was how he finished 'fixing' all those powers in such a short time, as he could ignore 80-90% of the patient's shard and work on understanding the other bits.

But... this also exposed the actual problem these 'artificial' power users had.

Their power, in every case, worked fine... their local brain connection was horrible.

In a couple of cases, one brain had two or even three dimensional addresses being used simultaneously, which was all sorts of messy.

Adam wasn't comfortable enough to give such brain structures to a normal civilian... brain surgery was always scary. But the amazing amount of data he had collected allowed him to easily connect a Parahuman who had not 'triggered' yet, and even change which address their power worked with.

He couldn't change a power without somehow consuming the planet sized shard himself and rebuilding it, requiring a massive amount of time and research... but he could fake such 'modification' pretty well by controlling how the Parahuman connected to it in their brain.

Not from a distance though. Thankfully, 'Recovery' would make him damn near impossible to kill even without using the overkill 'Enhanced' mode. Still... a long range method of using 'Recovery' to disable powers would handle any issues in this reality below Endbringers and Scion.

Theoretically. His power was soul based, so instant death SHOULD only be annoying as long as his soul stuck around for a bit. The biomass stored in his soul would easily rebuild a whole body, as long as Squishy stayed focused. Not going to test any of that though. Scary.

The jerk of landing at the Villa forced him to focus on the 'here and now' rather than laze around. Finally, he could get into a real bed and get some sleep.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The shirtless man covered in muscles and arrogance was overlooking a map of his city. "And this 'Variance' is buying even more properties?"

Oni Lee was silent as always, standing guard in the corner. The mentally damaged teleporter was having more issues with general conversation, but loyalty was more important than communication to Lung.

The lower ranked ABB minion gulped. Lung was nerve straining to work with at the best of times. "Yes sir. Nothing in the accepted gang territories, although those four are close. He has established some of them as safe houses, marked these eight as emergency clinics, and registered the others as orphanages. A number of Merchant clients and homeless have ended up taking advantage of the options."

Lung grunted, his metal mask glinting in the light. "Trash can do as trash wants." He designated a few, so far undeveloped, locations. "What do the reports say from the locals?"

The smaller man paged through his folder. "Actions so far appear to be an attempt at neutrality. No positive or negative bias for Asians, although there is a standard 'No Conflict' policy at each location that was constructed so far. We do have a couple of Nazis who tried to get them to kick out the non-whites once, but the guards shut that down."

Lung sighed. He hated having to dip this deep in the grunt work, he had less important people to handle these affairs, but a new player however small had to be handled appropriately. He moved more pages as he skimmed the information. "How did these Dockworker guards get such advanced armor?"

Weapons were easy to explain and procure here, practically given away. This new armor however ignored fists, clubs, knives, and bullets. Clearly high quality and likely expensive, how someone could construct so many units for so many guards without going through standard purchasing methods was shocking.

Lung, like all the other gangs, had long since had moles and spies keeping track of ammunition, weapons, drugs, and other items that came and went in this city. It was unlikely that Dragon could have done this either, as Lung knew a man who owed a favor that would have tipped him off if The Guild began shipping mass quantities of armor from outside the city's jurisdiction.

Which suggested that the new facilities created by Variance was creating this stuff in HIS town.

A growl rumbled as he listened to the excuses. "Whatever, how is this affecting business?"

The small minion shuddered and continued. "With much fewer homeless, our teams were unable to easily meet quota for new 'attendants'." Forced sex workers. Profitable, if not ethical. "Also, police response times across the board have massively increased recently, our men claimed it was a new web service provided by Variance. We had two teams actually get taken down during an standard series of abductions."

He glared. "We got them out." It was not a question.

A nod. "Our insider, Derek, managed to handle an 'accident' that got them out even before processing. It has led to him being officially reprimanded though. Suspended for a week."

Lung grinned. "Reward him. Acting so fast at least covered the incompetence of the teams." His eyes glinted. "As for the others..."

The minion carefully showed no expression. "Of course, they are being reprimanded and undergoing training again sir."

Lung nodded, then looked back at the map. "I appreciate this 'Variance' staying out of our territory and have no issue with what facilities he has already created... but this is clearly an expansion of his influence."

Hard or soft tactics? He had used both in the past, although hard tactics were much more... memorable. And enjoyable.

Some part of his soul still raged from the way Variance had shown on the city 'stage'. Building his house had been a spectacle worthy of anyone.

Pillars of fire that reached the sky, explosions that Lung had heard from HERE, and the rapid 'hearts and minds' campaign that followed seemed to be planting the seed for a potentially massive territory.

And under that anger... was anticipation. Finding powerful people and showing them how far below the god Lung they really were... it was a fine wine. And every hero and villain knew the might of Lung, especially here in his city.

Almost everyone.

Then again, the stolen personnel file said the only fight this child had been in was against some Tractor guy. Not exactly a worthy conflict to brag about.

He waved a hand. "For now, we watch. But begin buildup. If Variance is fool enough and steps over my line, I will crush him and those who cower beneath his protection. We have more important things to worry about."

Those damn Nazis had been testing his patience recently, and he had no time to worry about some worm of an opponent.

No worm could withstand a Dragon, after all.