Chapter 4 -|

Adam watched Squishy squish around.

She had five legs, but the one holding the wand acted... busy.

In a way, he had been cheated. She could only hold four charges total (although right now, it was back up to one... so not an issue yet.)

But the power-up did have two nice, unexpected side effects.

One, he had an adorable jelly baby booping around with a techno-beanie and a sparkly conversion wand.

Two, she could handle more complicated instructions.

Not just to force him into 'Recovery' mode if mastered or unconscious, not just 'hold these power charges and boop me if I forget to use them' and so forth...

Now she could auto-allocate the overloads into a directed growth pattern.

He absently used his mind to boop her a bit again, which seemed to delight the power.

'Space'. 'Space' and 'Time'.

Needed for him to change Realms, but each requiring SO many charges to use safely.

Most of time and space is empty. Or without life. Or boring.

Thankfully, Squishy had poked him with the knowledge that originally, there was a power that he could have chosen to go from realm to realm fully, partially, etc etc.

It was too corrupt to pick back then, and had options built in to spawn the user into terrible situations, and all kinds of problems...

But the framework, the idea, could be rebuilt.

It required two things from Adam though.

First, scanning of shards related to dimensions, storage, teleportation... the more powers the better the chance Squishy could find what she needed for a breakthrough.

Second, the willingness to give up control. The destination would be somewhat arbitrary, but would always have SOMETHING interesting there. And Squishy could use that decaying framework to return him roughly when he left unless desired otherwise.

Without those two choices, the charges needed were in the millions. It may not SEEM like a complicated power, but to silently ensure that the change in gravity constant doesn't explode your spleen during transit alone required thirty different power focuses.

Apparently, for most powers his ability was hacking the Shard network and sort of... stealing ideas. Presets. Interfaces. etc.

So... it would be a good idea to stay in this Realm long enough to build up a database of power scans, and ensure future abilities would form as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Adam checked his armor and suit before heading out for the day.

That was a future problem, he had a date to set up.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The Palanquin was closed. It was noon, so why open a night club now?

Thankfully, it was also a residence for Faultline's Crew. Used the same laws and legal loopholes Adam did to have Variance Villa legal too, even if his place required far more businesses licenses and inspectors.

That had been a headache. He had wanted to put everything under one roof, and Dragon had made him split stuff up into different properties to avoid certain legal loopholes.

And reduce traffic. Having a free family dormitory with its own parking allowed his workers to stay on site all work week or longer and just walk over.

Anyway, time to make a good impression.

Adam straightened his tie, checked his cuffs, then calmly walked up and knocked on the fairly fancy entrance.

A large, mostly transparent man with shells scattered over his skin opened the door. This would be Gregor the Snail then. "Good day. My name is Variance and I am here to hopefully set up a meeting with Faultline."

The man blinked. Slowly closed the door. "Faultline, a skeleton wants to see you!" He opened the door a crack. "Just checking, ya not a zombie or demon or something?"

A skeletal grin worked better with his blue flames. "Certainly 'Or Something'. I'm mostly here to have a talk or set an appointment, depending on how busy your boss is."

When the door opened fully again, the man gestured. "This way, Mr. Variance. And not that I'm sayin nothin, but no funny business."

Adam strolled into a large space, grin growing. Oh, Narwhal would love this place. Large, open bar with seating, and not just a dance floor but a dance stage! "I bring requests and large checks, humor aside."

Were those stripper poles? Oh yes. Better add the extra high quality cameras then.

Well, she would love that too, even if it would embarrass the hell out of him.

Not that he was going to learn strip dancing.

Oh god, Narwhal was going to force him to learn how to strip dance.

A side door opened, distracting him from his personal panic and showing a stair case behind a neon-orange man with a tail... Probably Newter, the guy who could drug you with his sweat or spit or whatever.

Huh, he had always imagined Newter as a heavy-set man, but he was tall and lean. Go figure. "Hello, name is Variance. You are?"

The man paused before noticing the gloves beneath the armor, and smiled, giving a firm shake. "Call me Newter. Faultline wants to talk upstairs in the office... but do you have a rough description about what this is about?"

Adam chuckled. "I want to install custom technology to allow remote virtual reality patrons into your club. You could charge a fee like normal, but run thirty virtual clubs or more... while those who pay most will have hard-light holograms and be able to actually dance here with real people. Anything they drink will be digital, so you can charge real money for nothing and they won't get fat or drunk."

He grinned at their expressions. "Yeah, completely safe, impossible to be drugged or drunk club outings. Could make a dollar or two."

Newter came back to focus first. "Right, this is definitely above my pay grade. Follow me."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Director Piggot was LESS furious but still stressed on all levels. Thankfully this meeting was a wrap up of several open cases, so she could stop thinking about how annoying her new 'neighbor' was in the city.

She looked over at Hannah, Miss Militia leaning slightly due to how long this particular meeting had taken so far. "But we are done? You've finished interrogations?"

The patriotic woman frowned. "Yes, at least we are completely finished with all the personnel found at Coil's Lair. Those not found on base have mostly escaped the city, although notifications have been released through our partner offices."

Militia flipped back to the previous page. "The data Armsmaster pulled from the Villain's systems helped a lot when prompting information from the employees. We had to completely release most of the construction crews and over thirty of the 'security force' alone because not only were they unaware of any criminal activities, but the methods of employment Coil utilized for security also gave them a clear record as far as criminal liability was concerned."

The Director gave a nod before turning back to Armsmaster. "And what has this 'Variance' been up to recently?"

Armsmaster grunted. "Aside from the massive number of applied and approved building permits, the man has been rebuilding his home into something massive. It is turning into some hybrid of production facility, mall, hospital, and child care center."

He frowned. "Not only is it legal, it is technically still a rural residence, which limits the types of surveillance we can authorize. In fact, it hits a whole different section of legislative code than we expected. It is slowing down my efforts and analysis."

Emily Piggot sighed and looked over the ever growing file. Easily ten percent of the Docks were now car pooling to that massive house, if not more. "How are the local threats handling this?"

Armsmaster frowned. "The Empire has been quiet, as the people being employed are not from their territory. They are beginning to increase surveillance over the area, especially after Coil's take-down which surprised... well, all of us."

He looked at the list. "The Asian Bad Boys had some suspicious movement after the whole block burned down into a house, but with no external actions taken by Variance seemed to have calmed into a 'wait and see' approach. Due to the method of construction being 'Fire' we should keep an eye on a possible dominance play by Lung in the near future."

She winced. A large muscled man with a metal mask... who exploded into fire and became a huge dragon when enraged. Might fight someone because one guy burned a house into existence. Lovely.

His helmet looked up. "I mentioned previously that the new duo Uber and Leet have joined under Dragon's Banner, and have been seen taking shop there in recent days. Thankfully, Dragon seems open to communication about their terms of employment and projects being developed, even if said project schematics are being held back until legally protected. The focus, as reported before, is mostly remaining on the gaming console being developed."

His sigh was strong though. "The problem is the Merchants. Drug users that self medicate were never stable to begin with, and a lot of Dock Workers have begun moving to the new Workers Dormitories that Variance constructed two blocks away from his home. The drop in population in the poor areas of the Dock has lowered drug customers by a noticeable amount."

Piggot focused tightly. "Is it an urgent threat?"

He sighed. "I honestly can't tell if Skidmark has even noticed yet, it is mostly drug dealers making the fuss so far."

She waved at another screen. "And this drone map information provided by Dragon, has it been accurate enough for us to monitor the situation without assigning assets to such a dangerous area?"

Armsmaster nodded. "It is real time and, for our version of the map at least, will attempt to identify any parahuman who uses their power in a public area. I assume that Variance has disabled this tagging on himself and similar allies, but that is just a presumption."

She grunted. "Good enough to watch the Merchants. Better than nothing, at least. Who knows what those crazy bastards are up to."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Skidmark jerked, his absent eyes focusing on the woman mumbling at his side. "S... Squealer!"

The rag covered woman groaned and ignored him, but this was too important. "SQUEALER!"

She jerked. "WHAT!? F*$#$ my head, what!?"

Skidmark could barely restrain himself. "I... F # , My hands! Like... They sh# do so g# $ da #$ much, but like... you know? I... F! #!, those coc ## suc #$ #$ don't even know!"

Squealer was far too asleep to understand how amazing his hands were.

He should write this down.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

~~~Broken Adventure~~~An enjoyable afternoon talking with Faultline at The Palanquin was rudely interrupted by Adam's schedule.

The woman had loosened up after a half hour or so of talking shop as it were, and Dragon had shown up to not only take over the contract side of things but to illustrate the type of 'customers' that would be available at the bar.

Still, he had places to be, so he left the two women and wandered away from the building.

His pickup 'car' worked as a vehicle if needed, but he swapped powers to 'Fire Manipulation' and had Kaa drive him home.

On a side note, 'Conversion' worked REALLY well on new objects. Thanks to the various properties available to Flame Metal and the advantages of Null Metal, a one-to-one conversion of a mechanical object into a Flame Construct was pain free and simple. The outermost surfaces even had very thin layers of material heated to different densities to show the right colors, and even textures were possible thanks to so many committed power charges.

However, the finished product was just that. A conversion of the original.

No advances, no improvements. He had 'room temperature' super conductive materials, both able to transmit heat or electrical power without loss. That alone could make simple designs more efficent, more powerful, just better. Null Metal could become effectively frictionless, allowing moving parts that didn't require lubricant and didn't heat up from use.

Yet as he relaxed in the driver-less car, Kaa steering him homeish on his own... there were upsides.

As long as Adam had 'Fire Manipulation' active, Kaa was smart enough to handle driving laws and road rules. And as a flame construct, his basic programs allowed him to control the car using his Golden Garden as a mid-person if he needed a different power activated.

Not for now though, controlling the car remotely sucked. Needed lots of attention, and to be honest somehow Kaa (giant metal snake) was a better driver.

He would never confess that to others though.

Anyway, he had scheduled some devices to be built at Variance Villa, shipped, and installed to the club for later. For now, he had healing to do.

The clinic had outsiders show up from time to time, but being a 'home practice' allowed Adam far more freedom to refuse service or redirect patients. Anyone who wasn't his employee or a member of The Guild had to meet certain criteria.

It wasn't meant to be 'holier than thou' or whatever, but in practice it was used to enforce the number one rule at his home: 'Stop being an ass.'

People who complained about being healed? Warning. People who complained about EVERYTHING!? Banned.

"You can't do this!" they cried. Like they weren't assaulting people verbally for any reason under the sun. Go enjoy healing over the course of 8-12 months like normal, a standard hospital is that way.

Adam would triage the worst cases and send them off with a free ride to a normal care center. Same for any gang members, with exceptions for a few that wanted to 'defect' and join the Villa here.

Apparently having a stable job and free housing was a heck of a draw, even before they found out about the discounted food and underground facilities.

He sighed as he quickly reviewed the digital work list for this afternoon. Dragon had what little 'healing technology' she could access or buy being shipped over for his review, and hopefully enhancement... but for now he had to actually show up at his home clinic to handle the cases that the staff there couldn't cover.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Well... this was interesting.

Adam sent some mental commands, quietly locking down the healing room and alerting Dragon to the situation.

This patient, who was here due to a broken arm and some damaged muscles, was a young man who had been miss-listed. Should have been healed yesterday. The nurse on duty had already apologized for the inconvenience, which the man had laughed off as not a large issue.

Adam himself had felt a little embarrassed about the mix-up.

Except that wasn't true.

This patient was a young man... and everything else was a lie.

A Stranger. His power was at least two fold: He probably projected the idea of him being 'normal', and that what he wanted was 'previously expected'. Maybe something in there about considering him to be a good person in general, though that may just be due to how upbeat and emotionally laid back the kid was.

The injury was real, so no reason to go violent right now. Thankfully, Squishy had noticed his mind making rapid changes (Memories were being modified to 'remember' a prior, scheduled appointment), and she swapped him into 'Recovery' without asking. Fixed it right up.

So anti-master powers... maybe verified? Anti-stranger, for sure. And now that he knew the issue, he felt 'Recovery' doing something odd to his mind in response to the 'weakness'.

Felt strange as heck, but his mind was now becoming more and more 'redundant', due to him being set on 'Peak' settings instead of 'Standard'. Who knows what would have happened if he had been set to 'Enhanced'.

While offering idle chit-chat with the boy, Adam waited until everything in his brain stopped moving. Always important, let your brain stop moving before work.

A quick switch to 'Research'... yeah, he could feel the memory changes being made and then reverted. It sort of itched slightly, thankfully not enough to be an issue.

He grinned, asked permission to heal the boy (And could FEEL his power trying to convince him not to bother him with questions like 'name' and so forth since he should already 'know' them), and then... contact.

It was... interesting.

Oh, the normal power bits to connect to the shard was there, but along with some parts to connect to the 'Shard Network' to convince people with powers to back off, aka the 'Stranger' effect, there were some other tiny bits that allowed minor telepathic connections. Probably. It was doing SOMETHING in a field-like manner, anyway.

This was the part that allowed those with powers to have mental effects on people WITHOUT powers.

Harder, since Parahumans had a power backdoor for easy mind access, this brain bit was doing stuff in a bizarre fashion that Adam just KNEW 'Research' was going to rant about later.

Future headache aside, he began streaming the experience and memories to Dragon with running commentary about the abilities of this 'Stranger' power and such.

Considering how stressed the cyborg woman sounded, at least this was keeping her from tranquilizing the whole clinic. For now.

And after sending the boy off (Never did get his name, though Dragon found out through some research of her own), he and several staff had to go through Master/Stranger protocols.

Honestly, it was a hassle.

Anyway, Adam spent most of his time in the 'restraining cells' reviewing the scans taken.

Honestly, he built the whole building and could transform it into any shape he wanted, so everyone knew this was a formality. If he was compromised, it would NOT be subtle or sneaky.

Back to the power, whatever it was called. It acted like a weaker version of the 'Nice Guy' power from that one guy on Slaughterhouse 9 way back then. But while THAT ass was able to do anything up to and including rape, murder, or worse (and have all the people agree it was a shame 'Nice Guy' was exposed to such a scene), this guy's power was far more restricted.

Obviously Adam didn't want to fix or enhance the boy's power, but if it HAD been connected correctly and most efficiently it could be described as 'Retroactive Opinion'.

The primary ability was memory manipulation, with a focus on granting the user a 'history' that explained whatever he was doing in the most reasonable way possible.

So if he wanted to get a free meal, it could modify a memory implying an existing 'reservation', or convince people that he had won a contest or whatever... but only if a contest was already going on, or if there was a reservation for someone else, etc.

It couldn't create NEW memories, not really... it modified existing ones. Sure, that single appointment you remember in the past turned into TWO appointments, one that the kid had missed out on... but he couldn't make you remember a new event entirely, like a fake date or a new national holiday or whatever.

Anyway, this meant that if he wanted to have clearances or passwords, he would have to modify thousands of individual memories... all those classes, and paperwork, etc, all suddenly done by TWO people instead of one. It would take literally hours, just to convince one person... and he still would not KNOW the password, so he would have to ask the victim to 'remind' him.

No computer systems would 'remember' this, of course, as it wasn't reality manipulation. And the boy couldn't stab someone or whatever, because it would take some bizarre existing memories to make THAT 'expected' and 'normal'.

Moving on, the power had some interesting stuff for Squishy to handle.

The memory manipulation stuff enhanced 'Recovery', 'Technomancy', and 'Conversion'. They handled memory storage, conversion, and so forth, and the new data allowed Squishy to reduce the strain on Adam when working with them. The shard network stuff was just stored again. Not worth the risk messing with that, although the protocols for being 'ignored' was saved for later.

The biggest win however came to 'Research', surprisingly. It took some complicated steps to analyze memories, especially foreign memories, in a rapid and efficient manner. This power was doing it on multiple people, finding memories relevant to a specific scenario, and modifying them on the fly with correct senses and emotions.

That was impressive stuff.

He sighed as he lay on the prison bed. Hopefully he wouldn't have to go through this every time he healed or fought a Master or Stranger in the future.

His Narwhal time had already been cut since she had to get back to work and Dragon had been worried the virtual avatar would cause problems if she used it every night for extended periods of time. They would still meet up on weekends, and have their daily 'meetings', but the cuddlefest may be over... or at least reduced.

Maybe he was pushing too hard? Or being too needy? Being abandoned alone in a forest in pain had added some pressure to his drive for companionship, but he didn't want to become annoying or burdensome. He would try to let her set the pace for a while, just in case.

He sighed. Couldn't even swap to a more fun ability, protocol for him specifically forced a stay in 'Recovery'. Wasn't allowed to run the games installed on Golden Garden either.

So... Hmm.

'Recovery' was darn close to 'Self Modification'.

With an eager expression, Adam decided it may be time to 'Self-Reflect'.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eyes were weird.

Probably more strange than he would have normally found them, since he was stuck without being able to do research with Golden Garden, 'Technomancy', or 'Research'.

Self improvement, in Adam's opinion, was best done systematically. And on parts easy to revert without long term consequences.

Theoretically, brain alteration would be safe now. His mind and personality was backed up by Squishy directly into his soul, so... it should be fine. Probably.

Unless the new mind got rid of the backups.

So no.

Anyway, eyeballs. Safer, smaller, easier to understand. Well, easier to understand when compared to the brain stem.

His body was all off now. Growths that looked like tree branches (Neat!) were now growing random eyeballs like berries.

He winced. It had been logical at first. Without notes or technology or research, why not keep each experiment as he went along?

Around eye fifty or so he had added random... well, they were a cross between bone tumors and tentacles really. Better than putting eyes under his clothing or on his bum or wherever.

The world was odd now. Colors his brain could not translate, segmented vision, tri-focal pupils, new visual spectrum, complex, simple... he had basically spun the genetic slot machine and looked into what popped up.

Everything was being scanned for future, more scientific research. Obviously. But for now, he was covered in random eyes that blinked, cried, and in one case bounced like one of those ball in a cup games. That one made him nauseous.

It wasn't boring though, so moving on.

The cosmetic stuff he figured out on his own within a few minutes, although the default colors available in his DNA weren't supernatural or neon or whatever. Lame. Changing how the nerves and blood was distributed allowed him to get rid of the natural 'blind spot' that one would normally have.

The other wavelength stuff... well, he was still testing it. While getting rid of some basic flaws (Slight warping in his normal eye shape, some color detection issues too small to matter most of the time, etc), he was currently trying to cram more light detection cones into the dang things without giving up and redesigning them all together.

The only reason he had made THIS much progress was due to all the men and women he had already healed, hundreds of eyeball examples of all types and ages giving him lots of random things to try.

So far, all the neat stuff (Slit eyes, solid colors, yadda yadda) just made his vision worse... probably. It may be better, but his brain wasn't adapted to the new input. Something to look into. Ha.

One downside, Adam noted, was that he was stuck.

Not physically, or in this form, or whatever... but just sitting on this bed was nauseating, a stationary roller-coaster. Too many colors, fields of views, changing view points... each twitch made EVERYTHING swirl into chaos.

His mind was adapting though, slowly. And it was entertaining. One of the eyes (No clue which, he would have to check with 'Research' later) could see electrical and magnetic fields. Not just the wiring in the walls, but the nervous systems belonging to the random people wandering around.

The thermal eye was useless. Note: Inside the 'cool' surface, Flame Metal was still fire. It would make hiding his creations very hard, at least from anyone with a thermal camera... so good to know, probably.

Couldn't find that eye either. It was somewhere on his right shoulder branch.

For someone covered in eyes, one would assume it would be easier to figure out which socket connected to which viewpoint.

Nope. Not at this number. It was probably one of the small cluster with that strange green highlights marking the eyelids.

One of the eyes... wasn't. Looked like one until it opened twice.

It was a mouth. With teeth.

What the hell!? What had he scanned or tried to recreate that made THAT a viable option?

Oh, it had an eye inside the mouth of the fake eye. Lovely.

At this point, he was letting 'Recovery' just spawn new eyes at random, really. He could switch back to 'Standard' for a quick reset then bounce back to 'Peak' and all would be back to normal... but he was stuck here anyway.

His hair was slowly being replaced with eyelashes. Really, really long ones.

Some part of him felt like this should be disturbing, but the feeling of letting his power wander around the gene pool was... very nice. Like having one's ears cleaned with drops.

His legs slowly began forming some sort of root structure that slowly stretched over the floor, covered in tiny dots that were... technically eyes? Light sensing organs at least.

It felt... odd. Nice, in a way... a long, hard 'stretch after being stuck in a small car' feeling.

...Wait...

Where did his ears go?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

When his room door finally unlocked, he was lucky it was Dragon who was waiting on him.

Oh, she was... less than happy at the genetic blender experimentation, but at least was calm enough to help document the reversal process.

He wasn't technically in trouble. Mostly.

Anyway, he got out of it thanks to some emergency Chocolate Cake holograms he had been working on. Far more kick than any 'real' food, the thing was his first experiment making 'digital foods' for future club activities.

Based on Dragon's reaction, it needed to be reduced in intensity. Again. First version nearly caused him to have an accident. Thank goodness it didn't need actual cooking to duplicate, and that it couldn't make him full or fat.

With her distracted, he walked (dashed) out of range of her 'Don't mess with your biology Adam' lecture and went to his personal lab to hopefully wait out her annoyance once she realized he basically threw orgasmically delicious dessert at her and ran like a bat out of hell.

She probably wouldn't have been so angry if he hadn't scared her first though. Opening his door had let FAR too much light, heat, and other input into the room. And his body was odd at that point, so his scream of pain had made HER freak out, and of course she wasn't convinced that he hadn't been deliberately trying to scare her in the first place... sigh.

Shame about that cake program, though. He had hoped to save that for the next big problem he had accidentally set off, and now he would have to find a new trump card to escape (probably justified) punishment.

Hmm. A few screens opened and he began... tweaking things.

One of the few treat that will (hopefully) save his bum in the future: Sea-salt and chocolate covered caramel candies.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The console 'Forbidden Fruit' had been changed several times by L33t, but the final release was now scheduled. Product was being generated by the Dockworkers downstairs and the advertisements had started.

It was a bit... saucy. Narwhal approved, Dragon was scandalized, and the internet was eating it up. That said, his target audience jumped to the older male demographic and it was likely that the other, far more kid friendly consoles would continue to exist after all.

This was not a huge loss, as the game companies sponsored by Garden were allowed to release content to other (far weaker) systems. No contracts getting in the way like normal. Also, abandoning the requirements for low rated content allowed the 'Forbidden Fruit' developers to make far more content.

Oh it was still labeled and such, so audiences could make sure their kids couldn't access certain content while under their roof. Unlike usual, however, each category of content in a 'Forbidden Fruit' game was rated individually.

So a game could have a violence 4, gore 1, nudity 2, non-consent 1, and so on and so forth. The console could auto-prevent an account from playing games that were not below approved levels, and friends or family could ensure they don't accidentally buy something far less 'family friendly' than expected.

This... well, this just added to the controversy. Apparently HAVING a game with all kinds of stuff in it was far more acceptable as long as one didn't acknowledge the exact content inside... somehow.

Well, that was what the lawyers were for.

Anyway, the console was set now and came with some accessories. One controller, of course, but one virtual reality collar as well. Those things went through HEAVY review, as Adam was absolutely NOT going to allow some hacker to send a user into a coma or force them to die through feedback.

Oh, the games could be played without the thing. But WITH it, one could try out the expanding 'Brockton Bay Experience' being showed off by Dragon and occasionally Narwhal... sigh.

She was very busy for the last week. Not that he wasn't, he had already shipped off more construction units via Dragon to expand facilities in a couple of new states, but she had to do the legal paperwork that related to guild stuff.

Anyway, the advertisements never showed anything explicitly, but apparently Uber was able to use his 'learn anything to perfect human standard' ability to become one hell of a director. The final product screamed sensuality, to the point where it almost got banned in a few conservative countries.

His girlfriend loved the things, and had pre-ordered some of the first final consoles released almost a month in advance. Her VR collar was far superior to the baseline consumer stuff of course, but her input allowed several software modifications before release.

The biggest one was a half-virtual-reality movie version, allowing the data to be sent to the collar to project the film or game play to only the viewer... which she used for inappropriate reasons.

It was a popular feature now.

For the less sexual users, it also allowed perfect audio and visual game play without bothering roommates or loved ones with loud noises or bright lights... so it was a win/win situation so far.

But that was all for later. Tonight, he had finally finished setting up The Palanquin as a 'Club' application for the console, one that would be released on Launch as a trial and example for other businesses who wanted to join up to get some internet crowds and money.

He checked his skeletal wrist, then straightened his suit... and projected via VR into Narwhal's office.

He tried to give a confidant grin until he realized she wasn't in yet. Uh...

Oh. Right, it was Saturday. She would be at home.

Trying to ignore how stupid he felt, he gave 'Invite Girlfriend to Club: Attempt 2, Electric Boogaloo' another try.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The lights were pulsing, the beat thumping into his lungs, the crowd a bit too thick and smelling a bit too much.

The woman twisting into his side made it all worth while.

Both were in 'Work' costumes, something that Faultline insisted on to increase the draw of customers ('We have REAL capes show up! Buy some beer!'), but that just meant that not only was Adam clad in sensitive full comfort armor, but that his dance partner was 'covered' in thin, see-through plates of force-fields.

She was warm, dancing at a fast clip, and sliding closer than strictly needed.

It was a good night so far.

There were people staring of course, but watching two attractive... uh.

Well, one attractive woman and one scary flame skeleton, whatever.

Watching them dance with a bit too much hip swaying and side brushing had settled the rooms nervous atmosphere and encouraged a few dancers.

Eventually they slid back into their booth (Only a few kisses distracting from that goal) and he began sharing with her the various virtual food he had been designing.

When her body shuddered and her eyes seemed to lose focus, he sighed.

Yeah, that cake had to be toned down a bit more.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Screw that. Cake stays EXACTLY the damn same forever!

Or maybe it was the coated strawberries. Or the cream puffs.

As he cuddled on the sweaty bed, he made some mental notes about which items to 'enhance' for personal use in the future, and which honestly needed to be toned down if anyone wanted to eat them in public. There was some overlap.

Narwhal's soft snores were surprisingly adorable.

Focus.

He needed to get a move on with the dimensional travel stuff. If he got too comfortable in this reality, the chances of everything going to hell would skyrocket. He had been passing overflow power charges to Squishy for days now, but progress needed to be made.

If he could get out of this reality, all his various time restrictions and such would be handled. Five seconds or so of travel would allow years or more of training or enhancement, assuming he could get the power working to the desired level.

Gently running his left hand through her hair, he sighed. He needed to analyze powers related to time and space to speed things up.

Time to schedule some trips to see Gray Boy's victims. It was on his list anyway, just due to how horrifying their situations were, but he had avoided them for now due to how weak he was and due to how much unwanted attention he would draw. Cauldron would have words, sure, but many gangs and Slaughterhouse 9 themselves could decide to visit him and his associates.

He sighed, hugging his girl's warm form tighter. It was a risk, but with an unshackled and rapidly improving Dragon combined with the best surveillance Brockton Bay (or the world) had ever heard of, it should be safe for now.

Getting outside of this reality would open doors... and allow him to socket two powers. At least.

An email and explanation later, and he focused on proper cuddling procedures.

You know, the important things.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Annette 'Anne' Hebert sighed, watching Taylor run around what was basically a giant play center in a villain's hideout. Oh, they talked a good game, but the damn man was a walking burning skeleton. It was a bit obvious.

Still, she had worked on this side of the fence before. The lack of threats combined with actually paying the workers had pretty much convinced her that this particular baddie was aiming for the straight and narrow.

That didn't mean that she was going to annoy a man who built a paradise out of fire and damnation though. When she heard her lovable oaf husband had tried to intimidate a man covered in either bones or armor and FIRE, she had nearly blown a gasket.

Thankfully though, it had worked out. Absently she moved to separate two kids arguing over a skele-doll. Again. Apparently below a certain age, 'toys' plus 'food' plus 'burning skeleton' had equaled 'Super Cool!' territory.

Some of her closest friends had even moved into the available company housing full time. The idea that the entire facility could sprout legs and walk away if needed had apparently been taken as a net positive compared to their old housing.

She and Danny stayed in their house for now though. The massive boost in income and reduced commuting distance had given them enough energy and funds to fix it up a bit. And maybe go about giving Taylor a brother or sister. Or four.

For some reason, Danny had a massive increase in health and... mmm. Muscles.

Those office 'checkups' had certainly paid off. Discrete questioning among the women in their group confirmed that whatever the hell Variance was up to, the perks so far were more than worth it.

She caught herself before checking her hidden piece. A legacy of her old 'minion' days, she wouldn't admit that the main reason she took this position was to guard her child (and others), just in case the crazy flame man inviting children into his lair was less than legit.

Anne got the impression though that Dragon had noticed her carrying the tinkertech shock pistol. And approved. So anyone who had an issue with an English Professor knowing how to shut a man down could get in line and then get over it.

Although... extensive exposure to her 'Boss' had taught her two things.

One: Overly powerful was a state of fact with this man. Modify a massive structure on the fly? No issue. Nearly resurrect a man from a fatal work accident? Took seconds, and didn't even make an impact on his day. Convert a car into a giant snake? Not worth mentioning. He was an act of Nature that wandered around making toys for children or crushing an underground criminal ring at two in the morning. Yeah, PRT friends of hers were still talking about that. Subtle? Nope.

Two: Watching a dozen tentacle arms remodel various attractions or toys had nearly earned the man a bullet to the brain... and he never even noticed. At all. She had given up on all types of 'Subtle' conversation or hidden references within minutes of meeting the guy. It apparently took a month of nearly humping the guy before Narwhal convinced him to try dating her.

So even as she brought her child here to enjoy company and earn quite the payday, she felt far more safe than expected. Because Variance was the type of man to laugh and bumble along life, right up until someone threatened him or his own... and force him to come down like the wrath of God.

It reminded her a bit of Danny, honestly. Not as good looking of course. More hair though.

Her attention was brought back when the swarms of children began streaming into the near theater, another facility provided by her skeletal boss. Apparently they were going to show off the cult classic Alexandria film again. That was always popular, even if the effects were terrible by today's standards. She did some quick headcounts and followed along. No reason not to watch the thing again, Danny's lunch break wouldn't be for another few hours anyway.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Gray Boy was an interesting, if horrifying person.

Looking like old film, with a body glitching at odd times, the bastard had claimed that his power was impossible to revert. That the zones where times repeat would not only make the victims inside immortal, but that it would prevent them from being able to adapt. Every feeling, every pain... fresh.

They would knowingly feel the same thing for a set of time, sometimes seconds, sometimes days... forever. That alone would drive them mad... and then sane... and then mad again.

Of course, that was bad enough BEFORE the bastard then entered the bubbles and started torturing them.

Anyway, Dragon had set Adam up with some travel plans in a month or so. She made the (valid) point that him acquiring and adapting healing tinkertech would have global advantages while freeing him from having to run his home clinic on a daily basis.

Not that he told her his reality traveling plans. If it went well, the only evidence would be him suddenly being able to make massive advancements. If it went wrong, well... probably death or being lost in the cosmos.

He HAD to go at some point, because this realm was dangerous.

Take Gray boy. An aspect of his powers kept him young forever (Time reverse took care of age), while rolling back any damage he took as well. Killing him was a massive undertaking, one that had tons of casualties. It took a woman who could rip power from the living to end him.

It was one of the main reasons Slaughterhouse 9 had such fear behind it.

And that ass had a boss, 'King', who could ignore the jerk with no issue by passing any attack on to one of the many people he interacted with in the last 24 hours.

Thus, powers were bullshit.

So if Adam wanted to survive here, where people like that who seemed all powerful could be swat down like ants by a stranger with the right shard... he needed more power. More time.

With a sigh, he hunched over his work space. Twenty or so limbs arched around his frame, the claws and thin strips of material acting as fingers and giving leverage as he examined his project.

Honestly, having a tentacle arm with a working 'flame light' had made this FAR easier.

The healing technology was still going through legal hoops, but right now he had a large set of boxes filled with original examples of various tinkers (Lot of Armsmaster's stuff too, obviously), and he was examining things... very thoroughly.

On one hand, he already scanned it all to a very fine level and had 'Research' going over it every hour or so.

On the other hand... examining it like this, mechanically, was soothing somehow.

A thread of bone white metal carefully began twisting, the tip magnetic, as what seemed to be an engine housing began to come apart. The other twelve screws had their own limbs handling their removal, but this one was the most obvious of the bunch.

He was currently guessing that this was meant to be a trap for people trying to dismantle the thing or an access panel for future maintenance, like most tinkertech required.

With a soft sigh, the panel finally lifted, and he shifted to 'Research', mechanical limbs pausing to avoid shifting or damaging his work.

This was the section that Dragon had to duplicate verbatim when copying this device. Each tinkertech device had similar 'black box' chunks scattered throughout, hence why no one else could duplicate their work and why only they could handle the expected 'maintenance'.

His hand barely trembled as he released a full scan on the section.

Eww. Oh... ewwwww.

Scan everything, just so he wouldn't have to look at this anymore.

So... yeah. Good news, it was a mechanical version similar to how powers connected to a human host.

Bad news: It was far more restrictive than a parahuman with powers. It was something like a pointer that said 'In that dimension are the complicated bits, come back when done' to the system.

It was how a device the size of a watch could create a shield that stopped tanks. The hardware, the software, anything too complicated for this world... was being simulated or built in the Shard's dimension.

Sucks, but he could work around that.

No, the truly bad news was how BADLY this chunk of technology was built. Just like the brain shards, it seemed like some power reached down and smushed things together till something stopped exploding.

It felt like some god saying 'Shovel, come kiss this hammer' and smashing them together until they became one out of a feeling of depression and self defense.

Redundant sections? Everywhere. Flawed connections? By definition. Unused areas? Some spots had so many that the redundant sections started counting them! And using that number elsewhere!

No wonder it needed babying to not fall apart.

With a sigh, he continued gathering documentation. In the end, his full scan of Panacea healing people would probably be enough to find the power and work with it like these devices connected to their OWN power... but it would probably not be as intuitive.

Still, device that can send out tiny robots to heal someone? Sounds like Dragon could use that tech. Heck, maybe he could hijack the medical tech stream that sent info on how the target was injured and record some of it. His 'Recovery' would improve from that, surely.

He flinched as the device snapped in his face, edges melting.

And... that was after he had already scanned it all and was following 'proper procedures' according to what little documentation Dragon had found with it.

The fact it was so fragile was one of the reasons why it had been approved for him to dismantle in the first place of course, but it was still frustrating.

With a sigh, he tried to psyche himself up to really focus. If something like this happened on a device he HADN'T finished scanning, the loss would be unbearable.

He moved the busted part to the rubbish pile and began working on what seemed to be a headset. Made from what felt like woven hair. Great.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Uber ignored his friend as they tested out some of the newer games for the 'Forbidden Fruit' console. It wasn't frustrating really, ignoring Leet when he got this passionate was a self defense procedure.

"...couldn't find the original developers so I asked the senior staff and it turned out that they had all scattered due to a gang attack the year before but we managed to track down..."

Yeah, he wasn't missing much. Still, he was supporting his friend 150% on this new setup.

No running from the law, getting attacked while trying to gain resources AND perform online, no accidents where the new shoes his costume required suddenly started smoking or exploding.

Just... video games. Oh, Leet still tinkered... but Dragon made the entire process safer. She would watch the man work, document it as it proceeded, and was building a history of previously constructed devices and why they failed.

The new information had basically explained what was going on: Leet could make anything once.

Even as the man fell into depression, Dragon helped back on his (mental) feet and took him on as 'Research and Development' for the Guild. Having someone create prototypes quickly for others to research and analyze had sped up many of her projects.

Uber was unaware that part of the reason Dragon was so 'helpful' was that one such project was to be used to create the new gynoid body that (hopefully) would be 'stress-tested' by Armsmaster.

Probably just as well that the two boys were distracted by piles of cash, video games, and new careers.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Victoria was furious.

Damn Variance for letting everyone know her personal, completely reasonable (Thank you for agreeing), fear of goats. Sisterly teasing was FAR more simple when it was one sided.

She was at her room before realizing that someone had placed a huge sticker on it.

It was a goat head.

The text below said 'Can you handle it?'

The word 'Can' was both in a silly font and made of cans.

Welp. This room was tainted.

She flew to Amy's room. Soon to be VICKY'S room.

Older sister privilege, or something.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam could feel the changes. Small. Continuous.

He carefully shifted the limb holding two transparent magnifying lenses. Clear Flame Metal was a great glass replacement really.

They then fixed themselves relative to his eyes, as he gently attached tiny rods and tweezers to some pins and screws. A limb with tiny threads, magnets on the end of each one, allowed him to hold both the parts being observed and the screws being removed without dropping anything.

Multiple limbs was far easier now that he had experienced being an eye bush.

His normal limbs were out of the way, as he sat in something like a meditative stance. His back had exploded into all kinds of tools and limbs directly from his armor, 'Fire Manipulation' allowing a level of control beyond human norms.

No heartbeat or twitching with these limbs.

With a series of twists, the outer shell began to open. Layers of material was carefully examined, grasped, then slid out of the way of his sensor limbs.

Tinkertech, he decided, was a terrible power.

This device was able to convert water into a type of goo, needed for whatever that captured Villain had used it for. A type of fuel, likely. One of the many devices Dragon had gathered from years of fighting and defeating Villains.

Back to the point though. He hadn't examined Armsmaster, Dragon, or Amy directly... but looking at past scans and this tinkertech, he had made some disturbing realizations.

A tinkertech ability came in parts.

First, the ability to create tools needed to work in your specialty. This seemed to be a generic database of info and a set of tools available to all tinkers.

Second, a tinkertech specialty Database. For your field, it contained a list of schematics, theories, and analysis tools.

Third, a set of tinkertech tools. Each ranged in size from a grain of rice to an entire island, and were stored inside the Shard's realm of control.

These things existed in another reality, and tinkertech worked by modifying parts of their devices to point INTO their own power, letting those tools take over chunks of the work.

It was how a toaster and some Christmas lights could become a plasma torch. The more esoteric or odd parts, especially parts that couldn't exist in this reality, THOSE were stored in the Shard's world.

This was why tinkertech needed maintenance. The dimensional portals would degrade from use since those machines were not a living host, and only the Parahuman creator had the correct coordinates to fix those portals to the right address.

Thus, Dragon was not a tinker.

Her ability was more like Adam's 'Technomancy', and allowed her to understand and at least duplicate the dimensional portals of other tinkers and keep them stable. That was why she could duplicate or even modify tinkertech belonging to other power users. Her real power was something similar to minor self-modification, some parallel processing... maybe some sensing abilities? Moving on.

He twisted the internals of the case housing a bit. Scanning had been done before this step, of course, but right now he was attempting to modify how the hardware interacted with the Tinker's power.

Enhancing the connection too much could cause extra dimensional rifts to occur sympathetically, which would tear everything up and force him to restart his research from scratch.

Again, he forced all his limbs to pause and swapped to 'Research' again, allowing a new scan on the materials for future comparison.

Back to 'Flame Manipulation'.

He could have stopped hours ago. He knew enough about Amy's powers to make a rough connection. But he had goals.

His limb twisted as he tried a new configuration. The more stable and simple the dimensional connection was, the longer it would go without needing maintenance. It would also reduce power requirements and prevent shard power leakages, which could do... all kinds of bad things.

Adam was smart enough to not just make a straight interface into her power of course. Panacea's power was able to fake biomancy. Too strong a shard for a thousand users to go nuts with, trusted people or not.

No, this was going to be a reduced set of tools for Variance Villa to have, to use when he was not here.

He sighed. He called these things computers a lot cause it was easiest to compare the two, but the whole shard was made of a single type of crystal, and crystal alone. Like a banana that was also a tree AND the monkey eating it... or something.

How long has it been since he slept?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah Hawk had worked in many hospitals before, but working here had been the strangest. Still, when the strange skeleton-man decides to call all the staff in for a meeting, you made sure to show up.

She watched with the others as the man chatted with Dragon, his metallic bones shifting organically as he laughed, a light blue smog of fire wafting from his jaws.

The guy was odd. The flame on his head would spike or fall based on his emotion, his eyes would range from light blue embers of boredom to blazing flames of excitement... and she heard that his rage was something astounding.

That was due to a couple of patients attacking each other... and he had swept in like an angry deity, fire flowing from his frame and fingers stretched into steel claws. Worse, his eyes had gone solid back, leaving a hulking monster in a suit asking very politely if there was a problem.

Turns out, there wasn't.

Anyway, this meeting was odd. There were devices on a table, each glowing strange colors from the odd patterns that covered them... this wasn't some sort of 'Why not experiment' thing, was it?

Variance turned to the crowd and grinned, a soft blue smoke drifting like he was finishing a fine cigar. "Everyone here? Great, this shouldn't take long."

He walked to the front, pointing out the hardware. "As some of you know, I am terrible at schedules, paying attention, and showing up here when needed." The chuckles had him pause with a smile. "Yeah, yeah, I know."

Adam held up the fist device. "So I used some info I got from working with Panacea to make these doodads." He frowned. "Dragon, she is going to get paid from this, right?"

The cyborg nodded. "It was inspired from her power, so she qualifies for royalty fees."

He absently nodded. "Anyway, these are the expensive version of the new 'Giving Tree' healing devices, to be released by our company. The mass produced versions are each the size of a car, but are cheap enough that at least hospitals can afford them. These smaller versions though would cost as much as a couple of large cities to purchase, each."

Sarah blinked at the idea... then again, this place was producing stuff at an unheard of rate according to the workers who stopped by for checkups, more crazy impossible stuff was to be expected, likely.

Adam turned the device, showing the controls. "Each device can do a single operation safely. This one can repair, regenerate, and remove genetic or radioactive damage from skin. That one does the same for muscles and tendons, while ensuring they are correctly connected."

He picked up the third. "This one handles bone and bone marrow, that group has one tool per internal organ, and the last one over there handles disease, viruses, immunity issues, and to a limited degree aging."

Noticing the shock, he shrugged. "Aging is due to DNA damage. This can't revert it all, but it will hopefully add a year or two of life to the natural life span. Anything more intense can risk memory loss or other issues."

Adam sighed as he picked up the last device... it looked like a bicycle helmet. "This last one is the most controversial. It is not automated like the other devices, it requires a surgeon to operate... but this allows non-invasive brain surgery."

He waved a hand, the illusion projector showing some video. "This is a set of tools. The ability to reduce swelling, to increase or decrease fluids, compounds, or hormones and such. And for our surgeons, the ability to remove damaged sections of the brain and replace it with a stem-cell slurry created from DNA from the patient."

He nodded. "It will be safer than normal surgery, the tools are hard-light scalpels, and this will allow basic matter replacement... there will be no exposure to the outside world or germs, and accuracy will not be restricted to the human eyeball and hand alone."

She couldn't look away... this was something like the holy grail for a surgeon like her. If only it had existed when her sister had needed it.

Variance grinned at everyone. "Well, Dragon has some documentation to hand out on this, and we need all of you to become experts on both our version and the soon-to-be-released public version. These need testing, likely some user interface improvements, and a good exposure to professionals like you before we feel good letting these out into the wild. Dragon, tell Narwhal I am going to sleep for a day or so."

And the skeletal man swept out of the room, leaving hope and god-like tools behind him like it was 'no big deal'.

She was the first to rush to the surgery documentation, but she wouldn't be the last.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In the end, Adam had to cheat. He had used a power charge on 'Research' so that it could determine Parahuman shard dimensional locations from exposure to their effects.

Still, aside from allowing him to latch onto exactly where Panacea's power lived, it would be useful to find and scan Gray Boy's power... and hopefully free his tortured victims.

As he drifted away, he poked Squishy. They would need to focus a bit on learning fine memory modification... no one needed to remember being stabbed thousands of of times for years.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Narwhal sighed, leaning away from her desk and stretching.

Even though it was a virtual desk, virtual paperwork, and a virtual office... this was still stressful.

She smirked as she glanced to the right, the 'wall' ripped off to show the amazing nearby ocean. The desk itself was still on oak paneling.

Sand sucked for rolling office chairs.

But the view... She could never find water this clear or sand this clean in public. Maybe on an island or something.

Adam's virtual reality device was already creating news waves in the media, especially with his x-rated game console being a bit much for the more conservative of families, but to her...

She waved a hand, interface allowing her to digitally sign the last of the forms and submit them to the various departments.

Virtual office work was the best.

No strained muscles, no eye strain, her body was basically taking a nap while her mind could get all kinds of things done.

Oh she still needed breaks for food or whatever, but the ability to 'work late' and not have to commute, or feel cramped from sitting in a chair for 12 hours... so worth it.

Her warm fuzzies vanished when she heard the knock.

The office room was a shell of course, this area was using the 'island' setting, and all her work today (Including conference calls) was being done through email alerts and electronic messaging.

She sighed. "Come in, Dragon."

The door opened, her friend giving a weak grin.

Narwhal groaned. "What did he do now?"

A dozen emails popped up alerts on her desktop. Dragon coughed awkwardly. "You know how I have been sending random tinker-tech to Adam for practice work? Hoping for inspiration?"

She blinked. "Wait, didn't I send him those sex toys we didn't know what to do with?"

Dragon blushed. "I DIDN'T KNOW! Why didn't you warn me!? Thankfully they were classified and everything, if they weren't so damaged he would have figured it out instantly!"

Narwhal chuckled. "Hang on, how long did it take for him to notice? An hour? I bet it was the dildo chair, wasn't it?"

The cyborg groaned. "Thank my circuits, no. The first box was the scrap parts and I used my lab to damage the other shipments before he opened everything. It was horrible, what if someone had caught me with those, those... things? In MY lab, no less!"

With a leer, Narwhal leaned forward. "Hmm, what if indeed. Are you sure you didn't save an item or two? I heard you and Armsmaster already had a... tinkering session together."

Paperwork smacked her in the midst of cackling, Dragon's face blazing with embarrassment. "Focus. I had to make up all kinds of lies, as if it was normal for tons of captured tinkertech to be mashed up into tiny chunks. Even then, some of the rubbery bits had to be melted down completely... eww, I had to clean everything in my lab like, dozens of times. It still feels unclean."

With a chuckle, she pulled back the paperwork. "So he must have made some progress if these forms are needed." As she began paging through, she realized that the thin packet was actually hundreds of pages long, compressed since this was a virtual environment. "What the hell, how many pages is this?"

Dragon snorted. "You know Variance, the man bumbles into all kinds of stuff. Somehow he managed to come up with a theory about how tinkertech works in general."

Seeing Narwhal actually gape in shock, she gave a satisfied nod. "Yes, my feelings too. Thankfully nothing sexually themed was built, considering his lab examples to build from."

Narwhal looked down and tried to read the documents, but this was the thick technical stuff that always took hours to figure out. "Give me the highlights."

Dragon nodded, gesturing as a recorded feed appeared and showed Adam explaining away. He looked... rough. A bit worn, but his eyes (blue flames that sparkled with delight) were making his skeletal grin warm up the room. Maybe she could get some snuggle time in tonight. Wait, what? Huh.

The highlights: Tinkertech cheated by building parts and code in another dimension, and used local junk to connect to it. The need to connect to the right place is why no other tinkers could easily fix an unrelated tinkertech device, and why they needed to 'maintain' their own junk.

And her boyfriend had not only found this out in less than a week, but had used past health care information he gathered to not simply duplicate tinkertech equipment from that sexual deviant tinker, but to create NEW tinkertech equipment using the world's most famous healer as a reference.

This. This was huge.

She blinked, looking at her hands. "So what is all this then? I didn't think a 'Heal me' gadget would require a hundred times more documentation than our Endbringer weapon experiments."

Dragon nodded. "If it was simply a gadget, that would be correct." She pulled up dozens of images, some looked like strange cell phones and others like a truck had attempted to hump a combine harvester into a massive barn.

She pointed at the small devices. "These are for Guild use only, use the Null Metal and Flame Metal that Adam makes, and have the most options." Her hand pointed at the other side. "These are weaker, use mostly non-tinker components, require maintenance every couple of years, and most importantly are vastly cheaper."

Narwhal looked more closely. "Alright, I'll bite. Why? What makes them cost differently?"

Dragon pulled up the images into pairs. "Our versions remotely connect to our own facility, which has all the parts that normally are stored in another dimension... or at least, parts that accomplish the same function. The cost in exotic parts was massive, even with most of the other pieces made from Adam's metals. It also required an almost unimaginable amount of underground expansion by Adam to hold it all."

She pulled up a cartoon image of 'Variance Villa', which was shown in profile. The underground areas were obvious... and then suddenly zoomed out, showing a shaft that quickly seemed to shrink into a thread as more and more earth was shown.

Dragon pointed. "He went straight down two and a half kilometers, about a mile and a half, before making a massive series of caverns. Coated in Null Metal, this thing is pretty much here to stay. Just like normal tinkertech, our smaller devices are way too tiny to actually work, and use dimensional portals... pointing to our dimension. The user interface and computer work is actually handled by the Villa's computer network, the Celestial Garden, while the only actual tinkertech are these chips that connect to that underground monstrosity."

A small golden chip rotated on screen. "Each one is a highly optimized connection directly to our devices instead of Panacea's power. This advanced connection reduces energy costs and so forth, but the biggest advantage is that should something happen to Panacea, even if her power was damaged or destroyed, we could use these creations to heal her."

Dragon looked at the stunned Guild Leader. "We don't know what happens if a device using a Parahuman's power attempts to work after that person's death, but this should be usable in most situations regardless."

She sighed. "We can't risk letting people know this is possible. Total duplication of powers? Possibly better controlled via computer interface than ever possible by the owner? It wouldn't just start a war, this would make a never ending conflict. The big bulky things we will be selling to hospitals are designed to prevent this with certain development principles."

Narwhal tried to hold back her groans at the mere thought of every villain attempting to get this thing, much less every hero. She read over the new slide.

Dragon pointed. "First, these are designed to be limited. Every function is in the large device, but each of the attachments can only use one of those abilities. Each tool is vastly restricted as well: Healing beyond health stabilization takes minutes instead of seconds, and they barely allow a fraction of Panacea's actual ability set. One tool that heals bones alone, another to repair a liver. So no cosmetic stuff, for example."

She showed the large device again. "Second, they are built heavy, bulky, hard to transport, and nearly impossible to assemble or disassemble. It will take literally days to steal this thing after deployment, and require enough scientific know how and bizarre components to rebuild it afterwards as to make it easy to detect purchases or kidnappings and recover everything and everyone at a later point. It also has a built in tracker and digital reporting functions."

Dragon glanced at Narwhal, who was already trying to read the notes again. "The hospitals won't care if it takes a week of installation to have Panacea-lite abilities. After all, healing a bone in fifteen minutes allows Doctors to interfere if something is going off in the process or if a non-standard change is desired, but this is still miles better than waiting six months or more. But mainly, I convinced Adam to slow down operation time to reduce the chances of villains breaking into hospitals for a quick heal and escape."

Seeing her friend nod, Dragon continued. "Third of all, I was afraid that the draw of the devices would be strong enough for sudden hostage situations. Adam had the idea that we inform people that this experimental device has been designed for non-powered individuals only, as they are the majority of the population... which is true."

Dragon's face grew a bit serious. "Any Parahuman that uses these devices, the public ones, will experience a loss of powers for around one hour. The explanation was a bit convoluted, but Adam found that sending the right signal to the patients brain sets off something like a self-diagnostic situation for their power. Testing so far verifies that the effect is not only temporary, but possibly beneficial. The Guild thinker I had brought on base, you know Jim? He volunteered, and informed us that it managed to 'reset' his thinker-headache as well."

Dragon pulled up his image. "Those three restrictions mean that stealing this without our notice will be difficult, expensive, require convoluted and exotic parts, and render powered thieves weak after healing. Hopefully that and some public 'truce' agreements will prevent bloodshed."

Narwhal sighed. "I know it is important globally to ensure anyone can come for healing, but it always feels wrong to heal up someone just because they took off their crime outfit."

Her cyborg friend gave a wry grin. "Well, the general public will think this is only for non-Parahumans. The PRT, The Guild, and a few other heroic teams will get followup communications. We can't ensure full security, but at least most hero's will be aware that they have better healing options even if eventually questionable people will get a fix too."

Narwhal groaned as she dropped the contract to the desk. "This is going to take forever to finish documenting and all that junk, isn't it?"

Dragon chuckled. "Don't worry, that form was automatically filled out by me already. You only need a few dozen signatures or so, after you have an idea of what is in there."

Her cybernetic hand opened and with a blur dropped a large stack of additional folders on the desk. "Anyway, here is the paperwork for each of the OTHER devices. That one was just for the skin regenerator."

Narwhal clunked her head into the desk. Damn her sexy boyfriend.

As the cyborg waltzed over to the door and was about to leave, she heard Dragon mumbling. "Oh, and we need another batch of 'B12' contracts submitted, Variance wants the healing stuff to be under the name 'Giving Tree'... so one more company branch for the Garden!"

Damn her boyfriend's puns too.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Finding volunteers for mind manipulation turned out to be far more easy than expected.

Adam had sent an email out to the entire Villa, and the response had been quick. In return for sessions of memory erasure and modification (Supervised remotely by Dragon and locally by loved ones or friends), the patient would be healed and enhanced to the peak of standard human.

Oh, and paid some. And in one or two cases, minor body modifications were promised.

No, the surprising part of this was finding out The Guild had a standard form for this situation. Heck, he even had an allocated budget for paying testers.

Apparently not all abilities could be practiced nor perfected without the help of humans, so the requirements for 'human trials' was... very low here.

Thank goodness Adam wasn't an evil scientist, this world seemed built for those.

Each session was similar to the next. A witness and Dragon would sit in on the first conversation, where 'Variance' and patient #X would confirm which memory or memories were fair game for modification.

Quite a few picked childhood traumas, although one woman insisted a whole list of memories from her childhood should go away.

This session was recorded of course, for the patient to view after the procedures. It ensured that they understood it was their idea after all, and protected Adam from liability issues.

Then... he did stuff.

One skeletal hand on his/her head and Adam would have 'Recovery' grab full bio-scans, 'Research' extract memories (That took a power charge, apparently it is different from messing with his OWN stuff), modify them (Meh, he did this all the time when reviewing his own thoughts), and actually applying the new memory back as part of the 'Recovery' process (Another power charge needed here.)

On a side note, applying a blank memory was the same as deleting a memory. The brain started using the 'freed up space' almost immediately.

It took a few days, and although he got better and better at this Dragon had to point out that the people he was planning on healing had not only been tortured for years by now, but many if not most had 'triggered' with powers due to the stress... and then double or triple triggered again, if not more.

Thus, Adam had recently taken a very 'hush hush' trip to the Parahuman Asylum facility. Dragon was well versed in these types of facilities.

After all, not all powers were good for the user, and a person didn't need to be sane or healthy to GAIN said powers. Many unfortunate souls were left here, treated of course, but not with a sense of hope or goals for the future.

This was the place where hope went to die, mostly.

Variance walked through the hall, the doctor fiddling with her notes as she led the way. "Alright, we have a few volunteers, but we are hoping you can do something for Sveta. Her powers not only mutated her body, but they have been actively hunting anything moving in the surroundings."

He winced. "She's the one who can't control her limbs, right?"

The doctor nodded. "Super strength and various levels of stretching as well. Some sort of advanced sensing ability... we were only able to contain her after her body got sleepy. Over a hundred died, almost two hundred had injuries... and she couldn't do anything about it."

Adam frowned. "You told her that with a body that modified, removing her power may end up killing her?"

She sighed. "Honestly, it was the risk of death that had her volunteer so quickly. Her strength, durability, and healing factor make her damn near immortal. Of course, statements like that were NOT something her therapist was happy about, by the way. If you see a woman walking at you in a huff, you should probably run."

He nodded. "Is... is suicide going to be an issue after I heal her?"

She glanced at her notes. "We've got suicide watch set up, some medication to hopefully keep her calm and assist in the adjustment process after the session, and some staff will be staying in shifts just in case for the next day or two, assuming everything goes well on your end."

They paused in front of a VERY large door, metal with a submarine style opening handle. Adam adjusted his tie and then gripped the wheel with his bone claws, twisting it and allowing the door to swing wide.

The second set would only open after locking himself into this separation chamber first.

It didn't take long before Adam finished closing himself in and opening the second door.

It took even less time for a vine the size of his arm to suck him in.