Chapter 2-||

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A sharp spike, a stab. It felt like a solid piece of hot iron being slowly forced through the back of his skull. Not figurative, it seemed to have some sort of ridged pattern as it melted into Adam's head.

As he jerked upwards, thrashing in bed, it hurt so bad his muscles kept spasming. Mouth too wide to move, lungs too tense to actually scream.

And everything stopped.

Collapsing into his mattress, gasping for air, he didn't move for at least an hour.

What. The. Hell.

Ironically, he now felt... calmer. More stable.

All the pain was gone, except a slight sting on the back of his right hand.

Which... now had a tattoo.

It looked like his socket. Even had the 'Slow Recovery' symbol pulsing in it.

He felt too strained, too stressed to get up... but his fingernails looked normal again. Well, like bone again (He WAS using recovery), but for a moment they had looked... void like.

That... might be good? Maybe?

With desperation, he knew something BIG had happened while sleeping.

He turned inwards.

Squishy was... different.

First of all, she was missing a limb... and that meant bad things.

Looking inside his mind, at the stardust heavens, he did a quick count.

'Fire Manipulation', 'Technomancy', 'Squishy', check. Wait...

Squishy was holding ZERO charges. All five were gone.

And it was wearing a hat. It looked like a beanie made from circuit boards and bones.

Uh... fine.

Moving on.

The shard 'Slow Recovery' was modified. It was simply 'Recovery' now.

And... 'Search' and 'Research' seemed to have collapsed/combined.

So one power set socketed left four limbs for Squishy... and SOMETHING used up his saved charges.

Focusing on his hand, he felt out the power displayed.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

So... this was... uh. Fine.

He knew he had been pushing it forcing all those strange connection methods between powers.

His skills had informed him that there was a massive cost to re-enable some of the removed Power Manipulation abilities. That had been acceptable. He had also been informed that moving to new Realms would help his soul grow, stabilize his power and allow another socket for power use.

He was unaware however of how much damage he had been doing making weak stop-gaps to try and allow multiple shards to work at once. It had been close to critical failure, near soul-collapse!

Thankfully Squishy got 'Slow Recovery' enabled in time.

Initially, 'Slow Recovery' had been tasked on 'Fixing'... everything. Including itself and 'Power Manipulation' as a whole.

All this time, every single time he had swapped to that skill, 80-90% of its ability had been focused on trying to stabilize his soul, on finishing that VERY FIRST task. Hence the 'Slow' part of 'Slow Recovery'... it was barely available to fix anything else. At least now, he would recover at a FAR faster pace.

The additional instability however, combined with the charges that were focused on increasing communication between powers, both had an unforeseen synergy.

He could no longer modify or repair 'Power Manipulation' in the future. He would have to build each feature from scratch, using tens or hundreds of thousands of charges to do so to make them as God Tier as they would have been originally.

However, it seemed worth the trade off.

Now, Squishy had been designated as 'Shard Administrator', something ever so closer to the 'Queen Administrator' of Worm Legend.

By shoving all those functions off Adam's soul and into Squishy, the burden of sharing inputs, outputs, and memories between powers was a problem of the past. They still couldn't directly work together, but it was sort of networked thanks to that strange hat Squishy was wearing.

Without all those burdens, his soul's strain had dropped to near nothing. The socket had gained stability, and was moved to a limb rather than centered in the core of his existence.

It would still need access to more realms before he could gain a second one, but now the physical changes would be far less. Apparently, if he had NOT finished stabilizing, not just hair, eyes, and nails would change... in fact, 'Technomancy' had begun messing with his blood network.

He did not want extra, unexpected limbs. Thank you.

No, the strangest bit was the 'Hardware/software Emulation System' had turned into Squishy's beanie hat. Why? No idea. But Adaman Eve OS was running away even now in a simulated state.

His mental storage, and a copy of all his memories had moved to his Soul's core, where the socket had originally been. It seemed to fill the space more naturally than his power shards ever did. Also, the storage limits were just... gone.

With a sigh, he set his mental computer to begin downloading information again since his limits had been basically redefined. Now he could store large files like video and such more easily. Transfer rate was higher too, and the Soul didn't have the same heating issue his brain matter had.

Remembered pain kept him in bed for the rest of the day.

Not like he was missing anything anyway.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Dragon had taken a break from her creation frenzy to check in on her various tasks.

It took less than a second with 'Boost' enabled.

Her suit was going to be amazing!

It had been a dream project worked on in secret over years now. Even as she reviewed changes and verified untested results, dozens of devices were being created in her production facility just to allow her to create the new production line to craft the tools needed to BEGIN construction.

Being allowed to MAKE production lines and automated facilities now simplified everything.

It was a literal labor of love.

Once the design had been finalized, she had about fifty or so parts of various complexity to be made of 'Null Metal' and 'Flame Metal' which would allow several unfair enhancements. Thermodynamics could go away, she had things to do!

In the mean time, she was making a more basic version, one buildable without the new versatile materials. Variance was overly helpful, but having only suits composed of a material he could gain control over at any time was silly.

Although if that boy got mastered, they would have larger issues than simple metal explosions.

With another system check, she turned attention back to her projects.

Maybe two versions? Three? How many types of Dragon were there, anyway?

For now, she was focusing on a humanoid/gynoid version and an enhanced Dragon Suit, one that could actually connect and sync with the 'pilot' (Previously mentioned female android).

Her 'human' appearance would still have to show mechanical parts, but a cyborg woman would be far easier for society to accept than a 'rogue' artificial intelligence. Well, according to her father, anyway.

Some part of her was very disturbed that so many parts of her new body came from the advancements of sexual products from the pornography industry, but the rest of her was working extra super hard to repress and ignore that information.

Fake human skin with artificial nerves had been created and released by a tinker years ago, back when Japan was un-sunk. The desire to be more (physically) human had made such advancements hard to ignore.

She had never been more embarrassed when she secretly researched those sex dolls, but it DID reduce her needed research by 30 decades.

Thankfully she remembered that clothes were necessary before giving final approval.

Working with Narwhal may have screwed her sense of normality when it came to fashion.

The actual 'brains' of her new body would be in the chest cavity, more secure. The 'head' would be a collection of sensors, speakers, cameras, wireless devices.

The power generator would be within the lower torso, eventually a custom version of Variant's Magma Generator.

Basic things.

No, the majority of the resources was going into the development of her arms. VERY complicated, sacrificing strength and speed for precision and adaptability. Her Dragon 'Suit' would handle any heavy lifting, the body inside would be her Tinker persona.

Each arm had dozens of tools compacted in overly complicated ways to look (and feel) human when compressed. But when needed, they could split into extra holders, cameras, cords, outlets, tools, blades, welding tools, and so forth. The thin layer of 'flesh' covering it would allow sensitivity and realism when not working on a project.

The idea of actually working on a project in 'person' filled her with glee.

It had nothing to do with a bearded man who may or may not want to 'collaborate'. Mmm.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A day passed, Squishy had a new charge, and Adam decided to bite the bullet.

Leaving his room (And mentally setting up an appointment with Narwhal), he had his new escort (Named Paul it turns out) direct him to the meeting room where she could be found.

He didn't go in of course. No reason to expose himself to whomever she was video conferencing with.

So he and Paul spent some time chatting. Turned out that 'The Guild' was one of the largest Canadian employers that did not require advanced military training or parahuman powers. Well, the largest that still addressed criminal activity (Parahuman or not). Over the years Canadian military funding had been moving into 'The Guild' instead, since any threat large enough to need an army tended to require parahuman assistance anyway.

Dragon did quite a bit of military research on their behalf, unsurprisingly.

Not just weapon development, troops required armor, tools, rations, transport... the jobs were endless and varied.

So he would likely end up developing some stuff in that direction eventually as well.

Something to think about, certainly.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Hours had passed since he had met with Narwhal and she had decided far too gleefully to redo a large portion of his power testing.

Her happy leer during sample producing had been epic.

Thankfully testing was no where near as complex nor as complete as his first go around.

Narwhal leaned back. "So... will this be happening again?"

He shook his head. "No. My powers were unstable up till now, but from here on any changes will be less dangerous to my health."

Narwhal sighed. "How dangerous was it, anyway?"

Adam fell back into his chair. How much detail? Hmm. "Without 'Recovery', I would have died by day 3 even if I had been in a hospital with unlimited resources. WITH 'Recovery', I was slowly falling apart on a near fundamental level. Only by reaching a safe location and having food and water, only by taking those days of rest focusing on more simple projects... only then was I able to actually, fully heal."

He held up his right hand, the glowing health symbol pulsing. Her shock hurt a bit to watch. "This thing was starting to fail at healing me too, until you guys held me in a place with enough technology for my powers to adapt in a better direction. Without that push, it would not have gained the quality needed for a full repair."

Her look of horror faded. "Quality?"

Adam nodded. "Connectivity. Technology's default features are adaptability and connectivity, at least that is what my ability decided. As I worked more on hardware and stuff, more and more information was needed to be shared between my various power-sets. The strange method my skills came up with turned out to be usable as a path for healing. Or something like that."

She gave a huge, relieved sigh. "So we DIDN'T almost kill you by accident?"

He grinned. "If nothing else, you and Dragon are near solely responsible for saving my eternal soul!" Well basically. He wouldn't have focused on inter-connectivity NEARLY as hard, anyway. "My Heroes!"

She gave a snooty nod. "And don't forget it!"

He saluted, a bit too lazily. "Yes Mistress!"

Her spine shivered and then he was FAR too uncomfortable seeing her expression.

That... might have been too far.

Her standing was a leopard slinking through tall grass. "Mmm. Maybe. For now, more testing."

He was NOT experienced enough for this level of teasing.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He escaped (Unfortunately?) after a dozen or so more tests.

Turned out that yes, Narwhal had not been teasing him previously.

She had, in fact, been holding back.

Damn.

In an attempt to make things easier for himself, he eventually switched to 'Flame Manipulation' and made her an oversized, micro-mesh-flame-metal-mail shirt.

His thought process had been, naively, that covering her body would allow him some breathing room, so to speak.

A tall, well defined beauty that appeared nude wearing an oversized shirt with too large a hole for the head (She had a horn! It HAD to have room!) turned out to be MORE tempting than just her damn force fields.

Worse, she loved the thing. It released a temperature like a warm blanket, but if your body got HOTTER than that it cooled you down to that same level of heat. So only warm, no stuffy feeling.

After all, there was a reason Adam kept wearing his own 'cloth'. It felt amazing.

In the end, he ended up making her a belt to go with it, so the bottom dangly part at least was sort of skirt-ish.

This stuff wasn't bullet proof, by the way. Too thin (so it would feel cloth like). But it DID prevent stabbing, electrocution, burning, and chemical damage. And according to the hip-swinging goddess, it 'breathed' and 'flowed', however one defined that.

Watching her slink around the room wearing her new 'dress' had been... well.

Technomancy allowed him to store that memory. For reasons.

If he changed Worm history by convincing the powerful force field near-nudist to wear sexy shirt-dresses... he wasn't sure how his old world would have reacted.

Both gratitude and rage, no doubt. The internet worked like that.

She had made him heat the thing up until it turned light white-blue in power though. Went well with her hair.

Honestly, testing took an extra thirty minutes or so due to how often he was distracted by her.

Based on the increased amount of 'stretching' and 'quick walk around', she was aware.

Again, if she was anyone else this would be a 1000% sign that she was interested in a relationship with Adam. As it was, it likely only meant that he got his foot in the door, so to speak.

Dang fine door though.

It took hours of programming in his lab to help him regain focus and not drift off. It didn't help that he could easily pull up those memories again at any time.

But focus he did.

Aside from standard production (Dragon had set up an electrical blast furnace for easy high temperature access for his powers) he spent most of the day (And the next three days) working on Adaman Eve OS.

It was still going strong! Tons of reviews though, and there was all kinds of inputs from the various open-source communities that had received his updates.

Turns out that many projects out there that had silently faded away due to some intractable coding issue or lack of interest were once again going strong now that such a powerful and easy to use platform had bothered to create a custom version of their program.

Having all the changes documented gave them an up-to-date code base and a secure release that in some cases had 'design wishes' instantly fulfilled. Now they could focus on what they REALLY enjoyed: New features.

No one LIKED reviewing programs for issues or fixing bugs. Or worse, rebuilding everything from scratch due to a conceptual flaw in the product. They wanted to do NEW things!

Thankfully Dragon knew something like this would happen, and had set up a special set of email accounts. One for contacting 'Variance', one for requesting Tinker-related services, and one for Adaman Eve OS issues/new applications/updated applications.

At the start of every Tinkering session, he would take time to review software for approval, patch it for security flaws, respond to the submitter with documented patch for approval, and if it all went through it was added to the Garden Repository.

Yes, his new machine and the repository had the same name.

One was a place, one was ideas, so to speak... the final 'Garden' for Adaman Eve OS would have everything it would need. Hopefully no forbidden fruit, unless one counted 'Cybernetic Warfare Suite'.

Interestingly enough, several of the larger paid-for Technology Companies had not gone the 'sue-or-kill' route he had expected.

Dragon's Seal of Approval was a MUCH bigger deal than expected.

Adam had already passed along to Narwhal the contracts and meetings were being set, but it looked like the 'Garden Market' would have both subscription options and one-time purchase choices to go with all the free stuff.

Apparently Dragon had privately told a few people that Adam had the ability to create black-box versions of locked up proprietary software legally. Which... scared some people. But fighting Dragon's organization through politics, software advancement, or lawyers was... well basically suicide.

So instead of risking all their work being freed, they had decided to license Adam as a resale agent as long as he handled the expensive 'Create versions of our stuff for your OS' part.

Adam, Narwhal, and Dragon had to agree to quite a few things. But he got allowance to create interoperability between file formats and so forth, and make some open-source file format alternatives as well.

He had to let those companies sell through 'Garden Market', almost turning all these large organizations into application sellers instead of OS producers.

On the plus side, they got to keep 90% of any purchase and 95% of any subscription service related to their own products.

It was miles better and less restrictive than other online markets currently available, and an online giant like Amazon didn't event exist here yet.

Heck, not everyone could afford a computer at this moment.

Yet.

Going back to his 'Garden' hardware, he continued working toward something producible without him around. With the power of Eve backing him, he wanted to create something that would put a fire in the hardware market.

Cheap, Small, near-disposable computers.

The smallest space needed for Xmas Eve, Min Eve, and Adaman Eve were calculated.

Swap 'Research' in. What was the least amount needed to run a web server? Processor wise, not much as long as the software was decent. Space could be added externally with hard drives.

That... was tiny.

Quick research on average small website web server usage. Huh.

Well, there were already several open-source servers he had transmigrated to Eve already, a quick purchase later let him view the abilities of the most popular paid ones.

Move to 'Technomancy', a bit of software magic, the usual security attacks and patches. Add in some features popular but not included in this code base.

There, by default an 'Eve Server' package was available in 'Garden' for others to try.

Xmas Eve was really for people to get old hardware going again, which was useful for public libraries and kids with less money.

THIS product would aim for Min Eve.

Min Eve Server ended up being custom crafted, and he didn't only design the hardware, but after working with 'Research' developed some machines to produce them.

Unfortunately he wouldn't be including his proprietary Fire Metal in this series, that was Guild only right now and sharing it literally world wide seemed foolish.

But his custom production machines COULD and DID have heavy use of both 'Flame Metal' and 'Null Metal'.

Some quick emails about the form and type of raw materials ordered currently through Dragon channels let him create a series of machines, each one taking a single form of input (One took plastics, one required dies, one needed large rolls of paper, one accepted hoppers of metal, etc). These devices would then supply a separate series of machines the correct amounts of material when requested.

The whole mess was powered by a HUGE 'Magma Generator' and controlled by an Adaman Eve system.

More input devices could be added (Increasing available processed resources), more outputs could be added (increasing resource cost but increasing output rate), and... sigh.

It took FOREVER to set up.

By the time he had the whole thing designed, crafted... Well, he had to spend a charge to more easily construct Flame Metal from schematics stored by 'Research' or 'Technomancy', another three to improve detail of compressed metal formation, modification.

He built it, it cranked out a fully made and packaged-for-market 'Small Garden: Min Eve Server' (One machine construction input only added stuff like printed instruction booklets and needed connection cables)...

And Narwhal made him move it.

Oh, Dragon had a facility prepared and overall it was far more convenient as people could more easily add the needed inputs and export the products to shipping... but NEXT time he would try and make it more portable.

Stupid, complicated parts.

The final product was more basic looking than he expected to go with, but he had a focus for corporate sales targets here. It was a box that had an included simple adapter that allowed installation into most types of computer rack, and the air flow design was VASTLY improved because he was making all the various components custom. This meant no random bits blocking the way, and all the hot stuff in easy to reach areas.

It was not designed to be repaired, ever. Just replaced. The price was damn low though, unreasonably low. No other Tinker on the market produced NON-Tinker products, besides Dragon. Their shards always butt in, trying to convince them to add just a tiny bit of extra something.

So his devices didn't need to use complicated parts built in sometimes sketchy lands. Nor did it use components from 30 design teams that would never meet each other. It was an unreasonable amount of work for one man to develop all of that alone.

His equipment had the cost of scrap and the performance of available mid-level hardware. You could find some cheaper, and lots more powerful... but not something this cheap and this strong.

His grumbling when designing the systems for 'Small Garden: Min Eve' was twenty times worse. Because THIS system needed to produce FAR MORE product and was designed for users!

This time he was smart enough to talk to his bosses first, and begin work in the workforce area from the start.

Honestly, without Dragon's more advanced production designs, this whole thing would have been horrible. She had special multi-armed extruders and so forth of all types, which she was gracious enough to share the specifications, software, and documentation of. Cut literally days from his work time.

But while the servers got away with only a cool 'Dragon Seal' logo (She loved the things, even if they were too weak for most Guild uses), Marketing ended up making him stall for a whole dang month!

The logo had been easy (A tree in a garden, it was nice looking enough for him to add it as a splash screen when Eve loaded). That had been slapped on the servers with no issue.

No, for the user version Marketing had him go through EVERYTHING. Colors, actual system shape (It cost nearly the same since he was making all the parts himself), and the marketing campaign.

In the end, it looked like a fat flower. The base had all the connections needed (Sound, Video, Keyboard, Mouse, Power, Network, usb, etc), and the top had some nice LED's (cheap) that changed color.

The very top also released the heat and had a basic speaker built in.

If one was able to actually able to open the thing, the insides were twisted like a tornado, sucking in air from the large base fan (Larger fan means less movement to move more air... thus quiet).

It was actually a weaker system than he wanted to release, but with his cheating construction methods, no need to hire workers, etc, he only really had costs due to having to purchase the construction resources and rent space from Dragon herself. Since he didn't care about profit margin too much with this thing, it would only cost the consumer $50. Another $50 would be needed to get a keyboard and mouse, plus speakers.

And while he expected shock, it had made Marketing lose their gosh darn minds!

First, the quad-core processor that he had created based on Dragon's original processor design (Seriously, Dragondad could have made better processors even BACK THEN if he hadn't been so scared of his own future daughter) was apparently a whole new market.

Thankfully advanced enough through 'Technomancy' and 'Research' to not resemble any of Dragondad's old stuff anymore, it was still blowing the minds of the technicians being called in by Marketing for reference.

After all, technology advances rapidly, it even did in his own world from what little his mind remembered. But Adam had expected that with all the alien tech superpowers out there, someone had advanced the hardware base farther along and that it just didn't sell well online.

Besides, there were research papers online in this universe even now about possible 256-core super-computers and stuff, and you could order custom machines with 16-cores or more from the Tinker Community 'Toy Box'. Like... right now.

It took Dragon a few explanations, but the reason computers in general were SO expensive for normal people (Average cost was around $800, but the high end stuff could reach $2,000 easily) was due to shipping issues (Again, Leviathan), resource gathering/manufacturing center issues, and of course, Tinker-tech.

After all, those average prices were for systems that were only dual-core. The high end stuff was for quad-core. And anything better needed Tinker-tech... which needed routine maintenance!

And the custom prices? Could cost anything, depending on where you went with it.

The idea of releasing a non-Tinker quad-core processor at all, mass produced, and at a cost cheap enough for LOW end systems!?

When he complained that he hadn't used the Eight-Core Processor to save money, Dragon took over negotiations.

Calming people down, asking (And getting) his specifications, design notes, and so forth.

She would handle the public release events and marketing and all that garbage that Adam wanted NO part in.

He agreed to having her take a percentage to handle this and all future craziness that he would likely toss onto the market.

Because that was not the end of it.

His solid state memory? Ran too cool, storage space too large. Ram? Too fast, too low temp, and also too much available. His modified wireless access radio chips? And so on and so forth.

Clearly no one had expected that the man who created all those upgraded and updated software changes could do something very similar to hardware development.

Thank goodness he held back. He had been trying to remember the tech level of his old world (what little remained memory wise), and had honestly felt dejected that even with a super shard helping he had failed to live up to his own expectations.

He KNEW the technology he had created could be enhanced much further, especially with cheating materials like his metals.

Now, all those products and the machines he made to make them were going to be a problem for someone else. Dragon, specifically.

Money well spent, in his mind.

Thus in the next few days he was tasked by her to make some documentation explaining the science behind the parts. Easy enough, since he made the documentation during 'Research' and development.

Back to 'Small Garden: Min Eve', Dragon was going to renegotiate larger amounts of raw materials first, then release parts and some redacted documentation to the general public. Adam's machines would build up stock during this, increase production, ship finished products to various distribution centers, etc.

Then after the commotion dies down, Marketing will hit everyone with his new 'Small Gardens'. He insisted on not raising the price, after all the device ran fine for a cheap end machine but the only reason the market would even notice it was due to how darn low cost it was.

Besides, the 'Garden: Adaman Eve' was going to be built with the same low profit margins with the best power he could shove into the thing. The best possible without Tinkertech materials or design.

It would have to sell at a much higher price to avoid destroying the computer market, and Dragon had already started a bit of a political campaign of sorts to calm future 'competitors' that we were not going to instantly cause all their businesses to crash and burn, firing everyone and blowing up the economy.

Then again, if the 'Small Garden' had stronger specifications, it could have destroyed the market alone!

Uh.

Adam was slightly concerned that even allowing competitors to license his OS and giving them data through Dragon, competition may crash and burn anyway.

Glancing at his mental 'Golden Garden: Adaman Eve' system, he winced.

Yeah, that one would never be publicly released.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam was enjoying his dinner, while bickering about marketing with his beautiful companion, Narwhal.

Dragon was there too, via screen... but she was also 'busy' looking through 'papers'. Her avatar was amazing, really.

After a bite of steak, he nodded. "So glad that stuff is over for now. I didn't realize how much extra work I was going to have to do just to make hardware suck less."

Narwhal chuckled. "Oh you are not close to done. Dragon has some suggestions to make your input devices easier to maintain without you having to hold hands, and we need at least 3 backups to swap in if a problem occurs. For each."

Dragon nodded. "And 3 backups for the actual construction machines too. That should be good enough that we can avoid bothering you every few months." Seeing his conflicted expression, she grinned. "You will be paid for these parts of course. But it IS part of the 'Support' clause in your contract."

He sighed. Still better than messing with all that paperwork. He would avoid developing any sort of political or social power just to avoid having to do crud like that in the future.

He sipped some tea. Narwhal loved the stuff. "Well, once that is done can I finally meet more people? I've been cooped up for nearly two months now."

They both winced. Dragon put down the 'papers' she was looking at. "No. Sorry, but there is a time period of observation for all new members which should have run out last week, allowing you full access to the next stages of Guild Acceptance."

She waved a hand. "And similar precautions apply for members who 'Second Trigger'. Your power stabilizing checks enough boxes that you activated the automatic quarantine procedures."

He blinked. "What!? Why even have that?"

Narwhal grimaced. "Some people gain dangerous sub-abilities after a second trigger. I for example found out my force fields could now cut people as well as defend. If I hadn't known, I might have accidentally sliced up a teammate while trying to protect them."

Dragon nodded. "We also have examples of people going psychologically unstable, in one case literally exploding due to paranoia."

Adam grumbled. "It's not like I was going to pop or something. You almost blow up your soul ONE TIME and no one lets you forget it."

Narwhal's response was dry. "Well, you know how squeamish some people are about soul explosions." She took another bite. "Anyway, Dragon and I thought we should try and get you around some healers, what few we have. See if we can get your 'Recovery' ability to improve."

Adam pushed aside his tray. "Improve in what direction? I can try and focus on one improvement path if I have guidance."

Dragon sighed. "Being able to apply the state to someone else without 'healing' them into a copy of yourself would be a huge step forward. Other than that... range healing? Area healing? Any improvement really would be infinitely valuable."

He hummed. "Well... I guess. Better start reading medical documentation though." His mental garden changed download lists. "And maybe work on general chemistry and biology at the same time. Wouldn't hurt anything."

Dragon 'typed' on her devices. "I am including paramedic and nurse documentation to go with your doctor related courses."

Narwhal followed him as they dumped their trash and returned their plates. "Ooo, so you'll be a nurse? Mmm."

Adam chuckled. "Male nurse outfit only, I hope. Though I do have the legs for it if needed."

As he wandered along with the two, one woman slick with innuendo, the other bickering about semantics, something about the conversation felt like home.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

All HIS crap was working, darn it! He tossed the printing hardware to the side. Some part inside his device was properly covered, but the laser printer had a manufacturing defect that popped part of it into the wrong section, causing parts to melt.

The new design nearly isolated every non-Adam part from the junk he was forced to work with. Dragon was to thank for this, as he had been very pro-brick design before she showed how OFTEN this third party stuff broke down.

As far as he could tell, most of his personnel would be hired simply to replace this JUNK he had to use on top of and inside of his equipment.

Raw material manipulation. One day, just... voom! Fix yourself!

Sigh, that would get a kill order on him on seconds. He had weak memories about the Star Trek universe, and how their Earth had nearly collapsed once replicator machines were released. Now all they needed was raw material to create anything. It caused chaos.

He took a break, flowing high temperature fire over his flesh to burn off the oil and stains.

The 'Garden' systems were having... an impact.

PHO alone (like many chatrooms) was booming with reviews, questions, commentary. As it was it took a few hours for people to accept this wasn't a publicity stunt by some random guy hacking the internet.

Dragon's distribution system was awesome.

He didn't want to admit to anyone, but her insistence that he build far more creation machines and build up a huge stockpiled had been well placed. They were sold out everywhere, and in some places pre-orders were through the roof!

She and marketing insisted that he leave it alone though. Too many building facilities would become a waste of resources after the initial wave of buyers got what they wanted.

It turned out though that the wave of publicity had managed to increase Min Eve Server sales, as most industries had assumed a certain level of bragging and snake-oil selling due to how high the specifications were for how low the cost had been declared.

Within the guild, the reviews were pretty solid. Even if the only Garden's being produced with Flame Metal were still in locked review labs.

Turns out that the cheap hardware got everyone's attention, but the speed and polish of Eve held it.

People were astounded by how well it ran on... well, near everything. The website was being swamped by testing groups and users wanting copies, and Dragon had to increase her allocation of server clusters to ensure nothing slowed down.

It was looking more and more likely that future consumers would either buy a Garden or a high end machine. The low cost market was being cornered HARD by this stuff.

Some people were pushing anti-parahuman rhetoric, some were saying it hurt national pride to use something made in another country, but honestly all the arguments came off as pretty petty and arbitrary. Normal internet stuff.

Still, the situation was stable enough that he could begin saving charges and preparing for his future medical tour.

Wait... would Amy have her powers yet? She would be what, 12? 13?

Chibi-doctor? No way was he going to google an underage kids name for any reason, that would just be creepy.

With a chuckle he realized that if he went around and collected the main cast of Worm it would be something close to a 'Muppet Babies' scenario.

Then again, some of those older women would now be in the prime of life...

With a grunt, he went back to work. Dang Narwhal getting his hormones raging.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

By the time paper work was straightened out and he had the supply chain for his new product established, Adam had a full set of charges.

Also known as: Four.

Each day since it filled up he had been subtly enhancing 'Recovery' in preparation for his 'Exposure Tour', as Narwhal insisted on calling it.

Tiers of 'Recovery' now existed: 'Stabilized', 'Standard', 'Peak', and 'Enhanced'.

'Stabilized' would ensure that no further loss of functionality would occur, but wouldn't try to repair non-lethal issues. So no limb regrowth, minor bruise correction, etc.

'Standard' healed you to fully functional human (Or whatever average your species had). 'Peak' would make you as close to a high level super-human as one could be without actually changing from base DNA or human organs, etc.

'Enhanced' would use all the information from 'Recovery', 'Research', and 'Technomancy' to try and go beyond limits while staying roughly to the four-limbed model as possible. He may end up with extra eyes or organs or something.

He could set the level of healing, reducing himself to a near crippled state with 'Stabilized', healed or better with 'Standard' or 'Peak', or in very dangerous situations, go crazy with 'Enhanced'.

The next charge was a mass storage system. When he had extra resources (water, food, metal, etc), it would store it in this dimensional space (Squishy played with it, looked like a meatball) for future healing. It took a second charge for it to also store metal and stuff for his 'Enhanced' form.

So he was really ready to get going.

He was NOT expecting an old, beat up Recreational Vehicle.

Dragon was grinning. "We can't just take a cargo plane or something, can we? You are a new cape, and we need subtlety."

Adam sighed. "Road trip?

The vehicle floored it. Dragon whooped! "Road Trip!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Riding in a self driving vehicle was unnerving.

Adam kept glancing at the wheel, SURE that something was about to go wrong.

Dragon found it all hilarious, as the various screens showed. "I've scheduled pit stops at various attractions along the way, so even with just us two it won't be too boring."

He gave a wink. "You and I, m'lady? Hark, I hath been abducted by yon Dragon!" At the chuckle he continued. "So who are we going to be working with?"

She sighed. "There are... very few true healers of any type, and over half of them are actively working for Villain organizations. The first though, we are going to have you spend some time with Scapegoat."

He blinked. "That... sounds like an unfortunate name."

Dragon pulled up a profile. "His power is to transfer wounds of any type to himself, and then onto others. As an emergency measure, we have a set of already brain-dead coma prisoners, each with existing death sentences, to accept the damage he builds up if he is unable to heal himself in time."

Adam looked over the details. "Going to guess here, but I assume that while working with him I will be the recipient?"

Dragon nodded. "Aside from your amazing level of regeneration, if your power triggers on his ability it would be the best variation to collect long term I think. You would become something like a damage sponge."

He moved on to the next profile. "Isn't this a Villain?"

She sighed. "Yes, Lizardtail works with the Villain Accord. However, Accord will likely be willing to cooperate under truce conditions with some minor concessions I could make with him." Seeing his look she shrugged. "If you can absorb the damage from others thanks to Scapegoat, Lizardtail's power would be the next best upgrade. He can apply his ability in a field around himself."

Dragon pulled up some pictures with modified circles. "Closer is better of course, but area healing would be amazing if you can pull it off."

Adam frowned. "I... might be able to do that without him. Do we have access to any Rogues or Heroes with other area of affect abilities? If I stay in healing form, that may be enough."

She blinked. "Hmm... Well, the third healer on my list has a sister with a wide area emotional affecting ability. Also, it is in a area where a tinker friend of mine has set up shop. I was intending to introduce you two anyway." She nodded. "I will arrange for Scapegoat to ship down to Brockton Bay, and we can hit four birds with one stone... or something like that."

He blinked. "They are all in one place?"

She shook her head. "I had a few other people with healing similar abilities, but most of them are chemical tinkers or create biological replacements. Useful, but not directly complimenting your abilities." Dragon sighed. "Also, one of them is in the United Kingdom and is being a jerk about cooperation anyway."

Adam shrugged. "Could be worse. When is our next break?"

She grinned. "Buffalo Zoo!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

It was not exciting.

The animals themselves were nice, and we were technically in the USA now.

Basically it had a petting area, and lots of birds and reptiles and stuff.

It honestly felt a bit like a school trip, and Dragon had him put on a headset (with camera) so she could talk and stuff while he wandered around.

He even had those fake glasses so she could project a hologram of her being nearby.

If she was still trying to look normal, this type of stunt was not helping her case... But she was clearly having fun, so who cared.

He leaned on the railing. "So... we are in New York. I'll be honest, I thought it was was farther away."

Dragon 'leaned' as well. Her 'body' was toned, but she had more of a 'girl-next-door' look than athlete. "Places on maps don't always line up with our heads when we visit. I find places seem closer than they are when I am flying from place to place."

He watched a baby leopard roll around. This exhibit was expectedly popular. "So where is this Brockton Bay anyway?"

She flicked her hair back. "North of Boston, so Massachusetts basically. Coast side. I'm thinking about setting up a new lab there, now that I have made some advancements in my tech base."

He blinked. "Advancements?"

Dragon blurred, reappearing as a... sexy cyborg thing. Mostly normal face, slightly robotic eyes, an outfit a bit tighter than expected. "I'm still stuck in my base, but some of Dad's old stuff became surprisingly useful recently. I have been working on a full recovery, but at least with this update I will be able to do something like a full body drone instead of the more simplistic remote sensors and stuff."

He shifted his eyes away. "Alright, I know you've been around Narwhal far too long. I mean, I am glad you are wearing pants at all, but those curves are deadly."

She lit up (thankfully NOT literally, who knows how many LED's she had hidden). "Aww, thank you Variance! I admit this model was focused toward a friend of mine who has stuck by me in my worst moments. I'm hoping to surprise him."

Adam rubbed his eyes. "Well, I am going to take a wild guess here and assume you like this guy a lot. A whole lot. To the point of designing sexier bodies to pop over and say 'Hi!' lot."

She bounced her... she bounced. "Too much?"

Adam thought back to the man in canon focused on efficiency, who dedicated his life to trying to prove his own worth. Maybe he deserved a mind-blowing gorgeous woman surprising him once or twice.

"No, I think you nailed it."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

They had almost made it to the edge of the New York state line when a large collection of what appeared to be combine tractors mixed with rusted cars acted like a huge Gundam and tried to flatten the RV.

'Tried' was the important part.

Adam had been stuck in the RV for literally hours.

It was... boring.

So when the 'Yellow' coated RV suddenly turned into a forty foot long Golden Kaa... it made an impression.

Seeing a man with blazing fire for hair and blood red metal eyes stare down at you from double your height... well.

It wasn't a fight.

Thankfully the tinker (Named "Track-Tor, the Invincible!") was not in the now burning wreckage. He apparently went for flammable filler when constructing his 'Farmbot of Doom'.

The thing went up near instantaneously when Kaa bit it, and the fireball had been epic!

It might have been meant as a final 'F.U.' to whomever defeated Farmbot, but watching Kaa eat the flames and grow larger kind of demoralized Track-Tor.

He was just sort of staring at the crater as we waited for PRT to show up.

Adam was just... unsure how to feel about this. "I thought only people like Mouse Protector went for the corny stuff?"

Dragon shook her head. "No, unfortunately people like this pop up fairly routinely. Not all powers leave you with a stable mind."

He had ended up catching four other cars before us, but those people were all fine. He had just put them into a 'Human-Pen' with small shears to experience the tragedy of Tractor life.

Yeah... this should have been mentioned somewhere in the canon lore, if this level of nuts was routine in some places.

When he found the Villain's Lair (Tractor production factory, why not), it was filled with various tractor-related gadgets and tools.

Why he had made a fruit juicer connected to a car-sized tractor, Adam couldn't understand.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

This road trip was CLEARLY for Dragon's benefit.

He didn't even KNOW there were this many museums.

Also, he had been under the impression that there was only one 'Worlds biggest ball of twine', and in reality that was likely true, but there were innumerable 'County's largest ball of (Fill in the blank)' that they had visited.

Does this count as trolling?

Thanks to having significant disposable income, he now had far too many souvenirs. And a day or so of driving... ended up taking a week.

She justified it as having to wait for Scapegoat to make his trip down there anyway, so why rush?

All that aside, he spent some charges over these days on a technological front, both to keep the narrative of 'My power grows based on those around me' and to eventually prepare a home for either Dragon or a similar AI.

If she ran on the virtual OS, he would have a companion like this even in other worlds... and not being alone was nice.

So an upgrade to Squishy to allow interfaces from other shards ('Search' windows? Floating desktop from 'Technomancy'? Yes please!) was followed by a charge to 'Technomancy' to allow time acceleration in the hardware simulation.

The other charges went into improving the simulation itself. The ability to allow hardware creation via software in the simulation would allow a future AI to craft new hardware for herself without him having to be in the way. The ability for a software designed Avatar to show up in Sqishy's interfaces so Adam could see/hear/touch/taste, etc.

It was all illusion, at least until he could find some hard-light technology here, but illusion could improve the quality of life.

The ability to record tastes and play back those memories when eating lower quality food. To allow the body to correctly smell the area for danger, but present something pleasant for his mind. And so forth... It was getting to the point where he was considering creating an 'Illusionist' skill tree just to see how useful it could be.

Adam had vague memories of mind manipulation in a series of books, 'The Dresden Files' or something close to that. With nothing more than mental tricks one could 'see' through fog or frosted glass, ignore uncomfortable weather or clothing, pretend food was still warm and ready to eat, and so many other small details.

Then again, there were no weak powers really, only lazy or uncreative users. Probably.

Seeing Brockton Bay on the road signs felt like heaven though. Even after remodeling the RV, traveling was getting old. Out of boredom he had burned out the inside entirely and replaced it with custom 'Flame Metal' parts... comfortable and safer if they had to fight some giant baker or ham sandwich or something.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The city itself looked high quality. Probably because the section ENTERING the city would get the most focus on not looking run down and filled with baddies.

Still, the quality of repairs went down hill as they drove toward the bay area.

Gang signs went up. Broken windows showed up more. People in hoods, shuffling, standing in shadows... well, sketchiness in general started ratcheting upwards.

Adam glanced at the empty chair. Since his 'upgrade', Dragon was able to just stream a video feed as if he had the portable camera, which she found fascinating. "So what is our first stop?"

She sighed, 'sitting' in the driver's seat. "First, we check in with local PRT Headquarters, get you set up with rooming and usually a lot of paperwork." She smirked at him. "Luckily, we got that out of the way already."

Images of the stacks of documents he had gone through fled in his mind. "Yes. Lucky."

Dragon chuckled. "So we are heading over to Downtown, near one of the High Schools. You can leave the metal in the van until we have to leave, I've arranged other vehicles to get us around while in the area."

He siphoned metal into a slowly whitening backpack. "Better be armed. Internet says this city is crazy dangerous." Plus, 'Flame Manipulation' made his hair look awesome.

Adam flicked his wrist, a bright blue Kaa hissing. "Yeah, and with a layer this thick I should be safe from knives and bullets from the neck down." A shift and most of his skull was covered in a helmet.

The eyes and mouth areas were actual flame, so he could see and breathe and stuff. The holes in the top allowed his hair to flame through.

...Shift the top layer of metal to lower temperatures... and now he was a combination of red plates with blue edging. Sweet.

Dragon jokingly sniffed. "Bit cliche, isn't it? You look like an average knight in that getup."

Adam chuckled. "How about this?" Guild symbol on the chest and back, add it to the gloves, change some of the flames to bright white for a skeletal look... Neat.

She was... less impressed. "Please lose the Skeletor look, He-Man."

Fine. Smooth white surface, blue square flamed 'eyes', red flame hair, space gap to expose mouth and bottom of nose. "Meh, should be good enough." The under-layer was scales of Null Metal, as an extra layer of protection.

Really, it was only possible to move this weight thanks to 'Flame Manipulation' in the first place. If he swapped out skills he would be way slower.

Adam flexed a bit... mmm. The outfit was comfortable, and the slight restriction against his muscles added a layer of something powerful to his movements. Exoskeleton, basically. "When do I get to meet some heroes?"

Dragon sighed. "Not soon. To hopefully speed up the process of power adaption, we set up a small apartment in this base next to the small hospital. You, Scapegoat, and a young healer Panacea will have rooms there and work together to heal cases."

She 'led' him into the facility. "Tinkers will be allowed to visit, since you already posses a powerset for that, but other than that we are keeping the number of visitors very small until we can understand how you will interact with their abilities better."

He blinked. "Isn't Panacea like 12 or something?"

Dragon nodded. "Thirteen, which is why the three of you have your own rooms for this test. If all of you were consenting adults, we would have three beds in a small area to increase power bleeding chances."

Seeing his shocked look she rolled her eyes. "Not that type of consent, although I am sure Narwhal would love the idea. Just... room-mates, basically. The current setup will be Apartment-mates, for the record."

Adam opened the door to his temporary home to see a man-goat.

He closed the door.

Adam took a calming breath. "Right, when you said 'Scapegoat', I feel that you left his profile images out on purpose."

She looked ecstatic. "Maybe?"

He sighed and opened the door. "Is it a mask? Because that is a very realistic looking animal head."

"Baaa."

Adam rubbed his eyes. "You all suck."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Scapegoat turned out to be a cool guy, really.

Still, mask aside, conversation was a bit lacking until Dragon led their new apartment-mate over.

Adam glanced over when the door opened.

Panacea was short, big-eyed, and peaking into the room like her bright white healing outfit was somehow subtle.

She. Was. Adorable.

Adam raised a hand. "Yo! You here for the healing party?"

Scapegoat also waved. "Baa."

...He COULD talk, but he (so far) has been using a dry erase board. It was... trying. Also, he wasn't sure if this was canon or not, Scapegoat wasn't exactly in the main cast.

But it was annoying.

Panacea squeaked before forcing herself to stand (sort of) tall and give a weak smile. "H... Hi! Yeah, I was told we were going to learn about healing and stuff. I'm still adapting to my abilities, and my family said this could help."

Wow, she took the whole man-goat thing in stride... made him feel like a wuss for freaking out a bit. "Yeah, come over and take a seat." A hand wave had Kaa slide over and convert into a mixture of chair and hammock.

Her gasp was satisfying. See man-goat? THIS is how you act impressed! "So I am Variance, I can use power-sets I gain from either dire need or the environment around me. This dude is 'Scapegoat', and he can absorb and transfer damage to heal."

Scapegoat nodded. "Baa."

Sigh. "Anyway, Dragon was hoping that I could enhance my healing power by being around others doing similar things. Oh, and you can call me Adam, Adam 'Adventure' Burns. No point in a secret identity when my head is on fire. Or bald, or paper, or whatever."

Panacea giggled. "Well, I'm Amy I guess. My family's team has decided to go open with identities to encourage Heroes to be more publicly acceptable." Seeing my look she shrugged. "And well... I gained my powers in kind of a public place anyway, so the secret was out before we could decide otherwise. My sister actually got hers during a public basketball game!"

She sighed. "I guess we weren't subtle."

Adam chuckled. "Well, I should get to meet your sister at some point as well. Dragon and I am hoping that being around her will encourage my healing to become area-of-effect, like her emotion stuff."

Amy blinked. "Huh." Turning to man-goat, she squinted. "Is that a mask or not?"

"Baa."

Adam pointed at the whiteboard. "He says it is one, just made from an actual goat with some tinker-tech to make it move right. I'm not sure why he would bother."

Man she was laid back at this age. He leaned on one arm. "So I slowly gain power each day, and have to choose one power-set to use at a time. How do your skills work?"

Amy seemed slightly uncomfortable. "I touch people and I know how the bits work. And I can change stuff." She seemed to close up a bit. "Not brains though."

Adam nodded. "Probably too complicated I guess. Not even advanced medicine has a full understanding about brain development or recovery, and the stuff adapts to basically any input given enough time. Can you at least understand the brains you see?"

At her cautious nod, he continued. "Then there you go, that is useful. You could help a doctor by having him take a brain scan or something and you can point at it to show which areas are damaged or whatever. That could save lives without forcing you to take on the risk."

At her stunned expression he held out a hand. "On a side note, my whole body changes pretty heavily when my powers are switched out. Could you let me know what it looks like on the inside when I do?"

A hand waved a board between us.

'No interactions before evaluations are done. Orders by Dragon.'

Adam blinked. "Ah. Thank you for the heads up, Scapegoat."

"Baa."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Healing was... interesting.

A patient would enter, the three healers would each individually diagnose him or her, documenting their findings. A doctor on staff would review the works, they would have a debate (with the patient listening) about the best and healthiest methods of treatments without and WITH powers.

Thankfully the documentation Dragon had passed over was very thorough, Adam could keep up with ease. More surprisingly, so could Amy. How old was she again? Sheesh, overachievers.

The actual healer would bounce between Panacea and Scapegoat, with Scapegoat holding Adam's shoulder, passing along all kinds of painful damage. Not that Adam flinched or anything, compared to soul surgery this was down right pleasant.

On the positive side, Scapegoat wrote down that he had managed to get rid of 100% of his injuries for the first time in several years thanks to Adam's amazing levels of regeneration. Normally some of the more deadly but benign injuries would be stored in Scapegoat's body until a certain level built up, at which point he would dump it on a Villain or death-row inmate.

So Adam was both morally and politically a great choice as a damage sponge.

On a side note, his 'Recovery' power-set had interested Amy, as she was confused how his body parts worked exactly. She got permission from Dragon to inspect via hand holding, but there was no DNA instructions forcing his eyes to look like that and no organs in place to construct fingernails made of bone.

Also, in 'Recovery' mode, he had NO hair. The ability to grow hair vanished.

For some reason that disturbed Adam.

Anyway, it only took a few minutes of annoyance before he swapped his heavy and annoying 'costume' into Null Metal chain-mesh shirt and pants with 'Fire Manipulation' before swapping back to 'Recovery'.

Constantly putting on and removing gloves got old quick.

Near noon, he got tired of being a damage dummy and used one of Squishy's charges to permit 'Recovery' to be externally applied, another charge for it to be able to 'scan' others and ensure any external 'Recovery' uses would not be based on Adam's existence.

No need for sudden twins, after all.

Announcing the 'change' brought the heal train to a crawl as they were moved to a nearby lab for more detailed scans while he 'attempted' to heal some volunteers.

Said volunteers seemed much less stressed when informed that there were two extra healers nearby, just in case.

The first healing... uh. Didn't go well. Didn't hurt the patient, but all her teeth fell out and new ones showed up.

After only a TINY amount of totally freaking out, everyone calmed down and Amy confirmed that the woman was a picture of health.

Still, Adam insisted on going back to standby until the next day. He had already used a charge secretly to convert and transmit any waste biomass like that into his bio-storage in the future, allowing his healing to give a more magical 'Things just changed' vibe rather than risking having a human shed like a lizard or something.

An extra day would allow him to have two reserve charges AND give everyone a chance to calm down a bit. Hopefully.

Thankfully the woman was still grateful, as her dental history had been... epic. No wonder his power decided it was faster to just remove and replace.

A new day, a couple of less traumatic healing moments, and Adam was now participating and helping out as each person entered, got evaluated, and healed.

It was during one of the rest breaks that their idle conversation led toward contracts, and Adam found out that Panacea had a terrible one! Even man-goat agreed.

Adam knew Carol was not exactly on the girl's side, but what lawyer would allow such unfair legal restrictions? Such low payments? High requirements?

With Dragon's help and Adams insistence, the three healers and five or so doctors ended up spending the rest of days three and four drafting a generic 'healing' contract, something that was unneeded before due to only having a few in existence it could apply to.

Dragon liked the finished product, which required mandatory breaks, pay rates, and monitoring of minors until of age and more.

She convinced Adam fairly quickly to use some of his massive treasure trove to fund a global charity funding healing in all forms in general, especially in Truces and local emergencies.

After all, many healers were not exactly legit but Adam still wanted them willing to help out.

And... he had cash.

Piles of it. More than expected. To the point where he now had a personal financier agent who only had Adam as a client.

Oh sure, his products were doing well. Sold out everywhere sold, so far. Hitting the media by storm.

But no, his current liquid cash was due to some craftiness by Dragon herself. Not only was she selling the schematics (Garden systems being spread was the whole point after all!), but she was setting up agreements and such with local big-shots, to delay deployment of the Garden systems in certain markets.

The payments needed to shut Adam's company down temporarily grew in cost over time though, so one way or another Garden systems would be sold on a global scale.

But this both provided more income in the short term and allowed the still accelerating production line to handle the current and future surge in orders.

So yeah, money. Already he had his financial guru buying up debt, foreclosed buildings, and near-bankrupt businesses. Both here in Brockton Bay and up in Toronto Canada.

Money wouldn't follow him easily when he left this reality, so investment was the plan.

Anyway, the global fund and charity would not only handle relief funding after Endbringer attacks but would pay basic salaries to any Parahuman with healing related abilities, bonuses if they volunteered at shelters, clinics, or hospitals, and more.

Healers who volunteered for dangerous situations would gain automatic life insurance and healthcare, relocation of family if desired, and a budget if their power required certain items to work toward healing. Healing Tinkers both existed AND needed funds and tools.

By the end of the week Dragon was already pushing the right buttons to speed the new charity 'Open Hands' along, and surprisingly Legend himself endorsed the charity during an interview. How she arranged that, no idea, but it hit the internet like an explosion.

During the same week...

After a certain number of people, it just got boring. There were one or two who had genetic disorders that Amy had to disable before his healing could fix stuff, and only a couple of crazy moments. Although one guy was CONVINCED he was dying because his friends shaved his head while everyone was drunk. How he got through security, Adam had no clue.

Amy had given him a bright red, black, white, brown, AND yellow Afro after some angry arguments, but the weirdo loved the thing and refused to allow anyone to remove it.

Just... what the hell.

Once it was confirmed that Adam could heal on contact (Although he didn't bother doing 'Peak' or 'Enhanced' options), they introduced 'Glory Girl', aka 'Victoria Dallon', to hopefully convert his healing to area-of-effect.

It went poorly.

Who even knew what 'Capraphobia' was?

Glory Girl didn't have it in the damn canon story, he new THAT much.

Amy was still pouting at the closet. "Vicky, come out already! You're hurting his feelings."

Adam glanced at the man-goat, rolling silently on the ground with his board covered in 'HA!'.

He's probably fine.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eventually Adam had to create a flame metal cube framework with flame-mesh curtains.

Scapegoat convinced him to add the 'Do not feed the Goats' sign.

It complicated everything. Now every patient had to go through evaluation, go into the goat cage, come out for consultation, read the message boards poking out of the goat cage, and then go through healing.

If it was Scapegoat's turn, they had to (again) go into the goat cage.

Victoria was on the other side of the room, sitting with Amy... who was basically treating Vicky as a pet right now. 'Everything is alright', 'The bad goat is gone', 'Your new crown is very pretty', etc etc.

Since Amy seemed to be having fun, Adam let it go. He had to take breaks anyway because Dragon would have documentation brought in at regular intervals. Charities took a LOT of paperwork, even with an awesome Dragon + Dragon Lawyers backing you up.

Still, the day was progressing along nicely until a comatose person was wheeled in.

Adam was the first to call a break and gather everyone up.

...Scapegoat had a 'paper' bag over his head. He was still finding this hilarious.

Glancing at the others, assistants and doctors left outside, he looked at his boss. "Dragon, I am mostly sure our next patient is not injured. In fact, I am pretty sure they are a cape with some sort of problem handling their power."

The random fidgeting between the kids stopped, and the metal 'bag' was fully focused. Dragon frowned. "That... was not planned. We wanted to avoid exposing you to other powers until your whole process was better documented."

Adam spent a charge on 'Research', focused on dimensional scanning. This ability would eventually split off when he created 'Time' and 'Space' powers, but 'Recovery' needed it to heal anyone with abilities safely.

He nodded. "I want to have Amy give him a checkup while I am in contact with them both in 'Research' mode. I will need some experience sometime, and this patient has family consent for healing already given." He frowned. "Plus, it may be his power causing the issue in the first place."

The conversation went back and forth a bit, and in the end parents were called. Thanks to Victoria's bickering Amy's mom gave in and gave permission... so on-wards!

There was a minor pause when Adam's paper hair and text eyes formed. Well, except for Scapegoat who had somehow got a marker to put a smiley face on his bag. Amy was impressed that, unlike my flame form, this one DID have biological parts in place to 'grow' more hair and fingernails. So... it may be genetic.

Neat.

And then the bio-tinkering.

Following Amy's power actions was... fascinating. She was not just claiming meat and ordering it to grow or move or whatever, that would be reasonable. No, her power was creating tiny, VERY tiny dimensional portals, so small that with one charge 'Research' could only confirm they existed.

And from these tiny space holes were shards of crystal, too small for any instrument or tool Adam knew of currently available to analyze.

Each crystal was basically a nano-machine, a tiny robot that existed only long enough to make a fraction of a fraction of a change.

No wonder she could reconstruct random biological stuff into needed components, this was new-magic technological wizardry. The power worked on such a tiny frame of time and at such a small scale that only a power dedicated to observation (Thanks 'Research'!) could he even detect ANYTHING.

He waited till Amy decided that this WAS likely a power issue and she had given up before speaking. "Amy, could I talk to you for a second?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Pulling her to the side, he gave a small, reassuring smile. "First of all, I want to say how impressive your ability is to me."

Aww, her blush was adorable. "Secondly, my 'Research' skill informed me of something your power does that you, yourself, are unaware of."

Dang, her face was tightening up in fear and suspicion. He waved a hand. "Nothing bad, Amy. Something... interesting though. I want to tell you first so you can decide if you want anyone else to know. It is YOUR power after all."

She took a deep breath. "Ah. Alright." She seemed to settle herself. "Lay it on me."

Adam nodded. "You are not a healer, and you are not a bio-tinker or a biological manipulator."

Amy blinked. "What?"

He changed into 'Flame Manipulation' and held up a flame model. "Yeah, its strange. Your power is to select an area, like a person or animal or whatever, and allow your power to create very tiny machines that make very small changes before vanishing. It explains why most of your ability is research oriented, allowing diagnostics and advanced knowledge of how biology works when it comes to future potential changes."

Adam grinned at her stunned expression as she watched the floating flame robot. "In other words, most of your powers are in the end a very strong computer somewhere in space-time combined with manufacturing tools small enough to do surgery safely. Considering that metals and stuff can occur naturally in the body on small scale, it may be possible through effort to scan or even modify solid objects... though it could take a long time for any change, considering how small your tools are."

He twisted the floating flame machine image, dozens of other flame models he had seen blossoming into flame and floating nearby. "Honestly, you are more a robotics tinker with major biological knowledge and talent. Basically a secret Tinker in disguise."

It took a few seconds before he realized that she was... well, not fainting, that doesn't really happen much in life unless someone is dehydrated or has blood loss, but certainly blanking out while staring at the floating objects.

Adam sympathized, the things were fascinating. Some were rods, some had noodly things, a few were all joints. No idea what each one did of course, but neat.

He poked her shoulder. "So... I know a Tinker who is really good at helping out tinkers. Want to talk to Dragon a bit?"

We had to wheel the patient out and pretty much call a break after Amy allowed Adam to share the new information with Dragon.

And it just so happened that she knew a local Tinker who may have quite some knowledge of small, efficient machines.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Armsmaster was covered in blue armor with silver edges. Adam's silver armor with blue edges rapidly changed to mirror the man's outfit due to how much more awesome his was. Armor buddies!

In the other mans defense, he took it in stride. "Armsmaster. You must be Variance?"

Adam took the handshake and nodded. "Yes sir, but you can feel free to call me Adam when off duty. I'm the one everyone is going out of the way to help stabilize my powers and hopefully make them more team-oriented."

The nod was... well, efficient. Not sure what Adam expected really. "Dragon has given me a high level summary, but I would like details about the original discovery of Miss Dallon's actual power manifestation."

Adam blinked. "One moment while I change power-sets." Go 'Technomancy'! Black nails, cyber eyes, awesome hair... rad. "Do you have an email for a large file transfer? I can convert my memories and impressions into other formats very easily."

Something like approval came from the other man. Not verbal of course. The bearded tinker looked to the side... Oh, the sexy cyber must have been using Adam's 'vision' over the last week or so to practice something similar for use with Armsmaster's headset. "Dragon, give him the account information we use for project transference." A near inaudible beep made him pause, as some software gave him a notice. "I mean, please. And thank you."

Dragon's grin had something like a motherly vibe for a moment before she was back to full bounciness. "Of course, Armsmaster."

Whom had already begun unpacking the various transport packages and setting up some VERY complicated looking equipment for scanning.

Contact, data compression, requested formats? Yeah those would work. And send. "The raw data, with transcriptions and info summary, has been sent. I also included a high level summary, but I can give an overview for those of us with slower processing speed."

The grunt pretty much informed everyone that it was 'understood, but I am currently attaching wires to...' whatever that was.

Victoria (Whom Amy had insisted stay for moral support) raised a hand. "I have been lost for like... an hour now. Actually, I'm not even sure why we stopped healing people."

Adam nodded at the girl. Her aura ability was nearly negated with all the Null Metal he was wearing, it considered her power as a type of energy field, so only his exposed hands and head were getting the impact. No idea how Scapegoat was handling it, but based on the laughter he wasn't getting a 'fear' response.

Adam waved a hand toward Amy. "So with the low quality tools everyone had, it looked like this brilliant young lady..." A nod, and she seemed to squirm under everyone's glances. "She thought she was doing something simple like changing people to be healthier. And to be fair, her power acted like that. But in reality, what she was doing was determining what changes she wanted to make... then a really strong computer or something like one was making tiny robots to follow her orders."

He shrugged. "But the robots are tiny and can barely do anything, so they fall apart. They also use some of the parts she is getting rid of, like broken bones and stuff, to help create those small robots and the healthy bits that are made later."

Seeing her still a bit confused, he glanced a Dragon but continued. "Basically she has a tiny robot army that helps people."

Vicky was wide eyed. "She's a robot princess!?"

Amy jumped. "NO!"

Adam grinned. "She's a robot QUEEN."

Amy shoved him. "NO NO!"

Vicky squealed! "We can get matching crowns!"

Her sister pointed in anger. "Don't you make me get Mr. Goat!"

...It devolved from there.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Healing people with powers was on hold.

Amy was grumbling while Armsmaster set up all kinds of gadgets in a corner.

Victoria was floating as far to the back corner as possible, and was only really staying quiet due to how fast she was texting her family. Apparently, those crowns require some preparation work before being crafted and the over-eager girl was jumping all over that.

That said corner happened to be on the opposite side of the 'Goat Cage', where Scapegoat was still 'Baa'ing in amusement, was irrelevant.

Adam himself was awkwardly sitting at the table in the middle of the room with a few non-Parahuman doctors and nurses. If he went anywhere else, it would be taking a side.

Thankfully the tension was broken by Armsmaster. "They are not robots."

Seeing the girls attention, he pointed at a screen. "Too small, not enough components for any level of instruction. Your power is creating a series of tiny tools. Springs, rotating levers, heat transfer rods, chemical catalysts, and so forth."

A model was rotating on the screen, showing many basic shapes. Adam's flames were cooler, in his opinion. "Your power creates tiny objects that are in the midst of moving. Where and at what orientation those objects are added to the patient handles the 'healing' you do."

Adam glanced at Dragon. "So the real power is whatever is calculating where to place those devices, what orientation they have, and how far along the tiny movements are at?"

Armsmaster barely nods, focused on the devices. "The crystal material itself doesn't exist long enough for capture or anything more than the shortest amount of examination. The models only completed due to the sheer number deployed during a repair."

Dragon was 'leaning' against the wall, looking slightly concerned. "Did this affect how you heal people, Variance? You already developed some pretty intense technological powers already."

Adam shook his head. "No, the feeling is more like it was inspired by Panacea's power, not copying it. In fact, I can not do minor or selective changes, like gene therapy or cosmetic surgery. My power has basic settings that I can't change yet. Give it a few days."

Thankfully this has Amy distracted from her slight 'Queen' freakout. "What kind of settings?"

He counted off. "Triage, or 'Stabilized'. Just enough to keep them alive without me. 'Standard', where you get a full heal. 'Peak', which tries to make you the best you can genetically be without extra DNA or hardware. And... uh."

Adam sighed. "Well, the last level I haven't used yet. It is 'Enhanced', which will use any and all knowledge, abilities, and surroundings to make me as powerful as possible. It will cut down my lifespan, toss out some organs and such not needed for short term combat, and rebuild me as basically a weapon of destruction. Extra organs and limbs with robot parts are pretty likely."

Seeing the shock he waved it away. "Going back to 'Standard' or 'Peak' would heal me right up, lifespan and all. It just would hurt, not last for too long, and... well, I would not trust it on other people until my skills improved by a LOT."

Armsmaster looked intrigued. "Have you used 'Peak' on anyone else so far during testing?"

Adam shook his head. "No, kept it 'standard'. Felt like anything else would required user consent beyond the whole 'heal me, please' that we have been collecting."

Whatever Armsmaster was going to say was cut off by a slight sigh from Dragon. "Orders from on high: No use of 'peak' on anyone until this whole healing session deal is over. They want a far more recorded and secure facility before possibly enhancing someone to almost Parahuman levels."

Adam shrugged. "That's fine, I'm not sure what my power would do to someone else anyway at that point." He blinked. "Or... or what it would do to someone who already had powers. My 'Peak' healing skill just makes you the best you can be... and that may apply to their power as well."

Ooo, good face-palm Dragon! "Correction: When my contact finishes freaking out she will likely delay testing even longer now."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The several day wait was punctuated by periodic requests from Armsmaster for various custom Flame Metal and Null Metal products, which he was ecstatic over. Not that it was easy to tell, but Dragon let him know.

The healing in general dropped to only two hours a day, which was still dozens of patients due to how fast treatment was.

At this point Adam had gained and used enough charges to allow 'Recovery' to (when desired) suggest changes and wait for approval before running through the still automatic process.

Thus genetic issues could be addressed, and he could now handle cosmetic work with no issue. No idea if he could fix the 'mutant' case 53's, because the testers were working REALLY HARD to prevent any more 'cape' patients.

Legend endorsing Adam's charity had accidentally become a huge boom in all of his businesses dealings as well, as everyone did background checks on this strange new guy.

At this point, his original name for his charity had been ignored and tossed by the public, and everyone was just calling it 'Charity Garden'. To the point where Dragon got it officially updated.

Well, it could be worse.

Anyway, 'Charity Garden' had some unexpected gains. Of course the Heroes applauded the concept, more healing is great, but surprisingly Villains in general were giving positive reviews of the deal. And the number of new self-reporting healing capes had hit double digits, as the few people with healing powers finally found a safer outcome than 'Someone finds out and a gang kidnaps or kills you.'

The ones with little or no attachments had actually signed up with The Guild directly, and Narwhal had backed them up to the hilt. There was now a healing division that was being set up so they could share ideas, gain advanced equipment, and get deployed during disasters.

Still, there were two days until he was scheduled to attempt to heal a person with Parahuman abilities. Two days.

Two charges.

Glancing at the 'Efficiency Tinker' Armsmaster, whom he had been around all this time...

Maybe time to enhance the 'Cybernetic Warfare Suite' by adding a 'Software/Hardware Optimization' option.

Victoria squealed. "Queen P! Aunt Sarah says she already has a princess dress with healing symbols on it!"

Amy growled. "Aunt Sarah is about to have a coffin with her NAME on it."

Vicky grinned. "Can it be pink?"

Her sister was only stationary due to all the sensor wires attached. "It will be black with hatred and filled with vengeance."

...Uh. This will be fine.

Just in case, how is Scapegoat doing?

...Is that a Tin Can!?