The Brookwood Mall was mediocre even back in its heyday. A medium mall in a middle sized town in the middle of nowhere.
Still, as the only major shopping complex in the area, it was financially solvent and popular enough that there were no concerns about further investment. If the local economy had picked up a bit, maybe a few larger brand stores would have taken up residence, offer more variety.
Adam gazed at the harvested shell of a mall. The large metal divides, the collapsed sections.
The first few days, after the panic came... there was hope.
Powers were still new, unlimited potential. Who knew what would happen tomorrow? Maybe a brand new tinker would make a device, maybe a striker could cancel the effect, maybe a trump could control it?
This was the mall where Gray Boy made his debut.
Over one hundred direct victims in this one location. Young, old, every race. Captured, twisted, and tortured.
As hope fell, this mall was transformed into a series of cages. Not to keep people out, or protect the victims, but to hold back the screams and sobs of the ever suffering masses.
The lucky ones were trapped without movement. Still forced to experience life, it was a terrible form of sensory deprivation. They still raced from sanity to madness and back, like the others, but it was only being trapped in their own body.
The most unlucky were no longer visited. Even friends and family could not bare to see them suffer like this.
Looped time, filled with renewing wounds. Slowed time, seeing the weapon close in on them for hours before the pain began... then reversed to enjoy it all again.
And the emotional pain... forced to see a parent or child suffer inches away for years.
'Recovery' was helping him hold his anger and sympathy at bay for now, to help him help these poor wretches. But... this hurt.
The bubble he was touching right now contained one of the earliest victims, thankfully only forced to repeat the stumble from being pushed for eternity. She was even in one of her lucid phases, and after each reset was silently watching the blue fire skeleton tapping her prison.
Even when sane, the prisoners rarely talked with those outside. Why bother? Nothing could help. No one was even sure if they could die of old age, as time kept restarting... could she die even if a hundred years passed? Longer?
Adam glanced at the girl. She was fine looking, but not amazing. Just one of those many people you would pass on the street while hurrying to somewhere.
He focused back on the surface.
There was both good and bad news.
Good news, all these fields were generated by Gray Boy's shard, and it wasn't creating a new planet for each victim trapped. It was why it didn't vanish when the boy died, as these fields were not based on the child himself but on the power in the other dimension.
Also in the good category, it was an active connection. He could follow it to the shard and study it.
Bad news, at least for Adam, this was not quite time manipulation. It was actually on the far distant side of Panacea's power. So no burning today.
Gray Boy's ability came in two chunks.
One, his shard cluster could create patterns that would project a dimensional field in Earth Bet, these 'time bubbles'. More like 'Dimensional Displacement Fields', as it slightly slid the area out of sync with reality.
And two, his shard could make snapshots of that field and reconstruct it in stages. It was how wounds could not be adjusted to, as the brains were being modified to not remember the last time the injury happened. It was why the victims could remember everything, as just like Panacea's healing the power wouldn't mess with memories while 'restoring' the victims.
While it would have been amazing to have time based abilities from scanning this shard cluster, at least it was directly useful in improving his 'Transfer' power set and getting ready for his first true dimensional jump.
After fixing this, of course.
He had been sitting in front of this girl (Susan? Probably Susan, he was more focused on examining this power than listening closely when Dragon had given the rundown) for over two days now. Switching to 'Recovery' a few times handled his rest issues, and Dragon had some of his protection personnel delivering meals on time.
Destroying this shard cluster would happen, even if Amy's power somehow got effected by the process. It SHOULDN'T, but these powers were odd to work with in the best of times. No, he could have done that in seconds after touching this thing.
He was trying to handle treatment by using the Shard as a medium. Even Dragon was unaware of the many people Gray Boy had attacked behind the scenes, the most secret the many victims he had forced to dig a grave and then freeze them under the soil. Constantly suffocating.
Seriously, the Slaughterhouse 9 were just assholes of the highest degree.
This would have to be done quickly, and it would have to be done right.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Why wait so long before working on this? Adam's original opinion had felt right at the time. Unlike making lots of money, fixing these victims would paint some big targets on his back, VERY big ones.
Cauldron, unstable at the best of times, would instantly notice. With an amazing precog and the ability to teleport anywhere, he would have issues unless this was carefully done.
Slaughterhouse 9, who HATED someone attempting to help their victims, would move to attack. When it got out that a guy had triggered in Wisconsin and started to make tinkertech replacements for the human body parts that the Siberian had eaten... well, they had killed him and many more within the week. Adam was not going NEAR them until his power had grown more robust.
Finally, and worse of all, Scion. The golden naked man was the definition of over powered, had very odd values, and could theoretically attack if he detected Adam destroying or modifying a shard. Far less likely now that he had time to examine the things (The difference between 'working' and 'ruined' was slight when it came to powers), but at the beginning he didn't know how much intercommunication power shards did.
So after this action, within hours... he was going to move to another Realm. Fast.
All his power charges, combined with the advances 'Research' had made from studying Gray Boy's dimensional field generators... it was barely enough.
Squishy was insistent that he use the reconstructed power carefully. 'Transfer', after all these charges, had unlocked small parts of the original 'Kaleidoscope' ability. A very... very small part.
By actively accepting some of the 'interesting' restrictions that the original power creator wanted, it would drastically reduce the activation requirements... down to the level he could actually use them.
So penalties he would be accepting on this trip: No safe travel. Arrive at an 'interesting' time. No language package. No reality insertion... which meant no memory modification or paperwork to make integration easy.
And so on.
In exchange, he gained a bit of precision: He could make a request for Squishy, a destination request.
Not strong enough to specify a Realm, or a person, or whatever. But he could request some level of destination filtering.
For example, he was going to focus his first 'Transfer' with the goal: Ability to avoid Precogs.
It should hopefully send him somewhere he could learn or gain the power to not be easily slaughtered here in Worm, even if people notice him. Especially then, actually.
Stupid Contessa with her 'I win' power, stupid Endbringer Simurgh with the 'I see everything' crap.
With another check on his setup, and some 'just in case' emails that shouldn't be sent out as long as he came back within a week... he proceeded.
"Conversion."
Miles of shard crystal suddenly became Flame and Null Metal. Parts of Gray Boy's area of Panacea's Shard actually exploded! The dimensional fields being generated however were now safely part of his power directly. Or at least, he could work through them as if HE was the owner. As if his shaking hands were able to touch these screaming souls, yearning for freedom.
He swapped to 'Recovery', even as outer sections of Gray Boy's power began to burn into solid blocks of metal.
"Conversion."
Thousands of tons of material across the nation suddenly became heat, then metal. The soil covering frozen victims, trees and concrete about to fall onto time locked victims, the weapons about to injure innocents, explosions paused in expansion, all of it vanishing into small metal spheres.
"Transfer."
A more basic use of his power. Deep in his house, converted matter balls fell in a flood.
Hundreds of people abandoned in back roads, still frozen in time, reappeared at Brockton Bay's Hospitals. Not like his involvement would be secret anyway at this point, at least these people could 'wake up' in civilization rather than miles from help.
Each transfer made a chunk of the new converted matter vanish, the energy used to teleport people rapidly dropping as his power analyzed each 'Transfer' and carefully became more efficient and accurate.
"Recovery: Triage. Shard Strip."
The few who were capable of triggering had done so in all kinds of strange ways, the years of torture taking their powers to bizarre purposes. Better to get rid of it all.
Setting them down to Triage level would expel any fragments or contaminants before the final action.
This... this hurt. Healing hundreds by reaching out of reality and back in elsewhere was draining his energy hard. Hunger burned in his stomach, and that was AFTER sacrificing all that new converted material into direct power for Adam to wield.
"R... Recovery: Peak. Dull Memory."
Just removing their memory could be damaging. Instead, their entire period of torture would be dulled, blurred... a rough outline, rather than years of suffering.
"Re... Re..."
His eyes, blue flames dimming, were starting to fade entirely.
"Resume."
Even as all those tiny lights, those fragile people, those poor souls... even as they began to move again, he could feel almost everything vanish from his power.
This... this would suck.
"Transfer:Abyss."
As Squishy pulsed, a soul was thrust into the dark.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Dragon held back a gasp as she watched Variance collapse to the floor, her people already moving into help.
Watching the man's eyes fade away, his flames vanish... it had stunned her.
Why!? This was just an observational period, they had agreed to begin testing on possible solution tinkertech devices in a month or so! What had he even been doing to cause him to pass out like this!? Narwhal was going to blow a gasket, this run was just to see if Adam could make something to help Dragon analyze the time bubbles.
Even as she watched her people carefully examine the skeletal man, she felt someone tug on her hologram.
"Excuse me, Robot Lady? Do you know what's going on?"
Looking at the confused miracle girl, moving freely for the first time in over a decade, Dragon noticed the growing number of alerts hitting her systems.
And the massive number of confused people that just showed up in Adam's city.
Dragon sighed as she began listing the new mountain of work this would cause, even as a small smile crossed her face.
'I just want to take a look.' Sure.
See if he wants to 'take a look' ever again after Narwhal gets done mothering him to death for power overuse.
