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.
rofl:
