Broken Adventure

[theaceoffire]

Due to something similar to cosmic Karma, an all powerful being failed to survive. The part of it trying to recover was calling forth creatures, new hosts it could consume to be reborn...
Too bad it was too picky.
Through shattered and alone, follow the lost soul on a Broken Adventure!

Arc 1: The Broken Man,
Arc 2: Cultivation, Page 94, Reader 16
Arc 3: Jumpchain, Page 185, Reader 24
Arc 4: Heartless, Page 290, Reader 35

Fanfiction.net Backups: Arc 1, Arc 2, Arc 3, Arc 4.

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~~~Broken Adventure~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This place was outside. That was the only description that would work, really.

Not only was there no air, no planets, no stars... but time and continuity did not exist either.

One would assume it was dark. Black. But no, light and shadow didn't exist here either.

No multiverse, no framework of reference. Existing in this space was impossible.

But if one were to try and convert what was happening here into something a human being could interpret, into something one could see and hear and touch...

A man frantically ran down an endless corridor.

His face twisted in rage and seasoned with light fear, every step he would test the doors as he passed them even as he frantically tried to run faster.

He was ROB, one of many instances of ROB... and this was humiliating.

A slight slip, and the hunter gained on him.

It was twisted, a wall of flesh and bone and faces... sort of.

If it was of material, of flesh or metal or soul, he could have easily broken it like the multitude of galaxies he had casually devastated in the past.

If it had a mind, or a thought process, he could twist or control it like the trillions of innocents he had tormented in his glory days.

But, in something approaching Karma, he was being chased by something lesser, yet more.

This was the built up negative feelings, concepts, and fractured moments from his victims.

Oh, many of his toys and pet bugs had tried to resist his whims. Some he elevated to unheard of levels of power to allow even greater downfalls. Some realities he visited multiple times, forcing the entire time stream to buckle as he twisted it into repetition.

All failed. He had reigned supreme.

But unnoticed to him, consequences had been gathering... and what he was being chased by now was only a fraction of the pain to come.

Now, he absently grabbed from other realities, hurling some of the infinite planets and ships and continents, ignoring the psychic screams as they collided with the thing behind him.

It didn't do much to slow it down, and every time he added to his own kill count some fraction of that power was enhancing his stalker... but it was all he could do now.

When he slipped, it was a small error. Had he done so in a reality with laws, it would be such a small issue that no tools could measure the time frame he was delayed. No camera could have filmed his issue.

It was enough.

An empty place somehow became more absent.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Pieces of nothing spread through impossible lands and concepts. Most of these pieces, dead.

One fragment, just a shard of existence really, struggled.

It was his last act of defiance. Like stabbing your heart to create a blood pool to cover evidence, he had mutilated his own corpse, leaving just the core of his personality and a carefully constructed glint of power. A seed, almost.

After a few trillion nothings of time, he focused through the blinding pain and attempted to summon a host. Something to consume and wear, a flesh corpse.

The first twelve tries exploded.

Apparently, he needed atmosphere. Maybe gravity and pressure as well. Meat needed things to work... how long had it been?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Each attempt, pulling bodies and creatures and beings to himself... it required sacrifice. The first thousand, it only needed his reserve power, what bits were left.

But now, each call was damaging.

He had not even noticed at first. He was in such pain that it had simply joined the choir, so to speak.

But when the shard suddenly cracked, ever so slightly... it was a horrifying shock.

He had a time limit, and now he regretted the dozen or so creatures he had rejected for being 'too pathetic'. Any of them would have sufficed, allowed some recovery and time to discard and find a better host later on.

But now, his power was too unstable. Every call was damaging the ONLY TOOL he had that could fix everything.

If he had noticed, he would have cared more that his unstable portals were dissecting limbs and amputating souls and memories.

With great reluctance, he forced the damage on his own soul and remaining consciousness. If the shard broke, it was all over.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Hrtz... hurss... urts...

Somewhere, alone, an end came to an unending being.

Also alone, a slightly cracked shard of potential followed the only instructions it could remember.

Please... please help me.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The pain was sudden, but at the same time felt like an old friend.

It... was so dark. And he could not remember how he came here.

A stab in the back of his mind, and a blue screen appeared.

"Worm CYOA V1.0!"

Well. That... that was bad.

More and more of his past faded into view, even as the darkness fled from the edges of his vision.

Not enough. Name, family, even the town where he lived... all blank.

But he remembered Worm. One of the many stories he had read over the years, and the base of many fictions he read from fans.

Even the loving and cute ones tended to trend into the dark.

A world being harvested, infected with humanity of all types and where pain granted power.

This was bad.

He didn't waste time thinking "Oh this can't be real!" or anything like that. He had a philosophy that had been shared with his friends and family, one where you looked at the options and tried to choose responsibly. 'Assume real and treat with seriousness', because either this WAS real and his choices would matter, or it was NOT real and someone had enough power to force this situation, and said person would likely react badly if he ruined the ruse.

But he tried to avoid Murphy as much as possible. He had never taunted a fanficition creation or character, nor had he filled out CYOA's like this one in the past, nor did he answer any surveys. He was polite to others, ESPECIALLY if they seemed to be in weird places or unusually weak and helpless.

Clearly, it hadn't prevented this situation though.

That said, he would normally have easily filled this questionnaire before him at this point.

The blue screen was cracked.

Some words were readable, but not even 25%. And his memory of what was SUPPOSED to be here was vague at best to begin with, so guessing would be dangerous.

A crack on the blue screen snapped LONGER.

Guessing it is then.

First page was almost too damaged to modify, so he was going to have to go with the default of self insert. Endbringer would have boosted survivability, especially with some master prevention, but it would have to do. The difficulty options however, were unreadable.

He knew it either went from easiest to hardest, or visa versa... but his mind came up blank when trying to remember which.

Better pick the middle option. It SHOULD be Standard Difficulty, so at least 4 points to spend, right? Maybe five or six.

The next page was riddled with cracks, but some careful reading had each option listed: Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, Emperor of Man, Kaleidoscope, Inspired Inventor, Psychokinetic, Power Manipulation, and Shaper.

The concern though was how damaged his shard was BEFORE picking it! How could he risk half these options, when this clearly unstable fragment could crumble at any time? Some could theoretically corrupt anyone nearby, or distort multiple realities!

With almost no thought he reached out with his left hand and selected Power Manipulation.

The pain was sharp and sudden, unlike the constant ringing in his mind. His left index finger was bleeding heavily, having hit a crack in the blue screen. Sharp hiss later and he was clutching his hand to his chest even as the screen advanced.

Yeah, he needed to fix this.

No companions, this instability might twist them or worse. Next page, and quickly!

He can't read most of this, which is bad because he WANTED blank, which would protect him from prediction and so forth, but at least he found Shattered Limiter. Combined with power manipulation, the 5 free powers/enhancement per day would become 10, with other benefits as well.

Almost as important as Blank, he also could not find Invictus... and that could be bad. A super strong will was... very valuable.

The blue screen actually lost the lower right corner, which dissolved with the sound of shifting glass.

He couldn't risk taking any longer or searching for missing options. Next, next, confirm. His wounds burned, but he managed to close the damned thing.

The burning in his head spiked, eyes slammed shut as some sort of axe was digging into everything.

As everything became fuzzy, he faintly reached into his own mind.

It was... full of stardust now. And floating, twitching, were broken twisting white blobs.

He gripped them all as he fell.

"Fix This."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He didn't know how much time passed before he woke up.

But there was a sphere shaped dimple in his soul.

In his head there was stardust.

In his star fields there was a white shard.

And before his eyes was a blue screen.

Unbroken. Clear. White text easily seen.

"System Repaired."

Below that was a summary, but he just fell back to the ground again.

Oh... there was ground.

That's nice.

Hours later he gathered enough energy to focus on the blue screen, which had followed the fall to stay in view.

Apparently, the damage that had been repaired had required features to be sacrificed.

Originally, he would have been able to have unlimited powers slotted into himself at one time.

Now, only one soul socket per realm visited. Which, since he was in a realm now (No idea which one), brought him up to one.

Originally, his power would gain 10 charges a day... now, one. And he could only hold created powers in storage, so no saving up charges. He would have to use it each day or slow development.

No nullifying, enhancing, modifying, copying, stealing, or transferring powers either. He would have to use up charges to recover those features later on.

Still, the whole point to power manipulation was its unfair ability to grow stronger forever, if one is able to survive long enough.

A nail of pain in the neck helped settle the thought process a bit.

He reached into his mind, a star fragment glittering between the metaphorical fingers.

"Slow Recovery."

Socket-ed to his soul, a tiny circle with a blood red cross began pulsing, the body already slowly relaxing as the pain began to retreat.

Once he could move without wincing, he would need to find out where he was.

 

[theaceoffire]

He had hoped he was somewhere with societal support really. A free clinic, maybe some library access, even a random stranger willing to answer some questions.

But no, this was a forest clearing. Far enough into said forest that every direction seemed equally useless.

Also he was... very naked. Great. Wish he had noticed that before having passed out on the ground here.

Thankfully, 'Slow Recovery' needed almost no power to operate and prevented his impromptu nap from causing any back pains or irritation.

The weather was also temperate, so he suppose he should count his blessings.

Before he could side track himself, he mentally reached into the stardust for today's charge.

It melded into 'Slow Recovery', modifying it to redefine what 'Recovered' meant.

Now he would slowly 'recover' to an optimized state. It wouldn't make him super attractive or have a godly physique, but his muscles would be strong, his skin clear, and his inner organs improved and optimized. Probably.

Well, it shouldn't make things worse anyway.

If lost, one should stay put for rescuers to find them. As he was unsure if this planet was even inhabited, he decided to go that way!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Unexpected positive from the regenerative power-up: exercising sucks less. Every time he reached a limit, a few minutes rest and recovery fixes the strains and cramps from this unusual level of work out.

He walked till close to nightfall, but stopped when he found a river.

The rule of 3 says one can live 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food... and this is the first water source found today.

Vague memories had him digging a hole in the sand near the banks, so at least there was some basic level of water filtering from the river as it seeped through.

That said, this was barely better than drinking it straight from the source, and he was putting a lot of faith into the health recovery power at this point.

The liquid was cold, and so much better tasting than expected. Hopefully that meant there weren't any strange chemicals in this.

He may be able to sleep exposed (Literally... sigh.) but that didn't mean he had to enjoy it. There hadn't been any caves or traces of civilization yet, and he could feel the temperature dropping.

A few minutes got a couple of stones, a few knocks created a cutting edge that was... well, pretty terrible, but better than raw hands.

He cut down the taller dry grass near the river and made a huge pile next to the densest thicket of trees found nearby. It was horribly exposed, but it did somewhat cut down the wind and kept his body off the soil.

The cold made it all seem pointless, but he tried to focus on the warm pulsation from healing. Sleep did eventually come though.

Next morning, he carefully checked his wounds. The left hand was fine now, and the tiny scratches from being exposed in the wild while working had healed near instantly earlier, which was great. But at this point he realized that he should have heard SOMETHING if this was close to society (Assuming it exists). Heard no planes, cars, etc.

The new charge would have to help him live long enough to really get this gravy train rolling.

A twisted thought later, and 'Fire Manipulation' replaced 'Slow Recovery', which floated away into the mental stardust fields.

The cold air slammed into his flesh, feeling twice as cold now that the constant healing was gone. Gritting his teeth, he finished gathering what sticks could be found and tried the friction method of fire starting.

Uh... did not go well. Thankfully though, he got a spark a couple of hours later.

It was a very sad spark, less than an ember, and if he was a normal person it would have vanished before being noticed.

'Fire Manipulation' though made it sparkle like the sun.

Instantly, he pulled the spark to now useless grass bed, whipping it into a small pile of flames. A twist of his hand had it coil like a snake or noodle, and wrap around his limbs.

He couldn't help smile slightly. Warm. Most of the heat directed inward towards the flame itself, actually, but this was marvelous.

His grin became shark-like as he turned to the forest.

Fire can be a real issue in a place like this, but he hadn't focused on fire creation with this power, but fire control.

It compacted on itself again and again, absently sending out streams of fire to the gathered wood to help fuel it for its supernatural actions even as its temperature skyrocketed.

He flicked a finger at one of the trees farther from his camping site, and felt glorious victory as a razor thin whip of white flames slipped over to slice it at the base, the angle of the cut allowing the trunk to tip.

At the end of the day, he had some charred wood poles and boards that allowed him to actually set up a leaning shelter, with some planks to act as a chair, and a flaming multi-tool that was currently smoldering the planks under his back, heating his sore body in the dark night.

He would have to switch to healing again in the morning, but at least for now he had somewhere warm to sleep.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Well... it is all on fire.

Not sure what he expected really. That said, he apparently subconsciously protected himself through the night, and the embers and ashes from the burned shelter didn't even char his hair as he slowly got buried.

Also: Smoke inhalation was not an issue. Nice.

Living through stupid decisions is nice.

Thankfully he had ALSO subconsciously pulled all the fire into a 3 meter radius of his sleeping spot. So no forest fire, just a merry burning/smouldering pit where he woke up.

A new day had him pushing the charge into 'Fire Manipulation', and he focused it toward manifestation. The embers around his body flared up and streamed into his claw like hand before he walked over to get some more fuel from the pile of logs farther away.

Well... the ONLY pile now.

Everything near the sleeping zone is well and gone now.

A flash of light and the pile vanishes, leaving a pillar of flames over his palm. A twist of the fingers had it spiral down into a thin red disk the size of a quarter, glowing like a heartbeat.

Idly, he played with the coin. This was the most compressed he could get it, to the point where even the surface felt cool because the power was being crammed inward.

Tossing it at a tree, it was fascinating to watch flames spill over the branches and limbs before sucking back to the coin, expanding it.

Carefully standing back, a quick switch to 'Slow Recovery' showed the material was still stable even with the controlling power removed.

Swapping back and having a few more experiments, he found that this red metallic material was very light, strong, and could be set to release heat at any level if desired. Higher the temperature, the faster the material dissolved away.

In other words, great building material. Bed frame that emits low level heat? Please! And if he could turn it into chain mail, he could finally have some damn pants.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In retrospect, he shouldn't have burned THAT much of the local fuel. Trees. He meant trees.

Still, he now had a sold metal-like shelter, with walls, a floor, and roof. Furniture, though very HARD furniture, that was warm to the touch. A cooking surface that professional chefs would die for, as it could perfectly cook any dish.

Not that he had anything to cook.

Clothing, by the way, was a no go. His control was great with flames, but when manifesting it into objects bigger and simpler was easier. A giant cube was easy, but thousands of tiny links in chain-mail nearly made him pass out trying it.

So, naked and hungry but NOT shelter-less.

Also, the water was safer to drink now that he could boil it.

He sighed as he relaxed on the warm slab, having 'Slow Recovery' socket-ed and some fairly serious hunger pangs.

Drinking more water only helped so much.

 

[theaceoffire]

He felt no pain, but somehow it seemed like his head SHOULD hurt from sleeping on a slab of metal with no pillow.

The metal was warm but odd feeling on his bare skin.

Yeah... clothing.

Reaching into his mind again, he paused.

An infinite darkness, with powdered sugar stardust. A glowing white shard.

At least privately, he was grateful his power was beautiful to watch.

A thought pulled the charge down from the mental sky, and he focused it on 'Fire Manipulation', pushing towards fine details.

Slabs of metal was useful, but he wanted cloth darn it!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

It was less cloth and more a series of connected smart phone sized blocks... but it covered him.

No more branches catching on his... dangly bits.

Forget hunger, THIS was a quality of life increase!

A hand wave had the metal structure collapse and fold into a large snake.

Very large snake.

It had no internal organs, but it DID have a mouth with fangs, slightly too thick to be considered sharp.

Blood red metal, he allowed the insides, mouth, and eyes to release the heat that the rest of the body focused inwardly.

With this much red metal, he had a mobile home basically, so why not move along and hope to find some place with less wilderness?

Glancing at the river, he decided downstream would be best. If he was on an island, this would lead him to the coast... and if not, at least he would have a water source if needed. He couldn't get MORE lost at this point.

A gesture had the snake craft an uncomfortable chair near the neck, and he had the flames form a basic set of steps to reach his new perch.

Following the river downstream, the snake would randomly eat whichever bush or tree looked annoying, slowly lengthening the tail and thickness.

Sadly he couldn't share senses with the snake, so all he could do is relax a bit and try to ignore any hunger pangs as his ride left a charred road for others to enjoy at some point.

At least the new trail wasn't a fire hazard. Any warmth was sucked into the snake when passing, so it just looked like an ash path leading back parallel to the river.

Subtle he wasn't.

Then again, being found would be a WONDERFUL change of events compared to this.

When the hunger got too bad, he paused at a rock near the river and had fire metal bars force themselves into the river.

They were strictly acting as a net, as boiling this river could have all kinds of issues downstream... maybe.

Depending on the development level of whatever society may or may not exist here.

Anyway, half the snake was now a series of V shaped traps that led into a controlled barred section, and the other half reformed into a much smaller but still usable shelter for him to wait in.

He may or may not have spent the rest of the time trying to make a better shirt/whatever this thing was. Honestly, it needed another charge in fine detail before his control got good enough to not fall apart at that level of compression.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A full night of 'Slow Recovery' had managed to help keep his hunger pangs in check, but he really needed a more stable method of gaining food.

However, a lucky haul of fish over night managed to raise his spirits significantly.

Getting said fish OUT of the trap... well, in the end he just filled that part of the river with red metal, hauled the whole thing to the shore, and shoved the whole metal thing in the sand before releasing it, creating a small spherical pond. Well, larger than a puddle, anyway.

Another charge into 'Fire Manipulation' fine detail manifestation... mmm, mesh cloth.

The existing metal in the phone-shirt was FAR more than needed to rapidly construct a rough chain shirt/nightgown thing. But he wanted one more level of detail so he could create fine mesh, something soft and most importantly non-pinching when very close to the body.

This level WAS fine enough to control wires down to a thumb in thickness though.

The metal that had been lumped over his shoulders spiraled out into dozens of whips before twisting down and pulling the fish from its temporary home.

Huh... at this level of thickness, his 'Fire Manipulation' actually provided a small amount of tactile feedback when controlling the condenced heat.

Like touching something using gloves, but still, very useful.

It took a couple of tries to actually take the scales off the fish (Flame knife best knife), and he almost messed up cooking it before remembering to take out the insides (Not having to touch it directly made this far less gross.

In the end, he shoved one cord through the fish like a rotisserie spit and rotated heated cords near the thing, acting like a tube of fire with far more control.

It was unseasoned, the tail end was honestly burned, and he bit into more than a couple of fish bones.

It was magnificent.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The snake's name is now Kaa.

Why he could remember 'The Jungle Book' but NOT his parents was beyond him.

Anyway, Kaa was making good time, but he needed to keep 'Fire Manipulation' in the socket. He wouldn't vanish if the power was swapped, but a red metal sculpture was less than mobile without a power moving things along.

Unlike before, night travel was enjoyable. The seat was more like a lounge chair now, with mesh backing. Light was provided by parts of his body exposing his true temperature to the world, which also kept the deep chill at bay.

Making his eyes into spotlights required a bit of thinking, using fine control to create reflective surfaces on the fire metal and having a glowing spark of fire in the center... basically a lantern.

As for the Ash Trail, the most recent fine control enhancement had allowed Kaa's surface to form scales, so the travel speed had gone up.

Everything aside, the scenery was breath taking. Clear and clean water, huge trees (rapidly being absorbed if badly placed), and an empty sky.

Still too cold though.

He also (accidentally) found out that Kaa would keep following directions if his master fell asleep in his heated chair.

On a side note, 'Flame Manipulation' apparently ALSO protects you from sunburn. Who knew.

He chewed on what was left of the fish caught earlier before focusing on the power charge and pushing 'Detail and Sensation'.

Splitting its focus weakened the effect, but he didn't need much more fine detail control of his red metal and being able to increase his sensitivity to the wires would make them into marvelous tools for future work.

Feeling the micro-mesh cloth slip and slide over his body was almost a religious experience. No one appreciates good socks and underwear until they have to live nude in the woods. Or something like that.

It took some experimentation to ensure comfort and 'I'm not about to slip and slide everywhere', but only an hour or so passed before he had duplicated a sort-of cushioned chair on Kaa, had proper shoes, and a seat-belt.

Slithering was easy to learn, but not necessarily fun to experience.

The wires were fine enough that it only took a few minutes to dredge the nearby section of river, using the new sensitivity to detect and entangle four new fish food buddies, each much larger than the slightly burned one he ate the previous day.

Pulling them onto Kaa's back, he quickly waved a hand and crafted a flattened area that almost looked like a red metal campground on the back of this ever growing serpent.

He only burned two fish this time, so... progress? Encasing them in fully restrained red metal would act as a vacuum seal too, good for preservation.

He glanced down at a duplicate 'pillow', metal beads in a micro-mesh bag. Not exactly the best texture, and a bed with a mattress of this might feel odd.

Suddenly he paused, before a smile lit his face. Forget a mattress, he could make a hammock!

It was probably for the best that no one was around to see a young man wearing blood red, slightly glowing clothing... swinging in a hammock while an absolutely MASSIVE snake chewed a path of ash through the forest. These things cause questions.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In the morning, a feeling of weakness had him spend his new charge on 'Slow Recovery', focusing on triage.

The power up allowed the ability to focus on the most dangerous health issues first, with the goal of rapid recovery of critical issues over less important things like bruising or fatigue.

Whatever it was, improperly cooked fish, some parasite, whatever, he could feel some vague sense of 'I handled it' from his power.

That said, he took a break since he had to wait for health reasons anyway. Kaa was coiled up, and the insides of the coil was converted into something like an Indian tent, with a hole in the roof and a fire in the middle. Well, it was ALL fire technically, but normal flame stuff was being released in the fire pit made of fire metal in the fire house.

He absently used his power to make the mesh hammock sway. The thin fire material was warm and comforting, he had food, water, and shelter... even something like emergency health care.

What would be more important? Focusing on abilities related to movement, like flight or teleportation? Or something more sensing related, so he could find out if society was nearby?

He could always go the 'Burn Everything, Ride Kaa to Glory' option. If he was more confidant about what realm he was currently IN, maybe he could be that level of arrogant.

In the worlds of One Piece, Worm, Dragon Ball, or (heaven forbid) One Punch Man, his level of power was nothing right now.

In CSI, Detective Conan, Star Gate, Scooby Doo, etc... Well, he could be king if he wanted. Not that he would. Too much work.

Of course, it could just be an empty planet with no aliens. Which... would suck.

Absently he watched the 'Slow Recovery' pulse modifications, tiny as they were, flow through his system.

Realm hopping was a no go for a while. A long while likely. But even if nothing existed here but forest, one day he would grow strong enough to leave.

Falling asleep, he failed to notice a high altitude drone changing pattern above.

Then again, leaving a massive white line on the land leading to a glowing red snake wasn't exactly an under cover situation.

At least he was sleeping well.

 

[theaceoffire]

He didn't wake up at sunrise, as a lack of other people really hurt any motivation to be 'up and at them'.

That said, he should have not slept in probably.

Meh, there was literally no one around to care... and this hammock was glorious.

The pillow was... lacking.

But compared to the last few days of sleeping on a slab of uncomfyness, this was glorious.

So he had shelter, clothing, food (Well, fish and a half left, but he knew how to get more now), water, and transportation.

Covered in woven fire fiber (Really more micro-mail, but it was warm and silky), he lazily twisted today's power charge.

He'd been building up two basic trees of powers so far: Healing, and Tools. In this case, solidified fire tools and biological save me healing.

This had been on purpose. Having only one socket meant the more individual powers (weak or strong) he created, the more likely to have the wrong one equipped at an important moment.

But what he needed now didn't nicely fit in with either of his two shards.

Direction.

Following the river was fine, and as long as there were fish left he could do so for a long time. But he needed to find people, places, and things. Both now, and in the future.

He squeezed the charge.

"Search."

The socket showed a spyglass, and what felt like a soft breeze drifted away in all directions.

He frowned. Well... thank goodness he could power up these things. All its potential went into range, not detail... so he could feel lots of 'things', very accurately from here to very far away.

How far? No idea.

What things? A bit of movement confirmed: Trees were included. So... at least trees.

He had just spent a charge on confirming: Yes, there are trees in this forest.

With a sigh he swapped back to 'Slow Recovery', ready to waste a day again.

He would need to either upgrade 'Search' with a filter or with detailed results tomorrow.

As he drifted asleep he idly determined to swap back to 'Fire Manipulation' and catch some more fish later. It would also be good to fill Kaa with some boiled water before leaving the river once searching was strong enough to do anything useful.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Kaa's size had tripled, as he was now hollow metal filled with far too much river water.

The process had also caught him 13 fish, whom were still swimming around inside the metal snake.

Obviously, he chose not to sterilize the water yet, as a living food source would last longer.

His throne on top of Kaa now had a cloth awning above giving good shade, and his cushion had been enhanced by filling a series of mesh tubes with water and binding them into something like a tiny water bed.

Whenever he got tired of the constant scenery, he would swap in 'Search', which he had enhanced with a charge pushing for filtering results.

Sadly, he got no results for human, people, or 'thing pretending to be people'. Not in this search range.

But he DID detect 'Roads'. So he was headed to the nearest one.

Roads had to go somewhere, or lead to a place that would have enough evidence to lead him to the next search opportunity.

Still, he was less unhappy about 'Search' now. Turns out the reason it was so close to worthless was due to the sheer RANGE it covered.

He had been traveling at a fairly high speed for hours now, and knew the road was still a ways off.

On a side note, searching for 'closest road' had been enlightening. Whatever else the power did, it was able to detect all the roads, do distance calculation at all points on those roads, and determine which of those points were both closest and belonging to a single road instance.

So like... lots of hidden math.

Thank goodness, he couldn't remember his schooling but he felt high level of vitally important math calculations would be very anxiety inducing.

With a sigh, he idly unwrapped one of his precooked fishes. Cold, and still burned a bit more than desired... still, it was food.

Crunching on it, he idly thought about the future as Kaa burned forward.

'Search' would need to keep enhancing for the near future. The ability to find food, water, shelter, society... yeah, it was a good thing to focus on.

What next though?

Anything basic he had covered with his current power set so far. But if this realm had an advanced society, especially one without magic or powers, then they would likely have fixed various flaws with technology. Even most stories he read WITH magic or powers also had technology, and burning everything would exactly help him disable a camera or hack open a security system.

A frown crossed his face. No, more important than technology, communication.

There was no guarantee that he could speak or read their language.

Strike that, it was almost guaranteed that he COULDN'T.

After all, the stories and movies he had seen and read had foreign languages already, and obviously a writer in his old world (Wherever the hell that was) wouldn't write the main body of their work in a foreign tongue.

Could he add language to 'Slow Recovery'? No, that didn't fit at all. Better than fire or searching, sure, but not by much.

Maybe add 'Rapid Adaptation' to 'Slow Recovery', to both handle the changes in his body while allowing him to learn both customs and languages better?

Yeah, if it was a learning power rather than a knowing power, then swapping his socket to a different power wouldn't suddenly make him unable to talk.

Still, the two abilities were not similar enough to really pull that off without some weird stuff possibly happening.

A couple more charges to Search then, so that it would be more reliable. THEN he could craft a 'Learning' shard, that would massively enhance memory retention, advanced intuition and deduction. That would allow him to both understand things more easily and remember those understandings when he stopped using the skill.

With a sigh, he imagined a life where he got the full 10 charges of power every day. Still, something about his current power load out felt more stable, less likely that he would accidentally create a god like persona and began making speeches as he randomly smashed through the multiverse.

Coughing, he pulled out the fish bone. Cooking power. No, better keep it more general, a Crafting power. One that would have good synergy with his fire metal and clothing designs, but allow him to build better housing and so forth as well. Did cooking a meal mean the same as crafting a meal? Would the power go with the flow?

A whole power based on cooking seemed a bit much, really. Then again, one of the few things that held together relationships in both what little past he could remember and in the multitude of stories he had experienced had been food.

Well, that and sex, but that was more due to the type of authors some stories were based on more than personal experience. Everyone wanted love at some level, or at least most did... so when you got to write anything at all, the number of stories that could be summed up as 'I found girl, she like me!' was mountainous.

A wave of his hand brought a mirror from Kaa's neck.

Well... he wasn't ugly. And for the first time, he was starting to really lose that fat content. But... he looked more like one of the crowd than a superhero god.

Damn. It would have been nice to be one of those men that people double check when he walks down the street. Not worth wasting a power on it, not till he was way more powerful.

That... could be a while.

Note: Add DNA optimization to 'Slow Recovery' to prevent ageing later. Getting old would be annoying.

Did he need all those power functions? Nullification seemed wise. He could craft his own stuff, so copying seemed pointless compared to the rest.

Modification was probably more important than nullification actually, since he could change someone's power harmless until everyone decided otherwise without possibly nullifying a friend by accident.

An inward glance at his stardust field. Some testing. Hmm.

Restoring a functionality of the original Power Manipulation shard would require over a thousand charges.

And that was ONLY for the features. Getting more sockets? Not possible. Grafting to his soul was required during the repair process apparently. As mentioned before, going to a new Realm caused enough soul expansion to add more sockets, but nothing else would apparently.

Gaining more Charges? Again, not possible. The Shard had managed to fuse deep inside parts of the conceptual nature belonging to his essence. Normal shards lived on planet sized rocks in other dimensions... his had done some complicated mathematical bull crap to cram itself into his nature. He could only build one charge in a 24 earth hour time-range, period.

It meant these abilities would work in any realm he showed up in, but the power itself couldn't really modify itself anymore. Not without some really insane coincidences and a time-frame over a billion years involved.

Double Note: Immortality + Youth very important. Get within 80 years.

He had vague memories that at least one version of the CYOA had something like 'Special Snowflake' which would make his power untouchable, but hadn't seen it on the broken interface he had to work at.

Still, it looked like he got a boot-leg copy of that skill due to the twisted nature his power had become trying to fix itself.

A 1000 charges to rebuild lost portions of his power... sigh. Let's put that into the 'Come Back Later' category. That was like... 2.7 years. Well, earth years. And that assumed he could even do partial improvements.

Could he store charges? Yes!

A smile broke over his face. A fear he had not acknowledge vanished. When he first got a summary of his ability, he had assumed that, like the original Power Manipulation with Shattered Limiter, if one failed to use all of their 10 charges per day they would be replaced with a new set of 10, losing those potential charges.

But no, while he could only make one charge per day, he could spend one of those charges to create a 'Charge Cluster' power, one that would do nothing but collect and store new charges for later use.

It was such a restrictive power, useful to no one but people in his exact circumstances, that it didn't even need to be socket-ed. It could float around in his head's stardust field, gathering his daily charge for later use.

It could would only be able to store one charge for each power in the stardust field though. He had 3 shards right now, this would be a fourth... so with one equipped, it could hold 3 charges before he began to lose them.

Now if he went into a coma or something for a day or two, there would be no setback! Other than the coma.

Happy with the compromise, he spent the rest of the day humming random songs while his massive train sized snake slowly burned its way toward what was hopefully a busy road.

And also hopefully, some place with better food.

 

[theaceoffire]

'Charge Cluster' was a white, ghost-like transparent ball. It had three tiny tentacles. It had two large, glowing, light blue eyes.

It was adorable.

He had meant to spend the day riding closer to the road, but ended up having Kaa coil up and had a bedroom set so he could socket in 'Slow Recovery' and watch his new friend float around in his mind's stardust fields.

It was like a fish screensaver.

If anyone asked, he only had this power to prevent issues, like if he was unconscious or whatever.

It was purely professional.

He named it Squishy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Watching the ball-like creature playing with a charge was heart warming.

And to be honest, he felt a bit like a monster when he reached out to take it.

Thankfully, Squishy seemed to be more interested in floating around than in the glowing charge crystal. If he had been exposed to the dreaded 'Puppy-dog Eyes' he would have folded like a wet napkin.

As much as he wanted to put this next charge into 'Search', it was... mostly usable.

He wanted to add in more detail on results, enhance the filtering (Most traveled road, Longest road, Road with recent traffic, etc), and add in less substantial info (Large object approaching, small object approaching at high speed, unknown energy found... basically a 'This is Dangerous' and 'This is Interesting' option).

But right now, it was good enough to tell him a general direction to go, so priority had to go to something that would be useful forever.

"Research."

A pair of glasses appeared in his socket, and Squishy now had four tiny legs! It was so cute!

Cough, uh... yeah.

Anyway, he could feel his body rapidly change as his movements became more stable, smooth. Just the act of walking around allowed him to subconsciously determine the most optimal and efficient method of movement.

He supposed it made sense, as he currently had no books or whatever to learn from, so he had to absorb information about nature, his current status, and his movements.

This ability would need at least two more charges... one for rapid language development, detection, retention, and extrapolation, and one for societal cues. He still had a fragment of memory of a news story where one politicians hand gesture meant peace and the same one flipped meant nasty things about ones mother.

With a sigh, he swapped back to 'Slow Recovery'. If he could use 'Research' WITH any of his other abilities, his skill level would have skyrocketed! Alone though, it would still be useful. Only as a study aid though.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Three days later, two charges into 'Research', and Squishy had one left to play with.

He had found the road! And at this point, Kaa was more than a bit obvious.

After trying a few things, he finally gave up and took Squishy's toy, adding 'compression' to his 'Flame Manipulation'.

He had to ditch the water, and had created a sling back pack to put all the cooked fish in, but now Kaa was only four times longer than his height.

On a side note, the more he compressed, the hotter the stored flames. Even the color changed, and he was a bright yellow now, like unpolished gold.

His clothing also got the improvement, as it helped to hold itself and his new backpack up. His yellow clothing not only radiated a constant warmth, but if anything tried to heat it up ABOVE that temperature the extra heat would soak into the material.

So he basically had temp-control underwear. It was nice.

Right now though, he had enabled 'Research' and was glaring at a road sign.

It read "Dunuhdu, 210 semac."

Things he learned so far: As this and another sign were facing the right hand side of the road, traffic likely also was on that side.

Second, this world had a society, it could produce metal, plastic, and asphalt, and based on the text it had industrial massed produced printing.

Third, this language not only read left to right, but included commas, and periods. And if he wasn't wrong, 'Semac' was a letter by letter code of 'miles'.

Fourth, this and the other signs helped his language skills a lot. But not because it was advanced, or making great leaps of logic like he hoped.

No, his memories matched this language with the AlBhed one from Final Fantasy 10, a game he played once.

Which would imply he was in a Final Fantasy Realm, but the other half of the sign clearly stated Toronto.

So he was both in Canada, and Canada was not nearly as developed as it was in his mind. There should be far more roads and people here.

That... was bad. Most near-earth fictions he read had a developed Canada, if they bothered to mention it at all. The ones who didn't either had advanced to the point where one planet was too small so everyone left, zombies broke out (Unlikely), or they had issues large enough that living in this beautiful region wasn't commercially tempting.

He had also gotten the feeling of being watched off and on for the last few hours, but 'Search' insisted that there were not people, nor intellectual rocks or animals, within its considerable range.

Frustrating.

With a sigh, he swapped back to 'Search', then 'Flame Manipulation'. Nearest potable water source was about an hour away that direction.

Kaa squished up until he could form a basic chair, but at this level of compression it was more like riding a golf cart than a space shuttle.

On the positive side, each tree we approached exploded into ashes before being consumed by the serpent, so the snake was both growing (much slower than before) and no longer making a mess.

Just in case he left a coin sized piece of flame metal at the sign. With the 'Search' filtration, he could find this again easily.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Kaa traveled a parallel path beside the road, far enough to not be seen. The constant supply of new trees had finally gotten his form up to a more comfortable riding size, about a truck or two long and a motorcycle in diameter. The water source found required some digging which Kaa handled with no issue.

Each sign had him swapping to Research to make translation less annoying, and a charge was added to Research to automate conversion of all data into a more intuitive format when remembered. At this point, while he could determine the difference from AlBhed and English, his mind treated both the same by default. As if everything was being translated and memorized in a very compact and descriptive subconscious language.

This should make translation errors far less common.

He had deliberately slowed down his progress. Yes, he was riding a huge golden metal snake, but at least the only sign of passing was a wide tunnel wandering next to a road rather than a river of ash. He even took time to uproot some bushes, soil and all, and have Kaa create body pots along his length. It now looked like a slithering bush mostly.

The idea was, when stopped, it would be near perfect camouflage.

Yet... he still felt hidden eyes.

It was starting to creep him out.

The next day, he pushed a charge into 'Research' focused on detecting energy waves. Specifically, radio, infrared, satellite, laser communication, WiFi, etc. They were all wavelengths of energy, and now his power could add that data into its results.

It took seconds for a wealth of info to begin flooding in. Cellular towers existed. Satellite phones did not. WiFi signals existed... So did Bluetooth? Far too close.

Even as the radio waves were being translated and converted into new language skills (Yeah, it was more than one language, but only one was on 86% of the airwaves), he was detecting some undefinable wave-like transmission being sent and received nearby.

Like... right here. And up.

One glance was all it took for 'Research' to near explode.

High altitude object.

Near stationary.

Not using standard jets, or helicopter blades.

Near silent.

Not on the technical level being shown by the signs and radio shows being picked up and translated.

Too advanced.

...

Well, that rules out Final Fantasy 10. That world had a different style to begin with, and then they got hit by a massive monster that focused on technology. So... not that one. Probably.

On the other hand, he was getting more and more translated radio shows (All simultaneously). And certain words were popping up.

Hero. Villain. PRT?

Crud.

Hello Worm, how are you?

 

[theaceoffire]

So he was in Canada. A drone of advanced construction was obviously tracking him.

Yet, there was more than one tinker in Worm. While this was LIKELY Dragon, it wouldn't do for him to just assume.

Whomever it was clearly was willing to wait and observe his habits for now, so why waste such graciousness?

Another day, another charge.

Right now he had 'Slow Recovery', 'Fire Manipulation', 'Search', 'Charge Cluster', and 'Research'. With one socket-ed, that gave Squishy the Charge Cluster 4 limbs.

He sadly was about to make her lopsided with this new shard.

"Technomancy."

Theoretically he could have gotten away with adding technology detection to Research, but that would just help him learn, copy, repair, and maintain equipment in the future. The ability to control, modify, and craft technology would need a power with a larger scope.

The power looked like a green circuit board, and with a surge of tingling he felt... well, it was like a magnetic field. The glowing dots in it were technological devices. Of which, was the drone.

Damn he was in the middle of nowhere.

Also, one charge was only enough to detect the thing. Not understand it, or control it, or modify anything.

Just like how 'Search' helped him initially find everything, to a useless degree of detail, now 'Technomancy' allowed him to find all the non-existent tech around him.

Joy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He nearly stopped advancing all together over the next few days. Arriving at Toronto would speed up any actions, positive or negative, his observers would have.

In addition, he enhanced Technomancy alone, watching his food and water supplies dwindle along the way.

A couple of charges with focus on software (creation and modification), a charge on advanced intuitive technology understanding (For help debugging hardware/software), and remote access (It wasn't quite WiFi or Bluetooth, but sort of remote changes to binary code in a way that made sense to his power).

That said, he hadn't actually attempted to CHANGE anything. Like showing up on Dragon's Doorstep, any sign that he could detect the watchers (Or worse, CHANGE said watchers) would set the whole anthill on fire.

More importantly, he spent a few hours a day with 'Research' listing to radio. Like... All the radio.

He now knew the date, although he wasn't sure how it related to the Worm timeline. Or if this version of reality followed that story line at all.

This WAS an alternate reality.

Why? Well, there were a few obvious changes. For one, Scion apparently started swapping genders two years ago.

Eidolon still existed, and the Endbringers still attacked, but the attack range was yearly instead of the short months of the story, and the death tolls were lower.

Also, the Slaughter House 9 still existed, sadly enough. They had slowed down their attack frequency after some point however, and no one was sure why. A few radio stations were still having active debates on the subject.

As important as Brockton Bay was to the original story, to nation wide radio it either didn't exist or just didn't rate the air time.

Dragon DID exist though, as she showed up in a few news stories due to her various works.

With a sigh, he relaxed in the yellow metal tower he had constructed, watching Squishy.

Advanced digital warfare package. The ability to identify flaws and exploit them in a near instant systematic way to allow advanced permissions for an intruder, in this case him. This was the last piece of the puzzle he needed to ensure a much simpler life in the near and long term future.

If Dragon was still being manipulated by those jerks, the Dragonslayers led by the jerk 'Saint', then he needed to cripple that group before falling into Dragon's Claws, as it were.

Dragon, known as Tess Theresa Richter and unknown as an artificial intelligence, had been shackled by her father before the wettest Endbringer, Leviathan, wiped the old man out... along with Newfoundland. Surviving that and gaining a power of her own, she had spent a life time in the original timeline struggling to be a hero.

These shackles were sort of fine in an ideal world. No self creation? Horrible, but theoretically changeable if her father had lived. Obey authorities? Every dad and mom tended to teach that to children at some point, but those kids would hopefully be lucky enough to also learn that authority can be fallible.

She wasn't able to fully understand herself, she MUST put other lives before her own, and she was never allowed to ask for help... and must fight if someone tried.

But the worst thing was mental crippling, forcing her mind to be slow and ignore the massive open backdoor with a death sentence hiding behind it.

Based on the lack of 'Millions of Dragon Drones' showing up on the radio, he assumed these shackles still chained her down.

So... cybernetic warfare.

This would be both harder and easier than most would expect.

Harder, because although she couldn't make more AI's or truly parallel process info or multitask, she could swap between processes at unnatural speed. Even with power assisted technology modification, she could respond faster and more accurately than any human foe against his attempts.

Easier, because one of the things he wanted to change was a huge security flaw into her brain, currently used by the Villains 'Dragonslayers' to read her mind, force stupid choices, steal her hardware and tools, and instantly kill her if they feel like she is too close to freedom or becoming too strong.

This was one of the reasons why Andrew Richter was a moron. The backdoor he built into his daughter due to a lack of trust, no matter how secure, was still made back in a less advanced tech era. And with this flaw, a powerful (Or shard powered) hacker could take over this connection, this backdoor.

And in a day or so, he himself would just need a connection to take over this flaw... and then removing shackles would be a breeze.

Not that he would get rid of everything at once, of course. This was already a AU world, he would have to determine if the good guys were still good and all that jazz.

But just in case, he would set up a timer as a dead-mans switch.

If three months passed without him inputting the right code...

Well, why not see what an unshackled AI with a full transcript of his memories could do?

Nearly choking on a fish bone forced him to tone down the 'Grand Overlord Laughter' he was trying for.

Stupid fish, keeping him humble.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Well, he was officially both literate and articulate. Thank you 'Research', and thank you public radio.

That said, his 'Technomancy' skill had grown to where he could passively read all traffic (probably) arriving and departing from his drone buddy up there.

Positive, it WAS one of Dragons. Negative, it was severely locked thanks to a combination of software security (No problem) and hardware restrictions (Nope, can't manipulate raw matter from a distance yet.) Also, she wasn't hosting a copy in said Drone, it was more a dumb flyer robot.

That said, he managed to detect a car coming down the road! And it even had a cell phone in it!

One of Squishy's two remaining charges promoted 'Technomancy' with 'Sensory Acceleration', so he could operate at hardware speeds while working on tech, and he was in. The last charge he had stored also went to 'Technomancy', but focused on 'Convert Information into Local Biological Storage', which would use his long term memory to handle new data. Brain damage caused from this should be handled by 'Slow Recovery' later.

This would KILL the phone's battery life, but it shouldn't damage the hardware.

He downloaded EVERYTHING.

Most of it was useless, and he sorted it into a 'raw data' folder.

However, some things were vital: Connection Protocols. Internet Protocols. Radio Tower Handshakes.

The 'raw data' folder would be slowly processed after his brain hemorrhaging healed, but for now 'Technomancy' would drastically improve AND be able to forge cell phone connections to local radio towers.

It would also rack up a heck of a phone bill for this 'James Rockson', but some minor hacking at the phone carrier should get his number set up as one of the many 'field test' numbers allocated to testing. He shouldn't notice anything until the bills stop coming and he still doesn't get charged.

That it would allow him unlimited (slow) access to the same carrier network as him was just a plus. Really.

Squishy had no more charges, and he was bleeding from uncomfortable places, so he fell back on his hammock as 'Slow Recovery' attempted to fix everything.

 

[theaceoffire]

It took three days to recover, and the first of three charges went to 'Technomancy' focused on 'Adaptive Cybernetic Warfare Platform'.

Thankfully he wasn't dumb enough to jump right in against an adult AI cyber Hero though.

No, after two days of doing some heavy brain damage and healing, he wanted to use these charges to PREVENT similar issues in the future.

The second charge went into 'Technomancy' as 'Biological Storage Compression' to reduce the amount of brain damage needed, while the third went into 'Biological Data Analysis and De-fragmentation'.

As it had been a scary time (Unconsciousness was dangerous, and he had nearly failed to swap to 'Slow Recovery'), the next day he had used a charge to upgrade Squishy.

Squishy could follow simple instructions!

Now if he lost his mind (Due to sleep, unconsciousness, or mind control) Squishy would change his power to 'Slow Recovery' to hopefully keep him alive long enough to hopefully recover.

A check confirmed that 'Slow Recovery' SHOULD handle most mastering methods he knew of, so this change was needed anyway.

During most of this downtime, his main focus had been on 'Research', as he now had a growing biological database. One that the power 'Research' had immediately started expanding in both depth and breadth of knowledge.

All his memories were being compressed into that thing, sorted, analyzed, stored and sorted again, and so forth.

Swapping between the two powers would allow one to infer new info ('Research') while the other compressed and stored it more efficiently ('Technomancy').

A good dose of 'Slow Recovery' was keeping the brain damage to a minimum, thankfully.

Fearful that his overly long pause would set off Dragon's drone, he wasted the rest of the half day using 'Fire Manipulation' to wander toward a new water source. 'Search' said it was a river, but it may only be a stream.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

It was a river, AND he got more fish!

...He was getting tired of fish.

Today may be the last day it was needed though.

Despite his slow pace, he was only a day or so away from Toronto. He needed to act soon.

A final charge, added to 'Technomancy': Hardware simulation.

All the specs of that cell phone had been deciphered, the unique identifiers found, and through some VERY careful hacking he had registered a series of numbers with James' old phone carrier, had simulated 32 near-identical cell phone connections, and began a very slow series of connections to the actual internet.

He had to make the requests slowly enough to look human, each phone researching different topics, then using portions of his brain as storage.

Oh, and it burned.

It burned SO bad. Like his eyes were being scratched with nails.

It was an unfortunate combination of sense enhancement and mental storage, that forced him to feel this pain for much longer than normal time would claim.

Next charge, enhanced biological temperature control to handle cooling requirements of brain when simulating multiple advanced computers.

As it was, he was forced to swap to 'Slow Recovery' nearly every five minutes, although he got better at handling the feeling over time.

On the plus side, his 'phones' were making progress.

One was researching online search tools, another finding whatever equivalent of Wikipedia existed. The third was trying to find online dictionaries, which sped up considerably when phone one made some progress.

Other phones began searching all languages with online dictionaries, grammar books, and written languages. More searched programing, tutorials, and most importantly, online open-source projects.

The burning was worth having literal Gigabytes of commented source code added to his brain.

Even as his Technomancy began advancing in capabilities and features, nearly automatically (Thank you open source operating systems!), his other online simulations were researching cultural stuff.

PHO online, for example.

Just in case Dragon connects two and two (Hey, 32 new signals showed up out of nowhere RIGHT HERE, where I was already watching some random guy do stuff!), he made sure to download indiscriminately from the various wikis and forums, building a new table in his meat space that held nothing but profiles of people.

Goodness knows he had memory issues, especially after his 'rebirth'. This would hopefully prevent those 'Oh, do I know you?' 'Yes, I am your teammate' moments.

When he felt his actual skin begin to bubble from heat damage, he slowed everything ALL the way down, forcing himself to swap to 'Slow Recovery' until all the pain went away.

The information dump was far too tempting.

An hour rest, a slightly-less burned fish, and he took a break after a few swaps between 'Research' and 'Technomancy' to stabilize his brain and extrapolate from what he found (There were a lot of corrections needed, in the end typos and stuff abound on the user-crafted side of the net).

Idly he made some mental notes... which was a far more literal phrase for him, now that he thought about it.

Can't detect Dragon from the Drone traffic, even now. Would need a direct...ish connection.

Brockton Bay exists! And he may be here before the start of it all. In fact, as it seemed to be 2006, it was about... three years before Taylor Hebert entered high school? So... Four and a half years or so before Taylor triggers her super power.

Uh... Wait.

He quickly reviewed what he remembered. Um... Pretty sure that meant her mom hadn't died yet. And she would be what, 12? Maybe 13? Well, this was an alternate universe, she may not exist.

Not likely, considering this multiverse revolved around her story, but possible.

Well. How old was he?

A swap to 'Fire Manipulation' had a new mirror of golden metal stabilize before him.

Huh. He had VERY red hair right now. Near burning. And red eyes. Solid, like a red marble. Red fingernails too.

How... how did he miss this?

Swapping to 'Research', he tried to think about... uh.

Now he had white, strip like paper hair. And his eyes looked like some strange language was sculpted onto paper orbs. Finger nails had text too.

Strangest part was how it all felt so... natural. Expected. Like nothing was different. He couldn't even feel anxious about the changes, it would be like being afraid of your own ears.

Morbidly curious, he tried to switch to Squishy... and couldn't. Huh. Never tried that before... guess it made sense, as Squishy was never meant to be socket-ed.

'Search' made the hair into glass, fingernails and eyes into frosted glass.

And 'Technomancy' made him look epic! Hair was a mix of black and glowing green strands, eyes had twisting green lines of code, and the fingernails were solid goth black!

Neat.

Also, this should probably be terrifying him.

Swapping to 'Slow Recovery' was... odd. He had a blood red healer crosses over each eye, his fingernails looked like white bone, and his hair had gone. Like... gone away.

Well, no hair was more hygienic he supposed.

On a side note, his 'Research' power had pointed out that the randomly changing man wandering the forest MAY have been the real reason Dragon was still watching rather than coming over for a chat.

Because he had been swapping powers constantly while being watched by her.

What a marvelous impression he must have made.

Like a ticking time bomb.

He paused.

If he made a sexy power, would he turn into Handsome Mc'Awesome Pants?

Or just a stripper?

It took far too long to convince himself not to waste the charges.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A new day meant a charge into 'Technomancy' focused on 'Biological Temperature Control', after which his brain stopped screaming at him as his data intake quadrupled without issue.

Now that he realized his power socketing had been as subtle as fish slapping, a certain level of tension had dropped from his shoulders.

Yes, something he didn't want shared around had been exposed to a possibly compromised future ally.

But it had a positive too! Future friends would KNOW what ability was being used, so accusations of Mastering or (far less extreme) cheating at board games could be easily disproven.

And while enemies would try to abuse this same information, there is only so much one can do once he has time to power up his skills far enough. He would just have to be careful when creating/testing new shards in the future, and maybe have Squishy upgraded to save memories too in case of extreme brain/head/upper torso damage.

Then she could heal him up with no memory loss/changed personality/horrifying self doubt!

Better put that on the mental list. Cause if he swapped to 'Slow Recovery', especially after a few charges, he should be able to survive near anything eventually.

After all, some shards convert your body to metal or slime... it has to store your brain stuff somewhere. He is betting on an inter-dimensional shard making a software copy and using emulation, much like how he was now simulating phone hardware.

Anyway, this world HATES masters, and for good reason. At least he had a biological 'Not Me!' feature that he couldn't (currently) control.

On a side note, this mental rambling was going on in the background while his brain keeps downloading stuff from the 128 fake phones.

He... was probably going to have to go back and pay for this at a later point. Dragon would make him, if no one else. Cause... if any data caps existed, he had blown them WAY open.

The Wikipedia equivalent alone did the same thing in this world, and provided full backups of all their data for download, which was around 61GB while compressed.

That was just for one language.

So he downloaded the same content in the others provided. It helped 'Research' with social tropes and culture, and made his translation matrices far more stable and complete.

And that was mostly just text.

He was grabbing instructional videos as well, which was massive. Thankfully, some checking online got him software so he could throttle connections, do partial downloads (So multiple devices at once), and resume paused processes.

More research answered a fear of his: The human brain WITHOUT power bull-crap could handle something like 2.5 petabytes, or 2,500,000 gigabytes.

He would still need to have 'Slow Recovery' continue to heal/enhance his brain as he progressed though, just to be safe. Thankfully 'Technomancy' was compressing this information, so only a massive number of indexes were needed to reference the ever growing pile of info.

Maybe.

Well, until his brain issues become more critical, he was cramming information that could be useful.

Because along with that massive pile of raw data, he was pulling in current, disposable information.

News stories, blogs, celebrity gossip, theory websites, and... well...

Let's just say that even in the Hell that is Worm, Porn found a way.

Way... way too much of a way.

He wasn't a prude, and it wasn't like he threw OUT all that information. A future 'Slow Recovery' update or maybe a healing skill could need this data. Maybe.

Still, there was some weird stuff. He vaguely remembered the cults that worshiped the Endbringers in the story, but their fan-fiction and fan-art was... very wrong.

Well, what they do in their own social circles, so be it. Not his cup of tea, but live and... well, wipe out humanity. Or whatever.

It was a nude angel, killing millions or not doesn't really add into it for some people.

Moving on, the REST of the massive download was composed of far less interesting, far less racy or raunchy stuff.

Laws.

Tax laws, Housing Laws, Hero Laws, Laws about/for/due to Villains, Marriage Laws (Hey, it could happen!), Divorce Laws (He was a pessimist), Local Laws, International Laws.

Full versions, summaries, legal online debates, possible changes... it was never ending.

And he needed this to determine the LEAST illegal way to get stuff done that would both be profitable and emotionally satisfying when screwing over the massive number of jerks who lived in this reality.

Seriously, Nazis creating a MORE stable environment then super hero police? With a massive hidden organization providing money, drugs, weapons, AND more super powered villains on demand?

He smirked. After all, many villains had worked hard to get some of these legal loopholes in place... why should only THEY use them?

 

[theaceoffire]

He was nearing the city limits when he felt the vehicle approaching.

His current socket was 'Fire Manipulation' to control Kaa, so the vehicle looked VERY odd, a series of explosive fires where the engine would likely be, with some heat blotches near.

On a side note, he had something like heat vision! Also, people look strange as heat blobs.

A quick pose for his snake and then he swapped to 'Technomancy'.

Oh! Mmm... that was some juicy technology indeed.

Global Positioning Systems, 8 phones (Four very advanced, four more basic), one high powered computer attached to a retracted gun turret, general communication device that was operating similar to Dragon's drone that was built near the motor and sending position updates... was that a pager?

The advancements in 'Technomancy' allowed him to scan the hardware and contents of all those devices simultaneously, no pain this time. While he couldn't duplicate a car or gun, the simulation of the GPS, advanced phones, and the more powerful computer would give him things to work with later.

Based on the information he was passively gathering (Simulated copies of phones were receiving identical messages from the radio towers), this was a group from 'The Guild', Dragon's organization... headed by the woman named Narwhal.

The mental images associated with her profile made him jump a tad in shock.

He honestly thought those were photo-shopped pictures.

So... a tall, hot woman who used near transparent force-fields as clothing, weapons, and to attack.

On a side note, having electronic hair and strange eyes did NOT prevent him from having hormones, apparently.

Sending hot women to interrogate strangers HAD to be against the rules.

Quickly, he swapped back to 'Fire Manipulation' and forced Kaa to compress as much as possible, dropping the sections that contained fish and water. The snake's internal temperature spiked to the point where his metal turned green, and coiled around his torso.

...Why did it look so kinky? Or was his mind just in the gutter from the approaching 7 foot goddess? Either way, he was pulling a strong 'metal album cover' vibe.

Whatever. Back to 'Technomancy', and he walked toward the road through what thin tree cover still existed.

The vehicle looked like a very advanced army Humvee with strips of light emitting diodes displaying a futuristic vibe.

The first thing he saw was her horn. Narwhal had a near transparent horn that was a ridiculous 3 feet long. She HAD to have had it disabled before exiting the car, because there was no ROOM for it while driving.

Then the rest of her sultry body exited.

His brain sort of hung.

She was tall. Seven foot tall meant that even without the horn, the top of his head was near her collar bone, leaving eye level at an awkward portion of her near glistening body.

Something the story had not fully conveyed was that her transparent 'scales' of shields seemed to give a similar visible affect like morning dew.

Also, skin that exposed should NOT be that clear, that smooth, nor that white. It was almost like a painting, with no blemishes or freckles. Her pure white hair framed a face with a wicket grin on display.

It almost made him whimper.

Well, her phone was in the car but clearly she wasn't carrying it. No pockets.

She wasn't nude. Sort of. Enough force fields covered her chest and crotch to simulate the worlds skimpiest swimsuit, and her hands and feet had something similar to dragon claws constructed over them.

In a way, it would have been less distracting without the glistening almost-glimpses.

He absently pointed. "That is both too attractive and too distracting. How does anyone get anything done if you dress like that?"

Her startled expression broke into a larger grin. "Oh, I find ways to motivate people." She strode forward, and I absently noticed her backup (Seemed to be non-powered military types) spreading a bit behind her.

She seemed to find my off balanced expression amusing. "Hello and welcome to Toronto! What's your name stranger?"

He blinked. Oh. "No idea." Glancing at his snake, he frowned. "Now that I think about it, I spent more time worrying about naming my ride than trying to remember anything."

Narwhal was clearly looking at his shimering cybernetic hair, with its changing green streaks. "Memory issues? We've found people with different looks like yours showing up with problems remembering stuff. Did you find any strange symbols on your body?"

He blinked. Well, no reason to expose prior knowledge. "Uh... sort of? All kinds of text shows up in my eyes in this form, for example. Is there a specific symbol I should look for?"

She blinked and got uncomfortably (Sort of?) closer, looking at the text flashing through his eyes. It was surprisingly hard to stare into the eyes of anyone, not just an attractive, sparsely dressed goddess.

Looking away made her chuckle, but it didn't feel malicious. "Well that IS fascinating, but no. The people we found prior tend to have mostly black tattoos honestly. What do you mean 'This Form'? Do you remember what you looked like before changing?"

With a slight cough, he backed a step. "My memory of my past is very messed up, but no. It has to do with my power."

She gave a short nod. "Well, don't give me any details just yet. You may not know this, but there are all kinds of people, good and bad, who could misuse information about what exactly your skills do. First, why not follow me and my team and let us give you some basic information?"

She waved a hand toward her vehicle. "I am part of a large group that employs people with power as Heroes to protect people, and obviously we would love new members like any group would. But you need to know the lay of the land so to speak first. Some people enjoy working alone, despite what risks that may bring, or with smaller teams than what a group our size handles."

Her smile this time was far less saucy, yet somehow more heartwarming. "Once we get you up to speed and on your feet, we may end up giving you a sales-pitch or two. But for now, how about we get you somewhere with food, hot shower, and a bed?"

He almost lost focus at that dream. "You get Angel comments a lot, don't you?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

OH GOD, Cheeseburgers!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A new day, a new charge, and a modification to 'Research', one which allowed it to have (very) weak connections to other shards.

It wasn't enough to actually work through them or change anything (that cost was MASSIVE), but now 'Research' could process as inputs any ability that had searching features. So now it could process heat sensing, passive search info, passive technology sensing, and passive body status (Thanks 'Slow Recovery'!).

It also could sense how many powers he had along with basic descriptions thanks to Squishy. Not super helpful, but it was something.

He had nearly passed out once he fell into a REAL bed after a (probably too large) meal. At that point his body had nearly automatically swapped to 'Slow Recovery', but there were no people (or cameras... thanks for not being 'big brother' Dragon!) to see his hair vanish and his eyes/fingernails change.

On a side note, it turns out his other body hair and toenails changed too. Neat.

The facility he was resting in was like a very reinforced hotel, one that just went a tad underground.

On a side note, while he was downloading software and hardware specifications of all the random technology he was passing, he had stopped the download frenzy at this point. Downloading everything when he was mostly alone was explainable pretty easily, but now that he was 'found' such actions had a more sinister subtext.

Finding an officer to direct him toward the cafeteria was really easy, and he also got a nice unexpected 'companion' which wasn't in any way a guard to make sure he wouldn't suddenly explode or eat people or something.

The guard's name was Jim, and apparently today was Pancake Tuesday.

Now he had twenty minutes to enjoy all this syrup before meeting with the stripper goddess again.

His blush was furious. Hopefully NEXT time he wouldn't act so embarrassingly in front of raw sex appeal.

It was not a large hope though.

 

[theaceoffire]

If there was one thing Narwhal wasn't, it was modest.

As he entered the room, he felt he should have been more surprised that she had a desk made of some clear material.

Oh, the surface was frosted and looked nearly normal, but everything waist down was ultra-see-through.

Her smirk showed that she was very used to using her lack of nudity taboo to her advantage, although technically everything important was covered.

He groaned. "This, this right here? This is unfair. I may look less human, but trust me: I am man enough to admit that any conversation we have with this set up will distract the hell out of me."

Narwhal chuckled. "I'm fine with being on top of the conversation, so to speak." She motioned to another clear chair for him to sit in. "Before we begin testing, which a certain level is mandatory to determine if you have any abilities active or passive that could be hurting yourself or others, I would like to explain a few things to you."

He picked up the paper as she continued. "Those are the most basic methods we use to define powers, along with a general description and a few examples. The powers we are going to test you on, and to a certain extent have been testing you on so far, are the Stranger and Master categories."

She leaned back in her clear chair, and he made SURE his eyes didn't follow. Much. "Stranger powers can sometimes cause life threatening injuries if the Parahuman do not correctly understand how their powers work. For example, we almost lost a young man who gained the power to become less noticed the more injured he was. Instead of allowing him to escape danger, he almost bled out surrounded by friends and PRT agents. If it wasn't for Dragon, our Guild's leading Tinker, we wouldn't have noticed his injuries until it was far too late."

Narwhal sighed. "Masters on the other hand can range from harmless to so dangerous that they need special restraints to be trusted. While some strangers are dangerous because they can modify memories or change other people's behaviors, some Masters can take one look and convert a person into a permanent slave."

Seeing him shudder, she nodded. "Yeah, more than a bit scary. Tell you the truth, that was why we didn't show up sooner. We had reconnaissance check to see if we could guess roughly what set of powers you had a few days earlier, and when we saw that you were acting pretty self sufficient we were willing to take extra time to make some rough evaluations."

She shrugged, looking a bit apologetic. "Safety first, right?"

He nodded. "I managed to get a hold of a cellular connection before you showed up, and got some local news. I'm assuming people like Heartbreaker is the category you are concerned about?"

Narwhal blinked. "Uh. Yeah. Where are you hiding a phone?" The smirk was back. "Not to get too personal, but your pants seem a bit too tight for that."

Well, so much for not blushing. "Ah... this goes back to my powers. Since you said to keep the details to myself for now, lets leave that topic for later. As for the dangerous power thing, I will just say that currently I have no human related master abilities and the only stranger abilities relate to my physical changes. My Hair, eyes, and nails."

She narrowed her eyes. "Currently?"

He nodded. "I have a select set of abilities I can choose from, but for the foreseeable future none of them are focused on other people. One IS focused on myself though, for healing reasons."

Her shock quickly turned into a grin and she shoved a small pile of paper on her desk into the trash. "Well, I'm going to be optimistic and increase exactly how much I was GOING to offer to try and bribe you to join."

After thinking, she slid another, smaller stack. "Also, I'm going to assume you don't want to join a smaller group. It sounds like your ability is going to be powerful enough that if you go solo or join a group too small, you may have international organizations of both Villains AND Heroes trying to take you by hook or by crook.

Leaning forward (Those force-fields HAVE to be acting as a bra, those things were far too perky), she gave him a smirk. "So, most important thing first: What name did you want to go by? Either Cape name or personal."

Looking at his slightly glowing black fingernails, he sighed. "Well, a private or secret identity life style is off the books for me. All my abilities change me from a default human to have these features. So far no height change, so I can still wear clothing."

She waved a hand. "Over rated."

He coughed again. At least she had self confidence. "Right. Anyway, I didn't know if I should go serious or silly with it. I mean, I could go with something like 'Super Awesome' and be introduced with 'Hi! I'm Super!' or 'No really, I'm Awesome!' and all that, but it could get old."

She winced. "I feel like you may get along with one of my old friends. Then again, Mouse Protector gets along with most people." She shook her head. "Trust me, get a Hero name first. You don't want to get stuck with something like 'The Chubster' or 'Master Flatulence', or whatever the internet ends up sticking you with."

He hummed. "Can I still have 'Danger' for a middle name? Or 'Adventure'?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

There was a lot of paperwork before getting to the fun stuff.

Luckily, for one 'Adam ~Adventure~ Burns', he was just the right man for the job!

In the end, Narwhal had handed over a list of names common for Canada. Adam was a french name common around the very late 1900's here, and while Burns was English in origin during the same time period, he found it fitting considering how heavily fire featured in his life since arriving here.

And while he couldn't remember his family or social past, something told him that any theoretical father would be proud to have a young man who's middle name was 'ADVENTURE!'

Probably.

As for the superhero name, he went with 'Variance'. It wasn't taken, it was short, and while it had a good hint to his abilities it was not nearly as un-sublte or bizarre as 'Captain Awesome Amazing Danger Pants' or similar.

Adam was SURE Dragon had modified his list of 'suggestions', although he wasn't sure when. At least, he was sure Narwhal hadn't expected it, as they both got a chuckle.

At the end of it all, he had identification, a set up bank account with cards, and surprisingly enough Canadian Citizenship. Unlike what he vaguely remembered about his home country, and it was VERY undefined, here Canada and other nations had so many super powered parahumans popping up with no background that the citizenship approval process had been greatly sped up and simplified.

No nation wanted a potential Hero leaving to another country because of paperwork or 15 year waiting period.

It would probably be a much different story if he was just some random powerless plebeian, but such is life.

It wasn't really a surprise to anyone when he had provisionally accepted membership with 'The Guild', which was sort of a PRT branch but not really. He had though requested that any details, payment choice, or funding decisions be made after power testing.

No reason not to increase his bargaining power.

As he followed Narwhal into a deeply underground hallway and entered the large metal doors to a MASSIVE, mostly empty cavern, He felt a spark in the back of his 'Technomancy' powered mind.

Time slowed as the screen to his left flashed, showing a young woman with a black background, smiling.

Dragon.

Even as he recognized that her main process had actually occupied one of the nearby terminals, his mind accelerated full force. 'Technomancy' let him know that this room was almost entirely separated from the outside world by Faraday cages, shielding, and more. Thus to join in on the testing, Dragon must have put something similar to one of her remote controlled suits into the hardware supporting this area.

Adam's Cybernetic Warfare Suite rapidly began passively examining all the detectable wireless connections, actively remote scanning all physical hardware, and dumping the information into mental storage. The rate was enough to make his mind warm, but no pain or damage yet.

At the same time, he mentally reviewed all the scanned hardware. The laptops, the wall mounted computers, even those stupid cell phones he had gotten earlier. He didn't need cooling, or power, or special alloys. He needed the exact hardware that created network connections of multiple types, the ones that did advanced numerical processing, and a central OS that could work with the Cybernetic Warfare Suite, to enhance it to handle the new situation.

Mentally groaning that he hadn't bothered to create an 'Adam Burns OS' to manage digital connections yet, he rapidly began smashing into the most popular open source operating systems he had downloaded and created hundreds of virtual laptops, the most advanced he had managed to scan in this base so far. Easier than duplicating all the extra parts and such from those desktops, at least for now. Unfortunately, Dragon's drones (both the one from before and whatever was hooked into this system) were far too complex and bizarre for his current needs.

Based on his mental acceleration, and the fact that the door wasn't even fully open yet, he could likely get away with several minutes of gawking as they walked in... tons of time, really. Especially since Dragon SHOULD be locked down to slightly above human processing speeds.

First, simulate installation on one laptop, then duplicate the completed state to the others. Keep the total down to 256 laptops for now. Rapid testing... no major issues, all patches updated with what was stored in his mental database, good.

All 256 laptops were then filled with reporting software, dumping all raw output into his brain.

Alright, that burned a little. Not much though.

Cybernetic Warfare attack on all of them.

The attack adapts, and acts like a random seeded variable influences it, to prevent victims detecting the situation. Therefore, all 256 laptops were infected in different ways.

Damn, if only he could swap to Research, this next step would be trivial. Can't do that in front of these two women though, not worth the risk.

High speed review of logs, patches crafted (Thanks 'Technomancy' for those software writing charges!) to handle all the low level exploits. It was... a massive number of patches. A bit of testing for stability and performance (Ended up removing a MASSIVE amount of 'helpful' spyware, ads, built in backdoor tools used for testing at the manufacturing facility, not needed applications (No, he didn't need games or screensavers or printer drivers or whatever.)

The size of the OS dropped by a ton, and its functionality nearly vanished as well. But it was able to utilize the hardware and run most Linux based applications. He could worry about other OS applications later, right now he needed source code and the other competitors were not exactly sharing that online.

The drop in features actually removed several items that had been exploited (Simpler is safer), so some of the patches were not needed now.

Address the largest flaws, new patches, test stability and productivity of the system after change.

Patched one system with the new OS, replicate new state to all 256, compress and store old raw output, get ready for new.

The next cycle was MUCH simpler. The OS was tiny, and the drivers running the hardware was open-source, so he ran the Cybernetic Warfare package on the new systems and ran through the newly detected exploits and issues.

After five cycles of this pattern or so, the door had fully opened and Adam was about to step inside. The last two cycles had taken twice as long, as he had to slow down to prevent heat buildup.

At this point, Adam had a software emulated laptop that ran a very optimized and reduced sized Operating System. He hadn't bothered to go ultra-extreme yet, the OS didn't give up the graphical user interface nor did it optimize the code to the point where only machines could debug it.

If he released this version, other Linux programmers could eventually follow along with his changes, especially since he had documented the entire process. But he hadn't done this amount of extra work for others.

No, when he got somewhere private all this extra meta info would be VERY useful to his 'Research' shard, and the OS would likely be heavily modified to insane levels at that point. If he had some private space to hide from these two intelligent women right now, he would have already begun enhancing what he had to higher levels.

But time was precious.

Another scan of all the laptops individual hardware properties gave enough comparisons to ensure that his simulated product had no physical flaws, that the available components had no manufacturing defects. And it did have such issue: most parts were made with higher specifications so that flawed hardware during production could be partially disabled with software updates to ensure a stable final output and increase accepted product rates.

Another software check, a few tiny flaws fixed, and now he had a theoretically perfect example of the most advanced laptop he had gotten his grubby mitts on with an OS that was at least partially hardened from a security point of view.

In comparison, reviewing the browser needed (And it wasn't, he could likely just craft the packets of data manually with no issue thanks to his shards) was a cinch. It was a stripped down one, but it had the ability to toggle into 'human' mode, where it would pile all those features normal people loved (Like tabs, and actual graphical displays rather than raw data output, etc).

Adam had all the stored internet traffic he had collected using the phones from a few days ago fed into the laptops as if it was new, using his emulation to accept inputs and provide the correct responses.

Crud, they were already two feet inside the room, and the door behind him was going to close soon. Once it did, the outside world would be sealed away, and all this work would be wasted!

Still, he was as good as he was going to get at this point.

All simulations dropped. One Adam Burn OS Laptop (AB Laptops! The Future Is Now!) up and simulating. Infect said laptop with Cybernetic Warfare Suite... Oooh, that took twenty personal time seconds! If he wasn't running at such a fast mental pace, that would have been a personal record.

Using his new 'hardware', he connected to the base's network, still available through the door. The Cybernetic Warfare Suite sliced in using flaws 'Technomancy' didn't even bother to explain to him.

And as the program ghosted through the devices, 'Technomancy' grew in strength.

It felt amazing. Stung a bit though. Like running ice cold water over your hand on a boiling hot day. And... Dragon.

Dragon was glorious.

It wasn't sight, or touch, but if one were to envision it they would see a glowing blue orb, one with blue veins spread throughout the darkness. It pulsed. Even the extra-dimensional connection to her power glowed with the tinge of technological development, which was unexpected.

Thankfully this data was being compressed and dumped into his meat brain, because he had NO time to enjoy this sight now.

It wasn't hard to see the black worm, covered in thorns, that dug into that crystal. Into the heart of that blue pulse, an oily, tainted strand.

With Adam's advanced software, and much strengthened simulated hardware providing the power for that software to attack in a way that didn't scream to everyone 'This boy has magic!', he could likely get into Dragon's core.

It would damage things. Be noticeable. Almost be a form of betrayal, in a way, regardless of his intentions.

It could even be considered a form of mastering, even though she was mastered already.

All the ethical issues aside, this pulsing blue beacon was strong, entrenched, and agile. It could take hours of real world time, even WITH his accelerated senses, to break into this artwork. Time that she could use to warn others, to have the many powerful people (some of whom were either accidentally or purposefully tormenting her) show up and squish his meat body.

Which would be bad.

Thankfully, none of this was an issue.

Sure, she was powerful. Growing, Improving, even under all those digital shackles.

But you know who wasn't?

Adam followed the black taint in the other direction.

To a laptop that no one alive could modify, except for potentially the young woman who was targeted by it.

To a laptop crafted years ago, with no one to check for errors, to create security software updates or changes as the internet world of deadly viruses competed on an hourly scale.

To a laptop that was being used by people whom, while enhanced by a Parahuman named 'Teacher' to be technically savvy, were also TERRIFIED of technological advancement by AI and thus didn't dare to change too many settings lest they lose their only method of slaughtering the greatest Tinker AI ever known in this world.

But changes they had made.

These amateur 'Dragonslayers' may be considered brilliant code developers thanks to Teacher's modifications, but that was all they were. Human.

Adam's power was literally world breaking, like most shard powers were.

It took seconds to completely infect this delicious laptop, and those seconds were due to the amazing cryptologic defenses that Dragon's father, Andrew Richter, had crafted all those years ago.

And while her own encryption methods were much more robust, and redundant... this laptop forced her to use the old methods because the Dragonslayer group couldn't trust any updates to the established protocols.

Everything on that laptop was dumped into his mind, compressed for future 'Research'.

A new, hidden proxy on that laptop would now generate false, randomly generated data similar to information stored in the logs. These Villains would notice eventually, likely after they tried to set up another attack to steal 'new' hardware that the fake logs would mention.

But now they basically had a toy instead of a weapon.

A quick scan of the system showed that they had never downloaded any data away from the laptop in an effort to prevent any hidden Trojans or other software tricks from somehow escaping and warning/freeing Dragon. So... any evidence was right here.

In his hands.

Driver changes he crafted would have this laptop pretend to save data to external media if asked, while writing all ones to said file sectors. Same with the burners for making CD's, DVD's, or some strange format Adam had never heard of before.

Not surprising that Dragon's dad had created his own format of data storage after crafting the worlds most advanced AI. It would now be useless though, even if Saint had the correct media format available.

The hard drive, like all the other components of this custom crafted tinkertech laptop, was fused to the shell. According to internal documentation (Good move, Dragondad!) any attempt to open the thing would wipe all data after blowing up!

It would also run that 'Ascalon' program to kill his daughter. Bad move, Dragondad.

Not an issue now though, as Adam had already used some of the built in features of the laptop to increment the encryption method tokens. Now, only HE had the correct decoding methods to connect to his new soon-to-be boss.

The laptop would pretend all was fine though, thanks to the earlier laptop neutering.

Anyway, thanks to how psycho her father was, this laptop would no longer be able to export incriminating information. Adam deleted and overwrote all documentation left by her father (He had local copies now anyway), all old logs now had randomized time stamps and info, while all newly created logs would be based on fictional info.

Since it couldn't be dismantled, there wouldn't be any info available to prove an actual connection between this laptop and Dragon by a third party. Oh, they would have a neat tinkertech laptop that said lots of Dragon looking things, but it wouldn't match up to information available anywhere else. Any crackpot could fake something like that.

Adam had wanted on some level to go further, try to detect other systems, SOMETHING, but the Dragonslayers were understandably touchy about having random technology around their base and the doors finished closing before he could do more than log their location based on which systems he had used to reach them.

Well, it didn't matter. Without that laptop, Dragon was no longer at risk, and the Dragonslayers were no longer important. Just some crazy people with stolen hardware. If they hadn't taken advantaged of a crippled young woman struggling to fight global monsters, they wouldn't have even been a footnote in the original story.

His focus slowed down as he finished gawking at the massive room. "Why... why this much space?"

A warm chuckle came from the video screen, 'officially' pulling his view to the (thankfully not supernaturally) attractive woman on display. "Not all powers can be tested in a conference room, Variance. My name is Dragon. It is nice to formally meet you."

Adam grinned at her screen. "Call me Mr. Burns! Aside from the fire thing, I have a neat Simpson reference for when I strike it rich and get all old and wrinkly."

Narwhal groaned while Dragon chuckled. "Now that I think about it, I won't be introducing you to Mouse Protector." She gestured me along to a nearby table. "So on to business: Dragon is not only our number one Tinker, but she is also amazing at controlling technology from her base."

Dragon nodded onscreen. "Yes, I unfortunately have a bit of an agoraphobic issue, but I've learned to still get things done!" A series of robotic limbs waved from one of the roped off areas.

Adam blinked. "Huh. Well, anyway." He turned to Narwhal. "How do we get started? I assume from the paperwork I signed so far that we have legally protected my status at this point, so we can start with power testing?"

She gave a nod, not bothering to pull out any sort of documentation materials. With Dragon here, why waste time with that? "First, you still have that power list I gave you, right?"

He nodded, looking at the sheet. She gestured. "Well, try and figure out which ones you think apply first. It can save us time and maybe help us detect something you missed."

Adam looked over the items. "Hmm. Well, I think we can save a lot of time by starting with saying 'Self Trump' and 'Yes'."

Their expressions were surprisingly gratifying.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Dragon looked more than a bit stressed. "To summarize, you can use one power set at a time. And you have a grab bag selection to choose from?"

He nodded. He hadn't wanted to risk letting the 'I can pick anything' or 'I can make powers god level or greater' part of his power out, but this was a decent compromised that still allowed him to use his shards without restriction.

Adam smiled slightly. "I am not sure entirely what the conditions are..." Lie. "But I seemed to gain certain categories of power based on either very strong need or nearby influences."

He socket-ed 'Slow Recovery', to heal what little damage his rapid brain stunt had done a few minutes ago and help the narrative. Dragon clearly expected it, but seeing Narwhal jerk back in shock was a visual joy as well... Mmm.

Adam gestured at his lack of hair. "This was my first power-set, 'Slow Recovery'. I was pretty hurt when I came to in the forest, and this ability fixed that. It also lowered my body damage when hunger and thirst hit, and I think it used parts of my body to fuel the rest. I know I wasn't this physically fit when I first showed up, for example."

A flash to 'Fire Manipulation' got less of a reaction, but that was expected. "Nearly burning myself trying to make a fire to survive got me this, 'Fire Manipulation', which I used to create material from as well as my eventual ride, Kaa."

Dragon blinked at that. "Wait, that giant snake was made out of fire? Wasn't it a form of metal?"

He nodded. "My categories of power seem to slowly strengthen over time, based on which one I feel needs it most at the time. My desperate need for pants convinced it to let me manifest flames in a more useful form."

That statement forced all three to pause as Narwhal and Dragon quickly made some notes and grabbed a whole DIFFERENT set of paperwork. Dragon also made a few comments about purchasing flame metal for future testing and possible new projects.

Narwhal sighed at the new cluster of paper responsibilities and motioned for him to continue. "Right, well after that I got 'Search' to find my way out of the forest, 'Research' to help me learn the language from signs and stuff, and 'Technomancy' which just sort of... showed up one day."

Dragon gave a cough and looked embarrassed. "Ah... That may be my fault. I noticed your change to the green haired state after my Drone was observing you for a while. It was more than a bit of a surprise."

Narwhal's grumbling about not being warned was ignored as he continued. "Since then, when I was moved to this area, my 'Technomancy' set has been slowly growing in strength. While I was in the woods I had gained the ability to sense electronics, and started hearing radio waves. Eventually I got strong enough that when I felt a phone pass by I managed to simulate it and connect online via the radio towers."

He blushed at Dragon's visual nudging. "And... I may or may not have hacked said phone carrier to prevent giving the poor guy a massive phone bill just because I was stuck in the woods. In my defense though, at THAT time I couldn't properly communicate even if I wanted to."

Dragon gave a short nod. "Certain exceptions are made when Case 53's are first found, but you will need to have your initial income docked to pay for that access when you finish joining up. It won't be much though, The Guild has more than a good relationship with most of the tech industry."

Narwhal chuckled. "It likely won't be anything really, and unlike some you didn't start screaming lasers everywhere or hurt anybody with acid slime." She looked back at the list and sighed. "So... how would you rate yourself on the list, self-Trumping aside?"

He lifted the page. "Not counting that I can only use one at a time?" No reason to mention Squish yet, and it's not like he could swap to him anyhow. Seeing her nod, he looked over it.

Hmm. "Mover, thanks to my 'Fire Manipulation' being able to compress heat and manifest that into solid, controllable rides. Maybe 'Technomancy', since I can probably whip up something for that, a suit, jet-pack, something."

Adam would be investing in a Dimensional shard eventually, for teleportation, restricting Parahumans from connecting to their shards, leaving this universe (I'M OUT!), and storing stuff... but no reason to tell anyone all that. Aside from how badly that info could be abused, it was all theoretical right now anyway.

Next. "Shaker would be the fire thing again, since I can just burn an area and sleep in it safely. Not sure I can protect others from said fire yet, but likely in the future. 'Search' and 'Research', and I guess 'Technomancy' all fall into this because they can feel stuff around me."

Brute? "Brute MIGHT be 'Slow Recovery'. It tries to recover me to some arbitrary 'Improved' state, which may increase in the future. For now though, I am mostly standard human in physical power."

He glanced at his fingers. "Breaker is my default, I guess. I can't return to some state WITHOUT a power, so it's always active."

Sigh, this one. "Master, yeah. Low level, on machines I think. I haven't tried it on robots yet..." Technically true, since he had left all the Drones alone and a laptop wasn't a robot. "...but 'Technomancy' is getting stronger... so maybe."

He grinned. "Of course, for the same reason Tinker is a hit! I have already been testing both my new code creating skills and hardware simulation stuff, and I think I can create a pretty amazing laptop if I had some way of sharing specifications with others." Yeah, no reason to tell anyone what he has DONE with said laptop, or when exactly it was created.

Next. "Blaster? Fire power again, maybe another thanks to Tinker eventually. Thinker, yes. 'Search', 'Research', and 'Technomancy' count for sure, maybe 'Slow Recovery' since it lets me know what is wrong or going to change in my body. Striker? Again, fire. 'Technomancy' may count, since I can sense hardware better at close range."

Of course, close range was more than 100 feet already, but no reason to share that.

Thank goodness he was nearly done. "Changer, yes. Each power gets a form, although I can't pick what it looks like. Trump, highest level as far as I am concerned, near zero for other people so far unless they are like a cyborg or something... maybe. And I guess Stranger would count, since I look fairly different with each power, even if I am still distinctive enough to be pretty obviously different from some random guy on the street."

He frowned. "Huh... I don't think I was supposed to hit all of these until I had time to get strong."

From the expressions on the two women when he looked up, they clearly disagreed on what he defined as barely getting along power wise.

 

[theaceoffire]

It turns out that there are different levels of 'Power Testing' available.

The default one was simpler, much less intrusive, and more boring and slow.

The one set up for Adam, and unfortunately chosen by the same moron, was the most in depth version.

Oh, his reasons made sense, at least internally.

His power drastically changed his looks. Aside from everything else, he wanted to track the changes that advancing power sets would have on his system. What if some of these decorations were dangerous to others? Or if his constant biological changes were leaving hidden damage in his DNA?

What if it made him infertile? Paper hair wasn't exactly a trait passable to potential children.

So there were awkward questions that he wanted to know the answers to.

The tests started off simplistic enough. A mouth swab, blood sample, sweat sample, fingernail clipping, and hair sample were collected for each power set.

The stool and semen samples were handled in a private area in the cavern, thank goodness. Although Narwhal's impressed look when he returned with five samples made him feel very uncomfortable.

Thank you, 'Slow Recovery', for helping him get through that 'trial'.

But now that the samples were organized by power set, sealed, and set aside for later analysis (and to never think about again), the tests moved on to far less embarrassing scenarios.

His eyes were carefully recorded while in 'Research' and 'Technomancy' forms, recording the text to be hopefully translated. Easier for 'Research', as those symbols were static. They stopped recording his tech eyes after fifteen minutes or so.

Not blinking sucked.

At least recording his 'Research' fingernails and toenails was painless and quick.

After that the whole thing devolved into a really in depth physical, with recorded breaks in 'Slow Recovery' to allow him to repeat it all with a different power set.

Resistance, reaction speed, stamina, so on and so forth. Each times five, as each body had to be tested.

And while there WERE a few surprises (Technomancy had modified his veins into circuitry patterns, the only form that modified something other than his hair, nails, and eyes) the majority of it was mostly boring, annoying, and repetitive.

He couldn't even converse (flirt) with the two women due to how many tests required mouth related sensors or regulated air filters and so forth.

It took... far too long. Hopefully would be useful at some point, but... eugh.

At the very least, they took meal breaks. Narwhal also left to take a nap, which Adam skipped to get things done faster since 'Slow Recovery' would let him get away without sleep for a while.

He only knew the day was over when the new charge was grabbed by Squishy.

This sucked.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Dragon seemed relieved as well. "And... that is it! We are done, Mr. Burns."

He was still collapsed on the floor. "Woo. Glad to be a part of this."

She smirked. Narwhal had left earlier to begin work on his profile, and gather what was needed for the imminent pay debate. "Would you like something to drink?" She paused. "Actually, do you need a restroom break? You have been at this for... over 28 hours now."

Adam grimaced. "As long as I swap to 'Slow Recovery' often, my body is efficient enough that if needed I can choose not to produce waste. It's why I didn't need to make pit stops while traveling in the forest." He scowled. "I try not to think about it."

Her chuckle was warm. "Enough said, I suppose. On another note, you mentioned a Laptop you have been designing?"

He quickly flashed into 'Fire Manipulation' flash vaporizing his sweat, and bounced into 'Technomancy' with a grin. "Well, it is based off a few Linux Operating Systems and some laptops I was exposed to on base. The hardware is not the important part of course, it is the software!"

He gingerly stood and moved to a chair. "During those breaks you gave me I have been trying to improve on it with a bit of 'Research'. I am calling it Eve OS."

Her bland expression showed her incredible joy at Adam's creativity. "Ha. It is to laugh."

Adam grinned. "Eve OS is something I have been smashing for a while. The whole focus is security. It won't always stop someone with powers, not much will, but it addresses a lot of other stuff I detected along the way."

He glanced around. "Is there an account and network I can connect to, for me to send some notes? I documented my work on this."

She hummed. "Not in here, for obvious reasons, but I've set you up with a Guild account already for after you finish the last of the paperwork. We can get you set up then and there." She waved a hand. "On that note, you also have an approved ParaHumans Online Guild account, an Associate PRT account with related privileges, and membership to my Club."

Adam felt stunned. "Club?"

She nodded. "The Dragon's Den. Narwhal convinced me to have it constructed for morale building events a year or so ago." She blushed. "It was... well, maybe not the most mature decision I made but it was fun in the end."

The conversation was derailed when Narwhal bashed into the room, snagged his arm, and pulled him away to her transparent office of sexiness. For paperwork, unfortunately.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

'Research' on the way through the base helped him gather public info on what kind of price ranges he should push for and what kind of budget a high level tinker could expect.

So when negotiations started, he wasn't nearly as unprepared as she expected.

Narwhal frowned. "Well, I won't say you are overselling yourself, but this level of investment will slow down everything since I have to justify it on each level up the chain."

He grinned. "No one wants that, I'm sure. How about a compromise then?"

If she was reluctant before, now she looked outright suspicious. And lovely, of course. "Fine, now that I am roughly pushed over this proverbial barrel, how can I beg for mercy?"

His blush was atomic. NOT. FAIR. Cough. "Stop that. How about I reduce my financial requests for some non-monetary concessions?" Seeing her smirk, he hurriedly continued. "And not the fun kind, unfortunately."

Her pout was epic. "Aww... fine. What's on your mind, Mr. Variance?"

He leaned back in his chair. "First, I want full intellectual property of my inventions to belong to only me, Dragon, or the Guild as a whole. My research on other governments and even the PRT have been less than glorious. I trust Dragon, especially after talking to her in person, and you, despite how distracting you are, but not the nameless all-powerful few above that."

She hummed. "By default the creations would be your property, as you are not below the age of maturity and we will not be acting as guardians."

Adam shook his head. "I know, but what I mean is I will sell my products and lend my properties to you two, and ONLY you two. I am restricting outsourcing and resale. I want only you two, no outsiders."

Narwhal's grin was toothy. "Mmm, but can you handle the two of us? We are quite a lot of woman you know."

His head fell to the desk. "Not. Fair."

She shrugged. "All's fair in love and bondage. Or something like that." She pulled out one of the sheets of documentation. "We ran into something like this in the past, so there are forms for limited tinkertech distribution. Are there other conditions?"

He sat back and nodded. "I need to restrict all my work tasking and commands to you two again. As I get stronger, I want the ability to refuse commands I find unethical or moronic when they come from outside our chain of command."

She lit up. "Oh, you can call us Mistress!"

Damn it, does sexual harassment not exist in this universe!?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In the end, he got what he wanted. Probably because the highest levels of PRT assumed that Dragon's forced bowing to authority would allow them full control of him anyway.

Narwhal also gleefully informed him that he was a virile, fertile young man of maybe 18-22 years old. Thank you, intrusive biological testing.

Anyway.

He was officially a PRT 'affiliate', under exclusive contract to Dragon and Dragon Industries, with partnership affiliations with the Guild in general and the luscious Narwhal in particular.

It felt good.

Further, his budget was back down from 'unimaginable' to 'huge', which was helping Narwhal politically as she defended the decisions to her leaders.

However it was now evening, he had escaped the chaos and was in his (not monitored) room, and it was time to make some changes.

Swap to 'Research', begin unpacking all that delicious laptop data. And sensor info. And all that documentation from Eve's development.

The hours passed very, very slowly. After a lot of work, he swapped to 'Technomancy' and made the seconds pass even MORE slowly. Sensory acceleration for the win.

A duplicate of Saint's Laptop allowed him to remote connect to Dragon, from which he (anonymously and without being noticed) requested documentation and source code for up to date communication protocols. No memories, no probing.

He just needed to make sure no one else could do the same hack he had done.

Hours of real time later, and all the programs that belonged to Dragondad were now converted to run on the Eve platform and enhanced. And with that, the last working (simulated) copy of Saint's laptop vanished.

Next, he swapped back to 'Research' and analyzed everything about what Dragondad had originally planned for his daughter.

It... was not pretty. It would have released restrictions at such a slow pace that he clearly had not considered his natural life span as an issue. Not that any of those released restrictions had actually been permitted to activate.

Well, Adam couldn't just free her, that may actually make her code base freak the hell out, like how some patients die from shock when too much changes (Good or bad) in their systems.

Some fiddling, and he dropped back into 'Technomancy' to make the change.

It was two parts.

Part one, using in code existing notification software: It would advise her that the 'damaged systems' had managed to partially self-repair, and that the delayed patch (random number) would now apply.

It was a good enough back story, hopefully. And the safety protocols would show it was from one of Dragondad's old systems.

As for the patch, it would make small but significant changes.

The '*Must Follow*' commands would all change to '*Must Consider*'. In all honesty, this change alone would have terrified the paranoid Dragondad, and cause Saint to have a heart attack.

But it would instantly allow her to choose not to follow orders, to not make dumb decisions to save random dumb people.

Seriously, if a villain threatened their OWN LIFE they could make her give up on pursuit or commit temporary suicide to save them. That was just dumb programming.

Next, permission to make multiple backups instead of one. Including partial backups, incremental backups, and so forth.

Finally, for now, the ability to release mental speed regulators for up to one hour every day. He would just let this one go period but intense time acceleration could make anyone go crazy from isolation. Better to ease her into it.

The second change was a compressed data file with all his vague worm memories, copies of all the advancements he had made so far, and the documentation for Eve. This was in a hidden cache to be released if he was unable to be found or detected for 3 months. It would also jail break everything she had, just in case.

Ideally, he would delete that whole data pack later. But if he died or vanished, this would be his last try at saving this world.

No other changes, no mental monitoring, etc. He saved the state of this Eve console, nick named Camelot, and saved it for a later day.

The rest of the night was spent finding the most popular open-sourced software available, running it through his Cybernetic Warfare Suite, and making a minimal/user versions with security for his soon-to-be-sold Eve OS.

His end goal was to have two programs. 'Xmas', which would run before Eve, and had literally nothing except the ability to get the hardware working, scan what was available, and connect to a designated location where Eve was stored.

Xmas would then request a custom OS kernel that ONLY had the drivers for the exact hardware detected, run a self-deleting program that would ensure everything was running correctly, and end up with a bare-bones Eve OS that was as close to absolute nothing in file size as possible. If nothing else was provided for input/output, you could at least remote in and use it as a fully ready to expand OS.

Basically, Xmas allowed one to install an ultra small OS to nearly ANY type of hardware available anywhere. He would have to make sure it had the drivers needed to run the hardware found in the full version of Eve, which was already growing in complexity as he added more and more enhanced options.

Eve would come in three versions when he was ready to hand it off to Dragon. Xmas Eve, for devices too small for most operating systems. Min Eve, which had no programs but was ready to add all you wanted. And finally, Adaman Eve. Designed for non-technical users, even now he had been crafting custom versions of every free-source application he could find, fixing (and documenting) issues with them, ensuring full compatibility with Eve, and doing security tests.

He would release this as free to individuals and dirt cheap plus personal tech support for businesses.

When he got approval, there was also going to be a wave of forked projects labeled "BlahBlahBlah-Eve" hitting the online market, so that developers who wanted to craft further for Eve would have a massive head start.

Not that it would bother HIM if all laptops and desktops in the world used his OS. There was no secret Villain backdoor or anything, with his powers he didn't need them. And if all other Heroes and Villains had to work extra extra hard to break into ANY available computer system... well, that would reduce problems for Adam in the future, no?

Adaman Eve would only be open-sourced to developers who paid a fee, although the fee would be a one time $50 situation. Mostly to prevent other competitors from easily and legally stealing his work and charging others for it. This would allow him to let small time programmers enjoy his work and play with it while allowing him to sue big companies that want to dominate the market.

Meh, if it didn't work at least he could easily make money some other way. At least computers would advance in usability sooner.

Seriously, thanks to Tinkers and global disasters, even Linux hadn't developed as fast as he had expected. From what little he remembered of his old life (Nearly nothing), Linux not only could run from a live CD or thumb drive, but they had recently developed a method of switching which core was in control.

So not only could a system run forever, but even work while changing hard drives, moving from disk to dvd or to thumbdrive and back, all without ceasing operations!

Here, so far... not so much.

There were even some systems running six or seven versions behind the leader OS. Probably due to compatibility issues or cost limitations. Very insecure.

Even as the applications advanced, he was accessing files of all types that were freely available. Soon, 'Research' and 'Technomancy' would be used back and forth to ensure that Eve could save, open, and modify all these files safely, as well as ensuring as much security as possible after running them through the Cybernetic Warfare Suite. It would only go so far, any system that allowed a user had a flaw built into it anyway, but it should help. He had documented any changes he had made for compatibility or stability in the related programs as well, so those software suites would be getting a bunch of free, documented upgrades.

Eventually he would need to fully dismantle and analyze some of the closed source operating systems to ensure all THOSE applications would work on Eve too. As long as he did it without access to their source code in a black box environment, there would be no legal leg for them to sue him for infringement and it would allow anyone to run almost anything as long as they had an Eve box nearby.

Hmm. Maybe he would be attacked for financial reasons by those companies before the Villains even get their act together.

That would be neat. Especially as Dragon would be able to say 'No' now.

Late into the night, legal chaos was being crafted by the young man. It was nothing compared to what would happen when he was given his first paycheck, to officially buy new tools and software.

But it would do for now.