Chain 126: Aberrant

Chain 126: Aberrant
Location: Karachi, Pakistan
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [+600] Costume Fetish, Kami-Sama!, Breeder
Aberrations: [+500] Cosmetic Alteration (On Fire), Feeding Requirement (Platinum Group And Noble Metals)

[Free]      Worth Every Penny
[0/2700]    Attribute Stipend (+600)
[500/2700]  Mega-Attribute: Dexterity (Five)
[Free]      Dexterity: Fast Tasks
[600/2700]  Mega-Attribute: Perception (One)
[Free]      Perception: Body Awareness
[1100/2700] Mega-Attribute: Intelligence (Five)
[Free]      Intelligence: Taint Resistance
[1300/2700] Hypermovement
[1900/2700] Dispersed Organs
[2500/2700] Molecular Manipulation
[Free]      Eufiber Suit (Armatura)
[2700/2700] Companion Import: Demona, Conspiracy

The first thing I become aware of, on entering this world, isn't my surroundings - it's a permeating knowledge of the world around me and of myself. Detailed knowledge. Oh, sure, I knew on a certain level that I've been an overglorified nanite colony for some time, but the nanites were emulating human tissue. Muscle and blood and skin and bone, a nascent spark, and magic and soul. I've delved into it and tweaked it in the past, and even assimilated SECOND to have a more direct control over myself long ago, but there's always been a degree of separation. Abruptly, though, I've become aware of every last little detail about myself.

Also, I'm on fire, but that can wait.

It doesn't really take much, once I cross the bridge of understanding, to reprogram the building blocks that make me up. I can miniaturize a small building to something the size of a remote control, so using that to further enhance my structure and make it all but infinitely redundant should be most effective. It's going to necessitate a lot of changes in my diet as my body restructures itself and rebuilds its reserves to what it needs now, but... well, other than reinforcing my bones to be rather more durable, the rest of the nanobiotic tissue that makes my body up is really just wasting energy, pretending that it's flesh and bone. It's a bit of a shame, but there's not a lot of point to it, when you come down to it.

And so, I change it; instead of a dozen different types of tissue, I have a fairly standard skeletal structure, skin atop with enough plasticity to not cross the uncanny valley should anyone touch me, and otherwise am comprised of an internal volume that can act as muscle in any way that I desire at great speed indeed, and otherwise distributes everything that I am through it. Vital organs are overrated, and even with the redundancy, it multiplies my potential in a great many ways.

I'm still on fire, though. This is a little perplexing, but as it turns out I'm not the first person this has happened to.

It doesn't help anything that I seem to have Demona at my side and the Conspiracy clearing the way as I walk, looking for all the world like some sort of occult leader with his worshippers walking through the streets of Karachi. ...actually, on a certain level that's exactly what I am, but regardless, there are better places to do this. This isn't a Pakistan I recognize, which means I'm going to have to do some reading about the local world - I branch off a timeline before returning to the normal actions I'd be doing instead, so that I can use it to study briefly.

Apparently, my doing this gained a LOT of attention from other empowered beings in the world, who have a more developed sense of time than the average person. Or baseline, in the local parlance. Still, it's enough to learn a great deal, even if much of the usual means I might use is inaccessible (what with being on fire), Demona is at least willing to do the research for me. She's as confused as I. Also, it turns out that this is not a good place to be and thus all of us vacate Pakistan in very rapid order.

It turns out that a thousand people flying around four hundred miles an hour, MOST of whom have wings, tends to raise a lot of eyebrows from the world's governments. As I come to understand it later, this ignited a hundred conspiracy theories. But by and large... I mostly tried to play it straight. 'Yeah, sorry, I accidentally empowered these people who worshipped me but I don't think I could ever empower someone like THEM again, only very weakly,' and so forth, because I was an unknown quantity.

Who was fourteen teen tall, on fire, and wearing what looked for all the world like modernized medieval armor fit for an emperor, and with an ornate cloak crafted from the petals of a sakura tree. All of which stubbornly resisted being set on fire.

Despite everything, I ended up with a fairly sizable following. Some in person, some over the internet. It didn't help anything when I ended up being rather unlike most of the local Novas - sure, I had certain abilities that were seemingly within their purview such as spontaneously being able to manipulate the molecular structure of objects and create them from almost nothing, or a brilliant mind that could combine their technologies with that which I already knew, but apparently so far as anyone knew I was the only person who could run at mach six.

(Hypermovement gives a 6x speed multiplier. Enhanced movement from having 5 dots in Mega-Dex also gives a 6x speed multiplier. These stack, and my base speed was already 400mph at a sprint. I could reach most points on the planet in an hour or two and run around the world in less than six.)

There wasn't really a lot I could do, though. I wasn't the only person in the world like this. I was, however, one of the few who could perceive things in advance - such as, say, the idiots who kept trying to kill me because they were convinced that I wasn't sterile like all the other novas in the world seemed to be. Or the fact that after I met with other novas, they mysteriously became fertile again, before it became a global phenomenon which such shady forces blamed on me. Not unjustly, I mean, this is what happens when you cast global enchantments that cause people to have a slow regeneration effect for genetic damage. On a related note, cancer rates around the globe dropped immensely.

But I kept playing things straight, aside from occasionally stepping in where things might otherwise go horribly wrong. Picking a few conspiracies apart, warning the other Novas who had their heads on straight about them, and occasionally making novas who did NOT have their heads on straight disappear. Sure, buddy, you're a kill-happy serial murderer with super powers, but I am literally a deity with magic, you're not going to persevere against me.

It's just too bad I didn't find out about the aliens who were manipulating everything until it was too late in my stay for me to make a major difference. I tasked the Conspiracy with rooting them out immediately, but killing a number of creatures who were effectively energy beings that mostly weren't on Earth was of limited effectiveness over the course of five hours.

I'm sure I'll go down in infamy, but that was the point that I instructed every member of my cult to go to ground, and that I had to leave them. Hopefully I'd be able to come back some day, but until then... they needed to be aware, and be careful.