003: Difference

Levi or Sam, which name should he go by?

It was such an inconsequential question that most people would simply ignore and accept both as just the same.

But only he could really think about it more than it really was necessary. Guess the blame here lay with his new mother who liked to use Sam, while his new father apparently was more of a fan of the other name and constantly referred to him as such.

Now that he had a few days to recover from all the crap that happened in one go at the start did wonders.

His physical condition was still in a horrendous state, but his mental health was recovering at a much faster pace.

That is if he ignored most things that still hampered that aspect.

When one considered everything, his mental health would probably be called a miracle after what he went through. Let alone an existential crisis, he was lucky to be not insane by now.

So having a knack here and there is normal and it would probably reverse its situation so taht he would never really recover completely and his physical condition would finish that race first.

Those last few weeks were also not completely wasted by him. He had to go through some simple rehabilitation at the moment when the doctors noticed his atrophy diminishing at an astounding pace.

His skeletal appearance slowly gained more muscle and healthy fatty tissue to the point where the nurses had to constantly deliver more meals for him every time they heard his stomach growl or the nutrient solutions in his drips vanish as if he was drinking them.

He could only shrug his shoulders at how these same doctors hadn't yet found the blacklight virus in his body and only were amazed at his great recovery progress.

Apparently, they attributed it to him being a young child with a very active metabolism.

Yes, he did have that now - probably. That was clear as day. But the reason for it being present was a very different one - obviously.

He knew it and could clearly feel his body becoming stronger the more he ate and exercised in his rehabilitation efforts.

The more muscle tissue he regained, the hungrier he seemed to get. And sometimes it even felt like that ravenous appetite grew in him to the point where he could hardly restrain it.

For the first few days after noticing it, it was negligible. But there was once a moment where he felt like he would attack his nurse when it nearly overcame his mind.

It scared him and was worrisome.

So he asked the doctors about it subtly which led to them running some tests and increasing his food to 5 meals a day plus some extra if he felt still hungry. 

Since that helped him control his appetite, he refrained from saying anything more unless he wanted to end up under some scalpel or other company dealing with bioweapons.

In the end, even with those increased tests they still didn't find anything besides his body having a very high upkeep in calories.

And apparently, his endurance somehow helped him in constraining this desire every time he felt like despairing of his hunger after the first time.

Now that another 2 months have passed and he was back at training he got used to the constant hunger.

It only felt like some heavy workout that heated up his body and was accompanied by a rather unwell feeling and...some pain.

But like he said, this is where his extreme endurance came into play. It actually had some synergy with controlling these outbursts and the more he got used to it, the more it became manageable.

In the third month, he also finally understood a little bit more about his condition when his fingers morphed into sharp claws after he failed to open a pack of chips.

Imagine his bewilderment when he saw his own hand warp and convulse into a blackish mass only to cut open the package and change back into his normal hand.

He was clearly shocked and the increased heartbeat got all the attention from the nurses that rushed in to check on him. 

Less said, he somehow got a ban on fatty products from that point...

And ever since that day, he tried to experiment with this whenever he could.

He got a hang of it and understood that his whole body seemed to have changed to the very cellular level. It was possible for him to change every single part of his body into something else as long as he understood the composition and if his mass could support that change.

Yes, there were apparently limitations in his ability. One was that he needed to constantly support himself with energy to keep his higher metabolism at bay and another was that he only could change into the same equivalent of his own body mass.

What the outcome would be to fail in either of them...Made him just shudder. There were theories he came up with that he would attack a human.

With knowing how he could morph, the likelihood of devouring another human was high...The thought alone somehow disgusted him...

And the morphing failing could result in him losing limbs. That was also not something he would like to happen.

That was about everything he could find out without raising suspicion.

Yet in his very instinct, he felt that there was more about this. So he made a note in the back of his mind to research his own condition. There was obviously no way in hell that he would just ignore this.

The very name of his gift said it all. It was a curse, a virus. And those tended to be maligned to their hosts.

His fear was reason enough to keep that stance against it.

After having been in this hospital for 6 months he could finally leave it and start his new life.

And he planned to do a lot. Not only did he experiment with his biological change but also the power that he got. And let's just say it was a very interesting power indeed. It was at least a lot safer than the virus in him.

Everything he touched he could let crumbled down to the very atoms that it consisted of. 

Yet that was not even all, he could also rearrange them and reform them back into different things as long as those were understood by him to a masterful degree.

Meaning if he ever understood how to make a phone, as long as he knew what to make and how to arrange its parts, then he could basically let a smartphone appear in his hands.

Though it would be one without any software on it.

It sounded neat in those aspects but without wisdom and knowledge, it was also useless.

But the greatest abuse he came up with was a very simple one.

The decomposition was nearly instant and all materials, as long as they stayed in their decomposed state, could be stored by him indefinitely.

He could even smear a wall with some sort of vorpal gate substance that looked like purple goo and everything that touched it would decompose and instantly enter his "inventory".

If he had to make some weird comparison, it would be like those online games that had those building aspects but without really having a limit in weight.

So, what did he come up with to abuse this? Simple, he came from a time when he was sent to war for resources.

And he was talking about real wars for even the smallest shit. Oil was one thing but later other materials were in much larger demand. Not to mention oil was running dryer than a desert and replaced by other energy sources for a long time.

Also, why not exploit the real problem that caused those wars later? Environmental destruction was real no matter how people viewed it.

Sadly most still disregarded it as a joke and profited from the "clear" conscience of the sheep masses.

He would exploit it as well, but unlike the rest, he would really try to do something for the planet. 

There is one thing we really have a lot of and that very thing is waste. And what does his power do? It gets rid of anything that comes into contact with it, becoming his to use.

So he would start simple. He already had a talk with his father to open up a scrapyard.

Apparently, he was well off with his new father being a council member of some energy company.

'Lucky me, I guess...' Thinking about it, that really was lucky.

With his mother who was a biochemist, it practically became a win-win in both, money and educational options.

Though the thought of him having to go through all that shitty school life again kinda made him moody. That was actually something that he was not very keen on doing. Yet it was necessary.

And so he had to make a deal with his father to keep his grades on the high end if he wanted to get his little "enterprise" going. Otherwise, they would sell it and stop giving their name to his little whim.

After all, you could only have a company as an underage kid with your parent's help.

So, his plan was to get rich through recycling. Unlike other companies that just made landfills, he would let all the crap vanish completely.

Maybe even sell the raw materials back to companies once they accumulated enough.

After all his conversion rate was near 100%. And all the Ferrum landing in his possession could be mixed with a little carbon to make steel again. But there were obviously many more possibilities in this.

The little stamina he used while decompiling was negligible. It could also be attributed to his extreme endurance and the virus inside him that he felt like yawning when breaking things into their atoms.

He did have inhuman strength and durability now as well. Hell, even his body was a clear muscular one after only a few months of rehabilitation.

Though he still had that little baby fat on him since he was still rather young. He was only 11 now.

In the end, when the crisis hits, he would still not even be of age, which kinda sucked. He could only abuse this as much as possible. Only time would tell how things would go.

Back to his first dilemma, he just simply wrote his complete full name on the piece of paper that was a questionnaire about some things regarding his health. Why they even needed that, he still didn't understand. After all his parents would still have to give the signature at the end.