BBS - Chapter 4 : A Crack & A Ghost.... (Patreon)

The Bat, The Billionaire & The Shenanigans [4]

Disclaimer - I don’t own anything. Disney does, Warner Bro does, and Rowling does.

Ireland

–Tony Stark–

He took a deep breath, soaking in all the manure around him before getting to work. A single mental flex told him of anyone who might be around and could catch him doing telekinesis, and after finding no one, a flex of his mind began the cleanup job of the waste generated by the plethora of farm animals they had on hand.

It was, as one would expect, a job that was assigned to someone as punishment, and since there were no punishments left to give this week, as somehow everyone had been on their best behaviour, he was the default choice. Perks of being the lowest on the ladder, he supposed. Ma did not care one bit who got the job. She just wanted the job done, and wanted all her children in one piece with all their digits intact after the job was done.

Beyond that, the children could do whatever they wanted. And they did do whatever they wanted to do. It’s just that in between doing whatever they wanted to do, they also did all the farm chores and all the other chores assigned to them. Even if they were a lot mischievous, the kids did all the jobs and made sure everyone contributed.

It was kind of amazing how all of them could go to school, come back home, and do all the chores. Jerry, the eldest and the one most likely to inherit the farm, was somehow the least educated out of all of them, having spent most of his life doing farming instead of setting foot in school.

Granted, most of them were Catholic Schools but for the primary education given out, they were fine. Sure, he knew quite a bit more about science than these people could even think of, but he had to work within the constraints of reality here, even with the enhanced power he seemed to have lucked into.

And the reality was that most of the people around here were farmers, and not the rich kind. School was technically compulsory until 14, after which most kids were just inducted into the farm worker force, and the country as a whole was quite poor.

He’d heard that in the past few years, there has been some change in politics about the education sector. The free education, as well as free yellow buses, certainly helped a lot. Sometimes, he saw Jerry looking at them as they left for school with a frown, but there wasn’t much he could do there. Not only was Jerry a full adult by now and quite set in his ways, but their Ma had quite a hold on Jerry’s mindset, and she was not going to budge an inch if he even suggested that Jerry should get some education. The rest were going to school, and that was fine.

That was his life for now.

Farm chores. Catholic School. Church. And the most interesting part of his routine, power training.

It was an incredibly versatile source of energy that allowed him to do borderline reality warping. If before it was a nice little boost to his physique, on top of telekinesis and extra sensory perception, now it was something else entirely. Now, it was more akin to matter manipulation.

Something that just made his heartbeat quicken as he thought of everything that he could do with matter manipulation. That way, he wouldn't have to keep on building the tools to build the tools to build the tools to finally get the final product, and even then, have most of his advanced armours out of his reach.

It was frustrating to have so little in terms of technology around him, but then again, if he had this power and was a powerless farmer child in his time, then he might have been dissected before he had even reached puberty. In his world, being able to exert more strength than a full grown man was basically worthless, especially since the opposition would be quite used to containing enhanced people. No, in more ways than one, being born in this place in this time period was an advantage for him.

He could always rebuild his technological arsenal later on, especially now that he had discovered that he could somehow manipulate matter. It was so OP that he couldn't believe he could ever get it. Now, it only remains to be seen if he could make the change permanent, and what else he could change about the base material.

So far, he had changed the wood to metal, changed the color, and more. But after a few hours, it always changed back. Once, he supercharged the change and found the log to be metallic for three whole days before it changed back to wood. 

The internal energy, that was increasingly starting to look like something he would rather not say, was essential to his body. As such, when he supercharged that spell, he emptied most of his tank, and that left him lethargic for two whole days before he finally felt good enough to work and go back to school. Ma had been worried sick, but their financial condition did not allow them to bring a doctor all the way here, and a trip to the city was expensive, especially since everything they needed to buy from the city was already here last week. Thankfully, he knew what the cause was and managed to recover right before it looked like Ma was going to get him a doctor, regardless of the cost.

He loved his Ma. She was old, cranky, and totally old school, but by god, did she love him and all her children. Maybe not equally, but she definitely did.

Shaking his head, he looked at a job well done before moving out of the barn and heading towards the river out in the distance. He reckoned that he had atleast an hour before anyone came to check on him, so it was time to do some experimenting.

A grin found its way to his face as he thought of just what he could do, if only he could get the matter manipulation to stick. The most useful application of any temporary matter change was to get the required tools. Well, the non-electric tools anyway. He had no idea if making a battery out of wood and stone might have charge or not, or if it would just explode in his face, killing him or worse, permanently disfiguring him.

Sue him, but his face was the most valuable asset.

___xxx__

It was yet another day of his routine, and he was sitting on the bank of the river, watching the water flow, as if in a daze, his mind going to the most devastating discoveries he’d made. The matter manipulation was a fraud! It was not permanent, could not properly take on the properties of the desired material, and barely had a fraction of the target material. It was just so useless beyond being a one hit pony or for show off purposes. It couldn't make an Arc Reactor Housing, it couldn't make high quality copper wires, it couldn't create hardened alloys, it couldn't act as a replacement for high quality manufacturing tools; it could not act as treated material. It couldn't create batteries or electricity. 

It was just…useless for his purposes.

He had been bummed for days now, lamenting what he could have done if only he had access to that magnificent power. He would have already been in his suit and flown around the world, getting to experience what the world was like before the internet took over and shortened the distance between people and places.

The internet created amazing and terrible things, but if he had matter manipulation, he would have been around to guide the world to a better tomorrow. He would have easily sidestepped many mistakes that mankind made, and acted as the invisible guiding hand. 

Hell, in this world, creating a Suit of Armour around the world would have been a far easier task. He would just have had to conquer the world, and with how remote and disconnected everything was, he would have lorded over the entire planet as the Supreme Leader, kicking and dragging the world to a better tomorrow. Emperor Stark does have a nice ring to it, does it not?

Maybe it is good I don’t have that power.

He knew himself. He would have just let all that power go to his head.

Even though he had the self awareness to know that, it does not mean he was not still bummed about the hope of finally being in the Suit once more being brutally snatched away from him.

He was so bummed that he hadn’t even known that his birthday was approaching. Yesterday, during supper, Ma told him that it was his birthday tomorrow, and that he could take a little time off to go play in the river, like you always do. But what was he going to do with a few extra hours of staring into the water, when he was just so damned bored out of his mind?

Playing with his internal energy was nice at first, but now it had become more of a chore, especially since he didn’t really use it all much beyond some farm chores, and then swimming. Sure, seeing self improvement in ways he had never seen in his past life was nice and all, but he needed some sort of challenge. Real challenge.

Challenges that he was not going to get while living in a town where the most exciting thing of the week was the Sunday Mass.

Shaking his head, he was about to take his clothes to finally jump into the water and take a nice swim, when he felt it.

His senses told him of a small cracking sound of some sort, along with a disturbance of some sort with his other senses. His internal energy-esque energy was somewhere near him, on the farm.

He immediately turned around and began running in a manner that reduced any noise he might make, and kept his eyes peeled to search for the most interesting thing that had happened this year. 

Who could it be?

Another human with that same internal energy? Someone who had sensed him and had come to finish him? Silence him? Take him away? Adopt him? Warn him?

Many questions rang in his mind as he continued to run full tilt towards the farm, leaping far distances in one go to reach as soon as he could, foregoing the usual level of caution he kept reserved for his more unusual feats of strength.

Before he could even reach the farm boundary, though, he heard that crack once more, but this time, the internal energy type feeling was nowhere to be seen. Still, he kept his pace and reached the place, and it was right at the same spot as their farm gate.

He did not know what was up with that, even as he ran circles around the property to find any traces, but nothing. It was as if the crack appeared out of thin air and then left that way as well, leaving behind very few traces, not enough to give him a sense of direction.

Teleportation? A freak accident? Were his senses going haywire?

He did not know, but things just got a bit more interesting than they were yesterday, and that was the best birthday gift he could get right now.