Impotent rage blew through him for a moment, an old friend from another world.
His mind was blown at the implications of what he found.
He had pretty much a full-body heal after he landed on this planet.
Pretty much anything foreign to himself had been removed, broken glass from the windows of the car, wooden bits from the trees he had crashed into.
So why did he still have a lump of cancerous tissue in his lung?
The realization hit him, foreign, the cancer was his own cells multiplying uncontrollably selfishly robbing his other cells of much-needed nutrients, killing them in the process.
"Well, I got something for you fucker." He said out loud, vehemence adding a cruel tone to his voice.
Focusing on the bundle of out of control cells and the surrounding tissue, intending to find all of the malignant cells.
Scouring both his lungs he found two other bundles of vampire cells and began to increase the vibrations in their atoms, cauterizing the evil fuckers and thankfully preventing a bleed.
Cade began to cough uncontrollably and fought tears as he brought the destroyed cells up and out of his lungs and throat.
He almost vomited as the charred taste settled on his tongue before he spat them out.
That task done Cade was glad to see no divot in his home, checking over the power tie he found it secure, feeding him power at a nice steady rate.
Grinning to himself over his victory Cade downed a glass of water to get the otherwise appealing taste of charred meat out of his mouth.
His grin slipped suddenly as he wished he had this power back on earth maybe he could have saved his Tony.
He stopped himself in his mental tracks, down that path led to madness and rage.
He had enough of that during Tony's fight for life.
Swallowing the familiar feeling he got back to the process of making a meal, infinitely simpler.
Pulling the gator out of the fridge Cade smiled down on the late reptile, "hey sunshine how about we get some dinner cooking and work on those pants."
With a flippant grin on his face that helped to mask the tumultuous feelings in his chest, he got to work cutting up the giant reptile.
Meeting the neighbors
Stepping out of his home to meet the morning sun a full two days after the gator incident Cade rubbed the last bits of sleep from his eyes.
After his meal of grilled gator tail, he had taken the remnants of his pants and applied the magically cured gator skin to them bonding them on the molecular level to each other, providing a little padding to his armor.
Taking some of the excess skin left over he made himself some thong sandals.
He was proud of his new footwear, they wouldn't win any awards but they protected his feet and that was enough for him.
The shirt on the other hand he just repaired with a few bits of rock as the sacrificial material folding the cuffs to his biceps against the hot and humid weather.
Making his way down to the riverbank Cade was glad for the entertainment offered by some relaxing fish watching as he called it.
It wasn't Sea World but it would provide some much-needed entertainment and a training opportunity.
He had spent all of the following day after creating his gator skin pants rebuilding his body to provide him with some much-needed upgrades.
His run-in with the caiman had driven the point home that a few advantages would do him a world of good, not to mention the poor earth beneath his feet.
Cade had reinforced his ligaments and strengthened his muscles, which to his relief turned out to be a fairly simple process.
The source for the organic material need for his increase in muscle mass had come from his little friend and meal companion.
Deciding on the amount of fast and slow-twitch muscles had been a sticking point though.
He didn't want to be a muscle-bound brute who took a whole year to swing a punch nor lightning fast with no power behind them.
The whole exercise gaining him a physic similar to a competitor in a strong man competition, strong enough with some fat to protect his muscles and provide support overall.
The changes had taken some getting used to, one side effect had stuck out to him.
After he had reheated some gator meat for lunch some juice had dripped off his chin.
He had unconsciously gone to wipe it off had almost knocked himself out in the process.
He laughed to himself remembering the incident, "tagged that off button pretty good".
His grin shifted to a grimaced, speaking of incidences he remembered a little project he had completed afterward.
Wanting some more light in his home he had created skylights in each of the rooms in his house.
Making the holes for the skylights had been simple, the two-foot by two for chimneys had been created in a few moments.
The glass that would prevent anything from entering his home through the skylights had been a breeze as well.
The incident in question had been when he had to make it to the top of the cliff his home was built into.
Cade chuckled to himself remembering his ill-advised stunt.
He had just finished creating his glass ceilings and was about to attempt to jump the 20 feet up to the top of the cliff.
He didn't expect to make it the full height just wanting to experiment with his newly created muscles.
Standing a ways away from the cliff he had got a running start and tried to hop up the side of the cliff.
As he had planted his leading foot saying, "he leaps tall buildings with a single bou..HOLY SHIIIT", his right femur had snapped under the pressure from his newly minted muscles.
Face palming at the memory he had to give himself a little credit, at least the healing spell worked, he hadn't noticed any divots on the beach as his leg had repaired itself.
After the embarrassing lack of foresight had landed him in the dirt, he had put his mind on how to reinforce his bones to prevent another fracture the next time he tried to used his enhanced muscles.
"Got the healing factor down how about some metal bones to go with it".
Locating some metal to work with hadn't been too bad, expanding his senses and ignoring anything that felt like the rocks he was so intimately familiar with from his home building adventure had been simple.
As he came again upon the truly mind-bogglingly huge deposit of metal that he had built his home's power source out of he hoped the dense but light metal would make a great coating for his bones.
It had been a scary experience, scanning the material and painstakingly finding the bonds and breaking the whole 50-pound mass into a dust storm of metal.
After releasing a shaky breath he was glad his fears of a fission explosion from breaking down so much material at once were unfounded.
The bonds of the material had required a massive amount of power to break down the 50-pound slab into microscopic pieces though.
He thanked his lucky stars the power produced from the fission reaction covered most of the energy requirements to make his little metal storm.
Cade was slightly sorry his little rock battery was consumed in the process though.
Following the path down from his cancer eradication day Cade coated his whole skeleton in the mystery metal.
An involuntary shiver ran through his whole body at the memory of all the little pinpricks as the metal slipped through his skin and muscles.
He had added a little insurance and placed a bit more of the mystery metal around the base of his skull and tied his energy and healing spell to it.
The hours following his little procedure had been nerve-wracking.
Cade had a hair-trigger on the metal ready to remove it, as he continually scanned himself waiting for it to appear in his bloodstream.
Satisfied with the results of his self-experimentation he had blown out a breath in relief.
Feeling the added weight after his procedure Cade had put himself through some exercises
to test it out, a few stretches and wind sprints on the beach showed no serious loss of movement or dexterity.
He was still considerably faster and stronger than he had been before his modifications, the added benefit of a metal reinforced punch didn't hurt either.
Feeling good with the results he attempted his flying leap up the cliff once again, this time with no boisterous words.
Completing that with two feet to spare as he fumbled the landing, stumbling and almost eating dirt, he had smiled shrugged and lifted the glass panels he had laid out at the foot of the cliff into their proper places with no further issues.
So with his body in order and food and water taken care of a little fun time was in order.
Sitting down on the river bank he expanded his power till it reached the opposite bank and began his training.
Sensing the fish and other animals, plants, and insects vibrations in the river he began by doing a wide scan of all the deep water before him he started his game of catch and release.
Cade would startle the fish by grabbing them with his power then release them only to try and catch the spooked fish again as he tried to track them through the water.
He found to his surprise that he could feel the fishes... he didn't think they were feeling, they were more what drove the fishes on a daily basis.
The most prominent of those instinctual directives was to feed their hunger and protect their little territories along Cade's little swath of river.
After a few hours of this, he was pretty happy with the results, he could reliably catch his chosen fish with minimal effort and concentration.
During his training he had found another caiman, the hunger he felt from the large reptile causing a small amount of rage in him.
He had taken perverse delight in tossing that oversized belt with an overblown opinion of itself a couple hundred feet in the air to smack down hard on the river.
Was it petty, why yes it was, did it make him feel better....hell yes!
He wasn't going to be another snack pack for a predator ever again.
Watching the corpse of the river croc float down the river gave him pause though.
The question of how he had felt the instinctual thoughts from the denizens of the river was a quandary he hoped to solve.
The fact that he could sense what another being was thinking would come in handy he was sure.
Sitting on the beach thoughts of the electrical impulses of brains in his mind he felt something enter the range of his senses coming from upstream on top of the water.
As he stood up and looked to his left he saw a decent-sized barge floating downstream, a handful of people standing on it.
A small burst of excitement coursed through him before he ran through his two options, would he run or stand and greet these strangers.
Settling on a mix of the two he backed 20 feet up the bank towards his home and waited.
As he watched them approach he had to admit the crew of the barge wasn't bad, skillfully bringing the craft effortlessly to the shore he had just vacated.
Taking a headcount of the men on board he counted six of them in nondescript black leather uniforms reminiscent of a mid-evil fair.
"Hello there", Cade waved as he greeted the men as they stepped onto the sand and gravel of the beach, "what can I help you with".
A wave of uneasiness went through the group as he watched them glance at each other in confusion.
"Guess they don't speak English around these parts."
The largest one, a monster of a man who looked to overtop him by at least a couple of heads, looked to his far-right and said something to the shorter but still stocky man next to him.
He watched the shorter man take off in a sprint back towards the boat they came in on.
A faint rattling sound reached him as he saw the man grab what looked like chains from the bottom of the boat.
"Yea.. no that's not happening."
Cade began to turn to leave these assholes who thought they were about to sell his big ass into slavery if the chains were any indication.
He was distracted by thoughts of Roots running through his mind as he looked back to the other five assembled men.
As a soft clatter of wood on wood broke the silence Cade noticed one of the shorter slighter men releasing an arrow from a bow that he had overlooked at his first inspection of the group.
The arrow slammed into the meat of this leg causing him to stumble slightly.
"Well, that gator skin did sweet fuckall," Cade said through gritted teeth as his leg started to throb.
Pulling the arrow out of his leg with a grunt he decided these fuckers were going to hurt.
Feeling the pain fade from his leg he took off at a dead sprint towards the five men.
A split second later surprised expressions greeted him as he laid a haymaker into the face of the short archer who had decided to make him a pincushion.
His hand caved in the man's googly-eyed black face and snapped his head back with an audible crunch as the vertebrae attaching his head to his neck crumbled under Cades metal-reinforced punch.
As he backed up from the four remaining men Cade felt good about that hit as he felt the pain from his bruised knuckles fade.
He had to give it to the group of slavers, they reacted fairly quickly jumping back and drawing weapons.
Looking the men over Cade identified a human man with skin bronzed by his time in the sun with a long sword in his grip.
To the right of the human, he saw what he assumed was a dwarf, shorter than him by close to 2 feet and sporting a beard that reached his knees and brandishing short axes in each hand.
The massive man next to the dwarf caused Cade to do a double-take.
What he had assumed was a monstrously huge human with a bear headdress looked to be a werebear complete with a short snout and small rounded ears on his head.
The werebear had no weapon but the massive paws both tipped with long claws, entirely too long for Cades liking, would do the job of cutting him to ribbons just fine.
Warily tearing his gaze from Winney the poos roided up cousin he took in the last member of the group facing him.
He looked at the slightly built lizard man, long pointed toothy snout and all with a tail sprouting out behind him that tapered to a point half as long as he was tall.
Added to the lizard man's evident lethality were the two short swords in his clawed grip.
Taking this all in over a few seconds Cade didn't like his odds, he didn't think they could kill him but if they started beating on him it wouldn't be very pleasant, to say the least.
Backing up a few steps which caused all of the men arrayed before him to cautiously crouch down in a battle-ready stance at the action, Cade pulled on his power.
Like his game of catch and release, he attempted to catch them all, grinning as a certain theme song went through his head his telekinesis like ability gripped all five men including the fool still rushing over with the chains.
Atomic Mage Page 4
