POV Rio
"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere," I complain honestly.
'Anakin was right all along. Which reminds me, I need to see about purchasing Lucasfilms or at least getting a piece of the pie.'
Since only the original trilogy came out in this universe, I figured I could step in and fund some of that. If anything, it would be fun. And it would be a whole lot more enjoyable than mucking around in this godforsaken desert.
But at least much of the searching is fairly passive, giving me plenty of time to do all sorts of things. I had searched most of Afghanistan by the first month passing, but then I decided to change to searching during the night instead, as perhaps what I was looking for only appeared at night or was easier to see at night. In either case, it was quite boring and uneventful. The only highlights would be when I stumbled upon a Ten Rings Stronghold. I killed all but the leader of that stronghold silently. Then I spent around two days programming him to deliver a phone to where Tony Stark was being held. All for a joke.
Flashback...
I wait to hear from the phone I sent with the agent while still flying around and looking for what I wanted. It took the brainwashed man two days before he finally arrived and delivered the phone, which was soon followed by a phone call.
Ring Ring Ring
I pick up the phone call and wait.
"Is this the creature that wiped out my men?" asks a man from the other side.
"Yes," I answer.
"What do you want?" asks the man.
"I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want. If you're looking for ransom, I'll tell you I don't have it. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let Mr Stark go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you... I will find you... And I will kill you..." I say, while in the form of Liam Neeson.
"Good luck," the man says before hanging up the phone.
I just smile predatorily.
"So you have chosen death," I say with that same smile.
Flashback Ends...
It fit too perfectly not to do it. And I was confident they wouldn't be able to escape anywhere I can't reach them. And I was bored, so it just felt like a good idea. I wasn't exaggerating or lying when I said I would find him and kill him. He wouldn't get to escape me. I would make sure of that. But for now, I was content with just killing any Ten Rings members I came across, always away from where I knew Stark was being held. I could have rescued Stark less than a week after he was kidnapped, but this was a growing experience for him, and I didn't want to prevent the birth of Iron Man.
My schedule was basically unchanged for the next several weeks. Search for 18 hours. Break for lunch and dinner, and 4 hours of sleep. While I was searching, I would be coding and practicing my transformation ability. Transforming was the only way to increase my assimilation progress outside of passive gains, and it was still very slow. It wasn't until 10 days into April that I finished assimilating the Changeling and got my next template.
[Changeling: 100%]
[Getting New Template]
[New Template Found ---> Arcade Israel Gannon]
[Arcade Israel Gannon: 23%]
At first, I was a bit confused as to why the template started out so low, given that Arcade should be a normal human, but when I started processing the info, he knew I realized why. Arcade was very knowledgeable about a lot of things, including power armor, hardlight constructs, plasma weaponry, microfusion/fusion cores, Stimpaks, and various other technologies of the Fallout Universe.
Which brought me to the gear. I was literally drooling over what he came with. X-02 Tesla Power Armor, a Plasma Defender, a Ripper, 12 Stimpaks, 3 Doctor's Bags, 2 Plasma Grenades, 2 Pulse Grenades, and a Lab Coat that improved my ability to think in relation to science/technology, oh, and I guess his glasses, but those weren't useful to me.
There was just so much to say. Some were one-time uses, such as the Doctor's Bag, as from what I understood, they couldn't be replicated. They were strictly a game-like item that could basically heal all limbs instantly. Including the restoration of lost limbs. Though you could argue I could already do that with the Healing Locket. But I guess it was nice to have the item just in case. The same could be said for the Stimpaks, though in that case, I was confident that I could replicate them, and in a way, they could be nice emergency healing items.
A similarly limited item was the 4 grenades. With time, I could replicate them. But for now, they were the last-ditch Hail Mary. I had enough scientific knowledge to know that these are really dangerous. Something I would want to be really far away from when they go off. Well, at least the Plasma Grenades are like that. The Pulse Grenades are basically EMP devices without a nuclear explosion. They would be quite lethal against electronics but not much else.
'I guess they might also work against Iron Man, well, at least once or until Tony finds a way to counter them.'
The least valuable item was the Ripper. It was a chainsaw knife, which is decent, but really messy and worthless against anyone important. Not to mention it's loud. But that was okay since I got the Plasma Defender. Besides perhaps some vehicles and walls, nothing anyone wears at this point in time would save them from a horrible death at the hands of a superheated glob of plasma hitting them. The only weakness is the slow speed of projectiles. If you can dodge a bullet, you can most definitely dodge a plasma shot. But at least against the run-of-the-mill mooks it should do nicely.
The Lab Coat was interesting, as I didn't really understand how it boosted my abilities, and the increase wasn't game-changing, as it was like a 5% increase in abilities, but it was a nice addition to my collection. And it made coding faster. Then, of course, there were the eyeglasses, which were literally less than useless for me. They were corrective lenses, so for someone with superior vision, it was a handicap, not an asset.
But that was all forgiven since I got what any man would love to have. My very own set of Power Armor. Sure, sure, Iron Man has his flying suits, and they are generally much better in a lot of ways than the Fallout Universe's Power Armor, but they had completely different design philosophies, and Power Armor was much, much cheaper to produce than a single Iron Man suit. At least that was my understanding from the knowledge I had received from Arcade. And it's not like my X-02 couldn't defeat the early Iron Man suits. It could likely beat the first and second models. But the third is a probable defeat. And model 4 would be a crushing defeat for the X-02.
But that was just base armor vs base armor; if you included my other abilities, I imagine it would be a much harder match-up for Tony. Especially given his complete lack of knowledge in magic. But Tony was known for his adaptability, so perhaps it would be a constant arms race between us. Something I wasn't too interested in.
I was really tempted to use the Power Armor on some terrorists, but for the time being, I chose not to. At least not until I was more familiar with the suit and how to move safely in it. Which meant I started to spend less time searching and more time messing around with the Power Armor. It was just as fun as I imagined. You felt both slow and powerful in it, but you're actually moving faster than most humans, at 25 mph. I did fall over a few times, but that's okay, I only caused some really loud shaking. I did have to stop practicing at home after several birds complained at me for causing a ruckus.
Then it happened. I finally found something of interest in the desert. It also filled me in on what God might have meant when he said Diamond in the Rough. I say that because the thing I found was a cave in the shape of a tiger. With a red glowing mouth.
"Who disturbs my slumber?" says the cave.
"I am Rio Pines," I answer.
"Know this, only one may enter here. One's who's worth lies within," the cave warns.
"Uh, well, that's... Could you tell me if I am worthy?" I ask nervously.
The cave ignores my question, and I hesitate to enter the cave for a while. I really didn't know what criteria it was using, and while I think I'm a decent person, I wasn't sure if I was worthy of entering and not getting eaten.
'Maybe I just have to trust god. Surely he wouldn't send me here if I were to die instantly.'
I look at the cave and calm myself down before walking towards the cave entrance. The tongue on the floor shifts into stairs leading into a golden glow.
"Okay, as the saying goes, just put one foot in front of the other," I say to myself and walk forward.
I step upon the first step and then the second, and I don't feel rejection, so I continue further in, and as I get farther and farther in, I start to relax more and more. I enter the Cave of Wonders, or at least what I believed was the Cave of Wonders. Inside the cave was gold of all kinds stacked as high as the ceiling, but I didn't pay attention to any of it as I could just smell the curses. In fact, I felt basically blinded by the ridiculous amount of cursed items in the cave.
It was so bad I was scared to even touch the floor, as such, I got on the Firebolt and flew slowly through the cave looking for something that I would find valuable or at least useful. But the more I traveled, the less confident I was that I would find anything. That was until my heart stopped when I saw something... The Lamp. The Genie's Lamp.
Gulp
I floated over to the Lamp and looked around it to see if there was anything that would trigger a trap or something similar, but thankfully, there wasn't, allowing me to grab the lamp and store it in my inventory. Then I got the heck out of this place, as I had no intention of sticking around this cursed cave. The entire trip out of the cave, I was holding my breath in anticipation of something bad happening, but nothing did. As soon as I was out, the cave spoke once more.
"You have passed my trial, now use the lamp carefully, its power should not be abused," the cave said before it started to melt into the sands of the desert.
As it was leaving, I watched the process with Truesight and could tell the cave was being erased from existence. As if it was never there in the first place. And once it was gone, that was it. It would never come back.
'Well, that just happened.'