It's only a flesh wound
Cade awoke on his bed, well-rested after completing his home renovation in the early morning hours.
Last night had been a bitch, working into the wee hours of the morning had drained him less than the actual work it took to dig out his new digs.
Cade looked around at his handiwork in the light of the new day.
Cut out of the cliffside he had fashioned himself a two-bedroom one bath apartment.
The buzzing and humming of the rock around him had become no more than background noise, a friendly reminder that he was making a new home.
Thinking back to better times he had built it around the one Tony and he had moved into when they first got married.
Just a decent sized kitchen that opened to a smaller living room than they had attached to a short hallway that branched off to the two rooms.
All of this had been illuminated by more than a few wooden torches that vented through holes in the ceiling.
One thing he had always had trouble with his oversized six foot six frame was finding a bath that fit him.
Cade always felt like an adult in a kiddie pool at all the places he and Tony had rented while he was serving.
So he had taken a little more time with the master bath creating a monster tub that he could sit in with water up to his neck with his legs stretched out.
In his excitement for a much-needed bath, he had stopped his renovations as soon as his tub was built.
The walk to the river shore had been hurried and treacherous in the darkness, the debris that covered the sandy beach tearing into his feet and tripping him up more than a few times.
He found a new use for his powers as he tried to fill the bucket he had created with water only to have the river water flow into it clear and cool.
Startled once again at the utility of his abilities Cade had collected a floating globe of water as he rushed back to the bathroom as giddy as a virgin on prom night.
He was almost embarrassed to admit he was just as hard as said virgin as he slipped into his glorious tubs hot, wet paradise with a shaky sigh of relief.
Cade had also added a few creature comforts to his place besides his glorious deflowered tub.
His king-sized bed had been one, making the frame had been easy as pulling a stone block from the ground.
The mattress though had taken an hour of his time, getting the rock to soft enough for him to sleep on had been a challenge.
The sheets and comforter had been relatively easy in comparison.
Cade had just duplicated the material of his shredded cotton undershirt sans bloodstains to make the sheets, blanket, and pillows.
Converting a few trees' worths of raw matter to make them had been a game-changer for his survival needs.
Cade found he could change the makeup of matter into anything he had an original "copy" of.
The amount of the material needed to duplicate the original varying widely with size and complexity though.
The second had been a result of Cade playing around with the idea of controlling the vibrations in the atoms of the rocks around him.
He had carved out a decent sized refrigerator out of the rock of his home and lowered the vibrations of the whole internal structure.
His initial design had stayed cool for a bit then warmed back up slowly while he prematurely congratulated himself.
The discovery of a literal mountain-sized deposit of mystery metal had Cade giddy with thoughts of free power for all if he could get his idea to work.
Trial and error and a few hours had allowed Cade to devise a way of tying his power to the super dense but light metal he had discovered while trying out a way to make nuclear fission.
The 20 pound two foot cubed block of the metal that was his final successful trial was being stored under his sink and powered a few of his "appliances" like his stove which worked pretty much the opposite of the fridge.
The light streaming in from his kitchen window reminded Cade that a new day had dawned and the growling of his stomach reminded him he hadn't eaten anything except for a few grapes since he woke up on this new world.
After getting up and going to the bathroom to relieve himself he collected his ratty clothes and made his way to the river shore to catch his first real meal.
Stepping out of his front door he made his way along the gravel and debris strewn beach to grab some water and hopefully catch some breakfast from the river.
Walking over to the bank he glanced around, seeing nothing stalking up that was going to bite his head off.
As he looked into the water, his eyes widened at the vaguely familiar face from his past.
Cades mouth hung open in disbelief, a 25-year-old him looked back at him with the same deer in the headlights look.
68-year-old Cade had a receding hairline and wrinkles on top of his wrinkles, this younger version was almost bald with a day of growth outlining a hairline that had crept its way back to its proper place.
"Well don't that beat all," he said to the young man reflected at him.
As Cade looked at his youthful face the past two days' events and his endurance through them made more sense.
He had kept himself in decent shape throughout his life... first life... anyway in shape or not Cade had been 68 when he died, not a spring chicken by any means.
The scramble up the tree the first night and the lack of effort required even exhausted as he had been, reinforced the notion that he had been de-aged when he got to this new planet.
He laughed as a crazy thought went through his head of him chasing Tony buckass naked around the house when they were working on baby number one.
He had been 25 then and fresh back from his second deployment, he and Tony ready to start the family they had been discussing before he got back.
Cade fondly remembered her telling him to give her his babies as they made love in their bed that first night back.
He chuckled to himself as he felt his pants grow tight as his little monster put his two cents in, yup 25 again alright.
That thought got blown out of his mind along with all thoughts of baby-making as two eyes and a snout popped up not three feet away from him underwater.
"Fuck" was the only thought he could form before he began to turn to run away when the water exploded and he felt a searing pain in his right elbow.
He was knocked off his feet as a 7-foot caiman locked its jaws around his elbow and proceeded to try and drag him underwater.
The weight of the 400-pound lizard slid off Cade's legs as it made to turn and drag his big ass off for an afternoon snack.
He felt his right shoulder dislocate as the giant lizard yanked it and his body back towards the river.
Through the pain in his legs, which he was sure were broken due to the overgrown iguana landing on them, Cade reached out with his power towards the caiman's skull and hoped the area he was choosing was its brain and poured all his ragged focus into boiling it.
The caiman jerked to a stop thrashed its head around once then proceeded to death roll Cades arm right off his shoulder.
"YOU MOTHER FUCKING WALKING HANDBAG BRING THAT BACK IT DOESNT BELONG TO YOU!!"
Screaming expletives as he tried to drag himself to the thrashing lizard, Cade found himself less disoriented as his stupid healing power saved his life in just as many days, snapping his legs back into their proper position and staunching the flood of arterial spray coming out of his mutilated shoulder after a few gorey sprays.
Refocusing on the caiman who looked to be having a bad day he restarted his attack on its little pea brain, cooking it from the inside out.
A cruel smile grew on his face as he lifted himself shakily from the ground and walked over to the still river monster.
Stopping next to the now still lizard, Cade pried its dead jaws apart and retrieved his missing limb and eyes clenched shut slammed it to his shoulder, praying to himself, "it's only a flesh wound it's only a flesh wound its only a flesh wound".
He instead saw red skin joining his body back to his arm.
Blowing out a sigh of relief he yelped as his shoulder was forced painfully back into its socked.
Groaning at the quickly fading pain Cade looked down at his newly reattached arm, "glad you and Palmela are back bud".
Flexing his tingling fingers he looked down on the 7 foot home wrecker, "well I was hoping for some fish but since you volunteered I guess we can cook up some gator for dinner tonight".
Cade looked around for some way of moving the 400-pound lizard away from the river to keep from having to deal with any predators who would try to steal his hard-earned dinner.
Failing to see anything that might help he focused on the dead animal before him scanning it from snout to tail like had his hand the day before.
He suddenly had a weird x-ray visual of the giant lizard including all its innards, skin, and scales.
Swaying slightly on his feet Cade as the disorientation of the caiman's body overcame him he instead tried to fix in his mind the whole animal instead of thinking of its disparate parts.
That helped and when he opened his eyes all he saw was the dead dick head in front of him.
Yes, he was still pissed, no killing it hadn't helped as much as he thought it would.
With his vision cleared and his mind less dazed by the shifting images Cade tried lifting the lizard with his mind.
That was a mistake, immediately he felt exhaustion hit him as the carcass rose two maybe three inches not even enough to get the feet off the ground.
Dropping his dinner to the ground he fell to his knees gasping for breath.
"Let us try something different," he said before grabbing a small rock.
Tying the same power knot that he had devised last night for his home battery onto the river rock Cade smiled as the rock's energy poured into him, as a few microscopic dust particles falling off of it.
The spell which is what he chose to call it, took a few hours of his late evening into his morning to figure out.
He had focused for hours on a small sliver of rock trying to find a way to make a small infentessimle fission reaction happen on one of its points.
After hours of trial and error, he made one happen, and thank God he had tried it outside.
The tiny piece Cade had been working on had gone critical and the only reason he and most of this jungle we still living and breathing was the size of the test piece had only been a few millimeters long.
Still when he tossed it and ran Cade still had 2nd and 3rd-degree burns on his back and legs.
A divot in the ground and a few minutes later with a new regulator spell tied to the fission spell he had applied the resulting workable spell to another small piece of rock.
Cade had then proceeded to beat the ever-living piss out of it with no boom.
He was still awed by his new abilities, it was earth science that gave him the ideas for how to apply the magic that made those ideas work.
So equipped with his little battery slash grenade and a full bucket of river water Cade proceeded to lift his dinner up and move it to his new home.
He counted the whole experience as a win, his right shoulder looking none the less for wear and his stomach growling at the prospect of a full meal.
Call me DR Cade
Cade drug his kill back home, thinking about what he should do with the carcass after he got the meat out of it.
Making it home he looked at his ragged clothes, his right shirt shoulder hung off his elbow torn from the rest of his shirt by the asshole sitting on the gravel and dirt beside him.
Glancing down past the patchwork mess of his shirt his pants looked no better.
"Gonna make some gator skin pants out of this fucker" he growled out.
"But first I'd rather not be making holes in the ground every time I have a near-death experience."
After he placed the gator in his makeshift fridge he looked at the little battery.
The little stone he had found after his little adventure at the river bank would do nicely as the power source for the healing spell.
During his home renovation last night Cade found his new abilities were driven by his intent and had a range of around ten feet.
He assumed that the emergency healing he had been getting had the same range due to the nice sized divots he was leaving everywhere.
He was going to have to find a way to tie the energy trickling out of the stone in his hand to his healing power.
He began by focusing on scanning his body like he had the gator sitting in the fridge.
"Might as well start from the top and make my way down."
He began his full body scan feeling the short hair that had begun to grow at the top of his head, then the skin at the top of his head as he scanned down his body.
Making his way down his skull he noticed an odd sensation in the back of it.
Thinking back to his hours of work on the home he found himself in, the buzzing and humming noise he had learned to associate with his ability working had come from this area of his head.
Trying to multi-task he activated his power to scan the rocks around him while still focusing on the back of his head.
Succeeding just barely at maintaining his concentration he found a bundle of neurons located in his brainstem that had activated.
Cade was fuzzy on the structure of the brain, he recalled a faint memory of the fight or flight response being triggered in a small part of the brain.
Trying to recall the name of the thing only brought visions of Russian fighter jets.
Dismissing the idea as unimportant he continued, as long as he could tie his power to the rock in his hand he would be happy.
Tying off the rock to that bundle of nerve cells was simple, he had done it with the 20-pound battery under the kitchen sink last night.
Cade focused on the rock in his hand and its regulator spell, turning it up slightly his awareness of his surroundings increased drastically.
The disorganized droning from yesterday came back full force.
"Hmm, that fixes our range problem."
Deciding to play around with the extent of the range of his abilities later he continued with the scanning of his body.
With a moderate force of will, he placed all the noise, that he knew was the vibrational frequencies of the matter around him, into the back of his mind.
Grinning at the turn of phrase Cade continued scanning his body, making his way to his chest he found his heart and lungs.
Noticing an odd mass in his left lung he almost lost his focus, only the hours of concentration with the new power allowed him to maintain it through the shock.
He had cancer, lung cancer probably the same type that took his Tony as the image he had in his mind matched up with the months of scans Tony had taken during her fight with this beast.
Atomic Mage Page 3