Tòumíng woke up and looked around, his vision swimming into focus slowly, everything blurry at first before sharpening into clarity.
He was in what looked like a very sterile hospital room. White walls. Medical equipment lining the surfaces. The smell of antiseptic strong enough to burn his nostrils.
IV stands.
Monitoring equipment beeping softly in rhythm with what he assumed was his heartbeat.
For a moment, he thought maybe he'd hallucinated arriving at Ghost Claw's base. Maybe he'd actually been picked up by an ambulance.
Maybe he was in a real hospital and everything after the explosion had been a fever dream.
Then he turned his head and noticed Sasha, the short girl with red pigtails who'd been terrified during the raid, currently applying an IV line to his left shoulder. Or rather, to what remained of his left shoulder.
The stump where his arm used to be.
She was working with surprising competence despite her nervous disposition, her hands steady as she secured the needle and adjusted the flow rate.
"What is this?" Tòumíng's voice was raspy but functional. His throat had healed somewhat during the unconsciousness.
Sasha jumped slightly at the sound of his voice, clearly not expecting him to wake up yet. "Oh! You're awake! Um, this is a specialized IV solution. It's designed to close up the wound by speeding up your natural healing process. The compound encourages cellular regeneration at the injury site and promotes faster tissue formation to seal—"
Tòumíng's eyes went wide with alarm. "WAIT, NO!"
He broke out of his prone position, sitting up abruptly despite the screaming protests from his still-healing body, and ripped the IV out of his shoulder stump. The needle pulled free with a spray of blood and clear fluid, the line dangling uselessly.
"If the wound closes up, then I might not be able to regenerate the arm!" His voice rose with genuine panic. "My healing skill requires open access to the injury site! If you seal it artificially, the regeneration process can't access the blueprint for reconstruction!"
Sasha's face went pale, her eyes filling with tears immediately. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know! I was just trying to help! Ghost Claw told me to stabilize the injury and I thought that meant closing the wound and I'm sorry I'm so sorry I didn't mean to—"
She was spiraling into a full panic attack, her breathing getting rapid and shallow, her hands shaking.
Tòumíng felt bad immediately.
She'd been trying to help.
Had done what any normal medic would do for a severed limb. She had no way of knowing his physiology was completely abnormal.
"Hey, it's okay," he tried to say in a soothing tone, though his raspy voice probably wasn't very comforting.
"You didn't know. It's fine. No harm done. I caught it in time. You were just doing your job and—"
The door EXPLODED inward.
Not opened. Not pushed. EXPLODED. The door flew off its hinges as Think Tink The Tinkerer kicked it down with manic energy, his skinny frame somehow generating enough force to demolish the doorframe.
He was holding what looked like a granola bar wrapped in silver foil, brandishing it above his head like a holy relic.
"HAZZA!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with excitement.
He charged toward Tòumíng's bed at full sprint, his bare feet slapping against the sterile floor, his expression absolutely unhinged with scientific enthusiasm.
He reached the bed and immediately sat down, not beside Tòumíng, but directly ON Tòumíng's exposed torso, his bony ass resting on what was still partially regenerating muscle tissue.
Tòumíng winced heavily, pain shooting through his still-healing body. "OW! FUCK! GET OFF—"
Think Tink The Tinkerer didn't care. Didn't even seem to notice. He shoved the granola bar directly in Tòumíng's face, so close that the foil wrapper was touching his nose.
"I HAVE CREATED PERFECTION!" Think Tink The Tinkerer announced, his eyes wild with the fervor of mad genius. "In the twelve hours you've been unconscious, I have revolutionized nutritional science! I have created the future! I have—"
"WAIT!" Tòumíng cut him off, his brain catching up to the timeline. "I'VE BEEN OUT FOR TWELVE HOURS?!"
Think Tink The Tinkerer nodded enthusiastically, his whole body bobbing with the motion. "Yes! Twelve hours and forty-three minutes to be precise! But that's semantics! What matters is THIS!"
He unwrapped the granola bar with theatrical flourish, revealing what looked like a standard granola bar, rectangular, compact, about the size of a typical energy bar, but with a distinctly metallic sheen to its surface. The color was off too, more silvery-gray than the brown you'd expect from oats and honey.
"This," Think Tink The Tinkerer declared with the gravity of someone announcing a cure for cancer, "is Supplement A-3! The culmination of my research into high-density caloric compounds and bioavailable energy matrices!"
He took a breath, which Tòumíng immediately regretted because the smell that wafted from Think Tink The Tinkerer's mouth was absolutely horrific, like he'd been eating garbage and hadn't brushed his teeth in days—and continued his explanation.
"The base material is beryllium aluminum alloy, atomically restructured and bound with organic compounds to make it digestible by your Reactor skill! The current production flavor is mint—achieved through the integration of menthol crystals at the molecular level, but I have seventeen other flavors in various stages of development including chocolate, strawberry, and something I'm calling 'nuclear waste' which is actually just very concentrated citrus!"
Think Tink The Tinkerer's breath was getting worse the more he talked, his face inches from Tòumíng's as he got increasingly excited about his invention.
"This single granola bar contains over FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES! And since you have the power to regenerate using caloric energy, if I could mass-produce this, you could in turn regenerate anywhere, anytime with just one or two of these things! No more eating entire buckets of lard! No more consuming jet fuel! Just portable, shelf-stable, high-density nutrition!"
Tòumíng was genuinely impressed despite the assault on his nostrils. This was actually revolutionary. A real superfood designed specifically for his abilities.
"That's... actually really good work," he managed to say while trying to sink deeper into the hospital bed to put distance between himself and Think Tink The Tinkerer's breath.
But Think Tink The Tinkerer didn't seem to notice the retreat. Just kept leaning in closer, his enthusiasm overriding all social awareness.
"EAT IT! EAT IT NOW! I NEED TO OBSERVE THE REGENERATION PROCESS!"
Tòumíng grabbed the granola bar and bit into it.
The texture was weird, simultaneously crunchy and slightly metallic, the mint flavor strong enough to overpower the underlying taste of what was essentially edible metal. But his Reactor skill activated immediately, breaking down the beryllium aluminum compound and converting it into usable energy.
He ate the entire thing in four bites, washing it down with nothing because his mouth was now full of weird minty metallic residue.
Then he checked his Metabolic Healing skill interface:
METABOLIC HEALING - INJURY ASSESSMENT
Required calories for complete regeneration:
- Total skin regrowth (arms, torso, face, legs): 86,405 calories
- Nerve healing and neural pathway rework: 8,093 calories
- Shrapnel removal and foreign material expulsion: 303 calories
- Lung tissue de-aging and particulate removal: 12,400 calories
TOTAL CALORIES REQUIRED: 107,201 calories
AVAILABLE CALORIES: 405,500
Estimated regeneration time: 4 hours
Begin regeneration? [YES] [NO]
Tòumíng nodded and mentally selected YES.
Then he screamed bloody murder.
The pain was immediate and all-consuming. Every nerve ending in his body fired simultaneously as the Metabolic Healing process began forcing tissue reconstruction at an accelerated rate.
Think Tink The Tinkerer's grin widened to manic proportions. He pulled out a notebook and pencil from seemingly nowhere and started writing frantically.
"FASCINATING! The vocalization indicates significant pain response despite the beneficial nature of the healing! Beginning observations!"
For the next four hours, Think Tink The Tinkerer conducted the most eccentric, invasive, and scientifically questionable evaluation of a healing process ever attempted.
He leaned in close—TOO close—his face inches from Tòumíng's writhing body, examining every detail of the regeneration with the focused intensity of a scientist who'd completely abandoned all ethical oversight.
"The epidermis is reforming from the dermis outward!" he narrated while scribbling notes. "Fascinating! The new skin appears to be forming in layers, with the basal layer establishing first, followed by the spinous layer, then the granular layer, and finally the stratum corneum! The process is visible to the naked eye if you look closely enough!"
He stuck his face practically against Tòumíng's regenerating chest to get a better view.
Tòumíng was in too much agony to protest. His body was rebuilding itself from the inside out. Bones were reinforcing. Muscles were knitting back together. Nerves were reconnecting, which meant he could feel EVERYTHING.
"How does it feel?" Think Tink The Tinkerer asked with genuine scientific curiosity, his pencil poised over his notebook.
"Specifically, how does it feel to heal the femoral arteries? The regeneration of major blood vessels must create significant pressure sensations! Describe it in detail!"
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Tòumíng responded.
Think Tink The Tinkerer wrote that down verbatim. "Excellent! Very descriptive!"
Ten minutes later, as the muscle tissue in Tòumíng's left arm began reforming from the stump, Think Tink The Tinkerer leaned in again.
"And now? The reformation of voluntary muscle tissue through accelerated myogenesis! How does it feel? Is there a sensation of stretching? Pulling? Describe the proprioceptive feedback!"
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Tòumíng screamed even louder.
Think Tink The Tinkerer nodded sagely and wrote it down. "Consistent with previous response! Interesting! The pain appears to be scale-independent!"
Twenty minutes after that, as the nerve endings in Tòumíng's face began reconnecting—which was somehow WORSE than everything else because facial nerves were incredibly dense—Think Tink The Tinkerer had another question.
"The trigeminal nerve regeneration! One of the most pain-sensitive nerve clusters in the human body! How does—"
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Tòumíng didn't even wait for him to finish the question.
Think Tink The Tinkerer wrote it down with visible satisfaction. "The pattern holds! Remarkable consistency in pain response across different tissue types!"
For four straight hours, this interview of agony continued. Think Tink The Tinkerer asked questions. Tòumíng screamed. Think Tink The Tinkerer wrote down the screams as if they were meaningful scientific data.
Sasha had fled the room within the first five minutes, unable to handle watching someone in that much pain.
But Think Tink The Tinkerer stayed, fascinated, taking notes on everything from the color of the regenerating tissue to the rate of skin cell formation to the pattern of hair follicle reconstruction.
Finally—FINALLY—the fourth hour arrived. The final stage of regeneration. The face.
New skin was forming over Tòumíng's skull, covering the exposed muscle and bone that had made him look like a nightmare. His features were returning—nose, lips, cheeks, forehead—all reconstructing according to their original blueprint.
Think Tink The Tinkerer over-analyzed every aspect, his face pressed close enough to Tòumíng's that it was deeply uncomfortable.
"Interesting!" he declared, examining Tòumíng's regenerating facial skin with a magnifying glass he'd produced from his pocket. "The follicular structure shows significant abnormalities! You have an unhealthy amount of ingrown hairs, particularly around the jaw and chin! The follicle orientation is suboptimal, with approximately sixty-three percent showing improper growth angles!"
He pulled back slightly, still writing notes. "Based on this follicular architecture, I can conclusively determine that you will most likely never grow a proper beard, even when you reach your forties! The ingrown hair density will prevent adequate facial hair coverage! Fascinating genetic lottery failure!"
Tòumíng, who was still in the final throes of regenerative agony, managed to gather enough breath and focus to yell three words:
"SHHHHHHUTTTT THE FUCKKKKKK UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!"