Ava was able to play with everyone just fine after that.
In the same year, 1986, Olivia came to him after she heard the kids talking that Damian had helped Ava with her ability and wanted his help too. Olivia's skin is red, and her hair is blue.
When she gained her ability to teleport, her skin turned red all over, and her hair turned from black to blue. Her parents thought she was a demon who had taken over their baby and abandoned her at Red River when she was 3 years old. Olivia was born in 1980.
Olivia wanted her skin colour to return to normal and hoped Damian would revert it.
Damian told her he could revert her skin colour back at the cost of losing her teleportation ability since it was tied to it.
Damian could edit abilities but not customise them. If your ability came with horns, he couldn't remove the horns without removing the ability. He could edit things like whether an ability was passive or active, how you use your ability, and how to restrict it or make it safe to use.
Olivia loved her ability, but her skin colour was the problem. Olivia took weeks before deciding to remove it.
Everything went fine afterwards. Olivia was adopted months later, and Ava got along with everyone. Damian copied Ava's ability to himself, and everyone within a 25-meter radius felt dread.
Nobody moved an inch when Damian activated the aura. His aura was different from Ava's.
Ava's aura is about her negative thoughts, and she's full of negative thoughts. That's why her aura never deactivated. Damian understood that when he was putting a "switch" in the aura.
Damian's aura is different. Damian's aura is about death since he experienced many deaths in his life. The aura follows his negative thoughts, but his experiences of death outweigh his negative thoughts.
A combination of Death and Fear is Dread. So the aura produced dread.
Damian deactivated it immediately after realising what was happening and told himself he won't do it again in the near future.
Everything was fine in the orphanage afterwards.
The following year, 1987, Damian turned 10, and everything was okay.
Damian tried to copy others' abilities, but nothing was copied except the ability to see DNA since it corresponds with Bio-Vision. The rest didn't work. He tried to copy teleportation when he was removing it from Olivia, but it didn't work.
He tried to copy telekinesis, but it didn't work. He couldn't control plants, control water, manipulate gravity, create wax, or heal others like Maya. He didn't let it get to him and figured the abilities had to correspond with his own ability to be copied to himself.
He copied water control to the person who could create wax, and vice versa, and it synced perfectly with them. He copied plant control to the person with the healing ability, and vice versa.
The person who could control gravity didn't get anything, but he could control the gravity just fine now.
The same year, a few kids and new caretakers were introduced to the orphanage. There were 4 of them: Tony, David, Melissa, and Gloria. They were not older than 5.
Tony's ability is superhuman strength, durability, smell, hearing, taste, and reflexes. David's ability is transmutation and superhuman vision. Melissa's ability is to turn everything she touches into stone. Gloria's ability is to breathe poison, but she gets sick every time she uses that ability because she has no immunity to poison.
Every person who has abilities has superhuman powers corresponding with their ability and the evolution of that ability. Damian understood this before Olivia lost her power and after Ava was able to control her power.
Olivia was only able to teleport to what she was seeing in front of her, but later, she could teleport to places she'd been to or seen. Ava's ability is based on her negative thoughts. After Damian helped her control it, she could sense negative thoughts in others, especially Damian.
Damian was able to get along with the new kids, and so did everyone else. The new caretakers were not like the previous ones. These ones were not nice.
They would treat everyone in the orphanage like dogs. They would sometimes throw food onto the floor and force the kids to eat it. Everyone who complained would get hit, locked away, or not fed for a week.
Damian didn't mind or care about them. Whether they threw his food onto the floor or didn't feed him, he would just pick up the food and eat it. If he wasn't fed for a week, he didn't mind because his regeneration helped him, but his strength decreased if he didn't eat anything.
The new caretakers would take a kid with a strong ability and lock them somewhere while they tortured the kid. The people who were tortured the least were Ava and Gloria.
Ava wasn't tortured because they thought she no longer had her ability, and Gloria wasn't tortured because she would need a doctor or a lot of medicine after she used her ability.
Damian wasn't bothered by it when he remembered his first caretaker and how she treated him. These caretakers looked like angels compared to her.
"This is fun."
Damian said that when they first tortured him, and they freaked out because of the way he said it. They asked Melissa to touch Damian, and his hand turned to stone when she touched him.
The second she let go, the hand returned to normal because of his regeneration. Melissa smiled happily when she saw that because she felt the touch of someone for the first time in a while.
Melissa is a 4-year-old kid. When she was 2 years old, she turned her brother into stone because she touched him while they were playing tag. Her parents called her a monster afterwards and refused to look at her.
She lived in her home while being hated by her parents. Her grandmother came to visit once and was turned to stone by her. Her parents hated her even more afterwards, and they would throw objects at her.
A year passed while she was being tortured in her home. Her parents thought about cutting off her hands, but they remembered that their neighbour once patted Melissa and was turned to stone.
Melissa became hated by everyone on the street, and no parents let their kids be close to her. When Melissa turned 4, her parents heard about Red River Institute and sent her there without a second thought.
When Melissa got to Red River, she met kids with different abilities, and everyone played with her just fine, but nobody wanted to touch her when she told them her ability, including Damian. Damian didn't want to gamble by touching her and finding out.
When the caretakers asked Melissa to touch Damian, he could've gotten away with his super speed, but he thought he could cut off his stone hand to stop the spread. The hand healed without danger.
After that incident, Melissa would follow Damian around to play with him and even offer him food to get a simple hug or a pat on her head from Damian.
Damian didn't take her food but would do what she needed, and she enjoyed her time with Damian.
"Why couldn't I get powers like yours or not have powers at all?" she once said to Damian.
Before Damian answered her, he thought back about his own life. He thought about getting burned alive, getting tortured, eating shit, sleeping in a church, and staying in the forest. He thought for a while before saying, "Nobody chooses their own origin. Even if we do get to choose our own origin, we wouldn't be what we are."
Melissa didn't understand what Damian said, but Damian told her she'll understand when she gets older.