ADAPTIVE MAN 2 REDO Beep, beep, beep. The slow, faint beat of Jake's heart pumps quietly, like waves thumping down against sandy shores. Jake's eyes flutter open slowly.
"Gasp! Doctor, doctor, he's awake!"
"What? What's going on?" Jack looks around groggily. He glances at the many wires surrounding him and pulls them out with a sharp grunt.
"Wait! Wait! Wait! You can't leave, you're still recovering! "A large man enters the room, his presence making the air tense and as solid as a brick, and he crashes in with a deep but friendly voice. "Hey man, you're standing just from adrenaline. You're going to fall the next time you speak. That's ridiculous! "Jack painfully collapses, his legs giving out like a landslide onto the smooth hospital floor. Regardless, it hurts like hell. "What! Why am I like this?" He punches the wall, not crumbling it like before, staring in shock and fear at his lack of power. "How... how long was I out for...?" Jack asks with great fear in his dark brown eyes. "You were out for... two years," the large man says with great sadness. The room fills with a depressing silence. Jack crawls weakly onto the hospital bed, unsure what to do next, his mind swirling like a cyclone.
One month later, he hasn't heard anything about Ms. Maple. He's been too busy doing rehab, but it doesn't seem to be helping. One day at lunch, while he's eating his depressing, soggy fries, he hears a crash from deep within the hospital. He rolls his wheelchair towards the loud noise, his weak arms pushing his chair forward with great difficulty. But he makes it, at last, to the door where the sound emerged from. He hears the large man from earlier—his name being Noah—talking to a nurse about some strange engineering experiment."It's called ETP—Extreme Titan Power. It boosts a regular man's speed and kick force tenfold.
For a crippled man such as Jack, it only boosts five times. "It's not ready!" the nurse shouts at Noah. "Well, we have no choice. Ms. Maple orders it today! "Jack sits by the door in devastating silence. He hears them exiting, so he scurries away in a panic and hides stealthily. Once their footsteps fade, he scurries back into the room with quick succession. He stares in awe at the ETPs, snatches them, and struggles to wheel them out because of his earlier bursts of energy. Instead, he decides to equip them in that room. He inserts his legs into the gear—KACHK!"AHHHHHHH!" The metal staples into his legs.
The pain shoots like thunder through his already paralyzed vertebrae, unbearably, but it strengthens his legs greatly. Noah enters the room, and within a millisecond of seeing the theft unfolding before him, he launches his full-force blow, destroying the wall. "WHAT THE FUUUCKKK!"Jack screams as he dodges the attack at Mach 2, his old instincts from his prime active. BOOM! Jack launches a counter-kick into Noah's ribs, shattering them completely like a collapsing Jenga game.
The nurse rushes in' Jack bounces off in a rush at Mach 3. He crashes into a house, his ETPs steaming from the engines exhaust. He wanders around the abandoned house he crashed into like a meteor. He ponders on the edge of the room and realizes there is one man he can potentially rely on. So, he runs off at Mach 1. still unable to fully control the ETPs full capabilities Finally, he arrives at the warehouse of the Crimson Killers.
"Hello... anyone home?" Jack shouts out into an empty canvas. The formerly lit bonfires are extinguished completely, and the sand beneath Jack's feet merged with ashy grey soot and blood. BOOM BOOM. The leader's monstrous stomps echo down the stairs, his crimson coat torn, missing an arm. "Why, hello, Jack," Riot says, grim and menacing. "Hey, Riot, long time no see," Jack replies, equally menacing.
"What happened here?" Jack asks, looking around at the filthy, destroyed warehouse. "After you, everything went to shit. Maple wiped out my whole squad single-handedly. We fought for a single minute, and she broke my arm before slicing it clean off like some goddamn butter with a hot knife. "So... what have you been up to?" Riot asks sadly. "I was in a coma, then rehab, then I got betrayed because I learned my carers are working for Ms. Maple. They were going to deliver these ETPs to her before I stole them, beat one of them up, and left. Anyway, I was wondering if you could train me?"
"Train you? I am in no position to train you. I was weaker than you before, and now I'm weakened, and you're crippled without those rusty chum bucket legs you're useless, But I guess there's a training course, that my gang once went through but it's so tough it killed several of my elite soldiers. So first, do 25 to 50 push-ups per day and try hanging on a pull-up bar with these resistance bands for a couple of hours NO BREAK! and maybe after a few weeks, you'd be maybe half the power that you were in your prime days.
"Fine!" Jack screams in fury at the long routine. He begins imminently Three weeks later, while he's cursing riots name in his mind as his training has barely helped whatsoever, however, he then senses a presence nearby raw and overwhelming. It's approaching. Riot senses it simultaneously—it's Noah from when he escaped the rehab centre. He now has obtained custom ETPs that stretch along his arms, which have been further amplified by the custom ETP capabilities.
Riot rushes forward and punches him, but it's ineffective. Noah simply deflects the blow as if it's a weak pebble. He shoots a steroid-filled punch directly into Riot's jaw, sending him flying away like a shooting star. BOING! Jack launches at Noah."Ms. Maple gave me some new gear to retrieve the old! "BANG! Jack's new metal prosthetic ETPs clash against Noah's ETPs, making a shrill sound reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. Riot arises from the dirt and comes rushing back in like a furious rhino, but he gets knocked back flying again as if he were Team Rocket—blasting off again."Leave this to me," says Jack with a proud and powerful tone. They jump away with agile swiftness. Jack launches forward, as does Noah. They exchange a flurry of swift, powerful kicks. and a furious assault of punches as strong as an earthquake itself while Jack's movements are as graceful and fluid as a dolphin. Jack throws a rusted steel beam as old as time straight at Noah, but he simply crumples it in one glove.
Jack keeps throwing surrounding waste in desperation or was it simply a ruse Jack blitzes behind Noah with a menacing aura and strikes with a destructive kick. "Impossible! This speed is beyond the gear's limitations. This isn't the ETPs—it's his own raw speed! "GAH!" Noah shrieks loudly in horrible pain. His arm ETPs get obliterated from the kick. Heavy panting fills the air. noahs throat exhausted from the extreme exchange of blows
"Wow, that was extraordinary, Jack. It seems that simply using those ETPs has led to an exponential increase in your speed. But sadly, your upper body still lacks muscle," Riot remarks. cackling as he chokes on each breath Jack gazes at Noah's defeated body, lying barely alive but unconscious on the sandy, blood-stained floor. Jack marches forward and smashes down as destructive as a hydraulic press. Noah's skull is crushed under the pressure and cracks open to his brain like an egg,
Jack stares at the ruin around the warehouse he then notices something among what remains of Noah's ETPs—it's a fluid that accelerates muscle growth, which is one of the reasons why he had gotten stronger. Jack painfully injects the syringe into his arm. His body collapses and convulses uncontrollably.
"Hey! Hey! Wake up now! Stay with me! "After a long while, Jack regains consciousness. "Wow, I feel way stronger—almost above my prime!" Jack remarks in amazement. "Wow, that's amazing!" Riot yells, ecstatic. "Do you think it's time?" he asks curiously. "Time for what?" Jack responds, confused. "Time to get revenge on Maple, of course.
"A sly, sinister grin spreads like an infection across Jack's face. "Yes, I agree. Time to give that BITCH! Maple a taste of her own medicine! Hahahahaha!" Jack cackles ominously it's as if the devil had taken control of his soul. Riot slowly backs away, scared of the devilish menace before him. Two weeks later—October 31st, 2026—Jack and Riot are preparing to invade Ms. Maple's basecamp, just as they did three years ago when Jack fell into his coma, as just simply the sight of this structure still standing makes Jack retch in disgust, but he calls his nerves and Jack then launches forward and stealthily slips throughout the camp as silent as a dead mouse. He stealthily assassinates most soldiers as he smiles at their corpse when it collapses lifeless,
he continues sneaking around the large base camp. Suddenly, he hears a familiar, sinister voice behind him—it's Ms. Maple, with a gun to his head reminiscent of the previous time. when he was only half the power, he is currently BOOM! Riot crashes down into the base with his one arm, swinging it around as wild as a silverback gorilla.
In that moment, he is a wild gorilla, smashing and swinging, terrorizing the base. Ms. Maple turns to witness the horrible chaos that is unfolding around her, but as she twists her head back as fast as an owl, Jack has vanished. She blinks again. Jack sends a kick flying into her face, breaking her jaw and giving her a full forced brain haemorrhage.
"Well, you've certainly grown stronger since the last time we met, Jack," she remarks, still with a sinister, devilish grin stuck to her face as tough as glue. She launches at Jack and shoots a barrage of bullets at him. Each bullet races toward him each with the speed of a racecar. Mach 3! He blitzes behind Maple and launches punches raining down like a crashing pilot—one to the collarbone, another into the spine. Ms. Maple recovers nearly in an instant. It's like she's a machine! "Not too bad for someone I trained!" she screams at him in fury.
Jack remains silent, as cool as a deadly icicle, but deep inside there's a flame—and each time Maple speaks, the flames rise and blaze higher and stronger to the point of it consuming the icicle that was keeping it bound it has manifested into a raging inferno. He launches a mix of punches and kicks at her with immeasurable speed at Mach 8. The air around them crumples under the pressure. He vanishes and reappears constantly, then suddenly appears directly behind her. Her life flashes before her eyes as she's engulfed in a bright light. When the same as when Jack was in this predicament, she reawakens under a rusty abandoned shed as a 10-year-old girl. Her black, neat hair now rustled and scruffy, her jacket and pants torn. She's called around the warehouse that she was once dragged around to do work as a victim of child slavery. Later that night, her father entered her crumpled, rusted room and didn't leave for another hour or more. She began crying every night after constantly remembering that night when she was locked in her own room and everyone is oblivious not knowing what happened because of the sheer amount of PTSD she manifested from that one singular hour, and when she turned 12, she was forced to fight for them.
remaining Traumatised from that one night long ago, there was only one thing that held her back from ending it all the one thing she would get for either Christmas or her birthday as it was never her decision when she got it and it would be an Agatha Christie novel. She was obsessed. Every time she would receive one, she would read it endlessly until she obtained the next.
She resulted in enjoying them so much that when she had the chance, she changed her code name to Ms. Maple so that her name would be as close as possible to the main character in those books, since that was the only thing distracting her from the trauma she experienced as a child. THUD! returning to consciousness Her corpse hits the ground lifeless, her eyes like dolls. Jack stands there, hyperventilating, both arms broken unusable, and his leg ACL torn and permanently damaged. Not as bad as last time, but still absolutely battered and beaten. His arms twisted, each movement makes him wince in terrible pain. But then he hears Ms. Maple's corpse speak in a mechanical tone.
"Self-destruct initiated. "RUN!" Riot shrieks, his voice pushing through the air across the whole base camp. But it's no use—he can't move. He sheds a single tear the 1st that he's shed in his entire life knowing he can't escape his fate and takes the blast full force. No chance of a savior, no chance to cheat death once more. He passed away at 1 a.m. on November 1st, 2026—right on his birthday, the day he turned 18 years old.