Adam switched off the broadcast. Everyone in class was discussing Concretion and Green Buzz's abilities.
The group of ability awakened students were chatting in excitement.
"I want to improve my ability soon enough! I heard Concretion's hero company is looking to recruit young talents!" One of the boys commented.
However, a girl in the group smirked as she replied. "Your grade H power is too weak to be in their eyes. You can just use x ray like vision to see if bones are deformed, what's the use? I Elena's fire control ability has a high potential!"
Adam shook his head and ignored the petty squabbles. Seeing this battle, he had other things on his mind.
His snatch ability just specified that he could snatch the abilities of other individuals. Yet it made no mention about the species of the individual. Could he possibly absorb the ability of these aliens?
However, he soon shook his head. At the moment, he had more pressing concerns regarding his ability. He had only two more suitable absorption slots, he had to choose his abilities in such a way that his snatching ability could be amplified and its weaknesses thwarted.
The critical idea was to absorb abilities that complemented his snatch ability. Like Tenacity could increase the limit of how many abilities he could absorb. At the same time, these abilities had to be only Grade H, the lowest grade.
Another problem on his mind was how to even acquire these abilities in the first place. His first idea was to look at the helpless people he could find, like the hospital.
Returning home, Adam browsed the internet and after a few searches, he found an old age home near the school, where old people who couldn't support themselves were taken care off.
Without being frivolous, Adam walked over the to old age home. When he arrived at the place, he saw that it was an old building that looked like it could crumble at any time. He walked to the reception where he found a fat lady sitting and watching some television drama on her holo watch.
Looking at Adam's sudden arrival, she was surprised. "What are you looking for boy?" She asked in confusion.
"I am a student at Mitsubishi High. I want to write an article about this old age home for the school newspaper. Could I visit the people living here?" Adam asked as innocently as he could.
When the fat lady heard that, her eyes softened a little and she nodded. "I'll ask the superintendent. But I think he should allow it. You should write about this institution's plight - no funding since many years." She grumbled as she called up the superintendent.
Adam nodded as he patiently waited for her to end her call. After a minute she ended her call and nodded. "Leave your School ID here. You can go inside and visit the old people." She said and returned to watching her television drama.
Seeing her busy in her drama, Adam rolled his eyes, did as she told before going inside. On entering, he found the place was even more decrepit than he imagined.
Old people were everywhere. Some on wheelchairs, most in a daze. Some were sitting and watching the holo tv and others were jabbering at the wall.
Adam tried to talk to the old people, asking how they entered the old age home and what happened to their families. Meanwhile, his Snatch ability was already finding that there were three ability users in the old age home among the old people. However, none of them were suitable for Adam's use. After walking around the institute and talking to people, Adam finally left.
After he had left, the superintendent walked out and looked at Adam's passing silhouette, his eyes filled with mystery. He looked at the fat lady at the reception, who was looking at the young lad in seriousness as well.
"Did he do anything suspicious?" The superintendent asked.
The fat lady shook her head. "No, he didn't. He seemed to genuinely be asking about the plight of the old people here."
The superintendent nodded. "Alright. Seems he is innocent, but increase the security, just in case. No body should know about our research here." The superintendent said with utmost seriousness as he inspected a photograph of the ID the boy had left behind earlier.
Adam meanwhile went back home regretfully. Over the next few days he decided to visit all the old age homes in the city to see if he could find anyone with a useful supplemental ability he could snatch. If he couldn't find any, he would check at orphanages and homeless shelters.
In school, Adam was diligent at studies. He also mingled with students and maintained a friendly demeanor. After school, he went about his usual hunt of latent ability users in old age homes.
Five days later, in an old age home in the northern area of the city, Adam finally found an ability, that stunned him on an old lady who was only semi conscious all of the time.
[Ability - Gluon Split]
[Grade H]
[Can disintegrate a Grade H ability into gluon energy, the fundamental building block of Ability manifestation]
[Absorb]
Looking at the description Adam was stunned into silence. This ability revealed information about things he had no information about. It turned out that abilities were actually composed off gluon energy, where gluons were a kind of subatomic particle within protons and neutrons.
Moreover, this ability on this comatose grandma was actually absolutely useless on its own. As she had no other abilities on her body it was basically ineffective. But, with snatch, Adam could use it to disintegrate other abilities into Gluon energy - yet, could this gluon energy be used to perhaps reinforce other abilities? If he could improve the grade of tenacity, he could potentially absorb more abilities!