Melissa started to become friendly with Damian and Ava. She became friendly with Ava because she was always with Damian.
Every time after the caretakers looked after them, Melissa would go to find Ava and Damian. If Damian was being tortured, Melissa would find Ava and they would play.
Damian wanted to help Gloria because her health was deteriorating every day. Damian could see that with Bio-Vision, and by the looks of it, she won't live past 10 years. She probably knows that.
Damian had to be careful with the watchful eyes around him.
Everyone was being watched in the orphanage, especially Damian. Damian was being watched more because he looked unbothered by the experiments.
After a few months, Gloria became bedridden, and Damian felt sad when he remembered himself. Damian decided to copy superhuman durability from Tony and healing from Maya.
Every time Damian copied an ability, the energy in his hands changed colour to match the copied ability. The energy he makes with his ability is a gray-white sphere, but when he copied an ability, it changed colour.
When he copied Maya's healing ability, the energy sphere became green in his right hand, and when he copied Tony's superhuman durability, the energy sphere became bronze in his left hand.
He copied those abilities to Gloria, but it didn't work. Damian tried that 3 times within a week, but it didn't work. The caretakers watched what Damian was doing and became interested in it, but became disappointed when Damian failed.
Damian decided to go to the library to study biology and physics to understand why he kept failing. Damian looks like a 15-year-old even though he's 10, so the librarian didn't mind him studying those subjects.
He took 3 weeks to read 134 books: 57 books on biology and 77 books on physics. If he had used his super speed to read, he would have taken less than 30 minutes to read them all, but Damian doesn't rely on super speed.
He understood why he kept failing and decided to give it one more try.
He went to Gloria and blasted her with his energy blast to cancel her ability in her body. He copied Tony's and Maya's abilities and merged them into Gloria's body.
The following day, Gloria coughed up black blood from her mouth the whole day. She kept coughing up blood all week, and Damian did nothing because he knew he had succeeded.
Gloria coughing up blood was her body removing impurities. Her body was healing itself.
The caretakers locked Damian inside an isolated room because they thought he was killing Gloria, and they labelled him as dangerous.
He was locked up for a month in the room. Food came each day, but they didn't allow anyone to visit him.
When Damian got out, he found out that Ava had been adopted, and with his super hearing, he knew they weren't lying.
Gloria came to thank Damian afterwards, and she started to hang around Damian.
A few months went by, and Damian turned 11. It was 1988, and something happened: David died.
The caretakers overused David's ability to transmute everything except living organisms. They used him even when he started coughing up blood, and they didn't stop.
David was a kid who got sent to Red River because his parents died in a car accident. While David was in the car, he transmuted a hole in it to get out. He got sent to an orphanage afterwards, and when they found out what he could do, they sent him to Red River after 2 months.
Every kid in the orphanage became extremely angry at the caretakers because of David. Damian didn't say anything, but he was angry.
The caretakers looked unbothered by the anger of the kids. It's like they expected it or were used to it.
"Everyone calm down. We need to keep going," one of the caretakers said as he looked at the children.
"What do you mean by keep going?" Tony said as he looked at them with anger in his voice.
"We need to keep going with the tests," the caretaker said without a care in the world.
Damian became extremely angry, and Dread Aura exuded from his body without him realising it. Every living being within a radius of 50 meters stood still.
Nobody moved a muscle.
Everybody forgot to breathe.
No one knew what was going on.
Damian walked towards the caretakers, and the only sounds that could be heard were Damian's footsteps. Each step Damian took made everyone more afraid, and they started to sweat.
"Go on. I DARE YOU," Damian said in a deep voice as he looked at the caretakers while deactivating the aura. Everyone fell to the ground, and Damian walked away to find where David's body was.
When he got there, he saw David standing at the centre of the room. Damian looked surprised to see David standing still, and David smiled when he saw Damian.
"Hello, Damian."
"David, everyone is angry and worried. Come on, let's go," Damian said as he turned around to walk back, but David stood still.
"You know, I've always wanted a brother or sister, and I'm glad you're my brother," David said as he walked towards Damian.
"Come on, David. Let's go," Damian said as he turned around.
"Even though it was short, you became a big brother... to everyone." David said as he hugged Damian around the waist since he was 5 years old.
David disintegrated after hugging Damian. Damian was shocked by what happened, and when he looked at the far corner of the room, he saw David's dead body.
That's when he realised he was talking to a ghost.
Afterwards, the caretakers packed everything and ran away without looking back.
The funeral was held for David, and they buried him in the backyard of the orphanage. Damian copied David's transmutation ability to himself, but it didn't get copied, so he transferred it to Gloria since Gloria was close to him. He copied superhuman vision to Melissa because she had bad eyesight.
Damian created a casket for David at super speed before burying him.
A few days after the funeral, new caretakers were brought in, and everything got back to normal.
These caretakers were not like the last ones. They didn't care about the kids or their powers. They just did the bare minimum and were done with it.