Adam kept counting under his breath.
Thunder kept crashing outside the crystal shelter, close enough to shake dust loose from the upper layers. Each strike was followed by a heavy burst of sound and the dull impact of bodies hitting the street beyond the sealed front. Thor was doing exactly what Steve had ordered. He was holding the entrance for one minute.
Adam looked at his watch again.
The Omnitrix was still glowing red.
'Forty seconds,' Adam thought. 'Just twenty more.'
The civilians behind him did not know what the red light meant. They only knew the boy who had built their shelter had suddenly lost whatever made him dangerous. A few of them kept staring at his wrist. Others kept looking at the cracked front wall every time another hit landed outside it.
Adam ignored all of them and kept counting in his head while the seconds crawled past.
Then a blue screen opened in front of the Omnitrix.
Adam blinked. "What now?" he muttered.
The window expanded until it was large enough to read clearly.
[Congratulations]
[Host Reputation has reached the required threshold]
[Current Omnitrix Level upgraded: Level 1 -> Level 2]
Adam frowned. "Hold on," he whispered. "I leveled up now?"
More lines appeared under the first ones.
[Level 1 -> Level 2 requirement: 10 EXP]
[Current EXP gained: 15]
'What did I even do?' Adam thought. 'This scam system keeps doing things without telling me anything first.'
The screen shifted again as if answering that complaint.
[Reputation Growth System Explanation]
Adam's eyes moved faster.
[Recognition: 0.001 EXP]
[Basic respect: 0.1 EXP]
[Confirmed respect: 0.5 EXP]
[Admiration: 1 EXP]
[Obsession and fixation: 3 EXP]
Then another set of lines appeared below it.
[NPC values use the base rate]
[Main characters and core plot actor values use x5 rate]
He muttered. "That is five times."
[Reputation is based on awareness, respect, admiration, fear, hatred, and fixation]
[Negative reputation converts into the same growth track]
[Hero route grows slower]
[Villain route grows faster through fear, hatred, and obsession]
[Severe hostile fixation may exceed 50 EXP from a single source]
'So this is a hero-villain system,' Adam thought. 'If I become a proper psychopath, I level faster. Wonderful.'
He kept reading.
[Recent gain sources detected]
[Steve Rogers]
[Protected civilians]
[Battlefield witnesses]
[Threshold exceeded]
[Overflow EXP retained: 5]
[Next requirement: Reach 20 EXP]
When Steve had trusted him with civilians, and when the people behind him had started looking at him like he could actually keep them alive, the total had jumped past the first requirement.
Adam finally understood where the sudden jump had come from.
[New alien unlocked]
[Use-loss penalty updated]
[Each 1-minute cooldown now consumes 20 minutes of total use time]
[Current Omnitrix Level: 2]
That was all it gave him.
Adam clicked his tongue and looked back at the crystal front wall. The constant pressure outside had not stopped, but Thor's lightning had bought him just enough room.
He looked down at the watch again.
By the time he reached the last line, most of the remaining twenty seconds were already gone.
The red glow faded.
Then it turned green.
Adam did not waste a second.
He slapped his palm onto the Omnitrix face and the selection display snapped open. The familiar green silhouette of Diamondhead was there, but now one of the dark locked shapes had changed. It was no longer a blank oval. A new form had taken shape inside the hologram.
Adam turned the dial.
The silhouette shifted.
He froze and leaned closer.
"No way," he said. "I got this one?"
The body shape was slimmer than Diamondhead and a little taller, but it was not built for brute force.
Another hit shook the crystal shell in front of him. People behind him murmured in fear again. Adam did not even look back this time.
He pressed the selection down.
Cold rushed through him at once.
His body stretched upward, but not by much. There was no burst of new muscle this time, no heavy bulk settling into his frame.
His feet lifted slightly off the ground. Adam looked down fast. He was floating.
Then he looked over his arms, his chest, and his sides.
"No wings?" he said.
He twisted a little higher on instinct and almost hit the roof of the crystal shelter before catching himself.
"But I can still fly?"
The people behind him had gone quiet again. This transformation did not look as violent as Diamondhead, but it looked even less human. A pale frost-like texture had spread over parts of his skin, his body looked leaner.
Then the name came to him.
"Big Chill."