Sometimes life gives you lemons. Other times it kicks you to the curb where you're splashed with water from an oncoming car. You win some, you lose some. What matters though is how you get back up. You could whine or cry, or stand tall and laugh it off. I like to think I’m the second kind of guy.
—
“He shot me!” I yell at Oliver.
“It’s not that bad,” he replies.
“HE SHOT ME!”
“Barely a flesh wound.”
“I’m bleeding!”
“You’ll heal.”
“There’s a hole in me!”
“Hey, that’s good news.”
“What?!”
“Means we don’t have to dig out any shrapnel.”
“WHAT?!”
—
The night had been going well at first. I had slotted Pietro and transformed into him. It was the comic version, but I still looked like the one from X-Men. The gang was watching.
“Very nice,” I say in an eastern european accent.
“I understood that reference,” Betsy says.
I give two thumbs up.
“Alright,” Oliver says, “enough playing around. Let’s go.”
“Bye, Tanya. Bye, Betsy.”
Betsy waves and Tanya says, “Good luck!”
—
New York City. You’ll never find a place with more scum and villainy. Our heroes find themselves at a crossroad. Save or kill.
“Quit brooding!” Oliver tells me.
As I mumble to myself about the unfairness of the world, we hear a cry for help.
“I’m on it,” I say, covering my face with a ski mask.
Speeding over to the sound, I come across a woman being held up by two goons with knives.
Quickly, I run up to the two and twirl them around really fast.
As they fall to the ground from being dizzy, I tell the woman to run.
She looks on, confused, so I super speed her away about a block then return.
The two men are still dizzy and flailing about as Oliver shows up.
“Haha, foul villains!” I lay it on thick. “You have been bested! Give up your crime ways and return to a life of mundanity!”
Oliver walks up to me and smacks me.
“Ow!”
“Quit screwing around.”
“Well, how else will they learn?”
“They usually don’t.” He grunts.
*Bang*
I push Oliver away quickly, but I feel a searing pain enter through my arm.
“Gah!” I fall to the ground.
Oliver, fast and fluidly, pulls out an arrow and disarms the gunman. He then goes to the prone men and beats them unconscious.
I groan and moan.
“Kid,” Oliver comes to me. “You alright?”
I’m able to sit up, holding onto my bleeding arm.
“I’m wounded,” I moan.
“It’ll be okay. I’m here with you.”
“I just-”
“It’ll be okay. Let me see it.”
I show him the wound. “I can’t believe they’ve done this.”
“Looks alright. Nothing that won’t heal.”
“He shot me!” I yell at Oliver.
“It’s not that bad,” he replies.
…
“There’s a hole in me!”
“Hey, that’s good news.”
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“What?!”
“Means we don’t have to dig out any shrapnel.”
“WHAT?!”
“Listen, kid, just buy a healing stim or something from the shop and you’ll be right as rain.”
“I-” I pause. “Oh, that makes sense.”
I buy a stim from Ana’s(Overwatch) gun and apply it to myself. The flesh stitches together near instantaneously.
“There, you’re better.” Oliver says. “Now let this be a lesson; don’t charge in blindly, always make sure your opponents are disarmed, and do your best to incapacitate them. Okay?”
“Yes, sir!” I salute.
He audibly sighs. “How much of this is the character?”
“Uh, ‘bout 50/50?”
He pinches his nose. “Let’s keep going.”
—
The rest of the night went swimmingly. And even though we didn’t go as fast as I would’ve liked, it was still enjoyable.
Let’s see what I got.
[Rolling…
5x D-rank… sold for 500 credits
3x C-rank… sold for 3000 credits
1x B-rank: Kongou Mitsuko(A Certain Magical Index)
]
Ah, lady luck smiles upon me once again.
-A few hours later-
I had woken up from a nice long sleep when a message appeared in my vision.
[Congratulations! You’ve survived a week in the Marvel world without getting caught, messing up big time, or dying! For your effort, have a free reroll token!]
Uh, thanks?
[This also means the time of your tutorial has ended.]
Wait, what?
[Don’t worry, not much will change. We simply designed the tutorial phase to be easier and more welcoming to new users. But now that you’ve got a taste for heroics (and summons) we know you won’t quit doing your best to be the best.]
Okay…?
[The changes are simple: You still get points for doing (or summons doing) heroic deeds, but now they are graded. Not only in your ability to complete the deed but also the deed itself. No longer can you get S-ranks for stopping a mugging, but in the same vein, you can’t get D-ranks for stopping Abomination (hint).]
So I can’t get any A or S ranks unless I do something truly heroic? I got nerfed!
[Again, don’t worry! We’ve come up with something to entice users to complete minor acts of heroics. Introducing: point exchange. For 40 D-rank deeds you can upgrade those into 5 C-rank points. For 30 C-rank, you can upgrade to 4 B-rank. For 20 B-rank, you can upgrade to 2 A-rank. And for 10 A-rank, you can upgrade to 1 S-rank.]
Alright, seems fair, I guess.
[We hope you will continue to do great work!]
Thanks. *Sigh*
“What’s with the sour face?” Oliver asks. Tanya and Betsy turn towards me.
“I got a message from the system.”
“Oh?”
“Yea, they nerfed my summoning.”
“How so?”
I explain the message in detail.
“Quite unfortunate,” Betsy says.
“Yea, but I think it makes sense,” I say. “Wouldn’t want me getting Superman or Thanos level summons each week.”
They all nod.
“By the way,” Tanya says, “what is your template percentage looking at?”
I check, “21%.”
“How does that equate?”
“Nine for the hours, nine more for the amount of heroic deeds, one for the day, and two for doing something in line with the character.”
“If you get percentage from being in character per hour then why don’t you remain all the time?” Betsy asks.
“Firstly, because it doesn’t count while I’m sleeping. Secondly, because I think I’d feel weird being around you all while looking like someone else. And lastly, because there’s no rush. I’ll get there eventually.”
“How would the percentage awarded change when at 50%?” Tanya asks.
“I’ll still get one per day and one per heroic deed, but not the other two.”
“I see.”
“And how goes the villa searching?” I ask.
“Well,” Tanya replies. “We’ve seen the penthouse in the city already and we were going to go look at a few more today if you want to come along.”
“Sure, I’d like that.”
—
Over the next few days, Tanya and Betsy went home shopping during the day while me and Oliver slept. Then they slept at night while us guys were out on the prowl. We got into a pattern while I saved up heroic deed points.
[Reporting…
95 deeds completed, 10 being C-rank, the rest D-rank.
80 D-ranks exchanged for 10 C-rank.
Current amounts: 5 D-rank, 20 C-rank.
End report.]
At some point I finished Pietro and slotted Thomas Wayne. I was glad to have one done and another in progress, but I learned that if I used my super speed while as Wayne then I wouldn’t get any percentage progress.
I also learned, my original body couldn’t keep up with the stress of super speed or advanced combat techniques. It seems that I’ll need to get the serum injected sooner rather than later.
“A castle?” I asked Tanya and Betsy.
“Yes, it’s quite lovely,” Betsy says.
“Perfectly out of the way, too,” Tanya says.
“How so?”
“It’s upstate and far away from any neighbors,” Tanya says. “Here, I’ll show you. Core, bring up the Castle.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the A.I. replies.
First, a holographic map of New York appears over the breakfast table. Then it zooms into one area that houses a stone-laid manor.
“What is this? Xavier’s?”
“I thought so as well,” Betsy says, “There are enough similarities, but it seems to be just a coincidence.”
As she was going through the villa, the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and living area, I suddenly wondered how she did this.
“Tanya,” I say, slowly, “How did you complete this rendition?”
She smiles, “I may have hacked into some satellites.”
“It’s 2007,” I say, incredulously. “And that doesn’t even explain how you got a detailed in-home view.”
“Shield is actually quite advanced for this time period,” Betsy points out.
“I guess… You two would know better than me.”
“We would,” Tanya says, keeping her smirk.
“Well… You think this is the best home?”
“Definitely.”
“All right. We’ll move in, buy the necessary supplies and security devices, set up the serum device, summon more heroes, and then take over the world!”
They all look deadpan at me.
*Cough* “I mean defeat Hydra and protect the world.”
They stare.