“Ugh…
fine, guess I’ve gotta admit this is reality,” I sigh heavily, looking out the window of my…
yeah, still my apartment, at the high-rises outside.
A completely different kind of architecture than back in my home country.
Or should I say — my house?
My head’s a total mess.
One part of me insists I’ve lived my whole life in Yekaterinburg, in a three-room apartment inherited from my parents, one that’s badly needed renovation for years now.
The second part of me indignantly objects — renovation, what renovation, and what the hell is Yekaterinburg?
I’ve spent most of my life right here, in New York, and the last couple of years in Queens, in a two-story house my parents bought me, basically a cottage…
which is a pain in the ass to clean!
But I can’t complain, or my parents might get disappointed in my sense of independence and take the gift back, dragging me home to live with them again…
which this part of me really doesn’t want.
Not because I’m some kind of rebel, it’s just “I”…
or is it really me, no quotation marks needed?
Anyway, I wanted to prove I could be independent.
Prove I was already an adult.
Sure, not as accomplished as my parents, but at least able to live on my own.
Yeah right, on my parents’ money!
Then again, teenagers don’t exactly have a massive income — they’ve gotta finish school first!
Wait, am I a teenager?
One part of me indignantly shoots back “no”!
I’m a twenty-five-year-old man who’s spent years working in shoe sales — but the other part insists that, yeah, actually — I’m a sixteen-year-old going to Midtown High School…
or rather, I used to go, before recent events.
And looking at my own scrawny arms, I have to agree — I really am a teenager.
A skinny one, too!
Right, mirror, there was a full-length mirror around here somewhere.
Working off the knowledge of this place that’s somehow in my head, I made my way to the bathroom and…
I really wish I hadn’t looked in that damn mirror.
That’s how you develop complexes…
though wait, my teenage self already has plenty of those.
Skinny — I’d even say excessively skinny.
Short — oh gods, I’m a dwarf!
About 160 cm, right?
Yeah, that’s what my memory tells me.
A brutal gut-punch for the other part of me, who used to be a good eighteen centimeters taller — basically a whole head.
Well, I’m still a teenager, so I’ve got growing left to do…
I should hang from a pull-up bar, just in case.
And fix up my diet.
And buy something for these damn pimples!
Ugh, and here I thought that was a solved problem, teenage stuff long behind me, but fine…
bearable.
Oh, come on, I’m nearsighted too!
And yeah, the memories confirm it — there’s a pair of glasses sitting on the nightstand in the room where I woke up.
Combo!
Damn combo.
In a bit of a daze, I went through the familiar motions of turning on the tap, washing my face, and brushing my teeth, my thoughts a million miles away.
The main question was — who am I?
There were exactly two options!
Gennadiy, twenty-five years old, orphaned young, who’d lived an utterly gray life — work, home, work.
And at home, hobbies that amounted to watching movies and anime, reading books and comics, and gaming on the computer — used to play soccer too, but eventually there wasn’t time for that anymore.
Basically, everything that let him unwind a bit from the gray routine and relax after work.
No wife, no kids, though there’d been a few fleeting flings in his life.
Just…
nothing serious, somehow.
And after losing his parents, he’d thrown himself headfirst into work, sharply realizing that now everything had to be paid for by him and all that.
Though in that life he did have a couple of buddies he knew well enough to grab a drink with after work, or even game together online.
But looking at it from the outside…
he was a pretty closed-off guy.
On the other side, we’ve got sixteen-year-old Lucian Taylor, half Brazilian, half American.
His mother’s Brazilian, and it was her who gave him the name, while his father’s a full-blooded American.
And judging by the slightly bronzed skin, you really can tell this body’s roots go in that direction.
Things are pretty grim with my parents here too.
No — they genuinely loved…
loved Lucian, and the feeling was mutual.
Sure, they couldn’t give him much time because of how busy they were — his mother was a doctor, a brilliant one according to plenty of people, and that’s the kind of profession that eats up a huge chunk of your time.
His father, meanwhile, owned some company, also connected to medicine somehow, which is actually how he met my mother in the first place.
Basically, he supplied them with drugs and innovative developments, their paths crossed at work, and then — spark, storm, and little Lucian nine months later.
Credit where it’s due, his father took responsibility right away, though his mother’s looks clearly played no small part in that.
Then again, his father’s looks probably helped too (it’s always nicer to tie your life to a rich hunk than to some ugly mug).
And how exactly did a hot-blooded Brazilian woman and a walking classical aristocrat produce…
this?
Nature is cruel, and genetics is a bitch!
Though, I’ve got good raw material to work with, and if I put in the effort over the next few years, with some adjustments I might actually end up looking like my father — though I can forget about the straight black hair and pale skin, that skin tone clearly came from my mother, same with the slightly curly hair.
And while curls suit a girl just fine, on me it wasn’t a great look.
Guess my motto from now on is short haircuts.
Funny how I never thought of that before.
Tch…
not for the first time, I catch myself noticing that the sixteen-year-old is increasingly dominating my thoughts.
Well, at least that settles the identity question.
This isn’t a fusion of personalities, isn’t a dominance of the older consciousness — which is what I’d have expected, remembering tons of fanfics and stories on this exact topic.
This looked more like the teenager, Lucian, inherited all the knowledge, experience, and basically everything that made up Gennadiy’s personality, but the foundation was still Lucian.
Yeah, that knowledge had some influence, it couldn’t not, just given the sheer volume of it — but not, like, a massive one.
Well…
at least it pulled me out of the depression.
Yeah, depression.
Going on three months now!
Well, for a withdrawn, unsociable teenager who never made friends easily, his parents’ death in an accident was a real blow.
He’d completely shut himself off after that, dropped out of school, cut off contact with his few remaining relatives — though to be fair, they weren’t exactly pushing to reach him either.
And he was sliding further into a funk.
Honestly, a little more and it could’ve ended really badly — my parents were everything to me!
And the old suicidal thoughts confirm that.
Oh, right, “to me.” I really am becoming more and more Lucian with every passing minute.
Though according to the memories, it was Gennadiy who “transmigrated.” And he transmigrated in a pretty interesting way!
He didn’t die!
No deity showed up to him, he didn’t save someone and get a new life and perks for it.
Nope!
His last memories actually amused me…
and made me want to stay as far away from the internet as humanly possible!
Coming home one evening and getting “tangled up in the web” yet again, Gennadiy had stumbled onto a site that had already caught his eye a couple of times before, the kind that was bound to lure in a weeb sooner or later.
Specifically, the “Interactive Waifu Catalog,” where you could literally build your own adventure and customize…
all sorts of things.
And Gennadiy went ahead and customized.
Did it half-heartedly, honestly, just to see what was what.
And there was a lot to choose from!
You could set your own character, the world where the story would take place, pick various powers and items, even bring along a starting waifu…
if you had customization points left over.
Gennadiy did have some left, but he waved all of it off.
He picked transmigration with no perks into a random person in this world, waved off any abilities too, wanting to just “test drive” the whole thing in its purest form, didn’t take a waifu either, because he’d read the rules and figured that by completing missions he could save up enough points to pull himself a genuinely cool one straight away — he’d already had his eye on Asagi the vampire from the Taimanin universe, who was on the list, but damn was she expensive!
Even accounting for one particular weeb’s excessive frugality, still way too pricey.
The only thing he did do — after realizing he wouldn’t have enough for this Asagi — was pick a world where he could quickly stockpile currency.
Yep.
Marvel.
After which he hit start, and here I am.
Wait.
MOM I’M IN MARVEL!
No, seriously!
THIS WORLD HAS A GODDAMN TONY STARK IN IT!
Okay, calm down…
who am I telling to calm down!
Lucian Taylor — hm…
no.
Gennadiy’s memory has no villains by that name or surname.
Small sigh of relief there.
No heroes either…
which is annoying.
And also, f*ck, I’m in the same class as Spider-Man!
Who would’ve guessed that the reclusive nerd Peter Parker and the recently-debuted hero were one and the same?
Damn, “reclusive nerd” sounds pretty rich coming from someone exactly like him.
And also…
what the hell kind of mishmash is this?
I don’t understand which universe I’m in!
We’ve got both Gwen and MJ in our class at the same time!
Fine, that’s plausible enough, my new memory confirms it.
But we’ve got TWO MJs!
Mary Jane and Michelle Jones!
How does that even work?
And Peter’s got a best friend, Ned…
but he’s not the funny chubby kid from the movies, he’s a slightly overweight, blond American guy.
Damn…
on the one hand — they’re classmates and friends.
And Ned probably already knows about Peter’s other identity.
On the other hand, blond American guy…
that’s a comics reference, the same one where he becomes Hobgoblin.
Except in the comics version, Peter and Ned aren’t friends, they’re rival journalists, and rivals not just professionally but over a girl too — Betty Brant, who, again, is currently sitting right in our class, meaning maybe she’ll end up at that same newspaper and we’ll get ourselves a proper comics-accurate situation.
And there goes my brain again, trying to figure out what universe this is.
Though…
screw it!
I don’t care about Peter’s problems.
Sure, I’m a fan of his and I genuinely feel for him, because Spider-Man’s life clearly hates him and luck’s had its back turned on him permanently, but I’ve got bigger problems right now!
I’m in Marvel!
And I’m apparently an extra!
And extras don’t live long in Marvel.
Seriously, heroes and villains die too, but they’ve got a shot at coming back, getting resurrected, all sorts of options.
And their odds of surviving chaos in general are clearly way higher than a regular civilian’s.
If nothing else, because they’ve got powers, gadgets, or something else that makes them “supers.” And I’ve got nothing!
Literally nothing.
I found some dumbbells in the room and decided to check whether this whole Gennadiy’s-personality-getting-absorbed thing had done anything at all — turns out, nope.
Literally nothing.
Ten reps with five-kilo dumbbells and my arms are already shaking!
God, I’m completely screwed!
I tried other methods too — speeding up, moving something telepathically…
basically everything I could think of!
And absolutely nothing!
Didn’t go so far as to hurt myself, though — didn’t have the guts.
I’m pathetic.
I came at it from the other angle too.
Where Lucian’s ideas ran out, Gennadiy’s kicked in.
And while Lucian tried things that were normal in his world and that he now knew for certain applied to Marvel, Gennadiy tried out the whole “standard transmigrator starter pack.” Except none of it worked either.
That’s what I figured at first, anyway, until I managed to reach…
something.
I’ll admit, I was expecting something…
different.
Not sure if “more significant,” just different!
When trying to summon a system (cosmic powers, gods, all of that) didn’t work, I did get a warm feeling in my chest…
not sure which action or phrase triggered it.
And focusing on it, understanding came to me, and something strange appeared in front of my eyes.
I’d say “System” — but no.
Not even close.
Three pages appeared, one after another, each further to the right than the last.
The first one was…
well, calling it a “status screen” is a massive stretch, but sure.
Lucian Taylor .
Race: Human.
Character Assimilation: Full Assimilation – In Progress: [Empty].
Summoned Characters: – Abilities: – Items: – This is page one…
and where’s the rest?
HP?
Mana?
Stats?
Free points?
Literally anything!
And what’s with this “assimilation” and “summoned” business?
Though…
remembering exactly how Gennadiy ended up in this world, I can think of a few possibilities.
But then where do abilities and items come from…
though, right…
abilities were part of that site’s options.
But items?
That doesn’t add up.
Well, fine, maybe I can figure it out by looking at the other pages.
So let’s move on to those.
The next page was basically a strange design of interweaving blue flowers, with a field up top offering a choice between two options, “General” and “Marvel,” and below that were literally just two buttons.
On the left, “Summon x1,” and on the right, “Summon x10.” Okay, and what’s this supposed to be…
At that thought, something clicked in my head.
After which clear knowledge appeared.
About the previous page too, and about the last, third one, which just had a label reading “List” and, well, that’s it.
So then…
I’ve got a Sy— no, not quite, just a Gacha, same as the ones in Japanese gacha machines, where the original term comes from, and same as in gacha games.
And even the pulls run on GP — Gacha Points.
Which I get two ways…
no dumb quests or anything like that.
The first is passive — I get one GP a day, doing the math, and one pull costs five, meaning one pull every five days.
But the rules of this whole gacha thing still apply here, meaning pulling ten at once is more cost-effective — it’s basically a guarantee that at least one out of ten pulls gives me something better than junk, which single pulls don’t offer.
The second way is exchanging real money for pulls…
even here there’s a cash shop, huh?
Is there anywhere you can escape that?
Even in another life, in another world, it keeps chasing me-slash-Gennadiy.
Just realizing that made me want to wrap myself in a blanket and give in to the depression.
Nasty feeling.
But the second method has its limits.
And no, not on currency — apparently all I need is to hold any money from any world, or its equivalent, in my hand and just imagine that I’m putting it into this gacha, and it’ll dissolve, and I’ll get credited GP.
The limit was on the number of pulls you could get that way.
Though the exchange rate stings too — a thousand dollars for a hundred GP.
In other words, twenty pulls.
Pretty pricey, not every middle-class worker would be ready to shell out that kind of money.
And me, having lost my parents, these expenses now will be…
oh, wait, no, various benefits, government support until I’m of age, plus my father’s company…
which is theoretically mine now, but given my age, I should’ve gotten a guardian.
I need to look into that.
I hadn’t had the headspace for it before — damn depression!
Ahem, calm down…
breathe steady…
inhale, exhale…
expert opinion, doesn’t help even a little.
Alright, back to the gacha…
damn, even the word makes me shudder.
Anyway, I can only buy 150 GP a month.
And that’s it — nothing more after that.
And I have to choose between buying or earning, because whatever amount I buy won’t get credited by the passive ability too.
Though this time I don’t really have a choice — it’s currently December 21st…
2004?!
Well f*ck.
Me-slash-Gennadiy landed one day in the future and almost twenty years in the past!
Are you kidding me?!
And based on my old memories, the technology here was well ahead of its own year compared to the world he knew.
Not surprising, honestly — damn Marvel with its geniuses lurking around every corner.
Ahem, but back to our little problem — it’s currently December 21st, and I’ve only got 1 GP.
So whether I like it or not, I’ll have to buy more.
I’ll probably grab 100 GP then, though the cheapskate in me is screaming.
Mostly from Gennadiy’s side of the memories, for whom a thousand dollars was serious money — Lucian doesn’t really have a sense of the value of money yet.
Well, it’s starting to form, not least thanks to the “digesting” of Gennadiy.
Why only 100 GP?
I can save up the remaining 50 over the days left, testing the natural accumulation rate along the way.
And the slow buildup will teach me patience and self-control…
plus the cheapskate in me really doesn’t want to spend another 500 bucks on top for something I’d get for free just by waiting.
Ugh…
and in January I’ll still have to deal with my truancy (yeah, January, since winter break in America starts December 20th and runs until January 3rd–5th), given that I’ve basically, since my parents died…
damn, a lump rose in my throat, and my eyes started welling up.
Don’t you dare!
I’m a man!
I haven’t cried since I was eight!
Yeah…
me-slash-Gennadiy, since eight — meanwhile me-slash-Lucian only stopped whimpering a week ago, sliding into black depression.
Dammit!
Anyway, I’ve been skipping school since the end of October.
And somehow I still haven’t seen any child protective services or anything like that show up here…
how odd.
Ugh, I sense I’ll need to dig through my memory and figure out what’s off about this whole situation.
For now though…
run for the wallet!
Time to get stronger.
In Marvel, that’s basically a survival requirement!