Well, a problem cropped up almost immediately with absorbing Ax-Man.
I barely had time to celebrate that it started at eight percent — my highest starting point so far — before it stalled out at ten percent, not budging for the entire evening and night.
And boy, did my boxing coach curse me out (quietly, under his breath, but still) when I decided to go with the tried-and-true method and pay him extra for an unscheduled session — lucky for me, that day happened to be free from work, since it was the twenty-sixth, i.e., literally the day after Christmas (in America the holiday is celebrated on the Catholic calendar date, December 25th, so the 25th and 26th are the holiday weekend for a huge chunk of professions — A/N), hmm, maybe that was part of it?
Even though I’d offered more than fair pay for just a couple hours.
But all that got me was the percentage shifting up by a single point, that’s it — though the coach did praise how motivated I was, doing everything flawlessly this time and so on.
Of course he did, seeing as I now partially possessed a certain martial art myself, so basic punches came out of me with a real sense of what needed doing and how.
Which the coach noticed too, growing pretty thoughtful by the end of the session.
But given how small the assimilation percentage still was, I wasn’t giving myself away too badly yet, and it could easily be chalked up to some critical mass of drilled-in knowledge finally clicking into actual skill.
Still, I can’t stall on this any longer, I’ll need to find a different club to keep training at, one where nobody knows I’m a complete beginner.
I can always explain it away as having gotten my basics at this club, which the coach — who witnessed the whole thing — could easily confirm, and after that, well, talent just kicked in and I started progressing fast (yeah, and definitely not because an actual combat-character card is finally getting properly assimilated).
As you can probably guess from all this, I’m not planning to quit boxing itself.
Sure, it’s weaker than Jo-Lan, but…
why not diversify my arsenal?
It’s not that this style — which has practically everything, even energy attacks and all sorts of meditation — is bad exactly, I just don’t want to be boxed in (pun very much intended) by the confines of a single style, however decent.
Also, ever since the assimilation of Axel began, I noticed things were happening differently now.
These weren’t just occasional strange urges that didn’t feel like mine anymore.
No!
Now I sometimes felt like something foreign was trying to force its way in, something waking up that shouldn’t exist, and…
I could either let it flow through normally, or actively suppress it, push it to the background, and hold back and control these new, alien impulses.
Seems like assimilating Helltaker was a lot more useful than I gave it credit for.
The only shame is that I still can’t suppress these urges completely or get rid of them entirely.
Say, even just one percent’s worth, but it’ll stick with me regardless.
I should sit down in that “Ryoku Jo-Lan” meditation after finishing Ax-Man’s assimilation and try to dig around inside myself, cut away whatever’s truly foreign, or build up some kind of defense around my own personality.
I’m pretty satisfied with my changes as they stand now, and I don’t want my identity getting yanked around in every direction.
Yeah…
I want to be the master of my own fate.
Still, I allowed plenty of Manning’s traits to seep into me.
After all, his stubborn drive toward a goal will keep me from veering off course, his self-discipline will keep me from slacking off if I ever burn out, his slight masochism when it comes to training…
well, pushing past your own limits isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
This whole time I’d had this feeling that I could be more efficient, better, and now I actually will be, giving even a bit more than a hundred percent.
And really, none of these changes were entirely foreign, since they were layered onto a foundation I’d already started building myself — I could have gotten here eventually on my own, given enough years; this time I just sped up the process using Axel.
And this should be the last time anything external gets to shape my character, even for the better, even if it just leads me somewhere I would’ve arrived at myself anyway, but…
from now on, only me, no matter how long the road looks…
hm…
damn, Axel really is a good motivator, and he lines up perfectly with the changes I’d already made.
Also, understanding that I’d finally gotten myself a real fighter let me relax a little.
I hadn’t even realized how tense I’d been these past few days.
Guess the fear I’d gone through hadn’t fully let go of me.
And it had gotten under my skin more than I thought — well, no, not more, exactly, considering I’d already been ready to essentially murder my old personality and do plenty of other drastic things — I’d just been genuinely good at distracting myself with work, and now, with the holidays freeing up extra time, and with feeling the changes from Axel, I realized…
well, I just couldn’t hide in my to-do list anymore?
Yeah, I think that’s the right way to put it.
What else — well, this state of calm let me notice something.
Ahem…
something fundamental about my Gacha, so to speak.
Yes, I’d correctly registered and understood the information, coming from god-knows-where in my Gacha, that Gacha Points can be bought and that they also accumulate on their own.
I’d correctly grasped the caps, and that there’s no bonus on top (and that no missions exist here either) — but the actual numbers…
where had I even gotten the idea that it was one point a day?
Basic math, plus my own observations over those couple of days when they were piling up before I bought more, make it clear that every day I can do exactly one single pull — meaning I actually get five Points a day.
Fine, let’s blame that on a brain that wasn’t working right back then, a long depression, practically a second personality rattling around in my head, and a bunch of other things.
Still, it’s annoying — I really should start paying closer attention, since this isn’t the first time I’ve flubbed something this basic in everyday life.
And yet I don’t make mistakes in class.
Strange, almost contradictory combination.
I can also note that even 11% of pretty-boy Axel finally got rid of my acne…
as for the freckles, well, I’ve got a lot of them, but I’ve been used to them since childhood and honestly, I think they suit me.
Probably the one thing about my looks I was completely satisfied with, even though plenty of people consider it a flaw.
I hope I don’t lose them — my hair’s already starting to go from curly to just wavy, a bit more and it’ll straighten out completely, and that’s not exactly what I want.
And also…
since the percentage refuses to climb on its own, and boxing — which isn’t quite the right fit — only bumped it up by one point and that’s it, then…
time to clear out the basement!
Said and do— yeah right, nope.
Fifteen minutes just to haul one damn box from the basement up to the attic.
And given how many boxes there are…
I’ll be digging through them for a whole day straight!
That’s way too costly time-wise, seeing as the assimilation percentage won’t budge the entire time.
Or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to finally go do a certain something?
Ah, screw it, I’m a sixteen-year-old teenager, I’m allowed to be impulsive!
I’ve held out surprisingly long as it is (probably thanks to all that pent-up tension, and the second it let go, I immediately started thinking with a different part of my anatomy than my brain…
sigh).
Yes, I decided to summon a certain lady who could keep an eye on the house, help me out, and protect me, and it would also be one of the most convenient ways to test…
how exactly my summoning power even works — who and how it brings over to me, and how much free will they’d actually have (I do need to check whether there’s some ugly side to the Gacha I haven’t been told about, right?).
And someone who’s obligated to obey and serve humanity, while also not being particularly emotional to begin with, would fit the bill pretty well.
No, I could have picked Demi to summon instead, she’d be even safer for me personally, but as a protector she’d be…
not great, to put it mildly.
And summoning two at once isn’t exactly wise, not before I’ve even figured out how any of this works.
“Let’s do this,” I said, psyching myself up, taking up a standing position leaning against the wall — on one hand, the pose looks relaxed (and, I’d like to believe, cool), but on the other, the data I already have tells me I could push off this wall pretty effectively and launch either into a sprint, running away, or into a fight, closing the distance to an opponent in record time, and if I pushed off just right, I might even knock them down, and then some good stomp— seriously, where’s this weird urge to use my legs coming from?
I pull out 2B’s card and activate it.
The card crumbles into blue-white particles in my hands, which grow and drift forward, and after freezing about two meters away from me, spinning, coalesce into a figure…
yes, that’s right, 2B.
Exactly the way I (well, Gennadiy — there’s no such game in my world, but whatever, his memory is mine, so I’ll just say “I”) remembered her.
And the adjustment for realism turns out to be pretty minor.
What I mean is, in the game she had this snow-white skin that looked almost too perfect, and here it’s exactly the same…
yeah, it immediately makes you think of some slightly otherworldly origin for this girl.
Or of the artificial nature of this particular life-form.
Same with the outfit, that black getup which, as far as I can tell, forms a single piece with the skirt slit down the right side, baring a stocking-clad, snow-white, flawless leg…
god, those thighs…
stop it, Lucian, you need to think with your head, not your “other head,” quit devouring her with your eyes and actually say something already, since the pause hanging over us since her arrival is starting to drag on.
“Master,” she said, tilting her head slightly.
And there was no way to tell from her voice whether it was a statement or a question.
And you know, in all the works I’d encountered (or rather Gennadiy had, mostly), main characters always get flustered by that kind of address, ask to be called something else, and go through the whole routine — but I felt absolutely nothing of that sort.
Maybe it’s because I understand that “master” is what 2B calls every human, maybe it’s because I recognize it as a scripted android behavior pattern, or maybe…
either something’s wrong with me, or I’m simply not a protagonist (since it’s only that category that gets embarrassed and protests, everyone else doesn’t).
But I did have questions.
“Do you remember who you are?
What’s the last thing you remember, exactly?” I asked carefully, ready for anything, including my conversation partner clutching her head after these questions, then reconstructing her personality out of some bad route and deciding to go slice up “humans,” starting with me.
“YoRHa android, unit number 2, Combat Type.
I…
remember everything collapsing.
From 2A’s actions.
I was destroyed, but for some reason I didn’t cease to exist.
That was strange.
After that, I received an offer — to continue existing.
I’m aware that an end is destined for all living things, but for some reason, in that moment, I wanted to continue existing.
Especially since I wanted to repay my creators, and serving someone who is part of humanity isn’t insulting to me, if that’s what you’re asking,” she explained calmly.
Though, maybe it wasn’t calm at all, but that fabric over the upper half of her face, covering roughly half of it, doesn’t let me read any emotion at all, and I’m not great at that in general — I certainly can’t read anything from just lips and a chin.
“So you’re serving me of your own free will?” I clarified this important point.
Though honestly, all of this information is interesting.
This reminds me of Ending C, I think?
Hard to say, since I never played it myself, and Gennadiy’s memories of it are already pretty worn thin.
But it’s interesting — if she was completely destroyed beyond any possible repair, then exactly what was it that received the offer to serve me?
Heh, that leads us to an interesting question…
if you overdo the humanity of an android, making it maximally close to a human in every possible way, then…
would it actually be human?
Would it have a soul?
And what even is a soul?
Looks like the answer to that second question turned out to be yes, or else I’m missing something.
Which would make sense — too lofty a subject for a down-to-earth guy like me.
“My duty was to protect humanity.
Now I have that same duty toward you personally, and it holds a higher priority.
But I do possess free will, and if we model a situation where you’re in danger and you give one order, while I see a safer way to save you, I will choose that method instead, disregarding your order.
From which one can conclude that I possess free will,” 2B answered in that same emotionless but pleasant voice.
And though her way of phrasing things, plus the specific scenario she picked to model, leave me a little flustered, she got her point across.
She’ll carry out my orders not because the Gacha forces her to, but because that’s how she was made, and because she genuinely wants to — but if push comes to shove, she could very well tell me where to shove it, say, if an order clashed with her worldview.
If, for instance, I ordered her to cut up babies, at minimum she’d look at me like I was an idiot and refuse to do it; at maximum, worried about my mental state, she’d restrain me and drag me off to a psychologist for an evaluation.
Though I am curious about the limits of just how much these summons of mine could actually hurt me, and…
I’m not exactly itching to test out the Gacha-given understanding claiming that my summons can’t kill me.
We’ll test that some other time.
“Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself and your world, and I’ll do the same in return,” I proposed, still holding my pose.
To which I got an “affirmative response.” After which came a lengthy account, hers first, largely repeating what I already knew, though some of the nuances from inside the picture were…
educational, let’s call it that.
And really, being a native of the Marvel universe (I do belong to this world, after all), just casually chatting with 2B like this…
it was a strange, exhilarating, but pleasant feeling.
Though all the while I kept up with curling the now eight-kilogram dumbbells — growing beyond myself, the five-kilogram ones had pretty quickly started feeling too light, and the number of reps needed to get any response out of my tired muscles had started feeling like too many.
We talked for a total of four hours, and honestly, I don’t regret a single minute of that time…
damn, I hadn’t even realized how starved I’d gotten for actual conversation!
You’d think, being a fairly antisocial element and all, but…
my parents used to visit often, always called (at least once a day), talked for a long time, and as a result I hadn’t even noticed how much I’d been missing simple conversations with, well, anyone.
I think another month or two of that isolation and I’d have genuinely lost my mind.