As the Kagami assimilation progressed, like I mentioned, I kept gaining a clearer and clearer understanding of his abilities.
And yeah, he loves hamburgers, he’s a basketball player, has a strong will, a trait I honestly wouldn’t mind a bit more of, though I don’t notice much change there yet, though I guess it’s easier to judge from the outside — too bad I don’t have any friends who could actually spot changes in my personality.
But that’s not everything.
What kind of sports anime would this be without special powers and abilities?
Just look at Kuroko from that same franchise…
the invisible boy, yeah.
Anyway.
Kagami can jump incredibly high, and in theory, I should be able to now too.
He’s also got pretty solid reflexes, though still within human limits, so nothing too crazy there, unlike the jumping.
Though even that, while it goes beyond normal human limits, isn’t by a huge margin.
There was also some ability called “the Zone” in that world, where entering it massively boosted all your reflexes, speed, and in Kagami’s case, jump power.
And yeah, as you’d expect, he had that ability too.
And honestly, it’s a useful thing, but only in fights against regular opponents.
Even the weakest “Super” would twist me into a pretzel regardless of any “Zone.” Plus the activation condition for this power is complicated…
too complicated, even.
The main requirement for Kagami to enter “the Zone” is an intense desire to fight for his teammates.
And I don’t have anything close to a team, I don’t even have friends!
And an ability that depends on wanting to protect others…
what kind of pathetic condition is that anyway?
And there’s this one specific trait that’s currently messing with my head — Kagami can sense power.
In the sports anime, he could just feel other players with special abilities, instantly picking them out among regular players.
But in Marvel, special powers aren’t limited to basketball courts…
if anything, they don’t get used there at all, so all these flashes…
am I sensing everyone who could be dangerous to me?
Am I detecting mutants?
Hm…
probably not, there’s way too many flashes for that.
Though, what if I’m sensing people who haven’t awakened their X-gene yet?
And might never awaken it, but still carry it, and that’s apparently enough to trigger this.
On the one hand — that’s a pretty cool ability.
On the other, can I get a slightly more “tuned” version, please.
Spider-Sense, for example, senses actual threats specifically, and doesn’t go off for Parker just because some random bystander has a dormant gene that could make them strong (not necessarily stronger than him, but strong).
Meanwhile every fifth person I pass sets mine off!
This is exhausting, I’m going to end up flinching away from people constantly!
Though, maybe at a hundred percent, with full assimilation, I’ll be able to get this thing under control (and turn it the hell off!)?
Once I finished my run, I swung by to grab more clothes and restock on cheeseburgers, then headed home and decided to finish off the assimilation, for which I dug up an old basketball from my stuff and headed down to the basement…
not accounting for the fact that, while it was pretty spacious, it was also thoroughly packed with boxes of junk.
Though if I cleared it out, it could actually make a decent training space or something.
As it was, though, my plan to bounce the ball off the wall and practice some fancy footwork was in jeopardy.
Still, I could at least dribble and work on some fakes, practicing evasive moves, turning that knowledge into actual skill and knocking out the last percentage points in about an hour.
Said and done.
And unlike the previous day, everything actually went according to plan this time.
The assimilation became a full assimilation, and I remained myself, though not without some lingering influence from Kagami, which had already shown up earlier.
And honestly, that’s exactly why I was scared to assimilate Batman.
I’m not ready yet.
I’m afraid his personality would completely flatten and steamroll mine, even though he’d be extremely useful once assimilated (since as a summon, given the whole free-will thing…
I’m worried that paranoid guy could cause all kinds of chaos and draw way too much attention…
and he’d probably wriggle out of it fine, but would I?).
But I definitely need some kind of buffer, some extra layer of protection first.
Ideally someone who’s not as much of an ordinary civilian as Kagami, but also not a heavy-hitter like Batman and his ilk.
Which means…
time to spin the gacha again (my second workday starts in forty minutes, after all, yeah).
Hm, the basic one again, or should I try the Marvel gacha?
No, why pull from Marvel stuff I’m bound to get eventually anyway?
Pass.
Plus the risk of pulling something dangerous multiple times over.
The basic gacha feels safer and more productive to me.
Alright, holding my breath, here we go.
1) Johnny Cage’s Socks (MK10) .
The gacha’s mocking me!
Or is this like, some kind of “completing the set” bonus?
I mean, the clothing situation is genuinely an issue.
2) Johnny Cage’s Pants (MK10).
Nope…
definitely mocking me!
Fine, let’s see what’s next.
3) Johnny Cage’s Boots (MK10).
“Aaargh!
Am I supposed to collect the entire set?
Nothing more useful in this thing?” I couldn’t hold back.
4) Johnny Cage’s Underwear (MK10).
“Fascinating standards you’ve got for ‘useful’…
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?” I say, feeling my eye twitch.
Somewhere in another world.
“I don’t know who did this or why, but when I find them, I’m gonna kill them!” bellowed Johnny Cage furiously, standing in his dressing room wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a vest.
Back in the Marvel universe.
“Okay, I’m totally not angry, I am the picture of calm!
Absolute serenity!
Damn it…
can I get something more useful than some B-list actor-slash-fighter’s clothes, even if he did help save the world once?!” — seems yesterday’s streak of bad luck and negativity was still going strong.
5) Zarathos (Marvel-616).
“Well, holy hell!
The strongest Ghost Rider, and the most uncontrollable one to boot…
nope, absolutely not!
I clearly remember, and I can sense it through the gacha’s knowledge, that this thing is basically impossible to control.
As a summon, he’d actively work against me, since the summon’s ‘leash’ would drive him insane.
And who knows what he’d get up to.
Assimilate him?
No chance at this stage — if a plain old basketball player already had this much effect on me, then this eldritch entity would completely obliterate my sense of self and reforge it in its own image during the assimilation process alone,” I said, first delighted, then deflated.
The card’s incredible, no joke, but at this stage all I can do is put it into storage and wait for its time to come.
Alright, let’s see what’s next.
6) Axel Manning (A.T.O.M.
– Alpha Teens On Machines).
“Oh my god, that’s giving me actual old-school nostalgia.
Talk about a blast from the past.
And most importantly — this one works!
The perfect transitional pick between my last assimilation and Batman!” I say, my excitement steadily rising, drawing on that old French cartoon from Gennadiy’s side of the memories, since nothing like it exists in this world.
Just look at this card.
A racer, a stuntman, a total heartthrob, and on top of it a master of the Jo-Lan martial art, capable of energy-based strikes…
basically Ryu from Street Fighter, but scaled down a notch.
Shame he’s only half-trained, since his mother was killed when he was ten, and his father, who’d been teaching him this family discipline, got captured (though for a long time Axel himself believed him dead, and only found out the truth much later).
“Wait, gacha, seriously?
Handing me another ‘orphan who’s not exactly hurting for cash’?
Except this one’s also been down the whole revenge road…
what’s with the not-so-subtle hints?” My eye twitched.
This lousy gacha keeps rubbing salt directly into the wound and reminding me of my loss every single time I use it!
Ahem, anyway, moving on — the guy loves speed and motorcycles, and he’s a bit of a masochist…
I mean, who else in their right mind pushes themselves in training to the point of not just reaching their limit, but regularly stepping past it?
Though there’s an upside — sure, he doesn’t know every technique of the Jo-Lan style, but the ones his father did manage to teach him before he was taken, Axel’s honed to complete automatic, masterful precision.
But at the same time, he’s remarkably level-headed (something I objectively could use more of, and honestly that alone is a good enough reason to assimilate “Mr.
Manning”), empathetic, capable of real compassion, but without a hero complex (though the whole revenge thing does mess with his head a bit, and while he does overcome that eventually, it’s still worth factoring in all the traits I might end up inheriting).
Overall…
this one’s good!
Really good!
I’d start the assimilation right now, especially since it’ll clearly go faster this time — decent physical build, not too far off from mine, plus overlapping elements of our backstories…
and actually, of three people’s backstories at once, mine, me-Gennadiy’s, and Axel’s, his personality should mesh really well with the traits already forming in me after Gennadiy and Kagami.
So yeah, this probably won’t need three days, might even wrap up in one…
oh, damn, though I hadn’t factored the Jo-Lan energy techniques into that estimate.
But whatever, even if it takes a week or a month to assimilate him, I still want it!
And I need him, both as himself, and as a great stepping stone toward Bruce Wayne.
The only reason I haven’t started the assimilation yet — I don’t have many slots, just the one, and I haven’t finished looking through what else I pulled.
What if something even better turns up?
Though in my current situation, “even better” is honestly hard to imagine.
Plus, this’ll be a good test of just how completely I actually absorb knowledge — Axel speaks Chinese, so let’s see, do I get the language for free, picking it up at an accelerated pace thanks to overlapping knowledge, or does nothing change at all?
For a proper experiment I’ll need to find a beginner’s Chinese dictionary…
and honestly, I should’ve done this kind of measurement back with Kagami too, since he actually speaks two languages, Japanese and English.
I probably won’t be improving my English much at this point, but Japanese would’ve been a good before-and-after test.
Well, chalk it up to the excitement and carelessness of a teenager my age.
Good thing I at least thought of it now.
For now, back to the gacha.
7) Koschei’s Egg (RNT) .
RNT — Russian National Tales?
Yeah…
nah, definitely don’t need this kind of loot, haven’t gotten enough of collecting random undead old men’s eggs in my life already!
8) Set: Helltaker (Helltaker).
Um…
okay.
So, based on the info I’m once again sensing from the gacha…
this is one unhinged guy.
Very!
He literally marched into hell to collect a harem of demon girls!
And damn, if I were in the DC universe, I’d assimilate this one on the spot, because there’s Raven there, and assimilating this set would not only get me a slick, perfectly-tailored white business suit, a stylish crimson shirt, fashionable glasses…
a decent amount of strength, though still within human limits, plus durability and pain tolerance, but it would also help me out socially with demon girls specifically!
And DC’s got Raven, and after assimilating this card, seducing her would be way easier — I’d basically be getting a legendary +5 to charisma specifically in the eyes of demon girls, plus their tolerance for a harem lifestyle!
But in Marvel, as far as I remember, all the demons are male.
Bummer.
Zarathos, Mephisto, Dormammu…
and a dozen other names, and every single one’s a dude.
Maybe Gennadiy’s just forgetting something or never knew, but the facts are looking grim so far.
Still, though, this guy makes some genuinely amazing pancakes!
Then again, based on my newly-forming awareness of Kagami’s abilities, apparently he can cook too, not perfectly and not a huge range of dishes, honestly he specializes almost entirely in Japanese cuisine, which he grew fond of cooking, while in America he mostly lived on fast food or had his parents (and his coach) cook for him, so he only discovered his kitchen talent after moving back to his home country, and he never really had much time to develop it further — he loved basketball more, and training ate up a ton of his time.
Well, fine, guess I’ll need to test out my new cooking skills at some point later, at 10% assimilation they clearly hadn’t kicked in yet, and I hadn’t cooked anything since.
And if it turns out things are still bad on that front, I guess I’ll be making some amazing pancakes instead, yeah.
Phew, alright, calming down, let’s finish going through the rest.
9) Emiya Shirou’s Cookbook (Fate/Stay Night) .
“…Thanks.
Just — thank you.
Sure, the talent itself would’ve been nice too, but the instructions alone will do just fine,” I say, getting a bit emotional over this one.
10) YoRHa No.2 Type B (Nier: Automata).
“Ahem…
and there’s my first potential summon…
or should I hold off?” On the one hand, Gennadiy’s memories, what I’d just seen on the summon card, and a teenager’s raging hormones were all screaming “she is insanely hot”!
On the other…
she’s been through a ton of battles, apparently, and if Gennadiy’s memory’s not lying to me, life’s beaten her down pretty hard, plus she’s got trouble expressing emotions.
And on top of that, she’s an android built to protect humanity, in that exact world where humanity’s busy tearing itself apart!
Ultron’s a perfect example of exactly how badly things could short-circuit for her, and if there’s even the slightest chance an android (robot, AI, whatever) could snap and go off the rails, then in Marvel that chance gets a x100 bonus multiplier!
Easily!
But still…
she really is insanely hot.
And her abilities aren’t bad either.
A solid support unit, though not overwhelmingly powerful.
Maybe I should assimilate Axel first, then Helltaker (for the durability and high pain tolerance), then Batman, soak up the super-regeneration ability, and then summon her and just deal with whatever happens?
Hm, sounds like a plan…
though the temptation to summon her right this second is honestly enormous.
As is the cowardly urge to just shove her into card storage and forget about it entirely.
Ugh, what do I even do?