I noticed I was doing too much 'Max POV' and '3rd Person POV' so I started using another POV to mix things up.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my OCs, and this is my first fanfic. English is my second language. I welcome constructive criticism, but please be kind to me!
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Rein Kashiwagi POV
I am a survivor. I learned how to hide well and position myself so I could survive Darwin's Game. My Sigil wasn't the most destructive, but without wanting to brag, it was high-level.
[Laplace] helped me survive, even against betrayals from people I thought I could trust.
But I knew a day would come when luck might lose, and that happened today.
I made a point of not spreading the power Darwin's Game had given me, but when I was planning to change the location of my base again, a new clan called Ashen Dawn attacked me.
It was common knowledge that you should keep your power as hidden as possible from your opponent, but the attackers knew what [Laplace] could do, catching me off guard.
I managed to escape into a complex of abandoned buildings in the middle of the chaos, and that was perfect for me. I used the terrain to my advantage, short ambushes, shots from one angle and disappearing before they could respond, the kind of guerrilla tactics anyone outnumbered should use. I managed to take down a few of them that way.
But there were too many. I had no way of dodging ten people shooting at the same time, indiscriminately, just wanting to hit me any way they could.
I was shot three times before I managed to get out of that corridor. The first shot grazed my shoulder, the second sank deep into my leg and almost dropped me right there, and the third went through my side, a heat followed by a pain so strong that for a second I couldn't even breathe. I managed to drag myself out of sight before they realized I was still alive, but every step after that felt like it was being paid for with whatever blood I had left.
The escape was slow and painful. I limped, one hand pressing against the wound on my side, trying not to leave a trail, but I knew it was useless, the smell of blood and the trail I was leaving would give me away anyway. Still, I managed to hear footsteps approaching, several of them, echoing through the empty corridors, spreading out as if they were surrounding me on purpose. They knew I wouldn't get far.
Shot, losing a lot of blood and with nowhere to go, I could only fight and take a few people with me.
When my body started going numb and cold and my eyes began to blur, a floating screen appeared in front of me.
[Compatible entity detected.]
[Match found: Rein Kashiwagi.]
[Do you wish to accept a Bond of Servitude, escape this certain death and continue existing?]
[Accept] [Refuse]
'Bond of Servitude… is this from Darwin's Game? No, this isn't anything like it… this looks like they're going to turn me into someone's slave.' I didn't want to accept that, but what else could I do? My vision was already almost completely white, and I could feel my own pulse slowing down.
'If this really is the only option, then there's no choice. I was going to die anyway. Better to become someone's slave than a corpse on the floor of this building.' It was with that bitter thought that I pressed the accept button, even without knowing what truly awaited me on the other side.
As soon as I accepted, an indescribable sensation invaded me, and all the pain from the bullets simply vanished. All I could see was a torrent of colors taking over my vision.
'This is dying… it's actually kind of nice.' That was my last thought before everything went white.
When I could see something again, the place I was in had nothing to do with the abandoned building where I had passed out.
There were no visible walls, only a darkness that swallowed any light that didn't come from the throne in front of me. Far away, a gate stood out alone in the gloom, as if that entire space existed only to serve as a stage for it. The silence was absolute, the kind that makes you feel your own weight.
And sitting in the middle of all that was him, on a throne made of swords, spears and axes rising from every angle, none of them real metal. The blades pulsed with a multicolored light, alive, slowly sliding between the colors as if the throne itself were breathing.
I tried to calculate, out of pure instinct, some way to defeat that man if things went wrong. After a few seconds, I gave up, a bit dejected. I couldn't predict any way to defeat him. I was impressed by that, especially coming from someone who looked so young.
"Hello, Rein Kashiwagi, can I call you Rein? So, Rein, do you know what happened, or did you end up here without any idea of anything?" He seemed to want to know if I had simply appeared there out of nowhere, if I had died and appeared, or something like that.
I stayed silent and suspicious for a while, until I finally opened my mouth.
"I was dying, after being ambushed by several players from a clan…" I made a face of pain just remembering, and continued. "Then a screen appeared in front of me asking if I wanted to live, and giving me the alternative of becoming someone's slave."
I told him the basics of what had happened to me, and he asked a few more questions about people he seemed to think I knew, but whom I had never heard of in my life. After that the conversation went to explaining how that Bond worked, him insisting quite a bit that it wasn't slavery, and me kind of not believing it at first.
He assured me that I could leave whenever I wanted, that he had no authority over me, and that was enough for me to lower my guard a little. Then he explained how this new world was much more dangerous than the previous one, and offered me a room of my own, food, a computer and protection if I agreed to work for him. It didn't seem like the worst choice in the world, so I accepted. He even made a point of putting a kitchen and a supercomputer in my room and handed me a Nattō-flavored Umaibō, my favorite, which only made me more at ease with the decision.
I forgot to ask how he knew all that about me. It was strange, but managing to pull me out of a death situation like that was already very good.
My new room was really good. The bed was so soft that for a second I forgot I had just escaped death, the pillows seemed custom-made, and there was even a light lavender scent in the air that I had no idea where it came from. The fridge was already stocked with food and snacks, with a few boxes of Nattō-flavored Umaibō beside it, exactly as he had promised, and the computer on the desk looked more advanced than anything I had ever seen in my world.
The idea of having him as a boss was good, until I heard a noise that put me on alert. I grabbed my sniper and prepared my Scorpion. The noises were coming from the door I had entered through, and I was already ready.
Even though Max had said it was safe there, he hadn't told me if I was alone in that place.
The footsteps were far too light to be his. I positioned myself behind the door and, as soon as it started to open, pointed the barrel of the sniper at whatever was on the other side.
"A new room to explore~ I hope that- ARG! WHAT!?"
But what was there wasn't any threatening animal Max had forgotten to mention. It was a little girl, standing right in front of me. Short, with a look that seemed more like a curious child sneaking into a new house than anything dangerous.
When I realized she wasn't a threat, I lowered the weapon and decided to talk to her.
"Little girl, why are you here? Did that guy kidnap you? If so, I'll get us out of here!"
How could this guy keep a little girl like that there? Her parents must be desperately looking for her. I think I misjudged him thinking he was a good person.
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING LITTLE GIRL!? YOU'RE A LITTLE GIRL! I'M AN ADULT WOMAN! I'M ALREADY 21 YEARS OLD!!! DON'T YOU HAVE SCHOOL!? DID YOU SKIP HIGH SCHOOL TO COME HERE!?"
"I'M ALREADY 18 YEARS OLD, GRANNY, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THERE WAS AN OLD LADY THIS SIZE WALKING AROUND!?"
"WHY YOU LITTLE—!?"
And that was how the short woman and I got into a physical fight, which, in a strange way, ended up being the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
(A/N: Max removed the ammunition from the guns without her noticing.)
.....
3rd Person POV
On a less busy street that Sunday night, Max walked aimlessly, accompanied only by his thoughts.
He had also lost people in his previous life, even without remembering them very well.
The feeling wasn't as bad as what he felt about losing his family in this universe. In his previous life, the people he lost were already old, had already lived, left children, completed their own cycle, so he didn't suffer much from that.
But his family in this universe was different. They died young, especially his older brother, and it was from one hour to the next, without warning, without saying goodbye.
He could have felt deadly anger at some random villain who caused the accident, but he didn't even know who it had been, and he had no interest in going after them. What would be the point? That villain had probably already been arrested by Omni-Man, who was the one who saved Max.
He also had no close relatives left. His parents seemed to have fought with the rest of the family, they sent their condolences, but that was the most he received from them.
His thoughts didn't stop there. There were also a few things bothering him, like the fact that the memories from his previous life still weren't complete, some parts blurry, others simply missing.
But he had a more urgent matter at the moment.
'Will the power go to my head in the future and end up turning me into a villain?'
It was a valid question. Although the assimilations hadn't caused a major impact on his decisions, they had made him a colder person. Could it be because he had assimilated an entire team of cold-blooded mercenaries? Or because he had assimilated a classic horror villain like Jason and the Antichrist Lucius?
'Fuck! That must be it. But I didn't become more evil or anything like that, just colder.'
The things he had already done were directly by his own will, like torturing those thieves in BNHA to practice [Copy], or destroying Muscular's genetic chain so that he wouldn't live much longer after that encounter. The same went for what he had done to Overhaul.
How to know if that had been his own will, and not the assimilations exerting some level of influence? After all, why would he think of doing exactly that, locking up Muscular and Overhaul, knowing that neither of them had any hope of redemption?
Of course, knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it are different things. He had already killed people indirectly, and he knew he would still need to kill more, directly this time.
But he felt that if he resolved everything only through death, that could become a problem.
'Damn, where's a campfire so I can restore my humanity when I need it.'
While thinking about that, he paid more attention to the street, seeing some homeless people and drug users from time to time. Most were sleeping, some mumbling something incoherent, and he even saw one practicing the act of self-love.
'Should I help these people? My grandma used to say: "Never help a screwed-up person without knowing why they're screwed up." I can just quickly read their minds and see if they're on the street or on drugs by their own fault, or because of circumstances they couldn't control and ended up like this.'
Max thought for a bit and decided to act. He would start by feeding these "poor souls" and see if he felt better about it.
Even though he didn't like reading other people's minds much, he still felt superior to the homeless people left there. He knew it was a bit hypocritical to have a code of not reading minds for no reason and simply decide to make an exception with a simple change of thought.
But he didn't want to become a slave to his own ideas, because ideas change. The Max of now was different from the Max right after getting the Gacha, and he would be different from the Max a year from now. There was no reason to lock himself in now.
The only problem was that it was already night. Who would make lunchboxes (question below) at that hour for him to deliver to the homeless?
That was when, while walking down the street, Max spotted an open Burger Mart.
'… It's not too wrong to buy some slop for the beggars to eat, right? The important thing isn't the nutrients, it's satisfying their hunger.' After that pure cope session, he decided that doing this was the best for now.
"*Ding*" The place wasn't packed, but it had a good number of people, at least there wasn't a long line.
Max then headed to the woman at the counter wearing the orange Burger Mart uniform. She had long, slightly wavy black hair, with loose bangs falling over her forehead, dark and expressive eyes, well-defined eyebrows and a light smile on her face while serving the current customer.
"Good evening, welcome to Burger Mart! Can I take your order?"
"Good evening, I'd like forty Mart Classic burgers, to go."
After Max placed the order, the attendant looked a bit confused.
"F-forty burgers? What are you going to do with forty burgers? If you don't mind me asking."
She was incredulous, looking Max up and down. He wasn't fat, nor did he look like he had been one before, he looked like a young, muscular guy. Why would he want all that?
"I'm going to donate them to homeless people." Max said excitedly.
"Pff! Ah, sorry, sorry, it's just that people usually don't give lunchboxes with balanced nutrition to people in street situations?"
She was curious. Why burgers? It must have happened before, but it wasn't something you saw often.
"Ah, it's fine. It's just that I was walking at night and, seeing the beggars on the street, I decided it was time to do something for others. Not every hero needs to save the world, you know?" Max lied shamelessly, he just wanted to see if that would make him feel better, or if he wouldn't feel anything.
But the attendant didn't notice the lie. She thought he was just someone purely good, wanting to do the right thing.
"Oh, cool, it would be nice if the world had more people like you." She smiled back at him, a bit more at ease now that she knew she wasn't dealing with someone that strange.
"Thanks. So, Marie, right? You look like a friend of mine. Do you know him? His name is Mark, he also works at a Burger Mart." Max had noticed the resemblance. He could even confuse the two as siblings if they were standing side by side.
"Hum… no, I don't know him. He must work pretty far from here. Burger Mart is a franchise, so the place where he works must belong to another owner." The attendant, Marie, answered sincerely, trying to remember someone with that name.
"Anyway, more people are starting to line up, I'll try to finish your order as fast as possible, okay?" Marie said, noticing the line forming behind him.
"Ah, what a shame, the conversation was going so well. We'll continue next time." Max said, playfully, as he left the line.
"Hahaha~ I'll be waiting for you then." Marie replied, her cheeks gaining a light pink tone before she turned to serve the next customer.
Max then sat down waiting for his order.
'I don't know why I asked that, and why I thought she looks like "a female version of Mark"? Pff, Mark's appearance was kind of generic, he even looked a bit like Tech Jacket. It's not that hard for a girl to look like him.' Max took advantage of the free time to have a few thoughts.
'I think it was because she was kind of similar, working at Burger Mart, and her name being Marie, pretty close to Mark.' Max stopped paying attention to that subject and started planning how to approach the homeless people.
.....
The night was cold, and in that cold a man was lying on an improvised bed in an alley. The alley was dirty, stank, and had rats, cockroaches and much more.
The man trying to sleep was one of those cases of a sequence of things going wrong in life, until he reached the point of living on the street. Without expectations, after losing everything he had built, he threw himself into the world of alcohol and drugs, sinking even deeper.
He was trying to sleep, drinking to forget, when something he never would have imagined happened.
"Hello, sir. I know life took a wrong turn, but I believe you can change. Don't give up on climbing back up in life again."
A warm voice called him. When the beggar turned to look, he saw something unforgettable, a muscular young man wrapped in a golden light that came out from behind him. The light covered his features, but you could feel the warmth and affection in the voice, as if an angelic being had descended there.
The beggar remained without reaction, just looking incredulous while the angel handed him a bag and a blanket.
"Take this, a burger and a blanket for you. This is because you're a good boy. So change your life after this." He passed the Burger Mart bag and the blanket to the beggar, who still hadn't said anything.
Suddenly, the being started floating, up to a certain point, and disappeared.
A lot of things happened in a very short period. Not even a minute passed between the young man appearing, delivering food and a blanket, and leaving without elaborating further.
The beggar looked at the burger and the blanket, knelt down and started praying and apologizing.
"I'm sorry, Lord! I'm sorry, God! I'll improve and get out of this life! I promise I'll make an effort!" That started a drastic change in that man's life, in the right direction.
.....
In another alley similar to that one, there was another man who had lost everything, but, unlike the previous one, he was the problem.
He had a normal life until he started gambling. He accumulated various debts and took out loans to gamble more and try to get out of the hole he had dug himself. The stress of the situation only showed who he really was.
He started hitting his wife and children, even tried to sell one of them, until they found out and he was arrested. He lost everything because of the foolish desire to make a lot of easy and fast money, and on top of that, he was still an unpleasant person. Even in the situation he was in now, he blamed everyone except himself.
Drunk, also trying to sleep, he suddenly felt the ground start to shake.
The ground opened up and fire escaped from inside it.
"WHAT IS THIS!? THE GROUND IS OPENING!?"
The beggar became frightened, looking from afar at the smoking hole while a being came out from inside it. He was wrapped in fire, his body was complete darkness, you could only see the red eyes staring at him.
"You belong to me! Your soul belongs to me! As soon as your miserable life ends, I'll come back to take you!" The being spoke in a hoarse, thick and deep voice, the kind that froze the blood.
"No! Please, don't take my soul! I promise I'll change my life!" The beggar was terrified at the possibility of going to hell, and wanted to seek salvation as fast as possible.
"You don't have to promise me anything! You just need to truly repent! Or else I'll take you to hell to be my Pet!" On the demonic face of the being, where you could only see the red eyes, a macabre smile formed. "And the first thing I do with my Pets is castrate them!"
"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
"YEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!"
The two shouted in unison, until the evil entity seemed to remember something.
"Ah, yes, I almost forgot. Here, take this burger." The entity threw the Burger Mart bag in the beggar's face, slightly crushing the burger that was inside.
"Enjoy… WHAT COULD BE YOUR LAST MEAL! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
The beggar, already without the effect of the alcohol after all that, saw the being in front of him do a double backflip and fall back into the flaming hole, before it closed.
"..." Still pale, the beggar looked at the ground without words. It seemed like a hallucination, but the Burger Mart bag was still there, very real.
He picked up the bottle that was in his hand and, when he was about to drink, stopped.
"No! I don't want to meet him ever again! I don't want to go to hell!"
He threw the bottle far away and ran to the nearest shelter to ask for admission.
Scenes like that repeated throughout the night, and several homeless people accepted help at the shelters. Those shelters had always been there, but they didn't allow alcohol or drugs inside, which was why many preferred to stay on the street until then.
That was how the rumor of a supernatural being that roamed the streets at night was born, blessing pure hearts with a burger and a roof, and dragging rotten hearts into the fire, even if only for a scare. No one could say if it was an angel, a demon, or both at the same time, but the name that stuck among the homeless people of the region was simple and direct, The Midnight Deliveryman.
.....
"[Homeless people in the region report encounters with two supernatural entities this early morning. Locals describe a figure wrapped in golden light, who supposedly distributed food and blankets to people in street situations, and another, described as demonic, who supposedly emerged from the ground amid flames to confront homeless people with a history of domestic violence and other crimes. At least twelve shelters in the city recorded an unusual increase in requests for admission in the last few hours, and authorities have not yet confirmed if the reports are related to each other.]"
It was already 6 a.m. when Max got home and turned on the TV. It seems they discovered his actions quickly. It must have been something related to dozens of homeless people reporting the two entities that appeared to them when they checked into the shelters.
Max had used a few tricks to put those appearances together. First, he used [Voice of All Things] combined with Lucius's mind reading to track the homeless people in the area and separate those who truly deserved the angelic visit from those who deserved the demonic one, without having to wander aimlessly around the entire city.
After that, he used [Shadow Mimic] on his entire body to become completely black in the demonic version, and a bit of Lucius's mental influence to create the illusion of being someone sacred in the first appearance. He also used Overhaul's powers to open and close the ground, and combined the mental influence with Lucius's pyrokinesis for the fire effects. That was basically it, with a little extra help from other powers to round out the details.
Honestly, Max felt good about that. Some of those people were bad, he even considered killing a few, but if they truly repented, he could turn a blind eye.
However, he would check on them from time to time. He couldn't let those who fell again tell the other homeless people that he hadn't come back to take their souls. He needed to be an entity of his word.
Of course, he "killed" those who were on the street because of serious crimes. He even thought about throwing a Molotov cocktail at them, but that would attract too much attention, so the good old lobotomy came to mind.
Anyway, what he did really made him feel good, so it was worth it. Now he only had one more thing left to resolve.
'Is the Mark of this world one of those evil variants?'
It was a serious question. What would he do, and how would he know in time?
There were only a few things that could give that away. Mark swearing a lot? High chances of being evil. Mark with a mohawk? Evil without a doubt. Mark with the Bulletproof suit? Evil without a doubt too. And so on.
You couldn't know for sure at what moment they became evil. Some maybe always were. Others, just a guess, maybe they never went through the moment when the father calls the mother "Pet" during the fight.
That might have been the biggest factor for the main Mark, both in the comics and the animation. Maybe the Mark of this world is the same, until his father doesn't call him Pet and he ends up joining the Viltrum Empire.
It's that or his Gacha will give enough power at the right time. The problem was that he was sure that, for now, he was still far below Immortal's level. He was one of the strongest in the world, but he would lose even to the weakest Viltrumite. That was the kind of power a Viltrumite carried.
Max also did another online search, now more focused on heroes and villains. Before he had only searched for what was happening in the world in general, since not even the previous owner of the body knew much about that. It was kind of crazy how there were so many heroes in this world and most people simply didn't care and went on with their lives.
He started seeing familiar faces: Savage Dragon, or just Dragon as he was called, Shadowhawk, Youngblood, Cyberforce, Pitt, and even Spawn, the latter only in blurry photos, since he didn't seem to be public knowledge. All were Image Comics characters that also existed in this universe.
He also saw several heroes that were probably original to this world.
He didn't know Image very well, only the main ones. The good side was that, even with Image characters existing in this world, not all of them were in the most powerful form they had ever had at some point in their own stories.
He knew that Spawn had some forms capable of killing Viltrumites without much effort, but the details about that were blurry in his head, like a good part of his previous life's memories. He had a vague memory that Spawn had died during the Invincible War, or maybe it was just an evil variant of Mark himself claiming to have killed him before. He couldn't say for sure which of the two was true. Either way, even if he had died there, he suspected that Spawn had already come back from worse things before, so he doubted that would be something definitive.
Invincible was its own universe with a microcosm of Image Comics characters, so, since they weren't the protagonists of the Invincible universe, Max hoped they wouldn't be that strong here either.
"I hope I have time. Between the moment Invincible gains his powers and the fight with his father, less than a year passes, probably around 6 to 8 months. I trust I can survive a fight with a Viltrumite in that period, but winning would be much harder."
While Max was thinking about that, an urgent news report appeared on the TV.
"[We interrupt this program for an urgent news report. Security cameras captured the moment when two identical individuals, now identified as the so-called Mauler Twins, attempted to invade the White House in the last few hours. The Guardians of the Globe, with support from Omni-Man, intervened quickly and managed to stop the duo before they caused greater damage. There are no reports of injuries among the presidential security team, and authorities guarantee that the President is safe.]"
"Holy shit! It's already starting! And I'm still considered cannon fodder in this world!" It had been a long time since Max had panicked. He was one of the most powerful in BNHA, but dropping levels like that in the power scaling, and now having to look both ways before crossing the street so he wouldn't get run over by an extradimensional universe-devouring entity capable of altering the laws of reality and consuming the life force of entire dimensions to feed its absolute cosmic power, was quite a shock.
"If the Mark of this world is one of the evil ones, then I'll have to turn him into a good one no matter what…" He got a bit discouraged. "I just hope I have some level of plot armor. How embarrassing would it be to die to a stray bullet from a Flaxan while Rex Splode is still alive."
With that thought, Max started planning how he'd dress, how he'd act, and how he'd go about becoming friends with Mark, hoping to guide him down a path where he wouldn't need to fight. At least that was what he hoped.
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Hello folks. I just started a Patreon. This is both to keep me motivated to write and to help me make some side income while I'm studying. If you want to read ahead and support my work, you can find me on Patreon searching for WorldHunger.
Lastly, please send me your ideas for Characters, Items, Perks, Gacha Mechanics, Powers/Abilities/Skills (Especially this, I need it), Consumables, and Worlds (for Travel Tickets). Even semi-useful powers are welcome!
Thanks for reading this far. Now, give me your Power Stones! They were promised to me 3,000 years ago! (And remember, everyone gets a free stone daily, for those who don't know).