Maya hadn't been in this world long before she figured out which universe she'd landed in.
Howard Stark was plastered on every TV screen, newspapers, and news outlet in New York. That alone was enough of a hint.
And then there was the time she and Magneto had their little encounter. Well — "encounter" might be generous.
It happened a few years back. Maya was on the school bus heading home when the whole vehicle suddenly lifted off the ground and hung in midair. The other kids immediately burst into tears. Maya did not cry. The figure nearby — clearly Magneto — must have heard the children's screaming, because the bus was eventually set back down.
Unfortunately, Maya had been leaning out the window to sneak a look. When the bus hit the pavement, her chin slammed against the window frame and knocked out a tooth that had already been halfway loose. Her eyes filled with tears she hadn't planned on shedding.
After the bus landed, the driver didn't shout. He didn't curse. He just focused intently, started the ignition, and floored it away from the scene — completely ignoring the police sirens wailing behind them, the dense, chaotic gunfire, the bursts of flame and smoke from burning cars, the screams of officers and civilians alike. The man acted like he couldn't hear or see any of it. Only once the bus had cleared the block did Maya see him raise a trembling right hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
After crossing paths with Magneto, little Maya became much more high-profile at her school. Every competition, every performance, every public event with any kind of audience—she entered every single one.
Her academic record was a clean sweep of top marks in every subject. Even in gym class, she consistently outperformed her classmates. Starting in second grade, she'd applied to join the student council. By third grade she was a senior officer. By fourth grade she was school-wide Student Council President — a position she'd held ever since, right up to eighth grade.
A quick note on the American school system(TL: Not sure if the author got all of this right — if anyone's actually based in the US, feel free to confirm!):
Since education in the US falls under state jurisdiction — which is further delegated to local school districts — grade structures vary significantly. The dominant model in cities and developed areas is the 6-3-3 system (six years of elementary, three of middle, three of high school), which mirrors the structure used in China. A 6-6 system appears in smaller districts; the 8-4 system tends to show up in rural or economically underdeveloped areas.
The pattern is consistent: the poorer and more remote the region, the longer the elementary school years. And given that high school resources dwarf those at the elementary level, students who spend more years in secondary education tend to develop stronger intellectual interests and career awareness.
Maya had been born in Manhattan — hardly underdeveloped — but Hell's Kitchen had always been notorious as a rough neighborhood with its share of criminals and gang bosses. Given its proximity to Midtown, the city had always seemed to wish it didn't exist. For an area of that size and population density in Manhattan, there were exactly two schools — both operating under an 8+4 combined model, meaning students spent all twelve years of compulsory education in the same building.
Her family couldn't afford private school. She was stuck in the public system. But she absolutely wasn't staying for high school — the teaching quality and resources were abysmal.
And what was the first thing she'd done after becoming Student Council President in fourth grade?
She banned students from smoking weed on school grounds. Maya sometimes thought to herself: back home, we'd never see this in elementary school. Even eighth graders were only thirteen or fourteen — and yet the teachers seemed completely desensitized to it. Banning it had nearly gotten her jumped by a group of older kids more than once. That she'd made it to thirteen with all her teeth intact (the one Magneto had knocked out aside) was largely thanks to her system.
In his past life, Jia Baoyu had been working overtime to build a mobile game.
The game was called 2D All-Out Brawl — an obviously generic title. The concept was simple: mash together skills and characters from popular web novels and anime, then let players mix and match abilities for either RPG solo play or 5v5 MOBA-style battles. As for the copyright issues involved in borrowing from dozens of IPs at once — that was the boss's problem. The boss certainly wasn't going to admit he was planning to cash out and disappear once the initial hype died down.
Now Jia Baoyu had become Maya Hansen. But the game system had followed him here.
On the subway home, Maya sat with her eyes closed — seemingly lost in thought. In reality, she was pulling up her system in her mind's eye.
System, she called.
A pale blue screen appeared:
Character: Maya Hansen (Age: 12 years and 5 months) Influence Points: 20,165
Power System: None (You have no power path yet.)
Kekkei Genkai / Bloodline: None (You are a baseline human.)
Skills:
① Kunai Throw Technique(Taught by Itachi to 5-year-old Sasuke) Trash Lv. 10 (This is currently your ceiling.)
Talents:
② Marvel Sage Knowledge: Bronze Lv. 8 — (Top-performing US middle schooler — keep reading, kid!) Mind: Gold Lv. 6 — (Original spec was Diamond Lv. 7, but your mediocre past-life soul dragged it down a full tier.) Expression: Trash Lv. 10 — (The shelf of trophies at home? Worthless by Marvel genius standards. You're deadwood.)
Items: Second Ninja War era Leaf Village Genin physique ×12 (Colorless equipment) Bloody Mist era Rain Village Genin physique ×3 (Colorless equipment) Basic Soldier Pills ×8 (Colorless equipment) Explosive Tags ×2 (Bronze Lv. 1) Hunyuan Scripture — Mortal World · Yunfeng Sect · Outer Disciple · Foundation-Building Volume ×1 (Bronze Lv. 7)
Overall Assessment:
You're weak. Go roll the gacha. The 2D Unlimited Spin Wheel is waiting — 10 points per Bronze pull, 1,000 for Silver, 50,000 for Gold, 200,000 for Diamond. Guaranteed rewards. 5% rebate on 10-pulls, 10% rebate on 100-pulls!! What are you waiting for?!
This was the sum total of thirteen years of Maya's hard work. And after transmigrating into the Marvel Universe, the system had shifted in one key way.
At age two, little Maya had quietly swiped $100 from Tom's wallet and shouted "PAY TO WIN!" into the empty air — in both English and Chinese, several times over.
The system didn't respond at all.
She'd initially assumed it was broken. Then one day, Jennifer carried her to the grocery store and neighbors along the way kept saying "What a cute little girl" and "So well-behaved." The label that had previously read Gold Coins slowly transformed into Influence Points, and a small "1" ticked into existence behind it.
Slowly, Maya understood: her system wanted her to make things happen.
And so, armed with an adult's experience and her naturally gifted Gold-tier mind, she'd spent years steamrolling her schoolmates. Drawing, singing, dancing, instruments — she mastered them all. She'd swept every academic and extracurricular competition available to her at this age. The New York education community had taken note. There was a prodigy in Hell's Kitchen.
The gacha system, though, was her nemesis.
Maya was a naturally pretty, bright, cheerful child — well, the cheerfulness was largely a calculated effort to farm Influence Points, but the pretty part was genuine.
At five years old, on her first day at the community school, she'd stood up during the all-school new-student assembly and announced to the entire student body: "I'm going to be Student Council President." The faculty and students were stunned.
At seven, she submitted a 50,000-word campaign manifesto to the principal — a detailed, mature school improvement plan titled "What I Will Accomplish as Student Council President." The old principal was genuinely moved by its depth and thoroughness. He wasn't even particularly surprised. After all, the kid a few streets over — Tony Stark, Howard's playboy son — had been soldering circuit boards at four and independently designing car engines at seven. By comparison, this Maya girl seemed like a pretty normal prodigy.
After taking office, she'd used a firm hand to clean up the school's culture. A very firm hand — she'd made several large, loud boys cry in the process. In the name of promoting academic and physical development, she organized constant events: sprinting competitions, trivia bowls, math olympiads, singing contests, ballet recitals, violin showcases. In every single one, the Student Council President walked away with first place, cheeks flushed with what could have been pride in her students' progress — or satisfaction at her own win — or quiet joy at the Influence Point total ticking upward. Probably all three.
Beyond her own school, she'd entered every district, city, state, and national competition she could reach. She'd collected Outstanding Elementary Student awards from New York City multiple years running, and had even taken a national-level award.
There were occasional humbling moments. At one national biology competition, a girl named Helen Zhao took first place out of nowhere. That loss reminded Maya that even in the Marvel Universe, the waters ran deep.
She checked Helen through her system. The results confirmed it: the girl had genuine intellectual talent, and it dwarfed Maya's. Helen's Knowledge was Gold Lv.1, meaning her biology knowledge already outpaced many undergraduates. More alarming: her Mind was Diamond Lv.8 — a full level above what Maya's original spec had been.
Thinking about Tony Stark a few streets away, Maya quietly decided: she'd keep her head down. It wasn't always lonely at the top, but it could be — better to just farm points in her little pond. Forget skipping grades. Run the school, build steadily.
At age ten, Maya finally crossed the 10,000 Influence Points threshold and splurged on a Silver 10-pull.
Nothing.
Not a single Gold item. Not even a Silver. The only standout in the pull was the Bronze Lv.7 Hunyuan Scripture and a pile of junk.
Right. She'd designed this system herself. The Silver spin wheel had a negative fourteen percent base chance of producing a Gold item. That meant even a VIP player running 100 consecutive pulls would, in theory, get maybe one Gold item. The Gold wheel had a negative twenty percent chance of producing a Diamond item. The Diamond wheel had negative twenty-five percent odds for anything higher.
Not even the highest-tier VIP could pull above their own bracket without spending real money on Lucky Cards — and even a dedicated whale with a VIP Supreme aura (which added fifteen percent, netting a positive one percent chance) would barely manage a Gold pull after a hundred tries.
Even within the same tier, the base odds of pulling a same-tier item were a generous fifteen percent.
For the free-to-play crowd, the system offered one concession: after spending 10,000 gold coins (now Influence Points), the Black Market Trader would unlock. Every real-world day, the Trader would stock one randomly refreshed item. You could store it on your personal shelf even if you couldn't afford it yet. Shelves had two slots. More slots cost money. And the refresh could be reset with points from victories — also purchasable if you were short.
In short: whether you were broke or loaded, the answer was always spend more.
Jack Ma once joked: if you have money, that's gaming; if you don't — well, that's your problem.
Back in his past life, the boss had praised Jia Baoyu extensively for this monetization design. Finish this project and I'll promote you to team lead.
And now — what cruel irony — Maya had fallen into the very pit she'd dug.
After accumulating enough points to unlock the Black Market and watching it refresh seven or eight hundred times over two or three years, not a single cultivation root had appeared. Every item was from the Naruto universe.
By 1993, at thirteen years old, Maya had given up entirely on the idea of immortal cultivation. The path to becoming an immortal had died before it began.
Being a powerful kunoichi isn't bad either, she told herself. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
Besides — even if she grinded to the Foundation Establishment stage, that would take another decade or more. By then Thanos would already be on his way. What good was a Foundation Establishment cultivator against that? She might not even be able to handle street-level criminals at that level.
More importantly: the older you got, the slower you learned, and the lower your ceiling. By traditional age-counting, at thirteen, she was already at the final cutoff point for martial cultivation.
Time was running out.