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People seem to think that when you suddenly wake up in a new body and in a new world your life would immediately change. I wish that was the case for me, after I died and woke up as a teenager again I waited for something to happen. But life just went on, sure I was in a new world where Mutants were real, Tony Stark had outed himself as Iron Man, and Captain America had a whole unit on him in history class. But life was pretty much the same, and man did highschool suck the second time round, I mean I was bored most of the time the first time round but now? Now it was worse because I already knew most of what we were going over, there were a few things here and there that were different but that was just part of being in another universe. History was a bit different, hence the unit and Captain America and a few new countries that didn't exist in my old world.
There were also a couple mentions of giant leaps in science but we didn't study them too deeply. We just didn't know how those leaps happened because we as the human race weren't advanced enough yet. Like a caveman hitting two rocks together, we knew it made a fire just not why. That would come with time… if the various secret agencies stopped hiding everything that was deemed 'too dangerous' for the public to know. I mean, I guess they had a good reason, some of the stuff I read about in the comics and saw in the various movies was really dangerous. Just have an ounce of common sense and you'll be fine, but the people in charge are always afraid of losing the little power they have. That was one of the reasons I hoped I would have a special power after I woke up in the world of Marvel, but no such luck. I mean I had a pretty good life, I had food, a roof over my head, clothes on my back.
I went to school, I had friends, and my new parents weren't abusive or anything. But they also weren't really around much. When I woke up I spent the first couple of days paranoid I would give something away and be shipped off to some government lab to be dissected. But nothing happened and as a week passed my memories were slowly integrated into my mind every night while I slept. In reverse order for some reason, so that was kind of weird, but hey at least I knew about things in my new life that had happened recently. That came in handy as I needed them to not give my couple of friends a clue that I wasn't exactly the person they hung out with before. As for my parents, they were so busy I would have been surprised if we said ten words to each other during that first week… combined. I think mom said 4 and dad said five or six.
After I calmed my paranoia a little I started to try and research this world. I knew that it wasn't exactly the same as anyworld I saw in my last life, and really, why would it be? The Multiverse was infinite, and not many people really understood what that meant. A universe for each thought ever thunk and more, entire multiverses vastly different from our own with irregular events happening so frequently they might as well be as mundane as a heartbeat. My situation could have been so rare that it had never happened in this multiverse but so common that it happened across all of reality billions or even trillions of times a second. So of course landing in a universe that was exactly the same as one I read about was almost impossible. But hopefully this one wouldn't have too many surprises or be a grim dark one. My research went rather well, I learned a lot of stuff that might help me in the future.
For instance Shield was a legitimate agency that people can sign up for, not some shadowy organization known only to a few. It was kind of obscure and made to look small and a bit of a joke, kind of like the X-files, but I knew it could be more than that. Depending on the world I was in it could be like the SCP Foundation with agents in every aspect of life and technology decades ahead of the rest of the world. Or like a smaller, more secretive branch of the FBI or CIA. They even had offices where you could go and apply to one of their academies. And after doing a bit more research I was leaning more towards the SCP possibility. I found out their standards were incredibly strict, if Reed Richards is really the smartest man in the world and only has eighteen doctorates then he must have gotten bored. Someone applying to the Science Academy needed 3 PHDs and still be under 18 to get in the front door, and most of them had more than that.
And if you were older then you needed even more accomplishments not just PHDs anymore. The other academies were a little different, Communications mentioned tests or proof that you were qualified while Operations described a boot camp that made the Marine's look tame. Mutants on the other hand gave me a large shock, by and large they were considered to be a danger to society. The hatred spewed by the internet was immense and severely off putting, I had to stop my research on them when I saw when some people were advocating genocide. I really hope that it was just a case of keyboard warriors and people didn't actually think that way. But I might have to wait until I meet a Mutant in person to see, and that was rare, mutations only occurred 1 in 10,000 people. A piece of information that was very difficult to find under all the rhetoric.
I had to hunt down some papers by Charles Xavier to find that out, I also learned there that most mutations were benign. A change in hair or eye color to something more exotic, resistance to certain toxins, or a basic increase in fitness. The fitness wouldn't even be on the level of Captain America, it would be something a gym rat would be able to achieve. Still cheating a little but nothing too extreme. So the numbers on Mutants weren't very accurate, cause how can you tell if a person with neon orange hair is a mutant that has orange hair or a regular person with weird taste. Plus the numbers in the paper were just the ones who activate their gift, not the ones who have the gene. But the ones everyone seemed to focus on were the ones with real superpowers or the ones with visible deformities. They reacted with fear to the ones with power and then hatred and jealousy behind their backs and they cursed and abused the ones with deformities.
Literally, on one of the sites I was on before Charles's paper there was a video where a group of people were beating a man that had feathers for hair and digitigrade legs. And the comments and crowds were cheering them on. It made me sick to my stomach to see such hatred against someone that was different from the norm. The video ended before the beating did and I couldn't help but hope that the man had made it out alive. It all seemed too much, the people and their reactions to mutants seemed over the top plus the fact I couldn't find anyone trying to defend them? It got my paranoia tingling again, something more than meets the eye was going on here. But I left it alone for now, I was a sixteen year old teenager, what was I going to do about it? The best I could do was speak up if something happened in front of me and prepare to do something about it in the future.
So I did, I put the research away for now, I learned all I could, and started to take both my fitness and studies more seriously. For the next year I did just that, I started to workout every day. Something that was much easier when you remind yourself that not being able to run fast enough in the future might cost you your life. As for my studies, I found that even though I could think slightly faster than in my old life it didn't make me some sort of super genius. I still got bored really quickly if I tried to slog my way through textbooks, and very little of the information was retained. So I had to find new, more interesting ways to learn. Science and math was the easiest to figure out. I did experiments and built small trinkets, it not only kept my attention but experience really was the best teacher. It helped that my parents made enough money and I had access to a bank account that more than covered whatever I needed.
They were also not around enough to actually notice when I became more interested in my studies. I was still in the same classes at school so I branched out into different or more advanced topics. I refreshed my memory on how to program, even learned a couple of languages that I was pretty sure weren't a thing in my old world. One was a language Stark created and the other was one that Richards made, Stark's was tailored towards making AI and Richard's was kind of like a C and MATLAB combination. On the more physical sciences side I learned about the various components of a computer and even started putting together my own. It still had a long way to go and was nowhere near the capabilities of what was available to the public much the more advanced ones I knew about from before, but it was a work in progress. I also dived deeper into Physics, Chemistry, and Biology and I discovered something interesting.
There were a lot of mentions of Erskin's Formula and the process Steve Rogers went through, but no actual information. It was like anything that could be used to make advancements based on it was removed from public record. My paranoia senses were tingling again! Along with the sciences I also leaned into the humanities, I couldn't just stop with learning about how the world worked, I had to learn about the people that lived here as well. And to understand the people I should walk a mile in their shoes, I couldn't travel to the places I read about yet but I could take the first step, learning their languages. It would take a long time to learn everything I wanted to and more seemed to be added onto the pile every day but at least I had a plan for the future. I had a purpose and, at least so far, the will to follow through, which was more than could be said about my last life.
My time in class was no longer spent sitting around, waiting for the day to end. Instead I would take that time to learn what I could, ignoring the lessons being taught most of the time, much to the annoyance of some of my teachers. But I made sure to pay attention if they were going over any subjects that I wasn't already familiar with, that plus answering any question they shot at me seemed to placate them. The last area I had to cover was the hardest, history was just so dull, I mean who likes to memorize dates of important battles or deaths of significant people. So to keep my interest up I looked for stories, factual ones, but ones that imparted some sort of lesson or could actually keep someone's attention. And the more I learned about history the more I realized that the world of today had not learned from the lessons of the past. It was then and there that I decided what I was going to do, if people had forgotten the lessons we learned over our history then I would teach them again. No matter the cost.
I was knocked out of my thoughts as I sat at my desk at home by the sound of a soft ding, then a blue screen appeared before me. The words displayed on the screen caused my face to light up in excitement, [Welcome, Player. Due to gaining a goal and having the conviction to follow through you have awakened your system.] I had a gamer system, that was like, the ultimate power up. It had been about a year since I woke up but I finally had the key to my success, but even with the key I would still need to walk down the path it opened. I took a few deep breaths to calm down and started to experiment, and after an hour of messing around I was very satisfied. The system itself was very intuitive, I didn't need to manipulate the various popups with my fingers or even give commands out loud. I just thought about what I wanted it to do and it did it.
So far I had found three different screens I could access, my status, my skill window, and something called a notebook. The status screen listed my level, tier and stats; I was at level one and tier one. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to gain levels or stats yet but the tier system had a little explanation when I wanted to know more. When my level reached 100 it would reset and my tier would go up, pretty simple right? It couldn't be that simple, there had to be more to it. But my system was only giving me a bare bones explanation, anything beyond that and I would apparently have to discover it on my own. That was fine, I shouldn't get too greedy, I finally had my cheat after all. So I learned a bit more about my stats instead. I had seven, they all started at ten and each one was pretty self explanatory: Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, Intelligence, and Vitality.
Strength was how strong I was, Agility was how well I moved, Dexterity probably had something to do with body control. Willpower was a little weirder but I guess it was either how much I could push past my limit or how much pain I could endure, maybe both. Not really something I wanted to work on right now but hopefully it would still go up on its own. Perception had to do with my senses and I was hopeful it would help with sensing magic someday. Intelligence could be either how fast I could think or how much knowledge I absorbed. And finally Vitality of course, was how healthy I was. All and all it wasn't the most powerful system I read about but I was happy to have anything at this point. When I looked up the tier system before it also mentioned that when my level reset my stats would as well. It was a big reason why I thought there had to be something more to the tier system. I mean, what would be the point of going up in level if it all reset after I reached 100?
The skill window was empty for now and I was reasonably certain it would fill up as I practiced different things now that my system had activated. The notebook was the most useful part of the system so far, once I figured out how to use it correctly. It operated on thought so I needed a little bit of practice to get it to work the way I wanted it to. It wasn't like writing or typing after all, I didn't want to move my hands to mimic writing or drawing or even typing as that would not only draw attention in the future but also show my hand. So I needed to figure out how to make what I wanted to appear on the screen simply by thinking about it. It did not go well at first as I accidentally linked it to my eyes, lines were appearing on the screen wherever I looked. But I got really dizzy after a minute and had to stop. After that I tried just staring at the center of the screen and thinking about what I wanted to appear.
From an observer's point of view I was sure it looked like I was just staring off into space. But random pictures and scribbles appeared on the screen at first and before long I was writing with my thoughts as well as I could with my hands. Which some would say was not good at all as I had rather bad handwriting, but oh well I'm sure with some practice it would look nicer. Now that I have this ability the first thing I did was write down everything I could remember about Marvel from my past life. I also wrote down where every piece of information came from… if I could remember. Marvel had a lot of different universes after all. But there wasn't just canon I had to worry about, there were also the countless fanfictions that could be real as well. After all, I was living in a fictional universe, who was to say that the cut off of what was possible was fanfiction.
But that was a little harder so I had to add three categories, one for canon, one for fanon, and one for unsure. I had been worried that I would forget significant events as time passed and my paranoia kept me from writing anything down but now I had something no one else could access. The notebook was a god send, once I had so much information that multiple pages were filled a tab appeared with a table of contents. Since it was all controlled by my thoughts I just had to think of what I wanted to know and it would flip to the correct section. That came in handy because next I started to write down anything I could remember from other fiction. You never know what might need to know, or I could even use it to steal some ideas from other universes. As I transcribed more and more information I became faster and by the time dinner rolled around I finished writing everything I could remember.
I was sure I was still missing a ton but my thoughts had stalled and I needed a break. I would add more when I remembered it. Dinner was a quiet affair as my family ate and shared what happened to us during our respective days. Dad had worked through a contract with a new client and Mom complained about the idiots she had to work with who apparently wouldn't be able to find their own asses without a map and stopping for directions. It was all pretty normal stuff, I knew my dad was a lawyer of some kind, he didn't go to court or anything but he worked with the law. I wasn't sure what my Mom actually did, she had some sort of business but since they did not care enough to pay attention to what happened during my day I didn't care enough to ask more about hers. When it was my turn I gave a typical response that classes were boring and my friends were just as into complaining about the teachers as I was.
I had decided not long after I started to take my studies seriously that I wouldn't inform them of the progress I was making. I tried for the first few weeks but every time I brought it up they seemed surprised that I was doing extra work, only to be surprised the next time I brought it up as well. They were either under some sort of obliviousness effect or everything I said went in one ear and out the other. But that worked just fine for me as well. After we each said our piece the only sounds that could be heard was the tinkling of cutlery on our plates and the chewing of food. The food was good too, not five star or anything but Mom was an alright cook, better than I ever was anyway. I finished eating first and took my plate to the kitchen to give it a quick rinse before placing it into the dishwasher. When I walked back out I said good night to both of them and walked up to my room. They seemed rather talkative today, I think we spoke more today than we have in the past few days combined.
The current advanced chapters are:
Master of Magic Ch2-3
Seal Smith Ch2
Flip the Script Ch1-2
The Game Ch1-3
Millennium Ch1-2
Haven Ch1
Who is a Zoo? Ch1
God of Games Ch6
Breathe Ch1
Another Wayne Ch1
Salvation Ch1
Guide Ch1
Growth Ch1
Ark Ch5-7
Further Ch2
Puzzle Maker Ch3
A Thousand Words Ch1-2
Free Range Ch1
Not All Heroes Wear Capes Ch3