Chapter 89: Taking Stock — and Getting Ready to Leave
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed with his hands loosely clasped and let the quiet settle around him.
Nearly a month. Longer than he'd planned for, shorter than it could have been. He ran through the ledger — what he'd come in with, what he was leaving with — and decided to do it properly.
"System. Current Friend Points and Family count."
「DING!」「Current balance: 602 Friend Points · 5 Family Points」「Current Family: 15/15」「Exclusive Skill upgrade successful!」
[ Exclusive Skill: On Your Right Lv.2 — Host may actively summon TWO Family members to Host's right side from any location. Cooldown: 24 hours. ]
「Next upgrade threshold: 15/20 Family members」
He read it twice.
Eleven gacha pulls, he thought. And On Your Right levels up.
He let himself enjoy the mental image for a moment: someone somewhere deciding that surrounding Ethan Cross was a good idea, and Ethan responding by summoning two of his fifteen Family members to flank him. The enemy surround becoming his surround. The geometry of it was deeply satisfying.
Then he frowned.
Fifteen Family members. He counted the ones he'd added recently: Wade, Tony, Sandman, Doc Ock. Four people. But fifteen was five more than the ten he'd had at the start of the Raimi arc. Which meant—
He checked the detailed log.
Peter Parker — Tobey version — had gone to Family during the Venom fight.
Ethan had been in the middle of a Rider Kick at the time and missed the notification entirely.
He read it again. The moment MJ was saved. Peter watching the rescue on screen from the hospital room, ribs wrapped, paper cup in hand, and whatever had been building in him since Uncle Ben survived and Ethan showed up and started making the impossible look routine — it had crossed a threshold, apparently.
Ethan smiled at the ceiling.
Don't be as useless as the movies, he thought at the absent Peter Parker. You've got a better foundation now. Use it.
Tobey's Spider-Man had been his first superhero. The one he'd grown up watching. There was something that wasn't quite sentimentality but lived in the same neighborhood.
He pulled his attention back to business.
"System. Convert all Friend Points to Family Points. I want to run the full gacha."
「Conversion complete. Current balance: 11 Family Points. Proceed with draws?」
"All of them."
The results came in:
「Congratulations, Host! Senzu Beans × 1 bottle (Dragon Ball)」「Congratulations, Host! Intimate Paradise (Naruto)」「Congratulations, Host! Lost Driver × 1 (Kamen Rider W)」「Congratulations, Host! Accel Memory (Kamen Rider W)」「Better Luck Next Time」「Better Luck Next Time」「Congratulations, Host! Glint-Glint Fruit (One Piece)」「Congratulations, Host! Sōsuke Aizen Growth Template (Bleach)」「Congratulations, Host! Ultra Instinct (Dragon Ball)」
Eleven pulls. Seven hits. Four duds.
Ethan looked at the spread and felt the particular emotion of a man who had expected better odds and was making peace with reality.
The Intimate Paradise jutsu was sitting there radiating a specific energy he was choosing not to examine too carefully. If I wanted adult content, he thought, there are more direct methods. He filed it under "exists" and moved on.
The Senzu Beans were straightforwardly excellent. His reserves were down to two; a fresh bottle restored the supply considerably. Some things were always worth having.
He turned the second Lost Driver over in his hands. He already had one. The Accel Memory was the interesting part — A's belt, a different Rider form entirely, complementary rather than redundant. He thought about it for a moment.
Then he thought about Harry Osborn.
Harry, sitting in a hospital room watching Ethan transform on television, saying I didn't know he could do that with the specific voice of someone who wished they could too. Harry, who had watched his father die in front of him while wearing someone else's face, who had been asking questions about power since the moment Sandman walked through the door, whose trajectory without an intervention was written in a universe Ethan had seen play out in theaters.
Becoming Green Goblin II was one option.
Becoming a Kamen Rider was another.
Ethan set the Lost Driver aside with a decision made.
The Glint-Glint Fruit gave him pause.
He'd always found the naming slightly baffling — the power was the ability to transform into and control light itself, speeds that made everything else look stationary, and someone at some point had looked at that and written down Glint-Glint. The operational logic of the One Piece naming committee remained opaque to him.
But the fruit itself was exceptional, and he knew exactly who needed it.
Wilson Fisk was Family. Wilson Fisk was also, at the end of the day, a human being — exceptionally large and formidable and currently managing retirement with the dignity of a man who had genuinely earned it, but still operating on the baseline of human durability. One well-placed shot could end him.
This changed that equation significantly. Light-body transformation made conventional damage almost irrelevant.
Uncle Fisk gets the fruit, he decided.
The Aizen template he looked at for a long time.
Another blindness-based power set. Sōsuke Aizen — former captain of Squad 9, architect of a century-long deception, pacifist by stated preference and terrifying by demonstrated capability. The Zanpakuto's ability to completely control all five senses made it arguably the most psychologically devastating power in Bleach's catalog.
He ran the compatibility check.
「Searching for optimal Family match...」「Match failed. Highest current compatibility: 10%. Insufficient for template integration.」
He wasn't surprised.
There was exactly one person in his orbit who fit the template — blind, principled, a lawyer and a vigilante, a man who had chosen a harder path when easier ones were available. Matt Murdock operated in Hell's Kitchen. Matt Murdock was currently a one-star friend.
Daredevil was not yet Family.
Something to fix when I get back, Ethan noted.
He set the template aside carefully. He wasn't going to chase a friendship just for a system reward — if Murdock turned out to be a man he respected, the relationship would develop on its own terms. And if Murdock didn't measure up, the card would wait.
He checked the time.
Wade would be back soon. Tomorrow they'd open the portal and leave.
He thought about Wanda, across however many dimensional barriers, running Fisk Enterprises with the specific competence of someone who had decided that competence was non-negotiable. He thought about Pietro's exasperation and John Wick's quiet presence and the Lucky Dragon and Peter Parker — the younger, home-universe Peter, who was probably at this moment doing homework and pretending his life was normal.
Nearly a month.
Almost home.
He didn't know, sitting there in the quiet of the villa, that Hell's Kitchen had developed a complication in his absence.
Something was waiting for him.
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