Chapter 171: The Three Great Ninja Epics Pull, and Taking Stock
Ethan stared at the gacha results.
That's a lot.
He ran through the list again. Somehow, in one ten-pull, he'd landed items from all three of the big ones — Naruto, Bleach, One Piece. The holy trinity of long-running shonen, all showing up in the same draw like they'd coordinated. Two Growth Templates, one legendary zanpakutō, a complete Kamen Rider Build transformation set, and a Devil Fruit he already knew who to give to.
He started sorting.
The Bird-Bird Fruit: Vulture Model — easy call.
Down in the school, Adrian Toomes was spending his days teaching engineering to Hell's Kitchen kids and his evenings quietly lobbying for a flight research budget. The man had a dream. He'd had it for years. Ethan had checked in on his classes twice now, and whatever else Toomes was — and the man had a complicated history, even in this universe — he was a genuinely committed teacher who took his students seriously.
The Fruit is his, Ethan decided. Call it a signing bonus. He's been teaching for months without asking for much.
The vulture flight form wasn't the most powerful thing in Ethan's inventory by a long margin. But a man who'd been trying to build wings out of engineering and physics getting actual wings out of a Devil Fruit — that would mean something to him specifically.
The BUILD Driver + Rabbit/Tank Fullbottles — Tony.
Ethan thought about this for a moment and then decided the logic was sound. Two geniuses, similar energy. Tony wouldn't use it the way Kamen Rider Build used it — he'd use it twice, get bored, and spend the next six months reverse-engineering the transformation mechanism and incorporating it into something that didn't exist yet.
Which was fine. That was Tony being Tony. And if it gave him ideas — if the Fullbottle concept sparked something in the way Ethan hoped it might — the result would probably be worth it.
He'll never admit how much he enjoys it, Ethan thought. But he'll enjoy it.
Kyōka Suigetsu — he picked it up.
The sword looked unremarkable. That was, famously, the point. Aizen's zanpakutō had always been a weapon designed for people who assumed that things which looked ordinary were ordinary. It wasn't a sword for cutting. It was a sword for lying — a perfect, complete, inescapable lie that rewrote the sensory experience of everyone who'd witnessed its release.
Ethan turned it over in his hands.
Could it fool the God of Stories? Probably not. Loki, at his current level, existed at a remove from ordinary perception that made conventional deception fairly academic.
Could it fool the Ancient One? He thought about this more carefully. Maybe. The Ancient One operated through awareness and mystical perception — but Kyōka Suigetsu worked on a level below that. It didn't deceive the mind. It deceived the senses that fed the mind. That was a different layer.
Worth having, regardless. He set it aside.
(Matt already had the Aizen Growth Template — the path, the capacity, the ceiling. This was the sword itself. Whether they interacted, or whether Matt could wield it, was a question for a later conversation.)
Hidan Growth Template — he ran the compatibility check and waited approximately half a second.
「Matching in progress...」
「Match found: Wade Winston Wilson — Compatibility: 111.9%」
Ethan blinked.
Over a hundred percent. He'd never seen that before.
"System. What does compatibility over a hundred percent mean?"
「Compatibility exceeding 100% indicates the recipient's ceiling exceeds the template's ceiling. The recipient will surpass the template's limits.」
He sat with this.
So Wade Wilson — who was already unkillable by the standard comic book definition — was apparently more suited to Hidan's immortality-curse mechanics than Hidan himself. Which meant that Wade, with this template integrated, would be better at being Hidan than Hidan ever was.
This was, Ethan thought, either the best or the worst news he'd received today, and he genuinely wasn't sure which.
He authorized the integration.
Somewhere downstairs, a gold light fell across a hungover man wearing headphones who didn't notice it at all, because he was deeply asleep on a barstool.
Enel Growth Template — he ran the check.
「Match found: Pietro Maximoff — Compatibility: 78%」
Ethan raised his eyebrows slightly.
He'd expected the Flash template, or maybe the Glint-Glint Fruit line — something that emphasized speed in a way that mapped directly onto Pietro's existing ability. Enel's power was lightning: the Rumble-Rumble Fruit equivalent, with the ability to transform into electricity, move at the speed of lightning, and project devastating electrical attacks. The Observation Haki mastery Enel had developed came with it.
The match made a certain sense the longer he thought about it. Pietro was fast — but Enel could become the speed, transform into pure electrical energy and travel as current. Combined with Pietro's existing velocity, the result was something different from either one alone.
And there was the elemental transformation component. Pietro, as electricity, couldn't be shot. The problem that had killed the Pietro in the films — a problem Ethan had been quietly worried about since recruiting him — was solved.
"Use it."
Downstairs, Pietro was sitting with his headphones on, listening to something at a speed that made the audio incomprehensible to anyone else in the room. A gold light washed over him. He pulled one headphone off, looked around, put it back.
He'd figure out what had changed in about thirty seconds when he tried to run.
Ethan opened the full stat sheet.
[ Name: Ethan Cross ][ Race: Human ][ Titles: Family Man Lv.4 · Lord of Hell's Kitchen Lv.1 ]
Lv.4. He'd missed that upgrade. The threshold must have triggered with Magneto's addition. He checked the new bonus: with one Family member present, his combat power increased by 25% and all Family members gained 20%. That was a meaningful jump from Lv.3.
[ Skills: Ultra Instinct · Rumble-Rumble Fruit · Gravity-Gravity Fruit · Telepathy · Portal Magic · Magnetic Field Control · Dying Will Flame · Invisibility · Self-Healing · High-Speed Movement · Chaos Magic · Observation Haki · Sonído · Resurrección · Cero · [additional entries...]]
[ Talents: Cursed with Knowledge · Protagonist's Luck ]
[ Items: Senzu Beans · Horse Talisman · Eternal Spirit Blade · Lost Driver · Eternal Memory · BUILD Driver · Rabbit Fullbottle · Kyōka Suigetsu · [additional entries...] ]
[ Friends: Wade Wilson ★★★★★ · Aunt May ★★★★★ · Stephen Strange ★★★★ · Yinsen ★★★★ · Professor X ★★★ · [additional entries...] · Jean Grey ★ · Miles Morales ★ · Peter Parker (home) ★ · Ancient One ★ · Natasha Romanoff ★ ]
[ Family: 19/20 — Pietro Maximoff · Caine · John Wick · Winston · Marcus · Wanda Maximoff · Wilson Fisk · Vanessa Fisk · Richard Fisk · Vongola Primo · Wade Wilson · Tony Stark · Matthew Murdock · Erik Lehnsherr · William Baker · Peter Parker (Tobey) · Harry Osborn · Otto Octavius · Frank Castle ]
[ Exclusive Skill: On Your Right Lv.2 ][ Exclusive Skill: Fortress Lv.1 — 10,000/10,000 ][ Family Points: 0 · Friend Points: 200 ]
Ethan looked at the sheet for a long moment.
19 Family members. One slot to the next milestone.
His skill list had gotten long enough that the system was using ellipses.
Pietro would be considerably more dangerous by the end of the morning. Wade was, somehow, now potentially more unkillable than he'd been yesterday. Tony was about to receive a Kamen Rider transformation belt and would almost certainly disassemble it within a week. Adrian Toomes would wake up tomorrow with wings.
Not a bad night's work.
He closed the panel and stood up.
Strange was waiting.
Time to go see the Ancient One.
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