Marvel:PS - Chapter 1 - Reincarnation (Patreon)

This is the story of Amelia Fulton, who was reincarnated into the world of Marvel. Tell me what you guys think. Is this a story that might be worth fully fleshing out?

(Word Count: 2,642)

Can a can of worms really be all that bad? Yes. Yes it can. I sincerely regret asking my friend Jessica about whatever happened to her boyfriend Ryan. So. Many. Things. Apparently.

I stifle another groan as she begins another tirade on how he’s been looking at other girls. I glance at my other friend, Hannah. "Kill me now, please," I convey through my eyes.

"You got us into this mess, get us out!," Hannah sends back through her own eyes. 

I sighed internally again. I had just wanted to divert the conversation away from my fanfic addiction, so I had blurted out the first topic I could think of, which had been the recent cold shoulder Jess had been giving Ryan. I regret asking.

"Hey, you know what? I heard that pumpkin spice is back at starbucks! Why don't we go get some to cheer us back up!" I suggested.

Jessica rubbed her temples tiredly. "Yeah, that sounds good, I suppose. Ryan's not worth my time anyway. It's decided! I'll break up with him."

"That's smart," Hannah said, "If he's looking at other girls than you're right, he's not worth your time."

"Come on, let's get going," I say. 

Together, we head out. The Starbucks was close by so we chose to walk. The conversation finally turned from Ryan to other topics. 

"Hey, Amelia, you even listening?" Apparently I wasn't. I had kind of fallen behind, walking a bit slower than Jessica and Hannah.

"Sorry, what did you say?" 

"I asked what are your plans for next semester?" Hannah asked. Jessica and Hannah had turned to look back at me.

I was about to answer when to the side, coming from behind them, was a large truck careening out of control. It was going to hit us.

"Look out!" I screamed and instinctively pushed both Jessica and Hannah out of the way. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to jump out of the way myself. 

The truck came onto the sidewalk and crashed into me, crushing my entire body against the wall of the shop behind me.

The next thing I knew I was standing in what seemed to be a receptionist area. There were rows of seats for a waiting area and a large front desk, with a door that led back further into the building, and posters of slogans like, "Don't let death bring you down, find an afterlife for you!" Or "101 ways Spirits can find fulfillment through eternity" Or "Join H.O.L.Y. for eternal benefits!" There were no windows or any other door though.

I was still somewhat in shock at what just happened. What happened? Where am I? Did I just die? What about Jess and Hannah? Were they okay?

Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm myself down. I was getting cold sweats from the adrenaline crash.

There was no one here, but there was a bell on the front desk. I rang it.

"NO!" A voice cried out from the back. "No no no nooo!" A woman burst into the room from the back door. When she saw me standing there her face crumpled in frustration. "Gosh dang it! How the flip did you die?" She demanded angrily.

Gosh, dang, and flip? What is this, elementary school?

"Hey! Employees aren't allowed to swear okay? Just," the woman took a deep breath and released it slowly to get rid of stress. "Look, I'm sorry for the anger. But no one was supposed to die for a full minute! It was supposed to be a whole thing!"

"Um… a truck ran me over." 

"Shiitake mushrooms! Fiddlesticks! Son of a wholesome woman! I'm gonna beat the fudge out of him!” The woman eventually stopped cursing and took another deep breath. “You were killed by Truck-kun! That no good rusty heap of scrap metal. Oh, this is gonna be a ton of paperwork."

"I'm… sorry?"

"Yeah, yeah… it ain't your fault. Truck-kun likes to take advantage of loopholes in our bylaws to get people reincarnation packages. I should have realized that this would be the perfect opportunity for him to strike. Come on back to my office and let's get you sorted out."

I get a package deal? Interesting. I followed the woman through the back and into an office packed with heaps of paper.

“Normally these reincarnation packages come as employee severance packages, the regular schmucks like me through 500 years of employment per wish. I’m already in my 1,000th year. I’m wanting to get that 3-wish package you see. Now, let’s see your file.” The woman started digging around through a filing cabinet until she pulled out a manilla folder.

“Here we go! Amelia Fulton. Age 23, female. You’re an introvert, love reading books and watching movies and TV shows. In highschool you were adopted by two extroverts, Jessica and Hannah, and you became more social. In college you moved into an apartment with your two friends. You also got sucked into fanfiction. You were supposed to have died in your 70’s. Yup, you match the MO of truck-kun.” She was mostly reading to herself from the folder. It was kind of weird to know that I had a file here in the afterlife.

“Okay, let's see what sort of package you’re getting.” She turned to the last few papers within the folder. “Okay. You can qualify for two different packages. The 3-wish package or the Complete Power Set package.”

“Can you explain them to me?” I asked. I didn’t want to go into anything without knowing what I was getting myself into.

“Both packages let you keep your memories and choose a world you want to go to. The difference is that the 3-wish package comes with, you guessed it, 3 wishes. In recent years we did have to restrict the wishes due to people abusing the privilege. So there are some more regulations aside from the usual no wishing for more wishes. You can’t wish for any sort of physiology outside of the universe you chose, so no Kryptonians outside of the DC multiverse, or Saiyans outside of the DragonBall multiverse. Those are the two most common ones. You also can't wish for a whole system, that's a whole other company. Stuff like that.”

“And the other one?”

“The Complete Power Set lets you choose 5 different skills, based on the 5 basic requirements for a power set. An Attack skill, a Defense skill, a Mobility skill, a Healing skill, and a Utility Skill. Normally, that would be it, but we're wanting to incentivize more people taking this option, so you will also be provided a small system panel to level up your skills.”

I do like the sound of that, I can get 5 skills instead of 3.

“What would you recommend?”

“Both are good. The wishes have a lot more variety on what you can get, like changing your race and all that. It is the one that I’m working towards. But if you aren’t careful you can be left with a gap in your power set, which isn’t a problem with the other package. I’ve already got my wishes picked out, but I’m not telling you that. The Complete Power Set also has growth potential with the mini system panel, so while your skills start out somewhat weak, they can grow to become much more than you originally imagined them to be. So like I said, both can be really good.”

“I do like the idea of the system panel.” Watching the numbers go up tickles my brain. “Yeah, let's go with the Power Set package.”

The woman took out some documents and a stamp. “Alright then, here. Fill this out.”

She passed the pages to me. The first page had questions like what world do I want to go to? Do you want to be reincarnated into a character? Specify when you want to be born in the timeline. Then it had five spaces for Attack Skill, Defense Skill, Mobility Skill, Healing Skill, Utility Skill.

Let's see. I want to go to the MCU as my own person not taking anyone’s place, I want to be born in the same year as Spider-Man. I also specified that the TVA doesn’t exist in this version. I don’t want to deal with potentially being labeled as a variant and everyone I know being wiped from existence. For my skills, I had to stop and think. I wanted my skills to be extremely useful, I don’t want to regret anything later on.

I came up with my Defensive skill first. Barrier Formation! But I can generate, shape, and control 2D barriers as I pleased. This lets me form defensive barriers, obviously, but I can also shape them around things to capture them and lift them up as I pleased. So with this I also have a form of Telekinesis. I can also use this to sort of fly around. Then there was the idea that I can create a 2D saw blade for attack. This was like an all-in-one skill, the only thing it didn’t cover was healing.

Mobility Skill: Teleportation! Why have superspeed when I can cut any travel time down to zero? It also lets me bypass walls, so if I’m captured and tied up I can just teleport out of all of that to freedom. But I didn’t want to just teleport myself, I wanted to be able to freely teleport things around me. Next, I needed to be able to know where I wanted to teleport to, so I wrote that it comes with a built in spatial awareness around me to solve that. Sort of like Fay from Hard Magic, by Larry Correia. On that same line of thought, I didn't want to accidentally impale myself by teleporting halfway into a railing somewhere so I also clarified that when I teleported things/people, they would be gently shunted out of any occupied space.

I’m such a genius.

Healing Skill: Regenerate! Not just “regeneration” like Wolverine, but to cast “regenerate” that I can use on myself and others. Pretty self explanatory. If I lose a limb, I don’t want a crappy healing skill that only promotes “natural healing” that way I would be stuck with just a stump. Then, when the skill is strong enough, I can basically grant myself, along with anyone I want, biological immortality like Wolverine. Sometimes my genius is almost frightening.

For my Attack Skill, I had to think. I now had a lot of variety with Barrier Formation and Teleportation. Those two skills will let me control the field a lot. Now I needed something with a huge punch to it. Disintegrate! To reduce everything down to atomic dust. If I am smart about this, I can reduce something down to its elemental composition. I’m sure some scientists somewhere can find some use in that. It’s also an extremely deadly attack.

Utility, I went for the mother of cheats: Shadow Clones! But because I don’t have an Uzumaki’s endurance or Kurama filtering out the brunt of the overlapping memory noise, I specified that as the skill levels up, my mind is strengthened to withstand the backlash of receiving all the memories of the clones when they dissipate. If needed, I can also use a clone to establish proper alibis when I’m hero-ing.

I flip to the next page and it's a bunch of legal jargon. I go through everything to make sure I’m not selling my soul anywhere and then sign around 40 times throughout the different pages. It basically said that they weren’t responsible for butterfly effects from my own actions so I couldn't complain if I got myself killed.

“Okay, I’m done!” I said, and handed the stack of papers back. She looked over everything and then stamped it.

“Alright, you’re all set! Now, we just gotta imprint the package into your inner soul and send you off!” She took the papers and then basically shoved them into my chest. It was a trippy feeling, seeing someone’s arm punching through you. When she removed her hand, the stack of papers were gone, leaving them inside me. 

“That’s a normal thing, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, of course. It’s basically a magic contract, it's fine.” Just as she said that, a blue panel appeared in front of me.

Attack Skill: Disintegrate LVL 1 (0%)

Description: [-]

You wield destructive energy to reduce the given Area within Range down to its elemental composition.

Parameters: [-]

Range: [Touch], AoE: [4]in^3, Strength: [1], Cool Down: [1hr], Usage Limit: [1]/day,

Defense Skill: Barrier Formation LVL 1 (0%)

Description: [-]

You can generate and manipulate 2D barriers at will, within given parameters.

Parameters: [-]

Range: [5]ft, Size Limit: [1]ft^2, Force Limit: [300]psi, Movement Speed: [0]m/s, Time: [10]min, Cool Down: [1]hr, Usage Limit: [1]/day

Mobility Skill: Teleport LVL 1 (0%)

Description: [-]

You can teleport at will, within given parameters. Comes with a spatial sense within the given range. Anything teleported will be gently shunted out of occupied space.

Parameters: [-]

Range: [10]ft, Weight Limit: [200]lbs, Passenger Range: [Touch], Cool Down: [1]hr, Usage Limit: [1]/day

Healing Skill: Regenerate LVL 1 (0%)

Description: [-]

You infuse a target within Range with healing energy that restores the target to its peak health and restores any lost parts or functions over the course of its duration.

Parameters: [-]

Range: [Touch], Heal Strength: [1] for [1]min, Cool Down: [1]hr, Usage Limit: [1]/day

Utility Skill: Shadow Clone LVL 1 (0%)

Description: [-]

Creates a temporary solid clone of yourself that acts independently. Once dissipated, you gain the clones’ new experiences and knowledge. This skill naturally strengthens your mind with each level to withstand the mental burden it induces.

Parameters: [-]

Clone Number: [1], Spawn Range: [5]ft, Time: [10]min, Cool Down: [1]hr, Usage Limit: [1]/day

“Wow!” I marveled at the blue screen. It was all of my dreams come to life. I had my own system. Sure, it only upgraded these 5 skills, but it was still a system! Wait a second. “I can only use my skills once per day! That’s a rip off!”

“Don’t worry about it, I told you the skills start out weak, right? You see those brackets? Those are your skills’ parameters. Once you level up a skill, you can choose one of those parameters of your skill to upgrade. If you choose to upgrade the Usage Limit a couple times it won’t be an issue. There’s no real limit on how far you can upgrade them, so go crazy.”

“Okay,” I said a bit mollified. “How do I level them up?”

“By using them. They will of course level faster in combat, but they can level outside of it as well. But you can’t just spam them mindlessly to level up, they’re called skills for a reason. You’ve got to get good at using them. Especially that Disintegrate skill. If you don’t learn to properly control it, you could end up disintegrating something you don’t want to. Like yourself.”

I gulped. Was it too late to change it?

“Yup! Now off you go!” And suddenly I was careening through psychedelic rainbows of colors until I was left adrift through an empty black void. Was I now outside of my universe?

I was stopping gently by an enormous hand. I looked up to see  a gigantic Goddess, capitol “G”, with what looked to be a dozen faces and thousands of hands which were catching and throwing thousands of different souls just like me. One of the faces looked my way, her eyes an ethereal blue-white glow. Before I could even ask what her name was, she waved her hand and I was once again thrown into a psychedelic trip.

9 months later, I was born again.