I spent the rest of the day in the hospital undergoing tests and wasn't released until the next day.
«Here. Sign here and here," the nurse said as she handed me my discharge papers.
I took the pen and was about to sign when I noticed that I was doing it with my left hand, and I was right-handed. I guess two lives had made me ambidextrous. With my signature, I was finally able to leave the place. And, of course, a black Bentley with a driver was waiting for me in the car park: you would not think that a man who takes care of his son, though he doesn't often show it, is capable of slaughtering 20-30% of the people on earth.
Sitting in the car, on the way I thought about how unusual it all was.
When I got to the house, if you can call it that, because it's hardly the size of Xavier's house, but it doesn't look like it's a couple of centuries old, because it's quite modern, and when I entered the house, I immediately remembered Stark's house - they have similar styles. From memory I found my room and sat down at my computer to check the differences between this world and mine in books, music and everything else. I fell to my knees and tears streamed down my face when I discovered that almost all of my favourite bands or songs were just not here! Why are they doing this to me, eh?! System, answer me!
Zing!
Assignment received.
"Pity."
Because of the system's slight blame for your psychological instability and, just a little, because of your unwillingness to participate in the plot of the first G.H., you get a new assignment. You must affect the plot of the film and do at least 10% of the total damage to the suit or Obadiah himself. Complete it before the end of Tony Stark's battle with Obadiah Stane.
Reward for completing it: access to a new feature in the "playlist" system.
Penalty for failure: losing the ability to get new features on the system in the future.
«Thank you, thank you," I said, staring up at the ceiling of the room and kneeling as tears of joy streamed down my face, which is where one of the maids caught me.
«Um... Mr Pierce, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were back already. I'll clean up later.
I have a feeling when this is reported to my father, he'll have a few questions for me and the doctors who assured me I was fine.
After that, I decided I'd better get on with one of the enjoyable parts of this rebirth, more specifically, testing my superpowers. I went down to the martial arts room - the one I had spent quite a bit of time in over 4 years. It was in the basement and was equipped with everything I needed, but I didn't need anything more than a dummy right now. I stood and wished for the ability to activate and it worked. I felt that something was wrong, so to test it I took a coin out of my pocket and tossed it, and it, just like in Hollywood's favourite slo-mo scenes, fell very slowly. After that I hit the dummy a few times, and my results amazed me: the strength I was able to demonstrate was half of what the trainer had demonstrated to Rainu, and at the same time, you have to take into account that the trainer is only 32 and has been in a lot of hot spots during his military service, and has brought his body's capabilities to the highest level. He's not Captain America, but I think he's got 50-60% of his strength in him. I just can't wait to spar with him - according to Raina's recollection, he was getting a pretty good workout every time he trained, and Brooks sure liked it, because what better way to do it than to beat up a kid while getting paid for it. Say, this will be my gift to Rain, who left this body too soon.The evening went well, though I noticed the odd looks the servants gave me, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the chef's skills.
When I woke up, I made a plan of action and decided how I would influence the upcoming events, after all, without my favourite music, there was no way I could do it. First, I decided to see if I could increase my stats without using free points. I decided to go all the way and I was happy with the result, because even though I had to sacrifice my lunch, after 20 hours of push-ups, treadmill and other exercises I was able to increase my strength, agility and endurance by 1. After finishing this hell, I was sad that I didn't get a player's body because I felt like I wouldn't be able to get out of bed tomorrow. I decided that as long as my body was still able to move, I might as well see how long it would take me to upgrade my skills, good thing there was a place to shoot, albeit only at skeet.
After replenishing some of my energy with something between lunch and dinner, I went to get my rifle and had the targets organised for me. To my surprise, in four hours I was able to raise 2 levels of shooting, and if at the beginning I hit only every tenth plate, by the end of the training I was able to shoot two out of every ten, and also a reason for joy was to get 50 units of experience. Although the pumping of the skill was not very difficult, but I noticed that the time for each next level increased quite a lot and I do not know if I will have time to pump it until the execution of the plan. It's a shame, of course, that I had to curtail my training, I don't have night vision and the lighting doesn't take the altitude where the plates are flying.
Finished with the checks, I went to bed, having turned on time acceleration beforehand, hoping I could recover in 14 hours.
How foolish I was to think that 14 hours would be enough! When I woke up, I found that I couldn't move without being in a lot of pain, so I stayed in time acceleration for another 10 hours, and I spent them to my advantage: I decided to find out all the differences between this world and mine, and what I could bring... ahem, bring new things to this world to make millions of people happy and, of course, my pockets. By 12 noon I was able to move around normally and decided to continue my shooting practice.
After two weeks of this training I received:
Name: Raine Pierce
Level: 3
Experience: 550 / 750
Parameters:
«Strength: 27
«Dexterity: 25
«Endurance: 30
«Intelligence: 26
«Intuition: 14
«Free Points: 10
Specialities: "major", "lab mouse", "hitman".
Skills: "martial arts - 9 level", "shooting - 17 level", "polyglot - 5 level", "psychology - 6 level", "strategist - 5 level", "stealth - 3 level", "player's mind - MAX".
Superpowers: "time acceleration".
I was able to increase my stats quite a bit, and with the boost I get from time acceleration, I think I'll be able to pleasantly surprise my dear teacher, who is supposed to resume my training today.