Ronan found himself floating. Now, in what, he wasn't sure. The world around him was composed of endless flows of light, dark, and color. Then the world coalesced to form words ahead of him.
[Evaluating potential User...]
[Sufficient Karma detected for reincarnation. Lacking sufficient Karma for Memory restoration. Sufficient Karma for maintaining general mental development and knowledge of name. 3 Random Traits granted. Randomly generating...]
With that, Ronan's world was brought into focus as the dreamlike haze that had been with him for as long as he could remember was suddenly shattered by the luminous text in front of him. There was nothing he could do now. He could only watch as his future was determined in front of him.
[Trait 1: Ice Monarch]
[Ice Monarch(Mythical): You are the Ice Monarch, the ruler of all that is ice. You are massively resistant to all elemental effects, for every element that comes in contact with you freezes. All ice and frost-related abilities below Mythical Tier are increased by rank and cost less energy to use. All ice and frost-aligned beings instinctively recognize you as the monarch. You are immune to ice and cold-based abilities.]
[Trait 2: Blessing of Fae]
[Blessing of Fae(Epic): You are blessed by the Fae, you have an increased energy capacity, and all fairies start at least neutral to you, Fae won't try to trick you, and Spirits will like you.]
[Trait 3: Winner Takes All]
[Winner Takes All(Epic): When you win against someone, you can extract a reward from them forcefully.]
As the traits appeared before him, Ronan was shocked as he looked upon what he'd received. The traits that he had received were insane to think about. Truly, he could not fathom the luck he had to get Ice Monarch as a trait. If this is what he had to look forward to, then his next life was looking pretty good. That was the last thought that he had as the kaleidoscope of light intensified and wrapped around him.
--------
This world was a misery. Ronan had been born to a wonderful, loving mother in a small hospital near Denver. Unfortunately, the moment that Ronan was held in his mother's arms, he awakened his traits, and she was frozen solid. He was, of course, asleep at this time, but that didn't mean that he was innocent, as his mother had frozen to death. The nurse had freaked out and called someone. Soon, he found himself thrown into a heavily insulated sack and brought to a mysterious facility. It was there that he had awoken to his new reality. He had awoken to numerous people in doctor masks poking and prodding at him. The only good thing about the situation is that whenever the doctors touch his bare skin, their tools would freeze and shatter. He could hear them saying something about a mutant before they took him and put him in a small crate with two spouts that he faintly recalled looking like the water feeders for a hamster. This is where he assumed he was to eat as he noticed modified pacifier ends on the bottles. It was then that the light text he remembered from the previous void appeared in front of him.
[Congratulations! Welcome to the Chaos Gacha! Here you can find anything from across the multiverse. To earn a Gacha draw, you must achieve something noteworthy. In this case, you will receive two Gacha draws, one random Silver box for the newbie box and one Bronze Ability box for resisting the investigation of the scientists.]
Ronan looked at the message and decided that, as a baby, he didn't really have any other options, so he first rolled the bronze box, saving the best for last.
[Rolling...]
[Arc(Uncommon): Allows you to channel electricity through your body and discharge with training, you can channel where your electricity goes to aim it more precisely.]
Ronan looked at his results. This one didn't look so bad, maybe he could fry some circuits or escape an electronic lock with this. He quickly rolled the next one too.
[Rolling...]
[Blood Manipulation(Common): Allows you to telekinetically control your own blood, but you can't generate more blood without regeneration, so be wise about spending it.]
Ok, this one he didn't plan on using. It required him to use only his own blood. That meant that in all likelihood, he would have to bleed to use it, and he really didn't want to do that. Ronan sighed as he lay on the floor. He couldn't really do much right now since he was, you know, a baby.
So Ronan just lay there and decided it was time to sleep.
--------
A few weeks had passed since his birth, and the doctors were getting desperate. They had tried to touch him numerous times with all sorts of implements, but nothing seemed to work. He had even managed to freeze the acetylene torch that they attempted to burn him with, along with the scientist who held it. It was from that death that he learned what his third trait meant. His trait [Winner Takes All] said that he could extract a reward from someone he beat. In this case, he had killed the scientist, which he imagined meant that he had beaten them. What that resulted in was a single system prompt.
[Winner Takes All triggered...]
[Choose 1 of the 3: Biology(Uncommon), Silver Skill box, or Mutant Research Files]
From those, he clearly chose the only thing that he was pretty sure might be able to help, the Silver Skill box. He immediately opened it as the scientists had retreated for the moment to take care of their fallen comrade.
[Rolling...]
[Intermediate Medicine(Uncommon): You are as skilled as a doctor, possessing a variety of medical knowledge and skills in treating injuries, illnesses, and problems, as well as familiarity with the body and medicine, as well as its applications.]
The result of his roll was pleasantly surprising, and it definitely beat out the other two options.
From that day, Ronan had done his absolute best to freeze as many of his tormenters as he could. This was helped along by the impatience of some of them and his growing skills. The doctors took more precautions each time they handled him, with the most recent movement seeming to send him on a plane if the shaking he heard could be trusted, and he was taken to his new home. He had been here, in this new place, ever since. Thankfully, and it was weird to say it like that, he had managed to kill three more of the scientists, and he had chosen three more of the random box options. Two silver skill boxes and one bronze random box.
[Blood Pack(Common): Your body holds inordinate amounts of blood, approximately 5 times the average person; this does not affect your body in any noticeable way... somehow.]
[Intermediate Leadership(Uncommon): You are a leader, you know how to motivate, take charge of, and lead people with decent effectiveness, instilling confidence into them and making them do what you want them to do. You are an effective leader.]
[Intermediate Acting(Uncommon): You are a skilled actor, being able to properly portray yourself in the way you want to be seen and concealing your real emotions. But people familiar with you or people who have good intuition, like detectives, can probably see through your acting.]
The trait that he received from the random box was surprising, as it had great compatibility with the [Blood Manipulation] ability from earlier. Leadership really didn't mean anything to him, but the acting would be useful.
He decided that from now on, he would have to do his best to get free of his current situation. He didn't know how he would do that, but the only thing he could do from now on was bide his time, get stronger, and eventually escape.
----------
Ronan's world was his little box. He figured out how to eat without freezing his food from the metal feeder. He found that he could consciously control what he froze. With time, he could make frost spread across the walls.
With more time, he could freeze the whole room.
His mind has assimilated those three skills he had received earlier, so he understood the importance of staying healthy and hiding what he was thinking. At this point, he was adept at maintaining a poker face. To the point where he wasn't sure of the last time he had changed his expression. He hadn't managed to kill another of the scientists recently. They had been maintaining their distance from him. Now, the only things he dealt with were these robots that wouldn't give him anything even when he broke them. They operated like tiny service bots and just changed out his liquid food containers when he finished them. Speaking of his living situation, it had gotten better in recent years. Mainly because, as he had gotten big, he broke his enclosure. But the scientists were ahead of him in that regard. They had him in a Russian nesting doll of enclosures. Each bigger and stronger than the last, and he had made it his mission to break them all.
--------
Dr. Sarah Kinney
Sarah jumped in shock as she heard another sharp rumble that followed a deafening crashing sound from Project Zero's wing of the facility.
The sounds had seemed to have stopped for a long time, and there was no telling without checking whether he had made it out of that layer of his enclosure.
She was conflicted. Zero was just a little boy, but she had seen him when she first got here.
He was only three years old, and she had seen him when her security clearances were issued. He was the first mutant to be held in the Weapon X project, hence his name. At the same time, he was the most dangerous. Before they had figured out how to keep him contained, there were a few scientists who had died. Their bodies frozen and their features unchanged from the original.
It was soon after that that containment was the solution rather than experimentation.
From then on, they had simply put him in a sealed room within his baby crate. That was until he broke the crate.
From there, it was a race to contain him in the strongest materials they could find with as much insulation as possible. He had since broken through about 6 layers of containment, and now his former twin-bed-sized room was the size of a normal bedroom. The engineers kept adding materials and layers to his containment. As there was simply too little of the most capable materials to fashion a room.
Personally, she was concerned about Zero. Every year, his face was a little more dead and his smile a little more ruthless. It had started to freak her out, and she knew she wasn't alone. The staff gossiped frequently about him. They said that zero had been getting stronger, and at the rate he was going, it wouldn't take long for him to break through the remaining two barriers. The upper management had been considering attempting to kill him. In fact, they had already tried multiple times, but he had survived. They gassed him. He froze it. They deprived him of oxygen, and he didn't seem to care. The theory was that he subsisted on something else rather than oxygen. That or his metabolism was so slow due to his internal temperature, their attempt did nothing to him. The most recent attempt will take place in three days. They would be shipping him off to a volcano and submerging his entire container into the crater in the center. The higher-ups' reasoning for this was Zero's utter lack of response to mind control methods as the mind mutants would get what they described as the worst brain freeze of their lives when they attempted to brainwash him, as well as his increasing rate of breaking the cages.
Sarah decided to take a trip over to the containment unit of Zero. She walked through the dead halls of the facility, ignoring the mutants on either side. Before coming to what was essentially a vault door with a single slotted window made of a thick missile-proof plastic. She opened the slot and looked inside.
First, she saw nothing but white. She was taken aback. That was snow, on a tropical island. Then her eyes met the boy's.
He was a beautiful child. However, his beauty was something cold, like an icicle. He had white hair and blue eyes, along with the palest skin she had ever seen. His eyes were so cold that she thought she could feel how much he hated them through the window. Then she saw in the air a sharp spike develop before it rocketed into the window, causing a single crack. She jumped back, closed the slot, and quickly began to walk away. As she left the containment units, she worried that maybe three days was too late.
------------
Ronan
Ronan sighed and laid back. These past few years he had managed to receive 8 rewards, 6 for all breaking his enclosures and two for surviving two attempts to kill him. Over all he had rolled 2 random Bronze boxes, 1 random silver Trait box, 1 silver familiar box, 1 silver ability box, and 3 random gold boxes. He received a number of useful and not useful things.
First, the 2 random Bronze boxes.
[Liquor Spring(Common): An ornate spring fountain that flows with water perpetually, any water taken out of the spring turns into a high-quality alcoholic drink of the user's choice. The water will only transform if it has been taken out of the spring for an hour. Returning the transformed alcohol to the spring will return it back to its water state.]
[Flash(Common): You can emit a bright blinding light from your hands or use it with less intensity for utility, does not work well outside of close range.]
The silver trait box.
[Protection From Arrows(Elite): You have a natural instinct to avoid projectiles, you always have a sense of where they are coming from and instinctually try to dodge them like a sixth sense.]
His new silver familiar.
[Rachnera Arachnera(Uncommon): Rachnera is a female Arachne with skills in a variety of fields. As an Arachne, she has a large body and enhanced physical stats as well as the ability to produce stronger than steel silk on demand. She is also a master seamstress capable of weaving fashionable clothes in seconds.]
The silver ability box.
[Shrug It Off(Rare): Allows you to shrug off your ailments and negative status effects. Blinded? Just shrug it off. Bleeding? Just shrug it off. Cursed? Just shrug it off. Allows you to cure your ailments like a cure spell that scales with your physical stats.]
Finally, the 3 gold boxes.
[Ripper Mode(Elite): "Let er' rip!" Allows you to unleash all of your rage and repressed killing intent. When activated, you will enter a battle trance like state, massively increasing your perception to the point where the world looks slowed down and unlocks your latent power, allowing you to unleash 100% of your power regardless of the damage it does to your body. Overuse may cause damage to your body and it consumes energy to remain active.]
[Ender Pearl(Rare): A round crystalline pearl containing spatial energies, when thrown by someone, it teleports them to wherever the pearl breaks on. Restock Timer: 8 hours]
[Lovers(Rare): You are better at understanding others and expressing your own feelings through speech or words, making yourself understood better. For all intents and purposes, this is essentially a talent in communication.]
Only one of these abilities will help him escape, and he felt that soon it may be time to "Let er' rip!" as his ability description says. He was going to wait though as he could tell from the faces and expressions of his captors that soon they would try to kill him again and this time he would be moving off the island.
His newfound ability to interpret what people were thinking and feeling seemed to come from his new trait [Lovers]. It seemed to work as a sort of newfound intuition that he could hardly tell was there. His mind was just able to interpret things differently than before. By far the most useful thing he received was the [Shrug It Off] ability. It had allowed him to survive both the gas and the attempt at suffocation. It essentially made him immune to gimmicky abilities that others could throw at him. Of course that was contingent on the strength of his body. But stuck in here he had nothing to do but train.
------
A few days went by and just like he had predicted they began to move him. It was slow at first. They cleared the area around him and rigged up several chains to lift his entire enclosure into the air via helicopter. Then all at once he was lifted through the air. He shifted his center of gravity down to keep his balance in the room as he swayed through the air. The time was nigh for his escape.
He waited for a while until he was sure they were far enough away from his original location before he began. So he took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he let out the sheer rage he felt at his captors. Within a second he felt it as the room became more frigid and there was nothing except his rage and his hatred of this damn box he was in, so he didn't stop this time. He ripped the world asunder as he froze and cracked his prison open like an egg. Then he dropped out and grabbed his [Ender Pearl] as he threw it as far as he could in the distance. Then while he waited for it to fall, Ronan gathered his ice into spikes and sent them at the cockpit of the helicopter sending it into a death spiral as the pilots were impaled upon the ends and the engine was shredded. Suddenly he found himself alone in a snowy forest as he heard the sound of a crashing helicopter in the distance.
He smiled as he realized that he was free and alive. Then he trekked off into the snow off to who knows where. What anyone who saw would notice though is that the snow beneath his feet lay undisturbed as his feet trod upon it.
-----------
[Ronan Wolfe]
[Age: 10 years]
[Setting: Universe 616 → Milky Way Galaxy → Sol System → Earth → North America → Canada → British Columbia → Pemberton Valley]
[Date: October 17, 1992, 08:26 AM PST]
[Traits: Ice Monarch(Mythical), Blessing Of Fae(Epic), Winner Takes All(Epic), Blood Pack(Common), Protection From Arrows(Elite), Lovers(Rare)]
[Abilities: Arc(Uncommon), Blood Manipulation(Common), Flash(Common), Shrug It Off(Rare), Ripper Mode(Elite)]
[Skills: Intermediate Medicine(Uncommon), Intermediate Leadership(Uncommon), Intermediate Acting(Uncommon)]
[Familiars: Rachnera Arachnera(Uncommon)]
[Items: Liquor Spring(Common), Ender Pearl(Rare)]