3rd POV
Juggernaut groaned while his eyes readjusted and his head settled down.
'Scout the area he said. Charles' group is dropping off a mutant we should look into he said'.
He groaned again while looking around for his partner, Black Tom, as when the blue light they'd seen came close everything kind of went to shit.
Trees were strewn about, there was a gouged round space carved into the ground, and Juggernaut could now see Black Tom limping back over.
Black Tom was a sharp faced white man with a black goatee, mustache, and hair. He had on a black getup with a red symbol on the chest, with his wooden shillelagh being used as a cane. He had blood leaking from a cut on his forehead, his uniform was torn up in several places, and he had a noticeable limp in his gait.
"What the fuck was that?" Black Tom rasped out while rubbing his throat, Juggernaut looking straight ahead trying to make out if anyone was following up on that attack.
"No idea. A blue light came and exploded."
Black Tom just groaned at the response, leaning against a tree for support while raising his shillelagh. His eyes darted around frantically as he tried to locate any other projectiles or enemies that could be after them, before a voice from right over his shoulder almost made him jump out of his skin.
"Boo"
He quickly turned, pointing his shillelagh and shooting a blast of force through it. The now revealed Vance was pushed back a few feet before two rapid spins of the golden wheel above his head rang out.
CLINK
CLINK
In a quick step Vance was up close and personal with Black Tom, swinging a hook across his face that sent him flying through a tree and down coughing. His shillelagh wasn't near him as it was sent whizzing through the air on contact.
Rumbling steps that shook the ground sounded out behind Vance, forcing him to turn and duck into a shoulder tackle on the enormous Juggernaut's stomach as he attempted to run Vance over. Vance started sliding back, the dharmachakra above his head grinding slowly before-
CLINK
He began slowing down, before choosing to reset by rolling quickly around the helmeted man. He registered Black Tom beginning to stand with blood dripping from his mouth, so he brought himself close with Blue before stomping him into the ground with a foot on his back.
BANG
The sound echoed as Black Tom Cassidy found himself unconscious and out of the fight, imprinted into the vegetated ground. Juggernaut stood tens of meters away after stopping his rush, chest rising and falling a bit heavily but not overtly so.
"You know, if you wanted an autograph you could've just asked" Vance said with a smirk while edging closer to try and get in range.
Juggernaut just snorted, eyes glancing at his partner,
'I've gotta get away somehow. I didn't push him nearly as much as I should have something's up with this guy.'
Vance saw the hesitation and rushed in with a sweeping low kick that caught him but resulted in very little damage. Juggernaut punched straight down, trying to drive Vance into the ground.
He dodged by rolling between Juggernaut's legs, a cursed energy boosted front kick to the back of the leg bringing him down to one knee. Vance sent a right elbow at the back of his helmeted head followed by his left and a straight right that rocked Juggernaut's body forward before he spun with a back fist that caught Vance and sent him sliding back five meters.
'Tsk. I'll need to get hit a bit more for the last bludgeoning adaptation.'
He spotted a dent in the back of the helmet where his blows had landed before Juggernaut turned and stared at him before speaking.
"How about we let this stop here?"
Vance frowned, his cursed energy spiking briefly as he responded,
"You set up an ambush for me and expect me to just let things go? Nah. Fuck that, run the ones."
The large man considered that, glancing to his right where Black Tom still laid knocked out, then back at Vance's cold eyes. He continued standing there staring while considering his options.
'My invulnerability hasn't been acting right since that blue attack hit us. If I stay here it's a toss up on if I can manage to hit him enough, but he's just too fast for most of my strikes to hit him. Might be smart to…'
With a quick spin he began sprinting the other direction, completely ignoring Black Tom several meters away. With each step his speed increased as he made a mad dash to escape.
Vance's frown became more pronounced, 'Juggernaut has unstoppable momentum. Blue might be able to pull him back but…'
He glanced down at the unconscious figure he didn't recognize.
'I'll just interrogate this guy instead. Information and whatever money he has. A win-win!'
Short time skip
Vance was in his apartment, the middle aged man he kidn- invited over tied up to a chair with Vance sitting across from him rather tired of waiting.
'Screw this' Vance thought as he grabbed a bottle of water from his fridge before splashing a quarter of the bottle directly on his face.
Black Tom Cassidy woke up with a gasp as he looked around frantically while trying to blink the water and blood out of his eyes. His gaze settled on Vance's smiling face as he sat back down in the chair opposite him. He tried to move, but found he was tightly tied with no avenue for movement at all.
"So guy I don't know, your suit doesn't have pockets and I don't recognize you at all. So let's start this conversation easy, what's your name?"
The man sighed before relaxing back into his seat a bit, making himself as comfortable as his position allowed.
"You can call me Tom."
Vance nodded, "Well it's a pleasure to meet you Tom. Now, why exactly were you and big ugly waiting to ambush me? Also, how'd you know where I would be?"
That was the big question. How had they known where he'd be dropped off and walking through? If his thoughts were right…
"Our boss told us to make contact with you to see if you would be willing to join us since he heard you were a strong mutant, and we have a friend over in Xavier's house."
… and he was, then that made things tricky.
'So Xavier has a mole and I'm guessing the boss he's avoiding naming is Magneto. Makes sense he'd have someone close to the group though it's annoying they came after me. Though, I'm not really looking to get involved in that shit so I'm just gonna ignore that.'
Vance closed his eyes while thinking and asked a question casually,
"Who's your boss?"
Tom shifted a bit uncomfortably, but still reluctantly spoke,
"He goes by the name Magneto. Really strong mutant."
Vance just nodded again at that.
'So it's what I thought. I'm gonna have to change stuff up to make things more distinct. Now what should I do with this guy.'
With a considering look he spoke softly,
"Do you happen to know your credit card information?"
When Tom gave a stiff nod, a confused look on his face, Vance broke into a smile, "Tom I have a wonderful idea."
Several hours later
Vance had decided not to go out tonight. Instead, he was organizing what would hopefully become his 'superhero' outfit for a while.
He'd landed on a darker color scheme, with his pants being of the looser athletic variety and solid black. His shirt was tight, similar to what Toji wore in Jujutsu Kaisen. Instead of solid black though it had dark blue shoulders that went into a deep 'V' with black for the sides and back. A dark blue cropped hooded sweatshirt was the final touch, with a hood that clung tight to the top of his head to hide his hair.
For the cherry on top he'd had a custom mask created. The mask didn't have any holes for his eyes or mouth and was split horizontally in the middle between black on the top and white on the bottom. The golden dharmachakra settled in the center was the finishing touch there. The mask worked with the outfit too as it held his hoodie down even more than it already was.
'Well bless Tom for giving me the budget for this.'
He'd knocked out the man after their impromptu shopping spree and deposited him at the nearest precinct assuming he had a warrant or two out for his arrest.
Vance decided to spend the rest of his night doing a deep dive into companies he could make investments into. He'd rob- confiscated money from a bunch of small time criminals over the last few weeks and with his bank account he had enough to spare several thousand for investements that were bound to blow up. He'd found a third party that would make his trades for him in exchange for a minuscule cut, and it was needed as he was currently under eighteen.
He put a solid chunk of his money into Google, pre-alphabet, for right under $10 a share. YouTube wasn't publicly available in 2006, but he knew google would buy it soon which would make things work.
Facebook also wasn't public yet, but he told Craig, his trader, to inquire on if he could privately invest. Apple was available, however, and Vance went all in on the $1.92 stock buying up as much as he could. He had future plans for bitcoin when it became available in a few years as well. Once he had money coming in from those two stocks and a few other companies he'd gone into (BlackBerry and Nvidia included) he would have even more to play with.
Leaning back in his desk chair, Vance sighed while rubbing his eyes.
'System please show me my status.'
Certainly host…
Name - Vance Gojo
Age - 16
Race - Cursed Human
Cursed Energy Usage - Grade 1 sorcerer
Cursed Techniques -
Adaptation and ??? - The ability to adapt to any and all phenomena and to ???? - Basic
Adaptations - Space, ???, Mental Strain, Bludgeoning (4 turns), Concussive Force (3 turns), Heat (2 turns), Slashing (3 turns), Piercing (1 turn), Telekinesis (1 turn)
Limitless - Bring the concept of infinity into reality and control space at will - Moderate
Other techniques/abilities - Rikugan
Infinity - Proficient
Cursed technique lapse, Blue - Proficient
The question marks in the adaptation portion still confused him as he couldn't feel any difference in his abilities past the adaptation.
'Maybe an additional aspect it has since it's a technique and not just an inherited ability like with Mahoraga? That doesn't feel right though.'
Moving on, with his constant use of the Six Eyes he was able to fine tune his usage of cursed energy even further allowing him to progress with blue and infinity. His adaptation was slower when grinding proficiency, but he had his path forward now.
'Slashing at three turns, Sukuna would hate to see me coming' he thought to himself with a smirk. 'Just need to research more fighting styles and I'll be lethal out there.'
Seeing it was midnight, he decided to close his eyes for a bit.
'School is ending soon. Speaking of school, I could probably test through high school this summer if I asked…'
Time Skip - 3 Months - September 2006
Vance could be seen shadowboxing with multiple fighting styles through a wooded area around mid day. His strikes wove together into a dance of knees, elbows, and fists that tore through the vegetation like a storm.
Coming to a stop after a straight right that made the air around his fist-
POP
-he relaxed his arms and stretched his arms while cracking his back.
His summer had been busy but productive. He'd gone through with testing out of high school, choosing to focus entirely on his vigilante activities and furthering his stocks past that point. 'Who needs college when you're rich?' Everything was going well with the stocks, and he'd been able to rob a few more criminals as well. The biggest contributor a mafia family member he'd gone to that generously gave him tens of thousands in return for not bringing him to the police. He'd gone back a week later and brought the guy in without being seen as well.
All in all, other than the few and far between cursed spirits he had to destroy things were looking up.
The X-Men had only needed his help once and even then he didn't end up actually doing anything, and no other person he'd fought had triggered any adaptations. He'd taken things into his own hands a little bit.
He had three turns for slashing now along with two for piercing, though he didn't enjoy the process the results were too good to pass up.
Humming a song that hadn't released yet, Vance began his trek back home while thinking about the future.
'The next year and a half or so is going to feel long, but if I can keep gaining more and more money I'll be set really well for the start of the world as I've seen it. I wonder if I should get involved with Stark at all…'
He continued to admire the day, his current walk being an unpopulated area just outside of Dover Plains, New York that was full of greenery. Vance didn't know if it would be a forest in the future, but for right now he enjoyed his walk before he ended up teleporting back home. He was dressed in casual clothes as the outings he'd started doing a month and a half ago were quite secluded with just about no chance for contact.
After a few minutes of nature viewing, he used Blue in quick succession to bring himself back to his apartment building. He could do long distance teleportation now, but he needed a clear path to get there and he wasn't confident about avoiding buildings on the way there quite yet.
Entering the building, he greeted his doorman before continuing down the lobby. The concierge desk was manned by a woman named Jennifer that he'd greeted most days, but today he stopped in his tracks when walking by.
'Her cursed energy signature is different.'
Vance didn't have an eidetic memory, but after seeing the same person and their cursed energy for months, you remember how they look. So when looking at Jennifer today the red hair, pale skin, and other features matched. The energy, meanwhile, made it look to his eyes like someone wearing her skin and immediately set him straight on edge.
His stopping must've been obvious as 'Jennifer' looked up quickly with a confused look before smiling.
"Good morning Vance, how are you today?"
Vance stared back for a minute, before carefully responding,
"Did you kill Jennifer?"
The woman frowned, "Vance I'm not sure-"
He flared his cursed energy, a blue aura rising subtly on his skin.
"Don't lie to me. I can literally see that you aren't her."
The woman's frown smoothed out at that as she schooled her expression,
'Shit. I've got to get out of here or things are going to go to hell.'
She gave a strained smile before responding,
"Jennifer is fine, I'm just covering her shift for her." She was hoping the admittedly poor excuse would get her out of the situation. Jennifer really was fine, just taking a day off at home due to a call from her 'boss' giving her a day off. The rest of it was just bullshit.
Vance took a step forward, causing the woman to slide her chair back to maintain distance between them.
"Well then why don't we just go and have a chat then? I'd love to learn more about you."
Before he could take another step a voice from behind made him whip around and activate infinity.
"That won't be necessary."
Standing behind him was a white man white brown hair that held silver streaks. He was dressed casually, with blue slacks, a black long sleeved shirt, and a brown/tan leather jacket.
"I believe you and I could have that discussion if you would be so kind as to indulge me."
Vance frowned again while facing the man directly, "Magneto?"
The man nodded while smiling, "I do believe you met a couple of my associates a few months back."
Vance just mentally groaned, 'I've really got to stop jinxing myself'.