2. First Week

Humanity is always being tested.

A small ship rocked in the waves created by a monstrous sea creature as it rose up out of the ocean depths, staring down at the insignificant Caravel for a moment before it roared and shot down at it. A moment later, it burst apart into several chunks as a shadowy swordsman sheathed his three swords.

Conflict and war is the crucible through which we evolve.

Lines of soldiers wearing white shirts and blue pants roared as they raced down a massive bridge. In their path, a shadowy figure with two swords on his back and a spear in his right hand calmly stood under a large winged serpent, lines of shadowy figures standing just as calmly behind him. There was no uniform denoting their group, but ALL of them were united in their purpose against the Marines rushing towards them.

Every battle, makes us stronger!

A shadowy figure in a straw hat stood over their defeated opponent slightly panting. After a moment, they turned away and shot a D shaped grin of light at the people standing the closest behind them. Similar grins of light appeared on their faces even as people further behind them in the rubble filled area began to loudly celebrate.

Those who fall will be forgotten.

A group of people fell slowly to the floor. Among them was a person with a rather large nose, another with a sword at the end of each finger, a man with a tail, a rather large woman, and an almost just as big man wearing a captain's hat. As they hit the ground, the figures all became indistinct, before fading away.

Those who rise up, their names will be remembered forever.

On an island at the end of a great but terrible ocean, a once empty throne was once more claimed. As the occupant's loyal followers joined them in looking back the way they had come, several ships of all sizes and shapes fired their cannons in salute, their black flags flapping wildly in the strong winds. A D shaped grin appeared on the figure's face as it laughed in the most joyful sound imaginable.

I jerked up from my air mattress, heart still beating like a drum as I looked around me after that unbelievably realistic dream, narrated by Doomfist from Overwatch of all things. Seeing the walls of the cave that I had been given by the island's inhabitants three days ago, I took a deep breath before I glanced over towards Tyrus who appeared to be sleeping on his bed of warm coals. Appeared being the key word as he said without opening his eyes "Had an interesting dream I take it?"

"You could say that." I said before I closed my eyes as I yawned and pushed my fist against my back cracking the whole chain of vertebrae. Giving a content sigh, I opened my eyes and saw Tyrus finishing his own yawn and full spine crack, his understandably taking a moment more before he flapped his wings and began to hover over his bed as he said "So, shall we get to work?"

I nodded and as Tyrus flapped over to hover beside me, I looked 'up' into the upper left corner of my vision and blinked once at the icon of a diamond inside a square that was in my eyesight. The icon flashed once before a list of IDs came down, bold IDs showing what I had unlocked already, and faded out for ones that I would have to unlock by using the IDs 'below' them for a certain amount of time. It was just a shame that I couldn't spam ID Create and Escapes to help unlock them faster, a few near the end looked MIGHTILY useful.

Basic ID

Cemetery ID

Farmland ID

Abandoned Town ID/Abandoned City ID/Corruscant ID

Forest ID/Rainforest ID/Kashyyyk ID

Swamp ID/Dagobah ID

Savannah ID/Dantoine ID

Desert ID/Tattoine ID

Beach ID/Ocean ID

Mountain ID/Volcanic ID

Tundra ID/Ice Field ID/Hoth ID

Coliseum ID (Random Enemy Waves)

Time Dilation ID, 2X/5X/10x/25X/50X/100X

Money Multiplier ID, 2X/5X/10X/25X/50X/100X

I gave the money multiplier ID a slightly longing look before I turned my gaze back to the top and blinked at Cemetery ID. As the world around us faded into a massive cemetery with fog swirling ominously around my knees, I once more mused how while I COULD technically create my own ID by saying ID Create and a defining word, it'd probably be a long time outside of needing something like an interrogation room before I got bored enough with what I already had to try it out. Any further thought was halted as a hand burst out of the grave closest to me and a groaning zombie clawed its way out of what SHOULD have been its final resting place.

Well, it started to crawl anyway. As soon as its torso was fully out, a bolt of lightning just smaller than the width of my hand shot dangerously close to my chest as it passed in front of me before it hit its head which proceeded to explode like a watermelon shot with a high caliber bullet. I paused from pulling my Tiaha out of its sheath to give Tyrus a warning look causing him to give a sheepish shrug of his wings before he shot down into the fog and began hunting. Shaking my head with a sigh, I finished drawing my weapon and used the club part of the spear to crack open the skull of the next zombie as it tried to get out and make me join the legion of the brain eaters.

By that time multiple zombies had left their own graves out of immediate reach and began shambling towards me. I took a quick look around to see where the biggest group of zombies was before I went to the other side and broke through the ring, more worried about getting the rotting bodies out of the way then killing them before I reached the outside of the circle and spun around and killed the outliers before I began a slow and steady fighting retreat. It was a strategy that had served me well for the last few days: Don't get surrounded so I could always keep moving AWAY from the hoard of enemies and focus on taking down one at a time. When I got better at combat I was sure that I could probably just dive right into mobs like this without a problem. But until that time, I was going to play it like I was leveling up a weak character in my Fire Emblem games and play things safe.

Fifteen minutes later, I speared the last one between the eyes and took a deep breath as it began to break down like the Risen from Fire Emblem Awakening. Once it finished, I knelt and collected the bit of money and an 'eye of the zombie' on the ground that was apparently useful in a few potions. I put the loot in my currently empty bookbag before I then back tracked grabbing the rest of the loot that my enemies had dropped upon their second deaths. Fortunately for me, Taifun had made it so that the loot glowed a golden color so that way I could find it under the fog.

I had just picked up the loot item from my first kill, a 'Lv One Skeleton Key' (Must keep away from Nami!), when a ten foot wide twister shot up into the air about a thousand feet away. I flinched at the loud sound and stood up to watch as Zombies, dirt, and even a tombstone or two were sucked into the funnel of wind before it lit up from the inside with an electrical charge. After I had blinked the spots out of my eyes, I sighed and began walking towards the destruction. Once there, I found Tyrus blowing all of his gathered loot into one pile and said "Tyrus, you were supposed to work on individual combat, not area of effect attacks."

"But I was! I used an individual attack to end my combat." Tyrus said with a cheeky grin and I sighed before shaking my head. I gave the large pile of loot he had collected an evaluating look before I said "That HAS to be enough for us to finally get that small subspace pocket generator."

"I hope so, I'm getting tired of us having to leave these IDs in order to get some food." Tyrus said.

I let out a hum of agreement as I put a hand on the loot and exited the ID, bringing it with us to the 'real' world. Once back in our cave, I began sorting through the loot, putting the money on my tablet where it was absorbed with small flashes of light and, amusingly enough, cashier sounds. Once I had everything in proper piles, I began the process of putting whatever I didn't want up for sale on the trade forum, the items disappearing once I took a picture with the tablet's camera, which somehow gave the trade forum's delivery service people the coordinates they needed for pickup. That done, I checked in on the sales of the previous loot transactions and was pleased to see that most of them had been purchased already giving me a final amount of money that would easily allow me to buy the aforementioned subspace pocket generator and still 'splurge' a bit.

Said generator was a mix of magic and technology, or magitech for short that acted in a similar manner as the book bag of Pokemon games with a few extras added to it. It could store multiple copies of an item (Up to 99, again similar to Pokemon's bag) and had three hundred 'slots' but was damn near weightless meaning that it wouldn't feel like you were working out while carrying it no matter what you had in it. And the part that I REALLY liked, not only would be capable of linking up with my tablet for easy inventory keeping but also had a remote storage function that would allow me to 'acquire' anything within a five-foot radius of it.

I quickly went to the item in question on the forum and choose the one that I would start off with, giving only a quick glance at the one that had a whopping TEN THOUSAND slots that I didn't think I could ever truly put through enough use to justify the rather insane cost of the dang thing. Twenty minutes later, I had the generator set in the pouch of my book bag closest to my back and everything but my mattress, bedding, and a camp shower I had bought two days ago in it.

That done, I tapped my fingers against the side of my tablet in thought as I stared at my remaining balance before I blinked and grinned as a thought came to me. The whole reason why I had stuck with the Cemetery ID was because it was easy to deal with the slow zombies with only me and sometimes Tyrus helping out. But if I had more people in my 'party' then I could theoretically handle a lot of the more difficult opponents that I was sure were in the other IDs that much sooner. And what did I do in the Fire Emblem games when I needed more 'warm bodies' in my teams to help make up for low level units? Why I bought Einherjar of course!

Tapping the word into the trade forum's search bar, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not ONLY could I get Einherjar of ANY character of ANY series, but it was possible to make custom ones as well. Of course, quite a few of the 'higher level' characters shown in the 'popular' section had prices that were absolutely INSANE! Seriously, a 'canon' Seventh Hokage Naruto Uzumaki was a whopping SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS! I let out a wince as I saw that one before I cocked my head and typed in Kushina Uzumaki in the Einherjar section's search bar and raised an eyebrow at how there were TWO distinct separations, Jinchurikki and Non-Jinchurikki, the non demon fox carrying version of the two substantially cheaper than the other, though still incredibly expensive. Didn't stop me from marking an adult version for my wish list though, she was one of my favorite female Naruto characters after all. I blamed the incredibly long hair, her unique chakra chains, and sealing abilities for that one.

Moving on from that, I selected a much more reasonable price range of five to two hundred dollars and looked through the 'lower level' options available. A minute later, my frown of concentration turned into a grin of delight as I looked at what was going to be my first Einherjar. I had at the very least watched the full first season of NCIS Las Angeles and NICIS New Orleans, but my REAL favorite was and would always be the original NCIS. I had seen all of the episodes for seasons one through thirteen and was working, if somewhat slowly, through season fourteen. I had the first twelve seasons on DVD and the last two on my phone. Hell, I had even gone looking for Gibbs' complete set of rules when I was bored once. On the practical side, it would probably be better learning Marine CQC rather than Mossad's Krav Maga since I was nowhere NEAR flexible enough for some of the kicks the show had showed Ziva doing. So with that said, my first choice was obvious, tempting as it was to go straight for Ziva, I'd rather start at the proverbial top.

I selected Gibbs and only took a few seconds to raise an eyebrow at a 'outfit selection' option before I ignored it and tapped on the 'canon' version. There was a quick tutorial about how to activate and deactivate the Einherjar before an amusing warning of 'Ignore Gibbs' rules at your own risk.' appeared on the screen before there was a flash and a card just about an inch taller than a standard trading card appeared on top of the screen. Picking it up, I studied the serious look the image on the top half of the card gave me before I mentally activated the card and flicked it shuriken style away from me. There was another bright flash as the magic of the card activated and standing before me in all of his glory was THE Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

The veteran Marine took in his surroundings with an expert eye before he looked back at me and Tyrus, the winged serpent merely earning a slightly raised eyebrow before he shifted the look to me and said "Well this is different. What's the situation boss?"

I sat down on the cave floor and said "You might want to get comfortable Marine, this could take a while." Gibbs gave the cave floor a wry look but didn't hesitate to mimic my actions as I said "I think I'll start off with asking if you know what the multi-verse theory is."

"Whatever can happen has happened in worlds similar but different to our own, right?" Gibbs asked and I nodded and said "Pretty much, alright, here's what happened."

Two hours after I had explained the world we were in and the highlights of what had happened in the story, Gibbs leaned forward and said "Let me see if I've got all of this straight. We're currently in a world where what we would class as superhuman is the norm and there's people who take that even further. We'll be fighting these people when you join a pirate crew who would rather have adventures then the stereotypical loot, pillage, and kill, and in fact the only REAL crime they committed was storming a government stronghold in order to save one of their own who was the only survivor when said government had her island wiped off the map. Said government is highly corrupt with a bunch of stuck up nobles able to get away with whatever they want and an almost as bad Navy and Marine corps enforcing their rule. You've got just under three months to get your body in shape and become combat capable before you are to leave this island to join this crew but you have NO idea at what point of the timeline you know you are at or if you are even in the same 'version' that you know meaning that most of your SPECIFIC knowledge is either highly useful at best or completely useless at worst. Your plan for preparing for this unknown future is to amass as much money as you can in order to provide 'out of the box' equipment and so you plan to buy more of us Einherjar in order to both help you earn loot faster and also help you become combat capable. Did I get everything?"

"Well you forgot the fact that there's a 99.99% chance that the captain of the crew will become the second Pirate King after one hell of a ride but yeah, pretty much." I said with a shrug.

"I need a coffee." Gibbs said before he took a sip of said hot beverage causing me and Tyrus to jerk in surprise with wide eyes as we tried to figure out how the hell he got said cup when it sure as hell WASN'T in his hand a second ago. Gibbs had a not quite smug smirk on his face as he took a deep drink. When he was done, his cup somehow vanished again even though we were both looking at it before he stood up and there was a brief pulse of what I could only assume was magic and he was in full tactical gear as he said "Well no point just lounging around here, the sooner we get started the sooner I can see what I have to work with."

I gave a shrug and said "Sure, I want to get enough money to buy one of the lower level lance users anyway, see if they can offer me any tips for my Tiaha." Standing up, I made sure my book bag was secure before I sent us back to the cemetery.

Time Skip: Five Days After Arrival

It's really amazing what a multiplier having Einherjar can be, especially when said Einherjar are based on a 'real life' team that is used to working with each other for years. Oh sure, since I had ALL of Team Gibbs with me rather than just the 'current' line up there were some pretty interesting times at first, but overall the team had really helped me rack in the loot. Of course, the MRT wasn't the only NCIS Einherjar I got, the full roster was as follows: Gibbs, Dinozzo, McGee, Kate, Ziva, Bishop, Vance, Shepherd, Abby, Ducky, Palmer. Admittedly, the last three were simply to 'complete the set', and mostly had remained in the card holder I kept on the right side of my belt while the rest of us were going after zombies and the creatures of the other 'beginner' IDs, but that's beyond the point.

NCIS wasn't the only franchise I drew from. Yesterday I had switched from the 'modern crime' genre to the fantasy genre and started buying Fire Emblem Einherjar. I started with Donnel from Awakening and Amelia from Sacred Stones. The two lance users gave me a relatively quick lesson in how to use my spear and then we were all right back into the action. After we got a substantial amount of loot an hour later I went a little purchase crazy and bought a bunch of the 'lords' of the franchise in order to give us a wide coverage of combat skills. The final Fire Emblem tally last night had been as follows: From Awakening, there was Donnel, Chrom, Lissa, Robin (Female just because I could), and Lucina. From Sacred Stones: Amelia, Franz (Who I had ALWAYS partnered with her in the games as a spear point team), Eirika, Ephraim, Tana, Innes, L'arachel, Lyon, and Joshua. From the 'original' English version of Fire Emblem I grabbed Lyndis, Eliwood, and Hector. Echoes saw Alm and Celica joining us while Radiant Dawn had Elincia and Ike. Finally I got both Nohr and Hoshido's prince and princess groups from Fates: Xander, Leo, Camilla, Elise, Corrin (Again female just because I could), Azura, Ryoma, Hinoka, Takumi, and Sakura.

Needless to say, with thirty-nine combat Einherjar backing me and Tyrus, we got a LOT of loot today when we did the Coliseum ID for the first time. I had enough money after the eight hours in there that I could buy a second, slightly smaller subspace pocket generator for the card holster I had bought for the Einherjar, a small solar energy collector/power strip so that way I wouldn't have to constantly wind up the small hand held generator Taifun had given me when I first arrived, a pair of Ironwood swords along with a pair of kukri knives made of the same material that I planned to learn how to use in one and two months respectively and so kept in my inventory, and just a little bit of reading material to round it all out.

Said reading material was a pair of books written by one Riskua Mihawk, World's Greatest Haki Expert and a reincarnated self-insert that author Tsume Yuki had brought to my attention with her story Tell It To The Marines. I had been rather pleasantly surprised when their character HAD had literature available for purchase showing that YES, the stories I had read before really did happen in this marvelous multiverse I was now part of. Said books were titled 'The Origins of Haki' and 'Theories of Haki'.

I currently had all of the Einherjar out and most of them were exploring the island with Tyrus and a few of his friends acting as guides. I personally was trudging my way through the appropriately titled Theories book, the information inside reading more like a high-end physics book than a book for beginners. Thankfully I had enough background info from my previous One Piece readings that I could assimilate the information with a minimal amount of trouble. Though I DID make a note to myself ten pages in to see if there was a 'For Dummies' version once I finished reading these two if only for Luffy and Zoro's sake. Abby was currently sitting beside me going through the Origins book with a glee only a goth forensic scientist could have, Ducky and Palmer both impatiently waiting for their own turns at the book even as they discussed medicine with the healers of the Fire Emblem group.

I was just getting into the part that discussed Haki's applications in accelerating healing times when Abby suddenly said "Hey Matt, I noticed you bought several close range weapons, but do you have a plan for long range?"

I blinked once before looking up at her and said "Not really, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to give me a gun any time soon since I need to learn how to properly use not only my Tiaha but sword and knife fighting as well. And while I did earn a couple of Archery and BB Riflery merit badges when I was a scout, my aim was never really anything to write home about. It'd probably be better if I stayed away from ranged weaponry so that way I can avoid friendly fire."

Abby grinned at me and said "That's a pretty good point, but let me counter that there's more to long range than just guns and bows. For instance, you could use one of these little beauties!" And with that she pulled out her taser with the same flourish a master would use to pull a sheet off their latest masterpiece for an audience of eager fans.

I blinked again at the sight of the defensive weapon and said "You know, it's been so long since I've seen an episode where you use it I honestly forgot you carry one of those everywhere you go."

Abby let out a chuckle and said "That's because everyone's learned not to mess with me."

"Right." I said with a roll of my eyes before I brought out my tablet and made a note to look over tasers in the trade forum tomorrow, adding a stunner to the note as well after a moment's consideration. After all, Abby was right, just because I was worried about potential friendly fire didn't mean I shouldn't have a weapon later on that could instantly drop an enemy, and Tasers WERE to the best of my knowledge one shot weapons. That done, I went back to my reading, wondering if I could possibly have any of these Haki skills down enough for proper use before I had to leave the island. The Concealment Haki alone would be EXTREMELY useful if I did.

That night as I slept on my mattress, I dreamed of a shadowy figure with a D shaped grin of light laughing as it ran through a forest of soap bubble producing mangrove trees, several other figures happily chasing them.

END

Author's Notes: Whew, working all but one night of the week is exhausting. Now then, show of hands, how many of you guys guessed that Gibbs was going to be my first Einherjar? Though I guess given how many times I reference him in my other stories it really shouldn't have been a surprise that I would get him at some point. Honestly, I was planning on this chapter to cover the first month but then Gibbs gave me that look of his and I had to give him more screen time on pain of head slap. And then Abby butted in with her puppy eyed look. (Which was promptly ruined when she took a sip of her Caf-Pow.) Anyway, I hope you guys liked the chapter, this is Tac out.