AN: This is the continuation of the formerly-dead Dungeon Crawling series. A substantial portion of this first chapter will have nerd-heavy exposition, but that drops off almost completely in later chapters. You have been warned.
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Down the streets of Tokyo, a girl just on the verge of becoming a young woman, walked alone. She was tall for her age, having already reached the average height of a Japanese woman (5'2" or 157cm) at the age of fourteen, though her closed body language and shy demeanor made her appear smaller than she actually was. She carried a schoolbag in one hand, and a book in the other, which she was largely lost in, while her feet carried her home from school on auto-pilot. Mizuno Ami was, on the whole, the picture of an adolescent Japanese bookworm, though her male classmates would have described her face as 'cute' if it was out of a book long enough for them to see it much.
A pained yowl jolted Ami out of her literary reverie, and she looked down to discover that she'd just stepped on the tail of a...
Is that a cat? Ami thought to herself as she stepped back, staring down at the huge lump of fur on the sidewalk, I didn't think cats could have red fur...
Ami gasped as she realized that the red was not the cat's natural coloration, at least, not on the outside of its body. A swift mental review called the location of the nearest veterinary clinic to mind, and Ami hastily crouched down to check the cat's injuries. It had long, thick fur, so much so that she was forced to attempt to locate its wounds manually, and it twitched feebly as her hands gently explored its body. She was able to quickly locate numerous gashes along its (large) flanks, as well as a shard of crystal about the size of her pinky sticking out of its back.
And three of its legs were broken.
Reasonably certain that moving it wouldn't aggravate its injuries even further, Ami carefully picked the large cat up. Ami groaned as it feebly struggled against her grip, but that had far more to do with it being heavy, than its struggles.
"Don't worry, neko-chan," Ami whispered quietly into the wounded creature's ear as she began speed-walking towards the vet's, "I'll take care of you."
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System crashed, unmounting,..
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Alternate ISO found, mounting...
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"Five broken ribs, at least two breaks in each leg, nine different lacerations along his body, blood loss to the point where he's barely alive, not to mention the crystal shard protruding from his back."
The vet looked up from the list of injuries describing the cat, and offered Ami a sympathetic expression.
"I'm sorry miss Mizuno," He said quietly, "But we can't justify the expense that saving him would involve, not for a random stray. The only reason he's alive right now is that he's incredibly hardy, even for a Meinkun."
"Meinkun?" Amy asked, curiousity reflexively perking up at the foreign name, until she shook her head and forced herself to focus on what was more immediately important, "How expensive will treating him be?"
"It will cost anywhere from one hundred to four hundred thousand yen," The veterinarian said sympathetically, "It's-"
He broke off as Ami produced a credit card from within her purse, one that her mother had given her for use in case of emergencies.
"This has a credit limit of five hundred thousand yen, sensei," Ami said quietly, "Please treat him."
The Veterinarian paused for a moment, studying the girl carefully, taking in her simple, but high-quality clothing, her shy but determined body language, and the complete lack of twitchiness teens (such as his son) displayed when they were lying. Eventually, he decided that even if she was lying about the credit limit, he could afford a partial loss for someone so determined.
"I'll treat him," He said, "I have to warn you though, with how much blood he's lost, he may die anyways."
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Mizuno Saeko was a busy, busy, busy woman. She was an Oncologist, considered by many to be the best in Japan, and with how common cancer was amongst fatal diseases, her skills were very much in demand, and every patient that reached her was always in danger of death. There were many upsides to her work; lives saved, respect, gratitude, recognition, very nice pay; but there were downsides as well, primarily in that she had far, far too little time with her daughter.
She was still pretty sure that she'd been in the apartment often enough to notice if they'd gotten a pet though.
"Ami?" Saeko asked as she stared at the basket (which looked more like a tub as far as size went) with a bandaged lump of fur in it, "What is this?"
"It's a meinkun, Kaa-san," Her daughter replied, looking up from where she was carefully feeding the creature something from a bottle, "I found him on the sidewalk, badly injured."
Professional curiosity piqued, Saeko moved up beside her daughter, and began to carefully inspect the creature, gently feeling around the bandages, and taking note of the three splinted limbs. Between its long, bushy fur and twitching tail obscuring its general shape, it took her some time to realize that the creature was, in fact, a cat.
"This is a cat?" Saeko breathed, looking over at her daughter in shock, "I thought you said it was a raccoon!"
"Mm," Ami said, shaking her head, but keeping her concentration on the cat, "Mainuh Kuneh, it's an American breed of cat, one of the largest in the world."
"I knew Americans liked to make things bigger," Saeko said, staring down at the cat in disbelief, "But this is ridiculous!"
"Hai," Ami said with a nod, "The veterinarian, after weighing him, said that this meinkun is probably going to set the record for size. Most meinkun are smaller."
"How much smaller?" Saeko asked, moving around the table to take a seat across from her daughter.
"He's seventeen kilograms," Ami said, setting aside the bottle (which Saeko noticed was effectively empty, "Most meinkun don't grow larger than eleven kilos."
"Most cats don't grow larger than five kilograms, Ami," Saeko said flatly, "This thing is far too large to be a cat."
Ami's face fell, and Saeko had no idea why what she had just said had upset her daughter. She waited a moment while the younger Mizuno carefully lowered the cat's head back down into the basket, then reached out to grasp her daughter's hands.
"What's wrong Ami-chan?" She asked seriously.
"Ah," Ami said, valiantly trying to hold back tears, "The veterinarian said that the only reason he survived all the blood loss, was because he was so huge in the first place..."
Maternal instinct was a thing within Saeko that was often starved due to separation, but when it did strike, it struck with the force of a typhoon; Saeko swept around the table and wrapped her daughter into a hug in a matter of second. Ami dissolved into quiet tears; the girl had never seen death before, something that Saeko had deliberately engineered, and part of the reason that her work separated her from her daughter so much. Even as skilled as she was, Saeko was lucky if only a third of her patients died in a given year, due to the severity of the cases she had to deal with, and keeping her daughter away from the endless procession of soon-to-be dead that she dealt with every day was something she had bent great efforts and energies towards.
Saeko knew from painful personal experience, that encountering death for the first time was hard, and was glad that her daughter's first brush with it had both come from an encounter with an animal, and one that had been a brush, rather than an actual fatality. Eventually, her daughter began to calm down, and Saeko knew that there was one question she could ask her that would be guaranteed to get her mind off of the unhappy subject.
"So Ami-chan," Saeko said calmly, "Tell me about this visit to the vet, and how you paid for it..."
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Welcome to Anima, Beyond Fantasy. Begin Character Creation, Y/N?
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Life changed a little over the next few weeks for the Mizuno's. Ami spent less time at the library, and more at home, often reading while quietly stroking the recuperating Maine Coon. The cat spent most of its time unconscious, sleeping off its recovery, and most of the time Ami spent around it while it was conscious, was spent feeding it. She got the impression that the cat disliked being fed, but it didn't actively resist her, and she was far too practical to consider not feeding it just because of an impression of dislike.
It was also very clear to Ami that the cat was rarely, if ever, fully conscious. Its eyes were almost always dilated, and when it did move around, it seemed to be poorly coordinated, though it was hard to tell, with three of its legs stuck in splinted casts. Ami had called the veterinarian about it, but he had said that it was most likely that the cat's body was simply reacting to the heavy trauma by enforcing unconsciousness and low levels of activity, much like people who were very sick sleeping far more than normal. He told her that if the cat continued to be torpid after its legs had healed, then there may be cause for concern, but until then, not to worry about it.
Ami hoped that he was right, and in an attempt to make the cat feel less alone, made a habit of putting its basket beside her futon when she slept, in the hopes that it would feel less lonely.
One other substantial consequence that came from Ami's unintended encounter with a dying cat on the sidewalk, was that her mother decided that the appropriate consequence to Ami's large expenditure on the cat's behalf, was to put her in charge of the family's finances. It was both a punishment, in that it took up a fair portion of Ami's time, and an immense gesture of trust, in that Saeko trusted her daughter's sense of responsibility enough to manage the family's finances well. Ami had been nervous at first, but when she discovered just how well her mother's job paid, and realized that due to her personal tastes being cheap (books), and her mother being far too busy for expensive hobbies, they had actually been spending less than half of her mother's income, even after taxes.
On the whole, Ami found that the changes made for a happier life, one that became happier still when the cat woke up.
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Well. Looks like the consequences of defeat were, this time, much more severe. Unlike the first fight against an epic opponent that I lost, this one, probably wisely, rather than just casting me across the world, cast me out into another reality altogether.
A reality so different that the system by which my abilities were quantified was cast away, and a new one needed to be implemented. Just to make matters worse, at some point when I had been crossing timestreams, my consciousness (already damaged by what Dumbles had done to me), smashed right through alternate versions of myself, imparting a new bundle of knowledge, but turning my mind into near-mush in the process.
There's probably a version or few of me in other universes, trapped in an asylum, gibbering mad.
The upside to the new reality? The mechanics I'm being given to work with are from the Anima, Beyond Fantasy system, which I like quite a bit more than I like D'n'D. The downside? One of the main reasons I like the system more, is that it's less broken.
Less broken meaning it's going to be harder for me to break the game to keep myself (and others) alive and well. This is going to be all kinds of not fun.
First step; Race selection. And apparently, I'm a cat. Not allowed to change that either; the Fun has already begun!
Second step, Creation Point selection, the single most critical aspect of Anima character creation, and of the five CP I start with, four are already locked into choosing The Gift and Access to Psychic Disciplines. Oh, and I have the 'Mute' disadvantage; now the Fun has been doubled!
For those unfamiliar with the Anima system, Creation Points (sometimes also called Character Points) are something you only get at the start of the game, and never get again, unless you essentially ascend to godhood, which there is no game mechanic for ever achieving. A character starts with five (three in the original version), and can take up to three disadvantages to get more. To give an idea of scale, Mute is worth one point, Blind is worth two, and no disadvantage can give you more than two points. On the upshot of things, getting proper access to magic or Psychic Powers takes 2 CP, and that's just to get you access. You have to spend Development Points to actually get any use out of them.
Considering that the Dragon's curse barring me from Magic and Psychic powers had doubtless survived the transition between worlds with me (seeing as how I was still stuck as a cat too), that meant that 80% of my starting CP were completely wasted. Well, wasted for the time being; I'm an eternal optimist, one could say. Mute, while not being surprising to have as a cat, was one thing I really would have liked to do without. Of course, finding someone who could handle a talking cat without freaking out would have been annoying, but I'm sure I could have managed it eventually.
That still left me with the task of determining what to do with my available CP and disadvantages. Mentally 'touching' (have you ever used a metaphysical interface?) the list of Disadvantages, I rapidly began paging through the available options. Some of them were not even worth considering, such as Blind (even if it was worth 2 points), while others, such as the one which gave a penalty to Initiative, were potentially very useful without being utterly crippling, but would completely remove tactical options, such as being faster than opponents of substantial power.
Still, there were a few standbys that I had used before, and considered to be well-worth the costs involved. Unfortunately, the first of them, the 'Powerful Enemy' option, was unavailable. Unsurprising, considering that it was a setting/roleplay element. What was available, however, was the list of Magical and Psychic disadvantages. One of my old standbys was in there as well; Psychic Consumption, which made you burn Life Points (HP in other systems) when you failed at using a Psychic Power, potentially enough to kill you if you failed hard. It was a disadvantage I used, because when I did use Psychic Powers, I rarely used them in a way that left me vulnerable to 'shorting out,' and it was worth two CP.
And, of course, if I never rid myself of the Dragon's Curse, then the disadvantage would never actually hurt me anyways. I was able to select the disadvantage, not a given as by Rules As Written (RAW) you could only use Magic/Psychic Disadvantages to gain more points of Magic/Psychic Advantages. Given that Psychic Disadvantages disappeared from my selection after that, I took it that whoever had come up with this implementation of the rules had decided that 'Access to Psychic Disciplines' as an Advantage counted as a Psychic Advantage even though with RAW, it was treated as a 'common' advantage.
Unfortunately, the only Magical Disadvantages worth two CP were substantially more painful; Shamanism and Magical Blockage. Magical Blockage made it so that you were incapable of recharging magical power on your own, and had to instead drain it from other casters. Shamanism wasn't too bad, in that it only made your spells require a material component, but for someone like myself who believed in readiness at all times, and no longer had opposable thumbs, it was a potentially critical weakness.
...If I ever actually got access to magic back. Screw it, I needed those points, I'd check to see if any of the Common Disadvantages were worth the risk, but if not, I'd take it.
...And nope. The only Common Disadvantages worth 2 CP were blind, heavy initiative penalty, taking an XP penalty (which I did not want to know what would do to my mind), or having a fatal disease. Looks like I'm taking Shamanism; the Initiative Penalty was the only other one even worth considering, and it was a definite loss of tactical ability, as opposed to a possible loss of tactical ability.
Oh ho? What's this; I still have the disadvantage selections available? ...Well how about that, I can only choose three Disadvantages, and I had no choice about Mute, which means that I can rules lawyer out a fourth Disadvantage. It doesn't make up for being trapped as a cat unable to speak, but it's nice to know that I'm not completely without compensation.
I had six CP available, so picking out a few advantages before the final disadvantage seemed appropriate. This was where things became tricky, because the Advantages selected, even beyond whether or not a character had access to Magic or Psychic Powers, determined how one was to build their character effectively, and I was blocked from all of my favored paths to power.
In Anima, there are multiple completely distinct mechanics, each of which is its own path to power. Generally speaking, the more powerful a mechanic, the harder to access it is, and the lower endurance it is, while the less powerful a mechanic is, the higher endurance and easier to access it is. This is a little bit of a simplification, as each power set also has its own 'specialization,' but it'll do for a basic understanding. Listed from least to most powerful with some versatility, here are the methods of developing power:
Straight up weapon/armor combat. All you have to do is put Development Points (DP) into attack, defense, and Wear Armor. If you can get higher quality/magical weapons and equipment, they sharply raise your combat ability. The only limit on this is literally fighting to physical exhaustion.
Martial Arts. At lower levels, Martial Arts give you a few advantages to things like grappling,and otherwise more or less emulate the advantages of using higher-quality weapons. Further, they're so expensive to learn that unless you're a Tao, the class that is engineered around Martial Arts and only pays half DP cost for learning them, it's just not worth it. They also have steadily rising skill requirements for the higher tiers of the arts. The payoff though, is that at higher levels, they turn you into a veritable juggernaut, with a body harder than steel, the ability to punch through tank armor, and the like. They also give bonus 'MK' for developing Ki abilities.
Ki Dominion. The first, and weakest of the blatantly supernatural ability sets. It's also the least flexible, in that it does nothing except give you mobility, some bonuses to durability/speed, and straight attack/defense enhancements. As well as being able to shoot big old energy blasts, DBZ-style, but the fact remains that it is essentially a pure-combat focus. The advantages it has, is that you don't need to spend any CP to gain access to Ki abilities, and you don't have to worry about 'Projection' for using them effectively. One can also do summoning with Ki.
Psychic Powers. Psychic Powers are generally what I recommend for a first time player who wants to use magic of some sort. The mechanic is fairly simple (though the book does a poor job of explaining it), and they have a nice balance of offense, defense, utility, and specialize in buffing. The primary advantage comes from the very nice buffs you can get out of them, without losing the ability to deploy offensive firepower, the primary disadvantages are the need to spend CP in order to gain access to Psychic Powers in the first place, and the dependence on Projection.
Magic. Magic is the most powerful mechanic within Anima by far; whereas Ki Dominion tops out with 'I turn a town into a crater in a few massive blasts,' and Psychic Powers top out with 'I freeze everything within X kilometers to near-absolute zero,' Magic tops out with spells that literally require you to be a god to cast. Because those spells include things like 'I incinerate everything smaller than a moon within one Astronomical Unit of Earth,' or 'I turn someone else into a demigod.' Spells that don't require you to be a god, just to be epic level and spend lots of character resources on Metamagic, then spend double Zeon (Anima's name for mana) to cast, do things like 'I create a sentient being from scratch,' or 'I can predict the major world events of the next century with high accuracy, or the detailed events of the next year.' I think you get the idea for the sheer scope of power within magic. Even without High or Divine magic, magic is the best source for healing, broad utility spells, and has a general bevy of buffs, debuffs, counterspells, and attack/defense as well. It can basically do everything that anything else can do, it just may be more costly. One can also do summoning with magic.
It's important to note that there are two other 'sources of power' in the game as well. The first is skills, which everybody gets and uses (though Martial Artists are particularly dependent upon them), and cover the general range of abilities you'd expect most RPG skill systems to cover; knowledges, stealth, athletics, crafting skills, etc. (Notable as well is the Style skill, which is literally just 'whatever I did, I looked awesome doing it, even if I failed at it. This includes making it so that any scars you receive are 'cool' scars rather than 'ugly' scars.)
The second is Ki Abilities. These are subtly different than Ki Dominion; you need a couple of these (Use of Ki, Ki Control) in order to use Ki Dominion abilities at all, but from there, they mostly function as an array of low-end buffs that are nice for anybody to use. They include the array of abilities you see in less blatantly-supernatural Shonen martial arts series, such as making you slightly supernaturally tough, age more slowly, be able to run up walls, get by with less sleep/food/drink, etc. In the expansion book specifically engineered for Martial Artists and Ki Domnion users, it added a few more blatantly supernatural abilities (which are really expensive), such as Shape-Shifting, 'Multiplication of Bodies,' which is basically Shadow Clones from Naruto (though you're not going to make more than 3-3 dozen even at high levels), and buffing your core stats.
Something that's important to note, is that you pay for both Ki Abilities, and Ki Dominion techniques, with something called Martial Knowledge; every class gets at least some Martial Knowledge for free at each level. Warrior-types get 25, skill monkeys usually get 20ish, casters get 10, the Tao (martial artist class) gets 30, and the Technician, which is intended to be the 'Ki caster' class, gets 50. This means that even characters who don't bother with trying to develop them at all, will pick up a few Ki Abilities as they go, and possibly even Ki Dominion techniques (though for regular casters that's highly unlikely).
Every class also gets a progression of Psychic Points for free. For Psychic classes it's one per level, for non-Psychics it's one every three (which is functionally irrelevant), but the point remains that the game designers saw Ki Dominion and Psychic Powers so much less powerful than Magic, that they give you some of the other two for free to counter-balance it.
Further, unless a caster is using pathetic, podunk spells, they'll be lucky to cast more than four to nine spells in a day (spells scale, as you get to higher levels, you cast more powerful, more expensive versions), and that's only if they're willing to exhaust their entire reserves. Which then usually take a week or so to recharge. Magic is powerful, unmatchedly so, but unlike the people who made D'n'D 3.5, the game designer(s) for Anima succeeded in making the most powerful pieces on the board, with the lowest combat endurance, and thus the need to be protected. A mage can use certain methods and spells to make themselves higher-endurance, but in doing so they generally lower themselves to the same throw-weight as other mechanics havwe available.
I could go on, and on, and on, but as I'm not going to be using magic or psychic powrs, I'll stop here for now.
The original thought behind this spur, was what Advantages to purchase. Not counting magical and Psychic Advantages, CP can buy you anything from durability akin to light kevlar just in your skin, enhanced resistance to magic, psychics, disease, poison, and general physical damage, to better luck, an affinity for animals, skills being easier to learn, or just naturally gaining ranks in skills every level. They can also be used to make your supernatural energy reserves recharge faster (6, 12, or 60 times faster for Ki and Psychic users, 4 times faster for Magic users; again, relative power levels), or 'buy' you a supernatural heritage, meaning that one of your ancestors was an elemental, a Kami, or the like, and you inherited extra-normal abilities from them.
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My favored path to power in Anima thus far has been Psychic/Martial Artist, using Psychic Buffs to augment the combat capabilities of a martial artist. As Magic and Psychic abilities are both directly blocked for me, and being a cat I can't learn human martial arts, I am entirely barred from my preferred form of character building. Being mute (and, again, a cat) makes social skills largely useless to me, having no opposable thumbs knocks out most of the rest of the skills, leaving me with essentially two meaningful options; stealth skills, and Ki Powers.
I'm about to become a LaserCat. If the internet is around in this reality, I'm probably doomed to become a Lolcat; I'm not sure how I feel about that.
That aside, I realized that I needed to see what stats I had been assigned before going too far into Ki abilities, as that would pretty heavily affect what I was going to do with them. A mental 'push' directed me away from Advantage selection, and into my Stats display.
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 11
Agility: 11
Constitution: 11
Intelligence: 11
Power: 11
Willpower: 11
Perception: 11
Appearance: 11
Well. For those of you unfamiliar with Anima, and familiar with D'n'D, no that is not a craptacularly mediocre stat set. 'Normal human' in Anima is five, and 'maximum human potential,' not counting supernatural, is ten. Twenty is the top of the scale, and at twenty, you gain abilities like Perception giving you total awareness of the world around you, down to the atomic level, Agility (which determines your move speed) allowing you to instantly arrive at any destination you desire, etc, etc. Starting with elevens in every stat is a bit like starting with a 22 or a 24 in everything in D'n'D.
(Appearance is pure asthetics, and has no attached mechanics. I was, apparently, going to be a very handsome kitty though.)
Looks like my 'Paragon' boosts have held over, in some form or another. Those stats are particularly relevant to Ki Dominion because a character's Ki pool is determined by their stats; everything except Intelligence and Perception give them 1 point of Ki per point in that stat up to 10, and 2 points for each point past 10. Meaning that I was sitting on 72 Ki to start with, whereas an average human started with around 30, and the amount of Ki necessary to make a decent stab at leveling a small city, was about 110. If you burned it all in a single attack and passed out afterwards.
Not a bad start, on the whole. I just wish I knew what kind of world I was starting out in, so that I knew what kind of firepower I'd need to be packing. Ah well; I at least know some of what I'm working with, so it's finally time to start picking advantages!
3 CP for Ki Recovery 3; giving me one Ki Point regenerated per Ki stat per minute, rather than per hour. For offensive power, that's roughly the difference between being a muzzle-loader musket from the 1800's, and being a modern light machine gun. The muskets in the civil war actually packed some pretty decent stopping power, but a SAW's rate of fire was murderously higher.
I considered buying 'Quick Reflexes' to give myself a faster response time (initiative), but while it was nice, I didn't think that +25 Initiative was worth the CP, especially when every branch of power except conventional weapons gave a means of raising your initiative by substantially more.
Good Luck was always useful; it didn't have a description when I 'paged' over to itl in the actual game system it made it harder for you to fumble (critically fail), but I didn't know how it would translate in a 'real life' implementation of such a thing.
Artifact was tempting, I was kind of surprised to see it there. You could spend 1, 2, or 3 points on it. It was largely GM discretion that determined what kind of item you'd get out of it, but as magical items were extremely rare in the game, it was the only reliable way to get one. GM's I'd played with in 'real life' scaled it from a useful trinket at 1 point, to an airship with lightning cannons at 3. Like Good Luck, I considered it as a definite possibility.
Switching over to the Bloodlines available from Dominus Exxet, the book on Ki Powers and Martial Arts, I was uncertain how to proceed.
Hm...
There were affinities for each of the elements; none of them particularly interested me, as Ki Dominion didn't use element-aligned attacks, making them largely useless to me.
Eyes of Death, an ability that let you see something along the lines of the supernatural threads of fate that bound a being together, and attack them directly. Potent, but it cost 2 CP, and I didn't really want to spend that much on something that basically devolved to nothing more than 'break things better.' It was cool, but not sufficiently utilitarian.
Eyes of The Soul, an ability that lets you see the supernatural and Ki energy that flows through both living beings, and the inanimate parts of the world. That was a high-utility ability; it had no direct combat applications, but it literally let you see the world in a whole new way, let you locate things by supernatural rather than mundane senses, and functionally let you see in the dark. I could work with that, especially since it only cost 1 CP, likely due to the lack of direct combat applications. A tentative yes.
Tsukiyomi, the Legacy of the Moon. This was one of the most interesting bloodlines, and one of the ones I'd long since wanted to try. It provided a bonus anywhere from miniscule, to respectably sizeable, on every single thing that a character did, dependent upon the phase of the moon. The darker the moon was, the larger the bonus, to the point where a New Moon made you heal faster, as well as capable of surpassing natural physical limitations, and an Eclipse did crazy-awesome things. The downside was that aside from during an Eclipse, these bonuses were only available during the night, meaning that if most of the action in a campaign took place during the day, you were SoL. Still, it only cost 1 CP, so not bad.
Uruboros, the serpent of time, was pretty worthless, it made it a bit easier to catch people by surprise, but not enough to be worth 1 CP.
Blood of the Great Beasts let you pick from a selection of powers usually only available to monsters, but they explicitly excluded pretty much all the good stuff, so it wasn't worth taking unless you really wanted wings, claws, or the like. And I am a cat, so claws=yes already. Unless I'm in a fantasy setting, I doubt wings would be a good idea, and even then, it'd ruin any chance for social stealth.
Eyes of Destiny; basically the Sharingan if it wasn't broke-ass shit. It lets you predict your foes movements and get a bonus in combat, but you have to use it for a while to start seeing the patterns, the longer you watch them, the bigger the bonus. It also lets you copy their Ki techniques; you still have to pay MK to learn them, but less. It might've been worth it at 1 CP, but at 2 CP, unless you're fighting bosses you can spy on regularly as well as Dominion users, it's just not worth it.
Eternal Blood. Now there is an example of a Determinator's dream. It makes it so it's about four times as hard to kill you dead, as removing the need for such puny things as 'a heart' or 'a non-severed spine' to keep on fighting. You do take penalties for accumulating massive tissue damage, but a sword through the head won't be any more impediment to you than a sword through the bicep (arguably less as no muscles will be damaged), and you will be able to keep fighting literally until you drop dead. Which is stupidly hard to do; you're basically as indestructible as villains from slasher movies. It might seem cheap at 1 CP, but it's only any good when you're getting the shit kicked out of you; if you win your fights with only modest damage taken, it's never going to matter at all. What I've used it for in the past, is being able to fake being dead when somebody stuck a sword through my character's head, then walked off assuming the fight was over.
Tempting, very tempting, considering how permanent death would be in this situation, but I couldn't commit to it when there were so many other useful things available.
The Blood of Orochi. If you've seen the manga/anima/fighting game settings with characters who have this, you know exactly what it means: Berserker Rage. Not interested, regardless of cost.
Existence Eaters. Lets you literally suck the ki out of something or someone, the problem is that it only lets you suck up so much energy per day, and the amount just isn't large enough to be worth it for 2 CP. It would be amusing to start sucking the life out of people when they hit me, but I can't afford to pay that much when I'm already loaded down with Magic and Psychic Powers that I can't use.
Venomous Essence; made you a very, very poisonous person. As in skin contact would poison people. I'm actually a person who has a deep-seated hunger for physical affection, something I didn't get much of IRL after I stopped living in the same house as my family (we were big on hugs), and I was not giving up the opportunities being a cat would give me in this regard in order to poison people. I was going to be a fluffy ball of cuddliness and invade every lap I reasonably could, dammit.
Natural Weapons. Gain claws/fangs/etc, or make them better. Actually reasonably balanced mechanically, but I didn't need to invest CP in something that served no greater purpose than 'break things better.'
Blood of the Dead; makin' bloody effigies of yourself. Not worth the likely social stigma it would result in. At least, not when it cost CP, if it was just a spell to learn or something, it'd be worth having as a backup ability in the arsenal.
Blood of Kami. An affinity for either a particular type of natural terrain, or for a given weapon. The first wasn't worth it when I didn't know where I'd be waking up at, the latter was just another way of being better at breaking things.
Blood of the Dragon; gave nothing in and of itself, just access to a certain Ki Discipline later on. Not worthless, but extremely unlikely choice when I had so many other options available.
There should have been an option called 'Latent Blood' available at the end of the list, but judging by the fact that I hadn't been required to pay a CP or level to Bloodline abilities suggested that someone had been fixing the (RAW) overpriced abilities anyways.
Unfortunately, that made it decision time, as I couldn't buy 'Latent Blood' and hope to purchase the abilities later instead of now. Don't you just love knowing that your life or death may depend on a decision you literally cannot make with adequate information?
Yeah, neither do I.
Normally, I'd end up spending a big chunk of CP on buying one of the auto-raise skill abilities, but that was oriented towards meeting the skill requirements of Martial Arts, or being a Smith; as things stood, I expected to be able to gain necessary skills through real-life experience, and martial arts were (unfortunately) out of my reach, so I decided to forgo those altogether.
I took Eyes of the Soul, Tsukiyomi, and Eternal Blood. Utility, heavy situational advantage, and durability, all tidily met. That left the selection of one more flaw, and whatever then whatever advantages I could buy with the new CP.
I seriously, seriously, seriously considered taking the initiative penalty for 2 CP, but the saying that combat is 'initiative and preparation' doesn't only apply to gaming. It also applies to real life; anybody who's an experienced tactician or strategist, anyone who's read and understood The Art of War can tell you, responding with speed is critical.
So instead, I took Serious Addiction for 1 CP, and applied it to 'cuddling' (it was something I already intended to do a lot of anyways), and then turned around and spent that last CP on buying a +10 per level bonus on Sleight of Hand. Because it'd be damn useful if I ever regained human form, and a cat that can steal things right from under your nose is both damn funny, and possibly critically useful.
Sending in an unnoticed pet to filch the guard's keys or the like could make all the difference in the world. Whatever world I ended up in.
A few seconds after I'd made my selection, I became aware of the world around me as something more than a vague set of sensations for the first time since I'd been banished from Fuyuki.
((()))
Unfortunately for Ami, the first time the cat came to full consciousness, was when it was sleeping beside her futon, and she was sleeping in her futon.
"Rwearr?" The cat rumbled, and Ami jolted awake, unused to sounds of any sort in her sleeping space.
It took her several seconds to work through the fuzz of sleep, but she soon noticed that there was a rustling sound from behind her, and turned to see that the cat was trying to pull itself upright within its basket.
"Don't, neko-kun," Ami said, worry clear in her voice as she reached out to lay her hands on the cat, "You'll hurt yourself."
The instant that she touched it, it stopped trying to move and turned its head to face her; glowing green eyes stood out clearly, even in the darkness of her room. Ami gasped as for the first time, she beheld clear awareness in the cat's gaze, and something that hinted at a level of intelligence which surprised her.
"Rrrrr," The cat rumbled, its deep purr reaching a lower tone than her voice was capable of, and some ingrained instinct, a vague part of Ami's mind thought it was cultural, impelled her to start petting it.
That was the first of many nights in which Ami ended up sharing her pillow with a cat; within a week she'd get a second pillow, as the cat was simply too large to comfortably share with.
((()))
I let the girl keep her arm wrapped around me as she drifted back to sleep. Judging by my surroundings, I was in a modern society of some sort or another, and going off of her oriental features and the fact that she was sleeping on a futon rather than a bed, I was somewhere in Japan. Given the sorts of places I'd found myself in before, that almost definitely meant Tokyo. Because 90% of all Anime and Manga ever seems to take place in Tokyo.
Knowing that much at least, before I had to pick all of my character stats, was damn good. The next thing I had to pick was a class, and I chose one that I never would have picked in an Anima game where I wasn't hamstrung with a three-fold curse: Technician.
As I've mentioned, Technician is the class for Ki Dominion users, the problem is that it kind of sucks. Each class gets four things automatically per level; Life Points, Initiative Bonus, Martial Knowledge, and Psychic Points. Most classes balance to +15 or +20 Life Points/Initiative Points per level, with the heavy-magic classes getting less, and the Weaponmaster, the least magical class, getting +25. The Technician gets +10 total, 5 to Life, 5 to Initiative. Painfully low considering that you're almost certain to engage in at least some melee, unlike other 'caster' classes.
As to MK, as I mentioned before, the Technician gets 50 per level, easily the most. The problem with this is that the Tao can average about the same, because learning Martial Arts gives you MK as well; this is what really makes the Technician class mostly obsolete in my opinion, because the Tau gets more LP per level, and Martial Arts are literally the perfect complement to Ki powers. Psychic Points are pretty much irrelevant for a straight Dominion user, and the Technician only gets 1 per 3 levels anyways, so it hardly matters.
Aside from those four things that each class gets at every level, the Anima system in many ways actually behaves like it doesn't have a class system. Rather than getting a list of abilities you either gain as you level, or get access to, Anima classes instead tell you how much things cost depending on your class. Any class can buy magic, Psychic, Ki, or mundane abilities, the only stipulation is that you have to pay more for it if it's outside of your class's focus, and you're capped at either 50% or 60% of your DP spent on that field, 60% if it's your class's specialty.
There are three 'primary ability' fields, Combat Ability, Supernatural Ability, and Psychic Ability. As the names suggest, the first is skill at hitting things and dodging them, though it also includes Ki powers, the second is skill with magic, and the third is Psychic Powers.
A Technician does have two other advantages over a Tao. First, it pays dirt cheap for getting more Ki reserves and being able to focus (accumulate) Ki for actual use more quickly, and second, it gets +5 to attack for free each level. The Tao's weakness is that even though it's an exclusively melee class, unlike every other fighter-archetype class in the game (and a couple non-fighter archetypes), it gets no bonus to Attack, Block, or Dodge. It makes up for most of that lack with Martial Arts, but it has to pay for those Martial Arts to replace the bonus.
Game balance, it's a thing.
'Secondary Abilities' in the game also have their costs determined by what class you're in. They're basically skills, so I'll be calling them Skills rather than Secondary Abilities, it's just easier. Skills are grouped into seven categories, Athletics, Social, Perceptive, Intellectual, Vigor, Subterfuge, and Creative. The difference between Vigor and Athletics is generally the difference between an actual athlete, and someone who just does body-building; Creative is Singing, Dancing, Art, Smithing, and Slight of Hand for some reason, while the rest should be pretty obvious. The 'average' cost for each skill is 2 DP per rank, while something your class is crap at will cost 3, and something it's specialized with is 1 DP per rank. Some classes get a specific skill at reduced cost rather than an entire field, usually only 'Prowler' (skill-monkey) archetype classes get a whole field at reduced cost, and Prowlers also usually get per-level bonuses to 3-6 skills.
It all works out reasonably well; one of the important things to note is that unlike Primary Abilities, there's no cap on how much DP you can spend on a skill at any point. It's one of the big things I prefer about Anima to D'n'D; when you specialize in a skill, you can really specialize. I'm a cat; I could sink all my starting DP into Stealth skills and be impossible to find. There are hard-caps on how good you can be at a skill without becoming outright supernatural in how well you do with them, but I'll get into those later.
All that said and done, a 1st level character starts with 600 Development Points (DP), and gains 100 additional DP thereafter. I was reading as level 1, and I didn't know whether I'd need skills, combat ability (cats are territorial with each other even if I didn't have to fight anything human-sized), or what, so I started off simple. A character can directly spend up to 10% of their total DP on MK, so I picked up an extra 60 MK, giving me 110 to start with, and then mentally groaned.
There are two Ki abilities you have to purchase before you can do pretty much anything else worthwhile. Use of Ki, and Ki Control; I'd thought they cost 30 MK and 20 MK, but my memory was off, and they were 40 MK and 30 MK. Meaning even starting with a huge amount of MK, I only had 40 to actually work with. Which sucked.
I bought the two, then let myself drift off to sleep; cats need something like 15 hours of sleep a day, so I needed to get some rest while I still could...
((()))
The next day, to Ami's great delight, the cat was aware and active; it tried to drag itself across the carpet after her when she left her room, so she carried its basket out to set on the kitchen table while she prepared breakfast and her lunch. It wasn't easy for her to carry the large cat basket, but it wasn't altogether unmanageable, and she was happy to have the company as she worked in the kitchen.
Every time she turned to look at the cat, its eyes were tracking her, and after a while, it began chittering at her, and making batting motions with its paws. Ami thought it was adorable, and it made her smile as she worked.
((()))
The girl is cute enough; seeing her in full light makes it clear she's skinny and somewhere early in puberty. Almost certainly a shojo or shounen anime setting then. My ability to perceive colors since waking up as a cat isn't that great, but I'm pretty sure her hair is blue, which makes anime settings pretty much a certainty; she could be from any number of shows, though short hair cuts down the number she could be a main character in.
Part of me hopes she's someone from Nanoha, because I'm a big fan of the Hot Blooded, but I can't think of any characters that she matches up with.
Hey, what's she doing with that bottle?
((()))
Ami noticed that the cat seemed to be downright sulking while she fed it, and gathered that it found bottle-feeding to be demeaning. Since it was properly awake and could probably chew and swallow, she decided to call up the vet and ask if it would be safe for her to pick up some cat food, so that it could feed itself, more or less.
((()))
That was humiliating. It looks like the girl's off to school now though; considering that she's wearing the iconic outfit, it's not like there's much else she could be doing with a bento and a book bag.
...And now I appear to be 'home alone' for the day, with three legs in casts (incredibly annoying that), and I'm stuck on top of the kitchen table. Great. I guess I'll be practicing my catnapping skills.
((()))
Approximately two hours after her daughter left for school, an exhausted Saeko Mizuno dragged herself out of bed, and staggered into the kitchen, where she dug unto the breakfast her daughter had left out for her. She didn't even notice that it was room temperature; her daughter wasn't a stellar cook, but could (unsurprisingly) serve a decent version of anything that could be made through simply following a recipe precisely.
It wasn't until after she'd cleaned her plate that she noticed that the cat was on the table again, and it was looking at her.
"...Hello?" She said, feeling a little self-conscious for reasons she wasn't entirely clear on.
"Reowr," The cat replied, before pulling its good paw out of the basket, and starting trying to drag itself over to her.
"I have no idea what you're doing," Saeko said, "But seeing as how you're a cat, I'm willing to bet that you're up to no good."
"Rooowr," The cat said, and finally managed to get a good enough grip on the tabletop to actually begin dragging itself (and the basket it was in) towards Saeko.
"Really," Saeko said, rolling her eyes in resignation, before reaching out to lift the cat out of its basket; she almost said something rather sarcastic, but it began purring as soon as she had it in a secure grip, a deep, soothing rumble pressed right up against her chest.
"Well," She said a bit more cautiously, "Maybe you'll be good company after all."
((()))
I must have woken up on a Monday. The next week was indescribably boring. I was stuck in the cat basket most of the time, because Ami and her mother were out of the house most of the time, school and work between the two of them. I was glad that cats sleep fifteen hours a day, because I would probably have done something stupid to break the monotony otherwise. When Ami was home, she was very good company, pulling me into her lap and petting me pretty much whenever she was awake. Granted, she was also reading, but simple companionship was worlds better than isolation and boredom.
Three important facts came to my attention during that week; first, I was in the Sailor Moon setting. That was both excellent, and horrifying. Excellent, because it's a freaking Shojo manga, which means that cats are nigh-immortal, and if the setting stays at all true-to-type, the villains are largely bungling buffoons utterly incapable of sound strategy or tactics. If it's not subject to the tropes which define mahou shojo (many of which it codified in western perception), then I'm going to be stuck in a setting where cosmic horrors with no remorse and vast armies of minions are out to kill/enslave/crush/transform mankind.
I have read Sleeping With the Girls. Yay.
At least I've been stuck in with the genius girl, rather than one of the flighty girly-girl types. That's an advantage.
The second important fact that came to light, was that I was wrong about Ki Control. It's not needed for anywhere near as many things as I thought, if the 'HUD' I see the world through is right. I'd still need it eventually anyways, as outright Ki Dominion powers require it, but it's annoying to realize that my memories were off.
The third, and least pleasant realization, is that I have a compulsion to groom myself. And I'm a longhair; I haven't coughed up a hairball yet, but I'm pretty sure it's inevitable, as I find myself absently licking my fur when I come out of a bout of deep thought.
Hopefully, these damn casts will come off soon, and I'll be able to get out and do something.
((()))
"Well, Mizuno-san," The veterinarian said, "I'm happy to tell you that the cat seems to be on the way to a full recovery."
"That's great sensei!" Ami beamed as she watched the vet carefully remove the casts from the cat's legs, "...I haven't seen any messages in the paper or anything, but has someone come looking for him?"
"No," The vet said, shaking his head as he removed the last cast, "No one claiming ownership has shown up at any of the clinics in Tokyo."
"Any of them?" Ami said, somewhat bewildered, "There is a network for such things?"
"Indeed," The vet said, nodding gravely as he turned to look at Ami, "This cat is a purebred Meinkun, and such animals can be very valuable, especially if they're well-formed enough to be show animals."
Confused, Ami turned to look at the cat; it stood up, and for the first time since she had first seen the creature, she was able to see what the cat looked like when it stood upright, and its fur was not pulled or pushed out of place by bandages. It was, as she had already known, a veritable giant of a cat, its fur predominantly black and gray, with subtle orange undertones around the ruff of its neck, which fluffed out into an almost mane-like shape. On the whole, it was a gorgeous animal, with with a nearly regal bearing as it gazed up at Ami with intelligent eyes.
After regarding her for a moment, it padded lithely across the examination table that the vet had placed it on, then reared up backwards once it reached the edge, standing almost fully upright. With the table boosting its height, it was actually taller than her, and Ami's eyes widened in shock as it suddenly tilted forward, planting its forepaws on her shoulders, and gazing directly into her eyes from just inches away.
For what seemed like an eternal moment, Ami felt as though the cat were gazing into her very soul.
((()))
She still has the wonder of a child, and enough courage not to flinch away from the unknown. She'll do.
((()))
Then the cat licked her on the tip of her nose, Ami giggled, and the moment was broken.
((()))
AN: The entire first arc of this story is completed, and I intend to post weekly until it's all up. Hopefully by then I'll have one of my other projects to a reasonable level of completion. If you're too impatient to wait, head over to the Spacebattles CrW forum where I've already posted the whole thing, complete with pictures.