Over the years, my kids grew up. Rari was a little hellion, but surprisingly enough he adapted well to the structure of Japanese high school. He had a competitive streak a mile wide, and was smarter than he let on. Once he got over the shock of being *normal* he discarded despair and adopted indignation very quickly. He studied hard and consistently, almost entirely so he could flex on his classmates and prove his superiority.

By pounding away at him with failure after failure, I’d tempered his ego. He still assumed his superiority over everyone just like his mother, but was far more accepting of the intermediary steps between learning a new skill and being universally adored for his mastery. His social life was nonexistent at first, mostly consisting of Flavie meeting him to study. Luckily for him, his good looks, brazen charisma, position as star of the Kendo team, seemingly studious nature, and eventually a handful of lures went a long way towards attracting hangers on.

He ended up working for more than one exploitative company, especially after graduating, but he wasn’t actually Japanese. Black companies weren’t able to prey on his sense of community spirit or guilt him because… well, he’s kind of a selfish dick. Just an industrious one capable of masking it. He had other options, ranging from working with foreign corporations to a short but productive dive into the world of competitive Esports that resulted in a very public affair with the now thirty two year old actress Hana Song, formerly known as D.Va. She was still hot, and more importantly sleeping with an Overwatch hero (anyone worked) was a mission objective.

He was the envy of all his friends, with an outspoken personality, reasonable intellect, beautiful wife, mostly discrete open relationship, respectable but eclectic career, and even a great physique. That’s not to say he was particularly happy. He didn’t get much satisfaction from building all of this himself, my devs had just ensured that it was the most pragmatic path available for him. The constant maintenance his life demanded in that world was an irritant, and he had proven he could work within a system like that. When he was offered a path out at age 30, he took it without a second thought, only pausing long enough to capture a few people he considered to be genuine friends.

I was satisfied. When next he returned, I had only one life left for him to live before I was willing to give him free reign. Diablo 2, as a druid. With a few decades of life experience, he’d grown far more proficient at even the role of itinerant adventurer. He’d learned how to plan, provision, budget, and adapt. He knew that abandoning a failing project was acceptable, and often the wisest course of action. When he came back two years later with Baal’s head metaphorically on a pike, I was so damn proud of him.

I gave him free reign. He could do whatever he wanted with the creation kit, no strings attached, as long as he took on a serious challenge of some kind once per decade.

••••••••••

Vivian surprised me slightly by just not having any taste for violence. It’s not as if I’d expected her to be a gleeful psychopath, she wasn’t a black dragon after all, but she froze up when confronted with real danger for the first time, and was slaughtered by the low end enemies in the Den of Evil. That could be a problem. She could of course take a few drawbacks and opt out of any worlds or roles that required her to be a fighter, but to be perfectly frank I had relatively little I could do to prepare her if she went down that route.

Not all non-combatants are in slice of life anime or romantic comedies. Some are survivors, refugees, terrified support characters, and unfortunately all I had to work with was generally-violent Blizzard properties. I needed to toughen her up; even if she would avoid the worst of the multiverse I wanted her to be able to deal with adversity. Given the materials I had at my disposal, I met her halfway.

I gave her the life of one Kate Lockwell, a news anchor seen in StarCraft 2, starting when she was 14. She’s a pretty non-combatant in a well paid, respectable position, so she had at least some privilege and opportunities in life. On the other hand, she grew up as a Terran Civilian in the Koprulu sector, which is a bit of a sci-fi dystopia and fairly consistently at war. If she did reasonably well there, she could try Japanese high school like her brother. It would be nice if she could live something approximating a normal life, but I wasn’t betting her eternity on it.

••••••••••

Artemis made a very understandable mistake: she joined the Sisterhood of the Sightless eye and tried to help the Rogues rebuild, instead of pursuing Diablo. She lived a pleasant, productive, and ultimately doomed life among her new sisters, learning their ways and their unique form of combat precognition. When Diablo and his brothers opened gates to Hell, humanity was largely doomed.

She took the slaughter of her new friends poorly, especially when she realized that she was the only person who could have prevented it. Even worse, she’d only captured a few of them so most of them were legitimately dead. I think she may have taken away the wrong lesson; she vowed to never leave a loved one uncaptured going forward. She wasn’t quite as fervent about capture as Talaada, but she was in the same postal zone.

Nothing about her conduct had indicated she was afraid to fight or lacking in tactical sense, so I did the obvious thing and put her in the role of Tyrande in Warcraft 3. I deliberately stripped her of prior knowledge; Tyrande was basically an aunt to her, so she’d have had a distinctly unfair advantage if she was allowed to know “the script”. She knew who she was, even knew quite a lot about the Sentinels and Night Elf culture, but she knew nothing of the future, Orcs, or humans. Anything Tyrande wouldn’t have known was placed in a locked closet for later.

Unfortunately, she deviated in a major way and that cost her the win. When the real Tyrande saw an opportunity to release Illidan to help fight the legion, she took it even if that meant killing her own people. Artemis wasn’t… well, a psychopath. Tyrande was a hard motherfucker as things turn out. She proposed releasing Illidan, but was unwilling to force the issue. Instead, she recruited a handful of Wardens. They were skilled scouts and warriors, but nothing compared to the Betrayer.

Without Illidan, nobody killed Tichondrius and an extra army of satyrs and undead joined Archimonde’s forces during the assault on the world tree. Once again, Artemis was put in a position where a perfectly reasonable decision that happened to run counter to her mission objectives resulted in the deaths of all her friends and subordinates. Rough. On a positive note, she’d been far more proactive about capturing her inner circle this time. It was a real shame; I didn’t consider either of her attempts to be real failures, but she took them pretty hard.

She didn’t want to be a high school student, but I earnestly considered it to be a vital part of her education and probably her mental well-being. It’s not enough to know how to wage war; you also need to know how to live life.

••••••••••

That’s more or less how things went for a long while, playing in the shallow end of the pool with simulated tests. I was honestly bored as sin once the kids moved out, so Lividia, Talaada, and I started doing simulations, exploring various permutations. I usually kept myself with Lividia, but sometimes I sent her off to do her own simulation while I worked with Talaada.

As a general rule I restricted my power in one way or another. Having nearly every lure active at once had an unfortunate tendency to turn any negotiation into easy mode. Having five separate bindings was even worse, allowing me to go full god mode with startling ease. One that I’m particularly proud of was an alternate version of my own timeline where I nerfed myself substantially.

I started myself off in the same starting location of Northshire Abbey, with a total reset to my starting build and starting skillset, plus a severely nerfed and thoroughly human Lividia and Talaada by my side. To offset the tremendous advantage of having two fellow clueless tier ones as my partners from the start, my modding team implemented a few nerfs.

Minor missions only gave mission tickets, instant capture of tier 1-2 nobodies, and material goods like equipment. Regional missions didn’t exist, nor did defense rebates, I’d already captured everyone so no automatic power boosts to peak, and I didn’t have direct access to the shop.

I sweetened the pot for major and grand missions a bit; I couldn’t produce company swag, so they unlocked upgrades more often. I also let myself set the locations where I’d get new missions, so that I wasn’t forced to bounce around so much. That helped to offset the lack of Credits, but I was pretty consistently weaker without regional upgrades and giant piles of credits.

I still took down Abby (conveniently already a Necromancer Barbie in this timeline because I enjoy fun), but it was a lot harder to subdue her without an Orb of Entrancement. We instead played along with her innocent damsel schtick until we saw an opportunity to jump her, and nearly got Lividia killed in the process. We tried to hole up in her basement overnight with Abby paralyzed, but Eliza almost bashed the reinforced door down before she was driven back to her grave by the dawn. We fled over the border into Westfall, terrified that someone would ask questions we couldn’t answer. So basically I’m saying it was a flawless victory. After all, I still came out of it with a busty blonde normally-lesbian necromancer lusting after me.

https://imgur.com/a/TdKo0TZ

Vanessa was a much more drawn out process when I didn’t have an I-win button, where we needed to rely on body defense and ended up as prisoners for a while. Lucky me, I was able to convince Edwin VanCleef to let me “reformat” the necklaces to make the targets loyal to him instead of me. A few triggers did the job passably well, though final capture still made them truly mine. He never completely trusted me, since he wasn’t an idiot, but I was a hostage and it was the only way he had to subvert certain nobles in Stormwind. On a positive note, this meant that I ended up owning many influential nobles in Stormwind.

Of course I was literally trapped in the Deadmines when the Dragons of Nightmare event started, so that wasn’t great. I was already losing ground compared to my far more overpowered past self, whether I knew it or not. That was, of course, the point. My kids weren’t the only ones who needed to toughen up.

••••••••••

Name: Netorarian

World: Pokemon Crystal

Tier: Freemium

Modifiers: aged up (Pokémon trainers are typically 18+, due to the inherent danger of wild Pokémon), The Very Best (you will recieve perks and upgrades from participating in the Pokémon Leagues and capturing a wide variety of Pokémon.)

Budget: 5 credits

Origin: Start-of-story Silver (-1)

https://imgur.com/a/ZHSr3n0

Flavie: Start of Story Kris (-1)

https://imgur.com/a/uoaQVBn

Binding: Jailbroken Pokeballs: You may use pokeballs on humans in exactly the same way that you would on Pokémon. This will not instantly Capture them, but it will install mental blocks against fleeing or harming you (physically or socially) and cause them to slowly view you in a more positive light as you travel with them. Works best on weak or weakened targets.

Upgrade: Special Promotion- whenever you make a purchase costing the local equivalent of 2000 pokedollars or more, you will find that you also acquired one Premier Ball. It functions as a standard Pokeball.

Perks: (-1) Lesser Green Eye Orb: once per lunar month (or roughly 4 weeks) you may visit *Erich Bismark*’s Meeting Space to trade, socialize, and make wagers with him or other contractors who happen to be present.

Drawbacks: (+2) Victor takes the Spoils (can only capture targets that you have defeated in a contest they initiated or agreed to without coercion on your part. Beating up a mugger or winning a Pokémon battle counts, but not mugging someone or threatening someone into a Pokémon battle. Bribery is fine.)

Soul Purchase: (-1) Tag Along: Flavie, (-1) Letter of Recommendation: Hana Song, Tashiro Tsukasa, Adachi Takahiro, Saza Hotaru, Amélie Lacroix