2 A Brief Summary and Family

POV - Alexander Corvin (1st Person)

Letting out a breath of air, I felt a genuinely sincere smile come across my face as I opened the door and entered the room my mother practically lived in.

I knew how messed up I was. I murdered my teachers and I took an unnatural glee in killing and murdering others, proving my superiority over them. I was a genuinely bad person. Selfish. Greedy. Power hungry. But I didn't care, honestly. But that was because I didn't really feel guilt. I had empathy but I could choose to ignore it.

Yet there was one other person in this world who didn't care about my actions. As much as they should anyway.

My mother.

She loved me unconditionally and I, in return, loved her back. Despite how predatory and animalistic my instincts were, there was one last bastion that guarded that ability to love my mother. Something that stopped me from being a completely power hungry, ruthless monster.

I was undecided how I felt about that. About being held back by chemicals in my brain. Part of me was angered but another part of me felt lucky to have a mother I could love.

I was torn in two different directions. But I usually humored the latter more often than not.

Mainly because one day my mother will die and I'll no longer be able to humor her or the chemicals in my brain. After she dies, I truly will fall to depravity and I will live for power and fighting. Even with the training and killing I do now...it's more like a hobby. But once she's gone, it'll be all I do and all I think about.

But that's the human condition for you. Hypocrisy, greed and selfishness all bound together and put inside some flesh and skin.

It didn't matter if one day I wouldn't be able to experience it, or if my dallying now would hurt me in the future: I'm selfish, greedy and, most of all, hypocritical. I don't care what future me has to deal with. I'd rather enjoy what I can now.

That's my type of arrogance. A level of arrogance that doesn't even give regards to my future self or my past self.

In anyone else, this type of arrogance would lead to their downfall. But to me, it was just the status quo and it wouldn't really end up with me getting the short end of the stick.

After all, even as I walked into my mother's room, my body was changing and growing from all the lessons I'd had up until this point. Muscle memory was being made, techniques were being perfected in my mind and my style of fighting was becoming more masterful and brutal by the second as my brain refined it all. Even when I took an hour to speak and spend time with my mother, I was making months or even years of progress in martial arts, combat and fighting.

That's the level of my talent. My superiority.

Even at the age of thirteen, I was more skilled than masters, more powerful than any human could ever be. I guess that's just how I worked. My biology, I mean.

I'd already seen the similarities between me and Yujiro Hanma, of course. The red hair, the red eyes, the talent and brutality. The fact I loved violence. Etc etc. I was quite sure I was a Hanma, genetically, at least.

Oh, yeah, I'm a reincarnator. I was once a martial arts fanatic. I trained and cultivated my strength throughout my whole life. Sadly, however, despite my unmatched determination and passion for strength, I was quite untalented. Even my body's limits were less than other people's, leaving me both less skilled and less powerful. In the end, I was killed for messing with the wrong people. A cliche end.

But it allowed me to be reborn here, with this body. With this body's talent and my passion for strength from both my last life and from the genetics of this body that lusted for power...I trained.

As soon as I could, I began training. I used my father's money to get instructors and training equipment and I just...trained.

I mean, I knew martial arts from my last life but I decided to start over. I learnt from the ground up and cast away my useless skills and techniques from my last life. Instead, I worked on perfecting everything I learnt, and this continued up until this day. 13 years with the talent of a Hanma on par with Yujiro Hanma himself...it was really something. I made more progress in just over a decade than I did in the entirety of my last life. It was both thrilling and humiliating.

Humiliating because I'd once been that piece of trash.

But never again. That's what I vowed. I wouldn't be weak--well, it's more like I couldn't allow myself to be weak. Whatever.

Enough of that.

Hearing her door open, mother looked toward me and instantly a smile spread across her gaunt face. I returned the smile and closed the door before walking to the side of her bed and sitting on a chair I'd had placed there many years ago. My mother, despite being so gaunt, was still quite beautiful with long blonde hair and baby blue eyes. From pictures I'd seen, she'd had quite the figure as well. Before I was born anyway.

Her current state is because of that, actually. Providing the nutrients for my body had overdrafted her body quite a bit. Even 13 years later she hasn't recovered. I can pretty much tell that she will one day recover but birthing me took many years off her lifespan.

...This is probably why I'm so grateful and filial to her. She gave up so much for me to be born.

Being ungrateful to such a caliber of woman seems inherently wrong. Even to someone like me.

"Sweetie," she smiled and spoke, her voice somewhat hoarse, "I didn't know you were coming to visit me today. I'd have freshened up a little if I knew. I haven't bathed today and I know how sensitive your nose is--" she began to fret but I just held her hand and looked at her with somewhat impatient eyes.

"Stop fretting. I don't care about how you smell. Even without bathing you smell much better than most people," I admitted with a chuckle, because it was the truth. The year was 1917 and bathing wasn't a, uh, let's say, common thing. People would be lucky if they could bathe at least once a week.

Though after discovering my sensitive nose after I complained about how some of the servants stink, mother began to bathe every day despite her condition.

She was...the opposite of me. Selfless. It was an idiotic gesture. It didn't mean anything or do anything substantial. Yet it warmed my heart all the same. It truly is weird how a human works. That is if I can even be classified as a human with a body and genetics like mine.

Hearing me, mother just smiled before chuckling lightly herself, "It's my job to dote on you, isn't it, Alex? You treat me too well," she said with a shake of her head.

Hearing this, I shook my own head. This was her level of self-esteem. MY mother's level of self-esteem. As much as I love her, I wish she'd at least hold her head high and know how much she's worth. But alas, this is what this time period has done to her. It's cowed her simply because she's a woman. Born a hundred years later and she could've achieved whatever she wanted. She's more business savvy than my father and she's easily more intelligent than him. She could even class as a genius. But this time period has beat into her that all she can be good for is producing babies. Even born a hundred years later and there are still places in the world that hold that same philosophy.

To me, none of that matters. I don't care about your gender or your sexuality, your color or your creed, your nationality or your job title--all I care about is talent. If someone's talented, no matter what or who they are, they deserve a modicum of respect. If they're nothing but trash, then even if they're the president...I won't give a fuck about 'em.

It's as simple as that.

Which is why seeing my mother waste away her life in this room instead of leaning into her talents...it aggravates me. But what can I do? She was already in her thirties and the ideology of this time period was thoroughly ingrained into her.

A shame, I guess.

Ignoring what she said, I just sat there holding her hand and thinking. I wasn't the most talkative. I could talk to people, about an endless amount of things, and I could definitely be social.

But around one of the few people I could keep my mouth shut and just listen to, I'd take that chance given to me. Sitting and listening to mother speak was a relaxing thing for me, I guess. Plus, I could multi-task and think up new ways to fight and train.

And so, I continued with my listening and only talking when I needed to.

I enjoyed the time spent here.

. . .

Currently, I was training my body. It was constantly evolving and growing, even when I didn't physically exercise, but doing actual exercise helped push the process along quicker.

I was wearing a full body suit that was practically half a tonne in weight. Hyper dense and heavy metal plates were spread all over my body. All of it being designed to not get in the way of my movement as well. Underneath this suit was another suit that was comprised completely of springs and restrictive bands that was designed to make moving as hard as possible.

For example, if a normal human was placed inside what I was wearing right now, they'd be crushed under the weight and they wouldn't even be able to breath because of the restrictiveness of the bands and the springs. Even if they were at peak human level for this world, they'd be dead.

But the main work out for me right now, was the poses I was doing and the way it made my muscles grind and beat against one another. A sort of yoga that used specific poses to make the body fight against itself, breaking itself down allowing for it to grow stronger which continued in a beneficial cycle. Of course, for others, this was limited. But for me? My muscles only grew stronger and as I practiced this style of yoga, I quickly became able to use it to temper my bones and organs as well.

My muscles that continued to grow stronger, made sure everything else about me began to get stronger as well.

Though, to be fair, I did grow naturally stronger over time as well. Even without training, I'd easily grow to a thoroughly superhuman level. But that wasn't enough. Why? How could being superhuman not be enough?

Because I was in the MCU. Or Marvel, at least.

By pure coincidence, when looking for survivalist teachers who could teach me techniques and skills for surviving in the wilderness, I found a name I wasn't expecting in my father's contacts. James Howlett and Victor Creed. Also know, respectively, as Wolverine and Sabretooth.

At first, I was shocked.

And then I felt an animalistic glee, a smile that spread so wide it hurt came across my face...I was thoroughly excited at the challenge this news posed.

I could just be in the Mutant universe. You know, Twentieth Century Fox Studios' movie universe about the X-Men. A completely fucked up timeline, sure. But it's still a possibility. Even if it is that universe, there's still the need to train as much as I am. There's no promises that the power levels of the characters will follow the show or if they'll be more like the comics. Maybe even the middle ground.

But what that means is that I need to train.

And even if I didn't have that reason to train...I'd still train just as hard. Why? Because power is what I want! It's what my entire being craves! Gaining strength and cultivating it through sheer will and selfishness...it's what I want to do.

The inclusion of Mutants and possibly the rest of the Marvel universe...well, it just makes it all the more interesting, no?

My smile turned absolutely feral and I picked up the pace, adding special strikes and kicks to my yoga poses that worked my muscles and bones even more aggressively. My joints popped, my bones crackled and my muscles hummed like plucked strings--I was really fired up just thinking about the possible fights in the future!

And so, I continued my utterly inhuman training. I'd continue this training for the next few hours, steadily increasing the intensity and adding more and more weights and restrictions to my body.

I was already superhuman. But that's useless when my goal is to be a monstrous Ogre in human skin, right?