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Mega Man-type
Basic Trope: Gaining new abilities by defeating the opponents that have them.
- Straight: Whenever Nikki defeats an opponent in battle, she gains her foe's best skill.
- Exaggerated: Nikki can use every skill and talent, from Reality Warping and Time Stopping, down to bending her tongue by defeating an enemy who possesses said ability.
- Downplayed: Nikki can use any weapon, and most equipment pieces dropped by a defeated enemy.
- Justified:
- Nikki has methods to copy enemies' abilities, like ripping a page from a wizard's spellbook and adding it to her own, removing a robot's plasma cannon arm and use it to upgrade her BFG, and being a master martial artist, which allows her to copy any move after seeing it a few times.
- Nikki is an AI, and she is capable of analyzing the code of enemy AI and integrating it into herself.
- Inverted: Whenever Nikki/Mike defeats an opponent, she/he loses the ability that was used to defeat that opponent.
- Subverted: Nikki knocks out a star swordsman after an epic fight, and gains... The ability to communicate with plants.
- Double Subverted: Confused, Nikki questions the swordsman after he comes to, and he admits he used to be an earth mage with that exact ability.
- Parodied: Whilst driving home, Nikki accidentally runs over a possum in the road. She subsequently discovers she now has the power to play dead. Later on, she uses this ability to fake defeat and set up a cruel Kaizo Trap for a particularly tough foe.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes the character gain skills from battles and sometimes not.
- Averted:
- All Nikki's and Mike's powers are their own.
- They learn new abilities as they gain levels and advance through the game.
- Enforced: "Why would we bother creating separate set of abilities for the heroes and for their enemies? Just make the heroes capable of copying their enemies!"
- Lampshaded: "Now I've got your power!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The Big Bad sends out a slew of opponents with the ability to self-destruct. When Nikki defeats them and habitually steals and tries out their powers, the results aren't pretty...
Only it turns out that our hero had gotten the ability to duplicate herself earlier on, and the Nikki that just self-destructed was one such clone. Nikki uses this "Clone Bomb" technique to take down many enemies.
- Defied: Emperor Evulz sends out alien-insect-something minions with abilities that require Bizarre Alien Biology.
- Discussed: "Alright! A new enemy! Now I'll get a new skill!"
- Conversed: "How do Nikki and Mike learn skills by killing and being hurt? Couldn't they just pick up a How-To book?"
- Deconstructed:
- Nikki may be able to copy the ability, but it may never have been meant to be used by a person like her. Nikki gets serious injuries after pushing herself beyond her limits to use an ability like Super Speed.
- Nikki's growing inventory of powers is eating up her other physiological and cognitive functions.
- Reconstructed: But that's only because she hasn't mastered the ability yet. After a few minutes of practice she's doing it like a pro.
Final Fantasy-type
Basic Trope: Gaining new abilities by being hit by them, and learning them in the process.
- Straight: Whenever Mike is hurt by an opponent's signature attack, he learns the attack and can use it in any opportunity.
- Exaggerated: Whenever an enemy hurts Mike, he copies every skill they have ever accquired.
- Downplayed: Mike is Awesome by Analysis, and can usually imitate an opponent's moves - but he still needs to practice if he wants to get any good at a given technique.
- Justified: Mike's Congruent Memory allows him to learn skills by seeing a demonstration.
- Inverted: Whenever he's hit by an enemy's ability, Mikes develops a power that counters it, like a water attack to beat a fire-based enemy.
- Subverted: Mike gets hit by a powerful knight, and learns... How to attack.
- Double Subverted: Mike never knew how to attack before.
- Parodied: Mike is napping when a possum plays dead on his stomach. Everyone else thinks he's playing dead too.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes the character gain skills from battles and sometimes not.
- Averted:
- All Nikki's and Mike's powers are their own.
- They learn new abilities as they gain levels and advance through the game.
- Enforced: "Why would we bother creating separate set of abilities for the heroes and for their enemies? Just make the heroes capable of copying their enemies!"
- Lampshaded: "Now I've got your power!"
- Invoked: Mike trains to become a Blue Mage.
- Exploited:
- Mike saves the self-destructing minion's power to take out the Big Bad in a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Mike and Nikki hurt each other with each other's powers on a regular basis.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: "Alright! A new enemy! Now I'll get a new skill!"
- Conversed: "How do Nikki and Mike learn skills by killing and being hurt? Couldn't they just pick up a How-To book?"
- Deconstructed:
- Mike can only learn so much, so when he knows too many skills he forgets how to use abilities.
- Mike gets gravely injured taking the signature move, to the point where he can't even repeat that same move since the limbs needed to pull it off were injured in the attack.
- Reconstructed: However, Mike does remember how to revive himself after dying, thus making him an immortal Game Breaker.
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Power Copying
