History Fanfic / RiskItAll

* MustMakeAmends: On his first day of superheroics, Ren can't bring himself to accost a young girl stealing to survive, to the displeasure of the food stall owner she just stole him. Rather than walk away, he goes to the shopkeeper and pays for everything she stole with interest to keep everyone out of trouble.

* EveryManHasHisPrice: On his first day of superheroics, Ren can't bring himself to accost a young girl stealing to survive. Rather than walk away, he goes to the shopkeeper and pays for everything she stole with interest to keep everyone out of trouble.

That's what Ren Song is thinking when he accepts a sponsorship to enter the shady VIP room in the back of one of Gotham's casino's. As a kid with little to his name but a knack for gambling (and cheating), the chance to come away with the jackpot to support his parents is [[TooDesperateToBePicky too good to refuse]].

* EveryManHasHisPrice: On his first day of superheroing, Ren can't bring himself to accost a young girl stealing to survive. Rather than walk away, he goes to the shopkeeper and pays for everything she stole with interest to keep everyone out of trouble.

** After a Triad shoots a mob crook he'd been fighting dead, Ren's super identity quickly garners infamy as a killer. The crippling effects of Soul-Crushing Strike only worsen his reputation, much to Ren's dismay. He wonders how Batman deals with bad press like this. At the least, his new viral presence on the internet gives him a lot of prestige points.

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: Ren is frustrated to find that his prestige point shop charges high for products he needs like body armor. To make matters worse, he can only sell them back for a fraction of the prestige points he paid to buy them.

* ComesGreatResponsibility: Following the second attempt on his life, Ren resolves to use his powers to defend his parents from Black Mask rather than any kind of self-benefit. His sense of morality soon motivates him to go on patrol in Gotham's Chinatown and Koreatown, knowing that he would hate himself if he let something happen when he could do something about it.
-->'''Ren:''' If there was a rape or a murder? If it happened nearby? Right when I decided to shrug my shoulders and go home? [[ItsAllMyFault I would hate myself.]]

* EveryManHasHisPrice: On his first day of superheroing, Ren can't bring himself to accost a young girl stealing to survive, so rather than simply walk away, he goes to the shopkeeper and pays for everything she stole with interest to keep everyone out of trouble.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Ren's parents are extremely uncomfortable about talking about his uncle, to the point of pretending he didn't exist until he paid for Ren's medical bills. Ren is baffled by this, but doesn't think too hard about it because of how much of a conversational landmine it clearly is. [[spoiler:This is because Ren's uncle is a Triad, a criminal and a murderer.]]

* NaiveNewcomer: Despite living in Gotham, Ren has a certain idealistic streak that hopes everything will turn out alright. This idealism is what got him tangled up in the MobWar in the first place, as his dream of winning big and taking his earnings home brings him face-to-face with Black Mask. After getting superpowers, he starts his crusade with the hope that he'll be able to stop Black Mask despite being woefully inexperienced and largely outgunned. This part of him is quickly challenged by the realities of superhero work. He lets himself get mugged after seeing a gun again triggers his PTSD. He watches a man he tried to incapacitate non-lethally get shot in the middle of a MobWar. Then said war escalates as a result of his actions and he's branded a villain by the internet due to multiple cases of NotWhatItLooksLike. He chastises himself multiple times for his naivete, but continues to stubbornly stick to ThouShaltNotKill and minimizes collateral damage whenever he can.

* PopularityPower: Ren's abilities run off how well-known he is. The more fame (or infamy) he gains, the more "prestige points" he has to spend to gain new skills, buy equipment, and improve his stats. Because of this, he has to engineer situations where he can get a drone to record his actions to upload to the internet to improve his powers and gain new ones while trying to keep his SecretIdentity safe.

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: After being nearly shot dead by Black Mask and seeing Alice get shot to death by an assassin aiming for him, Ren has an understandable fear of guns. The mere sight of one makes him freeze up and meekly fork over cash despite having superpowers, and it's only his frustration at being helpless before one that gets him over this fear. Even then, his fear isn't completely gone, as he still grumbles over how many guns there are in Gotham, he's just not completely paralyzed by the sight of them anymore.

* MusclesAreMeaningful: Ren's muscles grow in accordance with his strength stat. His six-month coma caused his strength to dwindle to a mere 2, but putting points in strength helped him stand again in a few days rather than months. Getting his strength to 20 gives him freedom of mobility and below-average, while dumping 30 more points into it causes him to gain twenty pounds of muscle overnight, leaving him looking and feeling better than he had before he was shot. With the help of his powers, he's soon performing complex acrobatics and knocking common crooks to the floor with a single hit.

* WrongContextMagic: The source of Ren's powers is a mystery. He's never had any kind of empowering accidents except for being shot in the head, and he's tests negative for the metagene. He also has no knowledge or relationship with magic or the supernatural prior to obtaining his powers.

* TooDesperateToBePicky: Although he knows that common sense should tell him to say no, the potential payout from winning in the exclusive VIP room is too much for Ren to ignore.
* TheTriadsAndTheTongs: The Snake-Flower Triads compete with Black Mask's mafia for control of Gotham City's Chinatown. While they're still ruthless crooks that Ren has little sympathy for, they come across as ALighterShadeOfBlack, given how one Triad seems to shoot a guy Ren had incapacitated to help him, nodding at him in affirmation. [[spoiler:Then it's revealed that Ren's uncle is a member and a loaded one at that, having paid for all of Ren's medical bills.]]

* TooDesperateToBePicky: Ren ''knows'' that entering the shady VIP room in an illegal casino is a bad idea, especially when he knows he's BornUnlucky. But the hope of coming home with a sack of cash large enough to solve all of his family's money problems is too much for him to pass up.

That's what Ren Song is thinking when he accepts a sponsorship to enter the shady VIP room in the back of one of Gotham's casino's. As a kid with little to his name but a knack for gambling (and cheating), the chance to come away with the jackpot to support his parents is [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse too good to refuse]].

* BookDumb: Although his grades are middle-of-the-pack at best, Ren demonstrates a keen understanding of probability and can quickly crunch the numbers to weigh the risk vs. reward in casino games as well as the randomness of the skills and powers he gains.

* NaiveNewcomer: Despite living in Gotham, Ren has a certain idealistic streak that hopes everything will turn out alright with his new powers to aid him. This part of him is quickly challenged by the realities of superhero work. He lets himself get mugged after seeing a gun again triggers his PTSD. He watches a man he tried to incapacitate non-lethally get shot in the middle of a MobWar. Then said war escalates as a result of his actions and he's branded a villain by the internet due to multiple cases of NotWhatItLooksLike. He chastises himself multiple times for his naivete, but continues to stubbornly stick to ThouShaltNotKill and minimizes collateral damage whenever he can.

** Subverted with Ren's FlashStep. While it gives him a burst of speed that lets him cross short distances nigh-instantly, he doesn't have the reaction speed to respond during this time and has to way until he slows down to properly throw a punch. His inability to turn means that he can't use this if someone is in the way, lest he crash into them.

* WithGreatPowerComesGreatHotness: Ren notices that he gets noticeably more muscular while increasing his Strength stat. This is most noticeable after he decides to dump 30 points in Strength all at once, resulting in him packing on twenty pounds of muscle all at once. Upping his Charisma also makes him look better in general, removing pimples, giving him a more pronounced jawline, and making his hair shinier following his six-month coma.
* WouldHurtAChild: Black Mask thinks nothing of shooting Ren, a sixteen-year-old who had no idea Black Mask owned the casino, out of the belief that Ren was a Triad.

* ClarkKenting: Inverted. Ren is by his own admission a nobody, but he goes the extra mile to disguise himself as a vigilante, hiding his hair InTheHood, wearing a face mask, and putting on contacts to change the color of his eyes. He also wears baggy clothes to avoid drawing attention to his rapid recovery from his six-month coma. Despite all this, [[spoiler:his uncle, a Triad he never met, deduces his identity fairly easily.]]

* ComesGreatResponsibility: Following the second attempt on his life, Ren resolves to use his powers to defend his parents from Black Mask rather than any kind of self-benefit.

* MagikarpPower: Due to the way his power works, Ren wonders if he could make himself as strong as ComicBook/{{Superman}} one day as he keeps acquiring new abilities and upping his stats. But in the present, he's only about as strong as reasonably fit teenager and is very much lacking in NighInvulnerability. In addition, several of his powers are useless in direct combat, such as Multilingual and Driving.

* NothingButSkinAndBones: A six-month coma leaves Ren emaciated and so weak that he has to relearn how to walk and stand. Luckily, his ability helps him build muscle quickly by dumping his prestige points into strength, letting him recover and return home within a month of waking up.

-->'''Ren:''' God, it totally looks like I'm mugging this guy.

* ThouShaltNotKill: Enforced by the skill of the same name. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" prevents Ren from ever killing his opponents so long as their brains are intact. This means that attacks that would otherwise lead to massive internal bleeding and death will "merely" cripple his opponent. He initially considers selling this, but after seeing the results of Soul-Crushing Strike firsthand, he opts not to, as he simply isn't mentally or emotionally prepared to end someone's life.

* InSeriesNickname: Due to his tendency to leave his opponents with broken bones that won't ever heal correctly, Ren's super identity becomes known s "the Breaker" on the internet.

* ItsAllMyFault: Ren blames himself for Alice's death, as she was caught in the middle of an attempt on his life.

* PlayingTheVictimCard: After Ren breaks the arm of the guy who mugged him, the mugger declares that ''he's'' the one getting mugged while coming up with a sob story about how Ren is taking his niece's birthday money. Ren tries to point out the issues with this guy's story, namely that he's holding a gun in plain sight, but his words fall on deaf ears. Ren is then forced to flee, discovering that footage of the incident is filled with comments about what a loser he is for mugging a guy.

* TheTriadsAndTheTongs: The Snake-Flower Triads compete with Black Mask's mafia for control of Gotham City's Chinatown. While they're still ruthless crooks that Ren has little sympathy for, they come across as a LighterShadeOfBlack, given how one Triad seems to shoot a guy Ren had incapacitated to help him, nodding at him in affirmation. [[spoiler:Then it's revealed that Ren's uncle is a member and a loaded one at that.]]

* DoubleJump: This is one of the abilities Ren rolls after going viral from his first video.

* SimpleYetAwesome: Soul-Crushing Strike is a simple punch that strikes with bone-breaking force and Ren's most-used combat skill. It's a no-frills attack powerful enough to incapacitate any non-superpowered mobster by crushing their bones and can't be blocked through martial arts. There's no apparent cost or requirement to use it, and the only noticeable downsides are the loud bang it makes upon use and Ren's own squeamishness over potentially crippling someone for life.

* HeroicRROD: Using FlashStep in rapid succession makes Ren's ankles ache. In addition, using his skills in rapid succession wears him out. A 40-second firefight where he uses Flash Step and Soul-Crushing Strike repeatedly leaves him winded and gulping for air.

** After a Triad shoots a mob crook he'd been fighting dead, Ren's super identity quickly garners infamy as a killer, much to Ren's dismay. He wonders how Batman deals with bad press like this. At the least, his new viral presence on the internet gives him a lot of prestige points.

* PerpetualFrowner: As an UnluckyEveryman, Ren has a permanent scowl on his face by default. It makes him look older than he actually is, allowing him to enter casinos despite being underage at sixteen.

* ProfessionalHitman: Subverted. Ren is nearly killed by a homeless man with a gun, who Ren lampshades as looking nothing like the assassins he expected. According to the GCPD, this is Black Mask's standard MO for getting rid of loose ends, as the desperate are easily convinced to kill others for a thousand bucks. The fact that the assailant is a random hobo means that it's impossible to prove decisively that Black Mask is responsible as the payment was made in cash.

* WhamLine: Ren is stopped in his tracks when he meets his uncle, who warmly greets him [[spoiler:as a member of the Triads.]]

* HeroicRROD: Using FlashStep in rapid succession makes Ren's ankles ache.

* MusclesAreMeaningful: Ren's muscles grow in accordance with his strength stat. His six-month coma caused his strength to dwindle to a mere 2, but putting points in strength helped him stand again in a few days rather than months. Getting his strength to 20 gives him freedom of mobility and a healthy, if thin build, while dumping 30 more points into it causes him to gain twenty pounds of muscle overnight, leaving him looking and feeling better than he had before he was shot. With the help of his powers, he's soon performing complex acrobatics and knocking common crooks to the floor with a single hit.

* RequiredSecondaryPowers: Discussed. While mulling over the weirdness of his gamer powers, Ren notes that abilities like Thou Shalt Not Kill aren't ''too'' weird to wrap his head around, given that Superman must clearly have some kind of tactile telekinesis to avoid ripping every plane he catches in half.

* ClarkKenting: Averted. Ren is by his own admission a nobody, but he goes the extra mile to disguise himself as a vigilante, doing everything from going InTheHood, to wearing a face mask, to putting on contacts to change the color of his eyes. Despite all this, [[spoiler:his uncle deduces his identity fairly easily.]]

* IHaveNoSon: Ren's father claimed to not have any siblings, leading to Ren's confusion when his father says that Ren's uncle helped pay for his hospital stay. [[spoiler:This is because said uncle is a member of the Snake-Flower Triads, recognizing Ren even in his disguise.]]

* ProfessionalAssassin: Subverted. Ren is nearly killed by a homeless man with a gun, who Ren lampshades as looking nothing like the assassins he expected. According to the GCPD, this is Black Mask's standard MO for getting rid of loose ends, as the desperate are easily convinced to kill others for a thousand bucks. The fact that the assailant is a random hobo means that it's impossible to prove decisively that Black Mask is responsible as the payment was made in cash.

* CareerEndingInjury: Invoked by Ren's Soul-Crushing Strike skill, a punch with explosive force that bypasses attempts to guard against it. Its name is apparently derived from how it crushed the dreams of many a martial artist by ruining them. When going out as a vigilante, this attack leaves multiple members of the mob crippled for life, something that [[MyGodWhatHaveIDione makes Ren uncomfortable.]]

* CareerEndingInjury: Invoked by Ren's Soul-Crushing Strike skill, a punch with explosive force that bypasses attempts to guard against it. Its name is apparently derived from how it crushed the dreams of many a martial artist by ruining them. When going out as a vigilante, this attack leaves multiple members of the mob crippled for life, something that makes Ren uncomfortable.

* FameThroughInfamy: Ren's power does not care if his publicity is good or bad, only that he's famous. As a result, good press will give him as much prestige as bad press. In fact, his first big boost of prestige is when he's caught on video apparently mugging a man who had held him at gunpoint earlier.

* MusclesAreMeaningful: Ren's muscles grow in accordance with his strength stat. His six-month coma caused his strength to dwindle to a mere 2, but putting points in strength helped him stand again in a few days rather than months. Getting his strength to 20 gives him freedom of mobility and a healthy, if thin build, while dumping 30 more points into it causes him to gain twenty pounds of muscle overnight, leaving him looking and feeling better than he had before he was shot. With the help of his powers, he's soon performing complex acrobatics and knocking people to the floor with a single hit.

* NiceGuy: Ren is largely portrayed as a nice, well-meaning kid who is in over his head between his gambling habit, superpowers, and getting shot by Black Mask. He can't bring himself to stop a child in Koreatown who stole food out of necessity for herself, instead paying off the shopowner with interest. His crusade to stop Black Mask is motivated largely out of a desire to prevent anyone else from getting hurt rather than revenge, and he cringes at Soul-Crushing Strike's bone-breaking power.

* PainfulTransformation: Ren's powers, particularly when boosting physical stats like Strength, tend to modify his body in relation to the points he accrued. When learning skills, this leads to a pinching feeling in his brain. But after going viral and dumping a lot of points into his stats overall, the sudden change makes him feel like he's dying and every muscle goes taut as he gasps for air. The sensation is so excruciating that he blacks out afterward, waking up the following morning.

* RandomNumberGod: Although abilities are organized into "tiers" of general effectiveness, whatever powers Ren gets is largely up to chance, with the author stating that he rolls a die when it comes to determining what abilities Ren gets.

* SimpleYetAwesome: Soul-Crushing Strike is a simple punch that strikes with bone-breaking force. It's a no-frills attack powerful enough to incapacitate any non-superpowered mobster and can't be blocked through martial arts.

* CivvieSpandex: Ren wears a skintight bodysuit with armor plating beneath a hooded vest and cargo shorts while going out to investigate Black Mask.

* MusclesAreMeaningful: Ren's muscles grow in accordance with his strength stat. His six-month coma caused his strength to dwindle to a mere 2, but putting points in strength helped him stand again in a few days rather than months. Getting his strength to 20 gives him freedom of mobility and a healthy, if thin build, while dumping 30 more points into it causes him to gain twenty pounds of muscle overnight, leaving him looking and feeling better than he had before he was shot.

* UnexplainedRecovery: Due to his refusal to tell his parents about his new powers, Ren's rapid recovery from NothingButSkinAndBones to healthy and even fit over the span of a month comes across as weird at best and concerning at worst.

* YoungerThanTheyLook: [[FaceOfAThug Ren's "Resting-Bitch-Face"]] allows him to enter an adults-only casino despite being only sixteen.

* MusclesAreMeaningful: Ren's muscles grow in accordance with his strength stat.

* UnexplainedRecovery: Due to his refusal to tell his parents about his new powers, Ren's rapid recovery from NothingButSkinAndBones to healthy and even fit over the span of a month.
* UnluckyEverydude: Ren is friendless, has middling grades, and lives in [[WretchedHive Gotham]] of all places while his parents struggle to make ends meet. To try and ease their burden, he uses his gambling talent to make money as a "part-time job", but it ends up biting him in the rear when Black Mask shoots him, leaving him in a six-month coma that forces his dad to reach out to Ren's estanged uncle for financial support.

* ButNotTooForeign: Ren is a Chinese-American who admits to being only half-Chinese, which has him worried when he runs into members of the Triad who may not appreciate his "impure blood".

* KidHero: Ren is only sixteen and has the maturity of one. As a result, [[DeconstructedTrope he's not mentally prepared to face danger]] on a regular basis, freezing up when faced with yet another gun after the first two attempts on his life. Even after he works up the courage to fight back, he

* SimpleYetAwesome: Soul-Crushing Strike is a simple punch that strikes with near-superhuman force. It's a no-frills attack powerful enough to incapacitate any non-superpowered mobster and can't be blocked.

* UnluckyEverydude: Ren is friendless, has middling grades, and lives in [[WretchedHive Gotham]] of all places while his parents struggle to make ends meet. To try and ease their burden, he uses his gambling talent to make money as a "part-time job", but it ends up biting him in the rear when Black Mask shoots him, leaving him in a six-month coma that forces his dad to reach out to his brother for financial support.

* CareerEndingInjury: Invoked by Ren's "Soul-Crushing Strike" skill, a punch with explosive force that bypasses attempts to guard against it. Its name is apparently derived from how it crushed the dreams of many a martial artist by ruining them. When going out as a vigilante, this attack leaves multiple members of the mob crippled for life, something that makes Ren uncomfortable.

* ComboPlatterPowers: The powers that Ren gets from his gamer power are random, resulting in him getting a strange hodgepodge of skills like SupernaturalMartialArts, becoming a BadassDriver, a DoubleJump, or the abiltiy to FlashStep. To add to the randomness, his powers are largely derived from other series like ''Manga/OnePunchMan'' and ''Manga/Bleach''.

* DiscardAndDraw: Ren can "sell" abilities, giving them up in exchange for prestige points that he can allocate toward his stats, rolling for new abilities, or buying equipment.
* FlashStep: Ren rolls "Flash Step" following his first video, giving him the ability to move with explosive speed over short distances, but only forward or backwards.
* HeroWithBadPublicity: Ren hoped his debut video would give him a decent reputation, but after a Triad shoots a mob crook he'd been fighting dead, Ren's super identity quickly garners infamy as a killer, much to Ren's dismay. He wonders how Batman deals with bad press like this.

* {{Omniglot}}: Following his debut video, one of the skills Ren rolls is "Multilingual", making it easier for him to learn any language, especially those that are related to each other or exist in the same region.

* PopularityPower: Ren's abilities run off prestige. The more fame (or infamy) he gains, the more points he has to spend to gain new skills, buy equipment, and improve his stats. Because of this, he has to engineer situations where he can get a drone to record his actions to upload to the internet to improve his powers and gain new ones.

* PopularityPower: Ren's abilities run off prestige. The more fame (or infamy) he gains, the more points he has to spend to gain new skills, buy equipment, and improve his stats.

** "2-7 Offsuit" is widely regarded as one of the worst possible starting hands in Texas Hold 'Em poker. In the same chapter, one of Black Mask's assassins attempts to kill Ren, who is undergoing physical therapy. If not for his powers, Ren would have been helpless.

* ComboPlatterPowers: The powers that Ren gets from his gamer power are random, resulting in him getting a strange hodgepodge of skills like SupernaturalMartialArts, becoming a BadassDriver, a DoubleJump, or the abiltiy to FlashStep.

* IHaveNoSon: Ren's father claimed to not have any siblings, leading to Ren's confusion when his father says that Ren's uncle helped pay for his hospital stay.
* OlderThanTheyLook: [[FaceOfAThug Ren's "Resting-Bitch-Face"]] allows him to enter an adults-only casino despite being only sixteen.

** "2-7 Offsuit" is widely regarded as the worst possible hand in poker

* OlderThanTheyLook: [[PerpetualFrowner Ren's "Resting-Bitch-Face"]] allows him to enter an adults-only casino despite being only sixteen.
* {{Omniglot}}: Following his debut video, one of the skills he rolls is "Multilingual", making it easier for him to learn any language, especially those that are related to each other or exist in the same region.