Fanfic / Greg Veder Vs The World

"My reflexes have been honed by years of videogames!"

One giant LARP

Greg Veder vs The World is a crossover of the main character's power from the mahnwa The Gamer into Worm, with Greg Veder being the recipient of said power. One would expect typical min-maxing, except Greg tends to throw multiple spanners into any plans. Much to the annoyance of his best friend Sparky.

The story is written by ZFighter18 and can be found on SpaceBattles.com (here), FanFiction.Net (here), Sufficient Velocity.com (here), and Royal Road (here).

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Tropes:

• Adaptive Ability: Greg gains resistances to any form of damage he has previously experienced with the strength of said resistances growing with time. Training his Blunt Force Resistance unfortunately involves a lot of self-harm and blood (including hitting himself with a hammer), which the game system metaphorically raises an eyebrow at.
  Going from punching yourself in the face to actual self-mutilation?
  Bold move, Veder. Let's see if it pays off.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Greg as Prodigy gives an extremely piercing one to Dauntless and the PRT that silences every single reporter on the site after the heroes show up late to the scene of a crime during a crisis looking well-rested while in pristine costumes.
  "I mean, could you imagine... what... what kind of heroes would just let somebody do all the work for them?"
• Barrier Warrior: Greg gains the ability to form Mana Barriers after having successfully saved Laserdream from Oni Lee.
• Becoming the Mask: Emma, as Greg's girlfriend. However, not completely sure, because there are times when she sees the relationship "funny".
• Bloody Murder: Greg can dodge Lung's direct attacks, but is really thrown off his stride when he gets some of Lung's boiling-hot blood in his mouth, searing his insides.
• Blow You Away: Greg gains the ability to manipulate high speed winds over a set area through his encounter with Storm Tiger. Initially it's only the strength of a gentle breeze, but as it ranks up he's able to blow away Lung's fireballs, launch Rasengan-style cutting attacks, and practically fly.
• Breath Weapon:
  • Being the Dragon of Kyushu, Lung is fully capable of releasing a devastating stream of fire onto any foes unfortunate enough to cross him once he has sufficiently ramped up.
  • Greg himself gains the ability to do this after defeating Lung.
• Bring It: After a school bully makes so many threats that Greg gets a quest to put him in his place, Greg actually takes a serious stance and invites him to bring it. (It's a short fight.)
• Broken Bird: Taylor. After everything she has gone through at the Terrible Trio's hands, she is highly suspicious of anyone in school showing her any kind of compassion. She even explodes at Greg after he gets Sophia and the others to lay off her, thinking it's some kind of trap set up by Emma.
• Bullying a Dragon: The PRT, through means of Dauntless, mock and belittle Prodigy and his heroic actions while commending their own importance in the events of the past few days. I repeat, they openly belittled the hero who single-handedly defeated a Scaled Up Lung and put an end to the Bakuda bomb threat, effectively putting an end to the Azn Bad Boys and accomplishing in a matter of hours something the Parahuman Response Team hasn't managed to perform in their last ten years of operation. If Greg hadn't just undergone a load of Character Development, he likely would have unloaded on them then and there.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Prodigy's personality should render him an absolute joke amongst the Cape community. He's an Occidental Otaku who spouts pithy one liners and Gratuitous Japanese to such an extent that he is an In-Universe Fountain of Memes. He almost always speaks in a very bad Shakespearean accent and is such a Large Ham that he could give Mouse Protector a run for her money. Even so, you'd be hard-pressed to find a cape who doesn't in some way respect him given that he took down a Scaled Up Lung twice in a two week period and almost single-handedly put an end to the Brockton Bay Bombings.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Greg has done so much PHO trolling that it takes him a fair bit of thinking to remember the specific incident where he provoked Genesis into getting herself banned from an MMO — even after being told the exact words he used.
  Greg: Okay that sounds like me... Nah, still not ringing a bell.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: While PHO speculates that the new cape is a low-level Brute and Mover, Void Cowboy guesses that he's the next coming of Eidolon, rating at least 4 in all categories.
• Car Fu: Between aerokinesis and brute strength, Greg and Lung toss the same car back and forth at each other several times, in increasingly wrecked condition.
• The Casanova: Greg‘s dad, Rowan Veder, was quite the ladies' man and would often regale his son with tales of his past exploits, regardless of if Greg inquired about them or not.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using [Reinforcement Burst] costs Greg a fixed amount of HP — which actually increases as the skill levels up. In the right circumstances, though, a few seconds of tremendously boosted strength and speed is worth it.
  Yeah, it's one of those skills.
• Character Level: With the sweet rewards that come with it, Greg is probably addicted to getting stronger so he can take on the Quests he needs for the large amounts of Experience Points needed to level up. Case in point - when he decided to throw himself into a ten minute long fight with a raging fire dragon that gets stronger the longer and harder it fights just for the experience, perks, and money he'd get from completing the Quest.
• Childhood Friends: Greg & Sparky, who seem to be each others' closest and only friends.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Axel "Sparky" Ramon is Greg's best friend and perhaps the only person who can convince him to show some restraint. While his advice usually falls on deaf ears, the fact that he manages to have Greg listen to him at all is quite impressive.
• Code Name: Greg decides for his alter ego to go by the name of Prodigy due to his ability to grow at an exceptional pace.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: A lot of Greg's abilities don't come with an off switch.
  • Changes to Greg's base stats reflect also reflect themselves physically. Increasing his physical parameters, STR, SPD, and VIT, literally changes Greg's body to be more muscular, lean, and toned. Increasing his INT and WIS allows Greg to much more easily form mental connections, memorize data, and pick up on social cues while also physically changing the characteristics of his brain.
  • A number of Traits and Abilities also cause subtle and unexpected changes. Dragon King's Blood is implied to give Greg's eyes a very minor shine and Heat Resistance allows him to stay in warmer areas without building up a sweat, something Susan Veder picks up on after Greg spends a few hours in the kitchen.
• Curse Cut Short: Greg's attempts to swear when hurting himself during training are interrupted by his constant shouts of pain. Even so, when Blunt Force Resistance levels up, he concludes it was worth it.
• Damsel in Distress: As per canon, Taylor against Lung.
• Dead Man's Switch: As in canon, Bakuda utilizes an internal switch along with a second detonator concealed in her boots. She threatens to set off an explosion of nuclear proportions should Prodigy refuse to comply with her demands. Greg gets around this by cutting off her legs with a superheated sword, both depriving her of her manual means of setting off her explosives and cauterizing her wounds to prevent her from bleeding out.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Not just a phrase, but a status effect, too!
• Dragon Ancestry: By defeating a fully Scaled Up Lung in single combat, Greg attained the Trait Dragon King's Blood, which gives him a boost to strength and speed as well as the blood of dragons and kings coursing through his veins.
• The Dragon Slayer: By defeating Lung at the Docks with Taylor's assistance, Greg attained the Title Dragon-Blooded Knight, which increases his damage to Dragon enemies by 50%. By defeating a much stronger Lung alone at Coventree Plaza, this Title evolves to Dragonbane Knight.
• Dynamic Entry: Greg is riding a high after he makes a dramatic entrance and excessively flowery challenge to Lung, to save Glory Girl from him, "the dynamic entry he had always dreamed of."
• Easily Forgiven: Greg is fairly quick to forgive both Emma and Sophia for their bullying of Taylor. It helps that he was Distracted by the Sexy when he forgave Emma, but he doesn't seem to hold much of a grudge against Sophia even though he thinks she was the main instigator behind the Locker Incident and instead seems to view her as a somewhat hostile friend.
• Elemental Armor: Dragon King's Aura, a Perk gained through defeating Lung twice, cloaks Greg in an elemental aura of his choosing that both protects him from similar elemental affects and inflicts damage to his surroundings.
• Enemy Mine: Stormtiger would quite like to recruit Greg, but when Greg has been busy assaulting the ABB, he isn't going to push the point too hard.
  Stormtiger: With us or not, he's cutting down the competition. Let's leave the kid to his work.
• Experience Points: Greg is somewhat addicted to them.
• Fighting Back Is Wrong: Greg's mother is pleased to some extent by his desire to protect Taylor, but also chastises him for getting involved in a fight — even though he didn't hit anyone who wasn't already hitting him. She buys him an ice cream, but also grounds him.
• Flavor Text: The Observe Skill not only provides details of a person or object's name and stats, but also lots of snarky commentary - some of it completely irrelevant, yet humorous.
• Flying Brick: Greg. He can easily lift over a metric ton, can move at decidedly transonic speeds, considers being impaled to be a minor inconvenience, and can combine his Mana Platforms, Aerokinesis, and superhuman abilities to manage a form of Not Quite Flight.
• Gathering Steam: As per canon, Lung gets more and more powerful the longer a challenging fight goes on. What makes Greg Lung's natural counter is that Greg's stats also increase drastically in combat but his stay up. This proves to be Lung's undoing when he leaves Greg for dead to go kill Taylor, only to lose steam as he's no longer facing a real challenge allowing Greg to reveal himself to be Not Quite Dead and seize the victory.
• Glowing Eyes: Greg has them when using powers. Especially ones that specialize in anaylsis. Such as Stuctural Analysis.
• Good Parents: Susan constantly worries about Greg's safety with her more or less getting a heart attack when she found out about her son being in the restaurant that ended up under Bakuda's assault. And that's beside the fact that her son suddenly completely changed his habits and is also sneaking out of the house. God knows how she will react if she finds out he is a vigilante.
• Healing Factor: Greg's body will heal from just about anything in a day or less. Broken bones move back into place, bullets and glass shards are pushed out, he can even grow back lost eyes. In the short term, though, things can still be quite unpleasant for him.
• Hope Spot: After Greg managed to pull a miraculously alive Emma from the wreckage of a destroyed building, he accompanied her to Brockton Central Hospital and briefly spoke with his mom before exiting the building. He then rushes back in once his Danger Sense spikes just in time to see an old Asian woman Strapped to a Bomb whose timer just reached zero. Subverted in the sense that the bomb is later revealed to have had a short range and that Susan Veder managed to survive the blast. However, none of this was revealed to Greg until after he had already completed his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Obliviousness leads to assumptions leads to horrible judgement.
• Hypocrite:
  • All the students who idolized Emma even when she was extremely horrible to Taylor ( or even because she was horrible to Taylor ), are now angry and disgusted with Taylor because she was mean to Greg after he tried to convince her that Emma was actually a really nice person. Greg himself goes from being upset about the abuse that Emma keeps pouring on Taylor to harshly critical of Taylor for calling out how blatantly Emma is manipulating him.
  • Sparky gets upset with Greg for beating and even killing his way through the ABB and taking it over. Then Sparky gets kidnapped by the Empire for an initiation, and realizes that if he had Greg's power, he would kill the people threatening him, too. He's rather bitter at himself, admitting that he moralized when he was safe but changed his tune when gang violence became his problem.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Sparky is quite upset about how many ABB members Greg killed. Greg insists he did his best to minimise casualties when doing a necessary job.
  Sparky: That's how it goes?
  Greg: Yes. When they have guns and knives and numbers and they want to kill me and terrorize the whole city and act like terrorists, that is exactly how it goes.
• I Shall Taunt You: Greg is very proficient with the Taunt skill as he is something of a natural expert when it comes to verbally infuriating those around him. He first acquires the skill when he enrages Sophia by accident.
  Greg: Hey Mushu! Come get some!^note This is a taunt he throws out to Lung.
• Improperly Paranoid: Taylor causes herself quite a bit of unnecessary stress by worrying about what Greg might be trying to pull on her. He may not have been^note definitely hasn't been a good friend to her, but he's not out to get her.
• Instant Costume Change: The Transformation Sequence Perk allows Greg to instantaneously change into any full costume he possesses while being stylistically obscured by any combination of a flash of blue light, Mana Glitter, and Aerokinesis.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Sophia Hess's runs out when she runs into Taylor Hebert after the latter had officially joined the wards as Lady Bug. The extent of her misdeeds are brought to light and the severity of her parole is greatly increased to the point that a single misstep would likely lead to her immediate incarceration.
• Klingon Promotion: After thoroughly defeating Lung, the game interface gives Greg control of his properties, and Greg decides to take over the ABB and scale back their activities to basically just be neighbourhood watch. Some of the former members aren't happy about it, but they're quickly sidelined and dealt with by the ones who are just glad to have a cape protector less prone to stirring up trouble and torching his own subordinates.
• Level Grinding: One would expect this from a life-as-a-videogame story, and Greg does engage in some, but much of the draw of the story comes from the personal growth (and self-sabotage thereof) of Greg.
• Le Parkour: Between sticking to walls, aerokinesis-assisted leaps, and general strength and speed, Greg ends up very good at roof-running — and beating Sophia in a fair fight gives him a Parkour perk, too, making him better at flips and jumps. One of the early sightings of his cape persona is a video of him screaming "Parkour!" over and over again, causing the PRT to assign it as a tentative name for him. Later, his Darker and Edgier persona goes by "Hardkour".
• Literal Disarming: Greg was acting in self-defence when he used a flaming sword to cut off a woman's legs, honest! It's understandable, however, that the police react badly to it when they arrive.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • After taking down Lung and Bakuda, Greg comes face to face with a school bully and has to work hard to stop himself from bursting out laughing. The incoming punch a short time later is basically in slow motion from his perspective.
  • On a later occasion, Sparky punches the same bully in the jaw, not to protect Greg from him, but to protect him from actually fighting Greg.
• Mundane Made Awesome: For Greg, his clothing adds different modifiers to his various Abilities and Stats, even those he doesn't have yet. Like the Oxford Dress Shoes, a part of the [English Gentleman] Outfit, that granted +3 [Ballroom Dance], +3 [Tact],+2 [Tea Preparation], and a +1 to CHA.
• My Beloved Smother: While Susan Veder does sincerely love her son, her desire to maintain control over his life and not let him grow up can be very overbearing. She freaks out anytime Greg shows signs of maturing, such as bringing home a friend, asking about acquiring a Driver's License, or catching him with a girl, and tries to discourage or distract him from said actions whenever possible. It's eventually revealed that she's so deeply afraid of Greg growing up because she's terrified that he will become just like his dad and leave her.
• Named Weapon: Greg has two.
  • Nozarashi^*Weather-beaten Skeleton is a beaten up katana that is so weathered that only Greg can use it thanks to his Reinforcement spell. It's primary purpose is intimidation.
  • Gram^*Wrath was not given a name by Greg himself, but rather by his power appointing one after he used the weapon to defeat Lung on one of his first nights out as a cape.
• Never My Fault: Susan Veder has difficulty reconciling her views of her son from before and after he gains his powers to the point that she contacts the PRT to have him tested without Greg's knowledge. When Greg calls her out on this obvious betrayal of trust after catching her in a lie, she fails to own up to her actions and does all she can to deflect blame onto Greg for the changes he has gone through.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Taylor snaps at Greg after he convinces Sophia and the others to stop bullying her once he tries to convince her that Emma is a lovely person (after Emma admitted to a long campaign of abuse that resulted in Taylor being hospitalised for a week). This not only alienates the only person who both cared for her and was willing to stand up for her in the entire school, it also further isolates her from the rest of the student body who only see her as a Jerkass for exploding at someone who was legitimately trying to help her.
  • Greg himself in the same situation, for being so completely oblivious to Emma's blatant manipulation. His humblebragging about getting Sophia and the other girls to apologise might have gone over better if he hadn't immediately switched to Emma's side the moment she started flirting with him (after she admitted to being involved in the bullying campaign that hospitalised Taylor) and then tried to convince Taylor that Emma was actually a lovely person. When this goes as poorly as one would expect, he immediately criticises Taylor for being mean to Emma.
• No Social Skills: Greg has trouble picking up on social cues, tends to not understand the significance of context to a conversation, and has difficulty understanding why Sparky is so disturbed by his Training from Hell when it produces definite quantifiable results. Part of this is attributed to Asperger's Syndrome, while the rest is likely due to his mother's overly cautious and protective parenting style never allowing him to come to terms with his disorder.
• Not Quite Dead: Being the Gamer, Greg can take a seemingly lethal amount of damage to himself only to get up and continue fighting as if nothing happened a moment later. Even if his HP reaches zero, Greg is only temporarily knocked out and his healing factor will bring him back in a matter of minutes.
• Not Quite Flight: While Greg cannot technically fly, his ability to leap great distances combined with his aerokinesis and Mana Platforms allow him to traverse through the skies almost as quickly and easily as he can move on the ground.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Greg tends to choke on his shoe almost every chapter. Greg being Greg, he tends to not notice his own faux pas unless they are explicitly pointed out to him, and will often continue to make an ass of himself unless Sparky manages to stop him.
• Otaku: Greg, definitely. Sparky to a lesser degree.
• Playing with Fire: Greg gains the Pyrokinesis skill from his battle with Lung.
• Poor Communication Kills: What eventually led to Greg breaking ties with Taylor.
• Pragmatic Hero: While Prodigy is certainly a heroic and inspiring figure, he is still very willing to dirty his hands if need be. He sends a large number of ABB members to the ICU during the Brockton Bombings and cuts Bakuda off at the knee to remove her detonator and not trigger her Dead Man's Switch.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: The "80s Leg Warmers (Used)" Greg found in the garage. The Flavor Text for the Item... implied things about their use that seriously unnerved him.
• Red Baron: White Knight, the moniker initially given to Greg's second alter ego, sticks with him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Greg embarks on one against the ABB after he is led to believe that both his mom and Emma were killed by Bakuda's bombs. He sends almost a hundred gang members to either the hospital or the morgue and doesn't stop until he has taken out both Lung and Bakuda. This is somewhat deconstructed as Greg later admits that the damage he inflicted on the grunts accomplished nothing in the grand scheme of things as the ABB is effectively a Keystone Army and none of his actions have made him feel any better than when he started his crusade.
• Secret Identity: Greg technically has two. During his first nights out as well as during his initial crusade against the ABB, Greg ventured out in a darker costume which was eventually deemed Hardkour◊ by PHO. His second costume was deliberately designed to be as different from his first one as possible to dissociate Prodigy◊ from Hardkour and the mistakes he made on his first outings.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Emma, Sparky's parents, Armsmaster, Director Piggot, and presumably Susan Veder have all managed to piece together at least one of Greg's secret identities by Spotting the Thread.
• Sensory Overload: Sparky gets a portion of Greg's Super-Senses after being Reinforced, and finds it overwhelming to constantly be distracted by every detail of every sight and sound and smell and taste.
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• Ship Tease: The author and his betas enjoy adding bits of this to the various chapters, as well as in comments and replies to reader questions.
• Shoot the Medic First: After the initial set of explosions went off throughout the town, Bakuda sent one of her bombs strapped to an old woman to Brockton Central Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the area where a large portion of the survivors had gathered.
• Shout-Out: Loads of them.
  • Greg's armor is intentionally styled to look like Proto Saber's and his sword has a handle with a golden grip whose blade glows gold when magically strengthened, making him the near spitting image for the King of Knights.
  • One Empire thug gets knocked out, and his compatriot screams out, "YOU KILLED KENNY!"
  • Bakuda reacts to Greg's tirade against her with "Yeah… well, that's just like… your opinion, man."
• Smug Snake: Bakuda. Just like in canon, she can't help but boast about how smart she is, how she's already won against Prodigy, and how her detonator and Dead Man's Switch maker her all but untouchable. It takes Greg literally and figuratively cutting her off at the knees to shut her up.
• Spider-Sense: Danger Sense, Greg's most heavily invested in Perk, allows him to sense the presence of incoming danger so that he may react to it accordingly. It is not perfect, however, as it doesn't tell him where exactly the source of the danger may be coming from, and it can be missed if Greg is distracted.
• Sudden Game Interface: How Greg comes to know he now has superpowers.
• Super-Reflexes: Greg's innate reaction time is a fraction of a regular person's. This in combination with his Spider-Sense gives others the impression that he may have Combat Clairvoyance.
• Super-Toughness: Greg can and does walk off all sorts of injuries that really ought to be crippling, so long as he still has hit points. They still hurt, but [Gamer's Mind] can blunt the effects of that. They still slow him down and might keep injuring him if he moves too fast, but he can regenerate. He becomes uncomfortably familiar with being broken, bruised, burned, and bleeding pretty much everywhere and still having to keep going.
  Ow.
  Apparently, getting blasted by energy-beams, carved up by a machete, taking the force of a salvo of grenades to one or more body parts, and finishing with a round of impalement wasn't good for you.
  Who knew?
• Superpower Lottery: As per Worm canon, some powers can be seen as such. Given the growth potential of The Gamer, Greg might have a good shot at winning here.
• Terror Hero: Greg's Hardkour persona's brutal actions against the ABB and terrifying reputation make him a nightmare for any villain unfortunate enough to cross him.
• These Hands Have Killed: Even with [Gamer's Mind] blunting the effects of fear and trauma, Greg's first kill causes him to pause and reflect.
  I did this. My first dead body.
• Too Much Information: Greg can't physically work out at school, so he focuses on Level Grinding his [Observe] skill. Unsurprisingly, this result in him learning things about his classmates that he would have been just as happy not to know, like unusual medical conditions.
• Took a Level in Badass: On Greg's first night out as a cape, he does terribly and almost dies. A few weeks later, he's mowing through Merchant scumbags like its nobody's business and throws himself at Lung.
• Trauma Button: Sparky can handle seeing fists and knives, but he freezes up when he sees a gun pointed at him, overcome by memories of having been shot and dying until Greg revived him.
• Try Not to Die: Subverted when Greg first tries swinging a sword, and Sparky comments that there's no point in telling him not to cut himself, because Greg would consider that an advantage (due to his Adaptive Ability).
• Unskilled, but Strong: Once Greg finds his flow, he realises that escalating Super-Strength and pyrokinesis don't actually make Lung a skilled fighter. He just charges forward and swings, with enough power to end whoever he hits, but no higher strategy.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: After a fashion. By completing the Additional Objectives of a Quest involving a Cape, Greg is able to gain a mimicry of one of that Cape's powers or equipment. Thus far, he managed to gain Aerokinesis from Stormtiger by convincing the Neo Nazi Cape to leave without a fight, Pyrokinesis from Lung by getting the last hit on him during their first battle, Mana Bolt from Purity by gaining her respect, Mana Barrier from Laserdream by saving her and Shielder from Oni Lee, Electrokinesis and Magnetism from Assault and Battery by winning an urban race aganst them and avoiding all their attacks, and Cryokinesis from Nordwind by KO-ing both her and Stormtiger in under 5 minutes.
• Villain Respect: Greg is particularly adept at attaining the respect of his opponents. Stormtiger and Purity both respect him for his actions against the ABB and his strong convictions while Bakuda can't help but be impressed by his willingness to take on Lung. The E88 as a whole greatly respects Greg's Hardkour persona due to the actions he took against both the ABB and the Merchants.
• Violation of Common Sense: Quests are a horrible, horrible, but convincing incentive to engage in suicidal activities like fighting a flaming rage dragon.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: One could see Greg thinking to have this relationship with Sophia. She doesn’t remotely agree.
• Wall Crawl: The [Surface Adhesion] skill lets Greg spend MP to stick to surfaces like Spider-Man. Besides climbing walls with it, he also uses it tactically for things like keeping solid footing during a fight.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: Gram, the sword Greg acquires from first defeating Lung, is a stupendous weapon all around but deals an additional 250% damage to Dragon enemies.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Two take place in Mob 5.17.
  • One of the Brockton Bay police officers calls out Prodigy for his brutal actions in subduing the ABB gang members as some of them will need intensive care in order to survive and others may never recover and goes on to question whether his actions against Bakuda were truly called for. Greg fires back that the people he brutalized were human-traffickers and are therefore entirely undeserving of any mercy that they may otherwise have been given.
  • Greg himself delivers a rather poignant one to Dauntless and the PRT as a whole after the heroes arrive at the scene of the crime only after the victims have been taken away while looking camera-ready with a prepared speech in their headsets, minimizing Prodigy's heroic efforts while also poking fun at his haggard appearance.
    Prodigy: Indeed. All of us have to do at least that much, right? All of us. No matter how long, exhausting or dirty the job is, keeping the people safe comes first. I mean, could you imagine... what... what kind of heroes would just let somebody do all the work for them?
• Worth It: Greg's opinion on having been cut, burned, beaten, and impaled during his battle with Lung after he finally emerges victorious over his foe.
  Prodigy: I. Regret. NOTHING!
• Wrong Context Magic: The Gamer's power is wildly different from other superpowers in the setting. For starters, it has nothing to do with shards. However, Cutscene:Embers suggests that the power is still connected with the space whales in some way.
• You Monster!: Greg is furious at Bakuda. She's unimpressed by his fury.
  Bakuda: Yeah… well, that's just like… your opinion, man.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Greg wants to throw up when his Intimidation skill levels up from a storage unit full of women kidnapped by the ABB being terrified at the sight of him.

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