Ava takes a fighting pose, letting the reader know what they're in for.
Parasite Code is an ongoing Web Serial Novel began in 2022 by S. P. Tucker, and a Pastiche (slash Reconstruction) of shonen fighting series.
Ava Hidalgo is a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old girl: she's five foot four, a hundred and thirty pounds, and really, really loves getting in fistfights with boys who are bigger than her. One day, after getting suspended from school and befriending a stray cat, she gets stung by a genetically-engineered parasite and introduced to a world of danger and adventure unlike anything she's ever known.
Parasite Code (or ParaCode as the author sometimes refers to it in shorthand) received daily updates at roughly midnight CST on Royal Road (here
), before going on Series Hiatus in October 2022.
Parasite Code contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's left deliberately up in the air if the Relationship Upgrade between Sam and Ava will stick past the Parasite Tournament.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. While Ava hasn't taken any serious damage yet, she tends to come away from her fights fairly dented; she's gotten two teeth knocked out, and in the aftermath of the Wolf Rogan fight, she's described as looking like "one giant bruise."
- Big Bad: In the initial mini-arc, the Devourer; in the Parasite Tournament arc, Mr. Johnson as of Chapter 15.
- Blood Knight: Practically exaggerated with Ava. She feels most alive when she's trading blows with somebody.
- Broken Bird: Ava's life is not easy, and her viewpoints and general attitude reflect that.
- Conversational Troping: Ava has geek tendencies, and the similarities of her situation (and the villains she fights) to various anime, manga and video games are not at all lost on her.
- Deadpan Snarker: Everyone has bits of this from time to time, but Sam and Ava get the most of it.
- Determinator: Luke. Despite having his chest so badly melted with Hollywood Acid that his ribcage is exposed in the Dissolve fight, he tears one of his own ribs out with his bare hands, and still manages to stay conscious for long enough to use it as a conduit for the Code of Sword.
- Drugs Are Good: Well, more "drugs are neutral," but Ava is an extremely heavy marijuana smoker, and it isn't judged in any particular way by the narrative.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first five chapters are fairly rough compared to the material past that point, and per
Word of God are going to be rewritten in the future.- Ava is a much more blatant Expy of Yusuke Urameshi in the early chapters.
- Ava's attitude towards violence and death is extremely inconsistent at first.
- Expy Coexistence: During the Wolf Rogan fight, Ava and Sam both explicitly compare him to Hulk Hogan and express familiarity with the latter.
- Rubberman, similarly, draws direct comparison to Luffy and Mr. Fantastic from Ava, and One Piece is explicitly mentioned as being on television in a later chapter.
- Fighting Series: Naturally.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Ava's preferred fighting style even before she received her power; made even better by the Code of Fist.
- Gorn: When the novel gets violent, it gets very, very violent.
- Groin Attack: When Luke attempts to go for payback against Ava, instead of going for a German suplex like in their first fight, Ava ducks under him and punches him square in the balls.
- The Hero: Ava, naturally, being the primary viewpoint character.
- Hero Killer: Maxim Konstantinov dispatches Luke and Scott in consecutive chapters.
- Hoax Hogan: Lampshaded as hard as possible, if not outright parodied, with Wolf Rogan.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ava puts up an abrasive, violent front, and is indisputably a massive Blood Knight, but when the chips are down, she almost always does the right thing for the people she cares about.
- Joke and Receive: Ava attempts to fill time in the Parasite Tournament, when her first opponent decides to be fashionably late, by cutting a promo... that's lifted directly from Hulk Hogan, complete with copious Lampshade Hanging. Cue "Real American" and Wolf Rogan running in.
- Made of Iron: Luke takes more punishment in the Dissolve fight than a human being should reasonably be able to without dying.
- Made of Plasticine: Ordinarily, violence is handled fairly realistically, but all the rules go out the window when a Code is involved.
- Megaton Punch: The Code of Fist enables Ava to hit so hard that she can shatter concrete into splinters and reduce a human to a fine red spray.
- Serial Killer: Charles Raymond Keyes, the Devourer, is a cannibal who was empowered with the ability to steal other people's powers by eating the brains of his victims, parasite and all.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Ava is an occasional cigarette smoker; however, it makes her get winded much more easily.
- Spicy Latina: Downplayed with Ava; by simple way of being a Latina and an Anti-Hero Blood Knight, she fits the trope somewhat, but it's explicitly at least partially a facade.
- The Stoner: Ava smokes a lot of marijuana, and reacts like a kid in a candy store when she finds out that the ship taking the protagonists to the Parasite Tournament has a dispensary. Sam also qualifies somewhat, but to a lesser extent.
- Take That!: During the Wolf Rogan fight, Sam notes that he "hope[s] he isn't as racist as the genuine article."
- Teeth Flying: If Ava gets in a fight, and takes a good hit to the jaw, it usually costs her a molar.
- Tournament Arc: The Parasite Tournament, obviously.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Discussed between Ava and Mr. Johnson, when parasite evolution comes up; the latter mentions a shapeshifter whose parasite evolved to only allow him to transform into a literal Trumplica. Immediately subverted, as the character involved immediately turned it into a lucrative con scheme in the Bible Belt.
- Will They or Won't They?: Sam is established very early as having a crush on Ava, but Cannot Spit It Out. As of Chapter 15, he does, and they do. Sorta.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Ava's Establishing Character Moment involves her pulling a German suplex, explicitly identified as such; later, in the Parasite Tournament, she's forced to improvise some wrestling spots to stall for time against Wolf Rogan.
