New York. Manhattan.
Two figures emerged from the shadows of a narrow alley—a young man and a striking woman with short white hair, her presence radiating an almost military confidence.
"Riven, what's tonight's take?"
The guy was handsome in that effortless way that transcended cultural boundaries. Sharp features, easy confidence. The kind of face that worked anywhere.
"Summoner—" The white-haired woman caught herself, a flicker of old habit crossing her features. "Luke. Tonight's earnings are one thousand dollars."
"A thousand bucks, huh?"
Luke Foster didn't bother hiding his disappointment.
On the surface, the exchange sounded perfectly normal. Like two coworkers wrapping up a late shift. But the scene behind them told a different story—a half-dozen bodies sprawled across the concrete, the metallic tang of blood heavy in the air.
Their "earnings" definitely needed air quotes.
Luke's old man had named him hoping he'd become a lawyer someday. Know the law, uphold the law—that whole deal. And honestly? He'd been on track. Finished law school, landed a position as a judicial clerk. Just needed to put in his time, work his way up to an actual judgeship.
Then the universe decided to hit the reset button on his entire existence.
One minute he's reviewing case files. The next? He's waking up in a world where gods throw hammers and billionaires build flying suits of armor.
The Marvel Universe.
At first, Luke had been... less than thrilled. Years of studying, grinding through law school, finally getting his foot in the door—all for nothing? Just to get dropped into a universe where alien invasions were apparently a thing?
But then he met Riven.
Not a Riven. His Riven. The same champion he'd piloted through tens of thousands of ranked games in League of Legends. She'd materialized beside him that first day, called him "Summoner" like it was the most natural thing in the world, and just like that, Luke discovered he'd brought a cheat code into this new life.
A System.
He could summon characters from games he'd played. The catch? It wasn't some gacha system where you whale until your wallet bleeds. No, this worked on monster drops. Kill enemies, get loot—weapons, skills, items, even characters, all dropping at random like some cosmic RNG decided his life was a looter game now.
Which explained why Luke was out here at two in the morning, hunting criminals with Riven.
Three birds, one stone: clean up the streets, make money to survive, and maybe—maybe—roll the dice on summoning another waifu.
The System's instruction manual had spelled it out clearly: Proficiency equals Affection. All those hours he'd spent one-tricking Riven in top lane, flexing her into jungle and mid, mastering every combo and animation cancel? That translated directly into loyalty here. Riven would walk through fire for him.
Years of being a degenerate who exclusively played female champions was finally paying off.
Just wish she'd spawned as Battle Bunny Riven instead of base skin.
Once Luke wrapped his head around how the System worked, accepting his situation got a lot easier. Sure, the Marvel Universe was dangerous as hell. But the upside?
Riven. Ahri. Syndra. Ashe. Jalter. Scáthach. Skadi. Lappland. Schwarz.
My waifus... I'm coming for all of you.
Reality, of course, had other plans.
Luke had managed to nail down exactly where he was in the MCU timeline. Tony Stark had just won the Apogee Award, which meant the billionaire playboy was about to fly to Afghanistan to demo the Jericho missile, get ambushed by the Ten Rings, and spend three months building the first Iron Man suit in a cave.
The classic transmigrator move would be to swoop in, rescue Tony, and leverage that gratitude into money and a legal identity.
Problem: How?
Luke had no papers. No ID. No passport. Traveling internationally meant either smuggling himself across borders or... what, having Riven carry him there? She could probably maintain sixty miles per hour indefinitely—fuel economy of one meal per hundred miles, like a super-soldier hybrid vehicle—but they didn't exactly have GPS coordinates for a terrorist hideout that even the U.S. military couldn't locate.
Afghanistan was big. The Ten Rings base was hidden well enough that Stark Industries' entire search-and-rescue operation came up empty for months.
Was Luke supposed to just wander the desert hoping to stumble across it?
And even if by some miracle they found the place, what then? Luke was baseline human. Squishy. Fragile. One stray bullet and he's done. Desert conditions alone might kill him—heat exhaustion, dehydration, sandstorms.
Would Riven protect him or protect Tony? She couldn't do both if things went sideways.
After thinking it through, Luke shelved his rescue fantasies and focused on what actually mattered: survival.
They'd found a place in one of those no-questions-asked neighborhoods. Cash up front, no ID required, landlord who very deliberately didn't make eye contact.
The apartment came cheap for a reason.
"The couch smells wrong," Riven had said the first night, her nose wrinkling with disgust. She'd cleaned it three times, but nothing worked. Her senses were sharper than any human's—honed through years of war in Noxus—and she'd picked up traces that cleaning products couldn't erase.
"Someone died on it."
Luke shrugged. He was mildly spooked by ghosts, sure, but with Riven around? Nothing was getting to him. And honestly, a place that didn't ask questions was exactly what he needed right now.
At least there were two beds. He and Riven had their own space.
Not that Luke had any plans to close that distance. Living with Riven was one thing. Making a move on Riven was something else entirely.
He'd watched her punch a street thug so hard the guy embedded in a brick wall. Like, actually stuck there. Couldn't be pried loose. Riven didn't have Superman's bioelectric field or whatever handwave let Kryptonians carry people without crushing them. Her strength was raw, physical, and completely uncontrolled at human-contact levels.
Luke liked his pelvis intact, thanks.
Unless he could find a way to buff his own durability, romance was off the table. Maybe if the System dropped him a Dark Souls item... actually, no. He wasn't trying to become an Undead.
There had to be something in his gaming history that would work.
"All that grinding and we got nothing but guns."
Luke stared at the small arsenal spread across their kitchen table. Pistols, rifles, shotguns—a collector's nightmare from every shooter he'd ever played. Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, Sniper Elite, PUBG, Battlefield. The drops were consistent, at least. Just consistently disappointing.
Nothing high-tech. Nothing sci-fi. Just regular firearms, some of them old enough to qualify as antiques.
At first, Luke had been excited. Guns were cool. Guns were manly. Steel and gunpowder and mechanical precision—there was romance in that.
Then he'd actually tried firing one.
The recoil nearly broke his wrist. A basic rifle kicked so hard he almost shot himself when the barrel jumped. Turned out "point and shoot" required a lot more physical conditioning than video games suggested.
He'd started working out after that. Couldn't afford to be some weakling who couldn't even handle standard infantry weapons.
The apartment's rent was cheap—probably the dead-body discount—and their routine had settled into something almost domestic. Luke handled the cooking because while Riven could cook, her idea of a meal was "edible calories that prevent starvation." Functional, sure. Enjoyable? Not remotely.
If Luke wanted actual food, he had to make it himself.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES.