MARVEL : STARTING WITH GOKU TEMPLATE

The power receded like a tidal wave, leaving him stranded and gasping on the shores of his own frailty. The world spun, a nauseating vertigo seizing him as the god-like strength of the Goku template evaporated. Ethan felt his body shrinking, the roaring fire in his blood dwindling to a pilot light, and his own human-ish consciousness, once a tiny passenger, was slammed back into the driver's seat. A cold, stark terror gripped him. The template is ending.

He knew what this meant. Even with his Saiyan blood, his own base power was pitiful. A tenfold multiplier on almost nothing was still almost nothing. Worse, the aftershocks of using the template were coming. The bone-deep exhaustion, the inevitable coma. He'd be unconscious before he could even try to trigger another transformation. And then it would be over. The X-Men, all of them, would be captured, and their fate would be in the hands of a man who saw them as lab rats.

A bitter realization settled in his gut. The templates were a crutch. A powerful one, yes, but once they were kicked out from under him, he was just a weak, helpless kid again. You can borrow power, a grim voice in his head said, but you can't own it. Not until it's yours. From this moment on, his own training had to be his absolute priority. He had to build his own foundation so that one day, the templates would be accessories, not life support.

But for now… for now, he was about to pass out in the middle of a battlefield.

No. A thought cut through the dizzying haze. Justice Points. Killing Jason Stryker, a puppet master about to commit genocide, had to be worth a fortune.

With the last dregs of his willpower, he fought back the encroaching blackness, his vision tunneling. He screamed at the system in his mind. Panel! Open the panel!

A familiar blue screen flickered before his eyes.

[Justice Value progress bar is full. One (1) protagonist template draw is available. Draw now?]

His finger, clumsy and trembling, stabbed at the glowing 'YES' like a drowning man grasping for a branch. He didn't care what it was. He just needed to load something, anything, hoping the act of initiating a new template would short-circuit the system, a bug in the code that would cancel out the debilitating crash from the last one.

[Drawing… Drawing complete. Protagonist Template: HARRY POTTER (AGE 14). Do you wish to load this template?]

Ethan's heart sank. Harry Potter? You've got to be kidding me. A moody teenager with a hero complex and some fancy light shows. Against Captain Marvel? It was a death sentence. But it was his only move.

Load! he commanded.

The change was instantaneous. The familiar exhaustion vanished, overridden by the new template. The tattered remains of his uniform dissolved, replaced by the scratchy wool of a black wizard's robe. The world sharpened as a pair of round glasses settled onto his nose, and he felt a faint, phantom ache from the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. In his left hand, he felt the smooth, polished wood of a Firebolt broomstick and the silky, impossibly light fabric of a cloak. In his right, a holly wand, warm to the touch, as if it recognized him.

The Firebolt and the Invisibility Cloak, too? he thought, surprised. The broom was fast, but not fast enough to outrun a human photon. The Cloak, though… one of the Deathly Hallows. It could hide you from Death himself. A perfect escape tool. But he couldn't leave the others. And what good was a wand against a woman who could punch through starships? The magical toolkit—unlocking charms, repair spells—was useless here.

He was still outgunned. But he had one last, desperate, insane idea. A bluff.

He put away the distracting thoughts, dropped the broom and cloak, and looked up at the brilliant, full moon.

DONG-DONG. DONG-DONG-DONG-DONG.

The familiar, terrifying heartbeat returned, a war drum pounding in his chest. His body began to swell. But this time, something was different. An epiphany struck him with the force of a physical blow.

It's not an override. It's a patch. A software update.

Loading a template didn't turn him into that person. It superimposed their abilities and bloodline on top of his own. Before, he was a normal human, so the Goku template was all there was. But now… his base form was a Saiyan. Loading the Harry Potter template didn't erase that. It meant he was now Harry Potter… with the body of a Saiyan. A magical Saiyan.

This realization sent a cascade of possibilities through his mind. Stacking bloodlines. Stacking abilities. Loading the Goku template when his own base power matched it, effectively doubling his strength. The path to godhood, to a being with no weaknesses, suddenly unfurled before him.

ROAR!

The wizard's robe ripped apart as he once again swelled to a terrifying fourteen-meter-tall Great Ape. He felt the power rush back in—but it was a pale imitation of what it had been. He could feel the numbers in his head, an instinct from a life he'd never lived. My base power is maybe… 10? Times ten is 100. That's weaker than Krillin was during the Saiyan saga! It was a candle compared to the raging bonfire of the Goku-Ape's 1400 power level.

But, he thought, a grim smile forming on his monstrous, fanged muzzle, they don't know that. To them, he was the same terrifying beast.

And then came the true revelation. The rage was still there, a screaming red ocean in his mind, demanding destruction. But this time, he wasn't drowning in it. He was standing on a ship in the middle of the storm, at the helm. He could feel the wizard's blood, the discipline of a thousand years of magical theory, acting as a strange, calming anchor against the Saiyan fury. He could think. He could reason. He could control it.

He also felt something else—a new connection. A choice. He realized, with a shock of pure elation, that he could, if he wanted to, suppress the rage entirely and force himself to shrink back down, even with the full moon blazing overhead.

The Harry Potter template, the one he had dismissed as useless, had just fixed the Oozaru form's greatest flaws. It had given him the keys to his own cage.