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The mechanics of the fic are as follows: once a week the Main Character will be given a selection between Five CYOA or Jumpchain and he can get one. However, he gets NO Points. There are a good number of CYOA / Jumpchain that have several choices you can get for free. Those freebies are automatically given to the main character. Some of these will give the main character new perks, skills, powers or knowledge, or items.

One possible scenario with this fic is that the main character could end up being related to several dozen people by blood from various dimensions, which is impossible in real life. However he could eventually get a perk where he's a genetically engineered clone or something, which works.

Some Perks require backgrounds or origins or need to be modified to explain why the main character has them. That's where the fun comes in!

Inspired by Brockton's Celestial Forge and Tinker of Fiction.

Those you who know my fics know I start out slow. If you want action go to Thread mark Young Justice 03.

-000-​

San Francisco, California

May 22, 1968

Wednesday



Before I bore you with the little things, like my super powers in excessive details, I should probably give you the basics first.

So the first thing's an introduction: my name is Norman, I'm a native of Connecticut. It's a nice name and it's a nice place I come from.

All average and normal, boring, and not that interesting at all. Life is not a very exciting place unless something bad is happening. Then you're usually very glad that it's not happening to you. The number of bad things that happened to me tends to involve my health. Even as little active as I was back in the old days I kind of enjoyed many of the jobs I had that were aerobic. Even if I never put in enough effort to get rid of my fat. At least the diet pills I used broke me from my habit of thinking about food every minute of the stupid day. Now I've got muscle and nerve problems so I was actually discouraged from working out unless I wanted to permanently damage the nerves and lose the feelings in my hand permanently. Then the pills hurt my liver and guts, I was using the recommended dosage if you're curious, and it took me a year to recover from that. And on top of all that I wore glasses all the time now.

One more thing…

I still had my hair.

People say I look good. People have complimented me on my looks, being totally blown away when I tell them that I'm at least ten years older than they thought I was. I don't eat crap; I have a very good diet. I eat lots of different things. I don't eat chocolate bars to the point where I throw up and still wanted more, nope. I have a love of spices in home cooking that didn't include sugar and candy wasn't one of them. I can't stand fast food most of the time. My favorite snack foot is celery with cream cheese and black olives. I obviously have to be doing something right if I'm overweight, don't work out except for power-walks, eat regularly, and get doctor's complements.

I had a nice job too. It's not exactly mentally stimulating but at least I wasn't serving fast food. I'd probably have stopped eating altogether if I had to deal with that every single day. It was somewhat aerobic, so I was active and not sitting at a desk. But my job paid all the bills, paid for my truck, paid for my internet, gave me full benefits and holiday pay. I don't take holidays off usually, nor do I usually get sick. Compared to all my coworkers and even my managers I was always at work when I was expected to work.

Now I don't have that anymore.

I am now a Connecticut Yankee in another world.

That said, as for why I'm on another earth, it's because I wanted to.

When someone offers you a job with good pay, you take it. A job is a job; it doesn't matter if you don't like it. Most of the reasons why it's called chores are that they are tasks that need to be done and in this case someone else is willing to pay me to get the job done so that the other guy doesn't have to do it. Getting paid is nice. It's even nicer if you like the job somewhat.

Only instead of a sack full of gold I was given some variation of a Choose My Own Adventure power up.

When I woke up I had a strange desire to brew and drink some tea. This is passing strange since I don't care for tea, I don't buy tea, and I don't know how to make tea. The only tea I ever had was an ingredient in those diet pills that… well, you don't need to know the rest, but it damaged my liver. Yet I somehow I want tea, right now.

I found myself in a dark apartment. I seemed to have everything from my old home moved into this new one. According to my clock it was now May 22nd​, a Wednesday.

One more thing…

I had a new home. The apartment was rather nice. It was bigger than my old place and it had an outdoor porch. The walls were made of a variant of wood deeply stained a kind of golden amber yellow, like honey, with blood red stained wood on the floors and trim and rails of the stairs that lead downstairs. The place was three stories tall, on the corner of an intersection, with a porch on each level for each apartment, facing a street that went up an extremely steep hill whose sidewalk was more stairs than anything. On the side of the apartment complex facing the leveled street there is a main floor that looked like an empty store. There were countertops and a very old cash register that looked brand new. There is also an upper area used for storage above it. There is another room in the back that contains both a library and what looks like an apothecary (died up roots and ground up spices and other herbal medicines in little bags). And there's a downstairs kitchen.

When I stepped out onto the street to look up I found the words 'XX_X-XX__XX For R_nt' on the sign, with words from the sign missing, as they'd fallen off at some point. While I was puzzling over that a red trolley car came down the ridiculously high hill to the right of the yellow painted shop/apartment complex.

I seemed to be in San Francisco, California, USA. And judging by the area this seemed to be China Town. The shop certainly looked like it was more than 40 years old, had a definite Chinese cultural look, had been expanded a few times, and it looked like it had been recently renovated too. The wooden beams and boards were a bit bigger by several inches than modern building techniques would use, which was reassuring. And there was no sheetrock or particleboard or laminated flooring.

One more thing…

I was a fan of Jackie Chan Adventures.

The sign changed to read Uncle's Rare Finds.

"AI-YAAH!" I exclaimed, and then paused, and then deadpanned, "Huh, yup, I can do that now. Uncle would be so proud."

I went back inside the shop and brewed myself some tea. The ground level store kitchen had the ingredients to brew more than thirty types of tea, including fine china tea sets. I knew they were the real deal antiques just by looking at them. I made some tea to calm me down and it seemed to work.

Apparently I have decent tea brewing abilities from everyone who ever worked in Uncle's shop.

One more thing…

Tea brewing abilities are not important, my life is. They're kind of neat, but that's it. What's important is that I'm in a new world and I have a shop and abilities I didn't have before.

This world has magic and spirits, but also evil demons and dark magicians. Many disrespect magic as superstition. But I sure as heck won't. Magic must defeat magic, as the saying goes. Strength of a Superman means nothing when magicians start throwing around Dark Chi Blasts.

I needed to stay alive. If I die, its game over!

I drank some more tea. I seemed to be adjusting well.

One more thing…

I seemed to have more abilities than just tea making. When I thought about them, wondered if I had anymore, a Jackie Chan Adventures CYOA popped up inside my head. Which was strange since I don't think I ever looked at the CYOA when I was back in my old world? I could see the whole thing inside my head as if I'd written it myself. These choices didn't influence my mind in any way, but they still gave me some basic knowledge anyway. Some of it gave me helpful extra experience. Some of the knowledge was going to impact my personality, but I was still in control.

The different origins usually cost points. But for some reason I didn't have any points to spend. Rather, I seemed to have gained all of the freebies instead. Which is a shame, because I would have liked to have been able to buy a few of the Talismans at least, and I didn't like the idea that some choices were taken away from me before I even knew about them?

Since I didn't have any points I couldn't choose my age or gender. I came as myself, which was a normal human male that was too old and out of shape for adventures. However as I sat there thinking about my new world I noticed that my body was slowly changing. A quick check with a antique mirror on the wall in the kitchen showed that I was getting younger. My face fuzz disappeared, I gained back two teeth that I had pulled, my teeth looking less worn and sharper; but my wisdom teeth were still gone. I found a scale in the bathroom. Based on the fact that I hadn't weighed this little since I'd stopped going to the gym, due to certain injuries, I estimated that I was now 18 years old or thereabouts. I'd lost all my injuries and no longer needed glasses either.

According to the CYOA my new origins was as a DISTANT RELATIVE. Which I didn't have to pay for, go figure. This was wrong since I didn't have any relatives in this world. Furthermore thanks to the Perk my new memories will not confuse or cloud my judgement, which is very nice. I was supposed to have clarity in my decisions. I hadn't decided to do anything, so I wasn't sure if it was there yet. As a white guy in Chinatown I was a foreigner, so people expected me to be a little unusual and won't mind me asking about the area. Thankfully I was old enough to miss out on middle school and high school. And finally I had a youthful and energetic body that was particularly able at fighting for my age. No more nerve damage. I didn't really see it since I was still overweight. Lastly it allowed me to stay at Uncle's Rare Finds for free.

I was going to miss out on being around Uncle and Jackie Chan, which I was a bit disappointed about.

At least now I knew why I had a home in San Francisco. I can easily set up a business to buy and sell artifacts and electronic items, books and ingredients. The library is large and full of knowledge about magic and the apothecary gave me enough ingredients to handle all basic alchemy and magic potion making for herbal remedies.

The perk called EVERYONE IS DOING IT also gave me knowledge in The Ancient Art of Butt-Whoop. What I seem to have gotten was the same decades of martial arts knowledge and acrobatics that Jackie Chan trained in before he went into the film industry. So I didn't have a black belt, just a little bit of everything else. These didn't make me an expert. But it also included a number of exercises that would be useful in other disciplines such as North and Southern Style, Wing Chun, Hapkido, karate, boxing, and so on. These were for getting the muscles in shape to train your flexibility and speed. If I wanted to take it to the next level I'd have to pick one and practice with it.

For some stupid reason I wasn't given the COMPANIONS Perk even though it was for free. I think it was because if I did get a companion than my benefactor would have to fork over some points so that my new companion could purchase perks. And that would definitely go against the whole everything-for-free thing we had going on. It sucks, but that's the way it is.

WE MUST DO REEESEARCH, on the other hand, is going to be extremely useful. From reading the description the ability seemed a tad bit overpowered. Especially for a comic book world where there are conspiracies everywhere. And here's why: so long as I put in the effort it seemed that I was incapable of not pulling up obscure facts and information no matter what. That I could use the ability to come up with potions and spells seemed to be just a side benefit. One of the main benefits, but still! The more research I do the more results I'll get.

Another benefit of the We Must Do Research Perk seemed to give me access to parts of the Chi Wizard Origins for free. I was already familiar with spells and supernatural creatures from watching the show and reading stuff online before I came to this world, but it seemed moreso, somehow. I already have an entire library of information to draw upon if I encounter the supernatural, which was present in the Library right this very minute. I can also learn and teach chi magic to others. This means that I can use chi magic. If I do research on magic I can learn magic now.

Chi magic for the win, baby! Awesome!

And finally there was the IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Perk which allowed me to identify on sight any authentic Artifact, capiton A, its general purpose and value. This explained the tea sets in the cupboards and how I knew how much they were worth. I couldn't tell if an artifact was magical or not, just that it was important. Though what I could do is immediately recognize fakes. If someone was trying to undersell or oversell an artifact I'd also know. This means that if someone were to try and sell me a thousand year old ring and didn't know its true worth and had mixed it in with a bunch of bargain basement knock offs, then I'd be able to tell that not only was the ring old and valuable and the real deal but how much I could sell it for.

I could already see myself walking through Chinatown arts and crafts stores to find gems among the junk.

I was also given a few benefits from the Explorers origins thanks to the It Belongs in a Museum Perk and We Must Do Reeesearch. I currently have no knowledge of history or culture or experience traveling around the world but that was going to change fast. If I wanted to become an archeologist I'll become a quite talented one. I'll be able to donate anything I find or sell items to museums for great profits as well. But on the other hand there are going to be nefarious groups and people that will be looking to use my abilities to unearth artifacts so they can sell them on the black market or profit themselves with my work.

This actually wouldn't be so bad, now that I think of it. Even when Jackie Chan and Uncle were hired by nefarious individuals they always walked away with new artifacts to sell or take to the museum. All they had to do was defeat the trolls, vampires, and dark chi wizards first while avoid being stabbed in the back.

One more thing…

I was going to need some equipment. Fortunately I was able to get a few items for free as well. Any item that is destroyed or misplaced will be returned and in perfect working order in about 12 days. This includes EVERYTHING going forwards from this day on. The only exceptions are to things I sell or to items that are stolen which I'll have to retrieve myself. A further limitation is that I must purchase these items in order for this Perk to work. This means that if I run a motorcycle that I just bought off a cliff I'll get it back in less than two weeks. But it wouldn't apply to a tool I found lying on the pavement. I'll have to experiment to see if it applies to anything I find.

PASSPORT gave me the paperwork I needed for traveling. Low-cost and hassle-free travel to any destination in the world that could feasibly be reached by travel agencies, and unsupervised access to historic sites as well. This means that I should be able to rent vehicles or pack horses, camels and boats, and I shouldn't lose my luggage on the way either.

Another benefit of the Passport Perk that I was seeing already was that I now had a legal identification. Turns out I really was 18! I'd have to wait a few years to drink or go to another country with lower drinking laws to consume it legally. I was also able to find, thanks to research, the paperwork to the shop, which I owned as well. All the utilities had been paid up for the first ten years for free.

The LASER BATON Perk came with two abilities. I now had both a Laser Baton and a Jetpack, both seemed to use the same technology from the TV show. I also had Tinkertech knowledge of how to build these two items and maintain them. There were about four different variants of the electric swords that I could make, one of which can be hidden in a cane. There was also a homing beacon for the cane that would return it to its user by flying through the air. For certain reasons I decided not to put the beacon in a hollow tooth and just went with a ring option. The Laser Baton went on my hip.

Finally there was the RESEARCH & REAGENTS Perk. The shop already had an apothecary and a library. There was some magic to be learned in the books and the bottles of ingredients could be used in potions. These were open to the public. However I now had a separate smaller library that was filled with nothing but magic books and another apothecary in the basement in a room filled with boxes and ingredients hanging from the ceiling that were only useful in basic spell crafting. There was some overlap but not much.

Among the books was the Demon Archive, books on good and evil chi, shadow magic, demon magic, dragons, Oni, ghosts, chi vampires, trolls, paper folding magic, maps, the locations of temples, and information on just about every single artifact from the TV show, magical or not. I was a bit concerned about the Demon Archive since it had the mark of Tarakudo on the front cover. But after opening the various books and reading what's inside I found that some of the magic wouldn't work in this Realm since those Oni, demons and deities don't exist here. Even if this Realm does have a Netherworld and a Shadow world to call its own they'll be completely unconnected to the ones from the Jackie Chan Adventures Universe. The Scroll of Hung Chao still worked however. The magical symbols in the scroll didn't depend on borrowing power from another entity, a realm that didn't exist, or blood or souls.

There are also books on Shadow Magic.

Every single being in the world has a shadow since the day they were born and thus shadow magic can affect them all using darkness and elemental magic. This allows one to travel through shadows and the Shadow Realm as well as turn invisible, use Gentle Shadow Magic, and create Shadow Servants. The shadows of the Shadow Realm contain memories and experiences of the shadows of those who have died when their soul moves onto the afterlife. So it was possible to create your own custom-made army that's both powerful and loyal. The only limit is in the crafter.

I could make my own Shadowkhan.

Whooah. My spine was tingling!

One more thing…

I also knew how to read the ancient languages of all the books in my new libraries. Apparently having the We Must Do Reeesearch also included the skills needed to do research in ancient languages. Since Jackie Chan the Archeologist and Uncle the Chi wizard and artifact seller, plus all the bad guys, had all done actual research in the show to find things and be able to use magic spells from cultures from all over the world throughout history, it had given me the ability to read and understand what I was looking at as part of a skills upgrade that was just as good as the characters from the TV show.

By the time the sun had come up I'd discovered that my new tea making skills had also included a new desire to eat mung bean sandwiches. This was better than eating garlic stuffed olives in my opinion. Why I went through that phase, I'll never know. They mostly tasted like lentils and I ended up putting the beans into a soup which I also knew how to make and didn't taste that bad. If you can imagine drinking boiled mushroom water than you can imagine what a cooked mung bean tastes like.

I'd also learned everything I needed to know in order to start creating my own Shadowkhan. I wasn't sure if my Research Perk had gotten a workout or not. Translating everything had been a chore that was both surprising and enjoyable, like doing a puzzle. However I had both books that covered the subject and Uncle's notebooks from the years the Chans were fighting against those who used Shadowkhan so it wasn't like I had to look very far to find what I needed.

My first efforts into using Gentle Shadow Magic enabled me to summon a fork of darkness from out of my own shadow. The item was so supernaturally dark that it sent my monkey brain gibbering in the corner where it broke down and cried.

I was holding this thing in my hand in the kitchen trying to not be afraid of what I'd just done … and for some reason it suddenly didn't scare me anymore. Now I don't want to alarm anyone but I think I just burnt out my fear. Did I just have a revelation?

It looked like pretty much every single creeping horror shadow special effect I've ever seen on TV. But this time it was in my hands.

The next few days would show me exactly how much utility Gentle Shadow Magic could be used for. If I wanted to craft a blade and fork out of shadow the result was every bit as good as the real thing. All these things were something I pictured I could use in my mind. I wondered if that was all it took.

Blades made out of shadows were ridiculously sharp. They were literally as flat as the space between two photons of light. But they didn't take hits very well. The hammer I'd created during testing usually disappeared into blue and black smoke with one hit when I tried to swing it with all my might and I wasn't a very strong person. For that I had to create Shadow Metal, which is whatever it was the metal I conjured from shadow. You could pretty much put the word Shadow in front of anything and I could summon it from the Shadow Realm. Shadow Steel, Shadow Cloth, Shadow Boots, and so on. They seemed to be composed of the memories of items from the past and were as strong as you'd expect them to be.

This finally gave me the reason why it was called Gentle Shadow Magic.

Okay, so I had magic. Now what?

Well for one thing I needed money.

I pretty much had nothing in the shop except for some herbs that I could crush and stuff into some caps with the help of a press machine I had in the back and sell as herbal remedies for five dollars a bag. I also seemed to have an unlimited supply of mung beans and tea. But that was it.

After a fit of reading that left me with red eyes and a headache and another night of sleep, I woke up at noon. It was just as well. During the day as the sun got higher my newly awakened shadow powers dimmed in quantity.

I left Uncle's Rare Finds and went down to the beaches to gather some materials for crafting. Those not used for swimming were covered in driftwood and littered with washed stones and broken shells. The Gentle Shadow Magic's utility allowed me to place a goodly number of specimens into my own shadow as a bottomless inventory.

Along the way I bought a few newspapers and magazines and did some Reeesearch.

President Nixon was asking for price curbs and tax increases, a quad of black girls had just won some bikes in a contest, a cop had been shot, and men coming home from Vietnam were talking about the "Nightmare That Never Ends!"

It was 1968, and I was just getting started in this world.

Once back at the shop I removed them onto the counter and set up a workshop out front. I projected a nearly invisible thread of darkness from my hand and with a few movements carefully cut a rock into a coffee mug with handle. The result was what you'd expect from an amateur.

My stomach filled with excitement!

What I've done with the stones wouldn't have been exceptional back home. People had been painting rocks forever, and there were stone cutting tools and polishing devices. That didn't deter me.

I spent the next several hours crafting solid stone items. I started out with cups and mugs at first, carving up the sides with seven quick hexagonal cuts and leaving the eighth side for a handle before removing the interior with a series of ice cream scoop shaped shadow blades. I put them all into the windows of my shop. I even used a bunch of round stones to make a sign that says Solid Stone Crafts. The letters are carved right through the rock so you could see light on the other side, with an additional slice on the bottom so they stood up and one slice on the front so it had a perfect mirror polish.

Word that I was open for business spread quickly and it wasn't a half hour later that I had my first patrons walking through the doors.

With my first sales came my first purchases. I got groceries and soon enough filled my cupboards with all my favorite foods. It was just a shame that this far into the past a lot of my favorite junk food wasn't available, for the sake of my diet that was probably for the best. I also opened a bank account and applied for a credit card. For some reason my credit was very good so I was approved.

One more thing...

Now that my nerves weren't in danger of being broken and my muscles weren't in pain anymore I planned to do some exercises in the morning.

I had a plan to fund my living, and was not hesitant to put it into action.

One more thing…

Next week I'll get access to another CYOA or a Jumpchain. I was looking forwards to that.

-000-​

Jackie Chan Adventures

Origins: Distant Relative

Location: Uncle's Rare Finds, In San Francisco, California, USA, 1968.

Perks: Everyone Is Doing It, We Must Do Reeesearch, It Belongs In A Museum!

Items - If lost or misplaced it will be returned to you in 12 days in perfect condition: Passport, Laser Baton, and Research & Reagents.

Last edited: Sep 22, 2020

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