Power Copying/Playing With
- Basic Trope: Gaining new abilities by copying them from others.
- Mega Man-type: Whenever a character defeats an opponent in battle, they gain their foe's signature attack.
- Final Fantasy-type: Whenever a character is hit by an opponent's signature attack, they learn the attack.
- Straight:
- Mega Man-type: Whenever Nikki defeats an opponent in battle, she gains her foe's best skill.
- Final Fantasy-type: Whenever Mike is hurt by an opponent's signature attack, he learns the attack and can use it in any opportunity.
- Exaggerated:
- Mega Man-type: Nikki can use every skill and talent down to bending her tongue by defeating her enemy
- Final Fantasy-type: Whenever an enemy hurts Mike, he copies every skill they ever learned.
- Downplayed:
- Mega Man-type: Nikki can pick up an enemy's firearm.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike is Awesome By Analysis, and can usually imitate an opponent's moves - but he still needs to practice if he wants to get any good at a given technique.
- Justified:
- Mega Man-type: Nikki has methods to copy enemies' abilities, like ripping a page from a wizard's spellbook and adding it to her own, removing a robot's plasma cannon arm and use it to upgrade her BFG, and being a master martial artist, which allows her to copy any move after seeing it a few times.
- Nikki is an AI, and she is capable of analyzing the code of enemy AI and integrating it into herself.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike's Congruent Memory allows him to learn skills by seeing a demonstration.
- Mega Man-type: Nikki has methods to copy enemies' abilities, like ripping a page from a wizard's spellbook and adding it to her own, removing a robot's plasma cannon arm and use it to upgrade her BFG, and being a master martial artist, which allows her to copy any move after seeing it a few times.
- Inverted: Mega Man-type and Final Fantasy-type are inversions of each other, but the following is an inversion of BOTH:
- Whenever Nikki/Mike defeats an opponent, she/he loses the ability that was used to defeat that opponent.
- Alternately, they learn an ability that counters the opponent's, like a water attack to beat a fire-based enemy.
- Subverted:
- Mega Man-type: Nikki knocks out a star swordsman after an epic fight, and gains... the ability to communicate with plants.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike gets hit by a powerful knight, and learns... how to attack.
- Double Subverted:
- Mega Man-type: Confused, Nikki questions the swordsman after he comes to, and he admits he used to be an earth mage with that exact ability.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike never knew how to attack before.
- Parodied:
- Mega Man-type: Whilst driving home, Nikki accidentally runs over a possum in the road. She subsequently discovers she now has the power to play dead. Later on, she uses this ability to fake defeat and set up a cruel Kaizo Trap for a particularly tough foe.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike is napping when a possum plays dead on his stomach. Everyone else thinks he's playing dead too.
- Deconstructed:
- Mega Man-type: Nikki may be able to copy the ability, but it may never have been meant to be used by a person like her. Nikki gets serious injuries after pushing herself beyond her limits to use an ability like Super Speed.
- Nikki's growing inventory of powers is eating up her other physiological and cognitive functions.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike can only learn so much, so when he knows too many skills he forgets how to use abilities.
- Mega Man-type: Nikki may be able to copy the ability, but it may never have been meant to be used by a person like her. Nikki gets serious injuries after pushing herself beyond her limits to use an ability like Super Speed.
- Reconstructed:
- Mega Man-type: But that's only because she hasn't mastered the ability yet. After a few minutes of practice she's doing it like a pro.
- Final Fantasy-type: However, Mike does remember how to revive himself after dying, thus making him an immortal Game Breaker.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Nikki/Mike gain skills from battles and sometimes not.
- Averted: All Nikki's and Mike's powers are their own.
- They learn new abilities as they advance through the game.
- Enforced: "Why would we bother creating separate set of abilities for the heroes and for their enemies? Just make the heroes capable of copying their enemies!"
- Lampshaded: "Now I've got your power!"
- Invoked: Nikki and Mike are Blue Mages.
- Exploited:
- Mega Man-type: The Big Bad sends out a slew of opponents with the ability to self-destruct. When Nikki defeats them and habitually steals and tries out their powers, the results aren't pretty. Only it turns out that our hero had gotten the ability to duplicate herself earlier on, and the Nikki that just self-destructed was one such clone. Nikki uses this "Clone Bomb" technique to take down many enemies.
- Final Fantasy-type: Mike saves the self-destructing minion's power to take out the Big Bad in a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Both: Mike and Nikki hurt each other with each other's powers on a regular basis.
- Defied: Emperor Evulz sends out alien-insect-something minions with abilities that require Bizarre Alien Biology.
- Discussed: "Alright! A new enemy! Now I'll get a new skill!"
- Conversed: "How do Nikki and Mike learn skills by killing and being hurt? Couldn't they just pick up a How-To book?"
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