I stepped out of the alley and into hell.
The street was chaos. People ran in every direction, screaming, crying, trampling each other in their desperation to escape. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, doors open, engines still running. The jewelry store's front wall was gone, reduced to rubble that spilled across the sidewalk like the aftermath of a bomb.
Through the dust, I could see the robbers. Two of them. Both big, both wearing dark clothes and masks, both carrying bags of stolen jewelry. One of them had a gun—a semiautomatic pistol, cheap, probably stolen. The other had a crowbar, its tip red with something I didn't want to think about.
I walked toward them.
My reinforcement was different now. The hundred years of knowledge in my head—the physics, the engineering, the understanding of energy systems—had changed how I thought about Cursed Energy. Before, I'd been pushing it into my body like water into a bucket, crude and inefficient. Now, I understood it differently.
Energy was energy. Whether it was electrical, thermal, kinetic, or cursed, the principles were the same. Flow, resistance, capacitance, induction. I could apply those principles to my Cursed Energy, optimizing its path through my body, reducing waste, increasing efficiency.
I estimated my reinforcement was three hundred times what it had been before. Three hundred times stronger, faster, tougher. My body, already transformed by the gym receipts and the martial arts training, was now a weapon in ways I hadn't imagined possible.
The first robber saw me coming.
"Get back!" He raised his gun, aiming at my chest. "I'll shoot!"
I kept walking.
He fired.
The bullet hit me in the shoulder. I felt it—a sharp impact, a burst of pain—but it didn't penetrate. The Cursed Energy reinforcement had turned my skin into something closer to armor than flesh. The bullet flattened against me and fell to the ground, a small copper coin spinning on the pavement.
The robber's eyes went wide behind his mask.
I closed the distance in two steps. My fist connected with his chest—not hard, barely a tap—and he flew backward through the air, his gun spinning away, his body crashing through the window of the store across the street. Glass shattered. He didn't get up.
The second robber dropped his crowbar and ran.
I let him go for about ten feet. Then I reached out with Sky Manipulation, grabbed the air around his legs, and pulled. He fell hard, his face hitting the pavement, his mask slipping off. I walked over to him, picked him up by the collar, and looked at his face.
Just a man. Ordinary. Scared.
"Stay down," I said.
He stayed down.
That's when the real fight started.
I felt it before I saw it. A pressure in the air, a weight that didn't belong. The ground beneath my feet trembled, and the rubble from the jewelry store began to move.
Not falling. Moving. Rising.
The rocks lifted off the ground, floating in the air like they'd suddenly forgotten gravity. They spun, twisted, and began to gather in one place—ten feet away, in the middle of the street, where a man was standing.
His mask had fallen off during the explosion. I recognized his face from somewhere. Square jaw, short hair, cold eyes. He was big—not as big as me, but solid, built like a boxer.
Then the rocks hit him.
They didn't hurt him. They didn't bounce off. They stuck to him, covering his body like a second skin. His arms, his legs, his chest—all of it disappeared under a layer of dark, jagged material. Not rock, I realized. Something else. Something black and organic, like volcanic glass.
His face was the last thing to disappear. His cold eyes met mine for a second before the material covered them, and then he wasn't a man anymore.
He was a monster.
I knew him then. Titan. From the comics. A villain who could cover his body in rock-like armor, who could punch through walls and shrug off bullets. A minor threat, in the grand scheme of things. Someone Invincible had fought and beaten without too much trouble.
But this wasn't the Titan I remembered.
The armor on his body wasn't rock. It was black, glossy, like obsidian. It moved as he moved, flowing over his muscles, shifting and reforming. When he took a step, the ground beneath his foot cracked—not from weight, but from something else. Something that made the earth tremble.
"Kid," he said. His voice was deeper now, distorted by the material covering his throat. "You should have stayed out of this."
"Probably," I said. "But I didn't."
He smiled. I could see it even through the armor—the curve of his mouth, the glint of his teeth. "I like you. You've got guts."
He swung.
I barely got my arms up in time. His fist connected with my forearms, and the force of it sent me flying backward. I crashed through a parked car—through it, metal tearing like paper—and kept going until I hit the wall of a building across the street.
The concrete cracked behind me. I fell to the ground, my arms throbbing, my ears ringing.
That was strong. Stronger than I'd expected. Stronger than Titan should have been.
I pushed myself to my feet. My arms were fine—the reinforcement had held—but I could feel the impact in my bones, a deep ache that told me I'd been hit by something serious.
Titan was already moving toward me. His steps were slow, deliberate, each one cracking the pavement beneath his feet. The black material on his body seemed to pulse, like it was alive, like it was breathing.
"You're tougher than you look," he said. "Most people don't get up from that."
"I'm not most people."
"No. You're not." He stopped a few feet away, looking down at me. He was taller now—the armor added at least six inches, making him nearly my height. "What are you? Some kind of hero?"
"Just a guy."
"Just a guy with super strength and some kind of air powers." He tilted his head. "I've been doing this a long time, kid. I know a hero when I see one."
"I'm not a hero."
"Then why are you fighting me?"
I didn't have an answer for that. Not one I wanted to say out loud.
He swung again. This time I was ready.
The next few minutes were a blur.
I dodged, weaved, blocked, countered. The martial arts training kicked in—karate for the strikes, Muay Thai for the clinch, judo for the throws, jiu-jitsu for the ground work. I moved through the forms like I'd been doing them my whole life, my body responding faster than my mind could think.
But Titan was faster. Stronger. Better.
Every punch I threw, he blocked. Every kick I landed, he absorbed. The black material on his body didn't crack or chip—it just... shifted, redistributing the force of my blows across his entire body. I was hitting him with everything I had, and it wasn't doing anything.
He, on the other hand, was hurting me.
His punches were like sledgehammers. Each one drove me back, cracked my ribs, rattled my brain. I could feel my reinforcement straining, the Cursed Energy struggling to keep up with the damage. Three hundred times stronger than a normal human wasn't enough. Not against this.
"You're fast," he said, ducking under a punch and driving his shoulder into my chest. I flew backward, crashed through another car, and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. "But speed doesn't matter if you can't hurt me."
I got up. My chest was on fire. Two ribs were cracked, maybe three. My left arm was numb from blocking a hit that should have taken it off.
"I can hurt you," I said.
"Then do it."
I reached out with Sky Manipulation and grabbed the air around his head.
The technique was simple—compress the air into a bubble, reduce the pressure, make it impossible to breathe. I'd practiced it on targets, never on a person. But Titan wasn't a person right now. He was a monster.
The air around his head compressed. I felt it happen, felt the pressure drop, felt the oxygen being pulled away.
Titan stopped moving.
For a second, I thought it was working. Then he raised his hand, touched the air bubble, and it shattered.
Not dispersed. Shattered. Like glass breaking, like reality itself cracking under his touch. The air rushed back into the space I'd created, and Titan took a deep breath, his chest expanding.
"That's cute," he said. "But you're going to have to try harder than that."
He lunged.
I tried to dodge, but he was too fast. His hand closed around my throat, and he lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing. His fingers were like steel cables, crushing my windpipe, cutting off my air.
I punched his arm. His face. His chest. Nothing. The black material absorbed every hit, redistributed every impact. I might as well have been hitting a mountain.
"Here's the thing about me, kid," he said, pulling me close so I could see his eyes through the armor. "I'm not like other guys with powers. I don't have a weakness you can exploit. I don't have a limit you can reach. I just... keep going."
He threw me.
I flew through the air like a ragdoll, spinning end over end, and crashed through the window of an office building. Desks, computers, chairs—all of it shattered around me as I tumbled across the floor. I came to a stop against a wall, my body screaming, my vision blurry.
I tried to get up. My legs wouldn't work. My arms were shaking. My chest was a symphony of pain.
Through the hole in the wall, I could see Titan walking toward me. His steps were slow, casual, like he had all the time in the world.
I reached out with my Cursed Energy, called my drones.
Thirteen of them. Armed. Angry.
They came from everywhere—over the rooftops, between the buildings, down the streets. The first one opened fire before it even reached me, its four guns spitting bullets at Titan's back. The bullets hit the black material and ricocheted off, harmless.
The second drone joined. Then the third. Then all thirteen.
Bullets rained down on Titan from every direction, a storm of lead and copper that should have torn any normal person apart. But Titan wasn't normal. He stood in the middle of the street, arms raised, letting the bullets bounce off him like raindrops.
"That's annoying," he said.
He reached up, grabbed a drone out of the air, and crushed it in his fist. The metal crumpled like paper. The guns sparked and died. He dropped the wreckage on the ground and reached for another.
"No," I breathed.
I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood dripping down my face. I reached out with Sky Manipulation and pulled. The air around Titan compressed, twisted, grabbed his arm and yanked it away from the next drone.
He looked at me. Through me. His eyes were cold, empty, the eyes of someone who'd stopped caring a long time ago.
"You care about these things?" he asked, gesturing at the drones. "Little robots?"
"They're mine."
"Then you should have kept them safe."
He moved faster than I could follow. His fist connected with my chest, and I felt my ribs break—not crack, break. The sound was loud, wet, wrong. I flew backward through the building, through walls and desks and windows, and landed in the street on the other side.
I couldn't breathe. My chest was caved in. My lungs were filling with blood.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn't move. My legs were broken—both of them, snapped like twigs. I could feel the bones grinding together, the pain so intense that my mind was shutting down, retreating into a dark corner where it didn't have to feel anything.
Through my blurred vision, I saw Titan walking toward me. He was bigger now—taller, wider, the black material on his body expanding, growing. He was changing, becoming something else. Something worse.
"Get up," he said.
I couldn't.
"Get up, hero."
I tried. My body wouldn't respond.
He reached down, grabbed me by the hair, and lifted me off the ground. My broken legs dangled beneath me, swinging uselessly. Blood dripped from my mouth, my nose, my ears.
"You're not a hero," he said. "You're just a kid who got lucky. And now your luck's run out."
He punched me.
The world went white.
I woke up in the air.
Titan had thrown me—I didn't know how far, how high. The city spread out beneath me, a patchwork of streets and buildings and tiny screaming people. I was falling, spinning, my broken body tumbling through the sky.
I reached out with Sky Manipulation, tried to slow myself, but my control was gone. The Cursed Energy was there, still flowing, but I couldn't focus it. The pain was too much. The damage was too severe.
I hit the ground.
The impact shattered what was left of my body. My spine cracked. My pelvis broke. My skull hit the pavement and I felt it fracture, felt my brain slosh against the inside of my head.
I lay there, in a crater of my own making, and waited to die.
People were screaming. Running. Dying. I could see them through my one good eye—civilians caught in the crossfire, crushed by debris, burned by whatever Titan was doing to the buildings around them. A woman holding a child, both of them covered in dust and blood. A man trapped under a fallen streetlight, his legs crushed, his face pale.
I'd done this. I'd started this fight. I'd brought Titan here, into the middle of the city, where innocent people lived and worked and died.
"Help," someone was screaming. "Someone help us!"
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything but lie there and listen to them die.
Titan landed a few feet away. The impact cracked the ground, sent a shockwave through my broken body that made me bite through my tongue.
He was huge now. Building-sized. The black material on his body had changed—it was glowing now, red and orange, like magma. His footsteps melted the pavement. His breath was steam.
"You know what your problem is?" he said. His voice was a rumble, like an earthquake given words. "You think you can save people. You think you can fight monsters and protect the innocent and be the hero. But you can't. You're just a kid with a few tricks and a death wish."
He raised his foot. The shadow of it covered my entire body.
"I'm going to crush you now," he said. "And then I'm going to find whoever sent you, and I'm going to crush them too. And then I'm going to keep crushing until there's nothing left of this city but rubble and bones."
His foot came down.
I closed my eyes.
The impact never came.
I opened my eyes. Titan was still there, his foot raised, but something had stopped him. A figure, floating in the air between us. A man in a blue and yellow suit, with a cape and a mustache and an expression of mild annoyance.
Omni-Man.
"Step away from the boy," Omni-Man said. His voice was calm, almost bored.
Titan lowered his foot. The black material on his body rippled, shifted, seemed to pulse with anger. "This doesn't concern you."
"You're destroying my city. Killing my people. That concerns me."
"Your city?" Titan laughed. It was a horrible sound, like rocks grinding together. "You don't own this city. You just live here."
Omni-Man's eyes narrowed. "Step. Away."
Titan stepped away. Not because he wanted to—because Omni-Man had already moved, had already hit him, had already sent him flying through three buildings and into the river beyond.
The fight was over in seconds.
Omni-Man landed next to me, his boots touching the ground without a sound. He looked down at my broken body, his expression unreadable.
"You're still alive," he said. "Remarkable."
I tried to speak. Blood came out instead.
He knelt down, examining my injuries. His hands were gentle—surprisingly gentle—as he probed my chest, my legs, my skull.
"Multiple fractures. Internal bleeding. Concussion. You should be dead." He paused. "But you're not. Something is keeping you alive. Something... unusual."
He looked at my face. Really looked, like he was seeing something beneath the surface.
"What are you?" he asked.
I couldn't answer. The darkness was closing in, pulling me under. The last thing I saw was Omni-Man's face, curious and cold, watching me die.
Then there was nothing.
The void was familiar.
Not darkness. Not silence. The absence of being. The same nothingness I'd woken up in weeks ago, when I'd first arrived in this world.
I floated there, formless, thoughtless, broken.
Then the figure appeared.
It solidified out of the grey mist, the same vaguely humanoid silhouette, the same points of soft white light where eyes should be. Drmac. The being who'd sent me here. The one who'd given me my powers and my mission and my second chance.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" I screamed. Or tried to. In this place, thoughts were louder than words.
Drmac's form flickered. The points of light dimmed.
"That," he said, "was Titan."
"I KNOW WHO IT WAS. WHY WAS HE SO STRONG? THAT'S NOT HOW HE WORKS IN THE COMICS. HE DOESN'T HAVE—" I stopped. The realization hit me like a punch to the chest. "This isn't the Invincible universe I know, is it?"
Drmac was silent for a long moment.
"No," he said finally. "It is not."
I floated there, my consciousness spinning, trying to process what that meant. An alternate universe. Different rules, different powers, different threats. The knowledge I'd relied on—the knowledge that was supposed to keep me safe—was worthless.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. My voice was quiet now. Tired.
"I forgot."
"You FORGOT?"
"It has been a long time since I guided a soul to this particular reality. The differences are... subtle. At first." Drmac's form seemed to shift, almost like a shrug. "I should have warned you. I apologize."
"Apologize? I just got my body broken by a guy who can turn into a magma monster. People died because I wasn't ready. Because I thought I knew what I was fighting."
"Yes."
I wanted to scream. To rage. To tear apart this void with my bare hands. But I didn't have hands. I didn't have anything. Just thoughts and anger and the crushing weight of failure.
"We need to talk," Drmac said. "About what comes next."
"I don't want to talk. I want to wake up. I want to go back and do it differently."
"You can't. What's done is done. The only way forward is through."
I floated there, defeated, broken, empty.
"Fine," I said. "Talk."
Drmac's light-eyes flared. And the void around us began to change.