Word Count - 3k.
Patreon-Beyblade245
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The first thing that hit him wasn't just a smell. It was a fucking assault. Stale air, yeah, but stale air with layers— ghost of instant noodles from a trash can that hadn't been taken out in a week, and underneath it all, the faint, sweet rot of something organic dying quietly in a corner. A mouse, probably. Or just the building itself, surrendering to entropy. The kind of smell that gets in your clothes, your hair, the back of your throat. The second thing was the pain. It wasn't a headache. Headaches are for people who have normal problems, like bills or traffic. This was a fucking demolition crew jackhammering the inside of his skull, except the crew was on meth and the jackhammers were on fire. Jake's eyes flew open like someone had electrocuted him, and he was staring at a water-stained ceiling. A ceiling he did not recognize.
He groaned, and the sound was pathetic, a dying animal noise that embarrassed him even though no one was there to hear it. He pushed himself up on his elbows. The room swam into focus. Middle-class apartment, if middle-class meant "we gave up five years ago and have been slowly decaying ever since." Furniture that looked like it came from a flat-pack store, assembled wrong, the screws not quite in straight, drawers that stuck, a coffee table with a ring stain from a mug that had sat there for so long it had become part of the wood grain. The kind of furniture that looked at you with sad, defeated eyes and asked why you even bothered. A thin layer of dust on the dresser, not dramatic dust, not the kind you write your name in, just the slow, patient accumulation of neglect. It was the kind of room that felt temporary, like whoever lived here was just waiting. Waiting for what? Didn't know. Didn't matter. Just waiting. That was the whole fucking personality of the place.
His head throbbed, a deep, pulsing beat that synced with his confused heartbeat, like his blood was trying to hammer its way out through his temples. He looked at his own hands. His? Not his? The fingers were longer than he remembered, the nails cleaner.
He muttered to himself, his voice a dry croak in the silent room, the words scraping against his throat like broken glass. "Didn't I fuckin' die? I remember dying while watching those fucking shorts then hit by that truck. And then nothing. So if I didn't die, then I… shit, what's the word… transmigrate? Is that the word? Like in those stupid webnovels I used to waste my time on when I should have been doing something productive with my life? Is that what happened? Did I fucking transmigrate? Into some dead guy's body?."
Before his brain could even process the absurdity of that sentence—before he could start listing all the reasons why this was impossible, why this was the kind of shit that happened in bad fanfiction written by teenagers who didn't know how to write transitions—the jackhammer in his head switched to a white-hot branding iron. Right behind his eyes. He doubled over, a strangled cry caught in his throat, his hands flying to his face like he could physically hold his skull together. It wasn't his pain. He knew that immediately, instinctively, the way you know a dream isn't yours when you wake up sweating from someone else's nightmare. It was a flood. A dam breaking. Someone else's memories, someone else's grief, someone else's last moments, all of it crashing into him like a wave of broken glass and battery acid.
Fragments. Images. A flash of a blue suit against a bright, sunny sky, the kind of blue that was supposed to mean hope but instead just looked like a bruise. A man with an easy, charismatic smile and eyes as cold and dead as a shark's, eyes that had never felt a moment of genuine warmth in their entire existence, eyes that looked at people the way you look at ants on a sidewalk. Homelander. And then another one. Translucent. Skin like polished chrome, disappearing into the light, a smug, invisible smirk that you could feel even when you couldn't see it. The kind of guy who thought he was better than everyone because he was born different, because he never had to earn anything, because the world handed him power on a silver platter and he used it to be an asshole.
He saw a street. A nice street, the kind with trees and kids playing and people who still believed in things. Heard a sickening, wet crunch. A body hitting the pavement. A kid, maybe twelve, just a bystander, just in the wrong place at the wrong time, just existing when a "hero" got careless. An accident. That's what they'd call it. An accident. But it was the faces of the people nearby that burned into him, that seared themselves onto his new brain like brands. A man and a woman. His parents. The original's parents. They'd seen it. They'd seen the great hero fuck up, seen the fear in the kid's eyes a second before the end, seen the blood spread on the sidewalk like a spilled Slurpee. They'd looked at Homelander with horror. Not adoration. Not awe. Horror.
And Homelander had seen them looking.
Jake felt a coldness that had nothing to do with the room. A coldness that came from somewhere deeper than bone. He saw the flash of heat vision, the silent, devastating slice, the way the air itself seemed to split open. He saw the man and the woman—the parents of this body—just… cease to exist. No screams. No warning. Just two columns of superheated ash and smoke where people once stood, the ash drifting away on a breeze that didn't care, that would never care, that would just keep blowing like nothing happened. And then he saw the boy. The original owner of this body. Hiding. Wedged behind a dumpster so far away, his eyes wide, a hand clamped over his own mouth so hard he was drawing blood, so hard his teeth were cutting through his palm, the taste of blood filling his mouth as he watched his parents turn to nothing. He saw everything. Every single fucking thing. The way his mother's hand reached out for a second, just a reflex, before she was gone. The way his father's mouth opened to say something, maybe her name, maybe his son's name, and then there was no mouth. The way Homelander looked around afterward, casual, like he'd just taken out the trash, and flew away.
The memory faded, leaving a residue of pure, unadulterated grief and a guilt so heavy it felt like a physical weight on his chest, like the whole building was pressing down on his lungs. Depression. That's what had killed the original. Not a disease, not an accident. Just the slow, patient work of grief. He couldn't live with what he saw, with the fact that he lived while his parents turned to dust, with the knowledge that the most powerful man on the planet was a monster and no one knew, no one would ever know, because who would believe some kid hiding behind a dumpster? So he stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped trying. Just lay in this sad little apartment and waited to die. And eventually, his body gave up. And then Jake woke up in it.
Jake slumped back onto the pillow, staring at the ceiling again. The pain in his head was gone, replaced by a dull, familiar ache. The hatred, though… that was new. It wasn't entirely his. He could feel that. It was the original owner's legacy, his last will and testament, the only thing he had left to give. A burning, focused loathing for two specific 'heroes'. He knew, with a certainty that felt like a cosmic contract signed in blood he couldn't see, that this hatred would never leave him. Not until those two bastard dickheads were dead. Not until he'd made them pay for every second of the original's suffering, for every sleepless night, for every meal pushed away uneaten, for every tear cried into a pillow that didn't care. He guessed that was the price for this second-hand body.
He sat up again, slower this time. His body felt strange, like a car he'd never driven before. The controls were in different places. "So," he said to the empty room, his voice flat, emotionless, the voice of a man who had run out of fucks to give somewhere around the third memory of his new parents dying. "I transmigrated. To The Boys world. The one with the psychotic superheroes and the guy who fucks people with lasers and the invisible prick who probably watches women shower. Huh. Fuck it. Fuck all of it."
He swung his legs out of bed. The floor was cold. A plain floor, probably, painted to look like wood, failing miserably. He stood up, his body moving on autopilot, and walked to a mirror hanging crookedly on the wall.
The face looking back at him was… good. Better than good, if you were into that kind of thing. High cheekbones that could cut glass, a strong jaw that looked carved from something expensive, dark hair that was a mess in a way that some people paid stylists to achieve. The kind of face that could have been on a magazine cover, that could have made girls in high school whisper and pass notes. But the eyes… the eyes were sunken, ringed with deep purple shadows that looked like bruises, like someone had punched him in both sockets and then kept punching. They were dead. Hollow. Haunted. The eyes of a man who had seen too much and then seen more. The body under the t-shirt was lean but starved, the ribs visible, the collarbones sharp enough to cut bread, the posture a little bent, like he was trying to fold in on himself, to disappear, to take up as little space as possible so no one would notice him, so no one would look at him and see his parents in his face.
"How the fuck," Jake whispered to his reflection, "am I supposed to fight them? Especially that milk-drinking psycho, Homelander? With this? I look like I'd blow over in a stiff breeze. What am I supposed to do, guilt him to death? Throw my tragic backstory at him until he feels bad? He doesn't feel bad. He doesn't feel anything except maybe hunger and the need to be worshipped."
And then, the universe, or something that had the fucking audacity to sound like it was in charge, answered him.
It wasn't a sound in the room. It wasn't a voice from outside. It was something that originated from the deepest, most hidden part of his own being, a place he didn't know existed, a place behind the hatred and the grief and the confusion. It spoke directly into his mind, not in words exactly, but in meaning, in pure information that bypassed his ears and went straight to his soul. A single sentence that resonated through every cell, every atom, every molecule of his borrowed body. It was calm, final, and absolute. The kind of voice that didn't argue because it didn't need to. It spoke, and then it was gone. Forever. Like it had never been there at all, except for the words it left behind, burning in his brain.
"Now... You are Thor."
Jake just stood there, frozen, his reflection staring blankly back at him, his mouth hanging open like a fish that had just been told it could breathe air. "What. The. Fuck." The words came out slow, separate, each one a question and an answer at the same time. "What the actual, genuine, no-bullshit fuck."
He waited for more. For an explanation. For a handbook. For a fucking user manual. Nothing. Just the hum of the old fridge in the kitchen, a sound like a dying wasp in a jar. Just the distant traffic outside, people going about their lives, completely unaware that in this sad little apartment, a dead man had just been told he was a god.
"That voice…" he said to the mirror, looking for confirmation in his own eyes. "That voice. Was that real? Am I having fucking hallucinations now? Is that a side effect? Transmigrating makes you hear shit?."
And then the change started.
It was a warmth, a deep, golden current that welled up from the same place the voice had come from. It was like drinking warm honey. It flooded his body, pouring through his veins, his muscles, his bones, his cells, pushing out the cold and the grief and the despair like a tide washing away footprints on a beach. He watched in the mirror, mesmerized, unable to look away even if he'd wanted to.
The dark circles under his eyes faded first. They didn't just lighten; they vanished completely, dissolving like they'd never been there, replaced by a clear, vibrant energy that made his eyes look almost luminous. The hollows in his cheeks filled slightly, not with fat but with life. His back, which had been unconsciously hunched, the posture of a man trying to protect his heart, straightened. His spine locked into a perfect, powerful alignment, the kind you see in statues of ancient heroes, the kind that says I am here and I am not afraid.
The lean, almost sickly body began to change. Muscles didn't just bulge; they emerged from beneath the skin like they'd always been there, waiting for permission. They defined themselves, each one finding its place, its purpose, its perfect shape. It wasn't the bloated, steroid look of a bodybuilder. It was something else entirely. It made his slim, athletic frame look like it had been forged, like a sword, like something designed by a craftsman who knew exactly what he was doing. It looked like a body built by a god to contain lightning, to channel storms, to wield power that would break lesser men. His face, now free of the shadows of grief, was no longer just handsome. It was striking. The kind of face that made people stop and stare, that made them forget what they were going to say, that made them want to kneel or run, depending on the look in his eyes.
The warm current finally subsided, leaving him tingling, buzzing, feeling more alive than he'd ever felt in either of his lives. His skin hummed. His blood sang. Every breath was a revelation. He flexed a hand, and the sheer, coiled strength he felt was intoxicating. Better than any drug.Better than anything he'd ever experienced or imagined. It was the feeling of being unlimited.
"Yeah, man," he breathed, his voice now full and steady, no longer a croak but a vibration that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
"This warm current," he said,grinning, still staring at himself like he'd never seen a mirror before, "is really fuckin' intoxicating. Like someone giving you the best blowjob of your life, and it just… doesn't stop. Like it keeps going and going and you're not even sure you deserve it but you're not about to ask questions because that would be stupid, that would be the stupidest thing you could possibly do, so you just lie there and enjoy it and hope it never ends. That's what this feels like. A blowjob from the universe itself. And the universe has really good technique."
He admired his new form for a long moment, rolling his shoulders, feeling the power sing in his muscles like a symphony. He flexed again, watched the muscles dance under his skin. He felt like he could punch through a wall. He felt like he could punch through Homelander's fucking face and keep going until there was nothing left but red mist and regrets.
Then, unbidden, the faces flashed in his mind again. Homelander's smile and dead eyes, the smile of a man who had never learned what real emotion felt like, who faked everything because the real thing was too scary. Translucent's invisible, sneering face, the face of a man who thought being invisible made him untouchable, who probably never considered that someone might find a way to see him anyway, might find a way to make him visible just long enough to hurt him.
The grin on Jake's face didn't disappear. It just changed. It became something colder. Harder.The hatred in his chest roared in approval, feeding on the new power, the two becoming one, merging into something that felt like purpose, like destiny, like the only thing that made sense in a world that had never made sense before.
"Okay, you bastards," he said, his voice low and clear, each word a deliberate, deadly vow, a promise carved in stone and sealed with blood he hadn't spilled yet but would, oh yes he would. "I'm gonna find you. Both of you. I'm gonna find that milk-drinking, cape-wearing, PR-manufactured piece of shit, and I'm gonna find his invisible friend who probably gets off on watching people who can't see him, and I'm gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna fuck you up so bad that when I'm done, people are gonna look at what's left and say 'damn, that guy got fucked up.' I'm gonna make you wish you'd never looked at that kid's parents. I'm gonna make you wish you'd never been born. I'm gonna take everything you have and everything you are and I'm gonna break it into pieces so small that not even the universe could put you back together. And then I'm gonna find the pieces and break them again. Just to be sure."
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