When I opened my eyes, there was no pain.
No burning skin.No shattered ribs.No taste of ash on my tongue.
Just… lightness. A weightlessness I hadn't felt since before the world ended.
I sat up slowly.I wasn't in the ruins of the department store anymore.I wasn't lying on cold, dirty concrete.
I was standing on… nothing.
The ground beneath my feet felt solid, but it was invisible. The sky—if you could call it a sky—was a blinding, endless white, stretching forever in every direction.
"This isn't right," I muttered, checking my hands.
Clean.Whole.Not a single scar from years of scavenging. No cracked fingernails. No burns from digging through irradiated rubble.
This wasn't the Golden City my grandmother whispered about back when she still had a voice. No angels. No gates. No choir.
Just silence.
"You're taking this well," a voice echoed.
I spun around.
A man stood ten feet away. Middle-aged. Gray suit. Clipboard. He looked like an accountant who accidentally wandered into creation.
"I died," I said. Not a question. A fact.
"I know," he said casually. "Messy business, that timeline."
"Messy?" The anger surged instantly. "My entire planet burned. Billions died. I died inside a giant lizard's stomach—and you call it messy?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose like I was the one frustrating him.
"Look, Marcus… I'll be honest. You weren't supposed to die like that. Actually, your whole planet wasn't supposed to go that way."
He waved his hand.
A hologram of Earth flickered into existence—sick, brown, and dying.
"There was a disagreement," he said. "Between myself and another Entity. A higher-dimensional scuffle. A wave of Chaos Energy came off the fight."
He pointed at Earth.
"That wave hit your solar system. It nudged General Thorne's mind off the edge. It mutated the wildlife. It accelerated environmental collapse. It was collateral damage."
I stared at him, feeling something colder than anger settle in my stomach.
"So my world… ended because two cosmic idiots had a fistfight?"
He shrugged.
"My bad."
I wanted to scream. Punch him. Something. But he was right—what would be the point?
"Anyway!" His tone brightened, switching to bored corporate enthusiasm. "We have procedures for this. The Reincarnation Protocol. Everyone who died in the 'oopsie zone' gets another go."
He stepped closer.
"You're being reborn, Marcus. Parallel universe. Clean timeline. A full life this time."
My heart stuttered.
"A second chance…?"
"Correct. You don't get to pick the world—you'd all cram into the paradise dimensions and ruin the demographics—but we do try to match people with worlds that fit them."
He checked his clipboard.
"You spent every spare moment reading, didn't you? Comics. Hero stories. Escapism."
"In a wasteland, that was all I had," I said quietly.
He nodded.
"Then you'll love where you're going. A world full of heroes. Capes, powers, the whole thing. It's called…"
He paused for dramatic effect.
"The Boys."
The name felt familiar. Like an off-brand comic title you'd find in a bargain bin.
"A superhero world?" I asked, hope swelling. "Like… like the comics?"
"Oh, absolutely," he said. "Flying men. Super-speed. Water kings. Masks everywhere. You'll fit right in."
I felt something bloom in my chest—something warm, unfamiliar.
Joy.
"Okay," I said. "Send me."
"Hold on." He lifted a finger. "Rule Two: Because of the trauma you suffered, you get to choose your power set."
He waited, expectant.
"What do you want? Magic? Super-speed? Tech genius?"
He didn't need to finish the list.
I had spent half my miserable life staring at faded comic panels. Imagining what it would be like to be invincible. To be a symbol. To be someone who could stand between people and the end of the world.
My whole childhood, all the rare scraps of comics I found in abandoned libraries or burnt-out houses—they all had one name that meant hope.
"Superman," I said. "I want to be Kryptonian."
The Entity's face twisted like I'd just asked for infinite wishes.
"Oooh. Yeah. No."
"What? Why?"
"World balance." He tapped the clipboard. "If I drop a Kryptonian into this universe—especially you, with your trauma—you'd break the physics engine. The Boys is… grounded. Realistic, relatively speaking. Drop a Kryptonian in there and you could sneeze and decapitate half the planet."
He shook his head.
"Request denied."
I exhaled slowly.
"Okay… no Superman."
But it still made sense internal to my character.Because in my world—our irradiated wasteland—comics were rare. The few that survived were the iconic ones. The big names. The symbols.
Superman was the symbol.
I didn't know every detail of every issue.I wasn't some walking Wikipedia page.
But I knew the basics.The cape.The hope.The power to always get back up.
Even in the dark, that symbol stayed bright.
So I kept thinking.
Not Superman… but someone like him. Someone who didn't start as a god. Someone who could grow.
I thought of the tattered trade paperback still in my backpack when I died. The one I saved even when I threw away food to make room.
Blue and yellow suit.Teen hero.Takes a beating.Gets back up.
"…What about Invincible?" I asked. "Mark Grayson."
The Entity paused, intrigued.
"Viltrumite DNA…"
He muttered calculations under his breath.
"Strong. Fast. Durable. But not god-tier at the start. Early development weaknesses. Can be hurt. Must train. Needs battle experience."
He tapped the clipboard.
"That fits. You'll be powerful, but you won't break the story. You'll grow into it."
"So I get his powers?"
"You get his physiology," he corrected. "A baseline Viltrumite. You'll have Mark Grayson's early potential. Lift a tank, fly to space, survive explosions. But no Omni-Man stuff unless you earn it."
I grinned.
"I grew up surviving on rats and melted snow. Hard work doesn't scare me."
"Good," the Entity said. "You'll need that attitude."
He snapped his clipboard shut.
"Enjoy the blue skies, Marcus. Try not to be too disappointed when you meet your heroes."
"Why would I be disapp—"
The void shattered.
And I fell.