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(1st POV)
You know what's really fucking stupid? Dying because you laughed too hard at a meme.
That's how Ezequiel went out. Twenty-three years old, scrolling through his phone at 3 AM like the degenerate he was, and he came across this absolutely brain-dead shitpost about Chainsaw Man. Something about Denji and pochita doing the fusion dance. He laughed so hard he choked on his energy drink, panicked, fell off his bed, and cracked his skull on the corner of his desk.
The last thing he saw before everything went dark was his phone screen still showing that stupid meme.
Peak way to go out, honestly.
When Laurent opened his eyes, he wasn't in a hospital. He wasn't in heaven or hell either, which was probably for the best considering his browser history.
He was in an alley.
A dirty, trash-filled alley that reeked of piss and rotting food. The kind of place where you'd expect to get mugged or find a dead body. His head was pounding, his body felt wrong—too small, too light—and there was this weird pressure behind his eyes like someone had shoved hot needles into his brain.
"What the fuck..." His voice came out wrong. Too young. Too hoarse.
Laurent—no, he was Ezequiel, wasn't he? Or was he Laurent now?—pushed himself up on shaky arms. His hands looked different. Smaller. Paler. There were scars on his knuckles he didn't recognize and dirt under his fingernails.
That's when the memories hit him like a freight train.
A different life. A shitty life. This body's life.
Laurent. Sixteen years old. Orphan. Parents died in a devil attack when he was eight—some minor devil that got loose in their neighborhood, nothing special, just another statistic. He'd been shuffled through the system, group homes and foster families that didn't give a shit, until he aged out onto the streets.
Three months ago, he'd been living in this alley. Stealing food. Dodging devil hunters and yakuza. Trying not to freeze to death.
Then he'd gotten sick. Really sick. Fever dreams and hallucinations. And somewhere in that delirium, Ezequiel's consciousness had... slipped in? Merged? Whatever isekai bullshit had happened, it happened.
"No fucking way." Laurent's hands were shaking. "No fucking way this is real."
But he knew it was. The memories were too vivid, too detailed. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a coma fantasy.
He'd died and reincarnated into Chainsaw Man.
Into one of the most grimdark, depressing, devil-infested nightmare worlds in all of manga.
"Of course," he muttered, stumbling to his feet. "Of course I'd end up here. Not some nice isekai with stats and skills and hot elf waifus. No, I get the world where everyone dies horribly and the main character's dream is to touch boobs."
He laughed. It came out bitter and slightly unhinged.
Then he noticed something else. Something that made his blood run cold.
Everything looked... wrong.
No, not wrong. Different.
There were lines on everything. Thin, spider-web cracks of red light that seemed to exist just beneath the surface of reality. They covered the dumpster to his left, traced patterns across the brick walls, ran along the ground like veins of blood.
Laurent blinked hard. The lines didn't go away.
He looked at his own hands. The lines were there too, running through his fingers, his wrists, up his arms. Delicate fracture patterns that pulsed faintly with his heartbeat.
"What the hell is this?" He touched one of the lines on the wall experimentally.
The brick crumbled under his finger like it was made of sand.
Laurent jerked his hand back, heart hammering. A chunk of the wall had just... disintegrated. Turned to dust. Like it had been cut at some fundamental level.
The memories clicked into place. The fever dreams hadn't just been Ezequiel's consciousness merging with Laurent's. Something else had happened. Some cosmic fuckup or ROB's idea of a compensation package.
He knew these lines.
Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.
"You've got to be kidding me." Laurent pressed his palms against his eyes, but when he pulled them away, the lines were still there. "The Nasuverse? Really? We're mixing Type-Moon bullshit with Chainsaw Man?"
He should have been excited. These were some of the most broken abilities in all of fiction. The power to perceive and cut along the "lines of death" inherent in all things, to kill concepts themselves if you were skilled enough.
But all Laurent felt was sick.
Because he knew what came with power in this world. He'd read the manga. He'd binged the anime. He knew how Chainsaw Man worked.
Devils were attracted to fear and suffering. Devil hunters lived short, brutal lives. Power came with a price, and that price was usually paid in blood and trauma.
And he was just a sixteen-year-old kid with no training, no connections, no resources, living in an alley in what he was pretty sure was Tokyo based on the signs he could see at the alley's entrance.
"Okay." Laurent took a deep breath, forced himself to think. "Okay, don't panic. You know how this world works. You know the major players, the timeline, the threats. You can use that."
He tried to remember where he was in the timeline. The memories from this body were fuzzy on dates, but he could piece things together. Makima was definitely in power. Laurent had seen Public Safety posters. The Gun Devil attack had already happened years ago.
Was Denji already Chainsaw Man? Had Aki and Power entered the story?
He didn't know. The memories didn't have enough context.
"Doesn't matter," he told himself. "First priority is survival. Food, shelter, staying off Public Safety's radar until I figure out what the fuck I'm doing with these eyes."
Laurent looked down at his hands again. The lines pulsed, red and hungry.
He had the power to kill anything. To end devils, humans, concepts themselves if he got strong enough.
But right now, he was just a scared kid in an alley, trying not to fall apart.
"One step at a time," he whispered.
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