The first thing he felt was pressure. Not pain. Not sound. Just weight—like gravity had doubled down on him specifically. He opened his eyes slowly, the ceiling above unfamiliar and full of shadows, as if the light itself had no interest in touching the place.
Not my ceiling.
The thought was immediate, clean, and somehow more terrifying than waking up in a burning building.
He sat up slowly, the ache in his spine making a case against it, but he powered through. There was dust in the air. The faint scent of week-old pizza and synthetic air freshener—pine, aggressively so. A fan clicked somewhere to his right, spinning just fast enough to pretend it was doing something.
His fingers curled into the shee usets beneath him. The fabric was rough, not the jersey cotton he used back home. Not his home.
This isn't a dream, he realized. And this isn't my body.
---
The apartment was barely one room. A kitchenette sat in the far corner with a sink full of dishes. A faded couch faced a flickering TV playing an infomercial about protein supplements, volume mercifully low. He found the bathroom and flicked on the light.
What stared back at him from the mirror was… wrong.
The face was angular, late teens or early twenties, with a faint scar over the left brow and hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in days. Hazel eyes stared back, flicking left and right as if trying to orient themselves. A thin frame. Paler than he remembered being. Definitely not his.
He opened the medicine cabinet, looking for clues. A name popped out: Isaac Ward. Prescription dated last month. Migraine medication.
Isaac, huh? It didn't ring any bells. Not from his world, and definitely not from the Invincible universe—at least, not from what he remembered.
Wait. Invincible.
The realization hit him like a cold bucket of water.
He stumbled backward into the hallway wall, nearly knocking over a stack of old mail. A poster of the Guardians of the Globe, last year's roster, hung above the TV. And in the corner of the screen, a news ticker ran:
"Omni-Man Responds to Global Criticism After Flaxan Incursion—More at 11."
That was it. Proof.
He wasn't in a world like Invincible. He was in it.
---
Scene 3: Memory Check
He closed his eyes and tried to focus. Back on Earth—his Earth—he was an average guy. Worked IT. Liked comics. Had read the Invincible run twice, watched the show, and even posted conspiracy theories about Cecil on Reddit.
There was no car crash. No illness. No mysterious portal. Just a memory of lying in bed after a long shift, queuing up Season 2, then...
Nothing.
Then this.
Did I die? he thought. Was that it?
The thought should've panicked him, but oddly, it didn't. His heartbeat was calm. Slow. He sat down on the floor, back against the fridge, and let the weight of it all settle in. The laid-back part of him—the one that got called lazy or unmotivated back home—took over. He didn't scream. Didn't spiral. Just... accepted.
Okay, he thought. New body. New world. No tutorial. Let's figure out what I've got to work with.
---
Later that day, after searching the apartment top to bottom, he stood in the alley behind the building with a pocketful of loose change. There were no powers listed in Isaac's medical history. No GDA tags. No emergency contacts.
But he felt something when he moved. A strange resistance in the air. Like walking underwater with invisible strings pulling him sideways.
He flipped a coin into the air and focused on it.
As it rose, he reached out—not with his hand, but with that odd feeling in his chest, just behind the sternum. Like trying to flex a muscle he'd never used before.
The coin's arc changed. Instead of falling, it zipped sideways and clinked off the dumpster.
"…Okay," he whispered, blinking.
He tried again. Another coin, another flick of intent. This time, he gave it a little more push.
The coin shot upward at a sharp angle, bounced off a metal pipe, and disappeared into the sky.
"Okay."
There was no HUD. No RPG system. No voice in his head. But one thing was crystal clear:
He could manipulate vectors—motion, direction, force.
And if he was right about what that meant?
He was going to be very dangerous... once he figured out how not to trip over his own feet.
---
Scene 5: Trial and Terror
His experiments continued late into the night. Coins, pebbles, bits of trash—anything with mass and motion. He learned quickly: vectors required interaction. He had to touch something or lock eyes with it and "mark" it somehow. Once marked, he could alter its trajectory. Change speed. Reverse it. Even stop it midair if he concentrated hard enough.
But only small things.
When he tried to affect a metal trash can, he felt a migraine spike and nearly blacked out. Too heavy. Too fast.
Limits, he noted. There are limits.
And consequences.
The next time he overextended—trying to stop a rolling bike from hitting a fence—his nose bled. The power responded, yes, but his body... didn't like it. At all.
Power came at a cost.
---
Scene 6: Earth-That-Was
Back in the apartment, he stood under the cold shower, letting water run over someone else's skin.
He missed the smell of coffee from his office's break room. The sound of his dog's claws clicking across the hardwood floor. The way traffic lights hummed when no one was around.
But he didn't break.
Mourning could wait. Right now, there were too many questions. Too much he didn't know.
Why this universe? Why me? Why this body?
There were no answers. Just silence. The kind of quiet that gets under your skin and sits behind your eyes like a weight.
He stepped out of the shower, dried off, and pulled on clothes that felt just slightly too tight. Isaac had been slimmer than him. Lankier. The sleeves tugged at his arms in ways that made him aware of every breath.
---
Scene 7: Public Noise
The city was alive. Loud. Different from any he'd known. Neon signs blinked next to cracked concrete. Flying cars zipped overhead on designated sky-lanes. Billboards rotated between hero ads and insurance companies that specialized in "super-collateral damage."
He wandered for hours.
Heroes flew overhead—Titan walked past him once, mid-argument on a phone. No one noticed Isaac. No one looked twice.
Good.
He didn't want to get involved yet. Not until he understood where he fit in the timeline.
From a street-side diner, he watched a news broadcast: "Mark Grayson, son of Omni-Man, still powerless. Sources close to the family say he's due any week now."
So I'm pre-canon, he thought. Mark doesn't have his powers yet. That means... I have time.
Time to train. Time to learn. Time to survive.
If he was right, then in a few months, the world would tear itself apart. He remembered what Omni-Man did. What Mark went through. What Cecil allowed.
He needed to be ready.
---
Scene 8: First Contact
That night, it happened again—only worse.
A scream in the alley. A teenage girl, pinned by two masked men.
He should've walked away. He told himself that.
But his feet didn't listen.
He intervened—sloppily. Stumbled. Got punched. Hard.
Then—he reacted.
Without thinking, he grabbed one man's arm, redirected the punch with a snap of a vector, and launched him backwards into a trash heap. The other man swung a knife. Too fast.
The blade cut his side.
Pain. Hot, real, angry.
He screamed and lashed out—grabbing the attacker's jacket and sending him flying up and into the fire escape ladder. The metal groaned as the body slammed against it and fell limp.
The girl ran. Didn't say thank you. Didn't stop. Just ran.
He stumbled into the street, blood soaking his shirt.
I'm not ready.
---
Scene 9: Rest and Regret
He patched himself up using Isaac's pathetic excuse for a first-aid kit. No stitches, just gauze and shaking hands.
His breathing was shallow. The adrenaline crash hit like a train.
He lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling again. Same shadows. Same dust. But he wasn't the same anymore.
I could've died.
And still, part of him smiled.
Because the powers worked.
Even if clumsy. Even if barely. He'd moved—not just physically, but existentially. The inertia of fear had cracked.
"I need to train," he whispered into the darkness.
"I need to survive."
---
Scene 10: Motion Initiated
The next morning, he made a list. On the back of an unpaid electric bill, in jagged black marker:
Assess limits.
Test speed manipulation.
Train reflexes.
Track canon timeline.
Avoid Cecil.
Stay anonymous.
Find out who Isaac Ward was.
He folded the paper and tucked it into his wallet.
He wasn't ready for Mark. Or Nolan. Or Robot. Or any of it.
But he would be.
The world would keep spinning. People would keep flying and punching and dying.
But he had one thing no one else had.
He could change direction.
And in this world, maybe—just maybe—that was enough.
---
End of Chapter 1
---jy