Sandusky, Ohio was a shithole.
That was the only thought running through Kevin's head as he stared at the blank Word document on his Vought-issued laptop.
For the better part of an hour, the cursor just blinked. Mocking him.
He was supposed to be writing a memoir, or some bullshit PR statement about "finding himself," but the only thing he'd found was the bitter punchline to his life: The Deep, King of the Seven Seas and former member of the legendary Seven, was exiled to a town with a population smaller than a rounding error.
A town where the biggest crime wave was Mrs. Henderson's cat getting stuck in a tree.
He was a superhero with nothing to do. A goddamn joke, stuck in a town that didn't need him, waiting to be forgotten.
He groaned, burying his face in his hands, not yet knowing his pathetic life was about to get a hard reboot.
A spike of white-hot agony shot through his skull, so intense it felt like his brain was trying to claw its way out. The world went black before he even hit the keyboard.
….
Hours later, as dusk painted the cheap apartment in shades of gray, the body slumped over the desk twitched. Something new, something that wasn't the washed-up supe everyone knew, opened its eyes.
"Jesus Christ... where am I? Who... am I?" a voice rasped. The glow of the laptop screen was blinding. He squinted, trying to make sense of the text. It was just one word, repeated over and over.
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck...
The letter 'k' had been held down long enough to fill forty-three pages.
Shoving the laptop away, the man stumbled to his feet. The darkness of the room wasn't a problem; his eyes adjusted almost instantly, the gloom sharpening into perfect detail.
He found a light switch and flicked it on, finally getting a look at himself. He was wearing some kind of skin-tight, rubbery costume with a fish-scale pattern.
A flicker of recognition sparked in his mind but vanished before he could catch it. Then he felt it—a weird, hollow, fluttering sensation low on his abdomen.
He found the zipper on the suit and pulled it down. He froze.
Lining his torso were rows of slick, dark cavities. Gills. Fucking gills, complete with feathery tendrils that twitched in the open air.
"What the FUCK?!" he yelled, his voice cracking. He poked one of the slits with a trembling finger, a wave of nausea washing over him. "I need a mirror. Now."
He found a full-length one in the bedroom and stared. He saw the face of The Deep, the costume, the gills... and then, it all came rushing back in a dizzying flash.
….
"You died. Sucks, I know," a voice, bored and ancient, echoed in a pitch-black void. He was naked, confused, and terrified.
"What? Where am I? What's going on?!"
"Look, I don't have all day," the voice sighed, utterly unimpressed. "New world, one perk. Your brain's screaming a few ideas. Let's see…" The presence felt like it was thumbing through his memories like a cheap magazine. "A world with supes, huh? And you want the powers of the guy on the poster? Fine, whatever. It's your funeral."
And with a sensation like being kicked out of a moving car, he was gone.
….
"I died..." he whispered, collapsing onto the bed.
His old name, his old life... it was mostly a blur. A protected file with key data corrupted.
He could remember feelings, concepts, but not faces or names. When he tried to remember his own, his brain hit a brick wall.
But as he looked in the mirror, a new name surfaced easily: Kevin.
The Deep.
It was like a data dump. He knew everything about The Seven, about Vought, about being a supe.
He, a writer who used to churn out fanfiction to pay the bills, was now living in one of his stories. He let out a dark, ironic laugh.
At least it wasn't one of those grimdark hellscapes where everyone was miserable all the time and there were no happy endings. This world was fucked up, sure, but he'd take it.
In his old life, he'd lost his legs in an accident. He'd been trapped in a wheelchair, on the outside of "normal" looking in.
The grief for that life was there, but it was buried under a tidal wave of pure, unadulterated joy. He had legs. Functional, powerful legs.
A wild grin spread across his face. He pushed off the bed to stand up.
Too hard.
He shot into the air, his head leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the cheap plaster ceiling before he crashed back down, the floorboards groaning under his weight.
"Okay," he grunted, rubbing his head. "Note to self: super-strength, low ceilings. Bad combo. I need to go outside."
Grabbing the keys, he bolted out of the apartment, the cool night air feeling incredible on his skin. He started with a jog, which quickly became a sprint, and then he was just a blur.
The world smeared around him as he pushed his speed, easily breaking a hundred miles per hour without even breathing hard.
He spotted a park and, high on adrenaline, decided to test his jump again.
He coiled his powerful new legs and launched himself into the sky with a wild "WOOHOO!" He sailed through the air, a good thirty feet up, before realizing he had no plan for the landing.
He flailed, trying to remember something—anything—about absorbing impact and ended up plowing into the soft earth, sinking up to his knees.
"HOLY SHIT!" he screamed, laughing like a madman as he pulled his legs free from the dirt. The smile only faltered slightly when he saw his new boots were caked in mud. "Well, at least they're waterproof."
He walked over to a nearby tree and tore off a thick branch like it was a twig. He crushed it in his fist, the wood turning to dust. Feeling the giddy rush of power, he squared up with the trunk, pulled back his fist, and punched.
CRACK!
His fist went straight through the tree. The whole thing groaned, splintered, and began to fall right on top of him.
On pure instinct, he caught the multi-ton trunk with one hand, holding it effortlessly above his head. He just stood there for a second, dumbfounded.
"Holy... shit," he breathed again. Then he let out a roar of pure joy, hurling the tree into the darkness and scaring the hell out of a couple making out on a nearby bench.
After a few more minutes of just reveling in the fact he could move again, he decided it was time to head back. He looked around. He was in the middle of a park, with no idea which way he'd come from.
"The King of the Seven Seas, ladies and gentlemen," he muttered to the empty street, "can't find his way out of a fucking park in Bumfuck, Ohio. Pathetic."