All at once across multiple realities countless beings of great power flinched, they could all sense that some great change had occurred. No matter how they searched they could not find what change had occurred, many lashed out when their questions remained unanswered. Others simply left it be, they believed with their power whatever had changed was far below them and would be unaffected. The less arrogant simply kept an eye out for anything that may point them in the right direction. Meanwhile the source of the change was a young man awoke in bed before sitting up. Now normally this would not be unusual as this happens all across the world every single day, but what makes this unique is the fact the young man should not have woken up at all. Because the day before this boy had lost his entire family and as he laid in bed the previous night he decided to join them by taking a large dose of sleeping pills.
And it worked, the man who woke up was not the same one who fell asleep, in fact while the body might be 18 the mind now inhabiting it was about a decade older. As the man sat up he rubbed his head in pain, "Well that sucked, remind me not to try and jumpstart my car in the pouring rain without proper protection next time." After he stopped rubbing his head he looked around with curiosity, "I wonder what kind of world it sent me to." Now you may be confused by his comment so let me backup a few minutes or several eons (time gets a little weird when you are outside of it). The man that was sitting on the bed was now floating in front of a man? woman? thing? let's go with being that sounds less offensive. The man was just staring at the being, trying to understand how he got there. "You know it's rude to stare. Plus if you stare too much into unknowable truths before you are ready to learn them it will fracture your mind."
"And I really don't want to have to put it back together, mortal minds are so weird. You leave out one thing, like the ability to feel happiness and they'll go insane trying to feel just one moment of joy." The man flinched and looked away from the being in front of him, "No thank you, I rather like my mind how it is." The being nodded, "Alright, then let's get down to business. I am what you humans call a ROB, not a terribly creative name but real names can be a dangerous thing to know." The man grew paler at that, he was starting to feel like he should be anywhere but here. The being didn't seem to care and just continued to speak, "Like most ROBs I am going to give you a gift and send you to another world. I think you guys call it isekai, or is it transmigration? reincarnation? Oh whatever, I don't really care anyway. I'm just bored so try and make whatever world you end up in more interesting than when you arrived."
If the man had a face the smile on it would have grown from ear to ear, he was always a fan of that genre and visiting another world might be fun. But then a thought struck him and a feeling of dread overcame him, some worlds would not be very fun at all, like Attack on Titan, Beserk, or god forbid Warhammer 40k. "As fun as it would be to see you try and survive in those worlds, I am trying out a new idea I got from a few other ROBs. I am going to send you to a safer world and give you powers related to video games. Now to get the other ROBs off my back for stealing their ideas, I'm going to make a few tweaks to your gift. And no I won't tell you what it is, it'll be a surprise. Now good bye and have fun." The man tried to protest at the lack of explanation but with a wave of the being's hand? his form winked out of existence. Now you are caught up, let's get back to it.
I kept looking around the room I was in and tried to stand from my bed, only the floor was further away than I remembered. After my face had an unpleasant date with the floor I pushed myself up and started to examine my new body. It was different then the one I was used to, it was not only younger but it reminded me of back when I was in the best shape of my life. I had a flat stomach, a bit of a muffin top but I would try and get rid of that soon enough, I had a second chance and I wasn't going to waste it. But there was one more thing I had to check before I got started, so I rushed to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. What greeted me was a face that wouldn't look out of place in a comic book… as one of the background characters. Not the supermodel worthy but also no large deformities, I still looked a lot better than I did in my past life.
After I spent some time admiring different aspects of my body I started to look for information on my new life. The ROB that sent me here didn't see fit to give me the memories that accompanied my new body. I hoped that wouldn't cause any trouble down the road, but on the other hand I had enough baggage of my own to deal with. Why would I want to add someone else's to that? After searching for a couple of minutes I found some information on my life in this world that made me feel bad for the other guy. He lost his parents in an accident just yesterday, and they traveled so much for work so he didn't have any friends. Every time he connected with someone they would be off to the next place, usually in another city and sometimes even to another country. So he was pretty much all alone now that his parents died, I could understand why he felt that suicide was the only way out.
I couldn't find anything on what his parents actually did but I found some paperwork that gave me access to their bank accounts. They had a good chunk of money saved up so I would be able to pay the rent to stay here for a couple years. Oh and I found out my name was Alex Warner in this world and the apartment I lived in was in New York city. It had two bedrooms and two bathrooms. A living room and kitchen with a dishwasher and it had a closet with a washer and dryer as well, which was more than enough for me. After I found everything I could I sat down on the couch and tried to figure out what sort of gift the ROB gave me. I tried calling out for a system, focusing to see if I had any inner energies, even striking various poses I would never tell anyone about to try and bring forth my power. Nothing worked, after a while I gave up and made myself some lunch.
There was plenty of food in the fridge and when I finished eating a very nice sandwich I decided to explore the outside world as well. It was very chaotic, I lived in a small town in my past life so walking around in a place like NYC was very different. I had a hard time at first and bumped into a couple of people, but eventually I made it to a small park that was slightly less crowded. I sat down on a bench and just watched the people passing by, they were pretty normal. There weren't any differences that I could see, but I had just got here so I shouldn't rule out any universes yet. After watching people for a while I decided to take out my phone and search the internet to see if I could find anything. That was when I noticed the first change, I hadn't really noticed before as the phone was very similar to my old one. But now that I think about it, it was more advanced than it should be for the time period.
Not by much but it was 2007 here, and the phone looked like it belonged in 2015, maybe even later. So I took the case off and then I knew right away which universe I was in and I couldn't help but smile. I was in the Marvel Universe, I could tell because I was holding a Stark phone, not really that surprised by the name but it got me thinking about which universe I was in. I hoped it was one of the good ones and not one where Ultron won or the zombie apocalypse happened, but the ROB said this was a safe universe so I would be cautiously optimistic. Once I got over the sheer giddiness of being here I unlocked the phone, good thing I still had the same fingerprints because I have no idea what the passcode could be. I should probably change that next. After I dealt with that I started to look up information about this world, I searched for anything that wouldn't ring alarms in SHIELD.
I learned that Tony Stark looked like Robert Downey Jr but he was still a playboy. Captain America was a hero in WWII, when I was swiping through some old photos of the war I saw a picture of the Howling Commandos. I immediately started another search and I was both disappointed by the lack of information and curious about the possibilities. Charles Xavier was a well known professor with several papers on the evolution of man, but mutants were considered to be urban legend. I smelled a conspiracy, probably Shield or Hydra suppressing the information, hopefully for different reasons. If it was Shield then they were probably just trying to protect the public from information they weren't ready for yet. If it was Hydra, then they probably were experimenting on them, which could cause a big rift in the future due to Magneto. But it all depends on how dark of a world this is, Shield and Hydra could do the same things under different names.
Thinking of the two organizations I decided to pull a risky move and I searched for Shield, which turns out to be a legitimate agency, unfortunately Hydra was defeated in WWII. That meant that they were hiding in the shadows, the cut off one head thing. After that I tried to cheer myself up by looking for some better news, but I got none. Spiderman hadn't shown up yet and while the Baxter Building existed the Fantastic Four did not. Latveria and Wakanda existed and were considered to be backwater nations for most of the world. I knew Wakanda was just hiding but I had no way of knowing if Doom had returned home. I stretched as I stood and started to walk back home,even if I didn't find a lot of good news it still was informative. By the time I made it back home it was time for dinner after which I started to go through my room and see if I had anything to do tomorrow.
I didn't find anything so I would spend the day making plans for the future, I couldn't assume that my gift would just show up and make me an instant powerhouse. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, even though there were worst places to be I was still in a very dangerous universe. With that cheerful thought still ringing through my head I started to get ready for bed. I was so tired that it didn't surprise me that only a minute after my head hit the pillow I was out like a light. What did startle me was what met me there, I was floating in a realm of color. It kind of reminded me of what I heard lucid dreaming looked like, that or hallucinogens. "Not quite, this is your gift." I spun around to try and see who was talking but there was no one there. "Yeah no, I don't actually have a form, I'm just a voice the ROB gave you to teach you the basics of this place."
"So let's get to it. First, what is this place, well that is kind of a complicated answer. Have you ever heard of the villain Nightmare?" I nodded and the voice continued, "Well this used to be his domain. With a few tweaks of course. You don't have to worry about him coming back or anything, the ROB took care of that. This place is your gift, it is pretty basic right now but has a lot of potential. Here you can make your imagination into reality, you can also connect it to the real world in whatever way you want. I recommend you just let it connect however it can instead of limiting it to a specific method. Any questions before we get into the nitty gritty of controlling this place?" I shook my head as I tried to keep myself from literally vibrating in place, one of the things I learned today was that entertainment sucked here. I think it was because of Captain America, when you have a real life superhero everything else seems so bland.
After him people just made a lot of remakes about his life, I knew the real version, or at least a real version. So they all seemed really over done, they didn't even do the whole standing up to bullies, it was just a lot of propaganda for the US army. Now that I thought about it that was probably the reason why General Ross would be able to get away with so much in the future. People just believed that the Army was this baston of good and could do no wrong. So I could really take advantage of my past and recreate a lot of the things from back there. How cool would it be to not just watch Star Wars or Star Trek but instead fight alongside Luke or Spock. Maybe even go on an adventure with Frodo or Luffy to destroy the one ring or find the one piece. There was a lot to learn so I dived right into my lessons. They weren't even that hard, it was a bit like programming with your mind.
Just think of something, then adjust it when it comes out slightly off and focus on making it permanent. It was actually harder to make something disappear. Ever try to not think of something? It was kind of like that. Like in all dreams time passed differently in this realm, I practiced for what felt like days if not weeks, making some real progress on my first project when I was literally knocked off my train of thought. Metaphors tended to manifest here so I just went along with it, and it was actually kind of fun. "Alright, so it is almost time for you to wake up, I won't be here next time so I should go over some last minute remarks. Like I said earlier, try not to mess with how the realm manifests in reality. At least wait until you get some more experience. Your area of influence is limited right now so as to not overwhelm you but it will grow over time."
"Lastly, this is the realm of dreams, but like Nightmare as you grow in power you will be able to manifest changes in reality, so be careful with how much you abuse that. Most powerful beings tend to frown upon major alterations to reality, so if you do want to make a big change take it one step at a time. The ROB put in place a shield to protect you from the more powerful beings, but it only covers you and what you do. It basically makes anything you do illusionary… like a dream. However they will be able to see other people that are affected by you or this realm, so when you are ready to bring other people here they will know what is affecting them. It still won't allow them to find you but once you feel ready you can manipulate that protection like any other aspect in this place. Now good luck and have fun." With those parting words my eyes opened and I woke up in bed as a smile grew on my face, "Oh this is going to be so much fun."