**Chapter 1: Nick
"Arrrrrhh!"
Majong screamed in pain. His body was throbbing with an agonizing sensation that was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He strained his eyes, trying to make out his surroundings, but unfortunately, all he could see was deep darkness.
"Where the hell am I?" he thought in frustration.
He focused his mind, attempting to recall the events that had led to this moment.
A memory surfaced in his mind.
He, Joker, and the Smiley gang had been facing off against about twenty-two Spherites, that had been sent by the World Government. He recalled how he and the smiley gang had declared war on every Pillar Country, causing the World Government to take action against the Netherlands. He remembered... he remembered...
Majong's mind hit a wall.
He couldn't recall what happened after that.
Everything after that moment… was gone being foggy, muddy and missing.
His teeth clenched. "Who the hell did this to me?!"
His roar echoed through the void, swallowed by the suffocating darkness. He tried to move, but his limbs refused to obey him, like they weren't his.
This helplessness only fueled his fury.
His mind already began forming vicious punishments for whoever put him in this state.
Then a thought flickered through his mind, a ridiculous and an unwelcome thought.
"…Wait."
"Could it be...?"
He sucked in a sharp breath.
"Poker," he suddenly snarled, voice cracking with rage. "If this is your doing, I swear on my decks—IF THIS IS A PRANK, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!"
Silence answered him.
"I'm serious, Poker! This isn't funny—"
His voice echoed back without stirring any reaction.
He drew in breath to shout again—
—but the pain in his head suddenly surged, scorching through his nerves, and then—
A blazing light followed, and the next thing he knew, the darkness disappeared. First there was light, then his eyes slowly adjusted to reveal a cracked wooden ceiling. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was lying on the floor. His back ached, and his mouth felt dry. He attempted to move, but his arms felt weak and fragile to uphold him.
Before he could think of anything, a sudden smell entered his nostrils. And he knew the smell all too well.
It was the familiar metallic scent of blood. He turned his head toward the source and saw a dead rat the size of a small dog near his feet. Its body was stiff, its one eye missing, and dark liquid had leaked out around it.
"A... mutant... a low-level one," thought Majong as he assessed the creature. For a moment, he just stared at it, unable to understand where he was or what had happened.
Disregarding the dead mutant, Majong then tried to lift himself again with his hands. Sadly he failed once again.
Upon his failure he realized that something was wrong with his hands. He turned to look at them and discovered that they were too small and too smooth, nothing like his strong, muscular arms.
He froze and looked again, as the shocking sight greeted his eyes.
"Where the hell are my hands?"
He coudn't see the scars he was used to, instead, the hands he was staring at looked like they belonged to a ten-year-old. The hard-won muscles he had built over the years were nowhere to be found.
His chest heaved, and his breathing quickened to shallow gasps. Everything about his body felt wrong—the rhythm of his breathing, the structure itself, all of it felt alien.
"Which hell have I woken up in this time?" he thought grimly.
He tried to remember what had happened before this. There had been preparations for war against the World Government, then out of nowhere, he woke up in a dark space, and suddenly he found himself in this bizarre situation. At this point, he no longer believed this was one of Poker's games; for even she knew that there were certain lines her pranks couldn't cross.
"Just where the hell am I?"
For a moment, the word 'hell' flashed in his mind again. If this was really hell, then that smug bastard Karma had really got him this time.
As he mulled over his confusion, Majong noticed the sight of runic circles near the low-level mutant at his feet. And his expression froze, then morphing into one of confusion.
"An Ascension ritual...?"
Puzzlement was clear in his voice. His eyes darted back and forth between the runes and the dead carcass of the mutant, and then a slow realization dawned on him.
It seemed someone had attempted to perform an Ascension ritual involving a low-level mutant.
"What sort of crazy imbecile would dare to attempt such a suicidal act?"
He knew all too well how slim the chances of surviving an Ascension with a low-level mutant were—this was practically suicide. He shifted his head, trying to locate the idiot behind the ritual, convinced they would already be dead by now.
But as he looked, he found no one. He glanced down at himself and noticed dried blood on his arms and a mark near his bare chest. An absurd speculation then dawned on him regarding the identity of the culprit behind the suicide ritual attempt.
it was him.
He laughed at the absurdity of it. But as he laughed, he suddenly frowned. His laughter didn't sound like his own maniacal and glorious laugh; instead, it felt young, innocent, and childish.
"What the hell..."
He attempted to stand up, but this caused his swollen head to throb even more intensely.
And then all of a sudden the world tilted amd he lost consciousness again.
When he woke up again, he was lying on a bed.
The light hurt his eyes and he could hear faint voices outside the door. And when his eyes finally adjusted he saw another ceiling, one different from the previous one.
A groan came out from him.
As he stared at his sorroundings.
When he saw that there was no dead carcass of a mutant or runes of an Ascension ritual, he let out a relieved sigh dismissing the earlier scene as a dream. But that was before he caught his reflection on the reflective flower base near him.
"What the fu***"