I've always admired heroes. It's not about their power, but their unwavering spirit. They face challenges that would break others, yet they never surrender to the dark. There's a light inside them that refuses to be extinguished. They remind us that even in the deepest night, dawn is a choice you fight for. That stubborn hope is what I truly admire.
So after all that talk you're probably wondering why I'm in a building with a teenager that has spikey black hair and a woman wearing a white nun uniform made of pins and needles. Well it's actually a really funny story.
My name is Matthew Smith. For the first eighteen years of my life, I was a straight A student from a quiet neighborhood in Houston, Texas. My life wasn't a fairy tale, but it was secure and warm, built on the unshakable foundation of my family. My parents, David and Carol, were my anchors. My older brother, Ben, was my hero, the charismatic one, the star quarterback who treated his nerdy younger brother not as a nuisance but as a friend.
We were the picture of mundane, middle class stability, and I never knew how fragile that could be.
The partying started subtly, a natural byproduct of senior year. A few beers on a Friday night, a house party with my friends while watching anime. It was a controlled burn of teenage rebellion, a way to feel alive before the serious business of adulthood began. My parents frowned upon it, but they trusted me. "Just keep your grades up, Matt," my dad would say, clapping me on the shoulder. "You've got a bright future."
I was still in control. I was still Matthew Smith, future engineer.
The foundation cracked the day my brother died. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. My brother Ben, driving home from visiting his college girlfriend, was in the wrong lane at the wrong time. Just like that, the rock of our family was gone.
The world didn't just change. It shattered. The vibrant colors of my life drained away, leaving everything in shades of gray. The silence in our house became a physical presence, thick and suffocating. My mother retreated into a shell of quiet tears, while my father buried himself in work, leaving the house before dawn and returning long after I'd gone to bed. I was left in the echoing quiet, the ghost of my brother's laughter haunting every room.
Grief is a strange, corrosive fuel. I couldn't fall apart. Someone had to be the strong one, the new rock. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I worked. I channeled every ounce of pain, every memory, every sleepless night into a furious, almost manic pursuit of academic perfection.
I became a workaholic. I was the first one in the library and the last one to leave. I took on extra credit projects, loaded my schedule with AP classes, and filled out college applications with a grim, determined focus. I wasn't striving for a future anymore; I was building a fortress to keep the pain out. Every A was another brick in the wall.
For a while, it worked. The exhaustion was a blessing. It was a physical numbness that matched the emotional one. My teachers saw a driven, brilliant student. My parents saw a son handling his grief with admirable maturity. They had no idea that the pressure inside me was building to a critical mass. The fortress I was building had no doors, no windows. It was a tomb.
The first drink after the funeral was a hesitant thing, a single beer from my dad's fridge, consumed alone in my room just to feel something other than the hollow ache. It didn't do much. But a few weeks later, after a particularly brutal calculus exam that left my hands shaking, I tried whiskey.
This was different. It didn't just numb the pain. It warmed the cold, hollow spaces Ben had left behind. For a few golden, hazy hours, the weight lifted. The constant, grinding pressure of being "the strong one" evaporated.
It started as a weekend ritual, a reward for a week of relentless work. A bottle would be my companion on a Friday night, a secret celebration of survival. But as the pressure of college decisions and final exams mounted, the weekend began to bleed into Wednesday. Then Tuesday.
I was a high functioning ghost. I'd ace a physics midterm in the morning, my mind sharp and clear, and by that evening, I'd be alone in my room, drowning the ensuing crash in a bottle of cheap bourbon. The alcohol was no longer a relief. It was a necessity. It was the release valve for the pressure cooker my life had become. The grief I had so carefully walled away was seeping out, and I was using liquor to plug the leaks.
The night it all fell apart was the anniversary of Ben's death. My parents had gone to visit his grave. I couldn't. I stayed home, the silence of the house screaming in my ears. I had a stack of engineering scholarship applications on my desk, their blank lines accusing me. I opened a bottle. Then another.
The next thing I remember with any clarity is the blare of a car horn and the searing glare of headlights. I was on the street, I don't know how far from home, stumbling through the rain. I was shouting, though I don't know what. I was screaming at the sky, at the rain, at Ben for leaving me alone in this suffocating world. I was the perfect student, the grieving brother, the secret drunk, all these fractured versions of Matthew Smith colliding in a final, catastrophic meltdown.
I remember the cold not from the rain, but from the alley wall I slumped against. I remember the figure approaching, not with concern, but with a predatory stillness. I was too lost in my own pain, too insulated by the alcohol, to feel afraid. I might have said something. I might have challenged him. I might have just looked like an easy target.
There was no struggle. Just a sudden, sharp, shocking pain in my chest, a pain so visceral and real it cut through the bourbon haze and the years of buried grief. As I slid down the wet brick, the world fading, the last clear thought I had was a bizarre one. I hadn't been building a fortress. I had been digging a hole. And finally, I had reached the bottom. After all my struggles this is what my end brought me.
My youth, to my teenage years and to my high school graduation. All my years of studying to get me into a good school and prosper in life down the drain. All because I was swallowed in grief. If my brother saw me right now he'd be pitying me.
And as the darkness closed in, my mind drifted back to the heroes I admired. The ones who endured. The ones who never surrendered to despair. Even now, at the edge of everything, I wondered if I had it in me that same stubborn hope. That spark that refuses to die. The ones who would defy fate itself and stand up again.
"An interesting thought for a dying soul." The voice was not in my ears, but in my mind, vast and utterly dispassionate. The pain, the rain, the alley, it all froze, suspended in a single, timeless moment.
"You admire the concept of the hero who stands against the dark, yet you have done little but fall into it. A pathetic but not entirely uninteresting contradiction." I had no voice to respond, only my consciousness to listen.
"Your story is a tragedy of the common variety. There is no amusement in its end. But the potential for a different tale… that has its appeal. You wish for a chance to embody that hope you so naively cherished? Very well. I shall provide the stage."
There was no kindness in the voice, only the bored curiosity of a cosmic spectator. "Let us see if a soul that broke so easily under one world's grief can bear the weight of another's destiny. Become the hero you claim to admire. Your old world is done with you. Let this new one be your crucible mongrel."
The voice was gone. Just like that. The crushing pain in my chest, the freezing rain soaking through my clothes, it all just stopped. For a single, terrifying heartbeat, there was nothing. No sound, no feeling, not even the weight of my own body. It was like I had been erased.
My last thought echoed in the void: Become the hero.
Then I gasped. A real, ragged breath that burned in my lungs. The air was cold and tasted like dust and stone. My eyes flew open, but I could not see a thing. This was not the familiar dark of my bedroom or the sodium-orange glow of a city night. This was a deep, swallowing blackness, thick and complete.
I felt a rough, gritty surface under my palms. I was lying on my back. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, living drumbeat proving I was still here, wherever here was. I pushed myself up, my arms trembling, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I blinked hard, and my eyes started to adjust.
I was not in a room. A chill breeze brushed against my face, carrying the scent of damp earth and something sweet, like strange flowers. I could see the faint outline of a stone railing in front of me. I shuffled forward, my feet scraping against the ground, and looked over the edge.
It was a balcony in an unfamiliar place. As I stood up, a sudden chill ran through me. It was not just the cold air. It was my body. My skin prickled, and I froze when I realized why. I was not wearing any clothes. Panic kicked in instantly. I covered myself on instinct, glancing around for anything, anyone, that could help me or at least something I could use to cover up.
I immediately went into the house of the apartment balcony I was sleeping on. I went straight into any of the rooms just to get some clothes on. The clothes were past my size but they would work for now. The next thing I did was go into the washroom and when I looked into the mirror I was dumbfounded. I looked way younger and like a whole new different person. My eyes were red and I had golden blonde hair on top of my head.
The person I saw in the mirror I recognized too well. It was Gilgamesh from fate. The King Of Heroes but when he was a child.
Out of pure, dazed curiosity, I focused on the empty space next to the shower. I didn't know what I was doing, but something deep inside me stirred, an instinct, a buried knowledge. I thought of a weapon. Any weapon. I imagined it not in my hand, but suspended in the air, ready to be called.
The air itself rippled with a golden, shimmering light. With a sound like chiming bells and tearing reality, a circular portal of gold and light erupted into existence. Hovering within it, tip pointed forward, was a magnificent sword I had never seen, yet knew intimately. It glowed with a soft, divine light, humming with immense power. Wait a minute if I had the powers of Gilgamesh I could probably get better clothes.
I focused on opening another gate and rummaged inside of it with my left hand. I looked nice and hard and sure enough I found it. Clothing for myself to wear that actually fits. I took it out first thing and switched out the sweatshirt I was wearing. I put on a short-sleeved purple shirt with a wide yellow collar and yellow trim on the sleeves, loose-fitting knee-length shorts in a beige, brown, black, and white camouflage pattern, and light-colored shoes with dark soles.
Inside my pockets was a wallet. I pulled out my wallet and looked at my ID. My name is Kousei Oogimiya. I'm 12 years old and have an esper rank of level 4. Out of nowhere I get hit with more information. I grabbed my head quickly and after the pain subsided I looked up again.
Soon I'll start my first day at Sakugawa Middle School. I recognized that name from somewhere I just forgot. I didn't know where I was but this was better than what I had going for me before. I exited the bathroom to get a better look at my surroundings. The apartment was small and it looked boring but it gave off the feeling of home.
Then out of nowhere I hear a thud outside the balcony. I immediately go back to check and what I find myself seeing is a nun in a white uniform. After that I immediately figured out what universe I'm in. This is the Toaru verse. Before Touma even met Index or any of the actual story happens. Out of nowhere all the power goes out, Touma is probably getting his ass handed to him by Misaka right now. Well it's no issue, now that I know what universe I'm in I'll just play my cards right.
I'll close the balcony doors and fall asleep there along with Index. This way I can have a home to stay in. Even though I have a vast amount of treasures, a guy can be cheap, can't he? So lying on the hard pavement I decided I'll fall asleep and wait until tomorrow morning where I'll introduce myself to Touma.
…
End Of Chapter. I hope that you guys enjoyed this. Honestly I'm really eager to get ready to work on this fic. I read the manga for A Certain Magical Index and watched the anime for Railgun and I hope you guys will enjoy this fanfic later on. Sorry if I get certain details wrong, if there's anything I get wrong feel free to correct me on it. My discord is v2timbit and i'll see you guys later.