There was that feeling again.
Hard to explain what it actually felt like. Just something in the air, like the whole room took a quiet breath. But all four of them felt it at the same time, and they all knew what it meant.
Someone was coming.
It had happened twice before. First time, two of them dropped in alone, completely lost. Then about six months later, two more showed up together. So naturally they figured that was just how it worked — every six months, new arrivals, like some kind of cosmic bus schedule.
Except then six months passed. Nothing.
Then a year. Still nothing.
Then two whole years of absolutely nothing.
Was it disappointing? Sure, a bit. But honestly? After a certain point you just stop expecting things. They'd made their peace with it. The four of them had even started joking that maybe they were the whole group — that whatever this place was, whatever they were, maybe the math just stopped at four.
Besides, none of them even fully understood what was going on anyway. What was this place? How many times could one soul get split before it ran out? Did the others even make it? No one had answers to any of that. So after two years of radio silence they'd basically shrugged and moved on.
Which is exactly why, when it finally happened, it caught them completely off guard.
The White Hall lit up like someone had pointed a flashlight directly at the sun.
No warning. No build up. Just — boom — blinding white light flooding every corner of the room all at once. They barely had time to throw their hands up before it died down just as fast, folding back into itself like it was embarrassed about making such a scene.
And standing right where the light had been, looking extremely confused, was a kid.
Twelve, maybe thirteen. Black hair, slightly messy. Black shirt. Silver chain around his neck. He had this expression on his face that sat somewhere between deeply suspicious and ready to throw hands at any moment. The kind of face that said he'd been in enough bad situations to stop being surprised by them.
Honestly he looked like the sort of kid you'd see hanging around outside a convenience store at nine pm and quietly cross the street to avoid.
The four of them stared at him.
He stared back.
There was something weirdly familiar about him. Not in an obvious way — more like that feeling when a word is right on the tip of your tongue. Something underneath the surface, tugging at them.
Then One Piece elric— because of course it was him — squinted hard, pointed, and said at full volume:
"Guys. Is that not literally Kevin from Ben 10."
The kid had been doing a pretty good job of playing it cool up until that exact moment. But the second he heard Ben 10 his whole vibe shifted. The lazy wariness in his eyes clicked into something much sharper.
"Who are you?" His voice was calm but his eyes were doing a full sweep of the room. Cataloguing exits, probably. "And what is this place?"
Blue electricity started crawling across his arms.
"Oh here we go, I am not explaining this shit again" One Piece Elric muttered.
And before the kid could do anything useful with all that electricity, one piece Elric was already behind him. Silent, quick, completely unbothered. One firm knock, right on top of the head.
Bonk.
The electricity disappeared.
The kid's face went through about four different expressions in half a second and then he just... folded. Dropped straight to the floor like someone had pulled his plug. Clean as anything.
One Piece looked down at him. Looked back up at the others.
"...Maybe a bit too hard," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.
Nobody argued with him.
........
Kevin had been having a great dream actually.
Not the fuzzy, melting kind that slips away the second you open your eyes. The good kind. Solid. Real. The kind you could reach out and touch.
Because technically it wasn't even a dream — it was his life.
He'd died. He remembered that part. And then instead of whatever was supposed to come after dying, he'd woken up inside a cartoon he used to watch as a kid. Specifically as Kevin Levin — the moody, absorbing, perpetually-making-bad-choices kid who spent most of the original show either causing problems or being the problem.
Which, all things considered, could have been worse.
He had a cool power set. He'd eventually get a ridiculously attractive girlfriend if the plot went the way he remembered. And most importantly he was self aware this time, which meant he could just... not do the stupid stuff.
And there had been a lot of stupid stuff to avoid.
First thing he'd crossed off the list: the Null Void. Absolutely not. Getting trapped in a pocket dimension and experimented on was not happening. Hard no.
Second thing: stealing money. He genuinely could not believe that had been the original plan. You wake up with the ability to absorb alien DNA and the first thought is bank robbery? Come on. He had more self respect than that.
Third — and this one had actually required some honest thinking — he'd admitted to himself that running all ten alien forms at once was above his pay grade. Kevin 11's whole tragedy was basically a cautionary tale about biting off more than you can chew. So he'd kept it simple. Grey Matter when he needed to be smart. Four Arms when smart wasn't the answer. XLR8 for everything else.
Three forms. Clean. Manageable.
With those and his absorption ability he'd quietly built himself a nice little underground setup. Nothing dramatic, nothing that invited attention. Just comfortable and safe and entirely off the radar of anyone who might want to dissect him.
Life had been going well.
And then he went to sleep one completely normal night, and something just grabbed him — not physically, more like getting caught in a current underwater — and dumped him into a white room where someone immediately hit him.
He came back to consciousness with a groan that expressed exactly how he felt about all of this.
The top of his head was throbbing. The floor was cold. The lights were aggressively white. He blinked a few times and a face swam into focus above him.
His face.
Well. A version of it. Older looking. More relaxed around the eyes, like someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Wearing a straw hat for some reason.
Kevin's brain did a very fast calculation and landed on run as the answer. His fingers hit the floor, he felt the familiar pull of XLR8 building up —
And then the memories hit him.
All at once. No warning. Just a sudden flood of things he had never experienced but somehow completely recognized. The White Hall. The waiting. The others showing up. The long, quiet stretches of nothing in between.
He hadn't lived any of it.
But it felt like something he'd seen once, a long time ago, and completely forgotten until right now.
He laid there on the floor for a second, staring up at the ceiling, letting the XLR8 energy quietly drain back out of him.
Then he said:
"Okay."
A pause.
"Which one of you actually hit me."
It got 1k power stone, here 3 chapter today.
You guys can check out my patreon with 40 advance chapter, and want to support this story.
patreon.com/LMStar666