The truck didn't even have the decency to be going fast.
That was your last coherent thought before the impact. Thirty kilometers per hour. A delivery van. A driver checking his phone. And you, stepping off the curb because you were too busy looking up at the cloudy sky, thinking about what to eat for dinner.
Thirty kilometers per hour.
Are you kidding me? was your second-to-last thought. A slow truck? That's how I go out? Not a heart attack while being awesome, not a dramatic sacrifice, not even something cool like a lightning strike? Just... a guy who wasn't looking?
The impact cracked your skull against the pavement. You didn't feel the pain not really. There was a brief, bright flash of white, like a camera flash going off inside your brain, and then everything went soft and warm and distant.
'This is fine,' you thought, deliriously. 'This is totally fine. I've been wanting a nap anyway.'
The last thing you saw before your vision tunneled into nothing was the poster taped to your bedroom wall, visible through your apartment's ground-floor window.
Because of course your apartment was ground-floor. You couldn't even afford a nice death with a view.
Gurren Lagann.
Simon's face, fierce and tear-streaked, fist raised to the sky. Behind him, the impossible silhouette of Tengen Toppa a mech the size of a galaxy, a drill that could pierce the fabric of reality itself.
"Believe in the you that believes in yourself."
You'd always loved that line. Loved the absurd, stubborn, beautiful stupidity of it. The idea that willpower alone could move mountains. That if you just wanted something badly enough, refused to accept defeat, refused to stop spinning—
'Yeah, well,' you thought, 'my willpower didn't stop that truck, now did it?'
The white flash faded to black.
And then the black spun.
...
You were nowhere.
And everywhere.
A void without stars, without ground, without air except there was air, because you could feel it moving around you.
No, not moving. Spinning.
A gentle, omnipresent rotation like being suspended inside the eye of a slow-motion hurricane while someone played ambient lo-fi beats in the background.
'Okay,' you thought. 'This is either the afterlife or I'm having a really weird dream because I ate that expired yogurt.'
You looked around. Nothing. Just endless, spinning darkness.
'Am I dead?'
No answer came. Just the spin.
In your previous life, you were known as Kenichi Urameshi.
Just your average college student, working a normal 9-to-5, living a boring, chill life.
No grand ambitions.
No hidden destiny.
No tragic backstory involving murdered parents or a secret royal lineage.
Just a guy who liked anime, cheap ramen, the occasional cloudy sky, and sleeping in on weekends.
You were, by all accounts, aggressively average.
And now you were apparently dead because you couldn't be bothered to look both ways.
'Damn,' you muttered into the void, your voice echoing strangely in the spinning emptiness.
'I actually died. Fuck. I knew I should've just eaten the leftover food Mom made. But nooo, I had to go out for something "fresh." Look where fresh got me. Dead. Fresh got me dead.'
You sighed or tried to. Hard to sigh when you weren't sure you had lungs anymore.
'This is such a drag.'
You started floating. Or drifting. Or whatever you call moving when there's no gravity and nothing to push off of.
You spun lazily through the void, arms flailing like a panicked starfish, until your eyes caught something in the distance.
A drill.
Not a physical drill not metal, not energy, not anything you could name. It was more like the idea of a drill.
A spiral of pure potential, hanging in the void like a screensaver that had given up on being interesting.
It was small at first. The size of your thumb. But the longer you looked at it, the larger it grew.
'What the—'
Before you could even finish the swear, the drill moved.
It didn't fly toward you. It didn't explode. It just... manifested.
Shifting, growing, spiraling outward into a shape that made your non-existent heart stop.
A human.
No way taller than human.
A figure of impossible proportions, towering over you like a statue carved from starlight and shadow.
Its features were indistinct, shifting like smoke from a dry ice machine at a high school dance.
But its presence was absolute.
It filled the void.
It was the void.
You floated there, mouth open, looking up at this cosmic entity like a goldfish that had just been informed it owed back taxes.
'Okay', you thought. 'Yep. This is happening. This is really happening.'
The being looked down at you. You felt it look at you even though it didn't have eyes. Or a face. Or anything remotely face-adjacent.
And then it spoke.
Not with a mouth. Not with sound. The words simply appeared in your brain, echoing everywhere and nowhere at once, like someone had turned your thoughts into a surround sound system.
"Welcome, traveler. I am known by you humans as a god. A minor one, admittedly, but I manage. I direct souls like you to their appropriate afterlife."
You stared.
Then you blinked.
Then you opened your mouth and said the first thing that came to mind, because your brain-to-mouth filter had apparently died along with the rest of you.
"...So, like, a cosmic HR department?"
The god-being went silent.
The void seemed to hold its breath.
"...That is," the being said slowly, "not the worst analogy I have heard. But I prefer 'celestial logistics coordinator.'"
'Oh my god', you thought. 'The afterlife has bureaucracy.'
"Right," you said, trying to sound respectful and definitely failing. "Celestial logistics. Got it. So, uh... what's the verdict? Am I going up, down, or sideways?"
The god-being tilted its head. Or maybe it didn't. Hard to tell when its entire form was made of spiral light and existential confusion.
"Your file is... unusual, Kenichi Urameshi."
"My file?"
"Every soul has a file. We are very organized."
'Of course you are.'
"You lived a small life. Unremarkable. No great sins. No great virtues. You once returned a wallet you found on the bus, but you also pirated seventeen anime series and never felt bad about it. By all rights, you should simply fade into the collective unconscious. Recycle. Start over as a new soul. Maybe as a beetle. You seem like you'd make a decent beetle."
"Wait, a beetle?"
"A June bug, specifically. They also lack situational awareness."
You felt personally attacked by a god.
"Okay, first of all ouch. Second of all, why am I talking to you if I'm supposed to be recycled into a bug?"
The being paused. The spin of the void seemed to slow, as if it was considering something important.
"Because something intervened."
A drill appeared. Not the giant one that had formed the god a smaller one, floating between you and the divine being.
It spun faster now, humming with a frequency that vibrated in your teeth. Or what used to be your teeth. It was complicated.
"This symbol. This 'drill.' It resonated with something in your soul at the moment of death. Your attachment to it your belief in it was unusually strong. Strong enough to catch my attention. Strong enough to override the standard recycling protocol."
You stared at the spinning drill. At the impossible geometry of it.
Believe in the you that believes in yourself.
"I watched a lot of anime," you said dumbly.
"Evidently."
"So... what does that mean for me? No beetle?"
"No beetle." The god-being almost sounded disappointed. "It means, Kenichi Urameshi, that you are not destined for oblivion. Nor are you destined for a quiet afterlife as a bug who flies into porch lights."
The drill grew brighter. Faster. The void around you began to scream with wind.
"I am going to offer you a choice. A reincarnation. Not as a random soul in a random body but as someone specific. Someone with power. Someone whose fate is already written in the stars of their world."
You perked up. "Like isekai? I'm getting isekai'd?"
"If you must use that ridiculous term, yes."
"Sweet. No truck-kun jokes, though. That's too on the nose."
"I do not know what that means."
"Don't worry about it."
The god raised an arm of spiraling light, and an image formed in the void before you. A man. Blonde hair, swept back like he'd just stepped out of a wind commercial. A confident smirk that said yeah, I know I'm hot.
A cape billowing in an unseen breeze. Holy Knight armor, gleaming silver and grey, polished to a mirror shine.
You recognized him instantly.
Howzer.
From The Seven Deadly Sins.
You stared at the image. Then at the god. Then back at the image.
"Holy shit," you breathed. "I'm going to be Howzer? The wind guy? The one who got absolutely folded by Meliodas in like two seconds?"
"That was the original timeline. You will be... different."
"You will become him," the god said. "But with a gift. That symbol that drill will merge with your new body's magic. Your wind will not be ordinary wind. It will be Spiral Wind. It will grow with your will. It will break limits. It will pierce anything you refuse to accept as unbreakable. In the parlance of your people... you will get a power-up."
The image shifted. Howzer's confident face melted into a new one older, harder, surrounded by swirling cyclones shaped like drills. His eyes burned with something that wasn't just magic. It was conviction.
"You will become one of the strongest Holy Knights in Britannia," the god continued.
"You will face the Seven Deadly Sins themselves and you will give them a run for their money. Meliodas will not fold you in two seconds. He will have to work for it. Maybe even break a sweat."
"Break a sweat against Howzer?"
"Against you."
The drill stopped spinning.
The void went silent.
The god leaned closer or seemed to, its form bending toward you like a collapsing star made of pure judgment and mild inconvenience.
"But understand this, Kenichi Urameshi. Your power will not come from talent. It will not come from training alone. It will come from belief. From will. From the absolute, stubborn, borderline-annoying refusal to accept defeat."
"Borderline annoying?"
"You will make speeches. Many speeches. Your allies will eventually tune you out."
"Worth it."
"If your spirit breaks, your wind dies. If you doubt yourself, your drills crumble to dust. If you ever, for a single moment, think 'I can't do this' you won't. The power is entirely dependent on your confidence. So you had better get confident, and fast."
You thought about that. About the weight of it. About having a power that only worked if you believed in yourself really, truly believed, not just fake-it-till-you-make-it believed.
'I watched a depressed teenager with a drill become a god', you thought. 'I can figure this out.'
"There is one more thing," the god said.
"Of course there is."
"You will remember your past life. Your memories of this world the anime, the manga, the lore they will stay with you. You will know what is coming. The demons. The commandments. The wars. The betrayals."
The being's voice grew heavier.
"This is both a gift and a curse. Knowledge is power. But knowing the future does not guarantee you can change it. And watching tragedies unfold that you could not prevent... that will test your spiral more than any enemy."
You swallowed. Or tried to. Void and all that.
"So I'm going into a death world with meta-knowledge and a power that runs on vibes?"
"That is... one way to phrase it, yes."
"Cool. Cool cool cool. No pressure."
"No pressure," the god agreed, and you were pretty sure it was being sarcastic. Cosmic entities shouldn't be allowed to be sarcastic.
The drill appeared again. Small. Spinning. Humming with that same impossible frequency.
"Do you accept?"
You looked at the drill. At the image of Howzer your future self surrounded by cyclones and glory. At the swirling winds that promised power beyond anything you'd ever dreamed.
You thought about your boring life. Your 9-to-5. Your leftover meals. The way you'd always watched heroes on a screen, eating chips on your couch, never imagining you could be one of them.
You thought about Simon. About Kamina. About a drill that pierced the heavens.
"Don't believe in yourself. Believe in me! Believe in the Kamina who believes in you!"
You thought about how dumb that line was. How melodramatic. How utterly, impossibly anime.
And then you thought about how much you loved it anyway.
You grinned.
"Yeah," you said. "Let's do this. Send me to the anime hellscape. I'm ready to be a himbo with wind powers."
"A what?"
"A himbo. You know. Big, handsome, not super bright but very sincere. Howzer's already got the look. I'll provide the personality."
"I do not know what a himbo is and at this point I am afraid to ask."
"You're a god. You can just know things."
"I choose not to know this particular thing."
Fair enough.
The god sighed or did something like it. The void shuddered.
"Then spin, Kenichi Urameshi. Spin, and never stop. Also, please try to be less annoying than you currently are. It will make your allies tolerate you more."
"No promises."
"I know."
The void exploded into light.
And then you were falling.
...
You woke up screaming.
Not in pain in pressure. Wind slammed against your face from every direction at once, howling like a living thing that was very upset about being alive.
You were on your hands and knees, gasping, your lungs burning with air that tasted wrong too thick, too sweet, like honey and ozone and someone had sprayed cheap vanilla air freshener directly into your soul.
Where—
You looked down.
Silver armor. Silver trim. A cape, your cape, you had a cape whipping around you in a frenzy of wind like it was having a personal crisis.
And your hands.
Not your hands. Bigger. Calloused. A warrior's hands. Hands that had definitely held a sword at some point.
Hands that had probably done some cool stuff you didn't remember yet because you were currently having an existential breakdown on the floor.
You stumbled to your feet, heart hammering against your ribs like it was trying to escape, and caught your reflection in the polished surface of a nearby shield propped against a wall.
Blonde hair. Swept back. A sharp jawline that could cut glass. Confident features that did not match the panicked, deer-in-headlights expression you were currently wearing.
You raised a hand to your face.
The reflection raised a hand to its face.
Holy shit.
I'm Howzer.
The wind around you didn't die down. It spun faster, wilder, responding to your shock and disbelief like an excited puppy that didn't know its own strength.
Little cyclones formed at your fingertips, no bigger than thimbles, spinning so fast they hummed like a refrigerator that had seen things.
You held up one hand and watched, transfixed, as a tiny drill of compressed air formed above your palm.
It was small. Fragile. A flicker of power that could barely ruffle someone's hair.
But it was yours.
And it was spinning.
Holy shit holy shit holy shit—
"Okay," you said out loud, just to hear your new voice. It was deeper than your old one. Smoother. Very protagonist-y.
"Okay. Okay. I'm in a anime. I'm in an anime as a side character who's about to become a main character. I have wind powers that run on anime determination. This is fine. This is completely fine. I am handling this very well."
You were not handling this very well.
You clenched your fist, and the tiny drill vanished. The wind around you calmed but didn't stop. It swirled lazily around your body, a constant, gentle rotation, like the void you'd just left had followed you home and decided to move in.
Believe in the you that believes in yourself.
You looked toward the window of whatever room you were in. Beyond it, a sprawling medieval city stretched toward a brilliant blue sky. Castles. Cathedrals.
Flags bearing the symbol of the Kingdom of Liones. Birds chirping. Merchants yelling. All the trappings of a fantasy setting that was about to get absolutely wrecked by demons.
Somewhere out there, Meliodas was pouring drinks in a rundown tavern, looking like a kid but being actually a thousands-year-old demon prince with trauma for days.
Ban was stealing something.
Diane was walking through forests that barely reached her knees.
King was hovering over the Fairy King's Forest, probably judging someone.
Gowther was reading someone's mind without permission because he had no social awareness.
Merlin was doing Merlin things, which meant being cryptic and overpowered.
And Escanor—
Escanor was waiting for the sun to turn him into a walking nuclear apocalypse.
And I'm going to have to fight these people.
Eventually.
On purpose.
You took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third, because the first two didn't help.
'Alright Kenichi, or Howzer. Whoever you are now. You've got wind magic that runs on fighting spirit. A world full of demons, goddesses, and commandments. A drill that's supposed to pierce the heavens and absolutely no idea what you're doing.'
But hey. That's never stopped an anime protagonist before.
You walked to the door, pushed it open, and stepped out into the courtyard of what you now recognized as the Holy Knight's headquarters.
The sun hit your face. Warm. Golden. Very cinematic.
Knights saluted as you passed. Trainees bowed. Nobody looked at you twice just another day with the wind guy, the one with the good hair.
You nodded back at them, trying to look confident and not like a college student who had been hit by a slow truck approximately twenty minutes ago.
Fake it till you make it, you reminded yourself. That's the motto. Fake it till you make it, and then keep faking it because imposter syndrome never really goes away.
You didn't know the plot timeline yet.
Didn't know when the Seven Deadly Sins would be summoned, or when the Ten Commandments would descend, or when the sky would crack open and everything you loved about this story would be put to the test.
But you knew one thing.
When the time came, you wouldn't be a bystander. You wouldn't be the comic relief who got folded in two seconds.
You would be the drill.
And you would never, ever stop spinning.
Even if you had no idea what you were doing.
Especially if you had no idea what you were doing.
That was the whole point of believing in yourself, right?