The evening rain had turned Delhi's streets into a treacherous kaleidoscope—puddles gleamed with fractured neon, traffic lights smeared themselves across wet asphalt, and the honking chaos of the city carried on with the stubbornness of a heartbeat.
Karan Chauhan hunched deeper into his jacket, collar up against the drizzle. His sneakers slapped through puddles as he hurried down the crowded footpath. His night shift at the IT company had drained him, and the thought of hot dal and chapati at home was pulling him forward like gravity.
"Just ten more minutes, Chauhan. Ten more minutes and your bed," he muttered under his breath, shaking rain from his hair. That crooked grin of his flickered across his face—the one his mother always said made him look like he was planning mischief even when he was bone tired. His friends at work always joked that he looked more like a struggling poet than an IT guy—eyes that carried stories, a jawline that belonged in films, but with a habit of getting lost in his own thoughts and an unfortunate tendency to stick his nose where it didn't belong.
*Especially where it didn't belong.*
He paused to check his phone, squinting at a text from his flatmate Rohit: *"Bro, you better not be walking home in this rain like an idiot again."*
Karan snorted, typing back with wet fingers: *"What am I, made of sugar? I'll melt?"*
That's when he saw him.
An elderly man stood at the edge of a busy intersection, clutching a white cane. His face, carved by years and monsoons, tilted slightly upward as if listening to the madness of engines and horns. The walking signal had turned red long ago, yet he remained there—still, uncertain, like a lone bird caught in a storm.
Karan slowed, his phone forgotten mid-text. That familiar knot formed in his stomach—the one that always showed up when someone needed help and he was probably the only one stupid enough to provide it. His mother used to call it his "hero complex." His ex-girlfriend had called it "emotional baggage waiting to happen."
The old man's knuckles tightened around the cane, and then—hesitantly—he stepped off the curb. One step. Two. His cane tapped the slick asphalt, but the rhythm was wrong, shaky. He was walking blind into chaos.
"Arre, Uncle! Ruko!" Karan shouted, waving his arm even though the gesture was useless. His voice dissolved into the cacophony—rickshaw horns, bus engines, the rain drumming on rooftops like angry fingers.
*Shit, shit, shit.*
The old man pressed on, each step more uncertain than the last. A motorbike skidded around him with a furious honk, the rider shouting abuse that thankfully the old man couldn't hear. A car braked sharply, water spraying as tires shrieked against the road. The driver leaned on his horn, face red with rage behind rain-streaked glass.
Karan felt that familiar burn in his chest—the same one that had gotten him into fights defending classmates, the same one that made him slip money to street kids when he barely had enough for himself. *Mind your own business, Karan,* he told himself, even as his feet began moving toward the intersection. *For once in your life, just walk away.*
But he couldn't. He never could.
And then he heard it—a different sound threading through the urban symphony. A low, heavy rumble that didn't belong. He turned, rain stinging his eyes, and his blood turned to ice water.
A delivery truck. Barreling down the lane like a charging elephant. No headlights cutting through the rain, no brake lights flaring red in warning. Its driver was slumped over the wheel—lifeless or unconscious, it didn't matter which. The truck had become a three-ton missile of twisted metal and momentum, charging straight for the intersection.
Straight for the old man who stood frozen in its path, finally understanding that something was terribly wrong but not knowing which way to run.
Time stretched like hot glass, each second bending itself into painful clarity. Karan could see it all: the truck's dented grille, the old man's white cane trembling in his grip, the exact spot where metal would meet flesh in approximately four seconds.
*Run, you idiot,* his brain screamed. *Run the other way!*
But Karan Chauhan had never been good at listening to his brain when his heart was doing all the talking.
"Benchod," he whispered—half prayer, half curse—and launched himself into the street.
His sneakers skidded on the wet asphalt as he sprinted, rain lashing his face, lungs burning with the effort. He could hear the truck now, a mechanical roar that seemed to shake the very air. Three seconds. Two.
"UNCLE! MOVE! MOVE!" Karan's voice cracked as he screamed, throat raw.
The old man's head snapped toward the sound, eyes wide but unseeing, mouth opening in a silent question. He started to turn, to step back, but his movements were the slow deliberation of age while death approached with the speed of youth.
Too slow. Too late.
Karan threw himself forward with everything he had—every morning run, every game of cricket, every stupid heroic impulse his mother had ever warned him about—and slammed into the frail body like a linebacker. The impact sent both of them tumbling, the old man's cane spinning away as they crashed toward the sidewalk.
For an impossible moment, suspended in the chaos, Karan caught the old man's face up close. Weathered skin mapped with laugh lines and worry, eyes clouded with cataracts but somehow still kind. The man's lips moved, forming words that might have been thanks or prayers.
*Safe,* Karan thought with fierce satisfaction as the old man rolled clear of the road. *He's safe.*
Then the world became metal and violence and the sound of everything breaking at once.
The truck hit Karan with the force of divine retribution. His body lifted off the ground, spine compressing, ribs splintering, as he was launched through the rain-soaked air like a broken toy. For a heartbeat—just one—he felt strangely peaceful, weightless, suspended between earth and sky as though the rain itself was cradling him.
Time to think one last coherent thought: *Ma's going to be so pissed.*
Then gravity remembered him. He hit the asphalt with a wet crack that seemed to echo in his bones. Blood bloomed around him, mixing with rainwater to paint abstract art on the street.
The city's noise changed pitch. Screams replacing honks. Running footsteps splashing through puddles. Someone shouting for an ambulance in a voice thick with panic. Through it all, a broken wail—the old man, crying for a stranger who had saved him.
*He's alive,* Karan thought dimly, his lips twitching into what might have been a smile if he'd had the strength for it. His vision was fragmenting, the world becoming a kaleidoscope of brake lights and faces and falling rain. *That's... that's good. That's all that matters.*
His body felt distant now, like an old coat he was finally ready to take off. The pain was fading, replaced by a strange warmth that seemed to spread from somewhere deep inside his chest. He thought of his mother's face when she laughed at his terrible jokes. His father teaching him to drive in an empty parking lot. Rohit complaining about his habit of leaving dishes in the sink.
Small things. Good things. A life measured not in years but in moments of stubborn, impossible love.
Through the curtain of rain and approaching darkness, something impossible happened. The downpour seemed to part above him, opening like stage curtains to reveal not the smoggy Delhi sky, but endless galaxies wheeling in cosmic dance. And in their light stood a figure—woven of starlight and shadow, immense yet intimate, as if the universe itself had knelt down to whisper in his ear.
"Interesting," the figure said, its voice neither male nor female, neither near nor far. It resonated in his bones, in the spaces between atoms, in the pause between one heartbeat and the last. "Very interesting indeed."
Karan wanted to laugh, but his lungs had forgotten how. Of course this would happen to him. Save a stranger, get flattened by a truck, then hallucinate cosmic entities in his final moments. Peak Karan Chauhan luck. The kind of story that would have his friends shaking their heads and buying the first round in his memory.
His chest rose one final time, shallow and shuddering. Through blood and rain, his eyes found the starlit figure hovering above him like a benediction.
"If... if I had to do it again..." he whispered, though he wasn't sure if the words made it past his lips. "I'd do it again."
The figure seemed to smile—or perhaps that was just the way starlight bent around the edges of everything.
And then the darkness claimed him, gentle as a mother's hand closing tired eyes.
Karan Chauhan died as he had lived—selfless, stubborn, and impossibly, beautifully human. A man who never could walk past someone in need, even when it cost him everything.
But his story—that crooked-grin, bleeding-heart, save-everyone-but-himself story—had only just begun.
In realms beyond rain and traffic lights, something ancient and powerful took notice of a small heroic act on a Delhi street. And decided that some souls were too bright to let flicker out completely.
Some souls deserved a second chance to burn.
—
Karan's first thought wasn't philosophical. It wasn't even dignified.
It was, simply: *Arre yaar, ab yeh naya nautanki kya hai?*
He was... somewhere. Floating? Standing? The concept of "where" seemed to have taken a lunch break. Around him, the universe had apparently decided to throw a rave—stars wheeled in lazy spirals like disco balls, galaxies spun past his face close enough to touch, and beneath his feet (which may or may not have existed) stretched something that looked like liquid aurora borealis having an identity crisis.
The "ground" shifted colors faster than a Bollywood item number: deep purple bleeding into molten gold, then into something so warm and familiar it reminded him of his mother's kitchen on Sunday mornings.
Karan looked down at his hands. They weren't really hands anymore—more like suggestions of hands, outlined in light, shot through with what looked like the world's most expensive fiber optic setup.
"Huh," he said, wiggling fingers that might have been metaphorical. "Either I'm dead, or someone spiked my chai with something *very* illegal."
"The former."
The voice hit him like a bass drop in a quiet room—not loud, but heavy. Weighted. Like someone had taught gravity how to speak.
Karan spun around (or performed the cosmic equivalent of spinning) and came face-to-face with... well, calling it a face was optimistic.
The thing in front of him kept changing. One second: a kindly old man with eyes that had seen monsoons come and go. Next second: a woman made of starlight and cosmic dust. Then: something so alien his brain just went "NOPE" and tried to file it under "Office Wi-Fi Problems."
The only constant was a sense of immense age and—weirdly—the kind of dry amusement his uncle Mohan used to have right before he'd tell a joke that would make the whole family groan.
"So," Karan said, amazed at how calm he sounded. Death, apparently, came with excellent emotional regulation. "You must be God. Or a god. Or..." he paused, grinning, "one of those cosmic customer service executives who puts people on hold for eternity."
The entity made a sound—not quite laughter, more like the universe clearing its throat. "Names are... limiting. Your species has given me many over the eons. Currently, I believe the popular term is..." A pause, like someone checking their notes. "Random Omnipotent Being."
Karan blinked. Then burst out laughing.
"R.O.B.? *Seriously?* Matlab, you're like the universe's Ajay Devgn—one line, no explanation needed, everyone just accepts it and moves on."
The being's form flickered, and for a split second, Karan could swear he saw the ghost of a smirk.
"Interesting comparison."
And then—because the universe apparently had a sense of humor—everything shifted.
They were sitting in a roadside chai stall. Plastic chairs that had seen better decades, a small table with burn marks from countless cigarettes, the distant hum of Delhi traffic. The only difference was that above them, instead of a corrugated tin roof, stretched an infinite canvas of stars and galaxies doing their cosmic dance.
The R.O.B. had settled into the form of a chai wallah—weathered face, knowing eyes, the kind of guy who'd seen every type of customer and wasn't impressed by any of them. He slid two cutting glasses across the table, steam rising like incense.
"Sit," he said. Not an order. Just... inevitability.
Karan sat, eyeing the chai suspiciously. "Arre wah. Cosmic entity with a sense of hospitality. My mother would approve." His grin faltered slightly. "Speaking of Ma... you know how she's doing? Did anyone tell her what happened, or is she still waiting for me to come home and complain about the rain?"
The chai wallah's voice softened—still that bass rumble, but gentler, like distant thunder over calm water. "She knows. She grieves. But she's proud."
"Of course she is." Karan's throat tightened. He picked up the chai, inhaling the familiar cardamom-ginger warmth. "Even in death, I'm the good son. Beta, don't go helping random people, you'll get yourself killed. And here we are."
"She always said you had a hero's heart."
"Hero's heart, idiot's brain," Karan muttered into his chai. "That's what my college friends used to say. Though they usually added more colorful language."
The R.O.B. leaned back in his plastic chair, galaxies swirling lazily in his eyes like smoke rings. "You saved a life tonight. Without hesitation. Without a single thought for the consequences."
Karan shifted uncomfortably. Compliments had always made him squirm, even cosmic ones. "Look, anyone would have—"
"No."
The word landed like a hammer on an anvil. Final. Absolute. The kind of "no" that ended arguments before they started.
"Most people would hesitate. Calculate the odds. Find reasons why it wasn't their responsibility, why someone else should handle it." The chai wallah's form flickered, becoming something vast and ancient for just a moment before settling back to human-ish. "But you? You saw danger and moved. No calculation. No self-preservation. Just action."
Karan groaned, slumping in his chair like a teenager being lectured about his career choices. "Bas karo, yaar. You're making it sound like I'm some superhero. I just... I couldn't *not* do it. That old uncle was going to get flattened, and I was the only one close enough to—"
"Exactly."
"—and it's not like I had time to think about—wait, what?"
The R.O.B.'s lips twitched. If cosmic entities could look smug, this one was nailing it. "You couldn't not do it. That moral compass of yours—it doesn't have an off switch, does it?"
Karan stared at him, then threw his hands up in exasperation. "Oh no. *Oh no.* I know this tone. This is the 'I have a proposition' tone. My ex used it right before asking me to move in with her roommate from hell. Spoiler alert: that ended with me sleeping on my own couch for three months because Priya thought the living room had 'better energy.'"
The R.O.B. actually chuckled at that—a low, dry sound like tires crunching over gravel. "No roommates. Just a choice."
"Choice." Karan squinted suspiciously. "Let me guess. Reincarnation with a clean slate? Cosmic internship where I file paperwork for eternity? Or do I become one with the universe and spend forever as background music in meditation apps?"
"There is another world." The chai wallah's form began to shift again, the plastic chair becoming something that might have been a throne made of crystallized time before flickering back. "A world of heroes and villains, gods and monsters. A place where someone with your... particular instincts... could make a real difference."
"Sounds ominous." Karan leaned forward, interested despite himself. "What's the catch? There's always a catch. Universal law of sketchy proposals."
"The catch," the R.O.B. said, form stabilizing into something more alien, more *other*, "is that you would not be ordinary. I would grant you power. Significant power. Abilities drawn from one of your own myths—a warrior much like you. Too generous for his own good, too loyal for his own safety, too stubborn to know when to quit."
Karan raised an eyebrow. "Which myth? Please don't say Hanuman. I don't have the upper body strength for that kind of devotion."
"Karna."
The chai glass froze halfway to Karan's lips. "From the Mahabharata? The guy with the divine armor, could shoot arrows that made nuclear weapons look like firecrackers, and still somehow got branded as the villain because of politics?"
"The same. Generous to a fault. Loyal beyond reason. Powerful enough to challenge gods themselves." The R.O.B.'s voice carried something that might have been approval. "He gave away his armor to save his enemy's son. He stood on the losing side because it was the right thing to do. He died because he refused to abandon his principles."
"So basically," Karan said slowly, "me, but taller and with better PR problems."
"Perhaps." The hint of a smile flickered across the being's impossible features. "But also someone who paid dearly for his choices. Power without wisdom has a tendency to corrupt, even the noblest hearts. The question is—would you be willing to risk that? To be given strength beyond measure and still choose to remain who you are?"
Karan went quiet, staring into his chai. The steam rose in patterns that almost looked like faces—his mother frowning as she bandaged his knuckles after another playground fight, his father shaking his head when Karan brought home stray dogs, his friends rolling their eyes as he lent money he didn't have to classmates he barely knew.
"This other world," he said finally. "What's it like?"
"Complex. Dangerous. Full of beings who could level cities without breaking a sweat." The R.O.B. leaned forward, his form becoming more solid, more present. "It's a place where good intentions aren't enough—you need power to back them up. But it's also a place where one person with the right heart can change everything."
"And you think I'm that person?"
"I think you're someone who threw himself in front of a truck to save a stranger. What do you think?"
Karan was quiet for a long moment, watching galaxies wheel overhead like ceiling fans. Finally, he looked up, that familiar crooked grin spreading across his face.
"If I say yes... do I get to stay me? Or do I turn into one of those stick-up-his-ass superheroes who gives motivational speeches before every fight?"
The R.O.B.'s form solidified completely now, becoming something that was almost human but not quite—like someone had tried to sculpt a person out of starlight and got most of it right. "You will be exactly who you choose to be, Karan Chauhan. Just with significantly better health insurance."
Despite everything—death, cosmic entities, offers of godlike power—Karan burst out laughing. "Health insurance? *That's* your selling point? Boss, if you'd led with that, I would've said yes ten minutes ago."
He lifted his glass in a mock toast, grinning like the troublemaker he'd always been. "Fine. You've convinced me. Send me in, coach. But I want dental coverage too. I've had terrible luck with teeth."
For the first time since this whole conversation started, the R.O.B. smiled fully—not a smirk or a flicker, but a genuine, amused smile that somehow managed to look paternal despite coming from a being made of crystallized impossibility.
"Excellent. Oh, and Karan?"
"Yeah?"
"Try not to die quite so dramatically this time. The multiverse has a limited supply of second chances, even for souls like yours."
The chai stall began to dissolve around them, stars brightening until they swallowed everything in white light. Karan felt himself coming apart at the seams—not painfully, more like being very gently unraveled by cosmic winds.
But just before consciousness scattered completely, he could swear he heard the R.O.B. mutter under his breath, voice dry as Delhi summer:
"Though knowing this idiot... maybe I should keep a third chance ready. And possibly a fourth."
And then Karan was gone—hurtling across dimensions toward another world, another life, and the same old habit of sticking his nose exactly where it didn't belong.
Some things, apparently, were universal constants.
In the fading echo of the space between worlds, the R.O.B. allowed himself one last chuckle.
He'd been watching mortals for eons, but rarely had he encountered someone so thoroughly, stubbornly, *impossibly* good. Someone who would literally die before letting someone else get hurt, then crack jokes about it afterward.
The DC Universe, he reflected, was about to get very interesting indeed.
After all, they already had plenty of heroes who'd been gifted with power.
What they'd never had was Karan Chauhan.
And that, he suspected, was going to make all the difference.
—
The first thing Karan noticed wasn't the beeping machines or the sterile hospital smell or even the fact that his body felt wrong in about seventeen different ways.
It was the voice muttering, "Come on, Barry, wake up already. I'm running out of one-sided conversation topics here."
Karan's eyes snapped open, and immediately regretted it. The fluorescent lights hit his retinas like someone had decided to use his optic nerves as landing strips for particularly aggressive aircraft. He groaned, a sound that came out roughly like a rusty gate having an existential crisis.
"Holy crap, you're awake!"
The voice belonged to a young woman with short blonde hair and the kind of enthusiasm that suggested she either drank way too much coffee or had been genuinely worried about him. She was wearing scrubs and holding what looked like a tablet, but her eyes were wide with the kind of relief people usually reserved for lottery wins and negative STD tests.
"Wh..." Karan tried to speak, but his throat felt like he'd been gargling sandpaper. "Where..."
"Easy, easy." The woman—a nurse, by the looks of it—was already moving, checking monitors and adjusting things with practiced efficiency. "You've been out for nine months. Your throat's going to feel like hell for a bit."
*Nine months?*
And then, like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water made of pure memory directly into his brain, everything hit him at once.
Not his memories. Someone else's.
*Karan Matthews, age 18. Son of Dr. Bryan Matthews (archaeology) and Professor Radha Matthews (comparative mythology, specializing in Indian epics). Born in Central City. Scholarship student at Central City University studying—*
The memories crashed over him in waves, each one carrying the weight of a life he'd never lived but somehow knew intimately. Growing up in a house filled with ancient artifacts and academic debates. His father's excitement about dig sites, his mother's passionate lectures about the deeper meanings hidden in mythological texts. Weekend trips to museums. Dinner conversations about carbon dating techniques and the historical basis for supernatural legends.
And then—oh god, then came the memory of that night nine months ago.
*"Karan, beta, come see! Your papa has found something incredible!"*
His mother's voice, bright with excitement. But not his mother—Radha Matthews, a woman who'd spent her life studying the myths of a culture half a world away from where she'd been born, who'd fallen in love with both the stories and the man who'd brought them to life.
*The armor. Dad had found the actual Armor of Karna.*
The memory unfolded like a nightmare in high definition. His parents in the living room, the archaeological find of a lifetime spread across their coffee table. Golden plates that seemed to pulse with their own inner light. Ancient Sanskrit inscriptions that his mother was translating with trembling fingers.
*"It's real, Karan. The Kavach and Kundal. The divine armor that made Karna invincible. The metallurgy alone defies everything we know about ancient technology."*
And then the sky had turned electric blue.
The particle accelerator explosion at S.T.A.R. Labs. The blast wave that had ripped through Central City like the universe's worst practical joke. His parents, still bent over the armor, hadn't even had time to look up before—
Before—
"Oh god." The words came out as barely a whisper, but they carried the weight of sudden, devastating understanding. "Mom. Dad. They're..."
"I'm sorry." The nurse's voice was gentle, professional sympathy layered over what sounded like genuine compassion. "The explosion... there were a lot of casualties that night."
Karan closed his eyes, and felt tears he hadn't expected leak down his cheeks. These weren't his parents—he'd never met Bryan and Radha Matthews. But the grief felt real, carved into every memory the cosmic R.O.B. had apparently downloaded into his skull along with this new identity.
*They died protecting an artifact that was meant to make its wielder invincible. And I survived because...*
He looked down at his hands. They looked normal—eighteen years old, a few shades lighter than his original skin tone, no longer the fiber-optic suggestions of limbs he'd had in that cosmic chai stall. But underneath the skin, he could feel it. A warmth, a presence, like wearing a sweater made of condensed lightning.
The armor. It had fused with him during the explosion.
"You were found in the rubble," the nurse continued, still checking his vitals. "Completely unconscious, but not a scratch on you. The EMTs said it was a miracle—the entire house had collapsed, but you were lying there like someone had just tucked you in for a nap."
A miracle. Right. More like cosmic intervention with a sense of irony.
"There's someone else who'll want to know you're awake," she added, gesturing toward the other bed in the room.
Karan turned his head—carefully, because his neck felt like it had been assembled by someone who'd skipped the instruction manual—and nearly choked on his own spit.
The other bed contained a young man about his apparent age, brown hair, the kind of face that looked like it smiled a lot even while unconscious. Machines beeped around him in the same rhythm as Karan's, and there was something about the way he lay there that suggested he was deep, deep under.
But that wasn't what made Karan's breath catch.
It was the name on the chart at the foot of the bed: *Allen, Bartholomew H.*
"Barry Allen," Karan whispered, and the nurse nodded.
"Your roommate. He was caught in the same explosion, apparently. Been unconscious just as long as you have." She smiled, the expression tinged with hope. "Maybe now that you're awake, he'll follow suit. You two have been through this together."
Karan stared at the unconscious figure of Barry Allen—*the* Barry Allen, who in about five minutes or five months or however long it took him to wake up was going to become the fastest man alive, was going to become the Flash, was going to anchor a universe full of superheroes and time travel and cosmic crises that made his encounter with the R.O.B. look like a casual Tuesday.
He was in the DC Universe.
*Of course I'm in the DC Universe. Where else would a cosmic entity with a sense of humor dump someone who got hit by a truck saving a stranger? Probably figured it was thematic.*
The nurse was still talking—something about doctors wanting to run tests now that he was conscious, about calling the social worker assigned to his case, about physical therapy and making sure the long coma hadn't affected his motor functions. Karan nodded and made appropriate noises, but his mind was spinning.
He was Karan Matthews now, eighteen years old, orphaned by the particle accelerator explosion that had given Barry Allen super speed. And he was apparently fused with the actual, mythological Armor of Karna—the divine protection that had made one of the greatest warriors in Indian epic literature nearly invincible.
*Nearly being the operative word,* he thought grimly. *Because Karna still died in the end. Betrayed by his own loyalty, killed by treachery and politics and the cosmic joke that good men always pay the highest price for their principles.*
Just like in his first life. Just like he'd always been afraid would happen eventually.
The nurse finished her checks and bustled out, promising that Dr. Wells—*Harrison Wells, oh this just keeps getting better*—would be by to see him soon. The door closed with a soft click, leaving Karan alone with his unconscious future best friend and a head full of memories that weren't his.
He sat up slowly, testing his body's responses. Everything felt... different. Stronger, somehow, like someone had taken his original factory settings and quietly upgraded all the hardware without bothering to update the manual. When he flexed his fingers, he could swear he saw tiny golden sparks dance along his knuckles before fading.
"Barry," he said quietly, looking at the still form in the other bed. "I don't know if you can hear me, but... we're in for a hell of a ride, aren't we?"
No response, of course. Barry Allen was still months away from waking up and discovering he could run faster than physics had any right to allow.
But Karan was awake now. And if the memories downloaded into his skull were accurate, Central City was about to become ground zero for every variety of metahuman weirdness the universe could throw at them.
*Good thing I've got divine armor fused to my skeleton,* he thought, then immediately grimaced. *Listen to yourself, Chauhan. You've been awake for ten minutes and you're already making superhero plans. Some things really don't change, do they?*
He looked out the window at Central City's skyline, then back at Barry's unconscious form, then down at his own hands where those golden sparks were starting to dance again.
Nine months ago, Karan Matthews had been an eighteen-year-old college student whose biggest worry was passing his midterms.
Now he was Karan Chauhan wearing Karan Matthews' life like an ill-fitting jacket, powered by mythological armor that had already proven it could keep him alive through explosions that leveled city blocks.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, he could still hear the R.O.B.'s amused voice: *Try not to die quite so dramatically this time.*
"Right," Karan muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and testing his balance. Everything held together, more or less. "No dramatic deaths. Got it. How hard could that possibly be in a universe where people regularly punch their problems into alternate dimensions?"
He was already grinning that crooked grin, the one his mother—both of them, apparently—had always said made him look like trouble.
Central City had no idea what it was in for.
But then again, neither did he.
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord (HHHwRsB6wd) server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Can't wait to see you there!