Immense pain laced my body as I barreled out of the portal, colliding harshly with the floor, then some desk, and finally a wall. 

 

I could feel the multiple fractures and open wounds in my body mend and I thanked Upgrade for the twentieth time today. She used her power on mine, strengthening it for the final fight. Thanks to her I was able to borrow more than one power, which was the only reason I was alive right now. I had Regenerator and Invincible's powers. Invincible's provided me with durability and strength and Regenerator's with self-healing.

 

Using my now augmented strength, I managed to prop my broken body up in time to see the portal I had came out from, rapidly closing. 

 

My heart raced and I scrabbled to use the third and last power, the one I took from the strongest Apocalypse Bringer, Conquest, the giant monster that sent me here and was killing my friends just on the other side, a few meters away.

 

I extended my hand and worked my mind into using Conquest's telekinesis to stop it from closing. A brain splitting headache grabbed a hold of me as I tried to keep it open. Despite my best efforts, sweat pouring down my forehead, the portal was slowly closing inch by inch every second.

 

I fought through the pain and activated the telekinesis to propel myself towards the rift.

 

It was all for naught, however, since when I was halfway to it The Apocalypse Bringer doubled its effort and closed the portal, the backlash almost making me blackout from pain. Fuck! It must have sensed me and turned its attention away from the battlefield for a brief moment to close it.

 

Breathing hard, sweat pouring down my face, I attempted to open up a new portal, but all my tries failed. After all, my shitty powers only gave me a fraction of whoever I took them from. In other words, I could steal others' powers, but I wouldn't be as strong as the original. 

 

Now, with the portal closed, I could feel my connection to the lenders break, my powers rapidly waning. "No, no, no!" I screamed. "This can't be happening!"

 

I shakily stood up and started pacing, almost tearing out my chin length black hair out in frustration. However, after a few trips back and forth through the room, I stopped after noticing the wall paint out of the corner of my eye--it looked identical to the one in my room.

 

Now, I was torn between investigating the room or immediately trying to contact this reality's hero organization.

 

Both decisions had their merits but I decided to investigate the room. I had no idea what was out there and I had heard horror stories of parallel realities full of zombies and shit.

 

With every second that passed, I felt like I was failing my friends and humanity for not being out there on the battlefield, but the more I looked at the room, the more convinced I grew that it was mine or this world's equivalent of me. Not all, but almost all the posters of bands and games I had hanged up were still there…but they were changed. The Bioshock poster had little boys instead of girls and the giant drill monsters had tits. Dead space had a female engineer. Others were the same, main characters were replaced by female versions, games which had large casts of romanceable females now possessed feminine-looking males instead, or maybe they were also women.

 

To confirm whether this was my room or not, I went to the desk. Where normally things would be scattered all over the place, they were now in perfect order. I rummaged around looking for tests or assignments—something with my name on it—and after a few moments I found one. It was a math test, I remembered this one, fucking pre-calculus. What I didn’t remember is getting such a high grade, it should have been in the seventies but here it lied, a rotund ninety-one.

 

I put down the test and moved to turn on the pc. As always it made a loud whirring sound from how much dust there must be inside. Once the login screen came up, I plugged in my password and hit enter…denied. I retyped it and hit enter. Denied again. The third time I made sure to type it key by key, but to no avail.

At this point I gave up on the computer and walked away. I opened the door of the bedroom and stepped out into the hallway of the upper floor of my house. From the lighting of the sun, I could tell it was late afternoon.

Regenerator’s powers hadn’t healed me up to 100% and so when I started jogging down the stairs and across the living room, I felt more than a little sore.

When I entered the foyer, the sound of keys and the locks of the door opening, made me reflexively dart to the side and hide behind a piece of furniture.

The door swung open with a whine, followed by the sounds of keys being dropped into a bowl. Then, the person, a woman, sighed wearily and started walking in my general direction.

 

I stayed silent and as packed together as possible, but rather than walk past me she stopped right in front of my hiding spot, facing away from me. She sniffed and frowned. “What’s that smell?” She probably caught a whiff of my burned spider silk superhero suit.

 

It was a matter of time before she turned her head and spotted me. The woman had black hair and blue eyes. She was tall, with sharp cheekbones, and a dark, depressed face. Most importantly, she heavily resembled my mother, but without the softness and petiteness. Perhaps mom had a sister in this reality or something along those lines.

 

At the moment, I only had one goal, to get in contact with someone who could send me back, so I didn’t have time to interact. For all I knew, in this world she could be a killer or villain. With that in mind, I sprinted out of my hiding place towards the door. Slipping past her was easy thanks to her being petrified from surprise or fear for a second.

 

I twisted the door handle and practically slammed the door open, exiting into the street.

“What the fuck?! Hey! Come back here! Who the are you?!” I could hear her shout from behind, in hot pursuit, her footsteps pounding the sidewalk.

 

I didn’t say anything, preferring to save my breath.

Unfortunately, my mother's lookalike was faster and stronger than her. That combined with my currently fatigued state meant that she was catching up with me fast. If I didn’t do something, it wouldn’t be long until she caught me. So, I made a sharp left and ran into the space between two houses…only to realize it was a dead end. Fuck my luck.

 

I turned around to see my mother approaching.

 

I raised my hands placatingly, “Look, I know how it looks,” I said. “A guy appears in your house out of nowhere. But I’m actually a hero. I got teleported there by a villain in the middle of a fight.”

She looks unimpressed, “Uh-huh, and I’m Hillary Clinton Jr.,” she retorted. “Do you think I'm an idiot? Your suit is black and practically screams supervillain. Now, if you were a woman, I'd beat the shit out of you no questions asked. But I'll be a gentlelady since you are a young boy, so let’s do this the easy way and come with me to the police. My son has been missing for five days and I think you are suspicious. I won't let the only lead walk away.”

I ignored the weirdness in her words. “Look, I can understand where you are coming from, but there’s people I need to protect back where I’m from. Time is of the essence and I can’t afford to sit through paperwork and interrogations. You have to believe me.”

“No. You will come with me nicely, or I'll knock off your pretty teeth and then you'll come with me. Don't even think about using your powers, because even if you manage to escape, I know a couple of villains myself who could find you and do bad things to you.” she said, stepping closer.

 

I consider fighting and running away, but even if she was bluffing about the villains. She could just call the cops on me, which would make things hard and waste even more time and paint me as a villain. It would be more efficient to cooperate and get this cleared out.

“Alright, I’ll go.”

“Great,” she said, grabbing hold of one of my arms to make sure I wouldn’t run off. However, her hold was strange, as if she was trying to respect my personal space.

We walked like that all the way back to her car and from there it was a long and uncomfortably silent ride to the local precinct.

-----

The police did not remove my mask, which was a great relief. It seemed that didn’t change across worlds; secret identities were almost sacred and people respected them, only confirmed, heinous villains get unmasked.

Instead the cops left and called in a superheroine. Through the open door I could see one of the policewomen (there were very few men in this precinct surprisingly and none of them were masculine-looking) open a cigarette lighter. After a moment the flame exploded in size. When it retracted back to the original size, a redheaded heroine was revealed to be standing there.

She entered the interrogation room I was sitting in (unshackled) brimming with confidence, with a cocky smile and her hands in her hips.

“Hey there handsome, I’m Trailblazer” she said in a confident voice. “Girls here tell me you got caught illegally entering a property and then tried to run away. Wh-”

“That’s wrong,” I corrected. “I'm a hero that was teleported there by a monster that is, as we speak, destroying my home reality.”

“Please have some respect and don’t interrupt me again,” she said, slightly annoyed. “Now, with that said, what's this about a villain that has the power to teleport others across realities?” Her disbelief was plain to see on her face.

I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice. “It was Conquest.” I could see from her expression the infamous name didn't ring a bell, no recognition. "You know, Conquest, The Apocalypse Bringer? Giant telekinetic monster? One of the four monsters the alien unleashed upon us?" 

“Never heard of him. But, tell me, were other people able to see this 'Conquest' of yours?" she asked.

"Yes, they were." I snapped. 

"But none from this reality, right?" she smiled as if humoring me. "No one in this reality, in the real world, can see the monster, correct? Do you often see things others don't?"

I ground my teeth. "I'm. not. crazy!"

Trailblazer waved her hand dismissively, "No no no, that's not what I said," she sighed. "I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this. Tell me, have you been diagnosed with any medical conditions? Schizophrenia for example?"

I slammed my fist onto the table. "I'm sick of you wasting my time! I already told you I'm not crazy. Just bring some bloody mind readers and you'll see I'm telling the truth. I need to go back to my world--I was an important part of the strategy to take down the Apocalypse Bringers. They need me!"

"Sir, please calm down. We will bring them after I'm done asking you some questions." She took a moment to let me calm down, the said, "You claimed to be a hero, so how about we start with that. Show me your powers. That would be a step into proving your story.”

“What are you talking about?! How could you ask someone to use their powers for something so stupid? Have you forgotten about the drawbacks.”

She smiled triumphantly, as if her suspicion was  confirmed. “Ah, there it is, the excuse. I can tell you powers don't have drawbacks, at least outside of your imagination” —she activated her power and produced a flame on the palm of her hand—”See? I think that it’s not that there are drawbacks, but rather you don’t have powers and are one of this compulsive liars I've heard about, or suffering from some other mental issue.”

“Look, you dumb- you rookie! I am not sure if you live under a rock or what, but all powers given to us by the fucking alien are a curse! They all fuck with us in the end!”

The red head sighed long and hard, then said “Why don’t you confess? I know you are a boy, and I don’t want to be rude...but you are full of shit. Aliens don't exist, you've been watching too many conspiracy yutube videos or are schizophrenic. And out of all the superhuman serums that have been developed, out of all of the tens of thousands of possibilities that have been recorded across different serum types, none can open portals to parallel realities and shit, no one has that ability—it. is. not. possible.” Her voice grew hard. "What do you know about Erin Lane? Why were you at his house really?"

“I already told you. Just bring the mind readers and you’ll see I’m right.”

“I think you are crazy, but as I said they will come.”

“When?” I asked.

“Tomorrow or the day after most likely. Now, I'll ask again, how are you-”

“No! Bring them now! I have to get back now! Don’t you understand?! My whole world depends on this fight!”

“Look this is all going to be easier if you cooperate. Give me something and I'll see what-” 

Anger, frustration, and desperation war inside me as I make the split second decision to steal her powers.