Once upon a time.

 

Within a generic hospital.

 

Inside a generic hospital room.

 

Laying on top of a generic hospital bed.

 

There was a girl.

 

Her cheeks were sunken, her skin pale as snow. But she was no snow white, no. She was just another generic sick girl. One that didn’t have a family anymore.

 

One that didn’t want to live anymore.

 

But still, her body refused to give up. At least until that day. That particular day she found herself watching the same set of movies, reading the same set of comics, listening to the same comments that the nurses made, probably in an attempt to keep her awake.

 

The girl closed her eyes that day, and a soothing wave of cold spread over her body, starting from the tip of her toes all the way to her head.

 

She knew what this was, a feeling all too familiar, a feeling she was hoping to remember.

 

The feeling of death.

 

This time, it was with certainty that it claimed her. Gently plucking that weak and damaged soul from the body that lived no more. The hooded figure looked at this soul with pity, wondering what great things it could’ve achieved if it wasn’t for her misfortune.

 

It wasn’t often that Death herself took pity upon the souls of the mortal realm, but it was known to happen.

 

So Death looked at the state the soul was in, and delved into the memories of the girl, living her life through her eyes countless times in the span of a mere second.

 

The hooded figure nodded to herself and gently pressed her index finger into the soul’s core.

 

“May your next life bring you happiness.”

 

And just like that, the soul was sent on a journey that would span a thousand years, into a world of fiction, a world of majesty, a world of conflict, of chaos, where beauty blossomed even in the darkest of times.

 

Death smiled, for the girl was sure to meet her new circumstances with a very amusing set of expressions she could not wait to see.

 

---

 

Queens General Hospital, New York.

April 2nd, 20:03 (8:03 PM)

Room 113

The girl opened her eyes, much to her surprise, to darkness.

 

She made sure to close them, focus on opening them, and then tried again.

 

Only to be met with more darkness.

 

Not in the “Oh, the lights are off.” Kind of darkness, but the true “Absolute Void” kind of nothing.

 

Fighting against the necessity to freak out, she breathed deeply and sat up on the bed she was laying in. It felt familiar, like a hospital bed. And as she moved her hands around, trying to see if there was anything around her, noticed the tell-tale signs of it being one.

 

There were railings on the sides, and judging by the clanking of a metallic pipe, there was an IV connected to her. Well that and the very clear disturbing feeling she had when she noticed the needle piercing her arm, but her brain wasn’t computing very correctly just yet.

 

Calming down, she figured she could call for a nurse if she could get a grasp on which button was meant for such a thing.

 

Since she didn’t quite remember their specific location, she pressed them one by one from farthest to closest to her.

 

First button, the bed leaned forward.

 

Second button, the bed leaned backwards.

 

Third button, the bottom of the bed rose a little.

 

She skipped the fourth button figuring out it would be the same logic as before, and then she pressed the fifth one.

 

A small ‘Ring!’  echoed, telling her she had chosen the correct option.

 

So she waited.

 

And waited.

 

Until someone entered through the door of the room. Judging by their distance, it seemed to have been rather close. Perhaps she was assigned the bed closest to the entrance? Nice, at least that would make moving to the bathroom a lot easier.

 

“Thank God, you’re awake.” The voice was unfamiliar though.

 

Perhaps a new nurse? The girl allowed a grin to permeate her face. Meeting new people was a luxury she couldn’t quite afford before. 

 

Actually, she was feeling a lot better than before. Not as tired, and sitting up didn’t hurt at all….Weird. Maybe it was just the results of a good rest?

 

“Hello…..” Huh, her voice was a little weird. A little lower than usual, and louder too.

 

“Oh, don’t strain yourself. I’m sure you’re quite disoriented after all that happened to you.” The nurse sounded a little….Concerned? Her voice was quivering a little at the end.

 

“Excuse me but, what do you mean?” The girl asked.

 

There was a small awkward silence.

 

“Ummmm…..Hello?” It was weird not being able to see.

 

Not that the girl minded that much, perhaps her eyes were just too tired to work again. That sort of happened sometimes, never to her eyes though, it was usually one of her organs instead.

 

Last time it was her lungs, that wasn’t a fun experience.

 

“Excuse me miss, but can you remember why you are here right now?” The nurse asked.

 

Silly question, of course she was here because…..Because….

 

Huh, she wanted to say because of her condition but it felt…Wrong for some reason. As if she was gonna lie if she said those words out loud. Was she remembering wrong? Maybe they had moved her from her previous room because of other reasons?

 

She did know that the other kids that shared her room didn’t like her very much…So she decided to ask back instead.

 

“Actually, no I don’t….Could you tell me why?” The girl asked.

 

The nurse took a moment to breathe before answering, was her condition that bad? But she felt pretty good right now, weird.

 

“You were a victim of a terrorist attack, do you not remember?” The nurse said.

 

Hahahaha, what a funny joke.

 

…

 

…

 

She wasn’t laughing. The girl listened as the nurse drew closer, only knowing the direction she approached her based on the sound her shoes made on the ceramic floor.

 

“Miss, could you look at me for a moment?” She asked.

 

The girl shook her head.

 

“I can’t actually see right now….” The panic started to build inside her chest now. “I-Is that supposed to happen?”

 

“....I’m afraid not.”

 

It was then that the girl started to hyperventilate. Under normal circumstances her vision would go blurry, but right now she couldn’t see a thing, so all she could feel was her senses slowly dying, hearing the muted sounds of the nurse calling for help before she lost consciousness again.

 

 

---

Victoria Serval. 17 Years Old. Orphan, works part-time at a fashion store and attends Midtown School of Science and Technology in Queens, New York. No adoptive family, lives alone in a small-sized apartment in a rundown section of the borough.

 

That was the girl’s identity.

 

At least her identity in this world.

 

It took her a few days to get over the initial shock, but when the kind nurse, whose name was Clara by the way, started to tell her the events of the last decade or so to let her catch up on what was going on with the world, the girl started to panic for very different reasons.

 

She was, effectively, inside the alternate reality of a fictional world.

 

A fictional world she was a very big fan of, mind you, but a fictional world nonetheless.

 

Keyword: Fictional.

 

Not only that, but just the day after she was told of her identity, something weird started to happen to her. For some reason she could….Feel the vibrations in the air. Sure, she heard blind people’s bodies adapt the remaining senses to become sharper and allow more functionality, but she could….Feel the objects around her.

 

Similar to how someone would feel the vibrations in the air as a loudspeaker yeets them directly into their bodies, the girl could feel the very much static objects around her. Only their overall shape, however. With no distinction of color, it was hard to discern letters as well.

 

In a world of beauty and whimsical fantasy, she was rendered blind due to a bombing attack.

 

There was a silver lining though.

 

Whatever caused her to go blind also seemed to give her some kind of superpower. Mind you, being able to feel things was pretty weird when it came down to it, but hey, at least she didn’t have maggots living in her intestines like some other supers had.

 

Yeah, all things considered, it could’ve gone a lot worse than just losing her eyesight.

 

It was April 5th when she was officially discharged from the hospital. Thankfully she didn’t have to sell one of her kidneys to pay for her stay since all she used was a bed for a few days and there wasn’t any rush to get her out.

 

In fact, Clara had been so kind as to give her a former patient’s walking cane so she wouldn’t need to buy an overpriced one for blind folk.

 

As Victoria stepped out of the hospital, she sent a pulse of her will outwards from within her mind. Doing some experiments, she noticed that this extra sense worked similar to a radar of some kind. Passively telling her the location of everything within fifteen to twenty feet of her, but requiring her to send out a pulse to “see” things further away.

 

It was a weird thing, this superpower. Not that she was going to complain though, being able to know where everything was without needing to see was actually pretty neat.

 

Thankfully the hospital did have her registered, so she asked for directions to her home and started her journey of self-discovery.

 

Aside from sensing objects and people, she could tell her senses were highly enhanced. She could smell a food truck a few streets down, hear the whispers of a couple walking across the street with ease, and taste the slightly acidic contents of the air around her.

 

As she kept walking, using the cane as both support and the main way in which she tried to sell the whole “blind” act, Victoria noticed a man following her.

 

His figure was particularly tall and broad. Wearing a hoodie and concealing what Victoria assumed to be a knife inside his pants.

She sincerely hoped it was a knife, at least.

 

Exhaling a mental sigh, she figured she was being followed since she was easy prey, so she kept to busy streets where people would at least be able to see her being dragged into an alleyway should things turn violent.

 

The last factor of her superpower, at least as far as she had been able to test within the hospital room these past few days, was telekinesis. She figured she had become some kind of Psionics user? Maybe the explosion messed with her brain in some special way.

 

It wouldn’t be the dumbest way to unlock superpowers, at least according to her inner thoughts.

 

Deciding that dealing with the hooligan was a better idea than having him follow her home, Victoria feigned confusion before going into an alleyway that was appropriately empty. A perfect spot to test her new power on someone that probably deserved a little humbling.

 

The thug followed her from a “safe” distance before taking a glance back to check nobody was following him or watching what was about to happen.

 

It was at that moment that Victoria took action, gently raising her right hand and leaning onto the cane to make sure she had secure footing before the invisible force she commanded wrapped itself nicely and smoothly around the man’s neck.

 

With a simple gesture that force tightened, and tightened some more before lifting.

 

Moving his weight wasn’t much of a problem, so she had to be particularly careful if she didn’t want to break his neck by mistake. Sure, she was going to give him a little beating before calling the police and walking away, but she didn’t want to kill anybody.

 

‘Looks like it tires me with time, not effort….Good to know.’  She thought, feeling how exerting the force around her wasn’t tiring in itself, but rather sustaining that effort was starting to tire out her brain.

 

Kind of when she read books until very late and her brain had a really bad headache the next day. Or when her eyes tired out from watching TV too much.

 

She smiled, gently gesturing with her hand towards the brick wall, where the man was pushed against. His hands were still trying to reach for the knife, so Victoria raised her leg and landed one solid stomp on his private parts to keep him from resisting.

 

The force strangling him would make sure he was nice and silent as well, barely any air escaped his lungs through her choke hold.

 

“You shouldn’t rob the blind, you know? That’s pretty low, even for a criminal don’t you think?” She said, uncaring at the sounds of whimpers escaping the man’s mouth.

 

He was in deep pain, maybe she had stomped too hard? Victoria sighed and just tightened her hold until the man passed out. Then, she used her telekinesis to take the knife from his pants and throw it in the nearby garbage dump.

 

Then, she took her phone and grimaced.

 

She forgot that she couldn’t see the screen.

 

With a tired sigh, she sent out another pulse from within and saw that there was going to be a few moments of noise as a firetruck was heading north through that same street.

 

She stepped towards the exit of the alley and prepared, just as the firetruck passed by, she tried her very best to imitate a different person’s voice and screamed.

 

She felt her voice vibrate through the air and tried to use Telekinesis to warp it a little, causing the pitch to change as it escaped her lips. Quickly, she pushed herself onto the street and acted confused.

 

Soon enough a few curious people entered the alley and she took that as her chance to get away.

 

First good deed done! Victoria was quite happy with her superpower kit, even if it was a little weird how many things her Telekinesis could affect.

 

Or should she call it Psionics? As she walked home and thought about it, she decided to settle on TK for now, since it was more specific to what she was certain she was capable of.

 

“Maybe I could be a hero too….Wait, what date was it again?” She took out her phone again, and started to try and use verbal commands to see if it worked.

 

It didn’t.

 

“Well, for now I should get it rebooted or buy a new one…”

She finally reached her apartment complex. It was old, judging by the pulse she sent coming back with some less than favorable readings on the stability of the material the building was made of. No matter though, it was Saturday and she would need to figure out a way to get another job.

 

There was no way she would be allowed to work customer service at a fashion store being fully blind after all. No way no how.

 

“Cashier it is. No McDonald's would like a blind cook after all.” Victoria sighed as she walked up the stairs.

 

The smell of mold and damp paper struck her nose. There seemed to be a leak that was very badly fixed just on top of the entrance to her room, judging by the second pulse she sent to make sure she was on the correct floor.

 

With a sigh, she got to it. Leaning against the door as if she was trying to search for her keys while using her TK to bend the pipe above her head, eventually setting it right and tightening until it creaked and the water was falling no more.

 

Just in time too, as she heard the voices of what seemed to be rowdy teenagers saying something about “Rolls” or something like that? Victoria shrugged and just slipped her hand into her purse, taking the keys of her apartment and unlocking the door to enter.

 

Locking the door behind her, she turned and sent a third pulse.

 

The state of her apartment was a little disheartening. The wallpapers were a little ragged, the corners of the ceiling were starting to grow a little bit of mold, most likely due to the leak that was never fixed before, and her living room was, in essence, also her bedroom.

 

There was a single bed, raised by metallic pipes under which a small desk was set up with a laptop resting on top of it. A small black chair was also in place, the squeaky wheels coming to life as she pushed it with her cane to make sure it was good to use.

 

The floor had a small circular carpet of what looked to be synthetic white fur. Most likely taken from some kind of flea market and cleaned, judging by the remaining residue sticking to the very base of it.

 

The kitchen, or what she assumed to be the kitchen, had a singular counter that acted as shelve at the same time, a singular stove and a dishwasher.

 

Thankfully there was a bathroom that did have a shower so she was pretty content with it all. Sitting down on the carpet and taking a moment to process the truth of her reality, she finally clicked something inside her head.

 

“Wait, if it is 2012….And I am in the MCU, apparently at least, then….” Victoria realized something.

 

And promptly crumbled under the serious implication that those two facts brought into consideration. A long and tired sigh escaped her lips as she did so.

 

“Well, I have a Chitauri Invasion to look forward to, it seems….”

 

She wanted to open her eyes and wake up in the hospital bed again, but no matter how many times she kept trying, all she ever saw was absolute darkness in front of her.