c1: Emergency Landing Crossing
"Sao Nian, do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you want to really... live?"
"Yes" or "No"!
Early that morning, Chen Xiaoyan had just booted up his computer to grind a few ranked matches in League of Legends, when a bizarre, almost theatrical line popped up on the login screen.
"Are you kidding me? Is this a Trask Industries experiment in subliminal messaging? Or did someone hack Tencent with leftover scripts from Infinite Crisis?"
As a borderline shut-in with three devout hobbies films, anime, and novels Chen Xiaoyan was no stranger to these tropes. A lifelong binge-reader of web novels and an amateur expert in genre patterns, he immediately recognized the cringe-worthy flavor of "infinite stream" stories those Qidian-era classics where reality-blending systems whisk you away to face life-or-death scenarios.
"Come on, Brother Ma," he muttered under his breath. "Are we really falling back on Zhao Yifan-style routines? This feels lazier than Mysterio's illusions."
Still grumbling, he dragged his mouse toward the corner of the screen to close the game.
But his hand froze.
No, not froze moved on its own. The mouse jerked over to the "Yes" button and clicked.
"What the hell this is straight out of Xavier's Cerebro! Or worse, some kind of Mind Stone psychic manipulation."
With a jolt of panic, his eyes widened. Just as the word "true" escaped his lips, the monitor flickered, and a swirling black vortex emerged on the screen. Before he could react, his entire body was pulled in like some low-budget version of Doctor Strange's Mirror Dimension gone rogue.
Unlike the novels, he didn't black out. No convenient fade-to-black transition. Instead, Chen Xiaoyan was fully conscious as he spiraled through what felt like fractured panels of comic book realities, each one flashing vivid scenes Krypton's final moments, Thanos snapping his fingers, Superman holding Lois's lifeless body, the Watcher gazing impassively into multiversal chaos.
"This isn't some budget Loki TVA trip. This is full-blown multiversal collapse!"
In the temporal maelstrom, pain lanced through him as shards of broken worlds passed through his body like phantasmal razors. It wasn't physical pain it was metaphysical, like his soul was being rewritten, reprogrammed by reality itself.
"If this is Kang the Conqueror's idea of time travel, I want a refund!"
Then, amid the chaos, a garbled AI voice echoed:
> "Urgent notice, urgent notice… Due to unknown multiversal energy interference, the Main Control Nexus is destabilized. Reincarnator No. 000001 must perform an emergency descent…"
"Main Control Nexus?" he gasped. "What is this Mother Box meets Jarvis?"
Then darkness swallowed him. One last flash of energy expelled him from the collapsing vortex like a piece of cosmic flotsam.
---
"…Due to structural failure of the reincarnation pod during transmission, and upon decision by the Supervisory Council of the Omniversal System Chat Group, the user has been granted a soul-transmigration compensation package…"
"…Initiating emergency descent protocol. Fasten metaphysical seatbelts to avoid memory fragmentation…"
"…Arrival confirmed. Scanning local reality…"
"…Alert. This is a high-threat universe. Disturbance level: Omega-Class. Entities detected: Mutants, Kryptonians, Celestials. Some system functions temporarily disabled…"
"Sao Nian, wish yourself good luck!"
Several ethereal system admins, resembling stylized avatars from a DC-Marvel hybrid Discord server, gave him three minutes of silent condolences.
But Chen Xiaoyan was already unconscious his newly untethered soul drifting helplessly through this foreign realm.
Had he heard those messages, he might've hurled celestial insults toward whatever omniversal intern had mishandled his reincarnation file. But now, all that remained was a soul transparent, shapeless nudged along by one last dying burst of Nexus energy, delivered to a rain-slick alleyway behind an abandoned church somewhere in a grim version of Gotham's Narrows.
An old nun, out searching for discarded food from the local Wayne Charities outpost, found the soul-infused baby in a soggy cardboard box. With no other options, she took him in and gave him a name.
Patch Meiwes.
Meiwes, her surname. Patch… well, that was between her and God.
---
Fifteen years passed.
Chen Xiaoyan now Patch had grown up in an orphanage somewhere between Gotham and Metropolis. Language barriers haunted his early childhood like the ghost of Hela. English felt like Klingon wrapped in Morse code.
"I was Chinese, dammit. Why was I forced to learn foreign languages through hymns and Latin prayers?" he often thought while mumbling Psalms during morning mass.
He remembered a time when he proudly claimed, "Forget ABCs, I'll be the future of socialism!"
Now? He was an American citizen, semi-fluent in English, and still very much illiterate in the ways of this world's heroes and villains.
Not a single power. No cape. No system updates. Just a dumb name and a memory full of regrets.
And every time someone called out "Patch" that cursed, awkward name he couldn't help but think:
"Patch? Isn't that just a backwards way to say 'Strange Things'?"
Looking up at the smog-filled Gotham sky, Patch sighed.
Somewhere out there, Batman was brooding. Somewhere else, the X-Men were fighting for survival.
But for now, all Patch had was confusion, an unfamiliar body, and a sneaking suspicion that his story was just beginning.
After studying English for three years, Patch finally shed the embarrassing label of being "the mute boy from the orphanage." But just as that stigma faded, another title took its place "dementia kid."
After all, most children in Gotham's East End could say a few basic words by the time they were walking. Patch, however, spent three long years in total silence before he finally uttered his first sentence in English to Sister Meiwes, the stern old nun who raised him like her own.
He still remembered the moment with painful clarity: Sister Meiwes was drying his hair after a bath, humming a hymn from Saint Dumas, when he blurted out, "Grandma." The shock nearly made her drop the hairdryer.
"Brother Magellan! Ms. Moss! Come quick Patch can talk! He's not some kind of metahuman vegetable after all!"
Metahuman vegetable?! Patch's mind went into static under the hot air. If this was Arkham Asylum, he'd be locked in a padded room already.
Please, Patch wanted to scream, I'm a time traveler, raised under the red flag for over 20 years! You try learning English from scratch after reincarnating into a parallel Earth with alien invasions, Kryptonian wars, and mutant discrimination.
Sister Meiwes's cry echoed through the crumbling halls of the Saint Jeremiah Orphanage (a Wayne Foundation-funded facility, barely holding together after Bane's last Gotham rampage). Soon, a small crowd gathered.
"This child can talk! He just called me 'Grandma!'" Sister Meiwes exclaimed, tears in her eyes like Aunt May watching Peter graduate.
"My God, can it be?" gasped a nun.
"Come on now, little Patch," chuckled Father Magellan, a broad-shouldered, white-bearded man who resembled Odin more than a priest. "Say Grandpa!"
"Cute little Patch," cooed Ms. Moss who, at 47, still insisted she was 'young at heart' dangling a chocolate bar like Harley Quinn waving a pudding pop. "Say 'Sister Moss,' and this is yours."
Patch blinked. "Hello, Grandpa Magellan."
Then, with regal calm, he turned to Ms. Moss and corrected, "Hello, Aunt Moss."
Ms. Moss's smile turned into a frozen, crinkled tulip. Patch stood proud, unmoved by her glare.
A single chocolate bar for a betrayal of title? Get real. Bring a whole crate, then we'll talk.
Though Patch had fought through the language barrier, the damage was done. Offending Ms. Moss sealed his fate. Rumors of his "slow brain" spread faster than J. Jonah Jameson's Spider-Man slander.
During morning scripture readings, Father Magellan would sigh and pause over Proverbs.
In the cafeteria, the kitchen ladies whispered behind ladles like Daily Bugle interns.
Late at night, in the creaky bunk beds under dim LED lights, Patch could hear the other orphans murmuring.
"Honestly, Patch is really handsome."
"Yeah, shame he's got something wrong up there."
Fifteen years had passed, and Patch had no strength left to defend himself. Just numb helplessness and cosmic irony.
So what if I started talking at three? So what if I zone out sometimes? So what if I sleep a little longer than others? You say I'm handsome, fine I'll accept that. But I'm not mentally retarded!
And Patch truly was handsome no delusion there. Compared to other orphans, his looks were sculpted, as if Celestials themselves had carved him from vibranium marble. His features had the refined symmetry of a Renaissance statue Steve Rogers meets Jason Todd.
At fifteen, he stood nearly 1.8 meters tall. His frame was lean but strong, with muscle lines that made him look like he was trained at Wakanda's warrior academy, not an orphanage soup line.
Brown curls framed a calm, youthful face. His sapphire-blue eyes shimmered with the clarity of Atlantis's coast—had Namor seen them, he might've offered him a title. And when he walked through Gotham's rougher neighborhoods, people often stared—like when he went to buy Communion wine for Father Magellan, and the liquor store clerk slipped him an extra bottle of vodka close to expiration.
All because he looked "too damn angelic to say no to."
But to the world, he was still "that pretty-faced, slow-minded kid."
What truly haunted Patch, though, wasn't the nickname. It was what he couldn't explain. Ever since his soul crossed dimensions into this world—this universe of Stark Towers and Wayne Enterprises—his mental state had been... off.
Moments of blank staring weren't the worst of it. He'd randomly doze off without warning, mid-conversation, mid-prayer, mid-bite. It felt like something was unplugged inside him.
Since the day he awoke in this world, he'd had a gnawing void in his memory—like pages torn from a sacred comic issue. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall what he'd lost.
Missing memories? He could deal with that.
But where was his golden finger?
Every transmigrator gets one! Whether it's a system from LexCorp hacking the multiverse, or a mutant awakening in Xavier's School, there's supposed to be a cheat, a talent, a spark of godhood.
Fifteen years, and Patch still had nothing.
No mutation. No tech. Not even a weird glowing artifact from Kamar-Taj.
He had nothing but good looks, sarcasm, and basic English.
Worse, when he first arrived—wrapped in nothing but a tattered cloth—he actually believed he'd trigger some cheat code. Something like the Uru Talent System, the Infinity Gene, or maybe even get adopted by Bruce Wayne or Charles Xavier.
But nothing happened.
Now, fifteen years later, he stood by the iron-barred window, staring into the horizon where Gotham's skyline kissed the orange sunset. The cracked cement court below glowed gold as if mocking his ordinary fate.
His gaze was heavy with disillusionment. The dream of glory, of multiversal conquest, of joining the ranks of Doctor Doom, Batman Beyond, and Sentry, had faded.
He had accepted his fate an average life in a super-powered world.
Until, that is, something stirred.
A sound subtle yet unmistakable whispered in the depths of his mind, like Cerebro pinging a mutant for the first time.
A voice. Clear and alien. Confident and divine.
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