*Ring!* *Ring!* *Ring!* *Ri-* The sound of an alarm being turned off, but sadly not broken, could be heard as Fredric Williams woke up. He stretched his upper body until a pop could be heard. As he finished, he looked around with confusion in his eyes. 'It's a Saturday, so why did my alarm go off? Hmm... has my room always looked this way?'
Squinting his eyes for a brief moment, Fredric shrugged, giving up on thinking. He slowly walked to his door, opened it, and headed to his bathroom. He was confused at the look of his bathroom, much like his room. However, Fredric didn't really care all that much as he turned on his shower. While it heated up, he decided to use the bathroom.
Three minutes later, he flushed the toilet and started washing his hands, humming Darth Vader's theme. Once he was done, he hopped right into the shower and started washing himself. 'Wait, I have abs!' Breaking out of the stupor he had been in for 23 minutes, Fredric began patting himself all over.
''This is insane! I've got abs and stubble on my face; that's never happened to me! And that back pain in the morning—I remember it vividly. I either went through the best late puberty or did the WebNovel tango and became...'' No longer muttering in fear of someone hearing him, Fredric thought.
'A transmigrator? If so, I'm either in another world that's completely original and I have no idea about, or one that I do know. I don't know what's worse, really: the fact that I'm not in Lord of Mysteries or the fact that I could be in Evangelion, for all I know. Or worse.' He lamented his life, wishing he hadn't pulled an all-nighter on Discord with his friends. They had been dunking on the terrible woke comics Marvel tried to make, then got clowned on for making—or attempting to make.
While praising the X-Men, because that's how you push woke ideology in a good way that people would actually care about, he even talked about the fact that they wished more was done with the X-Men besides just Wolverine. Good, Chad—the best. At anything really. Cyclops, a cuck loser, in not-so-nice words. He sighed before turning off the shower, grabbing a towel, and heading to his room.
Arriving there, he stood in front of his mirror, thinking, 'So I could be anyone? Like, come on, of all things, I look like this.' Not caring enough to continue bashing his own appearance, Fredric sighed once again before drying himself off, getting dressed, brushing his teeth, and doing a normal morning routine. After he was finished, he searched his house. After a while of searching...
'Is this a Samsung SCH-R640 Slide? Damn, I must be in a modern world in the early 2000s; otherwise, no way someone would have this.' After thinking this, Fredric quickly typed in a certain name, purely because he knew that since he was talking about the X-Men, there was a high chance of waking up in Marvel. It would only be right to type in the name of the MCU's ticket to making it big: Iron Man.
After obtaining results about him indeed existing, Fredric could only sigh as he put on his suit jacket. He thought, 'I'm so incredibly fucked. Like, come on, the comics could have— I don't know—put me in the MCU, the baby version of this hellscape that technically has more reboots to the universe than DC on the mutant side alone.'
No longer bothering to rant about how he was going to die without knowing it in his head
Fredric sat down on his couch as he started thinking, 'So I have no idea who I am, yet I know where everything is. It's not like I have some really good muscle memory; it's more like a subconscious thing. Maybe if I start thinking a lot about who I am, I'll be able to figure myself out.'
Much like the feeling of recalling obscure lore you learned about your friend's favorite series just to one-up them, Fredric recalled the life of Frederick Duncan. Not the entire life, but more like a movie that's not too long or short, leaving in the key details and some of the boring ones after a while.
''I'm quitting.'' Those were the first words to come out of Fredric—now Frederick Duncan's—mouth as he realized he was an FBI agent. Worse, he was just assigned as a candidate to become the new lead of the Department of Special Affairs. 'To make it worse, Project Wide-Awake is already on its way.'
Swiftly getting to his office, he packed up everything before remembering something. 'It has to be around here somewhere.' After an "aha," he opened a secret compartment in his desk and took out his psionic headband, given to him by Charles Xavier. Putting it on, he quickly tried contacting Professor X.
[Xavier... Xa—Charles, can you hear me?
.Yes, Frederick, I can hear you. May I ask why you are contacting me? What happened?
.Well, you see, I'm quitting. Simply. Don't worry, I've already erased all the data I have on you guys, and I even helped add in a new department. It's just that, well, I have a bad feeling that something is going on behind the scenes in the government.
And well, the people I've been seeing, who I knew once, are acting different. They're wide awake yet asleep at the same time. It sounds crazy, I know, but that's what I've been feeling. They're pushing me to release the secrets about you guys more and more. I just can't deal with them anymore. I'm telling you all this just in case, Charles.
.I see... Though I would have hoped you would have stayed a little longer, I can sense that you are indeed even a little afraid of what's going on. I'll be here whenever I'm needed. Don't hesitate to ask; after all, that's the least I can do.]
Shortly after his talk with Charles, hinting that something might be happening without saying anything outright, Frederick took off the headband and walked to his superior's office. After a knock and a buzz, he was allowed in.
''If it's not our best agent at handling mutants, Frederick Duncan, I'm assuming there's something you need, judging by the fact that you don't have any files in your hands. Since that's the case, don't be shy—say it.''
Looking right into the man's eyes, Frederick handed him his badge and papers as he said, ''I resign. I hope you have a good evening, sir.''
After leaving those short words for his dumbfounded boss, Frederick quickly got to the door, opening and closing it gently as he left, not looking back once. After gathering all of his things again, Frederick got to his car and left. Arriving home, he threw his personal belongings to the side as he slumped onto his couch, thinking.
'First and foremost, I have to prepare for Project Wide-Awake. After that, House of M and Powers of M. Though I have to also prepare for that Celestial husk as well. Now I guess I'm fused with a... hmm... I don't remember. Well, that doesn't really matter; that comes later. This is first.'
Reaffirming that to himself, Frederick started listing different metals and how to make them in his notebook, along with sketching out a suit design. He was fully aware of his level 3 brain that could easily have been a 4 if he hadn't focused so much on the agent aspect of himself, as well as the good guy who helps mutants.
'Not like I'll stop. I just need to make this suit to block mind-fuckery and survive that not-so-crazy woman's death. And to remember certain events that just got erased from the timeline, like a certain punching bag of the author's marriage.'