Jack Black-No, not the actor-was currently rotting. There was no other word for it. He was deep in the throes of a "bed rot" session, his limbs tangled in mismatched sheets that smelled faintly of laundry detergent and neglected ambitions.
The only light in his cramped apartment came from the harsh, clinical blue glow of his smartphone. It reflected off his face, highlighting features that were, by all accounts, offensively average. Jack had the kind of face that facial recognition software sometimes struggled to remember. He had messy, dark brown hair that looked like he'd fought a lawnmower and lost, and eyes that were a muddy, indeterminate hazel. He wasn't ugly, he was just low-resolution. He wore a faded black hoodie with a bleach stain on the sleeve and gray sweatpants that had seen better decades. He was the human equivalent of a background character in a crowd scene, and he knew it.
His thumb flicked upward with mechanical precision. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
His TikTok feed had been completely colonized. For the last three hours, it had been nothing but Invincible edits. Ever since Season 2 dropped, the algorithm had decided Jack needed to see every frame of Mark Grayson getting his life dismantled, usually set to high-BPM phonk or some slowed-down, reverb-heavy track.
"Mid," Jack muttered, his voice raspy from disuse. "The pacing is a mess, the character designs are basically 'Great Value' Justice League, and the animation budget is clearly three paperclips and a prayer. 7/10 at best."
He wasn't a hater by trade, he was a hater by soul. To Jack, nothing was ever as good as the "glazers" claimed it was. He lived for the "Ratio," the "L," and the "Mid."
Then, he hit it: the most generic, cookie-cutter edit he'd seen all year. It was a 15-second loop of Omni-Man floating over Earth, staring down with a stoic expression while a crusty, bass-boosted track blew out Jack's phone speakers. The transitions were amateur, the text was vibrating for no reason, and the color correction was so bright it looked like a literal flashbang.
Jack's inner hater woke up. He tapped the comment icon.
@NotTheActorJack: This is straight garbage. My grandma could've rendered this on a toaster. 0/10, delete the app.
Within seconds, his notifications pinged. The creator, @EditGod_99, replied: Lmao you're just an unemployed hater. Post a better one then.
Jack smirked. This was the nectar of life. He typed back instantly: I don't need to cook to know when the food tastes like mid-tier trash. This edit has zero motion. You're literally glazing a cartoon character with a CapCut template. Go outside.
The reply came back almost too fast:
@EditGod_99: You want trash? Fine. If it's so garbage, it'll be a perfect fit for you. Enjoy the fyp IRL, loser.
"Corny," Jack scoffed, ready to type back a final ragebait masterpiece.
Then the screen went black.
Not just the phone, the whole room. The hum of his PC died. The streetlights outside his window vanished. For a heartbeat, Jack felt like he was falling through a void of pure static. His stomach did a nauseating flip, and the sound of the world was replaced by a high-pitched ringing, like a frequency being tuned.
--
When Jack's eyes adjusted, he wasn't staring at his ceiling. He was staring at a canopy of massive, vibrant green trees that looked entirely too "saturated." The air smelled like pine needles.
"What the...?"
He scrambled to his feet, checking his pockets. His phone was there. He pulled it out, expecting a shattered screen or a dead battery. Instead, the battery icon was pinned at 100%. He watched it for a full minute. It didn't budge. He had full bars of 5G,somehow, but when he checked his apps, the screen was a ghost town. Maps? Gone. Uber? Gone. Discord? Gone.
Only a few system apps remained, and right in the center of the dock: TikTok.
"No shot," Jack whispered, looking at the towering trees around him. He remembered the conversation. "Did I seriously just get isekai'd by a salty editor? If this is one of those 'stuck in a fanfic' tropes, this is officially the trashiest writing of all time. 0/10 plot development."
He looked around. He was in a dense forest, but through a break in the trees, he could see the shimmering skyline of a massive city a few miles out. It looked familiar, clean, slightly futuristic, and bustling.
"Okay, fine. Find people, find food, find a way to sue that guy," he muttered, trekking toward the city.
As he approached the outskirts, things got weird. The air felt... shaky. Like he was walking through a low-bitrate video. He saw a bird fly past, but it seemed to drop frames, hitching in mid-air before smoothing out. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was having a stroke.
Suddenly, a roar tore through the trees. A massive, multi-eyed creature, a hulking mass of white muscle and teeth, lunged from the brush. It moved with a terrifying, jagged speed.
"Oh, I'm actually cooked," Jack thought, his legs turning to jelly. "Died to a generic mob. My legacy is literally a flop."
WHOOSH.
A sonic boom shattered the silence. The monster didn't just die; it disintegrated into a cloud of red mist as something hit it at Mach speed. The shockwave knocked Jack flat on his back.
Dust swirled around a figure hovering just inches off the ground. A white and red suit. A flowing cape. A mustache that looked like it was carved from granite and stubbornness.
Jack's heart stopped. He knew that silhouette.
"Omni-Man?" Jack breathed out.
The man in the air turned, his eyes cold and uninterested. This wasn't a cosplayer. The "colonized" feed wasn't a glitch. Jack wasn't just in another place. He was in the show.
"You shouldn't be out here, kid," Nolan Grayson said, his voice a deep, vibrating baritone. "The GDA is still clearing out the stragglers."
Before Jack could even mention the word "mid," Omni-Man gripped him by the collar of his hoodie and ignited into the air.
The Pentagon and the Raisin
The transition was violent. Jack swallowed a bug as they blurred through the sky. One second he was in the woods, the next he was being dropped unceremoniously onto a high-tech landing pad deep within a mountain.
"Cecil, found this one in the splash zone of one of your scouts. He's clean, but out of place. Deal with it," Nolan said. He didn't even look at Jack as he took off again, leaving a trail of white smoke in the air.
"He just... he just dropped me," Jack wheezed, straightening his hoodie. "Negative aura. Honestly, worst Uber experience of my life. One star."
Standing there, looking exactly like a tired raisin in a suit, was Cecil Stedman. The director of the GDA looked at Jack with eyes that had seen too many apocalypses.
"No records on you, kid," Cecil grunted. "Not in the DMV, not in the birth registries. You an alien? Another 'Viltrumite' scout Nolan forgot to mention?"
"I'm from New Jersey," Jack lied, his hater instincts kicking in. "I'm just lost. Do i look like i can fly? And your security here is kind of embarrassing. I just walked in with a guy who isn't even wearing a badge."
Cecil squinted, his scarred face twitching. Usually, he'd have Jack in a dark room with a truth serum cocktail. But Nolan had brought him in. Cecil's mind was already spinning. If he played this right, he could claim he 'saved' one of Nolan's interests. A favor from the world's strongest man was worth more than a fleet of stealth bombers.
"Sure. Jersey. Whatever," Cecil said. "Donald, get this kid a social security number. We'll put him in the local high school, someplace quiet. Maybe he can keep an eye on things for me. A little birdy on the ground."
"You want me to be a spy?" Jack asked. "Is the pay good? Because I don't work for exposure."
"You'll get a roof and a meal card," Cecil said, already walking away. "Don't make me regret not dissecting you."
--
Later that night, tucked away in a sterile "safe house" apartment provided by the GDA, Jack finally pulled out his phone. The 100% battery glowed like a holy relic.
He tapped the TikTok icon, and his eyes widened. The UI had changed. There were now three distinct tabs at the top of the "For You" page:
Earth-1: This was his home world. People dancing to the same songs, complaining about the same pedo-satanic politicians. He tried to comment, but a red error popped up: 'User out of range.'
The Editor's Cut: This was the "God of Editors" feed. It was full of videos of him. There was a clip of him falling in the forest, set to a "Sigma" phonk beat. The comments were being left by users he recognized from other shows, but they were acting like a live audience.
@Honored_One_Gojo: Lmao, look at this kid. Zero cursed energy. He's just a professional yapper. I love it.
@WubbaLubba_Rick: [Burp] Hey Jack, tell the raisin-face leader his science is adorable. Also, your name is Jack Black? Where's the Tenacious D, kid?
@Hashirama_Trees: This boy talks a lot for someone with the combat prowess of a wet noodle.
[LOADING...]: The third tab was greyed out. A progress bar sat at 1.4%. It wasn't loading a video; it looked like it was rendering the very reality he was standing in.
Jack scowled. "So I'm a reality show for a bunch of multiversal bums? Great. This is peak filler content."
He decided to test the "Cheat." He tried to watch the show Invincible to see what would happen next. Episode 1 worked perfectly, he watched Omni-Man slaughter the Guardians, his eyes narrowing. "Okay, the mustache guy has motion, I'll give him that."
But when he clicked Episode 2, a massive gold padlock slammed onto the screen. [CONTENT LOCKED: INCREASE CHANNEL ENGAGEMENT TO UNLOCK]
"Engagement? Are you serious? I have to farm likes to see the plot?" Jack threw the phone onto the bed. "This is the most pay-to-win reality I've ever seen. 0/10, developers should be fired."
--
If he needed clout, he needed content. Jack propped his phone up against a GDA-issued water bottle. He didn't dance. He didn't do a transition. He just stared into the lens with a look of pure, unadulterated judgment.
"Yo," Jack started. "I'm currently being held in a secret underground bunker by a guy who looks like a topographical map of the Himalayas. They're testing me for powers. Spoiler: They found nothing because their tech is mid. Anyway, here's a sneak peek of the 'Global Defense Agency.' It's basically a glorified DMV with more guns."
He did a quick 360-degree flip of the camera, catching a glimpse of a top-secret teleporter array. He slapped a "Slowed + Reverb" filter on it, captioned it 'GDA is poverty-tier. Cecil has no motion,' and hit post.
As the likes poured in from Gojo, Rick, and a user named @IronMan_Official, Jack felt a literal physical sensation. It was like his body was being color-graded. He looked in the mirror. His jawline looked sharper. His movements felt "smoother," like he was being rendered at 120fps while the rest of the room was stuck at 60.
[GOAL REACHED: 10,000 INTERACTIONS] [SEASON 1, EPISODE 2: UNLOCKED] [NEW ABILITY ACQUIRED: "THE HARD CUT"] Description: Once per day, you can 'cut' yourself out of a situation. Instant teleportation to the nearest 'safe' frame.
"Oh, we are so back," Jack grinned.
The next morning, a GDA black car pulled up to take him to Reginald VelJohnson High. Jack walked out, his "aura" visibly higher than the day before.