CHAPTER 2: WELCOME TO HELL (PART 1)
Rayen stumbles onto the sidewalk, nearly hit by another car. A pedestrian in an expensive suit yells at him—"Watch it, asshole!"—and he barely registers the words. His hands are shaking, trembling with the kind of full-body shock that makes fine motor control impossible.
This is real. The Boys. I'm in The fucking Boys.
He tries to say it aloud, testing the Entity's curse: "I'm in The—"
His voice cuts out mid-sentence, replaced by words that feel torn from someone else's throat: "Purple giraffe Tuesday."
A woman nearby in a Starbucks uniform backs away, eyeing him like he's one of the city's many colorful lunatics. Great. He's been here thirty seconds and he's already the neighborhood crazy person.
Rayen forces his legs to move, walking away from the intersection where he'd materialized. The city flows around him with typical New York indifference—pedestrians absorbed in phones, cars honking at nothing, the perpetual urban symphony of controlled chaos. But now he sees it through different eyes. These aren't just people rushing to mundane jobs; they're potential victims in a universe where corporate-sponsored psychopaths laser planes out of the sky for fun.
He finds a newspaper stand, hands still shaking as he rifles through the headlines. The vendor—a grizzled man who looks like he's been selling papers since the Eisenhower administration—watches him with the wariness of someone who's seen every type of street crazy.
"You buying or browsing, kid?"
Rayen grabs a copy of the New York Times, scanning for the date. October 15th, 2019. His stomach lurches. Three weeks. Three weeks before A-Train turns Robin Ward into street pizza, setting the whole bloody chain of events in motion.
He knows what's coming. The USS Jimmy incident. Translucent's death. Compound V being distributed to terrorists. Every horror, every atrocity, every moment of trauma that will unfold across the next few years—and he tries desperately to voice even a fragment of it.
"A-Train will kill—banana clarinet submarine."
The vendor stares at him. "What the hell did you just say?"
"Robin Ward will die—purple monkey dishwasher."
The words twist in his throat, becoming nonsense the moment they touch air. Rayen clamps his mouth shut, humiliated and furious. The Entity's curse is perfect—he's a prisoner in his own head, carrying knowledge of death and destruction while his tongue betrays him at every turn.
I know how people die and I can't warn anyone.
He pays for the newspaper with cash he finds in his pocket—the Entity provided something useful, at least—and walks away, mind reeling with the implications. The cosmic gag order doesn't just prevent him from speaking plot points; it seems to extend to any information that would significantly alter events. He's not just cursed—he's been turned into a living spoiler filter.
The irony burns: he used to dream about being isekai'd into his favorite fictional universes, about having foreknowledge that would let him save everyone, prevent tragedies, optimize outcomes. But the Entity's final gift ensures he can't simply waltz in and derail the narrative through exposition dumps.
A street performer bumps into him while zipping around with minor super-speed—one of the countless low-level Supes doing tricks for cash instead of joining major teams. The collision is light, barely a tap, but Rayen feels something activate in response.
His vision sharpens with predatory focus, pupils contracting as his eyes lock onto the performer involuntarily. It's like someone flipped a switch in his brain, channeling energy he didn't know he possessed directly through his optic nerves.
The Supe, mid-demonstration of zipping between traffic cones, suddenly trips over nothing. His enhanced reflexes abandon him completely and he crashes into a trash can at normal human speed, landing in a heap of yesterday's newspapers and coffee cups. The small crowd that had gathered to watch laughs, thinking it's part of the act.
Rayen's eyes are burning, watering uncontrollably. He blinks hard and the sensation fades, leaving him standing there in dawning terror.
What the hell was that?
The performer picks himself up, looking confused and embarrassed. He tries to zip away again but moves at normal human speed, jogging awkwardly while the crowd disperses. The man stares at his hands like they've betrayed him, then at Rayen—but Rayen is already walking away, heart hammering.
Erasure. It had to be Erasure. He'd nullified the street performer's super-speed without meaning to, without understanding how. The power had activated instinctively, like his body recognizing a threat and responding automatically.
But he doesn't know how he did it. Can't control it. Can't even be sure it was real and not some bizarre coincidence.
He stumbles through the streets until he finds a small park, collapsing onto a bench that faces another Vought advertisement. The Seven stare down at him from a massive digital billboard: Homelander's perfect smile, Queen Maeve's stoic beauty, A-Train's cocky grin. All of them pristine and heroic and utterly false.
I know what you are. I know what you'll do.
But when he tries to think about specific events—Madelyn's death, Becca's survival, Ryan's existence—his thoughts become slippery, like trying to hold water. He can remember watching the show, remembers the emotional impact of key scenes, but the details are locked behind a wall of static. Only feelings remain: dread when he looks at Homelander, rage when he thinks about Vought, pity for the victims he can't warn.
The Entity's curse is more sophisticated than he'd first understood. It's not just preventing him from speaking forbidden knowledge—it's making that knowledge increasingly inaccessible to his own mind. Like mental DRM, degrading his memories to prevent piracy of narrative information.
A pigeon lands near his feet, pecking at a discarded pretzel. Rayen stares at it and laughs—a bitter sound that makes an elderly woman walking her dog change direction.
"I got isekai'd into hell," he tells the pigeon. It cocks its head at him, unimpressed.
The sky begins to darken as afternoon slides toward evening. Office workers emerge from subway stations, heading home to families who don't know they live in a world where corporate superheroes casually commit war crimes between photo shoots. The normalcy is surreal—people going about their lives while literal gods walk among them, marketed like breakfast cereal.
Rayen's stomach growls, reminding him that this new body has mundane needs. He finds a bodega and buys a sandwich with the mysterious cash in his pockets, wondering absently where the money came from. Did the Entity rob someone for his convenience? Create it from nothing? Does cosmic power come with petty cash management?
Night falls as he searches for somewhere to sleep. The money in his pocket—he counts it while walking—is enough for a week in a cheap motel, maybe two if he's careful. After that...
He'll figure it out. He has to.
The motel he finds is exactly what the cash suggests: a grimy building that caters to people who pay by the hour and don't ask questions. The clerk behind bulletproof glass barely looks up when Rayen slides cash through the slot, accepting the key to room 237 without making eye contact.
The room smells like old cigarettes and industrial disinfectant. The carpet has stains that tell stories he doesn't want to hear. But it has a bed, a bathroom, and a door that locks. In a universe where Homelander exists, privacy feels like a luxury.
In the cracked bathroom mirror, Rayen examines his new face more carefully. The features are sharper than his original appearance, more angular. His eyes are darker, carrying an exhaustion that looks bone-deep. He looks older than his actual age—closer to thirty than twenty-four. The Entity had given him a face that belonged in this world: urban, worn, forgettable.
He tries to activate the powers deliberately. Stares at his reflection in the mirror—nothing. Touches the glass and whispers "Heaven's Door"—nothing. Focuses on becoming untouchable, imagining spatial barriers—nothing.
"I'm a god with a manual written in a language I don't speak."
Sleep doesn't come easily. He lies on the questionable mattress, staring at water stains on the ceiling that look like maps of countries that don't exist. Every car horn outside makes him flinch. Every footstep in the hallway could be Homelander coming to investigate the anomaly that just appeared in his city.
But eventually exhaustion wins. Rayen's eyes close, and he dreams of falling through cosmic void while the Entity's laughter echoes around him:
"Control, knowledge, and isolation. Let's see which one devours you first."
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