I don't own any of this; I am just bored out of my mind.
Death did not taste like the nothingness Aaron had anticipated. It tasted distinctly of copper, ozone, and old jambalaya. There was a moment of agonising silence, a void where his heartbeat used to be, followed immediately by a cacophony of white noise that screamed through his very soul. It was as if someone had twisted the dial of a cosmic radio, scanning through a billion stations at once before landing, with a violent *snap*, on a frequency that shouldn't exist.
Aaron gasped, his lungs inflating with air that smelled of wet asphalt and diesel fumes. His eyes snapped open. He was not in a hospital bed. He was not in the fiery pits of Hell he had seen depicted in that chaotic animated musical he'd binged just hours before his untimely end. He was in an alleyway, slumped against damp brickwork, illuminated by the flickering, sickly yellow light of a dying streetlamp.
He pushed himself up. The movement felt wrong—too fluid, too lanky. He looked at his hands. They were pale, his fingers long and spindly, tipping into nails that felt sharp enough to etch glass. A nervous chuckle bubbled in his throat, but when it emerged, it wasn't his voice. It was a filtered, trans-Atlantic timbre, layered with the subtle crackle of a vacuum tube radio from the 1920s.
"Well," Aaron murmured, the sound vibrating in his chest like a purring subwoofer. "This is certainly an unexpected broadcast."
He stumbled toward the mouth of the alley. The city beyond was roaring with life. New York City, unmistakable in its grit and grandeur, but different. He passed a rusted electronics shop window, the glass displaying a wall of televisions. On every screen, a man in a pristine suit stood at a podium, looking battered but arrogant.
"The truth is..." the man on the screen paused, a smirk playing on his lips. "I am Iron Man."
Aaron froze. The date on the chyron read 2008. But scrolling beneath Tony Stark's face were headlines that made Aaron's new heart stutter in a rhythm of pure static: *"Wayne Enterprises Stock Holds Steady Amidst Gotham Turmoil"* and *"Daily Planet: Superman Saves Shuttle."*
A fusion. A crucible of gods and monsters.
Sudden vertigo struck him. Shadows in the alley seemed to peel away from the walls, taking physical form, swirling around his ankles like affectionate cats. He felt a dark, voracious hunger in the pit of his stomach—a desire to consume, to terrify. The *Radio Demon's* legacy.
Panic flared, manifested by a high-pitched feedback whine emitting from the air around him. The glass of the shop window began to vibrate dangerously.
*Center yourself,* a thought cut through the static. It was the only part of the 'package' that felt alien to the demon persona but native to Aaron's desire for control.
Instinctively, Aaron dropped his weight, sinking his hips. His feet shifted, scraping the concrete. *Tai Chi.* He flowed into the 'Grasp the Sparrow's Tail' stance. The movement was slow, deliberate, a stark contrast to the chaotic jitter of the radio static surrounding him. As he exhaled, pushing his palms outward in a gentle arc, the aggressive shadows receded, turning from eldritch horrors into obedient silhouettes. The feedback whine smoothed into a low, pleasant hum.
"Balance," he whispered, the radio filter on his voice softening to a jazz-club croon. "Demonic chaos tempered by internal harmony. How... delightful."
He looked back at the televisions. The world was changing. Heroes were rising. It was a narrative waiting to be told, but more importantly, it was a captive audience waiting to be entertained.
Aaron closed his eyes and *reached out*. He didn't reach with his hands, but with his mind. He could feel the electromagnetic spectrum buzzing in the air like a swarm of invisible bees. Cellular signals, radio waves, emergency bands—they were all tangible to him. He could taste the news reports; he could smell the encrypted SHIELD channels.
With a mischievous grin that stretched slightly too wide for a human face, exposing teeth that were just a little too sharp, he grabbed a loose frequency. It was a local radio station, currently playing a top 40 hit.
*Let's see what this knob does.*
In living rooms, taxi cabs, and bodegas across the Tri-State area, the pop music distorted. It slowed down, warping into a dark, swing-jazz instrumental. The static cleared, replaced by Aaron's new, charismatic voice, projecting directly from his throat into the city's infrastructure.
"Salutations, listeners!" The voice was charming, dripping with false politeness and ominous undertones. "Interruption is such a dreadfully rude habit, but I simply couldn't resist. You're watching a man in a tin suit declare himself a savior, but the shadows tell a different story."
Aaron twisted his hand in the air, performing a divination gesture he hadn't known seconds ago. The currents of time whispered to him. He saw flashes: a green goliath in Harlem, a hammer falling in New Mexico.
"The age of heroes is upon you," he broadcasted, laughing softly, the sound echoing in thousands of cars. "But do remember, every light casts a shadow. And I? Well, I am just the static in between. Stay tuned, my dears. The show is just beginning."
He released the frequency, snapping his fingers. The pop music returned instantly. Aaron straightened his coat—which had somehow morphed into a pinstriped suit during his transformation—and walked out of the alley, twirling an imaginary cane. The city was a terrifying, dangerous place, but for the first time in two lives, Aaron felt entirely in control of the dial.