Plot-Killed on Arrival

The shouting was deafening.

It surged through the prison like a riot, too loud and chaotic for any single voice to stand out. All Damon Keller could catch was the mood underneath it: excitement. Hunger, almost.

He was in a prison: a long corridor lined with cells on both sides. Men crowded the bars, arms thrust through the gaps as they yelled themselves hoarse, as if the guards had just dragged in fresh entertainment.

Not everyone was joining the fun.

At the far end of the corridor, the last cell was almost unnaturally quiet.

It was a single cell. The "new arrival" inside had been there less than half an hour.

"I know the first time is supposed to be quick," Damon muttered from the narrow bunk, "but come on. At least let me feel something first. Throwing me into round two before I've even figured out what happened is just rude."

Don't get the wrong idea.

He was not talking about becoming a man, and he definitely was not talking about the rumors people liked to tell about prisons.

He was talking about transmigration.

In novels, getting thrown into another world was almost routine. In reality, the odds should have been laughably close to zero. Damon, for better or worse, had already beaten those odds once. He had crossed into a Marvel world he recognized and gained the power of Protege.

And Protege?

Protege was one of those Marvel characters who might as well have been a walking cheat code: delicate, almost androgynous, saddled with a joke-ready nickname, and armed with an ability so broken it barely felt legal.

Infinite Copy.

Infinite Stacking.

If you made a move against him, it did not matter whether you used a superpower, raw matter, consciousness, an abstract cosmic force, or something even stranger. Protege could copy it in an instant. He could even copy the experience needed to use it.

That alone would have made him terrifying, but it still only made him an equalizer.

The real insanity was Infinite Stacking.

After copying a power, he could stack its output without limit. Double. Tenfold. A hundredfold. Beyond that. Put simply, if you attacked him, you lost.

With that power, Protege had run wild. He had defeated the Living Tribunal, copied the powers of cosmic gods, and even claimed to possess power on the level of the One Above All.

Of course, once a power got that broken, the story had only one dirty trick left.

A plot kill.

Some random judge-like character had appeared out of nowhere, beaten him for reasons that barely made sense, and sealed him inside the body of the Living Tribunal.

After inheriting something that absurd himself, Damon had thought he could finally run wild too.

He was wrong.

He got hit with the same treatment.

A plot kill.

He had not even lasted three minutes in Marvel. He had not figured out the situation. He had not copied a single useful ability. Then the universe he was standing in went boom.

Gone.

Damon had expected to die. Instead, he transmigrated again and landed straight inside this prison cell. That was why he was complaining about the first time being too quick.

Who else got tossed into another world, survived less than three minutes, and then got tossed into a second one?

So for the last half hour, he had done absolutely nothing. He had stayed where he was and waited to see whether the universe would explode again.

At this point, it probably wasn't going to.

"The first time is always awkward. By the second, you start lasting longer. Damn. That's character growth right there."

Damon sat up, finally ready to figure out what kind of world he had landed in.

Both times, his body had come with him. That meant Protege's power was still his. New world, same ability, same chance to have fun. A prison cell was not much of a problem.

"Did it just get quiet out there?"

The corridor had sounded like a full-blown riot a moment ago. Now the noise had dropped off. Damon was about to get up, check the bars, and maybe test whether he could get out when two guards dragged a woman to the front of his cell.

"Why is someone in here?" one guard asked. "Wasn't this cell supposed to be empty?"

"Looks like some new guy got tossed in before processing," the other said. "He hasn't even been changed out. Probably pissed off the wrong person. Forget it. Not our problem."

"Are you sure this is okay? I mean..."

"You saw what she can do. What are you scared of?"

Neither guard seemed interested in asking questions. One unlocked the door, the other shoved the woman inside, and then they locked the cell again and walked away.

Putting two prisoners in a single cell was already ridiculous.

But a man and a woman?

That was pushing it.

'Was this supposed to be a starter perk?'

Damon looked at the woman they had thrown in with him, and his eyes sharpened with interest.

She had long brown hair falling over her shoulders, and the loose prison uniform did nothing to hide the shape of her body. Gorgeous, perfectly built, and unreadable, she carried a sharp, icy kind of allure even without saying a word.

Most importantly, Damon recognized her.

So this really was a starter perk.

"Some protagonists start with a dog," he said, smiling. "Apparently, I get a cat."

His smile widened.

"A feral one."

✦
✦
✦

Ready for more?

The next chapters are already waiting on my Patreon, along with early access, previews, and extra story updates 🗝️

https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheBacklotFanfiction