He stood at the edge of a skyscraper’s rooftop, a silent figure gazing down at the sleepless city bathed in neon and noise. Steam hissed from the sewers like ghostly breath, colored red by passing signs and traffic lights. The lights, the ughter, the distant bre of sirens—it all painted a picture of life. But beneath that glittering surface?

  It was rot. Pure, undiluted rot.

  Early spring fog clung to Gotham like a second skin, wrapping every alley and rooftop in a cold, damp shroud. The air stank of industry—of rust, smoke, and something sour that settled deep in your lungs.

  He could see the wealth, the power, the prestige—all of it stacked like a teetering house of cards. But he could also see the cracks.

  Maybe not with his eyes, but with something deeper. Somewhere in the distance, a dark alley filled with trash and echoing ughter. A sewer where the homeless whispered to shadows. An underpass where gangs exchanged bullets in the flickering light of a dying streetmp.

  Discarded guns. Cold corpses. Cackles and screams that twisted in the dark like broken wind chimes. Dried blood, bck under the rain.

  This city wore its sins like perfume, cloying and thick. And it didn’t forgive.

  You didn’t need a map. Hell, you didn’t even need to ask.

  People here had names for their city.

  Some said it was like Killer Croc—lurking in the sewers, swallowing you whole without leaving so much as a ripple.

  Others called it Two-Face—ruthless in its coin flips between justice and cruelty. A single toss determined whether you lived or died.

  Some likened it to Scarecrow—where every dream, no matter how sweet, turned into a screaming nightmare that dragged your worst fears into the light.

  And then there were those who called it the Joker.

  Because this city? It was goddamn mad.

  They ughed—harsh and shrill and wrong—and maybe, just maybe, the next moment they’d jam a pencil into your eye, tilt their head, and giggle at your twitching body.

  “Why so serious?”

  Yeah. You were in Gotham.

  He didn’t need to ask anyone. He just had to look up—at the cloud-drenched sky where a bat-shaped spotlight split the darkness. That was all he needed.

  “...Gotham,” he murmured.

  And then the sky opened up.

  Rain came down in sheets, cold and acidic, soaking through the cracks in the city and the mind alike. The world became a wash of gray and static. Every color bled away—every sound muffled into white noise.

  But the chill he felt didn’t come from the rain.

  He was armored head to toe, encased in tactical gear like a walking tank. A full-face helmet hid his features, split half bck, half gold. Underneath, a bodysuit of interlocked mail and reinforced ptes protected him from head to heel.

  This wasn’t cospy. This was battlefield-grade.

  He wasn’t just anyone anymore.

  He used to be, sure. Just a regur guy, working nights in warehouse security. The job was boring as hell. He wasn’t tall or built like a tank, but he was young, and had just enough fire in him to fake being brave when it counted.

  “How… did this happen?” he whispered.

  He raised a gloved hand to his head—but the armor cut off the feeling, smothering every texture and sensation. Nothing.

  He’d read stories—fanfic, webnovels, those wild isekai tales. Computers exploding, choking on food, saving someone from a truck—one ridiculous accident after another leading to some power fantasy in another world.

  But for him? He couldn’t even remember how it happened.

  No explosion. No lightning bolt. No divine light.

  Just… one moment he was in his dingy little apartment, ignoring a wedding invite from a middle school cssmate. Maybe pying a game on his busted old ptop, the one that sounded like a tractor when you booted it up.

  And the next?

  He was standing on Wayne Tower, in the middle of Gotham City, wearing full military-grade armor, staring at the Bat-Signal.

  Five minutes passed before he even moved.

  After the initial shock wore off, confusion settled in—along with a creeping sense of dread.

  Because he knew exactly where he was now.

  Back on Earth, at his boring job, he’d gotten hooked on superhero movies just to have something to talk about with coworkers. Marvel, DC—didn’t matter. One guy loved Avengers, another was obsessed with Guardians of the Gaxy. Some of the girls in the office kept arguing over “Stucky vs. IronWidow.”

  He didn’t get it at first.

  But he started watching the movies, then reading the comics. First Marvel, then DC. Then everything. He binged fan transtions of the big arcs, memorized names, powers, even alternate universes.

  And now… well, now he looked down into a puddle forming at his feet and saw the reflection of Deathstroke.

  Half bck, half gold mask. One glowing red eye. Twin fabric ribbons trailing behind like Rambo. A body built for war, cold and precise and unrelenting.

  He was Sde Joseph Wilson.

  Deathstroke the Terminator.

  The DC Universe’s deadliest mercenary. A master tactician. A walking weapon. Peak human strength, endurance, reflexes—and a brain operating at 90% capacity, second only to sci-fi nonsense like Lucy.

  No memory of how he got here. But the body was real. The skills were real. Gun training, combat instincts, even driving—it was all muscle memory.

  And he was inside that memory now.

  At first, it was thrilling.

  He had power.

  Deathstroke could beat almost anyone in a prepared fight—even Batman, with over 50% odds. He regurly mopped the floor with Robin and the Teen Titans. In the New 52 comics, he even went toe-to-toe with Wonder Woman—and walked away from a battle with Superman, no Kryptonite needed.

  But then reality came crashing in.

  Sde wasn’t a hero.

  He was a mercenary. A killer for hire. He’d worked for Penguin to hit Two-Face, then for Two-Face to take down Bck Mask. He accepted contracts to eliminate heroes.

  To Deathstroke, morality was just a price tag.

  And if you pissed off the entire roster of superpowered beings? Good luck surviving.

  “...This is bad.”

  His name—his real name—was Su Ming. Back in his world, the old guys at work just called him Xiao Ming. It made him feel like he was constantly in trouble. Like he’d forgotten to wash his hands or crossed the street without looking both ways. Cssic textbook troublemaker.

  Now, he had to figure out where he was in the DC multiverse.

  “Step one: figure out which universe this is. Step two: find out the timeline,” he muttered.

  Because Gotham showed up everywhere—in the comics, the cartoons, the movies. If he was in the movie-verse, things weren’t too bad. Steppenwolf got wrecked like a chump in Justice League. Power levels were manageable.

  But if this was the comics?

  Then he was standing in a powder keg.

  Earth-0—the New 52. Earth-3—the vilin-swapped world. Earth-10—run by fascists. Earth-38—the original comic continuity...

  So many timelines. So many threats.

  He touched the side of his helmet, rain running in streams down the armor. It was freezing inside—he didn’t even have clothes under the suit.

  And yet… his thoughts had never felt sharper.

  His mind was firing like a machine. Even minor comic details he barely skimmed before were clear as crystal. That wasn’t normal.

  “Is this… Sde’s brain at work?”

  His soul must’ve possessed the real Deathstroke’s body. He wasn’t a copy. This was him.

  Which meant the body’s right eye would never work—it was permanently destroyed.

  The regeneration? Sure. But it wasn’t infinite. Losing limbs still meant losing them. And healing drained him—left him feral if overused.

  Plus, Sde was in his fifties.

  His kids were already superheroes who wanted him dead. And his old man? A mind-controlling psychopath who wanted the same.

  The only reason Sde was still alive was because he was stronger than all of them.

  “Great. I’m a twenty-something shoved into the body of a divorced, half-cyborg war machine with kids that want to kill me.”

  Su Ming sighed and shook his head.

  Emotionally? Sde was a trainwreck.

  “Why was he even here?” he wondered aloud. “Was he on a job?”

  Whatever it was, the full armor meant something big.

  He gnced toward the building's stairwell. Rain or not, he needed cover. Sure, he had a glider pack—but he wasn’t risking face-pnting into Gotham asphalt without a tutorial first.

  'World-famous mercenary commits suicide in Gotham—allegedly due to romantic fallout with the Batman.'

  Yeah. He could already picture tomorrow’s headline in The Gotham Gazette.

  Su Ming had no intention of dying. Even in a world this dangerous, he’d fight tooth and nail to survive.

  Also, for the record? He was very straight.

  No offense to Joker and Batman, but he wasn’t getting involved in that circus.