Disclaimer:
The story as a whole will involve blood and gore, and lewd behaviour too. The main character, and the main romantic interests are all underage, even if the former only in appearance, so if that disturbs you please do not continue reading.
Not a harem, the eventual result would either be a loose friends-with-benefits group, or a somewhat tighter polyamory group, but the mc will continue sleeping with whoever they feel like, and his stable partners will be free to do so as well.
While I will not censor this completely, explicit sex scenes will be removed and may found on ArchiveOfOurOwn as well under my account Sanguis_Luna, and I will make sure to mention on the chapters here whenever there is something removed here.
An ancient being sleeps, its massive body covering the entire planet. In the past, one might have seen the flesh-like mass writhe and pulse, but now it lays still, even the colour seemingly muted from it.
An ancient being wakes, seemingly by chance, as a soul passes by its domain. The being has no intelligence to make use of, only acting on instinct, and it exactly because its instinct that it fires something at the passing soul. Something that can be call a seed. The seed collides with the soul, the physical somehow interacting with the non-corporeal, fusing with it while also knocking it off course.
An ancient being falls back asleep, the colour of its mass even more muted now, a sickly grey, pieces here and there visibly withering.
The soul eventually lands at the end of its new trajectory, smashing into a dying body. A dying human. A dying human that triggered a new power right before its death. Sadly for the human, their power did nothing to help them survive the massive blood loss. The new soul, however, has lucked out greatly.
After all, someone that has memories of reading 'Worm', a seed from a foreign being, and a triggered shard capable of hiding it from all precogs in the world?
This will be a fun time indeed.
—
Alexander was a normal person, relatively speaking. Sure, he couldn't feel guilt at all, and was quite aware that he has zero respect for the so-called sanctity of life, but he never acted on it, the consequences of being caught too heavy to outweigh his idle curiosity on how taking a life feels.
Aside from that though, he hardly had any problems. A relatively handsome face and well-kept body, a decent job, a positive attitude to life. Considering how many people were depressed, or had anxiety, or whatever, you could even say he was doing better than most mentally speaking.
Sadly, he had one small issue. His memory was pretty bad, in all ways except one; for some unknown reason. He had a very acute memory of how he feels physically. Very useful in the short term, of course. Being able to remember and identify small differences made it very easy to pick out any manifesting conditions. The issue came to the long term. Living for decades and slowly feeling your body get worse and worse is something everyone has to live with, but he can distinctly remember just how good he felt back in his younger years. Spending every single day remembering himself in his young years with no physical issues, no painful strains, no annoying body hair, no stabbing aches? It was not easy, and if not for his attitude in life, he would probably have one of the worst cases of body dysmorphia around.
Still, positive attitude or not, the issue was still a strain that loomed in his head, the one constant companion.
The companion that was apparently brutally murdered last night, because Alexander woke up feeling better than ever, as if he was twelve again, except even better than that since he felt full of energy, his body acting as if it was at 110%.
Opening his eyes he looks around in a daze, small tears forming in his eyes at the relief he was feeling. He expected himself to only have a decade before his body got bad enough that he had enough.
Still, priorities must be kept.
Right now, he is not in his body any more. If the feeling itself did not tell him as much, then looking down and seeing himself as a nude pre-teen flanked by two bodies and blood cemented that fact pretty well. Interestingly, the location of the blood made it look like some of it should have come from him, but there looks to be no wound on his body, in fact, not even a single scar is present, or mole, or freckle...alright, Alexander admits that this body is amazing.
Looking at the other two bodies, an adult man and woman, he idly wonders if they were the parents of the bodies original owner, but doesn't dwell on the thought. Instead, he looks around the room and finds himself in what he assumes was his bedroom, if the superhero duvet cover is to be of any indication, even if he doesn't really know what superhero that is supposed to be. Maybe from some new TV show, not like he pays attention to them.
Stepping outside his room he finds himself in a corridor, with the bathroom right beside his room, which is convenient since that was his next destination. Stepping inside, he looks at himself in the mirror and is not particularly sure what to think. Like the rest of his body, his face is also fully devoid of any other marking like freckles or moles, but aside from that it is quite plain looking. Not ugly, but nothing special either. Shame about the freckles, would have made him look a bit cuter.
Apparently, his body agreed, because before his very eyes he sees a smattering of freckles appear across his upper cheeks and the bridge of his nose.
I am not the type to freak out, especially since waking up in another body already topped my weird chart, so freckles-on-demand are not going to be my breaking point. That said, if he does have FoD, it makes him wonder what else he can do.
And just like that he is on the ground, his mouth open in a scream but no sound escaping his lips as he gets the mother of all headaches. He was slammed with a baseball bat to the head before, but he might as well have been gently caressed with a feather when being compared to this.
Just like the pain began suddenly, it also ended suddenly, with Alex laying on the ground, sweating, and apparently knowing how to shape shift his entire body, as well as make himself a blind spot to precognition.
The former seems to require biomass to work with, and apparently it's also constantly keeping me in top shape, so I will be eating a lot more than the average twelve year-old, that is for certain. The latter seems to be a mental switch? No, more like a volume knob, sliding how hidden I want to be from showing nothing to showing everything.
The better question is what exactly is precognition. I mean, the term is familiar, Alex was an avid reader and came across it more than once, but it is best to know the specifics of whatever he was immune to. Probably.
Standing up, he gives in the urge to stretch, despite not actually needing to it since his body is amazing apparently. Still, watching his lovely body stretch in the mirror does wonders towards improving his mood even further. Ah, how he loved it when he was twelve in the past, enjoying bodily pleasures with none of the annoying parts. Libido decreasing was already a bummer, but hair removal gave a damper on his enthusiasm as well. Thankfully, he can fuck and be fucked as much as he wants now, especially with that regeneration power of his.
Looking back at himself in the mirror, he considers using his power to make himself cuter, but probably best wait with that till he has more of bearing on his surroundings.
Alex returns to his room and looks at the two bodies, idly wondering if it was a joint suicide? But why would he be undressed for that. Though, looking around, he can't see any clothes lying around. Maybe he slept in the nude, they came in before he got dressed and things played out that way? Whatever, let's see about consuming that biomass.
Placing a hand on the woman's body, he wills his power to consume it, and watches in morbid curiosity as his entire arm splits in half, rows of shredder teeth lining the inside while multiple tongue-like tentacles latch onto the body and drag it into himself as the arm slowly closes with it, the teeth shredding the meal and somehow the mass of flesh ends up absorbed without any changes in his body volume, his arm now to normal.
Alex blinks in brief confusion, wondering if he was taking it so well because his natural attitude came into play, or did becoming a flesh-shifting monstrosity prevent him from feeling negative towards stuff like this. Probably both.
Well, he can figure out how this works later. Idly absorbing the other body, the arm choosing a similar but not identical method of consuming it, Alex decides to snoop around the house looking for a computer, and manages to find one at the other end of the corridor in the study. It is idle, but unlocked, so his presumed-parents demise was likely unplanned.
Looking at the date, he does a double take. August 13th, 2010? Either he time travelled to the past or is in an alternate world, and considering his powers, the latter seems more likely.
Without further ado, he opens up a browser and starts searching. The Latest news, top news, countries, cities, history, geography, religion. Within barely ten minutes he already knows what is going on, but spending an hour or so more skimming through things confirms it. He is in the world of Worm.
Fuck.
It's a dangerous world from a web series he read, and most importantly, it's a series he didn't finish. The last thing he remembers is Eidolon getting killed by Scion, and the situation seemed pretty damn lost. Sure, he doubts the series would end in a total loss, but without any idea how the protagonist pulls a win, he can only be guessing, and considering the unlikely series of events that brought it all around, it is safe to say that they won't get a repeat anyway. He will have to figure out how to stop Scion, or maybe running into another world, but whatever shard power shuttles him away is also gonna guarantee that Scion can get that world anyway.
Speaking of which, how come he has two powers? If it was similar then sure, but precog blind spot, henceforth just blindspot, and whatever his bullshit flesh powers can be called, are so very distinct that they can't be related. Two shards? No, pretty sure that's impossible. Maybe. Hackjob was a thing but Bonesaw shouldn't be around, and he really hopes there isn't another cape capable of such bullshit.
Something else then, probably and hopefully. Well, he did reincarnate here, maybe whatever bored entity put him here decided to give him an extra boon. Bored Being maybe, Entity is reserved for the worms now, I guess.
Well, whatever, apparently he is in Brockton Bay, and for some reason he rather distinctly remembers that Taylor triggers in January 2011, so that gives him a couple months time. The idea of stopping the bullying now doesn't really register in his mind. Sure, in a vacuum scenario he probably would stop it, but she is a known important factor, he won't let his non-existent morals decide to form just to fuck him over.
Back on point, couple months to set himself up well enough that taking in Taylor would be easy. No letting her fight Lung and thus leading to a series of events that would lead to whole ton of fuckery. Sure, shame that he misses out in Imp triggering during the leviathan attack, her power would be delicious and fits right up his alley, but ah well, can't win them all.
Wait.
Alex pauses his idle searching on the computer and tracks back on his musings. He might not be the most methodical person in the world, but his conscious thoughts shouldn't be that far out of wack. Why did he consider Imps power to be delicious? Everything else held true, but delicious? He was positive it's not a train of thought he would have made so idly.
Shard fuckery? Both operate similarly, one masking from pre cogs and the other masking from peoples attention in general, but no, nothing in worm had this line of thinking between similar powers.
So his other power? If nothing else, it has shown the ability to consume people for biomass. Can it consume more than just that? If it consumes a body of a para human, can it consume the shard too? But those things were on different earths, only lending their power to their host. So can he hijack the connection by consuming the para human?
A memory of a red planet flashes across his mind, endless writhing tentacles reaching out for something. The memory is gone, but this cements it. His other ability has some mental influence on him, because while he is smart, it took him way too little time and even less leaps between thoughts to arrive at such a concrete conclusion, one followed by a memory that is not his, a memory that implies that his power can grow to consume a planet. And shards just so happen to reside on different planet earths.
It seems that ending Scion became a lot more reasonable of an option.