AN: TRIGGER WARNING; GRAPHIC DEATH SCENE DESCRIPTION

CH. 1

DEATH

I can't tell you how many stories I read where a person from our world ended up in the Marvel universe. I enjoyed most of them, found some to be a bit Mary Sue-ish but overall, the perfect mix of angst and awesome that I had wanted, full of adventure with my favorite character.

Then I died and woke up in the MCU.

Gotta say I would give that a 1/10 experience.

The dying, very painful and I probably have PTSD from it. Death itself was actually very kind when I finally passed on, far more compassionate than most human depictions that I had seen, and he was a sweet relief after the agony that made up my slow passing.

Let me tell you, dying, much less being disemboweled isn't like in the movies, there is nothing quick about it. After 3 days I was quite glad to kick it.

Turns out we pulled the classic, 'wasn't your time to die' routine. Apparently, according to Death, my mother had put a curse on me so that if I ever deployed to the middle east, I would be killed, and then she could dig herself out of debt and make a new cushy life for herself with my life insurance. The joke is on her because I had taken her out of my will before I deployed. Because I volunteered to take someone else's place knowing that there was a high potential for our convoy to be attacked, it was enough of a self-sacrificial act on my part, and an abomination against the fates on my mother's part that the Fates decided to (give her the middle finger- I mean) give me a new life. Death kindly escorted me to my new incarnation, and I was born.

Now, I didn't realize that I had been born into the MCU at first.

I just thought that I had been born into a parallel universe that mirrored my own before I was killed. As a 90's baby, I had a lot of déjà vu going on growing up.

I might have also used my amazing hacking skills to create a false identity around the age of 5 and start investing in Apple, Google, YouTube, Amazon, coin, whatever came into existence that I knew was going to make it big.

I graduated high school by ten and started college by 11. Bit of a nasty shock for my parents when I emancipated myself from them at the tender age of 11 and didn't talk to them again.

As an adult being raised by adults there are just some things you shouldn't understand about the people raising you and to know that they didn't really care for you or love you is one of them. But enough about my issues.

Overall, I thought I was in a parallel universe where things were just a bit different. I remember seeing in the news that Tony Stark was a 'thing.' I didn't give it much thought, just supposed that someone (cough*Robert Downy Jr.*cough) might be reveling in the part or something. Seeing the Iron Man suit fly past at some point put a real dampener on things considering I was still in denial about the whole MCU kinda thing because that would be pretty crazy if it was real.

I mean come on! It. Was. A. MOVIE.

NOT

REAL!

The Chitari invasion (I lived in New York at the time) quickly got rid of that denial problem I had going, and I had to sit down and face the facts. Apparently, the Fates were enjoying flipping me the middle finger as well, to do something so impossible as put me in a made-up universe that I was now questioning my sanity and the past 24 years.

Oddly enough, I was not born with superpowers or super smarts, I just happened to have eerily good luck about 90% of the time, future knowledge of the stock market that made me crazy rich, and the propensity to learn quickly as well as the stubbornness needed to learn as much as I have.

I mean, I was 49 mentally from both lives, rich, and with a lot of downtime, so I guess it shouldn't have such a surprise for me to get bored and acquire skills like they were going out of style. Try a few languages, hacking programs, martial arts forms, parkour, etc, not to mention all the other skills that were leftover from my previous life-like weapons training, piloting, and shooting skills.

Boredem will do that to you.

Whatever the case, for a measly human with no enhancements, I was decked out enough, skill-wise, to be a part of the coming battles if I so chose like the Black Widow or something.

However, despite all this, I was 24 years old again in body and still had night terrors about getting blown to bits in the mountains of Afghanistan and being left for dead by insurgents.

I remembered them returning every day to see if I had died yet so they could show their victory over the American troops.

They always muttered angrily when I weakly flipped them the bird, but they left me be, probably deciding that a slow death was best for an asshole like me.

It was also probably because there was no reason I should have survived as long as I had, the grizzled sight of what was left of me enough to give grown men bad dreams and they didn't want to get near me, not even to shoot me and make it short.

But that's beside the point. The main point was I intimately knew what it was like to go through the process of dying a horrific and slow death. As much as Death and I were cool with one another, I was not too keen on the process of going to see him again. I didn't want to die again until I was old and gray and then I wanted someone to make it short and sweet for me.

So, that being said, the MOMENT that I realized what was up, I packed my bags and got the hell out of dodge, moving as far out of the way as Canada. Avengers weren't good for the lifespan and I didn't want to try my luck.

The move itself wasn't too bad. I made a couple of close friends that would come over and hang out, we would get into shenanigans and have a great time.

Did I mention that in my previous life I was a prolific artist with mad skills?

No? Well, this is how my carefully laid plans to keep out of it got blown to bits.

Being rich and all, I could afford to get an iPad pro with the apple pencil and one of my dreams in my old life was fulfilled by me being able to create fine and digital art professionally.

And boy, did I draw.

I could make all these cool effects too, using a mixture of the art software Photoshop CS, Paint tool Sai, etc. Being disconnected from what was going on with the Avengers I wasn't paying attention to the timeline which turned out to be a fatal mistake.

Making fanart to put on your account is just fine. Except I didn't even know that the account existed because my friend Lisa was putting my art out without my knowledge. Apparently, me saying that 'my art wasn't good enough to go on the web' didn't have the effect I was hoping and she seemed even more determined to put it out there just to show me much later how many favs and follows and likes I got from it all.

My face turned ashen when she proudly showed me the Marvel Fanart that was now out for the whole world, only to pause on her favorite, the Black Panther.

I almost passed out seeing that.

Putting out art of Superheroes that are still in hiding is a big no-no and we had not heard of a bombing at the UN summit meaning that the Wakandans were still hiding their civilization's advancement and the Black Panther.

"You need to go," I hissed as I raced around the house grabbing my bolt bags, my breath coming hard and fast. Lisa reeled back as if struck.

"B-but why?! Mori?! What's g-"

"You've put us in danger, and you need to get out of here before it's too late! When did you put that on the internet?!" I yelled as I scrambled for my keys and the keys to one of my cars.

"A-A day ago?" she stuttered in bewilderment as I shoved a bag in her arms cursing wildly at the news.

"Leave. NOW!" I yelled as I shoved her out the front door, my own bags in tow as I locked the door and ran to my favorite car. She ran to her own ride and hopped in driving off as I filled the trunk swiftly and moved to the driver's side. Just as I was pulling out the drive I saw a sleek black car pull onto the wide private street. Going slow so as not to give myself away I drove off in the opposite direction. When far enough away I hit a button and the driver's license flipped revealing a new one and the color of the car changed. Then I hit the highway and hit the gas.

Too bad I didn't see the kimoyo bead on the bottom of the car.