To the traditional — nearly mandatory — dank and dingy alley, beset by the smell of the sea, and of the chinese place down the street.

The alley does have one redeeming quality: it is currently empty, and therefore a good place to come to grips with sudden translocation.

It was empty, and now there is a teenage boy in it. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, that kind of lanky vibe that denotes a recent final growth spurt, very Italian facial features, dressed in flannel pajamas.

Andrea is currently too panicked to even scream, and when he fully takes in the dingy alleyway, thinks better of screaming because in some places you do not want attention. Like shady alleys in unfamiliar places. Hyperventilating seems a much safer way to panic.

It didn’t feel like they were drugged and brought here, there was no fade to black, no gap in memories. Just suddenly from one moment to the next they were in one place, and now are in another. It’s jarring and scary and it takes a while before the mental error messages slow down enough for them to think.

Suddenly going from being comfy in a warm bed at home where they are safe to being in a much colder strange alleyway is a perfectly normal thing to be freaked out about, and it takes them a while to get their breathing under control again.

Being exposed and alone in an spooky unfamiliar alley in just pajamas seems not safe. He will find a doorway to hide in for at least a little cover while he calms down. Maybe poke his head out the alley to see if the street looks safer.

Does he want to be good at blending in to his surroundings? Or maybe have an intuitive sense of whether areas are dangerous?

The questions come as a faint sensation on the edge of his mind, along with a feeling that neither accepting nor rejecting the offers will harm him. They're just ... options, for things that he could do now that he wasn't able to do before.

Nobody comes into the alley to see his pajama-clad form.

The cold, on the other hand, does start to make itself known as his adrenaline fades. The humid air wicks heat away from him with surprising alacrity.

It’s supposed to be summer, why is it so bloody cold! Also why can he smell the sea, he’s familiar with the smell of the ocean from vacations. Andrea’s poor toes feel cold even when the AC is on, much less in cold coastal air, so they feel freezing already. He regrets being too macho to buy slippers.

Where the fuck even is he?

The new sensations are very obvious to someone who is always constantly self policing his thoughts and feelings as a tool against intrusive depressive thoughts.

What the fuck are these? Normally he would be a bit more paranoid about unfamiliar feelings but a danger sense sounds very useful and good right now, because the adrenaline from the earlier panic is still very much there and is influencing his thoughts. He’s noticed the adrenaline is doing that, but just because he knows he normally would think differently that doesn’t actually change how he’s feeling right now about wanting danger sense.

When he decides that the danger sense sounds useful, a dim spark blooms somewhere within him. And now it is obvious that this alleyway is slightly more dangerous than the street, but the street is still pretty dangerous. The inside of the touristy café diagonally across the street is noticeably safer.

Does he want to be able to emit heat? Or maybe be more resistant to cold?

Okay wow, entirely new senses are wild. Andrea probably has actual brain damage because this is so far beyond what is possible for a dream. Not that he ever really considered this being a dream likely, he never feels emotions or physical sensations very strongly in dreams, and his feet are SO COLD.

Cafe! That’ll have normal and probably safe people, and a phone. Gosh the idea of going inside where people will see him while dressed in pajamas is anxiety inducing. The danger sense is making the choice between embarrassment and safety pretty easy though.

Maybe he wont mess with weird brain stuff right this second, the danger sense is weird enough.

Time to scoot towards the cafe, being very careful where he puts his bare feet, the street itself looks poorly maintained and loose road gravel is pointy!

Andrea notices the parked cars are facing the wrong way as he walks, theres only like 3 countries or something that drive on the wrong side of the road. Based on the vibes, the english signage, and the cold… Is he in America? How the fuck did he get in America? Okay, save that anxiety for when they are indoors in the cafe.

The bell on the door chimes as he opens it, a gust of warm air blowing past him. The server behind the counter doesn't look up, because she's counting pumps of syrup. The customer waiting for his excessively sugary drink does, and then double-takes when he sees what Andrea is wearing.

The little tables along the left-hand side of the shop are slightly safer than the area near the counter. The area by the door and window are slightly less safe.

"Hey kid, are you alright?" he asks, in a heavy Bostonian accent, which may or may not be one Andrea recognizes.

That prompts the barista to look up, but she doesn't say anything for the moment, although her eyes are wary.

Scoot over to the tables, just in case.

Andrea did some high school in the Midwest, the American accent is infectious, like a cancer, his accent parses as mostly American with a hint of Aussie.

Even in a dangerous and scary situation, speaking to strangers still somehow manages to make him feel anxious. What the fuck, brain, cut that out.

”Is… is this America? I uhhh… I don’t know how I got here, and it’s way colder than than its supposed to be, and the cars…” He’s getting a little rambly, but what the fuck is he supposed to say in a situation like this!

Oh! Well, that's a different thing entirely, isn't it.

The barista moves over to an old corded landline phone near the back wall of the store and dials a short number before beginning to speak softly into the handset.

The man with the bad taste in coffee leans against the counter, rather than approach Andrea when he's so visibly twitchy.

"Yup, this is America all right," he agrees. "Brockton Bay, on the East coast. Where are you from, kid?"

Oh America, what the fuck, how did he get to America? Maybe now is a better and safer place to have that panic attack. Because how could he go from in bed at home to an entirely different continent with no loss in continuity of consciousness, in the same pair of pajamas! If he was kidnapped he doubts he’d just wake up in a random alley in the same clothes.

Then the next thing the man at the counter says finally parses in Andrea’s mind.

Brockton bay? Like… the definitely not real and fictional city Brockton bay? Like from the story Worm Brockton bay? Doomed to be almost destroyed by horrible alien constructs and superpowered terrorists Brockton bay?

Oh he’s fucked, he’s dead, he might as well die right now. Literal fates worse than death are everywhere in the Worm universe. Maybe he heard wrong? Please, any amount of hope is something to cling to.

He’s trying not to hyperventilate so hard he passes out. “D-did you say Brockton bay?… like.. the city with the PRT in it? Lung? Kaiser? That Brockton bay?” He says in the tiniest most wavering voice. Tears are actively being fought back.

The man gives him a sympathetic look.

"Yup. That's the one," he agrees. "I wouldn't exactly want to visit either, but I had to come up North for a job. Damn plant zombies."

It seems to occur to him that this is probably not very reassuring.

"... but hey, it's alright. I'm sure we can get you back home. The news makes things here look worse than they are, I think."

Yeah, no, home is a universe away. Andrea’s family probably doesn’t even exist in this universe, and it wouldn’t be his family, they’d be strangers to him. Australia on earth Bet isn’t even all that much safer a place to be than here. The Simurgh attacks Canberra right? And then the Golden Morning is going to happen sometime… when? Oh god it could be soon!

He can’t tell the man he comes from a world where this universe is from a work of fiction. But there’s a lie that’s…. Close enough.

”I don’t think I can go home… I-I’m from… from earth Aleph…” That’s close enough to true. He doesn’t even feel too bad about that lie and he really hates lying to people, more than is reasonable.

He’s in Worm where the world is going to end across an entire multiverse, and the city is he is in has multiple doomsday events leading up to that. He is a whole universe away from home, from safety, from his dog. He cares more about never seeing his dog again than his family, he is going to miss Pancake so much, at least until he dies horribly on this deathworld of a setting.

Oh… the hyperventilating is getting rather bad, his vision is swimming. Andrea is going to collapse against the wall. He passes out.

When he comes to, it's to a cool cloth on his forehead and the sound of coffee percolating.

"... just said that you should stay here."

    "But I've got to get down to —"

"I know! I'm just telling you what the dispatcher said."

... and the sound of a quiet argument between the man and the barista. The shop's "open" sign has been flipped to "closed".

The adrenaline has broken down significantly after passing out, into all its awful byproducts. Andrea feels like warmed over garbage. He’s never had a panic attack so bad he passed out before, and somehow it feels even worse than the aftermath of a regular one. Why do brains have to be so bad, why are hormones like this.

He sits up with a groan. Yep, still in the coffee shop, being in Worm was real. Either that or he has severe brain damage. But it’s like simulation theory, you have to treat the world as if it was real even if it wasn’t. 

“Fuck….” He feels too emotionally worn out to even feel angry about his situation.

Does he want to be better at regaining an emotional equilibrium?

There's a sound like a motorcycle making the legally mandated minimum amount of street noise (for pedestrian safety) coming to a stop and parking itself. And then a chime from the shop bell as a man in blue power armor opens the door.

The area around him is ... strange. Both much safer and much less safe than the rest of the shop, in a complex pattern that continuously shifts with his movements.

He pulls a pale blue cylinder from a hatch on his leg, and waves it around the shop in a sequence of slow sweeping motions, frowning at whatever feedback this action provides him.

Ugh, Armsmaster. Colin. He’s such a prick in canon, and barely better in most fanfic. Armsmaster in canon reads like the kind of autistic who never put any effort into learning how people worked or into learning about themselves, and the result is a very familiar kind of selfish asshole to Andrea. Andrea might be a similar kind of antisocial autist but he at least bothered to learn the basics of humans, to introspect enough that they could at least guess at what behaviours would be harmful before doing them, learned empathy was better than none at all. As socially unaware as Andrea is, Armsmaster’s scenes in the story were enough to make even him cringe, it was like looking back at himself when he was 11 and was basically a sociopath. Even out of pure selfish self interest you should still learn how to not be a dick.

He hopes there’s someone else from the PRT or Protectorate around to talk to. Seriously director Piggot should never let that man interact with people without a handler. He wonders if Armsmaster has fucked things up with Taylor yet, when he loses the Protectorate one of the most powerful capes in the setting to villainy, simply because he couldn’t stop from being a dick to a traumatised kid.

Well, if he’s still Armsmaster, that’s pre Leviathan attack right? Doesn’t he rebrand shortly afterwards? It’s been a long time since Andrea read canon Worm so he is not sure. So he has some years to be alive before the world ends at least.

Andrea is not touching a power that messes with his emotions with a 20 foot pole. Especially a Worm-verse power. Using master powers on himself is a terrible Idea.

Armmaster is probably going to talk to him… and he has a physical reaction based lie detector… You know what? Hey weird mystery feelings offering powers, do you have anything for controlling reactions? Not giving away anything to the lie detector seems very useful right now. His life is screwed enough that he’s willing to poke the new mental stuff as long as its not something that will be fucking with his thoughts. The paranoia is still there, but existential despair is a good enough motivation to help him get over that.

Another spark blooms into being within him in response to his thoughts. Andrea becomes much more aware of the small movements his body is making, and feels as though they should be easy to control, restrain, or exaggerate.

There's also the faint sense that it really is here to help.

Apparently satisfied, Armsmaster returns his tube to his thigh compartment.

"There is no sign of airborne pathogens," he declares to the two adults. "You may wish to get a more thorough screening at the hospital," he adds, with the barely concealed subtext that a second opinion is unnecessary when the first opinion is his.

He walks over toward Andrea and stands looking down at him.

"You're awake," he pronounces.

“Had a bad panic attack when I realised where I was. Never passed out from one before.“ He feels like he has to explain himself. Like passing out was somehow a failure on his part. He at least notices those feelings and knows that’s stupid and he should try to ignore that feeling.

And now Andrea has to police his body as much as he already polices his own mind. Ugh. Okay, he should tone down his reactions in general, he already feels numb anyway, and stick to the truth where possible.

Armsmaster frowns again, his response fractionally delayed.

"You say you're from Earth Aleph?" he questions. "I can detect some residual spatial flux, but it's faint."

The unspoken implication that he doubts Andrea's story is once more painfully loud to anyone with functional social skills.

“I appeared in the alley across the way if that helps, near the dumpster. One moment I was in bed, in Brisbane Australia, where it is summer, and then suddenly here, in the cold, by the sea, apparently in north America. No transition, no split second of something happening, just instant. No blacking out, no gaps in my memories, still in the same pajamas. I’m pretty sure Brockton bay doesn’t even exist on my earth! And Kyushu sure does!” Voice getting a little hysterical as he goes on, and those were all perfectly true statements.

Armsmaster nods.

"I'll examine the alley next. Remain here."

With surprisingly quiet steps for someone wearing power armor, he makes his way back out of the café.

The man scoffs and grabs his coffee from the counter. He glances over at Andrea.

"I have to go, kid. But you're in good hands with the Protectorate," he says.

The shop bell chimes again as he ducks out and makes his way down the street to a red pickup truck.