AN: I don't love doing crossovers, but I thought Worm deserved a visit from the widely acclaimed strongest hero on earth.

ooOoo

The space between dimensions was dark and quiet. Peaceful. I hadn't expected the process to take so long. It was nice to have a moment to contemplate everything that had gone wrong to bring me to this point. A moment to come to terms with my upcoming demise.

It all started with the prerelease copy of Doki Doki Sisters 2: Hearts Aflutter. Well, no. If I'm honest, it all started when I allowed the Hero Association to name me King. When I let them give me the credit for the monsters killed by somebody else. Looking back on it, it seems like an obvious mistake for an ordinary guy with no special powers to let himself be known far and wide as an S-class hero, but it did come with a nice salary. And people really looked up to me. On some level I knew it would end in tears eventually, but I took things day by day and just tried to enjoy the ride. I never thought that something as innocent as a dating simulator would prove to be my undoing.

Somehow the company that made the game had discovered that I was a fan. It was embarrassing, but on the bright side they had decided to show their appreciation for all of my heroic work by sending me a copy of the latest version of the game weeks before it would be made available to the public. Not having a copy of my address, they sent it to me care of the Hero Association. Which meant I had to go to the Hero Association building to pick it up.

The Hero Association was a beautiful building. It wasn't that far from my apartment. The people there all liked me. The problem was that they all thought I was the kind of hero who was eager to get into fights. The kind of hero who would jump at the chance to fight off a monster attack. When I was out on my own I could just ignore my cell phone when they tried to call me in. When I was face to face with the person giving the message I couldn't just pretend I didn't know what was going on. I would have to come up with some excuse for why the monster wasn't worth my time. Eventually somebody would have to notice that I never actually fought any monsters.

Still, life is always a matter of risk and reward. I took my chances and made the trip to the building to secure my prize. It was just my luck that I was in the middle of signing for the package when they made their great scientific breakthrough. I could hardly run away from a summons that had been delivered in person. Besides, I didn't realize there was anything special going on until I showed up at the meeting room and saw that it was filled with S-class heroes.

I dealt with my sense of impending dread the way that I always do. I ignored it. I spent most of the meeting daydreaming about going home and firing up my new game, but I got the gist of it: our world had been experiencing a noticeable increase in monster attacks. They were happening more and the monsters were more powerful. Hero Association scientists had traced the source of the monsters to another dimension. They had a machine that could build a path between dimensions, but it was finicky. The dimensional planes would align to allow two heroes to travel to the monster dimension later that afternoon. The next opportunity to build a path, to either travel to the monster dimension or to retrieve the team, would be in two weeks.

Tatsumaki insisted that she would be part of any expeditionary team. It was at that moment that my daydreaming would cost me everything. The thing is, Tatsumaki, the tornado of terror, is an amazingly powerful esper. She looks like a harmless teenage girl, but she had more than earned her spot as the Hero Association #2 with her sheer destructive potential. Unfortunately, the only thing that can match her strength and skill with telekinesis is her abrasive personality. The prospect of spending two weeks partnered with her had everybody else at the table making their excuses for why they couldn't go. I didn't say anything because I wasn't paying attention and the idea took hold: who better to pair with the powerful telekinetic than King, the strongest man on earth?

And so, inevitably, I was now on a trip to a world full of monsters. I could have gotten out of it, of course. All I would have had to do was to tell the truth. To admit to the lies I had told. To accept the humiliation of being discovered as an S-class fraud. In the end, I couldn't do it. They say the fear of embarrassment is worse than the fear of death. I guess for me it was true. Or maybe I was tired of being afraid of death and embarrassment all the time and I just wanted it to end. I couldn't say for sure. I did ask the scientists to send me through first. If I was going to die a really pathetic death against the first monster to attack me I at least didn't want Tatsumaki to see it.

Now, waiting in the quiet darkness between worlds, I could see that this was the latest in a string of foolish decisions. I had allowed my pride to overrule my common sense over and over again. Tatsumaki was a ludicrously strong hero. Even on a world of monsters, it was entirely possible that I could hide behind her for two weeks and survive. Surely my life was worth a little embarrassment? I suppose in the end, I never really made a principled decision between death and humiliation. When humiliation was close, I did what I could to avoid it; now, with death looming, survival was the only thing on my mind. I was hardly better than a child snatching his hand away from a hot stove.

I was drawn from my thoughts when the blackness was replaced with a rush of sight and sounds. Whatever I was expecting from a dimension full of monsters, this wasn't it. It looked like a city. A human city. A dirty human city. I had appeared in an alleyway at nighttime. A streetlight on the corner provided enough illumination for me to make out the shape of the overflowing dumpster to my right. I could also just see a human figure standing on the sidewalk by the entrance to the alley.

I blinked. The scene in front of me didn't change. Neither did the smell. Was this even a different dimension? I decided there was only one way to find out. I took a few steps toward the mouth of the alley.

"Excuse me."

"What the fuck!"

He obviously hadn't heard me approaching. When he spun around to face me I could see he had the sort of hardened features I associated with career criminals. I was starting to regret my decision to talk to him, but there was no going back now.

"Where am I?"

He smiled, then drew a gun from his waistband. "You're in the wrong place at the wrong time, motherfucker. Now hand over your wallet."

I froze.

One thing more than any other has helped maintain my facade as a powerful hero. When I'm terrified, when I'm scared out of my mind, my eyes don't widen. My face doesn't go pale. Instead, my features always freeze into a blank expression. The only outward sign of my fear was the beating of my heart, which was loud enough to be heard from yards away. Back home, they called it the "King Engine," and took it as a sign of my eagerness for battle.

"You retarded or something? Give. me. your. money."

This guy clearly had no idea who I was. He just saw a normal man, terrified at the sight of a gun. What an ironic way to die. After being given credit for killing so many terrible monsters, all that it took to bring me down was one thug who wasn't afraid. I should have been cursing at the stupidity of the situation, but I was frozen in place by my own fear.

"Motherfucker, I will shoot you in the face if you don't-urk!"

The end of his sentence was cut off as the gun went flying out of his hand and the man was sent sideways by an invisible force, crashing into the alley wall. He was held there, pinned in place with his arms and legs spread out to the side. I was still staring in shock as Tatsumaki floated up next to me and put her hand on my shoulder.

"Calm down, King. He can't answer questions if you splatter him all over the alley."

I blinked. It took me a moment to pull my thoughts together and realize what had happened. Tatsumaki had assumed that I was in the throes of bloodlust and had intervened before I could kill the hapless mugger. She had saved my life, but of course I couldn't thank her for it. Not trusting my voice, I gave her a simple nod.

"This doesn't look like a monster dimension," she said, before turning to the man she had pinned to the wall. "Where are we?"

"Brockton Bay."

She looked at me. I shrugged, not recognizing the city name any more than she did. She turned back to continue her interrogation.

"Where is the Hero Association?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

I could see Tatsumaki's shoulders hunch in anger. I had to fight the instinctive urge to take a step away. It had been a long time since anybody had been dumb enough to be so disrespectful to the Hero Association's #2 S-rank right to her face. I half-expected her to crush the guy right there, but her response was more restrained. The gun that she had taken from him floated back into view, then began to visibly deform. In moments it was nothing more than a mangled lump of metal.

"Try again."

"Look, I don't, I mean," the man stuttered, all his bravado gone, "you mean the PRT? The cape cops?"

"I suppose."

"They're at the Rig! Out on the water, you can't miss it. The ferry station is just a few blocks that way."

"Very well."

Tatsumaki released her hold on the man. He fell to the ground, crashing to his hands and knees. She turned and floated off in the direction he had indicated. I made to follow her, but stopped when I heard him speak.

"That's it? You're just going to walk away?"

I gave him my best glare. "Don't spit on our kindness."

Physically, we were in much the same situation as before. He didn't have a gun, but it hardly mattered. I'm not a very strong guy. I've never even been in a real fight. If he attacked me with a knife, or with his bare hands, the outcome was hardly in doubt. Tatsumaki, confident in my abilities, wouldn't intervene even if she did notice an attack on me.

Psychologically, of course, it was a different story. His entire will to fight had deserted him. He scrambled to his feet with a muttered apology before running away from us as fast as his legs would take him. I shook my head. I was still mentally out of sorts myself, to be honest. Intimidating a street punk was one thing, but I doubted it would be so easy to put one over on the local heroes.

ooOoo