David Alleyne had been awake for three hours.
Not because he was nervous.
At least, that was what he kept telling himself.
He wasn't nervous.
Nervous implied that there was something specific to be nervous about.
David didn't have anything specific.
He had everything.
He stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, eyes burning from lack of sleep, and tried to convince his brain that four in the morning was an unreasonable time to be thinking about the Multiversal Peace Academy.
His brain disagreed.
It had been disagreeing for hours.
The school itself wasn't what bothered him.
He'd spent years around superheroes. He'd fought beside them. Trained with them. Learned from them. Worked alongside people who could bend reality, punch through buildings, turn into animals, manipulate energy, and occasionally make decisions that David was fairly certain should have required adult supervision.
He was used to the impossible.
Mostly.
The problem was that the MPA wasn't just another team.
It wasn't another mission.
It wasn't another training facility.
It was a school.
A school full of people from different universes.
Which meant different histories.
Different sciences.
Different technologies.
Different fighting styles.
Different languages.
Different cultures.
Different versions of things David already knew.
And David's brain had never been particularly good at looking at a piece of information and simply leaving it alone.
His ability had always been complicated.
He could absorb knowledge and skills from the people around him. It was useful. Incredibly useful, sometimes.
It was also exhausting.
Most people could meet someone new and think, Oh, they're good at archery.
David could meet someone good at archery and suddenly understand the mechanics of their stance, the way they compensated for wind, how they calculated distance, how they adjusted their grip, and exactly what muscles they were using.
Usually.
Sometimes it was quieter than that.
Sometimes it was just a strange little click in his mind.
A fact.
A skill.
A memory of something he'd never actually experienced.
He'd gotten good at handling it.
He had to.
But he'd never been surrounded by hundreds of strangers from entirely different universes before.
What happened if everyone at MPA brought something with them that his brain could absorb?
What happened if he couldn't turn it off?
YOU ARE READING
Between Worlds
FanfictionYoung heroes from across the Marvel and DC universes are brought together at the Multiversal Peace Academy, an experimental school built to foster cooperation between worlds. Between classes, training, friendships, rivalries, and the occasional mult...
