Lucien didn't sleep much. Too many ghosts of his past waited in the dark mirage of his dreams. They wailed and howled for attention he didn't want to give. So, sleep was a rare occurence.

It made his full nights rest stick out like a sore thumb. Or like the gaping wound he once had in his neck.

He got up with a violent gasp, feeling for the wound— looking for the giant mangy black dog that he assumed came back to finish him off.

It was nowhere to be found.

And he was nowhere he recognized.

"What the hell is this?"

He lay in an alley. But it wasn't the one he prepared to succumb to his wounds in. There was no comicbook store at his back. The old issues he had stacked at his side like some childish memorial were nowhere to be found.

Instead, he was stuck in the dark corridors created between a coffee shop and some sort of tech company— if the suited men smelling like aftershave and circuit wires said anything as they walked by in a rush.

The sun was high but hidden behind a sheet of fluffy clouds. Mid-day if he still had a semblance of his old life's training.

He stayed on the ground. The last thing you wanted to do in an uncertain situation— where you may be gravely wounded, is get up and run around.

"I mightve hallucinated. Wouldn't be the first time. Maybe the dog bit me on the leg. Please be the bad leg. Let's amputate the stiff fucker." Lucien lay still, flexing each muscle and slightly moving every joint.

When his physical check was complete, he was left confused again.

"No injuries. Actually— I feel great. And still, I don't recognize where I am."

He tried to orient himself the best ways he knew to in a city enviroment.

Iconography, branding, physical characteristics of the people and enviroment.

"It's warm despite the steady snowfall. I could be in shock. That would explain my heightened senses. I can smell the amount of pepper in the eggs being served in a breakfast sandwich across the street. This is a basic downtown metropolitan district. Just not mine. Not Chicago, that's for sure."

Lucien looked up the brick walls of the tech building across from him and found the spray painting of two arrows on the wall. One red and one green.

"I have no idea what that is….. but I'm ok— at least physically from what I can tell. It's time to move."

Lucien got to his feet. His head spun and his stomach growled violently, highlighting his intense hunger. A hunger so gripping it almost pulled him from his plans and sent him running after the squirrels in the trees just outside of the alley.

He focused himself and exited the alley.

The streets were rife with activity. He could smell a sort of Central Park styled forest enclosure a few miles north. Deeper into the city.

"I smell people too— cologne and perfume…. Like an aftertaste but for smell. I'll make my way there. It's probably a tourist attraction, meaning a lot of storefronts and directional material will be nearby. I can get properly oriented there."

Lucien approached the crosswalk, nearly jumping out of his skin as a mechanical scream shook his skull.

After a few seconds, he looked up from gripping his ears and saw the city bus at the end of the block approaching. Steam spun from the exhaust pipes as it stopped and took on another batch of people at a stop.

"Shock wouldn't make my senses this acute….." Lucien turned to the woman standing beside him. She blushed as she looked him up and down. "You're….. pregnant. Why can I smell that?"

The bus came to a stop at the light in front of him. He met his reflection then and had to take a triple take.

Before waking up in the new alley— in the new city, he was as he always knew himself. The grumpy old washed-up vagrant tired of living. A life of hard work and violence left him grizzled, scarred and shifty.

Now, he was his young self again. He looked like he did back in his college days when he was the star wide receiver on his football team. Thick black hair that split down the middle and hung down past his ears. Cold grey eyes, tanned skin and a long nose. It was straight— as if he never broke it.

He didn't slouch anymore so he truly looked six and a half feet tall. He didn't look to be on his homeless diet of tuna and day old breads anymore either. He wasn't rail thin and haggard. He was dense. His shoulders pushed the threads of his black t-shirt to the limit. He could see his bicep veins through the fabric.

It was then that he noticed he was the only person not wearing a coat in the snow.

Just his black shirt, blue jeans and boots. He didn't even have anything in his pockets.

The bus hissed again as the doors closed. He groaned but stopped himself from curling up into a ball of pain for the sake of the public.

Instead, he continued trying to orient himself.

As he watched the bus go, he found himself reading over the signage on the back.

"Star City Metro…."

As if he didn't suddenly— instantly, put a few pieces together and figure out his circumstances, more evidence came in the form of a rooftop chase.

They moved faster than any humans he'd seen move. And he'd been all over the world.

The one doing the chasing wore a velvet red cape and kings crown. He wore a clock mask and belt and shoulder pads and wielded a clock shield.

DC supervillains had a tendency to look campy. Especially the low brow ones like..

"Clock King." Lucien and eight other bystanders said aloud.

Ahead of him, a hooded archer in green flipped and rolled across the rooftop steel jungle as he fired explosive arrows back at the feral tyrant of time.

Lucien squinted. As if his focused senses would tweak the world and bring him back to reality. As if he hadn't died and gone to DC.

It was so jarring.

Seeing characters from the comics he read his whole life for real. Flesh and bone instead of ink and imagination.

"Clock King looks more rugged than I would've imagined…" Lucien thought.

The villain was covered in cuts and his clocks were cracked partially revealing the face beneath.

"Did he always have red eyes and f—"

Green Arrow jumped off the rooftop and fired a rapel arrow at the next building, allowing him to swing around the city from hundreds of feet above ground.

Clock King jumped after him. As he fell, he exploded into a cloud of blood-red smoke. From the spirals and steam, a wild eyed bat chased Green Arrow.

Suddenly the smell of death was so thick on the air it made Lucien sneeze.

"Something isn't right. This isn't just any DC universe. It's... awe hell, what's it called? This isn't the mainline universe. It's an elseworld. An alternate universe.Yea, that's it. I'm in an elseworld. Somehow. That's just my luck. Lucien Lamb, at the ripe age of fifty-six, I get bitten by a rabid mastiff in the ghettos of Chicago. Instead of going to heaven…. Or simply hell, I end up in a superpowered world that seems to be having a Vampire issue. I hate vampires— I hate death, I hate addiction. I'm irritated. And I smell another one."

Suddenly the air changed.

He could only describe it as a tightening sensation that forced him to spin around snarling just in time to see a dark specter in the tech building window aiming a loaded bow at him.

The figure fired.

Lucien's reflexes forced him to catch the arrow.

The specter didn't seem phased.

"Green Arrow's enemies— Star City villains….. cmon, I really wish I was a bigger fan now. Brick? No, he doesn't use arrows. Star-City slayer preferred knives. Deathstroke? No. I got it. Dark-archer. Merlyn."

The figure lifted a hand and pressed a button.

It was then that Lucien realized he was smelling napalm in the arrowhead.

His vision was taken over by a flash of blazing white heat.

Not his first IED, but it was defintely the most intense. When his ears stopped ringing, the screams of the wounded was enough to deafen him completely. He laid in the street, smashed into a cars windshield, all around him people scrambled and crawled for safety.

He tried his best to ignore the smell of charred flesh and something sickly sweet in the air that made his legs shake.

"Fear."

A fuzzy haze took over his brain.

"It's a good smell isn't it? It drives those like us— makes us even stronger. We can sense that they're beneath us. The same way I can sense that you're like me. Like us. That's a problem. Our plans don't account for... allies."

"I don't remember you having telepathy." Lucien mumbled as he crawled out of the bashed in windshield, "I don't remember being able to walk away from bombs to the face either."

"It seems we're all due for a bit of change. For me, immortal life. And you? Death."

Lucien spun around with his hands raised and blocked a sword slash with his forearms. The stinging burn of the cut was fading by the time he went on the offensive and front kicked the assassin.

At least that was the plan.

Merlyn side stepped the kick and hit him in the chest with an airial spin kick.

He flew back into the car he just jumped off of, denting the door with his mass.

"Merlyn is an extremely talented martial artist. Better than Green Arrow in almost every way with more years of experience and a higher kill count. Now he's also…. A Vampire based on that eye glow and smell. But I'm different too." Lucien assumed as he watched his wounds heal at inhuman speeds. "Let's see how different."

Merlyn raised his katana and charged.

Lucien grabbed the car door and stood. As he rose, he ripped the door off the hinges and threw it.

The metal door flew faster than human eyes could follow and slammed into the assassin.

It should've smashed him into a paste against the breakfast shop across the street, but Lucien knew otherwise as purple-red smoke flowed from the other side.

A bat flew from the dust and rubble of the thrown door— now lodged in the wall of the breakfast shop.

Lucien considered throwing another when the bat transformed back into Merlyn with his bow drawn.

"Shit!" He turned and ran back into the alley at speeds he didn't know possible.

As strong as he felt— as much as he wanted to rip the vampire to pieces, he wasn't a psychopath. Their fight would kill more people. People who did nothing but be born in the wrong place. He could sympathize.

So, he ran.

Merlyn carpet bombed the alley with explosive arrows.

They would've reached Lucien if he didn't dive to the side and burst through a window. He rolled to his feet inside a yoga studio full of old people in hiding.

He kept running and charged through the far wall, ending up on the streets leading to the center of the city.

The bat followed. Transforming back and forth to taunt and attack in the ways he saw most effective.

Lucien kept running, surprised that he wasn't tiring even as he ran beside cars pushing well past sixty miles per hour.

"It's not fitting of your kind to run. Turn and fight." Merlyn hissed.

"Get out of my head." Lucien veered off the road, stumbling as a bola wrapped his legs and snapped.

He didn't even bother hitting the sidewalk and leapt from the street, landing on an apartment buildings fire escape. He climbed it to the roof and began jumping buildings like a child on a playground. Only he wasn't a child and his city playground was crawling with vampires, archers and supervilllains.

And despite his newfound strength, he wasn't faster than a legendary martial artist vampire.

Merlyn divebombed, slamming him into the cement rooftop grounds so hard they cracked. Black claws burst through his gloves and cut into Lucien's throat, reminding him of the dog bite as his flow of oxygen was violently altered. He could still smell the hideous rot.

"Maybe you weren't as impressive as I thought... I don't think I'll even report you to our lord. You're a weak mutt."

"And you smell like shit." Lucien snarled.

"Mmm…. Your rage is palpable, feral man. Why?"

Lucien snarled— the inhuman noise unfurled from his throat like fire. His muscles bulged beneath his tanned skin. The hair on his arms and sideburns thickened and his own set of claws extended.

"Why….?" Merlyn pressed.

"I didn't live. I died without living. I died like a dog and my second chance is living in a fucking children's book made into a nightmare. I didn't even last a day. I want a day. I want the day. I want women. I want money. I want power….. I want freedom! I want—"

Six arrows sank into the side of Merlyn's body. Immediately they burst into flame. The vampire hissed and took off screaming.

Lucien burst to his feet, rattled by his revelation and the shift of his genes. He was even faster— even stronger. Born again a second time.

This time he didn't stop to check for injuries.

He pounced on Merlyn, pinning him to the ground from behind with his giant hands that were beginning to look like paws.

"Can you hear me, Merlyn?"

The vampire screamed.

"Can you read my thoughts still? I'm thinking about what I was going to say. I was going to say, I want to rip you in half."

Lucien lifted the burning flailing vampire and grabbed him by the shoulders. With a swift tug, he tore the vampire in two.

The creature hit the ground as ash and smoke.

He soaked up the silence. Just him, the wind and booming flow of his blood. His hunger climbed. His rage did the same— now that he knew he had it. It was almost deafening.

Then his nose reminded him there was another. He smelled like prescription pills and cheap cologne.

"So it's Vampires….AND Werewolves? I need a raise IMMEDIATELY."

Lucien turned and found his savior crouched on the next rooftop over.

He loaded his next arrow, eyes focused within his red hood.

"You a good guy?"

"….. I don't know."