#/and he dies in the end -> gets transported to the system dimension -> is revived by the system

[conflictofthemind]

Can we Please Re-Open the Petergate?

Ever since learning about Petergate in its entirety, it has been breaking my brain. There’s obviously something incredibly important happening here, enough so that it has to be hidden until the final season of the season.

For those not in the know, Sam Owens has / had a son named Peter that was first name dropped in Season 4. For some reason, the military wants his old schoolwork as evidence in the investigation of the Chrissy murder in Hawkins.

We also pretty much know that Peter is dead. The way Owens acts around Will in Season 2 as the only scientist who is actually determined to save his life, and the implications he makes that he understands the plight of Joyce both heavily imply he has lost a child. This also adds a layer to the whole ‘taking away your son’s precious school projects’ if that son is dead and those are some of the only memories you have left.

Okay so: Sam Owens lost a child, which explains his character motivations in the show. But it’s not quite interesting just ending it there, is it? And why leave this to be seemingly be a reveal in the fifth season where we already have so much else to take care of? Would Sam Owens’ son dying really be that impactful towards the narrative? Would that warrant the copious amounts of references (at least seven just in season 4) to Peter that exist within the show and are still coming out even in recent ST5 BTS pictures?

Something about Peter Owens has to be crucial information in the fight against Vecna.

Let us also remember that those military agents took Peter Owens’ schoolwork as some kind of evidence in relation to the Henry Creel murders, and it was important enough to highlight to the audience.

Let’s go over some facts:

1) Sam Owens has a house in Ruth, Nevada where he lives with his wife. Population irl of only a few hundred people.

2) Henry Creel lived in Rachel Nevada which uh didn’t exist in the 50s during his childhood where he encountered:

3) The Nevada Experiment. Henry happens upon related equipment and is briefly transported into Dimension X before coming back with powers and an altered personality.

4) In TFS, Henry is mentioned to have put a classmate from Nevada in a wheelchair following the events of his trip to Dimension X.

5) Henry was in the care of different doctors before he met Dr. Brenner and moved to Hawkins.

We curiously get no more explanation on this matter; whatever happened in Nevada is probably some of the most crucial information and is thus saved for Season 5. We’ve already gotten most answers that are relevant to Henry’s backstory in Hawkins… but not for Nevada.

Some of the major questions for S5 include:

1) What is Dimension X?

2) What is the actual origin of the Mindflayer and is it an independent sentient being?

3) How did Henry develop powers while in Dimension X?

4) What was the Nevada Experiment and the original Project Rainbow?

Since the military took Peter Owens’ schoolwork as evidence… it means Peter is at least connected in some way to this mystery, if not directly to Henry and probably implies the two knew each-other and were even classmates who worked on projects together.

Here’s the basis of what I propose (to be expanded upon later of course):

Henry and Peter were classmates in their youth fairly likely at this point. Henry and Peter were working together on a project that had them investigating the Nevada cave system. Or perhaps something relating to Area 51 / secret US government stuff. The project has to be relevant evidence since the military took it. This is what led to Henry stumbling upon the dimensional equipment in the cave that transported him to Dimension X.

My question is - what if Peter was also involved in Henry’s disappearance? Maybe he disappeared with him, and this was covered up by the government. Or he was simply exposed to the event but didn’t get transported with Henry, just became severely ill because of this Dimension X virus, and died as a result.

Or maybe Peter was meant to disappear as part of Brenner’s Project Nevada experiment. They didn’t plan for Henry to be there as well, and sure didn’t plan for him to be taken. The whole “rogue staff member stealing the equipment and hiding it inside a cave where Henry just happens upon it I guess” has been weird for a while. Maybe Peter was actually older and involved with P. Nevada, and he was the rogue staff member who hid the equipment? But then how did Henry conveniently get there and why was the schoolwork taken.

I don’t want to make this post too long; but something about this gives me major Will and El parallels in a way I can’t really illustrate quite yet. Boy gets taken under suspicious circumstances that could imply HNL meddling, but this time the supernatural kid is able to save him and bring him back. Owens becomes interested by this and comes to study Will in S2.

Owens also mentions that he has risked his family’s lives for the sake of their research, which I feel is relevant here. He’s talking about the current day NINA Project… but it could of course be a reference to the fact that this happened before, and ended in tragedy.

So wow, that got long! I didn’t even get to mention the Fringe parallels that people have brought up. This is just going to be Part 1 into my investigation of Petergate.

There’s so much promise in this potential storyline that I think really needs to get investigated, so I hope this interested people regardless of whether or not they’ve already come across Petergate. The fact that Henry’s time in Nevada is such a major gap in his backstory really fascinates me as to what they’re hiding from us.

[justice-forever]

Nighthawk By Green-Mamba

Real Name: Kyle Richmond

First Appearance: The Avengers #69 (October 1969)

Orphaned as a child by in a racially motivated drive-by shooting, Kyle Richmond vowed to dedicate his life to stamping out white supremacy. Undergoing rigorous physical training and using his inheritance to craft an array of weapons and vehicles, Richmond became the Nighthawk, the vengeance against all who would prey on the disenfranchised.

The most controversial recruit of Hyperion's Squadron Supreme, Richmond had at first been a proponent of the Utopia Project, as he believed it was the best way to bring about the systemic change the world needed.

But when it came to forcibly reprogramming people, Richmond saw the potential it had to be used as a tool of oppression, and he left the Squadron a fugitive.

Joining together a group of like minded individuals who sought to put an end to the Utopia Project, their fight became a perilous one as the natural disasters caused by the untethering of their world with their counter-Earth worsened.

On the day of the alignment, when it was believed the two Earths would cross each other's paths in space, Richmond's redeemers intended to use the cover of the worsening earthquakes to take back the Squadron Supreme's headquarters, but fate took a different turn.

Expecting to find the halls empty as the Squadron was busy dealing with the latest natural disasters, Richmond instead found a bearded wizard in a red cloak battling to contain a giant man with green skin.

Wary of potential collateral damage, Richmond tried to intervene in their conflict before the sorcerer's dimensional mirror spell was shattered by the green goliath.

When he came to, Richmond did not find himself in the Squadron's headquarters, instead in the sorcerer's sanctum--on the counter-Earth.

It seems the sorcerer, who called himself Doctor Strange, was attempting to help the green man, called Bruce Banner, contain his anger in a phase shifted dimension, but they had accidentally ended up in the respective counter-Earth in doing so due to the alignment.

Richmond explained himself and the dire situation of his counter-Earth.

But with the alignment now passed and the unusual circumstances of the transportation not known, Richmond was now stuck in a different world as his slowly died, trapped under the tyrannical heel of the Squadron Supreme.

As Strange tries to help Nighthawk figure out a way back to his counter-Earth, Nighthawk joins his nascent Defenders team alongside the Hulk after learning that the Avengers had been hunting the green giant down for deserting them, which makes Nighthawk see the Avengers as little better than the Squadron Supreme.

Yep, another Squadron Supreme member.

Obviously if you're going to do a second one after Hyperion it has to be Nighthawk, the Squadron Supreme's answer to Batman.

But Nighthawk is a funny one--there are like at least four Nighthawks, all named Kyle Richmond, who have all had a prominent role in the Marvel comics at some point.

There is the original Squadron Sinister one who later became a hero and joined the Defenders, there is the actual proper Squadron Supreme one who lead the redeemers against them (and later died, passing his mantle to his son), there is the Supreme Power one who was a black man fighting against racists, and then there is the modern one from Mephisto's Squadron Supreme.

I decided to merge the first three together, he's a black man who fights against racists who joins the Squadron Supreme but ends up fighting against them with the redeemers and then ends up joining Doctor Strange's Defenders.

But that meant there was a lot to get through in the bio! I hope I hit all the main points.

So Nighthawk is actually the first person from Counter-Earth to cross over to the mainline Earth (as the Squadron Supreme is from Counter-Earth in my universe).

And if you're keeping track, my Defenders roster is Doctor Strange, Valkyrie, Hellcat, Nighthawk, and Hulk. This is the entire starting roster, if you're wondering.

Maybe I'll draw them all together in the future. I dunno.

But yeah. I think the two most well known looks for Nighthawk are the original Defenders' era's Nighthawk and the Supreme Power's Nighthawk.

So I tried to combine the two looks while also trying to make him look as much like Batman in silhouette as I could.

So he's got the dark blue with the yellow bird emblem and the wing like red cape of the original (plus the extendable claws!), as well as the scale armor and scary goggles of the Supreme Power's Nighthawk.

The added little "ears" on the side of the goggles help give him more of a Batman like silhouette, and yeah, I know hawks don't have points like that on their head, it makes him look more like an owl.

But that's okay.

The bird emblem took the longest to design, I originally tried to get it to look closer to his classic emblem but it just wasn't working out, so I took inspiration from Nightwing's emblem, what with the whole Batman connection.

And like I said with Hyperion, the Squadron Supreme are designed to look inherently less grounded than my normal Marvel designs, to help sell them apart.

[mastermegatron]

Two weeks later…

Bent over a holoscreen of schematics, Megatron can sense that his alternate is pleasantly surprised he's actually capable of intelligent conversation, and more so, that he is able to contribute options for his dilemma. Reining in the urge to roll his optics, he focuses on the task at hand. “Mm. So how much of a power drain do you experience on short range jumps - say within one universe?”

The other gestures to a data table. “A terribly significant one that requires a week to two weeks to recharge the engines.”

Straightening to his full height, he turns his gaze to the gray frame. “And my ability to easily transcend dimensional boundaries when I want, nearly limitlessly, is your ultimate goal?”

“Precisely. A ship similar to this one had much stronger engines, though it experienced similar issues with energy expenditures to be able to jump. Therefore, the issue is not the size of the engine but rather the power source.” Megatron feels as his counterpart eyes him from the corner of his optic. “Your armor is powerful enough to allow this?”

“Ah - personal conversation. I believe it’s time for drinks.” Having found the bar aboard the ship during his last stay, Megatron opens a dimension gate to its location, sparing them a long walk. 

Once in the bar, the gate closes behind them. Not particularly thirsty, the other opts for a booth while he fixes a pitcher of some sort of engex concoction. Megatron joins him a moment later, two glasses in hand. Setting everything down on the table, he takes a seat across from him.

“When I travel, I’m not trying to move an entire ship,” he answers, pouring himself a glass. 

“You never transported anything larger than yourself?”

He sips his engex casually. “I pulled an entire planet through once to get back at someone.”

“An entire planet. At what cost?”

“In regard to energy, none. In regard to the war, that was the day I lost it. Seems it was a bit different for you,” he gestures to the Autobot brand on the other’s chest.

“Bumblebee showed me a better way. He died shortly after. It’s his brand I wear.”

“A bug showed you a better way?”

Red optics narrow. “Before the war, I was a miner who wrote of peaceful dissent from an oppressive government system that determined our lot in life - and how long we lived - in accordance with alt mode and usefulness. My intention in the beginning was never to resort to violence - but that changed. Bumblebee reminded me of who I was, what I had stood for. And at the time, it was necessary to stop Shockwave from unleashing a singularity that would have destroyed the entirety of the universe.”

“Interesting. So you founded the Decepticons?”

“Was that not the case in your universe?”

“Oh no, factionism predates me by millions of years. Where I’m from, the moment you come online, you’re one or the other. Trying to change is nearly impossible without risking death - it might as well be woven into our CNA.”

“You speak of it as though it’s more than just a symbol.”

“It is. We’re programmed. I can only speak for Decepticon programming; how it’s virus-like and vampiric. I used to be able to give it. It mimicked a bond of sorts. I could sense the whereabouts and distress of my soldiers.” He takes another swallow. “There’s only a handful of success stories in terms of dissenters.”

“Fascinating. It was your government that decided this?”

Megatron laughs. “No, our gods. War was never fought to end government corruption. The Decepticons merely grew tired of sharing Cybertron with the Autobots and rose up to conquer it. An eternal conflict between both sides was the will of the gods - they interfered to keep it going. It’s almost fantastic to believe, really. Our war was a necessity meant to keep the balance of the universe. Good and evil have to exist otherwise the entirety of the multiverse would collapse.”

“Considering I do not believe in gods, it is hard to believe.” His counterpart reaches for the pitcher then, pouring himself a drink.

“How long did your war last?”

“Four million years. Yours?”

“Ten million.”

“You’re certainly the most unique in terms of alternates I have met, paint job and all.”

“Mm. Is that a compliment, sweetspark?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Finishing his glass, Megatron pours himself another. Resting his chin on a fist, he smiles cheekily at the other. “These other Megatrons you have met then, what were they like? Certainly nowhere near as powerful as I.”

“None were remarkable enough to really leave an impression or a desire for me to make nice. Most were other versions of myself - and most wished to…” he hesitates, gesturing vaguely.

“Fuck?” he finishes for him.

“Yes.”

“Your politeness is cute.”

Megatron watches as he rolls his optics and takes a swallow of engex. Red optics regard him curiously. “You shamelessly flirt with me as though you have the same intentions.”

He laughs. “I don’t want to fuck you.”

“I suppose that’s a relief, then. I find the whole notion of engaging in such relations with other versions of myself repulsive.”

“We may call each other ‘alternate’ to avoid the awkwardness of a shared name, but that’s where it ends. I’m not you and you’re certainly not me.”

“Have you been with other Megatrons?”

“No.”

His counterpart leans forward, granting him a half-smile as he slides his hand forward just enough to brush his knuckles. “And if one flirted back?”

Teal optics gleam with playful excitement. “I don’t think you have it in you.”

[veilchenjaeger]

Shen Qingqiu really went from dying in front of his computer because he ate expired food to dying in the wreckage of an apocalypse-in-progress to save his beloved from being entirely consumed by the evil demonic energy that had slowly been corroding his mind. Poetic cinema.

[dragonsandwolvesohmy]

More Lost Fics

I've noticed a theme of finding something once I ask for help, so here I am. With another lost fic. (I think this one might've been taken down???)

Here's the breakdown;

Tim is running from invading aliens/figures and their tracking not quite bear creature abomination. He's alone- the rest of the batfam has died/disappeared- and he ends up cornered in a building. He manages to take out the bear creature, but at a cost, he's won't be able to escape the invading force for long. He manages to hide in a ventilation system, and uses 'the last resort'. Some time previous (told or flashback) Bruce and Tim were on the run, Bruce gave him the device/button, telling him to use it as a last resort type thing before they were separated. (I think Bruce sacrificed himself for Tim to get away?) The device transports Tim dimensions or takes him back in time. (Thought it was dimension travel, but idk anymore. I no longer trust my own mind) Either way, Tim ends up with Batfam once more.

I FOUND IT!!! I FOUND, I FOUND IT, I FOUND IT!!!!!!

It wasn't Tim, but Dick who was the Robin in the fic! And the bear like creature isn't actually described as bear like, it's described as being as big as a bear. Long story short- the missing fic is World's Apart by Fernandidilly_yo.

Idk if it was the same fic, but Tim might've had a dissociative episode and it really upset young Jason, who said something along the lines of 'Tim's not even here?' Might've been another fic, though. (because I lose them as quickly as I read them, it seems.

This one has been found by the amazing, fabulous spinlyrightround. It's 'birds fly in every direction' by distracted_dragon. (who's got a name I really love)

(Also missing this one-shot; Bruce time travels, ends up in Drake Manor when Tim's a wee baby and can't resist holding his son. It's all very soft and fluff- I myself found this one after a five hour search. It's 'In My Arms' by lurkinglurkerwholurks. (who's name I hope I got right.))

[longitudinalwaveme]

Arkham Files: Mirror Master I (Samuel Joseph Scudder)

Hugo Strange: From the patient files of Dr. Hugo Strange, director of Arkham Asylum. Patient: Samuel Joseph Scudder, also known as the Mirror Master. The patient displays a number of antisocial and narcissistic tendencies, and clearly has a nicotine addiction, but no formal diagnosis has ever been given to him, and since he, like the rest of the so-called “Rogues”, arrived at Arkham only a few days ago, I have not had the time to give him a complete psychological examination. Session One. So, Mr. Scudder, how are you today?

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of cigarette smoke) For suddenly having been sent a thousand miles away from home? Not bad, I suppose. 

Hugo Strange: Yes, I can see how that would be stressful. Believe me, having suddenly gained over a dozen new patients in one fell swoop is not an ideal situation for me, either. 

Mirror Master: Don’t sweat it, Doctor. I’ll be out of here in a few days anyway. 

Hugo Strange: I very much doubt that, Mr. Scudder. Arkham Asylum’s security has been improved considerably since the days of the unfortunate Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. 

Mirror Master: It doesn’t matter how good the security is, Doctor. The prison hasn’t been built yet that can keep me locked up. 

Hugo Strange: You are not a metahuman, Mr. Scudder. As long as we do not allow you undue access to technology, you will not be able to effect one of the fantastic escapes for which you are so well known. 

Mirror Master: (Blows a puff of smoke) You a betting man, Doctor? 

Hugo Strange: Not particularly, Mr. Scudder.

Mirror Master: Too bad. I was going to bet you that I’d be out of this joint in a week or less. 

Hugo Strange: If those are the terms of your ‘bet’, then I might be willing to relax my standards on betting. In the parlance of gambling, my victory will be a “sure thing”. 

Mirror Master: So, do we have a bet, doctor? 

Hugo Strange: Do we not need to, ah, set the terms for victory first? 

Mirror Master: You’re right. If I win, well...I’m out of prison, and you have to acknowledge that I can beat your supposedly impervious security system. 

Hugo Strange: And if I win, you will make no more escape attempts and will attend psychological sessions with me regularly. 

Mirror Master: It’s a bet. (The two shake hands) 

Hugo Strange: Now that that is out of the way, Mr. Scudder, I would like to make it clear that Arkham Asylum is not a prison. It is a mental hospital; a place of psychological healing. 

Mirror Master: Then why am I here? I’m perfectly sane. 

Hugo Strange: You call yourself the “Mirror Master” and commit crimes whilst wearing a hideous orange-and-green leotard. If that isn’t a sign of emotional disturbance, I do not know what is. 

Mirror Master: It’s a costume, Doctor. You know, like the ones actors wear while putting on a show? If they’re not insane, then neither am I. 

Hugo Strange: The two situations are not at all synonymous, Mr. Scudder. Crime is not a performance. 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) The crimes aren’t the performance, Doctor. I commited crimes a long time before I put on the costume. The performance is being the Mirror Master. 

Hugo Strange: Ordinary criminals do not turn their crimes into elaborate performances, Mr. Scudder. 

Mirror Master: And that, my dear Doctor, is what separates the criminals...from the supervillains. 

Hugo Strange: So, in your mind, the crimes you commit as the Mirror Master, with the silly costume and the incredible technology, they aren’t for money? 

Mirror Master: Well, the money’s nice...but the real fun of being the Mirror Master is the challenge. Matching wits with the Flash, outwitting security, getting my name in the papers-that’s the real reason I became the Mirror Master. If I’d just wanted to get rich, I could’ve done that easily. 

Hugo Strange: Yes, I was just about to mention that. Your records indicate that, among other things, you have invented or discovered an alternate dimension known as the Mirror Realm, which enables you to teleport between locations, mirrors that can hold people’s reflections, a 3D printer that makes perfect mirror images of people, hypnotic technology that works over long distances, a mirror that predicts the future, a mirror that lets you switch your legs with other people’s legs, a number of laser weapons, some sort of flying car, a mirror-powered jet pack, a mirror that allows you to shrink and enlarge yourself and other people, mirrors that create a wide variety of fantastical illusions, a weapon that turns people into glass, a weapon that reverses the way that the brain perceived the world, guns that can transform stolen jewelry into light beams (and back again) for the purposes of easy transport, and a weapon that distorts people’s bodies. 

Mirror Master: (Blows out a puff of smoke) I’m a man of many talents, Doctor. 

Hugo Strange: Obviously. What’s more, when you arrived here, we administered a number of psychological and intelligence tests to you, and the results were remarkable. 

Mirror Master: How so? 

Hugo Strange: In spite of the fact that your records indicate that you never graduated from high school, your overall intelligence score was somewhere around 174. In other words, Mr. Scudder...you are a genius. 

 Mirror Master: (Whistles) Well, I always knew I was smart...but I’ve gotta admit, I didn’t realize I was that smart. 

Hugo Strange: Mr. Scudder, you are, quite bluntly, one of the most astonishing scientists of our generation. You could easily have made yourself rich and famous legitimately. 

Mirror Master: Yeah, well, here’s the thing, Doctor. By the time I made those discoveries, I was already a convict. People don’t exactly line up to hire liquor store robbers from Skid Row, even if they are geniuses. Besides, why should I try to help science and society? What did they ever do for me, except put me behind bars? 

Hugo Strange: After you had robbed a liquor store, Mr. Scudder.

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) In case you haven’t figured it out, Doctor, I’m not a very good person. 

Hugo Strange: No, Mr. Scudder, you are not a good man...but you are also a very sick man, and it is my duty to help you. 

Mirror Master: What do you mean, I’m sick? 

Hugo Strange: By your own testimony, you dress up in costume and commit crimes as though it’s some sort of grand performance. You have repeatedly ignored opportunities to make money legitimately, and even your crimes focus more on showmanship than on actually making a profit. In fact, the only times your crimes show a profit requisite to the amount of effort you put into committing them are when you are working alongside the other so-called Rogues, which, I suspect, is largely attributable to the fact that Mr. Leonard Snart puts some effort into keeping your idiosyncrasies in check when you work together. All of this suggests that you are emotionally disturbed, Mr. Scudder. 

Mirror Master: So I’m dramatic. That hardly makes me a candidate for a rubber room, Doctor. 

Hugo Strange: I’m afraid I would have to disagree, Mr. Scudder. And I am the medical professional here. (Pause) So, Mr. Scudder, I repeat: why the costume? Mirror Master: I told you already. It’s part of the performance. 

Hugo Strange: And your decision to wear this costume had nothing whatsoever to do with the costumed vigilante who runs around Central City? 

Mirror Master: What, you mean the Flash? He really didn’t have much to do with it. I put on the costume before I ever met him. He makes commiting crimes more fun, but I would’ve become the Mirror Master regardless of whether there was a Speedster around to fight. 

Hugo Strange: So the Flash did not inspire the Mirror Master? 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) No. 

Hugo Strange: Then what, exactly, inspired you to put on the spandex leotard? 

Mirror Master: Well, you’ve gotta admit it’s memorable. 

Hugo Strange: I suppose so. 

Mirror Master: But in all seriousness, I was a big fan of JSA comic books as a kid. I always thought their costumes were pretty cool; if anything inspired my costume; it was theirs. 

Hugo Strange: So the Mirror Master was inspired by the so-called Mystery Men of the 1940s and 1950s? 

Mirror Master: Yeah. Let me tell you, if anyone understood showmanship, it was the JSA. Those guys were my heroes.

Hugo Strange: In that case, is it not counterintuitive that you became a supervillain? I was under the impression that the JSA comics presented those vigilantes as unambiguous heroes. 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) You know, I never really thought about it like that before. 

Hugo Strange: Then allow me to posit my own theory. (Strange pulls out Mirror Master’s file, papers rustle as he does so) According to your files, you were born to Percival and Martha Scudder. Your father died of cancer when you were only seven months old, and his medical bills consumed all of your parents’ money. As a result, your mother was forced to move with you to a glorified tenement building on the spot where Morrow Street and Baker Street met. The area was colloquially known as “Skid Row”, and poverty, crime, and drug addiction were rampant. Your mother, a seamstress, had to work long hours just to make ends meet, so you were often left at home alone. You and your mother never had enough clothes or enough to eat. When you were six years old, your next-door neighbor was murdered in a violent drug dispute; you were at home to hear the gunshot. When you were eight, you witnessed a violent brawl that ended in a man being sent to the hospital; when you were twelve, you watched another neighbor die of a drug overdose. 

Mirror Master: (Obviously uncomfortable) Can we please stop talking about this? 

Hugo Strange: Mr. Scudder, until you acknowledge what happened to you, you cannot make progress. 

Mirror Master: I do acknowledge what happened! I know Skid Row was a crappy place to grow up; I’m not pretending it wasn’t! But that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it! 

Hugo Strange: Mr. Scudder, I understand your discomfort, but unless we talk about what happened to you, I will not be able to help you. (Pause) To continue: As a boy, you were very close to a young girl named Jennifer Conners, who lived in the apartment across from yours. Her father, a minister at a local church, soon became like a father to you. He even served as your Scoutmaster. You were a Boy Scout, Mr. Scudder. You even earned the title of Eagle Scout when you were fourteen. That’s highly irregular for a costumed criminal.

Mirror Master: (Trying to change the subject) Yeah, well, I’ve always been extraordinary. 

Hugo Strange: That is not the point, Mr. Scudder. The point is, until you were sixteen years old, you were a remarkably well-behaved child in spite of your dreadful environment. You got good grades, you loved comics about so-called superheroes, you were a Boy Scout-you were not a juvenile delinquent in any sense of the word. What changed, Mr. Scudder? 

Mirror Master: (Angry) Why do you need me to tell you? Isn’t it in my files? 

Hugo Strange: It is, but I think it is important that you admit it, Mr. Scudder. 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) Fine! What changed was that I watched Mr. Conners get shot right in front of me! (Blows another puff of smoke) He was the best man I knew, and it still didn’t stop him from getting murdered by one of the Candy Man’s drug dealers. 

Hugo Strange: The...Candy Man? 

Mirror Master: Jack Monteleone. (Blows puff of smoke) He controls Central City’s drug empire. 

Hugo Strange: I see. So, your beloved father figure was killed in front of you. I’d imagine that produced a great deal of anxiety. 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) No duh, Sherlock. 

Hugo Strange: As such, you decided to start self-medicating with alcohol and cigarettes. Eventually, this got you mixed up with the party crowd at your school. Your grades slipped rapidly, and, by the time you were seventeen, you had dropped out of school and run away from home so that you could better feed your addictions. You committed a number of petty crimes before robbing a local liquor store at the age of 19, whereupon you were sent to prison. While serving your sentence, you discovered the Mirror Realm, and upon your release, you became the Mirror Master. 

Mirror Master: (Blows puff of smoke) So, how exactly does my life story prove that I’m crazy? 

Hugo Strange: Mr. Scudder, you are not “crazy”. What you are, however, is a child living a fantasy life. You used to self-medicate with alcohol; now you deal with your trauma by putting on a mask and playing an elaborate game of cops and robbers with your city’s scarlet-clad vigilante. By becoming this “Mirror Master”, you are reenacting the comic book stories that you loved as a child. You may be a warped reflection of the JSA, but you have nevertheless created a world for yourself where good and evil are simple and clear-cut and no one will ever really get hurt. And the Flash is enabling your fantasy. 

Mirror Master: (Blows a puff of smoke) Or-and here’s a novel concept-I do it because I like money and attention. 

Hugo Strange: Nothing is ever that simple, Mr. Scudder. 

Mirror Master: (Blows a puff of smoke) I’m really looking forward to watching you have to eat your words when I escape, Doctor. 

Hugo Strange: And when you fail to escape, I will look forward to helping you deal with your nicotine addiction, Mr. Scudder. Regardless, I think that it is time for this session to come to an end. We have covered enough ground for one day. 

[melon-wing]

The Void [Gren]

[Fanfiction Masterlist]

Ren really enjoyed the company of their newest member on the server. Grian was overall a nice addition. He was so open with all of them and spread fun everywhere he went. Sure, Ren had been on the receiving end of quite a few pranks, but he really didn’t mind that much.

There was a quiet noise and he looked at his communicator, putting his shovel to the side.

Grian fell into the void.

Ren winced. Again? Now that he thought about it… How many times had it been this week? He knew Sahara needed an ungodly amount of Shulkerboxes, but why send Grian, when he was so unlucky?

And not just this week. Since they had cleared the path to the other dimension that same message of Grian dying had come up again and again

The first time he had seen the message pop up on his communicator, he hadn’t been bothered at all. A lot of Hermits had managed to fall into the voids if their Elytra broke, they went out of rockets or just simply lost orientation. Or in the beginning when they needed to bridge over the endless nothingness.

But this? This was getting weird. It was as if Grian fell into it every time he went to the end. And it worried Ren. Falling into the void wasn’t a quick and painless death. It hurt like hell and it took really long.

<Ren> You alright, G-man? Need any help?

It took Grian a while to respond and Ren could just envision it: Grian lying on his back, being still a little out of it from respawning.

<Grian> I’m fine. I just miscalculated the landing.

<Ren> Need some help to get your stuff back? I can help you grind a bit.

Ren waited. The answer took unusually long. it had just been a nice offer since Ren knew how much it sucked, falling into the void and losing everything. Finally, there was a beep and Ren already got up, expecting to be called away to help.

<Grian> It’s fine. I had most of my stuff in my Enderchest already. That was really lucky.

Ren raised an eyebrow at that. Hadn’t Grian also said that to Mumbo a few days ago… Ren was pretty sure he had heard this a couple of times already. Now the question was, did Grian make that up as an excuse so nobody needed to help him or did he really put all his stuff away because he was so prone to dying.

<Ren> Alright! Maybe we should go to the End together next time. Then I can make sure you won’t fall! You really should take part in the buddy system we got going on.

There was no reply this time and Ren sighed. Grian always went to the end alone, declining every offer for help. Heck, even Doc in the middle of their Civil War had offered to accompany Grian when they had run into each other at the End portal.

If Ren ever met Grian at that portal, he swore he would make sure to stick to his side no matter what Grian said.

Weeks passed and Ren grew more and more worried. Sure, Grian was completely normal and healthy, but the constant deaths in the End still kept going, sometimes more often and sometimes few and far in between. And Ren was pretty sure that Grian didn’t even go to the End when there was a long time of him not dying in the void.

They had been getting closer and closer during the season and Ren had seen Grian fly around, easily landing on a tiny block mid air at almost full speed. This wasn’t a person who would miscalculate a landing or run out of rockets at the wrong time. Grian was too graceful for that, too good.

Ren looked at Grian through the flames of the campfire, his flower crown slightly crooked, but a bright smile on his lips. And Ren couldn’t help but smile as well when Grian looked at him, eyes sparkling.

“Well, thanks for this lovely evening Ren”, Grian said, a slight blush on his cheeks as he got up. “We really should do it again soon. But I really need to go now. Sahara needs a ton of Shulkers again and Mumbo and Iskall are busy with the redstone and-”

Grian stopped when Ren suddenly grabbed his hand, keeping him from moving away.

“Don’t.”

“Ren, what…?”

“Don’t go into the End. Or don’t go alone. You can’t… I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’m worried. All this dying can’t be good for your health.”

Grian smiled. A sad smile and he gently tore his hand from Ren’s grasp.

“I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”

“But-”

Grian put a finger against Ren’s lips and Ren could feel the heat rising to his cheeks.

“I promise, I’m alright.”

And as if he had known that Ren would still be too stunned to react he took out his rockets to take off quickly. By the time Ren had snapped out of it Grian was long gone. Damn. How could he let his stupid crush keep him from staying by Grian’s side like he had vowed to do?

Ren quickly jumped up, going to his RV. Of course Grian had kept all his stuff on him already while Ren had to get his Elytra and rockets first. And in which chest had he thrown it again? Damn, he hadn’t paid attention earlier, too nervous from the fact that he had managed to invite Grian over to a fucking dinner date.

It took him way too long. He knew Grian would be gone by the time he arrived. That still didn’t stop him from rushing towards the End portal. When he stepped into the End, the main island was deserted. Well, deserted except for a bunch of enderman.

Ren put his head back slightly, trying to pick up a noise or a scent in the wind. His senses were slightly better than the average human’s and the full moon was close. It was faint, but Ren would recognise that scent everywhere. Grian! He dashed to one of the portals and threw an Enderpearl inside to get whisked miles and miles away.

He searched everywhere. Endcity after Endcity. Sometimes he picked up Grian’s scent, but it got less strong by the minute. Ren was falling further and further behind. And then, when he hit the next Endcity he lost the trail altogether. Damn it! He had wanted to protect Grian. He wanted to be there for him.

With a sigh Ren let his head hang low and trotted back out of the building to look for one of the Endportals. It took him a while, but then he was standing on the Main Island again. And a familiar scent hit him full force. Grian! Ren jumped up the stairs leading to the main area and then he stopped. There was Grian, kneeling in front of the portal leading home, not wearing any of his equipment, an Enderchest standing next to him.

Ren stepped closer, quietly until he was behind Grian.

“Grian… Are you-”

Grian’s head whipped around fast and Ren gasped. There were trails of tears on Grian’s face and he looked so small and scared.

“R-Ren. I didn’t think you’d- I thought you were… Why are you here?”

“I was worried.”

Grian smiled, if only a little and then got to his feet.

“I’m… I was just…”, Grian seemed to search for the right thing to say, his eyes slowly traveling slightly to the left and Ren already knew then. He was able to read Grian by now. Whatever left his mouth next was a lie. “I sprained my ankle a bit when I missed the portal. I hit the ground too hard. I’m… It’s a bit better now. Why don’t you go ahead and jump in and I’ll be right there behind you, yes?”

“No worries. We can jump in together. I can carry you.” He’d believe that lie if it meant he would be able to get Grian to the overworld again safely.

“I…” Grian’s hands were shaking as he spoke, his eyes darting to the portal, a haunted expression on his face and that’s when it hit Ren. For whatever reason Grian was scared. Scared of…

“You never once jumped into this portal, did you? You jump into the void on purpose to get back to your spawn point.”

Grian flinched and Ren knew he’d found the answer. This was the reason Grian died so often in the End. It was his way home.

“Why, Grian? Why are you so scared of going in there? We all do it. It doesn’t hurt. It’s safe. It’s-”

“I don’t want to leave.”

Ren knitted his eyebrows in confusion at the statement. It seemed so random.

“I don’t want you to leave either, but the portal will just transport you home.”

Grian shook his head and tears welled up in his eyes again, he was holding himself now, his whole posture seeming so small and uncertain, so unlike the confident and cheerful Grian that Ren had fallen for.

“The- The last time... I jumped into it before. They took me.”

“They?”

“The Watchers…” Grian’s voice was barely above a whisper but he sounded so scared as if saying the word too loud might call the ones he was talking about.

“Watchers? But they are nothing but an Urban Legend. A myth. They’re not…”

Grian sobbed and Ren stopped talking. Something changed in the air between them. A red haze surrounded Grian and suddenly his eyes were glowing golden and black wings appeared on his back. And on Grian’s arms glowing markings appeared, lots and lots of drawings of open eyes, all seemingly staring at him. Ren gasped and stumbled back a few steps, which in turn made a grim smile appear on Grian’s face.

“I look like a monster, I know. When I jumped into the portal I lost everything. They turned me into this. What if they take me again? I don’t want to leave this world. I don’t want to lose everyone. And I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. Not you. And now you know I’m a monster and everything will be different and you’ll leave me and-”

Ren rushed forward, his arms moving around Grian, careful not to disturb his wings, pressing him close to his chest.

“I’m here. I won’t leave. Ever. I love you.”

The shaking stopped and Grian raised his head slightly, looking at Ren. And while his eyes might be glowing golden, Ren could still see the emotion in there. Hope.

“You do?”

“Yes. And no matter what, I’ll protect you. I don’t know what happened in your last world, but Xisuma’s magic is strong. He has made sure nobody and nothing can get into our world. You’re safe here.”

“Are you sure…?”

Ren nodded and then stepped up to the portal, guiding Grian to go with him, both of them standing on the edge.

“I won’t force you to jump in, but we can do it together.”

“Yes, please.”

Grian’s hand was shaking and Ren pressed it reassuringly as he took the last step needed, pulling Grian along with him.

He felt the magic of the portal wash over him and then the hand in his was gone as he landed on his soft bed in the RV. Respawn points. Fuck. Of course he wouldn’t stay with Grian. They hadn’t set the same respawn point.

Ren jumped up and ran out of his RV, hurrying to get to Grian, praying that he was still there. Just as he was about to kick in the door of Grian’s RV it opened and Grian stood there, back to his normal self, wide bright blue eyes looking at Ren.

Both of them just stared at each other for a second and then Ren pulled Grian into a hug once more, holding onto him as if he never wanted to let go.

“Thanks, Ren…”, Grian muttered into his shoulder and then turned his head slightly to be able to look at Ren. “I love you too.”

[mayasshitposts]

I’ve been waiting for you (Sasuke x OC)

Prompt: None Game: Ikemen Sengoku Characters: Sasuke Sarutobi, Rukmini Chakrabarty (OC)Warnings: Angst/Fluff- starts with angst SASUKE POV Summary: Sasuke and Rukmini had been in a relationship for 2 years before being transported to he Sengoku era through the wormhole. How does Sasuke spend the four years without Rukmini, as he waits for her arrival. Notes: - Sasuke wakes up in the middle of a battlefield - Spots Kenshin and saves him - Go to kasugayama - Analysis, starts calculations - Starts training - Meets yukimura and they become friends - Sasuke's inner thoughts - After he almost dies, he cries himself to sleep - Timeskip to honnoji - Hears yuki arguing with someone - The U-T Forces inspect and Sasuke offers to escort her- - They hug and cry silently.

The world was dark, everything was hazy. One could hear the distant sounds of swords clashing and the thumping of hooves. Men were shouting war cries. The air reeked of blood and death.

Sasuke Mikumo's eyes fluttered open as he was greeted by a bright orange sky and the sights one could only associate with war. From the corner of his eye, Sasuke spotted a man crouched on the ground. He sensed some movement, and before he knew it, Sasuke's feet were moving on their own as he pushed the man out of the way of an arrow. The rest of the events were a blur as the next thing Sasuke remembers is sitting in a large hall, surrounded by men who seemed to belong to a historical movie.

"You don't seem to be from around here," Said one of the men. Sasuke whipped his head towards a man with stunning blonde hair and a piercing gaze of different coloured eyes. Sasuke fumbled, but shook his head, "No, I am not from here." He said.

"What's your name?" asked the man. Sasuke paused for a moment, before introducing himself, "Sarutobi. My name is Sasuke Sarutobi."

 ****

 A peaceful fullmoon night had fallen over Kasugayama castle. Sasuke had discovered that he had saved the Sengoku warlord, Kenshin Uesugi's life, and now Kenshin would train Sasuke in the art of the ninja, and provide him with a place to stay. However, what puzzled Sasuke the most was the events that led to this moment. Just a few hours ago, he was standing at the Honno-ji monument with his girlfriend, Rukmini.

 Flashback:

 Sasuke Mikumo had met up with his girlfriend Rukmini Chakrabarty at the cafeteria at Kyoto University. They were both working on their joint post graduation thesis on astrophysics specializing in wormholes and time travel. While researching, Sasuke had made an interesting finding. "Rukmini?" He started, as they ate their spaghetti. The girl looked up from her plate, gesturing for Sasuke to speak.

"According to my calculations, a wormhole is supposed to open near the Honno-ji monument, and it should take us 500 years into the past. I want to test it out, would you join me?" He asked. Sasuke was nervous that she would refuse, or call his calculations stupid.

"Sure." Said Rukmini, catching Sasuke off-guard. Rukmini looked at her boyfriend of two years closely as she continued, "We'll be together, right?"

Sasuke nodded as he smiled a rare smile, "Of course we'll be together!" He exclaimed. Flashback end

 They had gone to the monument together when the wormhole appeared, yet Rukmini was nowhere to be seen. Endless possibilities ran through Sasuke's head. Could Rukmini be stuck in another dimension? Did he actually travel through time? Could Rukmini have stayed back in their original time? Sasuke could feel hiss heart clench as he thought about the worst possibilities.

 He had been dating Rukmini for two years now. They had met at university as they had been studying in the same department. Sasuke had fallen in love with her goofy personality and her dedication to academics. Sasuke winced as he felt the pangs of separation. He loved Rukmini, more than anything in this world. Sasuke dedicated the next four years of his life to calculations, and the study of ninjutsu. Sasuke met some friends along the way, including Shingen Takeda and his faithful vassal Yukimura Sanada. Over time, Yukimura became Sasuke's closest friend and support system in the Sengoku era.

 Sasuke's calculations predicted that Rukmini would arrive four years after him at Honno-ji.

 One day, Sasuke was on a scouting mission away from Eichigo, when he was ambushed. He fought valiantly, but the enemy overpowered him, beating him down. It was only when Yukimura arrived with reinforcements that the attackers fled.

Injured and frightened, Sasuke cried himself to sleep that night. What would happen if he had died? Who would tell Rukmini? Who would comfort her when she arrived? All Sasuke wanted was to feel her warmth, and to reassure her, and himself that he was still alive. Sasuke missed Rukmini, he really did.

 ****

 Four years had passed since Sasuke had first arrived in the Sengoku era. He was with Kenshin, Shingen, Yoshimoto and Yukimura, as they travelled through the forests near Honno-ji for scouting. They had heard about Oda activity near the territory. Sasuke was glad, as he expected Rukmini to arrive in the Sengoku on that day. The party observed activity near the temple as they lay in wait. Yukimura had gone ahead while Sasuke waited in the shadows.

Suddenly, Sasuke heard Yukimura arguing with someone. He rushed towards the voices and spotted Yukimura talking to a woman. The woman seemed familiar. Sasuke's breath hitched in his throat as he caught a clearer glimpse of her face. Sasuke moved closer to listen in on their conversation. The others join Yukimura and start questioning her. Sasuke knew that the girl was getting nervous. He emerged from his spot as the girl's eyes lit up as she noticed him. Sasuke looked at her, tears pricking at his eyes. He felt that he was alive again.

 "I'll escort her back to the city," Sasuke offered. The men were reluctant, but agreed, considering Sasuke was the safest option.

Once Sasuke was sure that they were alone, he pulled the woman into his arms and let the tears fall. "Rukmini," He whispered, "I've been waiting for you."

[dsoe-masteroftheheavenlyyard]

Chapter 2–Hunt for the Deadly Sins; Scene 5

master of the heavenly yard pages 38-47

After they got out of the forest, the two of them started to talk about what they had just witnessed.

“—That was disturbing.”

“Yeah. And there were so many things I didn’t get…For now let’s first talk about that man named Gammon. He said that he was given the ‘Blackbox’ from ‘god’…”

“Here in Evillious there are four people—or rather, ‘divine beings’, who are the subject of religious belief as ‘gods’. The sun god Sickle, the land god Held, and the twin gods Levia and Behemo. Maybe the ‘god’ that Gammon spoke of is one of them…Though we can rule out it being Levia at least.”

“I believe you. There are a lot of things about the other three that are inscrutable to me, but…I’d say the odds of it being them are slim.” As Allen spoke, he was struck by the fact that he was acquainted with all four of the gods.

When he really thought about it, that was pretty bizarre.

--That aside, in that case who gifted Gammon that ‘Blackbox’ and gave him the order to erase Riliane and the others?

There was a chance that Gammon was lying. Essentially that the ‘god’ he spoke of did not exist, and that all of it was entirely his own idea—

In that case, what could have been Gammon’s motive for taking such action?

“Was Gammon that kind of person when he was alive?” Allen asked Nemesis.

“He was, sort of…But there’s something off about him, too. My honest impression from that display we just witnessed was—‘Who’s he to talk, someone who ran away from his position as party head?’.”

“But the soldiers seemed to respect him.”

“I’ll admit that he has charisma. The Tasan Party was able to secure hegemony in Elphegort because of his merits, for sure. There’s no party member who isn’t aware of that. …Only, he hadn’t been that devout a person as far as I knew.”

“And the figures that Gammon pointed out as targets…Except for you, all of them are people who lived a very long time ago, that he’s never met before. Though, well, Duke Venomania is Gammon’s ancestor, and Kayo and Banica have a distant relation to him as well, so it’s not like there’s no connection whatsoever—”

“…He would have had some familiarity with Riliane too, wouldn’t he? If Gammon was in the theater up until his death, then Postman—a reincarnated Riliane—was also there.”

“Yeah, that’s right. That is true.”

The two of them hadn’t said it out loud, but there was another big commonality in the five targets.

--All of them were people who had contracted with a “Demon of Deadly Sin”.

But in the course of this thousand-year history, it wasn’t just those five who had contracted with demons. …So then why had he selected them as targets?

“Rather than just rambling on pondering it here, it might be faster if we ask Gammon—or rather, assuming his ‘god’ actually exists, them—directly,” Nemesis said, though Allen didn’t seem to be in agreement.

“That would be dangerous. You’re being targeted by him too.”

“…Let me confirm something here quick. I am alive, and everyone else—including Gammon and the soldiers and you…have all died and become souls, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So in other words, they have no physical body…Are they even still able to interact with me, given that I’m alive?”

“Do you remember the action you took before we left from where Gammon and others were?”

“Huh? Did I do something weird?”

“You tapped my shoulder. Even though I am a spirit with no physical body.”

“Ah…now that you mention it.”

Nemesis had done it without realizing, but now that she was thinking on it again, that had been strange.

“It’s the same as the trees in the forest. Even though your body is alive, you’re able to interact with souls, and vice versa.”

Nemesis lifted her head and glared at the moon above her.

Living people can touch “spirit data”? I wasn’t aware of such a system. …It seems that “Sickle” has been tinkering with the Third Period’s rules far more than expected.

Despite her bitterness, Nemesis strove to keep it from showing on her expression and turned back to Allen. “One more thing. All the targets aside from me are, of course, souls. How do they plan to kill people who are already dead?”

“—Gammon didn’t use the word ‘kill’, he said ‘erase’.”

“…So he must have some method for doing so.”

“Perhaps that ‘Blackbox’ itself is that. If what Gammon said was true, I think you might know more about that box than I do. …Does the ‘Blackbox’ have such an function?”

Nemesis thought for a moment after she was asked that question.

Assuming that it was the “Type S” that Seth made, then that feature would be—

--Shifting to a parallel world.

The Type S was originally created to prove a theory of Seth’s, him having been a physicist.

Only a limited number of people could use it. I was one of them. And I…became a subject of the Type S and was transferred to another time and space.

The parallel world that her soul—her spirit data had reached at the end was a place that greatly resembled the world that she lived in.

And there, I—met “another me”.

…Now wasn’t the time to be going over old memories.

Nemesis shook her head and settled her thoughts.

Then she said to Allen, “—Gammon’s ‘Blackbox’ may be able to transport a soul to an alternate dimension. So if he were to pull the trick of making it so that a transported soul was unable to come back…that could be said to have ‘erased’ them from this world.”

“Hmm…I wonder who made that box. I can’t imagine it was Gammon—”

“…It was probably Seth.”

“--!? Then is Seth the ‘god’ that Gammon spoke of--?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t imagine he’s pulling any sinister plots this late in the game. And Gumillia’s been keeping an eye on him. Maybe Gammon found something Seth made long ago and abandoned. …I think it would be fastest to ask Seth himself about it.”

“Would have been nice if he’d come with us instead of going off doing something else.”

“—When you arrived at where I was, you had Gumillia, Seth, and Michaela with you. Where did you meet with all of them?”

“I met Michaela in the forest. That was the first place I was when I landed down on the ground world. I asked that she come with me. She readily agreed when I told her that it was to help you.”

“And Gumillia and Seth?”

“With them…The ‘Master of the Hellish Yard’ just suddenly appeared from deep in the earth. Apparently they were chasing sinners who escaped from hell. I think maybe they’ve returned to doing that job right now.”

“In that case…I’ve got no idea where they might be.”

And there Allen seemed to think of something. “Ah, wait just a second. The sinners that Gumillia and Seth are looking for…are people who have contracted with a ‘Demon of Deadly Sin’.”

“--! Then if we go to the ‘Deadly Sin contractors’ that Gammon and the rest are searching for, there’s a chance we’ll reunite with Gumillia and Seth.”

“Right. Only, not all of Gammon’s targets are people that Gumillia is going after. Among those five, the only one who’s really fallen to hell…is Duke Venomania.”

“Huh?”

“You—Nemesis—are still alive, of course…And Banica Conchita didn’t actually die, strictly speaking. She assimilated the ‘Demon of Gluttony’ and became a new demon.”

“Ah, now that you mention it…”

Nemesis remembered that she had met Banica once in the parallel space that had been called the “court”.

Irina had called her the “Demon of Gluttony”…No, it wasn’t just then.

Nemesis had met Banica at a different place, too.

Back when she’d first headed to the theater, looking for Gammon…That woman in the red dress who had blocked her way in that forest graveyard—

Allen continued talking.

“So Banica has always been inside the wineglass. And Riliane…After she died, her spirit didn’t go to heaven or hell—it just continued to be reincarnated.”

“Reincarnation…Leaving aside the gods and their kin, that’s a very particular ability granted only to the ‘Twins of God’—I’m quite certain you and Riliane are different beings from them. Though you look similar.”

“Honestly, I don’t know the reason why Riliane reincarnated either.”

“Sickle didn’t tell you?”

“Yeah. But Sickle did call me ‘Irregular’. If that word applies to Riliane as well, then maybe there’s some relation there.”

“Or…maybe it’s connected to the circumstances of your birth.”

“…?”

“Well, let’s just leave it there. Now…What about Kayo Sudou?”

The moment that she voiced that name, Nemesis’ heart sank a little.

For she had the same full name as the woman that she had once called “mother”.

“Kayo-san…Well, how shall I put this…She has Gumillia’s favor.”

“Wha?”

“I guess because her appearance is the same as that of her old mentor. Gumillia apparently decided not to drop Kayo-san into hell, and instead keeps her around to make her clothes.”

“…Pfff. Ha ha ha…” Nemesis suddenly burst into laughter. “That’s so Gumillia. Come to think of it, she was wearing a pretty stylish outfit.”

“Yeah. Kayo-san made it for her.”

“Haha…That aside, looks like the place we should go next is where Duke Venomania is. You know where he’s been staying?”

“I do. He’s probably in Asmodean. But—” The next thing Allen uttered was a bit unexpected for Nemesis. “—Let’s still head to Lucifenia like we originally planned.”

Nemesis started to ask him why, but before she could she realized what he was feeling by looking at his expression.

…He’s worried about his sister.

Allen had come to take a much more mature attitude compared to how he’d been in life. That was only natural, considering close to five hundred years had passed since then.

What’s more, thanks to the “Blackbox” on the moon he had gained an ordinarily impossible amount of knowledge.

And yet, the fact remained that he was still a human being. Even if they became a spirit, no matter how much time passed, a concern for those closest to them was constant, and at times it could even drive a person mad.

--Just as it had with Nemesis herself.

“…Let me justify myself for a moment,” Allen cut in somewhat awkwardly, appearing to have guessed what Nemesis was thinking. “I’m not just saying that out of my own personal feelings. I said so earlier, but Riliane has been in the theater as Postman—Lilith. She may know something about Gammon and this ‘Blackbox’.”

“But in that case couldn’t we also go to Banica?”

Allen shook his head at her somewhat unkind question.

“Our original reasoning was that we had to go meet with Gumillia—or, more accurately, Seth that she’s wearing as a mask. The odds are slim that Gumillia is pursuing Riliane. …But if we go to Lucifenia, there may be other ‘Deadly Sin contractors’ there.”

“You mean—”

“People you know quite well yourself. Apparently Riliane is currently throwing a banquet in Lucifenia for all of the souls she used to know. A great deal of figures from other countries are going to the illusory palace.”

“—I get it. You mean Kyle Marlon.”

“Right. And Keel Freezis’ wife, Lady Mikina.”

The face of another ‘Deadly Sin contractor’ came to Nemesis’ mind.

Prim…But of course, she wouldn’t be going to a party hosted by Riliane.

The Lucifenian Revolution—there were many who had contracted with “Demons of Deadly Sin” before and after that chaos.

And there were figures among them that Gumillia would know, as well.

“That sounds like a pretty good start.”

“Yeah, and even you too—”

“—Right. It’s not like I don’t have anyone I’ve been wanting to see again. …Alright. Let’s go to Lucifenia. I imagine it’s closer than Asmodean.”

If they headed further south from here, Lucifenia would be right there.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[ellana-ravenwood]

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore...” 1/3 - Batfam x Reader (Marvel crossover)

A while ago, my computer got wrecked and I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. People suggested I open a “GoFundMe” and all and I ended up doing it. A lot of peeps came to my rescue, and I was able to buy a new computer...This story is for one of the people that helped. Thanks very much, Anna, for your 35 euros. It’s a huge amount (at least to me) and it really made my life better and helped achieve the goal of a new laptop. I hope you will like this story : 

PART 2 My masterlist blog : @ella-ravenwood-archives

__________________________________________________

“Klarion, NO !!”

“Klarion yes ! Hahahaha”

“You have no idea what it will do, you-”

Too late.

But of course, as if someone like Klarion would wait and listen to the Batman trying to reason with him.

Nope, double nope. He wanted to do it, and he didn’t care much about the consequences right now, as he was too excited ! Maybe he’ll regret it later, but that was his future self’s problem !

Klarion’s laugh is the last thing you hear, as a bright light encircles you all.

Your mother instinct kicking in, you grab your nearest kid, who happens to be Jason.

Frankly, as he’s the tallest out of all your children and is even a bit taller than his father, you can’t actually do much to protect him really. But when this specific instinct kicked in, you didn’t think  about the technicalities of things, and just acted, grabbing his arm and yanking him to you. Holding him tightly, feeling like this was very important.

Damian wasn’t far either, and you were reaching for him when your world turned upside down. Your last sight was of your youngest boy trying to get to you…

A heavy dread fell on you, as you felt yourself being flung all around, clinging to Jason so you wouldn’t lose him too. Because as you saw Damian’s image fade into the light, it felt like this. Like you just lost all your kids but Jason. And lost Bruce too, while being thrown…wherever.

************

Klarion stole “Michael’s sword”.

The actual Archangel Michael.

It belonged, as of late, to Zauriel, a fellow Justice League member. But Klarion stole it, and ran away with it. And in a cruel twist of fate, he was last sighted in Gotham City and it was bestowed to your family to find him and bring the sword back. Zauriel was on his way when you caught up with the “Witch Boy”.

You found him below the city. In an old abandoned subway station, long out of use because weird things always happened in it. The city closed it down decades ago, putting all the problems it had on a disfunction in the electric system...But you knew the truth.

John Constantine took a look a while back, and said it was a place to keep an eye on as it had all the specificities to have gates open, whatever that meant really. He didn’t actually give more details...Typical Constantine.

Obviously, Klarion didn’t choose this place randomly.

Of course he didn’t.

Michael’s sword. A weapon capable of  “tearing through realities” (according to Zauriel).

A place known to be favorable to “gate opening”.

Klarion.

Nothing was random. Duh.

************

And here you were, feeling like you’d been falling for ages. Just falling and falling, or were you standing still ? 

All your senses were confused, and you couldn’t figure out wether your head was up or down. When the light finally died down, and you opened your eyes, you were…exactly in the same place ? 

Still in that old abandoned subway station.

Except it was just you and Jason now. 

The rest of your family was nowhere to be seen.

You let go of your son, who was looking very green.

Jason has always been car sick, so that weird trip across the light, not knowing wether you were up or down, must have been a nightmare for his weak stomach. 

You almost smile at the thought of what people would think if they knew the ruthless Red Hood couldn’t handle an hour car trip without getting really nauseous (and oh my God you still remember the “Dineyworld’s tea cups debacle” for his 9th birthday).

Yes, you almost smile at the thought.

But you don’t.

Because right now, your biggest worry wasn’t the fact that your kid might throw up (though you took a few steps away from him, worst case scenario, you’d comfort him after), instead, it was...where were your other children ? Where’d they go ? And Bruce ? Were they ok ?

You could only hope that just like you, they just ended up...elsewhere. But were safe. Because except for Jason feeling nauseous, he didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him. And you were definitely fine. 

At least, the thought of this was comforting. There was no reasons that you and Jason came out of “this” (whatever “this” was) unharmed, and the rest of your family would get hurt...Right ?

And that dread that took over you as the blinding light appeared came back full force. When you started to be tossed around in that “light” (or were you just standing still and everything moved around you ?), that feeling that you might lose your family forever wouldn’t leave you.

Zauriel used Michael’s Sword to change dimension, and you assumed this was what just happened, right ?

What if you all ended up in different universes ? How would you ever get back to each others ?! Oh God did that mean that Damian was on his own ?! But he was so young !! And Tim too ! 

Oh who were you kidding ? 

The fact that even Dick, who was a grown man, or Bruce, who clearly could handle himself, were alone stressed you the hell out too.

Because who knew where they’d end up ?! What if they were in a hostile world ?! You were starting to hyperventilate a little bit at the mere thought of not seeing them ever again, when you felt a comforting warm hand on your shoulder.

“Are you ok, mom ?”

This brought you back to your senses in a matter of seconds.

Every time one of your kids would try to reassure you, this motherly instinct that was always inside you would kick in. Because in your head, you were supposed to comfort them in tough times. Reassure them when they were scared.

Be there at their worst moments, ready to pick them up.

You smile at him, and take a good look around. And that’s when you start to see the slight differences between Gotham’s station and this one. 

The architecture is almost same, but the colors aren’t. And there, in the corner, instead of  the “Gotham City” you’re used to see, it reads “New York City”. Mm. Which NYC though ?

It seems like you’re in a similar world, at least the subway looked the same. But what would you find once you’d get out ? 

You turn to Jason, who looked more worried about you than the situation he was currently in, and with a smile, you say :

“Well my boy, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore...”

************

One quick look around, and Bruce knew he wasn’t in Gotham anymore.

He knew his city by heart, and though some of the architecture was similar, he was sure he wasn’t home no more. He actually was pretty certain to be in New York City.

When the light died down, and he opened his eyes, he was in an alleyway that could’ve been one in Gotham but wasn’t.

And his family was gone.

So Bruce entered his “dark mode”, as you’d call it. Where he shuts out all of his emotions and focuses on whatever the problem he’s faced with is.

It was his “defensive mode”, the one he would enter to not lose his mind. Because right now, if he was thinking for too long about the fact that you all most likely were scattered in different dimensions...he would lose it.

The chances of ever finding all of you were extremely low, even if he managed to find Klarion and Michael’s sword. There were billions and billions of different dimensions, and Bruce was already calculating the probabilities of ever finding his kids and wife again...It would most likely take him a lifetime to even just find one...

So Bruce didn’t think about that, and instead focused on his surroundings.

He was pretty sure he was in New York City. And that he was in a World similar to his original one. It wouldn’t quite make sense for Klarion to use the sword just to move through space. He could always just use magic...Mmm...This was arising another question.

Why did Klarion need the sword anyway ?

He already had the ability to travel through dimensions by opening gates. He never struggled to do it, so why would he need Michael’s sword ? Bruce was trying to think of every possible reasons, but he couldn’t quite find any.

Mainly because even if he was trying to shut down his emotions, he couldn’t help but think about what happened to you and his children. If you were harmed in any way, he had absolutely no way of knowing. Which was driving him crazy.

And what if you’ll never see each others again ? Bruce didn’t think he could survive living in a world without any of you...No. No he couldn’t think about that, or he’d crumble ! Ok. First things first.

He installed trackers in your costumes a long time ago (he was pretty sure that, except maybe for Tim, none of you knew that fact). There was a slim chance you’d all end up in the same world, but there was still a chance. Even if it was just one of you, it was better than none. 

Bruce Wayne was never really a hopeful man. Life taught him that hoping for good things to happen never ended well...But right now, as he activated the trackers, he hoped to every gods he knew that you did indeed beat all statistics and ended up in the same World.

The familiar “beep” of the trackers resonated in his earpiece. One. Two. Three. Four. And five. And...

************

Damian opened his eyes after the bright light disappeared and...He was standing on the roof of a building, all alone.

“Ummi ?”

Was the first thing to come out of his mouth. 

The last thing he remembered, was trying to hold onto you. But the light “grabbed” him and threw him all around...and here he was. 

At the top of this building.

All alone.

Was he still in Gotham ? Most likely not. His father’s briefing of the situation said that Michael’s sword had the ability to “transport” people into different dimensions. Was it it ? Was he in a different dimension ?

It looked similar enough to his. He bend down to look at the streets below. Cars, people dressed like they were dressed in Gotham, dogs on leash (of course Damian would notice the dogs). 

Yellow cabs. Mm. So he was in NYC huh ?

He twisted his neck to try to see more of what was happening down there. Maybe there were some things that weren’t quite like back home. Or maybe there would be a confirmation that he was still in his own World, but just not in Gotham anymore ?

Damian was wishing with all his might that the sword malfunctioned and send Klarion to another dimension, but only send him and his family through space, and teleported them in other places of their own world. Because if you were all scattered through multiple dimensions, how would you ever find each others ?

Even if Damian felt in his heart that nothing could stop you or his dad to find him...realistically it would still be very difficult right ? If not impossible ? 

He’d like to think that nothing was impossible for you, when you entered “full on mom mode”, but this was quite the situation. He hunched over the side of the building even further, thinking that maybe he could-

“You shouldn’t bend down that much at such a high height, buddy. If you fall, you’ll be as flat as a pizza.”

Damian turned around in one move, taking a fighting stance, ready for whatever.

In front of him was a guy, raising his hands into the air to show he meant no harm, and wearing a red and blue costume from head to toes, with...was that a spider drawn on his chest ?

************

Dick couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t understand why.

The blinding light wasn’t enveloping him anymore, but he still couldn’t figure out where he was, or wether the world was up or down. He flailed his arms around, trying to get his balance back, but all his senses were disoriented.

Everything was so cold as well, the world around him was so damn blurry and Dick just couldn’t find an exit to it all.

He felt like he was slowly loosing consciousness when...

Someone grabbed his arm, and then he felt a similar sensation than when he was in the light, but not quite the same thing.

And all of a sudden, he could breathe again, and the world was slightly warmer.

“Mein Gott, what would make a man want to jump into the Hudson river by such a weather, I wonder !”

River ? Oh. It would make sense. Now that Dick could breathe again, and he slowly started to regain his senses, it did feel like he was in water. But after whatever that light travel was, he was just too confused to understand what was going on.

He slowly opened his eyes, and was faced with the most eclectic group of people he ever saw.

“Ya alright bub ?”

One of them asked. Dick rubbed the dirty water completely out of his eyes and finally took a good look at them, sitting up on the cemented dock they dragged him on (he assumed they were the one that got him out of the water somehow?)

The man who talked was short and stocky, very hairy too. Definitely not conventionally handsome, and yet he had an aura about him that made Dick think he must be quite a man !

Next to him, was the most beautiful woman Dick ever saw. Tall, dark skinned, incredible white hair... She looked worried about him, and if Dick had regained all his senses by then, he would have most certainly said the cheesiest pick-up line that ever existed ! Wow !

Finally, right next to her, was a...fuzzy blue man ? He had a bright friendly smile and...a tail ? Um, ok ? I mean, Dick saw weirder in his vigilante career but somehow, those three made him feel like he was actually in a dream.

However as his brain slowly started to function normally again, he just as slowly came to the conclusion that...Ah of course. Michael’s sword. Other dimensions. Mm. Where the Hell did Klarion send him, exactly ?

And were was the rest of his family ?!

************

Tim knew immediately he wasn’t in his original world.

Mainly because he was immediately faced with a tall blond guy threatening him with a hammer (????) and a massive green...man (?????) in purple shorts.

The light barely disappeared, and his eyes were just adapting to the surrounding daylight, that he heard a thunderous (haha) voice yelling :

“WHERE IS MY BROTHER ?!”

And bam, he was held upside down by the huge green man. Strangely, his hand around his ankle was rather delicate, given the size of him...Tim had no doubts that that dude could crush him if he wanted to. But for now, it seemed like holding him upside down was enough.

Tim was known to be one of the most quick witted of your family, and that was for a reason. Even as he just came out of a very confusing event, where all his senses were attacked, his brain was working a hundred miles per hours.

This was definitely not his World, his family was gone, and those two guys were definitely meta-humans (if they were humans). They were most likely some of this dimension’s heroes. Tim came to this conclusion thanks to their costume, and the fact they didn’t immediately kill him. Then again, maybe they were just waiting to question him about that “brother”, and were actually villains.

A quick look around and it seemed like this world was somewhat similar to his, as he saw cars passing by a bit further. Him and the two dudes where in a park, and given how big it looked, even as he saw everything upside down, Tim guessed it must be Central Park.

After all, this particular place was easily recognizable.

Connections were quickly made in his brain, and only a few seconds passed as he came to all those conclusions.

Ignoring the voice in his head whispering to him that his family was probably lost in other dimensions too, and  that it would be statistically impossible to ever find them again if it truly was the case, he focused on his current situation.

“Where is my brother little man ? We know he’s been in contact with you for the past few months, now tell us where he went ?!”  

Brother ? In contact with him for months ? Once again, Tim’s quick thinking definitely came in handy to him.

“I think you have the wrong person, and that we have the same end goal !”

“Is this a trick ? We won’t fall into it, if you’re working with my brother you cannot be trusted !”

“Wait let me finish ! My name is Red Robin and I’m pretty sure I’m not actually from here. I come from a place called Gotham City, and I was, along with my...sidekicks, following a guy called Klarion who stole a sword that allows people to travel through dimensions. I think he’s the guy you’re after.”

The blond man seemed to think about what Tim just said, looking at him deep in the eyes, as if trying to see if he was lying or not. It seemed like what he saw in Tim’s eyes satisfied him enough as he gestured to his friend (?) and the green dude put Tim back on the ground (once again, being surprisingly delicate for his size and stature).

“Alright, I looked into your soul and decided you were a trustworthy man. Well. Trustworthy boy, really. After all our radar indicated multiple places where gates to other dimension opened, so it means that not just my brother’s friend came in. I am called Thor Odinson, from Asgard. And this is my good partner Hulk.”

Thor ? As in…God of Thunder Thor ? Well, the hammer suddenly made sense.

“Hulk happy no smash little man. Hulk not like hurting little men.”

“Um. I’m…also happy you didn’t … « smash » me.”

Tim said a bit awkwardly, and the green giant smiled widely at him. It was kind of cute. But also terrifying. Tim turned towards Thor and asked :

“Thor ? So your brother is…Loki ?”

Thor looked surprised, and, raising his eyebrows and becoming suspicious again, asked :

“You know him ?”

“Well, not really. I just know my North mythology. Which I guess isn’t mythology in this World…Mm, interesting.”

“Do you always talk to yourself like that boy ?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Sorry about that. So. Loki. Is he the God of Mischief here too ?”

“Yes he is ! How do you-”

“Sorry to cut you off mister Thor, but I think I might know what is going on right now...”

************

“Well, I guess our only option is to go up ?”

You tell Jason, looking at the stairs that seem to be the only exit out of this place. Your son is about to reply when...he just start to stares at you, eyes wide. You barely have the time to ask what is going on that he jumps on you and tackles you to the floor, protecting you with his entire body.

And then...

Then nothing happens.  

“What the hell Jace ?!”

You say, pushing him off of you though he seems reluctant to move. 

What got into your son ? He’s looking around like a crazy person now, until his eyes focus on a specific spot and he gets one of the batarang he stole from his father out and shoots.

“OUTCH, MOTHERFUC-”

There’s a soft sound of someone falling on the concrete, and you can’t help but be very confused about what the hell just happened. Who the hell just yelled and...what ?!

Jason bolts on his feet and runs towards the source of the sound. He disappears in the shadow for a few seconds, before dragging a man out of it. 

Your son looks absolutely pissed, even though he’s the one that shot that...who was that dude ?

He was wearing a red and black costume and could very well have been a super from your World. But you’ve definitely never seen him before. He had the batarang stuck in his shoulder. In his hand he had...a laser pointer ?

And all of a sudden, connections were made in your head. Jason throwing you on the floor and covering you with his body, then getting angry, the stranger with a batarang in his shoulder, the laser pointer...You crease your eyebrow and turn to your son, hitting him on the chest.

“Don’t you ever do that again !”

“Outch, sorry mom but I thought he was going to shoot you ! What was he doing pointing a laser at you for no reasons like that anyway ?!”

“What ? No that’s not the problem, that guy’s definitely fishy. I’m mad about you protecting me by jumping in front of me like that ! What were you thinking ? If something happened to you I don’t know what...AAAAH !”

You hit him once more and turn around, trying to hold back the tears that came to your eyes and choking on your own voice. Damn it. They always did that. Your kids and Bruce. They always goddamn jumped in front of a bullet or some stupid shit like that ! Not realizing you’d rather die than live without one of them.

You already had to live through the death of almost all your sons. You couldn’t handle this kind of thing anymore. So whenever they’d do such a thing, you’d get all choke up and angry at them. How dare they...how dare they ?!

Jason was rubbing his neck awkwardly, not knowing what to do as you turned your back to him and was sniffling loudly...man, you could be so sensitive sometimes. Though he guessed the fact that he was basically ready to sacrifice himself for you was reason enough to shake you up.

He was about to reach for you when the stranger who was playing with that damn laser pointer started to move again. Without thinking about it Jason reached for him and immobilized him on the floor, saying :

“Not so fast buddy. You’re gonna tell me who you are and what you want with us ?!”

“Wow wow wow, if you want me to explain stop blocking my airways like that “buddy”. Sorry for the bad joke ok ? I haven’t been a superhero for long, I don’t know all the specificities about the job ok ? But you know what, don’t joke around with laser pointer, dully noted.”

“Jason, let him go. You’re knee is most definitely stopping him from breathing. It’s quite something he managed to say such a long sentence really...”

Reluctantly, Jason let go of the man, but kept a careful eye on him. If that guy was trying ANYTHING, especially towards his mom, he was dead. And Jay didn’t care that he promised not to kill anymore, if one of his family member was in danger, he wouldn’t hesitate !

“Pfewwww. Thank you lady, you...Oh. Wow. You’re beautiful. Do you want to ma-”

Rolling your eyes, you catch your son’s arm before he shoots yet another batarang, and make a head gesture to the stranger so he’d continue talking.

“Ok sorry, it’s your mom, I get it, you don’t like hearing about how hot she is. You’re defending your daddy’s honor...if um, there is a daddy ?”

“There is one yes. And he’s extremely jealous, and some would say violent.”

You roll your eyes again. Though Jason isn’t wrong, if Bruce was here, you’re pretty sure another batarang would have been thrown. The dude with the laser pointer continue :

“Ok ok sorry. I’ll stop now. My name’s Deadpool, I’m a hero in training and was send by the Avengers to fetch you two.”

Silence. Deadpool ? Avengers ? ...hero in training ? But “Deadpool” takes your silence as you not believing him so he adds :

“Ok ok, heroes aren’t suppose to lie either I heard. So what if I wasn’t really send by the Avengers ? And what if I’m not really in training but more like stalking them to see how they’re doing things ? Is there really a difference ? They were coming to get you anyway. I just reached you first.”

A few more seconds of silence, and as your brain is trying to work everything out, “Deadpool” starts to hum an elevator music. Jason is the first one to break the silence :

“You said “they” were coming to get us ? How do you know where we were ?”

“Ah ok so, and I know that totally not because I hacked into their surveillance system and am spying on it, but I heard them talk about dimension gates opening kind of everywhere in New York, and having to check it out. So I got one of the location, that happened to be the one that was the least specific because, I guess since you’re underground their surveillance system wasn’t as performant...like I’m pretty sure there’s lead in those walls so...maybe it’s like a certain hero wearing his underwear above his pants, can’t see through it ?”

“Did you just refer to Superman ?”

“Who ? I have no idea what you’re talking about. But in any case they’re looking above ground. I think they don’t know this old abandoned subway station exist. But I do. And here I am, finding you before them.”

“Ok um...”

“Deadpool.”

“Right, Deadpool. You keep referring to “them”, who are they ?”

“The Avengers !”

“Ok...”

“The Justice League of this universe.”

“Did you just-”

“No. I didn’t.”

“You’re-”

“I’m not. Hey now come on, Cap and Iron man are just up there, I bet they’d love to meet y’all. And maybe I’d get back on their good side if I’m the one bringing you to them.”

You exchange a look with your son, and you know you’re both thinking the same thing. There is NO WAY you’re going to follow that mad man. But then he says :

“By the way they’re not the only team that was sent all around NYC to find you and the others that arrived at the same time than you. I’m assuming you know them ? If you want to see those other guys again, you should follow me.”

Once again, you exchange a look with your son, except that this time, it’s full of hope. Could it be ? Or is he lying ? He doesn’t really have any reason to lie, after all, but what if ? Was this a false hope and you were about to get your heart crushed when you’ll realize he’s not talking about the rest of your family ? What if it’s a trap ?

You have no knowledge of this world after all, those Avengers could very well be super-villains or whatever. 

But as you look  at the man, and though you can’t really see his face with his mask...your guts are telling you he’s saying the truth. 

And so, making sure Jason was on board, you nod and follow him out of the abandoned subway station. Still being ready to fight, just in case. 

************

The trackers are on, and Bruce’s heart starts to beat like crazy.

They all turned on, and you were all very close from each others ! By some miracle, you all ended up in the same universe ! Or did Klarion plan this ?

Ah but for now, Bruce couldn’t think about that, because you were all here. In this World. Not scattered across the multiverse. He was going to see you all again. He was going to see you all again !

For some reasons, you were all converging towards the same place. Bruce’s eyes narrowed. Were you ok ? Oh if you were harmed, he was ready to let hell break lose on whoever did anything to you !

Now, his heart was beating to the rythm of his stress. 

What if you were all hurt ? What if you had been less lucky than him and fell on ill intentioned people ? Kidnapped ? What if you ended up in a part of town that was hostile ? After all, he knew nothing of this world, except for the fact it was somewhat similar to his own...but to what extent ?

Bruce’s mind was racing, raging, he was-

“Seems like he or she is already gone.”

“Ah come on Clint, we didn’t even look.”

“Well nobody is here. And honestly I don’t really fancy looking for “someone” we don’t even know in the entire city. You can though, I’ll look at you while eating pizza. There’s a great restaurant just around the corner from here and-”

Bruce, hidden in the shadows, was listening intently to the two strangers who arrived. 

One was wearing a black and purple costume, and had a bow strapped to his back. The other one was a woman, wearing all black, crazy beautiful red hear surrounding her face. 

They were clearly looking for him, and as Bruce wondered why their wrist watches started to beep. 

There was a small silence, as they seemed to listen to something, and then the man the woman called “Hawkeye” turned to her and said :

“Ah, well I guess we won’t have to search for anyone now huh ?”

“I wonder why Spider-Man is calling us back. He said it was important to thoroughly check any discrepensies the system was showing, and now...”

“Ah well you know what they say, Stark is a genius. People rarely understand geniuses. People like us. Normal, totally normal people.”

The woman scoffs and shakes her head, before saying :

“Ah well, I guess there’s some news. Come on smart ass, let’s go see what is up. They said they caught some of them, I’m curious as to what actually happened...”

Some of them ? 

Bruce’s blood froze and boiled at the same time. 

Were they talking about his family ? Looking at the trackers on his 3D map, Bruce calculated the direction the two strangers were taking and...it seemed everyone was converging to the same spot.

Without hesitating, Bruce started to follow them.

***********

“I’m not here to hurt you. What are you doing up here all alone ? ”

Damian didn’t lose his fighting stance, and eyed the man with the spider costume suspiciously.

“Who are you ?”

“Ok ok calm down little dude. I’m really not here to fight ok ? Unless you’re here to fight. Are you ?”

“Depends, do you want to fight ?”

“Not particularly. Especially not with a kid.”

“I’m not just a regular kid !”

“Yes, the mask and cape makes that much clear. Are you a super ? I’m one too, I’m one of the good guys !”

“That’s exactly what a villain would say !”

“Ah, you got me there...um...Listen, I’m really not here to fight ok ?”

“Who are you ?”

“Spider-Man.”

“Spider-man ?”

“Spider-man.”

“...You have spider superpowers ?”

“Pretty much. Anything a spider does, I can do too.”

“Spiders can do a lot of things...”

“I can do a lot of things. And even more.”

Damian detected no animosity in that “Spider-man”, and slowly disengaged his fighting stance.

“I’m Robin.”

“Ok. Ok cool. Like the bird ?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Can you do what birds do ?”

“...Not really. Metaphorically, I guess.”

“Oh. Ok. So um, Robin, what are you doing here ?”

“I’m not sure. We were after a...bad guy, and then I ended up here.”

“We ?”

“My parents and brothers.”

“Ok ok. And where are they now ?”

Damian didn’t know why, but faced with that Spider guy, he felt all his emotions about the possible loss of his family surge all at once. Maybe it was because, even though he was fully masked, Spider-Man was reminded him of his older brothers ?

There was a sort of brotherly aura surrounding that guy.

And so Damian’s shoulder flopped down, and letting his sadness catch to him, he said, voice breaking at the end :

“I don’t know...”

Damian could feel the tears slowly rising to his eyes. It was so strange. 

But that Spider-Man made him want to show his true feelings ? Again, must be because he reminded him of his older brothers. But it was also the fact that Damian knew now that he wasn’t in his own world, and that there was a high chance he would never see his parents and siblings ever again.

And all that emotions ? Well until then he kind of kept it in check, but faced with Spider-man’s gentle voice, Damian kind of cracked. It didn’t happen to him often, that he felt like the kid he actually was. But here, in this other world, all alone...Well, he just wanted his Ummi.

And she wasn’t there. And it was scary, and lonely, and what if he was going to never see any of his family member again ?! But Damian still stayed strong. He did not cry. Though he really wanted to.

“Um ok, ok. Where did you see them last ?”

“Before the light.”

“The light ?”

And without quite knowing why, Damian started to say everything that had happened so far to that total stranger. But there was just something about Spider-Man, that made the boy instantly trust him.

Maybe it was his gentle voice, or the fact he wasn’t rushing him. Maybe it was how he first talked to him, or how calm he seemed. Or maybe it was how clearly Damian could see that he was indeed one of the good guy, and had a kind heart ? Your youngest son didn’t even talk to Spider-Man for more than a few seconds, but he felt it in his guts. 

He was definitely one of the good ones. Maybe one of the best ones. 

Damian wasn’t quite sure why, but he just trusted him.

“Ok so that would explain a lot. I’m um, from a team of superheroes ? We’re called the Avengers.”

“What are you avenging ?”

“What are we avengi...um...nothing in particular. It’s just our name.”

“Oh.”

“...Anyway. We have a defense system against invasion from other dimensions okay ? And it went haywire not long ago. Multiple gates got opened.”

“Multiple ? How many ?”

“I don’t know, a few. I just received a call from mister Stark, and he gave me your location.”

“How did you know I wasn’t a bad guy ?”

“You’re just a kid.”

“The guy who send us here is also technically just a kid.”

“Yeah well...My spidersense didn’t went on when I approached you so...”

“Spidersense ?”

“Like a sixth sense that warns me whenever a threat is about to happen ?”

“Sounds useful. And made up. Spidersense ?”

But as he thought about it further, Damian actually realized it didn’t sound that ridiculous in the end. After all, his father also had the bad tendency to put “bat” in front of every words too...

“Well it’s not made up. And it usually helps me knowing wether people have good intentions or not. And you ? You weren’t hostile. Just scared.” 

Well, that much was true...Damian really was scared. Scared to never see his family again. 

“Listen, come with me and we’ll try to clear things up ok ? Try to find your parents and brothers, ok ?” 

Yes. Yes there was definitely something in Spider-Man that reminded him of his older siblings. He had Dick’s way of talking, and Tim’s talent to find exactly the right words. But also Jason’s stupidity. Geez. “Spidersense” ?!

But all of that made Damian want to trust him. Ah, it’s not like he had much other options anyway...

************

“Wow, this is so cool ! I mean, I flew on someone’s back once, but this is so much-aaaaaaaaah- cooler !”

Damian was holding onto Spider-man’s back who was flinging from building to building thanks to his webs. They were going so fast, and Spider-man was so in control of their fall and all ! It was awesome ! 

“Haha right ? Ah look, that’s the Avengers’ tower !” 

“Oh geez, can you be more obvious ?” 

Damian couldn’t see it, but under his mask, Spider-Man blushed a bit. It’s true that the place wasn’t particularly discreet, what with the gigantic neon lighted “A” on the side of the building...

************

At first, he thought they were going to think he was crazy. But then the short hairy man said “he ain’t lying” and they just kind of rolled with it (later, Dick would learn that that said guy had the ability to “smell” when people lied). 

Plus they apparently heard weirder in their lives. Which didn’t really surprise your son much, they definitely looked like they went through many adventures.

After Dick explained what had happened to him, and his theory as to how he actually ended up in the goddamn Hudson river, they started to do some explaning themselves in return.

Dick had to admit, this was all a lot of informations for him to take in, right after almost drowning. But he was aware all of this was important. He was stranded in an unknown world, the more he knew the better it was. Even more so since he was learning valuable informations.

Like the fact that “Storm”, “Nightcrawler” and “Wolverine”  (the name of the people who saved him) were where he appeared after the defense system from a team called the “Avengers” received warnings that tears in the reality were opening kind of everywhere in NYC.

A guy named...Tony Stank ? Or something like that ? Dick received so many infos that he didn’t catch everyone and everything’s names. 

In any case, that guy settled a security system all around the World that would instantly detect any otherworldly threats after their dimension was attacked by aliens years ago (man could Dick relate...), and that’s what warned them about the tears in reality.

They told him there had been seven gates opened, and Dick’s hope went high all of a sudden. Seven ? Including him ? His mom, dad, Jason, Tim, Damian and Klarion. Plus him. Seven. Please, oh please Gods make it so that it really was his family members, and not other errors because of whatever Klarion did with the sword.

But for now, Dick climbed into a car with his saviors, hoping they’ll be able to help out find the rest of his family (if it really was them in the other gates). Thanks to “Wolverine” they trusted him, and were now bringing him to...

“So, we’re going to the...Avengers’ tower ?”

“Exactly mein Freund. It’s quite the place. Not as interesting as the Xavier Institute, but still quite the place. Wolverine here was giving us a private visit of the building. We’re not Avengers you see ? We’re X-Men, but Wolverine here is both.”

“The...Xavier Institute ? X-men ?”

“Our school for mutants. And our team of mutants.”

“Mutants ?”

“Yes, mutants. People with special abilities.”

“Superpowers ?”

“Here we go.”

The woman called “Storm” (a codename, certainly. Dick himself told them he was called “Nightwing”, just in case) rolled her eyes and said :

“Nightcrawler, relax on all the informations. The poor boy is going to be completely lost. We already told him a lot.”

Dick gave her a thanksful look. He already started to like a lot those three people, but he was having an information overdose and couldn’t follow much anymore. And so, for the rest of the way, he started to talk to them about his original world. It was more relaxing to do so, really...

************

“So you think that Klarion, is the one that communicated with my brother ?”

“I’m almost 100% sure yes, their personality seems to really fit each others.” 

“On a scale from an angry raccoon to Ragnarök, how dangerous the both of them could be together ?” 

“Well I’m not too familiar with the Loki of this World, but if he’s anything like in the mythology stories from mine ? Then we’re very close from total Mayhem indeed.” 

“So, Ragnarök.” 

“Yes, Ragnarök.” 

Tim said dramatically, as Thor’s eyebrows almost joined each others in the middle of his brow from the force with which he creased it. 

“That’s not good.” 

“You don’t say.”

“No, I do say it.” 

“It’s an expression...”

“An expression of what ?” 

“...Nevermind. So, where are we going ?” 

Tim was sitting on Thor’s back as he was...swirling his hammer around so that he could fly ? And Hulk was following them closely, jumping from building to building. 

“The Avengers’ tower. Where my friends are. They’ll find a solution for sure, they’re very smart. Like you.”

“How do you know I’m smart ?”

“Well little man, you kept your cool as Hulk was holding you upside down, and managed to form theories as to what is happening in matter of seconds. Even an idiot like me can get that you’re very smart.” 

“Thank you. I don’t think you’re an idiot.” 

“Oh believe me, when it comes to hitting things ? I’m great. But I often let my emotions overwhelm me and tend to just jump into a situation without forming a plan first.” 

“Well, at least you seem very self-aware of your flaws ?” 

“Not even ! I’m only repeating what Bruce told me.”

“Bruce ?”

“Yes, the green guy down there. Sometimes he’s Hulk, sometimes he’s Bruce.” 

“Ah, kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ?” 

“Exactly like that ! Well when he’s Dr. Jekyll, he’s very smart too. And a great therapist.” 

“He’s a therapist ?” 

“No, he’s a scientist.” 

“Oh. Ok...”

There was a short silence, before Tim started again : 

“I still don’t think you’re an idiot. If you truly launched yourself in a situation without thinking, then you would have crush me with your hammer, right ?” 

Thor’s face brightened, and he turned to him : 

“Ah, you’re right !” 

“I think you’re too harsh on yourself. Don’t listen to what Bruce says, Bruces have the tendency to think they know everything but they can definitely be wrong.” 

“You know a Bruce too ?” 

“Yes, my dad.”

“Is he like my Bruce ?”

“He’s also somewhat of a scientist. And he says things like your Bruce seems to say a lot too.” 

Tim smiled at Thor, who smiled back. For some reasons, your son felt like he could trust that Thor guy. He seemed a bit too naive for his own good, for sure, but he also seemed very kind. And no matter what he thought of himself, Tim knew he wasn’t as stupid as he said he was. 

He probably just had some confidence issues (even though he was technically a damn god !), and if he was hanging around geniuses he...Oh god. Tim stopped his thinking, as he realized he was starting to sound like his father ! 

But he didn’t have time to be freaked out by that thought, as Thor said : 

“Well, we’re here ! The Avengers’ tower !”. 

************

“Ah, seems like we’re the first here. You can sit down and-” 

“DAMIAN !” 

Spider-man jumped to the ceiling in surprise, and turned to the source of the sound. It was a woman, with a costume kind of similar to the boy he took with him to the tower. And with her, was a guy he never saw with a red helmet, and...Deadpool ?! 

The boy stood up from the seat he just took, and ran as fast as he could towards the woman. And from the way she grabbed him and held him tight against her heart, Spidey guessed it must have been his mom. 

For some reason, the fact that this little one found his mom back made Peter incredibly giddy. He didn’t know that kid since very long, only a handful of hours (time for them to cross New York thanks to his webs), but he already felt oddly protective over him. As if he was his little brother or something. 

“Oh my God, are you ok ?” 

“Yes yes I’m fine, are you ?” 

The woman was now checking every inch of Robin’s body, looking for bruises and such, inspecting his face with attention. Satisfied that he seemed unharmed, she went back to hugging him, kind of suffocating the poor kid a bit. 

“I was so scared I’d never see you again...” 

Damian held you back with force, clearly sharing your fears. But everything was alright now. Well, not quite everything as most of the family was still missing. But at least, he wasn’t alone anymore. He had his Ummi back. And you always found ways to soothe and reassure him. No matter what the situation was. 

Jason approached his mom and little brother, and ruffled Damian’s hair. His heart skipped a beat as Damian let go of his mom to hug his older brother. The boy’s head barely reached above his belt (Jason really was the tallest one), but he hugged him back. 

Of course. Damian truly was afraid he had lost his family for good, so he didn’t care to keep up appearances and act as if this all thing didn’t touch him. He was glad to have one of his big brother back, he was gonna show it. 

Distracted by that heartfelt reunion, Spider-Man didn’t notice Deadpool slowly moving towards him. It’s only when the man whispered in his ear : 

“Hey Spidey...” 

That once again, he jumped to the ceiling, sticking up there with ease...And then he came back down, his mask creased in “anger”. 

“What are you doing here Wade ?!”

“Ah well you see, I found those two at one of the tears location. I found them BEFORE Cap and Iron Man. But when I wanted to go introduce them to Cap and Stark, they started to shoot at me ! At us ! So we narrowly escaped and I took them here.” 

“Of course they shot at you Wade, after what you did last time we saw you ! And how the hell do you know about the tears ? And how did you get into the building ?!” 

“Ok. What did I do last time ? Don’t remember a thing. Also for professional secret reasons I can’t answer your two other questions. What if you use my informations to infiltrate the Avengers ?” 

“...I AM an Avenger ! And you’re not !”

“Are you sure it’s not the other way around ?”

“No I-” 

“Um, excuse me, but could you two fight another time ? We have bigger problems in front of us.” 

Spidey turned around, to be faced with Thor and Hulk. And a third person he never saw before, but again, his costume was similar to Robin. 

“Tim !”  Damian saw him first, and rushed to him. And oh Tim knew that his little brother must really have been through quite an ordeal, if he was calling him by his first name AND hugging him like that. 

Well, getting thrown into a different dimension and separated from your family was quite traumatic really. So traumatic in fact, that Tim didn’t quite register immediately that by some miracle, he just found half of his family back ! 

After a few more hugs, and you not wanting to let go your two youngest son...

“Ah, it’s a cute tupperware reunion ?” 

A voice with a heavy German accent said from the entrance. Jason, who was the closest from there, got tackled first...by Dick. 

The voice was Nightcrawler’s, and he just had arrived with his friends and Dickie. And your oldest son definitely didn’t hide how relieved he was to be reunited with his little siblings and his mom. 

Only one person was missing now, but there was no reasons to think he got transported into another universe than this one. And hope wouldn’t leave you, as you thought of your husband, hoping a team of those “Avengers” reached him too...

Ah. They reached him alright. 

Right after you gave a huge kiss on your oldest son’s cheek to welcome him back, two new people entered...dragging your Bruce tied up behind them. 

What the hell ? 

Ah but of course, maybe he fell on people that were a bit more...heated than those on whom you fell (well, you admit that that Deadpool guy was quite something really) and got into a fight ? 

You couldn’t possibly see him lose though. What happened ? What power did those two persons hold to manage to catch your husband like that ? 

Oh but as your eyes met his, you suddenly realized his angle and before you could warn him that they weren’t hostile, he already entered in action. 

He got rid of the metal ropes tying him up. And as the archer and that redhead woman who brought him in just stared in amazement, he tied them up with some of his batropes, and they both fell heavy on the floor. He then managed to jump in between you and your kids, and the rest of those “Avengers” people. 

“I don’t know who you are, but know that I rigged the entire building with enough explosives to do a lot of damage, and help us escape. So let us go without any fight, and nobody will get hurt.” 

Oh man. Oh geez. It’s in those moments, that you remember how much of a badass your husband could be. You’re pretty sure there was heart in your eyes, as you just stared at him in all his glory, standing protectively in front of his family, and daring a bunch of clearly powerful superheroes to do something...

Meanwhile, the archer and the redhead untangled themselves from the batropes (proof that they were exceptional beings too) and got into a fighting stance, while the rest of them stayed completely flabbergasted as to what was happening. 

“Father wait ! They’re not bad...I think.”

“Yes just a second dad. You’re not one to jump to conclusion usually, what got into you ?” 

Bruce turned to Damian and Tim, who just talked, and, his face as stoic as ever, he said : 

“Well once I noticed we were all going in the same direction, I made myself known to them...And they attacked me without any warning. Which made my deductions as wether they were friendly or not very easy.” 

“Wait a second dude, what did you expect us to do ?! You jumped out of the shadows, dressed like a goddamn nightmare. Of course our first instinct was to fight !” 

The archer said, bow still in hand. 

That’s the moment Captain America and Iron man decided to chose to come in. And who is the first person they saw ? Deadpool, who somehow managed to sneak to the “Bat” side for some reasons. 

And then they saw Clint and Natasha in a fighting stance, and a guy dressed like a bat just as ready to throw hands. Of course, their first reaction was to-

“STOOOOOOOOOOOOOP !!” 

The loud scream took everyone by surprise, and they all put their hands to their ears...damn that was a strong voice. 

The Hulk was the one that did it. He settled himself in the middle of Bruce and the others, and just...pushed them. A tiny little push. 

They all fell flat on their ass. And you couldn’t help but laugh at the vision of your stunned husband falling over like a child. 

“You listen to little man. He knows.” 

The green juggernaut added, and he pointed to...Tim ? Oh. Oh no. Your poor baby. He had a serious case of stage fright. And there, as so many people stared at him...

But it seemed like the vision of his father and clearly powerful people falling as if they were mere keel in a bowling game had a sort of soothing effect on him. You know, like imagining your audience in ridiculous clothes or something ? 

Plus seeing how surprised his father was was quite something, therefor, a smile on his face, he said : 

“Yes. If you could please let me explain everything and hold the fighting for a little bit ? It’d be very appreciated. Thank you very much, Hulk.”

“Welcome.” 

The giant said, waving his hand as if it was nothing. 

************

You were so proud. So proud of your little boy (who wasn’t so little anymore). He had figured out what even his father didn’t think about (though he had a theory close to the one his son had, and obviously lacked some crucial details...like the fact that Thor’s brother, Loki, was involved). 

“So that Klarion guy is planning on teaming up with Loki ?” 

Clint asked, still eyeing your husband suspiciously. 

“It certainly seems like it, yes.”

“Wait a minute, Thor, I thought Loki was in locked down on Asgard ?” 

Thor suddenly became very red, and avoided the man who was called “Tony Stark”’s eyes. 

“Um yes. Well. I guess he um..”

“Fooled you again ?”

“Yes.” 

The entire Avengers team present, plus that “Nightcrawler” fella, and “Storm” lady, rolled their eyes. Clearly, it wasn’t the first time Loki did something like that. 

“So, we have to find them then...” 

“Klarion was probably the one that appeared at Brooklyn Bridge. Vision and Scarlet Witch are the one that went over there, but they still didn’t find a thing.” 

Captain America said. Bruce answered : 

“They won’t find him. Unfortunately, Klarion is a very resourceful kid. And I think I know what he wants to do with that sword now...”

“What ?”

“Well, you see, Klarion doesn’t need an artifact to travel from universe to universe. He can open gates thanks to magic. But he can only cross them alone. Well, his cat somehow is able to follow as well..but the point is, he couldn’t travel with someone else. Now with the sword ? He could just use his own powers, and his partner could use said sword. I actually think he brought us here as a test...And it clearly worked.”

“Wait, you mean that once Klarion and my brother find each others, they’ll have the ability to...travel through universes ?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s really not good...You were right little man, Ragnarök level.” 

There was a heavy silence as the news sunk in in everyone’s mind. Every persons present had witnessed really weird and dangerous things, in their lives, and they all came to know exactly when a situation was dire. 

And this one ? Two kings of Mayhem reunited and able to go from one universe to another ? Definitely a very dire situation...

“Well, we need to find that kid !” 

Thor exclaimed, but you shook your head, being faster than your husband to answer : 

“It’s not that easy. Klarion has certain...powers, to hide himself. None of our technology will work, and unless you guys know someone who has the power to know where everyone in the world is...It’s really not going to be easy. I guess we have to start from the Brooklyn Bridge and try to find clues and-”

“Wait. Sorry to interrupt you Darling, but I think I have an idea.” 

Bruce turned to whoever dared to call you “darling”, and glared at him. It was that short hairy guy that brought Dick back. And though you were thankful he apparently helped save your son...how dare he call you “darling” ?! And hey, HEY ! Why were you blushing ?! You never blushed when people flirted with you, you always brushed them of nonchalantly, or sometimes somewhat flirted back when Bruce pissed you off...But you never blushed ! 

“Someone who can find anyone in the World you say ? I think I know just the one.” 

Everyone was turned towards Wolverine (who seemed completely oblivious to Bruce’s glare, but definitely noticed you blushing as he winked at you...Bruce saw red, and it’s only thanks to all his sons getting a hold of him that Logan wasn’t suddenly attacked by a very angry man “twice” his size and could finish his sentence) : 

“We have to go to the Xavier Institute. And we have to talk to its headmaster. We have to go see Charles Xavier.” 

To be continued...YOU CAN FIND PART 2 HERE : clickclickclick

__________________________________________________

And here, the first part of this fic. This is basically the INTRODUCTION to this new series so it’ll most likely be the weakest chapter..it’s to settle everything ya know ? So that’s why some characters might be more quiet blahblahblah...I’m basically planning of splitting them into teams and..Well you’ll see ! This was just a small introduction to get the Batfam in the Marvel World !

I originally wanted to write just a funny one shot ya know ? But um, as usual I ended up being completely lost in my own head and wrote a plot much more complicated than I originally planned...I’m still gonna try and write some funny moments and all. I basically just will have more time to write about more characters haha. Ya wanna know something funny ? I jumped in this without knowing exactly how many parts there would be. So 1/??????, I have a feeling this will be my longest series so far, I just want the Batfam to meet so many of my fav characters...So I hope you’ll like following the Batfam traveling across the Marvel World (oh I really want to write them in the Savage Land and in Wakanda...) in pursuit of Klarion and Loki !

Aaaaah...So much for saying I’d never write series ever again huh.

[goldenbolts]

[classified] advanced advocates case file: LIGHTNING!

BASICS

BIRTH NAME: Mathieu Oliveira

NICKNAME(S): Matty, Mat

DATE OF BIRTH: August 10th, 1994

AGE: 25

GENDER: Cis male 

PRONOUNS: He/him/his

NATIONALITY: Brazilian-American

HOMETOWN: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Turnstone, USA. Miami, Florida.

OCCUPATION: Exotic Dancer.

ORIGIN

Mathieu was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a troubled mother who was on the brink of death and wouldn’t be able to raise him. He was immediately placed into the foster system, somewhere that put him in place to be adopted by rich scientists who were conducting illegal experiments. The scientists ran a practice named, Insituto do Futuro, the institute of the future, which experimented on children and raised them to be super powered soldiers.

The Institute disguised itself as an elite private school, and at times operated as such, all of the children had multiple classes, were kept under strict rules, and had to train their abilities with super powered mentors. The scientists were hoping to sell their technology as a weapon, able to be used by governments of the world to create an army of heroes that could fight in their wars.

A lot of the experiences within the institute were deeply traumatizing, abuse was rampant, and there was very little care for the wellbeing of the children. All they needed to do was be the best, the smartest and most capable, so that the experiment could be seen as a success, that was all that mattered. Many of the children placed into the institute died as a result of the experiments, which were intended to give them powers but were largely unpredictable.

Mathieu was one of the ones that developed incredible abilities, able to manipulate electricity and create portals. He trained his electrokinesis thoroughly within the institute, his ability of portal creation not actually appearing for most of his time there. The only actual relationships Mathieu made to get through the intense experiences were with his peers in the institute, the other children being experimented on. He had a few close friends that he confided in and supported, that was the only way he was strong enough to get through it.

When he and his friends were old enough, being in their late teens, they made a plan to escape the institute. Mathieu had developed a new ability to create portals and had kept it hidden, only wanting to use it to get out and not have it developed for the institute’s purpose. He and his friends were successful in escaping, thanks to his portal, and made it to the U.S.

He was granted asylum and applied to work with the Freedom Coalition, but was denied because of his very obvious sexuality. Mathieu wanting to gain some power for himself, worked alone to stop criminals however he could and worked nights at a strip club, feeling empowered through the dances he performed. He tried to apply to other smaller teams, but never gelled with any for long, until he applied for the Advocates. He’s been there since the beginning and he’s the proudest of himself that he’s ever been, and is glad that he can be seen as the hero that he knows he is.

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 5′8″

WEIGHT: 170 lbs.

BUILD: Muscular.

ETHNICITY: Latino. Brazilian. 

HAIR: Brown.

EYES: Brown.

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Tattoos. Curly hair.

DISABILITIES: Mild case of ADD. Some lingering PTSD. 

DRESS STYLE: Very casual. Snap backs, denim, crop tops. Lots of jewelry. 

TATTOOS: Lightning bolt on his right middle finger. A mickey mouse on his upper left arm, a reminder from his childhood.  A lion on his right shoulder. Random stick and pokes that he’s allowed people to draw on him when he’s feeling adventurous. 

PIERCINGS: Tongue piercing, nipple piercings, Eyebrow piercing. 

PERSONALITY/PSYCHOLOGY

INTROVERT or EXTROVERT: Extrovert.

INTELLIGENCE LEVEL: He’s smart but can be very oblivious.

MENTAL HEALTH: Not great, his coping mechanisms make him reckless.

HABITS: Bounces on his feet a lot. Very restless. 

MANNERISMS: Excitable, and moves a lot when he speaks. 

HEALTH: Healthy enough, he tries to take care of himself. Tries.

MBTI TYPE: ESFP

POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES:  Adventurous, Excitable, Energetic

NEGATIVE ATTRIBUTES:  Impulsive, Materialistic, Stubborn

LIKES: Good music, fun, getting new tattoos, attention. Travelling. Adventure.

DISLIKES: Being ignored, being wrong, people who are boring.

HOBBIES: Collects designer items. And postcards.

TALENTS / SKILLS: He’s a very good dancer. 

FAMILY

PARENTS: Anita Oliveira. (deceased) 

SIBLINGS: None that he knows of.

CHILDREN: None. 

MARITAL STATUS: Single.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S): None.

OTHER FAMILY: None. 

PETS: None.

SEXUALITY

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Gay

DATING STATUS: Dating, mostly for money and items.

DOMINANT / SUBMISSIVE / SWITCH: Submissive.

TOP / BOTTOM / VERSATILE: Vers-bottom.

TURN-ONS: Men who are bigger than him. Money. Attention. Choking. Exhibitionism. 

TURN-OFFS: Being ignored, men who aren’t adventurous, routine.

SUPERHEROISM

ALIAS: Lightning.

POWERS / SKILLSET:

Electrokinesis: Mathieu can generate electricity and control electric currents with his mind. He can use electric blasts of energy to attack, and sometimes propel himself upwards. Often he will use the electricity in his fingertips to disable electronic devices, overloading them. His electric blasts can reach far distances, acting like lightning bolts that shoot out of his hands.

Portal Creation: He can generate portals that allow him and a few others to travel to other dimensions, and across the globe, pretty much anywhere you can think of. All Mathieu has to do is think of a location he wants to go to and direct enough electric energy to create a portal. He has to make sure he’s focused, otherwise the portal can lead to anywhere and that can be precarious. You never want to end up somewhere random that you weren’t prepared for.

COLORS: White, and gold. 

APPEARANCE:  Lightning’s superhero costume consists of shiny, skintight white pants, white elbow length gloves, a white cape that has a white harness at the front over his chest, and a crown of gold lightning bolts on his head.

WEAKNESSES:

Easily distracted: Mathieu has a short attention span and is very easily distracted, something that isn’t the best with his particular abilities. He needs to focus to aim his electric blasts correctly, and to create a safe portal that will transport him where he actually needs to go. If something is off when he’s creating a portal, it can lead somewhere he wasn’t planning, somewhere potentially dangerous.

Rubber: Rubber doesn’t conduct electricity so Mathieu’s powers are useless against someone who is wearing anything rubber, or if they have elastic abilities. He doesn’t understand how, but his blasts have never affected those that can stretch beyond human means.

MENTOR / PROTEGE: Mentor.

LENGTH OF ADVOCATE MEMBERSHIP: 3 years, since inception. 

SUPERVILLAIN ARCHNEMESIS: Instituto do Futuro, Slingshot (elasticity, and super strength).

[theculturedmarxist]

Risky: The Game of Global Domination

Recently an acquaintance said to me that if Donald Trump wins (or “wins” as the case may be) a second, term, there’s going to be a third World War. I don’t think they’re wrong, but not because of Donald Trump himself. Rather, it’s a matter of the current economic paradigm reaching its uttermost limits.

When I was younger, I used to love my school history textbooks. I was a fast reader and a quick study, and I loved learning. The maps always fascinated me, particularly of these ancient empires. Often my books went into detail regarding their technological and cultural innovations and the effects these empires would have on later societies and cultures.

Alexander’s empire, for example, would bring Greek thought, culture, and art to Asia. Bactria would ultimately become a hybrid Indo-Greek kingdom that would introduce Greek sculpture to the Eastern world. Before this, the Buddha was depicted symbolically as a lotus blossom. It’s after Alexander and the advent of the Seleucid Empire and the Kingdom of Bactria that the Buddha would be depicted in natural, humanistic means in freestanding sculpture. Of course, Alexander’s empire didn’t last, but it’s interesting to think about what might have been if he hadn’t died. Alas.

The Roman Empire tended to receive a great deal of attention too, perhaps for good reason. It would influence practically every country in Europe, after all, and its influence was felt as far away as Cathay. Latin was the language of learning in Europe well beyond the Renaissance. Their system of political thought, architecture, and philosophy would influence countries even in modern times, like the United States.

These kinds of maps inspired awe in me, but also numerous questions. Why didn’t the much vaunted Roman war machine just keep going? Especially in light of the numerous barbarian incursions that would ultimately do it in? Surely an empire as mighty as the Romans could manage to quell a bunch of naked, ignorant Germans. The history of Roman expansion up to Caesar Augustus was one of almost unmitigated success. What happened?

There are numerous factors at work which contribute to an explanation. One such is the nature of travel at the time: generally you went on foot or not at all. The great Inner Sea aided transport of goods and resources throughout the empire. Egypt was Rome’s breadbasket. It’s produce was essential for feeding Rome and subsequently Constantinople. While the agricultural lands of Italy were in fact rich and productive, they were long ago dominated by the Patrician class, which turned its soil towards the production of cash crops. Feeding the vast urban mobs required the importation of thousands of tons of grain, the Cura Annonae.

To put it shortly, a person could only walk so far, so fast, and resources could only be moved so quickly, so far before they began to spoil. Sun Tzu mentions in The Art of War that a single wagon of captured feed is worth ten of what an invading army brings with it. Invasions are costly, dangerous, a huge economic gamble, and this is on top of the tremendous exertions necessary to supply an army so far inland in an empire that relies on relatively speedy seaborne transportation to survive. Between these factors and the internal contradictions gnawing at the empire, it simply couldn’t expand any further.

Ultimately, this would be Rome’s downfall. For all its technology and military might, its economy relied on expansion. It would attempt to expand eastward into the Iranian plateau, but this would result only in fruitless wars first with the Parthians and then with the Sassanids. The failure or inability to expand would result in it cannibalizing itself to death until it succumbed to Germanic incursions.

In my history books, on the subject of World War I, the explanations for what precipitated the war were rather simple. The Archduke gets shot (for some reason), and the system of secret alliances, along with the military buildup within each empire, lead to the ruinous war. Sometimes it would hint that Europeans had become complacent, that they hadn’t experienced a continental war since Napoleon or the Crimea. In others the explanation was the pride instilled in populations by burgeoning nationalism. Rarely if ever was the economic dimension even mentioned.

The state of the world by the beginning of WW1 was a rather dismal one. The scramble for Africa was complete, and in Asia what wasn’t already claimed by China or one of the European powers was being scrutinized with greedy eyes by Imperial Japan. China was sick and increasingly feeble as capitalist inroads eroded the foundations of thousands of years of the Chinese Imperial system, and the importation of opium was rotting out the rest.

Essentially, whatever had been “up for grabs” had been claimed. The Americas were more or less in the de facto sphere of the United States. Almost everything else had a European flag on it (and yes, that includes the Turks). Whatever the asspained dullards on this website might blubber and shriek, imperialism isn’t the exclusive demesne of “White people.”

Countries like Germany and Italy were Johnny-Come-Latelies in regards to Imperialism. Previously, Germany would exist, insofar as it could be said to, as the “Holy Roman Empire,” which was none of those things. It was a miscellany of small, independent states with regional and religious rivalries dating back hundreds of years or more. It wouldn’t be until Napoleon that the HRE would be officially disbanded and the process of conglomeration under Brandenburg could begin in earnest. By the time there actually is a Germany, the fledgling empire would have to scramble for whatever was left.

At its apogee, just prior to the first Great War, Germany would have a population of approximately sixty-five million people. Great Britain would hardly approach that, but then she was hardly alone. The population of the British Raj was somewhere in the neighborhood of three-hundred-and-fifty million people. The Industrial Revolution was well under way by this point, but the majority of production still required manpower and labor, skilled or unskilled.

You might well imagine then that this leaves a country like Germany, even with its scant and marginal colonies, at a severe disadvantage. Napoleon would plant the seeds not only of the German Empire, but German Industry. To compete, Germany would need by necessity to become a sophisticated industrial power if it wanted to have a hope against the hundreds of millions of people in the British or French or Russian Empires. The same would go for Japan as well. It didn’t take a genius to see that it was either colonize or be colonized.

By 1914, the Imperial economic system had reached its limit. There was nowhere left to colonize, explore, or claim. While increasingly feeble, China was still too formidable (and profitable) to simply invade and annex. At last the European Empires had to confront one another, like it or not, and the military buildup prior to this conflict is testament to that fact.

Suppose for a moment if you were to imagine the GDP of these industrial empires as singular units produced at the end of every year, the sum-total of production traditional and industrial. If the British Empire produces 2 and the German Empire produces 1, then the first year it would be 2:1, the second 4:2, the third 6:3, and so on. This is without taking into consideration the accumulative effect of industrial and technological development. The BE wouldn’t only produce 2, then 4, then 6, but 2.1, 4.4, 6.8, and Germany 1.1, 2.2, 3.4, 4.5. The British simply have more men and women working and producing than Germany. That’s more people to work the fields, factories, and universities. Without intervention Germany would be doomed to lag behind Britain, subject to its economic domination.

While factors such as nationalization and secret treaties contributed, the economic dimension was the main precipitate of the conflict. These unresolved contradictions would in turn go on to produce the second World War. Lebensraum wasn’t some idle delusion of der Fuhrer, but an economic necessity if German Industry hoped to compete on a planet a full quarter of which was the exclusive domain of the British Crown, not to mention the other empires of the world at the time. One must either upset the paradigm or resign oneself to subjugation. The Second World War would resolve some of these contradictions and pave the way not only for the “Cold War” ostensibly between Western Democracy and Eastern Communism, but also the unprecedented expansion of Capital.

I have only the vaguest recollection of the fall of the Soviet Union. I recall the 90s as being a time of unbridled enthusiasm and optimism in the US. Finally, without the thorn of The Evil Empire in our side, we could do all the great things we dreamed of. Communism was dead, and American Freedom and Democracy were the things that buried it. The threat of nuclear annihilation evaporated like a bad dream. It was a new world, but much too similar to the old one.

There’s an ancient Vulcan proverb: “only Nixon could go to China,” and he did, making inroads for global capital in the process. When the USSR was finally disintegrated (or dismantled), the ideological and economic counterpode to the US was suddenly gone. The unifying ideological force in the United States was gone, and for all intents and purposes whatever impediment to capital along with it. I don’t think I’ll shed any tears for the USSR, but however one slices it, the US and all which that entails was almost entirely unopposed. The pretense of international law would keep NATO from running roughshod over what remained of these ideological holdouts, but there was no longer opposition significant enough to stop the US from doing whatever it wanted to do. The “hard power” of the US military worked in tandem with the “soft power” of organizations like the IMF and World Bank to spread the good news of laissez-faire capitalism, which brings us inexorably to now.

Capital has suffused practically every country on the planet. Even old communist (or “communist”) holdouts like Cuba and North Korea are softening their stance on private enterprise, such is their theoretical and economic sterility. China, rather than being a cautionary tale of reactionary revisionism in the face of dealing with capitalism is seen as an example to be emulated. The treatment of workers there is infamous, the oppression of workers seeking to organize obscenely blatant. China would even come to the rescue of global capital in the 07/08 financial crisis. The complete collapse of the global economic system would be prevented by what should have been its greatest enemy. Alas.

Expansion is a necessity for capitalist economies. It is completely unavoidable and totally essential to its survival. By its nature, capitalism collects wealth and concentrates it, thus depriving itself of the very lifeblood it needs to function. If there is no one capable of consuming, that is without the capital with which to consume, then whence cometh production? Production to the ultimate excess is an integral feature of capitalism as well. The more of a commodity is produced, the lesser the scarcity, and subsequently its diminished value, actual or perceived. A tremendous mound of wealth is piled up which no one can access, because the tokens of access are monopolized by an incredibly few number of people, who have no need for the knick-knacks and baubles they produce to amuse the proletariat. It molders while millions starve, for no other reason than spiteful greed.

We’re left then under circumstances not unlike that in the early 20th century. Capital has no place else to expand, no other great mineral or material wealth to appropriate and exploit. The capitalists realize this as well. The US is spending trillions to prepare for an inevitable showdown with Russia or China or both. It’s the ultimate conclusion of the so-called “New American Century,” the reactionary effort to ensure American hegemony in the face of the Russia petro-state and the constantly developing economic, technological, and demographical weight of China. As climate collapse progresses, these contradictions are only going to come into sharper and more pronounced relief. Clinton began it with adventures in the Balkans. Bush II continued it in crushing practically defenseless nations in the Middle East. Obama exacerbated it with his “Pivot to Asia.” Trump continues it with his reckless bellicosity towards Iran and North Korea. The military efforts of each of these administrations points towards the purposeful isolation of China and Russia. The Pentagon seeks to crush any potentially unfriendly states, great or small, with the long term goal of depriving their chief adversaries of any succor in what they imagine to be the conflict to come. History shows us just how frequently out of touch the military establishment is with reality. America is convinced of its own special place in history, its uniqueness, and absent any enemy of respectable capability, its invincibility. Time and again the US military has been proven demonstrably wrong, and time and again they fail to learn this lesson.

Ironically, their integration into global capital is what painted the target onto China and Russia’s backs. The Chinese working class has becoming wealthy at the expense of the American and European working classes. The sale of necessary petro-chemicals and China’s status as “the workshop of the world” have concentrated vast sums of capital within them. Every passing day bleeds the West dry and enriches the East. While an inevitable motion of the Invisible Hand, this is viewed as an unacceptable aberration by American and European capitalists. Lesser capitalists in so-called emerging economies or developing countries, such as Brazil, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and so on, can sense the direction of the wind as well and are seeking to align themselves against their regional rivals. History might look back and recognize that we are in the opening moves of this next great conflict already. Russia is taking an aggressive stance at home and abroad to stymie American efforts. China spreads roots ever deeper into African soil, a continent that the US views as its sole domain. Trump diverted two carrier groups to the Sea of Japan to intimidate North Korea and by extension China, and even went so far as to invade Syria in complete contravention of international law and shoot down a Russian jet.

2019 isn’t exactly like 1919, however. For better or worse, our technology has advanced substantially, dangerously. Nuclear weapons are more potent than they were at their advent in the last century, but the threat of mutually assured nuclear annihilation disappeared with the USSR. Two generations now have grown up ignorant of the nuclear specter hanging over them. Nuclear war is something for movies and history books. No one talks about it. No one mentions it.

Advances in technology have always cut deepest the working class. Industrial machinery obviated the need for millions of serfs. Telecommunications technology has in our day obviated the need for billions of workers. Perhaps an even greater deterrent to the bourgeoisie pressing The Button and annihilating the world in atomic hellfire was the inescapable economic losing prospect that would ensue. Money would be worthless. Material wealth would be destroyed. The millions of human chattel they required to facilitate their life styles would be turned to dust. It’s one thing to take the other guy with you into oblivion, it’s another thing entirely to go blithely marching into it yourself.

Now, however, the bourgeoisie have no use for the reserve army of the working class. Machinery has become so sophisticated that whole factories can operate without so much as a breathing janitor. Rather than a begrudging asset, the working class represents a liability. We can all see what is happening to the planet. We can all see what capitalism is doing to us and the people we love. The bourgeoisie can see the inevitability of the proletarian backlash to their excess, stupidity, and greed. They push STEM subjects on the workers while keeping the Humanities for themselves. They know their history and know it well. They know what happens when the peasants have had enough cake.

Whether because they actually believe it or have deluded themselves with the fantasy, the American missile shield that has been so carefully erected around China, Iran, and Russia is a white elephant. It doesn’t work, even with all the cards stacked in its favor. That doesn’t really matter, though. Capitalism doesn’t care whether or not something works, only that it is believed in enough that rubes will buy it. Whether the Pentagon and NATO know this or not, they are still basing their future plans around the supposed functionality of this system. They either believe or wish to believe that, in the event of a nuclear exchange, they will be reasonably shielded from the infernal holocaust which will ensue. The bourgeoisie is ever superficial. They don’t care for culture or history. Let New York be flattened. Let the Louvre be incinerated. Vaporize the Kremlin and annihilate the Forbidden City. These aren’t losses to them after all. They only care for something insofar as it profits them, and nothing is more profitable than the prospect of rebuilding a city, a country, a civilization, and best of all it would be a civilization in their own image—the ultimate bourgeois revolution! As they emerge from their bunkers and silos to a silent planet, they’d have the technology, resources, and know-how to put the pieces back together again. No more Marxism to rile up the impertinent slaves. No more democracy to impede their whims. No more gods to flaunt their authority above these earthly masters. Just the rule of Gold, and those who have it. Finally, there will be resources aplenty, even in the event of complete ecological devastation. There will be only the bourgeois and their retainers. Atomic fire reduced the stupid, teeming billions to dust, a happy little accident of the nuclear conflagration. Not a tear would be shed, only sighs of relief. It turns out you can take it with you, and by this they establish their heaven on earth.

2019 isn’t 1919. Our circumstances are different, and perhaps even more urgent than those of the working class of generations past. The ravages of capitalism have left our planet irreparably damaged. The most intense period of reaction, through the Cold War and on through the collapse of the Soviet Union to today have rendered the Left, such as it is, fractured, impotent, and broken. Capital has learned its history well and spends billions in order to keep the proletariat under its massive thumb. To say that things were dire would be putting it mildly.

But all is not lost.

The Second International was undone by the first World War. Abandoning the ideal of Internationalism, millions of workers rallied to their nations’ calls and killed themselves by the millions. The development of a global consciousness existed but only in an embryonic state.

Just as Lenin said, the Capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with. The ubiquity of American culture has created, like it or not, a layer of universality that spreads across the globe. The Internet too has facilitated the development of an international proletarian culture. The sophistication of travel, both domestic and foreign, has likewise spread the roots and seedlings of an international understanding that supersedes parochial tribalism. “Globalism,” or so it is called, has done the marvelous work of eroding the sanctity of the nation-state. The bourgeoisie is scrambling to undo the damage, but there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. That borders are superfluous, even authoritarian, is an idea gaining coin and traction among all levels of the working class. Those that have circumvented them have no respect for them. Those trapped by them harbor growing resentment to the limits of their cage. The injustice is plain to those with plenty made to look out at the starving multitude, whose starvation enables their own feasting. Even those unsympathetic to the cause of labor are ground to dust by the ever proliferating demands of capital exploitation. Even those mode deluded and devoted workers are breaking down physically, mentally, spiritually beneath the onslaught of capitalism.

Unions in the US are standing up with growing confidence. Workers there and abroad are beginning to realize just how precarious the situation they find themselves in. India was host to the largest organized labor action in history not two years ago. Teachers in the US are growing restive beneath the weighty boot of austerity. The insanity of the Right, unguided by political ideology or personal conviction, lashes out like cowards only at the most vulnerable. Only the Left offers refuge to this vile, stupid violence. Only solidarity offers respite to the corrosive forces of capitalist economics. The Right consists only of the weak. The Left constitutes a plethora, weak and strong, whose collaboration makes the whole stronger. The Right needs a mythological father figure to have coherence and purpose. The Left is propelled by the collective will of all, towards the collective benefit of all. Cut the head off a snake and it will wriggle like a worm until it dies. Cut the head off a hydra, and two more take its place.

This should not be taken lightly. The labors ahead will take the collective effort, the unified dedication, and total collaboration of all of us. We not only have to prevent our own deaths, but preserve our planet. We not only have to ameliorate the wrongs of the past, but build a future congenial to all. We’re faced not only by the most developed, wealthy, entrenched plutocracy in history, armed with the most advanced weaponry and politico-military theory, but one which has spent the last century preparing for exactly such a conflict. Our work is cut out for us, to say the least.

But we can do it. We have to do it. There isn’t any other option, any other alternative. We either survive as a whole or perish alone. We either achieve socialism or succumb to barbarism. The dialectic, always in motion, has brought us to this point, to this ultimate historical moment and we will either rise to meet it or be crushed beneath it, without a whimper, anonymous bones lamented and remembered by no one. There is only one possible conclusion, and you know it. We all know it. All we have left is to embrace it.

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world to win!

[liunaticfringe]

(via Lucy Liu’s Joan Watson Was Elementary’s Humanistic Heart)

Beautifully written ode to Joan.

2:38 P.M.Lucy Liu’s Joan Watson Was Elementary’s Humanistic HeartBy

Angelica Jade Bastién

Photo: CBS

Recently, the BBC Archive shared on Twitter a 1977 clip of a middle-aged woman who was stopped on the street by The Viewer’s View to talk about her thoughts on television. In her tomato-red raincoat and delicately wrapped scarf, she cogently and movingly extolls the wonder of television. At different points she describes the medium as a “phenomenon” and a communal ritual for her family, which reminded me of the gentle awe television instilled in me when I was a child watching The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation as my mom braided my hair, or obsessively taping Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my own. “It felt like we were escaping from that kitchen sink,” she notes about the transporting nature of television, its potential to be not just a mirror, but also a window — an escape. Watching this brought to mind how much can be said about the pleasures of televisual comfort food, those shows we slip into like a warm bath, letting them entertain us with their familiar rhythms and archetypes.

Elementary, the CBS procedural that ended its seven-season run last night, was a delectable example of the potency and wonder of televisual comfort food, wrapping within the folds of its procedural a tender argument that the families we craft ourselves are as important as the ones we’re born into. What elevated the series from the glut of procedurals on television (and its own uneven final season) was its adept performances, particularly Lucy Liu as Joan Watson, who created a layered study in empathy that suggests second acts are possible in life.

Trying to capture what makes a good performance is like trying to hold smoke in your hand, but when I spoke to Liu earlier this summer, she said something that captured the essence of it: “I do think listening is very key to directing, and I don’t think we all do it as well as we should.” This holds true for acting as well, and Liu proved over Elementary’s seven seasons to be an active, empathetic listener. But even the greatness of Liu’s performance couldn’t distract from how the final season failed her character, ending on a sour note that stains her legacy.

When we first met Joan Watson, she was a woman whose life had been undone by trauma. After a patient died on her operating table, Joan gave up her life as a surgeon, flinging herself into a new profession as a sober companion hired by Morland Holmes (later played by the inimitable John Noble) to help usher his son, the brilliant and difficult yet strangely beguiling Sherlock (an excellent Jonny Lee Miller), into the rigors of recovery for his drug addiction. When Sherlock saw the spark of ingenuity and potential in Joan, he aided her in taking on a new calling as a detective.  What followed was a tender story not just of a nascent friendship, but what it means to rebuild oneself.

It became evident early on that Elementary was at its best when it used its procedural format to carefully nudge at ideas of family, both those we’re born into and those we make ourselves. For Joan, family is a knotted reality: We’ve seen her struggle with her mother’s Alzheimer’s, the memory of the father who ran out on her family and later wrestled with schizophrenia and homelessness, and the half-sister she only met recently as an adult. These rigors carefully revealed what justice and order means for her character, but Joan isn’t a harsh, brooding detective; she’s lightning-bright and boldly empathetic, listening with full-bodied attention.

As an archetype, detectives are a useful window into the moral dimensions of the society they are born into. They’re cinematic moral compasses tracking the interior and external reverberations of the choices we make and the often illusory nature of true justice. What does it say, then, that the most iconic examples of this archetype have been primarily white people? Perhaps this is one reason I’ve found myself pulled toward Joan, whose existence as an Asian-American woman shapes her understanding of the world and the justice she seeks. Perhaps the most striking development in this regard occurred in the show’s fifth season, when Joan approached a former patient fresh from prison, Shinwell Johnson (the late Nelsan Ellis), for information, but soon took him under her wing to teach him the detective skills she learned under Sherlock’s tutelage, which helped his own work as an informant. She and Sherlock increasingly disagreed on the situation until he was proved somewhat right about Shinwell’s moral character, but Joan’s decision to mentor Shinwell spoke to her empathetic ability to see the potential of someone whom the justice system may have failed.

When I spoke to Liu, she said it’s the episodes that peel back the layers of who these characters are that she cherishes most. “We do a lot of procedurals, obviously, and a lot of mysteries that need to be solved, but those episodes [like her first directorial effort in the show’s second season, “Paint It Black”] really stand out, and I love seeing those relationships. They are what creates the person that is presented and has so many layers,” she noted.

Joan is also one of modern television’s greatest examples of the characterization and storytelling that comes with great costuming. For Joan, fashion isn’t just a form of expression; it’s identity. One of the greatest pleasures of Elementary was in tracking the breadth of Joan’s arc through Rebecca Hofherr’s costuming. In the beginning, Joan wore casual clothing with loose silhouettes, but by season four her wardrobe had subtly shifted into impeccably tailored suits, echoing the evolution of her career as a detective. “The suit idea was not to sort of become more ‘masculine’ and have that kind of energy,” Liu told me. “It was more that she now conducted herself in a more professional manner as a detective, and so she then wanted to have more of a uniform.”

Yet some of the most indelible moments in the character’s history saw her in more feminine wear, like in season three’s “The One That Got Away,” in which Joan wears an elegant burnished copper and obsidian dress with a fur-trimmed coat to confront suspected murder and violent abuser Del Gruner (Stuart Townsend). When he viciously grabs her arm to level a threat, her posture strengthens and she looks him in the eye with an icy glare. “Get your hand off me or we’ll find out how well you do against a woman who can actually fight back,” she says, never breaking her gaze.

Joan’s clothing often acted as a window into how she saw herself. Her refined, immaculately tailored suits from the last few seasons spoke to her professionalism and comfort in her role as a consulting detective. Moments like her confrontation with Del allowed her contradictions to rise to the surface, contrasting the feminine quality of her dress with the steely aggression that allowed her to confront a man suspected of torture and murder.

But in the final season, Joan often felt like a splintered character lacking a secure through line, being pulled in various directions by the plot. This was evident in her clothing, which moved away from beautiful but not ostentatious suits to brighter clothing, busy with clashing patterns, ruffles, and an overall looser silhouette. The clothing was still gorgeous, but it didn’t track with the woman we came to know over the preceding seasons, and Joan wasn’t given enough to do in the final season to justify such a shift in wardrobe. This is a symptom of a larger problem: The series’s seventh season just didn’t work.

Elementary being cut down from 21 episodes to 13 put a strain on it, resulting in a final season that felt rushed and half-formed. That extended to Joan, who didn’t have much to do beyond support Sherlock until the finale, in which she became a vehicle for a maudlin twist that undercut the vibrancy of the character by making her a source for Sherlock’s pain (and a way out of the bind the writers found themselves in with trying to get him to stay in New York).

In the last few minutes of the Elementary finale it’s revealed that Joan has cancer. This leads to moving performances by Liu and Miller, who grant heft to this twist, but their tender chemistry isn’t enough to distract from the sense that Joan has been pulled in an unexpected direction that we aren’t given enough time to sit with, to fully feel the emotional weight of it. It’s a poorly sketched turn that misuses a star character who didn’t get many moments to shine in the final season.

I prefer to remember Joan as she was before the seventh season squandered her. I’ll remember the empathetic way she interviewed those mired in grief as a detective, how she carefully navigated the emotional strife of her familial dilemmas, and the gentle chemistry she shared with Sherlock, which demonstrated how a deep friendship can stir us as human beings. I’ll remember watching Elementary with my mother, feeling inspired by how Joan faced her future with a gimlet-eyed exuberance that made me believe that second chances in life are possible. I’ll remember all the times Joan chose empathy over being jaded, in a world where that choice remains preciously rare.

[aspiestvmusings]

FFH vs MCU: PARALLELS

PARALLELS & CALLBACKS & OTHER LITTLE THINGS: FFH & MCU: 

WARNING...SUPER LONG TEXT POST! THAT INCLUDES JUST A TINY AMOUNT OF THE MANY MANY PARALLELS, CALLBACKS... etc 

Peter’s secret superhero identity (Spider-Man) revealed (not by him/his choice) in the end of FFH &  Tony’s secret superhero identity (Iron Man) revealed by him/by his choice in the end of IM1

Peter’s/The movies last words/line in FFH being “What the F*--” as the screen goes to black (as he sees the “news” on screen) & Aunt May’s/The movies last words in HC being “What the FU--” as the screen goes to black (when she sees Peter in his Spidey costume). 

The “BLIP” video edit “in memoriam” broadcast ending with comment /by Betty, i think) that it’s time to move on...  seems to hint at Endgame lines “Some people move on.../You gotta move on...” by Steve 

AC/DC’s “Back in Black” - the song/band that plays during some iconic Tony/Iron Man moments in past film(s) & the song that plays during the Happy/Peter airplane above the tulip field scene as Peter is about to make himself a new suit. Even though Peter thinks it’s Led Zeppelin #ILoveLedZeppelin as he hears the song starting ;) 

Tony’s glasses: “To/For the next/new Tony Stark” - Tony’s special glasses now belong to Peter. And they have a feature that had previously not been revealed - they include an AI named E.D.I.T.H (Even Dead Im The Hero”, cause Tony loved his acronyms) 

Tony & acronyms: from J.A.R.V.I.S. to B.A.R.F. to E.D.I.T.H. in “Far From Home” 

Tony wanting to build a “suit of armour” around the world/Earth, but being denied in past Avengers films & then literally building/creating a suit of armour around the people he cares about - Rhodey’s suit, Pepper’s suit, Peter’s suit + re-making CA’s shield by/in Endgame. And as revealed in FFH he also did build a suit of armour around the planet - he has tech & satellites that is weaponized & ready to protect the planet from outside (or inside) threats. He wanted to be prepared for (another) Thanos-level threat & he wanted to leave behind a defence system... 

Peter using Stark tech to build a new suit in FFH (and Happy watching him & seeing so much Tony in him - in how he uses the tech and all that...) and Tony building his Iron Man suit in IM1 - the holographic tech used - visual parallels PS. Tom Holland has said that he re-watched RDJ’s scene rom first IM in prep for filming his scene & tried to mimic the movements & all...the parallels & similarity are on purpose

Peter/Happy in FFH  vs Tony/Happy in MCU - friendship and being supportive, while providing transportation & backup to the superhero, also...

Peter doubting in himself & in his leader abilities (bearing the heavy burden of being the Earth’s mightiest hero & protector) in FFH...the same way Tony struggled with becoming/being the Earth’s protector 

Peter having PTSD/anxiety (after the events of the BLIP/SNAPS & his mentor’s, Tony's death) & being pressured by the public... and not being able to take the pressure... escaping the “press conference” at aunt May’s charity event     in FFH & Tony having PTSD/anxiety (after the events on NY battle & the vision of the future & finding out that there are great threats lurking in the universe..) and being pressured by the public...and not being able to take the pressure... escaping the diner/table in IM3, when kids come to him...the hero..for  an autograph. 

Peter making mistakes  on the way.. when learning to be the superhero the world needs (trusting Mysterio, his new friend & giving over the powerful tech to him) in FFH & Tony making mistakes on the way in all the MCU films.  

Peter being betrayed by someone he trusted (his new “friend” Quentin Beck aka Mysterio) in FFH & Tony being betrayed by his old friend & business partner, Obadiah Stane in IM1. 

Peter not answering phone calls from important people - sending “Fury” to voicemail (ghosting Nick Fury) in FFH & Tony not liking answering the phone/talking to important people on the phone - putting them on hold (cause he just likes to put people on the hold) - example: Coulson in A1

The murals & street art in Europe as Peter walks by a wall art with flowers & candles in front of it dedicated to Iron Man/Tony Stark in FFH & the shadows of the six people who died mimicking  “wall art” in Iron Man 3 being a visual parallel to that scene with candles (and flowers) in front of it..to remember those who are gone...but not forgotten.

Peter using the Tower Bridge sign as shield & that tech (DIY project made of car engine & drone bits...) as the hammer on the “Bridge fight scene” in FFH as a visual parallel to Steve holding his shield & Thor’s hammer during the final battle in Endgame.

All three MCU main heroes - Tony (his arc reactor), Thor (his hammer) & Steve (his shield) were represented & could be visually seen during that bridge scene... as Peter prepares to fight the bad guy...

Peter going through many “dimensions”  during the Berlin    “safe house” illusion scene in FFH being visually similar to Dr. Strange & other MCU films visuals of other dimensions/universes - the mirror dimension, the many other dimensions seen... Infinite illusions scene.... 

Peter not having his Spidey-sense (Peter tingle) - one of his superhero abilities not working in FFH... for a while (because of his emotional state - grieving his mentor) & Bruce not having access to Hulk  - his ability to turn into Hulk/go green not working during Avengers 3 (because of his emotional state - after the events of past films)

Peter ending up in Netherlands/Holland (PS. while many people use Holland to talk about all of Netherlands, Holland actually refers to certain parts...two provinces that together “form” & are called Holland)... because Peter/Spiderman is portrayed by Tom Holland. #funfacts

Percentages - MJ was only 67/76% certain that Peter is Spider-Man in FFH & Tony saying Pepper should give herself 12% of the credit for the Stark Tower & Pepper saying she was having 12% of a moment” in A1. 

Tony saying “You reached the Live Model Decoy of Tony Stark” when agent Coulson gets through to him on the phone in A1 & Nick Fury basically using “live model decoys” for himself & Maria Hill in FFH. 

Mysterio and his illusions - making others see things that aren’t: Peter seeing dying Quentin Beck on the ground at the Tower Bridge, when the real Quentin is actually standing next to him, ready to shoot him, but peter sensing it & stopping him in FFH & Loki & his illusions - making others see things in a twisted way: agent Coulson seeing Loki in front of him, when he approaches with the new blaster weapon, when Loki is actually behind him & he doesn’t see the attack coming in A1. 

“Appearances can be deceiving” was meant to hint at both Mysterio not being who he is & also Fury & Hill being not who they seem... That they’re actually skrulls (working for Fury)

Happy’s surfboard mention/clue to Fury... when he calls him to warn about Mysterio’s deception is a reference to the skrull first looks in Captain Marvel... when they arrive. They first take the form of a group of surfers...cause these are the first people they see on the beach... 

The spiders crawling on Zombie IM in the illusion created by Mysterio in that FFH scene are according to someone who paid better attention & knows spider species better than me... apparently Black Widow spiders... IF so then that is a visual reference to BOTH characters who sacrificed themselves...all in one scene.

ETA: Mysterio in FFH was not who he seemed to be to the public & he wasn’t a man...but a Team... kinda... & The Mandarin in IM3 was not who he seemed to be to the public & he wasn’t a man...but a Team...kinda. Quentin Beck pretended to be Mysterio (a caped superhero) in FFH ... using movie magic & mo-cap suits  and visual tricks & Trevor Slattery pretended to be The Mandarin in IM3.. he was a paid actor, playing the role of the bad guy, The Mandarin. 

ETA: Peter &  MJ/Michelle in FFH vs Tony & Pepper in MCU films...there are both story/plot & visual parallels. Both ladies are taller (basically) than their partner (both Tony & Peter are...kinda...tiny/short). And both knew the man before the hero in the suit. And both were (at least at first)not a fan of the superhero “flying” and all (both Pepper & MJ’s reaction to Tony & Peter taking them to “fly” was pretty much the same...they were not fans of it #NeverDoThatAgain  #omgICantTakeThisAnymore 

ETA: all the drones (dummy suits built by Ivan) in Iron Man 2 VS all the drones used to create the illusions in FFH

Fire “monster” (Elemental: Fire) being one of the “bad guys” in FFH (Spidey fighting fire) & Fire “monster” (the “Extremis”  that turns the host bodies into hot fire/fire hot) being one of the “bad guys tools” in IM3 (Tony fighting Extremis)

Tony “creating” his ..and Peter’s enemies in many/almost all Iron Man/MCU films & FFH: Tony's dad vs Vanko’s das and Tony vs Vanko in IM2, Tony vs Killian & Maya in IM3, Tony/Avengers vs ULTRON in A2 (Wanda + Pietro vs Tony/Avengers in A2), Tony vs Charlie Spencer’s mom in CA. CW) The Vulture vs Peter in SM1: HC...and now Mysterio/Beck vs “new Tony Stark” aka Peter in FFH. 

Peter being all alone (with just one ally/friend - Happy)...and creating a suit for himself...from scratch (using tech) on the plane in Holland in FFH & Tony being all alone (with just one ally/friend)...and creating a suit for himself...from scratch... from a box of scraps...in the cave in IM1.

Not to mention all the little details, callback, parallels & similarities..connected to the (original) comics, to past/other Spider-Man films - JJJ as the “news” man, the multi-verse menton, every single Spidey costume from MCU making their appearance again, multiple Spideys all in one scene, LMD (Live Model Decoys)...etc etc...

[tessatechaitea]

Scarab #6

I don't know what's happening on this cover but I definitely have a new sexual fetish.

This comic book stars a raccoon. Rating: A+.

Most of the weird dialogue in this comic book probably comes from John Smith's high school notepads full of terrible poetry. I mean, this part about winter isn't too bad! I kind of like it. It's almost as if William Carlos Williams and H.P. Lovecraft were caught in a Star Trek transporter malfunction where their minds were melded but they had to overcome the horror of their new two-dicked physical existence to continue writing poetry. I knew John Smith was English from his previous work on 2000 A.D. and other British comic book periodicals but then he uses the phrase "Chinese whispers" in this issue and I think, "If I hadn't already known he was English from his previous work on 2000 A.D. and other British comic book periodicals, I'd now know he was English by his use of the phrase 'Chinese whispers.'" Here are some of the ideas John Smith throws into a two-page account of Scarab's recent adventures that he couldn't bother writing into full scripts but wanted everybody to know he thought up anyway: a television at the Waldorf haunted by the 20th Century, a pervert breaking the spirits of kids with his Zoo of Shame, The Phantom Barber stealing scalps from runway models, the world's sexiest man raped by Tarot cards, and the Electric Fetus Machine which manifests as a large organ whose music foments rebellion in fetuses. Is this how the British writers took over DC's adult comic books? By occluding our minds with so much random and weird pseudo-philosophical garbage that we couldn't think straight? Sure, I guess an Electric Fetus Machine sounds like a way better story than Batman beating The Riddler near to death. But is there really any substance there? I suppose there could be if the idea were fleshed out and some kind of theme built around the idea of fetuses rebelling. Maybe all of these ideas John Smith throws out are just a game of Chinese whispers where he takes, say, a story by John Barth from Lost in the Funhouse about the thoughts of a sperm considering how the race toward life is pointless and, maybe, they should all just give up, and he turns it into the Electric Fetus Machine so that when I read it, I don't instantly think, "Isn't this a John Barth story?" Instead, I think, "That's a better sounding story than the one where the guy is raped by the Three of Wands!"

Meanwhile, Scarab spends his downtime watching Eleanor turn into a Dr. Seuss tree. Or a mushroom cloud (because remember the theme established by the beginning quote and title?!).

Try to ignore Scarab's ass in the previous scan. It's phenomenal. If you're training to be a comic book artist, you need to spend a lot of time getting the ass right. And once you do, you'll never get an ass in pants right again because all you have ever learned to draw is a naked ass which readers will know is actually under skin tight Lycra unless the colorist completely shits the bed. The guy in the jar on the cover is a Russian experiment in psychotropic warfare called a Gloryboy. There are three of them and they're some kind of pacifist dream come true. They constantly mutter Vertigo phrases in a tonal frequency that makes normal people vomit and shit themselves. It's the Brown Note theory of winning battles but taken to the Vertigo extreme. Instead of a whomping bass sound system, the noise comes form a naked albino in a jar composed of dream matter. Maybe they're not composed of dream matter. And maybe they're not about pacifism at all. It seems they've been altered and experimented in such a way that they can give voice to "the Scream over Hiroshima!" That sounds pretty bad. It's probably some form of psychic bombardment, comparable to a nuclear blast, which drives everybody in the vicinity completely insane. Or maybe it really will just be a thing that pacifies everybody because have you ever tried to do anything while shitting yourself? I mean other than read the ingredients in your shampoo. And even then, I bet you take your eyes off the bottle for a moment to really be in the moment. As an aside, do women find shitting as enjoyable as men or is it just the fecal matter pressing up against our prostate as it passes that makes a big shit feel so good? The Russians test the Scream Over Hiroshima on London. What it does is project into the minds of everybody who hears it the entire reality of what happened in Hiroshima. It's the truth of war. It's pure horror and death and consequence. It probably also makes everybody shit themselves. But when it's done, they'll all understand, on a physically primal level what war is. And the assumption is that everybody will finally be against it, I guess? I've been on Twitter for many years and the one thing I know is that even physically experiencing the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima isn't going to change the minds of most idiots. I mean, if you didn't become a vegan pacifist hug machine after hearing Sting's song, "Russians," why would you become one after living the horror of fifty thousand lives snuffed out in an instant?! Some people, you just can't reach. London turns into a burning chaotic mess as everybody flips the fuck out from suddenly experiencing the most painful thing they've ever experienced. Scarab arrives after it's all over and everybody is afraid of him. Surprise! There's nothing he can do. He just observes the mess and meets a psychic who tells him that Eleanor is coming back. And isn't that the most important part of this eight issue story? That Louis the Scarab's love returns to him while the rest of the world falls into death and chaos? Scarab #6 Rating: C. Smith seeded this issue with more story ideas than story. The main story is an idea that really goes nowhere as well. It's a thought experiment. It's a minor philosophical musing. And Scarab doesn't do anything but distract himself from his wife's condition. But it also wasn't uninteresting. So I think that means it's a C? What am I, a high school teacher? I don't know how to grade shit!

[thecomicsnexus]

THE ULTIMATES #7-13 SEPTEMBER 2002 - APRIL 2004 BY MARK MILLAR, BRYAN HITCH, PAUL NEARY, ANDREW CURRIE AND PAUL MOUNTS

SYNOPSIS (FROM MARVEL DATABASE)

Hundreds are dead after the 'Hulk incident', and Janet Pym is in the hospital after getting sprayed by bug-spray and stampeded by hundreds of ants controlled by her husband, Hank. Bruce Banner is in isolation, so depressed by what he did, but no one even knows Banner is the Hulk. A doctor tells Banner that the Hulk cells are not leaving, and never will. Cap is greeted by Gail and Bucky Barnes, after the memorial service. Now that all the Ultimates know that Hank did it, Cap is in a rage, since he has feelings for Janet. Fury is calling on Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton to complete a mission. Cap calls a transport to Hank's location.

To introduce the new team of Hawkeye and Black Widow, the two go on a mission to kill a whole building of enemies. After a energetic battle, Hawkeye is almost killed but Black Widow saves his life. That night, Nick Fury has all the the Ultimates together, and with the new members; Black Widow and Hawkeye. Nick brought all the heroes together to tell them that an alien force, the same Nazi alien force that Captain America had to deal with in World War Two, is back and is wrecking havoc. Nick tells them that they think the aliens are preparing for a global annihilation. Meanwhile, Captain America is in Chicago, where he goes to meet Hank Pym, for personal reasons.

Captain America has just tracked down Hank Pym, and is with him, to teach him a lesson after Hank beat up his wife. Cap goes with the physical route, hitting Hank in places not too severe, but to make Hank need to increase his size. After Hank, having been hit numerous times, finally increases his size, Cap has a little fun. First, Cap goes to a higher floor to get a higher jump on Hank, and literally jumps on Hank's face, and pulls his head down, smashing it into a construction site. Hank tries to fight back, but Cap is too fast, dodging every swing by Hank. Cap finishes the job by dropping massive bars on Hank. S.H.I.E.L.D. came right after to clean the mess.

Back at the Triskelion, Bruce Banner, who hates Hank Pym because Pym previously stole Banner's job, is now happy to hear that Cap broke Hank's jaw. Betty, who is now with Bruce more than before, is telling Bruce about the possible upcoming alien invasion. The Chitauri have spent decades infiltrating Earth, and have been subversively planning a gradual "stealth invasion" ranging from sabotaging nuclear programs and (bizarrely) having children implanted with microchips. Banner questions how SHIELD is going to fight back. Betty explains that based on SHIELD's psychics they have examined the dead brain tissues of Chitauris leading to a "big push" that is planned for Micronesia. Importantly Micronesia possesses a hidden base containing a large number of alien soldiers and a wide selection of doomsday weapons, which means Nick Fury plans on invading Micronesia with a large invasion force. Amusingly, Banner explains that since the Chitauri's last invasion attempt in World War Two there were fifty or sixty of the aliens that remained on Earth. He then asks how there are more of them in to the present. Betty smugly reply that they have spent time reproducing.

Cap goes to Wasp's hospital room to see her, but Wasp is furious at Cap for what he did to Hank, even if Hank abused her. Wasp tells Cap to leave. Later, Nick gets his team together, and they head for Micronesia, a place rumored to be the alien's base.

In a flashback to 1944 Poland. As Captain America hangs from a train engine as his enemy Herr Kleiser taunts him for failing in his mission in intercepting a load of parts for the Nazis' super weapon, and allowing many of the Allied hijackers to die. However, Captain points out to him that he and the others didn't came to hijack the train but to "blow it up". Shocked, Herr Kleiser commands his men to shoot Cap but he manage to jump off the train before it explodes, killing everyone and presumably Herr Kleiser on board.

Twelve months later in Marrakesh, Morocco; Steven Rogers is briefed on the Germans of being ahead in their nuclear weapons program (again) and that their development is based from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, bringing the possibility of a nuclear strike on either London, New York, or Washington D.C. Cap questions if Herr Kleiser, in which rumors has it that he is alive, ever have any connections to the nuclear program in which General Eisenhower states that the alien has everything to do with anything, and also points out that Kleiser survives anything.

In the present, the Ultimates and S.H.I.E.L.D. forces heads to Micronesia via helicarriers. Nick Fury notice something wrong with Cap. Rogers only replies that the mission that they're undergoing is hauntingly similar to his last mission in Iceland. Nick assures him that this time he is "coming back."

Back at the Triskelion, Janet Pym notice that everyone in the sick bay are absent. She then finds several staff workers and questions them that she has been trying to call anyone for a drink but receive no answers. One of the staffers escort Janet back to her room and assure that everything is alright. As Janet turns her head around she notice a staffer dragging a body. Knowing something wrong she shrunk herself and avoiding a gunshot as it kills one of the staffers, who are revealed to be Chitauri agents. Janet quickly flees into the building's ventilation system.

Meanwhile, the helicarrier fleet arrives in Micronesia as the Ultimates and S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers storm the Chitauri facility. However, Thor and Iron Man, who were ahead of the fleet, informs that they have scoured the entire place and find it entirely deserted. Despite this Nick Fury orders an entire sweep for any clues and weapons.

Back at the Triskelion Janet desperately attempt to contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Ultimates that they are in a trap.

In Micronesia Captain America immediately notice something is wrong and calls out Iron Man. In the facility a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers find a nuclear bomb and it is immediately detonates engulfing the entire island and destroying the helicarrier fleet.

At the Triskelion, a defeated Janet talks to one of the Chitauri who admits that he has manipulated S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Psi-Division into giving false information to the organization in killing their enemies. He then informs Janet that he has blocked all her communications and sealed all the vents, and advise her to "sit tight". In the last panel the 'man' reveals to be Herr Kleiser.

With all the heroes and soldiers dead thanks to the Chitauri, Herr Kleiser goes after the Wasp, who is in a locked room. Kleiser easily captures Wasp, and puts her in a test tube. As Kleiser walks with Wasp to a helicopter, he elaborates about how and what people will think and know about all the deaths and what's to happen. He says that the Ultimates' story was that they died in a plane crash, or possibly a terrorist attack, and the soldiers did sign a contract which risked their lives. Kleiser then tells Wasp that parts all over the entire universe has some alien beings like them, who are just 'cleaning' the universe.

After they fly away, they land in the Arizona Desert, where the main site is for the attack. Another alien introduces Wasp to some 'gamma-butyrolactone', which suppresses humans thoughts. He says that by the end of the decade, not even one person will be able to form one independent thought. Wasp then asks why all the Chitauri have German names. Kleiser tells her that in that past a human named Kleiser was one of the many who surrendered themselves to the aliens. He tells Wasp: "One must consume to become, you know..." He gives Wasp a hint that he will be her soon.

Out of nowhere, partially damaged Chitauri spaceships enter from the atmosphere, startling everyone in Arizona. Many other huge ships, hundreds of times bigger than a jumbo airplane, are flying over Arizona. Kleiser goes to see the 'head' alien. He asks why the Chitauri aren't using cloaking devices. The alien tells Kleiser that it doesn't matter anymore, because the entire Chitauri race is being fought back at from every part of the universe by their enemies forcing themselves to retreat to Earth's solar system (derived as the "backwater" part of the universe), so there is no time to 'harmonize' Earth, only to blow it up and retreat in "the lower fourth-dimension". Wasp yells at Kleiser that he can't destroy the world, and Klieser responds by correctly telling Wasp they are going to destroy the entire solar system. Suddenly, another Chitauri drone inside the Triskelion tells Kleiser that they picked up something from Micronesia. A bolt of lightning comes out of nowhere at the Arizona base, killing some Chitauris. Kleiser goes to get ready (freeing Wasp in the process), as the Ultimates, and hundreds of SHIELD soldiers appear from the smoke. It is revealed that Iron Man's force field helped saved many of the soldiers and Ultimates from the nuclear blast, allowing Thor to transport everyone all the way back to Phoenix with his hammer, Mjolnir. Cap tells Iron Man and Thor to go into the sky, attacking the Chitauri ships. Nick Fury tells everyone to cover Cap, as Cap runs into the enemy forces. Cap sends a message to all of the Army, Marines, Navy and the Air Force, to fight for their lives and country. Cap pushes an alien out of a plane, saying: "Your country needs you."

Thor and Iron Man are causing chaos destroying every alien aircraft they can see. Herr Kleiser tells Captain America from a communicator to start the fight. Cap agrees, and drives a jet into Herr Kleiser, ejecting out of the plane before the jet and Kleiser smash into some oil tanks. A huge explosion erupts, and Cap immediately gets bombarded by Kleiser, and they start fighting. Cap starts to get the upper hand right away, slashing Kleiser with his shield across the head. Kleiser attacks back, hitting Cap several times before Cap can finally get free. Kleiser starts to rant, annoying Cap, forcing Cap to lose focus and just try to hit Kleiser. Kleiser again gets the upper hand, kicking Cap's head into the ground.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye is shooting at Chitauri soldiers from a humvee, when his car is hit by a smashed alien aircraft. Hawkeye yells at Iron Man for the alien wreckage raining on the ground. But Iron Man says it's Thor, who's just swinging his hammer around, destroying everything randomly. Thor tells Iron Man to get low, so Thor can blast a dozen spaceships in one time. All the ships drop to the ground, as Thor continues his attack.

Nick Fury sees Kleiser beating Cap down with debris. Fury calls S.H.I.E.L.D. to activate a invisibility sequence. As Kleiser beats down Cap, Fury shoves his gun next to Kleiser's eye, shooting, and dropping Kleiser. Kleiser again gets up, with a huge hole in his head, which heals, and Kleiser starts to beat down on Fury. Meanwhile, a huge ship is falling straight down over Phoenix, and there is nothing to do. Suddenly, Iron Man comes in the picture, flying under the ship, and bringing the ship away from the city. Unfortunately, Tony Stark has lost all his power, and his confidence. As U.S. army soldiers help Tony out, Tony continues to tell the soldiers that he can't be Iron Man anymore. That he can't do this anymore. A soldier replies: "Well, if you can't, who will? Tony thinks about it, and decides to continue. Using a power grid from a nearby street light, Tony recharges, then flies back into the action. Underneath everything, Wasp and Black Widow are killing Chitauri deep inside the base, and are trying to figure out how to stop the Chitauri's bomb. But when they realize: The instructions are in alien language.

Above ground Kleiser is strangling Fury, and then he pushes Fury away. Kleiser focuses again on Cap, telling Cap he should surrender already, because he can't win. Kleiser wants Cap to tell him to surrender, and this enrages Cap. Cap head-butts Kleiser, then hits Kleiser in the head, while grabbing his shield. Cap gets over Kleiser, screaming: "SURRENDER??!!", and stabs his shield into Kleiser. Cap pulls out the shield from Kleiser's chest and walks away with Fury. Fury contacts a soldier in a helicopter to traumatize Bruce Banner (who is also on the chopper), and the soldier begins to beat down on Banner, hoping to turn Banner into the Hulk, so Hulk could help above the chaos. Banner tells him that he put so much antidote into his system that he could never turn into the Hulk even if he was paid a "million bucks" to do so. Fury tells the soldier to go to "Plan B", and the soldier throws Banner out of the helicopter.

Banner is dropping hundreds of feet from the air, in hopes to turn into the Hulk. Cap orders the soldiers to fall back, as their Weapon of last resort is about to be dispatched. Banner screams, and he smashes into a warehouse, creating a huge explosion. Out comes the Hulk. Cap tells Nick to get out of the area, as Hulk charges in. Kleiser is again alive, and prepares to attack Cap, but Hulk gets to Cap first. Hulk gets ready to kill Cap, remembering that Cap previously kicked Banner in the head. Cap tells Hulk that the "naked guy" (Kleiser) was cheating on Hulk with Betty while Banner was in isolation. Hulk throws Cap away, and attacks Kleiser. Hulk throws Kleiser at a truck, and Kleiser picks it up, throws it into Hulk's face, but only in making Hulk even angrier.

Wasp and Black Widow are wondering what to do about the bomb, when the Black Widow comes up with the idea that Iron Man, the smartest man on Earth, must know what to do. Wasp calls Iron Man, but Iron Man says he can't help, because he and Thor are the only ones helping with the air support. However, the Air-Force arrives along with a fleet of SHIELD Helicarriers, providing the needed air support.

Hulk is punching Kleiser down, beating him senseless. Kleiser gets beaten until his camouflage is gone, and his alien self is shown. Kleiser gets ready to congratulate Hulk, when Hulk tells him to "shut up" and rips his head off. Cap and Fury go into a helicopter, and fly over Hulk, who is eating Kleiser's remains. Cap tells Hulk that the alien spacecrafts told Cap that they think the Hulk is 'sissy'. Hulk goes crazy, and attacks the Chitauri ships.

Iron Man doesn't know what to do either about the bomb, so he gets Thor to send the bomb to another dimension. Thor comes in, and smashes his hammer into the bomb, creating a blast of electricity. Everything is dark and raining, as Thor comes back and explains that he sent the bomb to the dimension homed by his enemy Fafnir the Dragon. A ripple is felt from the bomb's blast.

Meanwhile, Hulk is still destroying everything. Hawkeye is in the air, getting ready to shoot the antidote into the Hulk. While Hulk is running, he destroys an American helicopter. Hawkeye comes in with another helicopter, and gets ready to shoot. He shoots the Hulk, but the Hulk doesn't stop. As the Hulk jumps into Hawkeye's position, Hawkeye closes his eyes in fear of being eaten. Banner lands into Hawkeye, unconscious. With all the Chitauri dead, the heroes and the army celebrate. Banner is again in isolation, having to remember the Hulk eating Kleiser. Now that the Ultimates are world-famous heroes, and everything is back to normal, except that Kleiser might come back if he heals again from Banner's digested food, everyone gets ready for a party at the White House. Hank Pym finally gets the courage to call Janet, but Janet hangs up on him. At the party, Steve and Janet are dancing, and the two finally kiss. Fury watches, stating: "Well, ain't that nice? I thought that guy was never gonna get some." Fury then goes into the Oval office, telling the guards to pour a glass of champagne for themselves, "Ain't every day we save the world."

REVIEW

I wonder how french people feel about Americans letting them know that WWII only got worse after they lost. I mean, I guess such a comment makes sense from this Captain America... but the rest, I assume should have forgotten that.

I also feel some toxic masculinity, but because it is coming from Hulk, I guess is justified. (Captain America tells him people are saying he is a sissy and this angers Hulk, who screams he is straight). On the other hand, it would make sense for Hulk to have this kind of personality.

The one thing I wasn’t really excited about was Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. They are working in the shadows, so well, you only see them twice (and not during the climax of the series).

This second part of the volume wasn’t as emotional as the first. Perhaps because most characters already know each other. And adding Natasha and Clint doesn’t really change the dynamic that much.

Another thing that I found pretty odd, is that it took two years to finish these issues. I am not sure what happened, my guess is that Mark Millar was busy setting the foundation of Millarworld, but it could have been a delay from Hitch as well.

I give these issues a score of 9