The Wayne doll house
Have some haunted doll au, since it's been bubbling away in my mind.
The bat cave is large and sprawling, many layers and tunnels and hollowed out cracks in the walls. It takes many years to fully reinforce to prevent stray kids from tripping into stagnant waters or fall down crags as he once did. The doll cave, as it becomes known, is in one of the deepest, darkest corners, one where the lights of the furnished caverns above don't reach.
It's one late night sitting at the computer when it suddenly occurs to Bruce that his first encounter with a doll was at the well entrance, many levels above.
There was nothing there when he went back.
-
The justice league stared at the subaru. The subaru, having no eyes, did not stare back.
The seven of them had just finished a very long, arduous mission, and narrowly escaped government censure after the base they'd been raiding had turned out to belong to some corrupt official. With the alert up, they couldn't escape through city airspace, or even in their hero suits.
So civilian it was.
Batman had hotwired some bloke's car while the rest of them ducked into alleys and shop bathrooms, but the problem remained. There was seven of them. And five seats.
"I can shift into something more suitable for being carried," suggested j'onn, "but I believe one of us might have to hide."
"Foot well?" Hal tried, and everyone looked around at the tall, bulky, broad heroes.
"Think they'd have to go in the boot," Barry finally said. Everyone immediately turned to him. "No."
Batman spoke up before the discussion could devolve.
"I think.... I would be best for that."
The team stared.
"Batsy?"
Having no lungs meant he could not drag in the tired sigh he wished, but whatever force allowed this body to talk was capable of approximating something suitably resigned.
"As I am, I am... incapable of fully passing as human. It would be best if I remained out of sight."
"So just? Go change? I swear we won't be weird about whoever you are under the mask. Even if you're like, bald."
"Thank you, Wally, but I'm afraid I'm being serious." Reaching for the mask in broad daylight was unpleasant, but the glue and wires held as he gave it a few thorough tugs. "It doesn't detach."
Everyone stared. Clark reached out as if he wanted to check, but withdrew.
"Do you even have a civilian identity??" Oliver eventually asked. "Because at this point I'm genuinely not sure."
Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries had a meeting that same evening. "Hn."
"Can we go back to the 'incapable of passing as human' part?!"
"We can discuss it in the car," he snapped, stalking past Barry and popping the boot. "In case you haven't forgotten, we're on a time limit."
For once, that seemed to encourage them, and batman, with great dignity, folded his joints and cape into the small space, ignoring Hal's mutter of 'what kind of contortionist -' as he slammed the lid. With a little shuffling he managed to activate his comms.
"I will inform the watchtower of our delay."
"Batman, they're tapping all outgoing signals, you can't -"
"It won't trigger," he interrupted, before he twisted his consciousness and sent it spiralling across the country.
Bruce awoke with a groan, stretching his limbs and taking a moment to marinate in his annoyance before he reached for the comm and voice modulator on the beside table.
"Batman to watchtower, we've encountered delays. If the Texan state government calls we haven't entered the state in six weeks. Batman out."
-
"Alien?"
"No."
"Reanimated corpse?"
"No."
"Uh... Demon?"
"Hm. No."
"You're not just a meta human, are you?"
"No."
"Vampire?"
"No."
"Robot??"
"No."
"Batsy, please, someone's got to win the bet eventually. How do we even know you're not lying?!"
"You don't," Batman said, not looking up from his paperwork and Flash groaned, letting his sticky notes fall to the floor as he buried his head in his arms.
"One day," he bemoaned to the keyboard, "one day we'll figure it out."
"Until then please keep your eyes on the monitors."
Flash groaned again.
-
Robin ducked under superman's arm as he scuttled down the corridor, laden with the night's haul of snacks. The real problem wasn't getting them - stopping league members from raiding the kitchen would be extremely counterproductive - but keeping them until he could return home to his human body to eat them. Batman had started searching him each time they left and it was really cutting into his daily sugar intake. Unfair! Just because he didn't actually use energy to stay up my night to fight crime, it felt like he did!!
'Oh, you're broken, Robin, oh, don't go out until the glue has fully set, Robin' his arm was fine! It wasn't like there was much crime to be fought on the watchtower anyway! At least not physically.
So he was pretty pleased with himself until he went to set the snacks down and found that the tar like glue they used had soaked through the sleeve and gotten all over his chocolates.
With his other hand, he tried to pry them off, wincing as the wrappers tore and stuck. He tried to shake it, ignoring the way his elbow rattled in the joint.
"Come on, come on - aw, cheezits."
The arm fell off. Robin stared despondently at the limb, surrounded by torn wrappers and dripping black glue where it connected to the elbow. The sour stink of formaldehyde filled the air.
He was going to be in such trouble with Bruce.
The click of the door jerked his head up.
Flash stood in the doorway, wide eyed. Robin stared back.
Flash screamed.
Oh yeah @dehydratedmockingbird have a thing
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we would like to hear what the normal usual moth activities are and also who's in the time loop (re: the wip ask game)
WELL! Normal usual moth activities are Normal and Usual and Standard and perfectly usual for moths of all kinds. It's one of our Very Fun Whumptober prompt fics that kind of grew a mind of its own (more specifically for "hold them down") in which Leif gets injured on a mission while the only member of Team Snakemouth available, and thus has to lean on the other Explorer's Association members to patch them back up.
As you can probably see from the prompt title, it goes Bad, and everything goes downhill from here. Also has one of our personal favorite dialogue segments which we are putting below the cut.
And, uhh, Scarlet. Scarlet is in the time loop. More specifically, Scarlet is in a time loop where he is backed into a corner with two very unconscious bugs that are Very Easy to pin on him, in which he has about five minutes of prep time to look Not Suspicious and/or prevent Team Snakemouth from beating his skull in.
He does not know the end of loop conditions. He has a very limited amount of life force. Leif's specific mode of "vision" is not actually significantly impaired by most walls. Everything is going terribly.
Normal moth activities below cut:
“He’ll probably be fine later,” Zasp offered, speaking up for the first time since the meeting had started. “He’s still moving around, so he’s probably not dying.”
“There is a hole. In his chest.”
Zasp blinked at Kina, squinting as if she’d just asked something wholly stupid. “Yes…?”
“People die when they have holes in their chests. Generally.” Maki felt a bit as though he was falling into another dimension. “From bleeding. And damage to the ganglia.”
Zasp squinted at him. “Leif isn’t bleeding”
“I dunno, dude, his ganglia looked- pretty damaged to me,” Celia piped up. “Like, uhh, dangling out of his chest damaged, which-“
“He didn’t die last time he had his ganglia dangling out of his chest. And he got back to normal pretty quickly once I put them back in.”
Maki took a moment to process that. A very, very long moment. He could see Kina’s face going completely blank wth dumbfounded bafflement out of the corner of his eye.
“…last time?” Levi finally asked, looking as though he very much did not want to know the answers that might come from such a question. Zasp nodded, seeming to put no weight at all into their expression.
“Yes. Last time. In the lost sands, with the dune scorpion? Do you not- Mothiva, back me up here?”
“Oh, was that what you were doing when you wandered off during the tour?”
“Yes.”
“Can we get back to the part where his brains were hanging out of his chest? Please?”
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If Simon was just a little more aware of the influence he had over Betty, if Betty was just a little more intense about her obsession with Simon...
"Submissive like an attack dog is submissive"
All that chaotic whirlwind of impulses with Simon as her steady and solid center. She would - already has - always will break the world in half for him. But one word from Simon, and she rests placid and careful - not at his feet, but just over his shoulder. Hovering, ever watchful.
Simon is walking down the hallway, seemingly alone, when a pack of students - thinking they could push him around for kicks - start hounding him. Silly Simon - the loony lecturer - he was a joke. But as they lay one hand on Simon's shoulder - Betty appears like a wraith of vengeance, springing from the shadows that line the hallway.
How did she get here? Where was she this whole time? Who knows. But now she's here and she's about to make herself their very, very real problem. She snaps up the wrist of whichever guy laid a hand on her Simon. There's an ominous creak as the bones grind, a yelp of pain.
"Oh I'm sorry, is this yours?" She asks sweetly, squeezing harder. "You seem to have misplaced it."
The wise guy yelps as his posse rears back, still recovering from her abrupt appearance. As they scramble to find the single brain cell they share...
"Betty."
Two syllables. One name. Betty is at his side at once. She doesn't even pay the boys another look as her attention is devoted on the only one that ever matters.
All this time, Simon has walked steadily forward, never missing a step. He keeps his gaze ahead even as Betty attached herself to his side.
It's only when they're away from any prying eyes, away from his would-be bullies, that he turns to her.
"I would tear out their hearts if you asked me to."
"I know. That's why I would never ask."
"And that's why I keep asking."
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