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brucewaynehater101 · 4 months

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AU idea inspired from I Don't Belong Here (I Wish I Was Special) on ao3 and the atla bnha swap au here on Tumblr

So we got the Bad Timeline with the BadFam, which are a lot like in the fic, trauma and abuse goes unaddressed or horrifically handled

But to toss Human!Tim a bone, Kon and Bart do come back to life, so he at least the Core four of YJ is all together again

(when I type YJ assume I mean the core four but if you want I can also mean all of YJ)

Unfortunately Tim is ✨Traumatized✨ and unwilling to cut ties with the BadFam cuz their "stability" is one of the things keeping him sane

And then we have the Hybrid Timeline, with their BatFam, Bruce is a bat or bird hybrid, Alfred is a hybrid (dealers choice), Dick is a robin hybrid, all the other kids are their own bird hybrids

And all the Wayne (Alfred too if you choose) have wings

In this timeline being an animal hybrid is the norm! Which adds another layer of identity shenanigans for aliens like Kryptonians who already had it hard enough feigning humanity

And also this Batfam? They did the impossible. They are !!emotionally healthy!!

Oh shit happens, mental health spirals, Jason died and came back and it was whole emotional rollercoaster, except Batman didn't bataraang his kid, first thing he did after learning Jason was alive was kidnap his son again and trap him in the nest and broody chicken style until he snapped out of his instincts

And then he nabbed his bio son cuz Jason snitches on Talia or Talia wants what's best for her son and an assassin's cult is NOT it, so she sent the kid his way

Batman here isn't abusing his kids, Robin was never fired, it got passed down from Dick to Jay.

I could rave on and on how the Batfam here is happy and healthy as can be but I got an AU to present

So the BadFam is on a mission, magical artifacts are involved, Red Robin secures it but uh oh, once the mission is over he accidentally activated it in the Batcave and the next thing the BadFam know?

Red Robin's still there, except, uh number one the very pretty wings, and also he looks healthier, like his needs are being taken care of

When he breaks out the "alt-self dimension-swap code" they know what they're dealing with and establish their Tim is stuck in a Hybrid world due to an artifact and vice versa

But what really matters is how jarring it is for Hybrid!Tim to be with a world without hybrids as the norm; people with his family's faces so hostile to each other; hostile to him in his eyes; nobody to give his instincts and hybrid side their needs

Under the guise of professionalism and "I have a family to return to" and using the fact the BadFam knows only what he shares of his home dimension, Hy!Tim keeps as much of a barrier between him and the BadFam as he can

He's from a family that spoils one another's instincts and social needs. One that does do jack shit about their issues and communicates about them. A family that isn't cannibalizing itself

Suddenly being with what feels like a bastardized version is scary and he does not like it

On Human!Tim's end, he's suddenly with a family that doesn't hate him and is willingly to help him

They're welcoming and it's unnerving?? And he has a family to return to, a mission to be loyal to. Oh God, what's gonna happen to his other self?

Exactly 24 hours after the first swap, the Tims swap back again and they figure out that for a limited but long time, they're gonna swap places every 24 hours

So they gotta get some help or tech that will cancel out the magic and since they dunno when it stops, they don't want the magic to run it's course and bam, both Tim's are dimensionally misplaced

Thankfully whoever and whatever a Tim has on their person during a swap comes with them so they can trade progress with eachother

Anyways, what matters after the second swap since the artifact's activation is that Hy!Tim instantly snitches to his family on all the red flags the BadFam raised during his time with them

And also no hybrid instincts or amenities, it was not a Good time for him, family nesting time please? :(

So while Hu!Tim thinks he's got any chance of a Good Grade in having people pay as little attention to him as possible during this trial, he's got another thing coming with the third swap when suddenly the whole family is checking on his well being

Hu!Tim grew up neglected and abused and would very much like no eyes on him, amd for all the freedom possible. He is screeching in indignation

But hey, his own family also wants him to stay with em so maybe they can convince the Hybrid Fam otherwise!

And his back hurts more than ever, but he'll get that treated once the artifact's magic ends, no need to bring it up

=======

To Word of God the subtext; the artifact swaps the two Tim's every 24 hours and is slowly making Tim a bird hybrid himself and eventually he's gonna burst wings in a Gorey way

But before the wings and maybe after comes talons, bird noises, and instincts, which he might take a while to clock in on and will make his time away from the hybrid timeline more and more miserable as his transformation progresses

Dealer's pick if he's the same species as Hy!Tim or not

========

So Hu!Tim hides as much as he can get away with from the Badfam to draw as little animosity from them as possible but does the same with the HybridFam to try and protect the BadFam's name from stains on their reputation (ignoring his own)

Hy!Tim is gathering all the evidence on the BadFam's sins and other people's to make a sufficient case against them and to convince Hu!Tim to be adopted by his family

Oh yeah, it'll be fun if the two Tim's had notebooks they placed near them before their swaps to talk with eachother

Hell maybe one or both of their notebooks gets stolen by like a rogue and that could be an episode or chekhov's gun and— idk where to go w/ it

On top of that, Hy!Tim finds every excuse he can to hangout with Young Justice instead of the BadFam because he trusts YJ more than them to the point he feels safe to tell them the whole truth and even go as far as to nest with them and let em preen his wings

Eventually he asks em "my family is gonna kidnap my new brother, can I do the same with you?"

Okay not exactly with those words but that's the vibes

Let's say they agree and he holds onto the Badfam timeline's YJ during the swap and now there's double trouble

But also the BadFam and rest of the hero scene is wondering where the FUCK the YJ went after it becomes obvious they're missing

Hu!Tim is confused why he woke up in a nest in Titans Tower and why he wants to lie down there forever but it also makes him unhappy in a way

Hy!Tim only figures out afterwards what kind of mess he's made, but no take backs! He and Young Justice are Twinning!!! He'll just cover his tracks once's the swap happens again

Honestly two dimensional versions of YJ—one where humanity is the default, and another where hybrids are—interacting would be fun to see

Hybrid Batfam is exasperated because Tim you can't keep adopting and kidnapping like you're Bruce!

==========

Me thinks that while Hy!Tim hides as much as he can, Hu!Damian, knowing his animals, clocks in on all the signs that Hy!Tim is miserable with the Badfam, doing loads of bird stuff that indicates him feeling unsafe and in danger and whatnot

What does Human!Damian do with this knowledge I wonder . . .

Maybe on the other side, Hybrid!Damian catches onto Hu!Tim becoming a hybrid and snitches and now Hu!Tim's chances at not getting adopted are down the gutter for good

Does the BadFam ever pick up on the possibility they're gonna be double-crossed or do they learn when it's too late? both routes would be fun to explor

There's also the fact that Hu!Tim isn't the only victim of abuse, neglect, and etc. in this family, it's entirely possibly that the Hybrid!Batfam will look at Human Damian, Jason, Steph, and Cass, etc. and draw up adoption plans for them too

==========

I'm not abusing the fact that anything and anyone a Tim has on or touching their person swaps with them enough

Like maybe Hy!Tim brings over Jason, Damian, Steph and Cass (maybe Duke if he's with the BadFam yet) and plants the idea of being with his family away forever, away from their Batman

And now there's a third party in this game, one that can turn on itself and fracture at any moment

A third party in this game who has limited time to choose between cutting ties with their very dimension for a family practically clones of their own and themselves

Or they can go against that option. They can go as far as to reveal the double-crossing planned against the Badfamily by the Hybrid family

Seeing the infighting and discussions between them would be fun

Timothy the human? Well he isn't gonna be human much longer now is he, nor does he have much of a choice in this matter

I'm not paying attention to Dick, or Barbara or Alfred, either of em, at all lol, so sorry about that

Maybe Hu!Tim becomes desperate and swaps his Bruce and Dick (maybe even Bats Hy!Tim swapped) with him to try and get all three of them to help convince the Hybrid Fam that he doesn't not need rescuing from the Badfam at all

It goes poorly and maybe that's what gets the BadFam to wonder if they're gonna be double crossed or set the suspicion in stone if it already exists

==========

I can imagine Hu!Jason trying to justify Titans Towers and etc. with his excuses of Replacement and whatever, only for Hybrid!Jason to go "me too bitch, you're not special, you're just an asshole (traumatized, yes, but that doesn't excuse shit)"

==========

Finally, I imagine that where the BadFam is abusive, the Hybrid Batfam is Dark with some of it being attributed to hybrid instincts, and the rest of it's just personality

Batman doesn't kill because Killing is Kind, it's a fix doing nothing to address the problem, the Killed in question

This Batman and by extension, his baby birds, will not have death be the end, you are going to live with you actions and decide what to do from there

When Jason died? Bruce Wayne gunned for Joker and ruined the criminal career. Tearing and gnawing at bones and flesh, enough that countless doors to his villainy were brought down the drain; it would be easier to become a contributing member to society

The Joker proved himself a threat to his fledgelings and it couldn't stand

Gotham's criminal scene learned better afterwards

Canary of the Coalmine, that Joker was

Maybe Hy!Tim swaps Hu!Joker so his family can fuck him up big time

Hy!Tim is just kidnapping everyone he can get his hands on for either adoption or to beat the absolute crap out of them.

Having so many duplicates in one universe could cause problems, but I think they could work it out. The shenanigans they get up to would be ridiculous and hilarious. I feel bad for Alfred if they don't kidnap Hu!Alfred as well. I do have another idea, though.

What if Hy!batfam kidnap YJ and the batfam (minus Bruce) for just an extended period of time? Like they spend a few months to years there depending on their needs? Then, after they teach they to communicate with each other, they release them back to their OG universe.

When they go back, they find that Hu!Bruce and Hu!Joker are gone. The Hy!Batfam kidnap both of them for a bit to beat the crap out of them. Hu!Joker is returned when he can no longer be a criminal.

Not sure about Hu!Batman.

Also, the Hy!Batfam often visit the Hu!Batfam and YJ. They do like a cross universe long-distance relationship. As far as Tim, though, since he's turning into a hybrid, maybe he permanently moves in with the Hy!Batfam due to his needs with his instincts. That, or somehow the Hu!Batfam figure out how to help them. Though, maybe Bart wouldn't stay in the OG universe if Tim moved. Kon has Ma and Pa Kent (maybe Jon and Clark depending on how that's going), and Cassie has her mom and others. Maybe they still go with Tim despite that. Dealer's choice, ig?

It's an interesting AU, and I'm glad you shared!

#dc comics #tim drake #dc universe #thank you for the ask!!!!#dc au #yj98

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milkytheholy1 · 1 month

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Everything Ends: The End.

A/N: So apparently I deleted the ending to this series, so I am so sorry to anyone who's been trying to read the series.

"MOVE!" you yelled over the boisterous sounds of explosions going off inches away from you, shoving April to safety every now and again. She thanked you curtly, she couldn't offer you anything more unless she wanted to get blown up with everything else.

Casey was only a few paces ahead of you, stuck fighting the Kraang's lackeys and mutated Foot soldiers. You and April were trying to save him but got caught up with your own problems.

Another swing from your fist and the Kraangified-Foot soldier crumbled to the ground, ever since the Foot recruited actual people instead of their paper army, they were slowly becoming unstoppable. April had shouted something out to you, but thanks to the previous explosion, your hearing was a little off.

Another kick from your converse sent one of those gooey creatures skidding back, growling and whining before readying an attack. You weren't really trained for combat, sure, Leo taught you a few moves if ever the scenario arose that you needed to defend yourself or buy the others some time.

But nothing could have prepared you for this, fighting aliens from a different dimension who sought to destroy the future. You had to admit, it was a hard scenario to study for. Luckily, April had been teaching you along the way, having picked up stuff over the many years of knowing the Turtles, the girl was a natural.

"(Y/N)! We have to get to Casey!" April hollered once more, finally, the endless buzzing in your ear came down to a faint ringing sensation. You nodded your head in understanding, running as fast as you could to avoid the deadly claws of the slime creature on your trail, "I'm trying!" you snarked.

April was holding her own fairly well, with a metal pole by her side, she swung the thing like a regular baseball bat. With each violent swing, she took down a horde of those creatures without breaking a sweat. She laughed to herself, proud that she was able to do this without the brother's help; not that she didn't appreciate it when they did help.

Noticing you running past her like a headless chicken, April stalked behind the creature, closely examining the frantic path you were taking. With a nod of her head, more to herself than you, April dashed over to a wall, hiding behind it like a shadow in the night.

A clanging sound caught your attention as you scrambled around the streets of New York, hurdling over debris and smashed cars. Haphazardly looking around, you caught April dinging the metal pole against the wall, she soon smiled when she caught your attention. Miming, she pointed to the wall with her finger, giving you a quick thumbs up, which you returned, before dipping her head back behind the wall.

With your silent plan, you dashed towards the wall, taking a hard left with the monster following closely behind. But before it could nab you, April swung the metal pole directly into its face, knocking the creature out instantly; it all felt like a moment from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

You both shared a moment of accomplishment, cheering and hollering about your small victory. But the loud, voice-cracked wail from Casey halted any further celebratory dances. April gripped her pole a little tighter, "C'mon, we gotta go help him."

"S-stay back! I'm warning you, I'm crazy!" Casey rattled out, back against the wall. There were far too many for him to face alone, and with just a hockey stick by his side? It would be impossible for him to come out unscathed. The Kraang monsters continued in on their approach, the green eyes of Casey's mask bouncing from one creature to another, "I swear I'm crazy, who knows what I'll do next? Have you even met my mom? She's crazier than me!"

But the beasts didn't care, they just growled and snarled, claws ready to pounce. Casey released a small whimper, clutching his hockey stick with all his strength. He sent a fleeting glance to the key perched high up on the tallest building in all of New York, a sense of disappointment flooding his bones.

"APRILLLLLLL O'NEILLLL!"

A swift kick to the head here and a mighty punch to the chest there. After a few minutes of commotion, Casey was finally able to see the peeking heads of you and April, fighting the crowds and boosting his morale. Wide eyes soon turned into determined ones, and once more, Casey gripped his hockey stick with purpose and scrambled to help you.

You marvelled at how well you all worked together as a team when, essentially, you had no prior training together. April would whack a foe into confusion, then you'd come in and offer some painful punches and fleeting kicks anywhere you could land, and finally, Casey would come in for the final blow.

Once enough of the mob was down, you turned to Casey with hopeful eyes, "You need to go!" he nodded his head along, but with the crowds getting right back up, his lip began to tremble. You recognised that face, it was the same expression Leo gave you whenever he was worried about you. He had a different one for every Hamato Clan member: Raph's was a furrowed brow while Donnie's was a jutted lip, Mikey was given puppy dog eyes and Splinter a hand on his hip.

But when it came to you, Leo's whole face changed. His lips would go flat, dipped at the ends in a small frown. His brows would lift enough to give him creases, but his eyes...his eyes were always what gave him away. They'd go big and shaky, he always looked like he was on the verge of tears. Battling his inner demons, begging them to let him stay with you but knowing he had to go off and do superhero shit.

Perhaps with Casey looking up to Leo like a father figure, he might have learnt a few things.

In a much calmer voice, you gave him a warm smile, "Go, we've got this." He fled the scene quickly after that, putting his trust in you and hopefully he wouldn't regret leaving you to fight these creatures alone. You turned back to see April riding one of the varmints, screaming and raising her metal pole in the air; you would have been impressed if you weren't back immediately into the action.

---

Wind flew past Donnie's ears, his limbs falling slack and yet, he felt as light as a feather. But the overwhelming feeling of gravity pushing down on his chest startled him awake, only to realise he was in the air and falling fast. Hysteria settled in, perhaps a panic attack; he used to be prone to them when he was younger but he thought it was a phase he grew out of.

An unconscious Mikey drifted past him, although Mikey was a lighter build compared to himself, the youngest brother was dropping quicker. Donnie tried getting closer to the box turtle, eventually landing on swimming toward him, not his finest moment. But it worked. Grabbing onto Mikey's arm, Donnie pulled him tight against his chest, conjuring all his ninpo energy into protecting them both.

Purple formed around them, a hard barrier that in theory should save them a few broken bones and in the worst-case scenario, death. Donnie could see the ground getting closer, soon there would be an impact and he'd see if he was strong enough to protect not only himself but his brother, who he cared deeply for.

Velocity wasn't on the brother's side as they came crashing down into the hard concrete of the New Jersey docks, rubble and pavement scattered along the ground, the purple light that engulfed the duo cracked and shattered. Donnie's head was pounding while his legs ached, flinching upwards he caught his walking appendages hanging off the edge of the concrete mass he had found himself lying on top of, bruised and dirty.

"Mikey!" He gasped, sitting up quickly and regretting it. If Donnie thought the throbbing sensation was bad before then this was like nothing he had ever experienced. But that didn't matter, he had to check on Michaelangelo.

Shaking Miguel's body only brought up more fear and bile in Donnie's throat, he just had to wake up, he had already lost one brother. Thankfully, Mikey woke up with a scream, lungs intaking so much air Donnie feared he would pass out again.

"Easy, Miguel, breathe. That's it, just in and out...you're okay, we're okay." Donnie's hushed words brought Mikey back to a state of normalcy. Looking around he caught the familiar sights of Jersey and cringed, "W-where?"

"Jersey." Donnie answered curtly, quickly checking for any major injuries, "I think, at least, it smell's like Jersey." When he found nothing but light scratches, he arose and moved closer to the water, looking up at the Technodrome coming through the clouds. Mikey soon joined him, eyes wide and hands shaking, "Is he-"

"Leo's still up there, yes." Donnie sighed, he should be there with his brother. Fighting alongside him, sometimes he may despise his 'twin' dearly, but even with all that background knowledge, Leo shouldn't be alone.

"W-we need to find the others, how do we get back?" Mikey spluttered out, brainstorming was never his favourite thing in the world, and currently, his brain hurt too much to even think about thinking. Donnie rubbed his chin, "While I agree, we have no immediate way to find them and get to them before, effectively, the world ends."

Mikey huffed, but when an idea imploded in his head he clicked his fingers in glee, "I got it! We can use my mystic hands!"

"Sigh, Mikey. No offence, but every time you've used your, quote-on-quote, 'mystic hands', it's never worked. So please, praytell, why you think it would work now?"

"Because I believe it will."

"Just how like you believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy?"

"Santa is real, Donnie. How do you explain the presents under the tree an-and the cookies?"

"Mikey that's- ugh, you know what? we'll just swim."

Leo stood alone as he faced off against the Kraang Leader, watching as he circled him. Without his brothers by his side, Leo felt a little powerless. All the biggest, baddest foes he had ever fought were alongside his brothers, all working as a team to take down a common enemy. But right now, here was a common enemy with only one brother left to fight it.

He had no doubt that Mikey and Donnie would find a way back up here to help him, that's if they made it of course. God, he hoped they made it.

Leo grew impatient with the Kraang, glaring, assessing him as he paced in a wide circle around him. His fingers fluttered along the handles of his blades, deciding that he had to be the one to strike first. With a running start, Leo charged towards the Kraang, clashing his katanas against the metal armour with a fiery passion.

The Kraang Leader wasn't that impressed, he had seen better combat in the Battle Nexus in 1847. But Leo pressed on, making small cuts and scratches against the alien metal. The Kraang barely felt any of it, the armour too thick for the blades to penetrate the skin, or even cut a metallic limb off for that matter. With each swing, Leo grew tired, using all his energy to make the most damage.

The Kraang used this opportunity to slash Leo with the back of his hand, sending the teen flailing towards the grounds of New York City. In a quickly-paced thought, Leo threw one of his katanas towards the floating pile of concrete he called a battleground, while the other was crushed in the palm of his hand.

He tried to aim for a delicate landing but ultimately skidded down tall skyscrapers hoping it would break his fall. His one blade was lodged in the windows of the building, tearing it apart as he plunged down to the bottom. Once on the ground with shaky knees and a panting chest, Leo dislodged his katana and steadied himself.

He looked up towards the floating mass above, brows furrowed. A rich blue light brought his attention back down to his weapon, Leo took a moment to breathe before he would vanish and reappear back into the fight.

"LEO!" Called a voice from the distance, he knew that voice anywhere. You were panicking, he could pick that up from your tone alone. Before Leo could even respond your arms were thrown around his neck and your face was pressed snuggly against his plastron. Leo wrapped his arms around you, basking in the smell of your shampoo mixed with the copper smell of blood and sweat.

"I was so worried about you," you huffed out, refusing to move from his grasp. Leo's hands shuffled up and down your arms, slowly pulling you away from him so he could get a proper look at you, "Hey, don't worry. It's not like I'm going anywhere." he smirked. But on the inside he was hiding pain, he was still hurting.

"Where are your brothers?" you asked, finally taking a minute to look around and see that he was on his own. Leo grimaced, "I got separated from Mikey and Donnie." was all he said. You raised a brow, "Ooo-kay," you hummed, "So, where's Raph?"

Leo's eyes widened, he could see it in your own gaze that you were just as confused. The red-eared slider couldn't look at you, instead opting to turn away and look at the cracked concrete ground. Your fingertips traced along his jawline, willing him to look back at you. Although he moved his head to face you, Leo kept his eyes down, "We- I couldn't save him."

You gasped, hands covering your mouth as your pupils shook and salty tears began to build up in the corners of your eyes. Leo gripped your hands, needing to feel some form of contact with you. Even in a possible apocalypse, you were always warm. My little toaster he would often say.

"Are April and Casey-" he trailed off, you nodded your head, "Yeah, no yeah, they're fine. Casey's heading for the key just like you planned, me and April are protecting him."

"What about dad?"

You stilled at the question, Leo watching your face very carefully. Your tears had been running freely down your face, your nose was stuffy, your eyes red and lips trembling. Leo's grip on you loosened a little as realisation kicked in, "Oh," was all he said. Pulling away, Leo looked back up at his floating battleground, his one-stop tour.

"I-I need to go, I have to get back up there and end this."

"On your own?" you questioned, sounding slightly mad. Leo knew he needed to tread lightly, he didn't want to scare you but with his track record over the last few hours he doubted he'd be able to stop you from losing it. He pulled you in for another bone-crushing hug, "I'll come back to you, I promise."

"And you never break your promises." you pressed, a silent agreement that he would return otherwise you'd search all heaven and hell until you found him again. He leaned in and pressed a deep kiss against your lips, you didn't even have time to react before he was pulling away. He flicked his attention down to the glowing blue blade in his hand, "Make sure Casey gets to that key, it's our only chance." he spoke, sounding like a true leader.

You gave him a brief salute, a small smile gracing his lips. In a quick flash, Leo was gone and you were left alone. A shuddering breath passed through your mouth, so not only had you lost Master Splinter but also Raphael too? Those Kraang bastards can rot in hell. With a new vengeance fueling your thoughts, you dashed back to the fight and joined April.

When Leo reappeared in front of an awaiting Kraang Leader, tensions were high. The monster in question stood with his mechanical arms folded along his chest, a devilish smirk gracing his features, "Oh, I see you've returned then? Good. I was looking forward to an actual fight with you, finally, I'll be able to put you out of your misery."

"Funny?" Leo lightly laughed, getting into a battle stance, "I was gonna say the same thing about you, Squiddy." The Kraang growled, moving faster than light and heading straight for Leonardo. Although this wasn't Leo's first time battling a, quote-on-quote, 'God'. Leo dug one of his katana blades into the ground, disrupting the concrete and rocks. He then skidded along the floor, avoiding the grasp of the Kraang.

He sent the demon a quick smirk before running at him with his weapons raised high. Each slash was accompanied by a beaming blue light, flashing in and out of existence just like Leonardo. Just like the Kraang, Leo was fast and it quickly grew tiresome for the villain.

"Enough!" he yelled, grabbing Leo by the throat as another portal appeared. He squeezed his windpipes before throwing him to the ground, but Leo got back up again. Coughing as he stood, Leo braced his arms out in front of him, weapons still in his clutches.

"C'mon, Pinky, is that all you've got?" if he couldn't hurt him physically then damaging him mentally would do the trick. Leo narrowly avoided a red laser blast shooting his way, using his swords as a barricade more than actual killing and cutting tools. The occasional red beam would scrape his arm or graze his thigh, but Leo kept fighting.

"You think you're going to win? Your fighting will only lead to everyone around you dying! Think, Leonardo! We will outlast you all, you insignificant, fragile beings. You might even live long enough to see this world crumble to dust and be blown away! Everyone and everything you have ever known will be gone! And what will you have left?"

"Hope. I'll have hope." Leo hummed, running forward one final time and slashing at the Kraang with everything he had. He was making good marks too, hitting the Kraang in the joints of the suit, scrapping his blades along tender muscles. At one point he was able to scar the Kraang's actual face. But like life, all good moments are immediately crushed by the bad and Leo was slammed against the ground once more.

Though this time it really hurt like hell.

The Kraang watched on from the distance, smirking widely as Leo's body shook on the ground. Leonardo blinked his eyes open a few times before they remained that way, spitting out some blood to the side and groaning in pain. He held his stomach as he stood on quivering knees, using his katanas as an aid.

Cuts and bruises littered his arms and legs, some were bleeding while others were crammed with dirt and small rocks. Leo panted, his weapons illuminating a deep blue, runes running along the bladed edges. The Kraang cackled, slowly walking over to him.

Casey huffed and panted as he made it to the top of Metro Tower, he wiped away the slickness of sweat building up on his forehead. His mask was pulled back and his hockey stick strapped to his rear, he could hear static coming through the makeshift com device Donnie had given him when they were all in the Turtle Tank.

"Casey? Casey, come in? Casey, do you hear me?" Leo's voice filtered in and out of existence. Casey rapidly shook his head, even if Master Leonardo couldn't see it, "Yes, Sensei, I'm here. I've got eyes on the key, just tell me when you're home free and I'll pull this sucker out."

Leo grimaced, shining red eyes getting closer and closer towards him. With a jerky breath, Leon spoke, "Casey, listen to me. When I get to the other side, you close that door."

"W-what? Sensei, no!" Casey struggled to speak, his breathing was becoming random, his chest was tightening. Unfortunately for Leonardo, his heroic sacrifice was broadcasted to everyone, including you.

You crumbled to the ground, tears streaming down your face, "Leo..." you muttered out under a muted breath. April dropped the metal pole from her hands, her eyes were wide and mouth agape. Donnie and Mikey were still on Staten Island, arguing about how to get back into the fight to stop Leo from doing something stupid.

"Casey, it's the only way." he carried on, "The Kraang are too strong, he's not gonna stay on the other side unless I keep him there." His blades were pulled close to his chest as the Kraang swung a fist.

"B-but, there has to be a-another way!" Casey desperately begged, hand hovering over the key. Leo gruffed, taking another punch like a champ, "W-we tried, Cass. This is the only way."

Leo's words broke you, not him, you couldn't lose him too. You had already lost so much, this family had already lost so much. What would you do without Leon by your side? You begged and pleaded to whoever would listen, your voice going hoarse, "Leo, please don't do this!" you cried.

Leo swallowed down a choking cry, his throat closing tightly as the words left his lips, "Pfft, you're the one who said we should keep fighting for what's right no matter the consequences."

"I lied, I was wrong, just please don't do this...I'll never get to see you again." you whispered, big eyes staring up at the Technodrome; he was up there somewhere.

Leo held back another sniffle, but a tear rolled down his cheek along the edges of the red crescent moons that coated his eyes, "Of course, you'll see me again, I still owe you that pizza date." The coms fizzled out for a brief moment, Leo fully pulled back into the boss battle.

"Outmatched and alone, yet you persist." the Kraang laughed, "And for what? Honour? Redemption? Sacrifice? All meaningless."

"We'll see about that." Leo growled, running into the fight once more. He threw one of his blades towards the Kraang, but it missed him completely. With a hero's sacrifice on his mind, Leo leapt up against the Kraang plunging his other katana into the Kraang's chest plates. The Kraang Leader let out a ferocious roar, yanking Leo off of him.

He quickly pinned Leonardo to the ground, his breath fanning across the reptile's bruised face. Leo's com continued to buzz in static, Casey's voicer wavering through, "Leo, please, please don't do this!"

Leo's hands gripped the Kraang's shoulders, trying to wrestle him away to no avail, "Hey listen," he starts. Leo's head dips out of the way when drool pools beside his mask, "Future me would be super proud of you, I just know it. I'm proud of you."

The Kraang above him laughed, his grip on the turtle tightening, "Weak words, weak actions. I have forever known what you fail to understand, strength will always prevail."

Leon smirked up at the Kraang, his eyes half-cast, "And what you failed to understand is that I missed on purpose." he quickly grabbed the katana handle sticking out of the Kraang's chest. Once the leader of the Kraang realised what was happening he quickly tried to pull it out, but it was already too late. The moment the blade left his suit, the two of them were already in the Prison Dimension and the rouge blade was left to fall to the grounds of New York.

"CASEY! NOW!" Leo yelled, growling at the Kraang, using all his willpower to keep him in place. With reluctance on the other side, Casey tugged the key out with as much force as he could fathom. And when he did...

The top of the tower began to explode, along with the Technodrome. The world lit up in yellow and orange flames, the sky covered in smoke and dead alien tentacles. But the monsters are still attacking, still fighting on even when their general is nowhere to be seen. You've managed to find yourself a plain of broken glass, the jagged edges cut your palms but the weapon proves to be useful.

You slash the creature's throat, watching as it oozed green. It dropped to the ground, and then another and another. More and more of these creatures fell to the floor, a hive mind but the mind had been separated. You could finally see April from the other side of the street, between you laid bodies of countless ooey gooey aliens.

"T-they did it.." you muttered, hand going to your mouth out of shock and then morning. He was gone, Leo was gone. Forever trapped in the Prison Dimension. Tears poured down your cheeks, "Oh my god, April...He's gone." you bawled out. April watched you from the other side of the street, sadness written across her face. But what started as sorrow contorted into fear, "Watch out!" she yelled.

A breath spluttered past your lips, the whole world momentarily fell silent. You could feel your heartbeat in your chest, it almost hurt. Your vision was going blurry, you could nearly make out April's wide-eyed expression. Following her gaze, you caught the silver blade coated in red.

"Oh..." you puffed out, looking back up at her with your own horrified expression. You suddenly felt faint, like you could pass out at any momen-

"You've been portal-chopped!" Leo bragged, folding his arms over his chest while he floated around aimlessly. Of course, he was absolutely terrified. Trapped alone forever with a dangerous enemy who despised him and the air he breathed.

The glare he received from the Kraang could have killed him. With a burning vengeance, the Kraang launched at him. Leo was thrown through brick wall after brick wall, he was shot and blasted by lasers, punched and kicked until he bled. But he never fought back, he had no reason to. Everyone on Earth was safe, his brothers, April, you.

As long as Squidward was here, he couldn't harm them. And the only way to keep Squiddy in the Prison Dimension was to give him a target to let out all his anger. Maybe the Kraang would kill him immediately, he hoped that would be the case; he didn't want to suffer.

Or maybe he'd grow bored of beating the ever-living shit out of Leo and move on, letting the poor turtle die from a punctured lung or something.

"You think you've won, YOU WRETCHED LITTLE PEST!" the Kraang screamed, his face a deep red instead of the pastel pink it was before. With another punch to the face, Leo whistles, he thinks he might have swallowed a tooth with that one. But he's okay with that, who needs teeth anyway?

That sounded like something you would say, like that time you had cracked your baby tooth on a chicken nugget. Leo remembers howling with laughter and you had just shrugged it off, "It's only a baby tooth, besides if I do lose all my teeth I can just eat mush for the rest of my life. Like, realistically, who needs teeth anyway?"

He smiles at the memory, at least he can still remember it too; probably means he don't had an concussion...okay so maybe he did have a concussion.

But he'd die happy if you were his final thoughts, you and his family. Mikey, Donnie and Raph would be sat in their respective chairs for a movie night, April crashing on the beanbag with you huddled to his side. Jupiter Jim would be on the screen until Splinter would crash the movie night and force everyone to watch Lou Jitsu.

"You ruined everything! And now you, you will face my wrath all alone!" The Kraang seethed, veins popping out of his head. The metallic fist of his suit was littered with red splotches, and they only seemed to increase the more he hit Leo.

What would Christmas have been like? Leo starts to wonder, eyes blinking shut into an inky abyss. It would have been your second Christmas together as a couple, or was it your first? The details were starting to get fuzzy. No matter, Leo can see how the day would go anyway.

Mikey would have woken everyone up bright and early, you and April would have stayed over the night before. You'd all sit by the tree and spend the morning opening presents and such, many 'thank yous' and fake 'I love its' chorused around the room.

A team effort to create such a beautiful Christmas spread, which would have taken hours to make but only minutes to eat; especially with Raph around. The feelings made him feel all fluttery inside, warm even.

"WIPE THAT GRIN OFF OF YOUR FACE!" The Kraang screamed, rolling back his fist and with a powerful blow sent Leo out into the empty space of the Prison Dimension. A trail of dirt and smoke followed behind him, a broken sob the only sound in the area. Leo weakly pulled out the photo Casey had given April earlier that day, he had swiped it just before the mission to retrieve the key in the first place.

He looked at that photo now, you were still a family just...smaller. A lone tear rolled down his cheek, clutching the photo to his chest Leo's body rattled with cries.

Donnie watched in awe and guilt as the Technodrome ceased to exist, gone like the entire alien population. Given the context clues, Donnie knew Leo wasn't here anymore. It was almost more frustrating than losing Raph, at least he knew with Raph there was no chance of getting him back. But with Leo? Donnie would have to live with the knowledge that he was somewhere out there, unable to come home.

Something wet fell onto Donnie's cheek, with a slow glance and a shaking hand, Donnie found a tear. He- he was crying? The emotionless bad boy who had to maintain a perfect image was...crying? From his left he could hear Mikey panting for breath, with a deep sigh he spoke out, "Mikey, give up already. He's gone."

Sometimes Donnie hated being the realistic but pessimistic one. Mikey shook his head, eyes focused and brows furrowed, "Leo never gave up on us, so I'm not giving up on him."

The tears that blotched his usually happy-go-lucky face dripped onto the concrete below them, turning the light brown into a dark grey. He continued to push and pull his arms out, fingers flexing and turning just to create something. He believed he could do it, he knew he could do it, he hoped he could do it.

When all yearning seemed lost, orange flicks of light burst out of the air. Slowly, more and more appeared all ranging in colour. Donnie's brows shifted, flinching upwards as he jumped to Mikey's side, "Mikey, whatever you're doing keep going!" he cheered. This was amazing, never before had he seen something like this; and by his younger brother no less!

But Mikey wasn't strong enough, his skin flacking away, leaving behind an orange-tinted body. Mikey gave a shakey look towards Donnie, fear in his eyes. The taller brother quickly attempted to soothe him, "I'm here, Miguel." the moment Donnie touched Mikey a powerful energy burst through him. Michaelangelo's left eye lit a neon yellow, "It's- it's not enough! W-we need Raph here!"

Donnie's eyes filled with sorrow, "But he's not here, Mikey! We have to open this portal now!"

Mikey flinched at Donnie's tone, but when another hand graced his shoulder, his posture relaxed. Looking to his right, a lime green hand caught his attention, "R-Raph?" Mikey cried. Raphael's form was lit with white accents, looking the exact same as when he appeared to Leonardo.

"I'm here, Mikey." his calm voice sent a whole new wave of emotions over the remaining brothers. Mikey's right eye was now lit to a bright yellow, a true sign that his power was increasing. With a curt nod to Donnie, Raph faced the portal and helped his brothers balance the mystic power flowing through them. Little by little the portal opened more and more, Mikey released a painful scream as his entire being chipped away.

But it wasn't strong enough, even with the three brothers using all their might. Donnie shook his head, a few more tears dribbling down his cheeks, "It's not working!"

"I-I don't know what to do!" Mikey cried out, his hands shaking. A shiver crept up Donnie's spine, turning his head away from the partially formed portal, he caught a small figure in the distance. The figure was lit all in white, a ghostly green aura surrounding them. Stepping forward, the height of the individual shrunk until they were just above Donnie's hip.

"D-dad?" Donatello questioned, his voice wavering. Splinter placed cold hands along his two son's arms, wrapping a comforting tail around Raph's legs. Although Mikey and Donnie couldn't feel his usually warm touch, they did feel a warmth radiate their hearts.

"My sons." Splinter spoke.

With the final member of the Hamato clan beside them, Mikey let out a roar as the mystic magic spluttering from his hands formed an orange portal. Every ounce of love, grief and hope went into creating it.

The view inside the portal swiftly changed from the docks of Staten Island to the deep purples and navy blues of the Prison Dimension. The entire place was desolate, save for a few spiralling rocks and the lone body floating without meaning.

"Leo?" Donnie questioned, but once he caught sight of that blue bandana, Donnie all but screamed his name, "LEO!"

Said turtle slowly turned around, eyes wide and blurry. A small smile lit up his face, even if the action caused him to wince, "Took you guys long enough." he joked. With an outstretched arm, Leo waited for his brothers to pull him in. Donnie formed a long extension of his bo staff, like a fireman's ladder it effectively reached Leo long enough for him to grab a hold of it and slowly pull him back.

But a dimmer shadow lay lurking in the dark, the Kraang Leader leapt from crumbled buildings to burning cars; clawing his way to the injured turtle. His right eye twitched, no doubt from the pure anger that fueled him, "You shall not escape me, Leonardo!" he wailed.

"No, no, no, not again." Mikey mumbled out, he shrieked and a powerful orange wave burst from his chest. Leo held onto Donnie's bo stick for dear life, while the Kraang was sent flying into the deep depths of space, "NOOOOOooooo!" his voice fading out.

With the threat now gone, Donnie continued to pull Leo back into the real world, all while the possibility of Mikey accidentally closing the portal was very real. When Donnie's hand grabbed at Leo's, his bemused twin swore he'd never let go. Leo collapsed into Donnie's arms, nearly bringing the soft-shell turtle down with him.

The genius carefully laid Leo down onto his shell, closely examining him and frowning at all the possible internal injuries that no doubt plagued his body. Mikey looked at Leo with a smile, the flakes of his skin had not been restored when the portal closed, and Mikey's whole frame began to shake.

"I-I feel like jelly..." were his last words before he passed out, colliding with the floor. Donnie and Leo called out his name, but it fell on deaf ears. Donnie left Leo's side, how was he meant to look after two brothers all on his own?

The spirits of Raph and Splinter watched on, and although they felt present, they couldn't do much to help but look on in worry. Leo looked over to their father, fresh tears falling, "Dad..." he whispered. Splinter switched his attention to the newly crested leader, his ears twitching, "Blue-" he stopped. He grabbed his ears, a painful expression on his face. Raph grabbed his father's shoulder, "Pops, what's wrong?"

"I-I feel another." was all he said, looking off towards the city. Leo tried to follow his gaze, but any head movement caused a tremendous amount of pain, "Is Mikey?" he trailed off, unwilling to truly finish his thought.

Splinter shook his head, "No, his spirit is still very much in reality."

"I can confirm Mikey is just tired, maybe?" Donnie shut one of Mikey's eyelids. Leo cringed while moving to a sitting position, "Maybe?"

"Weeeell, he could be like this for an unknown number of days."

"Donnie, you just described a coma." Leo pointed out, Donnie shrugged his shoulders, "Oh, did I? Weird. Anyway, from what I can gather he seems to be fine. Vitals are steady and his breathing is fine, we just need to get him somewhere comfortable and wait."

"Dad," Leo wanted to ask his father what he meant by 'there is another', but found that his chance was gone. The spot where Raphael and Splinter stood was empty, blank, void of any supernatural spirits.

"Donnie, we need to get to the others. I need to see (Y/N)."

"And how do you suppose we do that, Mikey's unconscious. And if you haven't noticed, you're severely injured? Besides we have no way of getting out of here." Donnie threw his arms up in the air, today had been a very long day.

"Where is here exactly?"

"New Jersey."

Leo cringed, "Ugh, New Jersey? Are you kiddin' me?"

The blue handle made it harder to sit like a normal human being, but that was the least of your problems. What alarmed you more than anything is that you wouldn't be able to see you're family again, explain to them why this had happened; tell them about the double life you lived.

But you smiled in comfort at the thought of possibly being able to see Leo again, heck, maybe even Raph and Splinter if that afterlife place was real. Though you were certain you were the only one comfortable with dying, April and Casey were surrounding you with guilty chants and pleas to keep your eyes open.

They were good friends, well April was. Casey you had only known for a few hours, but he seemed like a nice kid. There was no doubt in your mind that you would have been good friends in the future. Speaking of the future, you could see it in Casey's eyes that this had happened before. Something about the look of deja vu that crossed his face.

Had you died in the future?

"(Y/N)?", you creased your eyes shut as a blue portal formed in the distance. The light hurt, and you would have made a joke about heaven and shit, but now didn't feel like the right time. Leo was being held up by Donnie's right arm, limping over to you with hurry. April and Casey moved out of the way, rushing to help Donnie who was carrying an unconscious Mikey over his left shoulder.

Leo's jaw dropped when he caught his blade plunged into your chest, his throat ran dry. His hands moved to cup your face, thumbing away the tears that were threatening to break through "H-how?" he stuttered out.

You let a whimper fall past your lips, your breath cold, "Just my l-luck, right?" you tried to smile. Leo held back a sob, not you, he couldn't lose you. One of your hands managed to grab a hold of his own, squeezing with everything you had left, "I'll say hello for you." your sweet voice becoming breathless.

Leo squeezed back with just as much love, "You better look after them up there, my dad may be a ninja master but he's also pretty senile." You tried to laugh, you really did, but it ended with you in a coughing fit. Leo looked panicked, holding your shoulder to keep you upright, "Hey, calm down, I still need to take you on that pizza date. I-if you leave, then I'll make you pay for the n-next one."

"I'll p-pay for all of them." Leo looked into your eyes, watching the life drain from your face and the colour of your cheeks pale, "Please don't go." he whimpered, lip trembling. You rubbed a bloodied hand against his cheek, cooing at him, "I have to say goodbye."

"What if I don't want to say goodbye? Please, just let me be selfish this once. Stay with me." he begged, invading your personal space as much as he could, he needed to feel you before he lost the chance. You once again smiled, this time, however, your lips barely moved.

"I'll be waiting for you, I promise."

That line almost broke Leo, "A-and you always k-keep your p-promises." You nodded weakly, Leo leaned in closer, smushing his lips against yours. You followed along, the last of your remaining strength sent into making sure he knew you loved him. You held back the trembling lips and the cracked voice, he didn't need to hear that.

As you kissed, Leo could feel the lack of your presence against him. He could no longer feel you pushing. Pulling away, Leo didn't need to look to know. He just tugged you into his chest, kissing your head and relaying that he loved you.

"I love you so god damn much." he wheezed, tightening his hold on you. And that's where he sat for hours, scared to let you go. His remaining family all bowed their heads, the clean up on New York could wait. Leo's cries for you to come back, to wake up, echoed along the city streets. But he knew deep down, that everything must come to an end.

#fandom #fanfiction #fan #fanfic #tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt leo x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #reader #everything ends #rottmnt leo #rottmnt leonard x reader

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risestarkiss · 9 months

Note

Hey, so I was thinking about your post about the Timeline Paradox Photo from the movie, and I've been turning it over in my head for a few days (I love timeline nonsense, I've spent hours on LoZ timeline theory, this is my bread and butter) and anyhow I think I figured it out actually.

So, to start, we're dealing with two timelines--the main movie timeline, and the bad future timeline, with the photo originating in the bad future timeline. First, we need to know when does the movie timeline diverge from the bad future timeline, and that would be as soon as Casey emerges from the time portal. Obviously in the bad future timeline Casey didn't exist at the time the Kraang invaded bc he wasn't born yet, so the whole "butterfly effect" thing was immediately in effect as soon as he popped out of the portal and therefore the movie timeline split off from the bad future timeline as soon as Casey shows up. This means there's a window of time from when Casey came out of the portal to when the Kraang were released from the prison dimension (or possibly later to when they summoned their main ship from the top of the tall building) for the photo to have logically been taken (since obviously no one's going to be taking wholesome family photos while the apocalypse is unfolding).

So then, let's look at the events as we know them for fact from the movie timeline. Before Casey finds April, a few things happen. First, the turtles fail to retrieve the key, but since they don't realize how important it is, they just head back to the Lair to chill for a bit. Second, April steals the vials of herbicide (er, whatever the blue goopy stuff was) from her college, and then encounters Casey. And then the rest of the movie unfolds the way it does bc Casey warns them about, y'know, the impending alien invasion and general doom of the world. Which means the team crashes the summoning party before the Kraang are able to pull out their weapons (possibly their exoskeletons? I'm thinking it's got to be the exoskeletons they were gonna try and nab, and not the main warship). Anyhow, this sets off the domino chain to lead to, well, all the other movie events.

Now, what happened then in the bad future timeline? With no Casey at that specific moment in time? My best guess is: the turtles fail to retrieve the key and head back to the Lair. April steals the herbicide from her college and then what? She's got a dangerous substance that she doesn't know a lot about, so it's possible she also heads to the Lair to have Donnie analyze it for her. And hey, she pulled off a cool ninja mission on her own and is making progress on her road to being an investigative reporter, that's something to celebrate and maybe even commemorate, so someone pulls out a camera and they all take The Group Photo (as to who's holding the camera, I mean, Donnie's got all sorts of tech that I'm sure could accommodate taking a picture of the group). Meanwhile, the Foot Clan frees the Kraang, and the Kraang are able to get their exoskeletons (again, this is a guess, but they seem much more powerful and protected w/ the exoskeletons, so), and no one is the wiser bc there was no tip off. The Kraang then make their way to the highest point in the city (big tall building who's name escapes me, sorry) and summon their main warship, which sets the apocalypse in motion. Given the lapse of time the turtles and April aren't able to react quickly enough to do anything to really stop the Kraang (and even if they could, the Kraang already have All Their Weapons)--intead, they manage to save enough survivors and go into hiding, allowing for Casey to be born and for the bad future timeline to unfold until it reaches what we get to see at the start of the movie.

So, that's my best theory for when the photo was taken and how it's not actually a true paradox or inconsistency. Actually, it could even double (or triple) as a really poetic bit of narrative writing, since future-Leo draws the image of the key that will release the Kraang on the back of the photo, the photo is an image of the people who are key to stopping the Kraang, and if the photo was taken/created on the day that everything started, then it might be a sort of temporal key to help Mikey's mystic powers guide Casey backwards in time to the exact day the photo was originally taken so that he could try and change the future.

Sorry for the really long anon ask, I'm super new to tmnt and am still getting a feel for things, so I was a bit too shy to just write this all out in a reblog of your original post. But I love your blog, thanks for writing all these fun analyses!

I’ve been thinking this over as well + having some great discussions on the original post. 😁 I completely agree with the divergence of the timelines happening once Casey comes out of the portal, and I do think that the happy family photo would have been interrupted by Casey’s appearance. But yeah, your explanation makes complete sense.

The twist on the key on the photo is such an interesting take! Thanks so much for the insight and welcome to the fandom 😊! Aww, it’s my pleasure. I love these silly little guys 😄💜

#answered asks #rottmnt #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #tmnt2018 #tmnt 2k18 #tmnt 2018 #save rottmnt #unpause rottmnt #unpause rise of the tmnt #save rise of the tmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles

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yanderes-galore · 2 years

Note

How would the Xenomorph queen react when a rival hive has eyes for her human I can only imagine the acid bath (ha get it since they have acid for blo-)

I loosely based this on the Red vs Black Xenomorphs from the comics (I never read them, but I know the subspecies) . I hope you enjoy! Also, I know the pictures are "Queen Mothers", not regular queens, but the queens in this concept are regular queens.

Edit: Combined two requests as they were similar. Also, eeee! I wanted to write more for this but ran out of ideas :( Did you want these two as OCs at all btw? I hope you all liked this!

Yandere! Xenomorph Queen vs Xenomorph Queen

Pairing: Animal/Pet-Like - Rivalry

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome, Mass murder/violence, Obsession, Aliens/human, Possessive behavior, Scenting.

Xenomorph hives warring against eachother isn't really that new.

Xenomorph Prime, their homeworld, has hives fight eachother all the time.

This is usually due to resources or sudden violent mutations in castes.

The first incident of Red vs Black Xenomorphs and the genetically modified Xenomorph King are examples of Xenomorphs fighting other Xenomorphs.

So it's entirely possible for Xenomorph hives to fight.

You probably got stuck with one hive, a type of Xenomorph with shells so blue they're black.

The Queen adores you and your scent, covering you in hers to claim you.

The rivaling hive, a caste of dark crimson, probably find you through drones.

The hives are probably competing for hosts.

The moment some drones can lure you away, you're nabbed away from the other Queen's sight.

The two different xenomorph colors are sister species.

By the time you enter the crimson hive, the rivaling Queen probably is attached to you too.

Whatever made the bluish hive fall for you, the same goes for the crimson one.

The Queen and drones despise the rival smell covering yours.

Once you're placed in the hive, the crimson xenomorphs cover your smell and claim you as theirs.

Now, to answer the question of what a xenomorph Queen would do after having her human stolen...

Rage and war.

The hive is thrown into disarray as the Queen can't find your scent anymore.

With a disturbed hiss, the drones are set to high alert.

Soon, the drones from the original hive will catch your scent among the... crimson scent.

They report their findings, then war is waged.

Wanting to fight for her human back, the Queen detaches herself from her egg sac and follows her hive to the rivaling one.

You're caught in the middle of a hive war.

The crimson Queen was just getting used to you.

The large red alien rubs her head on your stomach, arms holding you still.

Whisker-like apendages brush against your skin, the rival Queen cooing while she plays with her new trophy.

Then, there's rumbling.

Screeching echoes through the hive, the crimson Queen ushering you deeper in the hive and snarling.

The two colored drones fight eachother, acid spraying along the walls.

The crimson Queen hisses loudly once the Queen you know enters the nesting room, acid spilling from light wounds.

The two queens grunt and hiss, standing off with plans of destruction.

The original Queen is not too happy about having her human stolen.

Not by any humans... even more so by another queen.

Meanwhile, the crimson Queen doesn't wish to give up her new pet.

Finders keepers....

You move a bit to the side to watch the two queens.

The original Queen looks to you, cooing softly before the crimson Queen lunges at her.

It's a battle of the ages, the two queens stumbling around with claws out.

Tails sway around the room as they pin each other to the hive around, eggs being crushed under their weight.

While they fight, you wonder if escape is possible.

The queens are distracted... the drones are too...

If you can make it out of this hive alive, you can flee!

Who cares who wins? Escape is around the corner.

Or maybe... you've fallen for one of them through stockholm syndrome?

It'll be best to leave...

But maybe you want to stay?

Who will win? It's a battle of the titans.... A flip of the coin could decide the outcome.

#yandere alien harem #yandere aliens #yandere xenomorphs #yandere xenomorph queen #yandere xenomorph #yandere teratophilia

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solidshrimplet · 5 months

Text

Sliding in a self-rec for my trigun series (I have been promised doing so is not cringe).

there is a season for all things

Words: 18,104

Status: Complete

Relationship: Mashwood

Rating: E (might lean closer to M though)

What if plant sex is just weird? Like not compatible kind of weird? (This one is actually really sweet and cute I promise but we're also going all in on the xeno)

It really shouldn't surprise her, but Meryl will admit, out of all of her discoveries about the eternal enigma of Vash the Stampede, the one that really throws her for a loop is the revelation that, in bedroom matters, he's exceedingly confident.

But the other thing she discovers about Vash is that under no circumstances does he want anyone returning the favor.

sing for me

Words: 4,753

Status: Complete

Relationship: Mashwood

Rating: M

Follows on directly from the previous fic and expands on something Meryl wants to try.

bad timing

Words: 34,505

Status: Ongoing

Relationship: Mashwood

Rating: M

Set after the first two. Worst time to get nabbed by bounty hunters? Maybe when your alien partner's busy going through their seasonal thing.

He closes his eyes, lets himself sink a little lower so he can make use of the pillows. Maybe Meryl has the right idea about a nap. His hand keeps ending up across his stomach and he should probably put the cigarette out because it’s a dumb idea to fall asleep with one lit. It doesn’t feel pressing though. It should, but it doesn’t. He’ll deal with it in a minute. Just wants a few more seconds of this before he has to move.

Except it’s barely the afternoon and he’d got a solid eight hours the last night so why the hell is he nodding off like some toddler after a glass of warm milk?

Nicholas sits up sharply and shakes his head, trying to shrug off the drowsiness, but it doesn’t fade. No – the room lists, and nausea churns, but the fog won’t clear.

a silent night

Words: 5,231

Status: Complete

Relationship: Mashwood

Rating: E

This one is just smut. You can read it without touching the others if you want, but context never hurts.

“Hey... you want me to blow you?” “That a good idea right now?” “Why not?” “Don't wanna wake sleeping beauty.”

Vash makes a thoughtful expression, head cocked to the side while he considers the matter, and Nicholas sees the moment a spark of mischief brightens in his eyes. His grin spreads slowly in a way that spells trouble.

“Bet you could keep yourself quiet. Think you could do that for me, Nick?” he asks, dropping into a low tone. “Be nice and quiet if I tell you to?”

#trigun #trigunfanficappreciation #fic rec #self-rec #mashwood

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toweroftickles · 2 years

Text

No Ticket, No Entry

(Miles/Gwen Tickle Fic)

If you're a cop's kid, they say there are only two possibilities: you become a cop yourself, or one of the crooks he chases. For Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy, it was a little bit of both. Equipped with an arsenal of stickers and spray cans, Miles was always the more prone to troublemaking of the two. Gwen usually required a little more prodding.

But what kind of self-respecting teenager, at some point, hasn’t snuck into a movie theater?

The two perched high on lampposts on the street outside, perfectly hidden from passerby behind the blinding lights. It was one of those small local Queens theaters that had been around since the dawn of time, the kind that still used traditional signs, where even the color on the bricks had started to chip off. Red neon letters flashed cheerfully at them above the marquee. It was a chilly spring night.

"Alright, Spider-Boy; let's see whatcha got," the ghostly white Gwen teased with a wink.

“‘Spider-Boy?’ C’mon, that’s a low blow,” chuckled Miles.

“Hey, invisible guy successfully nabs us some snacks; then we can talk about upgrading your moniker," she giggled. With a flick of her wrist, a thin strand of web fluid whisked Gwen up to the roof, and left Miles alone on his vantage point, where he vanished with perfect camouflage. His gloves and boots squeaked on the glass foyer windows. There was quite a crowd...he had to squeeze quickly between the doorframe and a very fat woman in a fur coat, but no one was the wiser.

Both he and his girlfriend felt the pulse-pounding thrill of breaking the rules. A little bit of the old anxious butterflies flitted around their stomachs…what’s worse than getting caught? But they really shouldn't have worried. This was a world where superheroes, aliens, gods and monsters all ran around New York like it was their own personal Super Smash Bros. arena. All that Randall the overweight 15-year-old counter clerk thought about, when he saw a haunted bag of popcorn mysteriously sliding away around the gaudy orange wall corner, was the fact that he didn't get paid nearly enough to care.

Getting through the doors, crawling up the ceiling and behind the counter, and grabbing armfuls of food undetected was the easy part. The tricky thing was getting it all into the screening room. He & Gwen were already a few minutes late...a strategic maneuver. The way-too-loud trailers were audible outside the door. All Miles had to do was hide behind the back counter, wait for a break in the crowd, and sprint in and up the wall, resisting the urge to hum the sneaky Castle Garden music from Ocarina of Time while he did so.

All the popcorn bags, hot dogs, drinks, and what-have-you were webbed up all nice and snug in the back right corner of the theater's star-covered ceiling, opposite from the door and behind the other seats. A soft metal clunking sound that only his enhanced ears could pick up, like a knock on a metal door, lured Miles up back across to the overhang above the entrance. Even the walls were coated in carpet, but there was a single rectangular hole covered by a cheap iron grate, which led to the building's ventilation ducts. And behind it, smiling and waving at him, was his girlfriend.

"Hey there," she whispered. Miles' mask was lifted just enough that his mouth was visible. Even under the mask, though, he was clearly raising his eyebrows in that classic Dwayne Johnson way.

"Heeyyyyyy," he replied, trying to look cool and unaware that his face was wearing a patchy beard of popcorn kernels. Gwen bit her lip and tried not to smile too much...she thought it was cute.

“I can’t believe these dorks still haven’t noticed the opening is unscrewed!” It took nearly a full 30 seconds to crawl out and slide the grate back into place with as little noise as possible. Miles tossed Gwen a box of M&Ms, careful of the rattling. If the guy in the projection booth had looked down through the window, he might have noticed the snickering teenagers crawling along beneath his shadow.

It was like any other movie night, only huddled in the far corner of the room and fifteen feet off the ground. (It was some comedy movie, the details of which they barely cared about. Something to do with horses, a wedding, and Danny McBride eating a truck tire.) They whispered. They laughed. They stole each other's food. They tried to sneak looks at their smartphones, and always chided the other for doing the exact same thing. Miles almost tried the cliche "accidentally hold hands via popcorn bucket" trick, but he was too embarrassed...so Gwen smoothly slid her gloved palm into his anyway. In the dim blue glow, after all, he couldn't see her blush.

"Man, sitting this way is startin' to hurt my back."

"Heheheh...I'm gonna watch from here. You think someone'll notice?" Gwen said playfully. Grinning, the Ghost Spider raised from her place at Miles' left, crawled up above ("Hey! Where you going?") and sat down Indian-style right on the ceiling at his 10:00 position. Twinkling glow-in-the-dark stickers lit up the area around her. Despite her years of experience, she never really got over the novelty of being able to hang upside down whenever and wherever she wanted. When she fully demasked, both of the heroes laughed quietly at the sight of her blonde hair dangling toward the floor.

"Oh, so what, now you don't care about anyone seeing you?" Miles perked up instantly and tossed popcorn her way.

"Shhh! We've gotta still be quiet!" Gwen laughed back at him. The tension in her shoulders had wound down throughout the evening...she was feeling a little more mischievous.

"Oh, we do, huh? Yeah, we do?"

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Miles' left arm reached up and poked her in the side.

These skintight superhero catsuits were many things, but one thing they were NOT: tickle-proof. Thankfully, a character in the movie had just cracked a joke, and everyone in the audience was in a fit of laughter…no one heard it when Gwen’s chipper giggle blurted out.

Her eyes bugged out of her head. Her hand slapped over her vulnerable spot. She tried not to show it, even (especially?) in front of Miles, but the universe-hopping Stacy daughter was remarkably ticklish; even gentle back scratches could make her squeak and writhe like a bowl of jello. And deep down, she hated the sound of her throaty, husky laugh. She always gasped so much; it almost sounded more like hiccups than laughter.

"Quit it!" she snapped, looking back at Miles. Her mouth looked happy...he loved seeing that little gap in her buck teeth when she grinned; it was so dorky...but her eyes were panicked. Which, of course, just egged him on.

As soon as she wasn't looking, her boyfriend stretched out his arm again and squeezed her belly with all five fingers, and Gwen doubled over, giggling fiercely.

"HNGHEE!!" she exhaled hard; all the wind was knocked out of her.

She kept shoving his wrist, hissing at him, trying to get him to cut it out, but he was acting like an obnoxious little brother in the back seat of a car...all that was missing was for him to squawk "I'm not touching you!" on repeat. Every time she moved Miles' hand aside to one place, he swung his arm back and pinched her side or jabbed between her ribs. Limbs flying everywhere...it was practically a slap-fight.

Poke...poke....poke. Over and over.

All these little touches were making her all tingly, building up a storm of hysterics that Gwen was struggling to contain. Her Spider-Sense was blaring a full four-alarm siren, for all the good it did against someone who was just as fast as her.

"Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle," Miles teased her in a cartoonishly high-pitched voice.

“S-stop it! We’re gonna get caught!” She was frustrated now. It was true…down below, patrons had begun looking around in circles, trying to determine where that annoying noise was coming from, and who exactly they should pelt with half-eaten nachos.

Sealing her lips tightly, Gwen held her breath and swiveled to face the screen again. She was anxiously rubbing her crossed ankles while fixated on the movie, an action that drew Miles’ eye to the seafoam green ballet shoes which lurked, upside-down, just above his hair.

Meh...that'll work.

Just when she started to take her mind off the chortles, Gwen gasped. A finger was tracing along the outer lip of her right shoe.

"Don't...you...dare..."

Miles' hooked digit clawed around inside Gwen's slipper and gently scratched the arch of her foot through her black spandex tights. She could almost feel the electric tingles of his venom-touch buzzing up her leg…it made her whole body jitter, and she jumped nearly hard enough to unstick from the ceiling.

“HAA-Huh! *gasp*wheeze* Huhuh-Heheh, Haha! St-hop!” Gwen snorted loudly and clapped her hands over her mouth. Her flailing legs untangled from their self-made pretzel. “Heehee-Heh, Huh-Huh! *gasp* Heheh!”

She froze. A cold fear dripped down Gwen’s neck. Internally, she was shooting off every curse word she could think of. After a moment to catch her breath, once her laughter subsided, Gwen slowly opened a single eye…

…and there, below her, was her worst fear. The crowd was staring up at her, trying to make out the girl-shaped shadow in the theater’s back corner.

"Hey, it's Spider-Woman!"

"Woo! Spider-Girl, down here!"

"Wait I thought she was called Ghost-Spider..."

Thank god it was dark enough that no one could see her face properly; her mask was back on in milliseconds.

"Oh, shit shit shit; Miles, we've gotta - " Gwen quickly snapped her head to the side, but there was nothing there...nothing but an empty, dark corner where her boyfriend had once sat. He’d gone invisible and slipped out. The eyes of her costume narrowed into burning little strips of pink, like a pair of furious electric earthworms.

".....oh, you've gotta be freaking kidding me."

THUD!! BANG! Hard aluminum sheets buckled and wobbled under Gwen’s fingertips. She scurried through the air vents at a blistering pace, often sliding too far around a corner - CRUNCH! ow, that’s definitely an elbow bruise - and doubling back. Her legs nearly outran her arms, throwing themselves up and over each other, rushing to an ever-closer window of purple moonlight.

Her heart beat a thousand times a minute.

Freedom.

On the rooftop, Gwen yanked up her mask and sucked in the foggy night air. Breathing hard…whewwww….over and over. Its cool touch soothed the burning in her cheeks. Her slippers slapped against the stone and plaster. Alongside her own weary gasps, Gwen eventually heard another sound…one that made her temperature rise once more.

Miles, chuckling to himself right beside her.

“Heh-Heh…kind of a big change-up from how we met, huh?” he offered, a smug smile on his face.

"Miles!!" Gwen hissed under her breath, and slapped her boyfriend on the arm.

"Ow! Why you whispering? We're up here by ourselves."

“Uuugh. This is why you get in trouble with your dad! You are soooo lucky this universe doesn’t have mine. You seriously can't stop goofing around for more than 2 seconds even when...”

“So is that like your Kryptonite? You can’t win a fight if you’re being tickled?” laughed Miles. The question made Gwen go red in the face again. She was about to garble some kind of flustered protest, but something caught her eye and stopped her...from inside his sleeve, Miles produced some sort of shiny metal stick. It was kinda like those memory-erasers from that one dumb alien movie her dad liked.

"Well, you know...I was thinkin' while we were up here, maybe we could have a....uhhh, private show." Miles flipped over to the brick lip of the roof and squatted down. At his feet he placed the little silver tube, centered it, and clicked a button. "C'mere; check this out."

Along its side, a narrow slit opened up, pulsing a deep yellow color. Inside it, glowing photons waved back at Gwen like a sea of tiny stars, humming softly. A shower of light rushed up from the strip like an inverse waterfall until the little particles reached a rectangular shape, then scurried in all directions to paint the night sky alongside their far-off galactic brothers. Draped above Gwen & Miles, like a canopy, floated a holographic screen just for them. (Unknown to Gwen, exactly twelve feet below them, inside the projection booth, a red, spider-shaped, USB-compatible goober clicked into place against the room’s laptop. Its feed was being copied and streamed perfectly.)

"Wow......" Gwen seemed impressed, but paused when she realized….

"Wait, was this whole night just so you could show that gizmo off?"

"Ehhhh....maybe," shrugged Miles. He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head with his left hand. But as she thought about it, Gwen wasn’t even mad. She just laughed all over again.

A little web pillow was all it took to make the setup complete. Grabbing a fistful of popcorn from the sole leftover bag that Miles had carried with him, Gwen laid back against the nearby roof fan and shoveled the snacks into her mouth, excitedly looking up at the big projector above. And her boyfriend plopped down just to her left side, arms crossed and relaxed.

Strangely, the noise of the insomniac city streets below, the feet clicking on pavement, the rushing and honking of cab horns, didn't bother them. The movie played perfectly alongside the calming sounds of New York, and there was something strangely enchanting about it. Reaching up, Gwen’s hands came to rest behind her head and propped her against the pillow, and she sighed contentedly. A sweet smile washed over her.

"You know…" she said, "...I think I do kinda like this better, Spider-Man.”

Miles often made himself sick with worry about how their relationship was going. She was sooo much cooler than him. What was the next step? What if he did something to embarrass her? But for a few moments, all those fears melted away while he watched the projector's light dance reflected on her cheek.

He also realized, as his prankster side whispered in his ear, he was in a perfect position to sneakily tickle her armpit without her noticing. Both her hands were behind her head.

Almost on a reflex, his index finger bent and slowly hovered toward her...

….but he suddenly thought better of it.

Nah. Let's just enjoy the movie.

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superman86to99 · 8 months

Text

Action Comics #700 (June 1994)

"THE BATTLE FALL OF METROPOLIS"! Metropolis falls, quite literally! But, on the bright side, so does Lex Luthor, because Lois Lane finally busts his ass after 700 issues (give or take).

This super-sized anniversary issue starts with Lois recapping all the dirt she's dug up on "Lex Luthor Jr." during the past several months, including the fact that he's actually the original, supposedly dead Lex Luthor in a clone body. Lex tried to have Lois discredited by planting wacky headlines with her byline at the Daily Planet's computers and framing her for financial crimes (on top of blowing up her apartment), but now she finally has hard evidence of his crimes thanks to her informant at LexCorp, only known as "Deep Quote." (Is this the first reference to Linda Lovelace's oeuvre in a Superman story? Comics and/or porno historians, sound off in the comments.)

Despite having been fired from the Planet (see: "wacky headlines" above), Lois manages to present her evidence in front of Commissioner Henderson, Perry White, and Planet owner Franklin Stern... who still thinks this cloning business sounds like "science fiction." That's a weird thing to say when you live in the DC Universe. Hell, there's a whole government agency devoted to cloning just outside Metropolis! Or maybe I should say there was, because, right when Stern is about to apologize to Lois, everyone hears a massive explosion coming from Project Cadmus' direction -- as seen last issue, some of Lex's armored henchmen just dropped a goddamn mountain on Cadmus while fighting Superman and Superboy.

Superboy, who was all laughs last issue but seems to be taking his friends' apparent deaths much harder now, wants to look for survivors, but Superman again tells him there's no point, because "there's no one alive in Cadmus that needs our help anymore." Instead, they go look for the Lex-Men who caused this whole mess so they can bring them to justice. They're soon joined by Supergirl, who takes every opportunity she can get to destroy LexCorp property since breaking up with Lex himself in her recent miniseries (and that was before she found out he's actually a creepy old guy in a young body).

Meanwhile, Lex (whose clone body is rapidly deteriorating) is hiding in his yacht with his most faithful cronies, his scientific aide Dr. Sydney Happersen and his long-time physician Dr. Gretchen Kelley, the same woman who pretended to be his "mother" for the Lex Jr. ruse. Since Lex is gonna be here for a while, Dr. Kelley volunteers to go to the city and pick up some meds for him. Lex thinks that's a great idea... until he sees Kelley on TV, spilling the beans on his whole operation to Lois. That's right, Kelley was "Deep Quote" all along! Which was pretty obvious if you've been paying attention, but then again Lex has a long history of rejecting the obvious.

Kelley also spilled the beans on Lex's location to Superman, who suddenly bursts into the yacht to nab him once and for all. But Lex has an ace that he's been hiding up his sleeve for a long-ass time: a slew of "sonic torpedoes" reverse engineered from tech left behind by the alien invaders from DC's 1988 Invasion! crossover, which he hid somewhere under Metropolis in case he ever felt like pulverizing the city. Lex, who thinks he'll die any moment, seems perfectly willing to take millions with him -- until Superman asks him if he really wants the people of Metropolis, "his" city, to remember him as the guy who blew the whole place up. The "American Hitler," as Superman puts it.

Lex, who got into this whole mess in the first place because he wanted people to love him more than Superman, breaks down and agrees not to launch the torpedoes.

And then, for the first time in his life... Dr. Happersen disobeys Lex Luthor's wishes. Too bad those wishes were "let's not destroy a city."

After years of quietly taking abuse from Lex, Happersen finally snaps and launches those torpedoes. Lex tries to stop him by shooting at him with the death laser in his iron lung (of course Lex Luthor has a death laser in his iron lung), but it's too late. The torpedoes are activated, meaning that the city is as cooked as Happersen himself, who dies in Superman's arms seconds later.

Superman asks Luthor where the torpedoes are buried, but Lex, who looks genuinely distraught, honestly doesn't know. He always let Happersen handle little details like that.

Before Superman can even reach Metropolis, one of the torpedoes has already hit the WGBS building. He gets there right in time to race against the torpedo headed for the Daily Planet... but, as you might have guessed from this issue's cover, the torpedo wins the race.

If the city hadn't been evacuated a few issues ago due to the Underworlders' terrorist attacks, everyone in the Planet's staff would be dead now (thanks, ugly sewer mutant terrorists!). Superman does manage to prevent Lois, Ron Troupe, and, unfortunately, Jimmy Olsen from getting rolled over by the Planet's iconic globe after the building collapses, but only by destroying what's left of it. Perry White is following the action from the Planet's temp offices outside the city, and he looks about as emotionally devastated as he did in the issue when his son died.

Meanwhile, the other underground torpedoes are doing their best to turn Metropolis' skyline into a flat line. The only major building spared is the one belonging to Clark Kent's old employer, Newstime Magazine, but only because its owner happens to be a demonic entity with torpedo-deflecting powers, Lord Satanus. To his credit, Satanus does plant an idea in Superman's mind for how to stop the rest of the torpedoes: digging a big ditch all across Metropolis to intercept them (thanks, demonic entity posing as media magnate!).

As Superman, Superboy, and Supergirl stop most of the torpedoes, Satanus helps them out by redirecting the remaining ones to a more deserving target: LexCorp's giant L-shaped building, which is now shaped like a bunch of rubble.

With the torpedo problem solved, Luthor is finally arrested and exposed to the citizens of Metropolis as a no-goodnik, as Superman begins the long task of rebuilding the city by putting the Daily Planet globe back together. Yes, Metropolis is in pretty bad shape, and even Superman himself seems discouraged for a moment, but as Lois correctly points out: hey, at least it ain't Coast City!

Creator-Watch:

This issue marks the end of Roger Stern's distinguished run as Action Comics writer, which began exactly 100 issues ago... sort of, since he started writing Action when it was a weekly series and Superman only got two pages per issue. When John Byrne suddenly left the Superman books some months after that, in late 1988, Stern was an obvious choice to replace him, given his closeness to Byrne, his ample talents, and, well, the fact that he was already there.

Since then, Stern became one of the main architects of the over-arching storyline that made this era in Superman comics so special. His role as the Super-Squad's resident "continuity cop" enriched these comics tremendously. For instance, according to Dan Jurgens, it was Stern's idea to bring back an obscure character called Hank Henshaw as the Cyborg Superman instead of creating a new baddie for "Reign of the Supermen," which is the sort of thing that makes digging through hundreds of backissues worth it. Stern also wrote the bulk of the years-long Eradicator saga, Supergirl's evolution from lump of goo to proper hero, and, of course, Lex Luthor's long, strange journey leading to this issue (more on that later).

It's hard to imagine our beloved '86-'99 period without Roger Stern. Good thing he'll be back before too long, albeit in a reduced capacity...

Character-Watch:

With this issue, we a bid adieu to doctors Sydney Happersen and Gretchen Kelley, two of the most memorable characters ever to serve as Luthor's lackeys. Both were introduced in Byrne's Superman #2 (1987), and it's interesting that both were instantly portrayed as somewhat sympathetic: Happersen doesn't want to remove the kryptonite from Metallo's chest because he thinks it'd kill him (and looks shocked when Luthor pulls it out anyway), and Kelley is the one that warns Lex about Lana Lang's bizarre allergy to truth serum.

(Probably didn't help that they had a serious mold problem in that room.)

It's also interesting that Kelley was the only lackey on a first-name basis with Lex, hinting at the backstory that was revealed in Action #660: she was a small-town doctor until a young Lex swept her off her feet and turned her into his lover, only to ditch her for someone with larger boobs. Kelley became an alcoholic and ended up in jail, ruining her medical career, until Lex came to "reclaim" her and gave her a permanent job. I'm guessing the "old lovers" bit was added mainly to make the Lex Jr. story seem plausible, but it also helps explain why someone like her would stick with Lex for so long. She was clearly still in love with him, and the Lex Jr. ruse allowed her to imagine an alternate life where they were more than just employer and employee. I always like this bit from Action #676, before readers found out Lex Jr. was Lex Sr.:

In the Lex Jr. storyline, Kelley wasn't just lying to the world; she was lying to herself. Until she just couldn't lie anymore, I guess.

As for Happersen, he never had a backstory, but he didn't really need one. He was the prototypical meek henchman who'd do anything for his boss despite being treated like trash, which is why I found his breakdown at the end both logical and satisfying. Kelley and Happersen will each get a couple of flashback appearances after this issue, but they've been completely ignored by every revamp and reboot since. As much as I like them, I'm completely okay with that because their stories are over, and that's such a rare thing in comics.

Plotline-Watch:

The big subplot in this issue is Lana Lang's wedding to Pete Ross, which she said she wanted to hold "as soon as possible" after encountering Bizarro (and confirming that she's absolutely over Clark) in Action #697. Lois, Clark, and Supergirl are a bit busy to attend, but Ma and Pa Kent are there and even lend Lana their farmhouse for the ceremony. Other than Pa watching the chaos in Metropolis on TV, these scenes are completely disconnected from the rest of the issue, and I suspect they're only here for two reasons: 1) to tease readers with "Someone's getting married!" in the preview blurbs (remember that Lois and Clark had been engaged for a few years by now), and 2) to give Superman legends Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson some work. That last part makes the scenes worth it, in my opinion, especially since we even get a peek at how Swan would draw the Super-Mullet when Lana is thinking back on everything she's gone through with Clark.

The "we've had buildings dropped on us" scene Lana remembers is from Action #644, and the one who dropped the building was actually Supergirl/Matrix when she was suffering from Eradicator-triggered insanity. The "I've been kidnapped" issue, meanwhile, is Byrne's classic Superman #2, which leads us to...

Intentionally or not, there's a good numbers of parallels between this issue and the aforementioned Superman #2: Lana's most tragic moment and Lana's happiest moment; Happersen and Kelley's introduction and their exit; Superman angrily bursting into Lex's office and triumphantly bursting into his yacht; Lex getting away with it and Lex getting arrested. But the most significant connection is the fact that Superman #2 was the first time Lex put on his kryptonite ring, which is what sets off the long chain of events leading to this issue: him getting cancer (Action #600), faking his own death (Action #660), moving his brain to a younger body (revealed in Action #678), being infected with a clone-only disease (circa Man of Steel #31), and ending up as a sick, raving lunatic in an iron lung outfitted with death lasers.

What's definitely intentional, knowing Stern, is the fact that Lex's last stand happens in the Sea Queen, the same luxury yacht where he first met Superman (The Man of Steel #4). Both issues end with Lex getting arrested, but presumably he'll be behind bars for longer than two hours this time -- or maybe not, since the last time we see Luthor, he's thinking that "there are cards I've yet to play!" We'll find out what he means in Action #701.

While Lois is presenting her evidence against Lex, we learn that she first came into contact with Dr. Kelley/"Deep Quote" at the end of the "Bizarro's World" storyline, right after she learned of Lex Jr.'s sickness/shocking baldness (Superman #88). Unsurprisingly, Lex didn't like Lois seeing him like that and ordered Happersen to capture her, but Kelley helped her escape and they hit it off.

When exactly did Kelley decide to turn on Lex? A flashback suggests that it happened during the Supergirl miniseries, where she has an uncharacteristic outburst towards Lex for the way he "uses" Supergirl even though she loves him. We didn't even comment on that scene at the time, but now it seems pretty obvious that, even though Kelley does care for Supergirl, she was actually talking about herself.

Deep cut: at one point, Superman tries to find Lex by taking a Lex-Man's helmet to Professor Hamilton, who says that he recognizes this technology from the armor Lex once trapped poor Jose "Gangbuster" Delgado in, forcing him to act as a remote-controlled bodyguard (Adventures #451). Hamilton's efforts go nowhere, but I appreciate being reminded of Jose's most delightfully bizarre misadventure ever. Miss that dude and his horrible luck.

I also appreciate the shout out to Invasion!, and I wonder if Stern was planning Lex's sonic torpedo gambit from way back in Superman #28, which includes a scene in which Pentagon officials give Lex access to the alien weapons recovered in Australia. I also wonder if Lex thought to himself, "Hmmm, Australia... seems like a nice place to pretend to be from if I ever clone myself a new body."

Something that doesn't pay off is the implication that Colin Thornton/Lord Satanus would become a major villain now that Luthor is (temporarily) out of the picture. He'll pop up here and there, but something tells me that if Stern had stayed on Action, he would have made sure Satanus factored more heavily in big storylines going forward (or even just one big storyline).

Patreon-Watch:

This post ended up being double-sized like the issue itself, so this time we owe double-thanks to our patrons Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, Bol, and Gaetano Barreca, for helping us take the time to write it. Double-thanks! Join them at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99

And believe it or not, we have even more to say about this issue, so don't miss Don Sparrow's section after the jump...

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We begin with the cover, and it’s something of a strange one for such a huge numbered issue. Jackson Guice rightly recognizes that the destruction of the Daily Planet is the most arresting image within the story, so that’s what he highlights, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style, but it’s a bit hard to know what to focus on here. It’s not the best figure drawing of Lois Lane, with her hands in a claw like shape, but she’s still front and centre. The other possible area of focus is on the Daily Planet globe itself, which then boasts an uncomfortably spread-eagle Superman trying to stop its roll. But, I give points to Guice for going with a moment from within the story, and not just a generic “this is an anniversary issue” type cover, like we often see. Plus the cross streets of Jurgens/Grummett/Bog/Kitson on the street sign is a fun find.

Inside, we’re greeted immediately with a full splash of a satisfied Lois. Guice’s Lois has always looked photo-referenced to me, for better or worse. In this case, I think Guice is a little let down by the colourist, who extends the pinkness of Lois’ bottom lip all the way to the corner of her mouth which turns her smile into more of a smirk than I think the inks on their own intend.

On page 6 we get another version of Guice’s rubble pits—not a strength for him as much as someone like Tom Grummett, who was born to draw rubble (And everything else!) as the edges of the pit always look a little sharp to me.

Superboy’s rage at the destruction of Cadmus is well-observed—and Superboy looks very much like the youth he is—he can sometimes be drawn like a small adult, instead of having softer, teenaged features, but Guice does a good job on this page. Supergirl’s coy expression as she lets the libidinous Superboy down gently on page 14 is a funny drawing, and a great character moment in all the action, to boot.

It may just be novelty, or nostalgia, but the quieter moments back in Smallville, as Lana Lang prepares for her wedding ceremony, are my favorite pages. Curt Swan’s gentle, naturalistic lines are a nice counterpoint to the hectic pace of the fall of Metropolis.

The entire page of Lois revealing Lex Junior’s crimes to a live television audience is all well drawn—there’s an urgency in Lois’ posture to the camera that feels very real as you read it. This, followed up shortly by Lex’s horror at Dr. Kelley’s betrayal is another great piece of drawing. Then, on the very next page, Superman Kool-Aid-Man-ing his way through Lex’s hideaway is maybe the best single image of Superman in the book.

There’s a cute tribute to former Super-teamster, Jerry Ordway, as Peggy (who shares her first name with Jerry Ordway’s real life wife) plays De Koven and Scott’s “Oh Promise Me” not on a Steinway piano, as she might have on our Earth, but rather a “Jordway” piano. If the lyrics we see sound familiar, it could be because this same wedding song appeared in numerous film and TV weddings, including All in the Family, Mama’s Family and, for you Canadian readers, the Sullivan-produced Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, during Diana’s wedding. I do wonder if Revered Brewster was supposed to look like Ordway—his hairstyle is similar, though Brewster is a little heavier set than Ordway.

Back to the “action” of Action #700, pages 33-35 all make great use of a diagonal panel layout, to maximize the space as Superman gives chase to the missiles, which unfortunately find their target, the Daily Planet. Perry White’s shattered expression as he watches the place he loves fall apart is particularly haunting.

The effect of Collin Thornton’s demonic helmet overlaid his human form is a great visual. Lastly, for those of us old enough to remember the attacks of 9-11, there’s an eerie prescience to these images of tangled debris and smoking skylines.

On the whole, the events here—Luthor going full villain, Metropolis being reduced to rubble—seem fitting in scale for a nice big round issue number like 700. But, given how relatively quickly these changes are undone in the issues to come, it also feels symbolic of the post-Death-and-Return era of comics—just trying status-quo changing “events” and trying to recapture the buzz they stumbled into with the death storyline.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

There’s a funny in-joke during Lois’ phone call with Superman, as editor Mike Carlin slips in a warning to Tom Grummett about an issue being late. Though Grummett is not normally known for lateness, at this time he is drawing both Superboy and Robin comics monthly, so he can be forgiven for the odd slip.

Jonathan Kent railing at the television in response to Lex’s seeming impunity feels completely modern to me, reading it in 2024. Honestly, couldn’t you see certain political factions of today defending Lex’s actions, had they been perpetrated by the de facto leader of their party?

How do we feel about Lex not being quite villainous enough to blow up Metropolis? Does it feel like a cop-out, or would it have put Lex into a level of villainy the writers didn’t want to go to? Story-wise, I have to admit, it feels strange that the disasters seen on the cover and throughout bear the fingerprints of Sidney Happersen, and not Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of our age. [Max: I like it! Lex is evil, but he does seem to love Metropolis in his way, and he wouldn't spend so much time on philanthropic ventures if he didn't need people's adoration on some level. I think this is an interesting conundrum Stern put him in, and having Happersen do what Lex couldn't is a clever way to make sure the issue didn't end in a big anti-climax.]

GODWATCH: As with many a Roger Stern script, religious references abound in this issue, particularly during the wedding scenes, where the newlywedded Lana and Pete certainly seem devout. The unabashed love the Kents show for Lana is very moving throughout. [Max: There's also Lex saying "God forgive me" when he admits he doesn't know how to stop the torpedoes, which is a scene that's always stuck with me. THAT'S his real punishment: not jail, but actually experiencing guilt for a moment.]

As this entire issue is a study in contrasts, we jump from a country church wedding to a demonic character named LORD SATANUS giving Superman the firebreak idea that saves the city! There’s something very funny about that.

Does Collin Thornton know that Clark Kent is Superman? It doesn't seem like he does, but with his array of observational powers, you’d think he’d have figured it out. [Max: I'm sure there's something somewhere that contradicts it, but I like the idea of Thornton offering Clark that editor job years ago because he knew his conscience had been compromised by the Eradicator and he wanted a superpowered pawn to use against Blaze.]

Do you agree with Supergirl, that Dr. Kelley is someone to be admired, or given mercy? Sure, she helped bring down Lex in his latest evil, but she went along with so much, for so long, she’s hardly heroic, is she? [Max: I assume that by "I hope the courts are merciful," Supergirl means "I hope they give her prison library access and not the electric chair." I do feel sorry for Kelley, but she definitely deserves to go to jail for a long time for all those other horrible crimes she didn't prevent, starting with Lana's torture.]

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thegeminisage · 3 months

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ranking voyager characters from favorite to least favorite

i meant to do this at the end of season 1 and again after the finale but we'll just have to go with at the end of season 2 instead

seven of nine - i haven't met her yet but i just know.

janeway & tuvok - cop out to do a tie? possibly. they remind me so much of kirk and spock respectively. every time i go "oh no it's gotta be tuvok" it switches to janeway. every time i go "oh no it's gotta be janeway" there's another good tuvok episode. tuvok is such a wonderful look into vulcan culture through the eyes of someone who was not alienated from it and abused by it, and you never doubt his ability to get ANYTHING done, even if it's sketchy as hell. i think about his wife of 68 (almost 69! nice) years and his 4 babies and his orchids and his lute all the time. man can SING. on the other hand, janeway is such a breath of fresh air after deanna troi - who i love, but who was constantly victimized for being a woman. janeway just gets to be janeway - she's excited about exploration, she's deeply compassionate, and none of these things make her weak anymore than they made kirk weak. sometimes her adherence to her Ideals is a little picardian, but i forgive her, because she reminds me way more of kirk

chakotay - sometimes a man builds a bathtub and your opinion of him rises by. a lot. i've always liked the difficult position he was in of trying to balance maquis and starfleet interests and protect both sides from themselves and each other, but the ADDED LAYER that for much of the journey he has CANONICALLY been in love w janeway is simply too much to bear. also, i think his trust issues w betrayal are very gripping and they compel me. he has been through so much SHIT and i do love a little traumatized guy. ALSO also, they don't do enough w this in canon, but in my mind palace he and tuvok HATE each other (chakotay hates tuvok for being a spy, tuvok hates chakotay for nabbing first officer job), which i think is extremely funny

the doc - my best friend the emergency medical hologram...i like that he's a brand new kind of person, even if it brings up infuriating questions about the status of all these endless holodeck characters we create and then carelessly abuse or delete. he doesn't have a name! people treated him like he didn't exist! watching him come into his own and bond w kes has been one of voyager's great delights. also, gay king.

b'elanna - she doesn't always get a lot to do but when she does it's almost always good, racism episode notwithstanding. what i like most about her is how ride or die she is. she was willing to get her ass beat to give tuvok a tiny chance of escaping torture, she was willing to die to take down her own superweapon, she defended chakotay when his actions were entirely indefensible (AND she's secretly in love w him?? girl.), she will not hesitate to do any number of crazy things for Her People, and since she's estranged from her family or whatever they are all aboard this ship. you couldn't ask for a better friend than b'elanna and good for her. also, she gets to be gay with janeway about once a season so far which i've really enjoyed. she could do so much better than tom paris

harry - harry also rarely gets anything to do, but that makes his episodes all the more distressing. he's just a little guy! the so-called baby of the ship, until he was replaced by an actual baby with tiny adorable mother-killing spines on its head. i'm still mad that the really big important harry kim episode we got turned out to be such fucking garbage when the concept was SO good, and i'm not super hopeful for his future, but who knows. btw, he could also do better than tom paris. he and b'elanna could ride off into the sunset w/o him

kes - i don't dislike kes, and her scenes with the doctor are especially nice, but i feel like she, like deanna, gets victimized a lot, and her whole thing with neelix was so difficult it's hard to get the taste of it out even though it's over now. that said, i do love how compassionate and mischievous she is, and i love when janeway gets to give her mom hugs :( <3

neelix & tom paris - another tie. this is so difficult for me because i started out HATING tom paris and really liking neelix, and a few plotlines/episodes made me reverse my opinion. tom paris got a lot better when he was like yeah i decided i'm not gonna be a shitheel anymore! especially that he went on a multi-ep arc tricking us into thinking he was backsliding when really he was doing secret agent shit. props! but he's still not terribly interesting. neelix was AMAZING in the atom bomb episode but my interpretation of him as a guy who was gentle not in spite of but BECAUSE of past suffering didn't last long when he decided to be so fucking horrible to kes for no reason. i really want to get over it with neelix the way i got over it with tom paris, but for now they're both at the rock bottom of this list

for fun, i think my season 1 list would have looked like: janeway, tuvok, doctor, b'elanna, chakotay, harry, neelix, kes, tom paris. probably? it's hard to know now. we'll see how all this shakes out by the end of the series.

#personal #star trek blogging #voy lb

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lncarnon · 3 days

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i'm just gonna ramble on a character no one knows about or likely wants to know anything about

first for those who know nothing about kya: the dark lineage which i am assuming would be 99% of people, the plot summarized goes like this; the game starts with the protagonist getting swept away through a portal because she went snooping around her dad's work room in the basement. this world has a native people who miraculously speak english, which is hilarious. they are fairly primitive both in attire and like, society but are nice and understanding all things considered.

the short story of them is that they help her if she helps them. her brother got nabbed by the bad guys, the wolften and their leader, brazul.

so she goes through their strange magical world and defeats a few bosses, learns about the place she is currently stuck in, and saves the nativs. yes, nativs with no 'e', that is what they are called lmao. anyways through some sort of machine and magic the nativs are being turned into these wolf dudes, called wolfen. they seem to retain some sense of who they were but cannot control themselves, brazul has some unexplained way to control them and keep them in line.

so kya goes through, saving as many of them as she can against all odds. eventually she finds out the big bad brazul is her dad. which is only denoted by the fact he like, floats around and has blue hair and knows magic LOL. i guess no one ever questioned his blue hair or that kya was born with blue hair but w/e (how is she half alien i don't even know like idk maybe his species is close enough to humanity whatever (i like to think he ran an experiment on her mom and she is an amalgamation haha)).

so she just already doesn't like him because he disappeared from her life intentionally(?). i think it was a theory that he left because he realized he could not control the human population like he could do to the nativs, and thus left. he has apparently done this a few times, to other worlds, but again there is not a ton of lore for this game haha

anyways, kya ends up betrayed because brazul makes a deal with one of the main character nativs named aton, who trades her in for the safety of the rest of the nativs and the promise that brazul will leave. of course, as a villain, he doesnt mention that he is going to turn aton into a wolfen and make him be the leader of the other wolfen lol.

so that happens, kya runs into try and stop him from leaving their world. if she is defeated she gets turned into a wolfen. if she defeats him he falls into lava and dies. at the end of the game she rebuilds the medallion that can teleport them back to their world but it goes wrong and they end up. somewhere.

anyways the game world is really cool, floating islands and shit. there are terrifying plant monsters and weird lil animals. you can get this magic snowboard like item and there are a couple levels that you board through. there are these magic guns that brazul has made and some of the wolften have snipers- i hate them with a passion they are 100% accurate fglksjdglfkkl

i would love to throw him at people, he can move between worlds/dimensions.

#(MUN BS) OOC #(BRAZUL) MUSINGS

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monty-glasses-roxy · 10 months

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Welp. For the sake of sharing, what I found in my control f searching of Fazbear Frights flavoured Tubehell that had interesting sounding minor animatronics in them on the wiki... is that robotics classes are extremely common in the fnaf universe. And here's the information on minor animatronics I got:

The Breaking Wheel has three described animatronics. A monkey, a spider skeleton and a horse skeleton. The monkey is your typical monkey that smashes cymbals together thing, and is used to shut the classroom up. The spider is an exoskeleton of a spider and climbs the wall to put lightbulb stickers next to people's names on a participation chart thingo. The horse is also an exoskeleton thing, and whenever the teacher wants to demonstrate a type of actuator thing, she has it trot between the rows of desks. Very cool for a classroom! Not sure I'd get much use out of that, but I just think they're neat!

Together Forever has a bunch of lil guys and Rosie Porkchop who isn't a minor animatronic. Rosie is a springlock suit that some dipshit teacher just hands over to his two teenage students with no warning except the papers or whatever that came with her so you can probably guess where that's going. She's a fuzzy pig in a pink, frilly made costume, and has a massive stomach compartment that can house two teenagers, so she's doing better than Glam Freddy on that one lmao. Also she's fucking huge. She's neat.

The minor animatronics in Together Forever are annoyingly described in one big clump, except weirdly the flamingo. They're all bipedal, and have different accessories and articles of clothing, but who has what outside of the random ass flamingo is unspecified. There's alien looking things, cats, dogs, a cow, a horse, an orangutan and a goat. The flamingo wears shorts and suspenders, and one of the dogs has a yellow jumper. They're all described as being small, and a couple wear bow ties and vests, two wear feather boas, one wears a bowler hat, one wears stripey socks and one wears red gloves. Who wears what? No idea! Outside that, they're apparently old and considered vintage, but all of them are still repairable, so there's that.

And then of course, Felix the Shark has Felix the Shark lmao. Big guy. Huge. Shark shaped, blueish grey, rubbery skin, smooth and shiny, with a lotta teeth and playful yet sad dark eyes. But ya know, when the dumbass protag finds him, those eyes are empty and dead, the skin is tattered, peeling off in stripes that leave holes that show the corroded endoskeleton, and his teeh are rusty as fuck. One eye is black and hanging out the socket too. Beloved sharky boy.

And there's my findings! Felix was rescued from Tubehell a long time ago, but now I'm nabbing the unloved other guys. They're mine now. What am I gonna do with them? No idea. I'll think of something.

#pop rox plots book murder #that's for anyone wondering what I got from last nights dive #back to whatever the hell else I was doing that I've forgotten!#tubehell rescue mission

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wrathbites · 2 years

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The quirks are all right

Shepard's got a couple, but that's fine. They're cool. He's good.

Kaidan's got A Thing, too.

It's not a spare plate of food Shepard takes to the cockpit on Mondays, medbay on Wednesdays, engineering Thursdays, and throughout the ship every other day. It's his own, nutrition gone to waste if he's forced to sit with the rest of his crew and blend in with every mouthful.

When Garrus and Tali join, he doubles the trip for the three weeks it takes to convince them to join the humans at mealtimes, and only once for Wrex, content as he is to hunker down and ignore the few brave enough to dart glances his way.

Shepard always nabs a biscuit with each plate, a biscuit he doesn't pass on. He leaves it, instead, on the table by his cabin, paired with the weakest tea Kaidan's ever seen in his life and when he finally realises it's Shepard behind it, he calls him on it.

"It's for the ship brownies."

"The ship what?"

"Brownies. The little critters assisting with the upkeep of the ship?"

"You mean the maintenance drones?"

"Nope, I definitely mean the brownies."

"Are you serious?"

"Deadly," Shepard replies with a sharp-toothed grin, outright laughing when Kaidan rolls his eyes, "or have you missed that I'm a vampire, Alenko? If I exist, who's to say brownies don't?"

And that's... actually a valid point. So much so Kaidan sets aside some credits the following day and purchases a couple boxes of loose leaf tea when they next dock at the Citadel so he can nab that offered cup and remake the fucking thing properly, before Shepard causes some grievous offense and brings the ship down around their heads.

"Stop!"

She freezes mid-step at the sudden crack of Shepard's voice across comms. She expects a landmine, or wickedly sharp teeth that'd snap clean through her suit and mangle her leg beyond repair, or a pitfall she'd be stuck in for half a standard day. A danger of some sort, hidden from Vakarian's eagle eye and Alenko's frequent area scans and Shepard's sixth sense for trouble.

What she finds instead is a ring of bright yellow mushrooms surrounding a patch of especially lush grass.

"You can't be serious," she says, hoping Shepard reads the eyeroll in her tone.

But Shepard's either oblivious or — nope, he's dead serious, planting both hands on her shoulders and redirecting her course to avoid the ring entirely.

"I don't care what planet we're on, Williams, we do not fuck with the fae."

She turns to look at him, then, a quick triple tap on her omni-tool gradually upping the transparency of her faceplate so he can see for himself the are you fucking kidding me? expression stamped firmly across her face without sacrificing her retinas to an alien sun while she's at it. Not that she expects him to do the same, what with the imposing figure he cuts in all black armour from top to toe, and his allergy to all things sunlight.

"The fae."

"Yes."

"Alien fae."

"All the more reason to avoid them."

"But —"

"Not an argument you'll win, Williams," Alenko says as he catches up to them, a laugh bubbling away under his voice. "He's Scottish."

"Hey!"

"What are fae?" Vakarian chimes in, and honestly? Fuck this planet sideways to hell.

Fae! No wonder her faith doesn't bother him!

Mess of any sort bothers Alenko.

He'll glance over at unwashed plates neatly stacked aside no less than twenty-seven times a minute. He's subtle about it, just his eyes moving and shoulders going tight, but it happens. He does it.

When he's resigned himself to another defeat at the hands of that one fucking terminal, he'll walk off the aches and pains from messing with it for so long by pacing the distance between it and medbay, down to the last sleeping pod and back up to the seating area again. If there're any chairs left out he'll stall there, for seconds at a time, each pause growing progressively longer.

Armour carelessly dumped aside makes anyone with a lick of sense wince and frown in disapproval, but Alenko — he shuts down. Shoulders hunched, spine curved, fingers like claws on his greaves, frozen in place. Curling in on himself, scent gone sour and displeased, though he doesn't say anything.

There'll be a sigh for every soap sud he steps over en route to the showers, a tick in his jaw for any discarded towel, bottle, brush.

And a barely perceptible flinch for every squeal of metal on metal, or the scrape of wood over grating, when others push and pull boxes instead of lifting them.

Mess, in general? Not Alenko's thing. Sure, he does his best to ignore it, Shepard's watched him try his best to ignore it, but it always gets to him, without fail. And every time it does he'll cave and correct it, washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, sorting the armour back into compartments and lockers and across repair benches, collecting all the bathing supplies into little baskets he sets opposite the shower wall, using a spare towel to mop up the trail leading back to the crew quarters, and doing inventory on every supply delivery before unpacking the boxes, every item accounted for and secured away in its proper place.

There are areas he won't touch, areas he'd be messing up rather than helping with, or overstepping boundaries, Shepard suspects he turns a blind eye to those, for his own sanity.

Alenko has a reason, that much is clear. He goes at his own version of maintenance like a man possessed and very little short of a direct order will redirect him from it. Shepard doesn't know the reason, and doesn't need to know the reason. There is one, and that's what counts, so he settles in place beside Kaidan and works in silence with him.

"It's from BAaT, y'know," he says one morning and Shepard pauses mid-sweep of the brush, clearing the way for Kaidan to mop once he's done, "the cleaning thing. It's from BAaT."

"You don't owe me an explanation, Alenko."

"No, I know, but I don't want you thinking I'm just weird, either. Or crazy. It just. It's one of the ways they tried to break us. Make a mess and demand we clean it, biotics only or else. They'd track mud across the floor after we'd just scrubbed it clean, have us on our hands and knees for hours, maybe deny us food and smash the plates, or remove our mattresses and leave us to sleep on bare springs or the floor. And if we met their standards we'd do it again, and again, and again, overclock the amps, melt our brains. Fun stuff."

"Jesus christ."

"Yeah. It's a thing. It's my thing. But I don't use biotics for it. I won't let them win now, when they didn't back then."

"Well, so long as you don't mind a helper."

"Of course not. Hey, Shepard?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks."

"Anytime, Alenko."

#Sunlight and Stardust vampire verse #Rhys Shepard #Kaidan Alenko #Mass Effect fanfiction #Wrathwrites

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topaz-eyes · 2 years

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Rules: pick any 10 of your fics, scroll somewhere to the mid point, pick a line, and share it! then tag 10 people.

Nabbed from @serricoj!

I took their excellent advice and used a random number generator to pick my fics. Numbering goes from #1 (newest) to #211 (oldest).

And soon enough there she was, peeking from a crack in the door, the alien who’d usurped Lucy Cartwright and wore her face. "Hello, Sister-of-Mine," he greeted.

#58, A Kinder Fate, Doctor Who (2005)

You set out the modest meal on the table and wait, icy shaking hands wrapped around the steaming mug, hoping for calm, peace maybe, something soothing to settle the frayed thoughts of past friendship and uneasy forgiveness and what the hell do we do now?

#207, Small Comforts, Harry Potter

Ten years later, in her bedroom, in front of the larger-than-life image of Grandma Louise on her wall, Dad says, "There's something I want to tell you, Em."

#79, Love You Forever (The Heart Remembers Overdub), Lie to Me

Suddenly fed up with just sitting and drowning his sorrows, Wyatt jumped to his feet and slid out of the booth, knocking his empty mug over with his elbow. Mac winced visibly at the crash.

#35, Ouroboros, Strike Back

"That's pretty cold even for you, Jimmy," he said, but without malice. "Wanting your missing brother to have frozen to death on the bitter streets of New York City."

#143, In Confidence, House MD

That alone was fascinating to contemplate, but he wasn't going to get the answer out of Wilson tonight. He might as well continue the evening in bed, alone.

#137, Joker’s Wild, House MD

It had been in the set of Jack's jaw, the slight slump of his shoulders, the way he'd avoided Tony's searching eyes and flinched at Tony's hand on his shoulder when Tony broke the bittersweet news.

#201, In Narrow Daylight, 24

Twenty years later at another one-thirty AM, Dixie McCall RN, Head Nurse of the Emergency Department at Rampart General Hospital, was perched at her supply desk by the communications centre filling out the interminable paperwork, when a Roy DeSoto shaped shadow fell across her papers.

#11, Pay It Forward, Emergency! / M*A*S*H*

Neil exhaled, reluctantly pulled the paper from Aurora's grasp, and scanned for where she had left off. As he read aloud, he could have sworn he heard Tom reading right along with him.

#53, Larks Still Bravely Singing, X Company

10)

“But now I think we should move the wedding up as soon as possible given the circumstances. That is, if you want to get married. To me.” He cleared his throat then, and shied away from Johnny’s astounded face.

#6, There’s Got To Be A Morning After (if we can hold on through the night), Emergency!

Tagging: anyone who wants to do this!

#ao3 #fic meme #i might have fudged some random numbers to get a broader range of fic

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nrrrdgrrrl2002 · 2 years

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Inconstans

Chapter 4

Don’t Discourage

“” So who do you think is the distributor” Mikey asked as they were all on a rooftop. “I’m betting Baxter Stockman” Middy said.

“When is it ever the first guy we think?” Leo asked. “When it’s Baxter Stockman” she responded.

“I don’t think it’s him. Too obvious” Leo stated. “I’m sorry. Who’s the Batman of this team” Middy asked.

“Raph cause he’s grouchy” Mikey answered, prompting raph to thwack him. “Raphs more like aquaman cause of his connection to animals” Donnie said.

“Guess that makes me superman” Leo said with a dorky grin. “No. Aprils moreso the Superman since she’s op. You’re more like Wonder Woman” raph said, prompting Mikey to chuckle at the thought of Leo in a Wonder Woman costume.

“Wouldn’t april be Martian manhunter? Ya know. Psychic alien and all?” Middy asked. “Who would I be?” Casey asked after being weirdly quiet the whole time.

“Green arrow cause you’re just a guy with a weapon” raph answered. “Yeah” Mikey agreed with raph. “Hey!” Casey groaned.

“Come on. Green arrows cool” Middy chimed in. “In that show you like, maybe” Donnie said. “Come on. You have failed this city is iconic” she argued.

“Hey guys.” April interrupted. “I think I sense something” she continued. “What is it?” Donnie asked. “Lemme see.” She closed her eyes as she tried to decipher what she sensed.

“I think… I think it’s the guy making the mutadrug. Can’t tell who it is though” she said. “Can you sense where?” Leo asked.

“Yeah! Follow me!” She said as she jumped down. “You’re the boss” raph responded as they all followed.

They snuck into a warehouse through the roof. As they looked down, they saw Baxter Stockman working in his new lab.

“I told you s-“ “we know” middys whisper was interrupted by the rest of the teams too loud voice. Baxter looked up and saw them.

“Real ninja-ie, aren’t y’all?” Middy said sarcastically. Leo rolled his eyes as they all jumped down. “Ok. What are you up to, dinxter bexman” raph said.

Baxter simply responded with “mousers attack!” As he turned to gather his things.

“Ow ow ow!” Mikey yelped as a mouser bit his arm. “I got it!” Raph said as he tried to get it off. “Come on case!” Middy shouted as she grabbed Casey away from the fight.

“Oh no you don’t” Casey shouted at Baxter as he slammed the man’s face with a hockey stick. He then looked to see what Baxter was packing in a case.

It was a ton of the mutadrug

“Damn!” Middy said behind him, startling him. “You could create an army of monsters with this” she said as she saw the content.

“Not really. Probably would only work for like, 3 guys” Casey said without thinking. “What?” Middy asked. “What?” Casey also said.

Middy was forced to ignore this as a mouser jumped onto the case. “I got it!” Casey said as he slammed it with a hockey stick, sending the syringes all over.

“Thank GOD none of those shattered” Middy said as she lowered her arms. “My bad” Casey said. “We better grab some for dons research” Middy told Casey as she nabbed a couple.

More mousers went up to them. “I got it. You help the others” Casey said. Middy was surprised Casey didn’t offer to fight the mousers, but did what he said as a mouser tried to jump at her.

“How many of these are there?!” Leo said as they were led out of the warehouse. Middy noticed something nearby. “Hey, don! Are mousers waterproof?” Middy asked.

“I don’t think so” he responded. Raph saw what middy was looking at. “I gotcha” raph said, understanding middys idea. He grabbed the hose she noticed and sprayed the mousers, making them spark and die.

They jumped up to the roof to avoid getting electrocuted. “Wow. You think a brainiac like storksman would make his things waterproof” Mikey said.

“Wait. Where’s Casey?” April asked. “Here, red” Casey said from behind. He handed a couple syringes to Donnie. “That’s it?” Donnie asked.

“I got attacked by some mousers so I couldn’t gather em all” Casey said. “Alright. Still more than last time” don said.

“Awesome. Nice one Casey” Mikey said. “You’re welcome. Anyway. My dad texted me so I need to get goin. I’ll see ya guys later” Casey said as he ran off before anyone could object.

The others walked off as don looked at the syringes. “Hey don. Do you think somethings up with Casey?” April asked him. “What do you mean?” Donnie asked her.

“His aura feels…. Dim” she said. “We’ll be IS dim witted” Donnie responded. “Not like that. I… I don’t know why, but it feels like… he’s becoming harder and harder to sense” she said.

“That is strange. Has it been like this for anyone else?” He asked. “No. Just him” she responded.

Neither knew what to do with that information..

Casey snuck into his room and bent down next to his bed. He had a hand in his pocket, feeling the only syringe he had left.

Until tonight.

He put the briefcase down in front of him, opening it. He saw it filled with glowing doses of the mutadrug. He closed it and slid it under his bed.

He snuck into the bathroom nearby, looking into the mirror. No one noticed that night, but the glowing green veins had now covered his arm and were reaching the side of his neck.

Casey sighed as he felt the area. He raised his shirt and saw the veins were creeping around the side of his chest.

He needed to stop

Why couldn’t he stop?

He lowered his shirt and went to his room. He looked through his drawer and saw an old hoodie and a scarf. He remembered he didn’t wear the hoodie cause it was baggy on him.

He threw it on, finding it now fit him perfectly. He also threw on the scarf and lied in bed. He again struggled to sleep as he felt cold.

He felt that he still had the dose in his pocket.

He hadn’t been able to sleep in weeks

It’s for emergencies only

He just didn’t want to be cold

He injected it into himself, hiding the empty syringe under his bed to throw away later.

His headache waned as he felt the dose warm his body. It felt…. SO good…. But…

What was he becoming?

#tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2012 casey jones

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traipseartist · 4 months

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May 14th & 15th - South Bend and Beyond

The final two days of the trip are condensed into one blur because visiting my family in South Bend, Indiana was in the middle. The McMillen clan likes late nights, cards, wine, and Oingo Boingo, so it's hard to say where Tuesday stopped and Wednesday began.

Lewis and I packed out of Pike Lake early, deciding not to swim at the Milwaukee metropolitan area's finest open-to-the-public swimming lake in the 55°F morning temps, alas. Since we'd been dragging our feet on early mornings this whole trip, we decided to set out before 10am and plodded around Chicago in slow but probably still record time.

We decided to detour out of Milwaukee before heading down to Illinois as a sort-of salute to my original plan and so that I could relive the glory of this city as my 15 year-old self remembers it. I was also on the hunt for some New Glarus Spotted Cow, one of my favorite easy-drinking beers that you cannot nab beyond Wisconsin state lines. We search for beer and liquor stores (uncannily all open at 9am or earlier) and come up short for the kind of craft selection we know must be lurking here somewhere. After browsing past Bacardi Whipped Cream Vodkas and Colt 45s I give up and resort to Reddit which points us to... a local grocery store? named Woodman's. Lewis remarks upon my uneasy disposition that Woodmen gave us good luck in Omaha and perhaps they'd have more than your domestic spread.

Oh. So, did they have more than Corona and Bud? This was no grocery store. Woodman's is a beer SUPERSTORE that happens to sell bread and laundry detergent out the back. We lollygag in the aisles of just Wisconsin local craft beer for about half an hour, overwhelmed with the selection and exasperated that we cannot buy it all (Bad Farm Pilsner? Ma'am this is a Wendy's Summer Sour? Billy Rae Citrus IPA? Get! in! my! cart!). We buy my New Glarus, a Hazy called THE NEEDLER (depicting a pine tree with a Snake-esque head scarf tied around it's erm... tip? running recklessly and dual wielding those weird alien guns from Halo 2), and a dark beer as requested for Elaina who would touch base with Lewis at his final destination in DC.

We got settled in Stacey once more, but after 9 full nights together, we were beginning to feel the fatigue of travel, shared space, and the unwavering rhythm of Stacey over rough pavement. It seemed that all of what was left of Wisconsin and Illinois smelled like sulfur, we surmised, because of swamp gas or the like. The dense cloud cover and less-than-warm conditions began to invite a sort of listlessness amongst us.

We changed and got cleaned up at a gas station before finding breakfast--today we were aiming for Culver, my military(ish?) boarding high school in the middle of rural Indiana, then finally my Uncle Joe and Aunt Wendy in South Bend about an hour's north for dinner and some familiar (to me) faces.

We stopped at Pancake Point in Gurnee, Illinois for brunch and an attempt at clearer heads only to be immediately endeared to a character of a waitress who swore Lewis was her son's friend--but not. When we told her of our journey, she chittered anxiously about a road trip she'd just made to Colorado to visit her son and how all of the McDonald's looked the same(!) after a while. Lewis and I had to restrain ourselves from asking if this tiny, maraca of a woman was available for adoption and instead ate GIANT bowls of hash browns piled high with eggs, peppers, beans, chorizo, and the tastiest homemade pico. I nibbled at a pancake while we tried to shake our funk and hype ourselves up for the next four hours of driving into the cornfields of my past.

Fortunately, it was Alumni Week at Culver when we rolled in, so two strangers wandering the campus did not make us extra-out-of-place to the teenagers plodding about the quadrangle in their regulation recreation attire. I took Lewis to my favorite pockets of my adolescent years and gawped unattractively at all of the buildings they've since demolished and all of the buildings they've since built as is my job as a graduate.

I felt sheepish as I continued to run into faculty that remembered my face (especially those responsible for... disciplinary action) and fought my impulse to revert to my younger self (it's 4pm on a Tuesday... I should be at Speech practice right now!) but a small part of me was overjoyed to find the place still felt like home some 13 years later. Also wow... what a fucking ingrate I was for not truly appreciating the endless resources available to me as a bratty little teen (Horses! A photography lab?! A library and academic buildings peppered with ancient art??? A FULL SIZE THEATER FOR PERFORMANCE AND TECH!?) Lewis asks if this ruined it for me--college and the great beyond. I mused on the question. I never thought that any place should be like Culver... it is its own animal, its blessings almost inseparably tied to its curses. But no doubt, it changed everything in me as much as I want to temporally separate myself from this tiny cornfield bubble with time and distance.

After doing a small circle (the campus is enormous, acres and acres, it's hard to relay without a map and a meter stick) around the heart of the main quad, we boarded Stacey once more and rode the hour north to South Bend to meet with Joe, Wendy, and their children Jacob and Rachel at their home in Granger, IN.

By the time we were back on the main highway going north, the sulfuric smell was absolutely overwhelming in Stacey's cabin and I began to suspect that it was not the Midwest that was the stinky culprit. An hour later, after parked in a beautiful suburban neighborhood, thankful and light headed upon arrival, we pop the hood in front of Joe and Wendy's beautiful darkly wooded, 1970's style single family home to be greeted by a weak fountain of acid seeping down the side of Stacey's main battery. Oops.

While Lewis phoned AAA, I greeted the family. The kids were bumming it for the week at home because Rachel was graduating this weekend and was prepping by being hung-over by day, and partying by night (and some day, too) with her classmates on campus. Jacob was lassoed into redoing the front deck for her ensuing graduation party the coming weekend. Jean, Wendy's mother, was also there to set us straight with her sharp strategy in a few rounds of 3-13 we'd have later into the night.

Lewis and I were happy to be surrounded by some other humans for a bit, to eat veggie pizza (and share with the winded AAA guy swapping out Stacey's innards) and pet a dog or two. We slept hard and fast in a spare bedroom, anxiously awaiting tomorrow to race home and meet my Mom and Grandfather at Pittsburgh International before flopping down in a place familiar to us both.

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I anticipated we would scuttle home in a boring and direct fashion along the Ohio turnpike because time was of the essence and Lewis and I had not been historically early risers for this trip. Mom & Pop were to touch down at 5pm and it's a tight 6 hours back home from the outskirts of South Bend.

Unfortunately for them, and maybe fortunately for our timetable, their Southwest flight was delayed a full five hours due to weather surging up through the Columbus, Ohio region that was dramatically disrupting air traffic.

Amazingly, after replacing Stacey's battery, she no longer needed the precious white glove service of hand-jumping and we took it as a sign of renewal in its own way, waving good-bye to relatives I'd see again in 48 hours time for a graduation ceremony, we hit the road for the final lap.

It didn't take but two hours before Lewis and I decided to deviate from the sling-shot trajectory we had up until this point mostly avoided taking as a matter of principle. We slid up to the coast of Lake Erie to visit the Port Clinton lighthouse and eat a few french fries while looking directly at a giant body of water for a bit. Port Clinton appeared to be preparing for the Walleye Festival (???) that would arrive the coming weekend and so the town felt a lot less sleepy than was surely normal, despite being adorned in adorable maritime statues and public parklets that betrayed the slow plod of this place otherwise.

We poked around the promised light house, the chilly shore of Erie, a store for the supernatural (I bought a new pair of sunglasses to replace a pair I had gifted to a nail salon back in Minneapolis). We ate french fries while listening to the bartendress relay her morning struggle of finding someone to cover her shift while she took her son to the doctor for a surprise broken arm. We stared hard into the distance, still processing all that had gone and all that was yet to come, and rolled into Stacey for the last time. Pittsburgh bound, at last.

I read an experimental piece Lewis is working on from his bestickered laptop from the passenger's seat. We listen to the end of a playlist all about lyrics, and when we start to recognize bridges and tunnels, we breathe a sigh of relief. I play 31 by Ceann and sing the words at the tippy top of my lungs when we pull into my driveway at the tippy top of Stanton Heights:

"Soon we'll be home In the places I know Where the boys say "Yinz" And the girls say "Ope" 31 miles east of Ohio(oooo) Where Iron still flows In watering holes We'll go where the Monongahela goes To the city that was built from underground For Pittsburgh I am bound!"

#road trip #travel #south bend #pittsburgh

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