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masterofmagnetism · 4 years

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so you want to start a war || side a ( stark tower )

WHO: Lorna @mistressxfmagnetism, Alex @disarraycd, Emma @whiteqveendarling, Illyana @ofmagikandlimbo, and Tony @goldenavcnger WHERE: Stark Tower WHEN: August 2, 2020. 11 AM. WHAT: The Brotherhood makes the war between humans and mutants official, by way of a coordinated attack on New York in response to the Accords and resurrection of the SENTINEL program. The launch of the plan goes off perfectly--well, almost.

(In which Lorna and Alex show that they’re a fucking power couple, Emma slays the men of the room with like three words, Illyana shows off Scott the Demon Squirrel, and Tony stares down potential death while inebriated.

So nothing new, really. )

WORD COUNT: 3.8k TWs: mentions of past kidnapping and torture, murder mention

LORNA: There wasn't a time in Lorna's memory that she didn't know she was a mutant. Even before her powers had been prominent, she had known. There had never really been an option to hide. So it was only natural that despite her father not being a part of her life, she had followed in his footsteps nonetheless. Carving her own path in that direction.

Her tactics had been more defensive for the most part. Hiding people, moving them to safety. There had been protests too--and one that got her in serious trouble as a teenager--but she did most of her work in the Underground. But the Enforcers had torn that from her. Tried to break their network. So today was far from hidden. Today, she didn't just follow Erik's footsteps--she followed his lead. Today, they fought back in the open.

Lorna didn't wear the metal headband, created from the metal medallion gifted to her by Erik years ago, very often. But there never seemed like a more appropriate time than today. Unlike Magneto's helmet, it didn't block telepaths from her mind. Important when they were doing a two-pronged attack, relying on the signal.

She glanced at the others she was with--Alex, Illyana, and Emma--making sure they were ready to go. If it weren't them, she might be concerned. This was going to be risky, they had to all be all in and ready to fight for what they wanted. But she trusted Alex and Illyana with her life always, and Emma she trusted today.

ALEX: While his Mutant abilities manifested when he was quite young, but due to the manipulation of Nathaniel Essex he didn’t realize the power within him until much later in his life. Alex lived the first eighteen years of his life thinking that he was only Human. Upon discovering this wasn’t true, it was difficult for his parents to wrap their head around the news. Maybe they were afraid of losing another son, but they try to understand.

This is a cause Alex believes in — wanting to fight for what’s right for their people. He didn’t waste time suiting up and joining up with the others on his team. The Government thought making him register against his will would have made him fight for them on their side, but they were wrong. Alex would always side with Mutants every time.

His gloved hand adjusts some of the blonde hair faking over his mask and glances back at Lorna when their gaze meets. He trusts everyone in this room but that was obvious enough. Alex pulls his body away from the wall he had been leaning against, crossing his arms over his chest. “We ready to do this? I hope everyone has what they need.” There was a smirk on his face paired with his words as he looks at everyone in the group.

ILLYANA: Ever since her brother Piotr had been revealed to be a mutant she'd been mostly sure she was one too, or maybe it was more of a hope, but when she turned eleven she'd been proven right as her mutant power of controlling the stepping disks of Limbo manifested. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn't been taken to Limbo if she would have gotten some other power or if they'd be different. Of course Illyana wasn't a normal mutant, even before her mutant power had manifested she was a demon sorceress, she'd lost that part of herself around three months ago but she'd recently regained it and now she intended to use it to help the mutant cause.

It had only been about a week, maybe less, since Rogue helped her get her magic back and she hadn't really told anyone about it because it was so recent so she hadn't really used her magic again. Even if she was itching to use her powers again she was also worried about what could happen if she did, for now she decided to only rely on her mutant powers.

"Ready whenever you guys are" Illyana replied as she summoned a stepping disk on the floor in front of them. As soon as she did Scott, her demon squirrel came running towards her and climbed up Illyana to sit on her shoulder. "Fine," she sighed as she turned her head to look at him, “You can come, just stay close," she told him in demonic script, scratching him a little behind his ear.

LORNA: Lorna gave Alex a small smile as he pulled away from the wall. Reaching out to him, she gave his hand a squeeze. So many things could happen today, but Lorna was ready. There was no way this was going to go wrong. She wouldn't let it. For years they had all tried different ways, more peaceful ways, to get their message across. And all they had gotten in response was violence. Hatred. Fear. She'd been labelled a terrorist, attacked and ambushed. If they had their way, they'd throw her in the Raft. Lorna was tired of it. She could only imagine how her father felt after so many decades.

"Ready," she confirmed, stepping onto the disk beside Illyana. As the demonic... squirrel? leapt up onto Illyana's shoulder, she raised an eyebrow and snorted. That was unexpected. "Alright. Let's go."

Teleportation was something Lorna didn't think she'd ever get used to. Even for the split second it happened, it felt like cutting herself off from the connections she felt around her. But as disconcerting as it was, it was necessary for this. She blinked it away as they materialised at Stark Tower.

First things first: cut the power. They didn't need it right now, and it would hinder humans trying to counter them. Lorna raised her hands, and with a twist of her wrists sent out an electro magnetic pulse. Lights and computers sparked as they cut out, and it certainly drew attention to them as Lorna stepped off Illyana's disk.

"Where's Stark?"

TONY: Tony was a futurist. It was in his genetic makeup, in the very core of his being. Long before he even knew what the word meant, Tony looked out to the horizon, trying to predict what would be on the other side, and always coming up short. With all the IQ points in the world, with all of his degrees and all of his power and prestige and intelligence, Tony still didn’t know exactly what tomorrow would bring, and it fascinated him.

Of course, people were far more predictable than the world at large. Tony knew from the first time he met Erik Lehnsherr that he had a plan in place, that it would come to fruition much sooner than Ross and the Panel imagined. Tony also knew that at least some aspect of said plan would involve him. It was the logical choice. Go for the face of the Accords, send a message.

So he’d put a plan in place, one MJ, Mike, Roy, any and all of his employees knew now like the back of their hand. An evacuation strategy, one that was already set into motion when the lights flickered out and Tony could taste electricity in the air, when the arc reactor sped up in response. In the moments before the group arrived, Tony poured himself some whiskey over ice, slipped on a pair of his own adapted sunglasses, and crossed his legs on his desk, leaning back in his chair.

If he was going to be killed for a cause, he was going to die as he lived.

His cool facade was somewhat upended when he heard the words echo through the building, though. With a sigh, Tony pushed himself up from his desk, following FRIDAY’s instructions down several corridors before he came face to face with the attacker … herself?

Now that was interesting. “Wow,” Tony said, a small smile coming onto his face. “So it is true. I really see the family resemblance.” He turned to the other man — FRIDAY provided the codename Havok, though of course Tony knew that already. “On both counts.”

He took a long sip of his drink, and the smile faded. “Let my people go,” he said, “and I won’t cause any problems. Suit disengaged.” He held up his hand that wasn’t holding the glass, demonstrating the nanotech chip on his wrist flickering blue, then going dull. “I’m sick of being on the wrong side of history — and I’m a little drunk and on a whole boatload of painkillers for this migraine, so whatever you do will probably tickle.”

EMMA: Emma may have been many things but one thing one could always rely on was her desire to help her people. Whether they liked her or not did not bother her. Whether they cared for or wished she would just drop dead was not important. She had not carved her way this far to simply hide in the shadows. To not fight for her people. A change was coming and despite their friction, Emma and Erik agreed on one thing that made their partnership of the Hellfire Club make sense; that mutants would rise and no longer be hindered by the creations of man.

Feeling the others glance at each other, Emma remained stoic if not seemingly unbothered by it all. She was running through different scenarios in her head. She would love to tell them how wrong this could all go. That maybe they wouldn’t all make it but even she hoped that wouldn’t be the case. They were going to get what they deserved in her eyes and Stark Tower? Well, she had to admit, she took a little bit of personal pleasure of it being an Avenger of all people. People celebrated for the very things they were cursed and killed for. At Alex’s words, Emma smirked a little. “Careful darling. You almost sound excited. Not very Summers of you.” She chuckled.

As Illyana opened her portal, Emma stepped through. Well, if you could call it that, Emma walked with a strut. With a purpose. As they appeared in Stark Tower, Emma’s shoulders drew back, and her chin raised in a proud manner. She may not be an actual queen, but she sure carried herself as if she were. “Flawless, Illyana.” Emma commented on the smooth transition of getting them into Stark Tower.

At Tony’s words, Emma looked him up and down before making a sound of disgust under her breath. At his words, Emma stepped forward. “Tony, darling, unlike you homo sapiens who resort to such Neanderthal methods, mutants like to consider ourselves above such primitive actions.” As he mentioned that he had a migraine and their actions would barely tickle him, Emma chuckled. “Then again, I’m certainly not above sinking my manicure into that thing you dare call a mind.” She looked to the others after a brief pause. “Another time perhaps.”

ALEX: The blonde grabbing onto Lorna’s hand that was reaching out for him. He squeezes her palm in return, anything that they do would be done together. Which extends to the rest of their team as well, knowing that communication will be important with what they do going forward. His lips stretches into a smile for a moment, but Alex shifts his gaze to look over at Emma before stepping through the portal. “Very funny.” He chuckles as well, but his expression returning to a more serious one after materializing on the other side in Stark Tower. He knows this could land him back in the Raft again, but Alex doesn’t care because doing this feels right.

His arms are crossed over his chest for the time being, looking around briefly at the surroundings after the power is cut off. Alex brings his focus back so to watch Tony Stark approach them. There‘s a sense of pride in the fact people look at him and can see the resemblance of Scott in him. His older brother raised him more than their own parents did so wearing the Summers name will always make Alex feel proud. He even got rid of his adoptive family’s name when the Mutant was eighteen to wear the one that he was born with again as a way of feeling close to his older brother. “You sound a little speechless there, Stark. You should know what we’re capable of then by knowing our families.” He looks at the others for a moment, exchanging a few glances while managing a grin as his hands are repositioned on his hips.

His voice silent while listening to Emma and the way she responded to the demands for allowing the employees to leave. Alex doesn’t see why not, the Humans working here weren’t needed for what their intentions were in coming to secure the tower. “You won’t cause any problems? How can we be sure that you’ll stay true to your word if we let them go? Your tech might be turned off right now, but you’ll have to excuse me for being a little cautious.”

ILLYANA: When she was younger she'd had trouble with her mutant powers, either ending up in the wrong place, the wrong date or both, now though she easily teleported all of them to Stark Tower without any problems. "If I didn't know any better I'd say that was a compliment, Emma" the blonde commented dryly before she turned her attention to Tony. Though her attention was soon pulled to the demonic squirrel on her shoulder who had started lightly tugging on her hair. "Not now Scott, I'll get you something to eat soon" she told him, he didn't seem too happy but he settled down on her shoulder, for the moment at least, allowing Illyana to focus on the task at hand.

Tony said he wouldn't cause problems if they let everyone go, which sounded like a fair deal, though like Alex she was also cautious, not sure if he'd keep his word. "It's the building we want right? I say I just teleport them all outside and be done with it" she suggested, she didn't have much in the way of patience.

TONY: The situation was far from ideal, but it also wasn’t the worst case scenario he had planned for. Tony had always been a scorched Earth policy kind of guy. He was used to everyone being the worst version of a person they could be since he was a child. Erik’s people -- mutants -- hadn’t come into his Tower and burned the place to the ground. They hadn’t taken him as a hostage like the Ten Rings did, didn’t use him as a medal to wear around their necks. They’d allowed, for the most part, his employees to leave the building unharmed. All he had to do was negotiate to a level where the others were safe too, and they could take the marble staircases and burn his father’s grand piano and rifle through papers that he’d already sorted through, taking anything that was particularly sensitive to an undisclosed location before this ever went down.

He had a lot to lose. These people, they never had anything. That was the difference. Anything they wanted to do, Tony figured he deserved -- but he couldn’t let his people suffer for what he had done, for the system that he represented.

“You act like you’ve never probed my brain over steak, Emma darling,” Tony replied, but even his cavalier attitude couldn’t stand up against the people standing in front of him, gathered in a line debating internally what to do with him. “You make a fair point,” he said, gesturing to Summers, “and so does the, uh … Witch? Sorceress? Magic girl.” (He wasn’t thinking about magic right now. He did not need something else to add insult to injury.) “Teleport me and my employees outside. You say you don’t know whether you can trust me or not, but do that, and I’ll prove that I’m not working against you.”

Tony couldn’t say he was on their side. He couldn’t say that because he didn’t know what they’d been through. They didn’t want Tony Stark fighting for them. But he wasn’t against them. He would help if he could. “What you’re doing has been a long time coming,” he said, “but you didn’t need me to tell you that. I just … I hope you know that what I’ve done, I did because I wanted transparency. Openness. Accountability. I never wanted these robots in the air -- and if I can, when this settles down, I’d like to help you figure out how to stop it happening again, if you were interested.”

LORNA: Lorna didn't say anything as the people began to evacuate. It was clear that Stark had expected--or at least prepared for--some kind of attack like this. She raised her chin slightly as he seemed to take her in. Her reaction to the comment about family resemblance was not as proud as Alex's. Still, in this context, resembling the fearsome Magneto was not a bad thing. "It is," she confirmed. "And Havok is right. You know what we can do. You don't want to find out what the others can do too."

His 'let my people go' comment got an annoyed eyeroll from her. But she didn't say anything, letting Alex voice the same questions that rose to her mind. She didn't trust Stark. At all. He was the public face of these Accords as much as the politicians who pushed them through. Whatever his intentions, it didn't matter. Lorna had seen the way the Accords had allowed families to be torn apart, and innocent people to be attacked for what they were. Laura Kinney's sister disappeared after being arrested, Sam and his kid--a baby-- had been attacked. And it emboldened hatred. Every. Day.

Once upon a time, Lorna had believed in a dream of unity. Of mutants living peacefully among humans. But she'd grown weary of dreaming. Weary of hurting and hiding. Her father was right. "Magik is right," she said firmly. "We don't need him. And if he makes trouble for us, we'll handle it. We don't need hostages here." Not when the island of Manhattan would be their hostages, assuming Erik's plan went smoothly. "We'll let your people go. And you, Stark."

Lorna raised her eyebrow. "Well, congratulations on figuring out you're on the wrong side," she said wryly. "But I hope you're not looking for forgiveness." He could try somewhere else if he was, but Lorna was not in the mood. His offer made her just shake her head. "Flattering offer. I think we can figure it out."

EMMA: Emma scoffed under her breath. “I probed a lot more than your mind, Tony dear and to be expected from the track record of your life, inadequate at best.” Emma may be many things but she was perhaps one of the few people who could match Tony Stark’s sharp tongue with her own blow for blow. That had to be credited for something right? She left them to interact her gaze slowly drifting to Lorna. She nodded as she spoke. ”The way you are handling this is astounding. I am truly astonished, Miss Dane.” She always thought Erik’s spawn was a liability but Lorna was proving herself to perhaps be the strongest, something even Emma didn’t see coming.

Emma glanced back to Tony as he spoke about the act. “You need to remember darling, you Avengers may have not chosen the predicaments you are in but you aren’t prosecuted, experimented on and murdered for having them.” Emma told him firmly. She didn’t know how the others felt about her saying it but that was the facts she had seen it with her very eyes. The people she had lost. Naming grey hairs after dead friends and children. “Registering to your accords would mean simply registering for being born.” Emma explained before her facial expression became more icy if that was possible. “You may say you are not against us but don’t ever pretend that you and your people stood with us.”

Emma looked to Lorna and have her a small nod, showing her confidence in what she was saying. She couldn’t ever be more proud. “Pity we can’t keep him. I’d quite like a play thing to clean my boots.” Emma chuckled as if they were all just having a normal conversation. “Until we meet again as we always do, Mr. Stark.”

ALEX: There’s always a level of suspicion when it comes to Humankind claiming to side with his people. His own adoptive parents don’t always know how to support him, so how can Alex expect a complete stranger to act in his best interest? Although maybe it isn’t really to make his future better, but for the next generation and all Mutants. Which is why the blonde wasn’t so quick to believe Tony wouldn’t blast them when their backs are turned. While they could handle such an attack — that isn’t how Alex hoped this would go. He doesn’t think all Humans are bad.

His blue eyes watch as the employees are leaving the building, some running in a hurry as if their time was almost up. Although turns back to the man standing before the four of them. “I agree with them on this.” His hands gesturing to Lorna and Emma. “When have your kind ever done anything to help us while we were being hunted in the streets? When they went after our children?” His mind flashes to Josiah who was just a baby and it makes him so angry, but keeps his composure. He inhales to take a deep breath while letting the others put in their own two cents.

“You and your staff can go. We didn’t come here to take hostages. You won’t get forgiveness from me either though.” His eyes look to Illyana, nodding as if you say that if she wishes to teleport Tony out of the building maybe now was the time. Along with any of the other employees who haven’t gotten out yet.

He feels a sense of pride in how well the four of them are handling this, but was there really any doubt?

ILLYANA: She wasn't really interested in whatever apology or excuses Stark had, it wouldn't change anything and so she mostly ignored him. When Alex told Stark that he and everyone else could leave and nodded at Illyana she went over to stand next to Tony. "I'll be back in a few minutes" she told the others then turned to Tony "try to stay inside the circle if you want to keep all your limbs" with that she conjured a stepping disk under their feet and teleported them away. She went through the entire building until everyone of Tony Stark's employees were teleported outside before returning to Alex, Lorna and Emma. "It's done, we're the only ones left in the building."

For now, at least.

#c: alex summers #c: lorna dane #c: tony stark #c: illyana rasputin #c: emma frost #f: discord #d: so you want to start a war ( side a )

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littlemeangreen · 4 years

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Onism

The frustration of being stuck in just one body

@thecorteztwins your favs call me daddy too.

"Oh god, oh god, oh fuck-" Shinobi Shaw swore as he tripped over a table leg. Who put table legs in the hallway? Who put tables in hallways? God, they were so gaudy. But then again, it seemed like a thing for Haven. She was a sweet woman and a total milf but like all rich people, she had obviously never had to furnish her own home before.

But still, for what Haven lacked in moderate taste she made up for in a caring attitude that made most mutants of Krakoa swear that she had some sort of...super mothering powers. Yeah, that seemed like a valid enough thing for Haven.

She was always caring and polite and Shinobi was hard pressed to think of a time where she didn't help any members of the team. Like taking Alice shopping to develop her own style, letting Claudia ramble on about something, being there for Pyro when he either started going off about one of his books or dragged her off to talk in private and letting Madelyne go off on her personal martyr missions because it was "healthy for her".

Hell, she even made an effort with Shinobi's father, Sebastian. Shinobi didn't think that much could happen there, once a lost cause then always a lost cause, right? Still his father hadn't given any hints that he fucked her so Shinobi could admit that a great deal of his love for Haven came because of that fact.

But still, Haven gave almost everything she saw effort and that weirdly enough included the Shaws for god knows why. They were then Kardashians of Krakoa! There was no point for Haven to try and use her feelings to try and get along with his father. You could try to feed a donkey a carrot but you couldn't do it by shoving the carrot up its asshole.

That's why it was odd that she had called him so....late? Early? He had been at a delightful party-turned orgy so he had lost track of the time. He'd gotten told that he had a text right when it had been getting good and now here he was, rushing down a hallway because Haven had texted him in a middle of an orgy because something had happened to his father and no one would tell Shinobi what is was.

It was maddening. Infuriating. Worrying. Shinobi wanted his father to be okay.

Shinobi also wanted to hear that his father was in pain.

"Ah! Shinobi! Forgive me for not passing any details, the situa-" Haven seemed to have been cut off by the look he had given her but really, surely the woman would know not to ramble on after giving such a text!

"Right, yes, sorry. Your father is...okay." Okay? No mutant was ever okay in their lives! "He was on a mission with Fabian-"

Oh fuck. Shinobi imagined that if his father had another son (that Shinobi knew of) and dropped him down a river like Mystique did, it would be Fabian. A disaster of a birth could only make such a wreck of a man years down the line in Shinobi's opinion. But it wasn't like he would actually ever say anything to Cortez. After all, who knew what a mutant with power enhancing skills could do to a man who phased through things. Better to keep his tongue away from Fabian Cortez, both metaphorically and physically. Especially physically.

Wait. Shit. Haven looked like she was done speaking. Had Shinobi glazed through it all? Haven would be perfectly fine with explaining it again but still...did he really want to stand through another long winded and overly detailed talk? Probably not.

"-Trust me, we're going to try and reverse what happned but first we need to just simply wait and find out if..." Haven seemed to stop for a moment, biting her lip and looking away briefly. She fiddled with low hanging necklace riddled with red jewels. Shinobi distantly remembered that red apparently evil comings in Egyptian mythology.

Shinobi sighed and decided that, like all things in life, he would do this head first. After all, he was excellent at head.

"Right....well. Take me to him, I suppose he will be wanting to talk to me." He frowned and waved a hand, trying to come off as aloof. Father had done it many a times and he hoped to think that he had gotten the gesture down to the same titbit.

Haven seemed to account his aloofness for grief and stepped forward, offering her hand and not looking off-put when Shinobi didn't take it. "Of course. Follow me, he- they refused anyone in the room apart from Dr McCoy, Charles, Moira and....Madelyne." Haven winced at that last bit and Shinobi could only imagine what it could mean. Did Sebastian demand that she stay? To keep someone the smallest bit familiar that he could stand? Perhaps he liked it when Madelyne presence could soothe something in him, like a twisted beast disguise as a beauty.

No, that was ridiculous. Shinobi's father could take more comfort from a wrinkled bill rather than any person.

Fabian though? Yeah, that made sense she'd be there.

Shinobi was led through the halls, where he saw the rest off his team waiting about. Alice was leaning against Pyro, frowning as he rambled on about something to make her feel better. That was good of him, Pyro often than not was able to pull through on comfort far more easily than he thought he could. He'd hold on just fine until Dom came over to help him out.

Claudine was leaning against a wall, nodding at Haven after looking up from her phone and rapidly texting. Shinobi didn't want to think about what she would hope to gain from whatever happened to his father.

But what was surprising was the fact that the rest of the Acolytes were standing around near the doorway, Anne Marie being helped by Delgardo, who was passing her a glass of water as the blue haired woman took a sip and cradled her head. Also...Quicksilver was there. Which Shinobi didn't want to think about why other than him being on he mission with Fabian and Sebastian.

All of these people for the worst men on Krakoa...it was astounding honestly. "Are you ready?" The tall woman was weirdly insistent on making sure Shinobi was prepared for something he wasn't even sure about yet. But he liked surprises for the most part, maybe this would be one of them. Or better yet, this whole charade was just some sort of...surprise birthday party. You never knew, he certainly didn't know when his birthday was. Father was never big on celebrating milestones that just reminded him of the disappointment he seeded years ago. Ugh.

Shinobi nodded, adjusting his tie and taking in a deep breath as the door opened up. Whatever this was, he could easily handle it. Contrary to belief, Shinobi was capable of doing tasks for his fa-

Oh.

"Oh." Shinobi said.

"Oh." Haven agreed with a small sigh, covering her mouth at the unfortunate sight.

"Oh." Charles Xavier, sitting by a table in the room, seemed to think that this was the best greeting.

"Oh?" A new voice, deep enough that Shinobi could feel it rumble in his chest, deep enough that it caused he windows to shake gently. The voice belonged to a horror of a nightmare and oh god Shinobi was going to become a nun or whatever the hell meant he could never look at evil again. Because this?? This was evil.

He was big. Like, eight or nine foot big. Fucking stacked with the small pouch of fat that all middle aged people got eventually. There were also stretch marks across his skin and Shinobi wished that he had the decency to either cover himself or to just not wear a shirt at all, with the way that he wore ONLY sleeves that were buttoned above his ridiculously big man boobs, the type of man boobs that only jacked guys or the Blob had and the type that Shinobi prayed every night that he wouldn't get one day. Thank god his pants stayed on, despite how...hugging they were.

His face was chiselled enough, with a shady stubble that definitely make a picture with the brownish-red hair that was currently tied up in a ponytail trailing down his back and Shinobi couldn't help but notice the fact that his eyes were practically glowing blue among a pitch black scelara.

"Shinobi, I HOPE that you aren't going to just STAND there and stare like a FOOL." The same deep rumble was back and with every word that was seemingly emphasised, Shinobi not only heard his father's voice, but also a deep surge of something that made a churning feeling arrive in his chest and stomach. He didn't need to stand around here to know that he didn't like the way that another set of eyes opened up and stared from what was supposed to be Sebastian Shaw and Fabian Cortez's throat and left cheek. He also didn't like how a crunching noise led to another set of arms, just as muscular as the first pair.

Haven seemed to catch on to what he was feeling, she always did. And the kindly woman was quick to carefully place herself between the...two? Three? Of them. Luckily Fabian's liking for Haven seemed to transpire over to Sebastian and the giant's eyes softened as he stared down at her.

Well. Shinobi would feel traumatised over that later. It would give him something to do when he wasn't partying.

"Okay, let's...take a deep breath and...try to think about this. After all," Haven dropped her hands and winced, obviously thinking back to something Shinobi had missed. "We don't want a repeat of what happened to Scott when he tried to get you two to split up..." Shinobi didn't know it now, but he would definitely laugh later when he heard how Scott blasted an eye beam when Fabastian got too rowdy, only for his own lasers to bounce off him and.. seemingly emit from Fabastian's own eyes. Beast and Chrome had suspected that rather than increasing other mutant's powers or absorbing them in force, Fabastian took the power in and replicated it in a more extreme force, rather than a simple absorption like Rogue did.

Fabastian sighed and nodded, turning away to stare out the large windows, his awful back...rippling. ugh. How did someone ripple that much? It was gross and unnatural and ugh, oak trees were skinnier than Fabastian's arms. It was like bear meets bear meets bear with a bear with a steroid problem. "We are absolutely SURE that we can fix it BECAUSE, no one can even BEGIN to be trusted with this!"

Then, as an afterthought and lower to himself, Fabastian added, "And it isn't like any of you will be willing to help me or him or us or what makes this form so brilliant."

Behind them all, Pietro seemed to wince and look away, like be didn't agree with that sentiment. Which was fair, Shinobi didn't like it either so Blues Twinky Clues had a very good point there.

"Um. Okay." Shinobi made the effort to try and ignore the way that his - father? Guy he didn't want at orgies or doing drugs? Or anywhere near him? - Spoke. "So. Um. I think...this is a big problem and Haven is absolutely right when she thinks that this shit is weird and we need to-"

He barely got to finish before large hands were shooting out for him. Haven...she tried to stand in the way again but it seemed that Fabastian's emotions had taken over and large hand roughly shoved her away, causing Haven to slide across the room and into the back of a wall. Funny enough, almost no one noticed the flare of darkness coming across her eyes and spilling out of her mouth as she took the sudden force and was...seemingly okay.

Everyone else though, took it as the motion of "oh fuck they're angry time to fight" and now Shinobi was suddenly surrounded by a room of heroes, villains for hire and whatever Pyro was, as they took the big fight scene poses. Completely ready to get their asses kicked if you asked Shinobi.

After all, no one went up against any part of Sebastian Shaw and came away perfectly fine. He always hurt you in some little way that maybe you won't notice for months until someone sneered or yelled at you in the right way and your stomach would clench and you would start to shake because they were right, he was right about everything when it came to how awful you were but you could never hope to say anything to defend yourself.....ahem. Shinobi was getting ahead of himself there but the point still stood; You never won in a war with Sebastian Shaw, even if you had won the battle of that day.

And maybe someone would think that seeing Haven getting supposedly hurt would make Shinobi be more heroic and actually stand up for her for once. That having everyone in the room, including Anne Marie who normally would never harm a mutant so long as she knew stood on her side, was now staring intently at the awful muscular being and...well, fuck. It was going to be one hell of a showdown and Krakoa would definitely be busy over the next few weeks bringing people back to life. That is, if Fabastian didn't explode on impact, like am oversized balloon.

And maybe you would expect Shinobi himself to start fighting. To finally take a big stand against his dad and the asshole that kept ruining the good parties and orgies.

No.

Instead, Shinobi took a step back, a deeper intake of air that seemed to keep on running away from him. His eyes were wider by the second as Fabastian took a step forward and something pulsed within him that....well, he didn't like thinking about the sudden sharp fear, like he was a deer in headlights. Only that the headlights were an overzealous and violent man who was currently screaming over how; "He KNEW you would all betray him how DARE you ALL!" You know, the scary shit that you tended to hide from when an incredibly creepy guy and your scary parent were getting into that awful mood.

Instead, Shinobi decided that dying again wasn't worth it. And something in him twisted and turned in an ugly manner as the sight of familiar eyes shifting in anger as they took in all of the opponents they would hurt and prove their worth to. He didn't want to die like this and something in Shinobi (the part of him that went "that catch of tequila will fuck you UP" And was usually right) told him that he especially didn't want to die by his father's hand.

It was cowardly. To step back and simply...phase through the floor before Fabastian could touch him. He couldn't deal with this. Not right now. There was nothing funny about the current situation or the anger that was taking hold in a normally coll and collected man. Right now, all Shinobi cared about was getting to safety for himself. Maybe finding Storm because even when he was being awful and flirty, he did admittedly admire how she was seemingly never scared by what she faced.

And besides, he could always laugh at Pietro being punted into Anne Marie out of a window later.

#marvel #thecorteztwins #shinobi shaw #sebastian shaw #fabian cortez #pietro maximoff #Anne Marie Cortez #charles xavier #madelyne pryor #my writing #belle blurts #ok this is SUPER messy #but i thought: fuck it finish it while u can before u get distacted #so sorry that the rest of it is clearly rushed i didn't want to lose focous #tw child abuse mention #did i portray on Shinobi a bit????? maybe #Fabastian more like FabASStian #honestly I'm better at headcanons and i could probably do fusion headcanons much easier since it helps direct my thoughts easier #but uh. ta da???

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firstxman · 4 years

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dust to dust || scott, logan, & jean

summary: as the battle rages on, scott and logan take it upon themselves to step in and rescue a group of mutant children cornered by an enforcer. it doesn’t end well for them.

trigger warnings: violence, murder, death, grief

featuring: @jameslogans, @jeanelcinegrey, @apoisontouch (mentioned)

SCOTT: Scott had always been impressed by just how quickly things seemed to go to shit. It wasn’t as if they’d ever truly been safe, not since the Accords were ratified. But this… This was a nightmare. Half of Scott’s people had bounties on their heads, the other half were only safe because the government didn’t know what they were capable of. And right now… Right now, safe was a pipe dream. There were enforcers all around them, and none of them seemed interested in reason.

Across the way, Rogue and Jean were fighting. Scott caught a glimpse of them for an instant, the question Jean hadn’t answered still hanging on his tongue. You sure know how to do romance, Summers, he thought bitterly, tearing his attention away. Jean and Rogue could handle themselves. Better than Scott, probably. Instead, he turned to see who was near him. His gaze landed on Logan, and all at once the ground felt a little more solid beneath his feet.

“We need to regroup,” he said, yanking Logan down to prevent a bullet from tearing through him. “Someone’s going to get killed out here. Do you see the kids?”

LOGAN: There was a lot about his life that Logan couldn't remember. Details that had just slipped his mind. Of the life he could remember, he never remembered things being this bad. When the Accords had first been ratified, the tension was palpable. People were scared and for good reason. After the news the other day, things had gone to absolute shit. There were mutants and superheroes alike losing their damn minds. Half had a bounty on their head. The other half were dumb enough to register as if the government would actually protect them if it came down to it. Logan knew better.

They were surrounded by enforcers and things had only gone from bad to worse. No one was interested in an explanation. They just wanted the bounty they were promised. Logan didn't want to hurt anyone, but he would if it came down to it. He hoped that it wouldn't. He watched Rogue and Jean handle their own group of enforcers and he dodged one of the enforcers himself.

He was yanked to the ground by Scott and he chuckled despite the situation. "You know that can't hurt me, right? You need to be careful, Slim. Don't be an idiot," he chastised. Still - things always felt more stable when he was with Scott. Like they could make it no matter what was to happen. It was bad. "You've got that right," he muttered, his eyes poking around to survey the scene around them. He sniffed and then looked in their direction. "The kids are about 10 yards away. Surrounded. Scared. On the left. What's the plan here, Slim?"

SCOTT: The world ended all the time. Most people didn’t know that. Most people thought the world was a balanced, stable thing. It spun on, against all odds. They were wrong. The world ended all the time, with a whisper or a bang, with blood or with tears, on a burning plane or on the front lawn. The world ended all the time, and Scott always felt it. It built itself back up in the blink of an eye, righted itself before anyone else knew it was wrong, but Scott felt it every time.

It was ending right now. In an endless barrage of bullets, in screams, in rage. The world was ending all around them, and Scott was the only one who could feel it. The worst part, he thought, was that he didn’t know how it could come back from this. It always seemed impossible for the world to rebuild itself after it had ended, but this time? This time, there was no way things wouldn’t be different. There were government officials open firing on children and teachers. There were civilians standing on the sidelines praying for this to be the end of the X-Men. There was a law that made all of this okay. And Scott was angrier than he had ever been.

Maybe that was why having Logan at his side felt so right, in the moment --- because he knew he wasn’t the only one here who was angry. Logan radiated the rage that Scott felt, and there was vindication in that. There was comfort. “That doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing you get shot,” he snapped, hand tightening around Logan’s arm for just a moment before he let go. “Or --- Or maybe I really like these shoes, and your blood is especially hard to clean out of them.” A lie… But Logan would doubtlessly find it easier than the truth. “Shit,” Scott cursed quietly at the revelation, running his fingers through his hair as he tried to think. “Jean and Rogue are occupied. Everyone else, too. It’s on us, Wolverine. Those kids need to be someone’s priority, and I’m making them ours.” He shifted, turning his body to the left. “We’re going to run to them.”

LOGAN: He knew that the Accords were a bad idea. Mutants had been in the news for years before there were any talks of making powered people register. Powered people weren't considered dangerous until they started affecting civilians. Mutants had always been considered dangerous. Mutants had been targeted for decades because they were different. But the question was - what was the difference between them and a superhero? What was the difference between the X-Men and the Avengers? Now - the Accords and registration hung in the air and now it didn't matter who you were. If you weren't 'normal' you were dangerous. If you didn't register and follow the rules, you were dangerous.

Logan knew that he'd always be dangerous. The kids, though? They didn't deserve this. They never deserved what they got.

Bullets were flying around them and his attention was focused on helping the kids. On helping Scott get to the kids. It was selfish to admit, but he'd forgotten how much he missed working with Scott. He'd forgotten how much he missed being a team. Jean was in his head, but Scott? Scott was just as much in his head and he wasn't a telepath.

He'd never been good at hiding his feelings and the rage that he felt at the enforcers and the situation radiated from his pores. Logan wanted to tear them apart. If they hurt someone he loved, he knew he wouldn't be able to hold back. Scott kept him grounded, though. The feel of Scott's hand tightening around his arm brought Logan back down to Earth. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Slim," he growled back, his eyes meeting Scott's for a brief second to show that he felt the same. That he knew the truth.

"They're the priority," he agreed, his eyes continuing to scan the shitstorm that surrounded them. Logan nodded and shifted towards the other side. He looked at Scott once more. "Lead the way. I'll cover you. Please for the love of God, be careful, Slim, you hear me?"

SCOTT: Scott was distracted. He knew he was distracted, knew his eyes kept slipping back to Jean, knew his hand kept tapping against his now-empty pocket. The ring he’d given her had been a weight in his pocket for so long now that he felt almost naked without it, like the feeling you got when you walked out of your house in the morning just knowing you’d forgotten something. Answer me after, he’d told her, when we’re safe. Maybe it had been a bad idea. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea.

Logan’s voice drew him back to the present, putting the ground back beneath his feet and turning the gravity back on, holding him in place here, where he ought to be. We’ll make Logan wear a suit. He’d never agree to that… but Scott wondered if he might agree to a title. He’d need groomsmen, wouldn’t he? If Jean said yes, he’d need people to stand up at that altar with him, keep him from getting too deep into his own head. Logan had always been good at that. Scott smiled faintly, rolling his eyes. “I sleep fine,” he retorted. It wasn’t true, of course. It hadn’t been true since he was a kid, since before the world caught fire and everything became tinted with that stubborn, ever-present red.

Glancing back at Logan, Scott huffed a quiet laugh, rolling his eyes behind his visor. “Worried about me, Wolverine? And here I thought you were just waiting for me to bite it so you could stake your claim on my closet. I’ve been told I have an excellent sense of fashion.”

After a quick scan of the battlefield, Scott took off towards the kids ahead, trusting Logan to have his back. It was a hell of a run. A few close calls, a few bullets whizzing by his ears, a few grunts from behind him that probably meant Logan had personally stopped one or two from getting to him, but they made it. Impossibly, they made it to the group of terrified children, pinned down by five enforcers with big scowls and bigger guns. They were yelling, their fingers were on their triggers, their muzzles were pointed at the kids. Children, younger than most of the ones who showed up at the mansion. The fear was evident on their faces.

And Scott saw red.

”Hey,” he roared, stepping forward. His hands were balled into fists at his side, and everything was red, everything was always red, but it was so much brighter now. He was so fucking angry, and he wondered if this was what Erik felt, if this was what Logan felt all the time, if this was what Jean felt when the Phoenix burned through her. “You guys using lethal force right off the bat now? These are kids. They haven’t done anything.”

LOGAN: Logan never worried about Scott not having his back. Even when they argued for hours about the game plan, he knew that Scott would always have his back. He knew that no matter what happened, Scott would be there and inevitably backing him up. Just like Logan would always have Scott's back. It didn't matter what happened between them. It didn't matter that Logan had kissed Scott on the lawn during a lapse in his judgement. It didn't matter that he'd left Scott after Jean's death. No matter what happened between the two of them, they'd always have each other's backs.

Even so - Logan could tell that Scott was distracted. He could sense it and it put an edge of unease in the pit of his stomach. He knew that Scott was worried about Jean. About Rogue. About the kids. But so was he. Logan couldn't let it distract him. Distraction caused mistakes and they couldn't manage to make one here.

Their eyes met and Logan was at ease for a moment. He knew that they could do this. That they could do anything. It wouldn't be easy, but nothing ever was for them. Logan scoffed at Scott's words, but his gaze conveyed exactly how he felt about his best friend. He'd never been exactly good with words, so he merely grunted, and looked back across the battlefield.

Then, they ran. Logan barely felt the bullets that he stopped from hitting Scott as they ran towards the kids. He grunted a few times when he was hit, but he continued to run to where the kids were being held hostage by the enforcers. It would hurt later, but he'd heal. He always did. His main focus was making sure that Scott didn't get hit in the crossfire and that the kids remained safe. That the enforcers didn't lay a hand on them.

His claws only came out when they made it to the kids. Logan managed to control himself, but barely. He wanted to tear the enforcers apart. To give them something to be scared about. He wanted to make them regret ever messing with his people. To regret what they were doing to innocent kids. He could feel the hatred, the anger flowing through his veins, but it was Scott who spoke up. It was Scott who broke the silence that was filled with screams and the sound of gun shots.

Logan wasn’t afraid of getting hurt and that was usually why he was the one who opened his mouth. He couldn’t be killed. He could barely be hurt. In the moment that Scott spoke, Logan had opened his mouth to speak, but he was drowned out by Scott’s rage. His gaze turned to Scott for a brief moment in surprise, before he turned back to the enforcers. He was ready to tear them apart.

But it was too late.

There was a shot and this time – it wasn’t Logan that was hit.

SCOTT: When Scott was seven years old, the world caught fire. The ground beneath his feet became unstable, his mother gripped his shoulders, the heat prickled the back of his neck and made his hair stand up despite the sweat trying to force them down. His mother strapped that parachute to his back and told him it would protect him, and then it caught fire, too. The world burned around him, above him, below him. Everything was on fire, and nothing was. Everything was engulfed, and he was the only one sweating.

He thought it would get better when his feet were on the ground. He thought the distance from the smoke, from his mother’s teary voice, from his father’s bitter anger would make it easier to breathe and it didn’t. The ground was solid beneath him, and he was still unsteady. The flaming parachute was off his back, and he still felt its heat. Nothing was burning, but Scott was still on fire. The world was still on fire.

Every time it seemed like that fire might be doused, something lit it anew. He was a teenager in space, his team (his family) panicking all around him and the fire was back. He was burning all over again. He was watching blood blossom on a yellow uniform with her name aching in his throat, he was watching claws sink into her side, he was watching Logan walk away, and he was on fire. He was burning, he was always burning.

It took him a long time to recognize that fire for what it was, took him ages to sort through the metaphors and the excuses and settle on what it was that he was feeling. Not grief. Grief was what he was supposed to be feeling, but grief didn’t set the world on fire. Grief was a black hole, sucking everything into an abyss and spitting it out somewhere across the galaxy. Grief was empty, like the ache in your chest that came on with a particularly bad cold. It was a weight on your shoulders, it was a hole in your heart.

No, those flames weren’t grief --- they were rage. They were anger so deep it made you shake, the kind that made your chest burn with the heat of it all. Alex told him once that he’d always thought it was funny how, when someone was especially pissed off, people said they were seeing red. It reminded him of Scott, he’d said, and it was funny because Scott wasn’t angry. It was Alex who’d always carried their father’s bitter rage, Alex whose hands shook with the weight of it all. Scott, Alex had said, wasn’t angry.

But he was.

He’d been angry for as long as he could remember, since before he had the clarity to recognize it as anger. When you saw red all the time, when you only saw red, people missed it. People mistook quiet rage for calmness, mistook a seething fury for clarity. Scott had been angry for a long time now, since that mission in space tore holes in his life, since Jack Winters beat him into compliance, since Nathaniel Essex turned him into a science experiment, since the world caught fire on that airplane. Since before then, maybe. Since the beginning.

But this anger, this rage… This was more prominent than it usually was. Everything was shaking, and he was angry, so angry. Gone was the quiet rage, gone was the seething fury. This was different. This was Logan tearing people into pieces, Erik breaking that enforcer’s leg, the Phoenix using Jean’s voice to threaten hellfire. There was no logic to this, no order. Scott saw those kids, scared and alone, and all that was left was anger.

Logan was surprised. Scott could see it written all over his face, and he understood. Scott’s anger was the quiet kind, the kind that snuck up behind you. It wasn’t this, was never this. This was the thing he’d fought his whole life not to be --- a threat. But Scott was goddamn tired of fighting, and he was angry. He was so angry.

And he wasn’t the only one.

He saw it in an instant, that rage burning in the enforcer’s eyes that mirrored the glow from behind Scott’s visor. There was something else there, too, something accompanying it. Fear. And Scott knew. He knew what was going to happen, because he’d seen it before. Anger and fear didn’t mix well, didn’t end well.

It happened in a heartbeat. The man’s gun, shaking in his hands. The realization that the muzzle was still at the wrong angle, the sickening comprehension that when his finger twitched, the bullet would go sideways. It would hit the kids. He was going to kill children on a misfire, because Scott’s anger was too loud, too frightening.

There was only one move to make.

Beat.

Scott thrust forward, flinging himself between the gun’s muzzle and the terrified children. The enforcer’s hands were shaking, his gun was raised, and his finger twitched. It was all it took, all he needed to do. A movement so tiny, so insignificant. It was nothing. It was an instinctual reaction, it was his body acting without his consent. It was nothing.

And it was everything.

The gunshot echoed. Someone screamed, and the blood rushed into Scott’s ears and the world stood still. Scott felt the shock etched onto his face, saw it reflected on the enforcer’s.

(They were mirror images of each other again --- a leader and a man following orders. A fugitive and a government agent. A mutant and a human. A dead man and his killer. Scott thought, with something that was almost a laugh, of the funhouse mirrors at the fair his father took him to when he was five. The ones that warped your reflection, the ones that twisted you into something you weren’t. Which was he --- the original, or the twisted copy? Was he the man or the reflection? Did it matter now?)

His hands went to his stomach, trembling and unsteady and the world hadn’t started spinning yet. He was frozen, suspended in time by some invisible force as the flames picked up around him. “Promise you’ll never die on me,” whispered a voice more familiar to him than his own. ”I can’t be alive without you.” He’d thought it was funny at the time, hadn’t he? A ghost begging him not to die long after he already had. He remembered thinking the promise was an easy one to make, remembered replying, “I’ll never die on you, Jeanie. You’ll never have to live without me. I promise.” He’d said those words like they were nothing, like they were a given.

(He was good at breaking promises. He was so good at it.)

Beat.

The world started spinning again. Nothing was burning, and everything was. Behind him, someone was screaming. There was yelling, there was gunfire. Someone was emitting a low whine, desperate and pained. Scott thought it might have been him.

He didn’t remember falling, but he was on the ground when the breath came back to his lungs and it hurt. Everything hurt. Scott tried to catalog his injuries, but he knew it wasn’t necessary.

He knew what dying felt like.

He felt his heart pumping his blood from his body, expelling it like a foreign object it was desperate to be rid of. There was a metallic taste in the back of his throat, and he knew it was blood. It was getting harder to breathe, but his mind hadn’t shut down, wouldn’t shut down. Instead, it was taking him back to Essex.

He’d certainly earned the name Sinister, certainly deserved it. Scott remembered the way he used to narrate every step of his experiments, as if he needed Scott to learn something from the experiment. ”This part is important, Scott,” he’d say, gripping Scott’s jaw in his hands. ”Stay awake for it so you know what’s happening. I’d hate for you to miss it.”

Scott heard that same voice in his head now, echoing through his memories. It’s hard to breathe because your lungs are filling up with blood, it whispered. You’re drowning in the very thing you need to keep you alive. The bullet must have nicked your lung. Even with immediate medical attention, you’d have only a faint shot. You’re dying, Scott. You’re going to die here.

It wasn’t something he needed to be told.

Endings are never happy, Jean had said, and Scott knew that. The X-Men weren’t a fairytale. They weren’t a storybook. They didn’t get white dresses or bouquets of brightly colored flowers. Logan wouldn’t stand at an altar with Scott and Warren and Bobby and watch Jean walk down that aisle.

(Maybe, Scott thought with a hysterical laugh that dissolved too quickly into a cough that made that metallic taste in his throat rise up to meet his tongue, Logan would wear that suit to Scott’s funeral instead.)

Endings were never happy. He’d forgotten that, in the heat of the moment. He let himself see a world with dresses that were white when it was the black ones that got the most ware. Scott had watched Jean die so many times now, but he’d never considered this option.

He’d never realized that one day, it would be her watching him die.

There was a sudden panic in his chest, one that had nothing to do with the gushing blood or pain. Jean was going to watch him die. She was going to see him break his promise in real time, going to watch. He couldn’t do that, not to her.

Scott couldn’t will himself to live. There was no Phoenix burning through his soul, nothing to raise him before he hit the ground. He couldn’t live… but he could make sure she didn’t see him die.

He scrambled, arms flailing until they hit something solid, and he knew without looking what it was. Scott would know the feeling of Logan’s arm beneath his hands anywhere, knew it with just as much certainty as he knew Jean’s smile or Bobby’s laugh or the scent of Warren’s cologne. And of course Logan was there --- Logan was always there, even when he wasn’t.

“L’gan.” Scott choked on the name, more blood rising up with the attempt at speech. He coughed, clearing it from his throat for a moment, just a moment. It was all he’d need. ”Logan. Please, I can’t --- Don’t let her see. Do it before she gets here, please. It’s already over, Logan, I need you to end it.”

(Everything was burning, and nothing was. The whole world was on fire, and only Scott could feel the flames. Wasn’t that how it always went?)

LOGAN: There were a lot of blank spaces in Logan’s mind. There was a lot of space that was just …empty. For a long time, that was how he felt. He felt empty. He didn’t feel as if he had a purpose. He traveled aimlessly, only stopping to fight and get drunk. Then he’d managed to walk into Xavier’s Mansion and everything changed. Logan found what he’d been missing. He found a family. He found a purpose in his team and the kids that he got to teach. He never thought he’d been looking for something. Never knew what he was missing until he walked through that front door.

There were moments in his life that when they happened, he knew he’d never be able to forget. He’d never forget the feeling he got when walking into the mansion for the first time. Logan would never forget the feeling he got in his chest when he saw Jean for the first time. He’d never forget the way that his heart shattered into a million pieces when he dug his claws into her side and watched the life drain from her eyes.

Time stood still and he knew that this was one of those moments.

His relationship with Scott had been strained at first. Logan met Scott and immediately – he decided that he didn’t like him. Scott was too serious. Scott had a stick up his ass. He was far too reserved. It wasn’t one sided. Logan knew that Scott didn’t like him either. But somewhere down the line, things changed. Logan found himself wondering where Scott was if he wasn’t around. He found himself wanting to share his days with Scott.

Scott Summers was his best friend and Logan would do anything for him.

Time stood still and the rage that Logan had been feeling erupted. He wasn’t fast enough. There was never anything he could do, but stand there and watch as his family were hurt…or worse. The bullet was shot from the gun and before Logan could react, it hit Scott. The bullet hit Scott and Logan didn’t care about remaining pacifistic anymore. He didn’t care whether he was locked up in the Raft or not. He was going to kill every single one of the mother fuckers.

The gunshot echoed in his ears. One of the kids screamed. Logan resisted the urge to look to see if Jean had saw. He hoped that she hadn’t. He wanted to tear through the enforcers. He wanted to end all of them, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Scott again. He wouldn’t leave Scott.

Scott scrambled and Logan was at his side within seconds, his arms wrapping around the man as he lowered them both to the ground. It was bad. Logan knew that it was bad and he could see it on Scott’s face. They both knew. The blood didn’t matter. The enforcers that surrounded them didn’t matter. Only Scott mattered. He was the only thing that mattered.

The request left his lips and Logan felt all of the air leave his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, but he had to. He had to be strong for Scott. He had to be strong for Jean. The request threw him back to dancing in the kitchen with Jean. The way that she’d asked him so casually and then how it turned into something more. He was thrown back to the moment that it happened and the expression on Scott’s face. He remembered the way that Scott had looked at him when he begged him to stay. He hadn’t been able to stay. He wasn’t able to be there for Scott. It was something he still regretted.

Logan couldn’t deny Jean. But worse – he couldn’t deny Scott either.

“You asshole,” he shook his head, biting back the tears that threatened to fall. He’d done it for Jean. It was only fair that he does it for Scott too. Why was it always him that hurt his friends in the end? It was always Logan who watched the people he loved die. Logan’s grip on Scott tightened and he promised, “I’ll take care of her. Won’t even make a move. I swear.” He choked slightly on the joke as it came out, unable to breathe. His chest pounded in fear, in anticipation. It ached.

He knew that Scott was fading. He knew that he only had seconds. But he wouldn’t let him suffer. He couldn’t let him suffer any longer.

Logan withdrew his claws and whispered, “I love you, Slim,” before digging his claws into Scott’s side and ending it.

JEAN: She felt the gunshot tearing through her the second it happened. Rogue was only a few feet away and Jean faltered mid attack, the butt of the enforcer’s gun slamming into her cheek until she tasted blood bursting onto her tongue. She collected herself quickly, instinctively, hand shooting up to send the man flying back into a tree. Her ears were ringing from the hit. It felt as if she’d been pushed back, like everything was raining down around her, but there was something more pressing curling in her gut.

Memories of a fight years ago came to the forefront of her mind, and her hand shook as it went to the front of her uniform, pressing into the spot on her side Logan’s claws had gone through. Jean looked down, and her fingers weren’t stained with red. There was no purple mingling with the colors of her suit, no horrified look on Rogue’s face as they caught each other’s gaze over the chaos.

Jean wasn’t dying. She was aching, battered and bruised from the fight and the pushback from what happened with Rogue, but she wasn’t dying, not physically. There was nothing she could pinpoint that would lead to that feeling, not until she heard it.

Logan. Please. I love you, Slim.

Silence. Jean closed her eyes, trying to focus in on Scott’s mind, blocking everything else out, but there was nothing. It was just as it had been when she arrived on the lawn of Xavier’s, back from the White Hot Room for the third time and desperately hoping she wasn’t too late to find the person she’d been wanting since he left. For a second, she almost convinced herself it was just the bird – the universe, or whatever the hell had it out for Jean Grey in particular – messing with her, that this was just a severing of the psilink again, that she would look over and see disappointment on Scott’s face but he would be okay, and he would still love her, and she could still predict every word that was going to come out of his mouth because he was her best friend.

She knew him better than breathing – and right then, right at that moment, Jean realised that was exactly what he couldn’t do.

Blood was pounding in her head, dripping from her lips, but it was so easy to get across the field, even as she stumbled and tripped over herself, feet sliding on the mud. The battle continued to wage around her, but she was in her own bubble, always protected from mortality by her abilities, by the Force inside her, by sheer determination and a single-minded focus. She was there in an instant, Enforcers along the way being flung back into trees or each other, or thrown into the path of other X-Men’s attacks.

Jean felt her hand against Logan’s shoulder, pushing him back but only with the force of her own body, no telekinesis to add to it. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded – or tried to demand, her own voice needing extreme encouragement just to get past her lips. “Don’t – don’t touch him. Don’t you dare touch him.” Several Enforcers made their way towards the trio, and Jean lifted her hand. She just wanted them to disappear, and in the corner of her eye she could see them turning to dust, mingling with the water pooling in the mud. She was on the ground now too, freezing but burning up too hot at the same time, hands going to pull Scott onto her lap, fingers digging into his arms.

Maybe Logan was getting something out of his side. Maybe he was trying to save him. Maybe Jean didn’t know what was happening, maybe Scott would open his eyes and say he had this all under control, maybe the worst Jean would need to deal with would be the shame of yet again acting on impulse, a soldier without the self discipline necessary for such a role.

But Scott wasn’t opening his eyes. Logan wasn’t explaining. Jean’s gaze went to Scott’s chest and the voice in the back of her head – the voice she went to school for almost a decade to learn to listen to, to trust – told her there was no coming back from this. Lung involvement, the wide shot spread, how much Scott was bleeding, the claw marks on his side …

Logan was sparing him.

“Scott, baby, look at me,” Jean whispered, the hand that wasn’t holding him onto her going to cup his face. “You’re going to be okay. You’re in the … we’ll get you back home, and Hank will be able to fix it. We just need to get some pressure on your … I can get the bullet out and we’ll … We’ll get married on a beach somewhere, and we’ll find Alex and talk to my–”

Her voice was getting louder, and Scott still wasn’t responding. His mind was untouchable, his chest perfectly still. Jean was a doctor. She knew he was gone. She knew that, but she still found herself shaking him gently, just for a second, as if he could come back like she just had.

Why couldn’t he? What was so special about Jean that she had to keep repeating the same goddamn pattern, over and over again, while Scott was here, in her arms, blood and mud smeared over his face from where she’d touched him, the red from his wound covering her hands?

Someone was screaming. That someone was Jean. She knew because she could feel the back of her throat burning, because the ground was shaking around her, because everything and everyone else faded to nothing as she pressed her forehead to Scott’s. “You promised me,” she said, and it wasn’t fair, it was the most selfish thing she could’ve said, but she said it anyway. “You promised me you wouldn’t do this. You’re–”

Something shifted. Metal, the sound of a gun moving. Jean looked up, and it was then, for the first time, she met the eyes of the man who killed Scott Summers. He wasn’t alone, anymore. There were two other Enforcers beside him, both of who screamed the second Jean twisted her wrist, breaking their legs in one swift motion. This man, though … he didn’t deserve to have a telepath switch off his brain. He didn’t deserve to feel a human amount of pain.

Jean turned to Logan, meeting his gaze for a long moment. She felt empty, worn out, bloody and dead herself, but she could still look at her friend. The X-Men around them were regrouping, some seeing what had happened, others still blissfully unaware.

They were leaving. Retreating. Surrendering, though they wouldn’t call it that in the debriefing. Without their leader, what else could they do? When one of their own had fallen, what else was left?

Nothing.

I’m not leaving, Jean thought, broadcasting her voice loud and clear into Logan’s mind, until we take something from them, too. She turned back to the Enforcer, focusing on keeping him exactly in place, feeling his fear wash over her. This time, her words to Logan came out loud.

“Kill him,” she said. “Make him feel it.”

LOGAN: Logan could dig his claws into someone and feel nothing. He’d been doing it for years before he’d come to Xavier’s. When he got into trouble, he’d pull them out and he never lost a fight. The list of people that he’d harmed was a mile long. Still – he never felt a thing because most of the people he dug his claws into deserved it. There was nothing in his vocabulary to describe how it felt to do it to someone that he loved. There was nothing to explain the way that it felt to watch someone that you loved die. To explain how it felt when their death was at your hands.

He’d thought that once would be enough. He never thought that he’d have to do it again.

It was easy to forget how sickening it felt when he dug his claws into someone. When he was in the moment, he didn’t think about it. At first, he hadn’t been able to forget the feeling, but after a while – his instincts kicked in. It was like second nature. It was easy to wash the blood off. A bit more difficult to differentiate the positioning that would be the deciding factor between death and mere injury. Eventually, though, Logan had it down to a science.

He didn’t want Scott to suffer. Logan couldn’t physically bear to watch Scott suffer. They both knew that Jean wouldn’t be able to handle it in any capacity. This wouldn’t make it easier. In the back of his mind, Logan knew that, but he couldn’t deny Scott. He couldn’t say no and bear the guilt when he already had so much on his shoulders. He’d ran when Scott needed him the most. Logan had promised himself that he wouldn’t do it again. That he’d do whatever Scott needed.

This was what Scott needed. He was asking for it and Logan couldn’t say no.

His singular focus was on Scott. On his limp body in his arms and the blood on his claws. Logan forgot about the scene around them. About the enforcers and the war that they seemed to be raging. He forgot about Rogue. About the kids. He forgot about Jean until he was pushed back by sheer force. Logan stumbled backwards as he tried to regain his balance and immediately, he remembered exactly what was going on around them.

He couldn’t find it in him to watch Jean with Scott. He couldn’t look at them. He couldn’t look at the mess that he’d aided in. Scott had asked for it. He’d pleaded for it. Still – it didn’t lessen the grief in his chest. The anger that was boiling in his veins. It didn’t help the guilt that weighed heavily on his shoulders. Jean was screaming and Logan had to squeeze his eyes shut to block her out for a moment. It was all too much.

There was nothing left for them here. They needed to go.

They were surrounded. He could feel it before he actually opened his eyes to see it. His eyes landed on the man that had killed Scott Summers and Logan knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back. He knew that there was nothing in this world that would be able to keep him from tearing the man to shreds. Before he could make a move, the two men at the killer’s side fell to the ground and Logan knew that it was Jean. He could feel it in his bones. If he were a better man, he would have told her to stop. He would have grabbed her and got her off the battlefield.

That was the problem. He wasn’t a good man. He never would be

Their eyes met and Logan knew what he was going to do without having to be prompted. Jean didn’t have to be in his head. They didn’t have to speak to both know what was going to happen. He knew what her next words were before she said them. She didn’t have to get inside his mind for him to comply without question.

Logan was angry. He was angrier than he’d ever been before. It radiated from his every pore as he turned towards the enforcer who had taken Scott’s life. The man had taken his best friend. He’d taken the love of Jean’s life. Logan would make sure that this man would lose everything. Whomever loved this killer, they’d feel it too. They deserved to feel it. The man deserved everything that he got and Logan couldn’t wait to give it to him.

He wanted to make the man hurt. He wanted the man to beg for his life. Logan wanted to hear him struggle. He wanted to tear him to shreds. That was exactly what he planned to do.

The man wasn’t moving and Logan knew that it was Jean’s doing. At this point, he was exhausted, so he wasn’t going to complain. With a swift flick of his wrists, Logan unsheathed his claws and stalked towards the man slowly. He could see the fear in the enforcer’s eyes and it gave Logan no relief. It didn’t make him feel any better. He wouldn’t feel better until he knew that the man had paid for what he did. He wouldn’t feel better until the man’s blood hid the blood of his best friend.

“You really shouldn’t have done that, bub,” Logan growled as he inched closer. “This was unnecessary. All of it. You’re attacking kids, attacking us for what? This could have been prevented. Violence isn’t the solution, but since you started it….” His words were just above a whisper, a snarl that only the enforcer and probably Jean would hear.

Logan grabbed the man by the back of the neck and tightened his grip as he looked him in the eyes. “You killed my best friend, asshole. So, guess what? It’s your turn.” The enforcer begged quietly, but Logan couldn’t hear anything over his heart pounding in his ears. He couldn’t hear anything over the blood boiling in his veins. There was nothing else that Logan would say. Nothing that could right the wrong that had happened. The only answer was a life for a life and Logan couldn’t hesitate anymore.

He dug his claws into the man’s side. Exactly in the same spot where he’d shot Scott. Logan pushed the man back and watched as he struggled. He’d suffer this way, but honestly – even that wasn’t enough. The man coughed and his lungs began to fill with blood in exactly the same manner Scott’s had. How was Logan supposed to go on without Scott? How were they supposed to move past this? He couldn’t fathom being inside the mansion again with another one of his loved ones missing.

In a fit of rage, Logan decided that suffering wasn’t enough. He wanted it to hurt. Jean wanted the enforcer to hurt. Immediately, Logan dug his claws into the man once more and then stabbed him again and again. He stabbed him until there was nothing but flesh and blood and the rage that still flowed from every pore.

He was on the battlefield in one second and the next he was on the lawn of Xavier’s with the rest of the team in the blink of an eye. Logan knew that they teleported. He knew that he’d be in the papers. A bounty placed on his head.

He didn’t care. This was war.

#jameslogans‌#jeanelcinegrey‌#logan: dust to dust #jean: dust to dust #discord tag tbd

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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Hey so random ask but, I see a lot of people calling Tim drake sexist, I personally don't think he is but what are your thoughts on that.

Oof. Okay.

Technically I can’t just say he’s not, because as the product of a sexist society he, like any other dude and to a lesser extent any person, has got some passive sexist attitudes baked in there.

It tends to surface in things like, when he went on that first big solo adventure when the Robin comic launched, that started in Paris? And he wound up hunting King Snake with Lady Shiva and this one rogue federal agent, a black man, and he got very decisive. Shiva says something cutting about white men, and she has a point, in that if either of his adult companions of the moment were also white men Tim would probably have been somewhat more conscious of the fact that he was thirteen.

That unconscious prioritization that DC’s sexist narrative tends to favor? That is sexism, and also racism, and it’s valuable to draw attention to it, though not, I feel, to blame it all on Tim because quite often he hasn’t actually done anything, the universe around him has just colluded to make him look good.

(Of course this doesn’t happen much anymore, but back when he was the Main Character it did. Comics is a sexist community in a sexist culture, so of course Tim got some of that muck on him.)

But most of the accusations you see going around are about tearing him down on Steph’s behalf, and that’s...murkier.

Because honestly Tim is less sexist than most of the men in his profession. Significantly less so than Bruce or Dick. I literally cannot imagine Tim talking about a loved one the way Dick used to talk about Kori, or a new acquaintance the way Dick did a lot of the one-episode women from his ‘90s Nightwing solo series. He wasn’t bad to them exactly, he was honestly very normal and probably above average, but the incredible, controlling arrogance and casual sexualization is still hard to get through, sometimes. Almost more so for how much more it comes out when he’s talking behind their backs. And Bruce...well, Bruce and gender is an entire deal I’m not going to try to unpack here.

And I cannot see Tim ever using ‘girl’ as an insult, the way Damian does.

Tim’s interactions with the ladies on Young Justice, for example, tended to be a lot less emphatically gendered than Dick’s interactions with the ladies of the Teen Titans, or even Bruce’s in the Justice League, though there are fewer women there and less casual interaction.

And to a considerable extent this was because the passage of ten years had modernized writing norms, and to a considerable extent this was because his demographic was younger than the Titans and therefore less sexualization was expected of the writers. Young Justice built on some stuff Marvel had been doing with young teams and broke some ground that Marvel has built on even further lately. (Seriously what is with Marvel’s young team books lately they’re incredible.) But there was also that Tim as an individual cares less about gender than most of his family.

(In some ways Jason may care even less, but he also leans really hard into performative masculinity and thought flirting was a reasonable way to interact with older women as a teenager, and he’s been being written by Scott Lobdell for ten years even if I have a hard time thinking of that as canon, so his data is mixed.)

Or take the case of this young freedom fighter (/terrorist) who happens to wear Robin colors, who Tim meets at one point in Europe. Dava. The story creates situations where Tim gets a weird mind-altering stimulant transferred orally to him by Dava, and then from him to Shiva when he’s giving her CPR, and Tim rather notably doesn’t have a single narration box or speech bubble that treats these as ‘kisses’ that he has somehow benefited from obtaining.

Later he crawl-drags Dava’s knocked-out-by-Shiva body out of the middle of the bloodbath Shiva is now staging, because he’s in no state to do anything to stop it, which he hates, and while this is certainly the comic arranging things to put Dava in a damsel status relative to Tim, Tim does not at any point frame it that way.

He is really good about not disrespecting Dava, honestly. It’s an interesting storyline partly for that reason, though it’s not the only time it comes up.

Tim was constantly meeting Troubled Young Women who could kick his ass and whom he respected considerably in most senses, but whom he was able to convince that their particular approach to violence was somehow flawed and needed to be re-thought. Thereby allowing there to be Strong Female Characters but keep the balance of the world in order and not worry the readership, by placing the male lead in a subtle power position even if he had gotten his ass kicked.

It was like. An entire genre. Tied to the way Shiva kept popping in as Incredibly Terrifying Supporting Cast.

This was a major way DC was using female characters in and immediately after the 90s and tbh in some ways it was more progressive than what they tend to do now, even as certain parts of the framing set my teeth on edge.

(Compare ‘Tim on drugs manages to hit Shiva hard enough to take her down because she didn’t expect lethal force from him so he has to do CPR’ to the more recent Red Robin story where we spend a couple of pages with him laying out to her face how she came to town to fulfill a contract on him but he brilliantly out-thought her and she ate the drugged chocolates he sent her so He Wins. Bleh.)

Steph stands out for hanging around instead of being a one-off appearance, and for not really rethinking her life in response to Tim much at all, while also not being a villain.

The crux of the issue is, Tim slid into talking down to Steph on a semi-regular basis, especially when trying to get her to stop vigilante-ing, which he’s getting backlash for some twenty-odd years later, mostly by people blaming him for her narrative deprioritization because it’s more satisfying than blaming DC.

And a major form this takes is declaring him generally sexist.

And the thing is, I’m sure his unconscious view of himself as more competent to make judgment calls because Main Character Demographic did play into the way he approached those conversations! I have never met a dude with any self-confidence whatsoever for whom that wasn’t a factor. Sexism, like racism, is the air we breathe, you have to actively extricate yourself from it and even then it will crop up at odd moments.

Classism played into it, too--especially once he knew she was a C-list villain’s daughter; there was that sense that often crops up in Batman properties that not only does greater access to resources make it safer and less self-destructive for the moneyed class to go vigilante-ing, noblesse oblige means it’s also somehow more just. The old ‘the outsider has a more objective approach’ canard. This was even more subtextual than the gender stuff, but I’m sure it was there.

Intellectual elitism is sort of a subset of both that and gender issues--Tim knows he’s smart, it’s the core of his pride, and Steph is not as smart in the same ways and has not had the same educational opportunites, and there are definitely moments of high-handedness tied to this.

And then there was the territorial aspect; it was official Bat policy to discourage all other Gotham vigilantes, usually in a much more absolute and commanding way than Tim ever tried, not to take them in and train them.

That might have been an option for Bruce if he’d wanted to, but it wasn’t really on the table for Tim unless he wanted to stage an intense campaign to totally disrupt his own life in order to bring this person who introduced herself by hitting him in the face with a brick after he mistook her for a villain into private Bat training and spaces. They’d known each other for a while and been having this argument in various forms most of that time, before they ever dated.

Please also remember that the last time Tim wanted to take a troubled blond under his and Bruce’s wings and show them the ropes and make sure they could do this safely as part of a personal healing process that would help everyone, that person took less than a week after starting to show signs of instability to have a complete psychotic break, beat him into the ground, build a brick wall in the Batcave to keep him out, lock down the computers, and start killing criminals with the knife-hands he added to the Batsuit, while failing to prioritize civilian safety.

This was not that long before Steph’s debut. If I were Tim I would not trust myself to sponsor further new team members either!

All of these things besides the Azrael trauma are directly from Bruce, who is often way more emphatic and more of an ass about them. Robin was mirroring Batman (consider the way he talks to Selina sometimes egad, sometimes it only doesn’t look awful because she’s playing along) and following Bat-policy; it is totally nonsensical to hold Tim accountable for this and not Bruce.

It’s also important to note that Tim wasn’t significantly less condescending to Anarky or the General, who were white guys around his age with roughly his class background whom he was trying to talk out of villainy, and honestly Lonnie’s motives were baller. (The original Anarky was a hacktivist based on a design somebody drew up for the third Robin, but Tim got made instead.) Tim’s entire character design back to his first appearance holds that when he’s trying to talk someone into something he tends to fall into a lecturing approach.

This can be very annoying! The first time he did it to Nightwing he got grabbed and shaken and snarled at. And of course it’s worse when he’s talking down a demographic slope, rather than up one.

I am very aware of how fucking annoying it is when guys do this, even if it is their normal mode of interaction. I have come very near to punching faces over it, when it’s really bad.

Tim doesn’t usually approach that line, but the problem is his writers didn’t seem to know the line was there, so if you’re reading some of his interactions with Steph from the perspective of having that chip on your shoulder already, especially if you’re not immersed in the narrative’s assumption that he is The Main Character, especially now that language norms have shifted slightly so wording that was considered neutral in the 90s is now obnoxious, it can ironically make a deeper impression than the much more blatant and decided sexism going on all around him.

So that’s my take on the situation. Tim has some mild passive gender prejudice which he has never taken enough notice of to seriously compensate for, made more visible by being in a deeply sexist world and by being kind of an annoying person sometimes, and this has been blown wildly out of proportion by people who feel that he and Steph are in competition to be The One Who Was Not An Asshole in that relationship.

This is not a winnable competition. They were both assholes sometimes, and even if you could prove Tim was a terrible boyfriend/person it wouldn’t validate all of Steph’s behavior--she was often forced to behave very badly or stupidly, because back then one of her major narrative functions was as a stick for the writers to hit Tim with.

And the thing is. If you’re going to exculpate Steph of awful behavior because it was ‘just’ the writers being sexist, let alone let Dick off the hook on similar grounds, I think it’s really unfair and messed up to then turn around and hold Tim-the-individual accountable for sexism that mostly wasn’t even situated in him so much as baked into the narrative, though to his benefit.

Like. When sexism (or other -ism) benefits people in real life it can be useful to draw their attention to their systemic advantages if they seem not to get it, but drawing Tim’s attention to his narrative prioritization would be extraordinarily meta (lol somebody write that fic). And in neither situation is it productive or fair (though I do know it is so so tempting) to treat the very existence of someone’s privilege as an offense they have personally committed.

They literally cannot help that. That’s how systemic works.

#tim drake #sexism #comics #robin #batfam #ask #i have spent a ridiculous amount of time on this ask yikes #posting as-is without further revision #hoc est meum #calypsosposts

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thecorteztwins · 5 years

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Fanfic Friday,,,,Fabian and Anne Marie get turned into hulks?? ( g o d hulk Fabian is cursed but hulk Anne Marie 👀)

(Awesome, unique, and horrible idea all at once! Tagging @awkward-snake-girl for Hulkness. Also I combined the second and first gen Acolytes teams in this---like Chrome and Anne Marie but also Frenzy and the Kleinstocks---even though they were never on the same squads and probably would have hated each other if they were, since the second squad was just “kill all humans!” and the first squad, who I play, were actually a lot more noble. But whatever, this is its own canon! On with the fic!)The plan had gonewrong, horribly wrong.This was what both sides were thinking,heroes and villains, X-Men and Acolytes. This was NOT whatwas supposed to happen.For the X-Men, the Acolytes were NOTsupposed to have reached the great gamma radiation blaster in thelost Banner labs. For the Acolytes, it was NOT supposed to go offwhen they did reach it.It was definitely NOT supposed to hittheir leader and his sister at full force.The morecompassionate of the X-Men, and those among the Acolytes who hadcounted the pair as friends rather than just teammates in terrorism,cried out on their behalf...but did not come closer. There was nohelping these two. The only mercy was that their death, horrible asit was, would be quick. Hopefully, there would be nothing left tobury, for if anything remained it would be twisted and horrible tolook upon.Yet, within the painfully bright light, like asupernova star in miniature, the bulky twin forms of the Cortezsiblings were not diminishing...but growing. Exploding, perhaps?No...no they were simply...Getting bigger.“Nein...”Nightcrawler breathed, the sole person to make a sound as the lightfaded as quickly as it had come. Standing there in naught but thescant remains of their costumes were Fabian and Anne MarieCortez...but not as they were.Always an Amazon, she nowtowered at eight feet, he at ten. Her skin was a beatific blue ashade softer than her hair, while his skin had a bronze tone, likehe'd been cast in brilliant metal sans shine. But the greater changewas more than skin-deep; it was muscle deep. Both of them seemed tohave tripled in bulk at least, he still slightly larger than she byhalf again.“Hulks,” Beast whispered as they all gazed,Acolyte and X-Men alike, at these familiar but very newbeings.“They've become Hulks.”

That was all theAcolytes needed to hear for them to let out a cheer. Their victoryhad not been thwarted after all---it was more assured than ever! Theyhad Hulks on their side now!“Eat, X-Me---” was all thatone of the Kleinstock brothers managed to get out before he waspunched off his feet by Anne Marie. Fabian followed, attacking theperson nearest him, also one of his own team.“They turnedon their own?!” Rogue gaped as she dodged a thrownAcolyte.“Nah---they're just crazy,” said Wolverinegrimly, “Standard side effect o' this kind o' thing. They're likerabid animals, just lashin' out at whatever's close---and we'renext!”He was completely right. Anne Marie's next target wasindeed the tiny Canknucklehead himself, while Fabian was wordlesslyattempting to assault Colossus into a pile of so much scrapmetal.“Can they still use their powers?!” Jean called tono one in particular as she floated above the reach of the twinmonsters.“How should I know?!” called back one of theAcolytes in answer, Joanna “Frenzy” Cargill. Standing at almost 7feet tall, with super-strength and impentrable skin, Frenzy wasalmost a Hulk herself, and was trying to grapple with Anne Marie. Shewas usually a heartless killer, but that was only when it came tohumans and her enemies---for Anne Marie, all she wanted to do wasrestrain, get her under control, get her back into her right mind (orwhatever counted for it, in Anne Marie's case)Anne Marie,however, had no such concerns to hold her back. She only had onethought in her head---to smash. She did exactly that, hurling Frenzyoff her back and to the floor. She raised one giant fist, about tofind out if Frenzy's skull was as impenetrable as the rest of her,when she found it was suddenly encased in cold, hard, silveryomnium---one of the hardest metals on the planet, courtesy of atransmutive blast from Chrome.“Couldn't get enough juice tocover her completely,” he said aloud, “But I got one of thedangerous bits.”Anne Marie howled in anger....then smashedher fist into the floor next to Frenzy.And smiled when shesaw the size of the hole.“You idiot!” yelled one of theKleinstocks who was still conscious, “You just gave her somethingharder to hit with!”In return, Chrome rendered him, astatue, “Well, here---I'll keep you safe from her then.”“Keepdistracting them, all of you,” urged Psylocke to her team and herfoes, “Jean and I are trying to get in their heads---but it'sproving difficult. They don't have human minds anymore, there's justRAGE! There's nothing to control! We need time to find the peoplestill buried in there!”“And Anne Marie's a psychicherself,” Jean groaned, trying to speak through the strain, “Ifthat still holds true...she's got extra defenses...”“I'dworry more about her brother!” said Nightcrawler, who was currentlytrying to distract Fabian from simply smashing the two telepathicwomen where they stood. He did this by teleporting in front of him,to and fro, back and forth, drawing his attention like a rodeo clownwould with angry bull. The Fabian Hulk took the bait, bellowing andbeating his chest as though he were a great gold gorilla with a badhaircut to match his nasty temper. Eventually, through acombination of good luck and grudging teammwork, the Hulks were worndown...and began slipping back into their original forms. Anne Marieand Fabian, as they had been, dropped to the floor, unconscious.Cyclops began limping up towards their prone forms, holdinghis injured arm to his side, but Frenzy, who was far less worse forthe wear than he was, planted herself between them.“Just asecond, X-Man---you aren't getting near them!”The otherAcolytes, those who could still stand, gathered around their fallencomrades, expressing similar sentiments with similar hostility. Themomentary truce had been just that, momentary, and that moment wasover. “Hulks are unstable,” Cyclops explained with calmrationality, “Do you really want their transformations triggered atyour base?”The Acolytes all looked at each other, thinkingof Lord Cortez's raging tantrums and Anne Marie's volatile, extremeemotions in general. Frenzy, however, was not swayed, and crossed herhuge muscular arms across her leather-clad chest,“Thatdoesn't mean we're going to hand 'em over to YOU. We are the Acolytesof Magneto, Cyclops---and we take care of our own.”“Yourfuneral,” grunted Logan, turning, “C'mon, Summers---leave 'em totheir fate. S' a fitting one, if you ask me, considerin' what they'vedone before.”Indeed, the Acolytes were hardly what onewould call noble foes. While some among them were well-intentioned,perhaps even good people at heart, most were bloodthirsty killerssimply looking for an excuse to exert their perceived “superiority”over humankind in the most murderous ways possible...beingslaughtered by the same man who had give them that opportunity didindeed have an allure as poetic justice.But Scott Summers wasnot swayed. He did things by the book. By Xavier's rules.Andspeaking of Xavier....Professor? he called out mentally.Andthe Professor answered.- - -“Still don't seem rightto me,” grumped Logan as they flew back on the Blackbird, with thetwins in tow, kept in their unconscious state by the dual efforts ofJean and Betsy.“Look at this way, Logan,” explained Scottas he piloted, “What if they had learned to control theirtransformations on their own? Then the Acolytes would have a pair ofHulks on their side, just like they thought at first. Can youimagine? It was hard enough taking them down WITH help; dealing withthem in their right minds and in tandem with the rest of their teamwould be impossible.”“So why not get rid of the threatnow?” Logan popped his claws. This was the fifth time he'd madethis suggestion since the Professor had mind-controlled the Acolytesinto letting the X-Men collect the Cortezes.“That's not howwe do things,” Scott said calmly and solidly, “You knowthat.”“Besides,” suggested Kurt optimistically, “Sometime with us might do them good!”Logan lookedunconvinced.- - -“Nngh...” Fabian awoke, rubbingthe vast expanse of his pale forehead. He looked around, realizingquickly he was in a cell. Not a jail cell made for a standard human,no---the door was made of a forcefield, which had only a vaguereflective glimmer which demonstrated its boundary, otherwise givingthe illusion of freed. Within the confines of the modest space itselfwas a cot attached to the wall, upon which he was lying, and anattached tiny bathroom. How insulting. Fabian snorted at the sight,and in the process, looked down at his clothes---his Acolytes uniformwas a wreck! What had happened?! At the foot of his bed was a smallstack of neatly folded clothes, but he didn't even touch them, hecould tell already that they were previously worn. Had he actuallyhad a look at them, he'd have been disgusted further, as theybelonged to former farm boy Colossus, the only one o the X-team largeenough to have something that would fit Fabian's muscular 6'5frame.“Are you feeling more yourself now, Mr. Cortez?”Xavier had wheeled up to the boundary of his cell.“You!”Fabian ejected angrily, “You knocked me out! You kidnapped me!You--”“I understand why you would think so,” Xaviersaid, resting his chin on steepled fingers, “But that is not, infact, what transpired. Allow me to explain; there is security footagefrom the Banner labs that will confirm what I say, as I realize youare likely hesitant to trust me.”Fabian listened to whatXavier said.Fabian watched what Xavier showed him.AndFabian wondered...When he had become a Hulk, had EVERYTHINGgrown?

#fic #writing #hulks #littlemeangreen

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briangroth27 · 5 years

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Back to the MCU Part 2: The X-men

I’m absolutely looking forward to Dark Phoenix and New Mutants—I’ve loved or really liked all of the X-men movies except two and I’m sad to see the franchise end—but I’m also looking forward to the X-men joining the MCU. I was skeptical of the fan insistence that Spider-man would be inherently better just because Homecoming was part of the MCU and I was proven wrong, but I’m still not sure that the X-men going home will be a magical improvement. The Fox-films aren’t perfect, but they’re not the worthless dreck a lot of people make them out to be either and it’ll be a shame to lose all the good things about them (unfortunately along with The Gifted in all likelihood). Still, this is what’s happening and I’ll always be excited for new X-men adventures: they’re my favorite comics and I love seeing them brought to life! In a perfect world, we’d get a new X-men TV series (heck, both a live-action one and a new animated series) because there are just too many characters to explore over a trilogy or two of movies, but for these purposes, I’m going to assume they’ll only be doing X-films.

Full spoilers for the Fox-verse and MCU up to this point....

X-men Origins How should mutants appear in the MCU? This is super-simple: they just do.

There’s always been a handful around, like Xavier, Magneto (their ages and Erik’s Holocaust experience can be explained by saying they knew a mutant who could rejuvenate others), Apocalypse, Shadow King, etc., but mutants are just now starting to appear en masse. They’re a new and mysterious global phenomenon. Importantly, they’re a natural evolution and the most “cause” that should ever be given is the real-life explanation for evolutionary mutation: a reaction a hostile environment. Sure, you could say Thanos’ Snap created that type of environmental condition, but no one should be responsible for making mutation happen. This is something I strongly believe has to hold true: mutants can’t be created in a lab somewhere or Snapped back into existence “wrong” or have their X-genes turned on by Scarlet Witch or something. If anything like that happens, mutants automatically lose their “we’re natural, normal, and we’re supposed to be here” argument. It’s why the Inhumans aren’t really a great substitute for the mutants-as-minorities metaphor: even though the present-day Inhumans were born that way, they can still be traced back to experiments the Kree conducted on humans. Mutants, however, are completely normal and exactly what they’re supposed to be. Also, it’s that lack of an “explanation” that scares normal people and separates mutants from the other superheroes in the MCU. Bigots can write off a radioactive spider bite or a gamma accident as powers that happened to “those poor people,” but the X-men showing up and saying “this is who we are naturally, our powers come from the core of our being, and we’re the future?” That scares them and brings out the hate. That last point is just as much a source of fear as the others: just look at how white supremacists in real life scream about “being replaced” by Jewish people, Muslims, immigrants, etc.

I’ve been asked on Twitter how the common MCU people would be able to tell that the X-men are any different from the Avengers (Thor vs. Storm was the example I was given), and the answer’s in the characters. Storm and the rest of the team would absolutely self-identify as mutants, feeling they shouldn’t have to pass as aliens/accidents for an easier life (in addition to their stated goal of proving that mutants can be trusted). With that pride and the insistence that mutants are the future, bigoted reactions would mimic LGBTQIA hate: "Why should we cater to a minority? They should be committed/cured, not supported, coddled, and allowed to continue living in their delusions,” etc. People's kids being mysteriously powered is also a much scarier concept than an alien the public barely interacts with (Ragnarok having civilians know about Thor and Jane’s relationship status still rings false to me, unless Darcy’s been blogging). Thor's an external anomaly to the everyday MCU citizen and while the Avengers might accidentally wreck your town, mutants could be in your family and are an intimate threat to The Way Things Are.

I’ve also been asked how you square Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver with Magneto if the X-men just appear now rather than being rebooted into the history of the MCU, and that’s simple too. They aren’t his kids anymore in the comics, so you might not even need to explore that connection in the movies. If they do want to, he could be a secret parent they didn’t know about. They still don’t have to be mutants since their origin is tied to Loki’s scepter. Either way, Wanda’s continued presence in the MCU is not a continuity deal-breaker.

First Class While the idea I’ve seen tossed around of the team suddenly snapping into view after Xavier has been psychically hiding them from the world for years would be a cool reveal, I don’t think they’ll want to burn all the A-list X-men by introducing them as adults. IMO, the X-men are going to be the backbone of multiple future MCU phases since the big-name Avengers are winding done, so they’re going to want to cast X-teens who can grow with the MCU. They’ll also want to start at the beginning and (hopefully) really dig into the team finding its groove, learning as they go. I’ve enjoyed the Fox prequel trilogy immensely so far, but jumping 10 years between each film takes the wind out of proper development arcs. Showing the team’s learning curve as superheroes would also set them apart from the Avengers, who have personality conflicts but essentially came to the team as polished heroes.

Fox’s prequel X-team is a pretty perfect lineup in terms of characters, so I wouldn’t change the core roster much (though I do expect everyone to be recast). We’d meet the X-men as they’re recruited, allowing the film to both touch on the world mutants are living in and to show who these kids were outside the mansion. That’ll not only show the healing effect of having other kids like them in their orbit, but will also emphasize how important the school is as a safe haven (and found family) from the rest of the world. One area where Fox’s films have fallen short (and The Gifted has excelled) is showing what the common people’s reaction to mutants is, rather than just sticking with the military’s thoughts, and I hope the MCU follows that show’s lead.

While every teenager (and even every adult) can relate to the X-men’s outsider status, mutants are also (and most importantly) supposed to represent the oppressed in our society and the next cast should reflect that. So, I’d do a lot of race and sexual orientation switches. For example, Cyclops should be Native Alaskan. He’s closely tied to that region in the comics, Summers isn’t the real family name (it was chosen by an immigrant ancestor in the comics and here could be an example of his family trying to assimilate), and the pressure to be a “model minority” would mesh perfectly with Scott’s constant drive to be a straight-laced boy scout who thinks he’d be useless if he failed. I’d let the comics’ subtext about Storm being bi or pansexual be text here. I’d also stick closer to her having been a “goddess” as well as a thief; she should be the one mutant in history that ruled humans without fear or violence so she can be a voice of reason and experience on the team. Nightcrawler could be updated into a swashbuckling street performer who’s a little internet-famous (part of a growing mutant youth subculture) in addition to his religious struggles. He could also be a positive role model in how he embraces and celebrates his physical differences (like he did on X-men Evolution), no matter who calls him a demon. Kurt could be any race as long as he’s from Germany, though I kinda like the idea of one of the few white guys being blue the whole time. Rouge would definitely start out as a villain if I were writing it. She doesn’t necessarily need to be white and making her an African-American teen from Mississippi could grant her a whole new perspective on the mutants-as-minorities idea: her loss of memories and self could reflect the black American experience of not knowing where your ancestors came from or what their culture was. I also think her reaction to meeting a literal queen who’s also a black woman would be pretty great; Storm could be a role model for her once she starts to reform (and maybe punk Storm could come from interacting with Rogue’s more fun-loving persona). Those new aspects could potentially bolster the outsider feeling she’ll already have thanks to her powers acting like a disease that forbids her from making unencumbered contact with others, so she could be relatable on several fronts.

New Mutants Scott, Ororo, Kurt, and Rogue would be my core team throughout all the films, but there’d be room for others as well. Jean’s another favorite of mine and it’d be cool to see her without the Phoenix as a predetermined end-point in mind for a while. I’ve seen it pointed out on Twitter that one of her biggest assets is her empathy, so let her use that to promote human/mutant understanding and use her comic origin story to drive her towards not letting anyone die. Gambit would be a lot of fun (and, in keeping with making things more diverse, the movies could go through with an intended comic development that he’d be bi), but I would definitely not adapt his charm power: there’s just too much room for that to get rapey to even try including it (plus, he shouldn’t need a power to be charming). Being a roguish thief with a heart of gold would play well against both the X-men and the gruff Wolverine when he’s introduced. Jubilee is more than deserving of a larger, more active role after being a glorified cameo so many times; maybe she eventually becomes the PR face of the school? Iceman’s always been another favorite of mine and his deep-seated denial of his homosexuality would bring another realistic touch to the team. Polaris, X-23, Honey Badger, Eclipse, Quicksilver (who I guess is dead, though; it’s a shame we have to leave the superior cinematic one behind in the Fox-verse), Domino, Bishop, Beast, Firestar, Psylocke, Shadowcat, etc. …the list of great characters in this franchise goes on and on and they’d all be welcome; this is why there needs to be a show, not just films!

Logan, the Wolverine We should get to Wolverine at some point—he’s another one of my favorites and there’s no denying he’s the most popular mutant—and I’d play up the parallels between him and Scott rather than focus on the love triangle with Jean. But first, I want them to hold off on Logan and maybe not even introduce him until something like the third movie. Let the rest of the team breathe and become an ensemble before reintroducing a new Wolverine, who’ll instantly be saddled with comparisons to arguably the most iconic version of the character: Hugh Jackman’s. They’d spend most of their time justifying the new Logan and I worry that the rest of the characters would be sidelined again. Instead, let’s see all of them get the chance to be as fleshed-out and celebrated as Logan is, then add him in and watch as the franchise gets even bigger from there. Maybe a way around Logan stealing the X-spotlight is to do something unorthodox (yet with enough comic precedence to appease the fans) and introduce him in an Avengers movie first. Maybe the Avengers could take the place of Alpha Flight in the MCU (or maybe they’d do something totally unexpected and just make an Alpha Flight movie). Personally I’d like to see a Logan who was absolutely horrible in his past—an animal occasionally pointed in the right direction—who then had the mind-wipe truly make him a better person who’s out to atone for a life he doesn’t remember. I think that would be compelling and would make the mind-wipe matter. Edit: I thought it might work to make Logan a POC to reflect real-life atrocities and experimentation carried out against minorities, but “violent rage machine who becomes a hero after (probably white) scientists torture him and erase his identity” would be a terrible message since you could say it argues they improved him. If he were innocent before Weapon X it would be different (and possibly a comment on the damage white people have inflicted on just about everyone else); I guess it depends on what they want Logan's story to be and what effect Weapon X has on him (and there should be an effect, not that X-men Origins nonsense where he's essentially the same person on both sides of it). If he's an angry white guy who's improved by forgetting who he was/the society that made him that way, that could be an interesting comment on the white male rage we see so much of today too.

Dark Phoenix, Apocalypse (and other X-threats) I definitely don’t want to see Magneto right away (though he’s the best villain in fiction). On film, we need a break from him (though if they wanted to make him Xavier’s co-leader of the X-men for an extended period, I’d be interested). I genuinely liked Mystique’s character development into just that position in the prequel films, but when she returns in the MCU it should be as a villain first (and certainly as Kurt’s mom—or why not his dad, as originally planned?—and Rogue’s adoptive mother). Stryker, the Sentinels, and the Phoenix Saga should all be held off until far down the road as well.

I wish I could remember who on Twitter suggested it, but I love the idea of using conversion therapy as the basis for an X-men villain, so that’s how I’d open the series (let’s call these films The Uncanny X-men, for argument’s sake). Use Mesmero as one of two main villains, mind-controlling mutants into thinking that they don’t have powers to the point where they subconsciously shut down their access to them (like Iceman did to himself after House of M). Do this through Legion-esque twisty, mind-bending psychic sequences (so we can see each character’s inner fears and character traits), but mixed with real-world conversion therapy horrors. Once Mesmero’s phase is completed, the “cured” mutants are thrown into an elaborate deathtrap/maze to make sure they can’t access their powers anymore…this would be a Murderworld designed by an updated Arcade! That would provide the bombastic third act after the Mesmero stuff gives us some great character work. Xavier sends the team in to investigate this process (maybe it’s set on Genosha) and they meet Rogue there, who’s also undercover but for Mystique, out to kill everyone involved whereas the X-men want to expose the torture and shut it down peacefully to be a good example. You could start to argue whether the X-men being upstanding superheroes allows them to go far enough with a third party like Rogue/the Brotherhood.

My second movie would feature Mr. Sinister and his attempts to keep up with mutants by experimenting on himself to give himself powers. I’d make it a cultural appropriation metaphor, by having Sinister create agents for the government (the Freedom Force seems like an appropriate right-wing name and it looks like they might be needed to step in where the Avengers leave off after Endgame) who are heroes and celebrated by the public, whereas the X-men are still hated. The X-men would of course resent the popular “mutates” taking what made them special and being celebrated for it while they’re still hated. If the first movie is about the X-men fighting to prove they should be here, the second would be about mutants establishing their own culture (and the burgeoning mutant subculture would absolutely be a part of this). It’d also be about humans artificially clinging to relevance and fearing losing their status in society (extremely relevant to a huge problem with white society in America today), while larger sci-fi themes about moving toward the future of humanity via evolution are explored through Sinister. Sinister’s base would absolutely be in the Savage Land so we could see X-men vs. dinosaurs: in addition to just being fun and cool (and big business, if the Jurassic World movies are any indication), dinosaurs would metaphorically represent the human race. They’d be a constant reminder of the extinction and irrelevance Sinister is trying to outthink. Perhaps Sauron could be a minor villain in that setting. Since I wouldn’t want to do Phoenix yet, a Madelyne Prior story might be better for this new era (maybe she’s one of Sinister’s Freedom Force mutates). If they don’t want to do the Captain Marvel/Rogue animosity—and I’m not sure I want to see Carol lose her memories and herself again, though you could create a bond between the two of them over Carol being manipulated by the Kree and Rogue by Mystique (maybe that’s how they’d finally resolve their hatred?)—another of Sinister’s mutates being called Warbird and having flight/super-strength would be a fine substitute for Rogue to get her iconic powers and send her to the X-men for help.

As we get into Uncanny 3, I’d do Onslaught, but a more streamlined version that doesn’t involve the Heroes Reborn thing. I’d rather it be confined to the X-men, but since we’re in the MCU now it’d be a good opportunity for the teams to team up. My Onslaught wouldn’t be a Magneto/Xavier mind-meld, but a Xavier who finally lost hope in his dream and decided to force humans to accept mutants. I think Xavier screwing with the team, implanting false memories to manipulate them, sow discord, etc. would be a lot of fun…and a chance to have Rogue be the big damn hero because of her mental training to suss out her actual personality (in these films I’d dedicate time to the team actively helping her try to control her abilities and rediscover herself). A psychic threat would also be a nice bookend to the team’s first film and a response to “how impactful can the X-men be as true-blue heroes?,” while defeating Xavier would be a natural end to this chapter as the team goes on to new adventures under Scott and Ororo’s leadership.

Once we’ve explored new threats, I’m fully open to digging into Magneto, Apocalypse (hopefully maintaining his “I’m trying to save you all by forcing conflict to evolve you” delusion), Stryker, the Sentinels, Mystique, Shadow King, Juggernaut, Sabretooth, Omega Red (who hasn’t been used yet), etc. again. Whatever they do, I hope the MCU goes big and explores all facets of the X-universe, like Genosha, Asteroid M, the Morlocks, the Brood, Madripoor, Mojo, etc. The X-world is a rich one unto itself, so Disney should let it shine and really flesh out the MCU beyond the real-world boundaries they’ve lived in so far and are only just now starting to venture from (at least on Earth). When we do get to Phoenix again, I hope it’ll be a natural evolution and Jean’s quest to make the world better so no one has to die again, not a cosmic space bird trying on feelings or a secret evil split personality (as an early X3 idea pitched, my Jean would evolve into the comics’ cosmic force).

United I absolutely don’t want some sort of Avengers vs. X-men thing. Who wants the Avengers turned into the militant arm of a bigoted government or something? No matter how you slice it, the X-men represent minorities/PoC/the oppressed, so making the Avengers fight them just seems wrong and automatically tips them toward being agents of oppression. If you lean too far into “mutant powers really are dangerous” to justify the Avengers fighting them, the X-men lose their social relevance. At “best,” you’ll have the Avengers making an argument along the lines of “protests that cause property damage are just as bad as the racists/social inequality they’re protesting,” which is not a good look for anyone. Plus, I’m just sick of heroes fighting heroes.

I wouldn’t do House of M or X-men vs. Inhumans either: extinction events not perpetrated by bigots trying to pull off genocide undercut the metaphor of mutancy. The X-men represent oppressed minorities, not snow leopards.

Deadpool: The Last Stand While it would be absolutely crazy if Dark Phoenix ended with Jean re-creating the Fox-Earth into the MCU or something, I don’t think the Fox-verse will get that kind of send-off. Aside from Dark Phoenix, New Mutants (which looks very spooky-cool but who knows if it will be released in theaters or on Hulu), and The Gifted (which will almost certainly be cancelled, sadly) the big dangling thread of the Fox-verse is the still-popular Deadpool. Legion will be ending after Season 3 and I think it’s safe to say Gambit, Shadowcat, Multiple Man, etc. are dead at this point, and that’s probably for the best if Disney wants to create a unified vision and start fresh.

However, a Deadpool 3 (or X-Force) film should definitely still happen, and I have an idea to help the characters (and actors) we love from those movies make the jump to the MCU intact. I think DP3/X-Force should be an adventure on Mojoworld! Deadpool’s probably the only live-action property that would be willing to go all-in on Mojo, so they should be the one to take the dive (especially now that Shatterstar’s mentioned it exists). Everyone gets abducted and the writers can go extremely meta with it. They could structure it similarly to the first Mojo episode of the 90s X-men cartoon, but with jokes about Hollywood’s obsession with sequels, reboots, and the franchise wars (as well as society’s relationship with the media). They could also joke about fan fears about Disney making them PG-13 (though I think those fears are unfounded), via some Good Place-esque censorship. Mojo’s televised world could also allow for cameos galore from the Fox-films, including the much-desired Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds team-up. This isn’t how I’d prefer to see those actors together for the last time, but since it seems like the only option I’d take it. And at the end of this Mojoverse adventure? The Fox-verse is “cancelled,” leaving Wade and friends to be dumped into the MCU. You could cherry-pick the Fox timeline for favorites to save here: Wade, Domino, Negasonic, Colossus, Blind Al, Vanessa, Cable, Dopinder, both Yukios, and Laura/X-23 would all be welcome IMO (alternatively, I’ll take people like Zazie Beetz and Dafne Keen getting cast as Domino and Laura again in the MCU, just with new origins). If there’s a way to get The Gifted characters—especially Polaris and Eclipse—to the MCU too (if Blink’s season 2-ending portal doesn’t do it and make that group the MCU’s Exiles; seeing them come from a hardened anti-mutant world into an MCU where mutants are just starting to pop up in large numbers would be a really cool switch for them), I’m all for that as well. You could even give X-Force’s appearance in the MCU some narrative impact by forcing Xavier to accelerate his plan for the X-men to go public to counteract Deadpool’s team in the public eye, since Wade is not the guy you want at the center of the mutant rights effort.

Days of Future Past I realize most of this won’t happen (especially my ideas for the movies, but hey Disney, if you want some X-novels give me a call), but it’s a vision of the X-Franchise’s future I’d like to see. The big things are that mutants should just appear naturally, Disney should be open to casting and writing the characters more diversely than they’ve been in the comics (a consideration I’d extend to the franchise’s creators behind the scenes and soundtrack as well, though the main theme should absolutely be the 90s Animated Series theme!), and the MCU should take the time to dig into every aspect of the franchise rather than immediately hitting beats Fox has already covered. There are a lot of socially-relevant angles to tackle the X-men world with, and I want to see them all explored. The Disney/Fox deal is officially finalized on March 20, so we’ll soon see how the X-men will fit in.

Whatever happens, I’m excited to see Dark Phoenix and I can’t wait to see more X-adventures in the MCU!

What do you think? What do you want to see from the X-men in the MCU?

Check out more of my theories, reviews, and original short stories here!

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eddycurrents · 5 years

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For the week of 11 March 2019

Quick Bits:

Age of Conan: Bêlit #1 expands Marvel’s Conan franchise further with the beginning of this limited series featuring the early days of the notorious pirate Queen of the Black Coast. Tini Howard, Kate Niemczyk, Jason Keith, and Travis Lanham deliver a compelling story setting up the tragedy of Bêlit’s early life and her one-track mind for adventure on the high seas.

| Published by Marvel

Amazing Spider-Man #17, after two preludes (one branded, one not) and a simmering sub-plot of Taskmaster and Black Ant kidnapping the villains running for months, finally gives us part one of “Hunted” from Nick Spencer, Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba, Edgar Delgado, and Joe Caramagna. And it’s essentially more set-up. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great, building anticipation for the hunt to really start in earnest, but it’s a slow build.

| Published by Marvel

Animosity #19 starts trying to pick up the pieces after the fall of the Walled City. There’s some very interesting questions raised regarding survival and existence from Marguerite Bennett in this one, as both the animals and humans try to figure out a way to bridge the divide.

| Published by AfterShock

Asgardians of the Galaxy #7 concludes this arc with Sera and the Ravagers, as they team up to help refugees and Ego, the Living Planet. I still think it’s weird to see essentially the movie version of Yondu in present day 616 continuity, but Cullen Bunn keeps this fun. I suspect that Sera/Angela fans will still be disappointed, though.

| Published by Marvel

Assassin Nation #1 is the exciting debut of this action thriller, somewhat in the vein of Skybound’s other title Die!Die!Die! mixing elements of extreme violence, action, and a bit of humour, from Kyle Starks, Erica Henderson, and Deron Bennett. It’s a damn good set up, immersing us into a world of assassins jockeying for a number one spot, screwing one another over and turning on them for the highest bidder, with two interesting hooks of “Chekhov’s Gun” trying to figure out who’s trying to kill him and Bishop searching for who killed his husband. Phenomenal art from Henderson, with some very inventive death sequences.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Avengers: No Road Home #5 takes it up another notch as the Avengers continue to battle against Nyx and her children, this time narrated by Scarlet Witch. The fight on Nightmare’s front gets particularly interesting as we see how scary Hulk has really become, along with a humorous fight between Hawkeyes. Sean Izaakse and Marcio Menyz really turn in some incredible artwork here. And the final scene is pretty savage.

| Published by Marvel

The Batman Who Laughs: The Grim Knight #1 isn’t something I was going to pick up, but I saw some gushing about it from people I trust and decided on a last minute purchase. Like the rest of the Batman Who Laughs mini-series, this is dark, giving us a “Batman” who picked up the gun that was used to murder his parents, and, though technically proficient, isn’t really for me. What I do really appreciate, though, is the artwork from Eduardo Risso and Dave Stewart. It is gorgeous, with Risso continuing to explore some of the softer, painted style that he’s used in Moonshine and Hit-Girl. It really is worth the price of admission.

| Published by DC Comics

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #3 continues to be one of my favourite comics each month. Jordie Bellaire, Dan Mora, Raúl Angulo, and Ed Dukeshire are presenting a story here that so perfectly captures the spirit and fun of the television series, while also just being a great original tale. It’s fun to see the old faces in new situations, but it’s also an enjoyable story in its own right, introducing us to the characters and tossing them into the chaos.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

By Night #9 gives us Jane’s mom’s history with Charlesco and more or less the origin of the portal and the experiment. It’s particularly interesting as John Allison, Christine Larsen, Sarah Stern, and Jim Campbell tell the story in the visual style of an early ‘90s comic. There’s even a nice little nod to the Marvel Bullpen in there.

| Published by Boom Entertainment / BOOM! Box

Calamity Kate #1 introduces us to Kate, Vera, Jade and a world of monster hunting in this debut from Magdalene Visaggio, Corin Howell, Valentina Pinto, and Zakk Saam. Between this, The Girl in the Bay, and the forthcoming Dark Red, I’m loving the higher profile that Howell is carving for herself. She’s a great artist with excellent versatility.

| Published by Dark Horse

Catwoman #9 is a fill-in issue from Ram V, John Timms, and Josh Reed that’s one part revenge tale and one part heist, resulting overall in one hell of a good single issue. There’s a nice sense of rhythm and pacing to the story that fits with the theme of the heist, with some great artwork.

| Published by DC Comics

Cover #6 brings what has been one of the most unique, ambitious, and inventive uses of the comics medium I’ve seen in a long time to a close, with a bit of conversation and some gorgeous art from Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack, Zu Orzu, and Carlos M. Mangual. It get even more meta this issue, along with the usual multi-layered storytelling that delves into the comics world.

| Published by DC Comics / Jinxworld

Cyber Force #9 more or less completes the gathering of the team, presenting a bit of a quiet moment to collect themselves before setting up a confrontation with Cyberdata. There’s some interesting soul-searching between Dominique and Ripclaw on whether or not with the change they’re still them. And, as usual, the art from Atilio Rojo is pretty much worth the price of admission on its own.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

The Empty Man #5 has some gorgeous artwork by Jesús Hervás and Niko Guardia, especially among the repeating cycles of the opening and closing scenes.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

The Flash #66 brings back the single issue Rogue profile format for an origin story of the original Trickster, James Jesse, from Joshua Williamson, Scott Kolins, Luis Guerrero, and Steve Wands. Great art from Kolins and Guerrero.

| Published by DC Comics

The Freeze #4 concludes the first arc, with a very satisfying reveal of the serial killer and confirmation on a few other ongoing plot threads that nicely serve as a hook for future arcs. I’m really enjoying this one. Dan Wickline, Phillip Sevy, and Troy Peteri are telling a very compelling story here about essentially rebuilding society from a very different form of cataclysm, with some wonderful character-building and enough intrigue to keep you on your toes.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Grimm Tales of Terror #13 is one of the better recent issues, with Joe Brusha, Umberto Giampà, Fran Gamboa, JC Ruiz, and Fabio Amelia diving into the story of a true crime writer investigating a serial killer in Detroit utilizing the signatures of other famous serial killers. There are a few really nice twists throughout the tale.

| Published by Zenescope

Gunning for Hits #3 throws a few wrinkles into Martin’s plans for Stunted Growth and Brian Slade as Slade’s bodyguard, “Mr. Gladstone”, causes problems while trying to extort Martin. This continues to be a dense, but satisfying, read every month. It feels like Jeff Rougvie, Moritat, and Casey Silver are just packing in as much content as they possibly can.

| Published by Image

Hawkman #10 features a larger than life confrontation between Hawkman and Idamm. Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, and Jeremiah Skipper deliver nicely on that widescreen epic feel of the assault on London.

| Published by DC Comics

Hit-Girl Season 2 #2 gets up close and personal with the uglier side of Hollywood as Kevin Smith, Pernille Ørum, Sunny Gho, and Clem Robins continue their arc featuring the adaptation of Hit-Girl’s side of the story from Kick-Ass by the film industry. Things get a little complicated.

| Published by Image

House Amok #5 concludes what has been an excellent, mind-bending series exploring truth and delusion and the power of family, from Christopher Sebela, Shawn McManus, Lee Loughridge, and Neil Uyetake. This finale doesn’t give any easy answers and actually raises a few more questions, all with some gorgeous artwork from McManus and Loughridge.

| Published by IDW / Black Crown

James Bond: Origin #7 begins “Russian Ruse” with Ibrahim Moustafa and Roman Stevens taking over art duties, joining Jeff Parker and Simon Bowland in this tale of essentially piracy in the Barents Sea. Nice set up of the Russians’ duplicity here and an inept Commander not listening to Bond’s observations.

| Published by Dynamite

Justice League Dark #9 unleashes the Lords of Order against pretty much everyone, causing death and destruction as they try to “cleanse” reality of the chaos they think infests it. Between them and the Otherkind, things aren’t looking particularly cheery for existence. Incredible artwork from Alvaro Martínez Bueno, Miguel Mendonça, Raul Fernandez, and Brad Anderson.

| Published by DC Comics

Little Bird #1 is an experience. Darcy Van Poelgeest, Ian Bertram, Matt Hollingsworth, and Aditya Bidikar launch a dystopian future where a theocratic America seems to rule with an iron fist and a pocket resistance holds out in the Canadian Rockies. There’s a bit of a feel of Akira here, and Grendel: God and the Devil, maybe even a little Martha Washington, but still with its own unique elements and some seriously awesome art from Bertram and Hollingsworth.

| Published by Image

Livewire #4 concludes the first arc with a nice bit of soul-searching as Amanda comes to terms with what she did during Harbinger Wars 2. Between this, Age of X-Man: Prisoner X, and this week’s Shuri, Vita Ayala is definitely on fire right now. They’re doing some great character-driven work and it shines in this finale. Also, Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín can do no wrong. The layouts on this book are stunning.

| Published by Valiant

The Magnificent Ms. Marvel #1 is the beginning of a new era for Kamala Khan from Saladin Ahmed, Minkyu Jung, Juan Vlasco, Ian Herring, and Joe Caramagna. Using a kind of fable narration, setting up something new for the future while dealing with a continuation from Kamala’s current status in the presents, is a nice approach from Ahmed. It also marks a good jumping-on point for new readers as it recaps more or less what you need to know about Ms. Marvel’s history. Beautiful art from Jung, Vlasco, and Herring.

| Published by Marvel

Murder Falcon #6 is an epic, face-melting issue. Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer give us a bit of a tearjerker as Anne comes to terms with her situation with Jake and finally finds her voice. It’s really incredible. Also, giant monsters and metal.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Oblivion Song #13 jumps ahead three years for a new status quo, a few shuffled faces, and new situations for many of the cast of characters, providing an excellent jumping on point for new readers. There are some interesting bits about harnessing the flora and fauna of Oblivion for medical advances and the growing mystery about what the Faceless Men are doing. Gorgeous art as always from Lorenzo De Felici and Annalisa Leoni. De Felici really does some amazing reaction shots.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Old Man Quill #3 advances the Guardians’ story a bit further as they celebrate what little hope they’ve brought to the Wastelands, while hell in various forms circulates around them. It certainly pretty bleak, even in the good times.

| Published by Marvel

Outer Darkness #5 drops hell on the crew’s head as they crash on a relatively inhospitable ice planet with an ancient evil prowling and the crew at “Each Other’s Throats”. Also, naked cat girls. John Layman, Afu Chan, and Pat Brosseau are doing an incredible job with this mix of sci-fi and horror and the stakes seem to have been raised this issue.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Shuri #6 begins a two-part guest arc from Vita Ayala, Paul Davidson, Tríona Farrell, and Joe Sabino as Shuri travels to New York in search for the Lubber. Great art from Davidson and Farrell and Ayala has a wonderful feel for Miles and Shuri’s voices.

| Published by Marvel

Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #6 continues to suss out a new role for Gwen now that her identity is public and she’s returned to her own Earth. The character building that Seanan McGuire is doing here is pretty spectacular, especially given how strong the interpersonal relationships in the series were to begin with under Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez. Also, the art from Takeshi Miyazawa and Ian Herring is perfect.

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars: Age of Republic - General Grievous #1 is the last of these Age of Republic one-shots from Jody Houser, with Age of Rebellion coming next from Greg Pak and a rotating team of Chris Sprouse, Marc Laming, and others. This one focuses on Grievous and is a nice look into what he traded of himself in order to become the even worse monster that we see in the prequel trilogy and Clone Wars.

| Published by Marvel

The Stone King #4 concludes what has been a wonderful light fantasy adventure Comixology original series from Kel McDonald and Tyler Crook. There’s an interesting throughline in the story of responsibility for family versus responsibility for the greater society that comes to a head here, along with misunderstandings continuing to cause conflict. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but there is a set up for something more down the road that I’d love to see. Beautiful artwork from Crook.

| Published by Kel McDonald

Supergirl #28 concludes her jaunt with the Omega Men and the Supergirl clones, opening up more questions about The Circle and the destruction of Krypton. I’ve enjoyed the circuitous route Marc Andreyko has been taking us on to advance Supergirl’s mission, tossing bits of side adventure in growing out of her search, but it feels like we’re going to get down to brass tacks soon. Great art again this issue from Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, FCO Plascencia, and Chris Sotomayor. Pansica does some great horror and creature work and it shines through in the Kryptonian monstrosities.

| Published by DC Comics

Superman #9 tells of Jonathan’s ordeal trapped on Earth 3, tortured at the hands of Ultraman. Great art from Brandon Peterson and Alex Sinclair during the Earth 3 sequences. It’s also interesting to see that dream still haunting Superman.

| Published by DC Comics

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder in Hell #2 continues to be revelatory. Mateus Santolouco, Marcelo Costa, and Shawn Lee are doing some incredible work as Shredder continues to be plagued by nightmares, demons, and the undead as he tries to figure out his way through hell and his status as a vessel for the dragon god’s spirit. Over the years, Santolouco has grown exponentially as a storyteller and this is just a masterpiece.

| Published by IDW

Titans #35 continues the team’s nightmare excursion to Unearth, fighting a possessed enraged Beast Boy, Raven’s angry aggressive side, and Mother Blood as we head into the series conclusion next issue. This is a very entertaining story from Dan Abnett, Bruno Redondo, Christian Duce, Marcelo Maiolo, and Dave Sharpe, really putting the team behind the 8-ball wondering how they’re going to get out of this mess. If they get out this mess.

| Published by DC Comics

Tony Stark: Iron Man #9 continues the “Stark Realities” arc, nicely advances Controller’s assault on Stark Industries, the eScape users causing havoc, the mole within Stark, and the corruption causing Tony’s current simulation, from Dan Slott, Jim Zub, Valerio Schiti, Paolo Rivera, Edgar Delgado, and Joe Caramagna. Some really interesting possible revelations about Tony during this issue.

| Published by Marvel

Transformers #1 begins a new continuity, a new universe, a new era for the Transformers, from Brian Ruckley, Angel Hernandez, Cachét Whitman, Joana Lafuente, and Tom B. Long, as we start off some time in the past of Cybertron, before Autobots or Deceptions, as Bumblebee watches over a newly-forged Cybertronian as he makes his first decisions. We also get bits of an uprising of “Ascenticons”, though their ideals and motivations aren’t really explained, just showing a disagreement between longtime friends Megatron and Orion Pax (not Optimus Prime yet). It’s not bad, with some nice bits of humour, and there is an interesting mystery for a cliffhanger, but it is slow. The art is nice, but like the story there’s nothing flashy about this right now. I’ll certainly give it a few more issues, but there’s really nothing “bold” about this new era. Don’t expect something radical out of the first issue, this one plays it pretty safe.

| Published by IDW

Winter Soldier #4 delves into RJ’s father, Richie, attempting to get back into his life. It’s heartfelt and bittersweet, with Kyle Higgins, Rod Reis, and Clayton Cowles delivering a gripping tale with one hell of a set up for the final issue. Reis’ art remains absolutely incredible.

| Published by Marvel

Wonder Twins #2 is more fun from Mark Russell, Stephen Byrne, and Dave Sharpe. There’s some nice commentary on the state of corporate run prisons in the United States in amongst a humorous send-up of z-list villains in the Legion of Doom’s farm team, the League of Annoyance. Great art from Byrne.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Other Highlights: Accell #19, Auntie Agatha’s Wayward Home for Rabbits #5, Blackbird #6, Dark Ark #15, GI Joe: A Real American Hero - Silent Option #4, Go Go Power Rangers #18, The Goon #1, Head Lopper #11, House of Whispers #7, LaGuardia #4, The Life and Death of Toyo Harada #1, The Long Con #7, Marvel Action: Spider-Man #2, Marvels Annotated #2, The Maxx 100 Page Giant, Prodigy #4, The Punisher #9, Radio Delley, Rick & Morty Presents Jerry #1, Riverdale: Season 3 #1, Runaways #19, Spider-Man/Deadpool #47, Star Trek: Discovery - Captain Saru, Star Wars: Han Solo - Imperial Cadet #5, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #42, Wonder Woman #66

Recommended Collections: Astonisher - Volume 3: Black Hat, Batman vs. Deathstroke, By Night - Volume 1, Defenders: The Best Defense, Infinite Dark - Volume 1, Mata Hari, Moonstruck - Volume 2, Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowman - Volume 3: Rag & Bone, She Could Fly, Sleepless - Volume 2, Star Wars Adventures - Volume 5: Mechanical Mayhem, Strangers in Paradise XXV - Volume 2: Hide and Seek, Trout - Volume 1: Bits & Bobs, Vampironica - Volume 1, The War of the Realms Prelude

d. emerson eddy knows a muffin man.

#This Week in Comics

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marvelousbirthdays · 6 years

Text

Happy Birthday, paceees!

July 29 - something angst-fluffy with Rogue x Bucky, in which she still has no control over her power, for @paceees

Written by @kathryn-claire-oconnor

The two of them were a grand pair, Bucky thought ironically to himself, sitting on the railing of a balcony at Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Letting his legs dangle in the air, he watched a group of kids playing an enthusiastic game of kickball in the yard below. More accurately, he watched a couple young girls try and wrangle one of their teachers into playing with them, though the teacher – clearly content sitting beneath a tree with her lesson plan – was having none of it.

Anna Marie D'Ancanto. Rogue. She was known by many names, and Bucky had heard quite a bit about her – both good and bad – since coming here, but he’d never once spoken to her. Outside of the art class that she oversaw, he’d never really heard her speak at all unless it was to Logan or the professor.

Maybe he would try and change that one day, he thought to himself. Right now, it looked like the pretty teacher just needed a little rescuing from students who weren’t taking “no” for an answer. He jumped down from the second-story balcony, landing softly on his feet and walking towards Anna Marie and the students.

“—Really need one more person for our team!” one of the girls was pleading as he stopped behind them.

“I’ll play with you,” he offered, purposely keeping his voice quiet.

He was an adult, and here only because the professor’s mutation could help him; he understood he didn’t really fit in anywhere here, and that the kids viewed him as – at best – mildly intimidating. Or weird. Or flat-out frightening. Most of them thought he was a mixture of all three; none of them bothered to interact with him normally. Kickball he remembered well, though, and that much he thought he could manage, if the kids were willing to let him.

These two girls seemed to have none of the usual misgivings – about him, or Anna Marie, who everyone knew had night terrors to this day… and sometimes that still counted as the easier nights for her and the professor to handle. After blinking in surprise at him, the girls happily dragged him into the game with their classmates, leaving Anna Marie to smile gratefully at him, mouthing “thank you” when he glanced over his shoulder at her. He nodded with a smile and loped off to play ball.

A little while later, he looked over to see that Anna Marie had actually abandoned her work and was watching the game even if she wasn’t willing to participate. He didn’t blame her for her reserve. Unlike most adults here, she was not just a teacher, she was more of a student of the professor’s who “made up for it,” in Scott’s words, by teaching as well. She was notoriously locked in an on-going struggle to control her powers, but Bucky still wished she could learn to trust herself more somehow.

He understood her type of silence too well, and he hated it for her.

Most of the kids tired of playing long before his serum-enhanced body did, and once they wandered off, he decided maybe now was the time to try and get Anna Marie to talk to him. Turning around once he was sure all of the other ballplayers were inside, he saw for himself what he had believed his enhanced hearing was trying to trick him into believing. The woman of his very secret, clearly ridiculous and unfounded affections was heading towards him without any prompting from him.

“Thank you,” she said, the very drawl in her voice putting an automatic smile on Bucky’s face. “For playing with the children. With sports, I’m always afraid – one little slip up, you know…” She faltered. “Well. I guess you don’t know, actual--”

He noticed her hands tighten momentarily around the planner she held, and sensing her sudden discomfort clear as day, he broke in a little uncertainly, “Being afraid of what you’re capable of? Simultaneously feeling like those abilities are out of your control? I do understand, actually – courtesy of HYDRA, according to everyone else… but I was still the one doing those things.”

Anna Marie offered him a slight smile and a different perspective, pointing out, “And now you’re the one rescuing teachers and playing ball with children, so what does that say about what you’re capable of?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should get together again later and talk about it some more?”

That was an awful attempt at the question that he was really asking, and it wasn’t exactly the sort of conversation that was likely to draw her to him in the first place, but, hey, he needed to give himself a break. After all, he hadn’t asked a girl out in over seventy years.

She blinked at him in surprise before her smile morphed and he saw her swallow a laugh, eyes sparkling. “Sure, honey, I think I’d like that.”

He beamed. “Great!”

“How about five tomorrow night? Meet me in the side kitchen, and maybe we could talk over supper?”

“That sounds perfect,” he agreed.

She nodded, giving him one more grin before making her way inside.

So, that hadn’t exactly been the suave start that he had hoped for in beginning to talk to Anna Marie, but it was something, and, if he was honest, he was okay with it. Now he just had to see where it went tonight.

#RogueSoldier

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fyrapartnersearch · 6 years

Text

Hi there! My name is Noam. I’m 22, use they/them pronouns, and I’m looking for a partner for an RP in the Star Wars, Animorphs, Naruto, or Marvel fandoms.

A little bit more about me: I’m a big science fiction fan, and I love world-building, banter, and platonic relationships between characters (though I’m certainly not anti-shipping by any means). I have a fairly time-consuming job, so my free time is limited, but I will be able to reply at least twice a week if we’re doing longer posts, or every other day for shorter ones. My post lengths can vary—sometimes it’s appropriate to write only a few sentences, sometimes multiple paragraphs. I RP via e-mail at [email protected]

I’ll happily write relationships between characters of any and all genders, but in general, romance isn’t my biggest priority while writing. I’m not opposed to smut, but I’m also not sure how good I am at writing it! If it happens, it happens, but I don’t want it to be the main focus of the story, and I’m totally fine with having a fade-to-black or just no sex at all. I will not write smut with anyone under 18, nor will I write smut that involves an underage character.

I’m trans & gay myself, so if you want to have an LGBT OC, or an LGBT interpretation of a canon character, I’m totally down for that. (Or more colloquially: everyone in Star Wars is trans, fucking fight me)

If you’re interested, you can e-mail me at [email protected]!

The Fun Stuff (i.e., what I actually write):

Note that I have plot ideas for all these fandoms, and we can also come up with something together!

I’m very OC-friendly, please introduce me to your characters! I also enjoy doubling, mostly because I like group dynamics rather than for shipping reasons, but it’s definitely not required. I’ll ship pretty much anything, with a few exceptions that I’ll note as they come up. I seriously love any kind of AU—modern, high fantasy, Victorian, role-swap AUs, lay it on me.

***Star Wars: I’ve always been a Star Wars fan, and with the new movies coming out, I’ve gotten back into the fandom in a major way. I’m mostly looking for something set during the original trilogy/Rogue One or the sequel trilogy years, because those are what I have plot ideas for. If you’ve got an interesting idea for the prequel years, though, I’m game!

Playing: Finn, Poe Dameron, Rey, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Bodhi Rook, Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, Chirrut Imwe, Rose Tico, OCs.

Plots:

-Two Stormtroopers plot to escape from the First Order together. One of them wants to join the Resistance, while the other wants to escape and start an ordinary life somewhere far away from the war, but they can’t bear to be separated.

-[Vague TLJ spoilers] In the wake of the events of The Last Jedi, Rey and Finn are sent out to recruit allies for the Resistance—after all, a budding Jedi and an escaped Stormtrooper make for one hell of an advertisement. As their legend spreads, they’re contacted by someone who believes that they may know the truth about one (or both) of their families.

-[Rogue One AU] The mission to Eadu never happens, and Galen Erso lives to see his weapon destroy Scarif. The crew of the Rogue One survive, but only because they’re captured by the Empire before the whole planet explodes. Bodhi Rook is immediately imprisoned in the Death Star’s brig, pending interrogation and what will undoubtedly be a very public execution. Jyn Erso is imprisoned on the Death Star as well, because the Empire believes that she may be used as leverage against her father. And Cassian Andor, unconscious and dressed in an Imperial Officer’s uniform, is assumed to be a loyal agent of the Empire and taken to the medical wing. The three friends must find each other and escape, before the secret of Cassian’s identity is uncovered or Bodhi breaks under torture—and before the Rebels destroy the Death Star, with them still on it.

(Note: we can absolutely change who and how many people survive, this is just the first idea I had.)

-A member of the Resistance is contacted by a First Order officer looking to defect. The First Order officer is their sibling, who they haven’t seen since their own defection years ago. Their comrades had no idea that they were descended from a family of extremely wealthy and high-ranking First Order and Imperial officers, and their sibling had no idea that they were still alive.

**Animorphs: On the off-chance that anyone in this tiny fandom is active on this site, I’d love to do an Animorphs RP!

Playing: Any of the six Animorphs, Tom Berenson, Aftran 942, Eva, OCs

Plots:

-Instead of becoming trapped as a nothlit, Aftran gains the morphing power instead, becoming the seventh Animorph. It goes better than David, but that’s still not saying much.

-The Animorphs are contacted by the Yeerk Peace Movement, who want to work with the “Andalite bandits” to bring down the Empire once and for all. With the intelligence that the YPM have gathered, and their access to Yeerk bases and ships, the war for Earth could be over inside of a month. However, the YPM know of the Animorphs’ brutal reputation, and demand a show of trust to ensure that they’re not all slaughtered. If the Animorphs want to work alongside the Yeerks, one of them will have to become a Controller…

-Instead of the canon Animorphs, our OCs find the morphing cube and a dying Elfangor instead! Listen, I never said that I was above wildly self-indulgent plots, that’s like the entire point of RPs.

*Marvel: I’m not as interested in Marvel these days, so this would have to be a really good plot. Mostly interested in X-Men (movies or comics). Mutant worldbuilding outside of the X-Men is always welcome.

Playing: Clint Barton, Sam Wilson, Matt Murdock, Scott Summers, Ororo Munroe, Bobby Drake, Kitty Pryde, Logan, Laura Kinney, Kurt Wagner, Erik Lehnsherr, OCs

Plots: -[spoilers for Logan movie] Logan survives the border crossing, and makes it to the Canadian safe house with the kids, only to discover that it’s run by his old student, Kitty Pryde. The two friends reunite and settle in to a quiet life protecting the last mutant children—only to be immediately caught up in a mystery when one of them goes missing, along with a human child from a nearby town. The mutants are blamed for the missing child, and Kitty and Logan set out to find the kids before mob mentality can threaten their tiny community.

-Somebody in New York City is killing mutants, and the NYPD’s only mutant homicide detectives are on the case.

*Naruto: Pretty much only looking for OCs, as I’m not that confident with any of the canon characters’ personalities. However, I still have a soft spot for the Naruto universe, so I’d love to do a roleplay set there!

-A genin team are saddled with an incredibly boring D-rank mission—delivering medicinal herbs to a small monastery in the mountains. Trouble arises when they discover that the monks are harboring a wounded enemy shinobi—and, being devout pacifists, they’re unwilling to surrender him.

-Shinobi A is wounded in battle, presumed dead by their comrades, and left behind in a harsh environment (snowstorm, desert, whatever). As they struggle to find shelter, they come across Shinobi B, who has also been wounded and abandoned—and is from an enemy country. The two quickly realize that the only way for them to survive their injuries and their environments is to work together, at least temporarily.

#multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #marvel rp #mcu rp #submission #star wars rp #animorphs rp #Naruto rp

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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

Note

Fic Prompt: Coldwave, Zombies.

Fic: Staying Alive - AO3 linkFandom: Flash, LOT, ArrowPairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Cisco Ramon/Lisa Snart, unproven allegations of Mick Rory/Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: “– as always, this is Ami Dillon, your resident media studies graduate student and totally under-qualified radio host, and your source for the latest updates on the state of Central City during the present Zombie Crisis, courtesy of the Mayor’s office. In addition to life-saving tips and general safety alerts, we also bring you the excellent morale-boosting soundtrack of the greatest hits of the Apocalypse, by which we mean whatever tracks the local radio stations had sitting around and the cover songs played by our dearly beloved cover band, the Post-Apocs. As always, we begin with our theme song: Stayin’ Alive, by the Bee Gees!”

(the great coldwave romance of the zombie apocalypse)

A/N: Have you ever had an idea, gone “heh, that would be funny, I’ve always wanted to try writing one of those” and then it eats your brain? This is it.

…honestly, with the zombie apocalypse theme, I really should have predicted it.

———————————————————————————-

———The End———

“– as always, this is Ami Dillon, your resident media studies graduate student and totally under-qualified radio host, and your source for the latest updates on the state of Central City during the present Zombie Crisis, courtesy of the Mayor’s office. In addition to life-saving tips and general safety alerts, we also bring you the excellent morale-boosting soundtrack of the greatest hits of the Apocalypse, by which we mean whatever tracks the local radio stations had sitting around and the cover songs played by our dearly beloved cover band, the Post-Apocs. As always, we begin with our theme song: Stayin’ Alive, by the Bee Gees!”

———The Beginning———

Consciousness comes swiftly, as it always does, but Len yawns and stretches lazily anyway. He doesn’t have anything serious planned for today: Lisa’s off doing some ‘team bonding’ thing with the new Rogues he’s recruited, by which she means she took them to that Caribbean island resort beach house that Len won in a high stakes poker game against a Family don once to kick back, drink margaritas, and demonstrate to them the value of staying in rather than out. Len’s the vinegar, Lisa’s the honey; they work well together that way.

Naturally, Len is going nowhere near that stupid island when it’s this hot; he would have agreed to go if Mick was going, because Mick would have kept people (Lisa) from badgering him about leaving the air-conditioned house to go swimming or something stupid like that, but Mick had been lured away by a fireworks convention (why are there fireworks conventions? Why? Is it specifically designed to lure in pyrophiliac arsonists? Except no, Len checked it out, it’s apparently legit and just run by fireworks companies, pyrotechnics experts, and people who like things that go boom) all the way over on the East Coast, so Len’s all by himself.

He finds he likes that state so much more when it’s voluntary.

Still, biology can’t be denied: he’s definitely awake now.

Yawning again, he pads over to the kitchenette they’ve set up in the warehouse to make himself a cup of coffee, flicking on the TV as he does.

“Scenes of chaos break out internationally as what can only be described as zombies terrorize cities and towns around the globe,” the reporter says as violence plays out behind her. “No one knows where this plague came from, but the simultaneous outbreak in multiple locations has been definitively determined to be an act of bio-terrorism. Governments around the globe have deployed the military and information is limited. Interstate and international communications are being shut down as we speak. We don’t know how much long we will be able to continue reporting –”

The TV crackled, static-y, and abruptly cut out.

“Well,” Len says, reaching out to flick the coffee maker back off before it’s finished making the coffee. “Shit.”

———The End———

“Mayor Snart! Mayor Snart!”

“I am not the goddamn mayor,” Len says, as evenly as he can, though he suspects sourly that he’s going to lose that fight - in fact, that he may have lost it several weeks ago and no one seems inclined to confirm to him that the fight is lost.

The grins of the media pool seem to confirm as much.

“I’ll give you five minutes to ask questions,” he concedes. “Starting now. Go.”

“Mayor Snart – Scott Evans, Central City Picture News. Now that you’ve opened Central City’s doors to the international community once more -”

“After they go through our quarantine procedures, yes,” Len interjects.

“-the world wants to know how you managed to make Central City the most functional city in North America following the Crisis.”

“You do realize I said I was only giving you five minutes, right?” Len says with some disbelief. “Four minutes, thirty eight seconds, now.”

The reporter seems to realize his error and quickly rushes to the next point on his list. “Mayor Snart, when did you first learn about the crisis?”

“When I saw the news on my TV, just like most of the rest of the world,” Len says. “Next question?”

“Mayor Snart – Ronnie Troupe, Daily Planet,” a black woman says. “What reason did you have for going straight to Central City University in your quest to defend the city? What qualities were you thinking about?”

“The intercom system, mostly,” Len says, then takes half a step back at the sheer noise the media pool is generating at him. He holds up his hands for silence, which he even gets after a few minutes. “Everybody’s got a zombie plan, right? This one was mine. I always figured that the university – any university – has the most important assets you need when dealing with a zombie invasion, and I turned out to be right.”

“What assets are those?” the woman asks. “The library, for information?”

“The cafeteria, with food supplies?” another reporter asks eagerly.

“A well-stocked medical facility?” another one added in.

“All of those are important,” Len says. “But no, I was thinking about its greatest asset: an intercom system, and lots and lots of mostly able-bodied young adults between eighteen and twenty six who are conditioned by over twelve years of school to listen to anything that comes out of that intercom.”

He has to step back again as the media roars, each one yelling follow-up questions and drowning themselves out in the sheer noise. Then, when they realize he can’t hear them, they each start shouting his name – “Mayor Snart! Mayor Snart!” – in an effort to get his attention.

This is ridiculous.

“Lise,” he says to his sister and self-appointed chief of staff, who is perched idly in the chair next to his podium, filing her nails in a purposefully bored manner. “I’m basically the dictator of Central City right now, right? Why haven’t I banned the paps already?”

“Because you always said the only reason you can’t steal speech is ‘cause it’s free,” Lisa replies, not missing a beat. “Sorry, big brother. Suck it up.”

Len looked at his other side, where his personal admin – why does he have a personal admin again? He doesn’t remember agreeing to that – shrugs. “Sorry, boss. She has a point. You should answer some more questions.”

“Yeah, that ain’t happening,” Len says, his internal clock hitting a blissful zero in its countdown. “Sorry folks, your time is up. I’ll be answering questions again on Friday –”

He eyes a smug-looking Lisa.

“– and in the meantime, I’m sure my chief of staff will be happy to answer some questions for you.”

He dashes off the stage, Lisa’s yowl of “Lenny, you bastard!” following him like music in his ears as the reporters turn on her like piranhas in a feeding frenzy.

She’ll make him regret it later, he’s sure.

But for now: freedom!

———The Beginning———

Len makes his way through the entrance of the university, which is filled by anxious-looking undergrads and older students, all gathered in groups and chattering amongst themselves or gathered around the televisions.

Some of them, in what Len can only describe to be the true tenacity of the American K-12 system, are still doing their homework.

Sometimes Len is so happy he’s a dropout.

“Hey, you,” he ask a black kid who’s hovering around watching the crowds with increasing trepidation. “Where’s the AV department?”

“Uh, third floor, I think,” the guy says. “Wait, who are you?”

“I’m the guy that’s going to keep most of the people here from dying,” Len says, and taps the gun strapped to his leg. “By force, if necessary.”

The kid blinks and stares at the gun. “Hold up. Are you Captain Cold?”

“Right now, I’m the man in need of the AV department because I don’t fancy dying,” Len informs him. “You hear that noise in the halls? That’s the student body hurtling towards panic. Panic leads to questionable decision making and stampedes, which in turn lead to –”

“Lots of dead people, no zombies required,” the kid finishes, looking grim. “Okay, on the off-chance that you’re not as bad as everyone says you are, follow me; I’ll show you where it is.”

“You’re very trusting,” Len observes, following him as he barrels down the hallway at double-time pace. "Especially given that I am a supervillain.”

“Not so much you I’m trusting,” the kid says. “Barry says good things about you.”

Len’s eyebrows shoot up. Well, if that’s not a spot of good luck, he doesn’t know what is. He has no idea who the kid is, but if he’s part of the Flash gang, that’s good news for him. “Barry – Allen?”

“That’s the one.”

“And where is Barry Allen, by chance? I’d been wondering that. Zombie crisis everywhere - I thought I’d see lightening every step I take.”

The kid makes a face. “He’s in Starling City. And possibly another universe. He and – uh, a bunch of the others – went to go stop the zombie plague.”

“I’m in awe at his success,” Len says, voice dripping with sarcasm, and then he sees the door he’s looking for and walks in. The intercom set up is immediately apparent and he heads towards that, sitting down and pulling it out.

“What are you going to do?” the kid asks.

“What’s your name?” Len asks instead.

“Wally West.”

“Great, Wally, you can help me with the vernacular.” Len turns the intercom on and summons up all his vague memories of high school and television shows thereof. He puts on his best homeroom announcer voice. “Students and faculty of Central City University, pay attention. This is an urgent announcement regarding the ongoing crisis. In order to deal with this in an orderly manner, I need all of you to head over to one of the big classrooms –”

He pulls away from the mic and looks at Wally.

“You mean the lecture halls?”

“- to one of lecture halls. Once those have been filled up, any remaining individuals should fill up the classrooms near to them. Please fill up all available seats. Once there, circulate a –”

He pulls away again and asks Wally, “What do you call it when they all sign their names?”

“Attendance sheet.”

“Circulate an attendance sheet. We’re going to want to know where everyone is. The next step is going to be splitting you up into groups of five people, so please start organizing yourselves into those groups. Faculty, send a representative of each department, but specifically the history, engineering, chemistry and physics departments, to lecture hall 101 –” Len had noticed that that was the largest one. “– and AV techs, please set up a system by which the broadcast from that room can be sent to all the other rooms or hooked up into the intercom system. Additional instructions as to how we’re going to be dealing with this crisis will be forthcoming in thirty minutes, so be in position by then.”

Len flicks the microphone off. “Think that worked?”

“I mean, yeah, everyone’s gonna do it,” Wally replies, eyes narrowed a bit. “But what’s the actual plan?”

“It’s a university,” Len says. “Gotta keep up with the proud college traditions of 1968.”

“1968?”

“Do you even get taught history here?” Len complains. “I’m talking about barricades.”

Wally’s eyes go wide. “Barricades?”

“Well, yeah,” Len says. “How else are we going to establish a clear zone to use as a base to re-take the rest of the city?”

“Re-take the city?”

Len holds up a finger. “Barricades,” a second one, “clear zone,” a third, “quarantine procedures,” a fourth. “Siege warfare and expansion to fight the zombies. You can’t fight if you don’t have somewhere to fall back to. We’ve got a couple of thousand students waiting for directions right now. You gonna help?”

“Yes, sir!” Wally says enthusiastically.

Len makes a face. “No ‘sir’,” he corrects him. “If you gotta call me anything, just make it ‘boss’.”

———The End———

– in view of the mental and physical deterioration suffered by the individuals afflicted by TX-90 (colloquially known as “zombies”) [see supra, chap. 2], city warfare quickly reverted to the forms most familiarly used in the European social conflicts of the 19th century, most famously in Paris, France during the revolutions of 1789, 1832 (popularized, of course, by the famous novel ‘Les Misersables’ by Victor Hugo), 1848, and 1871.

Early military blockades, composed in the more ‘modern’ style primarily of individuals and high powered weaponry, proved ineffective against the onslaught, particularly in view of the general reluctance of soldiers to aim against such human-appearing enemies, many of whom were still dressed in casual civilian garb. Additionally, the infection of a single soldier on the line caused a severe and immediate drop in morale, leading to regular retreats and ineffective blockades.

In contrast, the revival of the use of physical barricades, accompanied by siege warfare tactics, in the retaking of Central City [see infra, chap. 6] was extraordinarily successful. As the traditional ‘paving stone’ barricade structure was rendered unavailable due to the introduction of asphalt roads, the citizens of Central City – led by Leonard ‘Captain Cold’ Snart [this work, which focuses on the strategic and tactical elements of the crisis, will not go into detail regarding the well-known actions of Mr. Snart; for a full biography, see Roberts et. al, Cold: A Study in Unorthodox Leadership and Lahiri, Divak & Strumm, Supervillains To Superheroes: The Rogues During the Crisis] – resorted instead to a more nuanced form.

The barricades of Central City, which served as the model for the other cities in the United States and, eventually, the world, are created by using elements of the existing infrastructure. Three teams would be sent out on any given ‘building’ expedition: the ‘scouts’, the ‘builders’, and the ‘reserves’. The scouts – a position reserved for individuals of bravery and recognized talents in armed combat, often including criminals of Mr. Snart’s acquaintance which he deemed trustworthy and supplemented by his student army, many of which were obliged to pick up firearms instruction as part of the ‘Crisis Curriculum’ [see infra, chap. 5, subsection 3 ‘Educational Initiatives’] – would be posted at the furthest extent from the epicenter (originally: Central City University) in order to spot any approaching zombie. While the scouts maintained the perimeter, the ‘builders’ would overturn local cars onto their sides and position them in a semi-circular fashion between the buildings on each side of the street. Quick-acting cement, formed in large quantities in the labs of Central City University [see infra, chap. 6, subsection 5; see also Trumbull & Hall, Chemical Manufacturing in the Midwest: The Zombie Revival], would then be poured into the gaps between the cars, creating an immediate ‘wall’ that would serve as a barrier between the oncoming zombies and the defending individuals. The ‘reserves’ were there to supplement the ‘scouts’, should any roving bands of zombies take notice. A certain number of ‘gates’ were introduced in each barricade wall, initially made of doorframes stolen from nearby buildings and later reinforced with additional layers of concrete and steel once the local automobile factories had been reclaimed and their manufacturing capabilities turned to support the barricades.

These barricades were simple, cheap, and brutally effective against the ‘mindless’ zombie attackers, who would simply charge the barricades repeatedly, enabling the defenders to utilize siege warfare tactics, including, but not limited to, burning oil, spikes, ditches, and even simply luring zombies in before destroying a whole set with a grenade while the defenders hid behind their wall. Due to the cheapness of this approach, utilizing existing cars already out on the street, it was possible to continue to expand with relative ease without disrupting the earlier built segments. As each barricaded area was secured, yet another set of teams was sent out to create another barricade further out. It is this simple yet visually arresting barricade system that created the famous ‘concentric circles’ of Central City, leading to the famous images captured by airborne photographers –

excerpt from Military Tactics During the Crisis, pub. 2018, © Columbia University Press

———The Beginning———

“They’re coming!” a panicked cry went up.

Len races down to the gates of the university, which have been barred and sealed by his order. The first barricade line is still being built; he’s pleased to see that his squads are returning back to the relative safety of the university as ordered instead of trying to fight the zombies.

Perhaps a little more “retreat” and a little less “fleeing in terror” would be better, but hey, they’ll work on that.

“Does anyone have a baseball bat?” he calls out.

It’s just weird enough that everyone stops panicking long enough to turn to look at him in disbelief.

“Chair or table legs work too,” he adds, then goes over and hops the fence. “Though I wouldn’t mind having a few guns at my back as well. And can someone call the chemistry department? That work I’m having them do in their spare time regarding explosives will come in rather helpful soon, I’m sure.”

Then Len turns to face the zombies. “Heeere, zombie!” he calls, mimicking every person he’s ever heard talk to a dog. “Heeere, zombie!”

“Is he nuts?” he hears someone ask.

Possibly multiple someones.

But it works – the zombies lurch after him instead of aiming for the university walls filled with tasty, tasty undergraduates, because the zombies clearly have lost whatever portion of their brain involves prioritization and/or efficiency.

They’re quicker than the slow-walkers he might have hoped for in an ideal universe, but he’s even faster, jogging a quick circle around them until they’ve gotten themselves all into one big, giant ravening mob.

One big, giant target.

Len grins.

He hoists up his cold gun and fires lengthwise at full power, freezing the whole lot of them as he slowly moves the gun from left to right over the crowd. As he fires, he moves steadily sideways, echoing his first round around the zombies, careful to ensure he gets every single one of them.

This involves having to climb up on a dumpster to get the last few that got stuck in the middle, but that’s fine.

When he finishes, with nearly forty zombies all frozen, he turns to look at his audience of gaping students. “Baseball bats, chair legs, table legs,” he calls to them. “Any blunt object will do. I want this ice cubes smashed before they even think about starting to melt, you hear me?”

The roar of agreement he gets is most satisfactory.

———The End———

“Welcome back,” the TV show host says with a grin. “Our guest tonight is here to talk about her newest book – the Age of Heroes. Ms. West here is a long-time citizen of Central City –”

There’s a long pause for applause.

“– and one of the first chroniclers of the activities of the Flash, whom many people are calling the country’s first super-powered superhero.”

“Well, it’s something of a race between us and Metropolis,” Iris West says with a laugh. “Thanks for having me. Ironically enough, though, my book isn’t about the superpowers people – especially people in Central City – got, or what they chose to do with in. Instead, my book is something of an exploration of how the whole superhero phenomenon got started: people realizing that they was something to fix in this world, and then going to fix it.”

“A lot of people have been quibbling with your decision to set the start of the Age of Heroes, as you call it, back with the emergence of the Green Arrow, Star City’s controversial vigilante figure. What do you have to say to that?”

“It’s very hard to say exactly when something began,” Iris replies. “Certainly, academically, you could go with any number of options. That being said, I do think that the Green Arrow counts as a superhero – he dedicated his life to stopping evil in his city, even if the way he started out was…more violent than what we’ve come to expect from our heroes.”

“Though, speaking of violent heroes, what do you have to say about the current leadership of Central City?”

“Oh, Mayor Snart?” she says, grinning. “He’s – definitely a special case.”

The host leans forward, eyes avid. “In fact, it appears that your foster-brother, Barry Allen, has attended several events as Mayor Snart’s plus-one instead of his husband. Given the – would it be wrong to say legendary? – nature of that particular relationship, that’s got a lot of people talking. Do you have anything to say about that?”

“Yeah, I do,” Iris says, looking amused. “Weren’t we here to talk about my book?”

———The Beginning———

Len isn’t going to throw the phone across the wall. He is not.

For one thing, he’s a mature adult. Way too old to be throwing temper tantrums, even if there are no impressionable kids around to terrify. It’s childish and irresponsible and stupid.

For another thing, he didn’t work this hard on a reputation for being cool to lose it at the first provocation. He’s Captain Cold, for fuck’s sake. He is not going to go off at nothing.

A lot of nothing.

Several weeks of nothing.

“Don’t throw it, boss,” Wally says, walking in with an armful of paper. “Cell phones are hard to replace.”

Len gives the kid a dirty look. “There’s a knock off cell phone store inside the clean zone now, I happen to know. Anyway, did I ask for your input?”

“Yeah, you did,” Wally says. “When you appointed me your personal aide.”

“Why did I do that?” Len wonders grumpily, but he already knows the answer to that.

“Because you hate paperwork with the fury of a million suns,” Wally says, smirking. “Or would you prefer to say something more like the frozen heart of a dead star being sucked into a black hole of vast emptiness?”

“You were an English student, weren’t you?”

“Engineering, actually. Cars.”

“You missed your calling.”

Wally cracks a grin. “My sister’s a journalist. Iris West.”

“I’ve read her stuff,” Len acknowledges with a nod. “Good writer. Probably gonna murder Barry for dragging her out on adventure when she could be winning a Pulitzer.”

“She insisted on going,” Wally says. “She’ll be okay; I’m sure of it. Barry would fix the timeline if her nail broke.”

Len barks a laugh. “Speaking of the Flash gang,” he says, gesturing for Wally to come closer, “do you have the plan for retaking STAR Labs?”

“No, that’s Axel’s bailiwick,” Wally says. “He’s got this genius for guerilla tactics that you really have to admire; he’s on his way. He’s not that bad, you know?”

“Getting him away from Jesse’s influence helps,” Len allows. “He’s still a punk. You get Rosa’s little sis?”

“Ami? Yeah, she’s still handling communications and having a blast. No word yet on Scudder - he’s probably still in Iron Heights, and that’s still no-man’s-land thanks to the military.”

“Pity,” Len says. “Useful skill set, that. Well, we’ll figure it out when we get there. Have we secured the reservoir? Professor Latham’s lecture on cholera gave me nightmares.”

Wally shudders. “No kidding. Yeah, it’s secure; Singh gave the orders and the CCPD stopped bitching. Well, for the most part. They’re feeling overshadowed.”

Len shrugs. “I have plenty of cops in the ranks,” he points out. “It’s the ones that cling to their need for superiority over the rest of us that are having trouble adjusting. Though really, after we raided the SWAT supply, I don’t see what’s so great about their precious hierarchy anyway. Whatever. I want to see the latest update from the reservoir first thing this afternoon.”

“Right,” Wally says, noting it down. “Now you wanna tell me what’s really bugging you?”

“Do I look like the touchy-feely ‘talking it out’ type?”

Wally cracks a grin. “No,” he admits. “But you wouldn’t be asking about the reservoir three days after declaring the project in progress and leaving it in Jax’s hands - also, on that note, he hates you and would like to remind you that he never actually got into college - ”

“He knows more engineering from his auto repair job than some of the so-called professors,” Len replies with a shrug. “He can learn how to fix a dam. Besides, I assigned him a professor – what’s his name – as back-up, didn’t I?”

“He still hates you for making him a general.”

Len smirks. He likes appointing people as generals, especially individuals under the age of twenty-five. They always freaked out about it.

“He can tell me all about it when I see him this afternoon on the reservoir project,” he says.

"Which is suddenly important again, why?”

Len scowls at his cell phone. “Solar’s all well and good to supplement our generators, but I want some hydroelectric to help boost the phone lines. Why the hell did the military cut them everywhere, anyway? Did they think the zombies were going to tap them or something?”

"I thought you already heard from your sister,” Wally replies, frowning.

“I have,” Len replies. “She has a satellite phone. The military of the island nation she’s on has barred all entrance/exit traffic until they’re satisfied that the crisis is over, so she and the others went back to the resort and are currently debating piña coladas vs margaritas.”

“Wow, really?”

Len shrugs. “It’s an island, and I haven’t seen any indication that zombies swim.”

“…now I’m imagining a swarm of underwater zombies, thanks for that, boss.”

“Me, too, actually,” Len says with a frown. “Get the bio department on that question stat, will you?”

“Sure thing. So what’s the problem with the phones, then? I thought you said your sister was the only living relative you had.”

“She is,” Len says, eyes still stealing to the useless and not-ringing phone. “It’s my partner I haven’t heard a peep from.”

———The End———

“– our next Oscar nominee is 500 Miles, an epic tale of love and hardship set during the events of the Zombie Crisis. This moving film skillfully merges romance, tragedy, action, and, yes, even comedy – yes, a romantic comedy has finally been nominated for an Oscar, and all it took was a horde of attacking zombies –”

The presenting actor pauses to allow the audience to laugh and the camera to pan over various faces in the audience, all smiling.

“As you all know, 500 Miles is based on the amazing true story of current Central City mayor, Leonard Snart, and his husband, Mick Rory, who found themselves located on opposite sides of the country when the Zombie Crisis began –”

The camera zooms in on a group of people in the audience sitting by the far left wall. A tall man with closely clipped salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a dark blue suit, is slouched down in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s developing a headache; the man by his side, a larger man with a shaved head, has a giant grin on his face. He’s dressed in a tux and he’s somehow obtained a giant tub of popcorn, despite food generally not being allowed into the building.

The young man sitting on the other side of the first man, a lithe brunette with a pleasant smile, punches the first man in the arm and gestures at the camera.

The first man does not show any inclination to raise his head and mutters something that makes the young man blush and the second man laugh, as does the dark-skinned young woman in a lovely dress sitting by the young man’s side.

“– and this film chronicles their epic journey to reunite, despite the many hardships they encountered along the way. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: 500 Miles.”

An orchestral score begins to play as the lights dim and a giant screen descends to the center of the stage.

A vaguely audible “Oh, god, kill me now” can be heard from the position of the group that had been the subject of the camera focus a few minutes before.

———The Beginning———

“What’s all the big fuss?” Mick asks the first group of people he finds climbing out of their cars with duffle bags and a scared expression, poking his head out of the side of the car he’d hotwired. They’d reached the same conclusion as him - the highway, filled with cars, was never going to start moving again.

Mick wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, because he’d been at the fireworks convention for the last few days, slept the sleep of the thoroughly satisfied yesterday, slouched around the house for one lazy day to indulge in the feeling of having been around so many beautiful fires, and today he’d started heading back to the rendezvous point with Len. Same as always.

Except for the bizarre traffic patterns getting in his way. It’s been three hours - they should have moved a little.

“It’s - the radio - they’re saying -” the father of the group is stuttering.

The little girl, about eleven, has no such issues. “There’s zombies everywhere and they’re gonna kill us all!”

“Jessie!”

“What? It’s true!”

Mick blinks. He hadn’t been listening to the radio, though apparently that was an oversight. But really, zombies? That has to be a joke.

He flicks it on.

“– more sightings of the alleged ‘zombies’ have been reported in every major city and many rural areas. People are advised to stay indoors where possible and to report any instance of contagion to the military hotline, reachable at –”

He flicks it off.

“Huh,” he says. “Zombies. Okay, then.”

He climbs out of the car, because they’re definitely not getting anywhere by car. He grabs the backpack he’d brought along for the trip, which had everything he needed – a change of clothing, the solar generator for his heat gun, a hard-copy map and a couple of snacks – and straps his gun back onto his thigh.

“Guess I’m gonna have to walk this one,” he says, shaking his head at the thought. Cross-country hiking was never his idea of a good time, but he can manage.

“Walk?” the father asks. “Walk where?”

“Central City,” Mick replies.

“What’s in Central City?” the mother asks. “They said the zombie outbreak was everywhere, especially the cities.”

“Yeah, but Central City’s gonna solve the problem,” Mick says confidently.

“Why Central City in particular?”

“Because Central City’s got someone with a plan to handle this,” Mick says. Central City’s got Len, after all; they’ve never actually discussed what they should do in the event of a zombie apocalypse – the few times it came up while drunk and watching movies, they usually assumed they’d be together during it – but Mick knows Len. Len will have a plan. Len will enact that plan.

The zombies don’t stand a chance.

“You think they’ll be able to beat the zombies?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Mick says.

“But how are you going to get there? There will be zombies all the way there!”

Mick pats his gun. “I’m not worried about zombies,” he says with a smirk. “I can defend myself.”

The whole family exchanges looks. “Could we come with you?” the father asks hesitantly. “To Central City, I mean. It’s as good a destination as anywhere else – I don’t trust the military shelters they’re talking about on the radio.”

Mick blinks. He hadn’t thought about taking stragglers, but he guesses there’s no reason why not. After all, it’s useful to have someone to keep watch while he sleeps.

“Sure,” he says. “As long as you keep up, you’re welcome to come with me.”

“And you’re sure they’ll be able to win? Even against zombies?”

“I’m sure,” Mick says.

After all, a zombie crisis is not really that different from any other, and he knows what to do during a crisis.

Get back to Len’s side.

———The End———

“– I mean, man, it wasn’t like anything you’d ever seen before,” the young man with the long, braided hair said earnestly to the camera. “It was, like, a religious experience, you know? All of mankind, getting together, in all its different shades and complexity, in one group, and we followed our leader to the promised land.”

“It was just like they always said it’d be in church,” a young black woman adds in. Her hair curls in tight corkscrews and frame her face like a halo. “I never really listened, you know? What do they know, they’re all old and boring, that sort of thing. But it was just like they said. I opened my heart, and I felt the truth of it.”

“He led us to the promised land,” the young man repeats. “All the way from the coast to the heartland. He pulled us together when we were scattered. But he wasn’t, like, snooty about it or anything. I wouldn’t have thought that the prophet would’ve been the sorta guy to sit back and smoke a joint with you – I mean, when I was protesting in favor of legalization, I had that sign and everything, you know, Jesus woulda smoked one, but, you know, I didn’t really think it’d be that way. But it was!”

“He wasn’t doing it for fame,” another man adds, a young Korean man, rubbing his eyes and shifting a little away from the first man. “He didn’t even want to do it at first, I think. But he protected us anyway. He was called, and he answered.”

“He just tore his way through the zombies whenever they attacked,” the first man says. “Fire shooting from his hands.”

“It was a flamethrower,” the black woman says, rolling her eyes. “Doesn’t make it any less impressive –”

“A flamethrower that works with no visible source of fuel and can roast a zombie to ash from ten yards back?” the first man says skeptically. “Right. That’s what he wants you to think.”

“Listen, you moron; we already live in an age of miracles, we don’t need to be making up –” the young woman says, leaning forward emphatically.

“Hey, hey!” the second man interjects. “What would Mick think about how the two of you are behaving right now?”

They both look shamefaced.

“You’re right,” the woman says. “He’d tell us we had to get our act together and deal with this shit, because it’s the end of the world and there’s no one else to deal with it for us. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together.”

“He’s really profound,” the first man says wistfully. “Walking with him was an honor.”

“It really was,” the woman says, and the second man nods. “Let us tell you about how we joined up –”

———The Beginning———

“Goddamn military,” Len snarls. “Wally, make a note, we’re not ever letting them do anything ever again. And I mean ever!”

“You got it, boss,” Wally gasps, the rain slicking down his hair. He looked rather bedraggled, clutching at his coat in an attempt to keep out the storm. Ami, clutching her tablet in its water-proofed case, doesn’t look much better.

“How many do the reports say?” Len asks, stalking along the wall they’d created.

“They brought a whole Marine battalion,” Wally says.

“How many companies?”

“Last thing we heard before they realized we were listening on their frequency, three, but undersized,” Ami volunteers.

“So we’re dealing with anywhere from a few hundred to nearly a thousand,” Len says grimly. “We can’t assume any of them got out of that hell-hole military base without infection. How goes the building of the wall?”

“Points A through D report that they’re on schedule. E and F are reporting trouble with flooding –”

“I’ll go there now and freeze them a dam,” Len decides, turning on his heel and stalking towards there. “Not that I think the zombies will really give a dam about it…”

“That was awful, boss,” Ami says.

“Let it go,” Wally tells her. “Complaining just makes him worse.”

“No, I actually rather enjoyed it,” Ami says. “But it was awful. Factually.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Len says. “How are our squad leaders doing? Everyone in position?”

“Yeah,” Wally says. “Everyone’s checked in, it’s all good. We’ve got car lights on every wall, so we’ve got visibility for at least thirty feet all around, even with this damn rain.”

“If we had a few more of your cold guns, we’d be golden,” Ami says with a sigh.

“Sorry, my sister took her gun with her,” Len says, not without regret. “And we don’t have enough cryogenic power sources for another gun.”

“The cold grenades you were able to work up are a pretty decent alternative,” Ami assures him. “Also, engineering loves you.”

“It’s called thinking outside the box,” Len says. “Or outside the bomb, anyway. Everyone knows not to activate them –”

“– until we see the whites of their eyes, yeah, yeah,” Wally says. “Everyone knows.”

“Good,” Len says. “We’ll send the runners out as soon as E and F are ready to deal with an attack, if necessary; they’ll lure them in towards where we’re strongest, so hopefully E and F won’t have to fight at all. Doesn’t mean it ain’t a good idea to make sure they’re secure. Wally, go to point A; I want to make sure the runners know that if they try to be a hero, I’m gonna hunt them down and kill ‘em myself.”

“Yes, boss!”

“Ami, point C. I want our electronics team working on getting the goddamn grid back up right away. And if the federal government sends a message, tell ‘em we’re seceding.”

Ami hides a smile very badly. “Yes, boss,” she says. “Anything else I should mention?”

“Yeah. Central City’s a dictatorship, namely mine, and they’ve gotta apply for diplomatic status if they want anywhere near our borders.” He pauses. “Oh, and make up some stupid-ass limbo shit they’ll have to go through to get diplomatic status approval. Check with poli-sci and the D&D foucs groups for ideas.”

“Yes, boss!”

“Stop ‘yes, boss’-ing me and go,” he snaps.

They dash away.

Len stalks forward, mind already busy with plans to protect his city from an armed, infected battalion of soldiers who just couldn’t be bothered to listen to the warnings of a mere criminal.

He’s too busy for it, but he takes a moment to be happy that Mick isn’t here, though he would love to have him by his side.

He hopes Mick’s safe, wherever he is.

He hopes Mick’s near –

But not too near.

———The End———

The chaos raged about the countryside the dead rose from the grave, a stormy sea where every ship was strained and all were tried; surrounded by dread gates, nowhere to flee. The earth was churned by feet worn down to bone and hands that grabbed in a full-swelling tide under a moon that froze the human throne and burned in light those who had died. But as their horde approached our wretched wall, Despair tearing at bricks, we would not bow. These heroes stood so that we might not fall, For Central’s death would not, for them, be now. Our walls did fall, but we–the people–stay, knowing how close we came to death that day.

THE ZOMBIE CYCLE, SONNET. 6 – Harris “H.R.” Randolph-Wells

———The Beginning———

Mick grew up in the country.

Oh, sure, it liked to call itself a suburb of Keystone, but it was so far out in the sticks that Keystone was ashamed to admit to it. He knows exactly how it works, out in the places that are only theoretically tamed; he knows the dirt fields that appear out of nowhere, the hidden dangers in the pleasant pool of water, the way it gets dark.

It gets very, very dark.

And nowadays, there are more things that roam in the dark than just wild animals.

“Follow me,” Mick bellows, but his (surprisingly large, now that he looks at them) band of tagalongs mill aimlessly, panicking, as the groans of the approaching zombies become audible. It’s worse, in the dark - they have flashlights that do nothing, car lights that do nothing but make people claustrophobic - because they can hear them, humanity’s nightmare in its hideous infectious glory, they can hear them, but they can’t see them.

“We’ll lose them when we cross the river,” he bellows. “Just cross the river! Follow me!”

It does no good.

They’re caught in the panic and the terror of the night.

Mick knows that they’ll be safe if they only cross the river - terrifying to do late at night, he knows, fording a river is dangerous even outside of the Oregon Trail games - but it’s the only chance they’ve got. The fucking idiots that left the group to go to the Walmart accidentally drew the attention of an entire zombie horde, then led them right back to the group.

He could go himself. Him, and the others who aren’t crazy with fear, and he’d get father and faster without the stupid tagalongs that joined up with him, most without even asking. They just saw people walking and decided that they’d better follow, because at least someone seemed to know what they were doing. Didn’t even ask, half the time.

They’re not his crew. They’re not his anything. He doesn’t know them, they don’t know him. He could leave them now for the monsters to get.

Mick snarls.

He hates not being the scariest monster out there.

Mick holds his gun to the sky and shoots up.

It’s a waste of charge and fuel, he knows that, emptying his gun in a pillar of fire against the vacant skies when he’d much rather turn it against some zombie monsters, but it works.

All the panicking masses turn and look at him.

“Get sticks,” he orders, lifting his voice as loud as he can. “Big sticks, and whiskey. We’ll make ourselves light and fire, and then all you need to do is follow the fire.”

Weary, dazed, scared eyes look at him.

Shit, this isn’t Mick’s area of expertise. He can’t convince them to follow him; can’t convince them to save their own damn lives. He’s not good with people. Too big, too angry, too dumb - he doesn’t have Snart’s silver tongue or Lisa’s charming ways.

But he does have fire.

“Follow the fire,” he orders them, and backs off, gun held aloft, flames shooting up in a line that can be seen a mile away. “Come on, you idiots! Follow the fire!”

And he’s almost entire sure that it’s not going to work, but it does. The first few people stagger towards him. Then the next few after that, and then little by little the whole group is moving.

“Follow the fire,” Mick bellows, again and again. And then they start saying it too - “Follow the fire,” they whisper, through fear-bitten lips and chattering teeth. “Follow the fire.”

A lot of voices, saying it. Saying it again and again, all together, until it’s a mantra that even the people way in the back can hear and understand.

And Mick backs away the whole time, backs down to the river front and into the river, makes them keep going. He stays in there, even though it’s cold and wet and awful, because they need to see him to keep going. People help each other through the muck, whispering to each other, “Follow the fire.” Those that begin to lose energy are pulled along, even carried, and though they can’t walk, they groan the line along with everyone else.

Mick keeps the fire burning until the last one of them has crossed the river, collapsing on the banks of the other side. Only when each and every one of his stupid follow-alongs has made it does he turn off the gun and fall onto his ass, shoulders sinking with exhaustion.

“Like in Genesis,” someone next to Mick mutters, voice dull with exhaustion and the remnants of terror. “Follow the pillar of fire to the promised land.”

“Fire,” someone else agrees. “Fiery fire.” And then another someone starts laughing, and that does it. They’re all laughing, even Mick, and he has no idea why.

When the laughter dies, someone turns to Mick and asks, “What do we do with Alex and Mikhail?”

Mick just stares, because he has no fucking clue who that is.

“The fuckers that brought down the horde on us,” another guy clarifies, looking like he’s considering being angry but he’s a bit too tired to be totally sold on it yet. “We need to punish them.”

“No, we don’t,” Mick objects, and weirdly enough they all look at him. “They were just being dumb,” he says. “You’re all going to be dumb eventually, and when you are, you’ll be glad for it.”

He has no idea what he means - he knows he doesn’t want to be part of any ‘punishment’; he’s been in too many prisons to ever trust mob justice - but he knows he can’t let it happen.

“No shame in being dumb,” he tells them, and they even seem to be listening. “We all start that way. Way I see it, it’s our job to get the dumb ones the rest of the way there.”

“Carry them through the water,” someone says. Mick’s not sure who. It’s dark.

“Yeah,” he says. “Like that.”

And then, even though he wants nothing more than to sleep right where he’s lying, he stands up. It’s more bravado and sheer pig headed stubbornness than anything else driving him now.

“Get sticks and whiskey,” he says again. “We’re going to have torches - tonight, and every night. We’re gonna follow the fire all the way there.”

He only means that it’ll be easier for such a large group to stay together if they have something bright to follow, but people start muttering again - “follow the fire,” they say, again and again, like it’s some sort of lifeline - and Mick’s not entirely sure what to do with that.

But it makes them stand up, the ones who still can, and that’s all that matters right now.

He’s going to Central City, to find Len, and Len can take care of whatever it is that’s growing right in front of Mick’s eyes. He’s sure Len will be able to handle it.

There’s nothing Len can’t handle, given time.

———The End———

– and of course his story is well known – and growing rapidly in popularity.

No one knows where the term 'Archon’ was coined for the enigmatic leader of America’s newest religious movement. Some say it came from his refusal to accept the name of 'prophet’, it being weighed down from a dozen other religions; others claim that there was at one point a serious debate as to whether Mick Rory was an incarnation of the archangel Michael. Regardless, the title seems to have stuck.

For the first time in living memory, we are seeing the resurgence of a new religious movement: open to all, ambiguous in its teachings, and with its leader still alive to theoretically explain them – theoretically, because other than his appearances with Mayor Leonard Snart of Central City (see our list of runners-up!), during which he often remains silent, Archon Rory has frustratingly remained virtually impossible to interview.

He has not even agreed to grant this publication an interview for the present feature -

–excerpt from TIME, “Mick Rory: Person of the Year”

———The Beginning———

“Almost there,” Mick says, squinting up ahead. They’ve been trudging through the suburbs for hours now, heading towards the boundary line that marked off Central City proper from the surrounding area.

A boundary more noticeable from the fact that it was now reinforced by what appeared to be a wall. Made of cars and concrete, and patrolled at regular intervals.

“They’ll never let us in,” Nadia groans. She tugs at her (head cover) anxiously. “This’ll be like that mall.”

“The guys in that mall were just assholes,” Mick tells her firmly. “They didn’t wait ten minutes past the first announcement to try to turn the world into the Mad Max dystopia of their wet dreams.”

“Survivalist militas,” Jerri spits. She’d brought her family to that mall in search of shelter; they’d been one of the ones Mick had rescued in his raid on that mall. She had reason to be angry: they’d been forced to join the militia’s band of “protected” individuals, expected to do chores and follow their absurd rules at the threat of a gun or being thrown out for the zombies.

Mick had enjoyed that raid. Jerri had, too - she wielded a mean baseball bat for a former suburban soccer mom.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m telling you, it’ll be all right.”

He’s pretty sure Len wouldn’t let things in Central get that far out of hand. Gotham was probably under martial law - hell, the cops and the capes there are just panting for the opportunity to really lock it down - but Central? He couldn’t believe it.

Still, no harm in being cautious.

“Nadia, Sharif, Timothy, Chris and Maricruz,” he says. “You’re with me. Jerri, Chaz, you’re in charge of bringing up the rest once we give you the all clear.”

“Sure,” Chaz says. “What’s the all clear?”

“We’ll wave.”

“And what if you want us to keep back?” Jerri asks.

“Chris’ll scream like a little girl,” Mick replies promptly.

Everyone laughs, even Chris. “I only did that once,” he protests, looking amused.

“Three times,” Mick corrects. “And that’s why I’m bringing you - that scream can cut through stone if it needs to.”

Chris is also apparently a somewhat well-known football running back, pre-crisis, which meant he had a remarkable running speed, excellent aim with a gun and a hell of a right hook. He grins good-naturedly.

They go up to one of the breaks in the wall, where someone is waiting with a rifle.

“Hello!” the guard says perkily, well before Mick and his crew can say anything. “Welcome to Central! How’s it going?”

“You mean, other than the zombies?” Nadia asks.

“Well, yes,” the guard says, blushing. “You want to come in? We have quarantine procedures, but everyone is welcome. You can keep your weaponry if it makes you feel better.”

“How’s quarantine work?” Mick asks. “We being tossed in with other suspected infected?”

“No, no - everyone gets their own cubicle, to avoid quarantine contamination. We set up plexiglass so no one feels claustrophobic or alone or anything - the psych department at the university says it’s likely to lead to heightened emotion otherwise - and we let you out after 32 hours. You know, just in case. Oh, and you get food! Do you have any dietary restrictions? We have halal,” he adds, looking at Nadia.

“Holy crap, this is the promised land,” she says, staring.

“How’s that?” the guard asks.

“Just a joke,” Mick adds hastily.

“Okay,” the guard says agreeably, though he still looked a little confused. “Anyway, bring everyone you’ve got. We’re a city; we’ve got room.”

“We’ve got a lot of people,” Mick warns.

“We’ve taken over an entire block of the financial district for quarantine purposes,” the guard replies. “We’ve got a lot of cubicles.”

Mick studies him, but the guard looks legit, and what the hell. They have a lot of people. They could take the guardhouse if they really needed to.

He turns and waves.

They begin to come - first in groups, then all at once, the whole lot of them, like an ocean of people bringing the tide in.

“Whoa,” the guard says.

“Told you there was a lot,” Mick says with a smirk.

The guard shakes his head in amazement, then pulls out a pad of paper. “Well, we’ll still need basic information for our records - names, origin city, any missing family or friends you’d like us to look for –”

“You’re running a registry?” Chris asks, interested.

“Yeah, we figured it’d be useful if people are missing each other, at least until we get cell phones redistributed. Let’s start with you guys. Names?”

“Mick Rory, Keystone City,” Mick says. “I’m looking for someone –”

“Wait, wait,” the guard interrupts. “Mick Rory? Is that what you said?”

Mick frowns. He wouldn’t have thought the open warrants were going to be such an issue, in light of everything, but…

“Hold on, I need to call this in,” the guard says, starting to grin. “This is going to be great - you’re to go straight to the main building – I’ll get someone to show you the way –”

Mick’s frown deepens. That didn’t sound like an arrest. “How’s that?”

“What about quarantine?” Nadia asks.

“He can do his quarantine in the main building; there are still quarantine cubes there,” the guard says. “We all got told in training that Mick Rory gets sent straight there, Mayor’s orders.”

“What does the Mayor of Central City want with our Mick?” Maricruz asks, her voice low and sweet and steely as always.

“Just to see him, I think,” the guard says. “Honestly, I don’t really question Mayor Snart’s orders.”

“Hold up,” Mick says. “Did you just say Mayor Snart?!”

———The End———

“I can’t go in there,” she said. “I can’t - it reminds me of the dark of the night when the zombies first attacked, when I was all alone -”

She turns accusing eyes on Adam. “You told me you’d be by my side the whole way.”

“It’s not his fault,” the guard said, his voice soft. Isabelle turned to look at him.

He was, now that she was looking, startlingly beautiful in his own way - his hair was long and braided, his skin dark as polished oak, his eyes fair. He held out his hand to her.

Isabelle took it instinctively.

“He can’t follow you into quarantine,” the guard explained. “It’s to keep us safe, all of us - and no one can be excluded. Even our own scouting parties have to go through quarantine after a long expedition. So many lives are at stake - we can’t let even one person hiding a bite in.” His eyes were wide and sorrowful; he had clearly known great loss.

Isabelle felt strangely affected by it - almost like she knew him, knew his sorrow - it wasn’t like Adam, how they’d bickered and fought, growing closer every step of the journey; this was something immediate. Something magical.

“What’s your name?” she breathed.

“Jonas,” he says.

“I’m Isabelle.”

“And I’m Adam,” Adam says, stepping forward, putting a hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. A possessive hand, one that would have thrilled her beyond understanding not even three hours earlier. “We traveled the Great Route together, in Archon Rory’s train.”

“Then you have done a great thing,” Jonas says, letting go of Isabelle’s hand only reluctantly, meeting Adam’s eyes dead on. “Perhaps, after the quarantine, I will have the honor of showing you around the city, Isabelle. But for now, follow me.”

She shivers as the two strong men eye each other warily. Could it be that they were fighting over her? That Jonas felt that same instant connection? Oh, but what about Adam - they’d been together through so much -

Isabelle would never have expected her life to become this; not in a million years.

- excerpt from “A Rescued Beauty”, the brand new romance novel by Adrienne Masters.

———The Beginning———

“Mayor,” Mick says. “Mayor.”

“Shut up,” Len says.

They were separated by a glass wall, the little Plexiglas box that Mick had to stay in for quarantine; he would mind it a lot more except that Len kept prowling around it, like he can’t wait for the time to be up. He felt like he was one of those beautiful paintings that museums kept locked up, one of the ones Len bent the full power of his considerable intellect on obtaining for his own. He’d never felt that before; it was strangely exciting.

“Besides, I hear you started a religion,” Len adds.

“I did not,” Mick protests, but he’s not so dumb as to deny that one may, in fact, have been started. “They did it on their own.”

“It’s still a cult of personality based on you.”

“Can I make 'em all drink kool-aid?”

Len’s smile is there and gone. “Your precious babies? I bet you know all of 'em by name.”

Mick prefers nicknaming people, but with a group that large he didn’t have any choice but to start learning names. But damnit, they’re not his babies.

He tells Len as much.

“Uh, huh,” Len says. “Jerri says to tell you that the pigeons are all fine.”

“Oh, good,” Mick says. “They’re skittish, though can’t blame them for…” He catches Len’s look. “They’re not actual pigeons; it’s just what I called this one group of kids - they were all out of field trips, and we got their buses to safety, and -” Len’s expression reveals nothing. “They’re not my babies!”

“Mick,” Len drawls. “When I said we could think about adopting, I didn’t mean a whole army of devotees.”

“Says the man who adopted a city.”

“Central’s always been mine,” Len says, sounding like a cat with a whole flock of canaries sitting in front of him. “They’re just getting with the picture is all.”

“Mayor.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you even know what a mayor does?”

“I have an entire poli-sci department at my beck and call,” Len says haughtily.

“So, no.”

“Not a clue,” Len concedes cheerfully, though his amusement is brief and the scowl comes back. He glares at the glass. “How much longer did they say?”

“It’s only been a few hours,” Mick says, amused. “You missed me?”

“Started to get worried after so long with no contact,” Len says. “You being a delicate flower and all that.”

“Lenny…”

“Don’t you 'Lenny’ me. Don’t you know how to use a phone?!”

“There weren’t any,” Mick says reasonably. “Most of the south was put on communications blackout. Military took down electronics everywhere.”

“We were too,” Len admits. “I had them put the grid back up.”

Len had an entire electric grid set up just to make sure he wouldn’t miss it if Mick tried to call.

Mick feels all warm and fuzzy.

“I hate having to wait,” Len says.

“I would never have known that about you,” Mick lies virtuously. Len’s as patient as you get on the job; it’s in personal stuff that he gets anxious.

“Yeah, yeah,” Len says.

“Don’t you have important mayor stuff you need to be doing?”

“I have sub-lieutenants for a reason,” Len says. “As do you. They can live without me for a short time.” He scowls. “Not that I’m doing anything.”

Mick thought about that for a second, the shrugs and pulls off his shirt.

“What are you doing?” Len asks.

“Giving you something to do,” Mick says agreeably.

“Something to do?”

“Yeah. Watch.”

Turns out Mick likes being looked at like some precious thing that someone wants to steal away, as long as it’s Len who’s doing the looking.

Fascinating, the things you learn about yourself during an attacking zombie crisis.

———The End———

Buzzfeed’s 10 Top Unbelievable Stories That Came Out Of The Zombie Crisis

You Won’t BELIEVE What These People Did

…

#6 Sex in the Quarantine Room: Fact or Fiction?

The individualized “mini”-quarantine units - started in Central City by using cubicles and plexiglass, then refined as the practice spread throughout the United States - are the opposite of sexy! But when death is looming as a potential option, anywhere looks appealing. Yes, everyone is put in these quarantine units individually, so touching is a no-no, but nothing will stop these brave outside-the-box thinkers, not even being literally in the box! There are reports of at least three confirmed incidents and potentially dozens more - there are even rumors that one of the most famous reunions, that of Mayor Leonard Snart and Archon Mick Rory, featured some of this!

———The Beginning———

Wally didn’t want to tell Len about the rumors at first, that much was obvious, but if the last few months of fighting side-by-side has done anything, it’s taught Len every single one of the kid’s tells.

“Tell me,” Len orders.

Wally tells him.

Len gets up and goes to solve the problem, because he’d known that there was some type of pernicious rumor dampening morale and he’d even known more or less who was spreading it, he hadn’t know exactly what it was. The downside of leadership, he supposed; they tried as much as possible to keep him out of the loop.

He hated being out of the loop.

Maybe he should establish a spy network? That’s what the television said leaders did instead of gossiping.

He’d ask at the next general assembly meeting. The LARPers will support him, at least; they think that stuff’s cool.

Mick will think it’s cool, if he ever manages to escape the stupid temple they’re building for him. Oh, sure, they’re calling it a ‘gathering place’, but Len knows what they really mean, even if Mick hasn’t quite accepted the reality of it yet.

The knot of ill-wind huddled around the statue of Bovine that oversaw the side lawn in front of the Agricultural Studies Department. It was easily accessible from the front lawn and from multiple buildings; they were going to have quite an audience.

Good.

Eyes followed Len, as they always did; he’d become uncomfortably aware that many of the people who came in through the quarantine lines saw Len as personally responsible for saving them, which was of course absurd and undoubtedly the remnants of shock after being attacked by zombies. Many had heeded Len’s early hijacked radio announcements - courtesy of the combined efforts of the media studies college-radio host and the comp-sci hackers - to stay in their homes, that rescue was coming; many had thought it was a lie and expected death, so they were pleasantly surprised when Len’s squads collected them and hurried them over to quarantine.

Len knows how to play an audience, though, and he’s worn his blue parka so much that the mere sight of it acts like a beacon.

So all eyes are on him when he stops in front of the small crowd of students milling around the statute.

“I hear,” he drawls, eyeing them all, “that somebody here’s got some beef with the Flash.”

Silence for a long moment.

And then foolishness prevails, someone assuming that Len’s reputation was a better guide than his tone of voice.

“He abandoned us!” someone shouts. “He should have been here to stop the zombies, and he wasn’t!”

“He’s fast! He could have saved all those people!”

“Where is he, anyway? Hiding or something?”

“Yeah!” “That’s right!” “Where is he?”

Len waits until the crowd is bubbling with anger and then fires his cold gun into the air, letting the shockwaves of cold air silence people as effectively as a gunshot with less chance of the bullet hitting someone when gravity pulls it back down.

“Are you all stupid?” he asks as politely as he can, his voice pitched to carry. “Some of you are young, so I’ll grant you that, but those of you who see yourself as past the age of reason - for shame.”

“You know where he is?” one undergrad, who had been one of those yelling most fiercely, a raggedy Flash t-shirt barely visible under her coat, asks meekly.

“I know the Flash,” Len answers, and he seriously can’t believe he has to do this. How quickly people forget. “I fought the Flash. You know as well as I do that he’d never abandon this city. You’re just so used to him doing all the work that you’ve forgotten that he’s just a man, in the end. He’s a fucking volunteer.”

His eyes review the ranks and they wilt before him.

“I’m sure you’ve all volunteered for something,” he says, “either before or during this crisis. Ain’t it hard, doing something without any expectation of reward? Throwing yourself - your body - against the worst this city can come up with on a regular basis? But the Flash does it. He does it again and again. And I am willing to bet that he’s doing it now.”

“But where is he?”

“The zombie plague came from somewhere,” Len points out, carefully omitting that he actually did have a good idea of where the Flash was and what he was fighting, courtesy of Wally. Some information didn’t need to be shared, and the existence of a stable breach to an alternative dimension that wanted to poison yours was definitely one of them. “I’m willing to bet he’s there, keeping the worst of it away. That, or he’s dead and you’re all on your own. Pick whichever theory you prefer.”

“Why do you care?” someone in the back, feeling brave in their anonymity, shouts.

“He’s my nemesis,” Len says. “Judge a man by his enemies, and whatnot. But more importantly, I’ve never in my life blamed a volunteer for not being able to do more than they can, and I ain’t starting now.”

His eyes narrow. “And since you all seem pretty content sitting here, swapping grievances instead of helping out in quarantine, the clinic, the cafeteria, sanitation or the fields - it’s not like we don’t have options - I’m guessing you’re all gonna be pretty happy with that tendency.”

Several people look shame-faced.

Len consults his mental version of the enhanced catalogue they’ve made, the school version merged with the IDs of everyone who they brought inside.

“Katy,” he says to one. “You’re chemistry. I expect to see you helping out in the labs.” Her eyes go wide. “Rakesh,” he continues. “Shira. Matt. The cafeteria needs extra help today.”

He goes down the line, smile painted firmly on his face, naming each of them and assigning them a task. It’s a good thing he prepared ahead of time, noting who seemed to be the source of the trouble, because even Wally is gaping at him, utterly impressed, and that kid isn’t surprised by anything anymore.

“Now,” he says, concluding his recital, “you’re all volunteers, you’re all here, and right now, you’re all we’ve got to rely on. No Flash, no heroes, just you. So get to it.”

He pauses.

“Oh, and the next person who wants to talk shit about the Flash behind his back?” he adds, icy smile growing on his lips. “Just remember that the Flash beat me once, one on one, and I’d be more than happy to find myself a new nemesis to keep me busy while he’s gone. Anyone who thinks they’re better than he is had better be ready to prove it.”

Oddly enough, there don’t seem to be many volunteers for that.

———The End———

fansagainstzombies: CALLOUT: do NOT apologize for zombies!!! they are mass murderers and MUST BE STOPPED. u cannot sympathize with zombies and still be on the side of their victims.. it is upestting and rude to all zombie survivors. DO NOT NORMALIZE ZOMBIES. THEIR ACTIONS HURT PEOPLE AND ARE COMPLETEY INEXCUSABLE.

justiceforthedead66: excuse me?? zombies were people just like us and we need to HELP them, it isn’t there fault that their killing people, their sick and not in their right mind, we need to find a CURE, not just MURDER these INNOCENT PEOPLE

fansagainstzombies: *their *they’re *they’re you’re argument is invalid. go back to 2nd grade, where your politics belong

theyliveagainandagain: [popcorn.gif]

zombiezombiezombiemushroommushroom: Guys, you’re taking this all too seriously.

fansagainstzombies: they were KILLING PEOPLE. WTF even is WITH this hellsite

———The Beginning———

“We’ve been gone how long?!” Cisco exclaims.

“Six months,” Felicity explains, staring at the screen. “Looks like it was a six to one ratio - one day there, six here. And it’s, uh - there’s a communications blackout. Mostly.”

“What? Why?” Iris asks.

“Uh,” Felicity says.

Sara peers over her shoulder. “Wait,” she says. “Zombies? But I thought - we went to stop them!”

“We did,” Joe says grimly. “Some of it must have gotten through regardless.” He rubs his hands on his face. “God, and Wally’s still there.”

“Thea,” Oliver breathes.

“We have to go back to Central,” Barry says. His hands are shaking. His city - he’d thought he was doing the right thing, chasing the cure and fighting the Necromantics, the inventors of the plague, all the way back to their own dimension, and in the meantime, his city, his responsibility was…

“Actually,” Felicity says, “looks like Central’s doing okay.”

“What?!”

“No, really - I’m reading military chatter, and Central City gets mentioned a whole bunch of times. Like, a bunch of times. By the time the military showed up to offer help - and not much help, either, we’re talking, like, food drops - the city said thanks but no thanks, we’re doing okay. And then started broadcasting - through the electrical grid they set up themselves after the military knocked the old one down, yeesh, now they’re just trying to make the rest of us look bad - information to other cities. They’ve got quarantine methods, zombie fighting methods - hell, they’ve been doing a weekly seminar on how to keep zombies away from your crops, and that’s, like, not even a serious issue yet.”

Barry blinks.

“They did say they would be interested in a cure if it were found,” Felicity adds. “Their new mayor, that is; he’s the one that led the whole movement against the zombies.”

Iris nudges Barry. “Looks like we made the right choice after all.”

Barry smiles helplessly. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.” There was something he wanted to say, something profound, maybe, about how much it means that they all got up to fight, that Central, of all overlooked places, is now standing out as a beacon of hope to the rest of the country…

“Our city is so much cooler than yours,” Cisco crows.

Or that.

That works.

“We should still head back,” Barry says, not even trying to hide his grin. “Oliver, unless you need help?”

Oliver shakes his head. “Easier without you, to be honest,” he says. “Star City is - complicated. At the best of times.”

“I’ll stick around and help Oliver,” Sara offers. “You go, Barry.”

Barry nods, and turns to look at his friends - Joe and Iris, Cisco and Caitlin. “C'mon, guys. I wanna meet this new mayor. Looks like we’ve got a lot to thank him for.”

———The End———

“As president of the United States during these dark times,” the president says, “it is my honor to bestow upon these heroes a medal that they have long deserved. We recognized them first during the alien invasion of 2016, and there we recognized them as heroes - individuals, meta or human, that were willing to put themselves forward to help their fellow man at risk to themselves.”

Barry shifts awkwardly.

Oliver doesn’t shift at all.

Sara looks like she wishes she was literally anywhere else.

“These heroes took the fight to its origin, fighting the creators of the zombie plague to a standstill and returning, triumphant, with a vaccine designed to prevent any new infections -”

“Only six months late,” Barry mutters under his breath. He was still pissed about that. Six months, his city had been without its hero, while he piddled around fighting bad guys in an alternate dimension.

Not that his city had been in bad hands…well, technically ‘bad’ hands, but not, like, bad hands…

“We got the cure,” Sara points out, also sotto voce.

“Yes, but…”

“Shhhh. She’s getting to our part,” Oliver interjects.

They quiet down, then step forward when instructed to let the president pin medals onto them.

“Now, our heroes will say a few words.”

Oliver nudges Barry. They’d agreed that he should do it, since he was well known as the Flash - though less well known than Oliver Queen - and he could adjust his voice like he’d stopped doing in Central ages ago. Also, he was apparently “charming”.

Barry goes forward. “Thanks,” he says. “We appreciate these medals; nothing means more to us than the people we protect, and we are honored to do so. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, not for any thanks - but it sure is nice!” He pauses to let the audience laugh, which they do, then changes from his prepared remarks. “I’d also like to thank you, the people, for standing up when we couldn’t be here. In city after city, town after town, people stood up and showed that you don’t need meta powers or special training to be a hero in a crisis. This medal belongs as much to you, people of America - people of the world - as it does to me. We do what we do not because we think you can’t. We know you can. We do it because you shouldn’t have to.”

Oliver is glaring hard enough that Barry’s half-worried he’ll develop Kara’s heat vision.

“We should have been there during the zombie crisis, done more, and trust me, no one regrets our absence more than me,” he continues anyway. “But you don’t need us - and you proved it. Thank you.”

Confused applause.

“I’m going to kill you,” Oliver says once they’re backstage.

“He wasn’t wrong,” Sara points out.

“That sounded like a retirement speech.”

“It wasn’t,” Barry says. “But I do think we should be partnering more with local authorities. Look at how much they achieved.”

“Your city got taken over by a supervillain while you were gone.”

“He’s the mayor now,” Barry replies. “You need to get over it already.”

———The Beginning———

People were happy to see him.

The Flash, that is. He got waves and a handful of “Hey, Flash!"s, and no one seemed to hold it against him that he’d been gone.

They made it almost all the way to the university center - they’d been excused from quarantine only because they’d been in a different universe, and anyway there were people hanging around to keep an eye on them in case they turned - before someone calls out, "Hey, Flash! Where you been?”

“I, uh,” Barry says. “Fighting the guys that invented the zombie thing. Getting a cure.”

“Knew it,” the guy responds in satisfaction, and turns back to what he’d been doing - repairing one of the barricades that seemed to dot the city now.

Somehow word spread, though, and less than fifteen minutes later a horde descended.

Well, just like eight or ten people, but they felt like a horde.

Biochemistry majors and professional chemists and pharma people and Tina McGee, who was a horde all by herself, in the lead.

“You have a cure?” she asks Caitlin.

“Yes,” Caitlin replies, and is promptly whisked away to the wonders of science and medicine.

Barry feels a bit like a supporting character in someone else’s (Caitlin’s) exciting biomedical thriller/action novel. It’s kind of a nice feeling.

Joe rejoins them.

“I thought you were going to find Wally,” Iris says.

“Apparently he’s in the mayor’s office,” Joe says, shrugging. He looks relieved; hearing that Wally was doing okay had clearly lifted a weight off his shoulders. He grins. “Besides, I want to meet this new mayor, too. Where did Caitlin…?”

“Don’t ask,” Cisco says.

Good to know that he was just as shaken by the horde as Barry was.

Then they get to the university and get shown into the mayor’s office.

“Flash!” Snart exclaims from behind the desk.

“Captain Cold?!” Cisco hisses.

“Flash, tell me you’re here to arrest me,” Snart demands.

Barry blinks.

That was…new.

“Um,” he says. “I don’t think so?”

“None of the police will do it anymore,” Snart says. His eyes are rimmed with red, like he’s been having trouble sleeping. “Waste of time, the whole lot. But you’re a superhero. You could do it. Just pop me over to Iron Heights.”

“We’d have you back by lunchtime,” Wally says. He’s slumped over a nearby chair. “And then you’d still have to attend the council meeting.”

Snart sighs. “Fine,” he says sulkily. “Never mind, then.”

“Wally!” Joe exclaims. “Are you okay?”

“He’s fine,” Snart says snippily. “He’s no doubt skipping the meeting on the basis of a long-awaited family reunion.”

“You bet your ass I am, boss,” Wally replies fondly.

“Wally, hold up a damn second,” Joe says. “Why are you calling Leonard Snart boss?”

“I’m his secretary,” Wally says. “Or possibly chief henchman. It varies by the day, really.”

They all stare at him.

“Oh, and he’s also the mayor now,” Wally adds.

Pandemonium.

———The End———

mymayorissexierthanyourmayor: LOOK AT THESE GIFS. LOOK AT THEM. How are these people real???

sssssnartssmarts: I love it when Snart and Rory kiss in public. It’s so fucking cute.

flameboycoldboy: This gives me life. Look at that adorable little face Rory makes when Snart kisses him!! [awwyouhaveacrushonmethat’ssoembarassingwe’remarriedstill.gif]

followtheflamewar: see this is why I can’t believe either of them is cheating with that Barry Allen guy

mymayorissexierthanyourmayor: yes, but have you considered: possible polyamory??

followtheflamewar: there’s no way to tell for sure tho!! at least we know the Ramon Glider ship is sailing – they’ve been going on dates like all the time

sssssnartssmarts: god those two make me so happy [lifegoals.gif]

———The Beginning———

“Joe’s still pissed off,” Barry reports.

“Let him be,” Iris says dismissively. “I’ve got your back, bro.”

“You’re the best,” Wally says. “Actually…”

“That wasn’t an offer to help with your paperwork!”

“Not paperwork!” he says, though he looks shifty-eyed. “Just – could you go out with Barry to the airport field over in Ashberry?”

“That’s outside of the line,” Barry says, frowning. “I know we’ve been distributing the cure, but…”

“But you’re a super speedster and can get them all,” Wally says earnestly. “So it, like, shouldn’t be a problem!”

“I’m helping repair the walls…”

“It’ll be super short,” Wally promises. “I just need someone to go pick up Lisa or else the boss gonna want to do it himself and that’s just – no.”

“I’ll do it,” Cisco says. “Uh. I mean. If no one else is. I could do it.”

His attempt at being casual fools literally nobody.

“I’ll take Cisco with me,” Iris says.

“But!” Barry protests.

“Relax,” Wally says. “Cisco, Iris, and two squads.”

“I don’t need two squads of backup,” Iris says, scowling.

“Probably not,” Wally says. “But it’s the rules. You don’t want to put up a bad example for everyone else, do you?”

Iris eyes him. “You’re getting sneaky.”

“I’m a politician’s aide,” Wally says. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Can we go now?” Cisco says hopefully. “I want to see Lisa.”

Iris rolls her eyes.

———The End———

“You had better make the weather fucking perfect,” Lisa says poisonously to Mardon.

“It’s perfect,” he assures her. “75, sunny, scattering of clouds, mild breeze.”

“Hartley -”

“The sound systems are perfect,” he sniffs. “Do you really have to ask?”

“Shawna -”

“I’ve done a head-count of all the guests, everyone’s here, and your fiancé is being talked down from a panic attack by the Flash, who’s here in costume,” she reports.

“Scudder and Rosa?”

“Banned from the premises and locked up as tight as Iron Heights, the Flash, and your brother can manage,” Iris reports.

“Good,” Lisa says. “Boys, you’re dismissed; girls, help me adjust my veil.”

“I still can’t believe you’re getting married,” Shawna sighs.

“I still can’t believe it’s going to be covered by the international media,” Iris says. She’s not jealous. Really.

“Don’t worry, you get the first interview afterwards,” Lisa says soothingly. “Or whatever Cisco’s next invention is going to be.”

“I’d better,” Iris says, and they share a grin. They hadn’t anticipated becoming friends, but somehow it’d happened.

Probably sometime around Lisa literally flying back in with a tan and offering to take Iris to her secret island next time there was an invasion of some variety.

There had been protests that there would be no next time, but Iris very reasonably pointed out that their track record hadn’t been great.

After that, well, what with Lisa becoming her brother’s unofficial media spokesperson slash chief of staff, it was really only business sense to cultivate the relationship. And they got to regularly have lunch on Central City Picture News’ dime, something they could both appreciate.

Lisa’s face twitches.

“Yes, you’re getting married,” Iris says immediately, recognizing the onset of nerves. “Yes, it’s a good idea – even Len likes Cisco – and yes, your dad is really, truly, totally dead. Deader than dead. We’re planning on having Mardon hit his grave with lightning as a wedding present.”

Lisa grins. “You don’t have to,” she says, but her shoulders are more relaxed. “Not that I’d object. God, how do people do this? This whole wedding thing is just nerve-wracking.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have had it at City Hall.”

“But irony points. Also, honestly, where else could we get a reservation at such short notice?”

“Come rain, snow, or zombie invasion, the bridal market in Central City is as competitive as ever,” Iris says. “I’m going to have to book mine years in advance, when it happens.”

“If Len’s still mayor, you could do it here,” Lisa offers.

“You know, I’m suddenly convinced of the virtues of eloping…”

The girls all giggle.

Mardon and Hartley look at each other and make a quick exit.

“Boys,” Lisa says, shaking her head and watching them run. “I clearly got the best of the lot.”

“And just think,” Shawna says, grinning, “you’ll be marrying him in less than two hours.”

“Oh god…”

———The Beginning———

“Allen, swing by my place later tonight, will you?” Len says to Barry as they walk down the main street. “This isn’t really the time. Or place.”

“Right,” Barry says. “I keep forgetting how busy you are nowadays.”

Len rolls his eyes and drops his voice, mindful of the fact that there are paparazzi and camera phones everywhere. “The fact that you’re even coming to me with your super secret plans to establish a metahuman superhero base in Central City is already weird enough. My reputation won’t take much more of this.”

“You’re the mayor,” Barry hisses, leaning back in towards Len. “Your so-called ‘reputation’ is totally shot.”

“Hey!”

“Well, it is.”

Len glares.

Barry glares back.

“Gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t reject your proposal out of hand from sheer spite, Scarlet,” Len says back, voice still dropped down low enough that Barry has to lean in closer to hear.

“A, because you’re a better mayor than that,” Barry says. “B, you wouldn’t reject anything out of hand, you’re way too petty for that. You’d let me do the whole presentation first, then reject it.”

“You know me well,” Len says, nodding a little.

“But that’s not the main reason you’re not going to reject the proposal,” Barry says confidently.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what is?”

“Because having the Hall of Justice be located in Central City would be so. freaking. cool.”

“…excellent point. Also, who the hell named it that? Cisco? There’s gotta be something better.”

Barry laughs.

Len shakes his head in amusement and turns to go to his next meeting. How did his schedule have so many meetings? Twisting a little, he calls back over his shoulder, “This evening, my place, 8 PM. And for once in your life, don’t be late.”

“Hey!”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He leaves Barry in the street shrugging helplessly in an admission of guilt.

———The End———

“Umbrellas!” the man calls out as the group entered the open-air marketplace in Central City Square, multiple individuals checking the darkening sky with some concern. “Get set, don’t get wet! If you pass me by, you won’t stay dry!”

“Fresh fruit, straight from the orchards of Keystone!” a woman shouts from another stall. “Get them fresh right now; they won’t last long! Ripe fruit, fresh fruit, get your fruit here!”

“Leather is better!” a man in a shop filled with bags and boots and other items cries out. “Finest leather goods in Central City! You won’t find any better than our leather!”

“Magazines!” another man calls. “Get your latest news fix here! All the celebrity gossip you could want! Actors, actresses, politicians – you know you want to know!”

One of the group slows down and heads that way to squint at magazine covers. “Hey, guys, look at this!” the young man calls back to the main group. “The title of this one is ‘Barry Allen: Homewrecker Extraordinaire.’”

“What the fuck,” another young man in the group says indignantly, ducking his head when people look over at his exclamation as if he could hide his face.

The first young man pays the magazine seller out of pocket – ten dollars and one Central City credit for good measure – and then carries the magazine in question back. “No, look,” he says, grinning. “On page four – ‘The mysterious Barry Allen, which has of late attracted so much attention from our esteemed mayor, maybe as more than merely a friendly visitor –’”

“Barry, for shame,” one of the woman says, starting to laugh.

“‘He has been seen in company with Mayor Snart at odd hours, including the two of them emerging late at night from Mayor Snart’s office…’”

“That was business!” the second young man squawks. “You know, running business!”

“‘And he has also been seen in the company of Mr. Rory in the evenings –’”

“Wait, hold up, which one is he supposed to be cheating on which one with?” a second young woman says, grinning.

The first young man flips through the pages. “Uh – huh, looks like he’s double-timing Snart with Rory and Rory with Snart, and neither of them have figured it out yet.”

“That’s the most unlikely bit about the whole thing so far,” a dark-skinned young man puts in. “Snart not figuring it out, I mean.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, look, Barry’s also apparently pregnant with a zombie baby.”

“I’m what?”

“The way of the tabloids is strange and mysterious, Bear,” the second woman says. “Just accept it.”

“I hate all of you. Why is this even still being published?”

“Morale, and also Lisa thinks this shit’s funny.”

“But seriously. Why do tabloids get to survive the zombie apocalypse?”

“Zombie crisis, Barry; the world’s still going. And are you really surprised?”

“…no.”

———The End and the Beginning———

“I demand that you do something about this injustice,” Len says to Barry before falling face-first onto the couch.

Mick was on the couch.

Mmm, Mick. That was fine; he could stay.

Barry just snickered, the ungrateful little brat.

Len lifts his head a little - not too much, Mick has put his hands on the back of Len’s neck and started rubbing, and he doesn’t want to discourage that - and glares at Barry.

“I take it from that you’re going to just stand by and do nothing while this continues.”

“Yep,” Barry says.

“Some superhero you are.”

“Terrible,” Barry replies.

“Total waste.”

“Absolutely.”

“Standing by idly while your city’s citizens are being horribly abused - ugh, yeah, Mick, just there; a little harder, will you?”

Mick complies, smirking.

“Len,” Barry says, sounding reasonable, which was surely a sign of the end of the world. “It’s not abuse that your staff wants you to run for governor.”

“But I don’t want to run for governor.”

“You shouldn’t have agreed, then,” Barry points out.

Stupid Barry.

“Wally snuck it by me,” Len says resentfully. “He’s as fast as you, now.”

“I’m sure that helps him with the paperwork,” Barry says soothingly.

“So much paperwork,” Len agrees with a groan. “I think Wally is planning on taking over the world and using me to do it.”

“I’m sure you’re very proud of him, you being a former supervillain and all,” Barry says.

Len considers this. “Well, yeah,” he says. “But does he have to be so public-spirited about it?”

“Just do me a favor,” Mick rumbles, hands still moving very pleasantly on Len’s neck.

“Sure,” Len says drowsily. “Name it.”

“Don’t become president.”

“Hah, please,” Len says. “I’m a former supervillain and I have this for a family life. What’s the likelihood of that ever happening?”

#my fic #dccoldwave #coldflashwave #goldenvibe #mick rory #leonard snart #barry allen #lisa snart #cisco ramon #wally west #zombies

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