#good boy jason who's always followed the rules realizes nobody knows who he is when he wears a mask and cat ears

[thaliagrayce]

i know we’ve already talked about this but i’ve been thinking so much about jasico miraculous ladybug au... nico w his love for heroes developing a crush on his friend and partner, chat noir... jason (as always) with the debilitating crush on his cool and brave and pretty classmate, nico... both of them stressing about the physics homework while they attempt to wrestle a 2-story-tall chicken man to the ground to get at his beak......

[stxleslyds]

I saw your rant about the Red Hood Movie lol (I agree DC keeps hurting my boy Jason) and you said something that interested me, you mentioned that you don’t like it when Jason is drawn with a bat symbol on him but why? Personally I feel that him wearing the bat symbol makes sense because he’s always tried to fit in with the family and it’s his way of connecting with them because he’s never had a family before. He gets along with his other siblings sometimes so I don’t think it’s ooc. I consider ‘bat symbol’ Jason an era of the past and am perfectly fine with his new Red Hood logo it looks sweet (but I wouldn’t be angry if he had the bat symbol on or not in the future). I’m curious what you’re thoughts are!

Hey there Anon, I have to be honest with you, your ask has been proven very difficult to answer, this here is my third draft. I have decided that instead of explaining my thoughts as I was trying to do in my previous drafts, I will now just link you to some of my past posts when I bring up certain points that make me think Jason should have never worn the bat-symbol on his chest.

Just a heads up, I am not a fan of Batman, the “Batfamily”, or Jason being dragged to any Bat-related content, I think it makes his character bland.

In order to make the answer clear to me as well as to anyone who reads this post, I will be separating my thoughts on how I think Jason’s relationship with Bruce has led me to think that he shouldn’t wear a bat-symbol or be involved with any Batman related content, and how Jason’s relationship with his brothers has led me to think that he isn’t part of any Batfamily or has ever been written as someone with true reasons to consider the others his brothers/allies/friends. I will separate each of those two groups in four different sections: pre-New 52, New 52, Rebirth and Infinite Frontier.

First though I would like to say that Jason as the Red Hood wearing a bat-symbol doesn’t make sense to me from the most basic of things, Jason’s vigilante name has nothing to do with Bats. Who wears bat-symbols? Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl, Batwing… All people that who have the “Bat” prefix on their names, nobody else wears a bat-symbol, Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin (Robin), none of them wear it, so why would Red Hood do it? It just makes zero sense. But anyway, that’s just me being annoying, I guess.

Jason and Bruce’s relationship.

First let’s go back in time to when Jason hadn’t died yet. You said that Jason wore the bat-symbol so he could connect with his family because Jason had never had that before, well, I see things differently, Jason had a family and that was his mother, the mother that he cared for when she was sick and the mother that he saw die to drugs after his father was put in jail. He had a family with her. And then he had a family with Bruce when he was Robin, but because Bruce started to neglect and not pay enough attention to him after he realized they weren’t seeing eye to eye in various things, Jason was pushed to act the way he did when he found that his birth mother was alive and “being manipulated by Joker”.

Jason’s father was abusive with his mother and didn’t care for Jason, Bruce wasn’t ready to be a father (even after Dick) and when Jason started to not want to follow his every rule Bruce neglected him, later his birth mother betrayed him and was one of the people involved in Jason’s death.

My point here is that Jason had a family with one person who died to drugs and then every other “family” that he found ended up betraying him or neglecting him. So, I don’t really think that Jason has much trust in the whole concept of “family” at least not when it comes to any of his experiences outside of Catherine Todd.

Now let’s move to the events of Under the Red Hood where Jason comes back to comics. Jason doesn’t hate Bruce then but he felt betrayed by him and felt like Batman’s whole crusade was not good anymore. Jason expressed several times in that book the fact that he didn’t believe Batman was good for Gotham and that he became a better version of Batman, the Red Hood.

Red Hood could do things that Batman didn’t dare do, he was better. So, why on earth would Jason wear a bat-symbol then? Well, Jason never wore a bat-symbol pre-New 52 when he was wearing his Red Hood suit. NEVER.

Jason didn’t care for Dick or Tim, he saw Dick as inferior to him because of Nightwing’s no killing ways and he was completely indifferent to Tim, his only interactions with him were when he cut his throat a little bit in Batman: Hush and when he called him “the pretender”.

So, Jason wasn’t looking for family he just wanted Bruce to kill Joker for him, and Bruce didn’t. When things got complicated and Jason realized that Bruce was too much of a coward he improvised, he told Batman that in order to stop him from killing the Joker Batman would have to shoot him (Jason). Batman didn’t use the gun, but he did save the Joker by throwing a batarang at Jason’s throat. When Joker detonated the explosives in the building they were in Bruce once again saved Joker from the rubble and didn’t look much for Jason.

That my dead Anon is the first time Bruce betrays Jason in such a big way that made me think that Jason would have never wanted to interact with Bruce in a good way. I will repeat it now, Bruce SAVED the Joker instead of letting Jason KILL the Joker.

After Under the Red Hood we got to see that Jason was alive and well in Green Arrow #69-72, where he made an appearance, there I can say with a 100% certainty that Jason hated both Batman and Bruce. He actively did things that pissed Bruce off and was searching for conflict with the man.

Jason and Bruce don’t interact much after all that because at some point Bruce “died” and that’s where Battle for the Cowl comes in. There is where we see one of the craziest Jason characterizations, there Jason took on the mantle of Batman because Gotham needed Batman (what? Red Hood was created to replace Batman!). But in that book Jason actually harmed both his brothers and left them for dead. In that book we also see a horrible message that Bruce left for Jason where Bruce told him that “Jason was broken and he tried to fix him” and that “Jason was my (Bruce’s) biggest failure”. I don’t know about you Anon, but if my father saw me that way, I would be packing my bags. And Jason didn’t look like he was looking to connect with his “family”.

After all that we don’t see Jason until Batman and Robin vol.1, where we see the weirdest characterization of Red Hood, this Red Hood hates Batman and would kill anyone just because. Jason had zero need to connect with his family there.

I just want to remind you here that Jason never wore a Batman symbol until here in his Red Hood suits, he only wore the symbol when he “was” Batman and that was OOC.

So now I welcome you to the New 52, where Jason wears a bat-symbol on his Red Hood suit for the first time. I HATE New 52 Jason Anon; you will find zero love for him here. That man wore a bat-symbol on his chest even though he didn’t believe in Batman’s ways and while he had this internal conflict about whether he hated or not Bruce. This Jason gave up a memory from his Robin years with Batman because he didn’t care enough to keep it, then he was seen acting like an ass towards Bruce and Barbara in the “Court of Owls” event.

But this whole shit show was written by Lobdell and one day he decided that Jason cared about what Bruce thought and let us know that maybe Jason secretly admired Bruce (in the post I will link here! I talk about what happened in those issues among other things). That story would be followed by Batman and Robin vol.2 #20, or what I like to call “the second time Bruce betrayed Jason in an even more painful way”. I am not going to explain what happened there, but I will like here! the post where I talked about what happened there and why I think that Jason should have never been on good terms with Bruce again from that moment on.

In that post I also discuss how much of an abusive and manipulative person and father, Bruce has and can be. He is a disgusting human being and Jason called him out about it but DC loves to write Bruce being abusive and then swiping it under the rug, Jason being on good terms with Bruce or wearing a bat-symbol on his chest is just horrifying after witnessing that issue, and it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour when issues later the same writer (Tomasi) had Jason interact with Bruce as if nothing had happened.

After that Jason was seen interacting with Bruce when the latter lost his memory, Jason even hugged Bruce there, it was OOC, and like I said it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour or at the very least made it look as something of no real importance.

Now, we are entering the Rebirth era of Bruce and Jason’s relationship, Jason was still wearing that fucking bat-symbol on his chest and this time around Jason even made a deal where he wouldn’t kill anyone while in Gotham (RHatO vol.1 #6), Lobdell even wrote them as being all buddy-buddy after the mess that was the New 52, absolutely disgusting.

Jason didn’t interact with Bruce in Rebirth that much, in fact the next time that Batman made a big appearance in the Red Hood book was in Red Hood and the Outlaws vol.2 #25, yeah, the issue where Batman beats the living shit out of Jason twice because he thought that Jason had killed Penguin. Father of the year, Jason wasn’t dying to be part of Bruce’s family, he was just brutally beat to be part of it. Bruce also ripped the vat-symbol off of Jason’s chest and told him that he didn’t “belong” with him or in Gotham any more. The AUDACITY of that bitch, can you believe? Jason belongs in Gotham as much if not more than Bruce.

Later when Red Hood and the Outlaws became Red Hood Outlaw, we saw Bruce and Jason interact again when Bruce informed Jason of Roy’s death, hugged him and also told him that he was still not allowed in Gotham, what a swell guy that Batman lad!

After that Batman went after Jason Todd when Jason came back to Gotham (without King Batman’s permission) and told the world that Jason Todd was alive and well and taking over Penguin’s Casino. Jason actually threatened Batman with revealing too much information about himself to the world (meaning, Jason threatened Bruce with revealing his secret identity) and that was that. Jason and Bruce only saw each other a few times when DC needed to make money with one of their boring ass events like Joker War and Bruce was shown “welcoming” Jason to Gotham in Red Hood Outlaw #51 or #52, I don’t remember but either way, it was absolutely hilarious and made zero sense. I am sorry, but after Bruce being a manipulative, abusive and all around a horrible person, I don’t feel anything except rage when they make them interact as if they cared for one another.

Shit hits the fan in Infinite Frontier with Urban Legends: Cheer, once again instead of explaining what happens there, I will just link you to the six posts I made about that mini. Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five and Part six.

Here I will only talk about the comeback of the bat-symbol in Jason’s life. Like you said Jason used (still has in some books) his own logo on his chest after Bruce ripped off the bat-symbol and told him to fuck off. That Red Hood logo was still done with the bat-symbol in mind and I just thought that it was ugly, like, there is no need for a logo if you are going to give him an ugly one along an even uglier suit. But that’s not what matter here, what matters is that the bat-symbol IS making a comeback because at the end of UL: Cheer, Bruce gives Jason a brand new (ugly) suit that has the bat-symbol again. That gift comes as a slap to the face after the disaster that was that book, from every point of view that mini should have not come out to the public. But it did because it forced the “Batfamily” down our throats through Bruce deciding to welcome Jason back to the “family” by giving him a suit with HIS logo on the Red Hood suit that kinda looks to me like Bruce saying “glad that I own you too as well”. The whole bat-symbol thing doesn’t sit right with him and sadly I don’t see it like a “Jason era of the past”, I see it like a metaphorical jail for Jason’s character, he is not free to be the character that he is supposed to be (a perfect opposite to Batman that shows that duality MUST exist in Gotham), and instead all we get is another Batman wannabe that is just as boring as the Batman himself.

Jason and his brother’s relationship.

The funny ha-ha thing with this is that we are not supposed to see Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian as four brothers (and to be honest I have never seen them four as brothers, as far as I see it, Jason hasn’t had a brother since before died). DC always makes it clear that Damian is Bruce’s only son so yeah, there is a big misunderstanding there within DC themselves, they have no problem with trying to sell us their absolutely nasty version of a family but at the same time they refuse to acknowledge any one except for Damian as Bruce’s son.

Even though I don’t necessarily believe that Jason sees his brothers as such I still call them that way because they were/are all Bruce’s children.

But this is not about Bruce so let me talk about Jason’s interactions with his brothers in the pre-New 52 era. So, as I said earlier in this post Jason didn’t think Dick was a big deal in UtRH because *just* like Batman Dick never killed and his way didn’t work or whatever (if only Jason knew what Dick did), and with Tim, Jason was mostly indifferent, he only hurt him a little bit in Batman: Hush (for the little bit that he took Clayface’s place) and then he referred to him as “the pretender”. Then we jump to the events of Teen Titans for Tim and Nightwing for Dick. In Teen Titans #29 Jason went to Titans Tower and beat the living hell out of Tim just because, now that thing was OOC and written by Geoff Johns but it existed and it further proves that DC writes this “family” through violence every time they can and then they just hope we forget it happened. With Dick, well, there was the Brothers in Blood arc where Jason dressed up as Nightwing and killed people in his name, he did it because he wanted to “bond” with Dick because he thought that Dick had killed Blockbuster, the whole arc was a mess and I can tell you this about it, Jason wanted to bond for all the wrong reasons and Dick was written as actually preferring Jason to be dead.

Then we jump right into Battle for the Cowl and even though (once again) this Jason was extremely OOC he did try to kill both Damian and Tim and fought Dick too, so, so far, I am not seeing Jason wanting to connect with his brothers, it was more like him going “be robin to my weird ass version of Batman or suffer!”. It was just weird.

Then there was Batman and Robin vol.1, where Jason’s Red Hood was just a blood thirsty and crazy and he didn’t want to be part of any family. I might not like Jason being written as part of the family but what this book had going on was not it.

Now, get ready because it is New 52 time again and this is messier than his relationship with Bruce in this timeline. The most recognizable relationship (or lack of thereof) was Jason and Dick. Lobdell just let us know one thing about what Jason thought of Dick and that was HATE. Jason HATED Dick, why, you ask? Oh, um, no one really knows, the only panel we were shown as “proof” of why Jason hated Dick was when Jason was acting like a little bitch when Dick was teaching him stuff during patrol (RHatO vol.1 #6). But, yes, Jason “had” (apparently) a good relationship with Tim. Yeah, no gracias, listen, Jason and Tim having brunch for two pages (RHatO vol.1 #8) isn’t making me believe that Jason cares or sees Tim in a good light, just throwing a brunch between them isn’t proof of them being the best of brothers but then again Lobdell loved giving Jason every character trait and relationship that Dick once had (examples: Tim, Roy and Kory). That brunch didn’t mean much because later on during the Death of the Family event Jason almost killed Tim (Teen Titans #16) to “save” his father from Joker (talk about bad writing). Jason and Damian had a very weird and forced “bonding” moment in that same event (you can include Damian to the relationships that Lobdell borrowed from Dick), all of the sudden Jason cared for Damian and he was acting all brotherly, because “they worked together” as different people in Batman Incorporated #4, this weird interaction between Jason and Damian (it can only be called weird because it looked out of place and you cannot change my mind, even Jason thinks it is weird in those panels) happened in RHatO vol.1 #17. In that same issue is where Jason tells Dick that he was trash because he didn’t want to say hi to Kory and kinda tells him that Dick “underestimates” Kory, listen, New Teen Titans isn’t a book that I enjoy reading most of the time but Lobdell needs to do some re-reading himself, Dick isn’t trash to Kory, Lobdell was trash to Kory. Anyway, at that point in time, Jason had a bad relationship with Dick, a secret admiration for Bruce, and a weird ass relationship with Tim and Damian.

Before we go on let me tell you what I think about the whole New 52 dynamic. Jason was used as a replacement of Dick Grayson. Dick was the one that had good relationships with his brothers and father, Jason up until the start of New 52 didn’t care for Tim or Damian, hated Bruce and kinda had a soft spot for Dick. In the New 52 the tables were turned. Jason’s relationship with Tim was never developed in paper, they for some reason were friends only when they stood together like they did in Robin War and Batman and Robin Eternal, there was never development or a reason as to why they “were in good terms”, they just *were*. The whole Jason and Damian thing didn’t last long because Damian died and then the whole mess of Batman and Robin #20 happened with Bruce.

Ahh, Grayson #12, the time when Jason and Tim’s last braincell died, they threw so much shit Dick’s way and for nothing. I will forever be mad at this, they really thought that Dick of all people faked his death, and because Bruce was conveniently amnesiac nobody dared say “hey, wasn’t it Bruce the one that told us that Dick was dead?”, seems to me like New 52 Jason and Tim can go be friends with that one braincell all by themselves. This is not family; this is people teaming up with whoever so DC can sell another weird comic event. Also at that time Damian was alive and Jason couldn’t have cared less about him being there (maybe it was because Jason was there when Damian was resurrected? Who knows?).

And now we jump to Rebirth because I hate the New 52. Tim was nowhere to be seen. Jason just forgot Tim existed and it wasn’t until the Red Hood Outlaw era in which we saw Jason interact with Damian again. What we did see, was a reconciliation between Jason and Dick, Jason was written as acting completely different in RHatO Annual #1, Jason respected Dick and his work and also said that Dick “had been a better brother than he had given him credit for”. Then Jason appeared once in Nightwing and they talked about Dick’s new girlfriend. And that was that for a long while.

As I said, during the RHO era Jason and Damian shared a couple of issues in the Teen Titans run, I have talked about these issues before in two posts (Post 1 and Post 2) but I will summarize what happened there here quickly.

Apparently, Jason and Damian had been working together in secret (never shown in actual comics), Jason gave Damian targets and intel of people for Damian to put in his secret prison for villains. When Damian and the Titans go after a target something goes wrong and the Titans end up hurt. Damian goes after Jason without a second thought and accuses him of betraying him, a physical and emotional fight ensues and it ends with Jason promising that if he sees Damian again, he will kill him. That’s all for Jason and Damian being on good terms in Rebirth.

But it all changes in Infinite Frontier, in August of 2021 we see the *real* comeback of the “Batfamily” in Robin #5. Dick, Damian, Jason, Tim and Stephanie appear in this issue but the only things of essence happen between Jason and Damian and Dick and Damian. Only one of them made sense, and it wasn’t Jason and Damian.

Jason was there to bring Damian back to Bruce. Listen, the last time Jason and Damian were seen together they were actively hiding their work from Batman and then they ended promising to kill each other, and now Jason came fresh out of Urban Legends: Cheer #6 wanting Damian to go back to Bruce. Damian tricks Jason into a hug, but surprise! it wasn’t a hug, Damian electrocuted Jason to get him of his back.

And that’s all.

-

I understand that there have been moments where Jason has been written as wanting to connect to one or two people from the “family” but its never developed or based on something of true essence. You might consider it actually strong family connections but I just don’t see it that way.

Jason wearing a bat-symbol after the abuse and manipulation that Bruce put him through in new 52 onwards is just dumb to me. And given Red Hood’s origin, Jason wearing a bat-symbol in the first place is absurd and goes against everything that he once was.

Jason officially started wearing the bat-symbol again in Detective Comic's back up story written by Rosenberg and will continue to use it in the ongoing book Task Force Z.

The bat-symbol is annoying but Rosenberg writes Jason beautifully so yeah, I am biased there...

We just have different opinions on the matter Anon, but don't take this post as an attack towards you and what you think, it is just that I just don't like Jason being involved with anything Batman.

I hope you have a fantastic week Anon!

[fishtre]

Oh lord your work has honestly has got to be one of the things that truly cemented me into being a Jason fan when I started to enter the fandom. I just wanted to ask; Has Dick or Bruce ever seen Jason (or even Jessie; im a fuckibg lesbian for her) while they were at a low point? Or have they ever seen something in Jay's behavior that seriously made them stop and think for a moment?

Oof-!!! o-okay. I wasn't ready for this. So many responsibilities??? Thanks and welcome!  XD 

*****

> Have they ever seen something in Jay's behavior that seriously made them stop and think for a moment? 

This goes for Jay and Femjay 

For Dick: No. Dick and Jason aren’t close. They know each other through Bruce who is this deforming prism between them: lingers even in his absence. This + a lack of a relationship = Dick's empathy sleeping where Jason is involved since day one. Meanwhile, Jason just doesn't trust Dick nor expect his sympathy as the replacement goldfish Bruce picked up (or the outlaw Jason later become). They avoid/ignore rather than seek/antagonize each other (unless the situation demands violence). Hence, it’s not granted Dick could recognize the moment for what it was and not chalk it up as “classic Jason”. 

As for Bruce: short answer is YES. Their whole history is paved with moments where Bruce has (usually late) epiphanies about Jason and himself. And this’ pretty much how Jason got benched after a rapist went flying through a balcony to meet the concrete twenty floors lower.

More to say, so long AF rant below the cut. Mostly about canon interpretation I use for characterisation + some side notes about Femjay at the very end. The essential is above tho.

Starts with “Batman the Cult”: 

Aka Batman goes missing while investigating an underground sect that kidnaps homeless people. When Jason finally finds him, Bruce is a drugged, tortured, half-raving mad man on a pile of corpses who've been living in the sewers for weeks. Jason tries to bring Batman to his senses and at the surface but he's so damaged in and out that Robin has to guide him back home like a lost child. Eventually they get surrounded by the cult members. After a "it was an honor to meet and fight with you sir" Robin got outflanked. Begs Bruce to help as a crowd of drugged hobos tries to literally tear him apart. Jason is like 14-15yo and it takes these three "adult fears" in a row (child going “yolo” + child protecting the powerless adult + watching child get almost killed) for Bruce to finally fight back and save the day.

Which brings us to the following event: The rapist and the balcony :p. Bruce can't prove if Jason committed the crime or not so the act in itself isn't the point. Jason admitting he didn't try to catch the falling rapist, no feeling remorse to potentially causing someone's death is what alarms Bruce here.

Between the Cult and this, for me it's definitely when Bruce first gets blessed with many epiphanies; 1) Jason’s attitude toward death, his or the crooks' lives, his soldier-like devotion to Bruce during the Cult is alarming. 2) Turns out Jason have different opinions regarding Justice, the right to redemption or vigilantism. Opinions that are pretty irreconcilable with Bruce’s. 3) He's not shaking the grip Gotham has on the boy at all (his reason or excuse to take Jason in at first.)  4) Jason's indulging Bruce and playing by his rules because love and respect (he hopes), not because Jason understands or believes in Bruce's methods or share his creeds. 5) He may had been emotionally compromised when he took in Jason (as Dick accuses him to be) and had been making thing worse for the boy, failing Jason as a mentor/guardian and an adult.

As the “greatest detective”, it weighs on Bruce that he ultimately failed Jason in knowing the boy and providing what he needs; his guilt and irresponsibility catching up to him all at once. From Bruce’s perspective, this has cost a man's life and Jason’s “innocence”, simply because he (or anyone) didn’t manage to see Jason for who he is; a more troubled child than he or Dick ever was, and that despite having all the clues in the world to figure it out.  In result Jason and Robin are benched. Jason dies before Bruce can find what he should do. That's it. UTRH could be seen as Jason at a low point I guess. But special mention to when Bruce "walks away" to not choose between Red Hood and Joker before aiming a batarang at RH's gun, Jason sits down in silence and simply gives up; resigned to wait for the bomb to blow up, not caring if Bruce or Joker get away or die with him. A stark contrast to how determined and mouthy he's been until then. Jason "accepts" what he sees as Bruce's choice: that Joker is more or equally as important to him than Jason. Bruce has to pull him away from the worst of the blast so it's fair to say that he must notice. It doesn't manage to make Bruce stops and thinks, but the conclusion to that story on Bruce's side this time is that while Jason is back and alive, the event in UTRH achieved to kill the boy he knew and lost. 

As for femjay, here a bit more trivia just for her AU:

Dick first thought after discovering that new Robin was a tomboy, whom Bruce also addresses or presents as one 90% of the time does alarms him a bit in the midst of his confusion. But when he half-questions Jason about it, she mocks him about this incident and shuts him off with a "none of your beeswax". Fuming, Dick brushes it off as being some kind of pervert game between Bruce and Jason, be it Bruce trying to replace and hurt him, introverted misogyny, lesbian culture or whatever. None of his beeswax. He doesn't look deeper into it. He leaves Gotham and only comes back for her "funeral". As a general rule, looking into Jason- related stuff and not minding his business when she is involved, always ends up biting Dick in the arse.

Bruce never really brushes the subject of what Jason may have done or not in order to survive on the streets for two years or why her parents gave her a boy name. He takes what Jason gives him on this (which is little) and doesn't pry into it further since Jason's medical checkups are fairly good and promising. Jason is a girl who prefers to blend in as a boy and Bruce plays along, secretly relieved because Bruce has no idea how to deal with a pre-teen/teenage girl. So yeah; he's scared and this is a blessing for him and she looks happy like that. Bruce avoids using pronouns to avoid confusion himself (which is partly why Dick got so confused by Jason's gender when they first met).

Nobody but Alfred realizes she starts corseting herself with bandages and a sports bra by the end of second year at the manor. Or that she buys pads and razors on the dozen with who knows what money since she asks for nothing. Old-fashioned Wayne's British butler is barely more at ease with Jason's womanhood than Bruce, but Al does take the initiative to give her an allowance so she can buy underwears when she first arrives. He simply raises that allowance to cover her new needs with a cryptic and awkward explanation. But because Jason doesn't know how to choose a bra she sticks to what she knows, aka; keeps wearing a sports bra and flattening her chest as best as she can while residing at the Manor. By the time she comes back as Red Hood, Jason is too curvy to hide so she doesn't. Also; Talia... While she still was only trying to use Jason against or to win Bruce back, she's appalled to learn what Jason used to do to her breasts, and took pity of her. She forcefully take Jason out shopping for her first actual bra at 17-18 yo and teach her some more basics.

[consumeconstantly]

Speak My Name In Tongues

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Summary: Bruce Wayne is determined to get his daughter to safety and aid (read: take over for) the Parisian heroes in capturing their supervillains of over six years. Unfortunately, these two goals are in direct conflict. (all of biodad bruce things can be read as stand alones but I do post in chronological order)

________________________________________________

Let it be said that Bruce Wayne is a persistent man. 

When he wants something, he does not stop on the first or second failed attempt. It doesn’t matter if the world believes something to be impossible. It doesn’t matter if he fails spectacularly to achieve his goal multiple times, in fashions that would likely result in any man of lesser wealth becoming the laughing stock of the global community for months. In order for him to cease his pursuit, he must come to the realization that whatever he’s pursuing is not worth the effort. This is a very rare occasion. Most times when Bruce comes to this conclusion, his decision can be traced back to the trauma of his parents death and the subsequent consequences of his vigilante life style (read: not pursuing Jason’s death, letting Barbara get shot.)

Thus, when Marinette turns down his offer of a safer life, he will not take her rejection at face value. A lesser man might. But Bruce is not any such thing.

Anything that Marinette is involved in-- and he finds that she does a lot-- all oh-so-coincidentally happen to be things that Wayne Enterprises invests in as well. He marks down each and every charity event and gala that she is scheduled to attend and makes an appearance there as well. When he finds that she supports all of her collége friends in their pursuits, he attends too.

Somehow, she manages to skillfully evade being drawn into any long conversation with him and always ensures that there’s a third person involved when he even says hello. If Bruce weren’t trying so hard to have a talk with her, he’d say that her ability to do so was really quite impressive and spoke to the reach of her network. But again, Bruce is trying to convince his daughter that he’s not safe in Paris by herself when the League most likely has a bounty on her head. If Talia finds out that he had a daughter not borne by her-- she’s certainly changed in recent years, becoming more volatile and much less like the woman he fell in love with all those years ago.

He half believes that with Marinette’s wit, intellect, and escape abilities, she may even be able to hold her own against the League. Unfortunate that the League has weapons training and she does not.

“Marinette,” Bruce approaches her at a Bourgeois evening party. She has friends in high places, that’s for certain. Chloe Bourgeois works at her company in the public relations department as does Adrien Agreste, which definitely turned a lot of heads in the fashion industry as nobody expected the boy to work for anybody but his father, nor did they expect him to stop his modelling career in the prime of his life. For modelling works, she turns to Juleka Couffaine and occasionally Olympic hopefuls Kagami Tsurugi, Alix Kubdel, Ondine and Kim Le Chien.  Thanks to her connections to Rose Lavillant, she’s produced an entire line of scents that go with MDC’s evening wear. MDC is extensively covered by Aurore Boreale, one of the youngest talk show hosts in the industry, Alya Cesaire, a young journalist who’s won international acclaim with her writing, and Nadja Chamack, a Senior Executive producer of TVi. Though Bruce is rather impartial to the music industry, she’s well known for working with international singers Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and Luka Couffaine as well as an up and coming EDM artist named Nino Lahiffe. In the film sector, she works closely with Tom Astruc and Graham Industries, with Adrien’s cousin, Felix. 

As the saying goes, Who you know is everything.

Marinette smiles, teeth bared. Even the way she stands is sharp. 

It’s difficult reconciling the girl in front of him with the pictures he saw while doing background checks on her, or even the girl he saw at the bar just three nights ago. At least, it’s difficult for Bruce to reconcile her when she’s around him; Marinette seems to be very much the same girl around her friends, which is almost just as frightening. When she’s with Adrien or Alya of Kagami, it’s as if her parent’s death didn’t even happen. All smiles and sunshine and good will. She still attends all of the charity events she signed up for, has increased the amount of hours she spends volunteering at homeless shelters and akuma shelters-- and Bruce has no clue in hell how Paris’ supervillain situation has gone unchecked for so long, but he already has several agents tracking down Hawkmoth and the Miraculous team to no avail-- and goes to work on a normal schedule. Since Tom and Sabine’s death, she’s taken no time off. 

In the presence of Bruce Wayne, however, there’s a great shift in her demeanor. There is nothing warm about her, and despite the fact that Marinette is his daughter and that she’s more than a full foot shorter than him, he finds himself wary of her. That says something, considering the types of people he faces down as Batman near daily.

For the first time, she allows him to approach without dodging him. 

“M. Wayne.” Marinette begins to meander to a less public place, all while maintaining a pretty media smile and waving to acquaintances as she passes them. The moment the door closes behind him, a flip is switched. 

“Leave me alone,” she growls. “I don’t want or need your protection.”

“Your parents were murdered.”

“You don’t think I know that? I was the one who found their corpses.”

“They’ll come after you, next.” The League of Assassins never leaves their jobs half done. Marinette is more of an achilles heel than Tom and Sabine were-- despite not being in her life, he cares for her. He can’t deny that if she were murdered, he’d probably get caught up in a fit of rage. The Lazarus Pits have not been good for his mental state over the years.

Marinette crosses her arms, sleeves fluttering around her. “You think you know who did it.”

“I don’t think I know; I’m sure who did it.”

“No,” Marinette says in a strangely detached tone. “You think you know who did it. You don’t actually know, do you, Dark Knight?”

Bruce’s stomach fills with dread. Something about her statement makes him feel nauseous. Queasy, even. “I do. The League of Assassins--”

“You think everything revolves around you, don’t you? Bruce Wayne and Batman are not the only ones with enemies.”

“You’re suggesting that you have enemies who would be willing to kill your parents?” Bruce isn’t sure how to take this. Marinette does have a fairly large following, runs in the most powerful and influential Parisian circles, and has money to spare. But as far as his research told him, she didn’t do anything to egregiously offend anybody, besides maybe one Lila Rossi and Chloe Bourgeois, though the latter of the two rectified their relationship eventually. 

“I don’t,” Marinette denies. “But Ladybug does.”

“The superhero.” Is his age finally catching up to him?

“The superhero,” Marinette agrees, looking at Bruce contemplatively. 

“Ladybug and I-- we’re close,” Marinette settles on. “Close enough for our bakery to become a safe house of sorts for the Miraculous team. Hawkmoth--no, Pavona. She either acted out of anger for her past with me or just wanted to strike a blow at the Miraculous team.”

Bruce feels a migraine coming on. It’s on days like this when he wishes he were a drinking sort of man. “Why would Pavona be upset with you?”

Marinette laughs, humorlessly. “World’s greatest detective, huh? Maybe you’ll figure it out eventually.”

He gets the feeling that their conversation is quickly coming to a close, and figures that whatever issue Marinette and Pavona have is something he can decipher later, “It doesn’t seem like Pavona has done much with this information. The Miraculous Team seems to be in high spirits, and there haven’t been any akumatizations in the past two weeks.”

Another dry laugh. “Wrong move at the wrong time. And besides Ladybug and you, nobody else knows.”

Marinette pushes past him, back to the door, back to the party. She pauses at the door. “I’ll put the two of you in contact. Until then, keep a lid on you and your operative’s emotions. I’m sure trained agents like yourselves can restrain yourself from feeling anger or sorrow for a while.”

Bruce is left with two horrifying realizations: Marinette is in a situation where she’s in over her head, and Sabine and Tom’s deaths have not been publicized.

#

Batman and Bruce have never liked magic or metas, and Ladybug seems to be both. It doesn’t help that she’s so high strung and seems to be inexplicably angry at him from the moment that he steps foot at their prearranged meetup.

“I sent you the ground rules if you want to operate in Paris. Forward it to your operatives. Follow the rules or leave.”

“I’m here to take down Hawkmoth,” Batman says with a bone-weary tiredness. 

Ladybug crosses her arms in a fashion that’s achingly familiar. “I know that. That’s why I’m giving you and your people the ground rules and a chance. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be allowed here.”

“Ladybug, you and your team have failed to catch Hawkmoth for six years now.”

“You and your team have been fighting the same set of villains for over thirty years. I wonder which one of us is really worse off.”

Batman grimaces. 

The heroine looks out at the night sky and sighs. “Look, this is a very stressful situation. Pavona acted out in one of the worst ways possible, and even though she and Hawkmoth seem to be MIA, it’s still not ideal.”

He remembers that Marinette said Ladybug and her parents were close. Batman stumbles over his words. He’s never been the best at comforting people, and healthy coping mechanisms simply don’t run in the family. There’s definitely a reason why he and all of his children take to vigilantism so well. “Tom and Sabine-- they were great people.”

Ladybug stills. 

Batman doesn’t know how old she is, or how old any of the Miraculous team is, besides from Chloe Bourgeois, who used to be Queen Bee. Something in the way her shoulders hunch, how her jaw trembles, and eyes water makes Batman feel like she’s just a child. But she can’t be. Not if she’s been protecting a city for six years. If he had to guess her age, he’d put her in her mid to late twenties, maybe even early thirties. 

“They were the most loving people I’ve ever known,” Ladybug says. “It was a privilege to know them.”

He’s not sure who made the decision to not release Tom and Sabine’s death to the public, but Batman recognizes it as a tactical decision. It only took a short amount of time to hack into security cameras near Marinette’s residence and filter through the sighting of the Miraculous Team at Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie, stopping to chat with Marinette or one of her parents, sometimes eating there, sometimes staying the night, using their living room as a gathering point. From there, it’s not difficult to realize that Marinette or Ladybug is keeping this information from the rest of their team in order to ensure that their civilian or superhero identities don’t get compromised by an akuma or a sentimonster.

In comparison to the Scarecrow, who makes his victims fight their worst fears, Batman can’t help but think that turning people into their insecurities and angers is worse. At least with Scarecrow, there’s a chance that people can win against whatever they’re fighting. Once a Parisian is turned into an akuma or sentimonster, they just have to hope that somebody else will come in and save the day. Victimhood with the cruelest twist, similar to when the Joker tried to make Dick into the Joker Jr.

“Pavona. What’s her deal with Marinette?” 

Ladybug’s laugh is hollow and familiar. “Didn’t Marinette tell you to figure it out on your own?”

“I need to know,” Batman insists. “I want to protect her. I don’t want her to get hurt like that again.”

“You have noble intentions, Batman,” Ladybug says quietly. “A kind heart. But you are mistaken in thinking that Pavona can hurt Marinette anymore. Even if Pavona tries to, she won’t be able to. Tom and Sabine-- they were the weak link. Everyone else she loves is safe.”

Ladybug pauses, looks sideways at Batman, then stares out at the Parisian skyline again. “Everyone except for you. You’re not safe, here in Paris. You know that, don’t you?”

“She--” his mouth dries. There’s a lot of information to process, but he focuses on one thing. “She loves me?”

He doesn’t think he’s heard those words come out of any of his kid’s mouths. He knows that all of them do love each other in their own messed up ways and knows that his sons and daughters are more likely to show their affection in actions instead of words, but Marinette is a biological child that he’s never interacted with before this month. How can she love him when all he’s done is push her away?

“She loves you.” Ladybug closes her eyes. “But that makes her a fool. She’s clung to the hope that she’d get to know you for years. Look where that’s gotten her. She gets to meet you at the price of her parents' lives. So please, don’t mess this up. The best way to protect her is by making sure that you’re safe. Really, I’d want you to leave Paris and forget about her. She’ll be okay. We’ll keep her safe.”

Batman says nothing for a time. Ladybug is right in thinking that Marinette shouldn’t love him, but she’s not right in her belief that she can protect her. After all, Tom and Sabine are still dead. “But I can make sure no one hurts her. I may not be someone she interacts with normally, but I can’t see her die.”

Ladybug makes a keening sound in the back of her throat. “I know, Batman. We’re not as trained as you and your team. I know you want to keep her safe. That’s why I’m letting you and your team help us. Because we’re just not enough.”

“You’ve done a lot to keep this city safe.” He wants to be mad at her for involving a civilian family, but he can’t find it in him. She seems so young. Does she have parents? Do her parents know that she’s Ladybug?

“But not enough.” She wanders to the edge of the building, yoyo in hand. “When this is all over-- maybe the two of you can spend some time getting to know each other.”

Batman stares at the spotted heroine. “Maybe someday.”

“That’s not very convincing.” Ladybug turns so that he can’t see her face. “Be kind to her. She’s alone.”

“She has you. She has your team.” Neither Bruce nor Batman has been very good at comfort during a time of loss. 

Ladybug fiddles with the chain around her neck. Two rings as a pendant. She clenches her fist around them and goes still for a moment. “We’re too similar to comfort each other. And we both agreed that telling the team… it would be disastrous. Tom and Sabine were parents to all of us. Pavona is scheduled to come back soon. If we tell them now, it might end in another mass akumatization. That’s something we have to avoid.”

Pavona is coming back? How did Ladybug even know that she left? How— 

Batman stills. The muggy Parisian warmth is only alleviated by a brief breeze that makes Ladybug’s hair ties fly in the wind. Anger wells up in the back of his throat, and he feels the Lazarus in him spike, knows that behind the white film of his cowl, his eyes are turning green. “You know who Pavona is. Why hasn’t she been brought in yet? Why—”

Ladybug could have prevented Tom and Sabine’s death. She could have saved Marinette the loss of her parents. 

Marinette could have retained her innocence. Been kept out of the world of superheroes and supervillains, been kept safely on the sidelines if only Ladybug weren’t so selfish, wasn’t so foolish to bring in a civilian family with no training and no background.

“Marinette and I have known for a long time,” Ladybug cuts him off, and he’s ready to put his hands to her throat, but no. Justice, not vengeance. He will make sure that Ladybug’s wrongdoings are brought to light. He will right her wrongs.  “For four years, it was Hawkmoth and Mayura. Once Pavona showed up, we thought-- we thought that between her and Hawkmoth that she’d be the lesser of the two evils. We had no clue who Hawkmoth was, but we knew that they were working together. Pavona was left free to roam in hope that she’d lead us to Hawkmoth. That we could finally end the fight.”

 Ladybug’s back straightens. She turns, and her eyes are all blue steel and pain. It’s then that Batman realizes that Ladybug truly did love Tom and Sabine with her whole heart.

“I see that I was wrong. Hawkmoth kills indiscriminately. But Pavona-- her grudges run deep. Mayura was the kindest of the three. The reason Pavona killed Tom and Sabine was petty.” Ladybug’s voice crumples, as do her legs. She hunches in on herself, hugging her knees. Batman watches on from a distance. 

What was it she said? That she and Marinette were too similar to comfort each other? One day, Batman may find himself furious at Ladybug for making the decisions she did. But right now, all he sees is a child. 

“I’m sure you’ve looked into Marinette’s past,” Ladybug starts. 

Batman makes a noise of affirmation, but she clearly wasn’t looking for permission to go on. She was trying to collect herself in order to tell a story.

“There was a transfer all the way back in collège. She was very popular amongst her classmates. Beautiful, well connected, charismatic. There was no way people wouldn’t love her.” 

Ladybug glances back at him. “Come, sit, Monsieur. I do not know you well, but I don’t bite.”

Bruce— Bruce does not want to sit with her. But Batman says that he has to hear her out. To give her a chance, at least. Batman has made mistakes over the course of his career as well, his actions and inactions affecting too many for him to keep track of. He would be a hypocrite if he didn’t let Ladybug speak, even if Sabine and Marinette are two people he never would have dreamed of involving. Still, he keeps one hand firmly on a batarang. The videos shows that not much damage can be done to the superheroes when they’re suited up, save for attacks with magic, but nothing is absolute. There’s always a way to bring an opponent down. “Is it that shocking of a story?”

“No. Not at all. If anything, it’s a typical story of teenage drama, except perhaps a bit more than that. But I need the reassurance that you won’t run off once I finish.” She lets the two rings go, gentle thud of the two rings pressing against each other and her collar bone. The rings seem familiar. 

Batman sits, albeit warily and at least five feet away from his companion. Ladybug hasn’t proven untrustworthy so far, but she is still part meta and a magic user, from what he’s gathered. He wouldn’t put it past her or one of her team, particularly the one who creates illusions, to do something. He just doesn’t know what.

“This beautiful, charming classmate easily swayed Marinette’s class to her side.” Ladybug peeks at Batman through her bangs. “Understand that the classmates are children. Children in a class where power means that trouble and responsibility never stick. They learned that taking action meant you would be blamed.”

Batman wonders how Marinette and Ladybug met. Maybe it was through this very class she’s talking about now. If that’s true, it does not bode well for his perception of her.

“Marinette recognized this classmate for what she was. A liar. She promised all sorts of beautiful things-- things that played to their classmate’s biggest dreams. Working with their favorite artist. Meeting olympic athletes and musicians. Trips to impossible places. Perhaps if Marinette wans’t who she was, she would have believed her, too. But this classmate lied about two things Marinette knew were false. She lied about being a hero. She lied about me.”

“How do you and Marinette know each other?” It was incredibly difficult to find the video evidence of the Miraculous team going to Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Batman had to call in a favor from Zatara and avoiding her questions as to why— he’d much preferred it if he were able to go through any normal channel instead. 

“We’ve known each other since the beginning.” Ladybug fiddles with her yoyo, refusing to look him in the eyes. “Marinette tried to get her friends to realize the truth. But everybody wanted what she was saying to be real. It’s hard to say otherwise when everything they ever wanted could be found in a single person. And Marinette didn’t pick the smartest ways to try to reveal her lies. 

“That beautiful, charming classmate didn’t like Marinette trying to debunk her entire persona. She grew to be very cunning. She hurt Marinette in so many ways. I lost track over how many times Marinette got suspended or temporarily expelled, only for her to be brought back at the behest of the one other person in her class who knew the truth. Her designs were stolen. The boy she loved grew into a shell in order to protect himself. Her friends drifted away-- not that they were cruel or anything,  they were taught inaction above all else, to not say a word about whatever happened in class ever since ecole-- but Marinette was really lonely. 

“It was sort of a blessing in disguise. During this time, a lot of the Miraculous Team went on a break of sorts, and it was only Chat Noir and I. We had to get stronger and smarter and Marinette and her family provided relief and moral support. If her friends were close to her during that time, things may have ended really badly. Hawkmoth may have caught on to more secret identities than he already knew.”

“Does Marinette know who you and Chat Noir are underneath the mask?” To put the weight of their alter egos on a civilian is cruel. It’s why his own was so closely guarded. He’s not a fan of Marinette knowing his existence as Bruce, let alone Ladybug. 

“The more people who know our identities, the greater a chance Hawkmoth has at taking our Miraculous.”

A non answer. Clever wording on Ladybug’s part. Although he can imagine Sabine agreeing to put up a bunch of teenage superheroes in her bakery, he knows that it’s impossible for anything to escape from her eyes for very long. He’d bet anything that she figured out the majority of the team’s identities. And by extension, anything that Sabien finds out, Marinette is bound to find out as well; her past indicates that she has an equal, if not higher level of intelligence and creativity that Sabine had.

Had. They went for so long without patching anything up. Why was he so foolish? So Hard headed? She offered him so many chances to reconnect, to connect with Marinette, to be a second father to her. She didn’t have any romantic feelings for him left, that much he knew, what with how utterly in love she was with Tom, and he was happy for her. Happy that she found somebody more stable than him. 

If he and Sabine were closer, could he have prevented their deaths? Would he have been clued into the situation of a magic supervillain in Paris sooner? 

He can’t be mad at Ladybug. Not when Batman, a hero with decades of experience on her, failed to step in. Refused to look old problems in the eye. Let loved ones die for his own inability to communicate. 

“For a while, Marinette didn’t fight back. She didn’t want the boy she loved, her best friend, to get in any more trouble than he already was, trying to protect her. She laid low. But the classmate was very interested in this boy as well. The classmate tried to break him to get him to love her.”

Ladybug smiles wryly. “You can imagine that was the end of her rope. Marinette thought that the only person the liar was targeting was herself. After three years of bearing the weight, she finally snapped. She started using the resources she had. And the wasn’t any grandiose thing, though in retrospect, perhaps it should have been. She wouldn’t have ended up in prison, no she’s too young, and one of the two main victims was under lock and key, and Marinette was never hurt to the point where the liar would face real consequences for her actions. All that happened was a restraining order and her removal from Marinette’s school.”

“The girl’s name is Lila Rossi. She was already a suspect for working with Hawkmoth at the time by helping him turn people into akumas. Then Mayura stopped showing up and Pavona took her place. Pavona was clearly targeting everything and anything near Marinette. I should have seen the signs, but I had years of experience on her, and the Miraculous Cure--” Ladybug breaks off. “From one point of view, even Hawkmoth is better than her, because at least he didn’t cause any irreversible deaths.”

The Miraculous Cure is cruel. It only reverses the damage done with a Miraculous or while Ladybug is transformed. When Tom and Sabine were murdered, Pavona and the Peacock Miraculous were nowhere in sight.

Batman can’t say whether Pavona is better or worse than Hawkmoth. But Lila Rossi-- he recognizes the name. He knows what she looks like, since her image came up when he was doing a background check on Marinette. It’s quite possible that she has some type of mental disorder. Now is not the time to think about that. Hawkmoth’s identity needs to be revealed, and quickly. “How did you connect the two with the magic protecting your identities?”

“I used a little magic of my own.”

Beneath them, more and more lights begin to flicker out. Even though Paris is nicknamed the City of Lights, due to the extensive drain on energy, shops are required to turn off their exterior lighting after 1AM. 

“Please,” Ladybug says. “Please help me find Hawkmoth. Please help me put them in prison. I-- I’ve been fighting for so long, and it was a duty I didn’t even want for the longest time. I just want all of this to be over. I want to be able to scream and cry and mourn without Hawkmoth and Pavona trying to manipulate me. Please.”

Batman has never been one for physical affection, but he pats Ladybug awkwardly on her back. She launches herself into his arms, curling into him and sobs as he awkwardly rubs her back. He keeps his eyes trained at a distance, watching for any akumas or amoks.  

“Please,” she warbles, eyes watery. “Be good to Marinette. Be a good father. Be someone for her to lean on.”

His muscles tighten. He’s never claimed to be a good father, let alone a good man. He tries to do right, but Marinette is different from all of the other kids he’s taken in over the years. She’s not from Gotham. She had parents who were kind and stable and normal. He doesn’t think he can be a good father to her.

Somehow, Ladybug guesses exactly what he’s thinking. “You just have to be yourself. It may be stupid and foolish, but she loves you. She really does.”

For a long time, the two of them stay on that roof, Ladybug buried in the crook of Batman’s arm.

_____________________________________________________

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety 

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip

also if i missed you please just lmk in the appropriate place again! and is it a me thing or a tumblr thing that some of these tags just wont WORK AUGH. thank you all for the support on the fics i’ve posted so far! i’m quite bad at posting regularly because all sense of time has been stripped away

hahahaha consistent chapter length? what’s that? (jokes on you these aren’t chapters just loosely related chronologically told one shots. what even makes a cohesive story a story)

[flying-nightwing]

Pink and Totalitarianism Always Go Hand in Hand

Here’s the promised crack fic. Disclaimer, this is terrible in every and any form, because it is meant to be that way. If you want quality, structure, a story that makes sense, this ain’t it chief. This is certified Crack. If you finish this and all you can say is something along the lines of “what the fuck”, my work here is done. (Besides, this isn’t edited to add to the overall crack vibe)

Enjoy and good luck, because it get worse and worse as it goes

Masterlist in bio // pinned post

Pairing: Jason Todd x Reader

Word count: 4626

Warnings: Mention of drugs, light non-graphic violence, language

Summary: You’re stuck in a world that does not make sense, alone and surrounded by secret police and spies that will report you to the government. One early morning, Jason appears in your living room. His arrival gives you an opportunity to get the hell out of there for good. 

You had taken a habit of sleeping lightly.

You, who had once cherished your sleep like it was the rarest gem in the world. Yet, you found out you had still severely underappreciated its importance in your life, something you realized only when it was gone. You missed it like an old friend who was gone to war and died on the front, leaving words forever unsaid. What would you do for just one more night in your bed, with your own pillows and that drool stain that just wouldn’t leave anymore, sleeping like a log until the late morning. Or just a nap, that even would be enough. But you were far from home now, and you didn’t have a lot of hope you’d ever come back. 

When you heard a loud thump in the living room, your eyes flew open and your muscles tensed. Pushing off the pink comforter and pulling on the equally pink robe that was draped over the wooden chair, you carefully made your way down the corridor and toward the sound. A man dressed in black and red, with a red helmet complementing his strange outfit was standing there, looking around like he was trying to understand what was going on. You plastered a smile on your face. 

“Hiya there” The corner of your mouth hurt from the strain of smiling so wide. “Can I help you?”

“Uh?” He looked up, and even through his helmet you could assume his eyes were wide with confusion. They wouldn’t get you this time, you’d make sure of it. He didn’t fool anyone. “Where am I?”

“Silly!” You laughed, waving your hand in a small dismissive gesture. “We’re in Happy Town, obviously!”

“Uh?” He repeated, already visibly exhausted. That one agent lasted longer than the last, you had to give him that. His confusion was credible and well played down to the last detail. “Listen, lady, I’m sorry I crashed your house but I need you to point me toward Metropolis”

“Metropolis? I haven’t heard of a city of that name” You didn’t drop the smile. The goddamn smile. “Although, you are quite illegal sir, black and red are prohibited colors”

“... What?” 

“I’m afraid you’ll need to change” You explained. “Luckily for you, I have spares in the bedroom. Come along”

“Wait, prohibited?” He repeated, and you nodded eagerly. A test, it’s always a test. “What colors aren’t prohibited then?”

“Well, pink, you silly goose!”

He stared at you for the longest time. “What the fuck”

You froze. Actual agents were not allowed to swear, under any circumstances. They were physically not able to, even. “What did you say?”

“I said what the fuck”

You let your smile drop and sighed in relief. “Oh thank fuck”

“Hey, stay with me” He waved a hand in your face. “What the fuck is going on? Where am I?”

“Okay, we don’t have a lot of time, but basically” You paused, looking around to make sure all of your curtains were closed. You found a way to disable your microphones, but you had only to sunrise before they turned back on again. It was less suspicious that way, when you could attribute the lack of sound to you sleeping. Besides, you couldn’t risk you saying incriminating things in your sleep. “We are in a side dimension called Happy Town, but things are sketchy here. I don’t know what they are hiding, but if you don’t stick to their gimmick to the letter, you’re going to reeducation camps and stuff. This is some serious brainwashing, and I’m talking worse than Scientology”

“Fuck” He swore, taking off his helmet. “How did I get here?”

“Some portal, I dropped in the same place you did” You spoke quickly, in a hushed tone. “I haven’t found a way out, obviously, but if you came from Earth too, I’m betting there’s something I missed”

“This is insane” 

“You tell me” You scoffed. “And you haven’t even seen how bonkers this place really is yet”

“Do I really have to wear pink?” He flinched, and your eyes widened.

“Yes, you do!” You replied. “They will have you under scrutinization as soon as you step out of this house. If you want to survive, you must follow the rules to the letter. They don’t fuck around, I tell ya. When I first appeared, all the neighbors moved away and were immediately replaced by other creepier neighbors. I swear they’re spies. They’re all spies!”

“Wait, how long have you been there?”

“I don’t know, years?” You guessed. Could have been any measure of time really, you couldn’t know for sure. “I have no idea how I got through their brainwashing sessions. Either I outsmarted them, or they have no idea what they’re doing. It’s better not to take any chance, though”

“This is fucked up” He sighed and sat on the couch. “Besides wearing pink, what do I have to do?”

“Oh boy, sit tight” You began pacing in front of him. You didn’t know him, but he was your best chance at getting the hell out of here. Your bed now seemed a little bit closer now, even though you knew you’d never sleep the same. “It’s not just the clothing that’s pink, it’s any fabric, by the way, because happy people like pink”

It was like he was now aware that every couch, chair, carpet, curtain in your house was actually pink. 

“You gotta smile, always. You gotta look like chuck-e-cheese on crack” You continued, pacing in front of him. “Talking of which, never, EVER eat pie. I don’t know what’s in it, but it messes with your brain. Always find an excuse or distraction to avoid eating it”

“I’m not--”

“Never allude to the microphones you might find, act like you’ve never seen them and have no idea they’re there” You added. “Also, tomorrow we’ll have to get you registered if we don’t want the secret police to storm the house. You’ll have to follow my lead or we’re both dead, got it?”

“Yeah but--”

“Don’t say anything incriminating during the day” You interrupted him again. “I tweaked the microphones so they’re scrambled from midnight to sunrise. But that’s it. Also, always assume anyone you talk to is a spy or a snitch. It’s the Stasi all over again here, you can’t trust anyone who you don’t hear swear, which is nobody”

“Wai wait” He stopped you as you opened your mouth to continue on. “Why?”

“Because the people from here cannot swear, happy people don’t swear, they smile and giggle” You felt your eye twitch as you recited the lines you were fed over and over again. “The people engineered here are not able to, only those they kidnapped from Earth. Bad news is, beside that, they are virtually non-differentiable from each other. And they all wear those stupid pink clothes, only the regular police wears a darked shade of magenta. Other than that, all the same”

Confusion and horror was evident on his face. He sat there, processing it all as your eyes fell on the clock. You had about ten minutes until the first rays of sun showed up and reactivated the mics. “There’s no way back?” He finally asked.

“Not that I know of yet” You wrapped your hands around yourself. “You know, I have been begging for help out of this hell hole. You might be the key. Anyway, we gotta change you into something non offensive before they find out you’re here”

You dragged him in the bedroom, leaving him at the threshold while you rummaged through the dresser. All those clothes had been there too when you popped in the house, as if they had known exactly what they were doing by bringing you here. However, it wasn’t clear whether or not they had planned for their new citizen to be you. Ad judging by the arsenal of weapons on the new guy, ir reinforced your theory that the actual selection was still experimental. You weren’t exactly the shut up and obey type, and you doubted he was either.

“What’s your name?” You asked as you pulled a pink cardigan out of a drawer. It occured to you that you might have to know what to call him. Polite people knew the name of their housemate. You grabbed a yet again pink pair of slacks and pushed the clothes in his hands.

“Uh, Jason” He replied, surprised at the sudden income of pink fabric. You threw him the socks, suspenders, bow tie, belt and dress shirt that was, you guessed it, the exact same color as the rest. He was covered in pink clothes like a coat hanger.

“(Y/N)”

“Hey, I’m not wearing that” He objected as he took a better look at the clothes. His face turned to disdain as he shook his head like he had drank bad milk. “Nope, no way”

“If you don’t wear pink, they’ll kill you” You said through your teeth.

“No, I’m not talking about the pink” He said, his expression unchanging. He pulled the cardigan and held it up. “This. This won’t do at all. I’m not wearing a fucking cardigan”

You stared at him, wide eyed. You didn’t have the time to deal with that, sunrise was a few minutes away!

“You will wear that cardigan or so help me” You said in a low, yet threatening voice. He recoiled. “Suck. It. Up.”

Wordlessly, he headed for the bathroom on the other side of the bedroom. He changed in two minutes, coming back awkwardly with his pile of dark clothes. You picked them from him and walked to that spot just beside your bed, and kneeled. You unscrewed the floor board, which was already loose, and you deposited the bundle, weapons and all, next to a very, very dusty blue jeans and burgundy coat. You hurried to replace everything like it hadn’t been touched and stood up again to face an all pink, visibly uncomfortable Jason. He was tying his bow, a displeased frown on his face. It made you wonder what was his life before. He changed rather quickly, and didn’t seem confused by the way bow ties worked.

“What now?”

“We gel your hair”

“No” His eyes widened. The wake up siren sounded outside, and like a reflex learned through violent lessons, your face pulled into a pained smile. You still made a zipping motion over your mouth, pointing to the bathroom. With a silent sigh, he complied.

---

His smile looked unnatural.

But again, so did yours probably. So did everyone’s. Smiling that much wasn’t natural for anyone or anything but perhaps a hyena. Or a clown. You walked arms in arms with him, waving at people sending you curious glances, their smiles unwavering. The government was already aware of this presence, either because they zapped him there or because they heard your made up meeting conversation through the microphones. 

“Okay, I see what you meant by everyone is a spy” He muttered through his teeth, making sure his lips weren’t moving. He was holding to his grin like it was a lifeline. And it was. 

“Right?” You replied in the same manner. “So don’t slip”

“I won’t”

“Well hello there!”

You jumped in surprise at the Mayor appearing in front of you, seemingly out of nowhere. You put your free hand on your heart and laughed. “Hi there, you startled me good!”

He laughed. Jason laughed. It all seemed forced. 

“I see we have an addition in Happy Town!” The mayor pointed to Jason, nodding in approval at his attire. “Where did you come from?”

His first test.

“I… Came from Earth!” He replied with enthusiasm. “Although I have to say, I looooove this place. It’s so… Happy!”

Well played, Jason. Well played.

“I am so glad to hear you say that” He placed a “friendly” pat on his shoulder, but he seemed satisfied. “What is your name, lad?”

“Dick Grayson, sir” 

You swallowed back your confusion at his words, but also at the hint of genuine smile that crossed his expression. Keep smiling.

“Well Mr. Grayson, welcome to Happy Town!” They shook hands. “I see Miss (Y/N) is already taking care of you, integrating you nicely in our community”

His gaze shifted to you as a silent warning behind those cold, smiling eyes. You had your fair history of problems with them, but they had every reason to think it was over now. Still, the warning lingered. But those pink assholes wouldn’t catch you this time.

“I’ll make sure he becomes one of us in no time!” You assured, giving a light nod to Jason.

“No doubt you’ll make an amazing couple” He tipped his pink hat and you noticed Jason held back a cough of surprise. “The daily play of the anthem is about to start, I must return to city hall. I’ll see you around!”

He waved. You waved. Jason waved. He walked away with a skip in his step like the happy jerk he was.

“Couple?” He said, coming back to your public mode of communicating. 

“Sorry, I should have warned you” You sighed internally.

“Sorry?”

“Yeah!” You wanted to burst out so bad. “What about it, Dick Grayson?”

“I wasn’t about to give them my real name” He defended, watching around for people noticing your hushed conversation. But everybody was preparing for the anthem, their attention directed to the morning messages man on the giant screens.

“So you gave that poor guy’s instead?”

“Poor? Nah. Relax, he can take care of himself” What you were sure was a chuckle escaped his lips. “Besides, he’s not even--”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for our national anthem”

You elbowed Jason and stood up straight, the sun hitting the side of your face. He mimicked your posture. The music started, and you could see faltering in the corner of your eye.

“Is this--”

“Yes”

“What the fuck”

“I know”

“Whyyyyyyy”

“Stay with me” You urged silently. You really didn’t know how or why Happy Town’s anthem came to be ‘Yeah!’ by Usher feat Lil Jon and Ludacris, but even if you did, now was not the ideal time or place to get into that kind of discussion. You suspected it had something to do with the exclamation mark after the ‘yeah’. But you could be wrong. You still didn’t understand the bigger picture however, since the lyrics clearly contained the word ‘not’ followed directly by ‘happy’ in the first verse, which made ‘not happy’. It was against the party line. 

“Okay, we stage a coup tonight” He decided as the song ended. “I don’t think I can do this another day”

----

Midnight came slowly.

After a day of mingling and presenting Jason as Dick Grayson and your future husband like the Mayor had most probably hinted at during your morning encounter, of slyly getting out of eating pie and avoiding the police, you were glad to finally breathe. 

“UUUUGH” Jason whined, plopping on the couch. “I can never look at the color pink the same way ever again. I’m sick of it, sick of it!”

“Get it together!” You snapped. “We need to plan our coup. We’ve got one shot for it, and if it fails we’re toast. I need my bed, Jason. MY BED”

“Alright, what do you have in mind?” He asked, taking a deep breath. “You know this place more than I do”

“I say tomorrow night, we quietly follow the police after their curfew patrol round” You began, biting the skin around your nails. “How good is your stealth?”

He looked at you blankly for a good ten seconds before he let out a small, ironic snort. “Above average, I’d say”

It was like he wanted you to ask why he’d think that, but you were too busy thinking about your plan. “Good, good” You nodded. “There must be some headquarters somewhere. All we have to do is get there, threaten them at gunpoint--Your guns are functional yes?”

“Obviously”

“--So they’ll zap us back to Earth. And if not, we shoot the mayor and take control of this hell”

“That escalated quickly,” He stated. “But what the hell, sure, I’m on board. Let’s go”

“Tomorrow the sun sets at 8:07. We’ll need to be changed and ready to go by then”

“Wait, tomorrow?” He sprung up in his seat, eyes wide. “No, no. I can’t take one more day of pink cardigans and pleasant conversations with spies!”

“DEAL WITH IT” You gestured wildly before calming down almost instantly. You didn’t need the neighbors to hear and report a fight. “Patrol is already over for today. Be smart about this”

“Fine” He sighed aggressively. “But if this flops, I’m taking everyone down with me. There won’t be an after tomorrow, I can fucking tell you”

“Yeah I won’t stop you”

“Good”

“Good.”

You stayed there in silence, unmoving for a moment. This was it. The moment you’ve been waiting for. Your liberation. Your bed was less than 24 hours a day if things went as planned, which you hoped it would. 

“I’ll… Sleep on the couch” He mumbled after a while, moving to lay down. YOur eyes widened.

“You can’t” You objected, knowing the government would find a way to find out the scam you were running through that detail. 

“Why not?”

“If the secret police comes for a surprise inspection and your side of the bed is cold, we’re kaputt” You explained. “We’re supposed to be at the very least fiancés, remember?”

“God fucking dammit” He swore, looking up at the sky like it would help him. Ha, you already tried that and it didn’t work.

---

The next day, as you prepared the decaf pot of coffee because happy people didn’t need caffeine to be happy, a knock sounded on your door. Jason was taking a shower in the bathroom, so you went and opened the door. Like you had predicted, two men in dark magenta stood at your doorstep with dangerous looking smiles. 

“Good morning ma’am” One greeted with a tip of his hat. “This is a surprise inspection, warranted by the new arrivant in your household, name Dick Grayson and title husband to be. May we come in?”

Your smile widened as you stepped aside, like you actually had a choice in the matter.

“Of course!” You exclaimed. “Coffee, officers?”

“We’ll have to politely decline, thank you” The other smiled as they came in and observed the clean state of the house. All houses were required to be neat and clean at all times. They looked around for something out of place, slowly but surely directing themselves to the bedroom at the end of the hall. You followed them a few paces away, ready to answer their question if they had some. It wasn’t your first surprise check. 

They finally reached the room, from where they could hear the shower running. Their gazes caught the neatly folded pink pile on the bed, then they surrounded it. They started to feel under the comforter and drapes, on the pillows, everywhere they could spot the presence or absence of another person. You called it, oh you so called it.

The shower stopped, and both officers shared a look. “Alright, everything is in order ma’am. Have a good breakfast and a good day!”

You escorted them to the door, threw them a thank you on the way and silently sighed once the door closed behind them. You returned to your coffee, and not long after, Jason emerged from the hallway all dressed in pink.

“Ooh, who were the gentlemen here?” He inquired cheerily, but you knew what it meant. 

“Some nice officers came to see if we were doing fine here!” You replied with equal cheer.

“Shucks, I missed them” He snapped his fingers, chuckling. “Next time perhaps”

“Of course!” The pep in your voice did not match your eye roll. Thank god there were no cameras. 

You finished breakfast and went to town once again, like you did everyday. You felt like everyone was staring at you even more than usual. Like they all knew what you planned for that night. You might have been slightly paranoid, but Jason’s calm demeanor was helping. He was good at that, like he had practiced for all of his life to deceive people.

The mayor bothered you again after the daily play of the anthem, a song you were sure would elicit a violent reaction from you once you would be back in the real world. Then, you repeated the same daily routine you had had forever. Smile, avoid the pie, smile, talk with the neighbors-spies, smile, think about how life is amazing, smile.

Smile smile smile smile smile smile. 

Eurgh.

That night, the pleasant conversations contained codes to trump the microphones. Jason pretended to dance while you unscrewed the loose floorboard and carefully placed his clothes and weapons on the bed. You picked your old clothes, quietly dusting them off. They smelled weird but you were excited to wear something other than pepto bismol dyed fabric. Making sure the curtains were drawn, you proceeded to change. Jason looked ecstatic to finally be rid of his cardigan, while you took a moment to appreciate your black t-shirt and burgundy coat. While he had his red helmet, he handed you a domino mask from his pocket. You had no idea why he had that, but you took it anyway. It looked cool and rebel. You sneaked through the back door, avoiding the spots of light by either lamps outside your house and street posts. You watched the patrol casually making sure everyone was inside, keeping a good distance in between you and them at every time. They weren’t talking, but whistling some creepy tunes. You had to make a small hike through a hill when they entered a gated tunnel, but you ended up in front of a giant factory where workers dressed in grey buzzed around with crates. YOu gasped.

“Illegal” You muttered.

“What?”

You shook your head. They had gotten to you too much, it was time you left that god forsaken place. “Nevermind. How do we go through that barbed wire?”

He pulled out a medium sized pair of cutters from… You had no idea where, but he had them. You shrugged, gesturing to him to go ahead. In a blink, you were in. You sneaked inside without being seen, navigating the building with guesses and feelings. You finally ended up in the main production room, where crates of products were opened and emptied in a giant bassin. The stirred liquid was purple and smelled strange, but you knew it was to do no good. And right beside, there was the pie filling packaging. 

“I knew it!” You hissed under your breath. “They’re putting drugs in the pie! Can you see what it is? Cocaine? Heroin?

“Doesn’t seem like…” He leaned in. “Wait…”

“Al-- Allegra?” You managed to read the crate.”Never heard of it, but it must be terrible and dangerous”

Jason turned his head and stared at you. HIs helmet bore no expression, but you were sure he looked at you like you were dumb. Did he know what it was? “Are you kidding me?”

“No, why?”

“Allegra is--” He sighed. “It’s allergy medication. It’s… Not drugs per say”

“Uh?”

“God dammit--” He paused as something caught his eyes. It was sparkly, and unfit for this environment. From it emerged five armed guys dressed in earth clothes. They had a bag of white substance, which was tasted by the man who welcomed them. “Of fuck, THAT’s cocaine” 

You waited as they put some of it in a vial, which already had purple liquid. 

“Fuck, they mix it with allegra?” He cursed, mostly to himself. “What kind of fucking insane dimension did I step in?” 

“I told you”

“Okay, so those guys will have to leave eventually” Jason pointed at the visibly Earth humans. “We’ll make sure we catch it as well”

“But they have machine guns” You pointed out, not sure how his mind worked. 

“Wait for my signal” You knew he was grinning under that helmet. Before you could ask him how the fuck he would manage five armed guys, he jumped over the rail and started running toward them. You shut your eyes shut as gunshots went off, then opened them again when it was silent. There were bodies around, but Jason was still standing, wrestling with two guys. You watched for a few seconds when you noticed a pink figure sneakily approaching from behind, a frying pan in his hand.

The mayor!

You jumped over the rail too, but your landing was way less graceful than Jason’s. Actually, you were pretty sure you sprained your ankle. But still, you ran-limped to the man and jumped on his back before he could bonk Jason’s head with his weapon.

“ARRRRRGH”

He did not see you coming, as he lost balance at your attack. You crashed on the ground, where you managed to get on top and start hitting him. But apparently neither of you knew how to punch, so it was a rather pathetic looking fight. You swapped and slapped, pulled hair and scratched, until you got a hold of his pan and made a pancake of his face. 

“Take that you pink fucking nightmare” You spat as you stood up. You turned to Jason, whose shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.

“Wow uh” He covered it with a cough. “That sure was an interesting fight to watch”

“Keep mocking me, mister fucking assassin” You rolled your eyes. “I stopped him from bonking your head”

“Alright, alright, thank you”

“No problem” You replied. “Let’s get out of here”

You went and stood on the platform the dealers came through, then waited. But nothing happened.

“I think we need to activate it” He spoke up. That was logical.

You scanned the room for a panel control, and you believed you spotted it on the opposite wall. You grabbed your shoe to throw at it, before Jason held back your arm’s motion.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Activating the portal” You furrowed your brows, pointing at the panel. A big red button on which was written ‘ON’ was glaring at you from the distance. Practical target.

“Don’t throw your shoe, that’s dumb” He snorted. “Let me”

Before you could argue, he cocked his gun and fired a bullet right on the button. A death sound resonated, but nevertheless sparks began to fly and not just from the ruined panel. The portal opened and swallowed you, sending you through flashes and weird colors until you were spat out in a dull, dark place that smelled bad. Jason seemed to have landed just fine, but you were another story. You pulled yourself up, whining at the pain in your ankle. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here”

A creepy, unknown voice made you both turn around. It was a pale man with an unnaturally stretched smile and bad taste in clothes, and right away it made you think the worst. You had been thrown in Dark!Happy Town. Without thinking, you let out a war cry and hurled your frying pan to the more evil version of the Mayor, knocking him out instantly.

What you didn’t expect though, was the roaring laughter from beside you. 

“Oh--Oh my god” He could barely talk. “I wished I filmed that”

“What? What’s happening?” You asked. Had he gone crazy? “Who’s that? We’re not back home are we?”

“Relax, we’re back” He took a deep breath, his shoulders still shaking. “You’ve just knocked out the most wanted criminal in Gotham city”

“WHAT?”

“Welcome back, (Y/N), welcome back”

[greekgeek21]

Percy Jackson & The Avengers: Convergence - some badass demigod training!!

Hello, and welcome back to...my horrible explanation for being absent! Coming up on this episode, you'll see me explain that I had my first 2 lacrosse games of the season and was left with bruised ribs. If anyone ever says that women's lax isn't a real sport cuz there isn't contact, you can tell them that someone from a fanfic website said they had bruised ribs from playing.

Anyway, I hope you like this chapter. We're starting to get some actual plot movement I think so have fun with that. Honestly, I kinda forgot what happened in here so...yeah. Please comment, like, follow, and reblog! Stay safe & happy reading!

- your author

Ω ♆ Ω

Percy and Annabeth woke up to the sound of a startled shout. Frank's startled shout, to be specific. They both shot up right away, their battle instincts kicking in, but Frank had seen enough.

"Seriously guys!? Again?" he exclaimed.

"Nothing happened!" Annabeth reassured, "We just fell asleep!"

"We did kiss a little," Percy muttered, and Annabeth shot him a death glare.

"Not. Helping," she whispered scathingly.

A sense of complete déjà vu washed over Percy. Except this time, the rest of the Seven were standing in the doorway, watching on with various amused expressions on their faces.

"Oh, this is perfect. Coach Hedge is gonna love this," Leo smiled in maniacal glee.

"No, Leo," Piper ordered, "You're not going to do that. Instead, we are going to get this meeting over with so I can get some sleep."

"Aw...you ruin all my fun!" he exclaimed.

"Someone's gotta do it when Calypso isn't here," Piper said.

It was true. Calypso and Piper are probably the only ones who could actually control Leo. Calypso because of Leo's fear of losing her or just general fear of her, and Piper because of her charmspeak.

"Ok! That's enough. We're getting sidetracked. We need to start this meeting." Jason clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.

He gave Percy a meaningful look; one which said to 'take it from here.' So Percy did.

"Um, well, Annabeth and I wanted to talk to you guys about what's been going on. We need to come to an agreement on what we are allowed to say and do with the Avengers. I don't think we should show them the full extent of our powers because it seemed like those spies were looking for a reason to lock us up," he started, "And I'm not particularly fond of being put in a cell. How about you?"

"Yeah. And we need to figure out a way to deal with the bombings without them figuring us out. The mortals seemed pretty Hades-bent on releasing the big secret, and that never bodes well for people like us. I know that we need their help, but I don't trust them." Annabeth said.

"We can just say we were born with the powers, and have no idea why. I mean, it's technically true," Jason offered.

The others all nodded in agreement.

"Ok, now what about the pattern? What is it?" Piper asked.

"All of the places are big parts of the Greek and Roman world. Brooklyn Bridge is near Manhattan, the home of the Gods, Portland: Mt. St. Helens, where Typon used to be held, LA: entrance to Hades, Long Island: Camp Half-blood, and San Francisco: Camp Jupiter," Annabeth answered.

"Woah," Jason whispered, shocked.

"Yeah, but that's not our biggest concern. We also need to figure out how to hide our identities from the world while we're fighting with the Avengers," Annabeth said.

Everyone else there hadn't even thought of that. It comes in real handy to have a daughter of Athena around sometimes. Ok, not sometimes, all the time. All of them would be really dead without her quick thinking and planning.

"Um, I could try to see if the Aphrodite cabin could cook something up?" Piper suggested, "But most of them are still getting used to fighting, so they won't really know what to make. They need help with the designs."

Leo shot up from where he had slumped down into the desk chair, "I can help! Well, the Hephaestus cabin can. We can help design it so it's battle-ready."

"Good. We'll need those soon, I think. I have a feeling that we're going to have a lead soon, so we need to be ready when it comes. This is just one quest, so there is no need for people to think we're some kind of superheroes," Annabeth said.

"Aw! But I already had a name picked out!" Leo exclaimed.

He looked like he was about to let them in on his superhero name, but Annabeth held up a hand with a glare that clearly said to not speak unless he wanted to lose some very important parts of him. That kept him quiet, for sure.

"Is that all?" Frank asked, towering over them all.

"For now, yes. Remember, say the absolute minimum and stick to twisting the truth. If you reveal any new information without the others knowing, call a meeting to let us know," Annabeth confirmed, nodding her head.

"Great, now I can go back to sleep," Percy said, pulling Annabeth back down with him.

The others filed out soon after that, already hearing Percy's soft snores as they left and returned to their respective rooms. Ok, so Jason and Piper stayed in the same room like Percy and Annabeth did, but nothing happened. It was just nice to be in the arms of someone who cares about you, you know?

Ω ♆ Ω

"Up and at 'em, kiddos! It's training day!" Tony gleefully exclaimed over the speakers that Percy was absolutely sure he did not see in his room.

Percy groaned when he saw what time it was: 6:00 AM. He knew he wasn't allowed to (and that it was wrong, of course), but he wanted to kill Tony so badly in that moment. It would be quick! Nobody would suffer!

But, alas, he had to actually work with the man-child. It might not come off like it, but Percy takes war very seriously, and this was starting to feel like a war. Or at least, it would become one if they didn't stop it soon. And to do that, they needed the Avengers, apparently.

That was the only reason that he followed Annabeth in getting up and ready for the day. He took a little longer than Annabeth, but at 6:30 AM, they were stepping out of his room. They saw that the others were slowly doing the same. They were all tired. There weren't any big dream incidents, but that doesn't mean that staying up until midnight and then waking up at six in the morning won't do something to you. Even Leo looked exhausted, with big puffy eyes from rubbing them in an attempt to wake himself up quicker. If Leo Valdez was tired, then you knew that it was too early for this.

Also, you have to remember that they'reteenagers. Teenagers aren't meant to be up super early- it's a scientific fact, Percy thinks. Annabeth once told him something about their melatonin not releasing until later at night, so they could stay up and sleep in later.

What? Percy pays attention to what she's saying sometimes.

"I hate Tony," Piper grumbled, practically falling asleep on Jason.

"You and us all, chica," Leo mumbled before letting out a huge yawn.

"What did he say was going on? Training?" Jason asked, looking over at Annabeth for answers because she seemed the most awake of the group.

"Yep. Training, whatever that entails. I don't know, so be prepared for anything. I really hope it has nothing to do with electronics, but knowing our luck, and how Tony has been so far, it will, so just try not to get too close," she answered.

Leo tiredly saluted her, "Yes, ma'm."

Hazel rolled her eyes, "Come on, Repair Boy."

She grabbed his arm and started leading the way towards the living room, which was their best guess at where the Avengers were.

As they were walking, they were interrupted by the disembodied voice of JARVIS, "Excuse me, but I was told to direct you to the training room, where the Avengers are currently assembled and waiting for you. Shall I proceed?"

All of the demigods were still really weirded-out by the AI, and there was no way it was ending soon. It's just a reminder that they were currently in a building basically composed entirely of technology, one of their greatest liabilities. Liabilities were a dangerous thing in their lives.

"Yes..." Percy answered hesitantly, unsure where to look.

"Then please follow the arrows projected on the ground, sir," JARVIS said.

Sure enough, there were large white arrows pointing them away from the living room, so they followed them. It was about a two minute walk to the elevators, where they were told to go to the 60th floor, which was apparently one whole training room by itself.

Ω ♆ Ω

"So let me get this straight, you guys want us to...play a video game?" Frank asked, gesturing to the giant room around them.

The Seven were quickly ushered by the Avengers into a big room with a bunch of white, padded tiles all around them as soon as they had reached the training floor. There was only a viewing window and an exit that disappeared when the door was closed. Then, Tony explained what they were going to be doing. None of them really understood it yet.

"No! I want you to fight the LMDs! The robots! They will simulate different levels of skill to evaluate your skills. Understand?" Tony punctuated each word, quickly losing any sense of patience he had started with.

"Yeah. We got it," Annabeth sighed.

Ok, she was sure she was the only one of them who realized that they were about to break one of the rules they established last night on the first day. They were about to fight robots. TECHNOLOGY.

This should go well, Annabeth thought.

Steve interrupted before Tony could make a snarky comment, "Good. We'll start with fighting separately and then together as a group. Afterwards, we'll see how you work with different weapons."

"Aye aye, Cap," Leo joked.

"Leo, focus. We're about to fight ROBOTS." Annabeth tried to get the son of Hephaestus to understand the severity of the situation. "You have a back-up plan, right?"

He could talk to machines. Robots were machines. Therefore, he should be able to get them out of this mess if anything went wrong.

He gave her a nod of understanding, and Annabeth settled back into her natural stance rather than her tense one. Well, she's always tensed for battle. At least in her natural one it's less obvious.

"Alright, who wants to go first?" Tony asked over the intercom.

"Uncle Leo will go first, right?" Percy joked, referencing to one of Leo's favorite nicknames for himself.

"Sure! I just need to know how much damage I'm allowed to do," Leo said, looking up at the Avengers.

Annabeth was shocked that he had even thought to ask that, and apparently the Avengers were, too.

"Um, just let go. There's nothing you can do to break this room. I designed it myself," Tony answered, still arrogant even through his confusion.

"Come on out, the rest of you," Natasha instructed.

Once the rest of the demigods had exited the room and stood next to the Avengers at the viewing window, Tony pressed a button on a screen that made a compartment in the walls of the room open up, revealing a row of floating LMDs.

"Now, I'm going to start you at Level 2, okay? It gets harder as you move up. The LMDs should stay the same form throughout every level, though. Ready?" Tony said.

Leo pulled his war hammer from his magical toolbelt and lit it and his arms on fire, "Ready."

Tony had to shake himself out of his shock before he pressed the start button, but when he did, every one of the mortal heroes had sat on the edge of their metaphorical seats, eager to see just how powerful these kids could be.

Plus, the kid had just pulled a giant war hammer from his normally-sized toolbelt, and then proceeded to light himself and the hammer on fire. They were bound to be curious after that display.

They knew the very basics of the young heroes' abilities, but most of that stuff was based on just what they had been told. Actual, visible proof is what they wanted.

All at once, the LMDs transformed into the Avengers minus the Hulk. Repeat, they changed into the Avengers. Leo had to fight a copy of the Avengers, alone.

Percy was freaking out inside. Sure, he trusted his friend, but Leo was a joker, and he tended to not understand how serious things were. In this case, he hoped that didn't happen.

"This should be interesting," Natasha remarked.

"No, this should be terrible. Tony, you never told me you were using this setting," Bruce said, rushing up to the other scientist, "He's just a kid."

"I think they've made it clear they aren't just kids, Jolly Green. It's fine. If they wanted to be treated like the rest of us, then they need to pass this test," Tony said.

Bruce looked like he wanted to say a lot more, but Jason stepped up to stop him, "He'll be fine, Dr. Banner. Leo may not look it, but he's powerful and he's smart. He can handle this."

Jason looked so sure of himself that it was enough to convince the doctor that it would be okay.

In truth, Jason had no idea how this program worked. There was a good chance that Leo did not, in fact, have this handled.

While this was being discussed, Leo had already started to fight the Iron Man LMD. He was currently alternating between swinging his hammer at it and firing balls of fire. The LMD had only been hit a couple of times because it kept maneuvering around the attacks by flying away.

It was getting tiresome, and Leo wanted it to be over with. So, he dropped his hammer and set a determined look on his face, glaring up at the robot.

The Seven were grinning, already figuring out what was happening, while the Avengers were just plain confused. What was the kid gonna do? Glare them to death?

Then, Leo started grinning and they knew it was all over.

He crouched down onto the ground and placed a hand on the floor, closing his eyes in concentration. The LMDs seemed to be as confused as their originals.

Three seconds passed before Leo's grin grew even more, and then he spoke a single word, "Stop."

And they did. Every single LMD lost their form and fell to the ground, limp and unmoving. Leo stood up, dusted his pants off, and turned to the viewing window to see his teammate's reactions.

They were priceless.

"That's how you do it," he said, "Am I done?"

Tony literally shook himself out of his stupor, "Yeah, sure. I need to reboot the LMDs."

When Leo came through the door, the rest of the demigods crowded him, patting him on the back and laughing at his dramatics.

"What was that?" Natasha demanded, breaking through the teens to tower over Leo's elf-like form.

Okay, maybe tower isn't the right word. She was taller than him, but not by much. Natasha was just very intimidating.

"Uh...fighting?" Leo tried.

Natasha's glare hardened, "You know that's not what I mean. What did you do to make the LMDs stop attacking?"

Leo glanced at Annabeth, who nodded in consent, "I talked to them."

"You did what?!" Tony exclaimed.

"I talked to them. They were pretty boring, to be honest, but I was able to shut them down," he answered.

Tony let out an incredulous laugh, "That's not possible! You can't just TALK to machines!"

"He can, and he did," Piper said, smiling proudly at her best friend.

"But–" Tony's voice died out.

"How come you never told us of this ability?" Natasha asked.

"You never asked," Percy answered simply, not liking her interrogatory tone at all.

The spy looked like she wanted to continue the conversation, but Clint whispered something in her ear and she stepped back with one last glare.

"Welp! That was fun! Who's next?" Tony clapped his hands.

Everyone turned to see that he had gotten the LMDs back online and back in the Avengers' form.

Piper sighed and started to walk to the door, "I guess I'll go next."

Before she could enter, Steve asked, "What weapon are you going to use? Your powers won't work on the robots."

Piper smirked at him over her shoulder before pulling Katoptris from its sheath on her thigh. Apparently, the Avengers had yet to fully break through the Mist, and they could not see her having that strapped there this entire time. But when she pulled it out, they seemed to finally be able to see it for what it truly was. It makes you wonder what they thought was there before. A ruler, maybe?

"I've got this," she stated before slipping into the training room.

Ω ♆ Ω

It was obvious Piper had been taking more lessons on dagger-fighting with Annabeth. As soon as the first person attacked, she was slashing and stabbing like crazy. Her lithe form was swisting out of the way of punches from Steve's copy, while Clint's arrows were shooting at her from behind.

Tony had clearly upped the level of difficulty after seeing what Leo could do.

Piper ducked under one of the arrows, and then shot back up to land a finishing blow to the center of LMD-Steve's chest. Then, she ripped Katoptris out of the robot and turned to throw it at Clint's copy, which just barely managed to avoid getting stabbed.

She was running on pure adrenaline now. It was best to imagine these opponents as monsters. Sure, when they actually fought humans, they would need to not kill, but these were just robots.

Cilnt's robot shot it's last arrow, and it exploded right before her face, stunning her into stillness. In that couple of seconds it took for her to recenter herself, Natasha's copy jumped onto her back for a chokehold. Piper struggled, but the LMD had been designed to know all of Natasha's known skills, and it was working. The Iron Man LMD landed and shot a stunning shot at her chest: the final straw for Piper to finally surrender.

She knew they wouldn't kill her, but she was not in the mood to be knocked-out. It left you with a massive headache.

So she tapped out.

"Ok ok, I'm done. I'm done," She panted as she was released, rubbing her neck.

Piper was not happy about having to surrender, but it seemed like the Avengers had been thoroughly impressed with her skill with such a small weapon.

"I'll do next," Annabeth declared, high-fiving Piper on her way out.

"Good luck," Piper said.

"Don't need it," Annabeth responded, pulling out her drakon-bone sword.

Out in the control room, Tony said, "Is that a bone?!"

"It's whatever you want it to be," Hazel grinned, manipulating the Mist just a bit.

"You scare me sometimes, Miss Metal Detector," Leo muttered, glancing at Annabeth's sword, which had shifted into a machete.

He wasn't sure whether to be impressed by Hazel's skill, or weirded-out by Tony's brain.

"Make sure to move to difficulty up a bit," Percy told Tony, "She'll be insulted otherwise."

The billionaire seemed to be getting used to the teens' weird ways because he didn't even flinch when he heard that, and instead moved to comply.

"And...here we go," Tony said over the intercom, "Good luck, Annie."

"My name is Annabeth!" she shouted before going into the fight.

In this level, every single one of them attacked at once. Annabeth back-bended under Steve's copy's punch, and then kicked up into LMD-Natasha's face. After, she turned and sliced the Iron Man armor on the side, just under the armpit. She had picked that as a point of weakness before she had even stepped into the building.

"She's good," Natasha relented, watching as the daughter of Athena thrusted her sword into Steve's robot foot.

Seeing that Clint's LMD copy was not going to get any closer to her, Annabeth pulled out a hidden dagger and threw it in a perfect line to hit it in the center of its forehead. Then, she turned and blocked a punch from Natasha's robot, who had recovered from the face-hit. The spy copy used the Iron Man LMD to jump up and wrap her legs around Annabeth's neck, trying to do a scissor hold, which failed because Annabeth rolled forward, slamming Natasha's head into the ground. The left a big enough dent that the LMD wasn't getting back up.

That only left Iron Man to deal with.

She settled into a fighting stance, but didn't attack, choosing to wait for her opponent to make the first blow.

Percy was grinning. This was what they needed: a good way to blow off steam without it possibly ending with one of them dead.

"What is she waiting for?" Steve asked.

"She's playing with it. It's fun for her," Jason answered, "It's Annabeth."

Finally, the robot got impatient and attacked. It sent a stun blast at her, which Annabeth quickly avoided. After, she ran up to the wall, kicked off of it, and jumped up to drag the Iron Man LMD down to the ground, where she sat down on it and landed a few punches. But she quickly realized punching wasn't doing much good.

"Judo flip! Do the judo flip!" Leo exclaimed, jumping up and down in excitement.

When it wasn't him being the one attacked by Annabeth, it was super entertaining.

Annabeth sighed, but a smile was pulling at the edges of her lips. She hauled Iron Man up, who was still recovering from being slammed down to the ground, and got a good hold on it's arm. Then, she flipped it over her shoulder with an ease that only came from years of experience.

With a huge smile on her lips, and a last glance at her carnage, Annabeth walked back out to the control room.

"How was that for a kid?" She asked Natasha.

"Not bad," she got for an answer.

Ω ♆ Ω

Jason, Hazel, and Frank's individual tests went-by pretty quickly. Jason electrocuted all of the robots, rendering them immobile.

After that, and with another new batch of LMDs, Hazel used her Spatha to slice and cut through the robots. In the end, it proved too hard for her to do it with just a sword, so she pulled a chunk of the wall out and smashed it against the LMDs until they were in many different pieces.

Frank ended up having to forfeit, but not before getting every single Avengers copy but Steve down. Steve ended up having him in a chokehold that was just too difficult to get out of. And Frank had already transformed into many animals, so he wasn't sure if he could've changed back if he had transformed again.

If it wasn't obvious, Percy was avoiding doing his turn. He was trying to stay in the corner, and out of the notice of any of the adults. However, that wasn't possible with two spies in the room. They notice everything.

"Percy? Your turn," Natasha said.

So much for that plan.

Percy hesitated, "Um...about that, I don't think I should go."

Natasha raised her eyebrows in mock-surprise, but it was actually Steve who spoke, "You have to go, son. In order to work well together, we need to know each other's strengths and weaknesses. This will never work without you doing this."

"Plus, we promise it's completely safe," Bruce added in.

Percy sighed, admitting that he wasn't going to be able to worm his way out of this one. Instead of fighting, he turned to whisper to Annabeth, "Don't let me get out of control."

Annabeth gave him a sad look, "Percy, I know you have control. I trust you. You just need to trust yourself. You would never hurt us. I know that for certain."

The Avengers were watching this interaction like hawks, but the other demigods were averting their attention. This happened sometimes, Percy and Annabeth going into their own world that only they could understand, and it was best to just let them be. Plus, privacy is a real thing people. The moment seemed almost too intimate for them to interrupt.

Percy still seemed to be having trouble believing Annabeth's statements, but he went into the training room without another protest. His shoulders were sagging in defeat, and he seemed to be folding in on himself. He was never one for attention, but that was a bit much in Leo's mind.

However, Leo and the rest of the Seven didn't have a full grasp on just how uncomfortable Percy as with using his powers now. They didn't know what happened in "that place."

"Are you ready, Percy?" Tony asked, readying the LMDs again.

"Yeah, I guess," Percy answered.

Annabeth was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, "Just breathe, Perce," she whispered under her breath, "You can do this."

She had to put on a brave face for her boyfriend, but she truly was terrified of Percy's potential. She had seen it first-hand in their trip underground, and it was nothing to be underestimated. The Avengers didn't know what powers they were playing with here. She only hoped that her insistent trust she was putting in Percy was going to amount to truth.

"We'll start you on Level 5? Based on what your friends can do, I think this will be a good start," Steve asked.

"Sure," Percy responded, bringing Riptide from his pocket.

"What's he going to do with a pen?" Bruce whispered to Clint.

The Seven all smiled at each other. Little did the mortals know, that pen was definitely not just a pen. It was always amusing when people saw what Riptide truly was for the first time.

"Alright. Here we go," Tony said, starting the simulation.

Percy closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled, and popped the cap off of his pen. Opening his eyes, you could tell something had shifted in him. He was in his natural element now, and nobody could stop him from achieving his goal.

That goal just so happened to be mutilating some billionaire's robots.

"Let's have some fun," Percy said, charging the first LMD.

He was a flurry of motion. His fighting style was a mix from Greek, Roman, and modern martial arts that he had learned from Annabeth. He'd kick one adversary just to turn and thrust his sword into another one trying to attack him from behind.

"He's amazing," Bruce said in wonder, mesmerized by Percy's skill.

The son of Poseidon was relying only on his hand-to-hand and swordsmanship skills, rather than his powers, but that barely slowed him down. If the mortals wanted a display of his competence, then he would give them one.

Annabeth had a proud smile on her face as she watched Percy judo flip Natasha's robot over his shoulder and slammed it hard enough to the ground that it "died," ending his fight.

That had gone well, considering Percy's worries.

However, he knew better than to let his guard down just yet. As all demigods know, life never gives any breaks. That, and the Fates are cruel.

Ω ♆ Ω

"Ok, guys. Let's take a lunch break, and then we'll do some more training, but this time, with only abilities," Steve said.

Percy had put his sword away, and was not standing in the viewing room with the rest of the heroes, mortal and demigod alike. All of the teens looked and felt exhausted, so it was a given to take a break.

"Got it, boss," Leo saluted, turning and exiting the room, heading no doubt in the direction of the kitchen.

"I guess that means we're leaving," Percy laughed. A real, genuine laugh.

It made Annabeth smile larger than she had in a long time. Improvement is always good.

Soon, everyone was gathered around the kitchen and living room area. Percy and Leo were scavenging for food while the Avengers and the rest of the Seven talked. So far, the hunt was not going as planned.

"Tony! Are you seriously telling me you're a billionaire, and you can't afford some decent Cheerios?!" Percy yelled.

"Yeah! Who goes grocery shopping around here?" Leo exclaimed, holding up the near-empty jug of milk.

The Avengers all looked at each other in confusion, "Who DOES go grocery shopping?" Bruce asked.

"Pepper, sometimes, I think. She must've been busy this week," Tony answered, "We can just order some Chinese or something for now."

"That should work, but if you're going to house these boys," Annabeth pointed to Percy, Leo, Jason, and Frank, "You're going to need a lot more food around at all times. Their appetites could rival that of an elephant."

Hazel let out a tiny laugh, realizing Annabeth's little pun about Frank. She received a small smirk in response.

"Teenagers," Tony muttered, rolling his eyes, "Always hungry."

"Now wait a second, Tony, I remember seeing you eat an entire large pizza by yourself just a couple weeks ago," Natasha remarked, smirking at her teammate.

Tony only glared in response, and then he told JARVIS to order lunch.

"Well, while we're waiting, I'll explain what our next exercise is," Steve said, "Basically, we're going to see and document your powers, but in a more controlled environment. You won't be fighting anything, but this will be more focused on precision than quantity. We need to know your full capabilities so that we know where to put you in a fight. Is that okay?"

He was asking their permission as more of a courtesy than an actual question, obviously, but the demigods still nodded their heads in confirmation. It wasn't like they couldn't leave at any time if things ever got too out-of-control.

Or at least, that's what they told themselves. In all honesty, nobody trusted each other yet. They could be shot down by the Avengers if they tried to run away, for all they knew, and that's what the scariest thing was. Neither group really KNEW the other group's intentions, only what they had told each other.

Everyone was walking on thin ice, whether it was known to them or not.

Ω ♆ Ω

I hope you liked it! Remember, this is also on FF, Ao3, Inkitt, Webnovel, and Wattpad.

other chapters :)

[marvinswriting]

Jason

hey, you guys remember jason from the movie? the one gretchen hooked up with but he didn't actually care about her? yeah :) ALSO REGINA POV?!?!? tw: bullying, suffocation, manipulation, shane omen mention g/t mean girls

I wasn't controlling.

Well- let me rephrase that.

There were rules for being plastic. I made sure Karen and Gretchen followed those rules. That wasn't controlling. Just, guidelines. They're rules in place to help the other plastics. Dress codes, what clubs you can and can't join, you can't buy a dress without the others approval, don't date your friend's exes-

but totally new boys were fair game. 

So before you ask, no, that's not why I'm against Gretchen dating Jason. 

On surface level, Jason seemed like a nice guy.

But he constantly blew off Gretchen, he flirted with other girls, and overall was totally using her.

And that's not even getting into how he treats tinies.

That's right.

Jason is a two-faced fucking asshole.

And none of the giants can see it.

I mean- I'm sure they're suspicious. I know Damian notices when Janis stiffens the second Jason walks in the room. And, Cady has probably picked up on the way Aaron gets quiet. If Gretchen has caught on to anything, she totally ignores it. I mean- Janis, Aaron, and I tried telling our friends in the begging. Gretchen didn't want to hear it. She's got a huge crush on the guy and totally ignores all red flags. 

So we gave up getting through to her. 

Besides, who would believe us? Jason was so sweet whenever our giants were around.

I guess when we collectively decided we couldn't get through to Gretchen- all the other giants were a lost cause too. And that was months ago. We're in too deep now.

"Allow me to take it back to the drawing board and suggest the best idea we've had since day one," Janis huffed. We were in an empty hallway after school for 'english help'. We've been staying after a lot more recently. 

It's been getting worse.

Jason isn't trying to be sneaky anymore. He'll pick up Aaron without asking, conveniently drop his textbook on the cafeteria table right next to Janis, wrap his arm around Gretchen when I'm on her shoulder. 

Yet nobody has caught on.

Janis continued. "Why don't we just tell our giants what he's doing?"

"Because Gretchen won't listen to me."

"Good thing there's three other friends." Janis points out.

I rolled my eyes, waving my hand dismissively. Of course, Janis didn't understand how it felt not to have her giant listen to her. Her and Damian practically share a mind, if anything it's a shock he hasn't started asking questions. "Fine, if you know what's best for everyone, go talk to Damian. I'm sure you two will solve everything with your buddy buddy perfect communication skills. Janis has a giant who actually listens to her! Wow! You don't have to rub it in." I cross my arms over my chest, leaning back against the wall.

Aaron blinks, his gaze bouncing between both of us nervously.

"I wasn't-" Janis pauses, letting her hands fold in her lap. "I wasn't rubbing anything in. Listen- Regina, I'm sorry Gretchen won't listen. Truly. I'm being genuine right now. But don't make me feel guilty for trying to come up with a solution to something affecting all three of us."

"Right," I mumble, guilt rising in my stomach. "Sorry. I just-"

My voice trails off but neither Janis nor Aaron push for me to continue talking. Gretchen was somebody I could always trust to be there and listen to me. Now she didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to make her listen. We're silent for a while while I regroup my emotions, not wanting to snap for no reason again. 

"I have tried talking to Gretchen recently."

"And how did it go?" Aaron prompted.

"Well, it fucking went." I shrug. "Gretchen isn't used to having boys like her. I love her but crushes directed to her don't happen often. So of course she accused me of being jealous a boy finally liked her and not me."

"Maybe it had to do with how you worded it?" Janis suggests.

"Well, how else do I word 'hey maybe you should break up with the boy you're not even officially dating yet because he's toxic, a cheater, not actually in love with you, also harassing your tiny friends'?"

"Literally any way but that." Janis mumbled.

I shrug again, pulling out my phone. "Well, I did my best. You know emotions aren't my thing." I want to cry a little just thinking about the talk last week. But I don't. Crying won't fix anything. 

"Regina, why can't you be happy that a boy likes me for once?! I know you're used to all the boys falling head over heels for you, but this is the first time a cute boy has put in the effort to care and call back and-"

"But he doesn't, Gretchen! He doesn't call back. He. Doesn't. Care! I'm doing this for you because nobody else is gonna tell you. Jason is bad news. He doesn't care about you, or Karen, or Cady, or Damian, and he really doesn't give a shit about Janis, Aaron, or I!"

"Just let me be happy, Regina." Gretchen says dismissively, ignoring everything I just said.

There's a hand on my shoulder, jolting me out of my thoughts. Aaron looks at me worriedly but retreats his arm. "Gina, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just-" I wipe away a strand of hair that's been matted to my face by tears. Wait-

-tears?

I use my sleeve to dry my face quickly. I didn't even realize I started crying. I was just so tired. I was supposed to feel safe around my friends. Even when the rest of the school sees me as an emotionless bitch I should be able to turn to my friends and be okay. I couldn't do what when my current number one source of fear has intruded into our group.

"So," Janis says awkwardly. "We don't tell our giants directly. How do we get them to see the side of Jason we're seeing?"

"We catch him in the act." Aaron suggests.

Janis shakes her head with a sigh. "I am tired and quite frankly sick. I don't want our plan 'a' to be; lets put ourselves in danger in hopes that our friends stop by to witness. Let's make that plan 'y' or 'z'."

"Well, we already have plans 'b' through 'z'. We need and 'a', I'm just spouting ideas." Aaron points out.

Janis sighs, shaking her head. "I should have stuck with Damian. I need a nap and maybe an Advil."

I chuckled dryly at the girl sitting across from me. "Always have your priorities sorted, huh Janis?"

"If my priorities include being sick and not wanting to deal with Jason ever again then yeah."

"It's getting harder and harder 'not to deal with Jason ever again'," Aaron pointed out. "Remember lunch last week?"

"Don't remind me." Janis huffed. 

Last week Jason decided to be a lot more careless with how he treated us around our giant friends. 

I cringe just thinking of the memory.

"All I'm saying is the tiny soccer team is so underfunded. We're even better than the giant soccer team but you wouldn't know it because we've set up to fail."

I raise my eyebrow as Aaron sits next to me, passionately explaining how he swears the tiny soccer team is not a total failure. 

I sat in front of Gretchen and across from Janis, who was flopped against Damian's forearm clearly struggling to stay awake.

I grin as she yawns. 

"Am I boring you, Janis?" Aaron teases.

"A little," Janis says with full honesty.

Before Aaron can remark, a stack of textbooks is dropped in between him and I, narrowly missing me as I push myself backward.

Jason.

Janis's eyes widen and I instantly rush around the textbook to make sure Aaron is okay. He is, just looks equally as shaken up as I do.

Jason sits in the seat between Damian and Gretchen without bothering to great the tinies he just nearly crushed. It's where Cady normally sits, but she isn't here today.

"Jason!" Gretchen grins, pecking him on the cheek like I didn't just almost die.

I throw and exasperated look to Janis who laughs at my expense. 

She wasn't the one almost fucking crushed.

Janis pushes off Damian's arm, making her way over to Aaron and I.

Or tries to.

She doesn't make it very far before shes intercepted by a hand scooping her up.

Janis makes a noise of surprise as Jason lifts her off the table without asking.

I push myself closer to Gretchen as Janis instantly tries to get back down to the table. Jason's thumb knocks her down and I cringe because- that looked like it hurt.

Damian eyes Jason wearily but doesn't vocally say anything. But neither does Janis so why would anyone worry? It's just Jason. Sweet Jason. The boy who's probably gonna ask Gretchen to spring fling. Innocent Jason.

Janis sits up again, clearly uncomfortable, as Damian speaks. "Maybe I should hold Janis?"

"No," Jason says simply before Janis can even open her mouth. "She's fine."

"Janis," Damian ignores the boy next to him. "Do you want Jason holding you?"

Janis is silent for a while, and I don't blame her.

She's in Jason's hands.

One wrong more and shes getting hurt-

badly.

"I- I uh, kinda want to be with Damian right now? If that's okay?" Janis speaks slowly, picking her words wisely.

"That's okay!" Jason reassures her sweetly, passing the girl to her giant. "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable." Aaron and Janis make an identical face of discussed at the sickly sweet tone and I can only assume my face is similar.

"It's okay." Janis says softly, visibly more relaxed in Damain's hands.

Jason forces a frown. "Well- I'll go give you space. Gretchen, I'll see you next period."

He gets up, walking away but I don't feel very bad for him. If anything, I feel safer. And if the collective breath of relief from Janis and Aaron was an indicator- they felt the same.

As soon as Jason was out of earshot, Gretchen turned to Janis. "Jason was just trying to be nice, Janis. You need to be willing to welcome him into our friend group."

Janis' jaw slacked. The 'are you kidding me' went unsaid. Instead, Janis forced out an "Of course, it's my fault." 

"I'm serious, Janis. Be nice." 

"I'm serious too." Janis shot back.

Aaron and I shared a look of helplessness. We couldn't just tell them. Our giants would never believe us.

To them, Jason could do no wrong.

"The only solution is to never go to lunch again." Janis speaks up, bringing me out of my thoughts.

"Mhmm, sure. That's a reasonable solution." Aaron teases.

"You got something better, soccer boy?" Janis raises her eyebrow.

Aaron shakes his head. "We've reached a dead end. Gina? You got any ideas?"

I shake my head with defeat. "Unfortunately, no. All I know is Jason hates us and his goal is to make our friends hate us too through lying and manipulation."

"Go girl, give us nothing." Janis rolls her eyes. "We already knew that Regina."

"Okay, I get your sick and cranky, Janis, but I don't need you-"

"Okay!" Aaron interrupts me. "The three of us are stressed! We're worried. We're scared. But we're also all on the same page. Let's not go at each other's throats right now. We're the only ones who understand each other's struggles. Please stop fighting."

Janis and I both mumble a weak sorry. 

Aaron was right. We were all scared. Can you blame us? Jason was doing everything in his power to isolate us from our friends. For no other reason other then we're tinies and see-through his act. Why he wants Gretchen so bad is beyond me. But hell am I gonna let his toxic ass have her.

"Do you guys remember that scarf Gretchen wore last week?" I ask.

Janis tilts her head. "Yeah?"

"I don't pay enough attention." Aaron shrugs.

I grin. "Well, it was a baggy infinity scarf to refresh your memory. There was enough fabric that I could sit on Gretchen's shoulder next to her neck and not be seen. So I obviously skipped my boring history lecture. But also- Gretchen talked to Jason. He didn't know I was there."

"You're like a spy!" Janis grinned, invested in the story. "What happened?!"

"Hey, Gretchen!" Jason smiles, slipping his hand into Gretchen's as they walked down the hall.

I sunk lower into the pool of fabric, hopping Grethen didn't point out I was here.

"Hey, Jason!"

I let out a breath of relief when she doesn't.

"I have to ask you something," Jason asked.

My ears perk up as I wait for him to continue.

"Is that Janis girl always so- unfriendly? I get the feeling she doesn't like me. I just don't know why. Like Regina clearly doesn't like me very much but she might just be jealous you've got a boy and she doesn't-"

So that's where the seed of jealously in Gretchen's head was planted from. It takes all of me not the stand-up and call Jason out on his bullshit.

He continues.

"But I don't understand why Janis or Aaron wouldn't like me. Aaron just gets quiet and hey- maybe he's shy. But Janis lashes out every time I try and talk to her."

"Janis can be like that sometimes." Gretchen says, nodding in agreement.

Jason could tell her the earth is fucking flat and this bitch would nod in agreement.

I wouldn't be surprised if Gretchen is even really listening to what Jason is saying.

All she's thinking is 'hot boy's lips are moving'.

Ugh.

"At least he's caught onto the fact that I don't fucking like him." Janis crossed her arms.

"Janis, he's painting you to be the bad guy. He's trying to turn Gretchen against you, what don't you understand about that?" Aaron asked.

"Oh no, I understood. I just don't care. I hate Jason and I'm glad he's caught on."

"He hates you more." I point out.

"Impossible." Janis shook her head.

We go back and forth about who hates who more before settling on the fact that our collective hate for him outweighs anything he feels for us.

"Let's go meet our giants, it's getting late." Aaron said standing up. He holds out his hand, helping Janis up first, then me. 

Janis groans holding her head. "Still feel sick as fuck and standing up so fast did not help."

"Woe is you." I roll my eyes. "Let's go."

We walk through the school, making our way to the tiny pick up zone. We're halfway there as Aarons phone dings.

Its a text from Cady.

Aaron reads allowed: "Gretchen went home early so Karen is driving Regina home. Damian and Karen are still in after school help and I might be a bit late to pick you three up. Wait there for me, I swear I didn't forget about you guys."

I laugh. "Cady could never forget about us."

"I mean-" Janis starts. "There was the one ti-"

"Shut up." I cut her off. "Cady would never forget about her tiny friends."

We make it to the tiny pick up zone and sit against a wall to wait. It's no surprise that the hallway is empty. It's late after school on a Monday. Who would willingly still be in school?

There's footsteps down the hall and we all look up, expecting Cady.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Janis groans.

"Ever the pleasant one, Sarkisian." Jason jeers. 

"I'm tired, and sick, and will literally cry if you even touch me. I will bawl. And maybe bite. Don't come the fuck near me." Janis threatens, holding up a sharpened pencil like its a knife.

Jason doesn't seem intimidated by this action. "Whatcha gonna do? Nibble my finger?"

"Fuck off!" Janis whines, throwing her head back. "Literally any day but today."

"Listen whiney and friends. I just hear to pick you up for your friends. So stop being such a bitch Janis."

The friends that told us to 'wait here for Cady'?

Riiight.

I share a knowing look with Aaron while Janis gets up, making her way back into the tiny halls.

"Not fucking dealing with this. Good day asshole."

"Nope." Jason reaches forward, picking Janis off the platform. "You're coming with me bitch."

"This is kidnapping," Janis says flatly. She doesn't fight Jason or thrash. She looks tired, like death is appealing at this point. "I'm being abducted."

Jason's fingers tighten around her. "Thought you were the fisty one? Huh? Shane said you put up a pretty good fight. Where's the fight, Sarkisian?"

"You talked to Shane?" I gawk. I don't know why I'm surprised. They definitely seem like best friends.

"Can you put me the fuck down?" Janis huffs. "Kinda hard to breath."

"Oh, is it?" Jason said with feigned worry. "Shame."

Janis cried out as the hand around her tightened, and Jason grinned at the first real signs of fear Janis has shown yet.

"Put me down- asshole!" Janis wheezed. 

"Let go of her!" Aaron yelled.

It was moments like these when you really realize how helpless you were as a tiny. 

All I could do was sit and watch as Aaron yelled and Janis squirmed. All I could do was pray Cady or really anybody would walk past and see what's happening. 

Yeah, we've been threatened with death before.

Every tiny in Northshore has at least once.

And yeah, we've been pushed around before.

But I've never legitimately feared for my life of a friend's life.

I know maybe that's just a perk of being Regina Geroge, but this was new territory. And scary as fuck territory at that.

Jason seems pretty fucking pleased with himself and it makes my stomach twist. It's never gone this far before. 

Somebody is going to get really hurt.

And I can't do anything.

I can almost feel my heart stop as Janis goes limp. I can't see her face. 

But she's not fucking moving.

"Oh whoops." Jason shugs. "You tinies really are weak."

Aaron looks like if he could he'd fucking kill Jason.

Wouldn't we all.

"Put her down!" I yell, snapping out of my helpless funk.

Jason loosens his grip on Janis but she doesn't move. My breath feels caught in my throat. 

My eyes were trained on Janis and I didn't see Jasons another hand till his finger flicked into my side, sending me falling backward.

I felt like I was living through one of those dramatic fight scenes in the movies.

Expect isn't it the villains who are supposed to be defeated?

I'm curled into myself on the floor, Janis is knocked out in the literal hands of the enemy and Aaron looks ready to kill or cry, whichever is possible first.

Never thought I'd die in high school.

"Hey, Jason, is that you?" A voice calls from down the hall.

"Cady!" Aaron runs to the egde of the platform. 

Jasons condescending nature and snarl disappear. "Hello, Heron!"

"Is Janis asleep?" Cady asks as her eyes fall to Jason's hand. "She only ever falls asleep with Damian, either shes exhausted or really trust you."

The bitter laugh is out of my mouth before I can stop it. 

Cady looks at me and tilts her head. "Regina, why do you look like you've been crying on the floor?" She pauses, her eyes trailing back between the four of us. I can almost see the doubt set in her mind. Yes! "What's really going on here?" She asks. "And uh, I'm gonna take Janis-"

Jason shakes his head. "She's fine, it won't be necessary."

"No, I wasn't offering." Cady's voice is an unfamiliar cold. "I'll take Janis."

I stand up and make my way closer to Aaron as Cady takes Janis away from Jason. "Now, what the fuck is going on.

"Literally nothing, we're just talking and-"

"No! He's a fucking asshole and he-"

"Regina, what did I ever do to you?!"

"Are you kidding me?!" 

Cady looks between us nervously. "Uh, Aaron? Wanna tell me what's going on?"

"Gladly."

Cady steps over, picking both Aaron and I up. My mouth is still open from shock. 

What did I ever do to you?!

Fucking bitch, want me to list it?

"So uh," Aaron starts nervously. Cady cups her hands so I'm next to Janis who looks like she's beginning to stir but uh- I've never been suffocated before, maybe she's just sleeping at this point.

But she's breathing. It's reassuring enough for me.

"It started a couple months ago." Aaron continues. "Jason actually isnt very nice? To the tinies at least." He laughs nervously, leaning closer into Cady's hand and away from Jason, who isn't bothering to keep the nice facade up anymore. "He's actually like- Shane Omen but worse?"

"Worse?" Cady's jaw drops slightly in disbelief. 

"I mean- he held Janis so tight that she passed out so I'd fucking say so." I snark. 

Aaron nods. "Yeah, heh- like, I dunno. Just- not nice? He uh, flicked Regina, which is why she was laying down when you walked over. And like its not the first time he's done this? Especially when we're alone."

There's an unreadable look on Cady's face as she looks up to Jason.

It almost scares me.

"I'm gonna walk away. Just-" Cady gives a low laugh. "Jesus, I almost feel sorry for you, Jason. You deserve everything coming to you. Starting with Gretchen and Damian when they find out."

Despite everything, I can't help but smile at the way Jason's face falls with realization.

It's not a big secret that Gretchen loves an excuse to slap someone.

And this is hell of an excuse.

I look at Janis who is still laying next to me, breathing shallowly. 

We might have to bail Damian out of fucking jail.

Cady turns on her heels without saying another word to Jason and walks down the halls. Once he is out of earshot she looks down at us. "How long?!"

Aaron shrugs. "Since Gretchen first met Jason."

"That's like three months guys!" Cady looks genuinely heartbroken. "I can't believe we didn't notice."

Janis stirs next to me, weakly propping herself up. "Huh?"

There are tears in Cady's eyes as she stops walking. "You guy have been enduring this for three months?"

"No," I say. "Well- yes but not really. It was a build-up. He didn't just start attacking us to the point of death one random day. It started with little things. Like pushing us around and knocking us over."

"That shouldn't happen anyway!" Cady says sadly.

"But it did," Janis mumbled. She seems to have caught onto whats going on. "My chest hurts."

"I'm so sorry you guys," Cady whispers sadly. "I- how did we not notice?"

"Not notice what?"

I turn around to see Karen and Damian walking over. For a second my eyes trail behind them in search of Gretchen but- she went home. Of course.

"Cady, are you crying?" Damian asks, instantly worried. "Is everything okay? Where's Janis?"

"Right here, dude." Janis mumbles. She's looking down at her lap, her arms wrapped loosely around herself. She's still wheezing slightly and tears threaten to spill over her eyes. I don't blame her. That was almost death.

Janis almost died.

My breath hitches at the realization.

As a tiny, you almost die a lot. But- it's accidental. It's falling or almost being crushed. Never malicious actions of bigger peers. 

Cady offers her hands out and I step backward, letting Damian gently scoop up Janis. 

 "What happened?" Karen asks, peering over Damian's shoulder at Janis.

I look back to Cady trying to figure out if she's gonna talk or if Aaron and I have to explain. She's staring at Karen with a crestfallen gaze, tear tracks down her face. "Guys-" She starts. 

I know this is hard for her because she's taking it personally and blaming herself, but we really don't need the fanfare. 

Not that I'm gonna step up and tell the story. 

Karen steps towards picking up me and Aaron. Cady doesn't fight it, she just lets her hands fall to her side. "Y'know, Jason?"

"Yeah of course. Smile emoji." Karen says from above me.

I look over to Janis, who has her arm around Damain's finger. She's doing pretty well for passing out. God knows I'd be sobbing if that were me. Hell, the ache in my side is enough to make me want to cry right now.

"Not smiley face emoji, Karen," Cady explains softly. "I don't know the full thing, you're gonna have to ask the tinies but-"

Cady explains what she walked over to see and the minimal information she got out of us earlier. She left out a lot, but she didn't know a lot to be fair. The look of utter horror on our friend's faces almost made me feel bad. We barely scraped the top layer.

Damian is looking down at the girl in his hands who at some point in the bad retelling started crying again. Karen had held Aaron and I even closer and Cady looked ready to sit down and cry. Me too, Cady.  

"Three months?" Damian whispers weakly. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Why would you believe us? Jason's fucking great." Janis said bitterly, still clinging to his finger.

"Of course we would believe you, Jan."

"Gretchen didn't." I say softly.

I didn't really think about what I was saying. I was just mumbling to myself. But Karen heard. 

"You told her?"

I shrug. "Tried to. She didn't listen."

"Well, she's gonna listen when we tell her tomorrow," Cady says. "I can't believe you didn't tell us."

I shrug dismissively, not wanting to talk about it. "It's not a big deal."

I didn't mean it. Of course, it's a big deal. But I said it wasn't anyway. 

"You're telling me Janis almost died today and it's not the first time you guys have been through something like that, but don't worry it's not a big deal?!"

I pause, looking at the three giants. This was Aaron, Janis and I's normal. It's what we went through every day. Yeah, it's shitty but we're used to it. I forget sometimes the giants don't understand the fact not getting shoved around is normal for us. Being threatened and made fun of for our size is just part of an average day.

"Can we continue this with Gretchen at lunch tomorrow? I don't want this conversation twice. I feel even crappier than I already did before and I just want to sleep." Janis speaks up from where Damian held her protectively close. 

"You all better tell us everything tomorrow." Cady says. 

"Cady are you taking Aaron or should I get these two home?" Karen asks.

-

"This was a really funny joke guys." Gretchen says from above me. Despite her words, her voice is void of all amusement.

"Yes, because we're the type to make jokes about our tiny friends almost dying." Damian deadpans. Janis is sitting on the table in front of him looking like she'd rather talk about anything other than this.

I don't blame her.

But this could finally be my chance to get Gretchen to listen and believe me.

"Gretchen." I turn around to look up at her, but I'm on the table I need to crane my neck. "I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you have to believe us. Cady witnessed it with her own eyes if you don't believe me. Janis sure as hell can vouch since she nearly fucking died yesterday."

Gretchen doesn't respond for a long time. I feel like I can see the seed of doubt settle in on the situation. She reaches forward, scooping me up and bringing me to her shoulder. 

"I- I'm not sure what to believe," She admits. "but I'll listen. I'm sorry I didn't do that before."

That one sentence felt like so much weight being lifted. Jason had Gretchen around her finger. His word was law and everyone else could fuck themself.

But not anymore.

I open my mouth to speak but get cut off by a familiar and unwelcoming voice.

"Hello everyone!"

Cady's eyes widen in disbelief. "You aren't actually stupid enough to think about sitting with us today, right Jason?"

"Aw, why not?" He asks, sitting next to Gretchen and slinging his arm over her shoulder.

I gasp as I'm knocked forward, gripping onto Gretchen's shirt underneath me as I try to stay on. 

Gretchen bats Jason's arm away and scoops me up. "Jason we were talking about something private maybe it's better you join us again later."

Jason's eyes narrowed, as he looked across the table. I sunk lower in Gretchen's hand as his eyes landed on me but he moved on without trying anything. I mean- obviously, Gretchen was right here but still. 

Cady's hand was resting wearily by Aaron if Jason tried something and Janis had been transported to Damian's pocket when I wasn't looking. How could Gretchen not pick up on how stressed we all are?

"What's wrong?" Jason asked, turning to Gretchen.

"It's nothing for you to worry about. I just-"

"Did I do something wrong?" Jason's face fell and I almost felt bad for him. Almost. He should pursue an acting career.

Gretchen looked at loss for what to say for a second before speaking up. "Where were you yesterday after school?"

Jason scoffed. "Whatever Cady said was a lie, Gretch."

"I-" Gretchen froze. "I didn't mention Cady."

Jason's eyes widened as he began to backtrack but- it was too late. 

"Jason I need you to leave, please." Gretchen's hand was shaking as she placed me gently on the table. "There are some things I need to rethink."

"You really believe those tinies?" Jason's face morphed into utter disgust.

The mask was off, the act was over. Karen reached over, tugging me away from Gretchen and Jason and closer to her. 

"I should have believed them a while ago, apparently." Gretchen snapped.

Jason rolled his eyes. "Please. They're just tinies. What makes them so trustworthy? Actually- what makes them worthy?"

Karen lets out a legitimate gasp from above me. Gretchen looks to me with an expression I can't read. My breath feels caught in my throat. I can't shake the feeling that this may be where I lose my best friend. 

But she looks back at Jason. "I can't believe you really just asked that. Did you think that would help your point? What made you think- oh this will totally get Gretchen on my side? What is wrong with you?"

Jason looks dumbfounded at Gretchen's outburst. "Gretchen-"

I knew it was coming, so it was no surprise as Gretchen raises her arm, and a loud smack echos through the cafeteria over all the oblivious conversations. Jason gasps, his hand shooting up to his cheek. "You fucking bitch-"

"You have treated my friends awfully for too long. Go fuck off and find somewhere else to sit for lunch." Gretchen says simply, turning away from Jason.

Jason doesn't say anything as he looks across the table one last time. Aaron was still on the table but Cady had her hand cupped around him defensively, Damian's hand rested over his chest pocket and Janis gripped onto his finger. Karen had pulled against her arm where I sat pushed away as far away from Jason as possible. It was pretty clear he wasn't wanted here.

"Whatever." He bitterly admits defeat, pushing away from the table and walking away. Gretchen watched him leave before turning to me, wide-eyed.

"I can't believe I didn't believe you." She said sadly. "I can't believe I didn't believe any of you." I hold my arms out and Gretche complies, reaching over to scoop me up. "Regina, I'm so sorry."

I don't try and stop the tears that burn in my eyes as Gretchen holds me close to her.

We still have a lot to talk about after this but-

I've finally won after a long and painful battle. All our giants are awake and no longer oblivious to the suffering. 

I'm safe.

I cling to Gretchens's shirt as the tears poor over my eyes. Gretchen shakes and I realize- she's crying too.

I wouldn't be surprised if I turned around and the whole table was.

Jason was an asshole. He manipulated his way into the friend group and made my life miserable. Plus Janis and Aaron too, I guess. But he's gone now.

We don't have to worry anymore.

We're okay.

It will be okay.

2.5/10 not my best work but fun to write @realmisspolarbear @smallsoysauce @musicallygt

[smells-like-ink-and-fire]

Innocence died screaming, honey I should know

Here’s the thing: For all his talk of Gotham being a life-sucking, happiness draining shithole, leaving it had never been truly an option on Jason’s mind. It was his shithole of a city goddammit, the grim dirt streets he would die on. It was his home, the blood on his veins. This city had its claws deep into him, and leaving, especially leaving never to return, had been simply impossible, did not compute to him.

Especially now, that Jason was getting along better with the Bats these days. He still didn’t, and never would agree with Bruce regarding his no-killing rule. But things were better, or at least he thought they were. His presence was expected and even accepted. There were some awkwardness and silent nobody knew how to fill, but there were also jokes and eating junk food together after patrol. Sure, there were a lot of snippy comments but he made those too, gave as good as he got, and Bruce still didn’t quite trust him, not to the extent he did with the other, though that was just a given, he had made peace with it, he still killed, after all, a little suspicion was an acceptable price to pay for it.

Self-righteous, holier than thou bat.

Still, there was an uneasiness on his chest whenever the pointed looks got too much when they would start questioning his actions and his plans like he hadn’t been trained by the world's greatest detective like the rest of them and League of Shadows on top of that. Forgetting that Jason had effectively taken control of the East End in less than two months, and without any of them noticing.

The good parts didn’t lessen the rage-hurt out when Barbara sneered at him, acting like he couldn’t be trusted in the field, like the fact he had issues, that he cared about the victims because he had been one made him incapable of being rational, turned him into something that was eternally compromised. Like he was a mindless raging monster, who would shoot to kill at mere provocation.

He had been, once, fresh out of those green waters, traumatized, angry, afraid, and replaced. He had been a child, too, didn’t that count for something?

Their veiled accusations of insanity, that he had a problem, that needed to be handled like he was a fucking dog, the angry gremlin claims that he was unhinged and the only reason that they kept him around was to keep an eye on him, it all made Jason feel queasy, made him feel less than human.

It made him wonder how truly welcome he was. Was he welcome or they were just trying to appease their guilt and keep a loose cannon from the streets?

But there were undoubtedly good things too. Moments that made it worth it. His relationship with Steph and Duke, and surprisingly, Replacement was getting better, even though the first two were not around as much as he would like. The nights they had spent chewing off some of the undoubtedly brilliant but assholes teachers while demolishing mountains of homework had been fun, and Replacement-Tim was quite a sass master, now only if he could convince the kid to take a step back from WE so that he wouldn’t have a heart attack before he could drink legally.

Replacement, however, was why he was here. Here being diner on the border of the Bowery and Robinsonville, The Raging Duck, a new place that Golden Boy wanted to try, make a family bonding experience out of it, Jason was sure. Replacement had twisted his way around with words in a shape that made it impossible for him not to come. His saving grace was that Jason had already made clear that he couldn’t stay long, under the pretext of having to verify that month payments collection from the Bowery.

Which was goddammed good thing because this whole outing had been a mistake. The last couple weeks had been rough, with the stress of studying and writing applications for his master degree, the couple of murders that almost led to a gang war between the Falcone and the Russians,  plus a decoy staged by the Riddler, as his newest scape plan, that had taken too long to crack leading to an accident that had killed three people and would have killed a lot more if Jason hadn’t said fuck and put bullet holes on some goons heads. This in turn led to an inevitable argument because of Batman's continuous incapacity to see the necessity of his actions while on some level recognizing that was the only poss0ible decision meant that tension had been higher than usual.

Therefore, putting everybody in a room together was definitely not the best idea, Dickie! The last ten minutes certainly proved so, what had started as an easy-going conversation about their early on mishaps of the field, which included a hefty number of stories where the main theme was “And then I said Fuck Batman – With varying degrees of success” that had started as a split-second change of subject in order to avoid a fight breaking out, had turned into passive-aggressive attacking Jason. The worst part was that Jason wasn’t even sure they were doing on purpose.

Did the even realize he was sitting right next to them? Or was he just a ghost?

“… and then the fantastic Robin fell three stores down only to be needed to be saved by the incredible Spoiler! So, listen to me kids, if you’re going to say fuck Batman you should at least be sure there is something to break your fall before you jump.”  - Steph finished the story with a flourish, going back to her waffles.

“That was a level of stupidity that I wasn’t aware that you were capable of Replacement. Really, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.

“Please, as if you weren’t the first one to ignore an order just to fuck with B, Jason. There’s a list. The Incident with the Falcone. Killer Crock latest scape. The entire shit show that was last week. – Tim shot back, mulish, poking at his fries

And every single of those missions was a raging success.

“Which is the one involving Babs, back when she was still BG, you know the one she always mentions, because I don’t know what you did dude but she’s still pissed at you for it.”

“Oh, I know! Bruce forced them to work together on that one, it was a drug-smuggling operation that involved kids. Jason jumped in instead of waiting for her signal. Needless to say, it did not end up well. Babs was so very pissed.”

Yeah for the assholes that thought using kids as drug mules was a good idea. BG was just made the street rat had a better plan than her

“Is that why warehouse 25F is a gory, burned-out mess?”

“Nah, that came later, during that corruption case that nearly put the Comish in the hospital. Or maybe it was the one involving that Nazi Arts dealer?”

“Is there a difference? They always end up in unnecessary explosions. Todd’s need for dramatics and overuse of force are well documented”

Because you can talk about overuse of force, demon spawn.                    

“Robin. Less explosions. Trying to help. Hurt.”

“Yeah, he was trying to help Cass, nobody is denying that the thing is Jason desire to be a little shit and prove Batman wrong is way stronger than his drive to help people, and even though there were far less explosions back then, both he and innocent people have gotten hurt.”

How you’d know? You weren’t around back then Dickface.

“So, we can agree that it’s basically a Pavlovian response for him at this point. Your stubbornness and desire to say Fuck Batman no matter the consequences have been able to surpass death Jason, and if that it’s not a feat, I don’t know what is. Congratulations, really!” – Steph summarized.

He had been holding up fine until that point but he just didn’t have the strength to it anymore, every word out it Tim's mouth felt like the blow of crowbar shattering his ribs, chocking on his own blood because a Batarang slashed his throat. He felt faint. He felt dangerously close to crying.

“I have to go.” – Jason got out of his chair.

“Jason…” – The pitying and yet reproachful note on Dick’s voice made his skin crawl.

“I said I couldn’t stay very long. Some of us have stuff to do. You know criminal empires to run, places to blow up, kneecaps to shoot.” – He doped a twenties bill on the table.

“Todd. Cease being childish. Just because you are unable to accept your failures, and the fact that you were incompetent and arrogant enough to be captured by an enemy does not mean you should incapable of accepting constructive criticism.”

“Not being childish gremlin. I do have a criminal empire to run. And I do take constructive criticism, preferably from people who know what the hell they are talking about. You know people that are more than the “blood sons” of people that are greater than themselves. Noise midgets, not so much. Bye.”  – Jason out of the dinner before any of them can reply.

See you never again.

He doesn’t know how he gets back to his closest safe house. It’s a reasonably good one. He likes this one. He focusses on the things he likes. Hardwood floor. The light green paint. On the things, he doesn’t. The shitty heating. The fact that the cabinets doors don’t shut all the way.

Breaths. Slowly. In and Out. Counts to three hundred. Breaths again.

The tears still prickle on his eyes. His chest feels hollow. His throat is dry. He doesn’t have the strength to move from where he’s sat on the floor, his back against the door. Going a few rounds with Deathstroke had hurt less. It certainly never made him want to crawl under his bed and stay there until the world forget he existed. Of course, Slade had also never blamed for his own death.

Even though his own father had. Reckless, overly aggressive, incapable of following orders, loud-mouthed Robin that got what he deserved, Bruce had said. Maybe not to his face but he had said it. Then again it had been his fault, hadn’t it?

He takes a few more breaths, tries to push his emotions back, locking them deep, and walks to the fridge, pours himself a glass of water. Drinks it. His mind goes back to the conversation. The glass shatters in his hand.

“Oh, fuck!”

He goes to the sink, to clean his hands and throws the broken glass into the trash. Lucky there were only some minor cuts that don’t need stitches even if they hurt like a bitch.

Take that universe!

Still, he wraps them in bandages since he doesn’t fancy cleaning blood out of his sheets. Sleep, however, doesn’t come easily that night, and the time he doesn’t spend tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable position to follow to try to fall back asleep in, he spends waking up from dreams that leave him feeling like he’s constantly falling, sharp terror waking him each and every time.

There is no rest for the wicked though, and so he takes off by late morning and goes to check o on the rest of the gang, makes sure Antony is running things smoothly. All in all, it’s pretty boring, with enough paperwork to make a bonfire, but it does the job of taking his mind out the things for a while. Patrol is uneventful, which is a welcome respite, and Jason doesn’t do much more than stop a few muggings and beating up some creeps.

During that time, he keeps an ear out for the bats, especially Dick since he’s not anywhere near the mood to listen to another of the boy wonder lectures about how “Damian is just a child; you shouldn’t take what he says seriously”, especially those came with the addition of being delivered in that tone that screamed, “even though he’s right”. But he must have gone back to his turf because he sees no hair nor hide of him or any of the others.

The next two nights are very much a repetition of that first one, with little sleep and little action, so much so that a paranoid and exhausted part of him gets a bit terrified and so he ends up calling Roy just to hear the genius talk about whatever crazy project he’s been working on lately. If the redhead has any idea why Jason is calling him at four in the morning, he doesn’t comment on it and simply talks until his friend's breath has even out.

This way when the sun comes up the next day, Jason drags himself out of bed and heads straight to the shower, the cold water helps ground him back into his body. Still feeling like shit but at least knowing the difference between dream and reality he eats his breakfast while checking his messages and it’s more than a little bit shocked to see a text from Bruce asking, as in there is an actual please in it if they can talk about a possible case with a few crossed wires. There’s even an invitation to stay for dinner alongside with it, which makes him wonder if Bruce hit his head a little too hard the other day, or if Alfred finally made good on his promise of finding a drug that made him less emotionally stunned.

No matter the cause, the message leaves him hopeful enough that he answers with a yeah, I’ll be there by five.

He arrives at the Manor door fifteen minutes past five, just in case, greeting Alfred with a smile that the old butler easily returns. They make some small talk as the older man demands him to at least drink a cup of tea before heading down. Still, they part at the entrance of the cave and Jason takes those final steps alone.

“Sup, old man?”

“Jason.” – Bruce answers, his back turned, typing at the bat computer, probably filling some reports.

“C’mon B, you’re the one who called me unless of course, you somehow have been possessed and that please was you asking for help, in which case, give me a second and let me call the Martian Manhunter, you gotta give a bit more of information.” – Jason kept his gaze on Bruce’s back, his breath steady, he was not rambling thank you very much!

“There been some talk about an escort service in Diamond District that works as a front from money laundering. I think you might know some of the girls.”

“Little bit out of my way. Maybe you should check with Cat.”

Bruce’s eyes were shining, and the line of his mouth meant that he was finding it funny and Jason was filed to the brim with a wave of warmth and nostalgia. It made him feel like a kid again, it made him like Robin again, like magic.

“Maybe we should.”

“Oh gross! Let’s go back to the ever-existing cases of corruption and gross old man please?”

“Isabella McGarvey”

“Know the surname. Any relation to Ophelia McGarvey?”

"Her older sister I believe, records show that she moved from the East Side two years ago but didn’t take her sister with her because she was a minor…"

Most of the afternoon passed that way. With the Batman and the Red Hood checking financial records, discussing disappearances and police reports in an amiable tone, full of teasing.  It was a welcome change of pace being the one providing the answers to all-knowing Batman for once. So, he took his time explaining the inner workings and the shady dealings of the Alley, preening at the attention and the approval, something he would deny until his second dying day.

Perhaps the only dark spot in the otherwise bright day was the fact that Jason kept purposely having to avoid looking at the southeast corner of the cave, at the glass cage that seemed to hover over them.

Refusing to acknowledge that some part of Bruce would always believe he was dead

“There maybe be a loose end might be worth exploiting but I don’t know how long that window would be open: There was a shooting, a few days ago, near the Bowery and Robinsonville, no cameras, three dead, the assailant left no evidence behind.”

“Don’t know what to tell you Bats, last time I was there I was with your kids, didn’t hear anything, neither did mine. I mean, I could ask but this is Gotham, murders are pretty much the norm. Unless those guys are part of something bigger, I got you nothing.” -  Jason shrugged, already calculating the possibilities of why this is relevant and coming out with nothing.

Damn all-knowing paranoid bat.

“They were. Trafficking ring. Middleman.”

“There is no trafficking ring in the Alley”.

Of that he’s certain.

“There is not. Because those men were killed before they could take anyone. But they were known for it, and they were asking the sort of questions that could ping on your radar.”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything. I’ll make sure to pay more attention, update some protocols.” – Jason answered, already planning to investigate it.

If they were acting as a middleman for someone roaming around then that someone would send more to scoop the territory out and he would be prepared when they came, regardless of what else could be there. There were no trafficking rings in Alley.

“Or maybe you did and decided to take care of it your own terms”

The abruptness of the question was so earth-shattering that he took a few steps back to regain his balance.

“Jesus Christ Bruce if are gonna accuse me of murder you could at least have the decency of start with that. No, I did not kill them. If any of mine did I haven’t heard of it. But as far as I’m concerned is no great loss.” - He succeeds at sounding nonchalant and enraged, hiding the fact that the question felt like a bucket of water, leaving his cold and shaking.

So, this is why Bruce actually called, so he could question Jason about his latest failure, his latest disappointment in Bruce’s eyes. Of course, it was, and he was a fool for ever thinking otherwise. For letting himself hope that Bruce was trying, that he wanted to rekindle the relationship they had when Jason still wore those green panties.

“Where were you at 2:30 in the morning, three nights ago?”

“What?”

Please god, everything but this. I can’t do this again

“At the time of the murder, where were you?

“In a dinner with your kids.” – Jason’s voice was nothing more than a whisper as if all the air had been pushed out of his lungs.

Why you don’t believe me? Why you don’t trust me?

“Damian said you left early, earlier than that, because he got home at 3:00. It takes at least half an hour to get here from there.

“Safehouse a few blocks away, then. Sleeping. Bruce, please”.  – Jason was begging now, voice raw and full of hurt.

“Can you prove that?”

"The hell is wrong with you?!? I already told you: I. DID. NOT. KILL. THEM. When have I ever not taken credit for the people I’ve killed?"

“What’s going on?”

And of course, because his luck could not be worse, that was the Perfect Grayson coming down the stairs. He could feel the headache forming behind his eyes. He did not want to deal with this shit right now.

Was it too much to ask for the ground swallow him whole?

“Nothing! Bruce’s just spent the last five minutes pointlessly accusing of murder! Can you get the fuck out so we can continue discussing it?”

“You were near the scene of the crime, you have a motive, the means, and a history.”

“Wait you killed someone?”

“No! Keep up, Bruce is just being a dick, you know like you usually are.”

“Is a valid concern”

“Is a piece of shit that is what it is!”

“Can someone please explain?”

“Bruce thinks I killed three people after I left the dinner the other day.”

That what you did after you left? It’s that what you meant by shooting kneecaps? Jay… I know that you were angry but this…

“Jesus Fucking Christ Didn’t I just say its bullshit?”

“You said that?”

“It was a joke”

“You have motive, means, no alibi and now your brother is telling me that you left because you needed to shoot someone. What do you want me to believe?”

“THAT I WOULDN’T LIE ABOUT IT!”

“If you were planning only to main them, if your anger got the better out you, as it has before if you did it out impulse, and is trying yo hide it.”

“You know what Bruce? You’ve already made up your mind so I will do us all a favor and get myself out. You can’t trust me? Well, I can’t trust you. From now on there will be no bats at the East End. If you are seen, you will be shot. That’s how trigger happy I fucking am!”

He pushed passed Dick and Bruce, the world was tingled with pit green glow, his ears were roaring, no sound, only rage, and loss. Every step he took was calculated, his breath was short, measured. A of violence ready to blow up at the mere provocation held together only by the barest threads of sanity and humanity and the training Ducra had given him. Roy’s voice babbling at him. Kori’s booming laughter. Kyle ridiculous art. Donna’s everlasting sass and warmth.

Somehow, someway he made home without turning Gotham into a bloodbath, and the relative he felt at activating the security protocol was fastly overtaken by fear. He hadn’t had an attack like that in over three months. Hadn’t let the Pit burning so strong in his veins in so long. Hadn’t felt that disconnection to reality since his early days out of the Pit.

Just the idea of what could have happened in case he lost control made Jason grab the nearest bucket and puke. He stayed there, pressing the palm of hinds to his eyes, heaving.

It didn’t matter, because it didn’t happen.

His phone rang, and if it was anybody else calling, he let go straight to voicemail, but it was Talia’s ringtone and she didn't call jus for kicks, so he presses answer.

“If I told you I didn’t kill a man would you believe me?” – Jason blurts out before he can stop himself, red coloring his cheeks as he realizes what he just said, cursing himself for his stupidity.

“Of course. Why would…I see.” – Talia’s face goes from neutral to confusion and finally anger in a matter of seconds. – “Your father does not know you at all Habibi, and that, rest assured, is entirely his fault. He’s too caught up in the image he made of you to be able to see you as truly are.”

“Batman being a stunned idiot, who can look past his own reasoning of the world? What an earthshattering idea T! – Jason says sarcastically trying to cover up his earlier emotional outburst. -  Anyway, got a reason for calling?

“Do not play coy with me, Jason, it’s unbecoming. Regardless, I do not believe Gotham has done you good. Moreover, I do not believe your father's actions towards you have been in any way helpful to your recovery and growth.”

“What are you? My therapist?”

“I would not be against for you to see one, but I would not force you either. Your choices, as always, must be your own. Besides is my understanding that to be effective therapy must also involve privacy. Another thing that its unlikely to come by if you are to remain here.

“Gotham needs me. The Alley needs me, God knows the Bat can’t handle this shit, they don’t care and even if they did the Alley would never trust them” – It wasn’t as much a rebuttal as it was an excuse

“They do, but you are of no use to them if you are constantly emotionally compromised by the rash and thoughtless actions of those who do not understand you and do not seek to. Loyalty is a gift that must be not be given lightly and they make ill use of yours while reaping the benefits of it. Perhaps it’s time for them to learn how to much you do for them. The absence does make the heart grow fonder.”

“You’re telling me to leave.”

“I’m telling take a step back. You’ve done tremendous work, but there’s more to you then violence. The petty criminals and drug dealers and the pimps are all properly terrified, your minions are capable enough that they can keep your operation running without your direct involvement. Rest. Recover. Come back when you are ready. Besides, you do have your master’s degree to consider, don’t you?”  - Jason blushed, Talia wasn’t one to give compliments that she didn’t mean, and she did have a point, but…

But what? What did he truly have here? It had taken less than ten minutes for Dick convince Bruce, based on nothing more than a few throw away words Jason had said when he was angry and hurting, that Jason had killed a man and once that decision had been made no amount of evidence would make Bruce turn around in his favor. The others probably already knew what had happened and just as likely had decided to stay away from him from now on. After all, if he couldn’t take a little teasing without blasting someone’s brains out then he was certainly no better than the crazies in Arkham, to them.

What Talia was offering has the peace of taking a walk without being judged by the path he chooses to walk on, let the dust stele until bygones were bygones and he could look at Dick’s- Holier-Than-Thou face without breaking every single bone in it.

What did he have to lose that he couldn’t take back later on?

“You do realize that this will take quite a bit of work and resources, right? – Jason could almost see that pleased little smile of hers spread on Talia’s face.

“You do realize who you are speaking with don’t you Habibi? Let’s get to work.

[your-worst-knightmare]

I’ll Love You (As Misfortune Loves Orphans)

The Gotham wind howled at the rooftops. Away from the constant noise of traffic, it almost sounded like the cry of a mourning woman. Gotham was mourning, but for what? the loss of her innocence, or perhaps what her children had done to her. The wind was harsh on those autumn nights, and was cold and unforgiving. Gotham’s children knew that chill better than they had known full stomachs and warm bones. It was cold, it certainly was at the heights of those lonely rooftops, and yet– yet all Jason felt was heat. 

It built inside of him like a a roaring furnace, fuelling him. Not to fight a crusade for Gotham. Jason lived and breathed Gotham, and he knew that her saviour was not one man fighting symptoms of a virus that had long since taken root. He wasn’t that man. God, no. 

He was not as frivolous as that. He was the protector of those not able to protect themselves from the symptoms of Gotham’s disease. He was rage. It warmed him, burned him as he grappled from building to building. He was immune to Gotham’s icy howls, if only for tonight. 

Tonight, he was taking down one of Gotham’s drug trafficking rings. Well, taking out. He wasn’t going to kill anyone– he had obliged to the Bat’s rules to play nice– but he had not consented to no explosions. That would thoroughly set back their progress and give the Red Hood some time to convince them to play by his rules. 

Jason dropped to the ground silently, slipping pat perimeter guards. There weren’t as many as usual tonight, so he had less to worry about if things went south. The few guards that had noticed him were quieted with the butt of his gun to their heads. He made his way around the compound, planting explosives as he went. After planting the last one, he decided to make himself known to give the guards some chance of coming out of that compound alive. If they didn’t, well, collateral damage. 

“Awful weather we’re having, am I right?” he called, swinging into the guards’  line of sight. The noticed him immediately, shouting at each other to call for backup. He let them chase him, let them get too close before he vaulted away again. It was almost a game, and hey, if he was saving these poor dolts while doing it, why couldn’t it be? His job was done, and he figured that toying with some goons once in a while wasn’t a crime. “I noticed you’ve got some heating in this place. How much does it cost at this end of the city?”  

His response came in the form of a bullet grazing his shoulder. Jason growled. Fine. He’ll be serious and leave. They had more than enough time by now. “I hope you fools like the present I left ‘ya.”  He pointed his grapple at the nearest rooftop and sailed away, gunfire peppering his departure. 

Then, three things happened at once. Or rather, in such close proximity to each other that it seemed like it. One: Jason activated the detonator. Two: A bullet ripped through his abdomen– a lucky shot.  Three: He fell. The ground raced to meet him, and he met it, with a sickening thud. 

Now a different fire ran through him, alongside the rage that previously burned. This was blinding and invited dark spots to dance in his vision. It was consuming, and there was nothing other than its presence. It was agony, and it was deafening as it screamed at him. Jason cursed under his breath. The goons had gotten lucky. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to be following him. He grunted, pushing himself against the alley wall. That brought a whole new array of colours into is vision. He bit out more curses through the pain.

Once situated as comfortably as possible in his situation against the alley wall, he sucked in some air. He needed to assess his injuries and work from there. That’s what B always said to do. The most pressing matter was his side. His hands were sticky with blood from pressing the wound, but it didn’t help much. The liquid still spilled onto the floor of the alleyway, creating a growing puddle. That definitely was not good. His vision still was hazy, but he suspected it was from blood loss rather than a concussion. He tried moving his legs, only to let out a fresh string of curses. Ow, that was not happening.  Yeah, not a good idea. His best guess was that his left leg was most likely broken. 

He needed to get medical help. His bike– which was parked several blocks away– was out of the question. No way could he use a grappling hook with so much blood loss. He really wished he’d finished installing that comm unit in his helmet– he could maybe call someone for help. But that wasn’t an option. He was stuck in an alleyway, with a broken leg, alone and bleeding out. Just great. 

His eyes flitted up to the sky. It was clear and cloudless, not that you would be able to make out any stars in Gotham’s polluted air. But the moon. The moon was bright against that dark drapery of night, and its slivery glow cast onto Jason’s injured body. It didn’t help his headache. He tried angling his face away from it only to hiss in pain. 

Jason groaned. Well, he couldn’t just sit here and go quietly. He steeled himself and gripped the wall in an attempt to stand up. It was dizzying and hurt like hell, but he grit his teeth and stood. Good, he thought. Now, one step at a time. One, two. One, two. One– he fell to the ground with a crashing thud. 

Well, isn’t this a fun day, he grumbled. He regrettably (because ow) crawled back to the wall. He needed to get someone’s attention. Hell, he was desperate at this point. Superman would even do. Was he off-planet?  It was worth a try. He tried speaking but was cut off by a bout of coughing. That did not make his side any happier. He opened the front of his helmet the let himself breathe. Sucking in all the breath his lungs could hold, he yelled. “Superman!” 

Jason waited. Nothing. Wonderful. He pressed his head against the cold concrete of the alley wall, trying to clear his head. If only he weren’t so tired. Two minutes, he promised himself. Two minutes to rest before he tried again. 

He closed his eyes. Of course, he knew that if he drifted off completely, he may not wake up. If that were to happen, Jason wondered who would be tasked with writing his second obituary. He’d better be getting a new headstone for what it’s worth as well. 

His train of thought came crashing to a stop when he heard a familiar low rumble. An engine, he realized. Aw hell. Those goons might’ve finally tracked him down. He cracked an eyelid open to catch a glimpse of the new visitor. He didn’t see anyone. Wait, no– he craned his neck, finally sighting the vehicle. 

The Batmobile. He never thought he’d be so happy to smell its nasty fumes. B must have used the rockets on the back. Speaking of which, where was the Dark Knight?

He opened his other eye to find Batman. Jason let out a breathy chuckle. “Hey, B-man.” God, talking hurt. Batman grunted. 

“Let’s get you in the car, Jay-lad.” 

With hissing and cursing thought would have cost him fifty bucks in Alfred’s swear jar, the two made it to the car. “‘M gonna bleed all over your seats, B,” Jason warned, if not a little weakly. Batman ignored him. He braced himself as the car pulled onto the main streets, rocketing towards the Cave.  

_______________

Jason must have passed out at some point because he woke up in the damp air of the Cave. The cot he lay on was all too familiar from his Robin days, but he was secretly a little grateful that he didn’t have to take care of himself. Thankfully, his side had been cleaned and bandaged and his leg set while he was out. He figured that Bruce must have slipped some sedatives into the IV that stood beside him. That would explain why his head felt so light, and his eyes felt so heavy. He gave into its lulling numbness and slept. 

Bruce was with him the next time he awoke. He looked like he’d been sitting there a long time, which was silly. Bruce clearly had better things to do. “How are you feeling, Jay?” 

He shrugged or tried to, rather. Either way, Bruce got the message. “How’d you find me?” he croaked. 

“I saw the explosion. Heard you a few minutes later.” 

“How’d you know it was me?”Bruce stopped. 

“Jason, I’d know your voice anywhere,” he said, carding his fingers through Jason’s hair. 

Jason couldn’t find the incentive to berate him for the action. Silence filled the cave once again as Jason thought. Was the Cave always this gaping? “Why’d you come?” he finally asked. His voice was as quiet as the dark crevices of the Cave.  

“What are you talking about?” Bruce countered, looking bewildered. “Why wouldn’t I come? You’re my son, Jay.”

 “But the whole thing after… after I came back… and with Tim…” He studied the wrinkled fabric of the blanket that covered him, trying to hold back the tears that threatened his vision. “I tried to kill all of you, Bruce. How could… how could you want me back?” His final words came tumbling out.

“Oh, Jason…” Bruce murmured, enveloping the boy in his arms. They might have had their differences, but when all was said and done, at the end of the day, Jason was his son. “ You know, there’s this quote Dick likes to say,” he started. He cleared his throat dramatically and continued in his best impression of what had to be Stitch. “ ‘Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.’” 

Jason groaned into Bruce’s shirt. “You’re the worst.” 

Bruce chuckled, hugging Jason’s head closer. “I mean it, Jay. No matter what happens, I’m not going to stop loving or worrying over you.” 

“It’s not me you should be worried about B,” Jason said, suddenly mischievous. “I think I might call Disney to sue you for copyright violations.” 

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Bruce feigned a look of betrayal.”Because I can and will buy Disney if that’s the case.” 

Jason flopped back onto the cot, a grin shining through the tears that still lingered. “Nah. On grounds of loving you and all that.”

“Get some rest, Jay,” Bruce said, patting his son’s shoulder. “You don’t have to, but  I’d appreciate if you stayed here for a while, at least until you heal up.”

The boy considered it. Then he remembered: Alfred’s cooking his whole stay? Hell yes. “Okay, I’ll stay.”  

Bruce smiled. Misfortune might love his children, but he loved them more. 

[valzhangs]

the lionesses den

a heroes of olympus trc au. read on ao3. 

Chapter 1: PIPER. 

One could say it starts when she’s six, listening intently to her mother. This is the first time Piper Mclean hears the story.

 Herself and her siblings sit huddled around their mother, Aphrodite, as she tells a story, one the rest of them appear to have heard before although Piper has not. Aphrodite’s voice, sweet as honey, fills the spacious room far more than the shelves stacked with perfumes and accessories ever could.

 “There was a woman, once,” Her mother tells the five children. Piper isn’t paying attention at first as her and Liz, one of her siblings, roll a green ball to each other. It’s tiny and bouncy and Piper can’t remember where they got it from but she adores it. Had she looked around, she’d have noticed all of her siblings were paying as little attention as her. Aphrodite looks at her distracted children and does not care as she continues, “She defied the gods.”

 This is what catches Piper’s attention and her eyes snap towards her mother in wonder. It was not rare for Aphrodite to speak of gods, of beings beyond what they could ever be. In the stories, they were always ethereal and untouchable, their authority undeniable, so the existence of a tale in which someone opposed them was a wonderous thing.

 “She didn’t agree with their insistence to be the only ones with gifts, so she found a way to replicate them. Witchcraft. Of course, this had existed for ages before she arrived, but it was a doctrine taught only to the gods’ proteges and descendants. She found a way regardless, and she made her own enchantments and gifts from scratch, she learned how to heal without medicine. And she taught others what she’d discovered in her very own isle, where people came from all over to be taught by her. Her name was Circe, and the gods were not happy with her at all.

 “Circe didn’t care about that, though, she just continued to teach the girls that arrived at Circe’s Isle, gave them a home. Eventually, a man who was the son of a god stumbled upon her place, and as he offended the girls, Circe turned him into a pig. This is what brought punishment to her, and soon all the apprentices were gone and her isle was unfindable. No one would learn the gods’ secrets again, and no one would interact with she who had taught them either.”

 Aphrodite’s story comes to an end, and she goes back to fixing her eyeliner in the mirror as her children just entertain themselves with each other. All except Piper, who is still focused on her mother as she waits for some form of continuation to the story. That can not be the end! How is it that Circe’s story had carried on? Is it really impossible to find her?

 “What is it? Do you want me to teach you?” It is not Aphrodite who speaks up as she noticed Piper still staring, but instead Silena, at nine the oldest of her siblings. She’s always really nice to Piper.

 “Huh?” Piper asks, not quite understanding the question.

 Silena giggles, “Do you want to learn how to do make-up? Mom says I’m a good learner, I might be a good teacher too!”

 “Mom is lying to you because you’re her favorite,” Drew butts in, seven years old and convinced she needs to earn her place.

 Silena frowns, “No, she’s not, Drew.”

 “Yes, she is!”

 “No, she’s not!”

 “Will you two stop fighting? We’re supposed to be in a peaceful environment.” Aphrodite says annoyance as their voices grow louder, not even looking over to the pair.

 Both girls frown and side-eye each other but stop arguing.

 Piper looks at her mother, ethereal and unreachable like the gods from her stories, and decides she doesn’t want to spend all her time being boring and putting lines on her face, so she scrunches up her face when Silena offers teaching her again and shakes her head, which seems to offend Silena as she walks away and starts playing with Lacy, five years old and Liz’s twin.

 Liz just starts throwing the green ball at her again and Piper laughs as she rolls it back to the younger one. Drew is huffing at all of them but eventually she joins the pair in green ball throwing, even laughing with the other two.

 It is then that the new maid, the really nice one with long straight black hair and warm brown eyes, peeks her head into the room and looks directly at Piper with a smile.

 “Your father is here,” She says and Piper immediately gets up, throwing a Bye! towards the rest before her mother stops her.

 “Are you really going to leave without giving your mom a proper goodbye?” She says.

 Piper sighs and walks back, giving her mother hug and an “I’ll miss you, mom” before walking back towards the door.

 “Byebye, Pipes!” Lacy calls after her and Liz echoes her and then the door shuts behind Piper and the nice maid.

 The two walk towards the giant house’s entrance (really, her mother’s house is enormous, even bigger than her dad’s) where Tristan Mclean awaits them, a pleasant smile on his face.

 “Did you have a fun time?” He asks his daughter once the two of them are back in the car, and Piper hums in confirmation, her mind still lost in her mother’s story.

 That night, she dreams of Circe’s Isle, of learning magic and conquering gods (or maybe unavailable mothers) with it.

      “Are we there yet?” Piper hears Leo Valdez, her best and oldest friend (which is not to say they’ve been friends for very long, just that Piper is not very good at maintaining friendships), ask.

 It is Jason Grace, the boy at the wheel and newest addition to their group, who responds, “It’s been two minutes.”

 He is the strangest member of their group, mainly because of how not strange he is. Or, well, appears to be, as no normal person would hang out looking for a magic island to get a wish.

 Leo groans and throws his head back onto the seat, his curls being squished behind him.

 A laugh comes from the front seat, besides Jason, and Piper can see the fourth group member’s hand gesturing in the air.

 “Patience, Leo,” The laughing girl says, and Jason suddenly looks at her then back at the road in a quick motion.

 “Have you been there the whole time?” He asks, sounding bewildered.

 He is the only one unsettled by Hazel Levesque’s sudden appearance in the car, as the other two learned long ago of the young girl’s uncanny ability to make herself go unnoticed until she speaks. It is nearly impossible to see her sneaking up on you. Nearly, thinks Piper, because she is determined to someday catch her in the act.

 “Of course, silly,” Comes Hazel’s reply, “I am never not-here.”

 Jason lets out air through his nose and Piper resists the urge to laugh at the clear sign of confusion. He will have to get used to Hazel eventually as well, after all, she’s an essential part of their little group.

 “Are we there yet?” Leo asks again, leaning forward as he gazes at Jason in search for an answer.

 “Nope.”

The curly haired boy pouts, “I wish we could, like, fly there or something.”

 Jason’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, “It’s a fifteen minute drive.”

 “It would be ten minutes if you’d just drive faster,” Leo remarks.

 “I’m on the speed limit, Valdez,” Jason’s voice sounds tight and unsure as it often does when talking about going against what’s set, as if breaking rules was the worst thought in the world. It’s probably why him and Leo sometimes clash, although Piper herself does not have much respect for guidelines so it only makes half sense.

 “There’s nobody around,” Leo points out.

 Jason doesn’t reply and continues to drive at the exact same speed as Leo just gives a sigh and settles back onto his seat.

 Hazel hums along to the song playing on the radio, a tune Piper can’t name but knows she’s heard before, perhaps simply from Hazel. It’s soft but loud, and it stands somewhere between a chant and golden era Broadway. Piper hates it but Hazel has the kind of smile on her face that reminds Piper of just how young she is so she can’t bring herself to change the station.

 Before she realizes it, they have arrived at their destination, the smell of the sea stronger than ever as three of the group step onto the port while Jason goes park the car.  

 Leo looks around, then back at Piper, “So, why did you bring us out here again?”

Piper raises an eyebrow, an ability it took her way more time than she’d be willing to admit to master, then looks out to the sea, “Maybe I just wanted to surf.”

 “It’s a port, not a beach,” Leo points out.

 Hazel smiles as she walks around a bit, “The view’s pretty.”

 Leo makes a noise that sounds like disagreement, and Piper gives him a look, “Didn’t you say you liked the beach?”

 “Yes. The beach, with sand and sand castles and the possibility of standing at the edge of the sea without going in just for the breeze. This is a port. No sand,” Leo glares at the sea as if it were its fault that the place doesn’t fulfill his expectations, “Besides, we’ve been here a thousand times.”

 Piper shrugs, knowing the place might get tired after a while with no results, as much as she still loves it.

 Jason finally joins them, his hands stuffed into his pockets, “So, Piper, what are we doing here?”

Piper smiles, “I think it’ll be better if I show you.”

 She walks off towards the bridge that leads to the boats and the rest follow her without question as they often do.

 She then takes a device from her backpack, a modified DR60 in a transparent case, hard plastic, probably as good as she would get with an underwater EVP recorder without actually creating something beyond the modifications Leo had made. He could probably ideate something that would work, but he also probably did not have the time for such a thing.

 “Uhuh, I made this,” Leo says.

 “We have seen this before,” Jason agrees.

 “Gosh, just,” She takes the recorder out of its case, “Listen to the recording.”

 Jason takes the DR60 and goes to play back on the thing before Piper holds out her hand in a “wait” gesture and takes a second device out of her backpack, this one a speaker.

 She connects it to the EVP recorder and rolls her eyes at the others’ looks, “Better sound quality.”

 Then Jason plays the recoding.

 For a while, there’s nothing there, and Piper can see in the Leo and Jason’s faces how they’re expecting it to stay like this, maybe find some odd noise that can be explained easily. Hazel looks pleasant and eager, perhaps the most trustful that this whole meeting did, indeed entail an important find.

 Then, there’s a voice, and although Piper has heard it at least ten times in the past day, she still leans forward with excitement.

 “What’s your name?” The voice is feminine and clear, a commanding quality to it.

 “Piper.” This is Piper’s very own voice replying.

 “Daughter of whom?”

 “Does it matter? They are nothing here.”

 The recording then goes back to simply being the normal sounds of the marine life.

 Piper looks expectantly at the people accompanying her, trying to discern their reactions.

 “Yeah, I still don’t get it,” Jason finally says, bringing both other companions to nod along to him.

 “I placed this underwater for maybe three hours,” Piper starts, “I left it there for maybe three hours and this is what I found when looked over the recording. This is not a conversation I’ve ever had.”

 She sees Leo and Jason share a look somewhere between skepticism and excitement.

 “You could have shown us this anywhere else,” Hazel suddenly says, curiosity bleeding from her every word, “Why are we here?”

 Piper’s smile widens, if such a thing is even possible at this point, “I was hoping you’d ask that.”

 She walks a bit further ahead, then points towards a spot at the corner of a boat where glowing circled tablets float.

 “After I heard the recording, I decided I’d check out the water around the area where it was,” Her hands gesture wildly around her as she speaks, “You know, for any traces of the kind of stuff disappearing acts have. This is the second place where it’s actually worked, and it’s way stronger than in Katakolon.”

 “This does look pretty solid,” Leo admits, and Piper resists the urge to give a smug huff at convincing the biggest skeptic of their group, “But it might be another dead end.”

 Piper thinks of sleepless nights looking through books about Greek stories, of miles travelled in search for a single clue and hours spent analyzing prophecies made by women centuries later, likely while high. She thinks of maps leading nowhere, of riddles with no answers and of absolutely unrelated stories that had somehow made their way into the mess that was the obscure search for Circe’s Isle.

 “It’s not,” Piper’s voice holds determination, “We’re close. I can feel it.”

[the-voice-of-hell]

The Septagram

This is a first draft of a novel. Opinions welcome if they come from a reasonably kind place.  The final draft, whenever that happens, will have substantial editing of dialogue, but keep most events intact.  It will have some illustrations, and RPG rules for the setting in the back end, and probably sold cheaply through Amazon.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence, Gore, Horror-themed Content, Some Cliché Positive Depiction of Cops that Could Understandably Be Taken as Copaganda, Bible Quotes, Depiction of Demons that Could be Offensive to Some Satanists, Strong Sexual Content, Some Depiction of Sexism, Racism, etc.

THE SEPTAGRAM

-Great American Satan

Grade 7

PART ONE:

THE HERALDS

          “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

       And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire  was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

        And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

        And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

    And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

 …And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!”

                                             -Spoiled Brats Knocking

                                              Chess Pieces Off Tables

***

“Daddy, I don’t think we should have taken that road.”

“Aw Snookums, it’ll be fine.”

“But what about the murderers?”

“Don’t you trust the boys in blue to do their jobs, Honey?”

“You should’ve trusted their wisdom to not weasel your way around the roadblock.”

“Haha, ya got me there, kiddo.  Listen, we’re driving. Nobody can murder us if we’re pulling seventy sweet em’s pee aitch on these empty streets, right?”

“I guess...”

Jason Homme drove his daughter Maddy crazy sometimes, but they had a good reason to be heading into the locked down part of the state.  Jason’s brother Kevin and mother Susan were in an isolated city, secured by police, but mom was unwilling to leave.  Kevin figured if anyone could convince her to evacuate, it was Jason - in person.  He brought Maddy to alternate driving until they were in the safe zone.

“We can do this, Maddy.  You just gotta believe in your old man.  You believe in me, right?”

“I guess...”

“Whaaat?  Has Daddy’s Princess lost faith in the king?  Our kingdom will surely perish!  No one will be spared!  Only the pure heart of--”

“Knock it off, Daddy!  I believe in you.  God.”

“...And so the kingdom was saved.  Trust me Princess, we’re gonna be A-OK.”

The state of Washington had a great variety of local climates, partitioned by mountains, hills, and bodies of water.  The east of the state was a great plain with typical midwestern skies, bright and hot in the summer, grading into patchy forests here and there.  As the car climbed the hills along the winding little road, the forest grew more dense.

But something was wrong here and it quickly became apparent.  That haze turned out to not be morning mist after all.  It thickened into great waves of smoke.  A forest fire was out of control somewhere, and not far away.

“Oh,” cried Maddy, “This can’t be good.  We really shouldn’t have come this way!”

“Oh Baby, it’s just a little forest fire.  They happen every summer around here.”

“Yeah, but what if there’s no firemen around anymore?”

“Don’t worry your head.  We just get past this, get to your Gran and Uncle Kevin, and it’s smooth sailin’.  We’ll ride out of here with a veritable phalanx of Washington state’s finest.”

“OK, but go faster.”

They were already up to eighty.  At that rate, if they didn’t get in a crash they were going to hit the mountains in minutes.  The smoke thickened and thickened, white grey and then black.  The little road had no real outlets - just lumber trails and rural residential dead ends.  If they chickened out, they’d need to turn around and lose a hell of a lot of time.

Jason flexed his solid hands on the wheel, pricked up his alertness to its full height.  He didn’t look from side to side, unfocused to take advantage of the widest amount of his peripheral view for motion and danger.  They drove into the smoke like driving from day into night.

He couldn’t help but reduce his speed, nervous of falling trees and the possibility he’d have to brake for a wall of flames.  Still, he was brave enough to do sixtyish.  Maddy was in the middle of the back seat, one hand gripping each of the front seats, trying to get the fullest view of the road - as if that would protect her.  They were sweating bullets.

Orange lights gleamed in the dark. Sparks raced across the road and disappeared behind them.  And then they saw the flames.  It was so quick at that speed - one second in relative darkness, another in the sparking zone, one more and there was a wall of fire.  Two walls of fire, left and right.  The flames nearly formed an arc over the road.  Maddy started to scream.

“FASTER, DADDY, FASTER!”

“I’M GOIN’, BABY!  I’M GOIN’!”

The road curved too sharply for their speed.  He skidded through the gravel, rode the guard rail like a demolition derby devil, got back on concrete after torturous moments.  Was their car already on fire?  They bored through hell like a power drill.

And then it passed.  The black disappeared, leaving them in grey-white smoke again, ash whipping in the wind like dust devils.  They had rounded the curve of a hill, whose steep sides were bare enough of grass to form an outer limit for the demonic flames.

“See, Snookums?  We did it!  Easy as pie.”

“Daddy!” She practically cried and punched him in the shoulder.

“Seriously, hon.  It’s gonna be fine, I’m for real about this.  Faith.”

She collapsed into her seat.  “I believe in you, Daddy.  I do.”

They finally got far enough from the thick of the smoke that Jason dared to roll to a stop and check to see if the roof was on fire.  As he got out, Maddy remembered the reason for the blockades and looked about crazily.

Murder clubs.  The concept was chilling.  Everyone knew that some people are just rotten and bad, like serial killers and their ilk.  Nobody guessed that there were enough to form cult-like groups and plot mass-murders for fun.  But they made the mistake of focusing their efforts in one geographic location, which let the government contain them with a little old fashioned martial law.

Martial law that they’d broken to get in here.  Maddy didn’t know what to expect.  Would they look like those internet losers, mad they couldn’t get laid?  Would they have lots of guns?  The stories said they preferred to use machetes and axes.  She shuddered and almost cried out for her father again, but he got in the car and spared her nerves.

“Just a lil’ sooty up there.  Guess I’ll be visiting a body shop when we get back to Yakima.  Unless you think they still have service in the safe zone...”

“Just drive, Daddy, please!”

“I’m drivin’, I’m drivin’!  Your wish is my command, Princess.”

***

Iphigenia Wallace washed her hands in the sink.  She was pretty sure she’d killed a few of them.  Those men.  Not that it was a sin, but she wished she could know for sure.  Had the one died when she smashed his head with a brick?  Had the other two died when she ran them over in a stolen Dodge Charger?  She didn’t know and it made her nervous.

The world had gone to hell and her family with it.  Those murder creeps started killing people in the night and the government overreacted with martial law, roadblocks.  But that only served to trap people in an area with an army of homicidal bastards and inadequate infrastructure.  Communication blackouts aimed at keeping them from coordinating by cell made it so no one could talk with their families and friends.

Ippy was one of those confused people, scrambling to find out - of her friends and family, who made it out?  Who was still in danger?  But she had worse luck than average.  Her mom and younger brothers and sisters all lived in Lakewood, which had been hit badly by the murder clubs.  The clubs had members in the military at Fort Lewis.  She found her family in their home.  They never had a chance to flee.

Then she sought out her best friends, in Fern Hill and South Tacoma..  Candy and Yvonne were both nowhere to be found, with apartments showing clear signs of breaking and entry.  She didn’t have any choice but to stop searching for them.  They could have been anywhere.  She realized, looking at the scratched and corroded bathroom mirror, that she’d always filled her life with routines, filled her thoughts with friends and family - and that meant her head was emptying out at an alarming pace.  What would she find when she didn’t have anything or anyone left to think about?

There was still Elijah.  Elijah had been her first boyfriend in junior high, but grew up to be more of a gay best friend.  He was living in Hilltop.  Her desperate search for the last traces of herself was narrowing in on Tacoma like a noose.

“Elijah... Be alive.”

She was dark, barely visible in the feeble light.  But her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw a person in there.  Who is she?  She put a thin reedy hand on the mirror then jumped back in shock.

What she had taken for a rust spot on the mirror sprang to life - a tiny bat startled by the vibration of her fingertips on the glass.  It flapped and shrieked, knocking Ippy on her ass with its outsized personality before getting lost inside the space above the toilet stalls.

She turned and got to her feet in a hurry, hustling out of the beast’s filthy little kingdom.  A little routine popped into her mind, made her feel like a human again - the annoyance that her freshly cleaned hands had just touched the bathroom floor and needed to be washed again.

Outside the bathroom she was in a gas station parking lot, cheap businesses on one side of the street, a string of forested lots on the other.  A car sped by, then an SUV.  It screeched to a stop and backed up for her.  She steeled herself for action.

The window was down and a Samoan lady hung her arm out the window in a peaceful gesture.  “Hey!  You wanna come to our church?  It’s safe there.  We have a lot of guns.”

“Uh... No thanks.  But can I get a ride to Hilltop?”

The guy at the wheel bitched, “I ain’t driving to fuckin’ Hilltop.”

The lady turned to him, “Why not you lazy bitch?”

“It’s too dangerous.  Forget it.”

Ippy waved the lady off.  “It’s OK.  I got a car, just thought it would be safer in company.  I’ll be fine.”

“Mm, OK.  Whatchu got for a weapon, Honey?”

She shrugged, then hoisted the hammer.  It was a slim profile claw hammer with a recurved long yellow plastic handle and black rubber grips, with serration inside the claw side.  She’d just picked it up from a house that had been abandoned in the middle of renovation.  “How about this?”

The Samoan grinned a gold tooth, her eyes disappearing into pleasant black crescents.  “I love it.  Have a nice trip!”  The man drove her away.

Iphigenia decided going unseen as little as possible was the ideal and went into the forested lots.  Someone peeked out of the dumpster at the gas station, watched her go.  He picked his way out of the noisy hiding spot with preternatural stealth and set his sneakered foot to concrete.  He padded across the bare street behind her, exaggerated spring in his tiptoes, looking like a cartoon burglar.  As he began to scale the forested hill behind her, his fingers slapped the wet bark - skin as moist and green as banana slugs.

***

Hilltop, crown jewel of Tacoma.  Well, crown at any rate.  Tacoma was an extremely sprawled, mostly one and two story grey smear on the southeast side of Puget Sound.  The sprawl was a motley of lesser cities that had been incorporated over the centuries in a cement of cheap hideous houses and strip malls.  The real Tacoma at its center was a port city next to a massive hill.  “Downtown” was the mix of mint-condition antique brick buildings and gleaming new development sloping down to the water.  But the real heart of Tacoma was the peak of that hill - blocks and blocks of impoverished single-family homes - weathered, cheaply built and long overdue for demolition.  Everybody from Olympia to Seattle knew about Hilltop - much more than knew about the Tacoma Art Museum.

It wasn’t the most easily defended piece of real estate, despite the high ground.  But people insisted on having more breathing room, access to their own bathrooms.  Nobody wanted to move into the hospital tower, which Detective Park and his irregulars could defend more easily - snipers watching anything within a mile of the place.  Park settled for gathering people in that crusty old neighborhood, keeping a weather eye through elaborately planned and executed patrol patterns and radio communication.

“Something is interfering with radio in the southeast.  Patrols there aren’t always getting through.”  Park was discussing strategy with the other commanding officers.  They were such a mixed bag of cops, soldiers, and volunteers that they decided to forgo normal chain of command and voted him chief of operations, but he still operated in a loose council - rarely made a call without consulting the other ranking officers.

“I can confirm that,” Officer Coffey said.  He was in charge of the civilian contingent - a high ranked security guard and army vet.  “I couldn’t get a signal on my patrol.  My guys couldn’t either.”

“It has to be the power lines.  We could try calling in closer.  Patrols there get word to the middle blocks, they relay to command.  If it works, make that part of protocol.”  Colonel James was active Army from the fort and should have been in charge, he was less assertive from a sense of shame.  Some of his men had turned out to be members of murder clubs.

“It probably won’t work.”  First Lieutenant Alameda was Air Force.  “We just have to do it analog - make the patrols quick so we can get word of mouth intel.”

“Mmm… something more than that,” Park said.  “Let’s make sure everyone who patrols there has a noisemaker.  Something they can use to get a warning out quick, without wasting ammo.  Ideas?”

Sergeant Infante was the only other guy from Tacoma PD.  “I think I know where I can scrounge up some air horns.”

“Make it happen, Infante.  Thanks.”   Park smiled at him.  That guy was top notch.  Not just another gun bunny looking for an excuse, despite being SWAT.  “Any more word from Homeland Security?  This holding pattern is the pits.”

“Just maintain,” Coffey said.  “Three commands didn’t check in this morning.  Auburn, Des Moines, and Beacon Hill.”

“Mm, I don’t like that.  They’re spread out, but still close enough it makes me wonder if they got hit by something.”

“SeaTac is close to all that, they report status normal.  Still taking evacuees, no hostile activity.”

Park pushed the meat of his forehead around.  “Can we spare anyone with a motorcycle to check on Des Moines?  That has the least cover en route, minimum ambush potential.”

Alameda said, “My secretary is always bragging on her bike.  She lives downtown, too.  It’s available.”

“Great.  Thank you.  Gentlemen.”  He nodded to dismiss the meeting and people broke into smaller groups to discuss needed details before returning to their respective commands.

Park followed Infante out of the tent, slapping him on the shoulder.  “Hey buddy.  Where are we shopping?  Archie McPhee’s is up in Wallingford.”

“Haha.  There’s an auto parts downhill.  I’ve seen ‘em there, at least a few.  Should be enough to equip patrols if they hand off.”

“Good man.”

Infante, appropriately, had a babyish face.  His pleasant, sensitive expression made him look all the younger.  “Not to be rude Detective, but don’t you have another duty?  We’re spread pretty thin up here.”

“I have a few.  Might as well get in my cardio instead of sitting on my duff up here.”  Park hoped he didn’t come off weird.  He was just glad to be hanging out with a fellow policeman.  The irregulars were good guys, but it was tense dealing with them.  If the Colonel decided to pull rank at any point, who knew where Park would end up?  “Besides.  I’d rather be with Tacoma PD any time.”

“Thanks, boss.”

They ambled along the cracked and mossy streets.  Some civilians were chilling on their lawns, glad for the time off work, whatever the situation.  They had to be told not to run barbecues and dads with invisible aprons glared at the cops as they passed.  Park was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered in a business casual and a shoulder holster.  Infante was just under six feet, his jarhead hairstyle and bulky SWAT uniform making his head look a bit small for his body.  His skin had a pleasant reddish tone, Park was like a sun-shy mushroom of a man, though his forearms and upper face were starting to get a light chestnut burnish from tromping around under summer skies.

“We don’t get much time to socialize on this duty.  How do you like SWAT?  Pretty new, right?”

“A few years here.  I didn’t see you much either.”

“Yeah.  So how about it?”

“We get all the toys, you know?”

“True…  Don’t take it wrong, but I don’t like guns as much as I did before I made gold.  This stuff going on… What if these assholes didn’t have easy access?”

“Eh, you and I both know we can’t what if.  It isn’t in the job description.”

“Yeah.  Well, it’s good to know there’s well-armed good guys.  I’m really glad we have you.”

“I just wish the rest of the squad was still around.  How could they just evacuate like that?  We got a job to do.”

“Only two detectives stayed.  SWAT had a better ratio.”

“Just me out of twelve.  That’s ate up sir.”

“That’s a big 10-4, Sergeant.  Heh.”

They could hardly talk as they staggered down a very steep stretch of hill.  The street there was cobblestone, quite randomly and at odds with the local architecture.  Then they came down to a comparatively level cross street and turned the corner.

The city was largely abandoned.  Foolish vagrants stuck around for primo looting and could still be seen wandering the streets sometimes, but there weren’t any within line of sight.  The police were quite alone.

Park saw a trickle of sweat at the back of Infante’s neck - a sign of humanity in the perfect soldier boy.  He didn’t know why it brought a smile to his face, not really.  “This isn’t the worst duty to draw, given the circumstances.”

Infante wheeled on him, shocked.  “Excuse me, sir?  We aren’t exactly neck deep in alligators, but this is fucked up.  Some of those psychos were Army and we’re working with Army right now.  And as far as we know, the murderers are all in plainclothes.  They could be anyone, come from anywhere.  This detail sucks balls, sir.”

“I’m sorry, brother.”

“It sucks balls.”

“I really am sorry.  I don’t wanna make light of anyone’s … travail, whatever.  I’ll be glad when we get these people out of the lockdown too.  I don’t know what to say.  What do you have to say about it?”

“About what?”

“About… them.  The murder clubs.”

“Pure evil, straight out of hell.  When we get everyone to safety, I’m gonna come back and send them all where they belong.”

“I bet you will.  Good man.”

Park didn’t like hearing him talk about killing.  It was an interest in killing that brought the creeps together in the first place.  He knew Infante’s mindset was fundamentally different, but it still made him sad.  They stepped into the auto part store through the already broken window and collected their prize.

***

Jason and Maddy weren’t about wasting time.  The forest roads didn’t feel safe - too many places for murder clubs to hide.  So they drove as fast as they dared.  Maddy took the wheel and Jason kept an eye out for trouble and turns.  They came out of the mountains into a cow town, then headed north through heavily wooded suburbs before turning west.  That street would take them into and out of the Green River valley and up to Interstate 5.

They descended into a cleft in the hill face, surrounded by tall dark evergreens, then burst out into the valley.  More dairy farms, but corporate parks and car dealerships too.  It was the flat nothing between Auburn and Kent.  The open space, empty of people and cars, was uncanny.  But to Maddy, who had been imagining attacks from the tree line for the last hour, it was a relief.  She unconsciously eased off the gas pedal and they slowed to forty-five.

“Perfect.  It’s been a while but I recognize all of this,” her dad said.

“And you’re sure 99 is going to get us to Beacon Hill faster?”

“Princess, look at the time we’re making.  We’ll be there before you know--”

His words fell away as he tried to comprehend the thing that was rising from the small stand of trees at the side of the road.  It was like a human arm, somehow grown longer - twenty feet for the upper arm, twenty feet for the lower, and patterned like a dairy cow.  It touched the street in front of them and they crashed into it.

Glass spider webbed and erupted with cutting little chunks.  Sparks flew.  Airbags exploded in their faces.  They whipped in circles before smashing through the guard rail and splashing in a wet ditch with intense force.

Jason woke up to his daughter shaking his head and shoulders around.  Maybe not the recommended first aid after a car crash, but he wasn’t able to think clearly enough to advise against it.  He licked blood from the corner of his mouth.

“DADDY DADDY WAKE UP!”

“Princess?  It’s OK, it’s fine, Baby.”

“You need to-” she sobbed “-g-get out of the car!”

“Sure thing, whatever you want, kiddo.”

Maddy took his manly arm in both of her scrawny paws and jerked uselessly.  He tugged his arm back gently.

“C’mon, hon.  Just let me do it.”

“O-oh OK.  OK, fine.”  She threw her hands up, stepped a few feet away, and slumped against a muddy embankment.

Jason tried opening the car door, then failing that he repositioned himself to force it.  He was a not atypical man, a little under six foot and two hundred twenty pounds, formerly a bit athletic.  But all his limbs felt leaden and clumsy.  He just kept moving until he took in enough air to decompress his ribs, start to revive.  She couldn’t watch for long, just taking short tearful glances at him and trying less successfully to get control of her own breathing.

He finally pushed the door open and staggered out, then leaned back against the car.  His feet were in ten inches of muddy water.  Or was it watery mud?  “See, snookums?  I’m right as rain.”

“Oh Daddy!”  She came in for a hug and he accepted it.

Probably no broken ribs, he thought.  Then he remembered something else.  “Uh, sweetie, did you happen to see the… tree that hit us?”

“Oh god!”  It looked like she was just remembering as well.  She broke from the hug and clambered up onto the street.

He followed, more slowly.  “Uh… Whatcha got there?”

“Nothing!  Noth-”

“Princess?”

“Oh!  There’s blood!  Oh no...”

He finally got up onto the concrete and came up behind her to lend moral support.  He saw the blood spray on the road.  Looked like what you’d expect from a very small animal - a squirrel, rabbit, rat, that sort of thing.  And there was no other remains in sight, so perhaps it was something small that got flung out of the road at that.  He couldn’t figure it.  “It’s nothing Honey.  Let’s just get walkin’.  We can probably find a car to borrow in one of these houses.”

“We should keep walking for a while, get away from here.  I don’t trust these houses.”  Maddy looked at the side of the road the thing had come from.  The sky looked above it was in a red haze almost, like a field full of cows kicking up their own manure - but no cows in sight.  She trembled.

“Alright, Baby.  Let’s shake a leg, OK?”

***

Iphigenia had lied about having a car.  She crashed the charger after killing those murderers.  She was driving crazy, worried she was being chased.  She did tend to feel safer on foot because it was easier to hide and harder to get truly boxed in.  She could escape killers in cars by just running where they couldn’t.

Why had she lied?  Just to end the conversation, allay the lady’s concern.  Maybe the hammer had helped in that respect.  She didn’t think much of it at the time she picked it up, but it was very handy - not just for impressing women.  The wooded lots were on a steep hill - one of the bumps that eventually added up to Hilltop many miles away - and she had taken to hooking the trunks with the tool as a climbing aid.

Ippy came out on a paved residential street, part of a good long stretch of pure suburbia.  Two story houses with lawns and everything.  Before the evacuation there would have been more cars in the driveways and on street curbs, but the people took their best cars and locked up the leftovers tight in garages.  Aside from that and the relative silence, the neighborhood really didn’t look any different from how it normally would be.  She walked between blocks in the middles of streets, cut through lawns, kept an eye out for useful stuff to borrow.

She was cutting across a lawn and randomly decided to go under a set of swings rather than walk around it.  She hooked the hammer claw on the bar for no particular reason and swung from it.  Her feet were still touching the grass, but as she let the bar carry her weight, she spun in a half circle.  That’s when she saw it.

Just for a moment she saw a greenish human shape duck behind a fence.  It had been looking her way.  Following.  Hunting?  Well Green Man, let’s go.  Ippy very quickly switched directions and headed straight back the other way.  Was it watching her that moment?  She heard its footsteps as it began to run, and kept pace, leaping a small fence and rounding a corner onto the sidewalk for an open chase.

It was dressed like a man, but had its lower arms and the back of its neck visible, and looked some kind of slimy green color.  Ippy had no idea what to make of that, but didn’t want to let it get away, just to stalk her again or go get its friends.  And she was faster.

It slowed just a moment to round another corner and she caught up, swinging the hammer into its shoulder, sending it flipping onto the ground.  It looked like a murder clubber - young, acned, male, nondescript clothes, camouflage army cap.  But his skin had all turned green and slimy-looking.  His ears were nearly inhumanly large, nose bulbous, mouth too wide and groaning through needle-like teeth.

“What the fuck happened to you?” She asked him, but wasn’t expecting a response - was too lost in confused thoughts and feelings.

“Whaddya mean, bitch?  You think we care if we live of die?  It’s--”

She silenced him by swinging the hammer within an inch of his mouth.

“I mean why do you look like that?  Why are you a goblin?”

“Stuck-up bitch, think you’re too good.  You’re prey.  We’ll--”

She dropped the hammer’s head into his guts, forcing his last syllable to dissipate into a wheeze.  “My curiosity is running out.”  She was trying to be coldly threatening, but she thought about these cruddy little fuckers and she thought about her family and her face went hot, her hands began to shake.  To still them, she gripped the hammer harder, then found herself raising it without any conscious thought, swinging it down.

“AUGH!  AUGH!  AAAA!”  He tried to block the blows but they just destroyed his hands before destroying the rest of him - he only prolonged his suffering.

His blood was green.  Guess that’d do that to one’s complexion.

***

    NEXT

    -

[stxleslyds]

MY TOUGHTS ON PART TWO OF RED HOOD BY CHIP ZDARSKY :)

A DC BOOK THAT TASTES LIKE MARVEL.

You know when you are reading a book and you feel like the story you are reading seems familiar but not really within the context you are reading it at the moment? If you can’t shake the wrong sense of familiarity you search for what it probably the biggest give away, the author.

Here it’s something like that; I have read other pieces of Chip Zdarsky’s work, namely Daredevil. While I could tell you the familiarity is there, in the subject of guilt after taking the life of another person, the reality is that this book doesn’t taste like Daredevil, it tastes like Marvel.

That can be either an excellent thing (because Marvel has amazing books) or something terrible (because DC isn’t Marvel and they don’t work the same way).

As of now I can’t really tell if this Red Hood story is going to be one or the other, but I can tell you that it feels out of place in the DC universe, or at least that’s how I see it. I will explore this particular thought later, I just thought this was a nice way to open this post.

If you would like to read the first post I made about this book I will leave the link here!

Now…let’s begin.

Part two picks up exactly where part one left off, we see Jason calling Oracle so she can bring the police to the place where Jason killed Andy a.ka. that gigantic piece of shit.

Jason is having some thoughts, ones that I think are important.

“I have taken lives before, a lot of them. I have killed guys knowing nothing about them except that they had guns and murder in their hearts. Those ones are easy; I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...”

Jason is troubled. He is now in front of a reality that he never truly thought about but to be honest with you I strongly believe that nobody in the DC universe thinks beyond what happens in front of them, that’s just how fictional comic worlds are designed.

Anyway, there is a little something that bothers me in this inner monologue of his, like since when have “murderers” been Jason’s actual target? Like Joker was his target but he didn’t kill him, the base of Jason’s morals when it comes to killing has always been drugs, most importantly if you sell drugs to kids. So unless he is saying “murderers” because they were selling drugs that caused people (especially kids) to overdose then I don’t really get what is going on.

Another thing that I also talked about in the first post is that Jason hasn’t killed in a very long time, this man has been sticking to the Bats rule for so long that it’s actually unreal. Even when he shot the penguin and Batman proceeded to almost beat Jason to death the penguin hadn’t died. So once again I am thinking that Zdarsky has some info that he is not sharing right now or maybe he just didn’t read Lobdell's run (in which case, can you really blame him?)

Now let me talk about the other part of his monologue “…I don’t have to think of their mothers getting the news or of kids being...” This is something that I haven’t seen in DC, direct consequences after a hero/vigilante does something, and let me tell you it feels out of place. Is it a good or bad thing? I don’t really know but I have some thoughts on the subject.

I think it's unfair to put a comic character in that situation or dilemma. Jason has basically three reactions to the same situation and they are all valid, but can this situation be handled by a fictional person in a fictional world? Because to be fair I could also ask about the criminals that are put in hospitals after they are beat up by heroes, what if they die in the hospital? Is the hero a killer or does it fall on the hospital? If a criminal cannot pay for the attention given to them in hospitals and they immediately go back to criminal activity to pay for those things, are heroes a good thing? If the Joker bombs a hospital for the third time in four months and Batman does the same thing (take joker to Arkham) only for Joker to escape and do it again, is Batman as guilty as the Joker for the deaths of innocent people or not?

As I wrote it and as I read it again I see that it is a crazy thought because you can simply add more depth to the characters decisions and the consequences that would ensue because of them, but Gotham is a fictional city created to establish that crime is off the charts and that they need Batman because no amount of resources will be able to fix this city’s problems. So putting Jason in this position is new to me…but only in DC (more of this particular thought below).

Going back to the comic in question, I feel like Jason had the answers and the ideas all in his head. In this issue alone he basically says that if the mother does not pull through the boy will be alone, but alone means going into the system (a horrible system that Jason does not trust and needs improvement), but also, Jason recognizes that if the mother died and the father was left alive then that man would have done horrendous stuff. I just simply wouldn't believe that a man that gave drugs to both his wife and son so they wouldn't bother him is just going to change after realizing that his wife died because of him. Even less believable is him becoming an amazing father.

In the big scheme of things, Jason has killed people who fitted very certain characteristics, never innocents (bye, Morrison). What happens after the killing is done? We don’t know because past stories have never focused on that (criminals in comics are by default one dimensional, villains are not)

But here is the thing, Zdarsky is a Marvel writer and Marvel has gone in depth within those situations (like what happens after heroes commit mistakes or kill someone) mostly with Civil War by Mark Millar and more recently in Daredevil written by Chip Zdarsky, but DC hasn't and DC has been plain for a long time, DC doesn't really explain how batman hurts people severely and nothing happens beyond that.

What I am trying to say is that Zdarsky is going for a different and unique route for Jason here but I think the story is out of place in the DC universe.

I promise I am done with those thoughts, they were really difficult to put on paper and to make them make sense, so I apologize if I only confused you, sorry!

Anyway! After the monologue is done we have a flashback where little Jason is being told by his mother to go buy bread (the only thing they can afford) but she is also making him leave so he doesn’t have to be present when Robby (a friend if you ask Jason’s mom, a drug dealer if you ask Jason) comes to the apartment to help her.

Sadly as Jason is leaving Robby is walking up the stairs, now not to copy little Jason but fuck Robby. Jason’s issues with drugs, drug dealing and overdosing is once again shown here but what is also shown is the violence that comes with it. Jason being terrified for himself (and his mother) as Robby pulls a knife on him broke my heart and as he is left there in the corridor to his apartment all we can see is a defeated little boy and that shit hurts a lot.

After that we jump back to the future with none other than Batgod…I mean Batman. Batman is following a man called Sydney and apparently he disappointed Batman because B told him to stop being a criminal, like come on man if I ask nicely or if I break both of your arms you will surely stop, right? Yeah, no.

I feel like I mentioned something about this while my brain decided that DC never usually explains what happens with criminals after they get caught or killed and now here we are. Consequences. Batman scares a man off of working for Scarecrow but the man still needs to work (does he have a family to provide for? We don’t know. Does he do it because it’s the only job he can get? We don’t know.)

This Batman intermission ends up with Oracle telling him that Jason might be in trouble.

So we find ourselves back with Jason and Tyler in his safe house, Zdarsky does not hesitate and first thing he does is give us a couple of very angsty panels.

I love the way it hurts.

Jason honey, my sweet chonky boy…what are you doing?

Well at least I am not the only one asking that because Jason is having a moment to reflect about what has happened, what is happening and what could happen in the future. In this monologue he says the following:

“Dammit, Jason, what the hell are you doing? You can’t take care of this kid! But you can’t put him in the system either! Just waiting for some obsessed militaristic billionaire to adopt him? Dammit. His dad was scum, he hurt Tyler, he hurt his mom. But if Tyler’s mom doesn’t pull through…I just made this kid an orphan. He is my responsibility, he is too young to really see what he’s gone through, he can still be saved…unlike…”

Yeah that’s some really angsty thoughts, he is really going through it and I understand it. He lost his cool after what that horrible human being said he did and killed him and now he has to face the consequences of his actions, he recognizes that if the boy is left truly alone he will have to step up…but here is the thing, does Jason really want that? It seems to me like Jason is deeply against the idea of children working as heroes, and here he is as an adult that is a vigilante with an impressionable child that sees the Red Hood as his hero, I don’t know, it looks like the perfect recipe for a disaster.

But we don’t get to see what Jason does right away because its flashback time.

Jason only moved from his spot in the corridor of his apartment door to get the bread but as Robby comes out of said door Jason is there waiting. Robby teases that he and Jason’s mom ended up sharing the “medicine” and that she will be sleeping for a long time, and that seems to be it for Jason because next thing you know Robby is falling down the stairs.

Aw, shit.

Jason from the future continues his monologue while he remembers what happened on those stairs.

“I never had a chance, not for one second. But he does, Tyler has a chance. I can help him, help him be okay. This doesn’t…what I did…what his parents did, it doesn’t have to define him.”

So Jason wants to make things right for Tyler so he doesn’t become like Jason. Now I don’t truly know what Zdarsky is going for but I will go for the unconscious route, little Jason pushed Robby (that fucker) down the stairs and he was left unconscious there.

In Jason’s eyes Tyler is still a good kid that deserves only the best (like you Jason, please don’t think so low about yourself) and that can be saved from a life of vengeance, justice and trauma. But whatever Jason was going to actually say to Tyler we don’t know because Tyler informs Jason that through the Red Hood mask there is someone telling him that Batman is coming.

Batman appears out of nowhere as he does and starts talking shit.

Honestly Batman what is with that “not my town” bullshit? Baby this isn’t the medieval times, you are not a king and as far as I know not only is Lucius Fox richer than you but so is Dick so sit your ass down and shut the fuck up.

Luckily Jason is giving the outstanding amount of zero fucks and tells Batman exactly what he needs to be told, sadly Jason’s big brain time doesn’t last long because he absolutely loses his cool and starts a fight. So you know what that means, monologue time!

“This was a mistake, but I can’t help myself, he gets under my skin. His sanctimony, he acts like he’s God, all knowing, all seeing when really…he’s just another failed parent.”

Amen. Jason knows many languages but he chose to speak facts.

As the monologue ends Batman is standing over Jason like he is about to murder him but no such thing happens because Tyler, who was quietly watching them fight, jumps in to protect Jason. Yep, there goes my heart, goodbye.

And this is it. The issue ends with Tyler putting an end to the fight and telling batman that he has to leave the Red Hood alone because he is a good guy. Jason of course is thankful and promises that everything is fine.

 I don’t know about you guys but so far I can’t say if I like the book or not. Both parts left me with mixed feelings. I obviously want to see how it ends but I honestly think that there is only one way this story can end with a happy ending, which I think it would be Tyler going back to his mom and Jason somehow working to help her with her drug addiction, maybe even have Dick involved so he can help them economically.

Things that I surely do not want to see are Jason backing down again and limiting himself to the Bats rules. I also absolutely don’t want Zdarsky to go all Geoff Johns on us and make Jason think that he should give up the Red Hood mantle.

Jason really needs to gain his confidence back, he was smart, calculated and strategic and now they have taken those things away to accentuate his “daddy issues” and “inferiority complex”. Why the quotation marks you ask? Oh, because those things are bullshit and there is no room for those things in Jason’s characterization other than to add more angst to the plot.

Let me know how you felt about the issue and my review! Are you excited about what the four next issues are going to bring to the story?

Also if you read Marvel, did this issue taste like Marvel to you too or am I going crazy?

[chimaerakitten]

Blackberries

About a week ago, @komadoriwonder requested the batkids+blackberries. I finally wrote it.

AO3

“Why is it so hooooooooooot?” Dick complained from his place on the kitchen floor.

“It’s summer.” Tim replied from somewhere Dick couldn’t see. “And didn’t the circus winter in Florida?”

Dick rolled over so he could look Tim in the eye. “Tell me you aren’t more effected by this than me.”

Tim did look way worse than Dick did. For someone who practically lived in layered sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off, he really couldn’t take heat. His T-Shirt was soaked through with sweat and he’d pulled his hair into the saddest bun possible to keep it off his neck.

“No,” Tim said. “But I—“He pulled open one of the kitchen drawers to punctuate. “—Am going to do something about it.”

Dick sat up fast when he saw that Tim was taking a spoon out of the drawer. “Tim, don’t. That ice cream is Damian’s.”

Tim hummed as he pulled the gallon of ice cream out of the freezer. “I’ll just blame it on Jason.”

“Jason’s not even here today.”

“Wait for it.”

That same second there was the sound of the door slamming open and boots stomping through the foyer.

“TIM!” Jason yelled.

“KITCHEN!” Tim yelled back, making Dick wince.

Jason stomped into the kitchen. “Where’d you put it?”

Jason was, of course, still wearing his trademark leather jacket, despite the 100-degree heat.

Dick wrinkled his nose “How are you still wearing that?”

Jason shot him a look of pure distain, though he did begin removing the coat. “Because I came here on a motorcycle?”

“…Fair.”

“ANYWAY.” Jason whirled back to Tim. “Where’d you put it?”

Tim rolled his eyes, pulling open the ice cream container. “Where do you think?”

Jason growled.

“In the cave! Jeeze.”

Dick looked from Tim to Jason. “What did you do?”

“Why do you assume always assume I did something?”

Tim cleared his throat. “Actually Dick, It was me his time. I accidentally took his grapple home with me after the stakeout last night.”

“Oh,” Dick said, lowering himself back to the floor, “Okay.”

Jason looked down at him. “Why are you on the floor.”

“Becaush itsch howt.” Tim said, around a mouthful of ice cream.

“What?”

“It’s hot.” Dick explained.

“You do realize,” Jason said slowly, “That you have an entire cave underneath this house that never gets above sixty degrees even in the summer.”

“Brusch banned usch.”

“Since when have you listened to what he says?” Jason asked, indignant.

“To hot to fight him.” Dick explained.

Jason shook his head. “You guys are pathetic. I’m leaving before you infect me.”

“Rude.”

Jason was almost out the kitchen door when it slammed open again. “Grayson!” Damian shouted, stepping smoothly around Jason.

“Damian.” Dick replied smoothly. Or as smoothly as he could, lying on the floor in a pool of his own sweat.

Damian stomped over (what was with everyone and their stomping today?) until he was standing next to Dick’s head. “Cain is missing.”

Dick smiled. “I think she’s in the wine cellar. It’s a little cooler in there.”

Damian huffed. “Why are you all so pathetic.”

“See!” Jason exclaimed, pointing at Damian. “He gets it!”

Damian side-eyed Jason. “And now Todd is here being ridiculous as well.”

“Don’t lump me in with them!”

“Oh, hey!” Dick sat up. “That reminds me!”

“Oh no.” Tim said, having surreptitiously snuck Damian’s ice cream back in the freezer when no one was looking. “Nothing good begins with Dick saying ‘that reminds me’.”

Dick glared. “That reminds me that the blackberries in the back of the property are ripe and Alfred wants to make a cobbler.”

“And why does Todd being here remind you of that?”

“Because,” Dick said, standing up. “Someone needs to pick the blackberries first.”

“Oh hell no, I’m not getting any more lacerations.” Jason said. “I’m out.”

“You are wearing a leather jacket.” Tim observed. “You really have no excuse.”

“He’s right, Jay.”

Jason whirled on Tim. “You’re a horrible little sadist, you know that?”

“I try.”

“And I can tell Damian that you were just eating his ice cream.”

“Drake!”

One fight, a collection of Cass out of the wine cellar, and a trip to the cave for protective gear later, and everyone was tromping through the underbrush at the back of the property to get to the blackberry patch.

While the others walked ahead, Dick lagged behind to guide Tim, who had been laden with Tupperware of various sizes and couldn’t see his feet.

“Watch out for those roots.”

“You could just take half of these off me, you know. I could see then.” Tim said, picking his way around the roots.

Dick grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Tim just rolled his eyes.

“GRAYSON!”

Dick sighed, scooping half the containers off of Tim’s stack. “We better go see what that’s about.”

They met up with the others at the end of the row of blackberries.

“TT, I thought you would never catch up.”

Dick smiled. “I was just helping Timmy with the containers.”

Damian huffed. He painted a comical picture, standing in the underbrush wearing his Robin boots and gloves over civies.

Dick ruffled his hair, turning to the rest of the group. “Alright, we need a plan of attack.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Dick, it’s blackberry picking, not fighting Darkseid.”

Jason looked contemplative. “No, he’s right, we need to be able to do this quickly.”

“And without pain.” Cass chimed in.

“That too.”

Dick clapped his hands together. “Alright, so. Jason and Damian are wearing the most protective gear, so it’s their job to get the ones farther back in the bush. Cass, you can get on my shoulders to reach the high-up ones. Tim can get all the easy to reach ones.”

“How come I’m on the cushy job?”

“Because Cass has better balance.”

“I can lend you my jacket and you can work with the demon brat.” Jason offered.

“I’m not working with Drake!”

At the exact same moment, Tim said, “Hell no, Jason. That jacket reeks.”

“Rude.”

“Anyway.” Dick said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Everyone grab a container. Let’s get picking.”

Twenty minutes later, the plan seemed to be working. The only one with lacerations seemed to be Tim (his cry of “Ouch!” rang out every minute or two when he overestimated his reach) and Damian’s picking method of stomping his way into the bush and grabbing every blackberry in sight had already filled an entire container. Jason and Cass both seemed to be following the “Two in mouth, one in bucket” rule, but at least it kept Jason from laughing at Tim whenever the younger boy hurt himself again.

“Hey Cass, you mind if I put you down for a second? This is starting to hurt.”

Rather than reply, Cass stood up on his shoulders and then back flipped off, landing without so much as a sound.

“Showoff!” Tim called.

Cass stuck her tongue out at him, and then turned to Dick. “Now your turn.”

“What?”

“Your turn to be on my soulders.”

Dick scratched the back of his head. “I dunno Cass, I’m a lot heavier than you.”

Cass shook her head. “I can handle it.”

“If you’re sure.”

She spun around so he could climb up on her shoulders. Despite his fears, she seemed unbothered by the weight.

Dick had filled the tub halfway before Cass spoke again.

“I’ve never done this before.”

Dick looked down. “You haven’t?”

Cass shook her head. “Never had the time.”

And of course David Cain wouldn’t have allowed it when she was a child.

Dick grinned. “Well you’ve been missing out. I used to do this all the time with the circus. We stopped in big open fields usually, and there were always blackberries around. We never made cobbler because that required an oven and the one in our trailer rarely worked, but we made blackberry syrup all the time. My dad would serve it over pancakes on the mornings of big performances.”

Cass hummed. “Sounds… sweet.”

Dick wasn’t sure if she meant the family tradition or the syrup itself. “It was.”

“I wonder—“

Whatever Cass was going to say was interrupted by a high-pitched, childish shriek down the row from them.

Climbing down from Cass’s shoulders, Dick’s immediate thought was that Damian must have been hurt, but Damian wasn’t much of a shrieker, which meant it was probably Tim.

So Dick was surprised when he got down to the other end of the row to find both boys unharmed and standing calmly a few feet away from the brambles.

“What happened!? Are you both okay?” Then something occurred to him. “And where’s Jason?”

That was when the bush started cussing Dick out.

He turned around, confused, to find Jason, a full five feet into the bush, sunken down so that hos eyes were at Dick’s chest level.

“What happened?” Dick asked.

Tim laughed. “He stepped into the bush and then he screamed.”

Jason glared. “There’s a drop off here!”

“So why are you still in there?” Dick asked.

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m completely surrounded with thorns! And unlike the rest of me, my face doesn’t have armor on it!”

“TT. I advised you to wear the helmet.”

Cass appeared next to Tim. “Like one of Ivy’s traps.”

Jason glared at each of them in turn. “Someone help me get out of here.”

“You’re pretty far in there.” Dick observed. “We might have to get the machete and cut back the vines back a bit.”

“Dick I swear to god, if you swing a machete at me I will shoot you.”

Dick snorted. “You don’t have a gun on you.”

Jason raised an eyebrow.

“There’s no way you have a gun on you.”

“Do you really want to risk it?”

Nobody replied to that.

“Someone had better get me out of here now or I’ll shoot all of you.”

Dick looked around. “Well Damian’s the most heavily armored, so if he goes in and grabs Jason’s arms the rest of us can pull both of them out.”

“Dick, This seems like a terrible plan.” Tim said.

“For once, I agree with Tim.” Jason added. “This seems like a great way to get shredded by thorns.”

“Well I don’t see anyone coming up with a better plan.”

“Actually, I’ve got one.” Tim said.

Everyone looked at him.

“WE send Damian in first, like you said. He pulls the vines away from Jason’s face, and we get like, a big stick or something, and we pull Jason out with that.”

“Okay,” Dick admitted, “That is a better plan, but we need a branch or something.”

“Got it.” Cass said, and Dick spun around to see that she had somehow already retrieved a branch of the appropriate size.

“That was fast.” Dick said, impressed.

Tim snorted. “It was like three feet behind her.”

Cass stuck her tongue out at him.

“Alright then. Damian, you’re up.”

Damian slunk into the bush, carefully pulling vines away from Jason’s face.

“Brat, if you get me scratched on purpose I’ll—“

“TT. You’ll what Todd, shoot me? How original.”

Jason fumed silently.

“You good there, Damian?” Dick asked.

Once Damian had most of the vines gathered up in his hands, he slid sideways into the bush, being mindful of the drop off. “I believe so.”

“Alright then,” Dick said, “Cass?”

“Wait!” Jason yelled. “I still have a tub of berries in here.”

Dick reached into the bush, carefully taking the tub Jason handed up. It was heavier than he expected, and he almost dropped it. “How many did you pick?” he asked, incredulous.

“What can I say? I want cobbler.”

Dick stepped back, placing Jason’s tub with everyone else’s.

“Ok Cass, we’re good to go.”

Cass passed on end of the branch into the bush, and Jason grabbed hold of it. Tim stepped close to the bush and grabbed the middle of the branch.

“I know Cass is strong and all, but I doubt the two of you are going to be able to do this on your own.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Quit stalling and go.”

“Fine.” Jason switched his grip on the branch.

Dick started to count down. “Three. Two. One— Everyone pull!”

Tim and Cass dug in their heels while Jason heaved himself up along the branch and Damian pressed himself even farther into the side of the bush. Unfortunately they’d overestimated the amount of strength necessary to manage the task, because Jason got out of the hole easily, but stumbled forward and knocked Tim and Cass backward into Dick. All four off then tumbled over on a tangle of limbs.

For a moment, they all just laid on the ground, out of breath.

“Well that was something.” Dick said.

Jason groaned. “I think Damian missed one near my neck. Something stings.”

“Actually Jason,” Tim laughed nervously, “I think that was me. I haven’t clipped my fingernails in a while.”

Jason sat up. “What the fuck, Tim.”

“Language!” Cass and Dick said at the same time.

“Okay, first of all, the two of you swear more than I do—“ Jason started.

Damian stepped out of the bush. “ That is false, Todd, and you know it.”

Jason got to his feet. “You know Dick censors himself around you, right?”

Damian looked at Dick. “Grayson?”

Dick smiled in apology. “Sorry, Lil D.”

“TT. You are aware that I’ve heard worse than you could ever say.”

Tim sat up too. “I dunno Damian, Dick can be a pretty creative swearer.”

“Blackberries.” Cassandra reminded them all.

Tim hefted Jason’s container. “Actually Cass, I think we might have enough for like, four cobblers.”

Dick sat up, doing a mental tally of all the containers. “Yeah I think we do.”

“Finally.” Jason said. “Alfred’s cobbler will make hanging out with all of you idiots worth it.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “C’mon guys. Let’s eat.”

Of course, there were two attempted stabbings in the hour and a half before the cobbler was done, but that was one attempted stabbing down from last week, so Dick counted the afternoon as a win.

[tessatechaitea]

Batman #23

This looks like a scene from Evil Dead. Or was it Evil Dead 2?

Of course Swamp Thing as Daddy Issues! He is a DC Character, after all!

• I just called my cat Fart Taco. • After Alec mentions how he didn't really know his real father and took his step-father's name, Batman screams, "You had two fathers you took for granted?! You are a monster!" Then he begins sobbing and runs out of the room waving his fists in the air. Alfred rolls his eyes and excuses himself for a second as he goes after him with a bag of Mother's Cookies. The "Mother's" has been covered over in Sharpie, of course. • Bruce and Swamp Thing are enjoying tea and artificial light in Bruce's den. Front and center hangs the family portrait painted by Damian of Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Tim, and Damian. Jason Todd wasn't invited for the portrait because, at the time, it was only for Waynes without death certificates. Of course, now all of them have died and come back (okay, Tim isn't exactly back yet. But soon!) since then. So I think somebody should paint Jason Todd back into the family. To the left of that painting is a portrait of Bruce with Martha and Thomas. And to the right is a picture of Napoleon. • A dog sits in the den with them. It isn't Titus. It looks like Ace. You know, I'd forgotten that Ace was back! After decades of reading comics, my brain has been programmed not to remember anything that happens in an Annual. • I wonder how Titus feels about Ace taking over the spotlight? I hope Titus is living at Titans Tower now. At least then when Damian ignores him, he'll have Beast Boy and Raven and Starfire to take care of him. • Bruce notices that Swamp Thing doesn't seem upset by the death of his biological father.

He's a grown ass man, Bruce! Are you saying that even if you'd been 65 when your parents were gunned down, you'd have been so emotionally devastated that you still would have become Batman? Maybe Swamp Thing doesn't care because he's already a superhero. What is this trauma supposed to transform him into? Swamp Bat Thing?

• Chapter 4 of this story is called "Kite Man!" because Tom King is desperate to make Kite Man a recurring character in this comic book. It's not like he's the most ridiculous villain Batman has ever faced. He actually has a pretty good gimmick! I suppose it's his name. Nowadays, he'd probably be Base Jumper. But there's something silly about sticking what is thought of as a kid's toy and activity onto the suffix man. It's a bit too strange to have a villain using the playful term kite as part of his name. Of course, all of Batman's other enemies do the same thing. Catwoman! Cats are cute and fun and you usually don't fuckfight with them. Riddler! Riddles are a child's annoying pastime! The Joker! It's a card you throw away immediately which never pops up constantly afterward gassing your friends and family. • The last time I flew a kite was in Nebraska. It was a Xena the Warrior Princess kite and, not having a lot of experience with kites, I didn't realize the roll of string isn't always tied off at the end. Who the fuck sells kite strings and doesn't tie it off to the tube its wound around?! I'm supposed to risk string burn to my fingers keeping a constant grip on the actual string? Anyway, I lost the fucking kite when the string ran out and flew up and out of my grasp. Bye, Xena! Bye! You were too good for this world! • Kite Man! sold a kite to a pawn shop. That kite could have been used by the killer to get through a window on the 84th floor of a building! Wait. What was Swamp Thing's dad doing in an apartment on the 84th floor of a high-rise? That's where people with money live! Is Swamp Thing rich now? • Batman follows the clues and solves the mystery of who killed Swamp Thing's dad: Headhunter! He always shoots people in the head twice. Nobody knows why the second bullet. I'm telling you! It's a punchline! • Batman is all, "This guy won't be easy to find!" And Swamp Thing is all, "The grass just told me where he is! The grass knows everything. Usually I don't listen to them because it's mostly screams as people walk across them or bike on them or fuck all over them. But if you can get past the incessant screaming, they usually have the information you're looking for. Fucking grass!"

Wait. Was that a fuck joke? Does Batman need a car to fuck?!

• Alec and Batman confront Headhunter and he boldly confesses. Basically, he did it for the lulz. • Swamp Thing isn't as cool as he pretended to be about the death of his father. He flips the fuck out and kills Headhunter right in front of Batman. Batman doesn't even try to stop him. Batman would try to stop Superman. Batman would try to stop Wonder Woman. Batman would try to stop The Flash. Batman would try to stop fucking Lobo. But he doesn't try to stop Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing must be more fucking terrifying than I imagined. • Swamp Thing realizes he must be there because Batman's Daddy Issues are so strong. At that point, Swamp Thing is all, "Oh. Well, that answers that. I can go back to not giving a shit about my father now." He then dissolves back into The Green while Batman weeps, yet again, over the permanence of death. I mean the permanence of death where his parents are involved. Let's not get ridiculous. This is comic books, after all. • The moral of the story is that Batman really should have gotten therapy twenty years ago.

[afroboydyke]

A VOLTRON PENTATONIX AU?? AKA LANCEYONCE AND CREW

Okay so sit the fuck down everyone I’m documenting this annoying ass dream that has been haunting me for the best few months. 

The Basis: So we all know about Pentatonix, right? (If you don’t, it’s an a capella group that remakes the old songs of famous artists to give them a new sound. They also have a few of their own original pieces). So, basically, imagine the Voltron gang doing this, except not a capella. They remake the tracks and beats to near perfection in order to pull this off.

The group consists of Allura, Pidge, Shay, Hunk, Lance, Keith, and Shiro, with Matt and Coran doing background work. 

Now to the Details.

Lance

Lance is in charge of any and all Beyonce-related performances.

The group itself started with him. He performed to her songs with his own original choreography and everything. Sometimes he would collab with Hunk. 

He picks his own songs

He does nothing half-assed in this group. He’s very nitpicky with lighting and stage set up because he needs to achieve that WOW! factor

Sometimes he goes a little overboard and the team needs to reel him in really quick because they can’t light fireworks on stage

He was disappointed but then he realized glitter and confetti cannons were a much better idea

Because all of Yonce’s songs have a certain feel to him, he chooses based on how his life is going

Happy? Fun? Well-off? TIme to whip out his favorites.

Sad? Had an argument? Where’s his sad stuff at.

Somebody died? Feelings of worhlessnesss? There’s a song for that, too. 

All his outifts are chosen by Shay while Allura does his makeup

These three are besties they do all the styling stuff tgether                

Lance either wears practical shoes or heels there is no in between

Performing in heels is a little harder but he manages because he’s just that good

He was excited to perform “6 Inch” because he had the perfect shoes for that

A lot of the songs he sings are romantic-like so he does a partner dance with Keith

One time the two had gotten into a fight, so he performed the most of the Lemonade album and some of the songs from the 4 album

Keith was in tears and ended up dancing with him again

The crowd went fucking nuts

His favorite songs to perform are probably Partition and any other song with sexual lyrics bc he gets too into it sometimes

Keith loves it but at the same time he blushes really hard

It’s funny to watch

Before a concert he discovers that his uncle died and that hit him hard because they were very close

And yet he still performed but with more passion

And he added the song I Was Here because death is such a sudden thing and he could die any second now just like his uncle did

The others actually played the background instruments for him (cello, piano, ect.)

Lance responds to as many fans as he can on his social media

The boy has Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and he’s the main one who runs the group’s Youtube channel

Sometimes he holds Q and A’s on Periscope 

During interviews he answers nearly everything meant for him

He also makes up the names of his fans and it changes every time

“Sup Lancers”

“How’s it shaking, my Bluebells?”

“What questions are in store for me today, Voltribe?”

It’s out of control

Whenever Lance isn’t performing he’s on back up vocals/dancing

That’s the rules: If it isn’t your turn, you work your ass off with back up and background dancing

If he’s feeling a bit peppy he’ll also certain Jason Derulo songs

Hunk

Let’s establish one thing: If Lance is Beyonce than Hunk is Nicki Minaj

It started off as a joke at first, but Hunk found it really fit with how he felt

And his flow is DOPE so win-win

He performs literally every song out there by her with no shame because Nicki Minaj has been his Girl for Years and she gives him confidence

His outfits slay all the time. All. The. Time. 

They’re pretty much renditions of Nicki Minaj’s own performance outfits, but designed to make him feel comfortable

Shay helps him tailor all his outfits and even designs them sometimes

He prefers boots and sneakers when performing because heels kill his feet

His favorite song to perform is the Flawless remix with Lance because they kill everyone within a 20 ft radius

The choreography is his favorite as well

He even installs fire things to shoot flames up from the stage

He also has a really nice voice, but he prefers to rap than sing since he’s better with low notes

Sometimes he collabs with Shay, who’s the group’s other prime rapper

They’re fire onstage and off

Hunk loves Feeling Myself a lot because his confidence rises

So many people find it odd that Nicki Minaj is his persona

Hunk is so kind and timid?? He’s very smart and not one who curses unless very angry or upset

But when he’s rapping he gets all flashy and bold and suddenly he’s cursing all the time very clearly

His moms come to every concert, along with the McClain parents because they love supporting their sons together

Hunk’s moms always jokingly scold him about how provocatively he dresses and his potty mouth but they really don’t care

They smother him in kisses and gifts and flowers 

Once, for their anniversary, Hunk asked Lance to perform “Ring Off” for his moms while he put together a video collage in their honor

The song fits their relationship so well

They cried very hard

When the Moana soundtrack was released, he got his own night to perform the whole thing with his family

He loved the event; it was the first time his whole family had done something together in such a long time

Hunk also helps Pidge and Coran with technical stuff likes lights and smoke affects

At interviews he takes shit from nobody and likes to brag about all the times he’s been right

Spoiler Alert: It’s a lot

He also shares embarrassing stories of the team 

A lot of the gossip actually comes from him tbh

“Spoiler alert: there may or may not be a surprise performance some time soon.”

“A little birdie told me that two of our members are getting a little buddy buddy, so look out for updates on that.”

“Oh, y’all are gonna LOVE my outfit for the next tour. It’s gonna be lit.”

The outfit was, in fact, on fire.

Allura

To complete the Power Trio, Allura is Rihanna

Sorry I don’t make the rules

Except I do lmao

This role originally was gonna go to Shay but then Shay realized she loved to rap so Allura hopped on it

Allura loves Rihanna fashion choices 

A lot of her outfits are based off of RiRi actually

Her favorite album has got to be the ANTI album

It’s a masterpiece 

Just so well written

Best songs ever

The fans love when Allura comes on stage because she provokes so much emotion and her voice carries so well

Not to mention her British accent gives a different feel from Rihanna’s Barbadian one

She has a very diverse cast of fans and probably recieves the most fanmail out of everyone

Lance and Hunk are second

Lance is Bitter

Shay’s third

 Keith, Pidge, and Shiro are tied for fourth

All of her songs are choreographed by herself

Her makeup artist is either Lance or Shay

Depends on who wins the coin toss that day

With Shay her eyeliner is swoopy and sharp with rinestones 

With Lance it’s artsy eye makeup and glitter

Allura likes both

All of her outifts are planned from the the top to the socks she wants to wear

Her hair is so long that it makes styling it very easy?? Like she has so many options

If she doesn’t style it herself than either Shiro or Coran does because they always have great ideas

For every performance, Allura opens with a quote related to what songs she plans to perform

Everyone thinks their from philosophers or something but really she’s quoting tumblr posts

She has the same social media as Lance, and they often compete for followers and such

All of her stuff is very pastel space

The pink marks under her eyes are in fact tattoos

She got them along with Coran for her 18th birthday 

They’re her trademark

Nobody knows if her hair is natural or dyed at first

It’s naturally really bright she just added highlights to it

When not performing, Allura is Lance’s number one backup singer

Sometimes Lance will let her perform Beyonce songs

Specifically Who Runs The World (Girls) bc that’s her actual anthem and Lance feels disrespectful 

And Daddy Lessons, which makes her emotional

Both she and Lance sing Pretty Hurts together because it applies to both of them 

Allura and Lance have a contest for who’s the Better ‘Yonce

Lance wins

Lance and Allura are constantly accused of being siblings due to their bond

It’s a running gag in the fandom for quite sometime until Lance breaks the rumors

Some of her songs involve couple dances with Shiro

It’s amazing watching them interact with one another because they’re so gentle with each other and their love is so Real that it almost seems like you’re intruding on a moment

At interviews, Allura is constantly bragging about how strong she is 

“Hunk and I are clearly the strongest ones here. We haven’t determined who holds reigning title, however.”

The two them proceed to arm wrestle.

It’s a tie

Everyone is crying. Everyone.

Sometimes, if she’s feeling it, she’ll do Marina and the Diamonds

Everyone takes a back seat to her then because she absolutely slays

Pidge

Pidge doesn’t normally sing but when she does it’s Hayley Kiyoko

Pidge loves her 

Very much

She probably dresses the most simple out of them all 

Her main style is shorts with stockings or knee socks and a loose fitting top

She let’s her hair grow out to her shoulders

She appreciates both long and short hair, and finds this a happy medium for her

She sports an undercut and the fans go crazy

Everybody finds Pidge adorable and most girls her age want to be her

Glitter! All over her eyes! Brings out the green!

Is either wearing glasses or contacts but mostly contacts

Pidge’s style is definitely K-Pop Idol

She’s a great dancer and does tons of flips 

Everybody loves throwing her in the air

Pidge is in charge of all music and technology and such. Everything must be run by her  

She adds the best effects to performances and is constantly praised

Pidge has social media too but it’s limited to Twitter and Instagram

Her livestreams are by far the fan favorite

It’s full of her pulling pranks and giving sneak peeks into practices and making bets

“Lmao ten bucks Lance is gonna be tripped by Allura”

He is, in fact, tripped by Allura

“You all owe me at our next concert

She films bloopers for the YouTube page

Most of the bloopers are of her and Keith screaming about aliens and Shiro favoriting her

Sometimes it’s Matt being an idiot

One time she temporarily dyes her hair a pastel green color

She loves it

Keith

Like Pidge, Keith doesn’t sing much. He mainly aids in choreographing performances

He’s been perfecting his dancing for years and has the smoothest rhythm 

When he does perform, Keith’s specialty is P!ATD

He’s emo okay

And Brendon Urie is his first celebrity crush so why not pay tribute to him

Keith gets an undercut with Pidge

It’s not his favorite style so when he grows his hair out again he grows it out long

Longer than originally

Keith’s makeup is limited to eyeliner done by Shiro

His outfits have to be the exact ones in all of Brendon’s videos

“You guys don’t understand if I don’t have the top hat and red suit how can I do “I Write Sins Not Tragedies?”

“Keith, you’re going overboard”-Lance

“You have N O ROOOM TO TALK”

When doing interviews, he also has the KPop Idol look

It drives the fans insane

He secretly loves the attention

He probably has the loudest songs out of everyone but he appreciates it

Everybody loves dancing to his choreography

He doesn’t like social media but still has a Tumblr and Instagram

They aren’t for the group though they’re for his conspiracy theories

Pidge Co-runs the tumblr account and has her own cryptid Insta

His live streams consist of the group cryptid hunting together 

If he does post to the group’s YouTube account it’s for cryptids or a sneek peak of some choreography

Sometimes he lets Lance do his makeup and post it on the channel

He loves to choreograph for Lance specifically because it always somehow involves him

Partition is probs his favorite too for obvious reasons

Shay

Shay’s the universal rapper of the group though she mainly does Drake

Shay just seems like a Drake fan so-

Still she does other rappers since she isn’t very picky

Shay’s outfits mirror Drake as well, though adding her little twist and touches to them

Most of the time Lance and Allura help her with clothes

Her makeup always deals with earth tone or stars there is no in between

She lives for glitter and small jewels

And she’s always wearing a necklace and earrings

Shay’s flow is even better than Hunk’s can you believe it

Hunk can

ANYWAY

Shay loves collaborating with others, specifically Hunk and Allura

She’s very loud and boisterous on stage but off stage she’s kind and quiet

Kinda like that friend who’s very meek in public but wild at parties with close friend

Very passionate about her dream

She’s also in charge of keeping everybody on schedule because nobody follows schedules like she does

Sometimes she’ll do small rituals to ensure good luck for performances

They have yet to fail her

At interviews she’s always really peppy and happy to answer questions

One of the fans asked if  she’s dating Hunk

“Oh no, I’m just a rock he admires very much”

The crowd is confused but the group gets it and starts picking fun

Shay bonds with everybody on the team and it’s great 

She and Matt talk about space for long periods of time on end it’s crazy

With Shiro it’s how pretty Allura is and how much he wants to fling himself into the sun

Also about the other team members

Allura literally politics and makeup and 

Lance it’s Spanish dancing and the ocean

Keith it’s Lance and like random shit

“What if Coran was in a gang”-Keith probably

“Dude,,, we have to investigate”-Shay

Hunk it’s lovey couple stuff and rocks and food and really cool movies

Pidge it’s plans for the next concert

Coran it’s schedules and stories

She loves having such a big and supportive family

Shiro

Bruno Mars. That’s it.

Shiro bops to Bruno Mars like it’s his religion 

Wears rolled up sleeves and jeans with sneakers forever 

His eyeliner is sharper than everyone elses and he takes pride

Fans eat him up

They love his “dad-like” personality

Sometimes some of them bring him cookies and such backstage

He takes them because who passes up free food??

Seems like dad, is actually 12 

Seriously, he causes most of the food fights 

And he’s always making bets with Pidge and Matt

But he’s still responsible when needed

He does his own choreography and everything what a man

Once he did a split in the middle of Uptown Funk and everybody lost their shit

Even the group

They just all started laughing while Shiro continues to strut his shit

Shiro’s snapchat is full of videos of him and the team

Half the time he’s screwing around with Matt

Other half he’s posting death jokes

Nobody is phased by this anymore 

They’re so used to it

“I want a light to fall from the cieling, knocking me out instantly”

“Yeah Shiro we get it you wanna die now help me stretch”

He probably has the most questions asked at interviews

Most of them are “Will you be my daddy”

“…I’m everybody’s dad”

“But only Allura’s daddy”- Lance

“Say your goodbyes to Lance because he done fucked up, kids”

His favorite album is probably 24k Magic bc he feels fly as fuck

Imagine him proposing to Allura with “Marry You”

Everybody knows except for Allura and she literally sobs when he gets down on one knee and pulls out a ring

It’s epic

Pidge once suggested putting a confetti canon in his prosthetic

Although he would like to Allura said no so-

He still does it anyway

Matt

Matt’s a fucking Meme

He handles booking places and unwanted press

And he co-owns the YouTube Channel with Lance

The place is meme central nobody can believe it

He also has a snapchat and Twitter

Live streams happen every week

Most of the time he’s just screwing around the tour bus/ hotel rooms it’s hilarious really

He dresses like a tired college student all the time it’s great

He’s friends with everybody

With Shiro he’s literally goofing off half the time

They rival Hunk and Lance for best bros of the year

Half time time his story is filled with ugly pictures of Shiro

With Allura he’s spreading Shiro gossip and doing her hair

Lance + Matt = Hardcore memes and suffering

Pidge it’s the normal sibling stuff

He once picked Pidge up and threw her

“Y E E T”

Hunk it’s techno stuff and like animals

Keith it’s sharing stories about Shiro and how he’s not from this planet

They plan “experiments” to expose him for the alien he is

They fail

With Coran he helps to clean everything because these people are pigs it’s terrible

And when he’s with Shay they’re literally memeing together but on a lower scale

He helps her withh her style and stuff

When Pidge is on stage he’s handling the lights and shit

One time he got stuck in the lights for the whole concert

When asked where he was, he fell straight into Shiro’s arms

Shiro dropped him

Makes the most jokes

Coran

Team Aunt

Takes the group out for victory dinners

Buys sweaters for everyone

Let’s you do whatever you want as long as it’s legal

Because he’s a retired dancer he’ll step in sometimes and lend a hand

Cooks when Hunk doesn;t

And it’s not bad

But Hunk is just better sorry Coran

The group’s body guard

Literally he dropkicked a loser for eyeing Pidge the wrong way

“Coran was that necessary”

“Not but, as Lance would say, it was dope”

Groan

He also handles press coverage and makes sure all venues check out before Matt goes to book them

Lance is his favorite and it’s insane

Lance: “Hey Coran can I have like fifty dollars?” 

“Of course!!

Allura: “Hey Coran can I borrow 20 dollars”

“Sorry I don’t have any money.”

Will treat everyone to a shoppinf spree every once in a while

Loves everybody like they’re his own and assures parents that they are Okay and In Good hands

Also almost blew up the tour bus and ran like three red lights

Extras

Lance, Shay, and Allura went through a KPop phase

BTS, EXO, GOT7, Red Velvet, MAMAMOO, TWICE, BLACKPINK

They freak out all the time and scream

Meanwhile Keith and Shiro are KPop veterans

“Hah, losers.”

One time they all learned the choreography to “Monster” and posted it to the YouTube channel

Matt sat in the background and screamed random things

Slumber parties all night every night

When they tour they literally get one giant hotel room

Couples each get an hour to themselves throughout the day and then they meet at night to sleep

It’s not even sleeping it’s taking ugly pictures and face masks and nightly rituals and love

They wake up: Shiro, Coran, Shay, Allura, Pidge, Keith, Hunk, Lance, Matt

They go to sleep: Coran, Hunk, Matt, Keith, Lance, Shay, Pidge, Allura, Shiro

Every award they win everyone’s family comes together and they have a very large dinner

The group is called Voltron (how original lmao)

Fans are part of the Voltribe 

I’ll add more if I come up with anything else