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noodyl-blasstal · 5 months

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Tale as Old as Time

It's @taznovembercelebration day 26! Look how far we've come! Today's prompt was "familiar" and I also used an AU generator (you'll never guess what I got...)

Read below or on Ao3, missed yesterday? Catch up here.

“Did you see that next door’s open?” Taako asks, cool, calm, motives impenetrable.

“Raven Tattoo?”

“Yeah.” He’s nonchalant, inarguably casual.

“So you met hotboy then?” Lup asks.

Fuck.

It’s fine, Taako doesn’t have to admit anything, Lup doesn’t have a warrant. “Who?”

“Tattoo goth next door?”

“I’m not sure.

“You don’t know if you met the man who owns the shop you just told me was open?”

“Nope.” Says Taako, liar supreme.

“He’s your type, is all I’m saying.”

He is. But that is precisely none of Lup’s business so Taako keeps his mouth shut.

“It’s a tale as old as time, you know.” Lup says as she wraps the brown paper around her spray. “Tattoo artist, florist, can I make it any more obvious?” She winds twine to keep it in place.

“Ah yes, the ancient tattoo shop florist love stories which echo through the ages, they’ve got at least four Disney films with it as a central premise I’m sure. Do you remember the one where the handsome florist’s sister is a complete dingus?”

Taako barely dodges out of the way of the stem cut offs that Lup lobs at him. Thankfully he’s had years of training.

“Fuck off, goofus. Have you spoken to him yet?”

“No.” Taako says, quickly.

“Uh huh.”

Flawless lie.

“So what was he like?” Lup asks.

Double fuck.

It’s not fair that she’s using her twin powers for evil.

“Taako wouldn’t know.”

“You realise our shop is 90% windows?” Lup picks out some more roses for the ‘November, remember!… to tell them you love them (with flowers)’ promotion. The make-the-worst-promotion-name-and-people-will-tell-their-friends-about-it approach has been working well so far.

“I have eyes, Lulu.”

“Well so do I, genius, so cha’girl saw you look out the window, wait until goth boy was on the move, rush out to pretend to run into him and follow him back into his shop.”

Triple fuck.

Taako was so sure she was busy with the flowers, he didn’t expect to be observed taking actions. That was cheating, probably.

“Taako learned from the best.” The best defence is a good offence and Taako is going down swinging.

“Things with Barry aren’t the same!”

“It’s very interesting, Lup, that you should bring him up. Who said anything about Barry? Taako certainly didn’t mention Barry, which means that when you think of the spurious accusations levelled at Taako about flirting you think about Bluejeans. Interesting, very interesting, considering you’re just friends.”

“We are friends”

“Uh huh.”

Taako dodges another trimmed stem. Maybe if he aggravated Lup less he wouldn’t have to sweep as often.

“Not just friends, though, are you? You wanna ride the denim train into the sunset!”

“I can’t believe you just said those words with your actual face.”

Taako can’t either, frankly.

“Denim what now?” Barry asks, looking excited.

They need a bell for the door right now. They need one yesterday.

“Nothing!” Says Lup, high and panicked.

“Ooooh, say no more.” Barry winks dramatically.

Oh good, they’re going to have to make him some kind of denim train for Candlenights.

“Taako’s got the hots for tattoo boy next door!” Lup says, throwing Taako so hard under the bus that he didn’t even have time to yank her under with him.

“Classic love story, bud. Tattoo, flower shop, you know how it goes.”

“That’s not a thing and Taako’s not interested in hot goth boy! Now stop talking about it!”

“Hello.” Says Kravitz from the entrance.

They’re getting four bells for the fucking door. Taako’s going to invent time travel and go back and put them all on and never ever ever complain about how loud and annoying they are.

“Hi.” Taako says, casually. Throws up a quick prayer to Istus that maybe, just maybe, Kravitz didn’t hear him. Because Taako is interested, Taako is very interested.

“I was just bringing you a pack of the stickers you liked, I printed some extras.” He’s definitely frostier than he was 30 minutes ago. “Anyway, I’d better be going.”

“No!” Say Taako and Lup in tandem.

Kravitz looks alarmed, and Lup’s doing the wide eyes which mean she’s all out of ideas having tried precisely nothing. Taako needs a reason for Kravitz to stay and he needs a good one.

“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo.” Taako says desperately.

Kravitz raises an eyebrow but doesn’t smile. He’s so hot, even when he’s pouty. He’s also got a laugh like honey and didn’t act weird when Taako mentioned that he enjoys fishing - usually everyone’s shocked and they get to do the ‘wow, what a left field hobby’ chat. Kravitz had definitely been interested before so Taako needs to fix this right now. If he gets a tattoo then Kravitz has to interact with him, how long can they take? 10 minutes is probably enough to explain.

“You are?” Asks Kravitz at the same time as Lup and Barry.

“Yep.” Taako’s dripping confidence. This is great, it’s fine. He can just get a tattoo from a place he’s not familiar with because he thinks the guy doing it is hot. What’s a little stabbing among hopefully-soon-to-be-more-than-friends?

“Right.” Kravitz sounds worryingly unconvinced.

“What’re you going to get, bud?” Says Barry, choosing violence and genuine curiosity.

“Yeah, Koko, what’re you thinking of putting on your body forever and ever? I’m sure you’ve thought this through carefully.”

“Mongoose.” Taako doesn’t even flinch, he’s a master of his craft. They want to play? He can play. He’s a professional, baby, he’s sliding down the floor piano on his knees while everyone claps.

“Oh.” Kravitz sounds slightly more positive than he did a few moments ago.

“You wanna talk through ideas at some point, kemosabe?” Taako may as well clear this up sooner rather than later.

“I thought you weren’t interested.” Kravitz says pointedly. Okay, so he definitely heard, and maybe the huffiness hadn’t entirely faded. Taako might have to work slightly harder at this.

“I’m very, very interested.” Taako looks hard at Kravitz and hopes he understands.

“I’ve got a bit of time now. My next appointment isn’t for a few hours.” Kravitz is trying his best to sound like he doesn’t care, Taako can tell, but there’s a note of hope in there under the surface. If he just sifts through the dirt he can see that they’re on the same page. Kravitz had better not just be excited about the possibility of getting a new client. Hopefully Taako wasn’t going to have to resort to getting the tattoo on his ass in the hope that giving Kravitz an eyeful would encourage forgiveness.

“Go ahead, I’ve got this.” Lup nods at Taako.

“I can help Lup out if there’s anything urgent here, bud.” Barry adds. Setting a definitely-just-friendly hand on Lup’s arm and smiling goopily at her.

They were gross and Taako hated them.

“Okay, lead the way handsome.” Taako tugs off his apron and gloves and rounds the counter, swipes one of the rose bouquets as he goes.

“Handsome, is it?” Kravitz asks quietly, holding the door open for Taako.

“Very, very handsome, in Taako’s expert opinion.” Flattery could also be the truth.

“But handsome isn’t something you’re interested in?”

“Handsome is something Taako is very interested in. What he is not interested in, is his sister being all up in his business. Look!” Taako grabs Kravitz by the shoulders, before he can even register that Kravitz is leaning down, eyes closing, he’s spun him to face the windows of the flower shop.

“See!” Taako points at Lup and Barry, pressed against the window and panickedly trying and failing to look like they’re doing anything else but spying.

“Uh… er… yes. Yeah. There they are.”

“So if we could continue that kiss somewhere that isn’t visible to them I’d like that, I’d like that very much.”

Kravitz grabs Taako’s hand and tugs him into his shop. “We’re in luck, I know a place.”

I hope you enjoyed! Wanna read some more? Find tomorrow's prompt here.

#taz november celebration #taz nc #The adventure zone #Taakitz #TAZ Fic #Noodyl Writes

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thebibliomancer · 2 years

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Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #13: The UNIFIED FIELD Theory

October, 1986

GRAVITON RULES!

Like hell he does!

Hm, now that Graviton has come back again again, now would be the best time for Hawkeye to remember those anti-gravity arrows he once invented. Fight fire with fire, Clint.

Anyway. I don’t love Simon Williams’ constipation face front and slightly off-center on this cover.

But it reminds me that the team deserves this loss for enabling Simon’s bad costume decisions.

Last time on West Coast Avengers: the team has been dealing with one-off threats and goofus villains for a while while not dealing with the arc plot of Master Pandemonium. A trio of villains got together and attacked L.A., loosely themed after three of the four fundamental forces. The West Coast Avengers managed to beat them, with teamwork and the good ol’ TRADE PLACES, but then Graviton showed up like a jerk to make this a two-parter.

Also, he’s trying to make Tigra his catgirl girlfriend or something? He’s a creep.

Graviton: “Yes, Quantum -- Halflife -- here’s a scene to live forever in your alien memories -- the destruction of the Avengers! And remember this as well -- you owe it all to the genius of Graviton!”

Hawkeye: “I’d stick it in my memory, too, Mr. Heavy -- but it’s already fulla the other times you claimed you’d beat us -- so you can stick it where the sun don’t shine!”

Good comeback, Hawkeye.

No, seriously. Good one.

Villains always be ‘i’m unbeatable, i’m so hot, i can get a perfect score in Donkey Kong’ and ignore that they’ve been beaten so many times before.

It’s like Kang in the recent three-parter in East Coast Avengers. Where Cape Kang’s entire plan hinged on the idea that the Avengers couldn’t possibly beat a Kang (despite so many times that they did) but they could weaken him for another Kang to take out.

I guess they wouldn’t be villains if they got themselves a humility.

Anyway, Graviton takes Hawkeye’s mockery in stride and just starts gloating how cool he is.

Graviton: “We stand on a rock ten miles above the Earth -- because of me! A breathable atmosphere is held in place around the rock -- because of me! You and Mockingbird cannot pass through the gravi-net without being crushed to the rock -- because of me! Iron Man and Wonder Man, despite all their power, cannot push themselves away from the rock -- because of me!”

Hawkeye: “When do you get around to creating Heaven and Earth?”

Graviton: “This is Heaven and Earth -- for me! Graviton was meant to be a god and rule supreme -- and here I am!”

Oh man, Hawkeye mockingly called Graviton for thinking he was god and Graviton just went ‘no, I really do.’

He’s doing a hubris.

Can’t wait to see things fall apart.

Anyway, Halflife agrees yeah sure Graviton beat the Avengers when Zzzax, Halflife, and Quantum weren’t able but, hey, she and Quantum have feelings too! Ego feelings, specifically.

Graviton soothes them that he needs them for his cool fundamental forces theming.

AND THEN RECAPS HIS ENTIRE LIFE

To be fair. These guys are apparently aliens. They really have no context for any of this.

We already covered his backstory in his introduction in Avengers #158 (wow its been a while) but here we go again.

Frank Hall was a scientist working on teleportation (not gravity) who decided to double the power and see if that did anything.

And what it did was blow up in his face.

But also scramble his molecules with those of an experimental anti-gravity element. Because, sure.

Frank Hall tried to hide his new gravity powers at first, for fear that people would think him a freak.

But the opportunity to be a petty dick proved too great and he started throwing things at people who criticized him.

And as is well known, throwing things is a slippery slope to levitating a scientific facility up into the sky on a chunk of rock and wanting to take over the world. Also, he was being a real creep about one of his female co-workers.

Wow, flying rock. Being a creep? The more things change, right?

Anyway, Graviton claims that his only remaining link to humanity was that he really wanted to bone his female co-worker. When the Avengers attacked, he easily defeated them (with gravity) but when “the woman proved too petty to deal with exaltation” ie chose to jump off his floating rock rather than be his captive love interest, that was his real defeat.

And he blames all his subsequent defeats on co-worker Judy.

Graviton: “You see, all I’ve ever wanted as Graviton was total control -- total satisfaction -- but it may truly be said that I’ve never recovered from that betrayal!”

Hilariously, Halflife is listening to Graviton’s version of Graviton’s backstory and realizing that teaming up with this dude is a mistake.

Anyway, after the West Coast Avengers kicked Graviton’s ass to close off their limited series, Graviton started wondering if maybe he was going about this all wrong.

So instead of making trouble as soon as he easily escaped the law, he went back to the metaphorical drawing board and jumped on the idea of the unified field theory, the idea that “four forces account for everything in nature!”

Graviton: “First and foremost, of course, is gravity -- the attraction between two bodies! Then there’s electromagnetism -- the attraction between the particles in an atom -- the strong force -- the attraction between particles in an atom’s nucleus -- and finally, the weak force -- the attraction between matter and anti-matter -- the attraction that leads to death! So, since my power grants me control over anything with mass -- including light waves -- I altered all light leaving Earth to carry my plea for those who might fill the other three slots --”

This is wild.

Anyway, Graviton claims that Quantum lived in an alien sun and then moved into the Earth the Sun because of his message. I still don’t get how he represents the strong force.

And Halflife apparently killed every other being on her home planet. Which doesn’t exemplify the weak force as described here because she ages people, not explodes them.

No alien responded to his call for an electromagnetism guy, so Graviton chose Zzzax instead but he didn’t expect much of him and yeah, no, he sucked as much as expected there.

And Graviton’s Grand Evil Plan and why he gathered Three Loosely Considered Fundamental Forces and sent them after the Avengers... to keep them busy so he could kidnap Tigra.

Like a creep.

Graviton: “The nature of all forces which compromise the unified field is attraction -- the yearning of two polar opposites to unite -- like you and me!”

Like a super creep.

Graviton says that since he’s been spying on Tigra for so long, he knows that she’s too horny to resist and then starts making out with her.

And she doesn’t resist.

Cool, great, I hate this subplot, this is awful.

It gets awfuller or Graviton interprets it as awfuller because Quantum says something in his language and Graviton interprets it as Quantum asking for a turn.

Graviton: “No, Quantum! We are agreed to assist each other on projects of evil -- and nothing more!”

Halflife: “We all have projects of evil, gravity man!”

You card-carrying villains. Ridiculous. Sound like Saturday morning cartoon villains. ‘We all have projects of evil!”

Then again, Halflife did kill her entire planet for shits and giggles apparently so whatever.

After Graviton leaves, Mockingbird pulls out a secret radio transmitter that the guards didn’t find and tries to send a distress message to the East Coast Avengers.

But everything is proceeding as he has foreseen, etc etc, and he catches the radio wave and shoots them into space. Because he can do that. Its science.

Meanwhile, back in the subplot that only Hank Pym remembers, Hank Pym is following up on the Master Pandemonium subplot.

And like he suggested, he’s picking up where Firebird left off looking for information at occult bookstores.

He visits Mr. Carstairs’ Grimoire Book Shoppe and asks Mr. Carstairs if he knows anything about the Darkhold or Master Pandemonium.

Mr. Carstairs denies that the Darkhold even exists or that he’s heard of Master Pandemonium. Hank figures that he’s lying but it’s not his job to follow up on that. It’s enough of a lead that he can point the Avengers at.

What Hank misses is a demon emerging from the floor after he leaves the Grimoire Book Shoppe.

The demon under the floor: “He says he searches for Master Pandemonium... but demons deal in lies, thrall! He could as easily be from the master, searching for me!”

And she decides to follow Hank out of paranoid suspicion.

Right, there is that thing where Master Pandemonium hates demons and is looking for demons. Stands to reason that there are demons that want to avoid being found.

Anyway, back at Graviton’s newest flying rock, he decides to do a trust exercise with Tigra and takes off her leash and collar. The one he put on her because he’s a creep.

Tigra immediately tries to jump out the window and bonks into a gravity field.

Graviton isn’t surprised that she tried that. He tries to convince her that she wants to be his catgirlfriend and all the benefits it offers.

Graviton: “You can rule my empire as an empress -- a priestess to the glory of power made flesh! And as for your plan to kill Master Pandemonium --”

Tigra: “How -- how do you know about that?”

Graviton: “I have watched you these past months by bending light waves to my eyes! I saw your talks with the Balkatar! I certainly have no use for a man as headstrong as Pandemonium -- I’ll kill him for you!”

To reiterate: he’s kind of a creep.

Tigra gets angry with him talking about her like he owns her and declares “I’m a person! I’m a person with claws!” and lunges to attack Graviton.

And he just faceplants her with gravity.

He leaves her in a gravity dome and tells her that she’ll join him eventually because TOTAL PLEASURE.

This isn’t remotely the point but I bet you anything Graviton is a shitty lover.

Left in the dome with nothing but her thoughts, Tigra thinks.

She thinks what a creep Graviton is. But big and strong. But he humiliates her. Which maybe she’s into. She liked kissing him and likes the sound of total pleasure.

Tigra: “I could soften him up over time! I could end up a goddess! OH NO!! What was I DOING?!!”

Freaked out suddenly about how far gone she is into the whole cat soul thing, Tigra activates the cat amulet on her top. Which turns her into her human self. Or just makes her look like her human self?

It’s been described both ways. But Tigra describes it like its a transformation, not a magic image inducer thing.

Greer Nelson, Not-Tigra: “I’m not an animal -- and I won’t become one!”

A guard wanders by and sees a random woman trapped in a gravity dome, that she’s not Tigra who Graviton has dibs on, and that there’s nobody around... and, uh, I’m pretty sure he has some thoughts about that.

Random guard: “Hey, baby, you got a name to go with those gorgeous legs?”

I expected the work culture of Graviton’s flying rock supervillain lair to be absolutely rancid.

Greer asks how the guard just walked through the gravity bubble like it ain’t no thang and he explains that he has a little device that neutralizes the gravity effect.

Greer: “THEN I’M TAKING YOURS!”

And she jumps the guy.

Apparently her fighting skills suck when she’s not cat powered. (And she does note later that her body feels stiff and strange compared to being in the Tigra body). Like she gives as good as she gets but the guy is tossing her around and punching her in the face and shouting stuff about how how he’s stronger because he’s a man.

Greer does eventually knock the ass out by capitalizing on the gravity dome.

He’s immune to it but it slams her down like a ton of bricks. She just arranges it so that when the gravity dome slams her arms down, they land on his throat.

Take some more judo lessons from Cap(tain America) when you get the chance, Greer.

She steals the little device and the duder’s uniform and heads off to enact A PLAN.

Some guards try to stop her as she’s wandering around because they don’t recognize her and points here to their minioning, its good guarding to actually question something out of place even if she’s wearing the right uniform.

A guard: “Hey! I don’t know you!”

Greer: “Yeah, well, I don’t know you either! But the boss knows me, and if you want to call him, I’m sure he’ll explain my duties to you in great detail!”

A guard: “Hey, no problem! If the boss vouces for you, we got no problem here!”

Another guard: “You’re not Tigra, and that’s all we have to watch out for!”

Well. You get what you pay for with minions and faceless guards. Good aggressive bluff, Greer.

As Greer searches the shadowy parts of the base, she thinks how much she loves sunlight and how she’d rather be Tigra basking in the sunlight and getting head pats from Graviton before rejecting the notion.

Wow, Tigra has her claws in deep.

Anyway, Greer finds Halflife meditating and claims to the alien supervillain that Quantum is totally planning on destroying her. And then finds Quantum and claims the same of Halflife.

Both Halflife and Quantum stomp off to confront the other.

And apparently there’s some goofy ideological differences here, or at least according to Halflife.

As ever, Quantum speaks to the beat of his own drum.

Halflife: “You! Alien scum! I should have known a power devoted to expanding life would turn against my dark destruction!”

Uh, sure?

You’re really identifying with that ‘weak force’ thing, huh?

This feels like a very silver age sort of thing. I may be way off base but it just feels like older, simpler, sillier character writing.

Halflife declares this whole team-up a mistake and goes to attack Quantum, who becomes a crowd, and then they fight.

Any Quantum she touches “ages halfway to his final hour” but there’s so many Quantums that she can’t avoid taking hits. And Quantum is strong enough to give Wonder Man a good fight.

Graviton notices the big, noisy brawl but doesn’t want to wade into it himself. So he calls over guards to throw at the mess.

Most of the guards guarding the Avengers come running at Graviton’s word, so Greer goes into action.

Still disguised as a guard, she claims to the two remaining guards that they need to go help the boss. They argue that someone needs to guard the Avengers but Greer just needed to keep them talking long enough.

She snatches their anti-gravity boxes and shoves the guards into the gravity cage, slamming them into the ground.

Greer tosses the anti-gravity boxes to Hawkeye and Mockingbird so they can escape the gravity cage.

Hawkeye: “Tigra! I knew you were fakin’ with Graviton! I knew you were an Avenger through and through!”

Mockingbird: “You sure are a heck of an actress, cat-lady!”

They’re right. She is a heck of an actress and an Avengers through and through. But they’re assuming that she faked her make-out with Graviton so that’s going to have to be a conversation later, I guess.

The anti-gravity boxes are then used to dispel the gravity effect on Iron Man and Wonder Man so they can get up off the ground.

Wow, these anti-gravity boxes work really well.

If the Avengers don’t take them back to the Compound to reverse engineer and keep them around for In Case of Graviton, then they’re idiots.

Speaking of the man, the Avengers go looking for him to throw hands but they find that he’s had to wade into the Halflife/Quantum fracas after all.

And the three-way fundamental force fight is causing a build-up of their respective energies.

Wonder Man suggests that the Avengers need to stop the fight before it’s too late but by the time he does, it’s too late.

Quantum is blown off the floating rock with a SPLAMM! and Halflife falls down smouldering. Leaving Graviton the winner of the three-way but only in a pyrrhic way.

The fundamental forces fight has caused his powers to go out of control, shooting the floating rock toward SPACE.

Iron Man tries to push the rock back toward Earth by doing a handstand

but its very goofy looking and I don’t know what he was thinking he would accomplish and I guess he doesn’t either, since he abandons the attempt after one whole panel of trying.

He quickly switches gears from ‘push rock back down’ to ‘ABANDON ROCK!’

Wonder Man concurs and tries to grab Graviton to save him.

Graviton: “I refuse to be subservient to anyone now! Not even a Wonder Man may carry a god!”

Wonder Man almost argues the point but decides ‘fuck it’ and leaves Graviton to get shot into space.

I know heroes try to save everyone but sometimes you just gotta let a man hubris into oblivion.

Instead, Wonder Man and Iron Man grab Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Greer, and ALL THE MINIONS! ... Uh, well, the ones that are conveniently nearby. The ones that Greer knocked out... uh... well...

Most of everyone was rescued, yay!

Graviton gets launched into space. But, y’know, fuck ‘im.

And then the West Coast Avengers take the two piles of minions to the Rancho Palos Verdes Police Station.

I’m not even sure what they’re going to be charged with.

Anyway, Hawkeye decides to say something only a little patronizing to Greer for her MVP role in this adventure.

Hawkeye: “You did great, Tigra -- again! It used to surprise me sometimes, but not any more!”

Greer: “I’m not Tigra! Don’t call me that! I’m Greer -- a woman with a cat’s soul overlaid on her! I almost forgot that -- but I never will again!”

Mockingbird asks if that means Greer will never become Tigra again. Greer says she has to change back to Tigra in order to still Avengers (which she does want to do). She’ll just have to stay on guard against the “seduction of that form!”

Which she privately doubts she can.

Can’t wait to see how this goes.

I know that eventually it will lead to Hank putting her in a cat carrier but there’s a lot of middle bits I don’t know.

Anyway, back at the West Coast Avengers Compound, Hank gathers baseball gear for the big East vs West Coast Avengers baseball game (AvA? Civil War -2?) unaware that the demoness from the Grimoire Book Shoppe is spying on him.