#he was desperate to know he wasn’t the only metahuman

[achangeinpriorities]

Moodboard: Mark Mardon + aromantic flag colors, requested by @blueelvewithwings

[hellishere7980]

IMW Chapter 13

Batman had seen a lot of great warriors and fighters in his career as a vigilante. He fought alongside many of them in the Justice League, and had fought against many others, and through all of that experience he was able to give an estimate on how skilled someone was by watching a single fight. Batman could confidently say that this heroine was on par with himself. Batman hadn’t had time to think and process it before the Watchtower delved into chaos once more and he snapped, telling everyone to be quiet and focus on the information. They would have time to talk about it all at the end but understanding everything was more important at the moment. The Flash snickered to break the silence, making a smart-ass comment about how he must not know anything about the Paris situation compared to them considering he was being “a grump” and Batman only had to send the metahuman a glare for the hero to stop talking. The Flash was right, he didn’t have a clue what was going on and he wanted to know everything before they discussed it, but he wasn’t about to tell any of them that. After this, it showed a news broadcast in which Lady Miracle declared her new persona and revealed that Paris was free of Hawkmoth, Mayura and Shadowmoth's reign of terror. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the Justice League meeting winded up, it was decided that Wonder Woman would reach out to Lady Miracle to see how to proceed afterwards. All the magical users of the JL were excited and desperate to meet Lady Miracle since her magic was ancient and concerningly bottomless.

The Bats returned to the cave. Dick and Jason turned towards Bruce. Jason- YOU SHIPPED HER OFF TO KEEP HER SAFE AND SHE HAS BEEN HELD HOSTAGE BY A TERRORIST!

Dick- YOU SAID YOU WERE KEEPING AN EYE ON HER! Bruce, we trusted you to keep Isabella safe. You sent her away, but instead of protecting her, she was thrown into a warzone. How could you let this happen?

Bruce- Richard, I thought it was for the best. I wanted to shield her from the darkness that consumes our lives. I made a grave mistake.

Jason- GRAVE MISTAKE, MY FOOT! YOU HEARD WHAT THEY SAID, PEOPLE HAVE DIED! SHE HAS DIED! BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE AND DIED AGAIN! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE BUT I DO! You call yourself a protector, but you left Isabella vulnerable. She should have been under our watch, not left to FEND FOR HERSELF! And you saw the court proceedings too! YOU SAW HOW THAT SADISTIS TARGETED HER, STALKED HER, MADE HER LIFE HELL!! DEMON-SPAWN TELL ME IF SOMEONE TORE UP YOUR SKETCHBOOK WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Damian (calmly)- Stab them and assure them that they do not need their limbs so much. Jason- SEE! SHE HAD HER ENTIRE WORKS SABOTAGED! SHE WAS BULLIED AND DID NOT GET AKUMATIZED ONCE! YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? SHE LOCKED HER EMOTIONS AWAY JUST LIKE WE ALL DID EVEN MORE SO!

Damian- Father, who is this Isabella?

Bruce sighed heavily- Isabella is my daughter, born out of a past relationship. I kept her hidden, thinking it would keep her safe.

Jason- We ALL saw how that turned out.

Damian- Father, I am your true son, yet you sent away this Isabella? Why?

Jason- ‘cuz he is a DOUCHEBAG! I’m going out for some air.

Dick- Me too

Jason/Dick’s POV His little sister had died. She had DIED! The whole point of staying away and making sure no one could ever connect with them, was to ensure her safety. Instead she had died! She had died repeatedly, and he had been none the wiser. She had died, and HE HADN’T BEEN THERE! She had been hurt, and he hadn't protected her. She had suffered. His stomach twisted at the thought, as the bitter thoughts of self loathing threatened the pit madness again. He could already see the tinge of green creeping into his vision.

After Bruce left in a hurry, Alfred explained it all. Isabella or as Alfred liked to call her- Miss Bella was the biological daughter of Bruce. As long as she was here, she was kept within the confinements of the Wayne Manor despite everyone but Bruce’s views. She was however shipped off to Paris without any forewarning when Jason died, was not allowed to attend his funeral and in their opinions, horribly treated by Bruce.

When Bruce returned, he looked like he had been crying. He turned to Tim.

B- Please find her.

Tim sighed.

All of them surrounded Tim as he sat down in front of the Bat-computer and started searching. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. They found basic school records and stuff and soon a court recording came up. And a new link towards Marinette Luscinia.

Dick- What the hell is this?

Tim- It looks like… A COURT SUIT?! Jason- WTF!? Tim- Lemme pull up a summary. … … … After 2 hours of pure research and horror. Alarm sounds in the cave. Computer Voice- Justice League meeting now. Wonder Woman is returning to the Watchtower with Lady Miracle. Bruce- We will get back to this when we return.

Watchtower All the league members arrived and stood according to their ranks in the main room. Lady Miracle’s power, her magic filled the room. Every eye within the room turned to them as they emerged from the portal. Wonder Woman went and stood with the JL. Lady Miracle’s magic flowed around them like a breeze that whispered through the Watchtower. The woman stood strong in armour, lined in black. It was cut for easy movement, and fitted to accentuate the woman's form. Her suit revealed the slight but hard muscle of her arms. The base layer was scaled fabric of black and gold that shimmered metallic in the light. But it moved with the woman, like a second skin, as she stepped forward in armoured boots, also of black. The woman's features were hidden by black mask lined with gold that covered half of her face. Her midnight black hair was pulled back. However, what they found the most hypnotic was her eyes. They practically glowed inside her dark mask. Like sapphires tinted with gold sparks. She walked towards them with confidence. Superman stepped forward.

Superman- Greetings Lady Miracle!

Lady Miracle- Bonjour Superman. Wonder Woman stated you wanted to talk about the events that transpired in Paris?

Superman- Indeed.

Lady Miracle- Very well. You may ask your questions.

Superman- Do you mind carrying this discussion in the meeting room?

Lady Miracle- Not at all.

All the leaguers and Lady Miracle proceeded to the meeting room. After taking their seats, Batman began.

Batman- Lady Miracle we wish to know your account of what happened in Paris all these years first and then, we can move on to the other questions?

Lady Miracle- If that is what you want.

Martian Manhunter- When and how did you get your Miraculous?

Lady Miracle- I got my miraculous on the day Stoneheart attacked. I was just an untrained civilian. I *deep breath in* was a terrified little girl who was told that it had to be me no matter how much I disagreed. Previously I was told that I was not cut out to be a hero. So, that contrasted *chuckle* I didn’t have training. I didn’t have a mentor and I was a clumsy, anxious thirteen-year-old. I didn’t meet the Grand Guardian until months later when I was already established and trusted by the people of Paris. I had to make a decision to be Ladybug or let someone die, and I chose the former. I don’t regret my decision. I knew I had made the right choice as I stood against Hawkmoth on the Eiffel Tower, but a thirteen-year-old should never have been forced to make that decision.

Red Hood- Who would be stupid enough to tell you that you can't be a hero? You totally rocked out there!

Lady Miracle- You would be surprised.

Zatana- Could you explain the powers of the miraculous more? Majority of the magical users here have been told that they were a myth.

Lady Miracle- The universe with the creation of the Kwami of Creation, my first Kwami, Tikki. It was followed by her counterpart, the Kwami of Destruction, Plagg. After them came the Kwami of Time and Evolution, Fluff and with her birth, time was also born. The other Kwami’s followed afterwards. Kwami are proper gods or concepts. For millennials they existed peacefully. Each Kwami gave rise to their creations and blessed souls. These souls held a part of the Kwami’s themselves called their Chosens. I am one of them. I will get back to that later. As time went on a True Guardian bound these gods on their demands to pieces of jewellery thus, the miraculous came into existence. Then he fell in love and started a family on Earth, as he swore to protect the miraculous, the miraculous were grouped into miracle boxes, the most powerful being the mother miracle box. The one in my possession. It holds the kwami’s of Creation, Destruction, Action, Illusion, Protection, Emotion, Transmission, Time and Evolution, Repetition, etc.

There was silence within the Watchtower as the Justice League and Young Justice, all of the leaguers sat mystified by the knowledge and the younger ones were openly gaping.

[ladyblogger-margie]

De-Briefing

Pairing: Rick Flag x F!MetaHuman!Reader (The Suicide Squad) *

Summary: Rick distracts you during Waller’s briefing of your next mission, taking advantage of the dark corner you’re both sat in to do so. 

Word Count: 1419

Warnings: 18+ (slight bondage, power imbalance, fingering, unprotected sex, PinV sex, creampie)

a/n: This is just smut and an idea I could not shake until I wrote it out. 

MY MASTER LIST

You slumped back in your theater seat with your legs wide and your hands still in the handcuffs that dampen your powers. Luckily for you, unlike some of the others, the dampener had no effect on your mind or energy, just on your ability. You throw one fireball in one briefing and suddenly you’re not allowed to use your powers inside Belle Reve. Whatever. 

Colonel Rick Flag slipped into the seat next to you and you failed to hide the sneaky grin that sprung to your face. Rick wasn’t always your commander in the field, but he was your favourite, and not only because you two had been fucking while out on mission, but because he was genuinely the best leader in Waller’s operation. 

Waller turned the lights down and Rick snapped into action. His lips pressed against your ear as he whispered a gentle hello which sent shivers down your spine. 

“They’ve still got you bound up, sweetheart? Have you been bad?” he asked softly against your temple. 

“You know me, always getting into trouble,” you whispered back, leaning into him, brushing your lips against his jaw. 

“Wanna get into some more?” he asked before finally kissing your lips. 

Every time he kissed you it was like the first time. His presence shot through you, setting your skin on fire and pussy throbbing. 

You snuck a peak out of the corner of your eye and confirmed Waller was just getting started with what promised to be a long and boring briefing that Rick could catch you up on easily enough when he was through with you. 

Rick caught you checking your surroundings. 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ve got time to take care of you,” he promised, and the wetness started to pool in your prison issue panties. 

He pushed you back gently with a firm grip on your shoulder so he had space to lift the armrest between your bodies. His hand travelled from your shoulder across your chest, pinching your nipples along the way. His other hand snaked across your back to reach around you and grip your hip. You bit your lip as he pulled you into his lap. You swivelled your hips, grinding up against his crotch, feeling him grow beneath you. 

Rick said you two had time, but he didn’t appear to be wasting any of it. Already his hands were pushing up your shirt to palm your tits and squeeze them roughly, enthusiastically. 

You squirmed in his lap, unable to do much else with your hands thanks to the oversized cuffs. Rick dropped his head into the crook of your neck and breathed you in. You tilted your head to the side, exposing your racing pulse point to his lips. 

He bit your neck and sucked right over your pulse as you continued to grind up against his growing erection. He kept his teeth against your skin as he slipped his hand from your breast down under the waistband of your pants, tracing his long, thick fingers over your trembling pussy. 

You let you a tiny whimper, barely audible, but he definitely heard you as he immediately put a stop to his touch. 

“If you can’t be quiet, I’ll have to stop,” he threatened, but you heard the smile in his voice. 

You nodded your head to show him you understood. 

“Good girl,” he purred in your ear. 

You bucked up into his hand, your now aching pussy desperate now for his touch. 

He slipped two fingers inside you, stroking and pulling you apart as all you could do was bite your lip and grip his forearm. Your head rocked back to rest on his shoulder as he worked you over in all the little ways he’s learned how. His breath was hot on your cheek as your vision went fuzzy. 

“I want you to cum for me like a good girl, I want you to cum before I fuck you,” he whispered. 

It took all of your self control to not scream out as you hit your peak and clenched around his fingers, drenching them as you cum. 

He pulls out of your clenching cunt, and slips his fingers in his mouth and moans quietly at your taste. 

You struggle pathetically to push your pants and soaked through panties down over your ass. It’s awkward and you can’t for a second believe that it’s sexy, but you just don’t care. You’re so needy for his cock, it’s your singular focus. 

He repositions you over one knee so he can unbuckle his own pants and slip his impressive length free. You take the brief pause to look around the room. It looked like everyone was still locked in on the briefing, or asleep. It thrilled you to share this dirty little secret with Rick in a room full of oblivious teammates and guards. 

He slipped your pants down over your ass, and pulled you back into his lap. He slipped his thick cock between your folds and collected your slick with a few slow rocks of his hips. He gripped your hips and you clung to one of his arms to steady yourself as he sat you on his cock. 

You knew he was big, it was obvious from everything about him that he was well hung, but you never were quite ready for how completely he stretched you out and filled you up when he was inside you. 

You did your best to reach your head around to find his lips with yours as he patiently allowed you to grow accustomed to his size. He took pity on you and guided his lips to yours, taking your face in one hand, tracing his thumb across your cheek. 

Then he bucked up into you and swallowed your needy moan. He snapped his hips up to thrust deep and hard inside you. He nearly knocked you off his lap with the force of his pounding thrusts so he gathered a better grip of you to hold you in place to bounce in his lap. 

While he held you in place, you slipped your own fingers to your swollen clit and in time to his cock finding your g-spot, you pressed your delicate bundle of nerves. It wasn’t long before you came again, soaking his cock. 

He bit your neck, hard and feral as he came too, painting your clenching, shuddering walls with his cum. He panted against the skin of your neck that he had bitten raw, sending a shiver down your trembling body. 

He wrapped you in a tight hug and whispered a guttural, desperate, “That’s my good girl,” into your ear. 

You felt the other half of the sentence he left unsaid hang in the air between you. It was the same thing always left unsaid between you two. You were grateful he never said it, because if he said it first nothing would stop you from saying it right back, and if you said it too, it would be the end of you both. 

This thing, between you two, only worked when you pretended it didn’t matter, because if you acknowledged just how much he mattered to you, and if he did the same, it would consume you both so completely it would doom you both. 

He slipped out of you and delicately returned your pants into place, but kept you in his lap as he tucked himself away. 

“My good girl, such a good girl, sweetheart,” he whispered against the back of your shoulder, peppering you with kisses. 

Waller was winding down the presentation so Rick moved you back into your own seat. His cum and your slick pooling in your panties, plus the raw bite marks on your neck as the only evidence of the indiscrecion that happened in the dark corner. 

“Are you ready to roll out, Colonel?” Waller yelled up from the front of the room as she flipped the lights back on.

“Yes, ma’am,” Rick responded with a wink in your direction. 

You smirked to yourself as Rick lifted you to your feet by the elbow and led you out of the row of seats. He waved away the approaching guard. 

“I’ll take her to gear up,” Rick said without a hint of suspicion so the guard just shrugged and you let him lead you to grab your gear and suit up. 

If you were lucky, you’d have round two with Rick out there in the field, and this time, you’d have full use of your hands. 

Tags: @autumnleaves1991-blog​

[opalismybirthstone]

Diverse DC p.1~Speedsters

1. XS/Jenni Ognats(Black/white biracial)

Jenni is the daughter of Barry Allens daughter Dawn Allen and Jeven Ognats. She wasn’t born with any abilities , however after seeing her father in danger, her connection to the speedforce was Unlocked.

2. The Flash/Danica Williams(black)

Danica Williams is the flash of the Batman Beyond universe. Whos father was a STAR labs scientist who studied Metahuman technology. Danica grew up with dreams of becoming a trackstar, but due to having many medical conditions including asthma, she lost hope. It was also thought that Danica had mental illness due to her claiming to see and hear figures that nobody else could. Though it turns out that she was actually communicating with speedsters from multiple different realities through an initially unknown connection to the speedforce. After she was urged to save a man from being hit by a train, it was revealed that she had superspeed, and eventually mastered the ability to run on air molecules. She was also the love interest for Billy Batson/Captain Marvel

3. Kid Flash lll/Wallace West(black/white biracial)

Wallace West ll is the niece of Iris west and the son of Daniel West, the second reverse Flash. He was initially portrayed as a delinquent and a troublemaker, however after being adopted by his aunt Iris, he began to ease out of his delinquent behavior as he began to look up to the Flash(not knowing it was Barry Allen). After a future version of himself went to the past and gave Wallace powers, he gained a hard to control and unpredictable connection to the speed force. He used his new powers to become the Flash’s new crimefighting partner. After being caught in Central City’s speedforce storm, his powers became more stable.

3. The Flash/Avery Ho(Chinese American)

Avery, like many other Central City citizens was caught in the Speed Force storm, giving her a connection to the speedforce. Her new abilities were unstable, and Avery’s cells involuntary constantly vibrated themselves, with her being unable to stop them. She was visited by Barry and another speedster named Meena Dhawan(whos up next) who helped teach her how to use and control her powers. After a while, Avery was recruited into the Justice league of China. Shes also Wallce’s best friend.

4. Fasttrack/Meena Dhawan(southern asian descent)

Dr. Meena Dhawan was a scientist at STAR labs who was caught in the speed force storm, giving her all the usual speedster powers+the ability to sense or Track others with a speed force connection (hence the name Fasttrack). She dedicated herself to training the next generation of speedsters who were also caught in the speed force storm. She was a villain at one point, but thats not important.

5. Irey and Jai West(biracial, white and Korean)

Jai and Iris “Irey” West ll are the twin children of Wally West the first, and Linda Park. They both have their fathers connection to the speed force, however, while Irey has the usual superspeed, Jai’s powers are…. Weird. He can use speedforce energy to accelerate his muscle growth and give himself super strength, but has also been shown to use the speed force to shapeshift when in distress.

6.Bolt/Alinta(no last name yet),(biracial,black/white, Australian)

Bolt is a new speedster who was first introduced during the future state event. Nothing is currently known about her origin, but she has been shown to be a member of the Teen Titans and the Suicide Squad. Also,shes a disabled speedster. However, not the first(fun fact: Bart Allen/Impulse has a prosthetic kneecap). Also, im 90% sure shes black. I saw one tumblr user say she was of Australian aboriginal origin, and if I can find any confirmation I’ll change this immediately.

Edit: I saw her origin story in the comics, her parents are shown to be a black woman and a white man. So, shes biracial.

Edit: We now know more about Bolt! She was a little kid when she found her speed, and the reason she can only run in short&quick sprints or bolts, as opposed to long distance runs like others speedsters, is because she found an incomplete speedforce equation. Her parents used her for their family business(which unbeknownst to her, was traficking illegal goods), until she lost her legs an was given new ones by Amanda Waller, who is now desperate to get her on the suicide squad because she wants a speedster now lol.

7. Kid Quick/Flash/Jess Chambers (black)

Not to be confused with Jesse Chambers, Jess is another new speedster, who was also introduced during Future State. They are Nonbinary and use They/them pronouns, and come from the genderbent Earth-11, where they are the nibling (gender neutral word for nephew/niece for those who dont know)of Earth-11’s Flash(who happens to be Jesse Chambers). They are also seemingly romantically involved with Aquamans daughter Andy.

8. Godspeed/August Corazón Heart(Latino)

August Heart was Barry Allen’s partner, whos brother was murdered around the time period shortly before Barry Allen was struck by lightning and became the Flash. Hes brothers murder case was dropped, and he was distraught. After gaining superspeed by the Speedforce storm, he designed his own suit and became a ruthless vigilante, going on criminal. Barry eventually learned that August was Godspeed, a hint was that one of August’s victims was his brothers killer. Eventually, August was killed by Eobard Thwane aka Reverse Flash.

[five-rivers]

Pep Talks 12

I think this might be the longest chapter of Pep Talks so far...

(AO3)

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When Clockwork first took Danny on as an apprentice, he’d laid out some ground rules for when he unexpectedly found himself in an unknown timeline. As Apprentice of Time, Danny was more likely to attract anomalies like natural portals and the like, and when that was combined with his innate bad luck regarding portals, well… winding up in weird places wasn’t quite a weekly occurrence, but saying it was wouldn’t have been a huge exaggeration.

That’s all to say, Danny appreciated the rules. He didn’t want to wind up never having been born again, or, worse, making it so that one of his friends had never been born. Or causing an apocalypse. Or wrecking the future. Or—

There were just a lot of problems that he could, and had, caused.

If Clockwork were able to pick Danny up right away every time, most of the rules probably would have been unnecessary. But he wasn’t. Mostly because of physics-shaped problems involving paradoxes and how too many time portals in the same general area could screw things up, but also because of Observant- and politics-shaped problems. And, Clockwork had admitted to Danny, sometime Clockwork left him somewhere because he was supposed to be there.

The first rule was to lay low. Avoid people when possible, except to acquire basic necessities. Avoid major events, crowds, protests, and cameras. Avoid important-looking buildings.

Do not offer help unless asked first, or unless the person is a ghost. There was, evidently, a loophole that made it okay for Danny to interact with ghosts even in places where it wasn’t okay for him to do the same to humans. Clockwork had said ghosts fell under Danny’s ‘jurisdiction,’ a term that seemed just a bit too weighty with meaning for Danny. As for being allowed to help when asked… Well, Clockwork knew that Danny was incapable of not helping. Although he did ask that Danny be subtle and indirect about it.

He was also not supposed to fight anyone unless he himself was directly attacked, for similar reasons.

The fourth rule was to stay within the accepted rules of the world he found himself in, where possible. In other words, if people generally didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, don’t challenge that belief by using his powers in public, but if superpowers were common, it was okay to use them.

The fifth was that, if he found himself in the past, leave civilized areas. With the threat of unpersoning himself hanging over his head, Danny took that one very seriously.

The sixth, the one that made Danny feel like a little kid despite his real age, was, if the previous rule didn’t apply, try to stay in the same general area he first found himself in.

There were others, of course, and special ones for special circumstances. For example, if he was captured by law enforcement, or injured, or actively in danger, or if he didn’t know what time period he was in. Different sets of rules prevailed if he was actually on a mission.

Clockwork had also told him that the rules no loner applied if it took him more than two weeks to find Danny. That, if he’d been waiting for that long, something had gone wrong, or Clockwork was unable to find him or pull him out.

It had been just under half that time, and Danny was starting to get worried. More worried.

He pulled his legs up, closer to himself. He didn’t need to conserve warmth, being what he was, but the action was comforting and the abandoned warehouse he was in was weird and creepy.

This whole timeline was weird and creepy. Also, semi-apocalyptic. They were going through some serious societal upheaval. Danny wasn’t entirely sure why, having only been here for six days, but he was pretty sure it had to do with the nascent ghosts partially overshadowing people and giving them power.

At least, that’s what it felt like. Danny wasn’t sure. The next nearest thing to this he’d ever encountered was a warlock, and that had been just one person. Ghosts were under his jurisdiction, but, like the warlock, the people with powers here didn’t quite feel like ghosts, and he wasn’t sure how trustworthy news sources saying that metahumans were all soulless degenerates were…

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to find out. Hopefully, Clockwork would pick him up before another week went by.

He didn’t think the government here could actually catch him, but some of the things they apparently did to metahumans made his core ache. It was a very X-Men-like situation. Except, well, set in Japan.

Why Japan?

But! Eight more days. Tops. Clockwork would get him.

Before he’d finished the thought, something blew the door of the warehouse in and a ropelike appendage hurtled towards Danny’s corner.

He reacted. Rules were, if someone attacked him, he could respond in kind, and if superpowers were common knowledge, he could use his.

There were at least a dozen of them, all of them displaying an eclectic array of superpowers, some reminiscent of Danny’s ghostly enemies, others entirely novel to him. A fair few also had guns. One man even used multiple powers. Needless to say, the battle was incredibly one sided.

In Danny’s favor.

Hey, he’d been doing this for years, and he was very comfortable with his abilities. Most of these guys weren’t. Most. The multiple-power guy had been challenging.

Danny examined his captives. He should probably just knock them out, then go find a new hideout somewhere else, but he wanted to know why he was attacked, first.

“So,” he said, deciding that the curly-haired man with multiple powers was probably the leader, given the way the battle had been structured, “why did you and your goons attack me?”

“I heard you were like me,” growled the man, attempting to escape Danny’s telekinetic hold. “I’m looking for a power that can help my brother.”

Danny twitched slightly at the word help. “What do you mean, like you?”

“You can take powers, too,” said the man, staring up at Danny with desperate, hungry, red eyes.

Danny blinked, frowned. “You thought I could help you, or your brother, so you attacked me?” His frown became deeper. “Or did you attack me to, what, steal my powers?”

The man squirmed.

It was. That was such a ridiculous villain cliché, although the brother thing was a twist. People could get desperate about their families and do terrible things.

Including Danny. As had been proven many, many times.

His heart and stance both softened. This counted as a request for help, right? And the guy was sort of ghostly. On the other hand… Transplanting whatever it was giving these people powers willy-nilly couldn’t be healthy, especially if it was related to ghosts.

(Multiple ghosts in one body… It reminded him of his dark future self, which was never good.)

“Okay,” he said, dragging a hand down his face. “Alright. What exactly does your brother need help with?”

The man clearly hadn’t expected Danny to ask this question. “He’s sick,” he said. His eyes gleamed at the edge of tears. “His body is tearing itself apart, DNA molecule by DNA molecule. If I could just find the right ability, I could save him,” the man’s voice broke, “I knowit.”

Molecule by molecule, huh?

Actually… that was something Danny could help with. Crud. People had powers here, right? He was being asked for help, wasn’t he? He was staying within the rules. Especially seeing as these guys were like warlocks. He was only doing warlock stuff.

“If I help you with this—if,” he stressed when the man perked up. “If I help you with this, I need two things from you. Well, three, really. Actually, no, four.”

“Name them,” declared the man.

“Yeah, I was about to,” said Danny. “Anyway, first, you need to ask your brother if he wants this. If he doesn’t, you have to come back here and return it. Asap. As in, tomorrow.” He was pretty sure he could get Clockwork to give him a day, even if he came to pick Danny up right now.

“Those are your first two conditions, then?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Third one is, you have to stop taking powers from people who don’t give you permission. The end of that road isn’t pretty.” At least, he was pretty sure it wasn’t. All those little maybe-ghosts, slammed together… Even if it didn’t have any immediate effect on this guy’s personality, the resulting ghost could wind up possessing him. If the ghost vaguely wanted to go with him, that might change things. Maybe. At least, it’d slow things down.

If this worked the way he thought it did.

The man scowled. “And you know this, how?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Look, you’rethe one who said I was like you, not me. Too much of these powers can mess you up.”

“If the number is the problem, it shouldn’t matter how I take them.”

“Do you ever get bad dreams?”

The man stilled completely. “What do you know about that?”

Danny shrugged. “Enough,” he said. “Do you want to be overwhelmed by your powers? Do you want to explode? It could happen.” Actually, Danny had no idea if it could happen or not. But it sounded good. “More importantly, do you want to help your brother or not?”

“Of course I do!”

“Great!” said Danny, clapping his hands together. “Let’s finish this up somewhere privately, okay?” He grabbed the man’s shoulder and phased them through the floor into the basement, which he lit with a ball of ectoplasm. “Okay,” he said. “Fourth thing.”

The man was staring at the ectoplasm with undisguised curiosity. “What is it? Money? A new identity? Passage out of the country?”

“Uh, no,” said Danny. What would he do with any of that, after all? “I need to know the full story behind you and your brother.”

“What? Why? Don’t you know enough?”

“So that I can be sure that I can help, first off. Also, the way I’d be doing it involved me giving you something rather personal, so…” He trailed off with a gesture that indicated he expected the man to talk.

He sighed. “My name is Shigaraki Hisashi. My brother’s name is Kazuki, and he’s been sick since we were children…”

Danny let him give a summary of his life up until this point. He had the vague feeling that he wasn’t being told everything of importance, but, then, not everything about a person’s life could be condensed into an hour or so of storytelling.

Apparently Hisashi had basically raised Kazuki, and once Hisashi’s meta power had come in as a young adult, they’d been completely abandoned by their parents. Hisashi had put together a group of freedom fighters (Danny skeptically recalled the guns, but also forced himself to remember the hints that there might be something like concentration camps for power users) to defend himself, his brother, and others with power. But Kazuki’s illness made him incredibly vulnerable, and as he was Hisashi’s one major weakness…

The feeling that he was living through an ‘X-Men Japan’ comic intensified. He felt so sorry for this guy. Danny knew what this kind of life was like.

“Alright,” he said, softly, finally, “I can help. And, this probably doesn’t mean anything coming from me, but that better world you were talking about? Where people with powers and people without can coexist? I think you’ll be able to make it happen. Just don’t let anyone stop you.”

“I don’t intend to.”

Danny nodded. “I can give you something to help your brother. A power,” he clarified. “But I need you to know, it could change him.”

“Change him?”

“His personality.”

“You were saying something about that before. Forgive me if I don’t agree with you. These powers are tools.”

“Okay, sure, but even just having more options can influence how a person behaves. Just warn him before you give it to him, okay?”

“Of course. I’m a man of my word, after all.”

“Right,” said Danny. “Give me your hand.”

“A handshake?” asked Hisashi.

“Not exactly.”

Danny let a minuscule, almost microscopic, piece of his core break free from the whole. It hurt like a knife to the chest, and some of his physical and mental abilities would be impaired for a while, but he had done it before, and it would heal before long. A fragment this size would give a power on par with those he’d seen so far in this world. It would also grow, of course, but it was unlikely for any human to live long enough for that to become a problem.

He let it pass into Hisashi, and the man shivered.

“That should strengthen his body without being too much of a burden on him,” said Danny.

“What kind of power is it?” asked Hisashi, reclaiming his hand and flexing his fingers.

“Uh,” said Danny, casting about for something vague that would fit. “A gradual stockpile of power. That enhances the user’s body.” That should be close enough. “Remember, ask first.”

“I will, I will,” assured Hisashi one more time. “And you can be sure I’ll be returning regardless, to thank you.”

“Uh huh.”

It took a while for Hisashi and his men to clear out. Longer still for Danny to find a new place to sleep. But he did.

He woke to a time medallion around his neck and Clockwork’s exasperated expression. “Daniel,” he said, “what did you do?”

.

Toshinori and Izuku stared at Danny with open mouths.

“You’re the original stockpile user?” yelled Izuku, pointing.

Danny smiled sheepishly. “Surprise?”

[gdikate]

CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS: Kate Biashin aka Hawkeye 

FACECLAIM: Fah Yongwaree 

AFFILIATIONS: Young Avengers, the Nomads

AGE (physical age as well, if different): 21

SPECIES (human, metahuman, alien, etc): Human

IS YOUR CHARACTER’S IDENTITY SECRET OR PUBLIC? Public

IF SECRET, OR YOUR CHARACTER IS A CIVILIAN, DO THEY HAVE A CIVILIAN OCCUPATION? She was  PI/vigilante for hire for a hot minute. After her dad cut her off, she had to sell her heroism to be able to continue her work. 

DOES YOUR CHARACTER LIVE IN THE MOUSEHOLE? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEIR DUTIES?Hunter. Gotta flex those arrow skills lmao. 

DESCRIBE SIX TRAITS (3 positive, 3 negative) YOUR CHARACTER HAS AND HOW THESE AFFECT THEM:

Resilient: Kate’s biggest strength is no matter how many times she gets knocked down, she gets back up again. She turned her trauma into determination and became a hero through sheer force of will. 

Witty: One of her many defense mechanisms is being a smartass. I’m not entirely sure if this is a positive or a negative, but I enjoy a good sarcastic quip in the face of imminent peril. 

Independent: Kate knows how to take care of herself. She’s been doing it for a long time, and she’s used her scrappiness to get out a lot of jams. Even after she was cut off from her dad’s wealth, she figured out a way to survive as a teenager who hadn’t graduated high school yet.  

Stubborn: Unfortunately, along with resilience comes stubborn pride. There is no negotiating with her once she’s made up her mind. Kate also feels a need to make up for the fact that she’s human, so she pushes herself too far in attempts to be superhuman. She has major trouble following orders when she doesn’t agree with them.

Guarded: Kate, like most young heroes, has major trust issues. Her lonely childhood, and her villainous father (who literally placed a hit on her lmao), and the PTSD from her assault impacts her ability to form meaningful relationships. She has a really hard time relying on people even when the situation requires her to.

Blunt: Kate is sometimes too honest. Tact is not her strong suit, and people can…get upset. Her ‘constructive criticism’ can be seen as a barrage of insults. 

POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES:

Marksmanship, swordsmanship, and jujitsu. 

WEAKNESSES:

As a human, Kate has all human vulnerabilities. She’s also a bit reckless when it comes to her own life because she feels like she has to compensate for being ‘weak’. 

IC PORTION; DETAILS —

WHAT BROUGHT YOUR CHARACTER TO SOKOVIA? Truthfully, Clint, but after running into a bunch of dead ends in her investigation of her mother’s “accident”, she felt like she needed to leave California and put her energy into something she could actually do something about. 

DID THEY SIGN THE ACCORDS? WHY OR WHY NOT? No. Again, Clint heavily influenced her decision, but it was kind of a given after she sided Cap in Civil War. She doesn’t need The Man telling her what to do or where to be. 

PROVIDE 3-5 HEADCANONS RELATED TO YOUR CHARACTER:

Kate can’t cook for shit. She is determined to learn, but it always ends in disaster and ordering out for pizza. 

Kate loves classical music, and she listens to movie soundtracks more often than songs with lyrics. 

The only thing her dad wouldn’t buy her when she was a kid was a dog, so she would go up to any dog on the street and pet them. She’s notorious for taking in stray animals, even though she’s not supposed to.

Kate was a mathlete in school. Nerd. 

POTENTIAL CHARACTER ARCS: Kate’s dad hinted that her mom is still alive, and Kate is desperate to figure out if he’s telling the truth. She also thinks he arranged her ‘accident’, so she’s dedicated to putting her dad in a maximum security prison. Also, she has no idea what to do with her life besides heroism, so she feels very lost in this new world, and I always love writing character angst. 

CHARACTER BIO —

TW: brief mentions of assualt

Katherine Elizabeth "Kate" Byanshin never really could call her house a home, and it wasn’t until she was in 4th-grade, learning about President Lincoln, that she understood why. A house divided cannot stand. She never thought of her parents as a collective unit. There was her father: stoic, cold, and sudden bursts of explosive rage, and then there was her mother: barely a shadow in the brief moments she was present in Kate’s life. When she thought about home, she thought of closed doors and empty dining room chairs. 

Still, Kate knew that she was far more blessed than others. Her parents were incredibly wealthy, and even though her house felt empty, it was still an extravagant penthouse in Manhattan. She never had to ask for nice things. Her father filled her closet with designer labels and far, far too many pairs of shoes. She got everything she wanted—everything except for the attention every child craves. 

After her mother died in a car accident on one of her monthly trips, her quiet home became silent. Her father shut himself away in his office, and after she accidentally witnessed him bashing a stranger’s face in, her loneliness turned to suspicion. She started paying close attention to his furiously whispered phone calls and following him when he left the house. Turned out, her suspicions were correct. Her father was in league with some sketchy people, and Kate got caught by one of his ‘business partners’ on one of her sleuthing sessions. She was only able to escape after the Avengers arrived in all their heroic glory. They were all magical in her impressionable eyes, but Hawkeye left a largest impression on her. He was just a human, like her, and he defeated El Matador with such ease. If he could do that, maybe she didn’t have to cower in the corner forever. 

A few years later, now a teenager, tragedy struck Kate’s life again when she went on her nightly run through Central Park. As she lay amongst the dead leaves and stared up at the black sky, she thought about another thing she learned in school. Nothing gold can stay. Her assault put out the little flicker of child wonder that had survived her father’s betrayal. She hardened herself, wrapped the soft belly of her heart in armor, and learned how to protect herself so that no one could ever hurt her like that again. She studied and obsessively practiced archery, sword fighting, and several different forms of combat training and self-defense until she herself became a honed weapon. 

After she joined Young Avengers, picking a codename was easy. Hawkeye had inspired her to become a hero and take up the bow, so she wanted to honor his legacy by taking on his name and colors. After years of training and working with the Young Avengers, she became a hero in her own right, but with a brand new world  on the horizon Kate wonders if she’ll still measure up. 

[soulmate-game]

“Alright, so tonight is going to be fairly standard. Arkham is silent, and there’s no solid leads on what any of the free rogues might be up to. Harley is sick and Ivy is stuck at home taking care of her, so they aren’t going to be up to anything on either side of the law for a few days. Catwoman is the only person we’d have to look out for right now, but her kleptomania has taken her out of the city for a change,” Barbara was typing away at the large Batcomputer keyboard as she brought all of the Gotham vigilantes up to speed on what to expect for patrol that night. “So, Red Hood and Black Bat will take the Narrows and surrounding area patrol route like usual. Nightwing and Batgirl, Upper east side and fashion district patrol route. Red Robin, you’re taking the route that passes city hall and through Old Gotham and Diamond District, and if you don’t throw a fit maybe you can take Robin with you. Batman, crime alley and Newtown patrol. Robin or no Robin, pick your poison,” the redhead offered, finally spinning her wheelchair around to look at everyone. “We’ll be pretty spread out tonight, but like I said, there’s nothing. No whispers of anything planned on the dark web, no news from any of the rogues, Blackgate and Arkham are, dare I say, peaceful right now. But if you see anything, I’ll redirect you guys so you can get backup ASAP.”

This was a rare night. Usually there was at least a plot or red flag to investigate, but not that night. For some reason, it seemed like Gotham had gotten a dose of sanity that it had been desperately missing.

“Actually,” Alfred took that moment to walk in, a slight pep to his step that seemed to catch everyone’s attention. “I do have news. Batman, you of course know that I have been keeping a close eye on Paris’s situation as per your orders, yes?”

Bruce, who had already been inching towards the batmobile none too subtly, suddenly stood stock still and slowly turned to look at his father figure. He could feel the eyes of his many children honing in on him, silent questions behind those orbs.

“Of course, I remember,” he confirmed cautiously. “You haven’t had an update for me in years.”

Years? Tim furrowed his eyebrows. That meant this had to be something that stretched very far back, because everything that Batman tried to keep secret from him since he became Robin had already been outed. Right? Well, he supposed there was always the possibility that Bruce could have snuck something by, but not a large one. Between him and Oracle, any new secrets he tried to squirrel away were unearthed pretty swiftly. So, most likely this was something Bruce had asked Alfred to keep an eye on at least back when Jason was still Robin. Maybe even further back than that.

“Yes, well you wouldn’t have appreciated any prior updates, sir,” Alfred said pointedly, raising an eyebrow. He always would be the one to understand Bruce Wayne and Batman the best out of all of them. “But this is a big one. I used our inside contact to check up on the Paris situation like I do every month, and this came up,” Alfred pulled out a remote from his pocket and clicked it at the computer, triggering it to bring up an article that likely had been hidden and only accessible via that remote signal. If Barbara had had any reason to check for hidden files she would have found it easily, but Alfred was good at never giving any hints as to when he was hiding something.

But what was on the computer was far more interesting than the all-too-familiar, cryptid ways of Alfred Pennyworth.

Because it was a news article from an online Paris newspaper. It was still in untranslated French, but nobody in that room had any trouble reading it. It was dated to have been published two weeks earlier.

On the cover picture for the article was a man that everybody also recognized, being high-profile and extremely influential in the fashion industry. Most of them had even met the man at least once, the aging Gabriel Agreste. In his early seventies, it was odd to see the man being herded into a police vehicle. He didn’t seem all that threatening, though he still struck an oddly intimidating figure with his cold glare and straight back. Being herded behind him was a woman of around Bruce’s own age, with long brown hair in several elaborate braids. Her dark, almost muddy green eyes bore into the camera and a snarl was on her face. Lila Rossi, the model that had been employed under Agreste for quite some years now and had turned into a sort of reality TV celebrity after she got too old to be hired for as many modeling gigs. She was known as highly untrustworthy, a lie monger and the most infamous gossip in the celebrity world. The headline for the article was;

“THE PARISIAN NIGHTMARE FINALLY OVER! AFTER THIRTY YEARS OF TORMENT, THE HAWKMOTHS OF PAST AND PRESENT HAVE BEEN ARRESTED.”

Underneath that title picture was another, this one detailing the Parisian heroes to stop Hawkmoth, who had been replaced years ago by his female counterpart Monarch, a play on the Monarch Butterfly. The Heroes, on the other hand, had remained mostly the same after the infamous confusion of the early years of Hawkmoth’s reign of terror, where Ladybug had temporarily started adding hero after hero to the team before mysteriously and suddenly retiring almost all of them.

On the right was Ladybug, who stood proud with her arms crossed and a somber gaze directed towards the two unmasked villains. On the left was Chat Noir, in a weird black leather costume that was like a bizzare yet fashionable meld of DiscoWing and the classic Batman uniform. Minus a cape or cowl, of course. Standing behind them, all fanned out, were the last four members of their team. Viperion, in a dark teal snake-themed costume. Ryuuko, standing next to him in a black and red ensemble with her elemental symbol proudly on her chest. Bunnyx, in her bright baby blue and white, and lastly the imperious Stinger behind them in her black outfit with gold accents.

As everyone but Alfred and Bruce read the article and examined the photos as quickly as they could, the eldest vigilante in the room slowly removed his cowl. His eyes were wide, disbelieving as they stared only at the two pictures on the screen and didn’t pay any heed to the article itself.

“Thirty years,” Jason remarked, turning to face Bruce angrily. “Paris has been under attack by magical madmen for thirty years, and you never told us? We knew nothing about this, and this has been going on since before us. Since before you, even,” he waved a hand at the screen angrily. “You know that they have been under attack since before Batman was even a thing, and you never said anything? We could have helped! The league could have—“

“Been a liability,” Bruce interrupted, but it was the uncharacteristic softness to his tone that ultimately shut Jason up and attracted everyone else’s rapid attention. “The league knows. The founding members, anyway. It was something I briefed them on back when we first founded the League, but we were careful to keep any mention of it off of any electronic system. The magic behind the attacks stopped any word of the terrorism from getting out through normal means. We pretended to put the JLE in Paris, when really they are centered miles out of city limits and never set foot inside Paris’s boundaries.”

“Why?” Dick asked, his own mask off so that he could glare into Bruce’s eyes without it obscuring his expression at all. He wasn’t explosively angry like Jason, but it was clear that Dick wasn’t happy either. “They all look to be your age, Bruce. Which means they’ve been fighting HawkMoth since they were teenagers, on their own, since before there was any Justice League or very many other established heroes at all to provide backup. And I get that HawkMoth and Monarch seem to have controlled or fed off negative emotions and a lot of us would have been liabilities, but there are Leaguers who have extreme control over their emotions. You could have gone. Or J’onn, you could have even sent Tim. Anybody to help even a little.”

“Paris isn’t my city, it’s Ladybug’s city. The League and most metahuman heroes stay out of Gotham because I asked them too, but I am not the first to have the idea that keeping other heroes out of a volatile city can be beneficial for damage control. Ladybug herself told me not to allow any interference in the situation,” Bruce braced himself against the back of one of their metal debriefing chairs, leaning forward so it could take most of his weight. That, and the way he never looked away from the photos displayed on the computer, tipped off everyone else that Bruce might not have stayed uninvolved willingly. That he had a deeper connection to the whole Paris mess than just keeping a shrewd eye on a possible issue.

“You know Ladybug?” Tim decides to speak up, leaning back against the desk that housed the batcomputer keyboard. His voice was decidedly softer than that of his elder brothers’.

Bruce nodded, still in an odd partial trance. “We met when I was on a trip to Paris, before I became Batman. It was twenty-three years ago, I was eighteen and found out the hard way about the situation that the rest of the world was somehow oblivious to. I was able to meet Ladybug during one of her patrols, and confronted her. Even after I became Batman two years later, she refused any help. It wasn’t until about a year before I adopted Dick that I finally decided I couldn’t keep worrying about a situation and people that I wasn’t being allowed to help, so I told Alfred to use the sources that Ladybug had given me back when we first met to check in on the situation every month or two. I know that it was not the best decision, making Alfred do what I couldn’t bring myself to, but by the time I adopted Dick I had mostly forgotten about it. I was too worried about trying to figure out how to raise a kid and then deal with raising a vigilante kid after that, for the first time.”

Silence reigned for a while. This was, essentially, news that Bruce had been waiting to hear for over twenty years. An outcome that he had been barred from being a part of. Talk about bittersweet, especially when Bruce seemed so passionate about wanting to have helped. Probably too guilty about not being allowed to.

In the end, it was Damian who made the connection between this news and his father’s foreign mood and behavior first. Or at least, he was the first to vocalize it. Cass probably noticed it sooner.

“You have feelings for Ladybug,” Damian somehow managed to make the declaration sound like a reprimand. “I admit, she is likely much better of a suitor for you than that mangy cat, but I hardly think that trying to start courting her again after so long apart is reasonable. She could have changed from—“

“I know, Damian,” Bruce’s knuckles were white from how tightly he was gripping the chair. “Trust me, I have spent more than enough hours contemplating calling her again to catch up, but I knew it was best to stay away. I had grown busy with Batman and the League anyway, and adding the time difference on there was no way any relationship between us would have been feasible.”

“So you cut yourself off from even being her friend. Which, might I remind you, I heavily advised against,” Alfred finally cut back into the conversation, hands clasped behind his back. “The two of you had maintained a perfectly stable long distance friendship for over five years, and I still consider the day you cut her off to be one of your stupidest mistakes, master Bruce. On an unrelated note, I received a call from the designer that you always commission your more high-fashion suits from, sir. She is coming to Gotham for a time, and I gave her an invitation to come visit for dinner tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind.” With that said, Alfred turned on his heel and walked away.

“That man never raises his voice, but somehow still makes you feel like absolute shit when he gets mad,” Stephanie mused aloud when the butler had left, earning silent nods from everyone else.

“How are you still alive, Father?” Damian asked, raising an eyebrow over one vibrant green eye. “If you cut off Ladybug only to continue to commission the person that I assume is her civilian identity on a regular basis, how has that idiocy not blended into the rest of your life?”

“It has,” Jason added in, always up for a game of Rag on Bruce. “He’s just always had this annoying ability of surviving even the shittiest situations he ends up in. It’s like he has plot armor or something.”

Bruce only grunted, pulling his cowl back on. “Patrol. Robin, you’re with Red Robin today. Don’t kill each other.”

“Oh no, I want to live to see the girl you’ve apparently been crushing on since you were a teenager,” Tim said as he ambled over to his motorcycle. “Seeing THAT reunion is gonna be way better than picking another fight with Demon Spawn.”

“Tt.”

—*—*—*—*—*

“Your tie won’t get any straighter,” Barbara teased Bruce, watching as he fiddled with the tie around his throat for the millionth time in just the past ten minutes. Alfred had made sure that he couldn’t escape this, even going so far as benching Batman for the night.

And to make matters worse, it was still far too early for patrol so all the Wayne kids were present. Stephanie had other obligations to see to, unfortunately, but other than her even Jason had come over to the manor to see the fallout.

“Master Bruce, she is here,” Alfred’s voice cut through the almost palpable nerves emanating from the usually stoic or charismatic man. Batman was nowhere to be seen at the moment, but neither was Playboy Billionaire Brucie Wayne. No, this was Bruce Wayne, as genuine as anybody could see him. And more nervous than his kids had ever witnessed.

The door was opened, and in stepped someone that defied any of the Batkid’s preconceptions. They were expecting someone suave, sophisticated, with hard-earned muscle trying to hide under her skin. Like a Wonder Woman type of person, bursting with strength except for when they made an effort to disguise it. But that was not what they got. No suave, sophisticated bachelorette of a businesswoman and reputable fashion designer. No goddess-masquerading-as-a-human. Not even a femme fatale like Selina Kyle or most of Batman’s exes.

But there was a distinct observation that the kids made the moment they saw her.

Black hair, so dark that it seemed to reflect blue in the light, and clear blue eyes that were dark, vibrant, and seemed to glow with intelligence and humor, with just the slightest gray tones that hid in them grim experiences and disillusion.

She had a smile that was eerily similar to Dick’s when she laid eyes on the family and let it spread across her face. It was like the warmth of the sun, and instantly made the impersonal foyer feel cozy and welcoming. But the sharpness in her eyes as she scanned over all the people gathered, more than she expected if her eyebrow raise was any indication, was just like Tim. Too much like Tim.

She came to a stop a few feet away from the Wayne clan, and rested one hand on her waist as she popped her hip out. Jason’s attitude.

Her hair was up in a simple but elegant bun, with a braid curling around the base of it. She was small, about five foot four if their estimates were correct, and the sleek sleeves of her midnight blue dress simultaneously emphasized and disguised the lithe, corded muscle mass that seemed to flow smoothly down her arms. Not a brawler’s muscle, but an acrobat or gymnast’s. The delicate silver embroidery along the sleeves and trim of her dress, and curling around her waist like a belt of thread, was in actuality a string of bats in various flight poses interspersed with silver swirls and tiny ladybugs. Her own playful personality, it seemed, something innocent and daring and subtle all at once that didn’t quite fit any of the kids, it was solely hers.

“I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” the woman finally introduced herself, holding out her hand even as her radiant smile stayed firmly in place. When her eyes found Bruce again, they stayed there. “An old friend of your father’s. And by the way, Bruce. If you ever cut contact with me again without ever explaining yourself, I will not stay twiddling my thumbs in some other city again. I will hunt you down and get you to tell me what exactly possessed you to freeze me out, and only if it is some really good reasoning will I let you off without giving you a remedial lesson in the importance of dodging.”

Damian’s fire.

Dick looked over at Bruce, then at Marinette. She caught his eye, nodded and winked, and looked back to her old friend.

“But I do have to say, this looks suspiciously like a family we might have had if you had ever gotten up the courage to ask me out all those years ago instead of not realizing that I never specifically forbade you from visiting Paris, only heroes in general. You’re lucky I’m patient. I spent thirty years waiting to get back the Butterfly Miraculous and lock those two up for good, but making me wait twenty years to finally confess to you is a bit much, don’t you think? And adopting kids with only blue eyes and black hair is a bit on the nose, even for you.”

Scratch that, Damian’s loyalty.

Bruce really had adopted kids that reminded him of Marinette in some way, and the way he would grin or smile at Damian when he was displaying his usually subtle but steady loyalty, or the way that Bruce had almost unending tolerance for Damian’s stubbornness, it all started to make sense.

Bruce had tried building a family around the one he imagined he could have had with Marinette.

“Mari—“

“Nope. You’ve made me wait this long, you don’t even get a hug until after dinner. Then we can catch up, and you’ll take me out to dinner in a few days,” suddenly what was happening seemed to creep up on the woman, and she fidgeted. Sheepishness rose to her face, and she winced at her own words. But damn, she had imagined this day for so long, she couldn’t help but get assertive! “I mean, if you want to. I get it if you lost interest in dating me, but—“

“How about I set up a private dinner on the top of Wayne enterprises, day after tomorrow. We can even do a patrol afterwards if you’re up to it.”

His sons all facepalmed, some inwardly and some outwardly. Barbara groaned and Cass pinched the bridge of her nose. But, to their astonishment, Marinette’s smile just came back full force.

“Aww, you know I can’t resist the offer of a patrol. But just one, I want to enjoy some time off now that I’m not perpetually on-call as Paris’s main hero.”

Bruce finally grinned back, his eyes soft for the first time in a while that wasn’t directed at his kids. In way that they had never been soft towards Selina or most of his past flings.

“Just one patrol, then.”

“Sounds like a date.”

First attempt to upload this goofed and deleted the first part, so here is attempt number two! Again, Brucinette has been invading my dreams.

Apparently there is a part 2 now.

[arianalilyblack]

Come home to me

Title: Come home to me

Chapter no: Chapter 1

Author: @arianalilyblack

Pairing: Harry Wells x Reader x Eobard Thawne/Harrison Wells

Word count: 1954

Summary: The wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West is finally here. You and Harry are caught up with the wedding spirit and start to slowly realize that maybe you developed deeper feelings for each other. Everything is perfect until Nazis bust into the church ruining everything. And alongside Earth X villains guess who shows up? Your ex flame, Eobard Thawne aka the Reverse Flash, complicating everything in your lives. 

  The church was filled with joyful chatter; everyone was hyped for the wedding of the year. The wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West was finally happening. You saw Kara and Alex entering the church, while Barry was talking to one of the waitresses. Slowly everyone was taking their designated seats when they saw that Barry was approaching the minister.

You were seated next to Professor Stein; in front of you was Sara and in the front row were Alex and Harry. Kara was preparing for her performance as she was the one who would start the ceremony with her angelic singing voice. You were a little sad that you weren’t sitting beside Harry with whom you became to be like best friends after he came back from Earth-2. He had been grumpy ever since he came back, but you managed do make him smile a couple of times.

The orchestra started the melody and soon after Kara started to sing. It was the song with which Barry proposed to Iris. It was a lovely song. When you heard the lyrics you couldn’t help but to take a glimpse of Harry, who was just standing up to turn around as Iris walked down the aisle with Joe. After hearing the song for the first time you started to realize that you had some deeper feelings than friendship for Earth-2 Harrison Wells, but you wouldn’t admit it for anyone, not even for yourself. Your eyes met and you shot a smile in his direction which he happily reciprocated. It seemed like the wedding spirit caught up with him as well. He looked happy as he watched Barry take Iris’s hands in his.

 ~

 Harry was smiling at Barry while Kara was adjusting the microphone. He knew that Kara was supposed to sing the opening song, which was written by Barry, but he never heard it before. He was too busy finding out who the Thinker was to have time for small chitchats with the team about the wedding or anything like that. The only team member who he was constantly in contact with was Y/N, because he genuinely liked her presence. She always tried her best to cheer him up; she helped him in everything he needed. It was nice having her around.

He met her just before he went back to Earth-2 after defeating Zoom, but he knew many stories about her thanks to the team. She was part of the team back when they were trying to catch the man in the yellow suit aka Reverse-Flash. But after it turned out that Earth -1 Harrison Wells was the villain, she had left the team. As far as the team knows, she was in a romantic relationship with that Wells, and it was a huge trauma for her, so it was understandable that she wanted to heal before she could get back to do the job.

The first time they met the poor soul turned into a pale ghost when she saw him. Cisco quickly summarized the whole situation to her, but that wasn’t important because Harry was already on his way back to Earth-2. It took quite some time for the two of them to get used to each other, mostly Y/N would avoid him in the beginning. But in the end it turned out just fine.

Now watching all the people gathered and hearing the lyrics, Harry couldn’t help but to think about his relationship with Y/N. The verses awakened some new feelings in Harry towards the woman. He started realizing, as he closely listened to the song, that the person who he wants to run home to is Y/N; he wants her in his life every hour and every minute of it. This realization startled him, because he genuinely thought that he would never feel this way again for another person beside his wife. He brushed away his feelings and concentrated on the wedding.

~

 It was a beautiful ceremony until the pastor was vaporized by a blue ray. Everybody jumped and turned to face the threat. There were a bunch of people dressed in black, with masks on their faces and something red on their arms. You soon realized that it was a Nazi logo on the armband. You could hear Oliver and Kara saying in unison that they hate Nazis, and you couldn’t agree more. You looked behind your shoulder to see Harry trying to get out as many people as he can. He looked at you concerned, but you assured him with a smile that you were okay and ready to fight back.

It wasn’t a secret that you were a metahuman, though you rarely used your powers in combat. You had some training sessions with Barry and Cisco, but you felt more comfortable behind your lab gear, so you supported the team with your knowledge not your punching skills. You were a product of the particle accelerator explosion caused by the Reverse-Flash, and every time you used those powers you were reminded of that man. But desperate times required desperate measures and you knew you had to do everything in your power to save the civilians.

You took a deep breath, bathing in the sunlight for a second, before you started to blast the enemy with electric jolts coming from your palms. Everyone around you were fighting as well, you could see Barry’s yellow streak as he was taking people outside. One of the soldiers got close to you and tried to choke you from behind, but you managed to send an electric impulse through your elbow directly into his chest, causing ruptures in his hearts electrical system due to which he collapsed onto the ground.

You let out a small chuckle. You already knew that the enemy will underestimate you, because they will think that you are a long range fighter who cannot use his powers in close combat. But they were wrong. You learned to control your electric powers so you were able to send out impulses and even little lightning from every inch of your body. This massive power naturally came with a massive price; thereby you couldn’t use it for too long.

 ~

 Harry was escorting people out of the church through the back door, but he kept coming back to see if Y/N is still okay. He knew about her powers, her limitations, and he was terrified that she will overuse her abilities and eventually get hurt. He tried his best to keep the civilians safe by pushing them towards the exits. He didn’t have a weapon to fight with so he tried to outsmart the enemy by coming up with a combat strategy. Everyone was caught up with his own fight, Y/N as well was kicking asses, and it inevitably made him smile feeling some sort of pride mixed with some other emotions that he wouldn’t acknowledge.

He just had been turned away for a split second, but when he looked at Y/N again he saw that she was overpowered by six enemy soldiers, who were trying to knock her out. He felt fear flowing through his veins, heart rushing so fast that he almost couldn’t breathe. He started to run towards her in desperation but the next moment the soldiers were brushed off by a massive electric discharge, leaving Y/N kneeling on the floor gasping for air. He was sure that she’d reached her limits.

Harry saw an arrow drill into the wall and looked up just to see that the enemy had targeted him, but luckily Oliver Queen came to the rescue by deviating the trajectory of the arrow. Harry nodded in the direction of Oliver and rushed in a hurry to Y/N. She was almost unconscious so he took her into his arms and carried her out of the church.

 ~

 You woke up in the med bay, having no idea how you got there. Your whole body was hurting, your muscles were sore and you had a headache as well. The team and the superhero guests were discussing what happened in the Cortex. You let out a quit groan as you tried to get off the bed. Just then you realized that an infusion needle was sticking out of your arm, hooked to an infusion bag. The memories started to get back to you, and you remembered that you used up your remaining strength to brush off the enemy. You were trying to stretch your sore muscles a little when Harry entered the room. You could see the anger in his eyes, but you observed other things as well. Were they relief or worry, you didn’t know, but it was something new.

„Thank God you’re alright. I was beginning to worry” he said scratching the back of his neck.

„I’m fine, no need to worry. I’m tougher than I look” you smiled at him reassuring that you were really fine.

„What were you thinking?” he asked in his usual passive-aggressive tone.

„I… well…” you were taken by surprise by his outrage. „I was protecting the people that I care about, Harry” you answered, anger starting to build up inside you.

„You could have died.” He took off his glasses to rub his eyes. Approaching to your bed he continued to lecture you. „You know how severe the side effects of your powers are. The water is one of the most important substances in the human body, and your power uses that water to generate your electricity. The more you use it the more water is dissociating in your body, building up a huge amount of oxidative stress and not to mention the massive dehydration you are suffering.” He let out a small sigh and added in a whisper „You almost died in my arms.”

„I’m sorry, Harry” you said. „I did it to protect you”

„What?” he asked surprised.

„I mean… all of you.” You felt your cheeks burning.

„Don’t overuse your abilities ever again for me, please” he pleaded in a soft voice that you never heard from him before. You felt your heart beating faster when he took your hands in his and kissed it gently.

„Ohm, where is the team? Are they alright? Who were those black devils?” you asked in a hurry to change the subject and to give yourself time to soak in the new Harry.

„Nazis from Earth X, it’s one of the parallel Earths. I think Barry, Oliver, Kara and some others are trashing their base right as we speak. Cisco is checking the Pipeline, Caitlin and Iris are in the Cortex.” He looked behind his back to check if anyone was there. Something wasn’t right, he could feel it. „You know, I realized something today.”

„Let me guess, you hate Nazis?” you laughed, making him smile too.

„Yes, that too.” He looked like he was trying to find the best words to express himself, but he was interrupted by Mick who just rattled in.

„Doc we need your assistance. We lost the communication with the team.”

„I’ll go in a minute” he said waving his hands. „What was I saying?”

„We will have enough time to discuss this after you do your job. It’s not like I am able to go anywhere in this state” you let out a nervous laugh. You felt helpless and angry, but you tried to conceal it. He squeezed your hands, which made you blush, and went after Mick to see what happened.

You were left there alone, waiting for him to come back, but he never did. Someone else came instead, someone you thought you would never see again.

Part 2

[death-is-a-new-beginning]

if you still write for cisco, i’d like ro request a smut (if you do them, its okay if not)! he and the reader are together but its a secret. she’s been bratty and teasing him all day. cisco tries to keep his cool but he’s obviously breaking, so she snaps hia final straw by flirting with barry (before iris & him are together). something inside him snaps and he drags her to his lab and fucks her senseless and overstimulates her. thank you in advance!!

A/N: Ooh I would love to do this for you! This is my first time writing smut but I'm going to do my best. Sorry it took so long! I wanted to make sure I got this right. I hope you like it! Also requests are open, feel free to request some more fics! 

Word Count: 2699

__________________________________________________________________

All damn day. All damn day y/n had been teasing Cisco. He was going absolutely mad because all he wanted to do was pull her onto his lap and kiss her senseless and do so many things just to hear her scream Papi, the way she did when she finally released her control. God just thinking about it made him want her that much more. But he couldn't do anything because they were keeping their relationship on the down low.

She was wearing normal clothes that normally would not call attention to her but for some reason it looked so good on her. It had been cold outside so she had worn a black hoodie with the S.T.A.R Labs logo on it and some dark jeans with red converse, totally normal clothes. But something about those jeans made her butt look a type of way that he just wanted to smack. At some point during the day in between missions the temperature had gotten warm and y/n took off her hoodie to reveal one of Cisco's new t-shirts he'd gotten recently with a mathematical equation written on it. It was like she was trying to get them outted. She looked at him smirking, knowing full well what wearing his clothes did to him. She then circled him like a temptress and reached over the control table for a her pen and came dangerously close to his face, he could feel her breath fanning him, her lips inches from him. It was like a mental battle they were fighting to see who would give in first. He was oh so close and willing to give in if it meant having her close to him.

After a few seconds of making intense eye contact, she smiled sweetly and said "Sorry Pap-Cisco I can't seem to reach my pen, do you mind passing it to me?"

He quickly passed it to her, swallowing thickly suddenly so thirsty, with a thirst that no amount of water could quench but time alone with her. He stood up abruptly and said, "No problem at all," and quickly exited the room, he need to get out of there. Barry would be back from the police department soon and he didn't want them to catch them doing something deliciously indecent. Not to mention Caitlin was working with them as well so it would just be problematic all the way around.

The rest of the day seemed to pass by agonizingly. With "accidental" brushes of skin in passing or flirty glances and there may have been something with a lollipop and a fake innocent laugh, he was at his wits end and about ready to burst, not caring about exposing their relationship. Later that day, they were working on some tech for Barry's suit when Cisco made a comment about her not programming something correctly and she just flipped him off.

"Like you never make a mistake? Geez, I'm already fixing it. Get off my back cowboy." The sexual frustration was translating over into just straight frustration with each other.

"Rarely do I make a mistake that would end in our friend getting killed," he fired back at her, immediately regretting it but he couldn't take it back.

"Fine, Mr. Perfect finish this yourself. I need a break anyways," she huffed and dropped the tools she was using and was already out of the room before he could call her back.

When Barry walked into the metahuman jail section, he noticed y/n sitting down on the floor reading a book about Quantum Physics, trying to come up with new ways to help Barry's suit phase with him more smoothly.

"It looks like you're doing some light reading," he joked, sitting next to her.

She laughed, "Yep, I needed a distraction before actually punching someone in the face. Maybe you know a guy on which I could use as a punching bag?"

Barry's eyebrow raised inquisitively, "Who do you want to punch in the face? Who hurt you?" He began laughing and bumped her shoulder with his.

"That is a can of worms I'm not sure we want to open muchacho," she joked with a bright smile, already feeling better, she hated arguing with Cisco, especially when it came to keeping Barry safe or when he felt like she wasn't doing a good enough job.

"How about you give me a list of names and I'll be back in like two minutes with the names crossed off with thorough lessons learned?"

"You think you could get it done in two minutes? Its quite a long list. I think it would take five minutes at least."

"Dang how long are we talking?" He asked.

"You know that episode of SpongeBob where the list just keeps going like out of his house or what not? Yeah about that long," she chuckled.

Barry cracked his knuckles and stood up, "Okay, no time like the present, give me the names and I'll beat their ass," she stood up while laughing then said, "Easy there Sonic, you need to fuel up and check in with Caitlin for your normal check up."

About thirty minutes later when she hadn't returned, Cisco went to go find her, he was worried he might have took it too far. He passed by the metahuman holding cells and heard her laughter mixing with Barry's. They were making their way to the entrance, he heard Barry ask her if there was anything he could do to help her and she said a hug would work. He watched them hug, her arms were around his neck which made her shirt rise up a little so Barry's hands were on her bare skin. After a few seconds they pulled away, with a sigh she sent him on his way to Caitlin and sighed before turning to go back to where Cisco was only to come face to face with a pissed off Cisco.

Y/n stopped in her tracks, a pissed off Cisco was probably one of the hottest thing to witness, but his anger was directed towards her, she could detect that much.

"What the hell Y/n? I know we want to keep our relationship on the DL but flirting with Barry? What the actual hell?" The realization that Cisco was jealous of Barry, for no reason, made her laugh.

"What is so funny?" Cisco asked almost yelling. He couldn't take it anymore, he felt so possessive and seeing them hug was the straw that broke this camels back. He would show her who she belonged to, as much as he belonged to her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into a secret room he had found the first year he started working at the lab. He sometimes slept there when he was working late. It had a mattress he'd secretly brought a few years ago.

He locked the door and like a predator hunting his prey, he pounced. He pushed her up against the wall, he had placed his hand behind her head to protect it, just like guys do in anime. His eyes darkened when he saw how turned on she was. He almost growled, "You're mine. Only mine, and I'm yours," he pressed his lips to hers passionately and it was on. A fight for dominance began but one he was winning. He smiled in the kiss and pulled away. Her eyes slowly opened, she was panting hard. His hands had moved down from her head to her side sliding his hand under his shirt she was wearing until he reached her breasts and he squeezed her the way she liked.

She moaned softly with this action her eyes growing dark and his hand were on the move again, unbottoning her jeans and reaching for the one place she ached for. When he reached that place his hands slowly circled her mound so slow that it was almost agonizing.

"All day you've been taunting me, being cute, wearing my shirt, being a brat. You even flirted with Barry! Well baby girl, you messed with the bull, prepare to get the horns." His voice deepened and the Cisco that only she gets to see came forward. He removed his hand, the source of her pleasure, which made her whine in desperation. 

"Take off everything. Now." He demanded.

"Yes S-sir." She stuttered, at times she was unprepared for the shift in dominance with Cisco. Most of the time he was laid back and nerdy as all get out, but here and right now Papi Cisco was present and demanded respect. This made her want him all that much more. She removed her articles of clothing one by one. His eyes raked over her as he licked his lips. 

“Now get on all fours on the mattress. You know what to do, you’ve been a bad girl and it’s time to get punished,” She complied, her bum was up slightly. She stared ahead at the metal wall. He took off his shirt, and approached her his hands squeezing her ass, massaging it. 

“You’ve been bad baby girl, being so beautiful and flirty with me all day when we are trying to keep our relationship under wraps. You’ve been pushing my buttons. You’re going to count to three okay?” He asked kindly. 

“Okay,” She said. 

“Okay what?” He asked.

“Okay sir,” She replied with a smile on her face. 

“Good girl, let’s begin,” He spanked her, it was a solid spank that didn’t hurt but made heat pool down her body. “One,” she moaned. The second and third followed suit with more pressure in each spank. After he was done, he massaged her butt, there was a bit of redness but he would make sure she wasn’t in any discomfort. He peppered kisses on her ass which made her moan, the soft touches were driving her crazy. He took those kisses lower until he reached her lips, licking down her strip, moaning at how wet she was for him. 

“Please, Cisco,” she mewled, all she wanted was for him to finish what he started over and over again. 

“No Mamas, you teased me, now its my turn. On your back baby girl. You’re not allowed to touch yourself,” she turned over, laying on some firm pillows that gave her the support she’d definitely need soon. When she looked at him, he was putting his hair up with a hair tie and there was a few strands that would always fall loose no matter how hard she tried. He looked beautiful, she enjoyed seeing all the different sides of him, they often face so much danger which is why they decided they wouldn't tell anyone until they were sure it would last. 

He kneeled onto the mattress and made his way to her, like a predator hunting for his prey and he looked hungry. Like he’d eat her whole. She almost moaned at the thought. When he reached her, he  was hovering above her, mere inches from her lips. 

“May I kiss you?” He asked, even when he was in dominant mode, he always asked her for consent, always made sure she was okay. The respect alone made her love him so much more. She wanted him to do more that kiss her, she wanted him to fuck her so good and then make love to her, the order in which that happened did not matter. 

“Yes, you can kiss me. I hope you plan on fucking me too though,” with that he smiled and smashed his lips to hers, sucking on her bottom lip a little before slipping his tongue in to her mouth. His hands wandered to her breasts, squeezing her nipples roughly which made her moan into his mouth and arch her back. His hand continued his journey down her body and between her legs, she was so sensitive and swollen there. He rubbed in circles then in 8 rotation movements. And with two fingers he entered her, he started pumping the digits in and out of her. She began moaning, her hips trying to meet his fingers with each thrust. 

After a few moments of fingering her, on the brink of her orgasm, he stopped. He slid his fingers out and she clenched around the absence of his fingers. He brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them, tasting her while making direct eye contact. He smirked, he planned on edging her for while before letting her finish. 

“Please Cisco, I was so close,” she pleaded. Aching to finish the job herself. 

“No baby girl you’re not allowed to cum until I say so, understand?”

“Yes, sir, “ she conceded. He placed one more kiss on her lips before moving down her body, leaving a trail of kisses as he made his way between her legs. Then he started sucking and licking and tonguing her entrance, He could feel her start to clench around him and so he stopped. Again. He robbed her from completion again, he kissed her thighs as he sat up on his knees. He unbuckled his belt and undid his pants. He stood up pulling the last remaining clothing off. He was standing there in all his glory. He pulled a condom from his wallet and gave himself a few pumps until he was hard enough to put the condom off. 

When he was ready he climbed back to her rubbing himself at her entrance, to which she moaned. He kissed her and pushed his way inside of her, they both moaned, he stretched her so well, he waited a bit to let her adjust and then began to move slowly, in and out of her. Her legs were wrapped around his waist trying to meet each thrust. He kissed her harder as he started to speed up, hitting the spot that made her go wild. 

He then slowed and came to a stop as she came close once again and came to a halt. She huffed in frustration, but then Cisco moved to his knees whilst still inside her, she was clenching and unclenching around him which almost made his control waver. He lifter her legs to be on either side of his neck and he put a pillow under her bum so she was comfortable. He held her legs together and started to thrust into her deeper and harder than before, she was screaming in pleasure, which made Cisco glad he had sound proofed the room. 

¨Papi, please let me cum. I´ll be a good girl. Daddy please,¨ she recited like a prayer, she wasn´t sure she could prolong her orgasm if she tried. He was fucking her so good. 

¨Cum now baby girl,¨ he demanded and she experienced the strongest orgasm she´d ever had. The man was Gandalf at making her cum. How he learned all of these techniques was beyond her. As she rode the high down, he continued to thrust until he came not too long after she had finished. He pulled out, he cum slipping out of her lips. He slowly lowered her legs down and went down on her, lapping up her juices, cleaning her, and sucking her sensitive clit, she didn´t think it was possible, but she ended up coming again for the second time. 

He cuddled her and she came down another high, panting. “I’m glad I was being a bad girl today.” She said with a laugh.

-A few days later-

Y/n was hanging with the gang in the main control area, laughing and joking around with Barry and Caitlin. Cisco walks into the room, strolls over to her, mumbling something like “Fuck it” and spins her to him and kisses her in front of everyone, she kisses him back on instinct. After a moment, he pulls away and looks around the room and says, “She’s mine.” then he struts out  back to his lab. 

“I knew it! Barry you owe me $100.” Caitlin said excitedly while clapping. 

Y/N just sits there in shock of what happened. “Wait you guys had a bet going?” She exclaimed.

-Fin-

[ascnsion]

▋ 𝙃𝙔𝙈𝙀𝙉𝙊𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍𝘼 𝙎𝙀𝙉𝙎𝙀𝙎 𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙂 .  .  .  .  ❛  you're dripping blood on the carpet.  ❜    𝙁𝙍𝙊𝙈   @kwisatzhadcrach​​​​ .  .  .  .  ( blood & bruises prompts ) ┘  

Thoroughly masticated piece of pale blue gum was mounted on a miniature pile of previously ( presently hard ) chewed gum, and a fresh piece of brightly colored candy was flicked into mouth with the expertise of a rather bored person. Thinking about it, he really should have shrunk down and spent the afternoon chewing on a single piece of normal sized gum instead of doing it the old fashioned, normie way. Mentos gum wasn’t getting any cheaper ! As beneficial as it was switching to gum from assorted bags of chips and more than a healthy amount of oreos, the stiffness shooting through jaws into temples told the Ant-Man enough was enough. A bubble gave way to a dramatic sigh, and just as booted feed hit the surface of the rooftop, a single chime emanated from his phone and stole attention. 

As desperate bored as a teenager waiting for their crush to text them back, Scott swiftly picked up the device, tapped in his password, and allowed eyes to thoroughly the scan the headline alert which took over the entirety of the screen. Avengers at it Again !  Sam Wilson’s New Wings !  Metahuman Heist Thwarted; Growing Concerns Over The Super Capable. Ten NEW Tips to Stimulate  an Or—— . Nothing about the Power Broker, nor Darla, nor his arrest ! . . Well, the last bit was probably for the best, but where was all the sizzle and BUZZ for Ant-Man. Scott wasn’t a bitter man by nature, and he certainly not feeling bitter currently, but seeing Wilson’s smoldering face made him wonder why the new Captain America couldn’t greased some wheels for Scott. 

Another sigh was released. Another notification went through, however this time Lang was really given something to gawk at with mixed confusion and concern. Bounty on Spider-Man’s legs —  ( yes, all of them ) was written in smaller print beneath the bounty posed on the henchmen and villain app. Now THAT would make headlines: the heroism of the insects; Ant-Man featuring Spider-Man ! . . plus, the whole doing something GOOD which genuinely was Scott’s only concern. Already donning his ant suit, pile of gum was tossed into the tiny waste basket situated beside his lawn chair, and he shrunk himself to ant size in order to board Larry who had been happily munching away on some twix crumbs. 

The wind hitting his body, the hum of invertebrate wings, and energy stimulating his mind in wonderful ways; god, how he missed being part of the good fight. Where the hell was Spider-Man anyway, any of them for that matter ??  He used the communication device rigged to his ant helmet to call up Smith, one of the few ‘ people ‘ who remained loyal to the man’s day-to-day struggle to make a living and a name for himself. Riiing. Riiiing. Riiing. The hell were those two idiots up two ?!  Another three calls and a lot of flying through later, the line connected with a man-droid who sounded less than pleased to hear from his boss.  

    ❝   Spider-Man. Location. Now. No, no, there’s no time. No . . I don’t know anything about an order for one hundred pounds of popcorn. Why don’t you just call . . No time !!  Address, anything. PLEASE, Smith.   ❞    It was almost as if Scott was paying the lot for nothing . . Alright, he wasn’t paying them, but that hardly mattered when life and limb were on the line. Through tapping into surveillance cameras, SHIELD satellites, and other government files, Scott and Larry were directed to the very home of Peter Parker. Twenty minutes later and one meter shy of reaching the famous arachnid’s home, a cloud of pesticide brought upwards by the projecting air from a gardener’s leaf blower sent the poor hymenoptera into a tail spin. Scott had achieved better entrances before . . and he had done worse, too; there was a always a flip side. Body crashed through the window of the bedroom ( just a meager chip really ), however body returned to full, normal size and crashed against the side of the bed and nightstand in a mess of limbs, broken clock, and a very tender tail bone. .  

    ❝   Ow, oooowww. God damn  —    ❞    The Ant-Man untangled himself from the bed sheets and the wood of the night stand, then jerked upwards onto his feet upon seeing the blurred body of Parker from his peripheral view. Scott attempted to play it cool. He jumped in the air, swung his arms around, even stretched down to touch his toes as though cooling down from a jog. Throat was cleared thereafter. 

    ❝   Uh, yeah. I think your alarm clock hates ants or something. I’ll pay for that, and this, all of thiiis really. Send me the dry cleaning bill. Actually, you’ll owe ME one after this.   ❞  

[secondwintersoldier]

tw: parental death, manipulation, heavy on the abuse/dv, murder, lots of BAD THINGS!!! IC PORTION; BASICS —

CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS: Richard James “RJ” Boyle / Winter Solider (II)

FACECLAIM: Noah Centineo

AFFILIATIONS: HYDRA, The Task Force

AGE (physical age as well, if different): 21. He was injected with the super soldier serum shortly after his 21st birthday, and so RJ will remain physically 21 until his death.

SPECIES (human, metahuman, alien, etc): Complicated. RJ started out entirely human, though he has been permanently altered by the serum, making him a meta human.

IS YOUR CHARACTER’S IDENTITY SECRET OR PUBLIC? Secret, for the time being.

IF SECRET, OR YOUR CHARACTER IS A CIVILIAN, DO THEY HAVE A CIVILIAN OCCUPATION?: He’s fully controlled by the ISA

DOES YOUR CHARACTER LIVE IN THE MOUSEHOLE? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEIR DUTIES? No

DESCRIBE SIX TRAITS (3 positive, 3 negative) YOUR CHARACTER HAS AND HOW THESE AFFECT THEM:

+ CHARISMATIC: RJ hasn’t lost his charisma, even with all of the brainwashing, conditioning and abuse. Prior to HYDRA, RJ was a goofy kid and some of that still remains. He’s an assassin that will talk your ear off while actively trying to kill you, boyish smile and all. RJ is, overall, horribly under socialized and takes every and any opportunity he can get to chat and be social.

+ QUICK-THINKING: RJ is always one step ahead, always ready, always waiting. He’s quick on his feet and isn’t easily frustrated or swayed when shit inevitably hits the fan and things veer off plan. He usually has back-up plans to his back-up plans, but he’s excellent at thinking on the fly as well. He’s resourceful and has been trained to use whatever is available to him, and has a good eye for these types of things.

+ PATIENT: RJ will lay in wait for however long is needed of him. He spent years in a HYDRA facility staring at a wall to pass the time, and so it is safe to say that he could literally wait to watch paint dry. This certainly aids him when it comes to missions and field work. RJ’s able to put in the leg work, do the recon required for his missions without jumping in too soon. He’s trained to wait for the perfect, most opportune moment, and he’s quite good at it.

- OBSESSIVE: RJ has tunnel vision when it comes to...most everything. He fixates and he is unable to see the bigger picture. When RJ is on task, it’s hard for him to think of anything else other than the steps that will get him to the end result. He isn’t easily side-tracked, which could be considered beneficial, but RJ’s tunnel-visioned to the point of absolute obsession. He won’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t do anything else until the task has been completed.

- UNSTABLE: After everything he has been through, ‘unstable’ is an absolute understatement. RJ is unpredictable, prone to violent tendencies, and his moods come and go like the wind. He’s impossible to predict and has little to no handle on his emotions and the actions that follow.

- DESPERATE: RJ, above all else, wants to belong. He will do whatever it takes to please the hand that feeds him in hopes that he might receive praise or love in return. He’s never been worthy, according to Mr. Colt, and RJ has run out of ideas of how to please his handler and superiors. He’s done everything they asked, and will continue to do so. They say jump, and he asks how high.

POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES: RJ is a master assassin. With this comes the general expertise in a vast assortment of weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. His training has been very thorough, and it is safe to say RJ excels at every challenge thrown his way. RJ is a master tactician and strategist, and speaks a wide assortment of languages. Due to being injected with the super soldier formula, RJ was gifted enhanced strength/durability/speed/agility/reflexes/healing and also (in theory) an extended lifespan.

WEAKNESSES: RJ is a puppet, and his handler holds the strings. For the most part, RJ has not required “activation”” as he goes on his missions quite willingly, though the threat is there if needed. His identity has been stripped from him, and all that he’s known for years is the Winter Solider. He does not remember a time before HYDRA with only fleeting memories passing as dreams from his childhood. RJ is unstable and is prone to episodes of becoming unhinged where he exhibits extreme violence and lack of restraint. There’s a sense of desperation to him, an instinctual need to be loved by the hand that feeds him, though to be honest the best RJ has gotten is kicked while being fed from the floor. In a sense, he’s very naive for the fact that his social skills are greatly lacking and he’s desperate for any sort of affection or love that he’ll take what he can get.

IC PORTION; DETAILS —

WHAT BROUGHT YOUR CHARACTER TO SOKOVIA? The ISA. RJ doesn’t quite know where he was before Sokovia - he was kept indoors mostly, and the windows of every car he was transported in were dark.

DID THEY SIGN THE ACCORDS? WHY OR WHY NOT? No, simply for the fact that he wasn’t asked. He’d do anything asked of him by his handler, so this is a possibility in the future.

PROVIDE 3-5 HEADCANONS RELATED TO YOUR CHARACTER:

RJ loved any and all media he was able to get his hands on during his time in HYDRA, the majority of which were old and classic movies. He watched the variety he was able to keep in his room to the point of memorization, and old/black-and-white movies are his comfort.

That being said, a big bulk of how RJ learned how to socialize at all comes from these movies. His only interaction for over a decade was with HYDRA agents and Colt, and so most of his knowledge of how socialization works was gathered from the same ten movies he watched on repeat.

RJ has a sweet tooth that he has little to no control over. This could be due to the fact that he was vastly food insecure for the entirety of his adolescence, but RJ will eat an entire pan of brownies all to himself in just a matter of minutes.

Sleep is evasive to RJ and has been since his training began, though it has gotten much worse since he was injected with the super soldier serum. He survives on just a few hours a night, and that’s enough to keep him functioning.

RJ keeps a journal, and it details his training from the time he began at HYDRA up until the present. It’s elaborate, spares no details, and is helpful for him to try to keep his head on straight.

RJ’s activation sequence has never been used, though he has been conditioned with one. It is: crimson, wistful, thirteen, current, snarl, eclipse, seven, anguish, twenty-one, voyage.

CHARACTER BIO —

tw: parental death, manipulation, heavy on the abuse/dv, murder

In truth, RJ remembered nothing before HYDRA. He did  not even know what “RJ” stands for. That was likely their intention, and they were successful. His file, inaccessible to him and under highly restricted access, would detail the following:

Richard James Boyle was born on Christmas Eve in the year 1999 in Woodbridge, New Jersey. His father was a conman, an outright criminal in his own right but he was good at what he did. His mother was sickly and his father couldn’t make ends meet, and so Richard Sr. turned to bigger crime in an attempt to keep his family afloat. Six bank heists in two years, and then he was caught and sent to prison when RJ was still a baby. His mother made do, they survived best they could until they couldn’t anymore. She passed away when RJ was five, and his memories of her even before HYDRA were fleeting. He dreamed of her sometimes, even still, but he could never remember her face.

Foster homes were the name of the game for the rest of his childhood.. Nothing was consistent, it felt as though as soon as he got settled he was packing up his belongings in a big black trash bag and being shipped off to the next one. This happened for several years, until his tenth year. The final family he was with sold RJ over to HYDRA for the cash, and with that RJ Boyle ceased to exist in the world he was used to and his training began.

He was handed over to Colt, who was RJ’s handler and responsible for both raising and training RJ. He was raised in a HYDRA facility, in a room that could be described as something one would see in a prison or a hospital, with Mr. Colt coming and going. The brainwashing began almost immediately, as Colt and his superiors wanted to ensure that their new asset was fully under their thumb.

RJ was the newest addition to the Winter Soldier program, an initiative that had  been long since abandoned. The history that followed was painful at best, and absolutely formative. Mr. Colt could be described as cruel, manipulative and abusive. RJ was not fed consistently, often beaten and tormented, and was taught that love and affection would be something that he would have to earn. RJ was told he showed potential, was gifted with talent and it was his duty to use that talent and potential. RJ was told that any worthwhile person would not waste their potential, would grab it by the horns and take it, and only then would he have value. His early trainings and missions were sloppy, and RJ was punished severely for this. He didn’t like killing, wasn’t particularly good at it, but that would change soon. He found it was easier not to think about it, treat it like any other job, and that was when things began to turn around.

His education was limited, certainly not formal, and only included what HYDRA and Mr. Colt thought would benefit their long term goals. So much of his training revolved around the Winter Soldier, whom RJ was taken in to emulate. RJ spent hours on end studying all the footage there was on Bucky Barnes, the original Winter Soldier, and reading every single file HYDRA had on the man. Over time, he could dictate the files from memory alone and could replicate the Winter Soldier's fighting style. Better yet, he knew his weaknesses, and his real mission became clear: to defeat the Winter Soldier. On top of this, RJ was shown the files of every other vigilante that HYDRA had at their disposal: he studied and studied and studied, and then practiced what he had learned.

He was seventeen when HYDRA began to fall, and RJ was shuffled around more often than not, moving from base to base as the organization struggled to stay hidden and alive. RJ’s training would continue, and he began to exceed expectations. He won every spar, he could assemble and disassemble every weapon handed to him with his eyes closed before using the weapon in question in record time. He was damn near undefeatable in the field, and finally he felt worthy. Mr. Colt disagreed.

On Christmas Day in 2020, RJ was given the super soldier serum after eleven years of training. He had been preparing for this for years, had studied and worked harder than he thought he ever could, and he finally proved worthy to the program. RJ was better than before - faster, stronger, more resilient, enhanced in every way. He was put through a myriad of tests, several field missions, to put his skills to the test and RJ aced every single one of them. One better, he did not require the hypnosis in place to force his hand and went on his missions willingly.He was no longer sloppy - he was clean, precise and deadly.

He was shipped off to Sokovia in February of 2021 with instructions that he would be working for the ISA’s Task Force. He was an agent, and would be at their disposal. Mr. Colt would not be coming with him, something that RJ was unsure of how to feel about as he had been the hand to feed him all these years. He would have a new handler, an unknown, and RJ didn’t like those. After all, it was his job to be prepared and stay one step ahead.

But it was nice to have a little more freedom. RJ Boyle was instructed to immerse himself in Matchak, to gain intel, to get comfortable with the lay of the land. The Winter Soldier would be needed soon, and it was RJ’s job to be sure he was ready.

WRITING SAMPLE —

EXTRAS —

Myers Briggs: ENTJ Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff Zodiac: Capricorn Sin: Envy

[sparkleofpizza]

Stolen glances - Damian Wayne x reader

A/n: hey, so this is the first time I’m ever posting an imagine so I’m kind of nervous, and also English isn’t my native language so I’m sorry if there’s anything wrong, feel free to message me if so. Also if you want to request something, feel free

Requested: no

Warnings: mentions of violence

Summary: All of the times Damian saw the reader and how he felt every time he did. 

Word count: 1.736

The first time Damian saw you, you were sitting on your desk, sipping something out of a straw and taking some notes with a pink pen. He stood there for a while, taking in your features. How your h/c framed your delicate face, plump lips slightly pouted and your focused e/c eyes. You looked so young and he wondered what you were doing at Wayne Enterprises. Perhaps you were some of the work’s daughter and were just studying while waiting for them? He never saw you there.

You glanced up, only in time to see someone walk really fast past you. Leaving you confused.

The second time Damian saw you, you were near the coffee machine on the 8th floor, talking to his brother. You were trying to convince Tim how he should try drinking more iced coffee, stating it would be a bit healthier, decreasing his amount of caffeine, just a tiny bit.

He briefly walked past the two of you, not stopping to acknowledge his older brother. But he did indeed walked a bit slower just to hear the sound that just erupted out of your mouth.

“I promise you I’m not trying to trick you into quit drinking coffee.” You giggled, taking a sip of your mug

The third time Damian saw you, you were walking down the hall, trying to reach the elevator while carrying your notebook, your bag, a bottle of water and lots of case files. He watched you struggle and normally he would just casually watch and laugh quietly when the person eventually dropped off all of their belongings on the floor, but when he saw you stumble, he was by your side, helping you keep your stuff from hitting the ground, in a flash. Even him was a bit surprised.

You looked up at him trough your lashes, blowing a hair strand out of your face. Your cheeks grew red from embarrassment as you tried your best to smile at the boy in front of you.

“Oh God.” You muttered “Thank you!”

“Here, let me help you carry these.” He pulled the cases and notebook out of your hand “Where you’re heading to?”

“Home. I mean, I’m going home so heading to the lobby so I can call an Uber.”

You cursed yourself mentally for rambling. You were making a fool of yourself in front of such a cute boy.

He stared at you with bright blue eyes, nicely styled dark hair, defined jawline. He held a small smile to his lips, watching you so flustered. You looked cute in his eyes.

“I will accompany you to the lobby then.” He said, pressing the elevator button “I’m Damian by the way.”

Putting a face to the name you so often heard come out of Tim’s mouth made you a bit more flushed than before.

“I’m Y/N.” You smiled at him

The fourth time Damian saw you, you were eating lunch on your own. You were typing something on your phone when he approached you, not really knowing what to do. Was it ok for him to have lunch with you? Although he had already eaten, he felt like making you some company.

After you two properly met last week, he took it upon him to find out more about you. He wanted to know what was there about you that made him so desperately want to be close to you. Were you some kind of metahuman that made people attracted to you? He only found out your birth, a few months younger than him, that you were from Central City, were majoring in Journalism and worked at the Communication department from the Wayne Enterprises.

“Hello.” He spoke, startling you “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s ok.” You smiled at him “Why don’t you join me?” You said motioning to the chair in front of you

The thirty-seventh time Damian saw you, he almost didn’t recognize you. It was dark outside and you were speed walking down the street. Your face was tear stained and he could see some tears running down freely. You hugged your body tightly, glancing over your shoulder and you heard their voices again.

Damian stood at a nearby rooftop, dressed in his Robin suite, trying to understand what was going on. You looked so distressed, so unlike the person he grew to know and to have a sweet spot in his cold demeanor. But than he heard it, and it all became way too clear to him, as clear as his range could possibly let it.

“You think some pepper spray and a kick on the stomach is going to help you get rid of us, hot stuff?” A man spoke, getting closer to you

“I like the feisty ones better.” Another one completed “And I would like for you to answer when asked a question.” He yanked your arm, making a shrink leave your lips

Damian dropped out of the rooftop, yanking the man away from you and with a swift move he was down on the floor. The other man tried a few punches, but Robin quickly avoided all of them, twisting the man’s arm and punching him on the face real hard until he was knocked out.

He turned around to see you sitting on the floor, shaking as you took deep breaths, trying to process everything that had jus happened. He took a few steps closer to you, and you looked up at him, eyes so wide and so full of fear he had to hold back from wrapping you up in his arms, stroke your hair and say it was ok because he would never ever let anyone hurt you ever again.

The fortieth time Damian saw you, he felt something in his heart he couldn’t point what it was. You were wearing a black skirt with a few buttons, a Arctic Monkeys shirt tucked in, black Vans. You hair was shiny and your mouth looked even more plumper, or was it his imagination? In his eyes you looked astonishing, breathtaking even. He watched you talk to some of your friends, a big smile plastered on your face, making you look even prettier. He stood still staring, his heart besting faster than ever had, and he had this urgent feeling of wanting to see you like this everyday, so happy.

“Father.” He said slowly, still not taking his eyes off of you “What is this weird feeling? My heart is beating too fast and my belly is like there is... something cold inside of it?”

Bruce turned around to look at his son, confused of what he was talking about, but then he followed his eyesight, catching the glimpse of you. Of course, his son was staring at his only friend on the real world. He smiled fondly once he realized what this is all about.

“Sounds like someone has a crush on Y/N.” Tim teased, standing beside his younger brother

Damian turned around too shocked to say something. He turned around to his father who only nodded his head.

A crush? He’s never had a crush before because this wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be alone for all eternity. He was a former assassin, the Demon’s grandson. One day he would follow into his father’s footsteps and become Batman. There was no space in his life to have a crush on someone. What if you got hurt because of him? Just the thought alone made shivers run down his spine.

“I can’t have a crush on her. She’s too good for me.” Was all he said before leaving

The forty-first time Damian saw you was the first time he was seeing you after coming on terms with his feelings. You were only wearing a sport bra and some yoga pants, he eyed your body up and down, snapping it back to your face once he heard you giggle.

“Hi Dami.” You kneeled down to pet his dog’s head “Hi Titus, how are you my babyboy?”

The dog barked happily at the treat and Damian’s heart was doing backflips inside his ribcage. Watching you being your sweet, adorable self. It was impossible to not find it lovingly.

“Hi, Y/NN.” He smiled at you, holding out a hand to help you up again “What are you doing?”

“Just jogging, need to burn those burgers we at lunch yesterday.”

He nodded, blurting it out before he could even think about it. Maybe it was the way your eyes were shining in the sun, or the way you were smiling at him, but at that moment he knew he was sure of something. “Do you want to go out on a date with me tonight?”

The boy’s eyes went wide once he realized he had said it out loud. Now it was real, and he was sure you were going to shut him down. Laugh at him in his face, you were just too pretty, too sweet, too nice and too cute for him.

“I would love to.” You smiled “Pick me up at 7?”

The sixty-eighth time Damian saw you, you were standing in front of him, in between his legs. He was sat on his bed in the manor, eyeing you carefully as you held his face in your hands, caressing his cheek lovely. Your eyes were watery as your hands went down to caress his chest, tracing a big bruise that was forming. Your lips quivered down and he was quick to sneak his arms around your waist, pulling you in a hug, resting his head on your chest.

“Oh Dami, you could’ve... You could’ve been seriously injured and it’s all because of me.” You whispered, too scared to say it louder

“Please don’t blame yourself, beloved.” He soothed you, pulling you onto his lap so your head was resting against the crock of his neck as he stoked your hair “I will always, always, protect you, no matter what.”

He wiped away your tears, kissing your cheeks tenderly. He hated to see you cry, specially if it was because of him.

You looked up at him. Pulling his face in your hands once more, leaning in until your lips touched in a loving kiss.

“You are the best that has ever happened to me.” You said against his lips

Damian smiled. Maybe he wasn’t doomed to live a life alone, after all.

[wotnahq]

Jonah Winston Wright • 18 • Male (he/him) • Metahuman • Hypercognition • C.A.R.M.A • Research & Development

BIOGRAPHY

Eleven years after he had abandoned his first son and wife, Winston Wright welcomed a second son into the world. In all reality, the older meta hadn’t wanted another child, having walked away from the first with very little guilt, but his second wife–a woman of high social standing and significant wealth–had desperately wanted a child, and Winston wanted to get her to shut up about it. What he hadn’t intended for, was for her to pass away when their child was only four, leaving Jonah Wright motherless, and in the full responsibility of his father.

Unlike his first go around, Winston had worked his way up in the world, clawing onto any money and power he could, and he couldn’t just leave this son, lest it harm his carefully curated reputation. This time, however, Winston had money and the ability to raise the boy with nannies and send him off to boarding school at the young age of eight. Jonah knew very little of his father’s business dealings, and really, he knew very little of his father at all. What he did know was that Winston was a powerful meta, and while he’d settled in Europe when he’d married Jonah’s mother, his dealings took him all over the world, and Jonah hardly ever saw him, even on holidays.

Jonah was a quiet boy by nature, and until he reached the age of 13, he seemed like a fairly normal boy. They knew, of course, there was a chance of Jonah developing some sort of powers, but Winston was too wrapped up in his own dealings to care. The quiet, normal existence of Jonah Wright was upended in his 13th year when his behaviours started to change. He’d never been a poor student, no, really Jonah had always been a good student, scoring acceptably average in comparison to his peers, and while he could seem a little scattered at times, he’d always been respectful to his teachers.

One day, it was like a switch had been flipped, and his mind was suddenly on hyperdrive. Thoughts came to him so quickly it was overwhelming at first. He missed a week of school when his power manifested, feeling so dizzy and nauseous from the overwhelming sensation. His body adjusted, as well as it could, but suddenly it was like he couldn’t sit still, or shut his mouth as the thoughts in his head flowed from him; correcting teachers, taking over lessons, and not being able to quiet himself, or his mind. It was like he suddenly had the answer key to everything, but he couldn’t get the information out fast enough. He got himself in trouble for those first few months, when his teachers didn’t understand what was going on with him, and Winston was too busy to take calls from the school. It wasn’t until one of Jonah’s regular nannies stepped in, putting the pieces together and using Winston’s connections to help understand what was actually going on with him.

It wasn’t long before Jonah tested out of high school early, and was accepted with open arms to one of the most prestigious schools in Europe. Winston even managed to be in town long enough to take Jonah out to dinner in congratulations for the young man’s achievements–though really he was calculating how useful Jonah could be to him in the future. Jonah continued on through university, finishing multiple degrees and a PhD in record time, though his focus always seemed to draw back to his own power, and the understanding of the metahuman gene. His schooling and research caught the attention of those at CARMA, and when young Jonah turned 18, and was able to be out on his own, he moved to America and joined the research and development team, hoping to consume as much knowledge as he is able to.

POWERS

HYPERCOGNITION: Jonah can instinctively or with little effort perform complex mental operations that are beyond the capability of a normal human mind, making his mental actions/process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses more powerful than an average person. With this power, Jonah is able to learn, think and read faster than the normal person, recall large amounts of information by memory, code and decode complex systems, hyperfocus on one topic, or multitask on many, and use the information he has at hand to come up with the probability of certain outcomes.

WEAKNESSES

While Jonah is able to learn at a much faster rate than others, he still has to be exposed to material to learn it (he is not able to simply come up with unknown information, unless he is able to deduce from previous info).  He struggles to ‘turn off’ his mind, and can often become overwhelmed with too many thoughts and too much information, resulting in negative physical responses such as nausea, headaches, dizziness and struggling to sleep. Due to his power, Jonah is often very scattered and disorganized, and sometimes cannot get himself to shut up.

PERSONALITY

+ Intelligent + Persistent + Loyal

– Scattered – Distracted – Know-it-all

[twiistedgalaxies]

Genesis: Chapter 6: Pill Capsules and Scrambled Eggs

How two brothers can take two opposite paths. How a man can be made into a monster and how the other must pay the ultimate price to save everything he knows and loves.

Or, alternatively:

The origins of All for One and One for All.

Previous Chapter

First Chapter

           Tomura held the smooth, plastic pill organizer, running his finger along the compartment’s hinges. He opened the small, light purple lids with a satisfying click. The morning after he’d forgotten to take his medications on his first night at the orphanage, he had woken up to his brother launching the pill organizer at his head at top speed and with deadly precision. He’d decided not to ask where or how his brother was able to find one. Hisashi seemed to have decided not to tell him. It was a staple of their relationship, him not asking and his not telling. Something left over from their parents, Tomura guessed, all too used to Hisashi pulling cash from seemingly thin air whenever household funds ran thin. At the thought of his parents, Tomura felt the ever present, heavy weight of grief grow more unbearable. He swallowed, over a week later and he still couldn’t believe they were gone.

         He laid out his pill bottles methodically, and set about the task of loading each compartment with his afternoon doses.

         Sunday. He and his brother had spent last weekend sleeping in the damp holding cells of the police station until the department could figure out what to do with them. The thin sheet they’d each been given did little to fight off the biting cold, most of those nights were spent crying, or staring numbly at the ceiling’s spiderweb cracks. The officers were kind, but it was clear they wanted to be rid of him and his brother. Hisashi had been angry. It was a strange relief, seeing another so upset at his parents’ meeting their ends. The way the people around them reacted, it seemed like the ones who mattered most to them had never even existed. The world just carried on, uncaring.

         Monday. They’d arrived at the orphanage. That day was a blur, he just remembered not liking the Matron and feeling apprehensive about the place that was clearly falling apart. He’s still sad he missed out on Monopoly.

         Tuesday. His first day of class. He was given a nightmarishly thick classwork packet so he could catch up on classwork, nearly a week had passed and he was still whittling it down slowly between assigned chores. In class he had spitballs launched at him whenever the teacher had his back turned. At recess, no one seemed to want to play with him, giving him a sneer or a disgusted grimace whenever he approached. Instead of playing, he settled for sitting under a large oak tree, working on the drills and exercises in his homework packet. Tomura wasn’t surprised that his peers didn’t like him, no one wants a cripple to drag them down. It still stung though.

         Wednesday. Hisashi and Leo must have noticed his dismal mood (despite his constant dodging of their questions) and pulled him aside after dinner to start their still ongoing game of Monopoly. The game was lasting for a ridiculously long time, and was getting stowed with all it’s pieces on a shelf in between sessions, strategically hidden under old textbooks to hide them from the other kids. Despite being glued to some clunky old phone the entire game, Hisashi was still winning by a landslide. This frustrated Tomura to no end, something that his brother’s friends found amusing.

         Thursday. Tomura took up a small delivery job for the Matron in exchange for a little bit of spending money. Christmas was coming soon, and he was determined to buy his brother a gift, even if it was just something small.The task landed him in a shadier part of town, which was a particularly impressive feat in the eastern side of LA. He found himself in an old impound lot, filled to the brim with ancient rusting cars and dead shrubs. A squat shack sat in the center of the lot, looking abandoned and haunted, especially next to an imposing storage shed. When he knocked on the door, in the back of his mind he worried the peeling paint and chipping wood would imbed itself in his hand. Luckily, that didn’t happen. The door opened to reveal a scowling, gaunt looking man with sallow skin that looked crumpled like tissue paper. 

         The man spoke and Tomura couldn’t help but reel back at his terrible breath and rotting teeth, “You one ‘a Abra’s?” he asked.

         Tomura nodded and quickly handed over the package he’d been given for this job. The man looked at it for a second, then at Tomura with a dissecting gaze. He shifted uncomfortably under his stare before he heard a grunt and had the door slammed in his face. Tomura blinked with surprise before promptly booking it out of there.

         When he returned to the orphanage, the Matron gave him a few crumpled bills and a lecture for his trouble. Apparently she expected him to make nigh instantaneous deliveries. On foot. Going across town. He had to bite his tongue to keep from protesting and instead chose to vent to his older brother, who’s been looking increasingly exhausted, later that night.

         Friday. Apparently he wasn’t the only person disliked by his peers, because as he was attacking the homework packet with vigour during recess he noticed three other kids, visibly metahumans, playing with marbles on the sidewalk. One kid looked like a lizard, another had hands that looked like they were coated in a metal alloy, and the last one’s skin seemed to shift colors with his mood. They were in the middle of their game when the kids who’d been launching spitballs and jeers at him throughout the week kicked over their marbles and a fight began to break out. Tomura was on his feet racing towards the group before he had time to think. Desperately, he tried to defend them, only to wind up in the matron’s office, given trash and gum duty for the next several weeks, as well as a particularly nasty black eye. 

         Later that night, he was woken up by the sounds of the matron arguing loudly on the phone in the common room. Something about payments, shipments, and inspections. It seemed like boring adult stuff, but he didn’t miss the fear in her eyes or the glistening sheen of sweat on her makeup covered face. He was barely able to duck back into his room and return to bed in time before she walked in to make sure the kids were all asleep.

         Saturday. He and Hisashi started the day in the back of a filthy taxi, and then in the waiting room of a hospital as the staff got their mom’s room ready. Her withering, pale body hooked up to countless machines is an image that will be burned into his eyes forever, he thinks. The nurse told them that it was a miracle that she survived, but the damage sustained to her brain by the gunshot has rendered her effectively a vegetable. The visit was spent with Tomura desperately clutching her bony hand, talking between sobs, and his brother rubbing circles into his back. For being in a hospital the room was so, so loud. The sounds of the respirator and beeping of the heart monitor created an all-penetrating blanket of noise that had Tomura waking up from a dead-sleep later that night, breathless and in a cold sweat. 

         Tomura closed the pill organizer, once again enjoying that satisfying click. All of his pain medications were at their maximum dose. He’d been feeling sicker lately, and knew that he wouldn’t have long until his body grew used to the dosing and he’d be rendered incapacitated again. At this thought, he felt a burr of anxiety in his chest. He shoved it down, worrying wouldn’t help anything. 

         Double-checking his pill organizer one last time, Tomura made sure that all of his things were in order (and well hidden) before he made his way to the mess hall. For all he disliked about the orphanage, he could still appreciate the colorful slats of light the stained glass windows cast on their eating area. The mess hall was as rowdy and packed as usual today, and Tomura found himself wincing at the noise. He made his way to the seat his brother had carved out for himself among his peers.

         The teen looked dead on his feet, dark bags under his eyes and surrounded by mysteriously obtained cups of coffee. It was an odd sight to see his normally well-manicured brother so dishevelled, Tomura was instantly worried.

          “Hey ‘mura,” his brother greeted, though it came out as a half mumble.

         “Are you okay?” he asked, sliding into the seat across from him.

         “Peachy,” Hisashi replied, brightening when he saw his friends enter the room.

         Tomura frowned at the obvious lie, “You’re clearly not fine, what’s wrong?”

         Hisashi shifted in his seat visibly uncomfortable, “We all process grief in different ways, I’d really prefer if you didn’t keep pushing, it’s been a long week.”

         Tomura nodded in understanding, feeling guilt twist at his stomach, “Sorry,” he grasped his brother’s hand across the table and looked him in the eyes, determined to reinforce his next words, “If you ever want to talk, I’m here, it doesn’t just have to be you who supports me, ya know?”

         His brother let out a low hum, and jerked his head towards a table across the room, “It looks like the mutant brats you foolishly put yourself in harm’s way for are over there, if you want to go hang out with them.”

         Tomura felt his eyes light up, despite his mild wince at the memory of the verbal reaming his brother gave him after that incident, and a smile stretched across his face. “Alright! I’ll catch you later, okay?” he finished that statement with a look that carried silent promise. We’ll continue this discussion later.

         Hisashi smiled sardonically, “Of course.”

                                                   -@~*^*~@-

         It had, in fact, been a long week. Hisashi smiled and bullshitted with the acquaintances he’d collected since landing in this barnacle of scum attached to an ever-sinking ship. He had spent the week, while confined to the orphanage, feeling for their mannerisms, expectations, and wants. It never hurt to cultivate future connections after all, even if they were rather irritating, and if their nightly Monopoly game served as a device to further these connections and goals as well as make his baby brother happy? All the better.

         He yawned, the caffeine he’d been given as a cashed-in favor could only do so much. There was an increasingly familiar buzz in his pocket. He carefully kept his facial expression from changing. As he spoke about baseball or something equally trivial, his thoughts turned to the thorn in his side.

         After making contact with Matt his first night at the orphanage, he was reached out to by an anonymous messenger. They asked him to perform a steep task. One that he wasn’t particularly willing to fulfill.

                                              Unknown Number

                                              Tuesday, 3:25am

[I need a favor.]

                                                                              [How did you get this number?]

[We have a..]

[Mutual associate.]

                                                                                                                     [I see.]

                                               Tuesday, 1:03pm

[So about the favor]

                                                                                                                      [Yes?]

[There's a pest that we need you to eliminate.]

                                            [I assume that’s not all you intend for me to go off of.]

[Of course not.]

                                                [I’d like to meet with you face to face before doing                                                                                                       anything drastic.]

                                                          [Security concerns you see, I’m not going to

                                                               such efforts for someone I’ve never met.]

                                             Wednesday, 11:00am

[Fine.]

[We’ve decided to meet with you.]

[Come to the old warehouse off West Beverly]

[You better be as good as we’ve been told you are.]

                                     [Of course, only the best quality of service for my clients.]

[Be there at 1am sharp, Sunday morning.]

                                                                                                        [See you then.]

                                               Saturday, 9:00am

[Just confirming that you aren’t pussying out

on us.]

                                                                                                       [Of course not.]

                                                                     [How am I to know this is not a trap?]

[Don’t be an idiot, why would we ambush you if we 

want something from you?]

         Based on the use of “we” in their correspondences, it seems like he was dealing with an organization of some sort. That, or some petulant brats whose daddy hit them too much. Either way, he’d always met with his clients face to face to sort out the specifics of his deals. Just because he’d grown rusty doesn’t mean he’d grown stupid. Despite their placations, he knew that he could very easily be walking into a trap. Especially, since the mafia was involved. It’s because of this that he (unfortunately) had to exchange texts with Matt.

                                                         Pest

                                              Thursday, 2:00pm

                                                                   [I’m meeting with a client on Saturday.]

[Oh? So you’re finally taking on deals again?]

[A gif of Mushu from Mulan, clutching a sword

and talking to a cricket saying, “My little baby,

off to destroy people.”]

                                                                                                            [Very funny.]

                                                [I don’t know how trustworthy they are, so if I don’t

                                          send you a text confirming my safety by Sunday night,

                                      assume the worst. If anything bad happens I need you to

                                                                                         take care of my brother.]

[And I’m doing this because…?]

                                        [If they do prove to be trustworthy, I can give you an in.]

                              [I know you’re always looking for new sources of information.]

[Alright, alright. I’m a man of my word. I’ll lend

you a hand.]

                                                                                               [I’ll hold you to that.]                                                                                                                          Seen

         Dealing with Matt more than necessary was an.. undesirable outcome. However, Hisashi wasn’t so foolish as to enter a meeting, completely blind, with no back-up plan. At least this way he could ensure Tomura would be safe, even if something happened to himself. He was just about to dig into his eggs when the matron stepped up to the front of the room. As he continued to engage in pointless chatter, he watched her from the corner of his eye. This couldn’t be good.

         “Ahem-hem,” the insufferable woman began. Her pointless throat clearing was drowned out in the noise that flooded the mess hall. He watched her pull her angular features into an often adorned scowl. She looked at those under her care as if they’d just taken a leak in her cereal. 

         “Excuse me,” she tried, once again ignored. Looking frustrated, she grabbed a nearby glass and spoon from a table and clinked them together loudly, finally forcing the room into silence, “First of all, I will not tolerate such insolence from those I house, feed and clothe. If it takes me this long to get everyone’s attention again, the consequences will be severe, understood?”

         “Yes Matron Abra,” the children droned, sounding as if they were trying out for a funeral march ensemble.

         “Good. Secondly, it has come to my attention that some of you have been making late night excursions,” she continued. Hisashi worked to keep his face schooled into a calm facade. He’d been going out each night to perform small jobs for Matt. Each time he went out, he was always careful. There had to be someone else slipping out as well, but who? The mess hall erupted into murmurs as his peers asked similar (and several more) questions. Matron Abra waited a few beats for the chatter to die down, then said, “As a result, the staff and I will be patrolling the hallways and making increased checks to the sleeping quarters. Within the week, we will be hiring on a security detail to ensure that everyone is ah,” her face split into a viscous grin, “safe and sound in their beds.”

         Hisashi felt his brows knit together, how the hell could they afford a security detail when this place was falling apart? Then, it dawned on him as to how much of a hindrance these new measures would be, sneaking out was already a pain on it’s own, but with guards and frequent visits to the sleeping quarters? He’d have to start pulling out tricks he hasn’t used since he was in middle school. Well, fuck.

A/N: This is a bit of a filler chapter, since I didn't want Tomura to drop off the face of the Earth narrative-wise while Hisashi wakes up each day and chooses violence. As per usual, feel free to leave a comment, feedback helps me improve my writing! I don't have much else to say in this week's A/N, school has made me really tired and I want to take a forty-year long nap.

Edit: I think the formatting gods are smacking me with a stick today. First I was having issues with AO3 then tumblr decided my last paragraph needed to be at the top of the post.

AO3

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really THAT Bad?

The DC films have been a mixed bag, to put it lightly. As of 2020, for every fun and enjoyable superhero film like Wonder Woman, Shazam, Aquaman, and Birds of Prey, there has been a film that was reviled or polarizing. Dawn of Justice and Justice League are both common punching bags, but there is one movie that stands out as the single most despised film in the DC cinematic universe so far:

Suicide Squad.

A lot of this comes from just how unashamedly blatant the film is at being a rushed cash in on the type of quirky superhero movie that Guardians of the Galaxy helped popularize: a bunch of wild and wacky antiheroes team up, fight a big problem, make one liners, and become a family, all while an awesome soundtrack blares in the background. It seems like the easiest thing in the world to rip off, but there’s a lot of heart and charm in Guardians that it’s not easy to replicate. And if you ask most critics… this movie did not.

Opinions on the film tend to range from lukewarm to outright hating, with IHE and the [REDACTED] Critic all throwing in their two cents. Perhaps the most damning review of all came from Mick LaSalle, who wrote:

“If you know someone you really can’t stand — not someone you dislike, not someone who rubs you the wrong way, but someone you really loathe and detest — send that person a ticket for “Suicide Squad.” It’s the kind of torment you can wish on your worst enemy without feeling too guilty: not something to inflict permanent damage, just two hours of soul-sickening confusion and sensory torment.”

There’s not much love for this, is what should be abundantly clear. And it’s really a shame, because there is stuff this film has going for it, but it wasn’t really enough to stop DC from basically hitting the soft reboot button and snagging the actual James Gunn to make a sequel while also doing their best to downplay that the events of this film actually happened. But now with a few years of hindsight, I have to go back and wonder like the heathen I am…

Is Suicide Squad REALLY that bad?

THE GOOD

Yes, amazingly, there is some good stuff here, mostly to do with the casting. At least half the cast is just pitch perfect for their roles. Famous rapper and YouTube Rewind star Will Smith as Deadshot is, of course, one of the standout examples; he brings a lot of charm and charisma to his role of an assassin who really loves his daughter, but then again, this is Will Smith. It’s hard not to love the guy in anything he does. Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is another inspired bit of casting, and she truly owns the role, and Jai Courtney is perhaps the most consistently enjoyable member of the Squad, Captain Boomerang, the exact sort of stupid D-list villain who SHOULD be getting screentime in a movie like this.

Of course, the very best bit of casting is Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, in Harley’s big screen debut. Robbie has such an enthusiasm for the role that shines through even with the clunky script, and while she would definitely improve her craft for her outing in Birds of Prey, her performance here still has that spark of zany fun that Harley needs, cementing Robbie as the perfect star for the role. Frankly, that’s the feeling that can be gathered from a lot of these really good performances; they’re good, but they lack proper refinement, and so are stuck spouting the stupidest, corniest, clunkiest lines imaginable. But yes, really the worst thing you can say about Harley in this film is that her outfit is absolutely atrocious and demeaning.

While we’re on the subject of Harley Quinn, tough… while the whole situation with the Joker is something I’ll get to shortly, I think their relationship in this film is actually done well in many aspects. I’ve always preferred the original idea of “Mad Love” over the glorified domestic abuse that Joker x Harley has often devolved into, and while there is a bit of the latter, the fact that Joker literally goes out of his way to save Harley at every opportunity to the point he’s a definition satellite love interest is really good. Of course, this was thrown out for Birds of Prey, but I do think it worked in the context of this film.

Of course, we all know that the greatest aspect of this film is REALLY Slipknot, the single most powerful member of the Squad. I’ve already written an entire Psycho Analysis on why he’s the greatest villain in the history of cinema, so just read that for the rundown on how our man Slipknot climbs his way into your heart and mind.

THE BAD

So there is just a lot to go over here.

First, there’s the soundtrack’s implementation. As a blatant Guardians ripoff, everything the characters do needs to be punctuated by some sort of awesome music to tie the scene together. The difference is that where in the Guardian movies the soundtrack is used as a storytelling tool to help subtly emphasize points that the narrative doesn’t want to spell out for you, Suicide Squad just has these songs because they’re cool and because Guardians did it. Why is “Black Skinhead” playing while Deadshot tests his weapon skills? Why is “House of the Rising Sun” playing during Waller talking about the Squad? What exactly do these songs add besides background music? The opening montage of everyone in the Squad is particularly bad because the songs are just switching up really quickly as the montage goes along, which echoes a complaint I had about Little Nicky, of all films: “One of the more noticeable problems is the usage of music; in the course of one single scene, they play four different songs, and all of this is in a span of about one or two minutes. Just pick a song and stick to it for fuck’s sake!” About the only song that is really properly utilized is “Heathens,” which plays over the (admittedly cool) credit sequence.

Now let’s get into the characters, because for every awesome character in this film, there’s two that just absolutely suck or are so underutilized it’s laughable. Probably the worst case of this is Killer Croc, who despite being a stunning practical effect and probably the reason this film scored an Oscar, does pretty much nothing for the entire film, save for a short bit in the ending where he swims. You’d be entirely forgiven for forgetting he’s in the film, which is not something you should be saying about a Batman villain of this caliber.

Katana and Diablo are both characters who should be awesome, but the story givers them nothing to do and rushes their character arcs, respectively. Katana is yet another character you’d probably forget is there, even though she has a lot of fascinating elements to her character (some of which are detailed in her infamous introduction, which don’t worry, I’m working towards it), but nothing is really done with her. Diablo is actually one of the best and most fleshed-out characters in the film, but the narrative just completely fails to justify him or his ultimate heroic sacrifice; by the end, he claims the Squad is like family, but they’ve never really done anything to earn this. Like, think to the ending of Guardians of the Galaxy, where we have moments like Drax standing up for Gamora and Groot sacrificing himself. These moments only work because the characters had their relationships built up over the course of the movie so that there is a punch when these things happen. Suicide Squad really just throws it in just to have it.

Then we come to our villain. Enchantress is yet another villain I once detailed on Psycho Analysis, and my opinion on her remains unchanged. While she most certainly has a cool design, she is absolutely not the sort of world-ending supernatural threat a team of snarky jackasses should be fighting on their first mission together. The Squad should have had a mission more grounded in reality, and that can’t happen when you have an ancient interdimensional witch causing a Luddite zombie apocalypse through the power of interpretive dance. There’s also the fact that there’s never really any reason given to care about the character of June Moon, the host of the Enchantress, so the desperation of Rick Flag (a character so boring and pointless I didn’t even waste time mentioning him before) to save her comes off as hollow as most of the movie’s other emotional moments. Overall, Enchantress is just a boring generic doomsday villain who feels wildly out of place in the story and just doesn’t do anything to make herself stand out.

Then we have Joker.

I’m not really going to get into Jared Leto’s obnoxious behind-the-scenes antics, because that has little bearing on his performance, kind of like how his performance has little bearing on the film. As I mentioned before, this Joker is nothing more than a satellite for Harley. This is probably a good thing, because despite being called Joker he’s pretty divorced from most other interpretations; while he plays up the thuggish, brutish elements the Joker does typically have, everything else about him is just so jarringly non-Joker as to be laughable, from his ridiculous grill to the absolutely cringeworthy “Damaged” tattoo on his forehead. I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say he’s the worst villain in a superhero movie ever as some have, mostly because he’s not even in the film long enough to leave much of an impact. I will, however, say that so far he is the absolute worst onscreen depiction of Joker in film. Once again, if you’d like to hear more of my in-depth thoughts on Leto’s portrayal, I did make a Psycho Analysis on him a while back.

But all that aside, the worst aspect of this film is the writing. The writing is just utterly abysmal throughout, and while there are a few good lines sprinkled here and there, a lot of the dialogue is cringeworthy and the story itself is a convoluted mess. The story takes so many nonsensical turns from the get-go, starting with how Amanda Waller thinks a bunch of non-superpowered criminals could take down a metahuman threat; what the hell is Killer Croc, whose only power is “being an ugly cannibal,” going to do against Superman? That’s like if you put Leatherface up against a Predator, who would be stupid en-

...Oh. Right. Well, if nothing else, Amanda Waller has a very bright future as a designer for Mortal Kombat games. Beyond that, as mentioned above, a lot of the characters simply exist and serve little purpose in the narrative, and the ones that do serve a purpose are underplayed unless they’re Deadshot or Harley. You’d think Diablo’s tragic backstory and desire to have a family or Flag’s desire to save June from her curse would be more major elements, but nah. We don’t get much, if any, development on these fronts. And for the dialogue… well, I think this one speaks for itself:

Is It Really THAT Bad?

So I’ve been pretty hard on this film overall, I think, but here’s the shocking twist: I don’t think this is the worst DC movie. Frankly, I find the claims that this is the bottom of the barrel in terms of superhero films a gross overexaggeration. F4ntastic and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are far and away worse films with little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever in them. At the very least, Suicide Squad is a fun kind of stupid, whereas those movies are bleak, miserable slogs that fail to even try and engage the viewer on any level.

And then, even within the DC movie lineup, I would not say this is worse than Dawn of Justice. Dawn of Justice has a more coherent story, and it in a general sense has better writing, dialogue, and so on… but it isn’t fun, it’s overly long, it’s incredibly pretentious, and it absolutely squanders the coolest concept for a crossover fight that there ever could be, all while giving us a Lex Luthor who is an obnoxious, whiny, sniveling brat who is utterly unbelievable as a threat. Suicide Squad almost seems within the ballpark of being self aware that it’s stupid schlock, and I find that infinitely more respectable than a film that, regardless of its artistic merit, thinks it’s deep and meaningful when it is anything but.

Suicide Squad is firmly on the side of “So bad it’s good,” and even within that category it’s somewhat underrated. I don’t necessarily think this film needs more respect per se, but I feel like it falls into the same category as movies like The Emoji Movie, where it isn’t good by any means but people will rant and rave about how it’s destroying cinema by being apocaliptically bad instead of just saying it’s crappy and moving on with their lives. Like this isn’t a great movie, but at least there’s a couple of enjoyable things, and superhero movies have been through far worse. Its current score of 6 on IMDB is honestly pretty fair. Is it spectacular? No. Could you be watching something way better. Definitely. But is it a trashy, idiotic romp with some good actors and some fun performances in a story so mind-bogglingly dumb that it needs to be seen to be believed? Hell yes.

[five-rivers]

Long Night in the Valley chapter 12

The scene shifted the moment Tempest woke up. They were outside, on a street in the middle of the city.  Storm clouds circled overhead.  

Tempest stood in front of them, hands in her pockets, a bland expression on her face.  

“So,” she drawled.  “You’re Nine’s friends.”

“Uh,” said Ochako, taken aback.  Right after Four had said she wouldn’t talk to them, this was disconcerting.   “Yes?”

“I’m his teacher,” said Aizawa, stepping forward.

“Yeah?  You think you’re doing a good job raising up little child soldiers?”

“Excuse me?” said Aizawa.  

“You heard me.”  She shifted her gaze to Ochako, then to Todoroki and Iida.  “I bet Souma told you I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“He did say something along those lines, yes,” said Iida, even as Ochako worked very hard to elbow him.

“I can follow why he’d think that,” Tempest said. “I spent most of my life fighting against the government.  Lord knows I wouldn’t have approved of him choosing a ‘pro hero’ to follow after him.”  She took her hands out of her pockets to make air quotes.  She was wearing brass knuckles.  “Whatever a pro hero is supposed to be.  Government lackeys.  Cops and war criminals with a different name.  I’m shocked he pulled a halfway decent person from the muck.”

“We’re not war criminals!” protested Iida.  

“Oh, yeah?  I forgot, the Geneva convention was nixed, wasn’t it?  They had this big meeting and decided none of it applied to metahumans, and then, bam!  Everyone’s a metahuman, so it doesn’t apply at all, huh?  Neat, right?”

“What we’re doing now might not be what you’re used to,” said Ochako, “but it’s the way society works, now.”

“And we’re not killing people, like you did,” said Iida.  Ochako winced at his combative addition.  

“I did what I had to, to get people out of the torture camps,” said Tempest.  “People like my little sister.  You know what they did to her?  They thought her power was just controlled by her voice.  So, they cut out her vocal cords.”

“They don’t do that anymore,” said Todoroki.  

“You think a government like that is just going to stop doing things?  Without people making them?  Without being forced?”  Tempest laughed and looked up at the swirling sky.  “Maybe you do.  You’re just kids, after all.  But tell me this, do you think they didn’t know exactly what was happening to your family, Todoroki Shouto?”

Aizawa cleared his throat.  “What’s your point, here?” he asked.  “What do you want from us?”

Tempest looked back at Aizawa.  The coldness in her brown eyes made Ochako shiver.  “We could have kept you out,” she said. “That Suzuki idiot, too.  Do you know why we didn’t?”

“Enlighten us,” said Aizawa.  

“Because the way we do it would cause irreparable brain damage.  We know, because we’ve done it before.  I thought it was worth it, but the others didn’t want to hurt ‘Nine’s friends.’”

“Are you implying that we aren’t Midoriya’s friends?” asked Todoroki, frowning.  

Tempest huffed and wind whipped down the road, making Ochako cover her face.  

“No.  To be honest, I’m not completely sold on Nine, either.  He wanted to part of the system so bad, and that’s not to mention—” she huffed again.  “At least he knows what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.  You four, though… I’m stuck with Nine.  I don’t owe you anything and you’re causing all these problems.  What I want from you—”

Behind her, lightning snapped down from the sky.

“—is to prove to me you’re worth it.”

.

“Vlad, the police were able to find your car,” said Powerloader, holding his hand over the receiver of the staff room telephone.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Vlad.  “I hate taking public transportation.”  He paused.  “I mean, uh, did they find Yagi?  Is he alright?”

“No, they didn’t find Yagi.”

“Great,” said Vlad.  “So, ask them when I can pick it up.  Why are you making that face?  Did Yagi total it?  I bet he did.  ‘Symbol of Peace,’ my—”

“No,” interrupted Powerloader.  “Yagi didn’t total it.  Or crash it.  It was parked in an alley near the Musutafu entertainment district.”

“Where Midoriya had that fight with Hawks,” said Vlad, putting his head in his hands.  “It got wrecked by one of them, didn’t it?”

“No,” said Powerloader.  “It was parked in an alley.  They found it on a security camera.  It isn’t there anymore.”

“They took it again?”

“The League of Villains took it.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

.

The bus felt empty with half the class missing. The remaining 1-A students (plus Shinso) were all huddled together at the front, mooching off of the teachers mobile hotspots.  

“Did my email go through yet, kero?” asked Tsuyu, leaning over her seat to look at Denki’s computer.  

“Not yet,” said Denki.  “I’ve got all the pictures you guys sent arranged, but I wish we had more video material.  Ashido was the one with the most…”  He sighed. “Ashido, gossip queen, when you wake up I will apologize for all my comments about your hobbies.”

“I have some videos of Midoriya.”

“Trust us, Mineta, no one want your videos,” said Yaoyorozu.

“Huh?  Why not?”

“Tell us this.  How many of your videos are actually of Midoriya and don’t just have him incidentally in the background while you try to film girls.”

“None of them,” said Mineta, obviously not seeing why this was wrong.  “Why would I film Midoriya?”

“Mic,” said Midnight, “please remind me to sign up the walking lawsuit for some sensitivity classes.  How did Eraser miss this?”

“Unfortunately, Shouta is about as sexual as the average rock, so…”

“Remind me to sign him up for some training, too, then.”

“Will do.”

“Walking lawsuit?” asked Mineta.  

Everyone else sighed.  Then Denki’s laptop pinged.

“Huh.  I just got an email from Principal Nezu.”

The adults, including Green Light, the bus driver, blanched.  Adults were bothered by the weirdest things.  In the end, Nezu was just a guy with a quirk, right?  A hero, even!  Principal Nezu, the Education Hero!

Okay, he’d scared Denki (Mr. Terrible Grades) a lot in elementary and middle school, but really.  

(Okay, the crane thing at the Final Exam had been high-key terrifying, but he was trying to get past that.)

“Huh,” repeated Denki, having read the email. “That’s interesting.”

“What is it, my electric friend?” asked Aoyama, drapping himself sideways across his seat.

“Aoyama-san,” said Midnight, “don’t put your feet on the windows.”

“Principal Nezu sent me a link to an ‘All Might adopt a kid’ fanfiction, and it’s by—”

“Midoriya writes fanfiction?” asked Shouji, evidently surprised into using his real mouth to speak.  

“That’s cute, kero,” said Tsuyu.  “It must have been before he met the real All Might, though.”

“No,” said Denki, “it was last updated just a couple of weeks ago, and, well… Midoriya didn’t write it.”

“So, who did?” asked Yaoyorozu.  

“Not Nezu, right?” asked Jiro, winding her earphone jack around her finger.  

“There’s no way, right, Kaminari-san?” asked Present Mic, nervously.  

“Uh, no, no, it’s, uh, it’s All Might. According to Nezu.”

A beat of silence.

“What?”

Denki inserted his pinky into his right ear, trying to clear it.  Man, if the Bakusquad had been here rather than the quiet half of the class…

“Yeah, it says here that this serves All Might right for working on this during school hours?”

More silence.  

“Green Light, the road!”  

“Oops, sorry!”

“Hey, guys, are we sure that All Might didn’t, you know, kidnap Midoriya rather than the other way around?  Guys?”

.

Gran Torino, also known as Torino Sorahiko, was an active hero.  That meant late nights and late mornings.  He was also an old man.  A very old man.  Late mornings often turned into noons and afternoons.  

Sometimes, during those noons and afternoons, he liked to ignore technology and the outside world for a good long while.  Maybe read the paper a little bit.  Or one of those terrible romance novels Nana had left him in her will.  

Still, he was a hero, one wrapped up in something best described as a two-hundred-year-long shadow war, so eventually he did turn on the news.  

Only to see Toshinori’s boy fighting Hawks on live television.  

Not to mention Toshinori hanging out in the background with a shaved head.  

And the ticker said UA student Midoriya Izuku kidnaps Symbol of Peace.

(Which was the dumbest thing he had ever heard, and under other circumstances, he would have been rolling on the floor laughing.)

Gran Torino was an old man, but, luckily, he only felt like he was simultaneously having a heart attack and a stroke.  His body was more than functional enough to place a not-at-all panicked phone call to one Tsukauchi Naomasa.  

.

Tsukauchi Naomasa was incredibly busy.  That busy-ness was divided mostly evenly between desperately trying to find his best friend (who had evidently decided to make a hopefully brief foray into kidnapping teenagers) and trying to figure out what the commission was taking, because it had to be illegal.  Oh, and putting together a complaint that the commission was infringing on police prerogatives.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure how much traction that last would get, since pro heroes had been steadily gaining more and more responsibilities even as the police were losing both them and the power that came with them.  Not to mention Midoriya’s stunt with Hawks… Which… Naomasa just wanted to know why?  What had the point of that been?  On either side?

(Sometimes he wished he were friends with normal people.  Like… he didn’t know… an accountant, maybe?)

(Not that he would give Toshinori up for the world. Just, some normalcy would be nice, too.)

He took a deep breath, remembered what he always told Toshinori about stress, and took a mouthful of room-temperature coffee.

In that thirty-second period, two more problems presented themselves to him.  

One, his cell phone began to ring, displaying the contact information for Gran Torino.  

Two, his email softly pinged, and a message from Principal Nezu asking for any images or videos Toshinori might have sent him slid into his inbox.  

Briefly, Naomasa considered ignoring both of them, but that wasn’t a realistic option and was irresponsible besides.  Contrary to his character.  

He picked the lesser of two evils and answered Gran Torino’s call.

.

Garaki was going to have a mental breakdown.  This was fitting because his car had broken down.  Midoriya Inko was asking him if he thought that his ‘friend’ might come pick them up, if it was safe.  If his ‘friend’ had a car.  

This last had almost sent him into hysterics. Gigantomachia in a car oh-ho!

Except it wasn’t funny at all, as this was almost certainly going to result in his death at the hands of All for One.  No matter that he considered the man his very dearest of friends, he was under no illusions about what All for One would do to him over this inexcusable error.

Perhaps he should just cut his losses and get one of the remote-activated noumu to come for them.  

Then, inexorably and inevitably, things managed to get even worse.

.

“Stop the car!” shouted Tomura.  

“But you said not to—”

“I know what I said!  Stop the car!”

Tomura twisted to see out the rear passenger window. Everyone else turned to follow his gaze, effectively blocking his view.  

“Get out of my way!” demanded Tomura.

There was some awkward, half-hearted shuffling.

“Does that look like anyone to you?” Tomura hissed.

“Yeah!  Like the doctor!” said Toga.  

“I’ve never seen him standing up, though,” said Spinner, dubiously.  “It seems out of character.”

“I didn’t know he owned a car,” mused Compress, rubbing the bottom edge of his mask.  

“Not him!” snapped Tomura.  “The woman!”  He pointed angrily at the rapidly approaching woman with green hair, narrowly avoiding dusting Mr. Compress’s top hat.  

“Eh?  What about her?” asked Spinner.  

“Doesn’t she look familiar to you?”

“To be honest, everyone without mutation quirks looks kind of the same to me.”

“Someone without face blindness.”

“Oh!  She looks like Izu-kun!  Do you think that’s his mom?”

The woman knocked on the window of the car.  Twice, unhelpfully rolled it down.  

“Thank you so much for stopping, we—Oh!”  She took a step back.

She apparently recognized them.  Joy.  He was going to unpack his feelings about this woman later.

“Hey, doc,” rasped Tomura, annoyed.  “What the hell have you been doing?”

“Ahem,” said Garaki, finally stepping out from behind the car.  “I didn’t expect to see you here, Shigaraki Tomura.”

“Because you blew us off and stranded us in the middle of Musutafu?”

“No,” said Garaki, in a way that absolutely meant ‘yes.’  “I knew you were resourceful enough to safely make it out of the city.”

“Oh, yeah?  Really?  You—”

Compress chose that moment to slam his face into the back of Tomura’s head.  Tomura steadied himself automatically on one of the car’s uprights, which cracked dangerously under his hand.  He pulled back as if burned.  

When he looked up, the gremlin’s mother was halfway to the tree line with – What was that in her hand?

He looked back over his shoulder.  

That was Twice’s goddamn mask.  

Compress, for some reason, was also missing his stupid mask (and covering his face like the dramatic weirdo he was), and Toga basically had hearts in her eyes.  Spinner was being Spinner, and therefore ninety percent useless.  He was lucky he was fun to play games with.

How to make her stop?

“Hey!” he shouted.  “We have your son!”

This was a lie, as far as he knew (unless Dabi had snatched him on his way back; it wasn’t impossible), but, he was a villain.

The green-haired woman stopped and turned back, allowing Tomura a full view of her expression.  

He decided that he regretted everything.

.

“Okay,” said Izuku, multitasking by letting Two pick the lock on the League’s safe, “considering Gigantomachia’s ability to track by smell and the questionable running water, we can’t just sneak out.  He’ll find us.  So… I think our best play is getting him to attack Shigaraki, and then when they’re both distracted, we run for it.”

Toshinori nodded and sighed.  “If only we had a giant jug of perfume.  We could throw it at his face and disrupt his ability to smell us.”

“I mean, I found a whole bunch of garbage a way back.  That isn’t perfume, but it does stink.”

“No, no, your plan is superior.  We’d draw too much suspicion if we attacked him like that. Perfume could be written off.”

“Yeah, I can see that.  Because perfume is a ‘nice’ thing.”

“Indeed.”

“It isn’t actually very nice to have it all over you, though,” said Izuku.  

“No,” agreed Toshinori.  “It isn’t.”

The safe popped open.

“I won’t ask if you don’t.”

“Deal.”

“But, anyway, assuming we do get away, what then? Where do we go?  And—Wow.  The League of Villains is broke.  I almost feel bad.”

“I was going to say Deika, but that’s too far, now, and we don’t know if Gigantomachia will come after us,” said Toshinori.  “Drawing him to a place full of civilians would be irresponsible.”

“Yeah,” said Izuku.  He frowned, pulling his head from the safe, and glanced out the window. “What about the Wild Wild Pussycats?”

“What about them?” asked Toshinori.  

“They’re near here, aren’t they?  And they’ve got that whole complex, so, I mean…  I don’t know how they feel about us right now, but it wouldn’t be a terrible place to hide.  Would it?”

“I’d hate to bring all of this down on them as well,” said Toshinori.  “But… That being said, I don’t believe they’re actually there.  They were taking some time off because of what happened to Ragdoll.”

“That makes sense,” said Izuku.  “Should we take the risk?”

“I’m unsure if we have a choice, my boy.  We could try roughing it, but that puts us in a very vulnerable position.”

“And we can’t stay here, with the League.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Okay.”  Izuku sighed and started to thumb through the League’s collection of fake IDs, looking for something he could use.  “Wild Wild Pussycats it is.  We’ve got to convince Machia to attack Shigaraki, and… then we sneak out the back while they’re fighting.”  He shook his head.  “It sounds really unheroic when I put it that way.”

“Under these circumstances, I think heroic is the set of actions where no one dies.”

His mentor was right.  Izuku still felt weird about this, though.  (The pettiness was completely different.)

Not to mention…

He put the last of the fake IDs away and massaged his temples.  “They’re doing something weird in there,” he said.  “I’m going to check on them.  I might be out of it.”

“Don’t worry,” said Toshinori, patting Izuku on the shoulder.  “I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”

(Perhaps all of this could have gone unsaid, what with their connection, but saying things out loud made them easier to organize.)

.

“Hey!” shouted Izuku over the roaring wind. “Stop that!”

“Are you going to fight me, Nine?  All by yourself?”

“No,” said Izuku, somehow contriving to look down his nose at her despite the height difference and the fact that Tempest was floating several meters in the air.  “I won’t have to.  Because I have a secret weapon.”

Ochako could almost see Tempest roll her eyes.

“And,” shouted Izuku, “do you seriously think I just wanted to be part of the system?  Are you serious?  I wanted to help people.  People the system failed.  It isn’t like they’re responsible for the system either!”  He waved his hand to indicate Ochako, Iida, Todoroki, and Aizawa.

“I’d argue about your hobo teacher.  Is this your secret weapon?”

“No, this is, Great-Aunt Miranda.”

Tempest opened her mouth, then closed it again. The wind began to die down.  “I’m – I don’t know what the point of that was—"

“Neither do I!  What’s the point of this?”

“The point is determining whether or not you have people you can rely on, or a bunch of backstabbers who’ll hand you over to a government lab as soon as it’s convenient!”  She stabbed a finger at Ochako.  “She’s just in ‘heroics’ for the money!”  She pointed at Iida.  “He’s only here because it’s traditional for his family.”   She gestured at Todoroki with her other hand.  “He’s doing it mostly out of spite.  And who knows what your hobo teacher is doing this for!”

“There’s nothing wrong with any of that!” protested Ochako.  “You must have your own motivations, too!”

“She does!” shouted Izuku.  “Considering what they are, you have no room to be criticizing Iida!  Besides, you don’t even like me!”

“This isn’t about liking you or disliking!  You’re the—” Tempest visibly cut herself off, then took a deep breath.  She set herself down on the street.  “Knowing what we do now about certain things, a fourteen-year-old would not have been my first choice.”

“Excuse me!  We’re all sixteen!” said Iida.  

“You’re sixteen now, it’s – The fact of the matter is that you’re children.  Naïve children.”

“Oh my gosh, you were younger than I was when you—”

“I was kidnapped and tortured—”

“I know, but why are you taking it out on—”

“By the government that you are trying to lick the boot of—”

“Did you see what they did to Suzuki?”

Ochako felt like she was spectating a very passionate tennis match.  

“If it means anything,” said Aizawa, dragging himself out of the pile of rubble he’d been thrown into by the wind, “I’m just trying to keep my kids alive as long as possible.”

“Then expel them!  Stop them from becoming literal child soldiers!”

“I do,” said Aizawa.

“He does,” confirmed Ochako, who was well acquainted with Aizawa’s reputation.  

“He really does,” seconded Todoroki.  

“I used to see Tensei’s group chat, and every time he expelled someone…”  Iida shivered.  

“Huh,” said Todoroki.  “Is that why you’re so… insistent about rules?”

“Of course not!  Rules are important regardless of why so many students were expelled during the first month of school!”

“So, why didn’t you expel these ones?”

“If you honestly believe the problem child wouldn’t have flung himself at the first villain he saw after that and dove straight into vigilantism, you don’t know him very well.”  He sighed, standing, and brushed dust and pebbles out of his tracksuit. “That goes for these three as well. They’re insane and it’s not my fault.”

“Isn’t saving others what heroes do?” asked Izuku, walking closer to Tempest.  Ochako wanted to run out and grab him, but this whole ordeal had just shown how useless that would be.  “No matter what?”

“Not no matter what.  This is why I…”  She shook her head, sighing.  “Not no matter what.”  She leaned forward, her hands on her hips.  “Don’t die. You do realize what will happen if you die, right?  I don’t have to spell it out for you?”

“N-no,” said Izuku.  

“Besides which, I’m not a hero.”

“You saved people,” protested Izuku.  

“And, as your friends pointed out, I’ve killed, too.”

“I know,” said Izuku.  “But you aren’t a bad person.”

“Lots of people kill during wars,” said Ochako, going to stand by Izuku, “and that’s what you were fighting in, wasn’t it?  I mean, I don’t know a lot about that time, but…”

“You wouldn’t.  It’s been over a hundred years.”

Izuku nodded.  “This fight isn’t doing anything, though.  None of us want them here if the vault opens.”

“The what?” asked Iida.  “The vault.”

“Hopefully,” said Izuku, “you won’t have to worry about it.”

“The fight did do something, though,” said Tempest.

“What?” asked Izuku.  

“For one,” said Tempest, “it made you think. For the other…”  Her eyes flicked over Ochako and the others.  “Everyone you fight will have their own reasons. Remember that.”

.

As they walked down the street, storms still brewing overhead, Ochako kept catching glimpses of children in the alleyways and cross streets.  

“Who are they?” she asked, unable to help herself.

“My sister and I,” answered Tempest, brusquely. Ochako, watching the back of the woman’s head, saw her twitch slightly towards one of the alleys.  “About the time we were taken.”

“Taken by who?” asked Todoroki.  

Tempest laughed.  The sound was entirely humorless.  “That government you’re so eager to serve.  You’ve noticed, I hope, that my sister and I aren’t completely Japanese?”

“Yes?” said Todoroki.  “I’m not blind, after all.”

“Todoroki,” said Aizawa in a warning tone.

“Good for you.  Our mother was Japanese.  Dad was American.  We went back and forth to see the family.  Problem was, everyone on Mom’s side quirks.  We didn’t even realize it.  The government tracked the weather disturbances to our movements and raided our family reunion.  Never saw my parents again.  Never saw anyone, for that matter, except my sister and my aunt – Dad’s side – who tried to smuggle us out and got shot for it.  We spent four years in that hell before Ryuji rescued us.”

“You’re more open about this than I would have expected,” said Aizawa.

Tempest sneered.  “Why wouldn’t I be?  I’m a terrorist, and people only become terrorists if they want to make a statement. Which I did.  Trust me when I say this, Nine, if the hero commission took you into ‘custody,’” she spat the word like it was dirty, “you’d be in the same boat. What do you children think they do to all those high-profile criminals in Tartarus?  The ones that are held indefinitely in a private prison without even a show trial?”

“I know, Three,” said Izuku, far more calmly that Ochako would have been able to.  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a hero.  It’s easier to change systems from the inside.”

“Not this system.”

“No,” said Izuku, “but then I had no idea this part of the system even existed.  They do a lot to hide it, after all.”

“Hm,” grunted Tempest, skeptically.

The buildings began to thin out, interspersed with wilderness.  The road rapidly graded narrowed into a one-lane road, then gravel.  

“Is this normal?” asked Ochako.  

“We have more control over our environments than the other ones.  You’ve noticed that only Eight and Nine had multiple versions of themselves running around and being confusing.”

“I didn’t do that on purpose,” said Izuku.  

“Exactly.  Any of us could send an army of ourselves against you.  Only those two don’t have a choice about it.  Amateurs.”

“Shouldn’t they have had the same amount of time as—” started Ochako.  She broke off as a series of concrete walls topped with barbed wire rose up in front of them, scraping at the surrounding trees, shedding clumps of dirt.  

The trees fell away, leaving a clear, baren space between the walls and the trees.  Slightly beyond the structure moonlight glinted off the surface of a lake.  

“Well.  Welcome to Jinoshi Lake Camp, kids.”  Tempest turned, putting her hands on her hips.  “This is where I met Ryuji.  And…” She glanced up at the walls.  “This is as far as I go.”

“You aren’t going to show us where to find this ‘Ryuji?’” asked Aizawa.  

“I promised myself I’d never go back there.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. “I’m not revisiting it for you.” She started walking away.  “Have fun.”