Health and Hybrids (XXVII)👽👻💚
[I can't remember the original prompt posters for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]
🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.
💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)
Where we last left off... Danny has another hashtag breakdown! Diana helps mediate. Stinky Dad and the Alien Guy observe.
Trigger warnings for this story: body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) | my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.
💚👻👽👻💚
Danny’s space-watching time is very important to him. He’s pretty sure it’s on his schedule, even.
Every few days—and even more days in a week, now that people are relatively certain that he’s not going to start hitting the medical staff—Danny gets wheeled over to the big window to stare out at the moon.
The moon hasn’t changed all that much since his first few visits, since. You know. It’s in space. Still, the stars shift in their positions, and sometimes they face Earth, and sometimes they do not, and a couple times Danny sees people flying out there, which is super neat.
Sometimes Danny sees maintenance workers out doing repairs on their buildings, too. They wave back at him when they’re not busy or carrying something, which makes Danny’s core bubble and spark with joy.
So, Danny is watching the stars twinkle in the sky with all the meditative calm his Obsession requires when something plops onto his head. It doesn’t hurt, but it does put pressure onto his neck. Ow.
Danny hisses automatically, but he already knows who it is—the quick-fast-kid-who-hasn’t-introduced-himself practically vibrates against Danny’s skin, all excited by omg/omg/misch/iefomg.
Typical. Danny wants to feign a bite, but his neck kind of hurts. He settles for grumbling. “What?”
“Dude,” the teenager says, or, uh, Danny approximates he says something kind of like dude, anyway— “Want to come see a feoht?”
Uh. “A what?” Danny asks, ignoring how the guy’s chin keeps digging into his scalp. It might be the most non-medical physical contact Danny’s had since he broke down with Diana. Maybe.
The teen backs up, and models some very quick punches into the air, making his own sound effects to match. It’s all very impressive, or whatever. Danny’s not going to applaud, though; his arms are tired.
“…Sure.” It’s not like Danny has anything better to do.
“Berstan!” the kid chirps, and—
Danny clamps down on his wheelchair wheels because holycraptheyaremoVINGFAST. His wheels aren’t on the ground—the teen is carrying him, chair and all—!
He’s going to be in so much trouble for running. Danny’s wheels touch the ground, and he drops straight to the floor. His hands shake all the way up to his elbows as he grips his wheels. He is going to be in so much trouble when the nurses look for him and he’s not there.
Oh no. Oh no.
“Here we are!” the quickfast teenager announces, grinning. They’re in a room with a big, rubberized floor. It’s basketball orange. The rest of the room is virtually indistinguishable from the cloth folding walls Casper High uses to divide the gym into smaller gyms—giant cloth panels line every surface that isn’t the floor. Walls. Ceiling.
Well. It’s certainly…sound dampening. There’s vents, though. So. At least they can breathe.
The other teenagers Danny recognizes yell out to them, cheerful as ever. One waves—the kid behind him waves back, and then they’re all clustered together, pleased and breathing heavy and slightly sweaty.
“Feel alright?” one teen asks—Danny recognizes him after a second; he usually has a leather jacket on over his brightly colored shirt. He isn’t sure what the huge S is for, but hey, it’s a cool emblem or whatever. Danny used to have his initial on his…
…Danny doesn’t want to think about that, actually. He doesn’t want to think about anything about home at all.
Oh. Someone asked him a question, and now they’re all looking at him for answers. Danny nods jerkily—something sloshes inside his skull, though, which. Ew. He scrunches his face up when everyone else starts to look worried about his expression, though; it’s no big deal! It’s just! Gross!
The boy who is very fast pats his hand before sliding to the other side of the room. There are buttons there, which he presses; the room shifts, just a little, to make a piece of the floor turn away in favor of a rack of weapons. The teenager who’s always masked, but is now in an exercise shirt, whistles approvingly, and two of the teens—whoah—start flying off to grab at the equipment available.
…There’s some cool stuff there. Danny. Danny might…
He doesn’t want to fight, per se, but. Um. Weaponry is intrinsically cool. There’s no doubt about it. Half the reason he liked to play Doomed was collecting the newest and coolest weapon to blast at all his enemies with! And Tuc—
—and—
—Tucker—
Something clicks right up in front of Danny’s face.
He flinches.
“You good?” the teenager asks, big blue eyes on him as Danny struggles to breathe. “Do you want hweorfan?”
Danny gasps around three uneasy breaths before his ears catch up. Or. Well, his ears work, but his brain doesn’t know what the teen is saying?? Danny shakes his head anyway—he doesn’t want more to happen. He wants less.
The teenager frowns. Danny immediately worries that he did something wrong. “Okay, but tell me if you change your mod.”
As soon as Danny figures out what that is? Sure. He’ll tell him.
In the meantime, the kids split up into groups; one set of two goes to one side of the gym and the other goes in the air, floating on the other si— wait, they can float??
…Danny stares, and two ostensibly human-looking teenagers take to the air, loudly teasing the two left on the ground, and, yeah. They’re flying. Danny watches as the one on the ground starts counting, ready to start their match, only to interrupt his own countdown for a sneak-attack at the start and a PIFF of a smoke bomb going off. Danny can’t see the buzzing kid disappear from sight as the air begins to thicken, but there’s a distinct taste of JOY/games/VICIOUS that flutters through him that tells Danny that, wherever he is in that smoke cloud, he’s living his best life.
And. Well.
The fighting is—there isn’t a better word for it, it’s just so damn cool. There’s kicking and punching and throwing and tossing and—sure, Danny can take a few hits and deal out some surprise punches when he has to, but these kids know what they’re doing, which is so cool, because once Danny lost the benefit of gravity mid-fight basically everything Mom had trained in him had been thrown out the window. The physics were just never right.
(And— Mom—)
Like, all the punches are happening at speeds that Danny can only kind of follow. His neck starts hurting from trying to follow them—but he can’t stop watching, and the kids are really having a blast. They’re laughing. They’re teasing. They show off, even, stopping to pose and flex and be admired by their sole observer, which Danny obliges with some gentle claps. The others are quick to jump on any distraction, though, and are more than willing to have Danny be the center of attention while they sneak up on showstoppers, stick or lasso in hand.
On one hand, Danny should probably be more alarmed by the sight of kids acting as literal child soldiers training to be combat ready. He…he’s pretty sure he’s meant to be one of them as soon as he’s recovered enough to get trained.
And…it is scary. It is kind of a scary thought that Danny might have to go back to…go back to fighting and getting hit and hitting and everything that fighting means.
On the other hand, there’s no one here. All the kids here are Danny’s age, and they’re not fighting because someone is making them; they’re having fun, and their job is to help people.
…Danny puts his legs higher up on his wheelchair, until he can wrap his arms around his knees. They’re supposed to beat up threats, but they don’t think that Danny’s a threat. They’re letting him sleep in a bed and get medical care and making sure he gets medication and everything. They let him hang out with their children and he has toys and fidgets to pass the time, and maybe he’ll have to pay them back later, but… isn’t helping out because he got helped only fair?
And they let non-humans live on Earth! That one teen’s stinky dad said that they could help Danny stay on Earth, he thinks. Or, uh, it’s what he thinks the green guy translated that as? So as long as he doesn’t leave, they could even protect him from the— all the bad stuff on Earth! So really, all Danny has to do is work on getting better. He’s safe here. Diana is here, the stinky dad is here, and there’s a whole team of super-people with super powers ready to help people.
Danny’s safe. He’s calm. He’s fine. He’s…worried that Diana doesn’t know where he is, but she’s smart and there’s probably cameras.
He watches the teens play around with various weaponry like they’re his model rocket. There’re thrown projectiles and giant hammers and dodgeballs and sticks, staves, and lassos; someone pulls out a shield, of all things, glittering gold and gleaming with something that itches at the back of Danny’s eyeball, and there’s a gun that sh—
Danny only breaks out of the memory of RUNNINGRUNNINGRUNNING when he realizes that someone is holding him. He’s choking. He doesn’t know who’s holding him, but they’re not hurting him right now and he can see a crowd of other colorful figures around him, which means he’s not with the Guys in White.
He’s hyperventilating. He can’t help it. He can’t stop it! His lungs hurt and there’s no end to the stress pressing out of his chest. Someone is holding him; where’s his chair? Did he lose it?? That’s really expensive medical equipment—they’re going to be so mad at him—!
Someone lifts him out of the stranger’s arms. It’s one of the older quick-buzzing humans. Not the teenager, and not the oldest one, he thinks. Danny can’t tell. He can’t breathe, and it’s hard to focus.
He’s shushing Danny like he’s a kid. Danny would be insulted, except he can’t breathe, and he really wants someone to help him, and his eyes are all weird and he can’t see and he doesn’t know where he is and his core hurts and his chair is gone—
Oh. The guy puts Danny’s hand on his chest and models breathing in with one big, visible breath.
Danny breathes in.
The guy models breathing out. It’s a long, slow breath.
…Danny struggles through the follow-through, but he manages. Well. He chokes hard enough to cough, twice, but…close enough.
The colorful forms milling about slowly disperse, until it’s largely just Danny, and the fast guy radiating very measured levels of calm, and his friend in black and blue, who is eating a sandwich. They breathe in, and they breathe out. That one guy eats his sandwich.
Danny looks around. He’s…the room he’s in is really big. Tables. Benches. Little stands of foo… Oh. He’s in a cafeteria. Cool.
…He squints through the new haze of green in his eyes. He’s probably strained something, but there are more important things at stake here: can he get some real food here?
“Where is here?” Danny asks. Rasps. He’s mostly horizontal, so manipulating his head around to glance at his surroundings is kind of a strain on his neck. Is that a hot dog cart?
“Wistheall,” the two say simultaneously—the guy in black and blue and a bird on his chest swallows his sandwich. “…Want a snakka?”
You know what? Danny’s going to assume that this means a snack. Sure! Why not. Nodding his head so quickly hurts, but he’s also not walking anywhere, so it’s not like it’s a full-body pain. The buzzing-quick guy sort of just…carries him around and asks Danny what he wants, and the bird guy gets it for him.
The little vibrations the guy is giving off are tinged a little with wor/ryworry/worry, but the guy’s mostly…at peace? Forcibly shoved it all down? Danny and the guy are practically chest to chest at this point, so it’s probably just that Danny’s close enough to feel even really quiet things.
His suit is super smooth, by the way. It’s not, like, skintight—there’s a little armor underneath, Danny can feel—but the fabric itself is like super slick. It’s cool. Texturally.
Also, he gives Danny a tube of something that are clearly off-brand Prongles, so Danny’s mostly just enjoying that instead of wondering what’s up with this guy and his friend.
“Are you okay?” the guy finally asks, his chatter mostly winding down into a question Danny can recognize. Danny swallows his bite of chips with a swig from his water bottle, and nods. He’s…unsettled, but he’s fine. He doesn’t know where he is, but he didn’t know where the teenagers had left him either, so this is about what he expected.
Even under his red hood-and-mask, the guy’s eyes are kind. Kinda worried. Not mean. “Something bad happened?”
…Danny looks back at his chips. Something bad happened, but it didn’t happen recently. “No,” Danny muttered around the crumbs in his mouth. He swallowed dryly. “Not…not now.”
The vibrations slow, and dim, melancholy lacing through the air. The sensation makes Danny itch. “Before?”
Danny nods. He thinks about his body melting from the outside in, his face dripping off in chunks of wet matter, his throat torn open still screaming.
“It was a—“ Danny tries, but he doesn’t actually know their word for gun or blaster. He just forces his fingers to make a familiar symbol, holding his own middle and end fingers back, leaving a shaking, uncomfortable thumb and pointer.
The quiet pew pew sound effects probably aren’t necessary, but the more detail, the better, or something like that.
Danny remembers how hot it got. Just…all the heat and light, and he could smell smoke right up until he couldn’t. And his face…everything hurt—everything still hurts, even—but the scary point had been when suddenly his face hadn’t hurt, and there was nothing left to feel.
…The guy holding him pulls Danny’s fingers away from his face. Oh. Danny was pulling at his still-green, still-healing wound. He. Uh. He doesn’t remember starting to do that anymore.
“Sorry,” Danny whispers. He swallows something wet from his sinuses to his stomach, and has to fight back the memory of a blood-and-ecto-and-flesh slurry taking its place in his esophagus as he tried to crawl away to die. Again.
The man sends out pulses of sorrysorrysorry through his skin. “Me too,” he murmurs back.
Then Danny gets hitched up—Danny squawks—and gets thrown into a better position over one shoulder, so Danny has better height to see from and a better perch in the guy’s arms. Danny drops half his prongles on the floor in the process. “Want to go find your chair?” the guy asks, body vibrating just a touch outside of Danny’s conscious awareness. Still, even without seeing the guy’s face, his whole body radiates sympathy/curiOSITy/Hungry.
…Didn’t they just eat?
Either way, Danny’s not torn between staring sadly at the ground where his prongles lay cold and bared to the cruelty of the world or getting up to go find his chair. “Yes,” he agrees, and uses the flat of his forearms to haul himself up higher onto the guy’s shoulders. Kindly, the guy in red doesn’t even budge. “Thank you.”
“Na geswincan,” the guy reports back easily, which Danny is pretty sure is a less-formal you’re welcome. Too bad there’s a whole language’s worth of context Danny’s missing out on here. His friend even snags Danny an extra can of prongles, and is kind enough to rips open the seal for him.
Nothing beats recovering from a crying jag like chips. Danny takes them earnestly.
The quick-fast guy hooks his arm onto his friend’s, and the world starts to stretch and blend into the in-between planes of reality, slices of world layered atop each other. The guy smashes through each one and pulls them both along for the ride.
It’s not quite like dunking his head in the portal, but it’s not not like sticking his head in a homemade portal either. Danny shakily pulls out a chip and starts chewing. He’ll just take the ride as it comes.
*
“Superboy.”
Kon winces.
“Robin.” Wonder Woman’s eyes turn to the more remorseful end of the bunch. “Wonder Girl. Impulse.”
“Wedidn’tmeanto!” Bart wails into a pillow, which. Fair. Cassie is sweating from possibly every pore she’s ever had (and maybe even a few she doesn’t??), and Tim is doing that stoic-faced thing that means he’s flipping the hell out too much to even tell his face to make expressions about it.
Kon just looks…miserable. Just absolutely miserable.
“…Triggered by firearms, maybe…?” Tim mutters under his breath, which means that he’s theorizing about their guest’s symptoms rather than coming up with solutions-oriented paths out of this confrontation and Cassie wants to shake him because this is NOT the time, Timothy Jackson Drake, except he’s kind of made of mortal human flesh and if she actually shakes him too hard he might die.
“I hope you understand how deeply irresponsible it was to take our patient out of his rooms without any form of supervision from either myself, his medical team, or an adult up to speed with our patient’s medical and psychological needs.” Wonder Woman’s voice is sharp—and her eyes are on Timmy Wonder Boy, who’s barely paying attention, making it clear that the majority of her ire is currently on him. “All four of you are being taken off of mission rosters for the next month in favor of remedial training. I hope that you are all satisfied with the decisions you made.”
“Fiiiine,” Cassie groans. Kon slumps in place. Tim nods without really looking.
Bart, still wailing at lightning speed into his pillow, continues doing…that.
233 notes
·
View notes
The Resistance squatted in abandoned buildings. They were squatters.
Before I show the panels that show they used abandoned buildings, I just want to be logical about this for a moment.
It doesn't make much sense to assume these guys - looking around jump-into-university age (18-26) - could afford to make underground bunkers and metal-plated halls all across Japan, for their base. They wouldn't have the time, resources, or even support from others to make these places.
Where do they find the metal to hammer in? The posts? The knowledge of actually building tunnels or buildings from scratch without them falling apart?
Other than that, having a single stationary base (above-ground, for example), is not going to survive. All For One's supporters fight anyone who opposes him without him needing to say anything.
AFO rules Japan right now. Everyone is wary of each other. Look at how Bruce describes it as "the harshest era";
As All For One's supporters attack his opposers of their own will, and supporters don't even realize they're on his side, the Resistance has to constantly be on the move. They can't really trust anyone.
They can't have stationary bases, nor can they afford ANYTHING to make them. They would've been caught immediately trying to do a big project like that, especially if they needed supplies to do so from someone who likely works for AFO, even without knowing.
Japan was in economic and social turmoil. They can't trust the market to keep going and grocery stores to be open. Look at how Japan is with All For One and Tomura; people band together and stores are looted.
Money is obsolete. Society is divided between humans and "monsters" (Ability-users). You can't trust anyone because anyone could be his pawn. Time is running up as his control spreads everyday. Resources are being looted left and right. It's too dangerous to go outside alone. Even if you have a stun gun, what does that mean against Ability-users?
So what do they do with their limited resources? Trying to hide from the big guy? What "bases" do they have?
They hunker down in abandoned places that already exist and, again, are abandoned. No one's going to come looking for them in places that people have run from and left behind. Because these places are literally just that: places no one wants anymore.
You hide a tree in a forest. You don't make a big, special base somewhere that says "I am here!", and they don't have the resources or time to burrow underground or build that.
Hide in an abandoned building among many others. There's not many people in abandoned places, if they happen to be there at all. The Resistance isn't going to be found in the deserted buildings, but they still have to keep moving, because someone might be trailing them.
When they take Yoichi from the vault,
They're in a house. The couch is ripped, the mug is cracked, and so is the wall, with a questionable stain in the background. There are signs of fighting and abandonment, but it works.
Houses have food. Houses have clothes. Houses have beds. It's enough to sit in for a bit and heat up some water.
Not everyone packed their things and run. Some people just had to RUN. And when some places are full-on abandoned from an exodus, the Resistance is definitely gonna find some stuff there in the new "safe area".
Look below at where Kudo and Bruce hole up after Yoichi's death. No one's outside, there's a destroyed car, and there's some smoke further up the road.
The hospital/clinic room Bruce uses is ripped apart and unsanitary, but it's still the best they can do. I think that houses and a hospital would be their best bet for survival/using as a base; resources, lodging, and some sort of safety exist there. Especially in a hospital, which would have backup generators, a camera system, and even a PA system. Hospitals have to accommodate for lots of people (food, space, lodging), and have a lot of medical equipment they can use.
Basically what I'm saying is: the Resistance likely doesn't have a permanent base. They don't have the resources or enough safety to make their own. They squat in abandoned places and move constantly, because nowhere is safe, but they can't just waltz in public and declare where they are; they have to hide in plain sight while they bide their time. In the meantime, the places they use would have to be resourceful, or they're using what they have on their backs. The manga already shows them using a house and a hospital room.
111 notes
·
View notes