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thegoldenavenger · 7 years

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fic bits roundup

vague ballet au

“you know, i dont think anyone has ever asked me that before” he says. the television is small and old but bucky can see the wistfulness even with the poor resolution.

“well, then,” the interviewer asks after a pause, “what did you want to be as a kid?”

his grin wobbles into something just a bit less confident and his voice gains this, this breathless quality and suddenly it’s twenty years earlier and bucky remembers one of steve’s friends staring at him, wide eyed, mouth just slightly open as bucky transitioned from one held position to the next.

“a dancer,”

steve had tugged on the man’s arm pulling him away, and bucky had only gotten an introduction far later. he’d been gangly and looked more like a teenager than the fortune 500 ceo he turned out to be and he always, always looked at the dancers in the studio the same way. there was far more to it, but bucky always suspected that the looking was half the reason steve never made a move.

“i mean, i used to prance around as a little boy but i stopped to focus on the family business, for the good of everyone involved; i was admittedly terrible”

bucky remembers steve’s friend, rewiring the shitty lighting on the catwalks, speaking around the tools stuffed in his mouth. his dad started pushing him towards the family business when he had been four. four. everyone was terrible at what they did when they were four.

zombie apocalypse au

Clint thinks he’s going to die when he meets Tony. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted Barney, but give him a break. If you can’t trust family while the world burns around you, who can you trust? It turns out, not family. At least, not Barney. Clint finds himself running as fast as he can on a shit leg, beat up and bruised and out of ammunition because Barney has sold him down the river.

Lucky pants next to him. At least the dumb dog picked Clint.

That won’t mean much though, when Clint is dead because he can’t this pace up. Not with his leg like it is. And he is being chased. By zombies, of all things.

It’s looks bad. It is bad.

Clint’s leg finally gives out and he sprawls onto the pavement in what he’s sure is the least graceful manner possible. He can’t hear the hoard behind him, but he knows it’s there. Giddily, he feels lucky he won’t be able to hear them eating him; the batteries for his hearing aids have run down long, long ago.

There’s a moment where Clint feels like just giving up. Lie down, close his eyes. Maybe he’ll stay asleep while he’s getting chewed up. A guy can dream. But, and get this, Lucky sits down in front of him. Stupid dog doesn’t know what’s best for him, and he looks pleadingly at Clint. After a moment, Lucky lies down like he always does, waiting for Clint to finally get up to feed or walk him.

“Aw, dog.”

Clint gets up, for Lucky. The dumb dog would’ve just waited his turn once the zombies caught up.

He’s stumbling, limping along. At this pace, he’s still gonna get eaten it’ll just take longer. He calculates another couple of blocks before he’s over taken, so it surprises him when he’s grabbed bodily by the shoulder. He has a moment to brace himself, he takes that moment to regret not making it to Sword & Shield but otherwise he’s lived a great life. Nat will be mad but--

“Cooperation would be nice!”

Clint isn’t being mauled by a zombie. He’s being yanked deeper into the mouth of the alley.

“Come on, come on, shit tell your dog follow us!” The man is holding onto Clint’s hand, rough fingers clinging to his, pulling insistently towards a dead end alleyway. Clint figures he’s already doomed.

“The dog does what he wants most of the time, actually.”

The man, he turns and looks at Clint, really looks at him. His eyes are wild, wide and brown, ringed with purple sleep circles. His hair is greasy and floppy, his beard rough with days of unkempt scruff.

“Just call him past this line, don’t want him to get caught in the show.”

“Show?”

“You good with that leg of yours? I can’t carry you and the dog up the ladder.” Clint looks up at the alley walls, and besides the standard gutter and water pipes, they look bare. The man is rummaging around in a bag, and Clint suddenly realizes he’s trapped in a dead end alley with someone he doesn’t know, a horde of zombies on his tail and his dog. The man is muttering vaguely under his breath, and Clint is just about to make the decision to chance the zombies again. The choice is made moot rather quick though, as the shuffling horde passes by the mouth to the alley at that moment.

Clint holds his breath instinctively, quieting like he’s sighting down targets. The first few zombies pass the alley and Clint almost allows himself to hope the rest might follow when, like a switch, the horde twists on itself, decaying bodies trying to scramble past each other to squeeze into the alleyway. Clint whips around to, to not get away but at least delay death the four more yards into the end of the alley. Instead he stares at the man fighting, of all things, with Lucky. Lucky’s got his mouth around a paper towel wrapped bundle and the man is trying to pull it back.

“What are you-- this isn’t the time for tug of war, we’re going to die!” Clint yells, backing away from the approaching horde.

“What?” the man glances up past Clint, like he’d forgotten the zombies altogether, his eyes widening just a bit, “Oh, them. Right.” He lets the bundle go, which Lucky, opportunistic ass that he is, scarfs down.

“Get back here,” The man orders, waving Clint over while kicking at a cluster of boxes and a garbage can. Clint can’t hear it, but he can’t imagine it helps them hiding.

“What are you doing? What are we doing? Shit, shit,” Clint hisses, but the man seems to take no notice, just pulls back for another kick.

This time the garbage can topples sideways, the boxes get shoved aside and with a whoosh of motion that must be triggered by some kind of weighted pulley system, something like a fire escape unfolds down the side of the building.

“What the--”

“Come on, then,” The man says, already climbing up, “Hand me the dog then yourself, hurry up or you’ll get splattered. Uh, probably.” Clint can’t hear him but it looks like he mutters hopefully under his breath.

Clint must take a second too long just staring because the man makes an insistent here here gesture with his hand, and Clint says fuck it, and grabs Lucky.

He manages to heft the dog up, the man grabs him by the scruff at first, which is. Alarming. But they don’t have much options besides that, and then pulls himself up after. The man grabs his shirt when they’re close enough, and helps to haul him up.

Clint collapses on he metal landing, but even this is only temporary safety. Zombies aren’t smart but Clint’s pretty sure they can figure out ladders. Or just, pile themselves onto each other.

He’s gasping hard, his leg strained and his body hurt, when the man grabs his shoulder again. Clint glares up at him, but the man isn’t even looking. He’s staring at the zombies and Clint turns his head to see what’s captured his gaze. The horde approaches and Clint guesses the man is just held captive by their impending death.

He gets a tap on his shoulder and he looks back towards the man who signs--signs?-- “watch this,” and then presses a button on what looks like a phone? Clint still can’t hear anything, but he feels a buzzing and when he turns the scene he sees isn’t pretty, but he can’t take his eyes off for awhile.

Some kind of grid has lit of the alley, suspended like a net from wall to wall. The zombies stumble head first into it, and the moment their decomposing flesh hits the light they just topple over, sliced into burning, grid sized pieces.

It takes probably five minutes for the horde--now that Clint isn’t running for his life and can count them, it’s more like a group of six or eight (it’s hard to separate the cubes)--to be diced and sliced by whatever scifi laser grid the man next to him activated with his phone. He looks at the man, who is a bit paler than before, clammy and sweat damp, after the chunks settled into a gross pile.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Tony,” The man says, while his hands sign in pretty okay ASL, “Is coffee okay for dogs to eat? Because I’m not so sure and yours just finished the last of my mix.”

Lucky throws the coffee back up later, but otherwise is just fine. Way more fine that he’d have been if Tony hadn’t decided to help them out. Clint promises to replace the bag when he can. Tony’s face gets an out of place expression, wide-eyed and longing, for just a second before he shuts his mouth like catfish getting noodled. But he doesn’t tell Clint not to bother, and when Clint points to the block where Sword & Shield is located and says that’s where he’s headed, Tony just shrugs and shoulders his pack.

Clint’s already got one partner he needs to find--two, but he and kate had a plan and that girl is too smart to throw everything away trying to meet up with him--three, but barney’s sold him out and Clint knows, should know, when to cut his losses--but Tony can liquify zombies with just a little bit of prep time, and he’s handy with a wrench. Besides, Lucky has taken to following Tony around licking at his hand like he’s got scraps.

Clint just doesn’t want to find out who Lucky would follow if they decided to split ways.

plausibly post civil war My Favorite Scenario

in which team capsicle (that’s, steve, wanda, scott, clint, sam, bucky) somehow plot-conveniently get inserted into Tony’s mind.

they wake up separately in piles of glittering garbage. looking closer, they can see it’s just mounds of old missile casings, guns, magazines, bullets, shells, the guts of several iron man armors, computer chips and mother boards all piled high around them.

they’re confused, but establish contact with each other (by yelling) and try to regroup. no body really knows what’s happened or where they are. they try to debrief, clint climbs up a giant pile of shit to get a better vantage point. bucky investigates some of the loose weaponry.

“this is stark tech,” he mumbles under his breath

then clint yells “somethings coming!” and distantly, the group can hear loud, rumbling mechanical noises. Grinding, shrieking, servos thrumming. They all climb up to where clint is, sees in the distance a giant shape in the distance lumbering closer.

“what is that?” sam asks to murmurs. no one really knows.

They wait, tensely for it, as the lumbering monstrosity edges closer. it moans, they realize, as it gets closer. it’s moaning, wailing almost, and then screams as it lashes out at the piles of munitions. Debris flies every where, enough that they can see the metal and wires flying even at the distance they’re at.

It continues on, moving in a different direction, passing them on. It keeps far enough away they can’t see a clear picture of it.

they decide, unanimously, to head in a direction opposite. Staying still is too close to the creature for comfort.

they walk in a heavy silence until the mounds start leveling out and rising quickly in the distance before them is a mansion.

Without having to speak, they approach the building. The lighting is dim but the house casts a shadow, and once they step in it, the temperature drops immediately. it feels like walking through molasses.

“i feel like, maybe we shouldn’t be going towards the creepy mansion house that feels like doom,” scott says

everyone agrees but what other choice do they have? it’s the house or the monster, and this way they might get some information.

#kamaeteWRITES #i still want to work on these but....#into the aether they go #untagged and untamed

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criscura · 8 years

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Pinocchio

((I wanted to write something different ^^; A little graphic at the start, but that’s it. Source for this guy –v and a link to it on Ao3))

It wasn’t real. It could not possibly be real. Monsters—monsters like that didn’t exist. They didn’t exist. Bogeymen didn’t come and steal your family away. Beasts didn’t charge from the woods in the night and eat up your parents.

But one did. And it was metal.

And made of fire.

And it made no noise until his mother stopped screaming. It played it back.

It was made of metal, and made of fire, and spoke with the voices of the dead.

He would’ve given anything to steal the scream back from it...

But instead…

He turned himself into steel, and he spat out fire, and his voice was the voice of a boy that had died with his family.

Monsters weren’t real, but now they were. Bogeymen were only fairy tales, until they weren’t.

His father told him a story once about a puppet who’d become a real boy. He was good, and loved his maker like a father, and was blessed by a blue fairy into flesh and blood.

Genos was good. He loved his family.

And his was gutted in front of him.

And the doctor had blessed him with a metal puppet’s body.

Bogeymen were real. He was a fairy tale.

And he could be a monster, if he needed to be.

~~~

The pain, the pain, every day alive was pain, every night of sleep was pain, burning and tearing and snapping, every day some bone split under the weight of his torso or his wrists twisted because he crashed down on them, and he relived his parents’ massacre whenever he blacked out.

He deserved it.

His mother bled on top of him, what half of her was left. His father exploded by the front door trying to keep it shut.

He sobbed quietly under it all, invisible beneath the flesh.

He couldn’t protect them. He didn’t even try. He sat paralyzed, terrified, silent, as they let themselves be shredded to pieces for him.

His mother asked if he was okay when her bones were jutting from her body like branches from a tree in winter. Then she screamed as her legs were torn from her, and the beast couldn’t hear the second scream behind it.

He hurt then, with his arms shattered under the bricks of his roof. He could have died then, had the thing so much as glanced back after it ripped his life apart.

He did not.

He should have.

And this pain—of shaving off his hips to attach stronger hips, of welding iron to his spine to make it support his weight—

Of feeling his eyes cut out, for just a moment when the anesthesia stopped working—

Of having the base of his tongue cauterized so it could be replaced with one that would function with his new vocal cords—

He deserved it.

The hours and hours of crying through therapy, through his shins cracking from walking or the horror of going blind because this optic nerve also did not work…

He deserved every part of it.

How dare he be weak, when his parents had been strong enough to hold him until they couldn’t hold anything anymore. How dare he cry, when they hadn’t cried as the embers of the house fused to their skin. How dare he expect peace, expect comfort, expect anything but this agonizing searing ripping shredding constant fucking pain when they’d done all that and more just so he could fail to try and help them at all.

It was all he was worth. It was all he could give back.

The kindness of the doctor—he didn’t deserve that. The soothing words, the warm bed, the hot chocolate—

He didn’t deserve that.

Days, months, a stolen lifetime of pain…he could handle that. He earned it.

Not hospitality.

Not love.

When his heart began to fail him and he felt his entire body seize up—when he lost that last bit of flesh and his rib cage became a shell, his heart turned to lead and fire just like the rest of him…

Then Kuseno told him, “This makes you no less human, Genos. You are still you.”

That was a lie.

Genos had seen horror movies, he had played video games. Robots, floating brains, sentient guns…

Those were the monsters in them. Those were what you killed. You were you, and they were them.

And Genos was one of them now.

His mechanical feet and legs—those were lies. His sculpted fingers and hips, those were both a lie. His mouth, his ears, his entire perfect fucking face, that was all a lie.

A floating brain, cradled by a sentient gun. A robot. A monster.

That wasn’t a lie.

That wasn’t a lie at all.

He was the thing you killed in movies, and it was all he deserved to be.

~~~

Years. Years. Four years he had spent scouring the country, and he had nothing to show for it.

He’d done everything right. He’d improved his tracking system, he’d hunted down the CEOs of every major cybernetics company in the world, he’d been to any region that showed the remotest trace of an attack.

And he had absolutely no idea where the mad cyborg had gone.

He had failed, and was failing, and continued to fail with each passing day that he did not rip its metal body apart.

Kuseno tried to calm him down. When his room filled up with caverns from his fists and the steel walls turned rainbow from the heat in his palms, he reminded him how long it had been rogue, how no one who’d tried finding it had any success.

It only made things worse.

He had tried harder than them, than any of them possibly could. He was more qualified, more capable for this mission, than anyone else could possibly be. He was equipped with a body that could identify scurrying mammals ten miles out, canons that could level small towns, accelerators that could move at the speed of sound. He knew in excruciating detail what would drive a cyborg to go one place or another. He could anticipate the movements of a monster within mere minutes of studying its behaviors and had spent years memorizing witness accounts of facing the beast.

Destroying the cyborg was all he was good for at this point. He was built for the sole purpose of wiping it off the face of the earth.

So why couldn’t he do the only thing he was supposed to be able to do?

He got upgrades. He trained. He studied. He replaced part after part after part to get stronger, left for weeks, months at a time so he could train more, so he could track more, so he could gather more information.

And it wasn’t enough.

He just…wasn’t enough.

He’d given everything he had, more than everything, and it just wasn’t enough.

…He was a failure.

It crashed down on him every time he crashed down onto himself, thrown aside by some new demon with a move he knew was coming, and still could not avoid. It hit him when they did, it rose up and consumed him when he was gathered up into a body bag by Kuseno’s drones so they could cart him back into the lab.

He was weak, and slow, and stupid, but above all…

He was a failure.

Most of him had died when his family did. Most of him burned and bled, and dissolved in the explosions that erased what his future could have been.

What was left, he tried to perfect. He gave it layer after layer of armor, of weapons, of technology so it was impossible that it could die too, not until he had destroyed the monster that had destroyed everything he’d ever known. When he would be decimated in battle, he let the doctor pour his life’s work into him purely for the chance at avenging his family. He swallowed the guilt with the oxygen tube because it was the only way he could make himself worth it.

What was left of him, he let be twisted and molded so that it could be better than what it was.

He tried to live with it, what was left.

But…it did not change that, all those years ago…most of him had died.

…And every time he came back from a hunt without the cyborg’s blood on his hands…

…he wished it would have been all of him.

~~~

He could be stronger. He could always be stronger. He had to be stronger. He was weak, a failure, a constant stream of losses, and if he could overcome that—if he could make sure once he found it he could obliterate it so there was no way it could slip through his fingers—if he could be so strong he could vaporize it simply by pointing his canons at it and set them off—if he could delete it from the history of the planet with nothing more than a single well-aimed blow—if he could be strong, if he could only be strong, if he could only be more than this pitiful fragile rash faulty eternal fuck-up of sham of power, he could do it, he could do it, he could defeat it and stop and rest and vanish and make up for it, make up for himself, he could make up for being weak, weak, weak, weak, WEAK—

~~~

He was just a man.

Just a man, with a normal body, and no clothes, and no hair. He was small and soft-spoken.

He was just a man.

And with one slap used more power than Genos had ever felt in his lifetime.

He did it to save him and he didn’t ask for thanks. Genos couldn’t take the monster out with every blaster on his body, save for the one that would detonate like a nuclear bomb.

He’d done it in an instant, without any effort at all.

He was just a man.

He was soft-spoken.

And he said his name was Saitama.

~~~

How. How. He couldn’t understand.

He’d studied him for weeks, first in secret and then up close. He chased him when he ran, he hunted him down when he would hide. He was like a hermit crab in that way, or an ant—a tiny creature, unfathomably powerful for its size, living quietly as if it was nothing unusual. And for his lifestyle, it wasn’t.

He joined him as he ate, and it was nothing special. He followed him when he went shopping and the stores were stocked with the same goods that you could find anywhere. He visited the baths with him and the facilities had nothing extraordinary in the water.

Nothing, of course, except for him.

Extraordinary…was a good word to describe him. Several other could apply—odd, outlandish, intimidating. For everything he was—for everything he was capable of—he could have the world at his feet. Genos had seen so little of his strength, but somehow he knew it was only a fraction of what he could achieve. And yet…

He clipped coupons. He ate Cup Noodle. He did his laundry. He complained when it got cold.

He was ordinary, with so much extra inside him.

…There were still more words that would fit him, though. Humble. Kind. Short-tempered.

Awesome, in every sense.

That was one he would use frequently—“awesome.” When they ate something he enjoyed in particular, when they found a steep sale, when Genos showed him part of his incinerators.

Genos did not think he knew what it used to mean, “awesome.” It described things that were “filled with or inspiring awe.” It was how kings were explained, or war heroes, or angels.

Angels were terrifying creatures, in many texts.

The scope of their power, and their grandeur and beauty and form—it was inconceivable, ethereal. It scared whoever it was with, that power. They knew they were in the presence of something out of their control, and so far beyond their plane they could never hope to touch it. It had been to Other Places. It had come back unscathed.

It was capable of anything it chose, and nothing could stop it.

This man…he was awesome.

And he let Genos live with him.

“Sensei,” was what he called him. “Sensei,” as if that could summarize how he felt about him. About his power.

…About the power Genos needed, if he was to become more than the mistake he was. If he was to become strong enough of a monster to wipe out the one that had led him here, on legs of metal with a heart of fire.

Here, where his parents could never come.

Here…beside his sensei. Beside this hero.

Beside this awesome, extraordinary, quiet man.

~~~

It was not fair. Circumstance, fate, statistics, happenstance—

None, none of it was fair.

He had saved them. He had saved every one of them. He had done it once—twenty—countless times by now, and when they were there to witness it, they berated him for it, cut him down for it.

Tried to crush him like an insect under their shoe.

And they praised Genos for the insects he crushed for them.

Nothing he’d done was worth a fraction of what his teacher had done. The vermin he destroyed were vapors compared to the volcanic disasters he’d avoided. The catastrophes he prevented as easily as stifling a yawn, the cataclysms he solved the same way he’d calculate the time passing between commercials—

He quashed the apocalypse the same way he scratched his back, and Genos shattered his trying to stave off a single demon.

So much power. He had so much power. More than he could ever use, more than he ever wanted.

He had complained to Genos on more than one occasion that he was too powerful—that fights were boring and enemies were weak.

The same enemies that Genos had watched destroy homes and raze towns. The same that could crush his body in their fingers.

The same that he could never defeat even if he expended every shred of power his core could offer him.

The same that his teacher pulverized without so much as breaking a sweat.

…And the same that could have made so made so many more that were just like him, had his sensei not been there.

He had…so much power.

It didn’t seem like anyone but Genos knew it.

It wasn’t that they didn’t see him use it---they did, on many occasions. It was simply…that they didn’t seem to understand, like they couldn’t comprehend. It was too much for them to handle, and so they didn’t, and they made up stories to explain it away.

“A fraud,” said some. “A poser,” said others. “A cheat,” said many.

“A liar,” said them all.

They were so wrong.

Genos—he was a lie. Genos, whose ranking was based on tests far too simple—Genos, whose popularity was due to a finely crafted mask—Genos, whose victories seemed large only on the small TV screens they were recorded for.

“A hero,” they called him, like was worth anything at all…when the only true things about him were the two words of his hero name.

“Caped Baldy” was the abomination they chose to call the savior of their planet.

“Demon Cyborg” was what they called the abomination they thought was their savior.

What jackasses. What fools. What ungrateful bastards.

…None of it was fair.

~~~

Nightmares, pain, failure, anger. Seclusion, frustration, destruction. Fear. Loss.

Sadness.

Hate…for the monster, but mostly…

For himself.

He deserved that.

It had been almost five years and he did not get vengeance for the ghosts that haunted him when he slept. It had been almost five years, and he was still just as weak as the boy that had let his parents die around him.

It had been five years, and he had yet to make anything of the extra time he ripped from death.

And people thanked him for it.

They acted like he was an idol, a god. They sent him awards and tokens, gave him plaques and presents and complements like he was worth of any of it.

They thanked him for the work he didn’t do, and it was infuriating.

Could they not see how little risk was involved for something that could replace its entire body, when there were heroes that risked it all? Did they have no idea how meaningless their gratitude was, when they did not give it to the one man who should receive it?

And…when that man would congratulate him, did he not see...how undeserving Genos was of it? How undeserving he was of…

…all of it?

He’d let him have the limelight, when he was a beacon of strength. He laughed along at all his love letters, when he got nothing but hate mail himself.

He shared his home like it was nothing big, when it meant the world to the one he shared it with.

It had been…so long since Genos had a home, and not a base to return to. It had been years since a normal breakfast was eggs in the morning and not the burnt carcass from whatever he killed the night before.

He’d forgotten what it was like to flip through channels instead of a performance report, or the simple comfort of hearing “Good night” beside you.

It was…safe, and soft, and normal, in a way he didn’t realized he missed.

He did not deserve it.

Just as he didn’t deserve the quiet praise, or the worried calls—the smiles when he walked through the door or the little surprises waiting for him after shopping trips. Those were treats for people living as they should, rewards for making the most of time between friends.

He could never earn that right.

He could clean, of course, and cook, and scrub and launder and tidy. He could give presents back along with the praise, and spend days off at home. But it would never be enough.

Not when his teacher got nothing but slander for protecting the human race. Not when the afternoons he could share were split between game marathons, and repairs to the shell of his body.

Not when the time he had was indebted to the parents who sacrificed theirs for him.

Genos operated on bolts and batteries, and stolen years and Inconel and guilt.

He was a wonder of modern science and a failure of a son.

He did not deserve the life he’d had, nor the one he shared now.

~~~

A carp could become a dragon, if it swam all the way upstream. That was the way the story went.

A fish, so brittle and insignificant, if only it could defeat the rapids, would leap into the clouds where its body would grow and its scales would bloom into silver and gold. It would be free to slip through any ocean then, both the ones that were filled with starfish and the one that was filled with stars. It could be more than it was, if it tried hard enough.

Genos’ body had grown. His skin had bloomed into silver and gold, and he could fly through the air, when he chose.

He still sank in water, though.

That’s what it felt like, when they walked the streets on Children’s Day. They were surrounded by little boys and girls, faces identical to the men and women holding their hands, all staring up at the paper carps streaming through sky. They could have been sand on the bottom of a riverbed, watching as schools of fish swam above them.

He was sluggish as he moved through the crowds, and his words were thick and slow. He knew the fire in his chest was burning hot as ever, blazing like a small blue star…and still, it felt cool to him. It got cooler when he saw the smallest sons picked up by smiling mothers. It chilled when he saw the older sons who were on the precipice of becoming young men.

His parents would never get the chance to see him come of age.

Months ago the day crept up and trickled past, and Genos did nothing to commemorate it. It was better that way, it was right, not to honor this thing he’d become. The boy that would have been celebrated—the one that would age and change and mature until he could have boys of his own—he had died long ago. This body was a grave for the life he’d lost, and the ones he couldn’t save.

Weak…he was so weak. He’d seen towns ruined as his was, and watched so many pull themselves from the wreckage. They came back later and thanked him, the survivors. They came with children and boyfriends and mothers, showing him the lives they rebuilt afterwards.

They were truly strong. They had grown, they had matured, they flourished in the wreckage they were left.

It was physically impossible for Genos to mature, and he’d grown to be the wreckage he was pulled from. Shining like silver, malleable like gold, with a body that could fly through the air like shrapnel.

Vicious as a dragon. Brittle as a carp.

Sinking under the weight of the dead.

~~~

His teacher was a quiet man, and he lived a quiet life. Everything around him was soft and light, from the old pajamas he slept in at night to the humming television he watched in the morning.

There were complements too, and praise, called only loud enough to make it out over the crowds.

Genos had trouble understanding them.

He didn’t grasp it first, too consumed with determining where the man’s unforgiving core was hidden. He must have had it, or something like it, when he could rocket through a meteor unhurt. He must have been guarding vibranium or adamantine or Thor’s thunder in his heart, for it not to break under the battering ram of public hate.

But…he was not.

His teacher, his hero, who could rule like the gods…he was just a man, with a soft smile and a big open heart, guarded only by the extent of his quietness.

He would not agree with Genos on his kindness. “It’s the right thing to do,” he’d explain as he opened his wallet, knowing he could not replace the groceries he’d destroyed saving a girl. “It’s what heroes are for,” he pushed, refusing the praise for rushing into a battle that was suicide for most.

But Genos watched him—he watched the way the insults cut him, he watched his shoulders fall as those he rescued laughed at him. He watched him spring protect someone who just told him he was a waste of space.

He watched his rare outbursts at crowds, knowing he could say so much more to them, and did not.

He watched him go back home and recede into a book, speaking even quieter than normal, if at all.

Genos watched this amazing man, this hero who could have had epics written for him and instead got slurs sent to his door…

…and it was his heart that broke.

The cracks started there—in his chest. They were not visible and still Genos could feel them, featherlight and biting in the open air. As he sat with him, ate with him, trained with him, they spread out into Genos’ arms, into his hands. His face would shatter in battle and it felt almost normal, so much so that he didn’t notice until they were pointed out.

“Are you okay?” he’d ask him. “You make me worry,” he’d tell him.

It was said so softly, but it fell like a hammer on his core.

The cracks got a little deeper. Routine passed through them like sea breeze through the boardwalk, and they filled up with windfall from the day—a string of puns chuckled through the produce section, whispered conversation in the dark before sleep. The sound of water bubbling down the drain as they washed dishes after dinner.

The fissures filled with these passing moments, each grain sealing them shut even as they split them further.

…Genos’ body was made of an iron alloy, and iron, on its most basic level, was weak. It was a common metal that needed to be mixed and twisted so it could withstand the pressure of daily use.

Sand, on the other hand, was a natural composite, formed from the rocks strong enough to withstand thousands of years of the ocean’s abuse. When stripped to its most essential mineral, it was made of quartz. Quartz was varied and strong, and formed the same way diamonds were. Quartz was used for healing and traded for its beauty.

In folktales, iron was a weapon used to kill fairies. The Iron Age was the reign of the filth of man. Quartz was used to protect infants from demons and in myths immortalized purity.

Quartz was always very strong, and iron…

Iron was soft.

If beaten, it will break, and will need to be gathered into a single piece again. If exposed too long, it will rust, and chip away when something brushes past it.

Iron will bend and crumple and yield, if put up against quartz.

Even a tiny piece can win the battle, over time. A single grain would be enough if it found a crack and settled deep within it. And Genos, with his fragile body…

He was covered in cracks.

Routine has a way of smoothing things out, of buffing the impurities of the day. A routine can turn the sharp cut of a jeer into a minor bump on the way to dinner.

His teacher had shared his routine with him. He worked beside him, day by day, learning from the quiet man how to live a quiet life. When he’d come home, he wouldn’t shout his greeting so he could hear the happy welcome that answered him. When he woke up, he wouldn’t focus on his nightmares but the even breathing next to him.

Before he lived like a forest fire, consuming everything on the path to the monsters of his past. And now…

He passed his days like water breaking on the beach, steady as the rise and fall of the waves.

This lifestyle…it was gentle, it was easy. Not to struggle swimming against the riptide, but to let himself drift on and off shore like sea glass or hermit crabs…

The cracks were still there, and they were growing, but Genos couldn’t help feeling that he was growing with them.

When his sensei smiled, his chest swelled and his armor could have been crackling under the pressure. When he thought of plans they made, he’d prepare for the day feeling lighter, like he had no armor at all.

That would make him weak, he realized, to be worn down by routine. It would leave him open in ways no battle plan could save him.

But his sensei was quiet and soft, and he was the most powerful man he knew. And if he could be that way, then…maybe…

It would not be so bad for Genos to be soft too.

~~~

When dolls broke apart, they were glued back together, piece by piece, by piece…by piece… He just needed some duct tape and some patience.

Patience.

Patience for pieces, that was it. Time to get torn down, after he’d been torn down, because that’s how the doctor would know where it all fit. Humpty Dumpty him up, only he had a king to put him together, and not the king’s men.

All the king’s men.

…There had been many men there, and women.

They had cracked too, but they didn’t leak yellow, or black the way Genos did. They looked the way they should, when real people got hurt. It would mean something later. It would turn people into monsters.

Just like him.

The other heroes had taken care of them, surely. All the monsters…but it was hard to remember who was who, with all this fog in his head. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…

Breathe out…

Ha…laughing gas, it was called. When he was little. Like he needed reasons to laugh then. They should sell it to grown-ups in bottles, like they did sleeping pills and caffeine pills. “Smile-all,” it could be. “Grin-it-down.”

Sugar makes the medicine go down… What had made this medicine go down? He hated it, all of it, always, this part. He hated it so much.

It made him remember who he was. He hated who he was.

He always fought it off, so hard. Like waking up from a nightmare, only he lost, he lost every time. He never won.

He hadn’t won this time. Nope, the claws went straight through him, right through his spine, and he shattered like a porcelain doll.

He didn’t remember hitting the ground, though. He usually did. It hurt, that part, the fall right after. It was the worst.

It was the best too, though, ‘cause he deserved it, and he didn’t always get what he deserved.

Who’d taken that away?

This hurt, a little. Not much. Not with the laughs.

He didn’t giggle though, it was a feeling. Not like at home. He giggled for real there.

He did it at Sensei’s faces, he did it at his jokes. What had he called him? A hot head?

Ha, ha…ha… Hot. Sensei was hot. Sensei was warm too, but he was cool, he was so damned cool…

Genos wasn’t. He’d broken in front of him. Humpty Dumpty, derpy demon. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men ran away because Demon Cyborg didn’t save them again.

What a joke. What a laugh.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

That’s what the HA looked like—HA, HA, HA, all across the rescue helicopters. They buzzed around like dragonflies, but they didn’t spit out fire. They got eaten up by it. So did the drivers, so did the stretchers underneath. Then the HA turned to AH, and they all did just that, “Ah, Aah, Aaaah…”

He was so tired of screaming. He heard it every night in his sleep. He was sleeping now, though, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that anesthesia? Just a slightly more awake sleep. So were those the screams?

But he wasn’t screaming. He didn’t hear any.

Well, not now. Before he made everyone scream. One bad shot and he knocked the monster into an apartment. Kaboom, it went. Kasquish, they went.

Screams. Lots of screams.

It should have been Genos in there.

He wouldn’t get backlash for it. Never had, never did, never would. Too pretty to knock down, that’s really what it was. The HA said he kept his ranking because he did good work.

He did shit work. He was shit. Shitty, shitty, shit.

…Shit…

He should’ve been left on the claws. They should’ve schlicked right into his brain, so he could stop and stop making more mistakes than he had. He was one great big mistake. He was five years of big and small mistakes, he was two and a half wasted lifetimes of miiistakes.

What a waste he was… What a tongue-twister that was…

Betty bought a batch of butter...”But,” she said, “This bot is bitter,” so she went and bought a better bot, but that bot was just as bitter. “Real boys are better,” bickered Betty, so she burned the bot and brought back a boy that was better than the bitter bot…

His father loved butter cookies. He loved to tell stories too, but not about the butter cookies, that was only when he told the tongue-twister.

He could bake butter cookies. He could bake them now, they would probably be good.

…No they wouldn’t be.

…Maybe they would.

Sensei liked his cooking, he’d like his cookies. Sensei said he liked a lot of things about him. Sensei said he had pretty hair, and pretty eyes, and a cool body. Sensei was wrong, but it was nice.

Sensei was nice. Sensei, Sensei…Sensei…

He was the one with pretty eyes, all dark and big and sparkly—but only sometimes. …Hehe. They were sparkly like his head.

Genos liked his head. Genos liked everything about him.

He should tell him. He should really tell him, not those half-assed tells he told because he was too scared to let him know how he felt. But Sensei would not tell back, because he probably didn’t feel back.

Sensei was a hero, an angel. Genos was a demon. He was a monster, a bogeyman, a dragon, that could go chomp chomp and burn up a village. Sensei was a dragon slayer.

He wouldn’t want to date a monster.

…He sure saved Genos a lot though, like he was some kinda princess. He wasn’t a princess. Not even when he got all broken up again, and needed to be eased down from the top of the HA tower. Rapunzel was on top of a tower, but even she could help save herself. She put her hair down. Genos’ hair wasn’t that long.

His spinal chord…maybe that, next time. Maybe he could pull that out and use it. Like they were doing now. It was so tickly, when they got here, even with all the gas in his lungs. It would probably hurt real bad if he was awake. It must’ve wasted a lot of money, this gas. He could’ve been shut down he was sure. His brain could be popped out and put in a bowl to save it, couldn’t it? That would make things easier. It’s not like much would be lost if it didn’t make it.

…Ah, but Sensei wouldn’t have omelets in morning then. He promised, before the sale, they’d make omelets together. Sensei liked cooking with Genos, he did it so much. He couldn’t do that if Genos was dead.

The beeps—the beeps were loud, now. They were like screams—beep, beeeep, beeeeep…

No, that was a real scream. Or just a yell? That was his name, for sure.

Oh, the gas was going. Bye bye, happy gas… Goodbye, happy…

But that…was his voice, and that was happy. Hearing him say his name, so softly, so carefully. No, it wasn’t screaming…how could he have thought that? It was mumbling…it was quiet…

It was warm next to his ear, and sounded like the start of a spell.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in…breathe out…

He was coming out of it. He was sore, and sluggish, but he was in one piece, and there was a hand around his. It held on tight, like he’d vanish or fall.

…Ha, haha. Like the nursery rhyme—Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

He would wake up soon, he could almost open his eyes. But for now…hearing “Genos?” said so shakily, like that voice would crumble if it wasn’t answered back…

…What was the rest of the rhyme?

…Of all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men…

Only one had made him feel whole again.

~~~

Five years he spent hunting the demon down. A quarter of his life, he’d devoted to a constant search. His mind, his body, his humanity—he’d given it all in a sacrifice for a chance at vengeance.

His plea had been ignored.

Of the hundreds of nights he spent hiding in the brush, none of them gave him a clue where it fled. The thousands of hours he spent scanning through reports, not one of them brought him closer to tearing it apart. News of it came less and less, and every month he did not kill it was another dig in the pit in his stomach.

He would search for it—he would always search for it—if anyone would pin it down and rip it limb from limb it would be him—

..but he could no longer ignore the growing suspicion that his mission was doomed from the start.

Leads were scant at the onset of his journey and even rarer as it continued. Then, though, he was too blind with rage to realize the most obvious reason for it—

He was so obsessed with living up to the ghosts of his past that he hadn’t considered he was chasing one of them.

It was never confirmed, as they found no body. For all he knew it could still be out there, burning villages and children and hopes and dreams…but if it was he would have heard of it.

There had been no news for a very long time.

It ate at him like acid, gnawed like a piranha at the nape of neck. If the beast was already dead, then his vendetta had been in vain. His agonizing, his fury, his rage, the years spent training and training and training—

They never brought him anywhere close to the cyborg.

Genos was weak, and he knew that. He had been too weak to protect his mother and father the ways they had protected him, and any courage he had smoldered with their bodies. He was hefted up like a toddler and given a better body, and still it took time for the courage to come back.

Once it did, he proved his stupidity in battle was more than enough to destroy his body again.

When he managed to conquer his stupidity, it was his rashness that beat him.

When he conquered rashness, it was distraction.

When it was not distraction, it was once more that he was simply too weak.

Weak. Weak. No matter how many upgrades he got, no matter how hard he fought, he was always too weak.

…To him.

It was not so to the man he spent his days with.

He would cry out at how fast he moved or marvel at how hard he hit, and in the beginning, Genos thought he was humoring him. How could someone able to level continents think he was at all strong?

But as the months passed by between them, he realized…no, his sensei was telling the truth. He thought his student powerful, despite needing to be carried back from half his battles. He thought him smart and quick and cunning, when he tripped up at least once in every fight.

He thought better of Genos than Genos ever could. He thought he was amazing, extraordinary.

“You’re really awesome,” he told him, or “That was a cool kick,” or “You’re defending yourself real well now!”

“You sounded great on the news,” was another. “Your voice is nice,” was a favorite.

And the one that was hardest to believe, even though Genos knew he meant it more than the rest, “I missed you while you were gone.”

His sensei thought of him, when he was gone. He thought of him enough to want him back.

Genos saw himself as waste of space. He drained time and money and resources, in such copious amounts he could never hope to replace them. In his mind he was a black hole.

But to his teacher…he filled something in him, so much so that he noticed when it slipped away.

That was no small feat. One afternoon the man had confided in him the years he spent alone, feeling hollow and inhuman. He described watching the fire of his emotions shrivel into coals, and the coals settling into grays and blacks. He told him how long he had waited for them to burn again, admitting finally that he’d let them die, and eventually he would die not remembering how they felt blazing inside him.

He pointed to Genos’ core, and said, “But you have a little star in there, so I’m sure you don’t have to worry about it.”

Genos cried then, slick tears of oil, and the black shone with the light from his chest.

His teacher looked confused and Genos thought it was odd, to be so unmoved as he spoke. At a loss he looked up into those great, deep eyes and was swallowed up in the blackness there.

Dark. They were utterly dark…like they’d never held any light at all.

Genos cried harder.

It nagged at him as the weeks passed by, and he did what he could to bring it back. He kept him company at unfamiliar stores, he rented movies when there were snowstorms. During blackouts he would open his shirt, and they would huddle in the corner for warmth, the way he remembered doing when he was young. It had made him feel safe then, and happy. There was some sort of magic in that tiny heat.

He could not tell if was working on his teacher, so he kept on trying.

It was not until that simple greeting that he knew it worked at all. Behind the smile and those three little words, he saw the shine in his deep eyes. It was gentle, yes, and flickering, and still very weak, but the light was strong and steady and his teacher did not seem confused by it.

He shifted to make room at the table beside him right after, and he didn’t seem like he could be more sure of anything in the world.

Saitama was not a deity, or an angel, or even some spirit from another world. He was just a man, who was soft-spoken, who lived a quiet life.

But he had given Genos a home, when he had only had a fortress.

He helped Genos become a hero, when he had only been a monster.

He gave Genos a horizon, when he had only seen a flatline.

Genos gave himself in a blood offering, and his plea for vengeance had been ignored, but…

…his prayers were heard, and received…

…and they had been answered tenfold.

~~~

Monsters had not been real before, but they were real now. Children were stolen and eaten in the night. Princesses were killed for no reason at all.

They were all living in one long, extended fairy tale…and that meant there were heroes, too.

There were white knights that struck down ogres, and fairies that could turn puppets into men, if only they were good enough.

Genos had not been good. He had loved his family too much, and let it turn to hate—hate for the world, hate for circumstance. Hate, more than anything, for himself.

He had killed, and let others be killed.

He was the villain in his own story.

…But his was no longer the only story he was part of. He’d been woven into another one, so smoothly he couldn’t find the seam between the two. And whenever stories blend…

….the characters can change.

The big bad wolf becomes the fox spirit, the harbinger of death becomes the mother of sleep.

The bloodthirsty dragon that hunts down villagers becomes the gentle wind spirit that protects a town.

A villain can become a hero, if he shares his story with another.

Especially when that other was a great hero.

Especially when that other saw him as a hero.

Happy endings were not made for the villains and monsters—they were for the good and right, the fighters, the saviors. The ones whose actions screamed loudest on the pages, no matter how quietly they did them.

Saitama was the kind of man that deserved a happy ending.

But Genos…he was a walking war machine, a floating brain in a grave of weapons, one of the demons that was killed before they had a chance to kill everyone else.

Genos knew better than to expect more for himself.

But fables grow. Fairy tales change.

The hard shell of a puppet can turn soft and warm, and a monster can become a man, if his hero is strong enough to rescue him.

Genos’ hero was the strongest of them all. He was a small, soft-spoken man.

And if that man though Genos belonged in his happy ending, well…

…maybe he could have one, after all.

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