Enough Caffeine to Kill an Elephant
Listen. It was an accident. He didn't mean to! It just kinda happened.
So maybe he brought a drink with enough caffeine in it to kill an elephant within a few minutes, and maybe he forgot to put the sleeve on his cup so he could tell it apart from the others, but it's not his fault! He didn't think anyone else was going to have the exact same Yeti cup as him! It's not like he'd seen any of the others carry one before. Besides, he worked with superheros. They should be smart enough to check before drinking someone else's drink.
Danny had been summoned by the Justice League Dark a few years back in order to help with a world ending crisis and he just didn't leave. It's not like he could go anywhere anyway. His ghost half hadn't grown past fourteen and his human half had stopped visibly aging at eighteen. He'd had to leave town as Danny Fenton, but he'd stayed in Amity Park as Danny Phantom. When his parents died of old age, thank god, he'd closed down the portal, stuck around for a few more years, before traveling the world as Danny Fenton.
Anyway, he'd taken up residence in the House of Mysteries after the JLD had summoned him. Constantine, at first, had been wary, but he and the rest of the JLD had grown to accept him. He was an honorary member of the team.
At some point, just after Robin had become Red Robin, Danny had been introduced to the Justice League. He liked those guys, too, and worked with them sometimes. Though, he usually only went to bug them.
Red Robin had been very interested in the fact that his was fourteen and working with grown heros, like he was one to talk, but Danny hadn't explained anything other than saying that he had died and come back. The following conversation was an interesting one that lead to Danny knowing that Nightwing was the Batman he'd met and that Batman was lost somewhere. He'd confirmed that the man was not dead, but he hadn't offered to help look for him. He probably should have, in retrospect.
Back on topic! Everyone in the JLD knew not to touch Danny's drink. They'd all seen him make it before and had been horrified on varying degrees. It's not like it could kill him. He's already half dead! So long as he only drank this specific brew as Phantom, he'd be fine.
The Justice League, apparently, didn't get the memo. He blames Constantine because Zatanna and Raven can do no wrong. No, John, he's not biased.
The point is, Red Robin just had a sip of Danny's drink. The horror he now felt was akin to the fear he held when he'd told his parents he was Phantom. (An interaction that had gone very well, thank you very much.)
Danny knew the exact moment that the vigilante realized he grabbed the wrong drink. His eyes widened to an astonishing degree, and, if he'd been able to seen his eyes behind the mask, Danny knew that the man's pupils would've completely overtaken the irises. His hands started shaking, too. Oh, no. The man's already addicted to hellish amounts of coffee. This is only going to make it worse!
Quickly, and without drawing any attention, thank the Ancients, Danny rushed over. "You, um, you okay, man?" Obviously not, but he tends to talk when he's anxious and he was certainly anxious right now. He could've possibly just killed a man via poison!
"What the fuck is in this coffee?" Red Robin asked, going to take another sip.
Danny pulled the Yeti from his hand and gave him the proper one. "Enough caffeine to kill an elephant."
"Obviously not, seeing as I'm still alive."
"Yeah, I can't tell if that's a good thing or not."
"Excuse me?"
"I-I mean-! I didn't-! You know what I mean." Caffeine is poisonous in excess, and his drink was way beyond excess, but it's the only thing that works for him as a ghost! Superpowered metabolism and all that.
"Do I?" The laugh in his voice answered for him. He took a sip from his drink and frowned at it. "I don't think any coffee will ever be enough again."
"And that's my cue to get my drink very far away from you." Danny turned, fully intent on moving to the other side of the room. Besides, the meeting was going to start as soon as the Flash and Kid Flash arrived, which would be soon. Something about one of their Rouges getting out?
"What?" Red Robin asked, "Why?" If he was a little desperate to get another sip of that coffee, he'd rather not acknowledge it.
"Because you don't need anymore lethal coffee," he muttered, "The sip you took will already keep you awake for three days at least, and it probably jump started an addiction. Best to stop it now. Besides, I need to go have my crisis on how the hell you're still alive after even a sip of this stuff."
"Again, rude." The bird themed vigilante crossed his arms as best he could while holding his cup. "If it's so dangerous, why do you drink it?"
Danny took a deliberate sip as he locked eyes with the technically younger man. "I'm dead. I don't need to worry about my heart stopping or having a seizure."
"Excuses."
"No, it's not 'excuses'. I'm saving your life."
"You're a kid. If I can't have that coffee, then you shouldn't be having it."
"First, I'm older than you. Second, I already told you: I'm dead. This isn't going to hurt me. Third, you can't tell me what to do."
"There's no way you're older than me. You're like, ten."
"I'm thirty-eight!" He balked, "I only look fourteen because I died when I was fourteen. We've been over this."
Neither noticed the entire Justice League looking at them. The two they were waiting on had arrived a few minutes ago and everyone was ready to start the meeting, but they'd been distracted by the two's conversation. Was that true? Had Phantom really died so young? They'd all been made aware he was not living, but they didn't think he'd died so young! Though, that was probably the denial speaking.
The Justice League Dark had been fully aware of this and didn't really bat an eye. Though, someone should probably get this meeting started. A potentially world ending threat was the topic, and that was a pretty important thing to discuss.
Captain Marvel was the first to pull himself together, though that was only after Atlas and Zeus had mentally slapped him out of his stupur. "As, ah, riveting as this conversation is," he stepped between the two boys- er, boy and man? "we really need to start this meeting."
Batman did not clear his throat because he'd not lost his voice in the first place. "He's right. Everyone take your seats."
Storyboard Part 2
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Would you be willing to do more enemies to lover tropes in hero x villain?
"You have a date?"
"If you don't want me to date other people, screw me yourself."
There was a beat of absolute silence. The hero abruptly realized what they'd said. They whirled to face the villain, eyes wide. "I didn't mean - that is - I don't know why I just said that."
Everyone around the room was gaping at the two of them.
The villain's head tilted, oh so slowly, to the side. Their gaze burned into the hero.
"I was being flippant," the hero said.
"Mm."
"You know, because you're possessive."
"Am I?" The villain's voice was silken.
"So I was just getting in there before you said something snippy."
"Oh? Is that what you were doing?"
The hero glared at them, face hot, stomach fluttering.
"Leave us," the villain said.
Everyone around them scattered.
The hero cleared their throat, not speaking until the last door had fallen closed. They wrenched their gaze away to anything, anywhere, except them. "It's not a serious date. I mean - they're not you."
The thing, whatever they were calling it, that they had with the villain was infinitely complex. Consuming. They were the most important person to the villain, and vice versa, and they both knew it but...
But they'd never kissed. They'd certainly never slept together.
Sure, the hero would probably get antsy if they thought the villain was going out with someone who might become first priority. But it wasn't - they weren't - the hero hadn't even been the one to bring up the bloody date!
The villain rose to their feet.
"You're walking dangerously close to one of our lines, hero mine," they warned softly. They sauntered closer, seemingly lazy, except that was the one thing that they never were. "You look startled enough that I can believe it was an accident. We could forget about it."
The hero watched them, a little mesmerized, heart pounding. The villain stopped in front of them.
The hero opened their mouth.
The villain tapped their lip. "Ah, ah. You're not getting away with another flippant comment after that. Think."
The hero closed their mouth. They swallowed.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that when the air between them began to crackle, the hero would say something snarky or careless to diffuse the tension. Nine times out of ten, the villain went along with it. Eight times out of ten, the hero didn't say something quite so dumb in a room full of witnesses.
It wasn't fear. It was terrifying, but it wasn't fear. It would have been so much easier if they were simply scared.
The villain set their hands on either side of the armchair the hero sat in. The hero let themselves be bracketed in with the same slow deliberation as the villain had approached them.
The hero exhaled a breath.
"Good," the villain murmured, studying them. "Now. Would you like to take that back?"
The hero said a lot of crap to the villain that they never took back. They were the only one who did. They watched the villain for a beat, every atom wondering what it would be like if the villain's hands slipped from their careful placement on furniture onto flesh.
The dates weren't like that. The dates were never like this.
But, lord, it would be such a stupid thing to do to cross that line.
The hero tipped their chin up, holding the villain's gaze again. "Do you want me to take it back?"
"If you don't, I'm definitely taking what you said as a challenge."
"Ah, yeah. That's fair." The hero wet their dry lips. "Fair warning."
"So?"
It had happened before. A threshold moment. A teetering. The villain's eyes would go dark, like they currently were, tracking everything. They'd let it go, though. If the hero asked. They always did. For all of their obvious possessiveness, the villain was never the one who brought it up.
"So," the hero dared, before they could stop themselves.
The villain's eyes notched another inch darker, more molten. Their nails dug into the upholstery.
The hero shivered; delicious and awful all at once. Intoxicating.
"So you were being flippant?" the villain prompted.
"So flippant. Unforgivably reckless. I mean, we're a terrible idea."
"The worst," the villain agreed. "Your dates are much sweeter."
"You can be sweet. When you want to be."
The villain clicked their tongue, warning.
The hero grinned back at them. Wild. Drunk, perhaps, on the vertigo of such reckless possibility, such foolish wanting.
They were at the line again. The hero was boldly brushing it with their toe, smudging at it, taunting.
The villain waited.
"You're sweet to me," the hero said. "Despite yourself." They leaned in, and up. "Tell me to stop."
"Do you want to stop?"
"No."
"No," the villain echoed. Then they grabbed the hero by the hair and kissed them.
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Danny has been declared the Ghost King at Fifteen.
He hasn't been told this yet, but his self-proclaimed closest ghost friends, Johnny 13, Ember, and Kitty, have volunteered to not only tell him, but be his bodyguards.
They do not, in fact, tell him.
They instead make it a game of "Get down, Mr. President!" and dogpile him from perceived threats. Threats like the toaster. Or Dash Baxter. Or Mr. Lancer. A stray cat that walked out of an alley. A fight with Skulker.
A bird.
The worst bit is, even the GIW and his parents have stopped attacking those specific ghosts, because it's far more interesting that beings that mimic human behavior have picked up a childs game to mimic.
So he'll be home, at the kitchen, and with an almighty cry of "GET DOWN MR. PRESIDENT" one of the three ghosts will launch themselves over him dramatically.
There is not escape.
The security system in his house has been programmed to ignore them.
His parents love the opportunity to talk to a ghost, and are starting to go back on their "all ghosts are evil" thing.
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Sonia redesign + Zelda (ancient)
she is the one to seal ganondorf in an intentionally cruel way to take revenge for him killing rauru
she also had a daughter from a previous marriage that she named Zelda after an ancient legend from long forgotten times; while she technically had both time and light powers, she could only take ahold of one (struggeling to grasp a certain power you are pressured to awaken reference ;) ) which is time, it was not the one she was supposed to manifest as her status was always associated with light, in her younger years she was often looked down upon but despite that later proved to be a capable leader
shortly after her first marriage was ended rauru and the rest of the remaining sonau (engl zonai) came from the underground to warn the folks living on the surface from a great evil that was told about in ancient texts they had found while mining desperately for the stones they had grown reliant on for survival
this warning later evolves into the plan to seal ganondorf away before he could even become a threat, through all those discussion and planning sonia and rauru grew closer and eventually married; the plan was to be executed in secret to give ganondorf no time to even consider to reveal what demon they believed he really was, but the secret got out and ganondorf enacted a counterattack in the form of stealing one of the enigma stones in order to put pressure on the hyrulian kingdom, but he gets betrayed by the gerudo that will be their sage in the last confrontation, however in the time that the gerudo sage takes to warn sonia and mobilize to save rauru ganondorf has already confronted him and though he did not plan to kill him he does so, more on accident really, as rauru did not listen to a single word he said but instead acted erratic like a helpless man trapped in a cage with a hungry bear, essentially starting a fight of life and death
when sonia arrives at the scene it is already to late; thanks to the enigma stone ganondorf can escape her grief-striken rage but sonia is out for revenge and sees him killing rauru as proof of the warnings of old, she wages war and at the end seals ganondorf in a cruel cage between life and death, even at the cost of her own life
her daughter, having witnessed it all, grows up bitter and determined to make hyrule a kingdom that will never fall again
(totk rewritten project)
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I started writing yet another tag essay in the notes of a different post where OP posited that the reason established relationships that are rock solid or functional are hard to write and find in fiction because there's missing tension due to the lack of will they won't they, and how one way to solve this in a story is to make the characters insane about each other. (The post is here.)
And don't get me wrong! I like when characters are a little or a lot unhinged about each other! and I also like relationships that self destruct, tragedies that end badly, and all that jazz I enjoy these things a lot! They're good things!
But I'm thinking about relationship tension again and how like, okay yes sometimes we want our characters confess they're in love with each other and get together and sail off into a soft epilogue, etc. This too is love!
But I think fundamentally to deny the fact that two (or more) people can love each other deeply, be totally committed to each other, and yet still have difficulties and life problems to tackle together is an underexplored facet of romance. The mundane of this is where the real romance lies on our day to day as people, and I find this so...rarely? tackled in fiction?
Maybe this is because I'm ace, but I feel that there's a distinct? vibe to these sorts of mature and enduring romances where like, the love is there, the commitment is there, but we still have moments we need to work for it because that's life and we work for it because we find each other worth it.
What is more romantic than compromise with someone you care for deeply? What is more romantic than tackling problems together and trying to come to an agreement and sometimes not being able to but still having done your best and accepted the outcome anyway?
What is a long lasting relationship that isn't about give and take and growing together or coming apart? Aren't those stories interesting? How could any long lasting relationship where people are deeply in love with each other be boring when like, to BE in a relationship with someone for ten, twenty, thirty, sixty years and come out the other side of that saying 'you're the one, you're still the one, you've always been the one' is one of the most wild and rare type of relationships to have?
What sort of sacrifice and compromise and work it takes to build that sort of relationship, isn't that interesting? To persist despite moments of doubt and periods of despair and all the work it takes in mundanity? all the trials a relationship like that has to survive and has survived, isn't that still tension? isn't that still interesting?
Maybe it's just me that I find this more interesting than "will they? won't they?" Either they will or they won't but when I'm reading a romance they mostly will! But do they have what it takes to stay there? And if they do isn't that one of the most interesting things in the world to look at?
Isn't that also love?
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