#and now I'm trying to put out more bits and bobs of it for funsies

[faytelumos]

Playing Nice

This is a short one for me. It's supposed to have a second scene, and I might eventually add it as a part two.

This takes place like a week before part one of Illusory.

cw: repeated mentions of child abuse

directory

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Black Ice adjusted his tie, trying to find the right balance between well-dressed and choking. He touched his thin briefcase reassuringly, trying not to bounce his leg. He settled for tugging on his slacks and picking a hair off of them.

It was amazing how stressful normal shit could be sometimes. Hand-to-hand sparring with someone twice his size? Easy. Racing other flyers to avoid the stick? A laugh. Going to an interview to get accepted onto the heroes roster?

He was fucking dying.

"No way," someone said from down the hall. Black Ice looked up to the speaker, and he felt the stiff kick of adrenalin to see two black, armored uniforms staring at him. Just his luck. He mustered up a friendly, polite smile, and the two enforcers started cautiously towards him. "Are you… Black Ice?" the one asked. She wasn't wearing head gear, and as she got closer, Black Ice could see the crow's feet and fine lines on her face.

"Hopefully not for much longer," he replied, chipper. He looked down and patted his brief case, then smiled back up at the two.

"Wait," the other enforcer, a man closer to Black Ice's age, said.

"Yeah," the first one griped, gesturing stiffly to him, "this is the little bastard that blew up Genesis Labs."

Great.

"Now, hold on," Black Ice began, pulling on his best smile. He stood slowly, holding up his hands when both enforcers touched the stun guns on their hips. Black Ice hesitated, looking between them, before meeting the woman's eye. He turned up the charm, making his smile crooked and more playful. "I think we can all agree that that place was unethical."

The man shifted, glancing to the woman. Black Ice held her gaze, tilting his chin down slightly. She looked him up and down in a flash before meeting his eyes again.

"I reacted unethically, and I'm ready to admit that," he went on. "But given the circumstances, can you see how my response was appropriate?"

The woman tensed her jaw, anger flaring in her eyes. "I don't know," she challenged, taking a step closer. "Johnson? Do you think it's appropriate to kill forty hard-working men and women for a kindergarten freak show?"

Black Ice's smile fell instantly, hatred and rage rising to a boil in his chest. The lab had been full of kids, little kids to teenagers, who had done nothing wrong. Kids who were just trying to survive that fucking place. Kids who were sweet, and good, and did everything they were told, and still got the fucking knife because they were different.

Black Ice bit down hard on the snarl trying to twist his expression, but the younger enforcer still took a step back. Black Ice kept his gaze on the woman, fighting the urge to drop his temperature until she couldn't breathe his air. She was nervous now, too, gripping the handle of her stun gun as he took a step forward. He couldn't do anything to this woman, to anyone. He had to be added to the hero roster. He needed to get back inside S.A.I.

"Do you think it's appropriate," Black Ice growled, leaning in closer, looming over her, "for forty-two grown men and women to muscle around a bunch of children? To watch, while sixty-five kids are beaten, starved, terrorized, and caged?"

She kept glaring at him, squaring her shoulders like she somehow still had the moral high ground. He didn't let her reply.

"I did what I did because I was trying to save people," he rumbled. "You people are just a bunch of glorified mercenaries."

"You have no idea what we do," she snapped.

"Enlighten me."

"We're the reason people like you survive as long as you do," she hissed, jabbing a finger into his chest. He clenched his fists, baring his teeth, but not using his powers despite the burning need to. "Without us, you and every other entitled mutant would be mincemeat on day one."

"Funny," Black Ice spat, his eyes deathly sharp, "since a fourteen-year-old made such easy work of you."

She grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall, both hands wrapped around his neck as the chair clattered behind him. He was already holding her wrists, ready to get up and yank her off of the ground, when the door opened.

"Hey!" another woman shouted. The enforcer stilled, but she didn't let go of Black Ice. He tried to soften his expression, clenching his jaw and tamping his roiling hatred down to a simmer. "Is there a problem?"

Black Ice watched the enforcer, a smug sense of satisfaction creeping in. What was she going to say? Yeah, there's a problem, this asshole killed a bunch of people a decade ago? This bastard has a smart mouth? He provoked me from all the way across the hall because he was just sitting there minding his own fucking business?

Black Ice smirked. The enforcer let him go, her expression tightly pinched.

"No, there's no problem," she said as Black Ice tugged his rumpled suit back into rights.

"Then please don't assault anyone," the new woman snapped. Black Ice just kept smiling at the enforcer as she tried to glare a hole into his face. "We're ready for you, now, Black Ice."

He finally broke eye contact with his assailant to pick up his suitcase, which had fallen to the floor during her little outburst. He turned to her again, offering her the most disgustingly sweet smile he could muster. "See you in the field, ma'am," he said through his teeth.

"I'm looking forward to it," she growled.

[accidentally-in-fictional-love]

Sooo I finally got to read the Simon fic, and it was so good! You made me warm up to him more and understand him a little better. It was a nice way to save him too, I like that the protagonist isn't this perfect individual, they get jealous, a lil bit stalky, which quite honestly is very relatable and realistic. Couple questions:

Do you think there's a character that is beyond saving? Denham, Willy, Dave from Heavy (lol jk) Is there hope for everyone?

Do you plan on writing for characters that have died and if so, will you come up with a way to bring them back or have the story take place before the death or alternate universe?

Every time I get love for my fics with one of the lesser loved characters my heart grows three sizes and I want everyone to know this Q//w//Q This answer got long so I'm putting it behind a cut, I've never gotten to answer something like this before other than my Simon one from yesterday so this was a lot of fun to think about! 💗

Going into writing readers I honestly thought I'd just be writing me over and over, but as I do more of them I'm so glad that it's easy to fit someone different into whatever role the character needs them to be, which is so different from my usual stuff since I'm very used to fitting the plot around purely existing characters, or my own ocs, and getting to write up someone new who can mesh with these guys while also having that bit of me and what I hope are bits of the people who read them is so incredibly refreshing and a constant challenge I welcome 😊

I feel like some are beyond saving, but only because I have a horrible fear of getting attacked for wanting to find a way to save the unsaveable just because I'm into villains and think they're hot lmao

It's a challenge for sure, but I don't see myself being able to do any villain redemptions for Denham or Willy or even Realtor Dave since they're so surface level evil and love the hell outta it (even though my villain-lovin ass can probably still give them fully fledged proper backstories oop), unlike Simon or Kyle Slade or Logan Reeves, who all have short parts and did very bad things but also have peeks into how they got there, and I can always work with that.

I love doing deep dives and finding out how a character in the present got to where they are, figure out where they can go when they miss that One Event that made them a villain, and doing it with DD's roles has been so much fun since he loves playing rounded out characters and is always adding so much to them so they're not Just Evil, even if we get a few who're exactly that just for funsies hehe

This is why Gensan is such an interesting character to me despite The Big Flaw, because I see him get reduced to only that when there's a ton that made him that way. I'll never ship with him, the super rare character I don't since DD lures me in that easily, but I can't hate him either, and that's just the honest truth because he's so much more than Uh Oh Plot Twist because DD's such an amazing writer. This movie and Animals stuck with me the most after I watched them, I was just thinking about them for like a solid week afterwards, constantly turning over what I'd just seen in my mind whenever I stopped thinking of other things and putting those early pieces together so I could see why he reacted that way, or did what he did, and I'd love to try and watch it again soon and catch all the stuff I missed the first time.

And then there's Cam, who just really fuckin sucks lmao he's the absolute worst, 0 stars, kick to the balls, what an asshole 😂

As for characters who died, of course! Two of my biggest loves are Abner and Wojchek, and I'm also madly in love with Bob now as well, so they'll all have fully fledged fixits with my selfship sona Addy as I get back to all her plots, Abner first and foremost oh my god my heart I love him so much he needs to be alive and happy forever 😭

Outside of her, yes absolutely I'll find ways to save them for my readers, their canon endings will not stop me QwQ A lot of them don't deserve their ends with or without redemptions if they're a villain (looking at you Dwight you maniac I love you), and definitely not if they're good people who're just in the wrong place at the wrong time like Lonny or Lester or Coco now that I've finally watched BR2049. I'll probably mostly stick to saving them before their deaths rather than bringing them back or delving into aus (apart from the starting au of having the reader in their lives lol) since those kinda ideas can get away from me fast and start series, and I wanna save all the big series for my boys the Three River Phoenixes and all of Addy's plots~

This is where I'd love to get more requests, since I'm still mainly writing for who I love, so getting that random challenge to fix or save someone evil or who died before any real character of theirs was established would be hard but I know I'd have a lot of fun with them 😊💗