#biteback | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

daisy-mooon · 15 days ago

Text

Meant To Be (We Might Be All Right Now)

Martyn is a cashier that hates his job and avoids his powers. He's not looking for his soulmate and he's certainly not looking to return to the sidekick lifestyle. Things get complicated when he slaps the biggest, baddest supervillain in town and discovers that they're his soulmate.

Martyn hates them immediately. And Cleo hates him immediately too. But hey, he can survive this...

...right?

Or: Martyn is a guy. Cleo is a supervillain with anger issues. This is a meet ugly.

(Tumblr Version was supposed to go up last night but it didn't so. well here it is now lmao)

Chapter 1.

Martyn didn't like working at the supermarket.

Should have been quite obvious, really. Nobody liked working at the supermarket. Not unless you had a passion for Tesco meal deals and customers asking to see the manager. But still, it was a job, and it was a job that had nothing to do with heroes or villains. His sidekick days were over.

It was the late shift, and the store was small. Thus, he was the only employee in the store. Poor old Martyn, left alone to man the till, stare at his non-existent phone and wait for a customer to come and yell at him about a lack of milk. Or something along those lines. Last time, it had been Sharpies. He didn't know why people would come to Tesco to buy Sharpies, of all things, but the customer was always right.

"Excuse me.”

Oh great. Martyn almost groaned, but he suppressed it. Just an hour more of talking to customers and then he could go home. Martyn pushed himself out of his slump to stare at them. He could do this. He could do this. He was so good at talking to people and scanning things. He could absolutely do this.

The customers head tilted. Yeah. This was cool. This was fine. Talking to people was easy. "Do you know where the meal deals are?"

"The meal deals are at the back." Martyn stretched sluggishly, blinking his eyes open. God, he needed to do yoga or something. "Drinks and sandwiches are in the fridge, snacks are in the shelf next to them-"

The first thing he noticed was that his mystery customer was wearing white—white shirt, white suitpants, white waistcoat. The customer was wearing a red cape on top of that. The customer was covered in dried blood. It was all of those things that he recognised but didn't fully process what any of the weird outfit or weirder bloodstains were until he fully lifted his eyes and stared at them, face covered in a wolf-skull mask.

Martyn’s mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. He gaped.

A supervillain. At his till.

And not a mid supervillain; this supervillain had killed thousands of people. The supervillain that could kill him in a heartbeat. The supervillain that was (allegedly) cursed to cause death wherever she went. Uh oh. This was not good.

“Thanks!” Biteback's tone lit right up. Without fuss, she swept her way around the shelves and disappeared to… find the meal deals, he supposed.

Any normal persons reaction this would be to start screaming hysterically. Martyn could only stare dumbly in her direction.

…working the late night shift could be pretty tiring. Maybe his dumb job of giving people meal deals and lottery tickets had finally driven him insane. Was he supposed to call the cops? Or wait for her to leave and then call the cops? Did he run and hide somewhere first? He’d been trained to deal with Karens and the Americans with guns, not supervillains.

He, momentarily, debated using his powers. Then in one of the isles that he could see from his position at the till, he spotted a person in traditional black and blue necromancy robes, adorned with an oversized deer skull. Martyn froze. This was real. As the necromancer glanced up at him—said necromancer was stuffing an unholy amount of salt into an IKEA bag—Martyn gulped and backed away. He recognised that outfit; Khione.

Okay, yeah. He was so not risking using his powers. With two supervillains in the room, he couldn't risk it yet. But... jeez. He remembered now what had blared on about them on the telly; they were a soulmate pair and were never seen without the other.

Martyn swallowed and forced himself to maintain an air of calm. Okay. He… just two supervillains- Just two soulmate supervillains robbing his store. Right. This was- fine.

His mind scrambled to remember something , anything else about them. God, now was not the time for brain freeze- wait. That was it . Khione had ice powers and… some kind of dark magic. Biteback could summon horrifying shadow wolves. They were part of a trio…

Oh. Right. They had a third partner in crime. Blight. Yep, he'd definitely seen Blight on the news recently. They'd robbed something. Their powers were...

Martyn’s mind pulled up a blank. Invisibility? Nope. They did something else, something more freaky…

Khione started lugging the bag of goods towards the till. Each squeak the canvas made on the floor made Martyn want to shudder, but he found himself frozen in place. Had Khione frozen him? He did a quick double check. No, he was just shivering because he was a coward.

You’d think that supervillains would at least be wary advertising their purchases in front of a random coward-cashier that could call the cops on them (he wouldn’t), but apparently not. Khione regarded him with the same importance as a dead frog, then yanked the bag onto the counter and proceeded to stare at him. God, that was freaky. What did he want-?

…right! Martyn was a cashier. He was supposed to scan things for customers. It was his job. He was good at his job. Very good. It was why he hadn't been given a pay raise in the past year of working here, because he was just so good that upper management had it out for him.

Wait.

Khione was… paying ?

Flawless black gloves tapped against the counter. He couldn’t see the look on Khione’s face, because, well, freaky deer mask, but he'd worked in this shithole long enough to know impatience when he saw it. Right. Scanning.

First was the salt. Two pounds, thirty pence per bottle. Seventeen bottles of it. That was thirty-nine pounds and ten pence (inflation was going to kill them all, but he supposed that if you brought seventeen bottles of salt for fun then you kinda deserved to die). Eight packs of disposable garbage bags, the kind that were conveniently large enough to just about store a body. Yikes! Three pounds each. Eight times three was twenty-four pounds. As for the meat… and there was a lot of meat-

"What on earth are you holding?"

Martyn jumped. Khione had moved his head to look at a now present Biteback, the antlers of his deer skull almost whacking the plexiglass they'd put up around the counters during the pandemic and never taken down. He was suddenly very grateful for pexiglass. He didn’t want grubby-grotty-Tesco-shopper-germs, and he definitely didn’t want supervillain germs, and-

"A meal deal," Biteback responded with far too much cheer for 9 PM on a Wednesday night. True to her word, she was carrying a watercress-and-egg sandwich, a cherry flavoured Pepsi Max and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. “And dog food.”

“I am not buying you dog food." He fumbled for something buried in his masses of robes. He produced a plain, black wallet stuffed to the brim with cash. Since when did supervillains pay for stuff? Didn't they just steal it? “I am not buying you a meal deal. ”

Biteback made a noise of indignation. "But- you brought Blight a meal deal on Friday."

"Because neither of us had lunch on Friday, Bitey.” Bitey? Martyn clenched the edge of the counter and strained every muscle in his body to not erupt into hysterical laughter. “Why do you even want a meal deal? We already ate."

"I can't believe that you won't buy your soulmate a meal deal." She huffed. She slapped the items on the counter. The sandwich toppled awkwardly into the salt and knocked it over. "And you won't even buy any dog food. What’s this random cashier going to think of this?”

Martyn froze as they both looked at him. He only just managed to put out words. “I… don’t judge.” He put out weakly.

Biteback huffed again and redirected her attention to Khione. “What is our daughter going to think of that?"

"We don’t have a daughter. You have a dog.” Khione distractedly shoved a wad of cash at Martyn. He took it, eyeing it with the most amount of caution he'd given anything, ever. Was it laced with poison? Or cursed to set on fire? His attention, thankfully, remained on his soulmate.

"She's a special dog."

"Your dog literally hates me."

“She only hates you when you're mean to me and don't buy me meal deals.” Biteback elbowed him, hard enough that he could see the wince. "Are you going to pay for the dog food or not?”

"...fine."

He blinked, and then Khione was shoving her meal deal and dog food in Martyn's face. Martyn gripped at it stiffly, pressing the scanner over the barcode.

What if he took too long scanning? What if he dropped the change? What if they asked for a disposable plastic bag and killed him when he said that they cost ten pence?

“You don’t have a soulmate, do you?” Khione sniffed at him. Martyn gulped and shook his head. “ Good. Keep it that way.”

He elected to ignore that for fear of being killed at the spot, and began to fumble for the change. He almost dropped it twice and swallowed as he handed it over. “Is that… everything?"

Before Khione could take the money, Biteback picked it right out of his hands and shoved it into an unseen pocket. Khione’s head slowly turned towards her. That did not seem like a healthy soulmate relationship at all, but you know what? Not his soulmate, not his problem. Unless they had an argument and destroyed the Tesco. Then it was definitely his problem, because the store didn't have insurance from supervillain fights. But other than that, no. He wasn’t paid enough to care.

"If you call the police, we will blow up this shop with you inside," Khione said calmly. The air froze, sharpened as he tilted his head. It was like a predator watching its prey. "Are we clear?”

"...yes,” Martyn squeaked. A small crawl of frost started to inch across the counter. He panicked, yelped out louder. “Yes! I won't call the police! I don't want them either-”

"Good." The frost dissipated, leaving behind a trail of droplets. Khione swiped at it, smearing the water across the counter. “Bye bye, pretty boy.”

Biteback snatched her soulmate by the arm and started dragging him off. He cursed at her and she cursed at him right back, snatching the bag from him as he almost dropped it. He heard a voice - in all honesty, he couldn’t tell whose it was - raise in an ungodly shriek as they left, cut off with the bang of the door closing.

Martyn stared.

Martyn stared for several minutes.

What did he do now? Call the police? Call his manager? Call the CEO of Generica City Tesco? Sweat began to bead on the back of his neck? What should he do?

Marryn did as all good minimum wage workers who'd just worked a dubiously legal 10 hour shift, and elected to ignore it until his boss brought it up.

The next day was painful.

He spent, to start with, an extra ten seconds more struggling with his rusty lock than he normally did and almost missed the bus. The bus then turned out to be full and he'd had to stand. And then came work itself—his manager had not been impressed to find out they had been robbed by two supervillains, and somehow managed to blame him . With every chime of the door, he imagined Biteback or Khione slipping in and grinning at him- which didn't really make sense, because neither of their masks showed their mouths, but- ugh . At least the manager didn't call the police, which was definitely breaking Tesco TM protocol and was probably to do with semi-illegal contents in the garages on this street, but the last thing he needed was a police investigation that would involve heroes.

Everything was fine, he assured himself with wide eyes and clammy skin. A coworker asked if he was okay—he waved her off even if he did jump at every minor creak of the door. It worked, mostly because everyone people working there were only there to collect a paycheck and go. All he had to do was stand at a stupid till and scan items, and then it would all be fine.

His hands shook minutely as he worked.

Then, there was the great temptation; open up his Sight and see what he could find. Martyn could feel the twitching crawl of his near-permanently shut Sight, begging to be opened up and to glean for anything his human eyes couldn't. He hushed it down. He did not need someone sensing his Sight and he did not need anyone connecting the dots. One could never be too paranoid. Right? Wrong. He could be too paranoid. Because everything was fine. Nobody knew who he was, and nobody was connecting any dots. The dots he was worrying about were non-existent.

The rest of the day went just about fine. Fine! One hundred percent, completely fine. No no, Martyn wasn't nervous. Martyn was a big boy who did big boy adult things. It was- ugh, it was fine . Normal , even, if you could call this city normal. The city of Generica was, in one word, generic, but that didn’t mean it could sometimes be extremely dangerous and slash or weird.

He- as much as he would rather not after the events of yesterday- was the last one to leave. His manager promised that he would get paid extra for the last hour, which he didn't believe one single bit, but he couldn't afford to be choosey. Rent didn't pay itself. So there he was, 10 PM on a Thursday night, closing the shop all by himself and praying that the the googlies didn't get him. No Biteback, no Khione, no zombies or shadowwolves jumped out, which he took as a good sign.

Martyn looked around semi-fearfully at the shadows around him—not full-fearfully, but still wary. The car park was empty. It usually was at this time of night. The rest of the shops closed much, much earlier than this Tesco—to the right of the store, a small array of ratty charity shops and a grubby cafe. To the left, a long row of those dinky garages that you could hire and leave stuff in.

It was late enough that he’d missed his usual bus, but there was another bus in about…. twenty minutes? He was about to check his phone when he remembered that he didn’t have a phone. Yay him. He shook himself off- he didn't know what he was shaking off of him, but he felt the need to do it out of instinct- and tried to ignore the squelch of his work shoes (shitty quality trainers) against the muddy road. God forbid bus stops ever be somewhere clean in this city. But that was Generica City for you. It was anything, if not generic.

Posters peeled off the back of the bus stop; a rather official looking poster that read “The Wither Rose Trio Wants You To Report Villain Sightings; call 69-0420 Today!”, or the years old, faded posters that yelled advertisements such a “Get Tickets For LDShadowLady: That's Just Shadow! (Special Guest Star: Tommy Innit)”. Bored, he skimmed the others for only a moment (what the hell was Twinkly Trash Cleaning?) before giving up. It was dark, he was cold, and he would like to do nothing more than curl up and sleep. He stuffed himself on the bus bench, jammed his hands into his pockets, and glared at the icy road.

A minute ticked by.

Then another.

Five. He shoved his hand out of his coat to splay his fingers out and glare at them. Yep, it had definitely been five minutes. He stuffed his fingers back into the pocket.

He wished that he’d brought his rucksack. It was huge and baggy and had far too much room and he definitely did not have enough stuff to justify lugging it around every day, but he could fit one of those cheap books you could get from the local charity shop in it. The selections there were poor but four for one pound was a flipping bargain, he had to admit.

He, distantly, thought about Ren's bookshelf. He'd loved collecting books; not the cheap, casual paperbacks either. Cloth and leather-bound books that looked impossibly old, and probably were. He never read any, but that didn't mean-

A flickering movement snapped him out of his thoughts.

Martyn didn't turn his head, immediately paranoid. Should he use his powers? He hesitated, then felt for the thrum of adrenaline in his veins. Cautiously, cautiously, he opened up his Sight.

A person. Standing near the Tesco, but not near enough to confirm a robbery or anything like that. He allowed himself to open his Sight up a little bit more, enough to confirm that the figure was, in fact, standing in front of the garages and enough to confirm that there were security cameras. A jolt raced through him—he hadn't considered the existence of security cameras last night. There were fines for not reporting villain activity, and he couldn't pay them. Oh, what was he doing -

The figure slipped inside the garage. Martyn held his breath. After a few moments, they emerged. He froze—had they seen him? He didn't dare push his Sight a fraction more.

Then he saw it. A hand pressed against the crumbling bricks. Darkness shot through the mortar- no. Not darkness. Rot . Martyn stared in a mixture of disgust and horror as sickly, streams of rot chasmed through the building. He knew who this villain was now, had caught a sickening glimpse of a skull mask and the unmistakably deathly black costume. Blight. What were they doing here?

He, finally, remembered what their powers were. He felt a little stupid considering that it was literally in their name— Blight —but he blamed it on the stress of the night before. Rot. Decay. Destruction. Why on Earth had he been so scared of the rumours of Bitebacks death curse? This was so, so much worse than shadow wolves.

He Saw the cracks before he heard them, but nothing could prepare him for the deafening groan of brick and steel creaking. Blight paused, then withdrew something from their pocket.

Right. Martyn had had enough of this. He was leaving. He was leaving now .

And as he turned around, something exploded.

His head snapped around at breakneck speed, unable to look away from the catastrophe in front of him. Fire spilt out of the garage and roared, combing straight through the rottened walls and flaring outwards. Martyn watched in horror as the flame burst into the Tesco- his Tesco-

But Blight didn’t stop. Instead, they shoved a hand out in front of them and curled their fingers inwards. The garage in front of them collapsed on the spot. And then the garage next too it. The flames were hot enough that he could feel them from the bus stop, and he startled backwards. He could do nothing but watch, in agonising horror, as the only job and only real security he’d had for the past year went up in flames.

At this point, he was too angry to give a shit about what Blight could do to him, only about what they’d just done to him.

“That was where I worked,” Martyn screeched at the top of his lungs. It was a shockingly loud, shrill noise that should have pierced glass but broke no reaction from the supervillain. “You asshole-!”

No Tesco meant no job. No job meant no money. No money meant no rent. And jobs that paid without putting him in the system were near impossible to get, which meant that he'd have to relocate again.

The lack of reaction should have inspired him to run before they could kill him. Instead, it only seized him into unsteady but violently furious stomps towards them. What the fuck was wrong with them? What had he done to deserve his workplace being blown up? What had anyone on this street done to deserve having their property blown up? Martyn liked to keep his Sight under wraps, but he saw red.

“What are you waiting for?” Martyn demanded. Blight still wasn't facing him. He could make out their golden chest piece, structured to look like ribs. He wanted to take it, piece by piece, and break it. “Why don't you look at me, you absoloute -”

They turned, finally and before he could even think “this is a really bad idea”, he punched them in the face.

In theory, it shouldn’t have done anything. But Martyn was pissed enough to put his full strength into it. Blights head snapped to the side with the force, and if he listened closely he swore he could hear the unsteady creak of bone underneath.

“I…” they were wearing a skull mask. He'd literally just slapped a skull. But more important than that, he had slapped Blight. Of all the supervillains in the city, and of all the villains and heroes he hated enough to actually slap, he had chosen to slap the one that could kill him in an instant.

Their voice was a low, dangerous growl. “Go ahead,” they dared, and in that moment Martyn knew that they were every single bit angry as he had suspected they were.

Martyn swallowed and steeled his nerves. Adrenaline mixed with the oddest combination of rage and terror to power his eyes upwards at them. Their skull mask- it was fairly simple, compared to the skull masks he’d seen on Khione and Biteback, but he blanched upon realising that it had been from a real skull, hacked away at to make room for it to fit on their face, He braced himself and forced himself to meet their eyes. Bloodshot and violently green, baring nothing but disgust and hate-

-and-

-pain?

Martyn's knees buckled as the most searing pain he'd ever felt consumed him. He choked. His entire body felt like it was on fire. Was this what Blight's powers felt like? Being flayed alive? His stubborn anger had disappated instantly, and his mouth hung open in the attempt to gargle out a plea. He’d heard they were undead—did the undead know mercy?

He gasped and stared straight ahead at Blight. Instead of towering over him, they had similarly hundhced over. He could hear their breathing; mangled, wheezing breath tore out of them like blood tore out of skin. Their hands gritted against the now ruined pavement, which only made his pain grow worse. His hand could have been on fire and he wouldn't have known any difference.

It cleared like a fleeting thunderstorm. Martyn blinked the spots out of his eyes and juttered upwards shakily. Blight was still staring at him.

“You can't be,” They gagged, stumbling away from him. Martyn almost gasped as they brushed against the flames, saw it go out. How had they gone out? It was then that he realised that their rot had cut outwards, smothering the flames in a thick blanket of death. Blight’s foot hit a chunk of rubble and exploded with pain. Pain that he felt , deeply, violently, as if it were happening to him-

No.

No, no, no.

This couldn't be happening. Martyn couldn't get involved with villains. He couldn’t. He’d promised himself, after Ren, that he would leave this world and never go back.

His mouth dried in horror. “You're my soulmate?”

Blight didn’t answer. The unnatural, shared pain that echoed in his bones was all the answer he needed.

#meant to be (we might be alright now)#life series #double life smp #dlsmp #divorce quartet #martyn inthelittlewood #inthelittlewood #scott smajor #smajor1995 #pearlescentmoon #zombiecleo #zombie cleo #mcyt #traffic life #mcyt fanficiton #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #archive of our own

20 notes · View notes

daisy-mooon · 14 days ago

Text

Meant To Be (We Might Be All Right Now)

Martyn hates them immediately. And Cleo hates him immediately too. But hey, he can survive this...

...right?

Or: Martyn is a guy. Cleo is a supervillain with anger issues. This is a meet ugly.

Chapter 3.

International Hero Corp Records; Blight

“Blight is an active supervillain in the United States of Generica in Generica City. Their gender and pronouns are unconfirmed. Their powers involve manipulating, accelerating and deaccelerating rot, decay, mould and other natural processes that destroy materials over time. The range of their powers vary on how old and damaged something already is; for new, well-maintained and undamaged entities, they need bodily contact with the material. If an entity already has pre-existing decay, mould or damage, then they can influence it from a distance. The specific range of this power is unknown.”

God. There were so many words.

“Blight is most well known for working within an unnamed trio with fellow supervillains Khione and Biteback. If you come across Blight alone, International Hero Corp recommends to get to a hidden or secure location and to then contact the proper authorities…” blah blah blah, supervillains are dangerous, Martyn already knew that. “Blight is notable for committing arson, property destruction, theft, murder and domestic terrorism…” Domestic terrorism? Is that what villain activity was called nowadays? Huh. "They are on bad terms with a variety of of other villains, including the Shadow Queen." Honestly... based? “Blight is suspected to be undead and has no known soulmate…”

Martyn rolled his eyes and hit Click to go back, hold to see history . Yeah. No soulmate indeed.

Google grinned at him. In another tab was Indeed and in another after that he had typed in “Generica city minimum wage jobs no experience”. He hadn’t viewed either of those in half an hour. Okay, so he needed to use the library computers to get a job, but he wanted to cyberstalk his soulmate.

And- yeah. One of the library workers had noticed this, and was looking somewhat concerned. Wasn’t this just splendid?

He was not getting anywhere with this. The best available job was an hour's drive away and the rest all required “Proof of prior experience” despite the fact he had hit as many specifications for “No experience needed” as possible. Martyn shut the computer down, dusted himself down, and then debated on what to do next.

The books might have been interesting, but he didn’t want to put the details for a library card down and he still had things he needed to do. He made a mental note of what might be useful to learn should he get forced into more villain fights—as could be expected of a public library, they were lacking in many self-defence books, but they had a nice selection of maps and some beat-up copies of survival guides. And, now that he thought about it, the Central Library had city documents didn’t they? Surely, some of those could be helpful.

The cuts in his hands throbbed. He winced. He’d done a decent job of bandaging them up, all things considered, but he was expecting that if anyone was going to be taking potions, it would be Blight. A supervillain could afford the good stuff. Maybe even the legal good stuff, although he’d laugh at that. As for the other injuries—they weren’t bleeding, so he didn’t touch them other than some more sloppy bandaging. But a pained Martyn was a hungry Martyn, and he doubted that Blight would be fixing anything up on their end if he starved to death.

None of the librarians paid much attention as he left. The one who’d been looking at him earlier had merely shrugged and moved on. It was an okay place, with its muddy-blue coloured carpets, free WiFi and computer access and heating that he didn’t have to pay for, but it couldn’t give him food.

But where to get food? The air snapped at his skin as he stepped outside—two coffee shops to his left, a tiny Watcher Shrine, a book shop… ah. This was the street with the Aldi on the corner. Well, it wouldn’t be ready-made, but he could scrounge up the change for some bread. Maybe even some cheese, if he felt like breaking the bank.

He was still on edge, but nothing jumped out at him. Good. The air snipped a him and he splashed himself in a puddle as he walked up, but everything seemed to be fine. There were no supervillains and no supervillains and no Tesco managers tracking him down for not reporting property damage.

Martyn paused. He’d skimmed the news report of what Blight had done at the library; he hadn’t read it long enough to really gather what the

The first aisle of Aldi was always the busiest, because everyone spent hours there trying to decide whether or not they can afford dairy or meat. Martyn slid through and managed to cast only two paranoid glances over his shoulder. A record for him. Although he really didn’t expect supervillains to roll up to Aldi. If you robbed banks for a living, he expected you to go to Marks and Spencers.

Past the vegetables and fruit he went, and straight to the dairy fridges. There were too many options for cheese. And they were all so- expensive . Martyn wrinkled his nose. Edam, cheddar, mozzarella, gouda…

He stared for longer than he cared to admit. Three pounds a packet? He glanced over at the meat fridges and found that the sliced meats seemed to be more or less the same price. That was just- outrageous .

Martyn chewed absently on his lip, then stopped. Could Cleo feel him chew on his lip? He shook his head. He’d go check the price of the bread, and then he’d return to the cheese if it was cheap enough.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets with a sigh and-

-walked directly into a guy. A guy with neon blue hair. It was like walking into a traffic light, if traffic lights were neon blue. And ouch -

His head hit theirs. “Hey!” Martyn yelled, nursing the throb in his head. He’d bashed his head hard. Cleo was going to hate him. “Watch it!”

“Watch yourself ,” the guy sniffed, fumbling for his shopping baskets. They were crammed full to the brim. Blue hair and mystery-pronouns glared at him. Jeez. They had cool eyes- blue and yellow? “I'm kind of busy here.”

He bristled. “You walked into me !”

They looked on the brink of cursing him out, and then they paused.. Their eyebrows furrowed, then pinched back into a stare. Any other time that would be oddly creepy, but Martyn didn't have time to care about that, because he had just made eye contact with the person behind him.

A certain someone clutching a packet of Doritos.

A certain someone rubbing their forehead where he'd whacked his own.

A certain zombie with orange hair and not-mystery-pronouns, who, upon seeing him, glared so violently he was surprised he didn't catch fire.

Martyn groaned. Seriously? Out of all the places that a supervillain could be, they were in Aldi ? “Hi, Cleo.”

“What are you doing here?” They snapped.

“Shopping.”

“ Oh ,” Blue-hair said. They looked at him with scrutiny, then bolted into recognition. “Is that him ?”

Cleo grimaced. “Yep.”

“...yikes.”

Martyn almost choked. He gaped at him so hard that his jaw hurt. Who did they were? The mean girls? “ Excuse me ? Who are you, exactly?”

Blue-hair opened his mouth. “I-”

“He’s no one important.” Cleo cut him off. A he? Martyn sighed. There went his blue hair and pronouns jokes. “What are you doing here?”

“Because I was shopping ,” He protested, holding up his basket. “Hello? Do you want us to die from starvation?”

“I thought he worked at Tesco,” Blue-hair muttered.

“The Tesco blew up.” He shot Cleo a glare. Cleo rolled their eyes. “So now I'm shopping- oh, don’t look like that , you asshole.”

Blue-hair looked momentarily surprised. Okay, he guessed it made sense that Cleo's friends wouldn't know that they were a supervillain. He briefly considered ratting her out, and then decided against it.

Cleo crossed their arms. “And you were staring at the fridge for five minutes because…?”

“Trying to decide whether or not to get cheese.”

They looked at him blankly.

“Cleo,” blue-hair sighed. “Have you seen the price of cheese in this economy?”

“Yes I have,” Cleo snapped at him. They grunted, dumped the Doritos in blue-hairs basket, dug out a wallet. Three fivers were stuffed into his hand.

Martyn blinked at her.

They shook their head. “Buy yourself the damn cheese, Martyn.”

Blue-hair nodded at him, semi-awkwardly. He was wearing denim on denim, which, really, should be a war crime. “Well… we have to go. So- bye?”

“Uh.” Martyn held the five-pound notes oddly in his hands. Surely they hadn’t meant for him to just- take them, right? “Okay…?”

They grabbed blue hair by the arm and dragged him away.

Now, you had to believe him on this one. He may have considered blackmailing Cleo into giving him money, but he wasn’t that desperate, nor was he that stupid. This was merely a coincidence. Right?

“This has got to be a joke,” they announced. They actually looked… distressed that they had run into him again. Which, in all honesty, was kind of hilarious.

“I don’t know what to tell you, here.” Martyn blinked. He had been solidly parked in the seat of this armchair for about two hours now, reading city documents. In all honesty, they were boring and borderline useless, but getting an idea for crime in the city seemed to be a good place to start for trying not to die in a villain war. At least he now knew about how the Shadow Queen’s potion smuggling had skyrocketed since Ren had… died. He cleared his throat. “What are you doing in Central Library?”

Cleo’s eyes widened for only a fraction of a moment, but he caught it before they could retain calm. “I… was returning a book.”

“...Really.” That was the most obvious lie he had ever heard, but he, quite frankly, didn’t want to know. “Well… I hope you enjoyed the book.”

Their eyes narrowed at him.

“What?”

“Why are you reading city reports about potion smuggling?”

“To take over the world,” he said dryly. “No, that was a joke . I’m just curious.” She raised an eyebrow. If he concentrated he could… feel the tension of the stitches in their face. Ugh. “Seriously. If you’re going to be blowing up illegal potion warehouses-”

“Keep your voice down!”

“-then I… think I should know about it.” He could feel himself growing more and more defensive, but he couldn’t help it. “What? You’re not the only one who doesn’t like the Shadow Queen.”

Had she been looking closer, she may have been able to discern the edges of pain in his face, but she didn’t. She crossed her arms. “You haven’t got the slightest clue as to why I hate her.”

“Let me guess,” he said, half-bored. “She was better at selling illegal potions than you?”

They snorted. “Not even in the same solar-system as the truth. And- hope you don’t me asking- are you reading these instead of finding a job?”

Martyn glared at them.

Cleo shrugged and walked off towards the shelves where he’d gotten the crime reports on. The archives in this place were pretty extensive; they had census records, police reports, building plans… he did not want to think about how easy it was for a supervillain to get this stuff. Martyn groaned, allowed himself momentary thankfulness that Cleo had gathered at the architecture section, and shoved his records in the crime section at the other end of the room. And then left.

Why the hell were they running into him so often? Were they a stalker?

The pavement blew up.

It, shockingly, wasn’t Blight’s fault, although Martyn did curse them out. In all fairness though, he was cursing everything out. The one job interview that he’d been able to get- at some shithole 24-hour convenience store that exclusively took cash and didn’t seem to know or care what documentation was- and he was going to be late .

Goddamnit. He hated this city. Maybe he should move to a different place, like DreamSMPTown, where people stabbed each other for fun. Except that had been blown up, and the author couldn’t remember any other SMPs to make into towns. Yeah, he would take his chances with Generica.

People were screaming and running. He got smacked in the side by some random schmuck with a backpack, and almost shoved over by another guy with goat horns. Martyn winced and squinted at the chaos at the other end of the street. What the heck was going on?

“You’re going to regret this, Bitey!”

Martyn paused. Wasn’t that what Khione had called Biteback in the Tesco?

And would you look at that. Biteback strode into the full view of the street.

“I need to get out of here,” Martyn muttered to himself. The shop he was interviewing for was just on the other side of the street. He stared out, trying to determine if it was safe, and then dashed out-

Another explosion. It hadn’t been close by any means, but it was too close for comfort. He backpedalled immediately. His heart shot into his throat as something else blew up. He dived for cover at the nearest parked car and slammed his Sight open with full force.

Two people standing on the other side of Biteback. One; purple and green, traditional wizard robes, face hidden by a relatively simple mask. Oh. That was Hecate. He’d met her briefly with Ren, and had fought with her maybe twice, although he couldn’t really judge her character. And there was her twin- Whiplash. Right. Hecate had some sort of crystal magic and…

Boom .

Because of course he had to get the explosions superhero when he was trying to get to his job interview.

“Put your hands up!” Hecate yelled at the top of her lungs. She didn’t use a voice changer, did she? Terrifying woman .

Biteback paused. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking with the wolf mask, but, slowly, in an almost mocking fashion, they raised their hands.

“Well, well, well.” Martyn almost screamed as he shot around. Khione was standing directly behind him, half crouched to disguise their presence, and looking straight at him. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

“Trying not to die,” he gulped.

Khione maintained the stare- God, he wished that his mask didn’t have covered eye sockets. “I think Blight would like that.”

Oh! So Khione- and he assumed Biteback- knew that he was Cleo’s soulmate. That was just… fantastic. Martyn shot a hasty Sight-enhanced glance back at Biteback. Hecate was yelling more things at her, and despite her raised hands he could hear Biteback laughing. “You- uh- not gonna help your soulmate?”

Khione shrugged. “She’ll be fine.”

Martyn was starting to have serious doubts about the sanity of this trio, because in what universe was being threatened by two of the biggest superheroes in town fine? Then, as if insulted by his judgement, a blurred, half-formed thing shot out of the shadows. Whiplash shrieked and raced backwards just as the thing snapped at him.

“Ah,” Khione commented dryly. “There’s Tilly. See? You have nothing to worry about.”

His voice almost rose into a shriek what the fuck was a Tilly? But he swallowed instead. “Listen, I’m just trying to get to my job interview, okay? Preferably without dying. It’s on the other side of the street.”

Khione tilted his head.

“If I ask really nicely, can you not kill me for a moment whilst I get across?”

His hand shot out, and for half a moment Martyn felt terror. Then he saw it- a wall of ice.

“Khione!” Hecate shouted. Martyn didn’t risk opening his Sight back up again, but he heard another explosion, a chorus of snarls and near-manical laughter on Biteback’s end.

“Well, go on then,” Khione sighed. “Sorry about your Tesco, or whatever. Just villain business.”

Martyn hesitated for a moment, then heard another explosion. “Yep! Yep. Okay. Apology accepted. I’m going.” He grunted, picking himself up from the ground.

Khione watched him race across. The door to the shop was- thank God- open and he darted in, breathing heavily The ice-wall disintegrated then, and Martyn watched from the window with wide eyes as he sent a boulder of ice towards the fight.

“Oh,” the owner blinked from the till. A scruffy blonde guy, no older than twenty. “You actually showed up after that?”

“I need the job,” Martyn panted.

He winced. “I uh… already decided to hire someone else. Sorry dude.”

Another explosion rocked the store.

“You’re welcome to stay here until the fighting stops, though.”

…Martyn was going to actually kill someone.

“Hecate and Whiplash Catch Supervillain Soulmates Breaking Into City Warehouse’; Discover Shadow Queen Stockpile!

Hecate and Whiplash, heroes part of the Wither Rose trio, confronted the supervillain soulmate pair Khione and Biteback on Goldfish Street at approximately midday. The supervillains had reportedly been seen trying to break into a city warehouse. After a short the villains fled, and the heroes discovered another of the Shadow Queen’s infamous potion warehouses… police say that the warehouse could have contained over a million pounds worth of illegal potions and half-potions. This is another part of the ongoing villain war between Khione, Biteback and Blight versus the Shadow Queen and her villain empire…”

Martyn threw the newspaper aside. He had inferred bad relations from Canary, but a full blown villain war between Blight and the Shadow Queen? This… his blood ran cold. This was not going to end well for him.

But- it was fine. All he needed to do was avoid Blight, and everything would be fine.

7 AM at the local cafe. All he wanted was a sandwich and a hot-chocolate after the actual nightmare that had been yesterday—still no job, but the shopkeeper had offered to pay him if he cleaned the windows, so he had a little more to keep him going.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Behold. A wild Cleo. And… a person holding a dog lead. The person looked, in all honesty, normal. Brown hair, dark-blue hoodie, thin face. They had one blind eye, but seemed content staring at him through the other one. The dog was cute. The kind of dog that was big but half-fluff, like an enormous teddy bear.

“Cleo?” The person questioned—he blinked at their accent. Since when did Generica City have Australians? “Who's this?”

Cleo gritted their teeth, and swallowed, painfully slowly. “He,” she said finally, looking absolutely pissed. “Is my soulmate.”

The Australian squinted, and then burst out laughing.

Seriously? This was starting to get offensive. “Is that the only thing your friends think of when they look at me?” Martyn demanded. “Ew?”

“Yes.” They pinched their nose bridge. “What are you doing here, Martyn?”

“I wanted breakfast.” He shrugged and took a bite out of his sandwich. Bacon and chicken, baby. This was the life .

“And…” they took in the bags under his eyes and frowned. “Is there a reason you’re buying breakfast instead of medical supplies?”

He knew exactly what they were talking about. The slash on his chest, from Canary to Cleo, which he hadn’t wanted to fuss with. He scowled. “Why don’t you buy them? You’re the rich one.”

He froze, then, looking at the Australian. Were they supposed to hear this…?

Cleo sighed. “She doesn’t care.”

“Oh, I do care.” Faint alarm flitted through him, but she quickly burst out laughing. “This is really entertaining drama. You guys should make a reality TV show.”

The dog barked and wagged her tail in agreement.

“I didn’t know dogs were allowed in this cafe,” he said flatly.

“They aren’t.”

Well… that was just lovely. Martyn shook his head and stuffed the sandwich wrapping into his pocket—he’d bin it once he was outside. “Listen, Cleo, how ever you’re following me, can you just stop?”

They gritted their teeth. “Do you think I’m doing this on purpose ?”

“...Maybe?”

One of the priests at a Watcher Temple had once told him that once linked, soulmates were often drawn to the same places. Martyn hated that idea and still did. He did not want Cleo drawn to his block of flats, no thank you.

“Well. Nice to meet you, Cleo’s friend. And Dog.” Dog sniffed him once. Dog sneezed at him. “I… bye.”

Over the next few days, he saw them a few more times. Once, crossing the street. They had glared at him and stuck him the middle finger. Twice, standing with the blue-hair and Australian woman, pouring over a map- or a… building plan? They didn’t see him, and he had instantly walked the other way. The last had been when he was running away from a fight—Canary again, this time, versus Biteback and Cleo. He was fairly confident she hadn’t seen him that time either. But he still allowed himself to delve into the paranoia that someone might have.

He kept his Sight as closed as possible. Over so much use in the past few days, it was twitching to open every other hour. But Martyn could avoid this world. He could. He could get away. He ignored the bruises, cuts and scrapes that he got from Cleo’s end of the soulmate bond and continued to scuffle across the city, trying to find a job.

A week, and he still hadn’t succeeded in getting a job. Martyn grimaced. His finances were not looking solid right now. He could pay his rent—but then what? He could try petty theft if he was desperate. Not villain-level theft but… enough to pay the bills, right?

He closed his eyes and thunked his head against the flat wall. It was a small flat, all considered—one room and a bathroom. A bed sat on a rickety bed frame and mattress, a table and a chair, and a mini-fridge. There were cardboard boxes which kept extra stuff and a pile of spare blankets on the bed. Back when he lived with Ren… well, Generica Hero’s Association granted them enough money to live comfortably. But he didn’t miss the armchair or the fireplace—he missed Ren. Ren would know what to do.

He peeled his head off the wall and blinked his eyes open- they were watering. Martyn wanted to sleep, but the flat was too… warm. He needed to get out for a bit.

The building was quiet as he opened the door, as he clambered down the stairs. Someone was singing on one of the floors above him. He tapped the passcode that opened the entrance and sighed. The wind was cold, and the rain was beginning to spit, but he calmed almost instantly.

Silently, religiously, he wandered towards the edge of the road. It was empty. These were the types of nights he’d do re-con with Ren, climbing the tallest buildings in the city, baring his face to the wind and allowing himself to search every nook and cranny. Nothing was invisible to him on those nights.

Martyn couldn’t see anything other than the other end of the street, but his closed his eyes and pretended, just for a moment, that Ren was behind him. That in just a moment, he was going to ask Martyn what he could see. That he was going to slide his hand into Martyn’s and squeeze it.

Something rustled

Martyn’s eyes snapped open. The street seemed empty. The trees were rustling in the breeze—was that where that noise had come from? He wasn’t so certain.

He took a step back and, in a foolish moment of anxiety, allowed his Sight to pop back open. That’s when he saw a figure, standing right behind him. He turned around at a breakneck speed-

Canary. He would recognise those feathers anywhere. The villain cocked his head to the side as he took him in- and oh, he felt the brush of Sight against him.

“The Shadow Queen sends her regards,” Canary nodded. And then, he lunged.

a/n: god i just love cliffhanger endings lmfaoo

#meant to be (we might be all right now)#divorce quartet #inthelittlewood #martyn inthelittlewood #mcyt #double life smp #dlsmp #life series #traffic smp #trafifc life series #zombiecleo #zombie cleo #scott smajor #smajor1995 #pearlescentmoon #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 #archive of our own

12 notes · View notes