#brute villain

[blanket-art]

They’re bringing back lunch for everyone!

(I got inspired to draw this after I saw chr0macide’s really cool drawing of the brute guy and remembered he existed lol)

[chr0macide]

NOBODY draws this guy, I stg I looked and couldn’t find a single piece of fanart, fr has anybody seen any?? poor guy 😭

this isn’t much but I tried to make an origins design for him

he looks kinda cursed with the less cartoony proportions tbh lol

[sweeneydino]

Enraged by his loss of the fragments upon meeting the Samurai, the Shredder gathers the best of the cadavers he can find to follow and capture them before he must return to his own world.

Bloated, rotten, and vile, these endlessly burning creatures and their intense loyalty to their master will stop at nothing to capture the four kappa, not even with two pissed off dads and their extended family who are just as relentless when it comes to protecting those that they love.

--

These are young versions foot lieutenant and foot Brute btw ;) less formed, more malleable. And gross..

[ppgxrrblove]

i love the school au designs except for brat... dont feel comfortable for the whole crop top sailor shirt with a darn short skirt - its not cute, especially when brats only seen as a 5-year old, i think it would've been nice if her skirt was longer; i know the girls have aged as teens, making it well known that punks aged as teens as well - that we never seen, but since, ya know they do exist if the girls have it pretty sure the punks too.

[moon-ayyye]

At a certain point, jason will realise that while he'll never truly consider the bats his family, they are the best he'll ever get in life.

Who does he have? Roy's dead, kori is in space most of the time or with her titans, bizzaro is the king of hell, and artemis is off doing shimtar shit. He's never going to befriend a civilian due to his attachment to the hood, as shown in his relationship with isabella, and he's always going to be an outcast in the hero community.

Jason killing isn't what makes other heroes hate him; it's the fact that he went out of way to hurt batman and co. Dick's titans would be pissed about the brothers in blood thing, tim's yj would be pissed about obvious events, and damian's team is too young, and miscellaneous heroes would be wary after the bullshit with mia dearden.

His own actions have doomed him to loneliness, or the company of people who are not healthy for him. Desiring human connection is jason's main motivation in most comics he's in, and he'd rather get harmful connections that will 100% end up killing him (which they already HAVE. canonically. gotham war belongs in a level below hell) than be lonely, and that's the tragedy of the character. His own actions have prevented him from ever healing, just not in a way he expected them to.

[rhymeswithfart]

Hello

Please help us,May God bless you 🙏

I'm Etaf from Gaza

red and Share the link on my pageThe fixer,

If you are able to donate, that would be kind of you. Thank you. 🙏

This campaign is vetted here. Low on funds.

I hope this will help reach more eyes too. I'm adding pictures for more tags

[j4yvex]

IWWV and TSH.

[sheppi-isometrics]

⚔️ Possessed Slasher enemy tokens on Patreon

🌟 Get access to more than 200 creatures, maps and assets by supporting us on Patreon! Complement your campaigns with hi-res monster tokens and start building the adventure of your dreams with our isometric and 2D assets 🏰!

[quibbs126]

One thing I’ve been thinking about for the past couple days, but something I’m not the biggest fan of with Kingdom is how the majority of the Cookies of Darkness are played more for jokes than they are for serious. And thus in doing so, the CoD itself doesn’t feel like that much of a threat

Like yeah, I like seeing stuff with the CoD just doing silly stuff, and I don’t need them to be super dark and serious 100% of the time, but like, of the Cookies of Darkness, the only characters that are consistently treated like an actual threat are Dark Enchantress Cookie and Pomegranate Cookie, though even then sometimes she’s part of the gag. And sure, some of the characters in the main story may be treated like a threat, like Red Velvet (despite his one appearance) and Affogato, but then also you’ll have them in a boy band or chilling at the rock festival, totally incognito

And again, it’s not that I don’t enjoy this stuff, but it’s just, how am I supposed to take the Cookies of Darkness as a serious threat when you’re putting them in boy bands and school AUs? Especially when more often than not, it’s the jokey route they use with them?

It’s part of the reason I don’t really see why we need all these Legendaries and Dragons and armies to fight Dark Enchantress, because 80% of the CoD are a bunch of silly little guys. I know realistically DE is powerful and has her Cake Army, hence why they need all that power, but that impression that they’re actually a threat doesn’t typically come to mind for me. But maybe that’s a me thing

And like, honestly I’d say Ovenbreak does it better when it comes to having the CoD seem like a threat. Sure I haven’t seen every event with them involved and I know they only show up like, once in a blue moon, but they usually cause actual problems, and if anything the fact that we see them so little makes them feel more significant, and like Dark Enchantress is more of a looming threat

I dunno, that’s just how I feel

[butwhatifidothis]

What gets me about GW defenders saying that "Claude siding with Edelgard shows how far he's willing to go to get what he wants, he'll use anyone to further his goals" is that, even if that were accurate to his character... that's not what he does in GW. At all.

Which one of Claude's goals are ever progressed once he sides with Edelgard? And how does siding with Edelgard, specifically, accomplish said goal?

Maybe... killing Rhea? But all of the reasons he says he wants her gone in this game are either completely unproven or blatantly incorrect - there's no proof of the Church forcing arranged marriages, Crests do not force obligations onto those that have them (which Claude himself literally proves), and the Church is helping Dimitri restore Duscur - a foreign nation - meaning they are actively willing to help fulfill Claude's main goal that he came to the officer's academy to achieve.

And... that's it! That is the only possible thing that even POTENTIALLY helps Claude's dreams, and taking a five-second look at it shows that it actually does nothing at all to help anything. But in the meantime? Claude weakens Faerghus through agitating Sreng and invading it himself, forcing Dimitri to fight a three front war; he actively helps Edelgard get herself out of a messy situation, even though not helping her and letting her die would have actually helped him and would have actually been him using her like people keep saying he's trying to do; he and Holst even admit that by the end of the war Edelgard is going to make a vassal state of Leicester after taking the lion's share of Faerghus' territory for themselves, which Leicester can't do anything about because of Adrestia's far stronger military. He is the one saying that! He is the one pointing out that that is going to happen! And yet he just keeps going anyway!

He is the one getting used. Very blatantly, and very extensively. Claude walked himself into a trap and lied to himself into thinking he's the one with the upper hand, which somehow managed to convince a large portion of the fanbase too. There's no gray morality here, there's no cunning being showcased, Claude is just an evil stupid tool

[katharintheminiongirl627]

I saw Brute Villain don't have mutch fanarts so i drew him

[chr0macide]

this shit is done because i cant think of anything else to write in it WOOHOO

this takes place right after Break In II: The Novelette (i.e. right after they leave the villain base for those who dont know what the fuck Break In: The Novelette is but i recommend reading all that if you want to understand this better) and its just about the miscellaneous shenanigans that occur while they try to get along with each other hooray

the ao3 link is up there but ill post the fic under the cut here as well for those who like to read on tumblr (this is about 4,000 words long split into 2 chapters)

Intermission

Chapter I – Road Trip

The kids stared down the elevator shaft. It felt like minutes had passed by the time they heard it crash on the lowest floor of the base. Nobody would be following them back up from there now. Larry let the segment of steel rope fall from his jaws as he climbed down from the service platform. He nearly stepped on Stephanie carelessly before Monica pulled her out of the way.

“Are you gonna to tell us where your safehouse is?” Prince asked skeptically.

Larry hesitated. “We need a car.”

Prince made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Why mention your safehouse in the first place if we can’t get there?”

“What, you don’t have a car? How did you end up in the middle of the woods?”

“We had a car. It’s totaled.”

“There’s a garage at the east wall. We don’t keep the keys in there, but I can probably hotwire one of the vans,” Isaiah offered, motioning for everyone to follow.

They left the mineshaft’s rickety elevator and made their way back to the base’s entrance building. The tree branches stone-grey sky framed the barbed wire twisting around the edges of its roof. Prince couldn’t help but notice how loud their footsteps sounded, even when they were muted by the soggy dirt. It was dawn in the middle of a forest. Birdsong should have permeated the air, but aside from the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind, he heard nothing. It was too quiet.

Larry lingered behind the crowd, falling into step beside Bradley. “Aren’t your friends going to give you a ride home, Detective?” he prodded, his voice dripping with false concern.

Bradley ignored him. He was supposed to get to the road and call for transportation, but he had come to find that his radio was spitting out nothing but white noise, even after they’d reached the surface. Mary had likely jammed the signal before she’d confronted everyone.

It wasn’t any of Larry’s business, but he seemed to know what Bradley was thinking about. “No signal, hm? Not that it matters,” he chuckled quietly. The sound was like sandpaper scraping against iron. “How many people in your department do you think are spies, hm? They were never coming back for you anyway.”

For a second, Bradley felt stupid for agreeing to come here in the first place, but he brushed it off. Of course he knew there were double agents all around him, but the mafia had just as many spies in their own ranks as his police station did, and he wasn’t getting anywhere without intel. “Considering that none of them work for you anymore, their names would be useful, Mr. Clockturn.”

Larry huffed some steam out of his vents. Before all this, he’d put plenty of his own men in caskets for snitching, but… he scratched at the scars beneath his suit. Some of his valves still felt strange. “I’ll have to think about that.”

They came to the back of the base. The garage door’s circuits sparked worryingly as Larry forced it open. He flicked a switch. Sickly yellow light illuminated the only van stationed there, black with masks emblazoned on the sides. A set of rambars were affixed to the front. He waved Isaiah in and promptly smashed one of the windows, setting off an ear-piercing car alarm.

“What the hell, man?!” shouted Hadrian over the blaring.

Isaiah looked back at him. “What? We don’t have the key. Bradley! You got something I can strip the wires with?”

The Detective tossed him some pliers, but the noise cleared everyone else out of the building and away from the noise. Twado padded to the tree line and busied himself sniffing the cold air.

Hadrian crouched down next to him. “Smell anything interesting?”

The dog kept sniffing. He licked his nose and thrust it into the undergrowth, ambling into the bushes. Hadrian heard hissing. The foliage rustled. An orange cat sprinted out of the leaves with Twado in pursuit. The others in the clearing watched them race across the grass. “Is that Cheeseball?” Prince said incredulously.

The cat darted into the garage just to see Larry, annoyance evident in his narrowed eyes. He hadn’t forgotten that it had launched itself at his face like furry missile twice. Cheeseball skidded across the concrete floor and yowled, trapped between him and Twado. Stephanie ran after them and swept the cat into her small arms. “Cheese!” she squealed, but her face fell as soon as she realized how close she was standing to the automaton. She ran back outside with Cheeseball in her arms. The dog trailed behind her, still trying to inspect the unfamiliar animal.

Hadrian narrowed his eyes at the cat as Stephanie brought him to the rest of the group. Cheeseball did the same to him. They’d left him with a neighbor before leaving for their disastrous camping trip. “What is that thing doing here?”

“Maybe he snuck into the car before we left,” Prince guessed. He gave the cat a pat on the head. Cheeseball merely tolerated it. “I’m glad he jumped out before it blew up.”

Everyone stood in a circle as the surprise wore off. They had to talk, but nobody knew where to start.

There was a pained look on Monica’s face as she glanced at the garage. “So… we’re gonna hop in a mafia-branded van and let the serial killer drive us around?”

Uncle Pete scrawled something on his whiteboard. I think we should go with him. He’s telling the truth. This forest has plenty of abandoned places to hide in. I know there’s a homestead and an old powerplant here somewhere.

“No, this is stupid! We’re the ones who got him into this mess. How do you know he won’t kill us?” Monica protested. Prince pressed a finger to his lips and pointed at Larry. The guy was right there.

Bradley reached into the van to hand Isaiah his screwdriver before joining the group outside. Pete stared at him with his lips pressed into a thin line. Bradley stared back.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

Pete’s marker hovered over his whiteboard indecisively. What did you find in the base?

“It’s confidential. No need for you lot to worry about it.”

The Headmaster wants them dead. I think we’re long past the point where they don’t need to worry, Pete wrote back.

Bradley scratched his overlarge moustache in thought. “It’s just going to put them in more danger. Imagine if he finds out what they know.” He shook his head. “Imagine if Larry finds out.”

He’ll understand.

“Ha! You think so?”

We’ll be fine. He’s not a time bomb, Bradley.

That was highly debatable. The Detective looked over his shoulder at Larry. They heard Isaiah curse from inside the van as the automaton seated himself on the hood, rocking the entire vehicle. Bradley sighed. “If you say so.”

He turned away from the garage and rifled around underneath his trench coat until he found one of the folders he’d escaped with. The edges were rough and the cardboard had turned yellow with age. Inside was a blueprint, and while the letters and pictographs were blurry after being photocopied so many times, Pete’s eyes flooded with recognition.

I’ve seen that before.

“Uh, I think we all have. Larry’s got one of those things in his back,” Hadrian pointlessly pointed out.

I mean this blueprint. I saw it a long time ago. It’s the original schematic for those things. I never had the chance to read it. What does it say?

“Most of these notes are very vague, but back when Larry was human, that key grew roots inside him. Over here, it says it strengthens whatever host it’s implanted in, but it disrupts certain functions of the brain. Especially the… well, I won’t bore you with the fine details, but mostly parts of the frontal lobe,” Bradley explained.

I guess that explains the bizarre personality shift.

“You talk like you used to know him,” Prince remarked.

I went to school with him. And after that, Purge University. He used to be so normal. I knew it had to be the key making him act weird, but

Pete stopped writing. Even if he’d been able to get his hands on the blueprint all those years ago, he doubted that he would’ve been able to help Larry. He shook his head at himself. Nothing we can do about it now. What else does that thing say?

Bradley’s eyes returned to the file, reviewing it thoughtfully. “Like I said, the notes are ambiguous. It says, ‘key cannot give you full control,’ but it’s not clear who ‘you’ is supposed to be. I’ll have to cross-reference it with some of the other intel I took, but I hope it doesn’t mean he’s a puppet… either way, it seems that his actions might not always be his.”

Pete waved his whiteboard. You get what I’m saying right? This isn’t really him. He was good man. He’ll help us.

Prince and Monica exchanged glances. Pete was overly optimistic, they thought. Sure, they could believe Larry used to be just some guy a long time ago, but what did it matter? Pete was old, and if they knew each other as kids, that meant he’d had that key for who knows how long. Years and years of criminal insanity. They could only guess how many horrors he’d perpetrated between then and now.

Bradley looked around at everyone else. “You don’t trust Larry, do you? Is that what all this is about?” he figured.

“Why would we?” Prince muttered.

“He’s a loose cannon,” Bradley acknowledged with a small nod, “but Pete’s right. About him helping us, I mean. Larry is no fool.” He closed the folder and returned it to his coat. “The Headmaster wants him gone, too, and even he can’t survive that alone. Certainly not during a purge. We’re the closest things to allies he’s got.”

Their Uncle looked at the words on his own whiteboard. His shoulders slumped. He wiped the words away with his forearm and wrote something else. I don’t know what Larry’s gonna do when this is all over, but Bradley’s radio can’t reach anyone. We’re stuck out here. Larry is the best chance we have.

The eldest siblings looked at each other again. This talk wasn’t over for them, but they supposed there were more urgent problems to worry about, and the car alarm had stopped shrieking. The van lurched again when Larry stood up, eliciting another expletive from Isaiah as his head struck the roof. He was scowling as he stuck his head through the window.

“We’ve barely got half a gallon of fuel left in this thing. We won’t make it,” he called out.

Prince knocked a row of jerrycans over with his foot. All empty.

Larry thought for a moment. He pried one of the tool cabinets open and grabbed some supplies. “Unlock the back. We might be able to salvage some gas at the old power plant.” He tossed the equipment inside. The padded benches at the edges hinted that it had been a police raid van before the mob had “repossessed” it. Larry walked to the front and shoved Isaiah over into the shotgun seat before cramming himself behind the wheel. He had to sit hunched over awkwardly, and even then, his head was still pressed against the roof.

Bradley and Pete climbed into the back. Everyone else followed them reluctantly. Twado wedged himself securely in between the front seats. He knew what kind of driver Larry was.

The top of the van scraped against the partially open garage door as he backed out. He brought the car around the front of the base, steering it along the path Prince and his family had come from. They reached the road and passed the fallen tree and the misshapen husk that used to be their car. Larry slowed the van down and eyed the remains. “What did you say happened to that thing?”

“It exploded. I think the tree crushed the engine,” Prince told him.

Bradley craned his neck to look at the wreckage. “Engines don’t explode. Someone planted a bomb in there.”

Prince didn’t reply. It felt like his life was getting worse every time he said something. Some criminal mastermind really, really wanted them dead.

They drove around the wreck. Charred scraps of metal crunched under the wheels. Larry sped up and rammed through the fake construction barricades. The impact would have sent Stephanie airborne, but Monica caught her and fastened the seatbelt for her.

“Who decided this guy was going to drive?” Prince complained.

Larry glared at him in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, are you the one who knows where the power plant is?” he sneered.

Isaiah sighed and switched the radio on. He tried tuning the frequency to a local news station. There was only static. He tried a different one. Nothing… but one of the music stations seemed to work. “No local radio. Your signal isn’t jammed, Bradley. I reckon whoever’s in charge of the purge this year knocked the power grid offline early,” he guessed. He put his feet on the dashboard and left the music on. It was better than listening to these nutcases bickering.

Larry grumbled. “Get your shoes off my dash, kid,”

“It stopped being yours a year ago, old man.”

“Tsk.”

Isaiah tapped his foot on the front window. “Who do you think the purge leader is this time?”

Larry shrugged. “Certainly not Miss Gearwise anymore… did you know she was supposed to kill me a year ago?” he laughed. “The Headmaster is going to be pissed when she tells him I’m still-"

A brief violin solo came through the speakers. Larry’s glowing eyes dilated. The van swerved dangerously, throwing everyone on the benches out of their seats. The automaton pulled his fist back and punched the radio hard, silencing the music and accidentally launching a shard of plastic at Isaiah’s eye. He slammed on the brakes at the same time. The tires screeched. Everyone ended up in a pile at the back of the vehicle.

“What the hell was that?” Prince yelled as everybody disentangled themselves from each other. Hadrian grimaced as he pried Cheeseball’s claws off his leg.

Larry didn’t respond immediately. He opened the door and staggered outside instead, smoke billowing from his vents. Isaiah had managed to end up folded almost in half underneath the dash, but he squeezed free with some effort and got out of the van as well. “Larry? You good?” he whispered, reaching out to steady him. Larry pushed him away.

“I’ll be fine… you drive this fucking thing. I have a migraine now,” he groaned.

He limped over to the other side of the van. Isiah took the driver’s seat. “Take the next right. I’ll tell you when you need to drive off the road,” Larry said. He put his head against the front window and shut his eyes.

Isaiah glanced at him. He didn’t know what Miss Gearwise had done before she’d decided to cut out his heart, and while there were clearly lingering effects, Isaiah wasn’t stupid enough to ask about what happened to him back in that base. Nobody else was, either. The ride was as eerily noiseless as the rest of the woods.

Chapter II – Last Stop

The power plant looked even more ancient than the base did. Prince could hardly see it at all through the vegetation ensconcing everything. The decay on the walls was hidden by thick blankets of moss. He could see through the broken windows that the insides hadn’t escaped nature, either; the walls were discolored by mildew and weeds had slowly inched their way across the grout between the floor tiles. Even the tips of the turbines were concealed by creeping vines. It would have been beautiful in an otherworldly kind of way if not for how grey all the foliage looked in the dawn’s pale light.

“You think there’s anything left to salvage here?” Prince said to nobody in particular as everyone climbed out of the van. There were a few somewhat car-shaped lumps of moss and flora in the area, but in a place this old, chances were someone else had already siphoned any gas left in them a long time ago.

Larry led them to one of the buildings, though nobody else could tell what it used to be. He pulled some ivy away from the entrance. The rusty hinges produced a grinding noise as he pushed the door open and ducked under the frame.

The inside was a labyrinth of scaffolding and handwheels and corroded pipes, some small and some more than large enough for a person to fit inside. With the windows blotted out by greenery, the only sources of light were the holes in the roof. Patches and ferns and grew on the floor wherever the light touched. The sound of dripping rainwater echoed through the boiler house.

Larry heaved a metal hatch on the floor away from the opening it guarded. “There were a few supply stores hidden here. I’m sure at least one of them still exists. The rest of you can wait up here,” he said as he descended the ladder.

The basement was completely lightless, but Larry stepped over the smashed machinery as if he could see just fine. He heard someone trip on a discarded toolbox and turned towards the sound, golden eyes glowing in the dark. Larry squinted in irritation at the sudden flood of illumination as Bradley decided to switch his flashlight on.

“It’s just a power plant, Detective. What are you expecting to find?” Larry snorted.

Bradley brushed the dust and debris off his trousers as he got to his feet. “This used to be one of the mafia’s fronts, no? You wouldn’t have caches here otherwise.”

“Psh. It was, 50 years ago. You’re just wasting your time at this point.”

The Detective shone his light around the maintenance room and did a quick once-over of the trash pile at his feet. He pocketed a bullet casing and a fragment of someone’s identification card. Larry felt an unpleasant combination of contempt that Bradley would waste so much effort on what must have been a cold case and respect that he could spot anything useful amongst all that junk.

“If you insist on being here, some of the supplies are behind this thing. Why don’t you get over here and help me move it?” Larry said, motioning to the tall steel crate at the end of the room. Bradley stood next to him. They slowly pushed it out of the way, revealing a cavity in the wall. Amongst the resources, they saw the fuel they needed, but Larry’s eyes narrowed. There were smudged footprints just inside. Fresh ones. The mud was still a little wet.

Bradley’s flashlight beam swept around towards the other end of the room and fell upon the figure above them, reclining atop one of the boilers. Like so many of his associates, the mafioso’s face was obscured by a mask, but they knew only one mobster with unnaturally enlarged muscles and orange-dyed hair.

“Hi, boss,” the Wadren waved. Bradley reached for the gun under his coat before remembering that he’d run out of ammunition months ago. “Relax, Detective! I’m not gonna hurt you,” the Warden laughed.

“Markus? How the hell did you get out of the base so quick?” Larry questioned. Mary had locked down all the exits except for the one they’d just destroyed. Anyone else who wanted to leave would’ve had to take the stairs all the way to the surface.

Markus smiled wryly beneath his mask. “You know how long I had to work at that shitty hideout? I remember override codes that even she didn’t know.”

“What happened after we left?” Bradley demanded, eyeing him suspiciously.

“After Larry woke up? Some people thought he’d take the base back”—the Warden gestured at the automaton—“and some people didn’t like that. I told them to calm the fuck down. Sure, Mary was a bitch, but there was no point, you know? I told them you’d never stick around after everything that… happened to you,” he said to Larry. “But you guys saw the fight.” He took a swig from the can he’d swiped from the cache. “No idea what their fuckin’ problem was.”

Larry chuckled at first, but… “Markus, you just abandoned your post right before the next purge.” Surely the Warden didn’t think he’d make it alone.

Markus sat up. “I was hoping I might ride it out with you,” he told them, looking both men up and down, “but you’re walking targets, now that you mention it. All of you. I’ll figure something else out.” He drained the last of his beer. “But hey, since we ran into each other, I think still owe you a concussion, Detective. How about a rematch?” he suggested, crushing his empty can between two fingers and tossing it aside.

Bradley gripped his umbrella a little tighter, but Markus laughed again. “I’m joking, I’m joking,” the Warden said. “It was you or me back there. I get it.”

Larry picked up a couple of jerrycans from the stash. If Markus had made it out of the base, others had probably followed the trail of functional elevators he’d left behind, and chances were that not all of them would be so friendly. “We need to leave before anyone else shows up. Are you going to help me carry these back up or not?” he asked Bradley.

Bradley picked up another can and passed it up to him as he stood at the top of the ladder. Markus waved goodbye. “See you guys later, maybe,” he said before Larry dragged the hatch cover back into place.

“Was someone else down there? We heard a lot of talking,” Prince inquired as he picked up one of the fuel cans.

“It was Markus. Don’t worry about him. He’s an alright guy,” Larry claimed.

Prince side-eyed him. “The Warden? He tried to dissolve us in your acid pit.”

“It’s not an acid pit. The substances I used were very alkaline,” he replied, because that was more important than Markus trying to kill them.

The troupe trickled back out of the building. As Larry started to refill the gas tank, Isaiah cast a sour look at the boiler house. “So, Markus made it out, huh? Thought I heard his stupid fucking voice.”

“Come on, Isaiah. I’ve had worse lieutenants,” Larry grinned.

“He was such a dickhead after you left. I get it,” he snapped when Larry opened his mouth to speak. “He didn’t like Miss Gearwise. None of your guys did after she took over. He didn’t have to make it everybody else’s problem.” Markus would toil all day if it meant nothing got done. Isaiah had been screwed over by his antics plenty of times, and he wasn’t the only one by a long shot. The only reason he was never demoted was that Mary couldn’t be bothered to find a replacement.

Larry shrugged. The mob was filled with all sorts of psychos like himself, sure, but Markus wasn’t one of them, despite his… abrasiveness. There were just as many regular people who were surviving in the only way they could. “He’s not a bad guy. An asshole, maybe. But not bad,” he said as he removed the spout of the spent can from the fuel tank’s opening and inserted a second one.

Near the boiler house, Prince and Monica were watching Cheeseball bat at Twado’s nose. As the pets cavorted and rolled around in the tall grass, Prince found that he felt jealous of them, in a way. They must have had no idea what was happening. He laughed at himself inwardly. Envious of pets.

In the silence, Prince’s own mind absorbed him. He thought of Hadrian as he saw him wading through the tall grass and talking to the animals as if they could understand him. Prince knew he shouldn’t be as surprised as he was by how normal he was acting. Plenty of people wrote his younger brother off as an airhead, too dense to realize when the world was burning down around him, but Prince knew he simply lived for today. Hadrian had once asked him why people bothered worrying about things they could never change. He had no answer.

Whatever happened to Hadrian would happen.

Prince thought of Stephanie, as he had so many times. She was only six. His little sister scarcely said a word since they’d been trapped in the base, and now that they were out, she was still the same way. How much did she understand what was going on? He had lost count of how many deaths she had witnessed. What would she become when she grew up? If she grew up?

As if on cue, Stephanie wandered over to them, dragging her teddy bear behind her. She reached up and tugged on Prince’s jacket. He crouched down. “You doing ok, Steph?”

“Are we going to die?”

Prince couldn’t do anything but stare at her for a second, but then he pulled Stephanie into a hug. He couldn’t look at her wide, hollow eyes right now.

“Are we?” she asked again flatly.

 “Larry is going to take us somewhere safe. He’s not as scary as he looks,” Prince lied. He turned his eyes towards the automaton to see that he had already been looking at him. Dried blood stained the front of his suit. He returned Prince’s stare unblinkingly. “We’ll all be fine. I promise.” The words tasted like ash. Larry was out of earshot, but he had seen the boy’s expression on a hundred different corpses. Prince saw the corners of his serrated mouth upturn into a thin smile.

Larry pulled the last jerrycan’s spout out of the fuel tank’s port and threw it aside. “Everyone back in the van! We’re done here,” he called out.

Prince felt like he was stepping into a hearse.

[perhapstheworldwillend-butbread]

What's more important? That Caesar was assassinated? Or that he looked into the eyes of his best friend as a knife that had been a gift, plunged unto his body? That the physical pain of flesh and bones went away as the physical pain of his heart started to hurt worse? That he was betrayed by the most intimate people he knew? People he had loved and gotten close to? That he had been taken to a spot because he had trusted? Because he had no reason not to. Because these were the people he had laughed with. Because the person he had looked at, wouldn't look at him back. And instead just kept plunging that wonderful knife over and over.

And maybe Caeser had closed his eyes as the wounds worsened. 5 then 10 then 20. And maybe he opened his eyes for one last time and had seen Brutus. His dear friend.

Maybe he muttered 3 little words. Maybe he put all his emotions into those words. Maybe he had uttered to his friend and his advisor,

"Et tu, Brute?"

And maybe Brutus had delivered the killing blow. And maybe, even before his final breath, Caesar was dead.

[ppgxrrblove]

[alieno-r]

re-reading if we were villains to annotate and the foreshadowing is absolutely insane.

[zal-cryptid]

DC characters - Brute and Glob