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brooktrout96 · 4 years ago

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The Dream That You've Always Dreamed is Suddenly About to Flower.

Chapter 1 of The Deeper The Darkness The More Dazzling The Light Shines!

Part 1 of The Zero to Hero Series

AO3 is here

Zero had been traveling all over the universe and even the multiverse. He had see many things like the beautiful green emerald like crystal of Esmeralda to an alternate earth where his arch-rival's son lived and protect. In all his (long) life, he never expected to land in a world where have superpowers was the norm until he did and taking a host with one of those superpowers

Izuku Midoriya was Quirkless and he was told by many that he couldn’t be a hero, that he was useless, until one day his idol and the number one hero told him that he could be a hero, that he was useful. He knew he had to work extra hard to be able to become the best he could be and become a hero that everyone believed in. But no one said that he would be meeting a 49-meter-tall alien that would have to share his body with as he works towards his dream of becoming a hero as he fight giant monsters that seem to be right out of a pre-Quirk TV show

"Midoriya!” His eyes snaped open as he awoke to All Might standing over him but he couldn’t move. It felt like his body wasn’t his own, like he was under someone’s control but there stood his mentor, if a Villain had use their quirk on him to see why the No. one hero had taken an interest in him, they would find out that his mentor was injured and that would make him an easier target. He had to protect All Might and his secret as he fought for control of his body and won control

“So, you’re more like Leito or Taiga then Run then.” Izuku heard a voice say as he looked around. All he saw was All Might standing in front of him with a concern look on his face

“My boy, are you alright?”

“Yeah All Might!” Izuku said with a smile on his face. “I just wore myself out move the junk; I think I’ll call it a day today. See you later.” All Might gave Izuku a smile as he took off and toward home

“Geeze, I thought I was a real bad liar.” The voice from before spooked Izuku as he looked around as he noticed that there no one there, as Izuku return to walking as a transparent ‘person’ appeared in front of him. It was red and blue with silver accents with two strange horn things on its head. On his chest was a blue light, that a lighter shade of blue then the blue on its body

“What!” He squeaked as he looked the ‘person’ that just appeared in front of him and spoke as he studied it. “What are you? Who are you?” He begins to mutter as it let out a sigh.

“My name is Zero, Ultraman Zero.”

Izuku looked at the ‘man’ as he introduced himself. “Ultraman? Zero? What’s a Ultraman?”

“So, it seems that Ultras don’t exist in this world.” Zero muttered as he then look at the young boy. “You’re heading home, right?” Izuku nodded his head. “I’ll explain on the way and then you can explain to me what this world is about.” Izuku continued to walk as Zero sit on his shoulder, explaining to him what an Ultra was.

~***~

Izuku moved the last piece of trash to the pile that he had made and he paused and took a deep breath as he set down to study his hard work. The beach was completely clean, there was no trash at all. He smiled, exhausted as Zero set on his shoulder with a grin on his face. “You did it kid, when your mentor get here, he’ll be so proud and maybe a little confused on how strong you are but you did it.” Izuku laid back as he let out a long-exhausted sigh as he closed his eye to relax and regain a little of his strength as he waited for All Might to get to the beach

“Yeah,” Izuku thought more to Zero then to himself. “I don’t think he was expecting me to finished cleaning until closer to the Entrance Exam.

All Might in his true form made his way to the beach where he knew young Midoriya was. He paused as he took in the beach

“Oh my.” He looked around the beach in shock as he puffed up into his hero form. “Oh, my GOODNESS.” Izuku stood up to greet his mentor but he looked like he was drunk as he stumbled in exhaustion toward him. All Might caught him. “You’ve earned a rest.” He said with a (real) smile on his face.

“All Might! I… I did it… I did it!”

“And you did an astonishing job of it, too! Especially for a teenager!” All Might put Izuku back down on the ground as he pulled out his phone and showed him a photo from seven month ago

“What’s this…” Izuku trailed off as the exhaustion continued to hit him hard as he looked at the photo on the phone.

“This is you, seven months ago!” All Might looked at Izuku, who looked like he could keel over if the wind blew right. “You did really, really good. We’ve only just reached the faintest mirage of the path that lies ahead but you’re a bona-fide vessel now.”

Izuku looked down at something in his hand as Zero had swapped shoulder to sit on, from Izuku’s right to his left. He let out a sigh.

“I feel like…. I’ve cheated somehow.”

“I mean you kinda did.” Zero chimed in as Izuku began to cry as the emotions began to take over.

“All Might, you went so far for me, and I feel too blessed!”

“What’s this all of a sudden? All Might thought in confusion. “It was all you, kid.” All Might let out a sigh as he shook his head as he pluck a strand of his hair as he spoke. “You know what they say, right? There’s a difference between something you were born with out of pure luck and something won after busting your ass for it! Puff out your chest and be proud. This is the power you earned fair and square kid. Now eat this.” All Might held out a strand of his hair out to Izuku

“Come again?” Izuku had a look of confusion on his face as Zero had fell from his perch on Izuku’s left shoulder in shock

“Technically the way you take my DNA doesn’t really matter but this is the easiest way to do it.”

“This isn’t really what I had in mind.”

“Even us Ultra have less confusing/disgusting way to transfer our powers.” Zero muttered to Izuku. Izuku took the strand of hair from All Might as he let out a sigh and put the hair in his mouth and swallowed (not without gagging but that was a given, it was a strand of hair for crying out loud).

He didn’t feel any different but he assumed that unlike the boost that he got as Zero’s host which was noticeable as soon that evening as his mom had a klutz moment while the two of them were doing dishes, she tripped and lost one of the plates out of her hand and he caught it before it could hit the ground. He at first thought that it was a side effect of his training with All Might but afterwards he questioned the Ultra that he shared his body with and he explained that being his host gave him a boost in all aspects of fighting and that if he needed, that he (Zero) could take control of his body if need be.

“Young Midoriya, take the day off to recover and adjust to the power of One For All. We’ll continue training tomorrow with it and the rest of the three month. For now, just rest and take time to get acquainted with the power but don’t try to use it.” Izuku nodded his head as he turned to look at now clean beach with a smile.

~***~

Izuku hadn’t even started on his way home, when the ground shook and Zero let out a sigh as he looked up, Izuku followed his gaze and he noticed a huge yellow and black narwhal looking creature that slowly lumbering threw the city

“What is that thing?” Izuku mumble as he pulled out his notebook as Zero floated in front of him.

“It’s a Kaiju called Gubila, Izuku I honestly didn’t think that Kaiju existed on this earth, a earth with no Ultras to protected it.” He paused. “Izuku I need to borrow your body, unless your up to fighting in my body.”

Izuku shook his head. “No, I’m so exhausted from cleaning, go ahead.” Zero took control as Izuku’s hair became more wilder as he pulled out the Zero Eyes and put them up to his face and hit the button as his arms spread outwards and Zero's body forms via ribbons of light.

He then appeared in front of the Gubila as he got into a fighting stance as the Gubila charged at Zero as he sidestepped the attack and grabbed the Kaiju’s tail.

Izuku watched in awe from Zero’s Inner Space (Zero kindly explained the first night what the space he would be in when they transformed is called, his form changes and what might be needed of him as his host) as he wondered if he could apply the moves Zero is using on the Gubila to fighting a villain.

Zero chopped the tail with his hand as the Kaiju let out a roar and quick swung it tail send Zero flying into one of the nearby building. “Shit! Oh, that’s right!” Izuku heard Zero mumble as if he just remember something. He quickly got up as he switched over to Luna-Miracle. All of Zero’s red colorations had disappeared and he became completely blue with silver highlights

Zero, I thought you said that Luna-Miracle was mostly speed and healing based, so it doesn’t do any real damage.”

“Right but the thing is Gubila are native to most earths I’ve been to but they tend to hide further under ground then most human would be willing to dig. Most of them rampage because a earthquake tends to wake them up. I try not to kill if I can help it and right now it’s not trying to attack the city on purpose. It just confused and wants to go home. Isn’t that what a hero do, help people in need?”

Izuku nodded as the bracelet on Zero’s wrist began to glow as he generate a soft ray of light that calmed the Gubila and he pick it up and took off flying trying to find a spot for the Gubila to be safe and away from civilization that it and the human won’t bother each other before it could return underground.

“He returned and saw a voluptuous young woman with purple eyes and white pupils, with elegantly long eyelashes. She has long, voluminous, creamy blonde hair reaching her waist, with two shorter strands curled to frame her face, parted slightly to her left. She was wearing a purple and pale tan-colored skintight bodysuit, accented with orange stripes, purple gloves with orange accents on the edge of the cuff, and she also wearing a purple domino mask with horn-like protrusions on the sides.

“Izuku, who’s that?”

“That’s Mt. Lady. She debuted seven month ago, and she has a Gigantification Quirk.” Zero took one look at the short (at least compared to him) hero as his Color Time began to beep as he let out a sigh as he looked toward the Hero

“Stop right there vigilante.”

“Vigilante? I’m no vigilante, my name is Zero and Kaiju are my specialty.” He said quickly as he took off before any hero could do anything to him

~***~

Izuku had spent the remaining time before the entrance exam sparring as much as he could getting use to the strength of One For All and Zero’s powers. It seems that he could use all or most of Zero’s skills outside of being transformed. He had the speed of Luna-Miracle and the strength of Strong-Corona but none of the abilities that came with those forms as far they could tell and he was glad, he could deal with the boost of speed and strength as saying he just got the boost from One For All

Izuku paused at the gate to Yūei as he took in the spectacular building that is the number one hero school in Japan, he took one deep breath as he made his way to where the exam were being held and then tripped as he was save by a girl’s Quirk as Bakugo shoved him out of the way as he yelled. “Fuck off Deku!” Zero almost took control right then and there. He hated villains who hide behind a heroic façade, essentially bullies, those who attacked the people who were weak and unable to fight back but Izuku was able to wrangle him back from taking control as they made it to the exam hall.

“Zero, I’ll let you take control for the exam, so you can let off some steam.” He muttered as he set down as Zero grinned as the duo watched other student hopefuls enter and set down. The protractor enter the hall and greeted the exam takers

“Welcome one and all to my live show! Everybody say Heeey!” Zero thought the man looked like a cockatoo dressed in black leather as he shook his head as Izuku began to mutter to him. “I’ve got shivers down my spine, too, Listeners! I’m gonna give you the low-down on how this will go down! Are you ready!? Yeah!” The room was silent as could be as Izuku was muttering to Zero in his thoughts

“That the voice-type hero ‘Present Mic.’ We listen to him on the radio every week.”

“Ah! That is why his voice sounded semi-familiar.”

“Now pay close attention, Listeners! We’ll be testing your mettle by running a ten-minute practice run at our replica city-district!” The others let out a small bit of sound as Mic continued to explained. “We’ll be sprinkling a large number of ‘villains’ over the battlefield and they’ll appear in three different varieties, with point values scaled according to difficulty!! Using each of your individual Quirks, dispatch as many ‘villains’ as you can. Your goal, Listeners, is to rack up a high score.” Zero tuned out Mic’s speech as he continued to explain the exam

~***~

Izuku was excited as he looked at the mock city that he was at because it was time for him and Zero to show how they were worth of becoming a hero.

“Zero.” He thought to the Ultra

“Yeah, Izuku?”

“I’m going to tell you which bots to go after to maximize our points.” Izuku said as he let Zero take control. Zeku (Izuku started to refer to himself as this when ever Zero would take control) had a grin on his face. Robots created by humans were nothing compared to the Darklops Zero that the Alien Salome created and then Belial mass produced.

Zeku zoomed off as soon as Present Mic was finished and he was destroying any bots and helping other hopefuls as he

“I think we got about thirty points from the bots but I don’t think we can get any more though.” Izuku said to Zero as Zeku zipped threw the cityscape looking for more bots to take care of while he was searching or more injured or trapped applicants as they eventually heard a loud woman’s scream as Zeku turned and followed the scream and saw a girl on the ground as the Zero Pointer

“Zero, what are you planning on doing?”

“We can’t let her die.” Izuku and Zero knew exactly what needed to be done as they jumped into action as the green sparks surrounded him as he jumped into air. Zeku went flying into the air toward the Zero Pointer. Zeku then punched the damn Zero Pointer and damaged it enough that it fell to pieces

“Ultra Zero Punch!”

It was in that moment both Zero and Izuku realized that they weren’t in Ultra form, so they didn’t have the innate ability to fly and that is when they realized that the hardest part would be landing, no matter what happened or how they land, it would probably end with something breaking. In their frantic effort trying not to die, they didn’t notice the young woman that they had save floating on a piece of the Zero Pointer and she slapped him as he felt his decent slowing as he ended up floating maybe an inch off the ground as Present Mic call the test

Zeku turned to the girl as he gave her a smile. “Thanks’ for saving me.” He notice she was looking a little green around the collar. “Are you alright?” Zeku heard a woman voice asking if anyone was injured or need any help. “That must Recovery Girl, come on let get you over to her so she can check you over.” Zeku greeted Recovery Girl as she looked over the girl who had save him, gave her a kiss and a gummy. She then turned to look at Izuku as Zero had give him back control as soon as the exam ended. “What about you, are you alright?”

“I feel fine but it wouldn’t hurt for you to look me over, Recovery Girl.” Izuku said with a smile on his face as she looked him over and saw nothing wrong with him, all she did was hand him a gummy. “Thanks Recovery Girl.”

~***~

Shota Aizawa was many thing, a Underground Hero, a teacher at Yūei and a loving husband. In all his years teaching at Yūei, he had never see a kid take off quickly and then efficiently take down the bots, it was like the kid was training all his life to fight. He listen as his husband ended the exam a as he head to the staff room and his desk as he studied the top ten applicants

Izuku Midoriya: Villain points, 30, rescue points, 60, total 90

Katsuki Bakugo: Villain points, 77, rescue points 0, total 77

Eijiro Kirishima: Villain points 39, rescue points 35, total 74

Ochaco Uraraka: Villain points 28, rescue points 45, total 73

Ibara Shiozaki: Villain points 36, rescue points 32, total 68

Itsuka Kendo: Villain points 25, rescue points 40, total 65

Tenya Ida: Villain points 52, rescue points 9, total 61

Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu: Villain point 49, rescue points 10, total 59

Fumikage Tokoyami: Villain points 47, rescue points 10, total 57

Yosetsu Awase: Villain points 50, rescue points 6, total 56

Aizawa was pondering the top ten as he thought back to the top two applicants. “Though he earned zero rescue points Bakugou came close to taking 1st, if it wasn’t for Midoriya saving Uraraka from the Zero Pointer near the end there and gaining those sixty rescue points, he probably would have with his plan.” He let out a soft sigh as he knew that if Midoriya ended up in his class that he found his problem child for three years. “Then there Midoriya. We’ve had entrants face off against the Zero Pointer but it has been quite a long time since someone’s sent it flying.”

“So, what do you think of the top ten entrants?”

The voice came from down and to the left of Aizawa as he looked down and saw the principal of Yūei, he was a stout ‘man’ who appears to be a possible combination of several different animals, including a dog, a mouse, and a bear. He has the head of a mouse with circular black eyes, a large scar over the right one, relatively rectangular-shaped ears with pale pink insides slanting outwards from the top of his head, and an elongated muzzle with a small round nose. His fur is white and has large, dog-like paws with pink pads and a thin tail like that of a cat. He sports a white dress shirt, a dark red tie around his neck, a black double-breasted waistcoat and matching dress pants and he’s wearing orange lace-up sneakers with incredibly thick soles which seem to be quite large on him.

“Midoriya seem to be a puzzle, Nezu.”

“What do you mean, Aizawa?”

Aizawa pulled up Izuku’s attack on the Zero Pointer on his tablet. “Right after the punch, it seems like he wasn’t expecting to fall, that is what puzzling me.”

“You’ve heard of the new vigilante called Zero, right?”

“Yeah, he has some sort of Gigantification Quirk and first appeared when that weird narwal monster appeared.” Nezu put a piece of paper on his desk and Aizawa looked down at the paper and then back to Nezu. “So, do you have a plan?”

“Aizawa, you’ve taught at Yūei for how long now?” The principal of Yūei smiled. “I always have a plan.” Nezu let loose one of his iconic laughed as Aizawa let out a sigh and a shiver. No one should get the eyes of Yūei’s principal on them

#my hero academia #boku no academia #ultraman #ultraman zero #my hero academy fanfiction

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firesoulstuff · 5 years ago

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Begin Again

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530607

Behrad likes to think of the weirdness that comes with being a Legend as an integral part of the adventure. Alternate timelines and magical creatures? It’s all part of the reason he signed up. The other part at the time was, you know, if he didn’t Kuasa probably would’ve killed him within a week but he definitely stayed for the adventure.

Sure, he knows alternate timelines can get messy. He’s seen Stein accidently create a daughter, Amaya debate the pros and cons of leaving the ship, and Ray vanish before his eyes because of a lost alien baby. So up until this morning he would’ve said yes if asked if he’s ever been personally affected by a changing timeline, of course he has.

Now he knows that would’ve been a lie.

He takes a deep breath as he rounds the corner into the engine room. He had checked his room for her, and then even Nate’s, and then Charlie’s, but Zari wasn’t any of those places. But she is here, in the hideaway he likes to claim as his own whenever he wants to be alone. He hasn’t mentioned that to her.

She looks up as he approaches, her eyes drawn first to his face and so he gives her a tight grin, and then she looks down to the dab pen in his hand.

“Wanna hit?” He offers, holding the pen out to her.

She smiles, small and humoring, and takes the pen and twirls it around in her fingers before she looks back up at him.

“You know, I don’t think a timeline has ever existed where you haven’t been a stoner.”

He chuckles, and as she takes her hit he ducks his head under the overhanging pipe and sits down next to her. She passes the pen back to him as she breathes out a short cloud of vapor, and he smiles to himself. They’ve never done this before. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure coming in here if she smokes, even if this isn’t technically smoking. He’d taken a gamble, and he’s glad he did; this is nice.

He takes a hit himself and sits back, as much as he can against the pipes running behind them anyway. She keeps her focus on the ground as he blows out a much longer stream. Maybe she only took the hit for the purpose of humoring him, which wouldn’t bother him. In fact it might even be considered a step in the right direction; she’s never humored him before.

“So.” He says, tapping his hands on his legs. “What I got from all that is in the old timeline, you were me.”

She hums, “Minus being stoned as often as Rory is drunk.” She amends for him, “And prettier.”

He laughs, and there’s a teasing little twinkle in her eye he doesn’t think he’s seen in a long time.

“I’ll accept the first one, not my fault you don’t know how to unwind in any reality. But the second? We both know I’m the pretty one.”

She laughs as he raises his eyebrows at her and so dose he, trying to drink all of this moment in. He hasn’t seen Zari like this in a very long time. Off her phone and actually giving him the time of day, living in the real world rather than in her head in “Zari Land” as he’s come to call it over the years. It’s nice.

“You know,” He says, “I know the whole ‘alternate timeline’ is a lot to take in, but it’s kind of cool when you think about it. I mean there was a version of history where you were a Legend. Isn’t that cool?”

She chuckles, ducking her head and moving a piece of hair behind her ear. He grins as he watches her. Yes, his eyes are seeing the perfect manicure of her nails push back black hair that’s interrupted with golden highlights, but his mind is picturing the alternate Zari he’s been shown. A Zari who never messed with the hair their mother always said was so beautiful, who kept her fingernails short and didn’t mind much if they were a little dirty from working in this room. A Zari who wore loose flannels as more than pajamas.

A Zari, he thinks, he would’ve gotten along with.

“I guess.” She admits, “I can definitely see the appeal of this place, traveling through time and saving the world and all.”

“Yeah.” He chuckles, “It’s pretty great.”

And suddenly an idea comes to his mind.

Well, maybe not suddenly. It’s been in the back of his mind since they found out about the old timeline. But now it’s at the forefront, because this is going well and maybe it isn’t so crazy.

“You know…” He trails, “Now that you know about who you used to be, you could stay. Be a Legend again.”

She scoffs, but it’s more with amusement than dismissal, and he’ll take that.

“What?” She asks, “This me couldn’t be a Legend?”

He doesn’t miss the challenging dip in her voice, the dare for him to be honest.

“No…” He trails, and he isn’t sure if he’s saying no she couldn’t, or no he didn’t mean that. “Come on Zari, up until now you’ve had different priorities than-”

“Different priorities?” She interrupts, and he freezes with his mouth still open with his next words. “What, you mean like rent?”

“Not exactly.” He huffs, willing the anger to stay out of his voice.

“And who says my ‘priorities’ changed because of a dead timeline?” She interjects, “I’m still me.”

“But the you in that timeline was a hero.” He tries to reason, also trying to get this conversation back on track. “Don’t you want to be that person again?” She opens her mouth but says nothing. He keeps quiet as well, and tries to think of what he can say next.

“No.” She eventually says with a shake of her head, “No, I don’t.”

He smiles, but there is no joy in it. It’s a smile of shock, of anger, when his face doesn’t know what else to do.

“Unbelievable.” He mutters as he stands up. “Unbelievable. All the good you did as a Legend. You don’t want to be that.”

“Of course I do.” She argues, standing up herself.

“You just said you didn’t!” He reminds her, and he rounds on her as he does. “I just asked you-”

“What you asked me is if I would rather be the person I was in that timeline-”

“You mean someone who cares about more than views and likes?” He all but shouts, “Someone who cares about other people?”

“I am not having this conversation.” She grumbles, and she turns and starts to march away, but now he is seeing red.

“Fine!” He shouts after her, “Run away, back to Zari land where nobody else matters!”

He’s said that to her in the heat of plenty of arguments before, and she has always stomped off to not care somewhere else. But this time is different. This time she stops.

And she turns back, with a look in her eye of “you’ve fucked up” that he has only ever before seen on Papa.

“You want to talk about nobody else matters?” She asks, and she takes one step back towards him. “Listen to yourself.” She near pleads, continuing closer. “You are seriously mad that I wouldn’t trade this life for that one, and why? Because you liked the outcome better?” It feels like a rock has settled in his chest all of a sudden, and with another step back to him she drives it in deeper.

“Were you not paying any attention to those memories?” She demands, “You died. Mama and Papa died. That me, that was a person who lived running from soldiers. That was a world where meta humans were hunted and killed. Where we were told praying was radical and rebellious, and it was outlawed. That me almost suffocated an entire village because I was so angry!”

Her breath hitches, and he can’t remember the last time – if ever – he saw Zari cry, but it’s threatening to be now.

She takes a minute to compose herself, to wipe her eyes and cross her arms in front of her.

“Do you really wish I’d gone through all that?” She asks, and he wants to scream No.

He wants to cry himself, to tell her he’s sorry and he never meant it like that.

“I just… I just want my sister back.”

She holds his gaze at first, and opens her mouth like she is going to say something, but instead all she does is turn back and walk away.

He beats himself up over it for a little over an hour, during which time there are thankfully no disasters. He doesn’t see her in that time, and a part of him wonders where she’s gone. She’s been staying in his room since she got here but she isn’t there when he goes, and she doesn’t come, and when he goes to Nate’s room she isn’t there either.

But, thankfully, Nate is.

He gives a small grin when his buddy looks at him with an almost fear in his eyes, like he has been waiting for him to come in here with a shovel for daring to go after his sister in an alternate timeline.

“Can we talk?” He asks, and Nate gapes at him for a few seconds before he finally starts to shake off the apparent surprise of the question.

“Uh… Sure. Sure.”

Behrad grins and goes and sits at the foot of Nate’s bed. Nate joins him soon after, though neither of them speak right away.

“You…” Behrad finally starts when he thinks he has organized enough of his thoughts. “Would you… If she could just… turn back, into the person she was in the dead timeline, would you want Zari back? The version you knew?”

Nate looks more than a little taken back by the question, and Behrad stays silent while he thinks.

“You know, I don’t think so.” He eventually says, “I mean, I don’t know her as well in this timeline, but I don’t think she’s any different. She’s lived different things, she’s done different things, she’s made different choices. But at the end of the day I think Zari is still Zari.”

He tries to hear that, he really does, but ultimately Behrad still finds himself rolling his eyes.

“Yeah well, I don’t think the Zari who sacrificed herself for the good of the timeline is the same Zari who freaks out when she gets less views than the college roommate she didn’t even like.”

“Except she didn’t sacrifice herself for the timeline.”

Behrad looks at his friend, about to insist that he has it wrong, but there is something about the puzzled expression on Nate’s face that keeps him quiet.

“She was on the ship.” He says; his face still scrunched up as he sorts through the information Gideon gave to them earlier, until he finally nods with confidence. “She was on the ship so that she would be safe from the changes, at least enough so that whatever happened she would still be a Legend. But then I died, and she came after me.”

Right.

That is what Gideon said.

“Ok, but that proves my point even more.” He says, “That Zari risked her own life even when she wasn’t sure if she could save yours, but she had to take the chance. This Zari? She spent my entire high school graduation posting it to Instagram.”

“Did you even come to mine?”

He and Nate both look up, and Zari is standing in the open door. She has small tear tracks running down her face, and for that Behrad can’t help but feeling just a little bit guilty.

Awkwardly, Nate gets up.

“I’ll uh… I’ll leave you guys alone.”

On his way out of the room Behrad isn’t blind to the silent exchange of… something, happening with his best friend and his sister. It’s short, and nothing more than an exchange of glances that puts a grateful smile on Zari’s face. He feels an obligatory surge of protectiveness flare up in his chest but he ignores it. He has actual problems to deal with here.

He waits for Nate to leave, and for Zari to turn her attention back to him.

“I was nine.” He says, and she nods.

“I know.”

She sighs, and she comes and lowers herself onto the edge of the mattress.

“You were nine, and your friend had tickets to a hockey game. My graduating class was only twenty-something kids and Mama and Papa felt bad making you miss it for an hour ceremony, so they said you could go.”

“So what?” He asks, “You’re mad a nine-year-old missed your graduation?”

“No.” She says, shifting so that she is sitting crisscross on the bed and looking directly at him. “I am trying to remind you that you were nine. Then I was off at school and you were ten, and by the time I got home you were a teenager, and you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“You didn’t want anything to do with me!”

“Because I was growing up, Behrad!” She nearly pleads with him, her face falling into her hands for a moment before she looks up again.

“I had no idea what I was doing with my life and I was trying to figure it out! Yeah, I took what I knew and I ran with it, and maybe I do get a little carried away sometimes. But I’m not seventeen anymore, and you are not the little kid who was always creeping in the background of my videos.”

He chuckles, a little, because he did have a reputation as a child for doing that. But more than that he supposes she does have a point. Really, they haven’t been a part of each other’s lives since before she left for college. Nine years is a big age gap, and besides, he can certainly understand now how hard it is to grow up.

He ran away on a time machine for crying out loud.

“Ok, so maybe my teenage angst played a part in my not having you around.” He admits, and she snorts a small laugh. He holds out a hand to her, which at first she only stares at.

“Try to be a little less ‘Zari Tarazi’ the influencer, and I’ll try to be a little less of a jerk?”

She bites her lip, a playful look of consideration on her face before she finally accepts his hand.

“Deal.”

He smiles as he shakes her hand, and then that smile turns into a wicked grin.

“One thing you’re gonna have to get used to if you’re planning to hang around.” He warns, and she raises a curious eyebrow.

“What’s that?”

He feels his grin go from wicked to downright evil.

“Legends are huggers.”

She squeals out a very un-coherent protest as he leans forward and yanks her into what is without a doubt the least awkward - and most toppling involved – hug they have ever shared.

#DC's Legends of Tomorrow #fan fic #behrad tarazi #zari tarazi #nate heywood #tarazi siblings dealing with their issues #slight steelhacker

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willardswritindump · 5 years ago

Text

Untiled Halo Fic

Chapter 1

The year is 2525. Humanity has just discovered that we are not alone in this universe. An alien alliance known simply as "The Covenant" has begun to seek out human worlds and outer colonies, kickstarting what would be the darkest, bloodiest conflict in human history. Luckily, the UNSC, or United Nations Space Command, have been preparing humanities galactic military strength due to the rise or the Insurrectionists, or Rebels, in the outer colonies who disagree with the treatment the colonies receive, and political and financial influences.

The UNSC, now needing bodies to man the massive space railguns they call ships, have constructed several dozen training academies and military schools for humanities brightest and bravest souls. One such facility would be the Corbulo Academy of Military Science, or CAMS. Corbulo is specifically an officer training Academy, housing only the most promising and talented future Officers of the UNSC

The shuttles' thrusters burn as it enters orbit, Lowering itself from the sky to the clouds. Heavy rain bashes against the reinforced hull of the Heron, as new recruits are mentally preparing to be rushed out of the bay upon landing. Some of the finest are among these rookies, such as Viper Mcfairle, the son of a high-ranking Navy Admiral and Julia Lebrette, a somewhat distant relative of a Catherine Halsey, (with a skill in advanced technologies to show-). The only noise being drawn from the turbulence of the D20 lowering altitude. There's a sense of nervous anticipation that all of the rookies feel, but don't mention. It's crowded and underlit, save for a small piece of space in the back-left corner of the Heron, who's only resident was a seemingly unimpressive, slightly short girl with brunette lengthy hair, and piercing brown eyes. She seemed to emit a sense of hatred for everything around her, which was probably why she was alone, scribbling in a paper journal. Which, to more preppy individuals, is seen as a poor, dirty thing. Dressed unlike the rest, in grey and crimson maroon, with a light brown bandoleer crossing her torso.

"February 23, 2525. The recent attack on Harvest is still shocking everyone across the galaxy. Not like I've been saying aliens are fucking real all my life. Still, it's scary. News feed of Civilian Evacuation and Military engagements on Harvest are on every media platform. It's all most can talk about, and all anyone thinks about. I still can't stand how the UNS--"

A sudden bang of turbulence disrupts her thought and sends the lead-tipped writing utensil leaping across the floor, gathering the attention of few.

"Fucking hell."

She thought to herself in pissed, but she eventually stops giving a shit, puts the tatty stained notebook away, and continues to project an aura of misery.

As the shuttle lands, someone who looks something like a sergeant stands up in the center or the rows of seats, and begins speaking aloud

"Alright, all of you, listen up! I want all of your electronics and biotics off and away, if I see it at all, that's it, you're done..."

He went on for about a minute on basic instructions, what to do, all that yadda yadda. Everyone did what they were supposed to, anyways.

Everyone knew what to do, though. It wasn't any of their first rodeos, (as most had either transferred from other academies, or were from well-known military families. Something odd happens about this time, though. The entire power grid goes dark, now the only lights being the dark red overheads from the shuttle. The Sergeant stops, orders everyone to siddown and shut up, and goes to have a chat with the pilot, probably for the radio communicator in the cockpit. The recruits, if you can call them that, do well on their end to shut the hell up, save for maybe one nosy individual...

The blonde cadet that sat across from the girl and who had been asleep for the vast majority of the transport ride was suddenly jolted awake as the turbulence rattled the shuttle, his pale blue eyes alert as he waited for the inevitable.

“Son of a bitch.”

He quietly muttered to himself as they descended onto the planet. As soon as the Sergeant began his speech, he could help but zone out, he was already far used to the icy military treatment from his family, at least this sergeant didn’t give birth to him.

He couldn’t help but wonder how much of the tirade was practiced beforehand by the sergeant. As he stared dead ahead of him the cadet couldn’t help but take survey of the girl in front of him. Not that he found her particularly interesting, although the found her a little cute it wasn’t enough to truly distract him, just enough to occupy his mind for the few minutes they would be stuck staring through each other. He knew something was off by the strange uniform she wore; it wasn’t the same white and grey dress uniform the rest wore but he couldn’t put a finger on why it was notable. Still it was enough to occupy his “recon mind” as his brothers put it and he made a mental note to keep an eye on her. Something about the air of rage that she gave off made him think that was probably a good idea. It made her seem dangerous, something that both fascinated and somewhat, well scared was probably to strong a word, he knew to approach with caution.

The brunette girl takes notice of the other cadet, who to her, almost can't take his eyes off her. She gives a quick half-assed glance and continues to stare out of the shuttle’s porthole-shaped window. A few brief moments pass, and the girl gives off a slight sigh of remorse, and with something of an agitated, intimidating, slightly monotone voice, basically demands the question,

"The hell do you want, pretty boy."

Her deep brown eyes now focus directly on the blonde, unflinching, unnerving. Whoever she was, whatever planet she called home, it was clear now that the most she had in common with any of the other cadets is height. She didn't give off any sort of formal military sense, but something about her told the boy that she had experience, and she knew what she was doing.

“Shut the fuck up back there!” The Sergeant yelled, how he even managed to hear the girl was beyond the boy. Soon enough the entire group was being rushed through a haze of noise and chaos. The only relief being the mean that they had 30 minutes to eat. Through coincidence the boy wound up at the same table as the strange girl.

The mess hall was brightly lit, thanks to the overhead fluorescent lights illuminating the tables and benches. The giant room seemed to particularly favor the color white, as everything from the counters, to the ceiling and shiny marble-like floor, was coated in whites and light grays. Cadets grabbed their grub, sat down wherever, and tried to keep the volume to a minimum as to not piss off the already annoying Sergeants and Officers around.

In the third isle, on the end next to a window overlooking the courtyard, sat the very same girl from earlier on the shuttle. Now in her titanium white cadet fatigues, "Oliver" sat only a few seats away from anybody else, as if she'd rather observe them than interact. She notices pretty boy approach with who appears to be a friend of his. From the sound of it, they were in a conversation about Harvest

"... And contact was lost right before it got hit! See the resemblance, man? The Aliens are helping the god damned Innies!... Uh, who's this?"

Hoffman, the slightly taller cadet with short, frizzy black hair, gestured to Oliver. Her full attention was now on them whether she liked it or not

The “pretty boy” took a seat across from Oliver, the neutral look on his face from the transport in hadn’t faltered despite Hoffman’s topic of conversation not exactly being one that he was fond of. “I don’t know, try reading. Not like our names are on the uniform.” The “pretty boy” said as before taking a bite of his food. “Also, I’m thinking our problems just got a little bit bigger than the insurrectionists, and that’s all I’m saying on the subject.” Pretty Boy said, a slight sense of sadness in his voice as he talked about Harvest, like something about it affected him more than just the loss of a colony. His eyes were distant as he continued to eat across from Oliver. Upon closer inspection the “pretty boys” name was Daniels.

"I dunno, man. All I know is when we get out of here, I'm getting payback on those gas-sucking freaks, right after those dirty fuckin' Rebels."

Hoffman sat next to Daniels, diagonally across from Oliver. She gave him something of a suspicious look, and turned back to the other cadet

"So what's your deal."

She directs towards Daniels, curious as to why he chose to sit there out of anywhere else in the Hall with much more bright, optimistic rookies. Well, in comparison to her, anyways.

The seat was open.” Daniel said calmly as he continued to eat his food. Truth be told he chose in an attempt to shut Hoffman up and to gather more information on Oliver. He couldn’t explain it but something about her interested him. “What’s your deal?” He asked her before going back to the synthetic vegetables on one side of his plate

"I'm not a fan of company, and three's a crowd."

Although she was being more honest and less rude, there was still some harshness in her words. Her accent seemed to differ from most of the other cadets as well, who talked either as if they were from fast, bustling cities, or rather slow, more laid back colonies. Oliver, however, had a much more foreign drawl. Daniels had a hard time putting his hand on it, it was almost a cross between Ancient Russian and some European country. Maybe she's from Eposz? She took a swig of bottled water, and then continued what one would guess to be meatloaf. It didn't kill her, so she didn't care.

"Oh, great, another extremely extroverted ray of sunshine! Don't worry, Oliver, we don't bite. Unless you get on Daniels fun side here... rrwwwrrrr~"

Hoffman tiger purred at his fellow cadet, messing with him and trying to lighten the somewhat dim mood

A moment quickly passed before Daniels turned to Hoffman and raised an eyebrow in a “what the fuck” look. “Okay first, don’t you ever that again, and second, don’t you ever do that again.” He said in a calm monotone, raising one finger on first and a second on “second”, pointing both at Hoffman. Truth be told as much as he liked the guy he kind of hoped the icy girl would scare him off, that clearly wasn’t the case. “As much as I appreciate your suave attempt at being a wingman I don’t think you’re helping..... that means fuck off Dustin.” Daniels said before going back to his so-called meatloaf.

"Alright, alright Odie, you win. Besides, you know I'm just fucking with you. Not so sure about that one from Eridnus II, though-"

Oliver almost smirked. She didn't really give a damn for what either of them had to say, but Daniels' response was somewhat humorous to her.

"You two are idiots."

She went back to her almost real meatloaf, acting uninterested and observing the outside courtyard below.

“What part of fuck off didn’t you understand.” Daniels said before taking another bite of the meatloaf and a swig of water. “Honestly, that’s a fair point.” He said in response to Oliver’s verbal jab at both him and Hoffman, truth be told he knew Hoffman wasn’t exactly the brightest and didn’t exactly know how to shut up but Daniels knew that without a doubt Hoffman would have his back in a fight. He couldn’t count the amount of they’d bailed each other out back on Reach.

"Ah, don't worry about him. He's just been grumpy lately. Guess we all have since... Uh, yeah.."

A moment or two flies by, before Oliver piped up and asked

"... So where are you two from."

If you could call it asking. She had something of a demanding tone, as if she didn't show empathy towards being courteous. Still, her, asking this, is friendly, for Oliver.

“Reach.” Daniels calmly replied, interested at getting anything more than an insult out of the curious fellow cadet. “And I thought we both agreed NOT, to bring that up.” He said to Hoffman, an agitated tone in his voice. The topic of harvest still seeming to be a bad one with him.

Hey, I didn't say anything, just throwing vauge...ness out there."

"Oh. I see."

Not much had been said, but things never had to be too obvious for her to pick up the pieces. From her guess, at least one of them lost something important on Harvest.

"Tough shit."

Oliver mumbled to herself.

"So what the hell are you doing here? In this gunkhole?"

“What does it matter?”

Daniels still seemed sore from all the talk of harvest. He soon swallowed down the last of his water and poked at what was left of the synthetic meatloaf and between pushing his few so called vegetables around his plate, his appetite clearly squashed.

“Why the fuck are you here?”

"I came here because I want to learn and get experience. I was tired of sitting around and listening to all the assholes back home, so I came here for a change."

"I came here to fight."

She had finished most of her meal by now, and pushed her tray and water aside.

"So, why are you here."

“I’m here to kill.”

Was all Daniels responded with, a dark look spreading across his face.

“I wanna see the pink or whatever the fuck color mist that those hinge heads make.”

He went on before taking an aggressive bite of the rest of his meatloaf and quickly swallowing.

"Hm."

Oliver didn't say too much after that. She didn't need to. Hatred like that resonated with her, in a way. It was probably the only emotion she would outright show empathy to. That is, if silence is empathetic.

"Sarah."

It had looked like Odie was going to open his mouth as if to say something (presumably an introduction), but she cut him off.

"You're Odie, and this is Dustin."

"Tolerable to make your acquaintance.

“Oliver, my name is Oliver.”

Daniels said before gulping down the rest of his water and getting up. With that he vanished into the sea of white and grey.

Some hours later after a long night of being yelled at, group punishments and being pushed through more supply lines than anyone thought possible the cadets were finally placed in their rooms. And who did Daniels wind up with for a roommate but the Ice Queen herself, the name Oliver, Sarah was placed right above the bed across from him. He sighed as he began to unpack his newly issued gear and few personal items.

Sarah had almost finished unpacking and organizing her gear, save for an ivory colored trinket with string wrapped around it. She unfolded what appeared to be an amulet, put it on, and stuffed it under her collar before Odie could make out the object, if he was even paying attention.

"Guess we're stuck together, pretty boy."

Sarah fell back onto the bunk and crossed her arms behind her head, in a somewhat relaxed, "Zero fucks given" pose.

"That's alright. Maybe you'll take a stray round for me at the firing range."

Luckily, there was a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice.

Oliver went about arranging what little he had from home. A chess board with pieces composed of standard UNSC shell casings, a few books, and a framed picture of a group of about 11 boys all varying ages and shades of blond hair, and their eyes all the same piercing shade of blue. After staring at the picture for a few moments Oliver grabbed one of the books and took a seat on his bed.

“If only it were that easy.”

Oliver said as he flipped through the pages of his book.

“Alright, cut the bullshit. Why are you really here?”

He paused for a moment as he turned the page.

“All the others are obvious. Either their mommies and daddies are military and they have no choice in the matter or they actually want to serve but mommy and daddy don’t want to loose their precious little darling to the insurrectionist, or.... whatever the fuck those things are.” An ever so tiny sliver of pain came through Oliver’s voice as the subject of the covenant cane up but he quickly composed himself.

“So they sent them here hoping they wind up some high ranking POG just like the ones who’s asses they kissed to get them here.”

Odie paused again.

“You’re neither.”

The girl sat up straight, and went silent for a moment. Sarah had a serious yet vacant expression on her face, as if she had been lost in a sad, dark memory.

"Mommy and daddy are the reason I'm here."

"And that's all I'm saying about that."

There was impatience in her tone, for sure, but something about the way she said it made it seem... Regretful.

Without even looking up Oliver could sense that he had struck a nerve even deeper than when Harvest was mentioned around him. He slowly closed the book before just staring at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry.”

"It's fine, shit happens. Lotta people don't make it through this fucking war. After a while you get used to it."

Sarah spoke with more agitation in her voice than sadness, and was trying to give off her usual "I don't give a damn" tone. She almost got away with it.

She cracked her neck left then right, then moved to sit on the edge of the bed. She paused for a moment, then looked over to Odie.

"What do you know about the Innies."

Oliver paused for a moment before turning to face Sarah.

“Do you want to know what I know or what I think, because that’s an important distinction to make.”

Oliver sat in silence as he surveyed Sarah and her reactions.

"And what might that be?"

Sarah leaned to her left, using her elbow as a stand and resting her cheek on her knuckles. She was expecting something along the lines of "Well sometimes they have good intention but sometimes they're too extreme". It was the most common thing she'd heard, but in her mind, drastic times sometimes call for drastic measures.

“Well, if I’m to tell the truth...”

Oliver paused to try and find the best way to phrase what he was going to say.

“I find the insurrectionists tactics to be somewhat sloppy, and that’s part of what makes them dangerous. Overall however I think the universe just got a little bigger than petty human squabbles over territories and politics.”

Oliver’s deadpan making it sound less like a personal opinion and more like he was reading from a briefing.

"Yeah, galactic civil war, aliens, what next? A big fucking gun that kills everything in the universe?"

Putting the "lighthearted" humor aside, she had a point.

"You think we should join up with the Rebels against them? If only temporarily."

“I think we’re going to need everyone we can get if we want to keep....”

Oliver paused, a little pain in his voice.

“If we want to keep the rest of us from ending up like Harvest.”

Her tone dropped serious and she looked Odie dead in the eye

"Things just go south from here on out. Harvest won't be the last. You know that."

“Yeah, but we have to do fucking something. Besides, if those things really do wanna kill us all then I’d rather die fighting than on my knees.”

Odie returned the look with one of his own, one that said he was going follow through with those words.

It may just come to that, if you let that gung-ho attitude of yours get to your head."

She flipped her bangs to the left and out of her face

"We'll get 'em back. They have to have a home world or base of operations somewhere."

"We'll blow it the fuck up."

“I’m not saying I’d complain about that. Not like dying in the line of duty isn’t part of my family history.”

Upon hearing that something clicked, Oliver was one of those Daniels.

Sarah felt an immediate jolt of emotions even she found hard to describe run down her spine. Her fists clenched up, and she had to act like she didn't just hear the fifth shittiest news of her life.

"Daniels. Son of Sergeant Major Henry Daniels, Company Commander of 106th ODST Special Forces."

"You're his son

“Technically, yes.”

Oliver paused as he tried his best to phrase what he was going to say next.

“Bastard never did anything to exactly qualify him as a father except sticking his dick my mom.”

He paused once more.

“I didn’t know him, he ain’t got shit to do with me.”

Sarah went silent. She didn't know how to react. How the fuck does somebody react to that kind of news? She tried to hide the anger and hatred she had for one of the most prominent military families this side of Eridanus. It almost worked.

"What. The Fuck-"

She felt her heartrate skyrocket, pounding in her chest. Almost every bone in her Venezian body wanted to break her fists on his face and vice versa. She couldn't, though. Not yet. It wasn't the time.

"Don't fucking talk to me."

Sarah moved away from the edge, and began making her bed, ignoring Odie entirely.

“Shut the fuck up in there you two or I swear you two will be running to Reach and back! Lights fucking out!” Their platoon sergeant yelled out before the main lights of the room sharply shut off and the only dim lights above the bed were able to barely illuminate Sarah’s work and gave Odie enough to read. He figured going back to his book was probably the best course of action after Sarah’s less than favorable reaction to his family heritage. Although he couldn’t completely understand, all that bastard of a man had done was beat him for being in his words a “useless runt” and make the homestead reek of alcohol until he got pulled back into some mission. “Yeah, real dad of the year material”, Oliver thought before marking his place and slipping the book under his pillow.

Sarah couldn't sleep that night. Not anything unusual for her, but this time was different. That assholes dad was responsible for her mothers death, one way or another. She'd get her revenge. In time.

Days turned to weeks, and most of the time all Odie would get from his battle buddy was quick, harsh glances and puffs of aggravation. The only time they shared conversation was in situations when they were required to. She was intent on following through with her words.

Chapter 2

#work in progress

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beyondconfessor · 6 years ago

Text

Visceral

[12/20]

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Psychological Torture, implied/referenced tortured, violence

Pairing: Sara Lance/Alex Danvers

Summary: If she touches her, Alex will alight and crumble into ash

N.B.: Also posted on AO3

The questions came, and Alex answered each one that related to herself. At any mention of Kara, she would go quiet. Even if it was something small, the risk, although it might be a lie, was too high.

And yet she rationed questions about herself, allowing only a single worded answered. What did vehicle did she drive to work? Motorcycle. How many bones in her body had she broken? Numerous. How many years had she known Supergirl? Four. She yearned for the words, spoke each one as if it was her drug of choice. With each word she spoke, the relief of human interaction grew smaller and smaller until it wasn’t enough.

It didn’t help that every time Alex came to back to her room, there was a different meal awaiting her return. Hot steak with roast vegetables. Chicken parm with salad and fries, a burger with the lot.

Instead of a cup of water, she was given a substantially larger bottle to pace herself with.

She laughed the first time. The sound echoed so that the woman backhanded her until she was quiet.

What a waste.

Alex knew what the food was. A bribe to condition her with speaking to continue receiving the food. If she didn’t think it was drugged before, she knew it now. Despite the food, her limbs felt heavy, her body ached. She was always exhausted, always nauseous, always in pain.

She ate the food anyway.

The fourth time, the man offered her a bed if she answered a small question about Supergirl. She considered it in silence, long enough to dream of her bed at home, but her silence was his only answer. There was no food awaiting her return.

Alex didn’t dream of Sara that night.

Instead, she dreamt of her recruits. That they had come and found her and then Veronica had appeared, laughing. She dreamt of Kara asking her why she’d betrayed her. She dreamt of J’onn, mediating with his father, they had been stoic and unresponsive.

Days seemed to pass as Alex drifted between questions and dreams, day after day a relentless string of nightmares and darkness. It seemed to that she had stopped dreaming of Sara and she felt all the worse - Alex had lost the one shred of human connection that gave her hope.

Sara was gone.

And then the darkness spoke. Its voice uncertain and whispering, “Was this a trick?”

Alex jolted at the words, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh.

“Sara?” she asked, throat was sore as she said the word. Hoarse. How long had been since she'd last spoken?

“Were you some minion working for Mallus?”

“No," Alex answered, the word feeling like glass in her throat.

She heard the chains rattle, and then the feeling of someone sitting close by her. Like shoes and cloth scraping on concrete, and the sense of warmth radiating near her hands. Sara hadn’t touched her, and for that, Alex was almost thankful. If she did, then Alex might alight with the touch, crumbling into ash.

She dragged her hands closer to herself.

“Alex…who has you?”

Was that a trick, she wondered, the empathy in Sara’s voice. Only moments before it had sounded cold and withdrawn, to now be…soft and gentle. It made no sense. Maybe this was a different dream. A dream-dream, like the others she'd had.

“Alex?” it felt strange to hear her name said aloud. It’d been a long time coming since she'd heard it. At least it felt like a long time. “I guess I deserve that."

Deserve what, Alex wondered. She was sure it was the dehydration, or starvation causing it. Her head felt so muddled, like Sara’s words turned to static in her head and losing all sense of meaning.

“Look, I’m sorry for ignoring you. I was so sure you were Mallus, and now, now we have Damien, fucking, Darkh. He has no freaking clue about you. I don't even think he was playing dumb…” there was a pause, and then Sara sighed as if she wanted to say something, but was holding back.

It felt almost like Sara was disappearing in the quiet. Fading away as a dream often did when you became aware of it.

There was nothing, no sound or feeling except her breath pulling into her lungs and then exhaling slowly.

Then, there were the gentle weight of Sara fingers as she reached out, a soft graze at first, and then heavy against Alex’s palm.

Alex didn't turn to ash.

It was like a fog had cleared from Alex’s thoughts. Her heart ached all at once at the touch. She tore away from it, curling into herself as she felt a sob rise in her throat. It felt too good, too sudden, too lovely to be real. Like all of her emotions appeared, and at once Alex felt the depth of her anguish.

She was starving to be touched, to be spoken to as a person, to be a person and it felt beautiful and awful and cruel to have that given to her from someone that had spent the last length of time tormenting her with absence.

Like dam walls crumbling, Alex felt the sob rise in her chest, clench at her throat and then tear its way out of her mouth, despite how her jaw shook from the refrained determination to not making a sound.

Once the first escaped, there was nothing to stop the rest. Alex's body shook, the sound squeezing through her jaw, despite how she tried to hold it back.

And then Sara was there, lifting her into her arms and holding her firmly against her body.

There was a hushing sound — a shushing. And Alex felt her cries soften as through the soft material of Sara’s shirt; she could hear her heart. It was a steady beat. A slow, thud-thud that carried as Sara drew a hand over her head to soothe.

“I must smell,” Alex said. The first clear thought she had. It was a disgusting feeling, to be in the clothes for so long. There was a layer of grime from everything, a layer of oil from her body that she wanted to cleanse herself from.

“I live with boys,” Sara said. “Well, I live with Mick. Nate and Ray are pretty good.”

Alex laughed. It was a low, loose chuckle but it was a laugh, no less. “This is a dream, isn’t it?” she asked once she steadied herself again.

“Or something,” Sara said.

Alex didn’t want to argue, so she let it be.

“What’s happening, Danvers?”

Alex took a moment to gather herself, piecing back a semblance of neutral emotions, so she didn’t breakdown again. “Roulette –– or Veronica Sinclair –– has me,” she said, and then she began the story of what she’d been doing on her mission. There was a rhythm to telling the story as Sara listened, the feeling of laying bare everything, making it easier to find herself calming down.

She explained how she got into a car crash and what seemed to follow, drifting briefly over the blue world. She spoke of the man, the questions, the routine, the suspected drugs in the food and water.

“Probably just the water,” Sara said. “Do you ever eat the food in the light?

“No, just the dark. I mean, the people bring me in here, I see it briefly with the lamp that the, ah, the...minion uses.”

“Do you know if the water is coloured at all?”

Alex tried to think back, but she’d never had a chance to look closely. The dark-coloured cups hit the colour of the water, making it appear inky black, and the bottles weren’t transparent. “No. I never see it.”

“Any smells?”

“No.”

“Well, that narrows it down, at least.”

“Not really, this whole room smells, my nose has been ruined by it. And who’s to say if it is something that it’s even of this Earth. Veronica’s a known alien trafficker. Last time anyone saw her, Kara left her on another planet with the people she’d been trafficking. I thought she’d be dead by now.”

Sara told her bitterly, “People like that worm their way back into power easily.”

Alex shuffled against her, moving to turn most of herself to where Sara's voice sounded. “Who’s Damian Darkh?”

Sara seemed to think for a moment, before she said, “The woman that you saw in my head, whatever plane it was on, that was Nora Darkh, his daughter. Damian is a very long story for another time." Sara took a breath, and then whispered, "he was the one to murder my sister.”

“I thought you said he was dead.”

“Resurrection magic, would you believe it?”

“No.”

Sara gave a soft chuckle. “Mm, sometimes I can’t either. But it was magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Well, Mr Dursley, I’m here to tell you the there is such a thing as magic.”

Alex felt her chest warm. The Harry Potter books. Both she and Kara had been obsessed with them back in school. It was one of the ways she learnt how to read English. “Magic isn’t real. It’s just unknown science or sleight of hand.”

“Magic exists. How do you explain this, otherwise?”

“Easily,” Alex said. “With science and process of elimination. I rule out psychosis, which is the most likely, move onto alien technologies, and then, there are metas. Cisco can travel between universes. Or perhaps travelling repetitively through dimensions and parallel universes changes the make-up of the human ––“

Sara’s fingers had pressed to her lips, hushing her words. “Magic,” she said. Even in the darkness, Alex could feel Sara’s eyes blazing at hers. She could imagine the woman smirking as she said the words, enjoying Alex’s rant. “I’ve run all the scans you need to know with Gideon, and they’ve all come up normal. There is no explanation outside of ––“

“Don’t say it.”

“Magic.”

“It could be beyond her processing.”

“It could be, but I’m not going to tell her that. Gideon can get very petty when you hurt her pride. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the world through time to see that some things go beyond science and technology."

“Well, I’ve seen enough of this galaxy to feel the opposite. There are more than enough aliens in this universe to show that science can always find the answer if you’re willing to look long enough for it.”

“Did you just try to one-up me?”

“A little.” She felt Sara pull her back into a hug. It was a very ‘that’s my girl’ kind of hug that warmed Alex. There was also a particular feeling to it, Alex didn’t expect. She knew how she smelt, she knew how she must look, but the darkness hid that at least. But the smell would have been awful. And yet, Sara didn’t care. She held her as if it didn’t matter, as if she couldn’t smell it herself. It was…dignifying. She wanted to explain that to Sara, say thank you, but the words didn’t come out.

Instead, what she said was, “I need a shower.”

“Then let’s get you out of here.”

The hope faded in her chest at those words. “I can’t,” she said.

“Because of these chains?” Sara’s hands were on hers, feeling around the manacles on her wrists. “Are they always chained behind your back?”

“No, sometimes they undo them and put them in front.”

“Do you know when that happens?”

“I think it’s a conditioning reward. It happens when I’ve answered enough questions or done something right.”

“And the questions are about you and Supergirl, right?”

“Yeah,” she felt her chest grow heavy. Sara hadn't been judging her, but Alex felt her judgement as she said the word out loud. She was slowly chipping away at an image of herself. It was a dangerous thing to do.

“Answer one about Kara.”

“No.”

“Hear me out. I think you need to get those people to move your chains from your back to your front. At the moment they’re changing them, you can fight.”

“I’m being drugged. And my arm is broken.”

“Which arm?”

“My shooting arm.”

She felt Sara’s hands go to it then, gingerly pressing over it. Alex held back her protests, despite how painful it was. “It’d be better if I had some light, but it seems like the bone’s snapped out of place. It’s going to heal badly.”

“I know,” Alex said. Doctor’s could break it back into position, but bones that had fused wrongly tended to become weaker. Alex knew that if she got out of here, there was an awful chance that it could become permanent weakened, even with physiotherapy.

Would that be so bad? She wondered, but it wasn’t a thought for now. Now, she needed to work out a plan.

“Can you punch well with your left?”

“No, the DEO decided to leave training only for my right arm because I was assured that I would not have use of it.”

Sara let out a laugh. "At least they haven’t taken your sass.

“Point is, there’s no way I can fight my way out with a weapon. Pain or not, the arm is useless. The whole muscle is weakened by the break that I can’t even hold the chains without shaking.”

“Well, they’re too tight to slip,” Sara said as she felt around manacles. Alex knew that too. She considered dislocating her thumbs early on, but it wouldn’t have done any good, “Could you break the chain?”

“Tried torquing the chains, but that didn’t work. The metal didn’t even budge from where the loop was closed. I’m too weak at the moment.”

“Well, that leaves the oldest trick in the book.”

“Picking the lock.”

“Picking the lock,” Sara agreed.

“That would be great, except that I don’t have anything to pick the lock with.”

“Anything you can steal?”

Alex paused. The lamp, if she could pull it apart, but would involve overpowering the minion woman who was, already, twice her size. If she had use of her hands, and one wasn't broken, maybe she could use the woman’s mass against her, but that was something she needed to be in good health to fix.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find that that’s the size of a pin.”

“Good girl,” Sara said.

Alex didn’t know about that, but she appreciated the sentiment anyway. “But how do I pick the manacles?”

Sara’s hands were feeling around the lock. “My best guess is, without actually seeing it, that you would need to carve a key that would fit into it. But you could pick the lock that’s connecting the chain to the base. The easiest way to do it would be raking it, except you'll need the tool for that. Without one, it's easier to use the single-pin picking, which I’m sure you already know how to do.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “But the only time I use that is when I’m locked out of my house. Which doesn’t happen often.”

“You’ll be fine. Take your time with it.” And then Sara was pulling her close again so that her head was leaning against her shoulder.

Alex exhaled, feeling the warm arm around her back, it was more comfortable to hold herself in the room and think in clear, concise thoughts. She just needed to find a pin, and then she would be able to get unchained from the ground. It did mean she might have to carry the chain with, which could be used against her, as well as restrict her movement. But…it also gave her a good, heavy weapon.

“What about the door?” Sara asked.

“I don’t think it’s locked,” she said. She'd seen what had once looked to be a bolting mechanism on the door, but it appeared to be missing half of it. “They might have a guard, but I’ve never heard anyone outside. The guard’s footsteps usually fade down the hall.”

“Seems like lax security for a DEO agent. Do they not know who you are?”

Alex chuckled. “I don’t think so. They haven’t used my name, and all the information I was carrying on me was for a cover.” Alex thought back to Roulette and the snaking tattoo on her leg. She hadn’t seen the woman since, and the first underling she had met there, either. That seemed odd too. It could be that Roulette didn’t value her, or had other villainess things to do, but to not see her since seemed odd.

“How long have I been here?” Alex asked.

“A while,” Sara said. “I don’t know. I was…ignoring you, for the most part, busy with trying to get the totems for Mallus.”

“How long has been since…since you were in the blue world.”

Sara drew in a sharp breath. “A while. I’ll find out, okay? Gideon keeps track of time on the ship. I just put one foot in front of the other and get through the days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I should be the one apologising.”

“I’m sorry for how I reacted.” Sara’s face still haunted her from the blue world. The horrified, heartbroken look she gave to her as she turned away and disappeared. She never wanted to see it again.

“Alex…it’s fine. You didn’t know what that side of me was. The things I’ve done to survive Ra’s Al Ghu -- that’s not even the worst of them."

“No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t you,” Alex drew in a breath as she thought of Kenny. She thought of the first time she fired a gun at combative enemies, hitting her target perfectly in the head, how the person had just dropped to the ground, the military grade bullets that had blown the back of target’s head open like it was just watermelon.

Alex pulled away from Sara to make some effort at looking her into the eye. “Do you know how much I loved killing those Nazis? How right it feels to have that kickback push at my shoulder as I hit person after person. They were nobody. They were nothing to me. If Roulette comes for Kara, I won’t think twice before killing her. I will pull the trigger and then it doesn’t matter what her hopes or fears are. It doesn’t matter that she’s someone’s daughter. When it comes to it, I will kill her, and I’ll sleep easy at night.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Sara said, her voice a whisper.

“How is it not the same thing? You’re not naive enough to believe that the enemies we come across are all some moustache twirling villain who kick puppies in their downtime. The people we kill to keep our teams safe have hopes and fears like us. Some of them think they’re on the side of good and some of them believe they have no other choice. They’re someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s partner or parent. And in the field, they know the same thing about us. It’s them or us. It’s human nature to choose yourself, to choose your team over a stranger. It's just easier if you believe they're evil.”

“Killing someone in the field isn’t the same as going into someone’s house in the dark of the night. Their house which they believe is safe to tuck in they’re kids and kiss them goodnight. And sneaking up on them as they're watching television and then killing them because they chose not to do the bad thing your boss wanted them to do."

Alex felt the air leave her lungs. She felt...stupid. Insanely stupid int hat moment.

"Would you do that if J’onn asked you to?” It was a harsh, but not a rude tone Sara took with her, but Alex didn’t have an answer. In her heart, she knew that J’onn would never ask her to that. She would never be in that situation. Maybe that was an answer in its self.

Sara continued, “I get what you’re saying, but at the end of the day, the people you killed aren’t defenceless, the people I’ve killed sometimes were just on the wrong side of my blade. They were defenceless, they were unarmed people who often just made a mistake. Say what you want, but I am a monster.”

“You’re more than just your history, Sara."

"Am I? Could you say that if you had witnessed everything I've done?"

"I don't know, because I won't ever know yourself the way you do. But I know your actions now. I've watched you with your team, and you choose to be a good person and walk in the light, not hide in the shadows. Whoever you were then doesn't matter, it's who you are now.”

Sara didn’t reply straight away. There was a beat before she said. “My sister said something similar, once.”

“Well, she was smart.”

Sara’s hand founds hers, coming to rest upon it. “Alex,” she whispered.

But then she was gone as Alex was yanked awake and onto her feet. There was a lamp in her face, and the underling was looking at her displeased.

“I'm up,” Alex said with a slack jaw. She rolled her shoulders, feeling the tension in them from the awkward position. Her right arm throbbed painfully as the woman hurriedly moved her out of the room.

She walked with the woman down the hall, making sure to look around. The lamplight cast a low-level light down the hall, throwing shadows on the walls. There was nothing useful that she could see.

In the interviewing/break room, Alex looked around for anything. She couldn’t see any cameras. There was no glass, so there wasn’t a two-way mirror. There was, however, shrapnel on the ground in the corner of the room. It was going to hurt, but Alex had an idea about that.

The man came into the room and began with his questions. Alex didn’t answer the questions this time. There was a lightness to it, as she found herself feeling the blossoming hope in her chest for the first time. Not only did this feel entirely possible, but Alex felt as though she had an attainable goal.

And yet, getting the manacles off was just the first step. She still had to get out of the room, and then escape.

The man’s pen tapped against the notebook, a sign of annoyance as he stared at her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Alex just looked from his hands playing with the pen, to where she could see the edges of the dagger in the belt. It was a flat blade about three inches long and about an inch and a half across, depending on how thick the sheath was.

He looked from her to his knife and pulled it out to show her. “You know, Ms Sinclair gave me this knife as a gift. Said it would be a good letter opener, as it were. Or a motivator if need-be.” He met her eyes then, but Alex wasn’t buying his bluff. If he wanted to motivate her with a knife, he would have done it a long time ago.

Still, there was something about the way he looked at her that Alex didn’t like. It was like a sick feeling came over her until she found herself blinking as she looked away, her eyes dry from staring.

“Perhaps we should pick this up next time,” he said.

Alex watched him leave, sheathing his knife, pocketing the pen and notebook before finally placing his jacket back on. She felt exhausted by the questions all of a sudden. Like all the energy had been sapped from her.

As the woman returned to take her back to the room, Alex made a show of taking her time. Easing off the chair as if it pained her.

As the woman lead her past where the swept shrapnel and dust had been on the ground, Alex feigned a stumble and fell back against the wall, crying out as it hit her arm before throwing her back onto ass, right in front of it. It hurt like hell against her broken arm, probably pushing it further out of place.

The woman glared at her. “Get back onto your feet,” she demanded as she tugged at the chains.

Alex’s hands scrambled at the muck. I would have been easier if she could see.

She made a show of trying to get to her feet and failing before the woman just grabbed her right arm and yanked her up. With a moan of pain, Alex stumbled on her feet again, but held her stance, hissing in a breath as she woman marched her back to the room.

There was no food on the ground, and this time, Alex noticed that her blanket was gone. The man was setting out to punish her. Good, she'll use it as motivation.

Alex took her place and watched the chains while the woman locked them into place. She moved, blocking Alex’s view of where she pulled and hid the keys used to secure the links on either end. That was fine. Trying to take them would be harder. If Alex even tried to fake-stumble against her, the woman would immediately go to check that they were still there.

It didn’t matter though; she had the necessary tools. As the door shut behind the woman, Alex felt for the pin that she had grabbed from the ground. She bent it as required and then moved to where the padlock was on the chain, connecting it to the welded loop on the floor. It’d be more comfortable if she could see it, but the primary function was there.

Alex worked her way around it, using the pin as she tried to feel for the driver and key pins. Alex had learnt how to pick a lock back in training and had once excelled at it, but she was out of practice. That was on top of trying to keep her bad arm in a position, as well as working blind.

Even though there had been no food or water to drug her in the room, and she’d eaten well in the past few days, Alex felt exhausted. Run a marathon, all-nighter, have the flu exhausted. Her arms grew heavy, aching in the position and although she knew she wasn’t quitting, just…trying to rest. It still felt like surrender.

She hid the pin in her clothes and found herself dropping tiredly on the ground, thinking of Sara. There were still bits of the plan she needed to consider. Bits of…

Why was she so tired, she’d only been awake for an...for an...what was the word...

A metric unit of time...?

#sara lance #alex danvers #agent canary #supergirl fanfic #legends of tomorrow fanfic #supergirl #legends of tomorrow #morgans fics

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scaryastheyseem · 7 years ago

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Animorphs October day 15-16: AU + Confessions

Tw for canon-typical body horror + canon-typical discussion of child death and endangerment

It’s weird, the things we don’t know about our parents. My parents have known me since the day I was born. They could tell you the name of every friend I’ve ever had, every food I don’t like, every teacher I’ve had since kindergarten. They know every time I had been sick. They remember every birthday party and every broken bone, every Halloween costume and bad dream.

On the other hand, I didn’t that my parents had names until I was six years old. They were just ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’, until the day that my aunt called the house and asked for someone named Loren, and I learned that Loren was my mom, and Alan was my dad, and that they’d had entire lives as Loren and Alan, almost thirty years apiece before I came along.

I still couldn’t tell you what they were like as kids. Or what their hobbies are now, or the names of any of their friends. That’s not because I don’t know. It’s because any information I give you about my parents could be used to find out who they really are.

I won’t even promise you that my parents’ real names are Loren and Alan. Or tell your our last name. Even that could be enough for the Yeerks to track us down. And I can’t let that happen.

Usually, it’s parents who have to worry about keeping their kids safe. They make sure they’re eating enough vegetables and aren’t staying out too late or going to parties where there might be drinking. If they’re like my dad, they keep us from watching violent movies and lecture us on the dangers of teen alcoholism like once a week, because my dad takes the very special episodes of Boy Meets World way too seriously.

My mom says it’s because he worries about us, and that I shouldn’t let it bother me. I act like it does anyway, because that’s what a normal kid would do, and I like to think that I’m still pretty good at pretending to be a normal kid.

The truth is that it doesn’t bother me. I know that my dad’s right to be afraid. Even if it’s not for the reasons that he thinks.

See, my parents don’t know everything about me, either.

I coast back in through my bedroom window, so tired that it’s a physical ache, like someone’s reached into my body and wrung out my bones. Two years ago, I didn’t know that you could be tired enough that your vision blurred. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to find my open window on instinct, or glide through it on the silent wings of an owl and land on my headboard with no more sound than any other owl would make catching a mouse. Which is to say, no sound. Most people don’t think of owls as scary, because even the biggest ones only weight about three pounds. But they’re some of nature’s most silent and deadly predators. Silent flight. Talons that could crush a human’s hand. Better vision than humans at any time of day, and better hearing, too. Most of their prey die without knowing what hit them.

I hopped down onto my pillow and started the slow shift back into human. Morphing takes a long time, and demorphing takes me longer than it takes the other Animorphs. I’m not bad at it, exactly. It’s just that sometimes, when I’ve been in morph for long enough, I forget what it feels like to have arms instead of wings. Or teeth instead of fangs, or wavy blond hair instead of the curled horns of a bison, my battle morph. None of the others have this problem. I don’t know why I do.

My toes split and shriveled. Marrow pooled in my bones. The other thing about morphing is that not only does it take a few minutes to go from human to animal and back, but the in-between phase is completely disgusting. I caught sight of myself in the mirror on my closet door. I was back to my full human height, but my face was still mostly screech owl, with huge yellow eyes and a thin beak where my mouth and nose should have been. Tufts of feathers stuck out of body at weird angles, and my fingers were still fused into long, chunky wings. I looked like a rejected design for the baby alien in Alien, or like somebody had skinned Big Bird. In short, totally gross.

Which of course, was when my dad walked in.

My already-human ears didn’t hear him coming until he was already opening the door. “Tobias,” he started to say, and then stops, eyes going wide. I froze. There was nowhere to hide, and no way to convince him that he was dreaming, or that this was all a trick of the light. It was a full moon, which had been convenient for our mission, but was now just letting me dad see that I was only maybe three-quarters human. My owl eyes saw every detail of his face as it sagged in shock, the color draining from his skin. I heard his T-shirt wrinkle as he sagged against the doorframe, the wood creaking as he gripped it for support.

Jake’s going to kill me, was the first thing I thought. Or he’s going to kill my dad. Or Dad’s going to call the cops, and one of the cops will be a Controller, and then we’ll all be dead. I have to stop him before he calls the police.

“Dad,” I tried to say, but it came out as a squawk. My vocal cords were still mostly bird, my lips hard and grey like a beak. I needed to get human, and say something, anything, that would stop him from screaming long enough for me to—what? Explain that I’d been given the power to turn into any animal I touched by a dying blue alien named Arbron, and that the reason I’d been making so many new friends lately was because we were fighting a guerilla war against mind-controlling alien slugs bent on enslaving humanity by masquerading as a coed youth charity organization? He’d think I was on drugs, or insane. Or worse, he’d tell me that I’d had a bad dream, that the stress of work was getting to him and making him see things. I’d go back to bed, and the next thing I’d wake up to would be Controllers swarming our house and dragging me and my mom and my sister down to the Yeerk Pool to be infested, while the thing in my father’s body looked on in approval.

See, we’re pretty sure that Jake’s the only one of us with a Controller in his house. Ax keeps watch on our families while we’re at school, and the only one of them who goes to Sharing events—or inexplicably vanishes for hours on end, locked in a cage by the Yeerk pool while the slug controlling them soaks up Kandrona rays—is Tom. But we never really know.

If my dad’s a Controller, I thought, I might have to kill him myself.

“Tobias,” my dad said, “Are—are you morphing?”

We sat on the bed together, my dad in his sweats and old MIT T-shirt, me in the worn-out leotard that was the only clothing I could morph. My scalp itched where my dad was staring at me. I kept lifting my hand to scratch it, thinking that maybe there were still some feathers left in my hair. But it was just my dad staring at me like he always had when he thought I wasn’t looking. Like he thought that Abby or I would vanish into thin air if he took his eyes off of us for a second.

“Does Mom know?” I asked.

My dad nodded jerkily. “Loren knew me before I was human.”

“But—how?”

“She was abducted, abducted by a Skrit Na ship, along with another human. My fellow aristh and I were tasked with rescuing them and returning to earth.” His lips thin. “The mission became—became complicated.”

My head spun. My mom had been in space. My mom had been abducted by Skrit Na, the dumpster divers of the galaxy. She’d been brought into space, and then met my dad, because my dad was an alien. An Andalite. An Andalite aristh, which meant he’d been a warrior at some point, or at least a warrior in training. Which was insane in its own way. I love my dad, but I was never one of those kids who walked around on the playground boasting that he could beat up everyone else’s dad. My dad was a California pacifist hippy, the kind of guy who goes to environmental rallies and puts bumper stickers on his Prius that say Give peace a chance, and meant it, and only owned a Prius because he was too uncoordinated to ride a bike. He had a stutter and shook hands like he was participating in an exotic foreign ritual. He cried during E.T. I mean, he didn’t even eat meat. It was impossible to picture him in battle. Impossible to picture him killing anybody, the way that my friends and I had.

I love my dad. I love my entire family, so much that it scares me, sometimes. It’s why I’ve never been able to get mad at him for being so overprotective, even when it makes sneaking out to do Animorphs things way more complicated than it is for someone like Rachel or Marco, whose parents have probably never seen a very special episode in their lives. I thought I understood what he felt when he looked at us. The deep and terrifying love that comes from knowing just how easily the people you care about could be gone forever. We both felt it, even if it was for different reasons.

Of course, it turned out that I didn’t understand at all. My dad’s fears came from a place that was a lot closer to mine than I’d thought. I suddenly got the insane urge to laugh, and had to bite down on my tongue to stop myself. All this time, we’ve been wondering when the Andalites will arrive to save us, and there’s been one in my house this whole time, warning me about the dangers of online chatrooms and making sure that I wear a jacket.

When I was sure that I wouldn’t break into a hysterical giggling fit, or possibly start screaming and never stop, I said, “Does Abby?”

“No.” He didn’t have to tell me not to tell her. Abby’s ten. She likes Archie comics and science books and learning baseball statistics. There are plenty of things a ten-year-old doesn’t need to know.

“Are you going to tell Mom that I know?”

“I already have.” He inclines his head towards the door, and I realize, thoughtspeech. This whole time, Abby and I thought that our parents always won at Catchphrase because they’d been married for so long. Weird that I’m thinking about Catchphrase. My dad is an Andalite. Was an Andalite.

When I’d brought up my demorphing problem to Marco, thinking that maybe he’d felt the same thing, he’d looked at me like—well, I’d seen how Marco looked at me when I grew a third eye. This was weirder. “It’s two hours, dude”, he’d said. “I think it’d take me a lot longer than two hours to forget what it was like to be human. I mean, setting aside the issue of anyone ever forgetting this handsome face, have you forgotten about opposable thumbs? Buffalo can’t play Nintendo.”

Of course, at that point Cassie’d had to chime in and tell him that my battle morph was an American bison, and then tell me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. “Maybe your sense of self isn’t rooted in how you look,” she’d said, which would have been nice if it was true, like most of the things Cassie said. “I mean, you might not be the fastest morpher—“ She refrained mentioning that she was the fastest morpher, which was also very nice “—but you’ve always been the best at controlling new morphs, even ones with really strong instincts. You were the first one to fight off the ant morph, remember? You have an innate sense of Tobias that has nothing to do with the body you inhabit.”

I didn’t tell her that I thought the truth was something different. I thought it was just easier for me to come unmoored from my body. I wondered how long it had taken my dad to forget what it felt like to be an Andalite. I wondered if he was like me, and had forgotten quickly. I wondered if he still remembered.

Sometimes when he was in human morph, Ax would shift his head like he was trying to use his stalk eyes to look around. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen my dad do that, but there was no way of knowing.

“She’s making us tea,” my dad said, and it took me a moment to remember who he was talking about. My mom. Who’d known all along that her husband was an alien, and knew that I knew, which meant that were were probably going to have to have a whole other conversation about this.

My dad reached out, slowly, so that I was prepared when he wrapped his hand around mine. I clutched his bony fingers in my fat ones and held on tight. Maybe some guys would’ve thought it was dorky for their dad to hold their hand, but I figured that I’d been fighting aliens an hour ago, and I could hold my dad’s hand if I wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What?”

“I thought I was saving you,” he said. His voice sounded strained, like he was talking through a chokehold, and I knew that if I looked up at him, there’d be tears running down his face. He sounded exactly like Jake when he was trying not to lose it on a mission. I kept staring at our hands. My dad’s wedding ring, the hot-glue gun scar on his thumb, my total lack of callouses or scars or any sign that anything bad had ever happened to me at all. Our bodies regenerate from our base DNA after we morph, and your DNA doesn’t store injuries. Even my chewed-up fingernails would come back whole. For all that my dad was a hippy, I’d never heard him cry before, and I knew that I didn’t want to see it. Just hearing it felt like my stomach was hollowing out. It was worse than Jake crying, because for all that Jake’s our general, he’s still technically another kid. My dad’s an adult, and he’s my dad. He might have been a pacifist hippy, but I guess part of me still thought of him as totally unflappable and capable of fixing all my problems, no matter how much I knew that it wasn’t true.

“You and Abby. War is—war is a terrible thing, a terrible thing.” He was stuttering bad, the way he did when he got cut off in traffic or misplaced a semi-colon in his code. “I thought Earth was safe—safe and peaceful. They had just had a war. Loren said it was terrible, terrible, there wouldn’t be—another. Not this time. So—you would be safe. But instead you’re fighting your own war, you and these other children. Children.” He shook his head. A tear dripped down onto the back of his hand.

Part of me wanted to scream at him for ever trusting that humanity could change for the better. For thinking that a species that invented the atomic bomb and then kept having wars would suddenly decide to lay down their arms and plant flowers. I suddenly thought of the psalm framed above his dresser. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war any more. I always thought it was weird that it was on my dad’s side of the bedroom and not my mom’s. She’s the religious one. Ax told me that Andalite culture was mostly based around the military, but that before their long war with the Yeerks, they’d been nomadic grazers who wrote poetry about the beauty of how trees framed rivers.

Rachel had snorted, and said that she couldn’t imagine any of the Andalites we met writing poetry, which had been my first thought too. But my second thought had been: Oh, that sounds nice. Like after the war was over, I’d like to wander and write poetry too. Maybe my dad had thought the same thing. I could be mad at him for taking that chance. Nothing I could say would unravel time until he took my mom—Loren, the girl he’d met in space—back to his homeworld and let Abby and I be born under a red sky. Or not be born at all. I don’t want that, and I need him to know that I don’t. That my life is violent and painful and worth living; that he gave me a life worth living.

“It’s not all bad,” I say. “I mean, I get to fly. I’ve been a bird. I’ve seen the whole Santa Ynez mountains from above.” I tighten my grip on his hand. “That’s—that’s worth a lot terrible things.” I don’t’ have the words to tell him about the feeling that flying gives me. Feeling the wind rising under my wings and knowing exactly where I’m going, and how to get there, and that when I do, it’ll be under my own power. It’s like freedom, bottled and purified. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.

I can’t tell my dad that, but when I look up at his face, it’s lifted towards the window, where a few stars peek through the orange smear of the street lights. I can see tear tracks drying on his face, but he’s not crying anymore. “Yes,” he says. “I had forgotten. There is a certain joy to flying.”

My parents read a lot of books about how to be better parents. There’s a shelf of them in the basement. The Aware Baby. The New Baby. Siblings Without Rivalry. Raising Boys. Raising Girls. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World.

I don’t know what any of those books said about what to do after your husband tells your kid that you’re an alien, and your kid tells you and your husband that he turns into animals and fights aliens after school. My mom had made tea, which as a response to family strife seemed like it would cover a lot of bases.

We sat around the table in the kitchen, which felt overlit and yellow and slightly fuzzy around the edges, the way that kitchens are in the middle of the night. I drank my tea. My mom brought out a bowl of edamame, which no one ate.

“You have to stop fighting,” she said.

“We can’t,” I said, dully. “We’re the only ones standing in the way of the Yeerks completely conquering humanity.”

“You’re children,” my dad protested.

We were fifteen—mostly, Cassie and Marco hadn’t had their birthdays yet—but I was pretty sure that bringing that up wouldn’t do us any favors. I think that as soon as you turn into an adult, anyone under the age of eighteen might as well be a kindergartener as far as you’re concerned. There was a big difference between somebody my age fighting a war and somebody Abby’s age doing it, but try explaining that to my parents. “The Yeerks don’t know that,” I said instead. “And we’ve been doing a pretty good job so far. We destroyed a Kandrona generator that was supposed to be installed in a homeless shelter tonight, to transform it into a Controller recruitment center. That’s a couple hundred people we saved from being enslaved, easily.”

My parents both looked shocked. I didn’t know if it was because I was talking so casually about aliens, or because I’d all but admitted that I’d killed somebody two hours ago. A few somebodies. I was pretty sure none of them had been humans, but then, neither was my dad. I imagined that I could taste Hork-Bajir blood in my mouth. I took another drink of tea.

“What about the Andalite fleet?” It was mom who said it, which surprised me. The world Andalite sounded even weirder coming out of her mouth. “Have you made contact with them? Surely they’ll want to oppose the Yeerks on every front possible.”

“We’re not an urgent case,” I told her. I could hear how flat my voice was, but the energy it would've taken to make myself sound gentle was so far beyond me that it might as well have been on the other end of the galaxy. “They’ll be here in three years. Maybe two.”

My dad’s lip curled in anger. “I’ll contact them myself. They’ll listen to me—“

“Will they, Dad?” I cut him off. “Will they listen to an aristh who abandoned his post? A voluntary nothlit? I’ve met Andalites; they’re not exactly accepting of alternative lifestyle choices. What makes you think that you can say anything that Ax hasn’t already?”

“Then give me the morphing power.”

It’s not what I’d been expecting him to say. My mouth fell open in shock, and he steamrolled on, stuttering but staring me down. “If you have the, the morphing power, then you must have an Escafil device. I may be a nothlit, but even a nothlit, even a nothlit can regain their morphing power, and acquire morphs in their new body. I’m an adult, an Andalite. I know the Yeerks, their strategies, their ships.”

“Me too,” my mom said. She reached out and touched my shoulder. “I might not be an Andalite, but I’m not about to let my son risk his life without at least trying to keep him safe.” She paused. “Also, we can both drive, which I imagine would be helpful.”

Weirdly, it sounded nice for a moment. I wouldn’t have to lie to my parents anymore about where I was going or what I was doing or why I was staying out so late. And they were right. They were adults. At least theoretically, it was their job to take care of us. To make the hard calls that Jake makes now, when there aren’t any good options. The ugly calls when there are good options, but the bad ones will hurt the Yeerks a little bit more. Or keep us alive for one more day. Or eliminate a threat that needs to be eliminated, no matter what the cost.

I thought about David. A bat cracking across my beak. Jake choking on his own blood. The terrible thing that Rachel had to do. I closed my eyes. “I’ll have to talk to Jake,” I said.

“What does that mean?” my dad said.

At the same time, my mom said, “Jake?” She said his full name. “That Jake? The sleepy-looking one who roots for the Padres?” My mom’s a Dodgers fan.

“He’s our leader. Our war-prince,” I added to my dad. Though maybe my mom knew what a war-prince is, too. “If anyone’s making new Animorphs, it’ll be him making the call.”

“He’s fifteen,” my mom protested.

“I trust him, Mom. With my life, like once a week.”

Her face got red and blotchy, which meant that she was about to start crying. My dad made a choking sound. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry we let this happen to you.” I stared at the chip in my mug and thought that I should have feel more awful about making my parents cry, twice. Or at least that I should have feel more awful than I did tired.

I thought about explaining to my parents that the last time we’d given somebody else the morphing power, he’d snapped and tried to sell us out to the Yeerks before almost murdering half of us and forcing us to trap him in the body of a rat. That just made me feel more tired.

Mostly, I thought, I could have told them, all this time. I’d been lying to my parents for a year and a half. About my slipping grades, about why I was so tired, about what I was doing with the new friends that they were so relieved to see me make. About why I kept waking up screaming in the middle of the night. And all this time, they would have understood. Maybe better than anyone.

“Dad,” I said, “Dad, I—I killed someone.” I hold out a hand like maybe he can see it, even though I’d used my back to crush the Hork-Bajir’s ribcage with a single blow and send them stumbling into Marco’s outstretched arms. Even though it had been my horns that had ripped someone open, stomach to sternum. Even though I’d demorphed inside the swimming complex at the Y and washed my feet and head off in chlorinated water before remorphing and flying home again, just like I did after every battle.

I didn’t know how the others washed the blood off. I’d never asked.

“I killed someone tonight,” I repeat, and my dad closes his eyes but he doesn’t flinch away from me. He wraps his hands around mine, and I think, this is what he will look like when he’s old. Then I think, he’s already old.

“I love you,” he says, and I think of all the things I could tell my father.

#animorphs #tobias fangor #elfangor #animorphs fic #animorphs october #hmmmm this is the first thing I've written in like??? a year?? and i literally cannot tell if its good or not #anyway yes hello this is my AU in which elfangor remains on earth and he and loren raise Tobias #and don't find out that he's fighting a guerrilla war until like halfway through the series by which time he's already done #some reasonably fucked-up stuff #so it goes over ABOUT AS WELL AS YOU WOULD EXPECT #and also Tobias has a little sister named Abby and doesn't use a red-tailed hawk morph in battle feel free to talk to me about this #noam writes things #and now i'm going the FUCK to bed

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blueboxshenanigans11 · 8 years ago

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Lost Pieces

Ten x Reader

Request: Anon: Hey, I was wondering if you could do a 10th doctor imagine with prompts 4, 13 and 14 with angst and a happy ending?

Here you are anon! So, so, so, SO sorry this is so late. I just finished the quarter so I’m doing some heavy catch up. Hope you enjoy! Thanks for your patience, it is more than much appreciated! Xoxo

Title:Lost Pieces

Word Count: 2,551

You walked at your usual brisk pace as the sun’s rays tickled your exposed skin on your face, arms, and legs. The smell of fresh cut grass dancing through the air as it hit your nostrils, and the familiar sound of some kids riding past on their bikes. It felt good to be outside and walking down the familiar streets of your hometown, smiling to those who gave you a wave or greeted you. You had almost let summer pass you by without even thinking about going outside, and you found yourself genuinely enjoying yourself.

You had been going through a rough patch to say the least. Ever since the Doctor and you had parted ways earlier that year, you had been struggling to maintain a regular routine. Your family who only consisted of your younger sister lived an ocean away and didn’t really know the extent of how or why you were such a hermit, and your friend group believed you when you told them you were just really into your work. In all actuality you had been hurt so deeply, it was debilitating. You wondered if that was how all break ups and endings were for other people, but you couldn’t fathom that the “normal” times it happens that it involved an alien who took you on amazing adventures through time and space. No. You needed the time you did to feel better, and now you were finally able to start moving on.

You had been out and about walking for quite a while. Went to a couple of shops and bought some groceries, a few new books, and a new cat toy for your cat, Paul. You giggled as you thought about your big, lazy orange cat, who had the most human name you could think of. He was probably staring out the window waiting for you to get home, or the wall depending what mood he was in. You turned onto the last corner to start walking down your street where you could see your flat right up the way. The familiar white bricks, with dark brown trimmings around the windows and door frame were too bold not to notice.

As you put your bags down to attempt to find your keys in your purse, the feeling of being watched slowly crept upon you. Your usual quick movements grew slower and slower as your ears began to ring, and the wind gave you a shiver. As you got your house key into the lock and the door opened, you turned around to look out past your yard into the street. The only things to greet you were the trees dancing in the wind, a few parked cars, and several different people going about their day not minding you whatsoever. You took a peak down the sides of your road which didn’t indicate much more than when you looked straight ahead as you picked your bags back up off your stoop. You finally decided it was just you watching too many ghost hunting shows as you shrugged off the eerie mood, and walked into the threshold of your home.

“Paulie!” You cooed as you placed your bags on your dining room table and began to look for the new treats you picked up for him. You looked over to where he usually sat if you were out, but he didn’t happen to be there. Next you had tried the bathroom, where he usually liked to sit by the heater but there was no sight of him. When you checked the final place you would think he would be before it became really unusual, yet he was still nowhere to be seen. “Paul!” You called out, now starting to look in non-familiar places around your flat. “Did someone come in and steal my fucking cat?” You asked out loud as you sat up from looking under your couch.

You were really starting to worry that something happened to him when a revelation hit you: “My book nook! That little shit.” You exclaimed, making your way to your little book room that used to be a half bedroom. Paul wasn’t supposed to be in there unless you allowed him to come cuddle with you on your big reading chair, mostly because he would try to knock down every book on your shelves. As you scurried down the hallway expecting to catch him in the act, your heart quickened in pace seeing that you had indeed forgotten to close the door all the way. “Shit, shit, shit, shit! PAUL!” You yelled through gritted teeth, and as you swung the door opened, sure enough he was in your antique chair. You were relieved you didn’t find him knocking down books, but then you noticed he wasn’t alone in the room. In fact, he was sitting on someone’s lap purring away. You yelped in fear, and took a book that was closest to you and threw it across the room, hitting the man that was sitting in your chair. “Ow!” “Who the hell are you!? Get out of my house!! And give me my cat!!” You screamed, rearing up another book ready to throw, “Y/N! Y/N! Stop! It’s me! Ow!” You had kept throwing your books, but then you froze and dropped the one that was ready to strike when you realized who’s voice it was that was speaking to you. “Doctor…?”

“Yes, Y/N, it’s just me. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to frighten you like that, I just was enthralled with this book I saw on your shelf about the history of art during the Reinassance and didn’t even hear you until you burst into the room. Paul seems to be just as good as ever, how are you?” He rambled on as you stood frozen to the floor. You heard his voice carry across the room and through your ears. You saw him sitting in the chair, stand up and slowly make his way across the room. You saw his familiar angels of his face, his deep brown eyes, and his styled dark brown hair. He didn’t look any different than the last time you saw him, yet you know it had been months since your last meeting. He had a genuine grin on his face as his eyes met your widened ones. That stupid fucking grin that even now made your heart melt. “Y/N? Are you feelin - OW!” The Doctor yelped again, as another book hit him with a thud and dropped to the floor. “What was that for? I told you it was me!” “Oh, I know it’s you.” You muttered almost silently. You were shaking with sadness, anger, excitement, and way too many other emotions mixed together, you felt like you were going to pop.

“Why?” You simply asked, awaiting a specific answer. He furrowed his brow, giving you a puzzled look but before he could speak you jumped in, “You know why I’m asking why. You know exactly what I’m referring to so you if you even dare say what do I mean, I will do far worse to you than throw a three-pound bloody book. So just fucking answer me in the simplest answer you can.” Your fists were clenched, and you couldn’t believe how hot your head had become in your anger. The Doctor just stood gaping at you, apparently not sure what he should or shouldn’t say. You scoffed, “Or don’t say anything. Walk out the door and don’t come back. I can still pretend that this is a dream, a – a vision. and just continue to do what I have been doing since you left, but don’t you dare think that you can just fly in and out of here whenever you fucking please and think I won’t be hurt about it!” You stood your ground, still not moving a muscle. You were afraid if you tried to move, it would result in you taking the Doctor in your arms and never letting go so he couldn’t leave again. In that moment, you realized you made the same mess about the room that you had been trying to stop Paul from doing, and you started to laugh. Your laughter quickly turned manic, and then switched right into hard sobs that made you crumple to the floor.

“Y/N…I’m so sorry…You know why I left…I’m back because I couldn’t bare being without you anymore.” “Oh so what, it’s been a minute for you, and almost year for me?” You shot through your hands as you wiped your face. “No! No, it has been longer than that. I traveled back to see you. I couldn’t go back to when I first left, but I…I just thought maybe after some time that the pain would have ceased and it would be okay to have a reconciliation.” A laugh escaped your lips and you looked past him as he sat down with you on the floor, afraid to touch you. “Today was the first day I felt normal enough to go outside. The first day I felt that I would be able to be back in the world like the normal human I am. I went to the store and got treats for Paulie, and some more books. Some about theatre, some just some novels. One’s a science fiction love story some stupid thing I thought might be an interesting quick read…” You didn’t know why you were telling him all this in grave detail, but it just was spilling out of you. It felt nice telling him everything again, but it was a habit you were surprised was so easy to fall back into. “God…What happened to us? We used to be so close…and now I feel like I’m telling a familiar stranger everything…” You pondered as you finally looked at him, and his face held pain in his eyes as he looked on at your pitiful, broken state.

You both sat on the floor in silence for a while, and it almost seemed like it all really could have been a dream. You were remembering the day he had left, and how much you wanted him to come back. You wanted him to come back even that very same day if you were being honest, but you didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it had. “You left because you were scared that somehow we would get hurt because we love each other…” You uttered, affirming your knowledge for the reasoning. The Doctor scooted closer to you, still keeping his distance. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you. I knew anyone who had the slightest dislike towards me would use you against me in any way they could and I couldn’t bare to lose you.” “You did lose me, Doctor. When you left me in that field outside of my parent’s house…I laid there for hours hoping you would come back. Hoping that it wasn’t real.” “I didn’t want it to be real either Y/N, I’ve lost so much…If I was going to lose you I wanted you to be safe, and home, and living.” “And if that meant you pushing me away and leaving without any trace, and it was on your terms then fine? You didn’t even care to ask me how I felt? Or think about what it would do to me? Just that you would be safe. Your feelings would be safe…” You both stared each other down, one waiting for the other to speak sweet nothings again, waiting to say it would be okay. But neither of you said a word.

“I missed you…” He professed, wringing his hands as his elbows rested on his knees. “You never really loved me did you?” You continued, your thoughts now not afraid to speak themselves through your voice. “Y/N!” He cried, and this time he didn’t care if you wanted to be touched or not, he pulled you into his chest. As his familiar smell and warmth hit your body, more tears fell from your eyes. He squeezed you so tightly you almost couldn’t breathe. You could hear his hearts beating just on the other side of your face as it was pressed against his chest. “No…no, no, no…I have always loved you…” He admitted softly into your hair. “I would check on you while I was away…I was away for three hundred years and it never got any easier when I would see you…Every time I would see you, I died. You were killing me and you didn’t even know it.” He declared, a small, nervous laugh escaping his body as he explained himself. “I don’t want to be away from you Y/N. I don’t know what that means to you, but I want us to be together again. Like we used to. Whether that’s here on Earth or traveling across the stars, I don’t care. I need you.”

He took your face in his hands and made you look him in the eyes to know that he was being genuine and meant every single word. You slowly reached your hand up to rest it on his, reassuring yourself that he really was there, and this was your Doctor. He had come back. He was here with you, and he wanted it that way, but you couldn’t help but feel the tug of reluctance in your mind. “I need you too Doctor. I’ve needed you…I – I want to stay with you, I always had. But…” You could feel his spirits drop as his hands dropped from your face and into your lap, but he never took his eyes off you. To make sure his mind wouldn’t wander, you cradled his cheeks with your hands, as you continued, “But it’s going to take some time for me. I can’t just jump back into the Tardis as if everything is okay. It’s not. I feel mixed up, and I was broken. I’m shattered right now, both in a good and bad way Doctor. I want you to help me put my pieces back together.” “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you again.” “Then don’t.” You whispered. You kissed his lips lightly, and as you pulled away, he cupped your cheeks again and wiped away your trail of tears. He tucked some of your H/C locks behind your ear before you both stood up and really embraced one another.

You led the Doctor to your room where you both laid down, intertwined with one another. “Don’t leave. Just stay with me.” You implored after you had settled. The Doctor held you tighter as to reassure you, “I won’t. Not until you’re ready for me to.” “Well that won’t happen.” He exhaled a little laugh, resting his head on top of yours. “Well, then until you’re ready to go with me.” He claimed, making a small grin lay on your face. You nodded as you felt yourself fading into sleep. You were stricken with tiredness after this emotional roller coaster that was surely not finished riding out its course, but with the Doctor with you again you felt that it wouldn’t be as terrifying to go through the rest of it. Your missing piece was back in your life, and you weren’t planning on losing him, or him losing you, ever again.

#blueboxshenanigans11 #doctor who #doctor who imagine #ten x reader #tenth doctor #imagine #request #doctor who x reader #doctor x reader

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kingoji · 8 years ago

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I’ve been giving the Godzilla ‘Millenium era’ movies a bit of a binge rewatch in order this past week, since we finally got a blu ray player in the house that they work on.

It was quite an odd period of movies. Seems to be the selection that opinions are most varied on as well. I’m gonna share mine on a film by film basis.

For the benefit of anyone who’s just happened upon this and doesn’t know the history, the Millenium series is the name given to the Godzilla movies from Japan that were made from 1999 to 2004. Initially they came about as a reaction to Tri-Star’s 1998 attempt (the one with Ferris Bueller and Leon), but the dwindling ticket sales of their previous series of movies, the Heisei era, also encouraged them to rethink their formula some. What was decided was that three standalone movies would be commissioned with different takes on the franchise, and the most popular would be the direction they embraced going forward. This largely fell by the wayside, and all but two of the films of the era ended up becoming standalone features. Naturally, as a result the reactions to the films varied as the tones and themes of the films themselves did.

Godzilla 2000

This is my personal favourite of the Millenium movies, and not only because it was the first one made where I was aware it was being made at the time and, thanks to publications like G-Fan, was able to follow along with updates periodically. I didn’t get online until around 2006 or so, so this kind of niche news was extremely hard for me to get ahold of. Godzilla 2000 had a radical redesign for Godzilla. It may well have been an effort by Toho to show Tri-Star that you *could* be extreme in redesigns while still honouring and being recognisable to the original (I am a fan of the Tri-Star design as a monster, but as Godzilla it was a failure), but it was also a solid way to visually differentiate this series from the previous one. Production values were higher across the board, and it was much more experimental in its special effects, often integrating the suit-acted Godzilla into panning or otherwise in-motion real-world shots. Before this, the technique was only ever used to add Godzilla into static shots or the far background. It doesn’t always hit the mark, but you have to respect that they aimed for something and took a shot. The miniature city sets were actually the largest ever constructed at the time, and the decision to reduce Godzilla’s height by half meant that they could be made larger and more intricate. In other words, the city sets looked more realistic and expansive, meaning they matched the real-world shots better and would be demolished more convincingly. The lighting work was stellar for this film, too, with crimson skies replacing the blue-tinted spotlights of the Heisei.

The human cast here is probably the most realistic and likeable of this series as well. All too often people dismiss the human element and act like the monster stuff is all that matters, but I cannot stress how much I disagree. Having a human cast you care for makes what happens with the monsters more urgent. My favourite character in this one is Katagiri, the director of the Crisis Control Intelligence bureau. He is considered the villain of the piece, and the film supports this by making him needlessly dickish to the main character and dangerously glib as to whether he lives or dies, despite the man posing no threat to him, his company, his position, or literally anything else about him. Thing is, despite this overplayed animosity, Katagiri’s behaviour and personality are actually fitting to his position and responsibilities. If it weren’t for his chafing attitude, he could have been the hero of this film quite easily. He reminds me of ‘The Colonel’ from Akira, only less stoic and serious.

In fact, I’m not sure there is a villain in this film. Godzilla is immediately established as a natural threat, but at the same time there are two equally valid points of view voiced about him; that he is a danger that has to be stopped, and that he is an animal doing what he does and should just be contained for study. Katagiri is next to be introduced as someone we shouldn’t like or trust, but see above. Then there is the alien life form which takes longer to fully understand the motives of but is no less destructive in the meantime. The alien, which for the most part is always hidden within it's vessel, had been stranded on this planet for millenia, and for whatever reason cannot leave. So it does what any living creature would do and tries to survive. It engages Godzilla because his DNA contains the key to surviving this new environment, but when things don’t go it’s way the life form resorts to learning what it can about Godzilla from our internet data first. This hacking and absorbing of data is seen as a hostile action and humans treat it as such. Then it faces Godzilla again and gets what it wants, only for things to go wrong again and Godzilla’s DNA mutates the alien from it’s natural state to a grotesque monster which then has to fight for it’s life before being destroyed. Next time you watch the film, pay close attention to how Orga acts when it is revealed. It looks at itself with horror, and when Godzilla advances on it it backs up in a manner which seems to say “Whoa, whoa, time out!” and only really gets into the fight when it realises Godzilla is not going to stop. It’s outmatched from the go and knows it, and everything it does seems born of desperation rather than aggression or strategy. Orga is one of the most tragic creatures in the Toho stable; a creature of genuine intelligence trapped in a brutish, cumbersome form, killed before it can try to do anything about it. Of course, for most of the film the alien is an ass to humanity, so it’s hard to feel too sympathetic to it. Then when Godzilla has “saved the day”, he proceeds to lay waste to Tokyo himself anyway, reminding us that while he may not be the villain, he’s sure as shit not our hero.

Actually, I think that’s the only universal source of contention for this film; after evrything has gone down and before Godzilla goes on his rampage, the human cast wax philosophical about him. One notes that humans created him, and ever since have tried to kill him. another than asks why he then keeps saving us. A third postulates that maybe it’s because “Godzilla is inside each one of us”. Which makes no sense. The first statement is correct, but the question asked is wrong as in this movie’s timeline Godzilla has always been the threat, and only got into this fight for personal revenge. I don’t speak Japanese so I don’t know if this is a bad translation, but I personally choose to interpret the real meaning of the discussion as something closer to the second person asking if we deserve Godzilla, an the final replying that we all carry the weight of responsibility for him. That’s how I’d phrase it if I ever adapted it in some way. It would also lead in better to Godzilla setting the area on fire than the actual “cuz we bros, man” that we get.

Takayuki Hattori is the composer of the score for this film. His only other Godzilla score was 1994′s Godzilla Vs. Space-Godzilla, but in the west probably his better known work was on the anime series Martian Successor Nadesico. I loved his work on that show, and as such am fond of his work on Godzilla. It certainly has a flavour distinct from other Godzilla composers that I’ve often read as “sounding more like Hollywood”, but I actually think it carries over conventions of anime scoring. You have very strong and individual sounding ‘hero theme’, ‘villain theme’, ‘battle theme’, ‘comedy theme’ etc. which you could easily imagine being attributed to an episodic show, often short and punchy. Whereas Hollywood movies are mostly scored to match exactly what fits on screen at that moment, and while you may get repeated cues added into different scenes, rarely is an entire piece applied wholesale to multiple scenes. I think I preferred Hattori’s work for G Vs SG than here, as that was in general a more fantastical film and as such a better fit for his “animated” style. Despite the overt sci-fi elements of Godzilla 2000, it is still comparatively a much more grounded film (there are no maser cannons here, and this film’s idea of advanced military arms is a new missile which is better at piercing armour than anything before). That said, this score is still strong and suitable, and to me feels more complimentary to Akira Ifukube’s traditional Godzilla theme than other scores have been. When it plays in this film it’s fitting to the overall sound, which seems to enhance it’s effectiveness as the familiar “shit, you know what this means” piece to build the anticipation, whereas in the next film it’s a more jarring difference that just makes you go “Cool, they’re using his theme after all”.

As a final piece of trivia, this was the first Japanese Godzilla film since 1984′s The Return Of Godzilla to get a western theatrical release, and the last until 2016′s Shin Godzilla. The trailer for the American release used Rob Zombie’s fast-paced song ‘Superbeast’ as accompaniment, which tickles me to no end given that this film was a response to Tri-Star’s Godzilla and the repeated chorus is “Hey yeah, I am the one that you wanted! Hey yeah, I am the Superbeast!”

Next up: Godzilla X Megaguirus!

#Godzilla #Gojira #Godzilla 2000

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