#just to like static shriek I guess

[crimsonblackrose]

The amount of stuff I have to get done and is uh...rather crushing. Of course every time I get on this same little path it ends up on a week where I’m also working extra hours to cover for time off or have other responsibilities. And this time I have ✨ both ✨ . Like I need to do this test. By test I mean a ridiculous amount of research for BIG THING, and it’s overwhelming and I do have questions (i.e. am I doing whole big thing or am I doing small sample?) but I can’t ask because the time right now is bad for the people to ask. (aka time zones screwing me over) It’s due Friday but I still have 9 hours of work tomorrow and probably 5 more before the mid-day Friday deadline and that’s going to eat up most of my time to work on it. I also just realized for the arts and crafts thing I got the most that need to be completed because I think past me volunteered to do so. (past me did not know it would come back to bite me) But it’s fine because it seems like a lot but research wise it’s not. It’s just making the things. Progress though is at like 1% for the research phase which is BAD. The birthday party on Friday is a potluck and cupcakes were veto’d and lavender cookies were requested so that’s a two day process (they’re in the fridge so day 1 is done but cupcakes would’ve been a 1 day process so I thought I could mark that off the to do list but I can’t yet and that means I’ve got to take away time from the working on the test tomorrow to finish them) I’m working extra hours tomorrow and Friday there is no buffer time after work on Friday because I have to bolt for transportation chaos to get there on time immediately after I get off work. Thankfully the arts and crafts aren’t do on Friday. But I do have to touch base about progress which is...practically nonexistent.

[tojirights]

Pls, I need Alastor and brat taming. 😭

Fem!reader who acts soo cocky around everyone and tells Alastor she isn’t scared of him only for him to respond “you will be.” and he spanks and overstimulates her until she submits to him. The next day she’s walking round the hotel thoroughly avoiding him bc she’s so embarrassed.

a/n: PFFTTT the brat in me is going wild for this one bestie

buy me a coffee?

tags: 18+ smut, nsfw, spanking, slight choking, over stimulation, brat taming, shadow tentacle use, sliiight ass play/double penetration

"dude you're fuckin' scary..." angel physically shudders when alastor rises from the shadows and appears at your side. you raise an eyebrow before laughing at angel. "for real? look at those fluffy ears and little tail! this is scary?" you reach up and boop his ears, which twitch at your touch. he narrows his glare at you, daring you to test him further. "go on, darling. keep belittling me like that and you will know just how scary i am."

you roll your eyes, locking arms with him as he starts to lead you away from angel and the others. "you're all bark, no bite." you continue to prod, poking his cheek with your finger. "stop it." he warns, and his tone is serious, but you just stick your tongue out at him. "i'm not afraid of you, al." you huff with confidence. reaching the door to your room, he pauses. "oh?" his voice cracks through the radio static for a brief moment, and you feel goosebumps rise on your arms. "is that so?"

even though the look in his eyes has you reconsidering your brave behavior, you stand your ground. "yeah, what's so scary about the radio demon, hm? gonna haunt me while the top 20 pop songs play? or i guess you'd only haunt me over some jazz or someth-" your words catch in your throat when alastor's suddenly pushing you against the door to your bedroom, for anyone walking by to see. "you need to learn your place, little one."

with wide eyes, you look up at him. "what are you doing?" you whisper, glancing around the thankfully empty hallway. alastor easily towers over you, caging you against the door. "you should be afraid of me, sweetheart..." he says, low and breathy against your ear. "i think you just need to learn your lesson, that's all." you're about to protest, your hand flat against his chest but then you feel his lips on your skin and you all but melt. "i don't-" you gasp, alastor's teeth scraping against your neck.

"shhh." alastor's hands slide around your body, opening the door and walking you through it. "alastor..." you swallow, about to challenge him more but his hand wraps around your throat before you can. "not another peep until i say so." your mouth opens as alastor pushes you to the bed, but the tug of your pants and underwear stop you. "w-wait!" you scramble, but alastor just chuckles. "not so tough now, are you?"

he rolls your panties up into a ball and in the process, he can feel the wetness your panties have collected. "if you can't handle it, you're more than welcome to admit to me that you are scared, my darling." he teases, but you hold your ground with a glare. "now, as for your punishment... over my knee." he commands, sounding so natural in this demanding tone. you bite your lip, wiggling further onto the mattress and away from him. when he sighs, you can't help but giggle.

but then there's something wrapping around your ankle and sliding you over to alastor's lap. "h-hey wait, no fair!" you whine when you see his shadow tentacle secured around you. alastor chuckles, another tentacle coming up over your mouth. "tap my leg if it's too much." he whispers, and you know he's giving you an out even after your playful disrespect. but your pussy throbs as you're pulled over his leg, bare ass up and ready for him and you're fully invested in this now.

you shudder when alastor's hand rests on your ass before coming down hard on it with a smack. your shriek is mostly muffled by the shadow acting as a gag, especially as the second hit comes faster than expected. wiggling in his lap, you whine against his restraints until you feel something prodding at your pussy and go completely limp as a shadow starts to slowly push inside of you.

eyes wide, you wriggle in his grasp but it only earns you a smack to your other cheek. "just relax, darling. or are you scared?" he pouts above you, watching the way your body reacts to his every touch. his tentacle eases into you, stretching your cunt in such a way that you're seeing stars already. you moan against your gag, jolting when you're hit once again. alastor's large palm rubs the irritated, bright red skin as his tentacle fucks you in slow, languid strokes.

you're certainly not scared, and alastor is well aware of that fact by the way your pussy squelches with every push of his shadow. he can hear how wet you are without even looking. you gasp when you feel yet another tentacle pressing ever so gently against your ass, just prodding the tight muscle but not threating to enter. your head whips around to look at alastor, eyes wide with a tinge of panic, but alastor's smirk is reassuring.

he may be teaching you a lesson here, but he's not a monster and respects your boundaries after all.

"tapping out, my sweet?" he snickers when your wide eyes drop to a glare once again. "that's what i thought." he hums, another smack hitting your abused skin. he's just toying with your ass, the tip of his shadow just barely edging its way in but the pressure itself is enough to start pushing you towards the edge. and when the tentacle slips passed the tight ring of muscle, you can't stop your orgasm from following quickly after.

every nerve in your body rings as waves of pleasure crash over your, your moans barely muffled by alastor's tentacle over your mouth. you swear you've never cum harder ever, and yet alastor doesn't stop. he's still pumping his shadow in and out of your cunt, spreading your wetness all over your inner thighs and even onto his pants. it's almost too much, the fullness of having both holes played with as well as the feeling of being restrained the way you were.

your eyes well up with tears, overwhelmed with the sheer pleasure coursing through your veins and alastor doesn't seem like he's going to be stopping any time soon unless you tap out.

and you're not a bitch, so tapping out is not an option.

alastor's free hand reaches your other cheek and spreads it apart, giving himself a view of the action in front of him. he'd be lying if he said his cock wasn't throbbing at the sight of his shadow pumping in and out of your slick pussy, prodding your tight ass. you feel so exposed, you can feel his eyes burning through you but that only makes you clench harder. alastor gives your cheek another quick smack and you're a goner once more.

shaking, your second orgasm hits you even harder somehow. your whimpers are barely audible, but loud enough to make alastor groan himself. "fuck, hands and knees, now." he breathes, pushing you off of his lap and quickly undoing his pants just enough to free his aching cock. your restraints are removed, giving you free access to move once more, but you also lose the fullness of the tentacles. its not for long though, as alastor lines his cock up with your leaking pussy

as alastor starts to slide his cock inside, one hand finds your hip while the other pushes your head into the mattress. your thighs shake with every thrust, and your pussy aches from the prior intrustion already but you can't help yourself from pushing back on him. you probably seem desperate, cumming twice already and still eager for more, but alastor has you like putty in his hands. "oooh now see, who's a good little slut, hm?" he coos, fucking into you harder.

you whimper into the blanket, still muffled like earlier but more pronounced now and alastor's ears twitch with every moan. he won't soon forget this little interaction, seeing you so needy and obedient. he smacks each cheek, enjoying your pathetic sounding cries as your body begs for a break. "cum again, darling." alastor grunts, hips slamming into yours in quick strokes. you shake your head, protesting the potential, but alastor's shadow sneaks around your body to play with your clit.

"n-no too much-" you pant, both convulsing with every flick of his tentacle. alastor just clicks his tongue to his teeth. "one more, sweetheart. then, maybe you'll have learned your lesson." you feel every thrust of his cock hitting right against your cervix, your head spinning as alastor works to pull another orgasm from you. "f-fuckk al-" you cry out, pussy pulsing around his cock, tears springing free from the overwhelming pleasure.

alastor's orgasm follows quickly behind you, and he chooses to pull out and paint your reddened ass cheeks with his cum. the red skin, in contrast with the milky white of his seed is a sight he won't soon forget. you whimper with each thick rope of cum hitting your skin before you collapse onto the bed.

you dont remember too much after that, but alastor gets you cleaned up and you're asleep within seconds.

the next day, you walk into the kitchen with your head down. "ah! good morning, sunshine!" alastor chirps, sipping from his coffee cup. you feel everyone's eyes on you, but all you can do is stare at the ground. "shut it, asshole..." you mumble on your way to grab a drink yourself. alastor just smirks. "naww, is someone embarrassed?" he pouts, eyes wide and teasing. "im never talking to you again." you threaten, but alastor hums and ignores your weak threat.

because you're crawling into his bed that night, begging for more.

taglist: @downbadforfictionalppl @karolinda007-blog @the-alastor-simp @batmanmonstarr @lilcupnoodlez @cxrsedwxrlds @murdertrampx @sssandychemd @jellibean2018

[lurochar]

Before It All (Pt. 3)

Warnings: Obsessive Alastor

Part 1 + Part 2

---------------------------------

It really was you.

His nameless Doe.

You seemed tense, clearly uneasy by the static he emitted and his presence alone by the looks of your erect ears and puffed fur of your tail.

(How cute, you had your clothes altered for your tail. A shame he hadn’t noticed it back when he had summoned you).

Alastor was now used to fellow demons being unnerved and frightened in his presence and so they should be, but you – there was no reason for you to be so anxious in his company, though he supposed he could understand it somewhat.

The power dynamics were completely turned around.

You had no advantage over him, he wasn’t that weak human anymore.

But still, Alastor didn’t like the fact you were so wary of him, so he needed to lighten the mood, break the tense atmosphere, and there was no better way than reminding you of your encounter with him when he was the weaker one, when you had the power over him, was there?

“How I’ve missed your wonderful ears, my nameless Doe.”

Alastor always did find your ears fascinating.

He may have his own pair of deer ears now and they had their uses – his auditory senses were vastly superior when compared to his human self, so much so, it took a week or two for him to adjust to sensory overload. They also gave any would-be attackers a false sense of security, he was just a deer demon, so he had to be weak.

Ripping those sorts to shreds felt much more satisfying.

But his ears were so damn sensitive to touch that Alastor had no idea how you didn’t just melt into a trembling mess when you allowed him to stroke your ears all those years ago.

He needed to move on from these thoughts before–

You blinked at his odd greeting, your body relaxing slightly from its earlier tensed position that had been poised to flee at any given second.

You blinked again.

And then you let out a loud yelp of surprise, springing forward when you felt icy cold hands playfully tug on your ears from behind. 

–before his shadow acted upon them.

You reeled around to see what had touched you, not expecting to see a grin right up in your face and you stumbled back a bit, happy enough that you didn’t embarrass yourself in front of the Radio Demon/Alastor by letting out some sort of pitiful sound like a scream or shriek.

“I do hope you can excuse my shadow’s behaviour. The poor thing can hardly contain itself, seeing it is a reflection of me.” Alastor gestured the shadow away, which it did after giving you a last glance before it vanished. “Well then, should we do now what we should have done twenty-four years ago?”

You’re unsure what he is talking about.

“Introductions, my nameless Doe! Unless you prefer that name over your real one.” Alastor bows in a flashy way. “Alastor Hartfelt! But you already knew that, correct?” He stood up straight and eyed you expectantly.

“It’s nothing special, it’s just Y/N.” You shrug before eyeing Alastor intently and you hope you don’t get killed or worse for your question. “You just seemed like a miserable boy brought up in a miserable situation, so I gave you a pass. I thought if I got rid of your main problem, maybe you could live the rest of your life normally. You didn’t even make it to forty. What happened?”

Alastor hummed. “It would turn out that my father was only a drop in the bucket. After that wretch was gone from our lives, my Mama instilled in me the importance and value of women. Women are not second-class citizens nor are they property, but this way of thinking was uncommon and misogyny was everywhere.”

You think you can guess where this is heading to…

“I killed men, men like my father. Men who see no problem in beating their wife. Degenerates that stalked the alleyways for their next rape victim. For over a decade, I was the ‘Bayou Butcher’. It’s only due to the incompetence of a hunter that I am here now.” The expression on his face was that of delight. “I have no remorse. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.”

Oh.

It’s… it’s not what you wanted for Alastor, but you remembered that sheer hatred in his eyes. Something that deeply rooted wasn’t so easily erased, even if the main cause was taken out of the situation.

Unfortunately, you were not wrong in guessing Alastor would eventually condemn himself to Hell.

Fortunately, you had held onto Hartfelt for the past twenty some years.

You do have another question, but you know better than to ask.

Some demons don't care, but some demons can get quite offended if asked about their appearance and why they ended up looking the way they do. It’s personal, tied to their sins in life and their manner of death.

Asking Alastor why he ended up as a deer demon, a prey-based demon, could get you killed or maybe worse.

“I was mistaken for a deer by an inept hunter who took a shot before bothering to confirm what he was shooting at.” Alastor answers easily and casually, as if reading your mind and knowing what you want to ask. “Do not be afraid to ask me anything, my lovely Doe. I assume you heard my message on one of my broadcasts, yes? I meant every word of what I said.���

Lovely Doe?

‘I told him my name…’ You decided it didn’t matter too much as it wasn’t demeaning or degrading. You’ve been called much, much worse and on a regular basis by Hartfelt, so hearing an affectionate(?) nickname was a bit of refreshing change–

Should you be thinking that way?

Your ears dropped.

“Listen, Alastor,” you noticed his eyes seemed to glow brighter from you simply saying his name, “I messed up that day. I… I shouldn’t have touched you, let alone hug you. There are countless reasons why most demons don’t have free access to the human world. Contact with demons tends to screw humans up. Even just one night with a Succubus or an Incubus can fuck up humans for months and they’re low-class demons.”

Alastor simply tilted his head.

“I’m mid-class and… and I should have known better.” You sighed. “I think I messed you up in some way by touching you and letting you touch me.”

You were taken back when Alastor started to laugh and your ears flattened completely, slightly bothered by his reaction to your words.

Did you say something amusing?

“Oh dear me, you have twisted it all around in your worrisome mind, haven’t you?” Alastor chuckled. “So you have yet to realize you saved me and my Mama from that piece of scum I had to call ‘father’? My life even? Had you not killed that man for me, I would have made a clumsy attempt to murder that man, whether I succeeded or not. Such a thing would have cost me my life much earlier. I would not have been able to pursue my career and take good care of my Mama until her final days.”

You flustered, not sure what to say back.

“I lived my life the way I wished to because you freed me from that man. I am here in Hell purely of my own actions, though perhaps a little earlier than expected. You are very much downplaying what you are to me and I cannot say I care much for it.” Alastor couldn’t help the loudening crackle of his static.

“...okay…”

“Pardon?” Alastor’s ears twitched at the mumble of your voice, though he heard you just fine. He wanted you to clarify what ‘okay’ meant and look him in the eyes as you did so. He wouldn’t trap you in a contract like the fools whose souls he owned, but with his guaranteed protection for nothing more than just staying at his side and within his sight, how could you refuse?

(Though, if you wanted to give him your soul, he certainly wouldn’t turn it down).

“Okay! Maybe I didn’t fuck you up! Maybe you were… a little ‘different’ from the start!” You weren’t sure how to say ‘psychopathic’ in a nice way. “I still felt guilty about it this entire time. I hoped differently, but I knew you would probably end up in Hell.” You admitted, huffing when Alastor let out another chuckle. “So I did something to try to make up for it in case I did mess with your mind somehow.”

“Hmm, and what is that, my lovely Doe?” Alastor’s smile seemed to widen and it may be hidden from view, his tail wagged in excitement. “You thought of me, even before I landed myself in Hell? I must say, I’m quite flattered!”

“I looked for him as soon as I got back from the human world and found him before he understood how… things worked around here.” You didn’t feel bad in the least. “So I tricked him into making a deal with me. Shelter, food, simple basics for his soul. He didn’t seem used to living on the streets, so he took it right away. He didn’t understand what it actually meant to give your soul away.”

“Well done! What a delightful little tidbit! I had no idea if you would be interested in the art of deal-making. I would be more than happy to guide you. Why, I already own a great number of souls myself.” Alastor’s smile turned a little more sinister and he felt his blood heat at the thought of watching you trick some desperate fool into giving you their soul.

He would slaughter an entire district just to see that.

“I’ve… never really thought about it? I just do what I can to get by. Prey and livestock-based demons don’t have it easy in Hell.” You were sought out for your meat after all. “Anyway, I thought I’d make it up to you by – well, that demon whose soul I own is your father’s.”

The static around Alastor went completely silent.

You swallowed thickly, suddenly nervous. “I, uh, I always intended on giving you ownership of his soul whenever you ended up here, if you ended up in Hell. You can do anything you want to him, I have no intention of interfering if you… wanted to broadcast his torment or something.”

Shit, why was Alastor staring at you like that?

Was it the wrong choice? Did he want nothing to do with his father?

“W-WAH!” It was the most pitiful fucking noise you could probably make, worse than that earlier yelp when Alastor seemed to melt into the floor through a void of shadows and then reappear right in your personal space before you comprehended what happened. That was not the reason you let out a damn bleat before you could help it, though.

Alastor was stroking your ears just as he had done twenty-four years prior.

“A gift from you is always welcome, but this – I never imagined one that would bring me such… joy. Truly, you were always meant for me, my lovely Doe.”

“S-so, I take it you want ownership of his soul?” You struggled to get the words out, feeling your vision blur for a moment. You let out a breath of relief when Alastor reluctantly released your ears, but he didn’t step away from your personal space.

“Yes. I’m more than willing to give you a soul – ten even, in return. Mama may disapprove of it, but I will pay back a thousandfold and more for what that man put her through. He will suffer the worst torture I can possibly think of.” To your amazement, Alastor’s pupils spun into a shape that resembled radio dials before returning to normal.

“It’s a gift. You don’t need to give me anything back in return.” You blinked in surprise when Alastor poked your cheek, pinching it playfully before tutting at you. “What was that?!”

“You have been here longer than me, but it seems I must teach you a few good lessons.” Alastor held out his hand invitingly. “Before this transaction, would you like a tour of my radio tower?”

You placed your hand in his. “You’re going to have to explain it like you would to a child how this radio stuff actually works. I can turn my radio on and change the station, that’s about it.”

Alastor felt that chill that followed him all his life leave him and his smile felt genuine for very few times that it was as he felt your hand wrap around his.

He may be dead and in Hell, but his (after)life was looking rather bright – he still could enjoy his passion for radio and he no longer had to hide his true sadistic nature and homicidal thoughts. Better yet, he could combine the two and broadcast tortured screams for denizens of Hell to hear!

He was powerful and feared, toppling Overlords to become himself in an extremely short period of time and he owned multiple souls to do his bidding whenever and whatever he wanted – and soon, he could add his miserable wretch of a father to his collection to torment all he likes.

Best of all, he finally found you, the demon who made this all possible for him and now that he had you in his grasp, there was no conceivable way he would ever let you elude him. He could certainly give you the illusion of freedom and space if that’s what you wanted.

He was charming, he knew that, it’s all he needed to win you over.

Perhaps it would take a little time and patience, but he would get what he wanted in the end like he always did.

His lovely Doe. His new wife.

It was a dream that Alastor was going to turn into his reality.

----------------------------------------------------------

I hope this ending was satisfying

Tags: @alishii @yourdoorisunlocked @godsent69 @eris-norwega @catticora @tayraedoll @michi-keinz @martinys-world @n0tmentallystable @xalygatorx @everwolf-20 @yui-onnero

[barefoot-joker]

Snake in the Garden Pt 4~ Yandere!Lucifer X Reader

Hey, guys! Welcome to Snake in the Garden Part 4! In this chapter we meet a few new characters, so I hope I got their personalities right. I do hope you all like the new chapter as I had a lot of fun writing it. As always, enjoy and I hope you have a great day/night!

Words: 2395

Warnings: Swearing

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5

I heaved as I ran through the streets of Hell. I couldn’t get enough air to my lungs and my legs were growing weary of the journey. However, I kept my eyes on the marquee and just kept going. You’re almost there, Y/n! Come on! Soon you’ll be free!

I didn’t take the time to look at the demons surrounding me but my ears caught all of the screams, moans and conversations as I passed. A couple of times I was grabbed at, but I just shoved them away and continued my trek. When I reached the gate of the hotel I stopped to catch a breather, my hand grasping the iron bars to steady myself. I looked back from where I came, the palace a tiny speck in the distance. I wanted to pat myself on the back but I knew I wasn’t in the clear. Until I was back home Lucifer could rear his head at any moment. Speaking of the Devil, I wondered how long it would be till he noticed I was gone.

Taking in a few more breaths, I walked up the cobblestoned hill to the front door. The marquee shone a bright red and I felt like I was bathed in blood. Stopping at the front door, I marveled at how intricate it was. The stained glass formed a circus tent pattern and the rim held a golden tint to it. Bringing my hand up, I knocked on the glass, a knot forming in my stomach. What if all this work was for nothing? Would the Princess even listen to my case?

I didn’t have much time to think when the door opened. In front of me stood a tall, lean man dressed all in red. Among his red and black hair, black deer antlers stood and what I assumed to be his ears straightened in surprise. His red eyes felt different compared to Lucifer’s, his feeling more sinister. His grin seemed to grow wider as he looked me up and down. “Hello, my dear. Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel. I’m Alastor, the hotel’s facility manager. How can I be of-”

I rushed past him and slammed the door shut, my nails digging into the golden wood. “-service to you?”

I spun around to face him, my eyes blown wide in panic. “I need to speak to Charlie! Please, it’s an emergency!”

I clasped my hands tight in prayer and tried to make myself look as vulnerable as possible. “Charlie isn’t here at the moment, I’m afraid. She’s out on some business with Vaggie. The two of them should be back soon though.”

I groaned and hung my head in despair. How long will she be gone?

I lifted my head back up and let out a slight shriek at how close the deer man was. He was practically on top of me, our noses almost touching. “Though I could speed along the process if I was told what constitutes an emergency.”

I hadn’t noticed it before but as the man spoke his voice held a static to it, almost like an old radio. “Listen, Alastor was it? I don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you.”

“Hmm. I guess you’ll just have to wait then. Husker, make this sinner feel at home.”

I looked to the left and saw a bar that looked way too out of place. Blue boards made up the walls and floor while the dark oak bar top sat in the middle. The cat demon, Husker, looked up from drying a glass and sighed. Alastor wrapped his arm around my shoulder and dragged me over to the bar, shoving me at a stool. I sat on top of it and gulped as the radio man kept eyeing me from his post nearby. “What’ll you be havin’?”

“Oh, um, a water is fine.”

“Not much of a drinker, eh?”

“No. Besides, I don’t really drink around strangers.”

Husker shrugged and turned his back to me. When he returned to my side, he placed a rocks glass in front of me on the bar top. I grabbed it and sipped my water. “So, I couldn’t help but overhear you’re in an emergency. Got some loan sharks after you or somethin’?”

“Oh no, much worse. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve heard my fair share of long stories as a bartender.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable sharing. I’d much rather wait for Charlie.”

“I can respect that. Hell is a rough place and if you’re not careful it can swallow you whole. I learned that the hard way.”

He sighed and continued to dry glasses. As I sipped my drink, I glanced over to see Alastor still staring at me. That maniacal grin never leaving his face and his eyes cool and calculating. “So um, what’s Alastor’s deal? Why does he keep staring at me like I’m fresh meat at the butchers?”

“He’s always like that, scoping out the new guests. But a word of advice, don’t make a deal with him whatever you do. You think your life is horrible now, you got another thing comin’ with him.”

“I see.”

Suddenly I felt something grazing my ankles. I peered down to see a very short woman with a red bob, a stripe of yellow hair in front of her one giant pink eye. My eyes widened upon seeing the silver blade in her hands. The female looked up and a giant grin spread across her thin lips. “You're not meant to be down here, are you?”

“Huh?”

“You smell…human. Sinners have a certain scent and you don’t have it. We’ve got a live one, guys!”

She hopped into my lap and grabbed the top of the nightgown. I gulped at how the knife was slightly pointed at my throat. “You’re pretty for a live one, not that I’ve seen many like you before.”

“T-thanks?”

“How rude of me! I’m Niffty! I clean.”

She shook me back and forth. “A live one, hmm?”

Suddenly I felt a hand tighten on my shoulder. I looked back to see Alastor, the end of his smile reaching well past his eyes. “You didn’t quite introduce yourself to us, did you, my dear?”

“Leave her alone, Alastor!”

“Tsk, tsk, Husker. I just want to know what I should call our newest arrival.”

“I, I, I-”

I stopped when I heard the front door open, two voices chatting as they came inside. I had never been more thankful for a door to open. “Oh, hey guys! What’s going on,” The tall blonde asked.

She looked so similar to Lucifer so she must be Charlie. “We’ve got a live one, Charlie! And to think she was trying to hide,” Nifty replied.

The Princess turned her red gaze to me and I quickly threw off the deer and housekeeper. I got down on my knees and looked up at the blonde. “Please Charlie, you have to help me! Your dad is fucking crazy-”

“Oh you must be Y/n!”

My heart dropped. No. No, no, no, no. How much does she already know?

Lucifer’s daughter scooped me up to my height and pet me on the head. “It’s so lovely to finally meet you! My dad has sent me several pictures but you look much prettier in real life. But what are you doing all the way out here? Shouldn’t you be planning a wedding?”

“That’s my problem! I don’t want to be here! Please, you’ve got to help! I’m begging you!”

I could feel tears come to my eyes as I pleaded my case. Charlie’s eyes softened and she placed her hands on my shoulders. “Here, let’s take a walk. Vaggie, can you put our shopping away?”

“Of course, honey.”

“Come on.”

The blonde took me by the shoulders and led me up the grand staircase. We went up a few floors before stopping in a room that resembled a library. Charlie ushered me to sit in one of the leather armchairs and then she followed my lead. “So tell me everything. I’m sure my dad left out a few key details.”

I did. I told her how the two of us had met up until I had been forced to say yes to marrying him. While I told my tale, she didn’t say anything. She just hummed at key parts. “So can you help me?”

“I want to, I really do. However, my dad-”

“Fucking kidnapped me, Charlie! Do you really want me to go back to that?!”

She opened her mouth to say something when suddenly her phone rang. She pulled it out of her red suit jacket and her eyes widened. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“It’s my dad.”

“Shit! I’m not here!”

“But…”

“You see the good in others don’t you, Charlie? Can’t you see the good in you helping me?”

She bit her lip before sighing. She clicked the answer button and held the phone to her ear. “Hey, dad. What’s up?”

Lucifer didn’t even need to be on speaker as I could hear him shouting from the phone. “Charlie dear, thank goodness you picked up! Look, I’m in serious trouble and need your assistance.”

“What can I do for you?”

“My darling bride Y/n is gone! Vanished! I left her to her own devices and when I came back she’s left me! I thought someone took her but then I found this rope hanging out the bathroom window and have you seen her? I don’t know how long she’s been gone for and I don’t want her out and about by herself. Hell’s too dangerous!”

Charlie and I made eye contact and I begged her to not give me up. Her grip tightened around her phone and I could see the battle going on in her head. 

“Sorry dad, I haven’t seen her. I’ll keep an eye out though.”

“If you do find her please make sure she’s unharmed. I want my dear apple to be in one piece after all.”

“You’ve got it. But, hey, I’ve got to go. Vaggie’s calling me. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, thank you sweetie.”

“You’re welcome. Love you. Bye.”

She disconnected the call. I let out the breath I was holding. She did it. She actually was going to help me! 

“Okay, I know somebody who can get you back to Earth. But we’d better hurry. My dad sounds like he’s getting close.”

“Thank you so much, Charlie! I really do appreciate it!”

“Hurry now!”

She summoned a dark trenchcoat and fedora from thin air. I quickly put them on and out the front door we went. Our walk felt just as long as when I had run to the hotel, but this time demons didn’t seem to bother us. It was probably because the Princess of Hell was with me. We continued walking until we stopped at a very large mansion. Out front was a cobblestone drive and a fountain spraying water. Charlie and I walked up to the double set of dark blue doors and she knocked. They opened to reveal an imp butler, a small white mustache hiding his lips. “Hello, Princess! What can we do for you?”

“I need to speak with Stolas. It’s urgent, Pringles!”

“Follow me.”

We strutted inside and the little butler led us to a study. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Thank you, Pringles.”

“Of course, Princess.”

The door shut behind him. The study was quite large with several bookcases housing thousands of novels near the walls. A desk with a tall, navy and gold chair sat behind a dark oak desk. The place seemed very fitting for a Prince. As we waited I found myself playing with my engagement ring. I willed myself to stop but my fingers kept rubbing it. Don’t get cold feet now, Y/n. You’re almost home free.

I heard the navy blue door open and I turned to see a very tall, skinny owl man. He wore a dark red jumpsuit with a wine red cape draped on his shoulders. White and black feathers made up the collar and they mingled with his own gray feathers. A smile found its way to his beak when he spotted us. “Charlie! It’s so good to see you, my dear!”

The two hugged and when he pulled away, he looked at me with his four red eyes. “Who might this be? A friend of yours?”

“Stolas, this is Y/n. My dad captured her and brought her down to Hell. We need to send her home to Earth.”

“Ah, so this is the infamous Y/n I’ve heard about. It’s a pleasure to be meeting you.”

He bowed. How many people has Lucifer told about me?

“But why would you want to go back to Earth? You’re getting married in a few months.”

“Because I don’t belong here! I was fucking kidnapped and am becoming a bride against my will! Please Mr Stolas, let me go home!”

“Have you and Lucifer made a contract together?”

“Huh?”

“I mean have you signed anything that he has given you?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

He bowed his head. “Then I can help. Just let me get my Grimoire.”

He held up his hand and a blue and gold book came flying towards him. The book looked heavy as it floated in the air but the owl Prince paid it no mind. He flipped through each of the pages until he landed on one. “Y/n, if I do this for you I cannot guarantee your safety. I know Lucifer. He’ll be looking for you until you’re in his grasp again.”

“That’s fine. As long as I can go back.”

“Very well.”

He chanted out a spell and before I knew it a purple portal materialized before my very eyes. “Go quickly now. I can’t hold this open for long.”

“Thank you, both of you. I appreciate it!”

“Go!”

I walked through and not a minute later the portal closed behind me. I looked around and smiled. I was back in my house in the hallway. I laughed triumphantly and threw off my disguise, making my way to the living room. I stopped when I heard the crunching of what sounded like…chips? I looked over to my couch and I felt my eyes widen.

“There you are! It took you long enough!”

~~~~~~~~

TAGLIST

@ladymothbeth @cosmic-spider @l0vedoe @stormz369 @strawberry-gothic @repostingmyfavs @purplechan9 @caniseethefourthsword @rl800 @froggybich @txpchhhhhhh @stayinguplate @theonlykawaiigod-blog @vash-yuu @musicb33nsstuff @zennylz @rosieposie005 @weirdgirlislonely @noxianwarmason @luksusowejachty234567 @nicky190i @flutistbyday2020 @insanepurplegrapes @rin22 @b-connie @yepperoniro @halparkebitch

[tashacee]

The Clocktown Mystery

Chapter One: The Mystery of the Peculiar Portal

There was something very wrong with the portal.

In fairness, there was always something wrong with the portals. Stepping into them felt both like stepping into the emptiness between worlds and it felt like being squeezed through the most compressed, miniscule crevice in the universe. Their bodies felt as though they were simultaneously being torn into atoms and pressed tighter than should have ever been possible, all while something deep, something innate told them to walk, just keep walking forwards until all of a sudden the strangeness of the portal was nothing more than a bad dream and the glaring darkness melted back into reality.

But this one was different. Something about it was wrong, something more than the usual feeling of unreality that accompanied the appearance of a portal. The smell of ozone that came with it was too strong and the edges of the swirling darkness seemed to be made of static, jumping and shifting between solid and indistinct, tearing at the edges of reality.

“I’m out.” Legend said. “Whatever. Screw this. That thing looks like it’s going to eat us and I'm not about to get pulled apart by a broken-ass portal. Fuck it. I’m out.” for emphasis, he threw his hands in the air and made to turn on his heel.

As he moved, though, a bolt of lightning lanced from the portal and struck the ground at his feet, blackening the grass in every direction. Legend shrieked and leapt back, and even from a few feet away Warriors could feel the fine hair on his arms and legs standing on end with the electricity humming through the air. The stench of ozone had become all encompassing.

“Or I guess I'm in!” He squeaked.

Read the rest on AO3!

[concussed-to-pieces]

Wolves At The Door; Part One

Fandom: Resident Evil [Village]

Pairing: Eventual Karl Heisenberg/AFAB!Reader

Rating: Holy shit M.

Summary: "Highness? That's a little much, just lord will do."

A/N: Welcome all, welcome to our first installment! Enjoy!

Tag List: @cookiethewriter @amneris21 @topgirl17 @vodkafolie @a-smol-witch @baby-lisuga @clockworkmidnight @calwitch @silver-quinn01 @velvet-paradox @mrs-wolfwood @mic-sunderland @somethingthatsaysbubbles @fullofmoonsandstars @stargazerofgoldenwords

Prelude

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains mentions of blood, canon-typical violence and extreme depictions of mental and physical duress. Stay safe!]

Rain hammering what was once his face, the boom of thunder and the grinding shriek of metal. Karl Heisenberg looked up at the plummeting form of a man, dead man Ethan Winters, silhouetted in stark relief by the lightning shattering the sky, and he felt nothing except a fevered madness, the berserk desire to tear the world itself limb from limb. Within him the cadou throbbed and slavered for blood, more more more!

In his rage-fueled delirium Ethan was transformed from mere crumbling vessel to a vengeant angel, pulling the trigger and firing that last rocket directly into his internals. All the sacrifices, all the sleepless nights, failures, suffering, torment…

Yet Karl had to respect that level of dedication, that kind of drive. He certainly wouldn't have shown himself any mercy, had the roles been reversed. If he had been the man on borrowed time, struggling against all the beasts and bastards in the world to save his kid…well, Heisenberg could definitely understand Ethan's steely resolve, for all that it was about to bring his plans to ruin. 

I must…kill her…

"It's already done." A voice he knew. The Duke, that jumbo-sized, two-timing prick. 

Karl struggled to move, to stand, sort out what had happened, but something was wrong with his mind. It was as though his thoughts were…slippery, too difficult to grasp, and he was just so…

Tired. Gods, he couldn't ever remember being so tired. He felt mortal, fragile even. More details were racing past him, faster and faster as the weariness crushed him to dust, but Karl couldn't bring himself to care. He was too exhausted. Hell, he couldn't even muster up the strength to open his eyes while the rocking of the cart lulled him into a stupor.

I must kill her.

Who? Who was…

Consciousness slipped through his fingers once more, and for a time Karl simply slept dreamlessly. 

…

A warm, wet cloth was being rubbed back and forth across his bare upper arm. Karl licked his lips absently, flinching when he encountered dry, cracked skin. His lower abdomen was pounding.

"Shhh," someone, someone was there, a hand brushing over his brow soothingly. "You're safe. Sleep, Karl."

That tone, soft, too soft, too gentle. Karl hated it. "'Fuck 'way from me," he slurred, dragging his arm up in a pitiful attempt to shield himself from this new and insidious threat. When the hell had his limbs become so heavy?

"Don't move! Easy, easy. Give me your arm back, I still have to change that dressing." The person scolded, fingers wrapping around his wrist. Karl didn't even have the strength to struggle and soon relented, leaden arm going limp in this stranger's hold. 

"You gonna' kill me?" He asked, unsure why he felt so glib about the subject. 

There was a sharp intake of breath next to his head, followed by a long exhale. "No, of course not. That would be rude to the Duke. I promised to make sure you could recover physically. I guess you have some memory loss?"

"Huh." Karl's brow furrowed. Memory loss. Maybe that's why his brain seemed soft and bruised at the edges. But that couldn't be all there was. He was still himself, right? 

He couldn't tell. The details of his life to that point were full of static. It was like he was teetering on the edge of some dark pit, unsure if the lack of concrete memories was a blessing or a curse.

I must kill her.

Who?

Karl Heisenberg. Did that name even mean anything anymore? 

…

You were in for it, you could tell. Karl was as cantankerous as he could manage to be while he was still bodily incapacitated, the man only barely able to open his eyes after several days of recuperating.

His mouth worked just fine, unfortunately for you. 

"You making lunch soon, sugar? I want meat." 

You sighed heavily. "You want meat at every meal, Heisenberg." 

The nerves surrounding your mysterious houseguest and his lofty title had quickly worn off, replaced almost exclusively with annoyance. He was clearly an individual who was used to getting his way and while you hadn't wanted to be rude, you rapidly realized that he didn't care much whether you were or not. Honestly he didn't seem to care much about anything that came out of your mouth, appearing to talk just to hear himself prattle. Speaking of which…

"...potatoes, carrots, boar, I feel like I haven't had boar in ages, some black bread with oil and salt-"

You shoved the dishes you had been scrubbing back under the soapy water, turning to fix the man on the cot with a stern look. "Anything else I can get for you, your highness?" You snarked.

"Highness? That's a little much, just lord will do." He waved a limp hand dismissively, fingers twitching after a moment or two. Behind you, you heard the silverware settling belatedly in the water-filled basin. "Look, I don't want it all now, I'm just thinking of the future! I'm a big guy, not being able to eat like usual is killing me." Karl all but whined, his expression a bit pitiful for such a 'big guy'. 

You stifled your laugh, returning to the dishes. "Well, clarify that for me. When people say they want something, usually that implies a pretty immediate time frame."

"I do want it, I just can't have it now. Life is rotten sometimes."

"Yes yes, you're really fighting the cosmic battle."

"Don't patronize me, sugar."

Your laugh escaped that time, though you tried to mask it with a cough. Heisenberg muttered something you couldn't make out and when you dared to glance over your shoulder at him he had turned his head towards the wall. You pursed your lips, feeling a little guilty. He was bedridden and probably going crazy from boredom. That would definitely explain his talkative bouts whenever you were within earshot.

"I'll…I'll see what I can do about the boar. No promises, though." It had been slim pickings as of late; the strange excess of air traffic recently seemed to have had a negative effect on the local wildlife.

Another helicopter hummed distantly overhead and you briefly wondered if there was some sort of land survey going on, or if maybe it was a forest fire prevention drill, but soon enough more important thoughts took over and the query vanished from your mind.

…

The twitching was getting worse. It felt like something just beneath the skin of his abdomen was struggling to move him bodily, demanding him to propel himself onward with greater and greater urgency.

Which would have been fine, but Karl didn't even have so much as a crutch to hobble around with. Not that he would have used it, mind you, but the idea of it-

You were apparently hard at work doing something, leaving at sunrise and returning every day defeated in the twilight. There was still wood to be cut around the place, water to be boiled, general maintenance of your property. You always made sure to leave Karl food before you departed though, and you stoked the fire well. 

Heisenberg's only and eternal complaint was boredom. He was barely able to eat unaided, mainly motivated by spite and the grim realization that if this kept up he would be indebted; a fate worse than death or whatever the hell his gossamer memories were shielding him from recollecting. 

But Christ he was bored! He spent the days staring at the knots in the ceiling and willing himself to get stronger faster, damn it all, before he entirely lost his mind from cabin fever.

His loaned cot collapsed beneath him one such boring day after he made a sudden attempt to move his arms, dropping him on his side on the floor and knocking the wind out of him. From the little he could see the metal fasteners on one side of the canvas sling had just…all torn free of their moorings at once, clattering to the floor around his stunned form. 

His brow furrowed. Karl reached a tentative hand out, his index finger inches from one of the fasteners. The tiny object shuddered and then rocketed across the floor, scraping up a ribbon of wood in its wake. It finally halted when it met the edge of the cabinets, burying itself deep in the grain of the worn timber. 

–whirling twisted metal screaming death trap pouring rain and that man, that man–

Karl flinched, blinking. His hand was trembling when he attempted anew, and a second fastener made a half-hearted attempt to follow its kin, coming to a rolling stop midway through the kitchen. 

Well that's something.

The man paused. Then, with a superhuman effort, he heaved himself up onto his elbows. Gritting his teeth, Heisenberg crawled forward on his stomach until he was able to clearly see and confirm that yes, the fastener was lodged in the cabinetry. "Weird." Heisenberg muttered to himself. I didn't touch the fucking thing though, so how the hell-?

The door to the yard swung open and you came stumbling in, kicking your muddy boots off to rest beside the door on the porch. 

Karl froze. You froze. The fastener in the cabinet tore free, flying backwards to strike Karl in the shoulder. "Fuck!" He yelled, more surprised than actually hurt. Flapping a hand around on the floor he finally scooped up the little metal object, harboring some deluded fantasy about crushing the fucking thing flat in his fist.

"What the heck was that, and why are you on the floor?" You quizzed, sounding exhausted.

In reply, Heisenberg mutely gestured in the general direction of the collapsed cot. There was the sound of something clattering against the wall and you had an expression of fright on your face when he looked up at you. "Damn thing fell apart underneath me." He grumbled.

Your voice shook when you asked, "w…why did it just move?" 

…

You didn't care how tired you were, you knew what you had seen! Karl had waved his hand and the cot framework had chucked itself into the wall! The Duke hadn't mentioned anything about that! 

"I couldn't tell you." Karl's reply was as flippant as he usually seemed to be, but his eyes had an odd look to them. If you didn't know any better, you would say he was as rattled as you were by this strange development. "It feels…familiar, though."

"What does?" You demanded.

"The…I dunno', the feeling. I…" Karl had been in the process of opening his hand, but he abruptly trailed off. When you peeked over his fingers, you glimpsed a wrinkled piece of metal resting in his palm before he hurriedly clenched his fist again. "Back off, sugar. Cornered dogs bite." He warned, that strange look still in his gaze.

"Dog, huh? Right now you seem to be doing your best 'bear rug' impression, laying on the floor like that." You snorted, returning to the door to pick up what you had dropped beside your boots on the porch. "Since you're either not willing or not able to be clear with whatever is going on, we're going to discuss it with the Duke the next time he visits." You extended the sturdy branch you had found in your woodpile, its surface smoothed over the last few days as you waited in your hunting blinds to no avail. "I can tell you've been losing it, figured I'd make you something to help you move a little easier."

"I don't need-"

"I don't care." You cut him off, giving him a gentle tap on the shoulder with the walking stick. "I'm tired of moving you around and you need to start using your legs before you get blood clots or whatever the hell else."

Karl puffed out a breath, his eyes darting between your face and the staff you held. When next he spoke, however, it was in a tone of grudging admiration. "You shave this yourself? Delicate work. You must have a steady hand and be real bored to clean up something like that."

"If you'd rather not use-" 

Heisenberg wordlessly latched onto the stick, grimacing while pulling himself into a sitting position. He was panting by the time he made it to his feet, but still mustered up a cocky little smirk for you. "You'll have–to pad the base. Don't want to wake you when I start to roam late at night," he chuckled breathlessly.

You rolled your eyes, but resigned yourself to scrounging up some felt to protect your floors. Speaking of which… "Where did that scratch come from?!"

…

"One."

Thunk.

"Two."

Thunk.

"Three."

The last nail ricocheted off the tree trunk and Karl swore under his breath, hobbling forward. 

You, still observing from a safe distance on the porch, called, "everything okay?"

"Yeah, I s'pose." Karl answered glumly, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the head of the first nail. When he hauled his hand away to jerk it back out of the wood, however, he somehow managed to instead tear out a bolt from your recently-repaired fence line, sending several logs toppling to the ground.

"Aw, I just fixed that." You complained, venturing off the porch to retrieve the bolt from its place in the grass. "I'm gonna' need to drill a new hole because you sent the nut through the wood again! My fence is starting to look like Swiss cheese." Maybe you should stop was clearly what you were thinking and Heisenberg couldn't really see a reason to argue. All he was doing was causing more problems, more messes for someone else to clean up. 

Indebted. He gritted his teeth, heaving the first log back into place. You started to protest but he waved you off with a snarl, simply wrestling the remaining logs up on top of the first and then making a curt gesture. "Get your shit. I'll hold these." 

"They're heavy." You pointed out needlessly.

His arms had been shaking from the beginning. Karl jutted his chin arrogantly, raising an eyebrow. "And?"

You took off running, making a beeline for your lean-to where you stored most of your tools. As soon as you left Karl sagged a fair bit, trying to brace the weight of the fencing with his legs as opposed to his arms. Well, this may not have been my brightest move, he admitted to himself ruefully.

You were suddenly at his elbow, whirring drill ringing in his ear while the bit bored into the rain-softened wood. Karl absently watched the shavings spout from the bit, trying to ignore his arms trembling under the strain of the task at hand. 

–drill bit boring down, down, down, shards of bone flying, the twitching of muscles long dead–

The drill abruptly jerked to a stop in your grip, startling Heisenberg out of whatever reverie he had fallen into. "Shit, what the hell?" You grumbled, fidgeting with the trigger. "Must be a knot in the wood, hang on."

Karl exhaled roughly, glaring downwards at the stuck drill bit with all the malice he could muster. Don't make me look like a weakling here, shithead! The tool creaked and then, without warning, drove itself down through whatever had jammed it with an indignant shriek. 

You rushed to place the bolt in the newly made hole and even in his distracted state, Karl saw that your fingers were shaking. 

Once he was able to take a step back from the fence and catch his breath, he straightened up and tightened his hold on the walking stick you had given him. You continued to fiddle with the fence, obviously making a play for time, and Heisenberg finally issued a loud sigh. "I'm not…I know it seems like I could be dangerous but–well, you trust the Duke, don'tcha'?" he tried to rationalize. 

"Considering the fact that he hasn't come back since bringing you here, my trust is wearing a little thin." You retorted, still not looking at him.

Ouch. Karl shook it off, though. If he was in your shoes, the second some unwanted guest decided to poltergeist a cot into the wall would have been the same second they received a swift boot to the ass. "For what it's worth–hang on, let me finish–for what it's worth, I won't hurt you."

Your laugh had no humor in it. "Intentionally or accidentally? I live alone, Karl. An accident is just as bad as intentional for me."

"I…" Karl paused, unused to the level of resentment he felt at your accusation. Whatever he had been like before, he was clearly not a man that had been questioned often. "I don't know. Should I leave?"

You aimed the drill at him and Heisenberg got a terrible jolt of recollection that drowned out whatever you said next. Him but not him, and that man, pointing a handgun at him while protesting…something. "...take me out like the others and then you get to go and save Rose, right?" his voice had replied, sarcastic.

Rose. Rose. Powerful kid. Even Miranda's scared of her–

Karl grimaced, holding his head. Miranda. Rose. Ethan Winters. All these names, unattached to anything tangible. They seemed to exist exclusively to exasperate him.

"Hey, you feeling alright? You're pretty gray." He had to be imagining the concern in your tone. You didn't trust him, after all. "I guess that took a lot out of you. Let's get you back inside."

It was only once the two of you were halfway back to the porch that Karl realized he was leaning heavily on you, but you had accepted the burden without comment.

Indebted. Karl wanted to shove his head into a meat grinder. 

…

You knew you probably should have kicked him out. After all, he could walk now, right? Best to be on his way. You certainly weren't going to keep Heisenberg around out of some misguided loyalty towards the Duke. Truly, you didn't know either man. Hell, Karl didn't even know himself! Add to that the strangeness of his…powers, the solitude of your abode and you had a recipe for disaster.

You brought the maul down once more, sending the wedge home and splitting the log cleanly. Wiping the sweat from your brow, you reached down to scoop up the wedge. To your annoyance the thing skittered out from beneath your fingers, flying across the yard to Heisenberg's waiting hand.

"Let me take over." He offered, then hurried to add, "so you can have a break! You've been at this since ten."

"It needs to be done." You replied shortly.

"Yeah. So let me help." Karl tilted his head, the brim of his raggedy hat casting his eyes into shadow. "I can't exactly cook, I'm not good for much. Lemme' muscle something around for you, huh sugar?"

Your shoulders did hurt a little. "What time is it?"

He flicked his wrist, checking his watch. "Five after two."

"Shit." You grimaced. "Okay. But only so I can have a drink and a five minute break." You warned, aiming a finger at him with a squint.

Heisenberg bowed theatrically, sidestepping you on your way to the porch. "Naturally." With a solid thud the wedge slammed itself halfway through the next log. 

An early summer storm had brought down the rest of the winter-damaged trees and you had been doing your best to stay on top of the unexpected bounty, but the task was proving a bit more monumental than you had anticipated. Even after you'd sawed the fallen trees to manageable size, it was slow going.

Once you'd gone inside and poured yourself a tall glass of water from the gravity-fed sink, you headed back out to sit on the front steps. Sipping the water, you idly watched your begrudged guest tear his way through the amassed pile of pre-portioned logs. He had no real finesse, but you guessed if you knew you could split a log in any place you chose you probably wouldn't waste time with a technique. Karl used both the maul and the wedge on different logs at the same time, effectively doubling your results with apparent ease.

You grumbled to yourself a little, laying back on the porch and throwing an arm over your eyes to block the sunlight. Showoff.

…

You must have been exhausted, because the next time he glanced at the porch he realized you had fallen asleep. Karl caught himself smiling and quickly jerked the maul down into the next log. He needed this, he decided. The physical labor was doing wonders for his brain, keeping everything nice and quiet. No nasty flashes of what-was when he was focusing on some menial task. He'd have to try and take on more of this stuff. Maybe you'd let him help to fill the jugs at the river, for washing and drinking and–

-and what was that noise. Heisenberg straightened up, his eyes immediately drawn to the shadow of the trees at the edge of your property line. It was so strange the way sunlight only made the woods seem darker, intensifying the shadows until they were inky black. Karl stared hard, willing his eyes to adjust to the shade, but he only caught the faintest glimpse of…something. It was more like an impression of movement, eyeshine and hair but not…not right, not animal-shaped. 

Karl hesitated, his grip tightening to a chokehold on the maul. The wedge rocketed over the fenceline, vanishing into the bushes. The yelp in response set his teeth on edge. Again, the wrongness, too bass for a lynx and too high for a bear. 

Karl stormed forward, his walking stick forgotten on the ground as he brandished your old maul with an intent so gleefully malevolent that it confused him. Man, I must have been a bad person. He shoved it to the side for the moment, scouring the underbrush for the wedge. 

It had traveled further than he expected but it simply laid forlornly on the forest floor. However it seemed to have met its mark regardless, as the chisel tip of it was stained black with some kind of ichor. 

Heisenberg gingerly picked the wedge up, rubbing his thumb across the liquid. In hindsight, probably a bad idea. The fluid was still warm and stank of iron and decay, like…blood left out in the sun too long…

--buckets of congealed, blackened liquid, splatters of it on the concrete beneath his feet and all around him the reek of rusty death. But this was home, as much as if he had built it himself–

Karl shuddered, nearly dropping the wedge. He felt like the wind had been crushed out of him by some giant hand. 

He had left you alone. Asleep. Vulnerable.

Heisenberg whirled, met with a wall of trees and no clear view of the cabin. "You stupid fuck!" He cursed at himself, tearing off in what he thought was the right direction.

…

"Hey!"

The sharp bark woke you from your unwitting doze and you jolted up, startled. You rubbed your eyes, groaning, "what, what is it?" 

Heisenberg was standing in front of the stairs in a strange, hunched position. It took you a moment to realize that he still had the maul, and that woke you up. He looked furious, he looked dangerous, his chest heaving and his hat missing. Without even thinking about it you clawed yourself backwards to get out of range, your legs nearly refusing to cooperate.

"K-Karl?" The tremor in your voice seemed to have some kind of effect on him, his posture and fierce expression softening slightly as he blinked down at you. 

"I…you're okay." He said finally. His knees gave way, the man nearly sagging to the ground before he managed to prop himself up with the maul. "You been asleep the whole time? Didn't see anything?" He questioned you, his tone rough.

You shook your head, baffled and still wary. Karl sighed, but it sounded more like relief than annoyance. "What's going on? You uh…you look upset." You commented, giving up on any subtlety. 

"There was something in the woods." His gaze hardened once more and he fidgeted with the maul. "Didn't get a good look at it, but it…somethin' about it wasn't animal, y'know?"

"Oh." You tapped your mouth. "The Duke mentioned things called Lycans, he put up some charms to ward them off. That's why I don't go out past the fence at night. Never seen any close to the property, though. That's weird."

Karl pressed, "You've seen them? What do they look like?"

"It's always been dark out so I couldn't say exactly." You bit your lip, trying to recall. "Whatever I saw had really patchy fur or hair, like it had mange. I thought it was a big lynx, honestly. The Duke didn't want to tell me what they were, he just put out the charms and said that would tell them to stay away."

Karl swore under his breath. "Always at night?"

"Yeah, I've never gotten a good look at them. Not sure if I believe they even exist but," you shrugged, "I don't really have a reason to go groping around in the woods after dark anyways. What with the bears, wolves, lynx…I mean, it's not exactly like an inconvenience for me to park my ass at night."

"Well whatever I saw, it was watchin' me. And I don't know for how long."

Part Two

[madds-is-ace-trash]

Time for Chapter 7!

Chapter 7: To anger the storm is to get struck by lightning

Summary: Gotham handels sum rats, danny…. the poor baby, and conner gets some news that makes his heart sink.

Hey y'all guess who got a proof reader!

The lovely and super kind @itsallgoingtopot on tumblr! please send them some love.

Ok so this chapter is me having fun with gotham and some more set up. To the person in the comments who suggest that conner should kick the GIW ass….thanks for the brain worms time for big bro superboy.

The night crept on and the storm swelled over the cathedral, the rain deterring any of her wards or her people.  The ground wept in excess as the rain reached its limit.  The clouds settled low in the sky. Thunder rolled, sending  static through the earth itself.  Then the van the men had attempted to take refuge in blared. 

  “Holy Smokes!” One of the men shouted as he clambered out of the shrieking van. All devices in the van began to fire due to the excess energy. The wind whirls, soaking the man to the bone. 

  “G come look at this reading!” 

  “H you're insane, get out of the van! You're gonna get hur-'' All the ghost detectors on the van began to sing in their clamoring chorus.  Sending the screeching sound into Gotham's stormy sky. She traps it, not letting it travel too far. For if it were to fall upon the ears of her new ward he would surely flee. 

  “H, please, I swear to god! Get . Out.  Of . The . VAN!” The man begged his partner as he reached to pull him out himself. Gotham pulled back her storm just enough to allow the men to set themselves free, the pair standing with their hands over their ears in the middle of the flooded street.  

  She hisses, seeming to shake the very ground itself, but Gotham has control, and only the corner the white rats had decided to hide in is affected. Across the vast city her bats have begun their nightly flights, and she needs to dive the vermin out before they come her way. 

  —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The wind fizzled out with a pop in his ears, but his soaked suit was a constant wetness weighing heavily on his chest. Agent H had been trained in handling ghosts and he knew some of them could get violent. But this was something else. The readings on the meter had been off the chart. Whatever this thing was, they had entered its turf and were clearly not welcomed.

  The static grew, making the agent feel as though his head were about to explode. The storm itself fell from the sky, encasing him and his partner in the dense gray and purple fog. His lungs felt heavy. It became increasingly harder to breathe as something squeezed his very being.  Two eyes manifest from the haze, a striking yellow as they glare into his very soul. 

  He was supposed to be trained for this, he was supposed to be trained to handle vengeful spirits. So why, why can’t he bring himself to move, to reach for his gun, scream anything? His throat feels tight like it's filled with molasses, he tries to scream, to beg ,to plead for fresh air. 

  Then it speaks , if you can call it that. He hears the voice from inside his head. A hiss, accompanied by a constant static, rings behind his eyes. He covers his ears to no avail. It doesn't stop; it doesn't quiet; it is only loud and painful. 

“ Y̵̧̨̨̛͕͎̞̣͚̳͎͎̫̫̭̬̾̃̂̑̈̋̾̇̄̏̕̕̚Ő̸̡̡͈͈̺̹̀̐̋͌͐͑̓͌͛̿͌̆̓̑͐͋͘̚͝Ų̵̩̤̮̝͔̗̥̬̝̪̤̳̦̘̖͎̝̟̻̄̈́͒̄̀͒̎́̀͜͝͝ͅ ̴̨͍̰̮͕͕̹̞̖̘̘͉̱͔̗̻̭̭͓̮̆͐̾̔̈́̐͐̃̀̋͘̕͠ͅͅĄ̵̟͖̝̯̂̕ͅ��͇͔͍͚̝̳͜R̵̨̛̛̪̱͚̲̝̣̣̺̩̹̉E̵̝̥̰̞̜̬̭̙̻͑̀͋͋͝ ̷̛̠̰̥̤̗̖̲̖̜̼̬̏̀͋͌̀̈̿̈́̿͌͐͗͂̒͘Ņ̷̰̹̖̞̲͈͉͎͎̣̯̱͔̙̩͓̐͒̔̾͋̿͝O̵̪̘̱̞̊̊̐Ţ̵̟̪͉̹̝̫̱͕̗̀̅̂͜ ̶̧̛̬̮͓̫̱̣̗̰͖̼̦̼͔̲̺͖͖̖̭̉͊̔̑̀̆Ẁ̸͙̠̩͉̌̽̒̎̔͋̈́̀̓͐̓͘͠E̶̟̥̘̮̟͇̲̘̦̝̫̓̏͐͆̍̅̍͂̎̌̌͆̑̈́͛̃̕͘͝L̷̨̢̡̨̻̜̰̙͍͚̭̖̹̹̝͍̮̓͛̃̄͋͆́̑̌̇͜ͅC̵̢̛̲̩̘̻͈͔̪̞͈̦̮̱̺̙̦̼͓̮̹̿̀̎͊͜O̴̧͎̩̱̘̳͇̮͈͉̒͗̂M̷̨̥̳̪̦̙̦͉̮̪͉̣̫̯̮̗̬̮̄́̈́Ę̴̨̧̢̧̛̦̤͓͕͙̦̼͍̻͎̹̻̀͛̿̋́͋̀̋̐̓̆̓̓̀͑͋͗ͅ ” 

  The words ring -a piercing whine like the reload of a camera.  

  M̵̨̢͉͇̼̘͔͈̪̜͕͈̥̯̘͛̃̃̏̑̔̓̈̇͐̓̓̍̾̑͆̚̕̕͝ý̵̨̢̢̬͇͕̩̱̯̗̋̽͒̏̇͛͑̍́̾̋͂̏̉̋̇̅͆̒͘ ̴̧̟͚̻͔̩͓̺̮͖͍̰̭̬̙͈͚̹̙̲͑́̀C̴̜̏̀̍̐̉̌̈́͑̓̓͑̏̅̑̓͋͠ï̴̮̫̪͊͗t̵̢̡͙͚̟͍̪̺̺̤̖̩̜̟̭̟̪͒̈͌̅́̀̇̈̂̄͛̀͐͜͜͝ÿ̷̖͈̄̃̏,̴̰̭̣̏̏̒̈́̐̑̅́͗̽͊̆̆̒̌̉́̉̚͠͠ ̷̨̢̧͎̠̰̤̲̣̯̙̼͈̜̬̣̺̾͊̍m̸̢͎͎̘͕̦͙̼̦̫̫̳̽̏̀̒̑͝y̷̨̧͇͓̖̗̝̺͙̻͖͔̹̰̲͌̓ ̴̡͙̩͚̂̆̐̐̈́̀͒͌͂̎̐̅̊̏͂̚͠͝P̶͇͍̠̥̥͚̭͍͕̥͇͎̼̦͔̼͓̭͙͒͆́͗͗̓͂̓̚̚e̷̡̡̢͇̯̺̰̜̠̗̱̹̞̞̣͈̞͉̜̿͒̈́̊͐̄͝ỏ̷̧͔̟̦͕͔̭̝͎͕͌̏̐̍̃͐̊̽̄͒͒̌̈͋̉̌̕͝͝͠P̸̢̧̯͙̳̖͉͓͉̫̩͈̦̫̼͍̩̺̳͐̇̀͆̕L̸̛̛̦̭̣̻̠̙̘̼͕̮̜̹̟̯͓̽́̀̑̆̎͗͌͗͑̂̇̈́̇̎͂͒͂̏͘Ę̴̰̹͕͉̙̼̗̻̖̩̭͔͇̣̱̦͑̾̈͌͐̉͂̕̚ ̶̡̧̡̲̮̞̙̞̞̣̳̫͂̀̉̑͒̂͛̓͛̄͆̈́̐̈͗́̃̎͝Ļ̷̢̱̱̤̹̗̻̙̫̻̩͔̝̩̘̤̤͈͎͐͊̐̆̾̏̈́͑̆̂̅̆̂̇̾̃͂̅̕̕͘͜͝ͅé̶̛̬̄̽͊̂̓̆̂͆̑́͗̋͗̈̈́̏͝͝͝A̴̡̺͕̤͍̰̺̘͕̦͎̗̖̦̥̩͕͓͎̽̆̓͊̆̓͒̈͑̄̏̑̆̕͜ͅv̴͎̤̳͓͛̓͂͋̿̊̇̎̔̃͘̕͠͝Ȩ̷̝̝͖̩̬͒͗͑̒͊

      The demand booms in time with the storm’s waves of thunder, making his skin sting. This is wrong; he needs to run; he has to hide; he needs to LEAVE. 

  Ņ̴͚͇̼̲̖͍̺͑̐̂̔̐̈́͝ờ̶̆̌̓̓͛́̉̾̕͝��̧̠̻̞͈͚͕̟̥͔͙̮̯̻͆̽ ̷̢̛̜͍̮̘͙͍̲͕̎̐̑͂̐͌̈̓̿̑̐̀̉̄͑̓́̇͠͝H̵̡̞̖̾̓́a̶̡̧̖̬̭͚̹͉͕̓̄͊̾̉͌̏͌̅͗͌͜ͅŔ̶̡͕̼̫̭̻̗͕̬̰̍m̸̡̺̻̻̖̺̝̞̤̌̈̽̎̈́̑̍͆̑̈̈̇̀̕͠͠ ̴̻̹̤̟̔͐́͋̎̾͐̾̎̊̓̾͂̏̈́̓̍̈̚ẁ̷̡̨̧̲̙͎̝̬̘̼̮̱̯̠̤̱̣̼̘͕̩̂͜i̶̲̻̝̾̎̈́͋̏l̷̡̧̧̧͇̭̙͉̺̗̠̭̱͔͗́͑̆͌̃̑͗̒̊̕ļ̷̧̺̘̭̺̹̹̠̳̭͇͙͓̩̠̖̮͍͓̼͌́͛̉̓̕͜ ̶̮̼͙̓̒̌͜͜C̶̨̟͕̲̩͙̲͙̟͒͋̋̓̍̽̋͌̎͌̌́̌̚ͅơ̴̧̡͈̣̰̠͍̟̙̞̈́͘͜M̴̢̧̛̻̳̥̼͇̹̞͉̜̱͙͚͕̬͚͂̌͋̇̊̏͂̀͌́ͅe̴̛̛͍̥̲̟̫͈͓͎̪̪̎͒̓̆̌̀̑̐̈́̒̇̽̏̕͜͠ ̸̮̋̑̆̌̾̍̈́̿̎̒̈́͝͠M̶̢̻͚̜̺̘͈͚̼̓̑̈́̋͆̏̉̂̋͝i̵̧̝̲͇̠̝̘͍͇̗̰̪͓͙̫̦̖̗͐́̔͐̓̒̏̋̈́̊̄̈́͘͜ņ̶̠̲̜̖͕̙̰̼͙͔̺̝̺̋́̋̈́͠ͅȩ̴̢̛̤̬̫͉̮̪̮̥̬̰̄̄̇̅̓̓͑ ̷̢̣̫͇̬̰̹̠̯̮̲͉͚͆̇͗̓͜.̶̢̛̟͖͖͖̪̟͔̟̯̭̙̠̟̓̇̄̆̄̽̌̊̎̇̆̆̈́̚͜͠ ̵̡̛̮͉̠̣̣̦̯̄̀͌͒̍͊̀̕͘̚̚

The spirit’s eyes twist and swirl, teeth form from the fog and the cloud squeezed tighter.  His watch detector shatters, snapping him back into reality. With that, his lungs emptied, his limbs regain control and he runs. He doesn't know where he is going or how he's going to explain this but he needs to run.  He doesn't think -he just grabs his partner and beelines it for the van. He is not coming back. 

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gotham retracts her storm. Her job is done; her wards are safe. She slinks off into the darkness -after all, she has to check on her knights. 

  —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Tim, you're seeing this right?” Barbara chimed in over the com he still had in his ear. He raised his head off of his knees pulling out his phone and opening the tracker that she had sent him. 

  “It's not the first time we've seen Gotham’s weird weather patterns before. Is something up with this one?”  The storm was constructed in a pocket of Gotham, it happened occasionally. 

  “Yeah, look at the duration. They’ve never gone on this long before. And it seems to be centered around that van I flagged.” 

  “You think it's a meta?” Tim asked wearily. A rogue meta was the last thing they needed right now. 

  “Don’t know. Can’t tell since the storm took out the cameras. I'm trying to get them back online.” He can hear the click of her keyboard as Babara tries to reboot the cam feed. A grunt came from the other side of the line, so no dice. 

  “Okay, guess we’re investigating on foot,” he turns to his siblings who were still sitting with him in the hall outside of the room Danny was sleeping in, “ Somethings going on with that van over by the cathedral. We gotta investigate on foot.” 

  Cass popped up and Dick swiftly followed, all three on their way down to the cave. His brother stalled, pausing in the hall and turning towards Danny's door, a worried expression crossing his face.  Cass softly tugs on his arm, giving their oldest brother a soft smile. ‘Safe’ she signs. Dick smiles back; Tim sure hopes she's right. 

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oracle chimed in not that soon after the bats and birds had flown the coop, reporting that the van had been spotted speeding out of Gotham. This was great news for Dick.  It settled some of the worry sitting in his chest as he and Tim swung their way over to where the cameras had gone down. The entirety of the block was drenched, which wasn't weird for Gotham per say, but the storms were never this concentrated. 

  “Stay on high alert, we don't know if they made a drop off.” Tim called out through the coms.

  “You got it, Red!” It had been a while since he and Tim paired off on patrol. It was nice to get to hang out with his brother.  As they approached one of the alleyways that had been marked on the map, the scale in which the storm had raged became more clear. It had been strong enough to take out cameras but apparently had not washed away several scorch marks on the concrete. Dried patches blackened throughout the surrounding area. 

  “Red Robin, you seeing this?” 

  Tim already had his compact camera out, after all he had always been a shutterbug. Dick smiles to himself at the memories of Tim chasing them around with his camera, thinking of how far he had come. At Tim's affirmative, Dick ducked deeper into the alley scanning until he found something. 

  His gaze fell upon some freshly broken glass, and what looked like the arrows from a compass of sorts, not far from the ring of scorched earth. “Red I found something,” Dick called Tim over to get a shot of the debris before putting it in an evidence bag. 

  “Nightwing, I think whatever storm event this was must have broken a piece of their tech,” Tim observed,  collecting a few good pictures of the scattered parts' location, then took note of their distance from the initial circle. “The street had some small scrap as well, and Oracle flagged the van due to it giving off abnormal radio signals.” 

  “Yeah? What do you think it means?" Dick quaint,  placing his hand on his chin and rolling around the information in his head. 

  “Who knows, but they either found what they were looking for or were scared off based on how quickly they left.” Tim took the bag of parts from Dick and put it in a pouch. “And I'm not sure which is worse.”  Tim scanned the area one more time looking for any more bits of whatever had broken. Not far off from where the van had been parked he finds it. A busted wrist watch, but it wasn't a normal watch. It had obviously been modified, but for what he wasn't sure. 

  “We should take it back to the cave", Dick says, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder to snap him out of his detective spiral. They still weren't sure if whatever (nature or a meta but honestly the storm had been too controlled to be anything but a meta) had wrecked the alley would come back. It was probably for the best they collected the evidence and dip. 

  “Yeah, you're right, best to report to Oracle. We also don't want to leave the little one alone with B. If he runs and none of us are there, we could lose him for real.” Tim agreed easily enough, which was weird. Tim was a total workaholic, but maybe he really was that worried about Danny. That was a touching thought for Dick, but then again his family had always been fast to take in any of B's new wards so he supposed this would not be all that different. 

  “Yeah let's head back,” Dick quickly pulled him into a side hug, and then shot his grapple. 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Danny's eyes fluttered open, the sound of muffled voices dancing on the other side of the door. They were soft and warm, nothing like the hisses in his foggy memories.  He phased through the pile of blankets and inched towards the door, placing his ear against it to listen to whoever was on the other side.

  “We can let him sleep,  B, poor thing's probably exhausted,” the man that Dick's daddy had brought home spoke in a light accent. 

  “ I know, Clark, but he’s so small, we've never had one that small,” the other man sounded so tired. “ I just… What do we do? He can't stay here -it's not safe.” Oh no, the big man was gonna send him away! Danny didn't want to leave! Uncle left him with Dick; he was supposed to stay with him. Big Lady said he was safe. So he had to be safe. 

  Danny's breathing picked up as he scooted himself back along the floor, pulling his legs against his chest. He wants Dick to come back, he wants ქმɀɀ. He wants to go home but he can't-home isn't there any more.

  What happened?  Why? Why is it gone? 

  His head spins, the voices outside the door don't stop, he wants all the noise to stop. His ears buzz and he can hear the outside, he can hear the cars driving on the city streets, it's too much. He needs it to stop. 

  A whine escapes from deep in his chest. He's scared and he wants it to stop. He's not sure what he did but he's sorry, he  just wants to know why this is happening. 

  Then like a warm pack on his aching muscles, a hand is placed on his shoulder. He snap his head up, tears trickling from the corners of his eyes. “Hey bud, it's ok. You're ok. You're ok.” The now familiar voice rings out in soft tones.

  Dick came and he answered his pleas, Danny's core buzzing in the relief. He launches  himself into the man's arms burying his face in his chest. 

  “Loud -it's too loud….” he softly sobs, holding his hands over his ears. The noise still didn't stop and he doesn't know why, or how to make it stop. “ I want Ja...I… Big sister…where did she go?” Images of soft smiles and bright red hair dance around his head. He knows who that is, he just can't quite picture her. 

  “Your ears hurt?,” Dick asked, keeping his voice soft and low but it was still so loud. Why was everything so loud?

  “May I?” The other man from the hall takes soft steps forward. “This happened to Jon a few times when he was little. I think he's having trouble reigning in  his super hearing. He's probably overloaded, Gotham's a big city with a lot of noise.” 

  “ Danny, can Uncle Clark try to help? He's got really strong hearing too, he might be able to help,” Dicks whispered as soft as humanly possible. 

  Did Danny want his help? He was big and scary, but his aura was soft. Not like the other big man with his prickly one. He gave off waves of sympathy, love, hope ,worry, same , that made Danny's core reach towards him. 

  “ But don't leave, please don't leave,...” Danny tugged on Dick's sleeve. He didn't want him to leave because every time he did something scary happened. 

  “Of course star shine,” he moved Danny's bangs out of his eyes, “ I'll stay right here ok?” Danny nodded and Clark took a few more steps towards Danny. His heart raced and images of looming figures in white flashing in his head. He put his hands over his ears and shook his head trying to clear the fog.

  Two large hands clasp his own gently lifting them off his ears, "What can you hear the softest, what's the furthest away Danny?” He asks in his soft tone. 

  “Cars, foot steps, owls.” Danny listed out as requested.

  “ Ok that's good, good job, now how about some things that are a bit closer?” 

  Danny listens trying to find sounds closer than the rushing of traffic, “ Water, trees, crickets, bats”

  “You're doing great!  Okay how about things just in the manor?”

  “ Talking, buzzing, pots and pans” 

  “ Ok see you're doing fanatic,” He said, placing a hand gently on Danny’s shoulder. “ Now things just in this room.”

  “ Breathing, heart beats , bug” Danny's head doesn't ring so much any more- the far off noise being filtered out and his ears only focusing on the space around him. 

  “ Bug? Just one,” Dick chuckles, rubbing soothing circles on Danny's back. “ That's some pretty good hearing.”  Danny flushes at the compliment, burying his face back into Dick's chest. 

  “Not used to the noise of the big city buddy?” Clark asks gently, his tone still low and even. 

  “Nuh uh,'' Danny mumbles out. His last home was a lot more quiet. He could hear a pin drop from across town. This new home was too loud. 

  “Well you're awfully brave,'' Clark offers.

  “The bravest,” Dick agrees. Danny flushes up to his ears, hiding his face. His core humms, because they're telling the truth, waves of love and compassion waft off the two men. It was refreshing and warm and he wished it could last forever. 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Bruce took a moment to gaze upon the sight before him. His eldest son with a small boy held lovingly to his chest, and his boyfriend smiling fondly at the shy child as he offered comforting words.  A small smile crept onto his lips.  His son, his Clark, and his grandson. And wasn't that a thought, how the boy had latched onto Dick so fast.

  In reality they were lucky he had, what would they have done if they had to force the kid into containment? It probably wouldn't have done them any good, the kid had already been through so much and they didn't even know the half of it.  How had the Kents survived when their powers went awry?

  Oh wait,  that's right, Clark's parents lived in rural Kansas, with no surrounding cityscape to overwhelm them and they always had a place to go when they were. 

  “Hey Danny, what if you came with me to my parents' farm, just while you heal a little? It's where I grew up and we'll know how to handle your powers.” And this is why Bruce loved the man.  It was like he read his mind. 

  Danny didn’t even respond, he just clung tighter on to Dick's shirt. If Bruce didn’t know any better he would have sworn that he stopped breathing all together.   “Danny it’s safe there I prom-“

  “I don’t want to leave!” Danny blurts out heaving in a breath. “ I can’t leave, Uncle left me with Dick! I have to stay.” Danny was growing visibly distressed, "How is he supposed to find me if I leave?” 

  Clark winced, setting a hand on his forehead for a moment. Strange, did Danny getting agitated influence how much the kryptonite in his system affected Clark? Maybe the faster his heart rate rose the more infected blood was pushed to the surface.

  “Ok ummm…tell you what, how about we take a few days to think it over?” Dick offered, keeping his voice calm. The boy visibly relaxed at his words.  “We can think about it over the next few days then on the weekend when I’m off we’ll try it out just for a couple days. Just a visit, how about that?”

  Bruce knew that meant he would probably have to work a little extra to cover the lost ground. But to be honest he’s not sure if he minded, his new grandson obviously required a little extra care to adjust. 

  Plus he has to start following the trail before it goes cold. After all, no one hurts a child in his city and gets away with it. 

  ——————————————————————-

  Tim sat at the computer and huffed, Dick had rushed off to check on the new kid as soon as they got back from patrol, leaving him with a majority of the dirty work. Whatever, the analysis of the watch would probably go faster if it was just him anyway. Just as Tim had started laying out and photographing what little of the watch was still intact and the pieces that they had managed to find, Alfred walked into the cave. 

  He politely cleared his throat, causing Tim to turn towards the man who was basically his grandfather. “Master Tim, I’m aware you're probably busy but I have a request.”

  “ Oh Yeah? What is it?” Tim dropped what he’s doing and sped over to Alfred by his spot on the stairs; it was rare for the man to make a direct request. “What is it, wait is it in that bag?” The butler was holding a little disposable bag from a med kit, clearly labeled as medical waste.

  Wait a minute, “Is that- is that from Danny?” He knew that Dick had said Danny was bleeding, but the thought of the red stained cloth coming from the child he was just playing tag with, the boy who spent hours  rambling about the stars, the one his brother held with all the fondness in the world, made his stomach turn. 

  “I'm afraid so. I believe it would be beneficial to get it analyzed as soon as possible. Not only to confirm any links to his origins, but also to check for infection if possible.”  Tim gently took the bag from Alfred, suddenly the weight of just what they were dealing with resting on his shoulders.  

  “The green, what, what is that?” The cloth was littered with green like someone had taken green glitter and mixed it with the blood. 

  “The green was in his blood, still is I assume. The surgical wounds and the fear of medical procedures point to the boy being experimented on.”  That meant Alfred also had no idea. Looks like this watch would have to wait. 

  “I’ll get right on it”, Tim rushed over towards the batcomputer he swung over the railing and pulled the chair out. But before sitting he turned towards Alfred. “Hey Al is he- is he ok? It’s just… Dick is just, he's really attached already, you know?” 

  “I hope he will be, but right now we just need to do our best to figure out what happened. I wish you luck, Master Tim, please get back to me as soon as you get the results.” He gave Tim a smile and made his way upstairs. 

  Turning to his new task, Tim just hopes this provides some answers. 

——————————————————————

  Conner sits on his bed in his room at Ma and Pa's house, headphones in his ears blocking out any sound around him. The headphones had been a gift from Tim, designed so he could block out the outside world.  The warm Kansas breeze flowing through his bedroom window, the soft glow of sunlight caching the curtains as they flutter in the wind.  

  He feels a light tap on his shoulder,  he turns to see Ma holding a phone. He takes his earphones out and sits up a little more so he can make room for her to sit. “Oh hey, how’s it going,” Conner chimed.

  “It’s your father, we got some news and well I think you should hear it,”  the look on her face was worried so not good news. Great, what now? Clark almost never called Ma with bad news. Conner took the phone and gently rested it against his ear. 

  “ Yes dad, it’s Conner. Is everything ok?”

  “Hey bud,” oh no, Clark was calling him bud, "I think you should hear this but I need you to promise to not come rushing.” 

  “Wait what’s wrong, you went to Gotham right? Are you hurt? Is…. Is  Tim hurt?” 

  “Yes I did; no I’m fine and Tim is safe. I promise.” Clark took a shaky breath in, Kon could hear the sound of someone running a hand on Clark’s shoulder. Probably Bruce if he was in Gotham. “Conner, we… we think we found another clone. We think someone cloned me again. And-“

  “ No ”  

  It was all he could bring himself to say as his bed creaked under his grip.

Next chapter: chapter 8: Visiting hours

Jason stops by for a visit, dick is so done, and conner and jon make an appearance.

Also to those of you who couldn't tell, yes Dick is my favorite of the brothers, Why? Because i too am the eldest and the ginipiggu that my parents worked out all their screw ups on so they didnt fuck up the other ones. I RELATE to him on a personal level i to am the eldest in a family full of problem children but I still love them. <3

Tag TIME!

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@fisticuffsatapplebeesbees

@terzatheunderscorerima

@sweet-itachi-lovinovin

@undead-essencee

@blacksea21090090

@markus209

@nonbinary-disaster

@starkcravingmad

@ashxshadow

@aikoiya

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@seraphinedemort

@skulld3mort-1fan

[rjalker]

We had been at the South Pole a week. The outside thermometer read fifty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The winter was just beginning.

"What do you think we should transmit to McMurdo?" I asked Rizzo.

He put down his magazine and half-sat up in his bunk. For a moment there was silence, except for the nearly inaudible hum of the machinery that jammed our tiny dome, and the muffled shrieking of the ever-present wind, above us.

(read-more was here)

Rizzo looked at the semi-circle of control consoles, computers, and meteorological sensors with an expression of disgust that could be produced only by a drafted soldier.

"Tell 'em it's cold, it's gonna get colder, and we've both got appendicitis and need replacements immediately."

"Very clever," I said, and started touching the buttons that would automatically transmit the sensors' memory tapes.

Rizzo sagged back into his bunk. "Why?" He asked the curved ceiling of our cramped quarters. "Why me? Why here? What did I ever do to deserve spending the whole goddammed winter at the goddammed South Pole?"

"It's strictly impersonal," I assured him. "Some bright young meteorologist back in Washington has convinced the Pentagon that the South Pole is the key to the world's weather patterns. So here we are."

"It doesn't make sense," Rizzo continued, unhearing. His dark, broad-boned face was a picture of wronged humanity. "Everybody knows that when the missiles start flying, they'll be coming over the North Pole…. The goddammed Army is a hundred and eighty degrees off base."

"That's about normal for the Army, isn't it?" I was a drafted soldier, too.

Rizzo swung out of the bunk and paced across the dimly-lit room. It only took a half-dozen paces; the dome was small and most of it was devoted to machinery.

"Don't start acting like a caged lion," I warned. "It's going to be a long winter."

"Yeah, guess so." He sat down next to me at the radio console and pulled a pack of cigarets from his shirt pocket. He offered one to me, and we both smoked in silence for a minute or two.

"Got anything to read?"

I grinned. "Some microspool catalogues of stars."

"Stars?"

"I'm an astronomer … at least, I was an astronomer, before the National Emergency was proclaimed."

Rizzo looked puzzled. "But I never heard of you."

"Why should you?"

"I'm an astronomer too."

"I thought you were an electronicist."

He pumped his head up and down. "Yeah … at the radio astronomy observatory at Greenbelt. Project OZMA. Where do you work?"

"Lick Observatory … with the 120-inch reflector."

"Oh … an optical astronomer."

"Certainly."

"You're the first optical man I've met." He looked at me a trifle queerly.

I shrugged. "Well, we've been around a few millennia longer than you static-scanners."

"Yeah, guess so."

"I didn't realize that Project OZMA was still going on. Have you had any results yet?"

It was Rizzo's turn to shrug. "Nothing yet. The project has been shelved for the duration of the emergency, of course. If there's no war, and the dish doesn't get bombed out, we'll try again."

"Still listening to the same two stars?"

"Yeah … Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. They're the only two Sun-type stars within reasonable range that might have planets like Earth."

"And you expect to pick up radio signals from an intelligent race."

"Hope to."

I flicked the ash off my cigaret. "You know, it always struck me as rather hopeless … trying to find radio signals from intelligent creatures."

"Whattaya mean, hopeless?"

"Why should an intelligent race send radio signals out into interstellar space?" I asked. "Think of the power it requires, and the likelihood that it's all wasted effort, because there's no one within range to talk to."

"Well … it's worth a try, isn't it … if you think there could be intelligent creatures somewhere else … on a planet of another star."

"Hmph. We're trying to find another intelligent race; are we transmitting radio signals?"

"No," he admitted. "Congress wouldn't vote the money for a transmitter that big."

"Exactly," I said. "We're listening, but not transmitting."

Rizzo wasn't discouraged. "Listen, the chances—just on statistical figuring alone—the chances are that there're millions of other solar systems with intelligent life. We've got to try contacting them! They might have knowledge that we don't have … answers to questions that we can't solve yet…."

"I completely agree," I said. "But listening for radio signals is the wrong way to do it."

"Huh?"

"Radio broadcasting requires too much power to cover interstellar distances efficiently. We should be looking for signals, not listening for them."

"Looking?"

"Lasers," I said, pointing to the low-key lights over the consoles. "Optical lasers. Super-lamps shining out in the darkness of the void. Pump in a modest amount of electrical power, excite a few trillion atoms, and out comes a coherent, pencil-thin beam of light that can be seen for millions of miles."

"Millions of miles aren't lightyears," Rizzo muttered.

"We're rapidly approaching the point where we'll have lasers capable of lightyear ranges. I'm sure that some intelligent race somewhere in this galaxy has achieved the necessary technology to signal from star to star—by light beams."

"Then how come we haven't seen any?" Rizzo demanded.

"Perhaps we already have."

"What?"

"We've observed all sorts of variable stars—Cepheids, RR Lyrae's, T Tauri's. We assume that what we see are stars, pulsating and changing brightness for reasons that are natural, but unexplainable to us. Now, suppose what we are really viewing are laser beams, signalling from planets that circle stars too faint to be seen from Earth?"

In spite of himself, Rizzo looked intrigued.

"It would be fairly simple to examine the spectra of such light sources and determine whether they're natural stars or artificial laser beams."

"Have you tried it?"

I nodded.

"And?"

I hesitated long enough to make him hold his breath, waiting for my answer. "No soap. Every variable star I've examined is a real star."

He let out his breath in a long, disgusted puff. "Ahhh, you were kidding all along. I thought so."

"Yes," I said. "I suppose I was."

Time dragged along in the weather dome. I had managed to smuggle a small portable telescope along with me, and tried to make observations whenever possible. But the weather was usually too poor. Rizzo, almost in desperation for something to do, started to build an electronic image-amplifier for me.

Our one link with the rest of the world was our weekly radio message from McMurdo. The times for the messages were randomly scrambled, so that the chances of their being intercepted or jammed were lessened. And we were ordered to maintain strict radio silence.

As the weeks sloughed on, we learned that one of our manned satellites had been boarded by the Reds at gunpoint. Our space-crews had put two Red automated spy-satellites out of commission. Shots had been exchanged on an ice-island in the Arctic. And six different nations were testing nuclear bombs.

We didn't get any mail of course. Our letters would be waiting for us at McMurdo when we were relieved. I thought about Gloria and our two children quite a bit, and tried not to think about the blast and fallout patterns in the San Francisco area, where they were.

"My wife hounded me until I spent pretty nearly every damned cent I had on a shelter, under the house," Rizzo told me. "Damned shelter is fancier than the house. She's the social leader of the disaster set. If we don't have a war, she's gonna feel damned silly."

I said nothing.

The weather cleared and steadied for a while (days and nights were indistinguishable during the long Antarctic winter) and I split my time evenly between monitoring the meteorological sensors and observing the stars. The snow had covered the dome completely, of course, but our "snorkel" burrowed through it and out into the air.

"This dome's just like a submarine, only we're submerged in snow instead of water," Rizzo observed. "I just hope we don't sink to the bottom."

"The calculations show that we'll be all right."

He made a sour face. "Calculations proved that airplanes would never get off the ground."

The storms closed in again, but by the time they cleared once more, Rizzo had completed the image-amplifier for me. Now, with the tiny telescope I had, I could see almost as far as a professional instrument would allow. I could even lie comfortably in my bunk, watch the amplifier's viewscreen, and control the entire set-up remotely.

Then it happened.

At first it was simply a curiosity. An oddity.

I happened to be studying a Cepheid variable star—one of the huge, very bright stars that pulsate so regularly that you can set your watch by them. It had attracted my attention because it seemed to be unusually close for a Cepheid—only 700 lightyears away. The distance could be easily gauged by timing the star's pulsations.[1]

I talked Rizzo into helping me set up a spectrometer. We scavenged shamelessly from the dome's spare parts bin and finally produced an instrument that would break up the light of the star into its component wavelengths, and thereby tell us much about the star's chemical composition and surface temperature.

At first I didn't believe what I saw.

The star's spectrum—a broad rainbow of colors—was criss-crossed with narrow dark lines. That was all right. They're called absorption lines; the Sun has thousands of them in its spectrum. But one line—one—was an insolently bright emission line. All the laws of physics and chemistry said it couldn't be there.

But it was.

We photographed the star dozens of times. We checked our instruments ceaselessly. I spent hours scanning the star's "official" spectrum in the microspool reader. The bright emission line was not on the catalogue spectrum. There was nothing wrong with our instruments.

Yet the bright line showed up. It was real.

"I don't understand it," I admitted. "I've seen stars with bright emission spectra before, but a single bright line in an absorption spectrum! It's unheard-of. One single wavelength … one particular type of atom at one precise energy-level … why? Why is it emitting energy when the other wavelengths aren't?"

Rizzo was sitting on his bunk, puffing a cigaret. He blew a cloud of smoke at the low ceiling. "Maybe it's one of those laser signals you were telling me about a couple weeks ago."

I scowled at him. "Come on, now. I'm serious. This thing has me puzzled."

"Now wait a minute … you're the one who said radio astronomers were straining their ears for nothing. You're the one who said we ought to be looking. So look!" He was enjoying his revenge.

I shook my head, and turned back to the meteorological equipment.

But Rizzo wouldn't let up. "Suppose there's an intelligent race living on a planet near a Cepheid variable star. They figure that any other intelligent creatures would have astronomers who'd be curious about their star, right? So they send out a laser signal that matches the star's pulsations. When you look at the star, you see their signal. What's more logical?"

"All right," I groused. "You've had your joke…."

"Tell you what," he insisted. "Let's put that one wavelength into an oscilloscope and see if a definite signal comes out. Maybe it'll spell out 'Take me to your leader' or something."

I ignored him and turned my attention to Army business. The meteorological equipment was functioning perfectly, but our orders read that one of us had to check it every twelve hours. So I checked and tried to keep my eyes from wandering as Rizzo tinkered with a photocell and oscilloscope.

"There we are," he said, at length. "Now let's see what they're telling us."

In spite of myself I looked up at the face of the oscilloscope. A steady, gradually sloping greenish line was traced across the screen.

"No message," I said.

Rizzo shrugged elaborately.

"If you leave the 'scope on for two days, you'll find that the line makes a full swing from peak to null," I informed him. "The star pulsates every two days, bright to dim."

"Let's turn up the gain," he said, and he flicked a few knobs on the front of the 'scope.

The line didn't change at all.

"What's the sweep speed?" I asked.

"One nanosecond per centimeter." That meant that each centimeter-wide square on the screen's face represented one billionth of a second. There are as many nanoseconds in one second as there are seconds in thirty-two years.

"Well, if you don't get a signal at that sensitivity, there just isn't any signal there," I said.

Rizzo nodded. He seemed slightly disappointed that his joke was at an end. I turned back to the meteorological instruments, but I couldn't concentrate on them. Somehow I felt disappointed, too. Subconsciously, I suppose, I had been hoping that Rizzo actually would detect a signal from the star. Fool! I told myself. But what could explain that bright emission line? I glanced up at the oscilloscope again.

And suddenly the smooth steady line broke into a jagged series of millions of peaks and nulls!

I stared at it.

Rizzo was back on his bunk again, reading one of his magazines. I tried to call him, but the words froze in my throat. Without taking my eyes from the flickering 'scope, I reached out and touched his arm.

He looked up.

"Holy Mother of God," Rizzo whispered.

For a long time we stared silently at the fluttering line dancing across the oscilloscope screen, bathing our tiny dome in its weird greenish light. It was eerily fascinating, hypnotic. The line never stood still; it jabbered and stuttered, a series of millions of little peaks and nulls, changing almost too fast for the eye to follow, up and down, calling to us, speaking to us, up, down, never still, never quiet, constantly flickering its unknown message to us.

The line never stood still; millions of little peaks and nulls calling to us, speaking to us, never still, never quiet, constantly flickering its unknown message to us.

"Can it be … people?" Rizzo wondered. His face, bathed in the greenish light, was suddenly furrowed, withered, ancient: a mixture of disbelief and fear.

"What else could it be?" I heard my own voice answer. "There's no other explanation possible."

We sat mutely for God knows how long.

Finally Rizzo asked, "What do we do now?"

The question broke our entranced mood. What do we do? What action do we take? We're thinking men, and we've been contacted by other creatures that can think, reason, send a signal across seven hundred lightyears of space. So don't just sit there in stupified awe. Use your brain, prove that you're worthy of the tag sapiens.

"We decode the message," I announced. Then, as an after-thought, "But don't ask me how."

We should have called McMurdo, or Washington. Or perhaps we should have attempted to get a message through to the United Nations. But we never even thought of it. This was our problem. Perhaps it was the sheer isolation of our dome that kept us from thinking about the rest of the world. Perhaps it was sheer luck.

"If they're using lasers," Rizzo reasoned, "they must have a technology something like ours."

"Must have had," I corrected. "That message is seven hundred years old, remember. They were playing with lasers when King John was signing the Magna Charta and Genghis Khan owned most of Asia. Lord knows what they have now."

Rizzo blanched and reached for another cigaret.

I turned back to the oscilloscope. The signal was still flashing across its face.

"They're sending out a signal," I mused, "probably at random. Just beaming it out into space, hoping that someone, somewhere will pick it up. It must be in some form of code … but a code that they feel can be easily cracked by anyone with enough intelligence to realize that there's a message there."

"Sort of an interstellar Morse code."

I shook my head. "Morse code depends on both sides knowing the code. There's no key."

"Cryptographers crack codes."

"Sure. If they know what language is being used. We don't know the language, we don't know the alphabet, the thought processes … nothing."

"But it's a code that can be cracked easily," Rizzo muttered.

"Yes," I agreed. "Now what the hell kind of a code can they assume will be known to another race that they've never seen?"

Rizzo leaned back on his bunk and his face was lost in shadows.

"An interstellar code," I rambled on. "Some form of presenting information that would be known to almost any race intelligent enough to understand lasers…."

"Binary!" Rizzo snapped, sitting up on the bunk.

"What?"

"Binary code. To send a signal like this, they've gotta be able to write a message in units that're only a billionth of a second long. That takes computers. Right? Well, if they have computers, they must figure that we have computers. Digital computers run on binary code. Off or on … go or no-go. It's simple. I'll bet we can slap that signal on a tape and run it through our computer here."

"To assume that they use computers exactly like ours…."

"Maybe the computers are completely different," Rizzo said excitedly, "but the binary code is basic to them all. I'll bet on that! And this computer we've got here—this transistorized baby—she can handle more information than the whole Army could feed into her. I'll bet nothing has been developed anywhere that's better for handling simple one-plus-one types of operations."

I shrugged. "All right. It's worth a trial."

It took Rizzo a few hours to get everything properly set up. I did some arithmetic while he worked. If the message was in binary code, that meant that every cycle of the signal—every flick of the dancing line on our screen—carried a bit of information. The signal's wavelength was 5000 Angstroms; there are a hundred million Angstrom units to the centimeter; figuring the speed of light … the signal could carry, in theory at least, something like 600 trillion bits of information per second.

I told Rizzo.

"Yeah, I know. I've been going over the same numbers in my head." He set a few switches on the computer control board. "Now let's see how many of the 600 trillion we can pick up." He sat down before the board and pressed a series of buttons.

We watched, hardly breathing, as the computer's spools began spinning and the indicator lights flashed across the control board. Within a few minutes, the printer chugged to life.

Rizzo swivelled his chair over to the printer and held up the unrolling sheet in a trembling hand.

Numbers. Six-digit numbers. Completely meaningless.

"Gibberish," Rizzo snapped.

It was peculiar. I felt relieved and disappointed at the same time.

"Something's screwy," Rizzo said. "Maybe I fouled up the circuits…."

"I don't think so," I answered. "After all, what did you expect out of the computer? Shakespearean poetry?"

"No, but I expected numbers that would make some sense. One and one, maybe. Something that means something. This stuff is nowhere."

Our nerves must have really been wound tight, because before we knew it we were in the middle of a nasty argument—and it was over nothing, really. But in the middle of it:

"Hey, look," Rizzo shouted, pointing to the oscilloscope.

The message had stopped. The 'scope showed only the calm, steady line of the star's basic two-day-long pulsation.

It suddenly occurred to us that we hadn't slept for more than 36 hours, and we were both exhausted. We forgot the senseless argument. The message was ended. Perhaps there would be another; perhaps not. We had the telescope, spectrometer, photocell, oscilloscope, and computer set to record automatically. We collapsed into our bunks. I suppose I should have had monumental dreams. I didn't. I slept like a dead man.

When we woke up, the oscilloscope trace was still quiet.

"Y'know," Rizzo muttered, "it might just be a fluke … I mean, maybe the signals don't mean a damned thing. The computer is probably translating nonsense into numbers just because it's built to print out numbers and nothing else."

"Not likely," I said. "There are too many coincidences to be explained. We're receiving a message, I'm certain of it. Now we've got to crack the code."

As if to reinforce my words, the oscilloscope trace suddenly erupted into the same flickering pattern. The message was being sent again.

We went through two weeks of it. The message would run through for seven hours, then stop for seven. We transcribed it on tape 48 times and ran it through the computer constantly. Always the same result—six-digit numbers; millions of them. There were six different seven-hour-long messages, being repeated one after the other, constantly.

We forgot the meteorological equipment. We ignored the weekly messages from McMurdo. The rest of the world became a meaningless fiction to us. There was nothing but the confounded, tantalizing, infuriating, enthralling message. The National Emergency, the bomb tests, families, duties—all transcended, all forgotten. We ate when we thought of it and slept when we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. The message. What was it? What was the key to unlock its meaning?

"It's got to be something universal," I told Rizzo. "Something universal … in the widest sense of the term."

He looked up from his desk, which was wedged in between the end of his bunk and the curving dome wall. The desk was littered with printout sheets from the computer, each one of them part of the message.

"You've only said that a half-million times in the past couple weeks. What the hell is universal? If you can figure that out, you're damned good."

What is universal? I wondered. You're an astronomer. You look out at the universe. What do you see? I thought about it. What do I see? Stars, gas, dust clouds, planets … what's universal about them? What do they all have that….

"Atoms!" I blurted.

Rizzo cocked a weary eye at me. "Atoms?"

"Atoms. Elements. Look…." I grabbed up a fistful of the sheets and thumbed through them. "Look … each message starts with a list of numbers. Then there's a long blank to separate the opening list from the rest of the message. See? Every time, the same length list."

"So?"

"The periodic table of the elements!" I shouted into his ear. "That's the key!"

Rizzo shook his head. "I thought of that two days ago. No soap. In the first place, the list that starts each message isn't always the same. It's the same length, all right, but the numbers change. In the second place, it always begins with 100000. I looked up the atomic weight of hydrogen—it's 1.008 something."

That stopped me for a moment. But then something clicked into place in my mind.

"Why is the hydrogen weight 1.008?" Before Rizzo could answer, I went on, "For two reasons. The system we use arbitrarily rates oxygen as 16-even. Right? All the other weights are calculated from oxygen's. And we also give the average weight of an element, counting all its isotopes. Our weight for hydrogen also includes an adjustment for tiny amounts of deuterium and tritium. Right? Well, suppose they have a system that rates hydrogen as a flat one: 1.00000. Doesn't that make sense?"

"You're getting punchy," Rizzo grumbled. "What about the isotopes? How can they expect us to handle decimal points if they don't tell us about them … mental telepathy? What about…."

"Stop arguing and start calculating," I snapped. "Change that list of numbers to agree with our periodic table. Change 1.00000 to 1.008-whatever-it-is and tackle the next few elements. The decimals shouldn't be so hard to figure out."

Rizzo grumbled to himself, but started working out the calculations. I stepped over to the dome's microspool library and found an elementary physics text. Within a few minutes, Rizzo had some numbers and I had the periodic table focused on the microspool reading machine.

"Nothing," Rizzo said, leaning over my shoulder and looking at the screen. "They don't match at all."

"Try another list. They're not all the same."

He shrugged and returned to his desk. After a while he called out, "their second number is 3.97123; it works out to 4.003-something."

It checked! "Good. That's helium. What about the next one, lithium?"

"That's 6.940."

"Right!"

Rizzo went to work furiously after that. I pushed a chair to the desk and began working up from the end of the list. It all checked out, from hydrogen to a few elements beyond the artificial ones that had been created in the laboratories here on Earth.

"That's it," I said. "That's the key. That's our Rosetta Stone … the periodic table."

Rizzo stared at the scribbled numbers and jumble of papers. "I bet I know what the other lists are … the ones that don't make sense."

"Oh?"

"There are other ways to identify the elements … vibration resonances, quantum wavelengths … somebody named Lewis came out a couple years ago with a Quantum Periodic Table…."

"They're covering all the possibilities. There are messages for many different levels of understanding. We just decoded the simplest one."

"Yeah."

I noticed that as he spoke, Rizzo's hand—still tightly clutching the pencil—was trembling and white with tension.

"Well?"

Rizzo licked his lips. "Let's get to work."

We were like two men possessed. Eating, sleeping, even talking was ignored completely as we waded through the hundreds of sheets of paper. We could decode only a small percentage of them, but they still represented many hours of communication. The sheets that we couldn't decode, we suspected, were repetitions of the same message that we were working on.

We lost all concept of time. We must have slept, more than once, but I simply don't remember. All I can recall is thousands of numbers, row upon row, sheet after sheet of numbers … and my pencil scratching symbols of the various chemical elements over them until my hand was so cramped I could no longer open the fingers.

The message consisted of a long series of formulas; that much was certain. But, without punctuation, with no knowledge of the symbols that denote even such simple things as "plus" or "equals" or "yields," it took us more weeks of hard work to unravel the sense of each equation. And even then, there was more to the message than met the eye:

"Just what the hell are they driving at?" Rizzo wondered aloud. His face had changed: it was thinner, hollow-eyed, weary, covered with a scraggly beard.

"Then you think there's a meaning behind all these equations, too?"

He nodded. "It's a message, not just a contact. They're going to an awful lot of trouble to beam out this message, and they're repeating it every seven hours. They haven't added anything new in the weeks we've been watching."

"I wonder how many years or centuries they've been sending out this message, waiting for someone to pick it up, looking for someone to answer them."

"Maybe we should call Washington…."

"No!"

Rizzo grinned. "Afraid of breaking radio silence?"

"Hell no. I just want to wait until we're relieved, so we can make this announcement in person. I'm not going to let some old wheezer in Washington get credit for this…. Besides, I want to know just what they're trying to tell us."

It was agonizing, painstaking work. Most of the formulas meant nothing to either one of us. We had to ransack the dome's meager library of microspools to piece them together. They started simply enough—basic chemical combinations: carbon and two oxygens yield CO2; two hydrogens and oxygen give water. A primer … not of words, but of equations.

The equations became steadily longer and more complex. Then, abruptly, they simplified, only to begin a new deepening, simplify again, and finally become very complicated just at the end. The last few lines were obviously repetitious.

Gradually, their meaning became clear to us.

The first set of equations started off with simple, naturally-occurring energy yielding formulas. The oxidation of cellulose (we found the formula for that in an organic chemistry text left behind by one of the dome's previous occupants), which probably referred to the burning of plants and vegetation. A string of formulas that had groupings in them that I dimly recognized as amino acids—no doubt something to do with digesting food. There were many others, including a few that Rizzo claimed had the expression for chlorophyll in them.

"Naturally-occurring, energy-yielding reactions," Rizzo summarized. "They're probably trying to describe the biological set-up on their planet."

It seemed an inspired guess.

The second set of equations again began with simple formulas. The cellulose-burning reaction appeared again, but this time it was followed by equations dealing with the oxidation of hydrocarbons: coal and oil burning? A long series of equations that bore repeatedly the symbols for many different metals came up next, followed by more on hydrocarbons, and then a string of formulas that we couldn't decipher at all.

This time it was my guess: "These look like energy-yielding reactions, too. At least in the beginning. But they don't seem to be naturally occurring types. Then comes a long story about metals. They're trying to tell us the history of their technological development—burning wood, coal and eventually oil; smelting metals … they're showing us how they developed their technology."

The final set of equations began with an ominous simplicity: a short series of very brief symbols that had the net result of four hydrogen atoms building into a helium atom. Nuclear fusion.

"That's the proton-proton reaction," I explained to Rizzo. "The type of fusion that goes on in the Sun."

The next series of equations spelled out the more complex carbon-nitrogen cycle of nuclear fusion, which was probably the primary energy source of their own Cepheid variable star. Then came a long series of equations that we couldn't decode in detail, but the symbols for uranium and plutonium, and some of the heavier elements, kept cropping up.

Then came one line that told us the whole story: the lithium-hydride equation—nuclear fusion bombs.

The equations went on to more complex reactions, formulas that no man on Earth had ever seen before. They were showing us the summation of their knowledge, and they had obviously been dealing with nuclear energies for much longer than we have on Earth.

But interspersed among the new equations, they repeated a set of formulas that always began with the lithium-hydride fusion reaction. The message ended in a way that wrenched my stomach: the fusion bomb reaction and its cohorts were repeated ten straight times.

I'm not sure of what day it was on the calendar, but the clock on the master control console said it was well past eleven.

Rizzo rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. "Well, what do you think?"

"It's pretty obvious," I said. "They have the bombs. They've had them for quite some time. They must have a lot of other weapons, too—more … advanced. They're trying to tell us their history with the equations. First they depended on natural sources of energy, plants and animals; then they developed artificial energy sources and built up a technology; finally they discovered nuclear energy."

"How long do you think they've had the bombs?"

"Hard to tell. A generation … a century. What difference does it make? They have them. They probably thought, at first, that they could learn to live with them … but imagine what it must be like to have those weapons at your fingertips … for a century. Forever. Now they're so scared of them that they're beaming their whole history out into space, looking for someone to tell them how to live with the bombs, how to avoid using them."

"You could be wrong," Rizzo said. "They could be boasting about their arsenal."

"Why? For what reason? No … the way they keep repeating those last equations. They're pleading for help."

Rizzo turned to the oscilloscope. It was flickering again.

"Think it's the same thing?"

"No doubt. You're taping it anyway, aren't you?"

"Yeah, sure. Automatically."

Suddenly, in mid-flight, the signal winked off. The pulsations didn't simply smooth out into a steady line, as they had before. The screen simply went dead.

"That's funny," Rizzo said, puzzled. He checked the oscilloscope. "Nothing wrong here. Something must've happened to the telescope."

Suddenly I knew what had happened. "Take the spectrometer off and turn on the image-amplifier," I told him.

I knew what we would see. I knew why the oscilloscope beam had suddenly gone off scale. And the knowledge was making me sick.

Rizzo removed the spectrometer set-up and flicked the switch that energized the image-amplifier's viewscreen.

"Holy God!"

The dome was flooded with light. The star had exploded.

"They had the bombs all right," I heard myself saying. "And they couldn't prevent themselves from using them. And they had a lot more, too. Enough to push their star past its natural limits."

Rizzo's face was etched in the harsh light.

"I've gotta get out of here," he muttered, looking all around the cramped dome. "I've gotta get back to my wife and find someplace where it's safe…."

"Someplace?" I asked, staring at the screen. "Where?"

[artzychic27]

Based on your last DC post, Cosette as Static Shock with quotes from the show.

Akuma: What the heck is up with that?!

Cosette: You mean, 'What's up with that'. Either use slang properly or don't use it at all!

—

Cosette: No more asking my dad to borrow his car, dude.

Simon: You don't even drive yet, C.

Cosette: Oh, whatever.

—

Cosette: Mutant? Now that's degrading.

Aurore: You have a better word for it?

Cosette: I kind of like... meta-human.

—

Cosette: I wish I could just go out and rent a decent headquarters, but that takes money.

Zoé: Nobody ever said the superhero gig would be a profit center.

Cosette: Yeah, but it's costing me; I keep tearing my costume, melting my shoes.

—

Cosette: Let me tell you something about electricity; a big enough charge can overload any insulator.

—

Yvette: *banging her hand on the locked bathroom door* Cosette Olivia Bellamy, get your ashky butt out here right this minute...

Cosette: *unlocks the door and sticks their head out* Yvette! My middle name is never to be spoken aloud, you know that! *sticks their head back into the bathroom and slams the door closed*

—

Cosette: I don't believe we've been introduced.

Akuma: Omnifarious.

Cosette: You're Nefarious?

Akuma: Omnifarious. It's my name. It means many forms.

Cosette: Bro, I go to public school. Latin's an elective.

—

Reflekta: I'm gonna make so many of me, you won't have a prayer.

Cosette: Ooh a room full of has beens, now I am scared!

—

Cosette: This looks like a job for...

Ismael: Don't finish that sentence, Cosette. Superman already owns the rights.

—

Evillustrator: What? Afraid I'm gonna show you up again, shock jockey? Well, you can relax.

Cosette: I am relaxed. You're the one jumpin' around like a demented cheerleader.

—

Cosette: Ahh, well I guess you're wondering, 'what's with the costume,' well, I... umm...

Kagami: Don't sweat it, I knew you were Static when I first met you

Cosette: What... You did?!

—

Green Lantern: For a rookie you did well, but I can tell you'll be a handful when you finally join the League.

Cosette: I'm sorry; did you say when I join the League?

Batman: Anything is possible... when you're a little older.

Flash: But remember, I get first dibs on the pizza.

—

Cosett : Batman's not gonna be happy when he hears how you've been treating his guest and you really don't want to see Batman unhappy.

Batman: First, we don't have guests here. And, second, I'm Batman.

Cosette: And I'm Beyonce.

—

Yvette: Cosette!

Cosette: You shrieked?

Yvette: You didn't take the garbage out last night.

Cosette: Is that what smells? I figured you were trying a new recipe.

Cosette belongs to @nerd-chocolate in case anyone forgets

[englass]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by: @shallow-gravy — thank you hun! 🥰

Tagging (but optional): @derelictheretic @fadedjacket @chazz-anova @weekend-writer @starsandskies @chyrstis @words-and-seeds @littlegoldfinchh @wrathfulrook — and anyone else that’d like to do it.

To be honest, I’ve only really written little drabble pieces or experimental stuff last few weeks. Nothing major sadly. But since I’ve been trying to write a fight scene that’s been in my head for a while recently, figured I’ll share that at least. Not sure if I’ll do anything with it, but no harm in sharing I guess… just, kindly ignore the tense issues please; if nothing else…

-/-/-

With a flourish you brandish your gunblade, aiming it brazenly at your opponent with a taunting sneer. Finger restless against the trigger as the dignified entity glares at you, head tilted back haughtily as the grip on its staff tightens. Thunder booming with every sharply measured paw of its hoof against the air.

The proverbial countdown ticks, primordial rumbles and growls the warning bear of teeth as the atmosphere thickens. Crackles in the static as the air charges, the friction snapping and tension mounting. The durable leather of your gloves creaks as your grip tightens.

A sharp exhale, a short huff. Weapon hand drawing back in a smooth motion to rest your gunblade ready just behind you, stance shifting as you hold your free arm out before you. Hand angled, fingers a loose claw as the horizon of your arm becomes a makeshift retical; the unintended scope pinning your gaze to your levitating adversary.

Its hoof comes down; thunder a resounding roar.

Your lips quirk, the barest flash of teeth; the shameful zing of hunger.

Its eyes narrow. Raises its staff calm and deliberate, holds. Waits.

The thunder echoes, the air snaps.

The anticipation swells warm, your breath labours.

With regal might the staff comes down– vision whitening as lightning strikes with a shrill whistle, the ground between you scorched in an instant.

The countdown ends.

With a swiftness you kick off, racing across the distance before leaping into the air, coming down on your foe with a cry and heavy swing. Blade and staff connect, a momentary deadlock catching you midair.

Red eyes glance up at you, stern and unimpressed. Levin snaking along the length of its crimson staff in sporadic climbs that quicken with every distorted crackle, the orb at its peak glowing brighter with every charge.

You grit your teeth. Pull the trigger of your gunblade, catching the beast off guard with a grunt as the knock back shoves your arm away. Foot bracing against its staff to kick yourself away and follow the momentum. Twist into an unsteady landing that has you sliding back a few fulms. Blade swinging out, sparks catching as the tip rivets the ground. Applying force to push away on your back foot and dash back into the fight, blade uppercutting into the answering parry of its staff.

With a flurry you manoeuvre and step around its retaliating sweeps, static tingling along your weapon arm with every meeting. Hand tightening its numb grip as your weapons clash. Metal shrieking as the friction causes sparks to ignite, aether singing.

[gyubby99]

Julia pls

#lianagotobed2023

Tw: mentions of R*pe, a guy named Jason.

Also, they're not together in this. Just mere acquaintances.

"Aponi, dear, are you in there?"

She was. He knew she was.

She was in the room, but she'd dare not to speak for it could bring her walls down.

Even if her intentions in this hotel is pure and this was some sort of "therapy sessions but you get a free room" type of program, she still had trouble telling everyone about it.

The mark on her neck.

"Hmm.." a radio static was heard from the other side of the door. "You know, I'll be the first to down that jambalaya if you don't come out!" The radio demon exclaimed, trying to bribe her into coming out. His voice switching from static to normal for a brief moment.

She so often would fall for it, but not this time.

"Aponi?" He called out once more.

No. She couldn't. She just couldn't. For once in her life she just wanted to be alone.

Memories flooded her mind of what had happened moments after she died almost 50 years ago.

Ghosts of his lips biting hers, his hands pulling her hair as he tells her she was the fairest of all.

If she was so fair, how come he threw her away like garbage?

"You're so beautiful, princess"

"JASON, STOP! PLEASE!"

Aponi slammed her hand over her mouth, clutching her eyes close as she sat on the floor, shaking.

Even in the afterlife his ghost had managed to get a hold of her.

She never should have looked in that mirror.

"Alrighty, then! I guess I'll save some for you!" Alastor stated before he walked away, footsteps fading as he steps away further from her room.

She couldn't care less about anyone at the moment.

"My friend, I've decided to bring you some jambalaya instead! Let me just put it here," Alastor suddenly bursted into her room with a small tray in hand, putting it on her table.

Aponi let out a shriek of horror as she realized that he had the keys to each room. Therefore having the access to get in whenever he pleased, as much as he respects her privacy.

"As a devoted hotel staff, I assure that the guests have great services! err.." he stopped himself, looking down on Aponi.

A static noise as he tilted his head.

Shattered mirror glass. And the latest patient on the floor breaking down.

He cleared his throat. "Forgive my intrusion on your despair, but shall I call Charlotte to help with your specific situation?"

Aponi shook her head as she buried her head onto her knees, her arms wrapped around it.

"No.. just.. just leave me alone, please." Aponi cried weakly.

Alastor stayed silent, his eyes still on Aponi.

Then he caught a glimpse of something she was trying to hide.

Her neck.

But why?

Then he recalled the first time he saw her when he first arrived at the hotel.

There was a mark around her neck, that he thought was a unique birth mark, then again, why would she have a birthmark specifically in that area?

He put the pieces together.

She hung herself.

The shattered mirror, the turtlenecks, always making sure her hair covers her nape..

"If it is solitude you're asking for, my friend. Blow off some steam, I sometimes personally prefer to work on my grand schemes alone." Alastor tried to make her feel better, but he never knew how to.

He was apathetic to most of things.

Aponi chuckled. "Ofcourse."

Alastor bid farewell, before shutting her door close.

Aponi climbed to her bed and wrapped herself in a thick blanket, one that Niffty handmade.

"Stay still, you bitch!"

"Fuck.. you're a good kisser, Lilly."

Aponi sobbed onto her pillow, her mind acting on its own flashing memories upon itself. She'd gone out of control, like a broken radio that's full of static noises when you press play.

"Relax, princess. No one's gonna know!"

"This remains a secret between us."

"Make it stop, please.." she cried to no one.

"Make it stop.."

~~~~~

Aponi grumbled as she woke up, her eyes fluttering open and slowly she got a glimpse of the side of her bed.

Nothing special. Just a nightlamp, cup of water, the small thing she won from loo loo land with beginner's luck the first try..

And a box? A red box.

Aponi got up, still dizzy from passing out.

She needed that good cry.

She picked up the small box, examining it before finding a note.

It said, "Alastor" in red and next to it was a poorly drawn face of him smiling.

Aponi raised an eyebrow, wondering what possessed the demon to be concerned of her, let alone leave her a present in her sleep?

He could be Santa Claus next christmas.

She untied the red ribbon and opened the box albeit a little hastily.

Her eyes widened in surprise. How did he..

It was a choker in the colors of the butterfly wings on her back.

She tried it on and got up to look at herself in a piece of the shattered mirror.

Aponi smiled, a little amazed that the radio demon paid attention to the details of her wings, and was intelligent enough to know about what she had been breaking down about hours ago.

"I see you've been up," a familiar radio voice boomed, and her hotel room door was once again opened.

"Not too long, I just woke up." Aponi responded.

Alastor hummed. "Very well, then! What do you think?" He asks, gesturing to the choker she now wore.

"It's.. beautiful. Thank you, radio demon." Aponi thanked politely.

Alastor laughed. "You know my name, dear! Use it!" He exclaimed. "My mother came up with a better name for me than those loathesome sinners! Though I must admit, I like the title."

Sounds of laughter filled the room.

Aponi laughed as well as the sound he broadcasted. "Thanks, Alastor."

[eternal-sacrifice]

Fanfiction thing

So I never ever ever write fanfiction but I wanted to spite Soda so

Erghhhhh I'm so mad this is the first piece of my writing I share on the site

Watcher grian reset thing I guess

One.

Two.

Three.

Click.

"Can you hear me? Is this thing on?"

The sound of static fills your room. You hear it, buzzing in your ears, dulling the rhythmic drumbeat of your heart, digging out your flesh.

"...Please. I didn't want this to happen. Please. Don't kill them. Not again."

The smell of blood. You feel your face instinctively, but the only thing you feel is a bead of sweat on your forehead. Why were you sweating? Why are you breathing so hard?

You don't know. You haven't figured it out yet. It's okay, you will soon. You always do.

"Please, please, please. Please. I know I swore I wouldn't get attached but I'm so scared that they might be gone for real this time- please."

You wonder where the sound is coming from. It sounds… frantic, doesn't it?

There's two sounds.

One inside your head, and one outside it.

A shriek roars through the static and you tense. 

That's the first one, the sound outside. And judging by that noise, it's the one you should deal with first. You can barely even think with the static eating out your skull, anyway.

You trust the second voice. And you look around the room.

You think it's a room. You can't remember, you're not sure. It's so dark- you're afraid to move in any direction. 

It's okay, it's okay. You'll just have to make the choice. You can do that.

You turn around, even though you can't see anything, your footsteps echoing for what feels like forever in a cold, dull, metal ache.

"NO! STOP- GET OUT!"

The shout shrieks inside your ears, the grind of the audio peaking making you wince, but your feet begin to move, and then move faster, and then you are running.

You are thinking get out get out get out get out over and over again, aren't you?

You keep running.

You're running left, or maybe right. Or maybe neither. Or maybe both. Direction doesn't seem to mean anything in this place, where whatever recording is playing never gets quieter and the voice never goes away.

Your heartbeat is getting dangerously fast. Your lungs- your arms- do you have more than two arms? There's something else connected to you, something you didn't have before but you can't think about that now-

Keep running. Keep running. It doesn't feel like you're going anywhere, the recording's sound never changes, how is it playing everywhere? Surely, surely there's got to be some way to navigate by sound, some way this makes sense, some way the endless echoing…

There. To your left. There's a pedestal.

You slow down, but your heart is beating even faster, your eyes are growing wide, your arm reaches out like your body has a mind of its own. You have no idea why you are feeling terrified. And that in of itself is enough to send a chill down your spine, rocking your entire body.

There are buttons. You don't know how you can see them, in the pitch black, but you can. You reach out, your hand meeting the cold marble of the stand, and…

A panel in front of you. It must be glass? It's glowing, that's all you can tell for sure, and now you can finally make out the lettering on the buttons.

Forget

Forgive

Fracture

Your hand stops moving. The panel dims, to the point where you can see what must be your face in its reflection of you.

Glasses. You tilt, trying to get the glasses reflection to move so you can see your eyes.

Messy hair, you can't tell what color. There's something in it.

You reach up, feeling around your hair, and you grasp it.

A piece of… paper. Or something like it. You bring it down to your face, only just reading one of the words written on it- Forgive, the same as the button- before you catch a flash of something in the glass. You carefully move your eyes up to see it, not daring to move.

It's your eyes, finally! But… They're… not… right. Something is off with them. They're moving right and reflecting fine and seeing perfectly well, but- you can't put your finger on it.

You let out a breath of air. You're real, you think. You have a reflection.

And then a thought hits you.

That means this isn't a nightmare, right?

You're… trapped here, in this space, with this glass and-

You don't even realize you've done it, do you?

Your eyes inch over slowly to the marble pedestal, even though you already know what awaits you, and then you realize two things.

The static's cut out.

And you're pressing a button.

You know, somehow, instantly, which one it was.

The glass panel goes dark. You can't even see the pedestal now, somehow it's darker than before.

And as the voice in your head begins to grow louder and you swear you hear footsteps that aren't your own, you realize a few more things, because they're right in front of you, walking towards you and making your heart beat faster with each step.

You don't have multiple sets of arms. You feel your back just to check and they're there, not the warm feeling of skin but the cold of chilled, soft feathers.

You're glowing. That must be how you saw the buttons earlier, though you have no idea where they've gone now if that's true.

You're hungry. You're practically drooling. You have a craving, something specific, some sort of specific want… It's familiar. It's forgiveness.

This is a nightmare. You were wrong earlier.

You back up, staring down the set of eyes right in front of you, staring at the glasses identical to yours, and you scream, you scream at yourself this is just a reflection, even as you are on the floor and I am ten steps away, echoing in your head.

Your vision starts to fade, even as the click click click clack click of footsteps gets louder.

You finally remember, because it's staring you in the face, looking at you in a way that scares you, in a way you should not be able to look, in a way that makes you want to feel terror again, even as it's fading, because that face has no emotion drawn on it, and the face and the footsteps stop as I look down at you with nothing. You reach out before your arm goes limp, desperately trying to hold on to your sudden realization, even as everything else is leaving you, and you grasp it just for a second, cold and clear. 

Your eyes are purple.

[felinalain]

(keep reading link just doesn't work for me, so copy pasting the rest here.)

[Audio begins]

“It took a few minutes to get everybody into their coats. It’s a little chilly out, but nice. Some guy driving by saw us, came and asked me what was going on. I told him, you know. I was waiting for their parents.”

[Deep inhale.]

“He, um, just left. Then he came back with like 10 pizzas and just- like four bags of candy. I guess the pizza place run by that couple up the road is open and just- giving pizza to whoever comes in. I think maybe he just stole the candy but… well, I tried to thank him and told him he should take a pizza but he just left. Didn’t even get back in his car, just walked away.”

“This is so much pizza, but I can’t- well. It’s enough for everybody to have as much pizza and candy as they can eat. I don’t want them to have too much, they- I don’t want to be sick when they-”

[Crying.]

[Audio ends]

[Audio begins]

[Loud shrieking.]

“So, I gave everybody pizza and candy and set them loose on the art room. Fuck it.”

[Audio ends.]

[Audio begins.]

“Um, it’s… uh, late afternoon, now. It’s gotten real dark out. I can’t- I can’t make myself go look, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to know when it’s going to happen. They’re all taking naps, now. With any luck, when it hits, they’ll still be asleep.”

[Sniff.]

“I can’t believe nobody else came. These are good kids. They- they deserved better than what I could give them.”

[Sniff.]

“I- if someone finds this. I guess… there’s art on the walls. Glitter absolutely everywhere. I guess… I mean. Now I don’t have to clean up, I guess.”

[Bitter laugh.]

“They had a good day. We had a skinned knee when we were outside earlier, but other than that they had a good day. There’s art everywhere, art they made. Lot of people in capes, I guess they had superheroes on the brain. I see Titanium Man and- uh, the Lipstick Sisters, and the brain guy, but there’s more.”

[Sniff.]

“Um, I can’t get the tv or radio to work, and I’m not putting the battery in my cell phone, so I’m just- I’m just gonna lay down in there and stay with them. Until the end. But um. If you find this, I did my best, and they had a good day, and with any luck they never knew what happened.”

[Sobbing.]

[Audio ends.]

[Audio begins.]

[Radio static, then news anchor speaks.]

“…we’re having trouble getting a good angle, but it looks like masked superheroes destroyed the meteor just before it could enter Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the debris has caused minor damage, and there are some major antennas down, but it seems that Earth has been saved.”

[Radio clicks off.]

[Sniff.]

“You’ll never guess who just showed up to pick up their kids.”

[Audio ends.]

[Audio begins.]

“I’m glad I had all that extra pizza, after all, because I guess they haven’t really eaten today. Most of the kids are still asleep, which is good, because I keep crying.“

[Sniff.]

“Bee Tee Dubs, the Lipstick Sisters? They are not sisters and apparently I’ve been watching their triplets for the last year.”

[Audio ends.]

[Audio begins.]

“This is Titanium Man. It is November 29th, and it’s been six weeks since the events documented on this recording. Addie is hesitant to delete the recording, because she feels it’s a historical record, but she also doesn’t want to hang onto it. She’s afraid she’s said too much, that our identities might be revealed just by figuring out who she is and where she worked. So I’m going to be giving this to my friend who can send it to a museum in the future, where our identities don’t matter anymore, and they can preserve this record.”

[Long, easy breath.]

“I wanted to add something of a post script. Addie’s been watching our kids at a more secure facility, with better tech for communications. She won’t have to deal with a blackout like that ever again. She’s doing a great job with the kids. She’s been helping us find a few more people to help out, so she can take a break when she needs to.”

[Clears throat.]

“I can’t tell you how horrifying it was. To be working so hard and not knowing if our kids were safe. Were they scared? Were they alone? We were dealing with trying to save everybody and not knowing what was happening to our kids. To come home and find them gently asleep, having had a really fun day, was beyond our wildest hopes.”

[Shaky breath.]

“They probably won’t even remember this, most of them are too young. Maybe you’re listening to it right now, and having a few faint memories, but.. She made sure you had a great day, and that you were happy and had fun, and she did it while being scared out of her mind, mourning herself and you and everybody, and I don’t think I know anybody braver. That’s what I wanted to say.”

[Audio ends.]

You’re a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kids’ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.

[abyssalstories]

If I could? part two

I remember it like it just happened, but it was twenty years ago.

I wake to the glow spilling through the vent on the farthest wall of my bare cement room telling me the furnace is preparing to fulfill its duties for the day, they must have found her this time. I get up and slip on my gas mask and my hazmat suit with no hood, the lenses on the other one are hard to clean so I avoid using it whenever I can. I make my way to the exit pausing at a pillar a few feet away from the door with a single intercom on it “Did you do it right this time?” I ask, pushing down the little red button “Yes we’re sure this is the one my queen” a static voice replies “Let’s hope so, you wouldn’t want a repeat of last time would you?” I release the button just as a light above the exit turns green indicating the subject is properly restrained.

I make my way through the door into the main room that’s decorated with only a pivoting surgical table facing towards the front of the furnace which has a chair next to it. As soon as I entered the deformed shadow creatures that were surrounding the girl strapped to the aforementioned surgical table back away. She’s squirming around trying to break free from the restraints but she doesn’t make a sound, they never do, they’re too scared to scream but not enough to stay still. She looks towards me, not at me, there’s not a single bit of recognition in her eyes but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other she’s just a little disoriented that’s all.

She has the red hair, the blue eyes. Everything I remember her having it’s her, it has to be. “What do you want with me, who are you?” she demands still struggling against the straps that hold her in place I walk over to one of the shadows “Darling tell me the details please” I say gently petting its decaying head, it leans into my hand before I stop returning my hand to my side “yes my queen, her name is Cirrus Evelyn and we found her watching television in a apartment on Lilac street, we had to make her get dressed though but we did not invade her privacy, which did complicate things a bit whereas in her privacy she tried to run but we caught her and transported her here with utmost delicacy” the creature relays sounding proud of itself.

I pull a remote with a single fingerprint scanner that upon scanning my thumb a sliding door opens, next to the door is an engraving that says reward room the creatures release a faint shriek as they shove and claw their way through the door. The door closes behind them leaving me and Cirrus alone. “Why am I here?” She cries as tears begin dripping down her cheeks. I rush over to her and reach my hand out to wipe the tears from her face but she turns her head away “Don’t touch me!” she yells crying even more I just stand there looking deep into her eyes “it’s not you, you’re not my delicate cloud are you?” I sigh as I walk over to the chair by the furnace and sit down “I’ll never find her, I guess I should’ve known by now” I give a weak smile that quickly fades away.

[till-all-are-fuck]

Thinking of(Being Human) -snippit-

-Her scent nodes detected traces of strange matter in the atmosphere. Sharp, foamy, and sweet like gunmetal. The faintest whiff of wild charge caught right before a lightning storm.

Memory files tingled in the back of her processors. It's been millions of years, but she recognized that. She recognized that taste, that feeling. It's only ever come from one source, and she knew that Source very, very well. "...Aj?"

It was then that the traces expanded, shifting into static, and that static into currents. Electricity, wayward and humming with barely restrained power flew and flickerd about the area in slow, graceful arcs. A sudden spike- and the readings on her HUD flashed Red.

"Everyone! Stand back!" Elita One braced herself, warding the surrounding bots away from the immediate area with a wide gesture. All thoughts of the previous conflict lost as the world shook.

The energy continued to spike, popping and shrieking and pulsing erratically until it all began to colapse in on itself, sending mighty shockwaves rippling through the open air around them.

"It's going to blow!!" The call sent Autobot and decepticon alike from a cautious withdrawal to a mad scramble as every nearby cybertronian capable of doing so transformed and tore off in all directions, all others quickly becoming engulfed by the white white light.

Her crew wouldn't stray far, the blue and white praxian pulling up beside her proved that true. Elita swerved out of the way of flying debri, pushing the distracted inventor with her as she used a complex array of internal scanners to comb every inch of the area. How she always managed such accurate readings, even amongst such chaos, Elita could never guess.

"Lancer!" She could hardly hear herself over the chaos, looks like the COM lines were still jammed. "Status report! What the frag is that thing!?"

The feme pulled up beside her to be better heard, the contrast of her soft voice and the current situation serving to cut through the chaos like an energon knife though oil batter

"Its an unstable spacebridge of some kind! My readings indicate that it's comprised almost entirely of... Supercharged Energon, or a similar substance."

That was what Elita had suspected. "I noticed it in the atmosphere earlier." Her tone was grim, if a little hopeful.

Lancer's field turned skeptical, pointed and edged with no small amount of panic "Captain, you're not seriously considering- after Arla Nine!-" Elita just leveled her with a firm look "Lancer,-"

Before she could finish, however, the spacebridge reached a brilliant crescendo; Ramping up until the battlefield, once rife with the chaos of a thousand vocalizers screaming out at once, grew silent but for the tepid roar of pure, unadulterated, power.

Looking back at the spectacle from a seemingly safe distance, The gathered mecha braced for an explosion unlike any they had ever seen before. Elita, more out of instinct than logic, flipped out of alt mode and shielded her only reachable teammate with her own frame. Lancer transformed in her arms, throwing up a rushed barrier around them as well. She knew it wouldn't be enough, but held fast anyway. Primus, help us! Please...

...

...

But nothing came.

Instead of igniting like the dying star it appeared to be, the gate just.. Stopped. Silence descended upon them all like a vicious snake, leaving tense apprehension in it's wake and, for the first time in Millennia, bringing everything to a standstill.

All was quiet but for the doorway, which had smoothed out into a low continuous buzz. No bot made a move. Not until, something stepped out.

[thepenultimateword]

Static Part 4

Part One Part Two Part Three

Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

For the first time in a very long time, it was not the shriek of Villain's implants that eased her into wakefulness. This sound was steadier, weightier, the same soothing sort of alive as trees rustling in the breeze or an animal's soft breathing in its burrow, and she could listen to it all day.

Villain turned over groggily on her side, cheek sliding over silky, warm fabric, and snuggled in closer to the warmth. She had a hunch that that same sound that woke her may just lull her back to sleep, and when was the last time she'd slept in? She couldn't even remember a time. That pesky static was always too insistent that she got up and stayed up whenever it pleased.

Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

The static squealed lightly in the background, but masked by this mysterious beat, she could almost, in the blurry corners of consciousness, imagine she was normal. She curled her fingers into her pillow and let sleep drop in dark, heavy folds over her mind. Was this peace?

Her pillow moaned.

Villain's eyes shot open.

Everything struck her as a searing blur. It took several painful blinks to take in her bleak living room. It wasn't actually that bright. The warm glow of early morning shone through her kitchen window just high enough to define a couple wrinkly clothings items and a pair of military boots on the floor.

"Hey," a soft voice mumbled next to her ear. Gentle fingers dragged through her hair from the crown of her head to the middle of her back. "Feeling better?"

Her eyes flicked to the droopy-eyed face above her to the hand curled into his shoulder, so tight her nails pinched his skin. She opened her fingers slow and deliberate, blinking several more times, this time not to see but to make sense of what she was seeing.

She was not in her bed. She was on the couch. She was on top of Sidekick, on the couch.

She drew back sharply, but her limbs, still heavy with the tail-end of sleep only brought her as far as his legs. The leftover sway of her momentum brought one clutching hand to the back of the couch, while the other caught itself on Sidekick's bare midriff. Her fingers leapt away from the warmth and settled shuddering on the couch cushion. "What-- I don't--"

"You had that nasty attack last night?" Sidekick said, prodding carefully at her memory. "I stayed to make sure you were ok." He yawned and rubbed at his mussed hair. "Guess I fell asleep."

"I always knew that night at your place meant something," she said in her best sultry tone, despite being the one blushing up a storm.

Sidekick smiled, obviously way more comfortable with the situation than she was.

"Afternoon," he corrected. "And night. And morning. You were passed out for a long time."

"Right." Awkwardness tugged the corners of her lips up, and she encouraged the backward impulse into a wide grin, hoping Sidekick believed its steady confidence. Then again, he was used to reversed emotions by now, so maybe he'd read it as her very real nerves. Ugh! She didn't know anymore! Her brain was too complicated.

"So," Sidekick said, meeting her eyes. "Are you feeling better?"

"Much better. I guess...thank you?"

"You don't have to thank me for something like that. I couldn't even call myself a hero if I'd left."

But you did it for someone like me.

The longer their eyes remained locked, the more roiling storm Villain caught behind the hero's own gaze. It was hard to define: Anxiety? Anger? Confusion? Determination? It was all so jumbled she couldn't tell them apart.

"Like what you see?" Sidekick quipped, actually managing to keep all but the tips of his ears from blushing.

Villain rolled over the edge of the couch, landing on her shoulder and sweeping up onto her feet with only a slight stumble. If she looked at him any longer she might combust. And she didn't do embarrassed. That was supposed to be Sidekick's department. He wasn't supposed to succeed at turning her own weapons against her.

She shuffled hurriedly into the kitchen.

"D-do you want breakfast? I have eggs and..." she swung open the refrigerator door, "...eggs."

Sidekick propped himself up on his elbow. "Eggs, please."

"A good choice."

Villain began pulling out a frying pan and spatula. Sidekick's gaze glued to her each and every movement, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Socked feet crept up behind her; even without looking, the presence lingering at her back was palpable as she cracked eggs into the warming pan.

"Do you need help? I don't want you to burn yourself if you have another attack."

"That's a very nice thought, Sweetie, but I'm pretty sure I've been surviving just fine without you."

This time Sidekick did blush. Villain's chest burned with pleasure.

"How do you like them done?" Villain nodded to the pan.

"Scrambled."

"Booo, fried is better. But I suppose since you're a guest..." She swirled the eggs together with the edge of her spatula until they were one liquid disk.

“Do you have another pan?” Sidekick asked.

“Yeah, a small—“

Sidekick was already crouched in front of her cupboard rummaging the little frying pan out from the back. Next he found an old, half-melted spatula in the top drawer. Villain only kept it as a spare, but she grimaced at the sagging blue plastic.

“I make yours, you make mine?” he said.

“Over-easy?”

“With cheese?” he countered.

“Deal.”

They clinked spatulas. It was so in sync, Villain had to duck her head to hide the traitorous frown creeping down her face. She was so glad she'd tried to drug him all those weeks ago. She was so glad he'd caught her. Even if he was going to be done with her once she was fixed, this time, this first of normalcy, was special. Maybe if she'd been able to make sort of friends with a hero, it wouldn't be so hard to make real friends later. She'd be charming once she was normal.

Villain pushed the raw egg around absently, making goopy ridges in the yellow pool.

What would she be once this was all over? Would she still be a villain?She'd only really begun because it was what people had seemed to expect of her. She was too erratic for a real job, and the villain stuff came pretty naturally. Especially at the start when she'd been filled with so much anger. That had fizzled out into exhaustion and fear recently, but it didn't change that she'd done some awful things.

Villain rose on her toes and danced around Sidekick's back for the fridge, gracefully plucking a bag of shredded cheddar from the door and spinning back to her pan to sprinkle it on top of the half-solid mass. She folded the egg in sections over the cheese and continued pushing it around until it turned fluffy.

Doesn't matter, she thought as she pulled out a plate. Sidekick already knows all about that and--

And what? Was he really the only person who mattered? No. Dangerous thought. He was only doing this because he felt it was right. Keeping a good conscience didn't extend to being her friend for life. She should get used to the idea of letting him go.

Fzzz-FZZT!

The shock came like a punishment, but Villain fought the jerk of her head into a sharp wince. Sidekick glanced at her, but she cut off any chance for questions by swinging around toward the table.

"Here you are!" she sang, ignoring the ache in her ears and setting the plate of steaming scrambled eggs down on the table. She curled up in the seat across and Sidekick placed his own eggs, specked with pepper and leaking runny yolk around the ring of the plate, in front of her.

"Might have to take a few points off for presentation." Villain poked at the edge of the egg whites with their fork.

"It's not my fault you're disfigured spatula broke one of them," Sidekick said. He took a defiant bite of scrambled egg and immediately melted. "Mmmm, you're good at these."

Villain laugh-cried, a mix of flattered pride and amusement at his full-mouth mumbling.

Fzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, the static chimed in.

Great. The shock wasn't random. Fuzzy was waking up.

Sidekick lowered his fork. "Are you sure you're ok?"

Villain caught herself rubbing her temple. "Huh? Oh yeah, yeah. This is nothing. Just normal annoying buzzing. Not like last night."

Regardless of her words, Sidekick still drooped. "I wish I could help you right now, but my last few practices on a precision strike weren't so smooth, and if it goes wrong and I hit the wrong place... If I hurt you..."

"It's fine." Villain waved him off. "I've waited 12 years. I can wait a while longer.

Sidekick sighed deeply. "I know. But I still--"

The chirp of his phone cut him off mid-sentence.

Stabs of inexplicable gratitude and regret hit Villain at once. She wanted to know Sidekick's thoughts on all of this. On her. Sometimes she even felt desperate for it. But anything too familiar always set her heart pounding like a hunted rabbit's, and she just wanted to run. Strange how she could want something so bad but resist it just as firmly.

Sidekick frowned at his phone.

"What is it?"

Sidekick jolted a little, frown deepening as he looked up at her. "Hero. He wants to meet up."

"Well, that's not anything stra--"

"He says to bring you."

The yolk of Villain's fried egg slipped off her fork. "What?"

Sidekick shrugged, but despite his attempt at nonchalance, he moved too stiffly to be ok. "Somehow he knows about you. I don't know if he's always known or if someone told him... I'm just going to go. You stay here."

Villain stood up with him. "I'm fine going."

He blinked. "Are you sure? Hero's great, but he's...Hero. Not exactly the most friendly with criminals. And I have no idea what he wants. What if he tries to arrest you?"

"Then I'll run away," Villain shrugged. "He's stronger, but I'm faster. And if he has questions about me, who better to explain than me?"

Sidekick still grimaced, but Villain marched across the room and leaned stubbornly on the door frame. The static in her head crackled worse with her rising anxiety, but she managed to keep her stare even.

"Fine," Sidekick broke. "Just...don't say anything too weird. He's not used to it."

Not like I am.

It remained unsaid but poignantly understood. Villain probably should have been offended, but a happy frown sprang to her lips instead.

"Deal."

***

The meeting place Hero chose was a small diner on the edge of the city called Mumbles, Hero's favorite according to Sidekick.

"He's stressed," Sidekick explained on the way over. "He always gets the Lumberjack Special at Mumbles when he's stressed. So he probably only knows we're spending time together, not the reason why."

"Shouldn't you have told him?" Villain said. It was more curiosity than chastisement. She'd known Sidekick was hiding their entanglement from Hero, and though she hadn't expected it, it had been a relief. Being involved with one hero was strange enough, bring in a second, especially if that second is Hero, and her life would have become all kinds of strange.

"Probably." Sidekick groaned. "I just knew he'd get worried and make a big deal out of it, and I wasn't expecting it to take this long, so I figured what he didn't know didn't hurt him. Stupid."

The diner door chimed as they pushed inside, revealing checkered floors, cracked aquamarine booths, and a bar and stools where a couple kids drank milkshakes. Some calm, jazzy tune romped around the restaurant from a jukebox in the corner, calming the fuzz in Villain's head just a little.

Would I have liked it here as a kid? Villain wondered for not the first time. There were all sorts of places that pricked her feelings and encouraged her to imagine a life where she never had been taken, where she grew up like any other kid.

Hero wasn't hard to spot, long hair tumbling over his enormous shoulders and his broad chest threatening to burst not only his flannel button-up but perhaps also the booth table he was squeezed against. As he saw them approaching, he didn't stand up, as it probably would have been too much of an ordeal to shove himself back behind the table again, but he rapidly wiped the orange juice out of his beard and fixed Sidekick with a disappointed glower.

"So you do know her well enough to invite her," he rumbled. Hero was always booming, a clap of thunder unable to contain itself; it was strange hearing the deep roll of his voice when he was trying to be subdued.

Sidekick slid into the booth first and waited a couple seconds for Villain to join him before saying, "Hero, what's this about?"

Hero looked unhappily between them a couple seconds longer before he slid his phone across the table. It was opened to a string of text messages involving a couple of pictures of Sidekick and Villain--one of them walking down the street together, the other as they entered Villain's apartment complex--as well as a few not-so-polite, speculative texts.

Hero steepled his large hands on the table. "I received a tip from one of my informants last night that you're either double-crossing me or fraternizing. I don't believe the first one and don't want to believe the second, so I need you to be completely honest with me, Sidekick. What is your relationship with Villain?"

Villain wasn't used to being completely ignored by a hero but ok. Apparently, Hero hadn't asked her here for her input, just to prove Sidekick's culpability.

"I'm helping her out, that's it." At Hero's mortified look, Sidekick added, "Not with anything nefarious! It's a personal problem."

"What could possibly get you mixed up in the personal problems of a criminal?"

"Well, you see," Villain said, "I had a very bad childhood and someone put a couple electronic doodads in my head. Sidekick's going to fry them without frying my brain before I go completely loony bin crazy."

Hero only blinked at her before turning intensely back on Sidekick. "I don't want you involved with her."

"Isn't our job as heroes to help people?"

"Not her."

"Why not?"

"Because she's crazy!"

"She's not crazy!" Sidekick snapped.

Villain's heart fluttered a little at his vehemence. No one had ever gotten close enough to defend her. She hadn't even known if she was worth defending.

“She’s smiling!” Hero motioned one hand harshly in her direction.

Villain caught herself. She really was smiling. The anxiety of the moment must be getting to her. Weird, she usually didn't get anxious over arguing. She purposefully turned her lips down.

“She can’t help it," Sidekick said. "The implants screw with her emotions. She's as upset as we are.”

"So she says."

Sidekick threw his hands in the air. "You're not even listening. Just talk to her; she can explain everything."

Hero shook his head and attempted to drop his voice into a gentler tone. It only half-worked. The ends of his words still grated frustration. "I know you think I'm being unfair, but I've been doing this job for a long time. I've never seen anything good come from trusting the word of villains. They trick, and they lie, and they turn your good intentions against you. She is no different." Now he did turn on Villain. "What do you really want?"

Villain rolled her shoulders back and straightened tall in her seat. "Just what Sidekick said: a little bit of help. As soon as this static is gone, you don't have to hear from me again."

The muscles in Sidekick's arm seized against her own. What was that about?

Hero narrowed his eyes. "You just asked, and Sidekick said yes?"

"Well, there was a little more sedatives involved."

Sidekick winced. Hero leaned in furiously.

"I knew it!"

"She didn't use them," Sidekick said quickly. "I caught her tailing me way before she tried."

"And she was stalking you too? Sidekick, how can you ignore that? I taught you better."

"Because I've seen the implants. And her pain is real."

Hero sighed. "Maybe it is. But that doesn't change anything. So you help her. What's that going to change except her ability to commit crimes with more precision? Maybe she was given those implants for a reason. Maybe it's a good thing."

"How can you say that?" Sidekick's expression was appalled. "She might be a criminal, but she's still a person. And I joined this cause because I wanted to help all people. Not just the innocent ones. You're the one who stopped me from killing Ignite, shouldn't you understand?"

"Not killing someone is a far cry from defending them. Think of your parents. What would they think of you helping the same sort of person who killed--"

"They'd trust my judgment!" Sidekick's eyes were so wide with rage that they were more whites than pupils.

Hero pounded both fists on the table, clattering the plates and knocking over his orange juice glass.

"These are the rules! You can't be a hero and correspond with villains!'

"I don't even want to be a hero!" Sidekick cried. An intense wave of power burst across the room, causing Villain's implants to shriek and the jukebox to sputter to a stop.

Hero froze.

The diner was silent; customers had retreated to the other side of the building to stare at the superpowered argument from afar. The citrus puddle spread across the tabletop leaked in slow drips onto the floor.

"What do you mean?" Hero said.

Sidekick slid his hands over his face with a soft groan. Villain didn't need to be a mind reader to know Sidekick was regretting the outburst. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to be a calm calculated explanation where Sidekick didn't hurt the person they cared about most. It was not supposed to be leverage, and it was not supposed to be revealed in a heated fashion in an already heated situation.

"I don't want to be a hero," Sidekick repeated softly. "I want to be a doctor or a nurse or something in the medical field. No one said anything to me, no one influenced me, it's just what I want. What I've always wanted. I just...forgot for a while."

Hero swallowed. "Is that what you tried to tell me the other day?"

Sidekick nodded.

Hero's expression shattered. Villain hated the ugly smile creeping up her lips. She'd never seen the boisterous hero so quiet and broken looking, never even imagined it. Even as a villain it unsettled her.

"So...I've just wasted your time all these years?"

"No! Hero, I needed this! I wasn't ready for a civilian life back then. You helped me heal. But now that I'm ok, I just feel like... I need to get back to normal."

"I don't understand why this can't be normal." Hero motioned to Sidekick's super outfit. He smiled tremulously. "We're a great team."

Sidekick open his mouth and closed it again. There was nothing else to say. Any more explanation would just be throwing them back into another useless loop of arguing.

Hero's face fell even further.

"I'm sorry I pinned you down like this," he muttered. His gaze flicked toward Villain as she held her aching, buzzing head but then quickly flicked away again. "I-I'm going to go."

Sidekick stood up as Hero unwedged himself from the booth. "Hero. Can we talk about this more later?"

The enormous man paused. Nodded. "I just need to think."

The tinkle of the door's bell officially announced his departure.

"Umm..." a waiter ventured, hanging back nervously against the counter.

"Don't worry, we're not staying," Sidekick said, and Villain took the signal to slide out of the booth next.

Warm slender fingers touched to the side of her head as they made their way outside. When Villain turned toward the touch, she found Sidekick's worried eyes staring back.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It was an accident," Villain shrugged, shaking her head slightly as if it could jostle away the implants' bothered wail. "Buuut, losing your temper, Sidekick? Not very heroic of you."

Sidekick didn't smile or blush like she expected, instead holding the same pained expression. "Not just that. All the talking about you like you weren't there. Even if Hero didn't want to ask, I should have made sure you had a better chance to talk. I just argued like an idiot."

Villan's heart picked up to rabbit speed again, except this time Sidekick's penetrating gaze seemed to freeze her. She scoffed and pulled away, dancing a few steps ahead down the sidewalk. "Why do you even care about that? It's not anything I'm not used to. Villain. Remember?"

"Because I care about you."

Villain spun around, humorous grimace already prepared, but Sidekick didn't grin back. He stood frozen to the spot, staring, urging belief with the steadiness of his eyes.

"I know you're lonely and all," Villain said, "I've seen your Netflix history, but come ooon. I'm not that cute."

No smile to that either, not even the usual denial and eyeroll, only a deep red ear-to-ear blush.

Villain's heart skipped a beat. "Wait, you're serious? You actually care? Not even a doctor-patient sort of care or a friend sort of care but an actual like-like, romantic, want-to-kiss-me sort of care?"

Sidekick looked at the ground. His voice came out hushed and somewhat ashamed. "I didn't mean to."

FZZZZZZZZZZZ! the static said, aggravated with all this dramatic activity in Villain’s brain today.

She couldn't think. She needed to sit down, she need to...

Villain dropped into a crouch and clutched her head. Sidekick's footsteps pounded hurriedly toward her.

"You don't have to say anything," he said from overhead. "I don't even need anything from you. It doesn't change anything about our agreement, so don't worry about it."

"No, no," Villain gasped. "I think I like you that way too, it's just...no one has ever cared about me before. Not that way or any way, and I don't really know what to do. I'm probably going to act like a weirdo and mess it all up and then you'll abandon me--"

Sidekick dropped down in front of her and caught her face. "Hey."

Fzzt! Fzzt! Fzzt!

Villain's brain was already moving so fast she barely felt the shocks, but her head still jerked three times.

"Hey, jitterbug." The first time he called her that it had been so derogatory, but somehow now it sounded so affectionate. "You're not going to mess anything up. And I'm not going to abandon you. I already know what a weirdo you are, remember?"

He smiled slyly, and Villain managed to gulp down a full breath. She nodded against his hands. They were so warm.

"What about Hero?"

"Well," Sidekick's thumbs tapped gently against her face. "Depending on what you say, I'll tell him as soon as he's cooled down. Don't want to throw too many things at him at once."

Villain nodded again.

"So...what do you say? I guess I don't need an answer right now, but if you do have thoughts already then maybe--"

Villain surged forward and kissed his cheek.

Sidekick stared at her, sharp eyes cutting back her faux bravery and reducing her to a quivered smile. Villain's nerves told her to run, but she forced herself still.

Sidekick folded his legs beneath him, sliding one hand around the back of her neck and the other into her hair.

The next kiss felt like electric sparks dancing across her lips, a thrilling current that rushed her head so strongly she could barely separate the static from the rapture.

Master Taglist: (I'm so sorry I forgot to add this into my last two posts)

@moss-tombstone @crazytwentythrees @just-1-lonely-person @the-vagabond-nun @willow-trees-are-beautiful @cocoasprite @insanedreamer7905 @appleejuice @psychiclibrariesquotestoad @valiantlytransparentwhispers @whovian378 @watercolorfreckles @thebluepolarbear @yulanlavender

Static Taglist:

@kitsunesakii

(Let me know if you want to be added the Master taglist :))