#powers gone wrong

[frownyalfred]

I want a JL fic that borrows from X-Men where Clark gets hit on the head a little too hard with something imbued by Kryptonite and suddenly he can’t turn off his heat vision. Cue angsty fic where he’s stumbling around with his eyes clenched shut trying not to get too upset/angry because emotion seems to make it worse, and then suddenly Bruce’s hands land on his shoulders. Calm settles over him. Someone’s talking in his ear, low and reassuring, asking him to open his eyes, that it’s safe, nothing will happen.

Clark opens his eyes, feeling the last of the heat vision fade away. Bruce’s face is inches away from his own. He never doubted Clark for a second. He never feared death, the awful kind of brain-boiling death that awaited him, should Clark fail.

[arrimorr]

My ocs, Sir and Ser, aka the eldritch malevolent policemen 😔

[luxaofhesperides]

Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!

Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.

He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.

What Duke gets instead isn’t even words. 

Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.

“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”

He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.

“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,

Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”

Jason looks him over critically, then nods. 

Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing. 

This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.

He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.

For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.

He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.

And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.

Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white. 

Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.

Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.

Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws. 

The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all. 

The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope. 

“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.

Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.

“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”

Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”

“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”

“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”

“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.

“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”

Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”

Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room. 

“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”

Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others. 

Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.

Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape. 

Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.

The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic. 

His left hipbone burns.

Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.

The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.

And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.

“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.

“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”

The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”

“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”

“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”

The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room. 

“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.

He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.

“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”

“You—what?”

“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.

Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances. 

“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”

“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”

Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”

“And you dreamed of me.”

“I did.”

“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”

“Okay.”

“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”

“I’ll help,” Phantom says.

“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”

“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”

Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”

“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”

“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”

“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”

There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.

Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.

“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”

“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”

Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”

“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again. 

“Let’s go find them, then!”

They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together. 

The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now. 

He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.

[illmoraineakoi]

Do you guys think that when Dark was dying, he knew it, and became so overwhelmed by the visceral fear of his inevitable incoming death that he started desperately pleading to Alan to somehow come save him?

A forsaken creation, dying and agonized, desperately reaching out to his creator in a last ditch attempt at salvation.

A child, begging for it's parent's help, because they're scared and they don't want to die.

[boar-cry]

blinding ire

All these foolish religious weepers and overzealous preachers; don't they know the Gods remain indifferent to the plights of man?

Omnipotent beings sitting high atop their shrines, deaf to the screams and sorrows so far below, collecting gold and rot as if offerings owed. And yet still there are those who carve their names in polished silver and iridescent stone; sculpt temples with diamond pillars and weave jewelry out of pearls; not out of desperation, but delusion – that if they worship so called divines, they can somehow remold their spoiled lives.

What good are useless Gods that regard us no more than grains of sand?

[m0th-h]

The love for the Avengers but hate for mutants will never not be funny to me

[quinn-of-aebradore]

I keep thinking about how Ashton’s been acting lately and I coming back to them saying that they’ve earned “a minor sense of superiority” for all they’ve been through in their life and then how through a lot of what they said after that demonstrates that that sense of superiority goes far beyond being minor. Especially the way they laughed and said “who else?” when the Hells asked themselves if they should really be the ones deciding if the balance of the world should be upended and remade. It carried a lot less of a “well who else is going to do it?” energy that I think it might’ve once carried, the sort of thing the Nein might say, and instead felt more like a “you really want anyone else but us choosing that?”, which aligns with the wildly out-of-hand way they were behaving in the council meeting. They really seem to be placing themself above everyone that was in that council room, especially with how they repeatedly said that all of those delegates are stupid and blind and so on, particularly those who answer to divine powers (I cannot remember if Ashton directly said that last night, but I feel like it would align with what they did say even if they didn’t put it that clearly).

What makes that very interesting to me is that Ashton is also a vessel for a higher power now, a power that—from the way they seem to be looking at things—is grander and older and more powerful than the gods themselves; a titan. They may not answer to Rau’shan, but they channel her power just as surely as any cleric or paladin might channel their deity’s powers. Which is a little hypocritical, but that’s not my point.

I keep wondering that if maybe, probably on a subconscious level, that connection to an older power than the gods is fueling Ashton’s sense of superiority over the gods and those who follow them.

[completeoveranalysis]

[1]

And here we are in xxxholic Chapter 92(ish)! The final chapter in this leg of the reading journey before we switch back to Tsubasa.

In which Clamp show us this lovely cover and my thoughts go “Oh how lovely!” and “oops I wish I knew more about flower symbolism”. 

But I’m sure it is a very fitting and poignant flower choice! Full of many meanings for us to think about!

The AU where I’m a botanist is looking wild right now. 

In the meantime we have a couple of nice little touches that speak to their closeness, like Kohane lifting the veil to shelter Watanuki underneath it, and strands of her hair falling over his head and gently resting there. It speaks of a very soft and comfortable connection, which is something very valuable considering the nature of Kohane’s family and how they treated her. We never would have seen this kind of image of her when we first began her storyline, and it’s wonderful that she has support in people like Watanuki now. It’s showcasing an easy kind of comfortability and closeness that only comes when you really care about and trust another person - so this is genuine and beautiful change to Kohane’s life that only exists in the world because Watanuki is still here, which means it's an important note for him too. 

All that said it kind of looks like this could be an advertising poster for a new pair of earrings and it’s working on me.

[why-the-heck-not]

19.11.23, sunday

I listened to Succession soundtrack a lot today and had about the most productive day I’ve had in so so long

things done today:

7h of coding

went to my sister’s kid’s birthday party (mario theme 🍄)

[k2ulhu]

hulu was doing live coverage of the election until 2:00am, at which point my power randomly went out and when I reopened the hulu app on my tv the election coverage was replaced with

[saryasy]

it's funny. I keep making all these posts defending Aziraphale and it's because there's this annoying trend in the fandom to villainize him while simultaneously woobifying Crowley, so there's a need for more Aziraphale perspective

but I was thinking, if we stopped looking at fandom for a minute, and just regarded Aziraphale as a character, how would I criticize him or his choices?

then I realized I wouldn't cos my wife did nothing wrong in her life

[kacievvbbbb]

Truly from the depths of my struggling heart. Viva La Vida by Coldplay belongs to one Toshinori Yagi aka the one and only All Might.

Coldplay should just sign over the rights of the song at this point promptly too.

[ambagel]

Wait hold on, in his anniversary video Barbatos mentions the mc being the brother's attendant?

But in the other videos, it's implied that they don't remember the mc leaving (which is actually something im very disappointed about and really hope isnt the case in the actual story)

In these two specifically, it seems like they aren't aware of the mc's presence in the past/alternate timeline/whatever it is. The only other person who seems like they know is Lucifer

Which also lines up with the end of lesson 40, where he's the only one who says welcome back? So like?? Do only him and Barbatos know? Did they not tell anyone?? Diavolo would probably know as well but I haven't seen anything to show that yet. Anyways I don't really like where this is going, I would really prefer they not make everyone forget the mc disappeared

[starship-buccaneer]

Steve: Well yeah, Eddie flirts with me constantly and touches me all the time and I do it back and everything, but we're just two guys horsin' around, y'know?

Everyone: No Steve. We do not know.

Steve: Yeah, Eddie's fruity with me, so what? Just because I'm a guy and he likes guys doesn't automatically mean he's into me. He's just comfortable being himself with me!

Everyone: Steve. He's sitting in your lap, playing with your hair. He calls you pretty boy, Steve. He's wearing your sweater, Steve. Steve, please.

[telesodalite]

Sort of a ramble, sort of me just writing my thoughts out while I'm stuck with writer's block, but I keep thinking about how Fulcrum was in stasis for roughly 3 million years??

Like, that's a long time, even for Cybertronians. Not a really long time, not an entire lifespan. But still, it's a large chunk of a normal lifespan just gone. Poof.

One second you're crawling across the pockmarked terrain of an alien planet, surrounded by the sound of gunfire, and the shouting and screaming before and after each earth shuddering impact of another k-con hitting the ground. And then it's quiet. You're not there anymore. You're drifting somewhere between not alive and just asleep. Preserved somewhere in the background of a doomed body, ignored by time and space, still here, but also not.

And then there's sound. Not gunfire. Not shouting or screaming. Not the sounds that'll haunt you till your dying days, your own death sentence pounding in your head. No. Just voices, talking, standing out against a silent, dead world. Wondering. Joking. Bickering. Familiar. Just, not familiar to you. And you're awake. Pulled back from the nothingness you've been frozen in, consciousness tugged forwards with the yank of a fuel pump and the nearness of life.

These two moments are roughly 3 million years apart, but only minutes, maybe even seconds, to him. From a hectic harrowing battlefield, to an old silent graveyard in one blink.

How long did it take to really sink in? I mean, he seems to just roll with it. He doesn't seem particularly bothered. But like, what happened outside of what we see? How did he really feel?

Also, his body aged without him. While his mind preserved itself, freezing him as he was right then, his body was left to weather Clemency for all those years. No wonder it crumbled to dust when he jumped off the world sweeper. It's probably a miracle of some kind that it didn't just fall apart each time someone leaned on him.

And even after they rebuild him, give him a better, newer body. His spark, it's casing, all the irreplaceable core bits that make up their inner bodies, it aged in the time without him. Does he feel it? Does it make his body even more foreign to him?

Then he's also a technician with information that's 3 million years out of date. Lucky him that the scavengers probably weren't working with top of the line material. But still it's gotta be weird when faced with anything brand new, because a lot can change and progress in 3 million years, and now some of the knowledge he once prided himself in is obsolete.

Besides those things, his view of the galaxy, of the war, of their kind, of other kinds, is one of the few things actually pointed out when it comes to him being stuck in the past. So, how often were his old views challenged? Facts of life he held close proved to no longer true? There's 3 million years worth of new science, new beliefs, new words, new terms, new views.

And sure, some of it can be familiar, because they're an ever evolving kind, and they have patterns, core beliefs, repeating behaviors, but a lot of it's gonna be unfamiliar at the same time, because it's 3 million years worth of catch up, it's not like missing last week's trend.

In a way, it makes him a living relic of a bygone era for Decepticons. It would've been really interesting to have had that explored a little more.

[itspileofgoodthings]

I don’t even fully know why but “what do I do when I miss you so much?” / “Just wait, and pray desperately” was a knife to my heart in the best way.