#stealth big time suit

[hallowcos]

Kids Spider-Man Stealth Big Time Suit PS4 Cosplay Costume

[scarletspider2the2ndpower]

“Kaine,” Web of Spider-Man (Vol. 3/2024), #1.

Writer: Steve Foxe; Penciler: Greg Land; Inker: Jay Leisten; Letterer: Frank D’Armata

[matt-murdockk]

Stealth

pairing: matt murdock x Black Widow!fem!reader

words: 3.5k

summary: Retired from your old life, you had comfortably settled down at Hell's Kitchen running a bookstore next to Nelson & Murdock. When your past comes knocking at your door again, you pray to god it doesn't affect your relationship with Matt. 

warnings: cussing, lack of proofreading (rip), canon typical violence, it’s mostly action, fluff, and comedy 

a/n: going through the matt drafts like my life depends on it lmaooooo enjoy <3

——————————————————————————————————

Blood dripped from your busted lip as you looked up from your knees, another blow snapping your head to the side. Your assailant loomed above you, fists still clenched, breathing heavy. You laughed at him, knowing that even after his efforts and all that he's putting you through, he is either going to walk away without the information he's in search of, or he's not going to be able to walk away at all. 

"I'm asking you one last time, bitch. Where is she?"

"Go to hell," you sneered, your voice dripping with malice. 

Before he could react, you surged upward, slamming your shoulder into his gut. He stumbled back with a grunt— off balance just long enough for you to twist, swing your leg out, and sweep his feet from under him. He hit the ground hard, and you didn’t give him time to recover. You dropped your weight on his chest, drove your knee into his ribs, then slammed your forehead into his nose with a sickening crack.

He yelled, tried to shove you off, but you were faster— rolled to your side, hooked your tied wrists under his chin, and yanked back with everything you had. His head snapped back. The struggle was short. One last jerk, and he slumped beneath you, out cold.

You sat there for a moment, breathing hard, blood on your tongue and your pulse roaring in your ears. You managed to free your hands, the binds falling away. Instinctively, you brought one hand up to rub at the angry, red mark circling your opposite wrist— thumb pressing into the sore skin as you exhaled through your nose, steadying yourself.

Slowly but carefully, you staggered towards the dresser and pulled out the burner phone you had stashed away, to be used only in case of emergencies. You called the only other number on the phone, your voice strained but low. 

"Yelena. We have a problem." 

——————————————————————————————————

"Mac and cheese? I make really good mac and cheese."

"No, Yelena. I'm good."

"Suit yourself."

You sat at the counter of your kitchen, icing your split lip. Yelena rummaged through the pantry, letting out a satisfied 'a-ha' when she found a box of Kraft mac and cheese tucked all the way at the back. You know, the usual routine after you get rid of a body with your colleague from ages ago. 

"So, is now a good time for you to tell me why a guy broke into my apartment asking for you, or..."

"You sure you don't want my mac and cheese? Trust me, it's really—"

"Yelena." 

"Alright, fine. I may be on the run from the Ranskahov brothers."

You exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down your face, jaw tight and eyes closing in defeat. "You're what?"

"It is no big deal, I can deal with it."

"No big deal? Yelena, a man broke into my apartment at midnight and we just got rid of his unconscious body."

"Your point being?"

"Wh— This is a big deal!" you exclaimed, unable to comprehend how she was so relaxed about it.

"Relax, Sunshine. I got this under control, I promise."

You stared at her, slack-jawed. “Clearly, you don’t. I just took a punch to the face in my own apartment because of your mess.”

She shrugged, unfazed as she stirred the mac and cheese with a wooden spoon. “Well, technically he was already in your apartment. You were just... surprised to see him.”

You set the ice pack down with a thud. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, grinning. “What happened to that sharp reflexes, stone-cold killer, don’t-mess-with-me energy? Getting soft?”

You narrowed your eyes. “You think I’m out of touch?”

Yelena tilted her head, weighing it. “You’ve been... domesticated.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Try me.”

She considered you for a beat, then gave a small, amused nod. “Alright. Point taken.”

You leaned back, arms folded. “Let’s end this. You and me. Whatever's left of the Ranskahov crew— we shut it down.”

Yelena raised her hands in mock surrender. “Your words, not mine. I’m just here for emotional support and cheese.”

Then, a beat passed. She stirred the pot idly, quieter now. “You sure you're up for this?”

You gave her a look.

“No, I mean really,” she said. “You're not worried about the lawyer finding out?”

You froze, just for a second.

“It’s been, what— five, six months?” Yelena added, not unkindly. “You think he’s gonna notice if you disappear for a day or two?”

You glanced down at the counter. “It’s not about him noticing.”

Yelena shrugged. “So what is it?”

You didn’t answer right away. The silence between you filled with the soft bubbling of the stovetop and your pulse in your ears.

“It’s just... different now,” you said finally.

Yelena gave you a knowing look. “I mean, no one’s gonna know. It’s what we do, isn’t it?”

You looked up at her.

“Ghost in, ghost out. We finish what we started.”

“Let the record show,” you said, getting to your feet, “I’m helping because you nearly got me killed. Again.”

“Let the record also show,” she said, sliding a bowl across the counter to you, “I did not ask for help.”

You took the bowl, a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself— soft, almost reminiscent. There was something familiar about the moment. The crappy mac and cheese. The bruises. The adrenaline still fading from your bloodstream. For a second, it felt like the old days. Like the good parts in between the hell you went through. 

Yelena caught the look immediately. “Aha,” she said, pointing the spoon at you. “You missed this.”

“Shut up.”

——————————————————————————————————

The next afternoon, your shop smelled like cinnamon and dust— paperbacks piled on mismatched shelves, the old ceiling fan overhead rattling faintly in protest. In complete contrast to your past, you had made quite a home for yourselves at a cosy little corner of hell's kitchen, snuggled right next to the Nelson & Murdock office.

Matt sat across from you at the little table in the back corner, his cane resting against the chair, his jacket draped on the back of it. 

The two of you had made a habit of lunching here once or twice a week— sometimes with food, sometimes with nothing but stubborn cases and terrible coffee. Today it was takeout from the Thai place around the block.

You pushed your noodles around with your fork, watching him sip his tea like it wasn’t hot enough to melt steel.

“So,” Matt said casually, “about tonight— I was going to ask if we could rain check.”

You blinked. “Oh— yeah. I was going to say the same thing. I’ve got some errands to run."

He nodded. “Foggy dropped a mountain of files on my desk this morning. I’ll be chained to the office most of the night.”

He said it too neatly. No stammer. No sigh. No frustration about the files. Just a clean, compact sentence, tied with a bow.

Your eyes narrowed— just barely. There it was. That was his tell. You almost knew it by heart now. He didn’t fidget, didn’t shift in his seat. He stilled. Too polished. Too calm.

He was lying.

You smiled like you believed him.

“That’s a shame,” you said lightly, taking a sip of your water. “I was kind of looking forward to it.”

“I was too,” he said, and he meant it— just not the way he said.

You nodded and changed the subject, let it drop between you like nothing had happened. If he noticed anything off in your tone, he didn’t show it. Eventually, he gathered his things and stood.

“I’ll call you later?” he offered.

“Yeah,” you said, standing with him. “We’ll pick a better night.”

He reached for his jacket, adjusted the fold of his cane, and turned to leave— when the bell above the door jingled.

Yelena stepped inside, sunglasses perched in her hair, a paper bag in one hand and a too-innocent smile on her face.

“Aw, look at this. My two favorite nerds.”

Matt paused mid-step. “Yelena.”

“Mr. Murdock,” she said brightly. “Fancy seeing you here. Hope I’m not interrupting any... legal bonding.”

You deadpanned. “You are. But don’t let that stop you.”

Matt chuckled under his breath. “I’ll leave you to it.”

You watched him leave— pausing just long enough to lean in and press a soft kiss to your lips, quick and warm, like punctuation at the end of a long sentence. Then he was gone.

Yelena waited a full beat after the door shut before turning to you with a look.

“You lied to him, didn’t you?”

You picked up your half-finished drink and took a long sip. “Only because he lied first.”

Yelena looked thrilled. “Ohhh, this is gonna be fun.”

——————————————————————————————————

The docks reeked of salt and rust, the fog rolling in heavy over the water like it had something to hide. Yelena crouched beside you behind a stack of shipping containers, her braid pulled tight, her knives already slick with someone else's blood.

"Four more on the upper level," she said, voice low and steady.

"Two by the crates, one pacing by the boat," you added. "Third’s probably on lookout.”

Yelena grinned. “Just like Budapest.”

“I’m not reminiscing with you while hiding and smelling like fish.”

You were already moving— silent, efficient. Two guards down in under a minute. A third turned, startled, just in time to catch Yelena’s elbow in the face.

You were halfway to the second stack when a thud hit the ground behind you. A figure in red.

You turned, ready to strike.

"Easy," came the familiar voice.

Your heart skipped once. Just once.

Daredevil.

Yelena straightened beside you, blade still in hand. “Dude. What the hell.”

“I’m not here to get in the way, I swear,” Daredevil said, tone even, unreadable. “We could work together.”

You exchanged a look with Yelena. Her brows lifted, daring you to call the shots.

"Fine," you said. “Just, don’t slow us down.”

He nodded once, readying himself— then tilted his head slightly in Yelena’s direction.

“She's new. Who’s your friend?”

Yelena smirked, stepping past him with a gleam in her eye. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

And then you moved— no time for anything else.

The fight was fast, chaotic— muffled grunts, broken bones, steel against skin. You worked like you'd never left the field. Knife, fist, elbow. Yelena at your side. And Daredevil... flanking, striking, always just in the right place at the right time.

But that was the problem.

He was too good.

He moved like he didn’t even need to look at the layout. God knows if he can even see anything through that mask. Dodged a swing from behind without looking. Tilted his head slightly every time someone approached, like he heard them coming—

And when you shouted, “Duck!” mid-sweep, he reacted a beat faster than sight could manage.

Your chest went cold.

Blind. Bruises. Lies. His voice. Your eyes locked on his masked face mid-spin and suddenly, everything clicked.

Holy shit.

Holy. Shit.

Matt.

You didn’t miss a beat— kept fighting, didn’t let it show. But you knew. And he didn’t know you knew.

And Matt? He was noticing things too.

The precision in your hits. The way you landed without sound. Your balance. Your calm. The way your heartbeat never spiked, even in the thick of blood and noise.

He’d heard it before— more than once, in quieter moments. In the space between conversations at your bookstore, when you handed him a cup of coffee and your fingers brushed his. In the office, when you laughed at something Foggy said and tried to hide it behind a file. He’d memorized your rhythm without ever meaning to.

And now, in the chaos, it was unmistakable. His chest clenched mid-fight.

You.

The realization hit him like a punch to the ribs, followed by an actual punch to the ribs. He quickly recovered and retaliated, still lost in his thoughts.

That was you moving beside him— calculated, silent, lethal.

You weren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to be like this. But you were. You moved like someone who didn’t just know violence— you had lived in it. Adapted to it. Survived it. He could hear it in the way you breathed, the way you anticipated hits like you'd studied the fight before it even started.

It clicked halfway through the second wave of men— when you threw your body in front of his and took a hit that should’ve been his. You winced, gritted your teeth, and kept moving like nothing happened.

He ducked under a pipe and drove his fist into a man’s gut, head spinning now for a different reason. You weren’t just the girl next door with the most cozy bookstore in the world.

You were trained. Conditioned. Deadly.

Widow, he thought. Of course. Of course, you’re a Widow.

The realization didn’t slow him down— if anything, it made him faster. He pivoted to cover your blind side just as you lunged forward to disarm the final gunman. Back-to-back, two silent protectors tangled in a storm of fists and steel and fury.

The last guy went down hard. Silence followed. Heavy breathing, the clatter of a gun skidding across the dock. You turned to look at Daredevil—

But he was already gone. Just like that.

Yelena jogged up behind you, wiping blood off her knife with a rag. “Okay,” she panted. “That was not part of the plan, but it was less of a shit show than I expected." 

You stared at the empty space where he’d vanished.

Your heart was still racing, but for a very different reason now.

“I… I think I know who that was,” you murmured.

Yelena raised an eyebrow. “Well? Don’t leave me hanging.”

You turned to her slowly, wide-eyed.

“Dude,” you said breathlessly. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

——————————————————————————————————

You slammed the door behind you, tossed your keys into the bowl by the entrance, and stood there for a second, wide-eyed and winded.

Matt. Murdock. Was. Daredevil.

You turned slowly to look at Yelena, who was flopped dramatically on your couch, one boot already off, the other halfway dangling.

"Okay," you said, pacing. "Okay. Okay."

Yelena raised a brow. “That’s a lot of okays.”

“He knows. He knows it’s me.”

"Did he say that?"

"No. But— he was there. Fighting next to me. You don’t just forget a person’s rhythm like that.”

“Alright, Mr Miyagi, calm down,” Yelena muttered. “Did he see your face?”

“No.”

“Then he doesn’t know,” she said with finality, grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl she'd found somehow. “But you know he’s Daredevil?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Well... that’s fun,” Yelena said. “Kinky. Do you guys roleplay in the suit?”

You threw a cushion at her.

She ducked it easily, grinning. “Relax, Sunshine. He doesn’t know. We’ll deal with it in the morning.”

The next morning

You woke up to a single text on your phone.

Matt: We need to talk.

Your stomach dropped.

You stared at the screen for a full minute, then looked at Yelena, who was eating cereal out of your favorite mug like it was her house.

“He knows,” you said, voice flat.

She peered over the rim of the mug. “About the Widowing or the lying or the whole knife ballet by the docks?”

“All of it.”

Yelena snorted. “You’re being dramatic. He’s a man. I promise you he noticed nothing.

——————————————————————————————————

He didn’t knock.

You looked up from the counter of your shop just in time to see Matt step through the door— coat slung over one arm, jaw tight, his whole presence coiled and deliberate like he’d been rehearsing this confrontation all the way over. Your chest tightened. Behind the mystery section, Yelena dropped into a crouch like she was on mission.

“Hey,” you said cautiously.

Matt held up his phone. “Got your message.”

You blinked. “I didn’t—”

He arched an eyebrow.

“Right. That message.”

He moved to the counter, leaning forward just slightly. Trying to keep it civil. It wasn’t working.

“You lied to me.”

You crossed your arms. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Fair enough,” he said flatly. “Last night. The ‘errands’ that somehow involved you taking out the entire Ranskahov crew with a very familiar blonde.”

Yelena’s voice drifted from behind the shelves: “Rude, I was extremely subtle.”

“You stabbed someone while humming Toxic, Yelena,” Matt said flatly.

“It’s called multi-tasking,” she shot back. "Wait, how'd you know I am blonde?"

Matt exhaled sharply through his nose, frustration leaking through his carefully even tone. “I thought I could trust you.”

You blinked, surprised by the weight behind the words.

“I don’t understand why you’d lie to me about something like this,” he went on. “You disappeared for a night, showed up in the middle of a takedown like it was routine, and didn’t think I’d figure it out?”

You crossed your arms, jaw tightening. “Pot, meet kettle.”

Matt’s brow creased. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve been lying to me for months, Matt,” you snapped, eyes narrowing. “So forgive me if I don’t feel guilty for keeping one thing to myself.”

Yelena’s voice chimed in helpfully from behind the shelf. “Technically two things. You also said you were allergic to cats and we both know that’s a lie.”

Matt didn’t even look in her direction. “This isn’t the same, (Y/n).”

“No?” you shot back. “Because I remember you brushing off every bruise, every night you vanished, every time I found blood on your shirt. But when I keep something close to the chest, suddenly it’s a betrayal?”

He looked away for a beat, jaw clenched.  You stepped around the counter, folding your arms. “Yeah. So let’s not throw stones, Daredevil.”

Yelena raised a hand. “I’d like to throw one.”

“Shush,” you and Matt both said in unison.

“You really want to stand there and pretend like you’re on the moral high ground, Matt?”

Yelena popped her head up just long enough to say, “Oooh, he’s going to need ice for that burn,” then ducked back down.

Matt turned back toward you slowly, the fight draining from his posture, replaced by something quieter. Something closer to hurt.

“I’m not mad that you can handle yourself,” he said, softer now. “I’m mad that you didn’t let me in. That you didn’t think I could take it.”

You stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “Funny. I could say the same thing.” 

Yelena coughed meaningfully. “Anyway, since we’re all being honest now, can I get a ruling on whether this is a breakup or foreplay?”

You and Matt both groaned.

Matt turned toward her. “Do you have to be here for this?”

“Yes,” you and Yelena said at the same time.

You exhaled through your nose, some of the tension bleeding out of your shoulders. “I didn’t keep it from you because I didn’t trust you,” you said, voice quieter now. “I kept it from you because I didn’t want to ruin this. Whatever this is.”

Matt nodded slowly, like he understood— because he did. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

A beat passed.  

“I just didn’t want you in this world,” Matt said after a moment. “Not this part of it.”

You sighed. “I know. And I didn’t want you to see that side of me, either. Not if I didn’t have to.”

A pause. Something gentler settled between you.

“So what now?” you asked. “We just… go back to pretending we’re two normal people who work too much and flirt in the office kitchen?”

Matt smiled faintly. “That wasn’t pretending.”

You mirrored it. “Fair.”

He shifted on his feet. “We’re both good at lying. Maybe too good. But I don’t want to lie to you anymore.”

“Me either.”

Another pause, not quite awkward. Just full. 

From behind the shelf: “Boring. Now either make out or fuck. I need to know what genre this is.”

You and Matt turned to her in sync.

“Get out,” you both said.

Yelena grinned. “Love you too.”

She made for the door with a dramatic little bow. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” you muttered. 

After the door shut behind her, the silence felt warmer. Softer. Matt was still observing you, his expression a little looser now, the storm behind his eyes finally settling. You stepped into his space without thinking. His arms slid around you like they’d been waiting for exactly this. 

Your cheek pressed lightly against his chest. “Well,” you murmured, “now what?”

Matt’s hand traced a slow line up your spine. “She gave us options before she left.”

You glanced up at him. “Options? Sounded more like a to-do list to me.”

A small, crooked smile tugged at his lips. “In that case, I have some ideas.”

[sparrows4bats]

Pretty Damian is killing me. @ghostly-bat @bizzylosingcats I hope you enjoy the fruits of the seeds you have sown in my mind.

Damian grows up to look like Talia more and more. He still has his Dad's jawline and brows, but that is Talias Baby! By the time he is an adult, he has Talias nose and cheekbones. Her skintone and green eyes. When he forgets to get his hair cut, his mother's waves appear. When he smiles, it is an Al ghul grin.

Due to being vegetarian and training with Dick and Talia the most, Damian is lithe and flexible. Built for speed and stealth. He doesn't have the bulk of his brothers and stops growing at 5 foot 10, a respectable height even if Jon keeps resting his chin on his head!

Overall, Damian is a supermodel in the making he just doesn't realise it, but it's not his fault. All of the Wayne's are ridiculously good-looking, and Damian never notices his pretty privilege because he chalks the stuff people do for him up to him being a Wayne. He doesn't view people and physical appearance like that, so the idea they are hitting on him doesn't even cross his mind.

His family doesn't realise how big an issue this is until Damian shows up to a Wayne Gala dressed to nines for the first time in years.

Since starting his paediatric and Truama Surgery specialities, Damian has pretty much lived in scrubs, and when he is not working, he's in pyjamas trying to rest as much as possible before his next shift.

So, when Bruce forces them all to attend the Wayne Gala, Damain asks Stephanie and Cass to pick out his outfit for him because he's busy.

The girls get him a fitted black suit with a deep green dress shirt that is artfully unbuttoned to show off his collar bone. He is adorned in gold jewellery and has subtle kohl around his eyes to complete the look.

When he enters the Gala, he captures the awe and attention of everybody. The socialites crowd around Dr Wayne, much to the horror of his family.

Dick spends the night rescuing Damian from his admirers.

Tim pays attention to who gets a little too close and decides on a few little investigations later.

Jason punches a guy who tries to grope him.

Bruce is inundated with blind date requests and even arranged marriage proposals. It's the first time he has been considering getting drunk for real at a party.

The girls are proud of themselves and terrified of what they have released into the world.

Duke spends the party helping Damian hide with his powers.

The issue is that it doesn't stop after the Gala. Photos of Damian are leaked to the press, and Gotham goes wild!

A young prodigy doctor who works with underprivileged children! And he looks like that! There's fan pages up in minutes.

He's an animal lover?! Well, now his pets all have fan pages, too!

Damian Wayne is out trending his entire family and said family are losing their collective mind!

They hate it. If they see one more thirst post, Oracle is going to start ruining lives! (Damian, who, other than looking at art pages, does not use social media, is blissfully ignorant of it all.)

It gets worse when the heroes meet Dr Wayne one day. They know Robin retired, and those who know the batfamilys identify know Damian went to school, but no one has seen him in a while.

No one is prepared for the re introduction.

During a potentially world ending event, Superman gets injured. They can't get to the internal injuries because of the inpeneratable skin, and there's a lump of kryptonite lodged somewhere inside of him. And instead of panicking or trying to help, his son flies off.

Everyone is so confused. Until he returns minutes later carrying a man in a white coat.

"Everyone stand back now!"

Batman and his team obey instantly; forcing everyone else to do the same. Superboy lets the man go as he runs to the fallen Superman.

Then, he takes out a medical kit from seemingly nowhere and inspects the wound. "Jon I'm going to need you to hold him still while I sedate him."

It's only after the surgery began that they noticed all of the instruments glow green.

"It's done, but he needs yellow sun," the stranger turns to the crowd that's gathered. "Is anyone else hurt?"

They all freeze at the sight of green eyes, messy hair, and a perfect face. Slowly, all hands go up.

The gorgeous man sighs, "Batman, Nightwing, I need you to grab med bags 7 A and 8 B. They are stocked for Metas and Diagnostic Use."

Both men glare at them but do as they are told.

"Now I want everyone to form a line, Spoiler can you help with triage?" The purple vigilante nods.

The doctor is there for hours and sees each one of them. Many blush as he examines them.

Superboy, meanwhile, hovers over his father and glares the entire time.

The Bats guard the doctor but listen to his every demand. (Apparently, they were hiding their own injuries. The beautiful man berates them all while stitching them up and force feeding Red Robin pills.)

When they leave, many have a lot of questions, many looking for his number.

Nightwing, Batman, and Superboy look especially pissed when Blue Beetle asks him for it.

The pretty doctor appears a few more times always accompanied by the Bats and the Supers. (Many heros try to catch his attention, but Batman always seems to know when they cause their injuries on purpose.)

Jon is pissed. When he went and got Damian for his Dad, he never expected it to go like this!

He sees how the others look at Damian, how they try to impress him, and wants to drag his Robin from the Watchtower immediately.

Where was this admiration when Damian was Robin? When he was literally killing himself to be a good leader, a good hero? They didn't want him, either of them, then. They don't deserve him now.

So Jon does something he should have done years ago and asks Damian Wayne on a date. He is so lucky he says yes.

Their dating life is so easy, so natural it feels like they can breathe easier even though they didn't realise they were struggling before.

Jon gets to wooing the love of his life. It's not hard, but God is it fun to do all the things he has wanted to do for Damian for years.

And Damian apparently does the same. He calls it courting and, for some reason, doesn't freak out when Jon proposes after two months. Their parents sure do, but They dont know that Jon was going to propose after the second date. This was restraint. (Damian was planning his own proposal, but his custom order ring took too long.)

But Jon is blissful, and so is Damian. And no one really blames him after they meet his fiance.

The Next Gala Bruce makes sure to invite the League when they announce their engagement publicly. Jon withstands the envy just fine with his beautiful Robin by his side.

[fatkish]

hello everything is fine? If requests are still open can I request all might x wife fem!reader? The reader is a professional heroine and a professor at UA, but the relationship between All Might and the reader is a secret for the 1A students and the class ends up discovering by accident that he and the heroine reader are married? Thank you in advance

All Might x Wife Reader Headcannons

(Here’s some bits of what your life is like when you’re married to Toshinori and how you guys got together)

I strongly believe that young All Might would have been more open to relationships Pre Nana’s death

This would mean that you were likely a childhood friend or someone he knew before Nana’s death and in order to keep both himself and you safe, you both would have fled to America

Now you can have whatever quirk you want but I strongly believe that Toshinori would prefer a romantic partner who isn’t as famous as him. So likely an underground hero like Eraserhead or a support hero who helps heroes from behind screens or helps them strategize like Nedzu

During your guy’s time in America, you both met David Shield and became friends with him. David would make you some kind of super computer/information network device that would allow you to support All Might from the shadows or he’d make you a super advanced stealth suit that would help you as an underground hero

While you both are in college in America, your relationship grows and you both grow closer. Of course Toshinori has his doubts and fears about losing you to AFO, so you both decide to make a pact. You both would probably have each other agree/promise that you would live for the other if one of you dies. This would mean that if AFO kills you or you’re fatally injured in the line of duty, then Toshinori would live on and continue as a hero without letting your death prevent him from moving forward and the same would go for you if he died

Due to All Might’s rising fame, after you both graduate from college, you both decide to get married but do it discreetly so that means little to no ceremony and you both would hide your relationship from the world and public. Only Grand Torino, Sir Nighteye, David Shield and Nedzu would know that you’re together

You both wouldn’t wear rings so as to not let people know you’re married

When AFO has his big fight with Toshinori that causes him to lose organs and gives him his scar, you, unlike everyone else, support his decision to continue fighting even if it’ll kill him since you know that it’s what he wants to do

After that, you decide to take up a teaching position at UA, as a close combat/martial art instructor and a second English teacher since you’ve actually been overseas in an English speaking country

With your new job you’re able to come home and care for Toshinori’s wound and make meals for him that are easy for him to eat

The students love you. They love listening to your stories of America and they learn a lot. You had helped Nedzu and Present Mic come up with a voluntary English pen pal program with a hero school in America. The program allows for students to write letters between each other and lets them establish contacts in America and it counts as extra credit in their English classes.

Since no one knows that you’re married, the kids freak out when they learn that you’re married to All Might once he retires

Midoriya is surprised that he didn’t know about you and asks you so much about your life with All Might

The girls are always asking for romantic stories about you and All Might.

The kids love to hear stories of young All Might, much to Toshinori’s embarrassment, and constantly ask questions about the two of you

All in all, after All Might retires, you’re the only person who doesn’t protect him and make him feel like he’s someone who needs to be protected and treated like glass

He’s so thankful and happy that he married you

[avaliferous]

Inspired by @keferon ‘s mecha au (spoilers (?) if you haven’t read the idw comics)

(I don’t know if you already had plans for him in the AU, but I had the idea that since he’s already a little guy in a big piece of armor… why not make it here too??)

The Magnus Armor was one of the oldest and biggest suits in the mecha program so it made sense that its pilot was revered by many. It was an unwavering pillar that saved hundreds of thousands and by that extent famous -though second to Blurr (and by a long shot). The mecha was a light of hope for both people and pilots alike; why wouldn’t he be when the average pilot’s lifespan was cut shot and yet, he was still going strong with no signs of stopping. Besides, if it could withstand all those years of fighting then maybe humanity stood a bigger chance against the quintessons than they thought.

Although despite the fame around the mecha and its pilot, no one knew who the pilot actually was. The Magnus Armor (or Ultra Magnus as they all called it) was always taken to a separate hangar after battles and many figured it was because the mecha was so large that it needed its own space to shutdown. So when Jazz had the opportunity to fight alongside him, by the time the battle was over and they returned to the base to recover, he would be lying if he said he wasn’t the least bit curious to see who the pilot under the armor was.

The golden opportunity presented itself when Jazz just so happened to stumble across Magnus’ hangar at the time the pilot was coming out. However, when what emerged wasn’t in fact a middle aged man, Jazz was surprised. He didn’t know what he was expecting but it certainly wasn’t…that. A second suit. A smaller suit, smaller than any he had seen before and that included some of the stealth class mecha (and they were pretty damn small). Then, from that, a person emerged; a shorter man, probably in his late twenties, with a mustache and the stature of someone who certainly didn’t seem like the pilot of a three story tall mecha.

———

Anyways, small little drabble (i dont write as much as i draw so it’s pretty rough…) and whatnot that i needed to get out of my brain desperately so i can focus on blurr again

In addition to that, here are some small doodles of magnus with roddy (the precious boy he is)

[goodlucktai]

What if I said 10 & 20 as portal duo thanks so much

dialogue prompts

10. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving you.”

+ 20. “Get away! You’re hurting them!”

for my beloved meeks

x

They weren’t supposed to be here. It’s stupid, but it’s the first thing that springs to Mikey’s mind. 

Leo had only recently graduated with honors from those initial grueling physical therapy sessions that usually ended in tears (not always Leo’s) to daily exercises that got easier and easier until he was breezing through them the way he used to breeze through everything. 

If he went farther than two steps away from his arm crutches Donnie appeared out of thin air looking ready to breathe fire at him, and Raph was in the habit now of holding Leo out at arm’s length immediately after every hug in the manner of scruffing an unruly kitten to double-check he was wearing his leg brace and compression sleeve, and Mikey had learned the hard way what everyone meant when they said medics make the absolute worst patients. 

But for the most part Leo was doing really good! He was hitting all his marks and only driving everyone a tiny bit insane—well within the allotted Leo amount! 

So when he had smiled that crooked, conspiring smile at Mikey the minute the coast was clear and said, “There’s no better strengthening exercise then sneaking out with my favorite little brother for a past-due victory smoothie,” what was Mikey supposed to tell him? No??

It did occur to him, a tiny little guilty whisper. Leo was healing. He’d been so badly hurt. Even Splinter, who spoiled Leonardo rotten, hadn’t given into the slider’s constant pleas to rush the recovery process along. They were going by the book. Literally, since Donatello had stepped up as team medic in the interim. Don and Raph and April and even Casey were all very good at not bending an inch no matter how many tragic looks got sent their way. Mikey wasn’t very good at that at all. 

And anyway, joy had drowned out that whisper with a shout. He lit up with it, that newly-discovered supernova inside him curling up like a happy cat in a patch of sunshine. There’s a very big part of him that will always be what it’s always been, no matter how old he gets, or how powerful his mystic arts become—he’ll always be Michelangelo, and Michelangelo will follow Leonardo absolutely anywhere. 

So he said, “I’ll get my hoodie!” and darted out the door with zero ninja stealth, clipping his shoulder on the frame and almost crashing into the table in the hall. Leo laughed behind him, and the unrestrained sound made Mikey feel like he could float. Maybe he actually did for a second or two. 

He’ll never forget those horrible minutes after the portal closed, after Leo’s comms went dead, when he had wondered if he would ever hear his brother’s voice again. When he wondered what, exactly, his last words to Leo had been—they almost certainly weren’t I love you or please don’t leave so they didn’t count. 

To make up for it, he wanted to tell Leo everything every chance he got. He wanted to make him laugh all the time. He wanted to crowd into the little twin-size infirmary bed to watch movies or do art projects that got glitter everywhere. He wanted to sneak out for smoothies even though it would get them in big trouble, because that was literally why he helped save the world in the first place. 

And now he’s standing in a dim sidestreet, an orange streetlight buzzing dully above him, two smoothies melting in his hands. It’s their usual shortcut home, through a bunch of foreclosed apartment buildings and a dead end road. Leonardo is in front of him, shoulders stiff, ninpo humming weakly beneath his skin like a tired little beetle that shouldn’t be up from hibernation just yet. 

Across the road are half a dozen humans in what looks like riot gear labeled TCRI and a man in a black suit. The man somehow looks more dangerous than the people in police armor. 

“Leo,” Mikey says in a small voice. His brother doesn’t answer, but he does shift his weight to put Mikey more firmly behind him, which is answer enough. 

And Mikey thinks, We weren’t supposed to be here. No one knows where we are. 

The man in the suit starts talking into the bulky earpiece he’s wearing, but Mikey can’t make out what he’s saying over the buzzing of the streetlamp and the pounding of his own heart in his ears. All he hears is Leonardo murmur, “Mikey, go.”

“No,” Mikey’s mouth says automatically. It doesn’t even need any input from his brain to say it. Because no. 

“Mike,” Leo says, in his best leader voice. But his tone is urgent in a way that borders on being scared so closely it must mean he’s actually terrified, or he would never have let Mikey hear even a hint of it. “I’d go with you if I could. I’m sorry I can’t.” 

His hands tighten on his crutches. He can’t run. He’s still healing. He should be at home, doing his exercises with those little pink dumbbells in the warmth and safety of the lair, complaining the whole time in between tossing out ideas for dinner. 

Mikey should have said no to sneaking out the way Donnie and Raphie would have instantly said no. He should be better at taking care of Leo the way he needs to be taken care of, the way everyone else does so easily. 

The armored people start to shift to the side, moving around Mikey and Leo in a wide formation, hands on the guns holstered at their waists. Containing them. The man in the suit is still talking, face inscrutable behind the tinted glasses he’s wearing, but his face hasn’t twitched away from their direction even once. 

“Hey,” Leo says, bringing Mikey’s attention back. “Don’t look at them, look at me.”

He’s smiling over his shoulder like it’s any other back-alley brawl with the mutant of the week or a handful of those Foot soldiers who never know when to quit, and not a horrible high-stakes situation in which Mikey stands to lose one of the most important things in the entire world if he makes the wrong move. 

“Just get home and get the guys, okay? Then come right back for me. You can outrun these goons without breaking a sweat. You can do anything.”

Mikey drops the smoothies and the cold wet soaks through one of his sneakers instantly but he needs his hands free so he can clutch the back of Leo’s stupid hoodie. He needs to hold on tight and make sure whoever tries to take his brother away knows exactly what kind of knock-down drag-out fight they’re in for. 

“I don’t care,” Mikey says, too loud in the stillness. “I’m not leaving you.”

He wishes he were a snapper like Raphie. If he was big and strong and had a shell that was as good as bulletproof armor, he’d scoop Leonardo up and shield him from the guns and run them both away. 

If he was a genius like Donnie, he’d have one or a dozen gadgets on his person that would have saved them. 

But he’s just Mikey, who isn’t big and strong, who isn’t a genius, who isn’t one of the people Leonardo is willing to step down and be weak in front of and depend on. Just Mikey, who Leo saved all his best jokes for during painful rehab, like it mattered to him that Mikey didn’t see him struggle. Just Mikey, who Leo always lifts both arms for the second he sees him coming and squishes into the world’s best hug, even if he’s pissed off at everybody else. Just Mikey, who Leo wants to get better for, be the best for, be one of the constant things on this planet Mikey never needs to doubt, like gravity and sunrise and overpriced street food. 

Because there’s a very big part of him that will always be what it’s always been, no matter how mature he gets, or how accomplished a ninja master he becomes—he’ll always be Leonardo, and Leonardo would do anything to make sure Michelangelo keeps smiling. 

Leo is also very stupid, because he doesn’t seem to understand that Mikey will never smile again if his big brother goes away. 

When the TCRI agents explode forward at some signal Mikey missed, and grab the brothers and drag them apart, Leo stumbles and falls when his crutches are wrenched away. He’d probably be making a smart-ass comment if his jaw wasn’t clenched, the sudden fall probably radiating pain all the way up his spine, distress making his gold eyes burn neon yellow. 

Like a flip was switched, all the panic inside of Mikey evaporates into a red-tinged mist. 

The supernova inside him sleeps most of the time, because he’s not big enough to contain its multitudes yet, and it doesn’t want to cause pain. It only wants to shine light in dark places, it only wants to help. But it wakes up with a fury and fills every inch of him to the brim and the overflow spills right out of him, lifts him right off the ground, makes his voice a resounding thunderclap when he yells, “GET AWAY! You’re hurting him!” 

Staggering back and shouting in alarm, the agents begin firing, because humans in a panic are trigger-happy creatures, even well-trained ones like these guys must be. Every round fired disintegrates the second it meets the glow pouring out of Mikey, disappearing before it can do harm. 

“Holy shit,” Leo says, eyes wide. It’s the way Mikey imagines he probably looked at Leo, when everyone else feared Raphael was a lost cause but Leo put his hand on Mikey’s shoulder and told him, I’m not giving up on him. I’m not leaving him behind. A sailor lost in a storm and their first glimpse of the lighthouse in the dark, close enough to save them.

“Hold your fire!” the man in the black suit barks suddenly, his voice viciously angry. “I did not clear any of you to fire!” 

Mikey doesn’t care who the scary Men In Black guy is, or what reason he has for tracking Mikey and his brother down, or why he’s calling the dogs off now. He cares about helping Leo get back on his feet, scooping the crutches up off the ground and getting Leo’s arms in them, and staring right into Agent Sunglasses’s stupid face while the supernova burns and burns and burns inside him. 

Try it, he doesn’t say. Just try it. If the Krang couldn’t take my brother from me, what hope do you think you have?

He feels Leo’s arm slip around his, locking them together at the elbow. Leo’s ninpo, a soft breeze instead of the playful gale it’s supposed to be, weaves through Mikey’s own to lead it. 

‘Like this,’ the wind tells the sunburst, guiding it through the process it wants it to take the same way bigger hands used to guide a smaller Mikey through katas, readjusting his arms and poking him playfully on the beak when he scrunched it in frustration. The golden portal that opens beneath their feet costs him nothing, appearing as effortlessly as Leo’s spinning blue ones always do. 

The agent’s face goes slack with shock the second before the turtles disappear. 

They land on the sofa with enough force that it almost collapses, and Leo makes a pained noise, hands pressed to his plastron like he’s trying to contain a full-body ache with sheer willpower. Mikey scrambles off of him and falls off the sofa for his trouble. His clothes are prickly, like he’s covered in static electricity. A magazine left on the coffee table begins to move, pages flipping as if in a breeze. One of the beanbag chairs lifts up slightly, like gravity has gotten lighter in that specific spot. 

He feels too big for himself. There are multitudes inside him, a million different things that are all true at the same time. He’s still so angry, and he’s still so afraid, and he’s still just Mikey, who couldn’t be what Leo needed him to be until the last possible second. 

Just Mikey, who Leo saves his best smile for. Just Mikey, who Leo hugs like it’s the easiest thing in the world to bring another person that close and trust them right next to his heart. 

“You’re the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Leo says, like it’s another truth Mikey can keep for as long as he wants. Forever, even.

There will be hell to pay when their brothers get home. There’s a brand-new danger their family needs to be made aware of. Leo tried to leave him behind again and it reopened a wound that was still raw and healing.

But for now that wild star in his heart doesn’t need to burn so bright. It can put all the furniture that began to float back down and go back to sleep. And Mikey can press his face into the cracked print of Leo’s favorite Chappell Roan hoodie and say, “Hope you enjoyed your last taste of freedom for the next hundred years.”

Leo laughs, but doesn’t let go of Mikey right away. He clings extra hard for an extra long minute.

He would have left, Mikey realizes, but he didn’t want to go. When he was alone on the Technodrome, staring down a monster and a portal and the truth of how to save everyone, he didn’t want to go. If there was any other choice, he would have taken it. He would have come home. 

Mikey isn’t Leo, who will do what he has to do no matter what it costs himself. Mikey isn't Raph or Donnie. Mikey is and always has been the spoiled baby of the family, who will do exactly what he wants to do and damn the consequences. He’ll tear a thousand holes open in the universe if that’s what it takes to keep his family together, and if the Hamato ancestors don’t like it then they can come and take their ninpo back. 

They can try, anyway. 

[thirstyforlulu]

i thought of two cute scenarios: lulu returning to his wife and children after a long trip and/or lulu playing and teaching vampire/warrior tricks to his children!! 🥹

Why not both?!

Getting back to you and the kids is the highlight of his day

After a long day at work his stress melts away the moment your children run to greet him at the door

Then he gets to hug you, his darling, and everything feels right in the world

When he has to be gone for long periods of time he’s miserable

If possible, he’ll call every day just to hear your voices

If he can’t for stealth reasons, he’ll be even extra irritable

When he finally gets to come home, he rushes like crazy

As soon as his mission is over, he’s headed your way

Sometimes he gets so focused on getting home that he forgets to call ahead and surprises you

Those are the best

The kids jump up with excitement and shout “Daddy’s home!” before running full speed toward him

He always scoops them up and gives them big hugs to make up for the time he missed

Then with the kids still in his arms, he walks over and gives you a kiss

Lulu would want to make sure the kids are well trained and prepared for life as vampires

He’s going to protect them as best he can, but he wants them to be able to handle themselves if it came down to it

He’ll wait until they’re a little older before he’ll start teaching them

First will be the vampire basics like transforming, drinking blood, and what to avoid

Then once they have that down, he’ll start combat training

By starting with the vampire stuff, they’ll be stronger physically, so he won’t have to worry as much about them overdoing it in training

First he’ll teach them hand to hand combat stuff

He wrestled with them when they were young so they already know a little

He’ll even teach them how to use their vampiric powers in combat, similar to how he does

Once they can handle themselves without a weapon, he’ll help them find a weapon they like

If they’re a sharpshooter like him, he’ll get them a beautiful gun worthy of the vampire king’s child

If they are more suited to swords, he’ll get them something just as exquisite

They don’t get to shoot daddy’s guns until he knows they can handle it

One time he let you try it and you were nearly knocked over, so he’s not going to make the same mistake with the kiddos

[tribbetherium]

The Middle Therocene: 35 million years post-establishment

Searet Relationships: Marine Fearrets of the Middle Therocene

As the Great Lakes of Nodera opened up to the seas, the aquatic hamsters of the large landlocked water would find a new frontier accessible to them: the oceans. First would come the tailless pondrats, expanding into the seas and becoming even more specialized to water to become the bayvers, a diverse clade including herbivores, omnivores and carnivores in their ranks. But they would find an ocean already contested by a now-dominant clade that reigned unchallenged in the absence of vertebrate competition in marine ecological niches: the shrarks. Growing to immense sizes for an arthropod, with the biggest being the two-meter long megaprawns of open seas, and armed with powerful 'biting' pincers, they patrolled the shallow coasts, reefs and open seas as the apex predators of their time. Originally hunting only other shrish species, many of which grew quite big at sizes of a meter or more, the bayvers found themselves quickly added to the menu: and thus, in these early days, remained semiaquatic and pinniped-like to escape onto the shores out of reach of the marine hunters, most restricted to bouncing and wiggling on their bellies on land, and some, the more basal wavewaddlers, retaining the ability to clumsily walk using their fused rear flippers: ties to the land being a constraint that had restricted their diversity for the past few million years.

But another species from the lakes had spread out from the seas in this time, and would eventually turn the tide in the favor of the hamsters. The lake searet, an ambush predator related to the carnohams, that fed on aquatic and terrestrial prey alike, found the Centralic Ocean a very welcome place to expand, and soon spread throughout the inner coasts of Ecatoria, Nodera, Westerna and Easaterra. In the past ten million years these had diversified, diverging into a wide array of species occupying varied niches.

Propelled by enlarged, webbed hind feet and tails adapted for steering, the searets were well-suited for maneuvering and foraging in the water. Their powerful jaws, in particular, made them superbly built for tackling hard-shelled prey: a useful adaptation that prevented them from competing with the other main marine hamster lineage of the time, the bayvers, which fed on smaller shrish, bottom-dwelling crustaceans, and even marine plants.

Brown coastal rodders (Lutromyocricetus vulgaris) are among the most basal of the species, and the most widespread. They have a preference toward hard-shelled prey too tough for bayvers to crack, such as slow-moving armored shrish. The bayvers, faster in the water, were pursuit hunters of shrish that specialized on speed and shoaling to evade predators, while rodders, more suited for maneuveravility, dexterity and stealth than speed, preferred those that were more heavily defended but were slower and easier to catch.

Some species, such as the dappled rockasheller (Duroclastemys circulupunctus), would even rely on beyond just their physical limitations, and augment their diet with the help of primitive tools as well. Using stones or bits of coral as blunt hammers, they break open the shells of bivalves, large snails, and heavily-armored lobster-like shrish as well, in order to access the nutritious meat within. This is primarily an instinctive, rather than learned, behavior: young rockashellers will often carry around small stones and use them to hit hard objects as an act of play, completely oblivious of the reason of this behavior and gradually learn to use this behavior for feeding through experience and imitation of older members of their species.

Marine searets, as a whole, are far more independent of land than bayvers are, and can in fact spend their whole lives at sea: feeding, sleeping, mating, grooming and bearing their young all while floating at the surface of the water, gathering in family groups of a dozen or two for safety. Fiercely protective of their packmates, they, instead of timidly fleeing from danger like bayvers do, instead mob and attack any predatory shrarks that threaten them, and occasionally even successfully killing their assailants: setting the stage for a complete overhaul of the dynamics of the ocean biomes as a whole.

Over time, this defensive mobbing behavior turned into active predation in some of the larger species, with shrarks, and other large shrish, no longer being seen as enemies or competitors, but as prey. The largest searet species of this time, the goliath searet (Titanolutromys goliah) can reach lengths of over eight feet from snout to tail and weigh about two hundred kilograms: making them formidable predators of the open seas, and the first hamsters to fill the niche. Goliath searets are powerful swimmers, so much so that they basically never come to land willingly, and, while big enough to prey upon bayvers, rarely do so unless desperate, as bayvers are too fast and evasive for their liking while they are much slower ambush hunters. Instead, their preferred prey of choice are the giant armored meter-long shrish abundant in the shallows, including filter-feeding, grazing and predatory members of their clade. At their size, they are large enough to tackle shrarks on their own, and now live by themselves or in mated pairs, as well as their offspring which stay with their parents for about two years before becoming fully independent.

Rather than becoming yet an additional danger to pose a significant threat in the water, if anything, the presence of the searets actually was a net benefit to the bayvers, as their rampant hunting of predatory shrarks in the shallows gradually forced the deadly arthropods further out to sea: and reduced the predator densities of the tropical coastal reefs that did prey on the bayvers regularly, to make a relatively safer sea for the marine pondrats to press onward into, and finally diversify. At long last, the monopoly of the seas by the shrish has been challenged by the hamsters: and in the eons to come, the searets' impact on the ocean ecology will have lasting effects felt even millions of years later as they, and the bayvers, attain remarkable proportions only creatures with internal skeletons could ever hope to achieve.

-------

[silverskye13]

Angst prompt courtesy of: @theunderscorwolph

[Part 1 of 2]

[Part 2 Found Here]

Helsknight waited... Probably too long to check in on Tanguish. In his defense, the last time he spoke to Tanguish, he was heading to Hermitcraft, and while Hermitcraft was far from safe, it was, in its own ways, safer than hels. There were fewer people, fewer hazards in general, and there was Tango. Tango wasn't a fighter. As far as Helsknight could tell, he was mostly just squirrelly, and a bit cowardly. But he was fiercely loyal. That went a long way. He had even, misguidedly, attempted to save Tanguish from Helsknight once. Helsknight, who recognized he was a big, scary, angry-looking, armed and armored knight, could respect that. And Tango and Tanguish were friends, and they got wrapped up in each other sometimes, and this was far from the first time Tanguish was gone all day talking to his other half about some project.

It was, however, the first time he'd been gone for two days in a row.

Helsknight didn't really consider himself to be a worrier. Tanguish was an adult. He could take care of himself. And even if he couldn't take care of himself, Helsknight could recognize that everyone had some level of pride. Butting in on someone else's business uninvited was a great way to be a nuisance at best, and a problem at worst. So, Tanguish didn't come back by the evening? If there was a problem, Helsknight would respectfully let him handle it. Tanguish knew to come get him for help. And while Helsknight would feel truly guilty if his dithering caused Tanguish to respawn, he could take some solace in knowing he would wreak holy vengeance on whoever did it.

[That was one of the perks of being a knight: when you pointed at someone and said something along the lines of "Through hels or high water I will smite thee" or some such dramatic nonsense, people tended to get out of your way and let you get to business.]

Day two of no Tanguish, and Helsknight went from being passively concerned, to something closer to open nervousness. He asked, as subtly as he could, around the Colosseum if anyone had seen him. No one had, though Martyn did make a joke about Tanguish finally getting wise and finding a real knight to squire to.

[EB really needed to stop getting between them when Martyn said things like that. The power of a bloody nose on shitty humor was astounding.]

Eventually, Helsknight had given up and decided the best thing to do was go to Hermitcraft and track the little pest down himself. He suited up for what he thought might be a mild amount of trouble -- it was always possible he would run into Wels when he was on Hermitcraft, and if he planned on searching for someone, he wanted to minimize the time he was fighting his double. He donned his chainmail, and the netherite gauntlets and grieves. He made sure the clasps on his boots were pulled tight. He cinched on his netherite sword, and made sure it pulled easily from the sheath.

He picked up his cloak last, and gave it a contemplative frown. In hels, the cloak was a distinctive and somewhat necessary piece of costuming. It was the visual shorthand he needed to inform everyone that he was a knight, and therefore probably knew his way around a sword [and wasn't worth mugging]. For those who knew knights, it told them what Order he was a part of. Useful. On Hermitcraft, however... Being able to tell at a glance that he was a red-themed knight in dark armor, who looked suspiciously like but not quite enough like one of the other server members...

While Helsknight weighed the pros and cons of stealth and subtly, two things he was famously very bad at, the shield hanging on his wall shuddered and kicked, and someone tumbled out of the reflection with a shriek. Helsknight sighed and rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling. He did a slow count to ten in his head, and tried not to be very, very annoyed he'd just spent twenty minutes putting on armor for no good gods-damned reason.

"Tanguish," Helsknight hummed, when he thought he could keep his voice relatively neutral, "for no reason in particular, I think we should make some ground rules about when you should check in with people--"

Helsknight turned, looked down, and anything else he was going to say vanished out of his head with such abruptness, it made his ears ring. Laying prone on the floor of Helsknight's cell, staring with wide, somewhat terrified eyes and the kind of grin that screamed about recently realized mistakes, was Tango. The Hermit blinked up at him. Helsknight blinked down at him. Somewhere down the hall, somebody laughed at something, which was their only indication that the whole world hadn't frozen with them when they made eye contact.

Helsknight could say, with honesty, he never expected to be put in a situation where a Hermit stumbled into hels, much less into his cell in the Colosseum, surrounded by all the biggest, scariest, most dangerous people in hels. At a complete loss on what to do, he fell back on what he thought was safest: namely, making sure no one got killed over it. Helsknight leaped over Tango -- who screeched ingloriously -- crossed to the door of his cell and slammed it shut. There was no lock -- he'd never needed one until now -- so he settled on turning his back to the door and bracing against it, content in the knowledge that, should someone come inside, he would be the first one to know.

It did not hearten him to see that Tango was still on his floor. He had apparently, when Helsknight stepped over him, curled up as small as he could, anticipating some kind of attack. He'd thrown his arms up over his face, and now peered at Helsknight through his fingers, humming tuneless, horrified syllables.

"Tangotek," Helsknight said, concentrating on keeping his voice very calm and very quiet, "you aren't welcome in my home."

"I didn't know I was going to end up here," Tango whispered back, his voice high and tense as a violin string.

"Go home."

Something flickered in Tango's eyes, something like determination. Helsknight hated that look.

"Uhm. N-no can do. Sorry."

"Can't." Helsknight said, barring his teeth at the Hermit. "Or won't."

Tango made a face at him, tight-lipped and tense. He propped himself up on his elbows. "Uhm. If. If I say won't, will you kill me?"

"Possibly."

"Then I can't. Definitely, definitely, physically can't." Tango looked around, scrambled to his feet, and dashed to Helsknight's bed. He, admirably, only winced a little when he set his spawn -- probably worried hels worked like the nether, and the bed would manage to explode somehow. With a bit more confidence this time, Tango stated again: "Can't."

"I can break that." Helsknight seethed quietly, and tried very hard not to grind his teeth. "It would piss me off. I like being able to sleep here. But I can break that, and send you back to Hermitcraft."

"But you don't want to do that," Tango said nervously. "Because-- uh-- you'd have to kill me, and Tanguish would be really, really upset about that."

"Tanguish isn't here. So either run home, or I will... escort you there." Helsknight put on his most wicked grin, and placed his hand on his sword meaningfully.

Tango staggered a step back away from Helsknight, somehow managing to go paler than he already was. The redstone freckles adorning his face sparked, and the flame of his hair took on a slightly green cast. The idiot Hermit was apparently made of very stern stuff, though, because he didn't flee for the nearest reflection. He took a few seconds to breathe. He had his own sword, a fact that Helsknight only noticed because his hand twitched towards the hilt uncertainly. Helsknight wasn't alarmed. Tango didn't move like someone who knew how to use a sword well, and he was fairly sure the Hermit's hands were shaking so much he would drop it if he tried to draw it.

Tango swallowed hard, darted a tongue across his lips, and asked with only a minimal tremor in his voice, "Uh, T-Tanguish isn't here? Like, not here here, or like... Not in hels, here?"

Helsknight narrowed his eyes. "Is he supposed to be?"

"He left my place yesterday, and said he would be back in a few hours," Tango explained quickly. "I thought-- like, you know, maybe he decided to wait until morning? But. He didn't come back. And I got worried. He. You know. He tells me if he can't make it. It's-- all it takes is a reflection to talk. You know? And I did look in my reflection, but I couldn't see anything, which normally means he's not by one. It was just dark."

Tango crossed his arms. It was a gesture that somehow made him look smaller.

"I thought-- I hoped-- you know. Hopping through the reflection. I could just check on him. Make sure he was okay. I think. I think maybe it just took me to his spawn point."

Tango thought that statement over, then flashed Helsknight an incredulous, almost horrified look, "Why is his spawn point your bed?"

"Tanguish was supposed to be with you," Helsknight frowned.

"You haven't seen him?"

"No." Helsknight rested his hand on his sword hilt, mostly just so he wouldn't fidget. "Could he have gone back to Hermitcraft and you just missed each other?"

"I checked," Tango said, shaking his head. "I have... X gave a few of us console access. I did a few scans... Is there. Anyone you know with that kind of access for hels?"

"Hels and Hermitcraft are different places." Helsknight wrinkled his nose. "Maybe Evil X?"

"Cool! We'll talk to him then!"

"Oh sure," Helsknight spat derisively, "I'll just go knock on the front door to Evil X's tower and ask politely for admin access, will I?"

Tango grimaced. "Will he not... Like that kind of thing?"

"Oh he'd just love it. One more thing to hold over my head." Helsknight snorted. "It wouldn't work anyway. I have a pact that says I can't directly oppose him. If he, for the gods know what reason, has Tanguish, and I knew--" Helsknight made a parrying motion with his hand. "It's better if I don't know. Keeps my hands from being tied."

"Huh," Tango leaned back against the wall, slightly more at ease. Helsknight wasn't sure if he liked the fact that the Hermit was getting comfortable. "I kind of figured you and X-- uh, Evil X, would be friends."

"Why in hels would we be friends?"

"Well, I'm friends with Wels. And. You know. X. I just kind of figured..."

Helsknight decided the best thing to do with this statement was ignore it.

"I will check the house," Helsknight said. "You go back to your server. When I find him, I'll tell you."

Tango shook his head vehemently. "No! Nuh-uh. This is my rescue mission."

"While I appreciate your tenacity," Helsknight bared his teeth at the Hermit, causing him to shrink back a step, "hels is for helsmets. You wouldn't last ten minutes here. And I'm not wasting time keeping you safe."

"You protect Tanguish just fine."

"Tanguish can outrun everything that chases, and out-clever anything else."

"And he came from me," Tango said, crossing his arms petulantly. "I'm plenty smart! And I can be speedy in a pinch!" He sniffed. "We'll just give your house a look-around, easy-peasy."

Helsknight made to argue, and then a thought occurred to him.

"This isn't my house."

Tango blinked. His eyes shifted around the small, relatively bare room. The single desk, shield mounted on the wall, and bed.

"Is it... An outpost or something? You put this up while you were exploring?"

"This is my Colosseum cell," Helsknight said. When Tango only stared at him blankly, "Surely Tanguish has told you about the Colosseum."

"I mean... He did."

"I have a room here. For when I don't want to walk across hels to sleep."

"There's a bunch of fighters out there."

"There is."

"Fighters who... Dislike... Hermits."

Helsknight snorted.

"W-well!!" Tango sputtered, noticeably more nervous, but doing his best to ignore it. "I'm! Still not leaving! So! We'll just have to be quick. And once we get outside--"

"We'll have to walk across hels. Hels, the city, is very big, and has a lot of people in it."

Tango put his face in his hands and let out a keening whine of dismay through his fingers. It was the kind of noise that suggested he didn't know how to growl in exasperation, so he howled instead. Helsknight, begrudgingly, admitted to himself he was being [a little] harsh. He decided, against his better judgement, to have a little mercy.

"You really want to find Tanguish."

"Yes! Yes I do!" Tango snapped, looking up at him beseechingly. "I mean, is it really that hard to believe you're not the only one who wants him to be safe?"

Helsknight's skepticism must've shown on his face, because Tango let out another of his exasperated, half-syllable noises and ran his hands back through his hair.

"Look, I promise I won't get in your way. And I'll go home the second we find him. I just... I'm worried."

Helsknight sighed and tried his best not to roll his eyes. He crossed the room to where he'd left his cloak, and motioned for Tango to join him. Hesitantly, nervously, Tango stood and waited as Helsknight flung the cloak over his shoulders. It would have been far too long, but he gathered some of the length to turn into a makeshift hood, bunching it awkwardly around Tango's shoulders. It took some folding and some pinning, but after a few minutes, Helsknight stepped back and nodded. It was passable anyway.

"Keep this on while we're in the Colosseum," Helsknight informed him, pulling the hood down low over Tango's face. "With any luck, people will assume you're Tanguish. Or at least that you're supposed to be with me."

"And, uh, if that doesn't work?" Tango asked, his voice pitching the barest bit higher in nervousness.

"We'll burn that bridge when we cross it," Helsknight snorted. He checked one last time to make sure his gear was all in place, and, squaring his shoulders, led the way out and into the cells.

Nobody noticed them leave the cells. Or, at the very least, nobody noticed who Tango was. A few people stopped Helsknight to try and talk, but when he made it clear he had places to be, they let him pass. Helsknight's patience was not a thing anyone wanted to shorten, even those few dangerous people who could probably weather the aftermath.

Soon enough they were walking down the streets of hels, Tango hovering so close to Helsknight's side they occasionally walked into each other. Helsknight wanted to be annoyed. He wanted to be even more annoyed by all of Tango's jabbering. The Hermit would make observations as they walked, pointing at buildings and asking questions that Helsknight rarely deigned to answer.

They weren't here to sight-see. They were here to find Tanguish. So when Tango asked him his twentieth question of the morning [You guys have a working water fountain? How do you have water in hels? Is it an update suppression thing, or does hels have different rules than a standard nether hub?] Helsknight scowled and started walking so quickly, Tango had to jog to keep up with his long strides. Panting, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other without tripping over cobblestones, he couldn't ask any more questions.

[Praise every god and saint in hels.]

Eventually they turned onto the street Helsknight's house was on, and immediately he knew something was wrong. Even from the end of the street, Helsknight could see the front door was open. A cold fist of dread clenched itself in his stomach, and Helsknight ran up the street, Tango protesting as he tried to keep pace.

The house had been ransacked. The door wasn't just open, it had been halfway knocked off its hinges, and the window at the front of the building had been smashed. He hadn't yet stepped inside, but from the red light streaming into the open doorway, Helsknight could see his little dining table and chairs had been knocked over. There was broken glass on the floor, and the pale gleam of metal -- Tanguish's dagger, dropped in a scuffle. There was no blood that Helsknight could see, but that was cold comfort.

"Oh... Shoot." Tango panted, standing beside him. "This is your house?"

Helsknight found himself swallowing past a growing lump in his throat. "Yes."

"Did you... Not go home yesterday?"

"No."

"Shoot." Tango said again, tugging on the edges of Helsknight's cloak nervously. "He left Hermitcraft in the afternoon. Would he-- would he have gone straight to the Colosseum if--"

"Probably."

"So. So this probably happened when he got here," Tango glanced up at Helsknight, gauging the knight's hesitation, and then picked his way cautiously to the door. "Does your house get broken into often?"

"If it did, there would be a lot fewer thieves in this city."

"I'll uh... Take that as a no." Tango stepped gingerly inside, the broken glass crunching beneath his boots. His tail, a liquid, fiery thing like his hair, swept around the floor, glinting off the glass shards like a field of sparks. He picked up Tanguish's knife and flipped it over in his hands, studying it before slipping it onto his belt. "No blood. Obvious signs of a struggle. I mean, he had to have been ambushed right? Otherwise he would've run for it. And they took him alive because, well, I mean, he would've just respawned right?"

The lump in Helsknight's throat got tighter. It was suddenly very hard to breathe.

"Right?" Tango prompted again.

"How much do you know about helsmets? How our respawns work?" Helsknight asked quietly.

"I know respawn is rough for you guys." Tango raised an eyebrow at him. "Or, I assume, I guess. Tanguish seems pretty scared of dying, anyway. And I know you take deaths in the Colosseum very seriously. A lot of warrior culture weirdness stuff."

Helsknight swallowed. The fear of speaking his thoughts out loud grabbed him by the throat and pinned him still. Adrenaline, cold and sourceless, sent ice through his veins. His fist clenched around the hilt of his sword, his instincts as a knight searching for a source for his alarm to fight and dispatch, even when his logical mind knew there was none.

[He didn't want to say it out loud.]

"Sometimes."

Helsknight cleared his throat uncomfortably. He didn't look at Tango. His eyes wandered around the broken glass at the Hermit's feet, watching the flame of his tail glint off the brittle, jagged edges.

"Sometimes."

He swallowed again. He adjusted the buckle on his gauntlet. It suddenly felt too loose around his wrist. He was too vulnerable to talk about this. He needed plate mail, or a helmet. Hels, he needed castle walls and a full garrison.

"Sometimes we... When the universe... We are. Uhm. We're different than--"

He could feel Tango's gaze heavy on him. His skin prickled with the weight of his stare and his own growing, frigid alarm. Something like panic, a rare and terrible beast, was crawling awake in Helsknight's stomach. It gnashed its teeth against his insides, and he felt the desire to laugh, or shout, or throw something, or maybe just throw up in general.

[Don't say it out loud.]

"Tango, sometimes we dont--"

"Well it's about gods-damned time!"

The amount of relief Helsknight felt at the sound of that hostile voice was profound and dissonant, and incredibly welcome. Mostly though, it was an excuse to focus all his pent up fear on something physical he could kill, and he praised every god and saint in hels as he turned to face the newcomers.

A group of four vaguely thug-like helsmets stood in the street less than twenty paces away from him. Helsknight's gaze swept across them, noting their mix-match of leather and gold armor. Two had swords -- gold and iron. One was twirling an axe in her hand in a flourish that was probably supposed to be threatening, but mostly just told Helsknight she'd been practicing axe-flourishes instead of axe-throws. The person who'd spoken, a rather weasely looking thug with a knife on his belt, grinned with glad maliciousness.

"We've been waiting for you to show up, tin can."

Helsknight didn't rise to the [insult?]. It wasn't worth his time. He cast a quick glance in Tango's direction, catching the fading flicker as the Hermit hid somewhere in the house. Good. Helsknight would prefer he not be under foot.

"Who are you?" Helsknight asked coolly, not really expecting a response. He flexed the fingers of his sword hand restlessly, itching to draw his blade. "And what have you done with Tanguish?"

"Come quietly and maybe we'll tell you," the ringleader said, motioning broadly with one hand for his thugs to fan out around him.

The three fighters moved to circle Helsknight, one stopping just in front of the ringleader, while the other two began stalking further up the street. Helsknight did the mental math of four against one, while he was surrounded, and decided he didn't like the odds.

Helsknight attacked before the first swordsman, the one with the golden sword, could pass him. He turned and drew his sword in the same motion, and the strength behind his cleaving overhead strike shattered the softer metal of their blade neatly. His second swing, lightning quick, took them in the throat. He pointed his bloodied sword at the second swordsman, who froze in shock, blade up in a shaking guard position, as they watched their ally fade into twitching death throws.

"Will you make me ask twice?" Helsknight hummed, his voice as level as the point of his sword.

The swordsman's eyes darted over his shoulder. Helsknight frowned, felt more than he heard the approach of something. He ducked and spun, sword arching over his head to catch a weapon strike that instinct told him was coming. There was the loud clash of metal on metal, and when Helsknight straightened, he found two more thugs had joined from... Somewhere. The roof perhaps. Helsknight backed up several steps, trying to keep the entire group in his sight line, and his back to his home. At least with his back to a wall, no one could get behind him. The four with weapons drawn advanced on him slowly, wary of his speed, and the efficiency of his strikes.

"Throw down your weapon, gladiator," the ringleader called to him. "If all you want is to see your friend again, we'll take you right to him." He flashed a wicked grin. "Though we might rough you up a little first."

At that, the axe-weilder leaped forward -- some uncanny sense of Helsknight's, honed for danger, demanded he duck as a whisper of noise hissed by his ear -- and she fell back shrieking, a bloody hole punched in her shoulder. It was only when the arrow cracked against a far wall that Helsknight realized she'd been shot at close range with a very high power bow. Tango leaned through the broken window, a terrified grin on his face, another arrow already knocked.

"Fight fair why don't ya!" He crowed and loosed his second shaft. This one grazed the thug closest to Helsknight, and he used the distraction to ram his sword through their chest.

What followed was a frenzy of breath and movement, seconds that ticked by as ages that he measured in the studied arc of his blade. One thug, then two, then three, scythed down like wheat in a field, crude skill and cruder weaponry breaking against his fortress of an onslaught. It was only when the last one fell that he realized the ringleader was making a run for it. Silent as a breath, Helsknight yanked his knife from his belt, aimed and threw. It hilted itself in the back of the ringleader's left knee, and he fell to the cobblestones howling.

"Holy-- nice shot!" Tango laughed, the high piping sound of the traumatized and terrified. "What are you--? Wait! Helsknight! Wait a tick--!"

Helsknight wasn't listening. He was angry, and the implication that Tanguish was captured somewhere goaded him on like a burning brand between his shoulder blades. There was a very mean little animal of panic in his chest again, warring with the adrenaline of the fight, and he thought, if he had the mind to, he might tear the ringleader in half with his bare hands.

[It would be easy. One hand on the back of the neck, one at the base of the spine. His boots were heavy, and if he planted a few strong kicks at the knuckles of a vertebrae he was pretty sure he could--]

It was a mountain of restraint that made him stoop instead to pick the ringleader up by the collar and slam him into the nearest wall. His head bounced against the bricks behind him and his breath whooshed out of his lungs, leaving him dazed and gasping while Helsknight leaned his full weight into him to pin him still. Not that he was going anywhere fast with a bad knee anyway.

"Talk," Helsknight growled, nearly nose to nose with the thug. "My friend. Where is he."

The thug whined, eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted in pain. "I'm not-- I'm not telling you anything. Y-you're not that scary."

For a very brief moment, Helsknight was so angry he actually did see red. He pulled his gauntleted fist back, fully intent on putting a dent between the thugs eyes -- when Tango leaped up and grabbed his forearm in both hands, dragging it down again.

"Hey! Hermitcraft to Punchy McMurderface!" Tango shouted frantically, clinging to Helsknight's arm for dear life. "Don't do that!"

"Why shouldn't I?" Helsknight snarled, grinding his teeth.

"Because if he's concussed unconscious he can't answer your questions, skippy!" Tango snapped fearfully, flinching back as though he expected Helsknight to punch him instead.

Helsknight, who had been expecting a much more stupid excuse [Something like, "Oh no Helsknight, don't punch the bandit that's mean and icky!" maybe] was momentarily caught off guard by the logical answer. He stood there, glaring down at Tango, panting as the red tinge the world had taken on faded back a bit.

"I'm st-still not answering your stupid questions," the thug sputtered bravely. "If you th-think I'm going to betray my guild--"

Helsknight hissed a breath out through his teeth. He reached for his dagger at his hip-- and remembered he'd already thrown it.

"Besides!" The thug gasped fearfully, realizing, probably, what Helsknight was looking for. "Y-you're a knight right? You've gotta be! No run-of-the-mill gladiator swings a sword like that! Knights don't torture people! It's against your religion or some shit."

Helsknight, whose anger was boiling up his throat again, considered the implications of renouncing his knighthood for one afternoon. Less than an afternoon. Surely it wouldn't take more than an hour to break a few bones. His Saint could only damn him to a lesser ring of hell. Maybe if he explained it was for something very important when he went to confession--

Tango spoke first. "Yeah but, knights are the law, too, aren't they?"

The thug briefly stopped breathing.

"I mean, they're deputized, technically." Tango continued, shoving his hands in his pockets. Helsknight suspected it was so no one could see them shaking. "At least, that's how knights in my world work. And I haven't seen any cops around. So. He's the law right now. And I don't know a lot about hels law, but I know you cut people's hands off around here for stealing things."

Tango looked up at Helsknight. "What do you think, Killer? I mean, technically they stole a person, right?"

Helsknight, despite his current fury and desperation, and despite his fearsome reputation, and despite, even, his ugly thoughts of a few moments ago, was not a torturer. He had inflicted some terrible wounds on people before, some to the point of what he would call cruelty, but never had he drawn a weapon with the explicit aim of causing pain and suffering. It was a line he had never really dared to cross, barring a few very harrowing fights with Wels, when he had flirted with the idea of that danger and eventually stayed his hand. There were some things a man could not do without carving out pieces of his soul in the process, where the gap between thought and action was a chasm, and to cross it was to never return to safety again.

Helsknight searched the darkest parts of himself for the will to remove someone's hand to get information. He searched the darkest parts of himself for the will to torture someone to find out where Tanguish was. A very sick, cold, empty feeling opened up in the pit of Helsknight's stomach. When he looked to the thug again, he had scrubbed himself of anger, and adrenaline, and, he hoped, fear. His expression must have been truly grim, because he watched the thug's face pale fearfully, his pupils pinpricks in too-wide eyes.

Helsknight threw the thug to the ground, forcing Tango to stumble back a few steps to get out of the way. His boot came down on the thug's shoulder, pinning him against the cobblestones. Panicked hands scrabbled at his ankle, nails sliding off the metal of his grieve. Helsknight was reminded of a rat trying desperately to climb out of a well, drowning.

"Hold your arm out, and hold it still," Helsknight said, his voice deathly calm. He leaned more weight into his heel, eliciting a long whine of pain from his captive. "I would hate to miss your wrist, and take your arm off at the elbow instead."

The thug was clearly panicked. Helsknight honestly couldn't blame him. He was very close to panicking himself. He kept shoving his feelings down into that cold empty place in his stomach, and replacing them with the mask he wore when he played the villain in the Colosseum. He quietly, forcefully, informed himself that this was a role he was playing, and like every role, he would play it very well. And then the performance would be over, and he could feel feelings about it then. After the screaming had stopped, and the blood had dried.

Tango had turned his back to him, his hands clasped over his ears. He did not run away. He did not leave. It was a show of solidarity Helsknight neither wanted nor expected, but found himself grateful for anyway.

"Last chance," Helsknight said. He lifted his sword, ready to plunge it down into the outstretched arm. He thought, in the detached way of the horrified, that if he could catch the tip of his sword between the bones of the wrist, that might be the fastest way to... To...

The thug closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Helsknight let out a long, slow breath. He drove the sword down. The thug screamed. The blade cracked against the cobblestones.

There was no blood. There was no dismemberment. The thug had pulled his arm away at the last moment, and clung to Helsknight's boot with both hands, shrieking. Helsknight's ears were buzzing. He couldn't hear what the thug was saying. His heart was racing, and his mind was so terribly, terribly empty. He felt... Numb. It was very hard to keep his sword in his hands.

A hand tapped gently on his arm. Helsknight blinked down at Tango, feeling vaguely like someone was waking him from a nightmare.

"Let me go!" The thug was yelling, scrabbling with renewed vigor against Helsknight's boot. "I told you what you wanted! Let me go!"

"Did you... Catch all that?" Helsknight asked, trying desperately to pluck coherent thoughts from the droning emptiness in his head.

"Sure thing."

[Ah... Good.]

Tango kicked his boot against the thug's side, more a nudge than anything. "Alright. We're going to let you go. Tell your guild boss or whatever that we'll be outside his place tomorrow at noon. Be ready to negotiate or -- uh -- be ready to get dead, I guess."

It was not a threat that would go down in the annuls of history as a great villain monologue, but the thug, shaking and terrified and in pain, took it deadly serious. Helsknight released him, and he hobbled away down the road as fast as he could on a bad leg. They watched him in silence until he disappeared down a side alley, leaving them in an empty street scattered in left over items from the other fallen thugs.

"Tomorrow?" Helsknight asked, his voice sounding very far away in his own ears.

"Today," Tango answered. "Telling them tomorrow makes them think they have time to prepare, and if they're preparing, they're not, you know, hurting Tanguish."

"Ah."

"You alright?" Tango squinted up at him. "You look like you're in shock."

"Mh." Helsknight dropped his gaze to the ground. His dagger had been left behind. He took a step forward... and sank to the ground.

"Woah! Hey, hey! Easy big guy--"

Helsknight found himself on his hands and knees, shaking, smothering under the weight of guilt and his own potential for horror. His head was buzzing again, a nauseating sound like the static of the void. His eyes found his dagger again, and he lunged for it. Moving on something between impulse and habit, driven by guilt and self-disgust, he ripped the blade across his wrist, spilling blood across the ground. With shaking hands he grabbed up his sword and set the tip against the cobblestones, his forehead pressed against the hilt, eyes screwed shut.

"Saint of Blood and Steel," Helsknight breathed, with all the desperation of a sinner crawling to an altar, "forgive me for what I would have done." He pressed his forehead so hard against the cold netherite of the hilt, it hurt. "Please, please, forgive me for what I would have done."

His nose stung with the smell of blood and metal and salt and sealing wax. His mouth tasted like bile, and he could feel every fluttering heartbeat in the cut on his wrist. The buzzing in his head, slowly, slowly, alongside the speed of his racing heart, ebbed. The animal panic curled up in his chest and grumbled as it started to ease itself to sleep. He realized someone was rubbing circles into his back, and whispering at him, and tugging at his hands.

Tango was not trying to be reassuring. At least, he wasn't trying to be reassuring so that Helsknight would be calm. He muttered things under his breath like, "Okay, easy now, no big deal, it's fine," and "Let it go. Nice and easy. Good knight. Scary knight..." The circles he rubbed into Helsknight's back were shaky and awkward, and very clearly a distraction for his other hand, which worked on uncurling Helsknight's fingers from the knife. Helsknight, his exhausted wits finally returning, had mercy on him and released it. Tango snatched up the knife like it were a snake he feared would bite someone. He grimaced at the blood on the blade, and, not knowing what else to do, wiped it off on Helsknight's cloak, before shoving the knife beside Tanguish's in his belt.

"So, just for establishing the rest of this afternoon," Tango said, when he realized Helsknight had come crawling out of his stupor. "Should I be worried about you hurting yourself randomly? Like, does this happen on a regular basis? Do you have triggers I should be making safe words for or--?"

"No." Helsknight said, trying not to feel ridiculous.

"Right. So that was just a one time thing? Because if it's not a one time thing, I'm not judging or anything. But, like, I might recommend seeing a hels therapist or something."

"No I--" Helsknight had no desire to explain that he had a Saint, and that Saint had tenets he'd sworn to, and he had been preparing to go smashing through them like a sledgehammer, mostly because she didn't want to admit it to himself either. He didn't want to admit that he had been on the verge of turning his back on everything that made him himself, because he was desperate and scared, and he didn't want to admit that if he wasn't a knight, he had no idea what he even was at all. Instead he fell back on what the thug had said, because it wasn't wholly true, but it also wasn't a lie. "Knight. Torture. Against my religion. Or. Whatever."

Helsknight leaned on his sword like it was his last hope of salvation.

"Very, very against my religion."

"R-right." Tango put on a complicated expression. The kind of expression one gives when they're realize they're walking on a minefield. "But. You know. You didn't actually torture anyone. Right? So. God can't be mad. So you don't have to slash your wrists for god, right?"

"I would have." Helsknight's eyes found a chipped cobblestone. "If he hadn't moved... I... Would have."

That feeling of frigid dread spidered it's way down his ribs again to pool in his stomach.

"Well. But. But. You didn't." Tango swallowed audibly. "You didn't. And that's what god cares about, right? And, even if god does care, you were following the letter of the law. And if god cares about that too. Uh. God. God can. Take it up? With me."

Helsknight barked a half-hearted laugh. "You going to defend my honor from god, Hermit?"

"Yes," Tango said uncomfortably. "Because I was the one who told you to do it. So. Double damn both of us, right?"

They looked at each other. They looked away from each other.

"Tanguish is going to kill us when he finds out what we did to find him," Helsknight said.

"I won't tell if you don't."

They looked at each other. Tango offered a hand to help Helsknight stand. When Helsknight took it, they grabbed each other's forearms, and it felt uncannily like a pact, or a promise.

"I won't tell if you don't," Helsknight murmured.

Helsknight sheathed his sword, and ran a hand through his hair, trying, with some success, to pull himself back together.

"We should... Get moving." Tango observed, looking up the street.

"I didn't hear a word he said."

"I've got it all up here buddy," Tango said, tapping the side of his head and offering a half-smile that didn't quite make it to his eyes. "So uh... You know anything about a Thief Guild?"

[irisintheafterglow]

Hello, I have a request. So I have these lyrics brain rotting me and I just know you, with amazing writer skills, will be able to bring it to life. So, from The Prophecy, "Don't want money, just someone who wants my company" and like reader being lonely for a long time before meeting katsuki. I see reader as a very important part of the society, like not a hero, but more as a spy that can also fight (the Hero version of a fantasy assassin) And she is paired with Katsuki for a mission and he sees her in her true colours. Maybe a series? It's up to you, or course, but thank you for writing and being so talented and considering this request <33 Hope you have a great day!!

lowkey this request broke me in all the right ways omg...i love the prophecy so so so much it's so heartbreaking and definitely one of my favorites off ttpd <3 ty for your ask and all the love, hope you like this :)) so sorry that it took so long to get to and ty for your patience, i haven't had much time to write lately

cw: explicit language, implied fem!reader but no she/her pronouns (reader does wear heels), angst/fluff with happy ending, angry forced coworkers to lovers, bkg being lowkey mean but he's just psychoanalyzing you

you liked the sparkle, to a certain extent.

it was nice to pad around in designer satin, your name embroidered in gold thread on the back tag. you could appreciate the crushed velvet sofas in the living room of your high-rise penthouse, the walls covered in abstract art gifted to you by painters whose names you don't remember. your closet was larger than your university dorm and lined with enough expensive fabrics to start a hospital. everything about your lifestyle screamed luxury, yet even a marble bathtub couldn't provide much comfort when you came home at two in the morning to a cold, lifeless apartment. tragic.

bound by contract, you weren't allowed to live with civilian roommates, and pro heroes looking for places to rent were as scarce as dust left behind by your cleaning crew. you figured it was better that way, not needing to explain to your roommate why you're gone for weeks at a time on assignments and coming back with several broken ribs and a staggering sum of money. instead of friends, you had your job, however dangerous it became sometimes. you were good at playing a character (it's why you had your current job in the first place) and made it look like you weren't lonely, but you'd be lying if there weren't times you were just begging the sky to send you...who? who do you even want? love was a foreign word, a privilege reserved for those not in your profession. so you withstand whatever life throws at you like a statue made to wait, constantly on the brink of crumbling.

it's mid-january when you receive the call informing you that you'd be working with a partner on your next assignment. you wrack your brain for the few people trustworthy enough to join you, only for the words to catch in your throat when your agent says they're assigning someone for you.

if you were bad at working with others, bakugo was unapologetically worse.

"could you walk any louder?" you hiss into his ear as you stroll through the lobby of the most luxurious hotel in the city. his bicep flexes under your fingers, something you can only perceive as him stiffening in annoyance. "your big-ass feet are gonna get us compromised before we even make it past the perimeter."

"i'm not trained for stealth, genius," he argues, adjusting his suit jacket with free arm for the fifth time in twelve seconds. "i usually go in, blast the shit out of people, and call it a day."

"well, your thundering steps are doing the opposite of helping us blend in," you reply bluntly with a pretty smile toward the concierge desk. "we're doing recon, not infil." you take an abrupt step to the right, simultaneously bumping bakugo in the hip and making him stumble. with the way you start to sway and lean into him, your perfume makes his brain go fuzzy and his ears pinker.

"what the fuck are you doing?"

"you are literally the funniest person i've ever met. i can't believe i fell in love with you, sweetie," you drawl, fluttering your eyelashes.

"what the hell is wrong with you?" he cringes away as you beam at him with a lovesick smile, one hand keeping him flush against your body while the other brushes the pant leg of a passing security guard.

"just play along, darling," you seethe through a fake smile. without taking your eyes off your partner's face, your prize finds itself between your fingers and you unbutton the keycard without blinking, bringing it to his chest and smoothly slipping it into bakugo's jacket pocket with the guard none the wiser. once you catch the guard round a corner behind you via the reflection of a gilded mirror, you drop your act and detach yourself from a very flushed bakugo. "yikes, you're worse at this than i thought you'd be," you deadpan.

"you-you just used me to get that guy's card," he sputters in pure disbelief while you continue to walk down the side hall in the direction of the bar and banquet room. "the hell is wrong with you?"

"i work alone, bakugo," you say boredly. your heels click against the glistening marble and you roll your eyes as his loud steps catch up to you.

"yeah, that much is obvious," he glowers. "we're supposed to be working together on this shit-"

"you are not my partner in this job. you are a tool." you have half the mind to think that your coldness was too harsh, but remember that working alone is what you're best at, for better or for worse. "look, i'll get the job done; you just sit there and watch so our agencies can get off our asses about this being done through 'official means.' got it?"

"you think you're good at being alone, but it's actually killing you," he states in a tone that barely echoes off the sparkling walls. "you think you're good at being alone, but what you think is the farthest thing from reality." if you weren't running four minutes behind schedule, you'd whirl on him and slap his pretty face. you settle for stamping his foot with your heel and he lets you, an ungratifying fuck you all you get as a reward.

"i should have told my agent that i'd quit if she made me work with someone else," you snap with your arms crossed as he fishes out the keycard from his jacket pocket. he gives you a look that enrages you further, something between loathing and sympathy.

"take my arm, for fuck's sake. let's get this over with so i don't have to deal with you and your self pity ever again," he snarls and, for the first time, he catches you off guard. you obey without a word, eyeing him warily while he swipes the keycard and guides you into the crime boss' exclusive campaign gala.

"you know nothing about me, so don't try to analyze me since i know it's not your strong suit," you mutter under the sound of blaring jazz trumpets, sidling past investor after investor as they chatter excitedly about the your target's recently announced run for mayor. "i've seen the leaks about you heroes' IQ scores."

"yeah, they were faked by some extra in the todoroki agency that wanted to undermine him. wanted to imply that he was a nepo baby or some shit like that," bakugo replies without missing a beat and you're barely able to detect any malice in his answer. it confuses you. shouldn't he be pissed that you just insulted his intelligence? "icy-hot's one of the smartest guys i've met, so don't you fucking dare discredit him for one second." he's angry that you insulted...a different hero?

"that doesn't change the fact that you don't know shit about what i do," you dodge, spotting your target at a table near the banner-flanked main stage. he's surrounded by a dozen women who fawn on him like moths to a fire, caressing whatever body part they can get their hands on. it's exactly the scenario you need to bypass his defenses. "there, 3 o'clock. he's got his harem with him."

"so what's your play, lone wolf?"

"dance me toward him and then get out of my way," you order, dragging him onto the dance floor while the jazz band in the corner eases into a mellower tune. "what, got two left feet?"

"no, i'm just trying to figure out why you are the way you are," he questions, slipping one arm around your waist while his hand intertwines with yours.

"don't go hurting that handsome head of yours," you reply coldly without thinking, suddenly feeling your ears go hot when he smirks. "what?"

"nothing. 's just funny when you actually act human rather than the killing machine you were made to be," he admits and your jaw clenches.

"again, you know absolutely nothing about me." you subtly try to move your dancing bodies toward the crime boss' table, but meet bakugo's eyes with a glare when he actively spins you in the opposite direction. "we should be going that way, idiot."

"what if i wanna keep dancing with you, idiot," he retorts. "now," he takes a deep inhale, "i'm gonna tell you exactly what i think you are so maybe your next partner doesn't have to dig into your ass and get your head out of it."

"you are putting this whole operation in jeopardy--"

"don't care, especially if i'm being told by a self-pitying, pathetic excuse for a public servant who hides themselves away because they're too scared to make human connections," he rants, looking you directly in the eyes so you could see just how molten they were.

"stop," you warn, looking for any excuse to go in on your target so you could get out of the spotlight that bakugo was putting on you. he doesn't let you, though, effortlessly dipping you in a way that outsiders could consider flirtatious. it's an unfamiliar sensation, your spine curved under his steady hands, but all you can register is the intensity of his expression inches away from yours.

"you hide behind your callousness and say you don't need anyone fucking else because you've never had anyone else. and then, one day, when someone comes along who actually wants to know you for you, you're gonna be too much of a little bitch to realize that there are people who care about you. even if you are the most irritating being to call themselves human." he abruptly stands you both up and steps back, both of you burning and withstanding each other's wrath. your voice is smaller than you want it to be when you finally manage to speak.

"how would you know any of that?"

"because i was that." his attention flicks to behind you, toward the boss' table. "now would be your best chance. i'll sit at the bar and you finish the job, alone."

"...alone?"

"that's what you want, isn't it?"

no. i don't want it.

you don't catch him in time, some shackle like pride chaining you to the floor. it doesn't feel like relief, you realize when he turns to leave and disappears into the crowd. it feels like a punishment, an unbreakable curse that you'd put on yourself. you were a fool in a fable and it was sinking in, even as you worm the information you need out of your target and slip out of a back window, alone.

always alone.

---

it's not until ten months after your initial mission with bakugo that you finally work up the courage to tell off your agent.

"you have no place to be making such demands!" you lean away unbothered while your agent screams, her anger distorted by your phone speaker. "you have no idea how to--"

"don't care. i'm done working alone in the shadows," you interrupt with the callousness that once benefited you in your job. now, you realize, it was only impeding you and making it harder to find people who saw you as a human, not a tool. "put me in the infil mission or i'm quitting. for good."

"you don't know anything about infil. they'll eat you for breakfast if you join the op now," she hisses. "you need me."

"you made me think i needed you. you and the sparkle, and the fancy pajamas, and the smelly bath salts. you made me think that, to keep all the nice shit, i needed to be alone. but now i know i don't need to be."

"how would you know anything--"

"i know that you've purposefully delayed the infil operation so that you can cover up your ties to the boss' campaign, and that you sent me in with bakugo that night thinking i'd take the fall for your corruption. too bad he caught on and helped me investigate the todoroki IQ files you gave me and said they were official leaks."

"you're making a big mistake."

"and you should have learned sooner that i don't want the money. i never did."

"bullshit. money is all we have in this hero-run society, the only way we can be equal to them. what else would you want?"

"company." your agent falls silent at the same moment you hear a faint knocking on her line. "speaking of, looks like you have some." the tell-tale beep beep beep! of the call being ended echoes off the walls of the apartment and you sink further into the plush couch cushions, counting down leisurely on your fingers.

five,

four,

three,

two,

one.

"got her, babe!" you hear from down the hall. "and we got her good," katsuki says as he appears from your shared bedroom and grins at you. he leans against the door frame, waiting patiently as you delete your ex-agent's number from your contact list and show him the phone. "i ever tell you you're a natural at getting confessions out of people?" you giggle and let him pad over to you on the couch, sliding down so that he could lie his entire body on top of yours. even after all the time he'd been with you, the skin to skin contact still made your stomach burst into uncontrollable butterflies.

"i guess it comes with being a spy for so long," you suppose with a shrug. "but i'm not one anymore." your fingers absentmindedly trace the creases of back muscle through his shirt and he hums like a cat purring contentedly.

"yep, and now you're stuck with me until one of us dies in combat." you click your tongue with a tsk and lightly pinch his side, feeling him snort in triumph against your sternum.

"why can't you just say you love me like a normal person?"

"because neither of us are normal, genius," he explains, his eyes shut against your chest. "how normal is it to be so lonely that when you're around another lonely person, your shit cancels out?"

"i guess not that normal," you concede. "but still...what do i do now?"

"as much as i wanna say it, i don't think 'me' is the correct answer," katsuki proposes and you burst out laughing. "but really? anything you wanna do, baby. your hand's off the throttle, so now you're just cruising."

"since when did you use so many metaphors?" you ask with a teasing smile. "last week you said 'lightning in a bottle' and 'cursed like eve.'"

"since i met your dramatic ass."

"you know you love me."

"mmm, now you're finally starting to get it."

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! commissions and nsfw requests can be sent through my fiverr! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

[iggyshippingcorner]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ anon back once more. I haven't had a chance to backread everything but has anyone suggested omega Robotnik who disguises himself as an alpha (for obvious reasons) with an alpha Stone who disguises himself as a beta (or even an omega if you want to push it further) because he finds it advantageous to be underestimated?

Also perhaps because Stone's never struggled to deal with his biology before Robotnik comes into the picture and activates his neurons like no one ever has before (Stone: oh no I understand why other Alphas are like that sometimes. I mean, still no excuse but at least I get it now.)

I love stealth-competent Stone so I also love the idea of everyone ignoring this beta coffee runner only to realize they've messed up big time when he brings out the alpha strength and all but tears a man in half with his bare hands.

Fun if Robotnik knows but doesn't say anything, funnier if even he didn't realize because he underestimated Stone just like everyone else (well. the part of him that's going insane over Stone noticed, but he's been trying very hard to ignore that part so it didn't get to share its observations with the class). Post-reveal Robotnik being mega pissed because Stone could have been making himself so much more useful if he'd known the man could lift that much weight above his head! He's gonna use Stone as a car jack out of spite. He's hiding his fancy coffee grinder and making him do it by hand with a mortar and pestle. He's disabling his automatic door access and watching him struggle to pry them open with his fingers. And most importantly, he's gonna push him around even more (but oh perhaps he didn't think that one completely through with the upstairs brain cause physical contact was something he was avoiding, oops)

ouhhh. i think it's been brought up insofar as the synthesised pheromones, but i love the emphasis on Stone wanting to be underestimated. i personally think it's a major part of his character-- in comparison to the doctor, he's very polite, mild-mannered, fairly average stature, and innocuous in his neat, all-black suit. to further fly under the radar as a beta with a particularly neutral scent? well, that just makes the whole special agent thing a lot easier!

and ouuhhh. alpha strength stone my beloved <3 him surprising robotnik with it too, either because he didn't know beforehand or because he willfully dismissed the information he found out as unimportant... Man. robotnik getting a little hot under the collar watching stone brute force his way through an altercation for once, completely disregarding grace or tact... and then immediately getting annoyed because HEY. he didn't give himself permission to BLUSH in front of his imbecile agent! what the hell!

this quickly turns into robotnik making stone do the heavy lifting around the lab. using stone as a car jack out of spite is SO GOOD. but i do think it backfires quickly because then stone starts shedding his jacket and rolling his sleeves up to better assist the doctor with that heavy piece of machinery. yes, doctor, i'll spend an hour unloading the new shipment that the badniks can't do themselves for some unknown reason. well, yes, i'm taking my jacket off, don't want to pop any stitches, haha. (stone knows exactly what he's doing)

[xstatic-12235]

Hey! Real big fan of your stuff :)

If you had the power to- What would you change about the third movie of httyd??

First of all thank you so much!!

For the third movie? Everything.

I don't think there is a single thing I like about the third HTTYD movie (Aside from the Deathgrippers ofc, they're perfect <33)

Scrap the lightfury, I don't like her. She was made just to be feminine and that pisses me off. Her invisibility, while kinda cool, just doesn't really sit right with me. Especially since it was supposed to make her unique and then they gave Toothless the same ability two seconds later. Which leads me into my second point.

"The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself" WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE LITERAL. GIVING TOOTHLESS SKRILL POWERS AND INVISIBILTY MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. WHY DID YOU EVEN BOTHER GIVING IT TO THE LIGHTFURY IF HE WAS ALSO GOING TO HAVE IT. FLASHY ABILITIES MAKE NO SENSE FOR A STEALTH DRAGON.

Adding on to this, Toothless should not be acting like a horny dog. He should have been a graceful, cat dragon and not what he was. Also him practically abandoning Hiccup for the Lightfury???? She tried to kill Hiccup--Toothless's BEST FRIEND--multiple times and he did nothing????

Why did Toothless become the king of the hidden world right away??? Why would he even be fit for king?

Speaking of the Hidden World, kick that out the window. It makes literally no sense. No fresh water, no food, and the habitat is NOT SUITED FOR ALL DRAGONS.

Sending to the dragons was STUPID. HICCUP. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING. Not only sending them away betray the whole message of the previous two movies, that you have to fight for what you think is right, But it also gathers all the dragons in one place, with no food, water, or natural.

None of the villains were compelling at all, the Warlords were just meh, and Grimmel? Oh boy do I have something to say about him.

The ENTIRE aspect of his character is stupid. While I can get behind a nightfury hunter, you're telling me that STRINGBEAN killed ALL of the nightfuries? Not buying it. Not only were all of his facts wrong, but there's no feasible way one person killed off an entire species of dragon. There is absolutely no way he could ever cover that much area or kill that many nightfuries, even with the help of the Deathgrippers.

Ahh, the Deathgrippers. My babies, my big murder puppies. They are perfect and deserved so much better. They didn't even get to live at the end of the film. What happened to "Good dragons under the control of bad people do bad things."???? NAH, JUST STRIKE THEM OUTTA THE SKY ITS FINE. HE DIDNT EVEN TRY TO SAVE THEM.

The only bad thing I will say about them isn't even about them, it's about their venom. It was inconsistent at best and random at worst. It changed based on what the plot needed it to, and yes, the could be chocked up to it having different effects based on what it's mixed with, but Grimmel didn't even label them. It was just a random draw. Imagine him trying to knock out the Lightfury and just killing her because he didn't realize that was the really poisonous dart. The random effects makes literally no sense.

Moving onto my next point, the characters. Oh boy, the characters. Everyone was out of character from HTTYD 1/RoB/DoB/RTTE/HTTYD 2

Snotlout, my guy. Why the FUCK would you say "Who died and made you chief?"???? BROTHER YOU WERE AT STOICK'S FUNERAL. YOU CRIED, YOU MOURNED. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. NOT ONLY THAT, YOU STARTED GOING AFTER HICCUP'S MOTHER. DUDE.And Tuffnut. You would never leave Ruffnut behind. And as stated in the shows AND movies, YOU RIDE A TWO HEADED DRAGON. YOU CAN'T FLY WITHOUT A RIDER ON EACH HEAD. And you, Ruffnut. You would never lead all of the hunters/trappers right to Hiccup and all of Berk because you 'never look back'. BITCH WHAT. WHAT. Fishlegs and Eret served literally no purpose other than comedic reliefs, and the movie would be the exact same without them.

And what happened to all the riders working together??? We literally see them raid multiple places in RTTE and HTTYD 2. Heck they tricked VIGGO during Last Dragon Auction and that takes working together.

The ableism oh the ableism. What do you mean "I have a parasitic twin and you don't see me limping around about it." BROTHER HE LOST THAT LEG IN THE BATTLE WITH THE RED DEATH. PROTECTING THE ENTIRETY OF BERK FROM LITERAL DEATH.

Speaking of Berk, Hiccup would never endanger the entirety of Berk with overcrowding and bad infrastructure. Why were there so many dragons. Why didn't you expand to the rest of the island. Why didn't you rehome the dragons to different islands. Why did one dragon bumping into a tower cause so much destruction. There are so many things wrong with it.

Changing the subject back to Grimmel, it is insane that they let him win in the end. Even though he died, he won. Toothless is confirmed to be the last nightfury, and Hiccup made the dragons leave. He accomplished BOTH of his goals, kill all the nightfuries, and for dragons to not live with humans.

And back on Hiccup sending the dragons to a death pit in the middle of nowhere. There will always be bad people. Always. It's the curse of humanity and by sending the dragons you have not only gone back on the entire message of all the previous shows and films but you have doomed all of the dragons and shoehorned in an ending that doesn't fit the series.

Anyways all this will be fixed in my rewrite and thank you for listening to my rant about THW, I hope you have a nice day/night!

TLDR; THW was awful and pretty much everything needs to be changed, deathgrippers are amazing tho and are perfect as is

[marlynnofmany]

Mystery Colors

Our first delivery after a bit of shore leave at the local space station, and it was a stealth mission. The client didn't say why they needed this delivery to be handed over without catching the attention of the authority figures at their work site, but they were paying extra for it. I wasn't part of the conversation. I don't know what other details Captain Sunlight got from them to make sure this was a safe risk on our account. But she was always smart about that sort of thing, and at any rate, she assured us all that we didn't need to worry. Flying in to an unpopulated area out of sight of the main science installation would be fine. 

We trusted that, but we were curious. And since the client was human, the rest of my crewmates volunteered me for the delivery in hopes of wheedling out some tactful details. 

I didn't object. I wanted to know too. 

So I got into my exo suit, checking all the seams and settings even though the safety gear was inspected regularly. This planet wasn’t even all that dangerous according to the readings — it was mostly terraformed to an acceptable standard, though the air wasn’t quite up to standard levels yet — but this felt like a good time to be careful. I wasn’t likely to be entrusted with any secrets if I passed out from lack of oxygen.

Paint was waiting for me with the box. “We’re almost there!” she said, scaly tail swishing behind her. “Best of luck!”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the box and wondering for the umpteenth time what was inside it. The logos were all from a megastore at the space station. Zhee had picked it up, and it was already sealed when he signed for it as official intermediary courier. The person at the checkout counter hadn’t known what it held either.

The engines made their usual landing hum. Since our ship had good landing gear and reliable artificial gravity, it would have been easy to miss otherwise. Paint scuttled out of the way while I walked toward the exit. Blip and Blop peeked around a corner, frills waving in curiosity. Zhee was parked in a cross hallway, not trying to hide.

He tapped one bug leg on the floor and said, “I hope to hear any juicy secrets first.”

Before I could answer that, Mur scooted by in a quiet slap of tentacles and put in, “I’ll be in the cockpit to see if Wio can eavesdrop with the sensors.”

I left Zhee to grumble about it and threaten to tattle on Mur for bothering the pilots. We all knew Zhee was just jealous that he was too big to perch in an out-of-the-way corner. At least he wasn’t Trrili’s size; she barely fit in the cockpit at all.

The door panel said the airlock was engaged, and the air outside was as expected. I stepped through the first door with the box held tight, letting it close behind me with a shush of air that drowned out the bickering in the hallway.

The outside door opened to let in bright sunlight, alien air, and distinctly less gravity. I didn’t notice that last until I stepped out onto the ramp and nearly made a fool of myself. Caught my balance, though. I tried not to leave finger-shaped dents in the box as I hopped awkwardly down the ramp and mentally kicked myself for not reading the briefing more thoroughly. I’d been focused on the air and hadn’t noticed that the gravity was lower than I was used to.

No time to worry about that now, though: a pair of human shapes in bright red exo suits were approaching from the edge of the flat rocky area. A metal roof visible over the boulders behind them was probably their own shuttle. Everything else in sight was rocks in a range of gray-to-orange colors. A hill in the distance held tinges of green that could have been plants.

“Hello!” said the human who was one step ahead of the other. She sounded a little younger than me. Her face wasn’t visible through the reflective visor. So clandestine. “Thank you for being prompt.”

I said, “We aim to please,” and managed to stop moving without smashing into either of them. They had clearly been working here long enough to get a feel for the gravity. “Here is your package,” I said as I handed it over, “And here is the payment tablet,” I added once my hands were free. I unhooked it from my waistband and passed it to the second human.

The first was busy ripping the box open like a kid with an anticipated present.

“Oh good, it’s the right kind!” she said in relief. She set the box on the dusty ground and pulled out something that I recognized as a turbo cleaning wand, the kind usually marketed towards the parents of small children. I’d seen artists use them too, both for cleanup and for making some neat inverted-color murals.

Not wanting to sound like I was doing more than making conversation, I said, “I’ve heard those are good ones.”

“They’re definitely the fastest,” the human said. “Lemme just see if they work on this particular ink.” She opened a thigh pocket with a rip of velcro, and took out what looked like a chunk of tile with deep pink scribbles on it.

The other human finished with the payment tablet and handed it back. “They’d better work,” he said. “If not, we’re toast.”

“How come?” I asked with concern in my voice, hoping that wasn’t too much.

I shouldn’t have worried. The first human activated the wand and wiped the tile clean in one swift pass, then laughed with clear relief. “Saved! We should have just enough time to get everything before the inspectors arrive. Now we just have to hope Julian didn’t leave any more of his rude notes somewhere we haven’t found. The shopping lists and tally marks would be bad enough, but his stuff would get all three of us canned immediately.”

I looked in the direction of the large encampment I’d seen from space. “Are you working this whole place alone?”

She laughed and put the tile back in her pocket. “Oh no, we’re just the only humans here. Everybody else is a Waterwill. Did you know those guys can’t see the color magenta?”

“Really!” I said. This was news to me.

She pulled a pen out of a different pocket. “These are completely invisible if you write on a pale surface. Which has been handy for keeping track of specimens when we feel lazy, and leaving each other notes by the door..”

“…But Julian took it a bit too far,” added the other guy. “With this gravity, he jumps and writes insults on the ceiling.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see why that might not go over well with inspectors. Who are not Waterwills, I take it?”

“Nope,” said the first human as she stowed the wand back in the box then picked the whole thing up. “But they’re not coming until tomorrow, so we should be able to clean it all away in time. Even if we have to do some quiet climbing around in the middle of the night.”

“Hey, what’s that?” the other human interrupted, reaching for something else in the box. He came up with a bundle of green cloth.

“Oh!” said the first. “That’s for Julian. I’m going to say it was at the bottom of the last food shipment as an error.”

When the guy unfolded it, the cloth proved to be a T-shirt patterned in green specks of multiple shades. The side toward me had black text that said “The Best.”

But the two humans were laughing about something on the back. When they saw my confusion, the guy turned it around.

Among all those green dots were a series of orange ones that spelled out “I’m colorblind! And also an asshole.”

The first human explained to me, “Julian is actually red-green colorblind. The magenta pens were for his benefit originally, since they don’t blend with the green ones like red does, and sometimes we need to chart things in color-coding. But—”

“But the Waterwills can’t see it at all,” the second continued. “So they were retired. Officially.”

“I see,” I said. “Well. Best of luck in cleaning up his messes!”

“Thank you!” they chorused. Once the shirt was stuffed into the bottom of the box and the lid was safely shut, they gave me a wave and bounded across the low-gravity rocks toward their waiting shuttle.

I made my awkward way back up the ramp to where my alien coworkers were waiting. I was considering an impromptu color vision test for them, just to see if something bright and obvious to me was invisible someone else onboard.

But then I realized that it would lead to a contest for smell-vision, and I was absolutely rubbish at that.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[broken-glass-puppet]

So we have jumping spider reader, how about peacock spider reader. Who is all colorful, dances really well and is a master at distracting the enemy with their movements while fighting them at the same time. Even when not dancing nor fighting they move really fluidly and elegantly.

His suit would be super colorful but be able to fold or be interchangeable to change to more stealth muted colors. And maybe they are a bit sñ

They could have a bunch of ribbons and a pair of bladed fans to help in their fights (eye-catching as well for the distraction factor). They could bond with Gwen over doing ballet.

And of course dances in random places and sometimes a routine would take them through the whole HQ making everyone turn heads and their spider brains to watch the dance.

YES YES YES YES YES

Look, you move like a professional dancer, it's hard not to stare at you

When miles asked you why dancing while fighting you simply said "If you look closely, dancing and fighting are not very different from each other, in both you have to move quickly and with precision"

Your figure is like a ribbon, you move with fluently and you look so beautiful while fighting

Gwen sees you as a big sibling, she even talked to you about everything that happened in her universe, she trusts you a lot

Hobie thinks your abilities are sick, he likes seeing you dance, maybe you can even teach him

Pavitr it's super nice with you, he likes everything about you, you guys are like besties, and yes, YOU TWO DANCE TOGETHER RAAAAAAHHH

Miguel thinks you are interesting, specially your powers and abilities

Your fans are beautiful and lethal at the same time, that only makes you even more beautiful

Your routine makes the whole HQ turn around and look at you

You and Gwen train together, no, shut up, I just know it

Your emotions can also change the color of your suit

You are super colorful and pretty

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Yet again I am away from my computer and nonetheless compelled to write jaytim as though my life depended upon it

This is a snippet that will... probably(?) go in Chained at some point so spoiler warning for below the cut, but it should be funny enough on its own for folks who aren't interested in that to enjoy it too 👍

Dick carefully punches in the codes to disable Tim's second story window alarms and comes in out of the late December chill. He's not being particularly stealthy, since all he's here to do is drop off a small present before Christmas - but then he hears Tim and someone who sounds suspiciously like exiled-from-Gotham-and-totally-disappeared-off-face-of-Earth Jason, and decides to switch to maximum stealth instead.

They're standing around in Tim's kitchen (which actually looks well used for once) sharing coffee. Jason's striped down to nothing but boxers and Tim is draped in an oversized shirt that leaves it a mystery as to weather or not he's got anything covering his ass. Something about the way Tim is looking at Jason's chest makes him uncomfortable.

He's expecting Jason to be uncomfortable with it too and snap at him for staring at his scars - instead when Jason notices Tim's gaze, he smiles smugly and makes his pecs bounce.

Dick silently recoils in shock, while Tim blushes a bright red and thwaps Jason with a hand towel.

"You're supposed to say 'my eyes are up here'!"

"Hey, normally I would, but we both know that these..." He gestures lasciviously to his chest. "Are the only things keeping your eyes from wandering down here." He gestures the same way down to his boxers which are actually tented when he holds them at this angle and- holy fucking shit why is he wearing a strap-on?!?

That- that is way too fucking big and hard to be a packer why is he... With Tim... Both half naked... Flirting over coffee... Strapped...

Dick rapidly begins spiraling towards something like a mental breakdown, because not only is his little brother who's freshly murdered someone (AGAIN!!) being harbored by his other little brother who he loves to absolute death and he's going to have to fight both of them over this, potentially on Christmas - not only is the world possibly ending in like four months - not only that but they're apparently fucking each other too!

Which... Kinda isn't the most surprising thing ever? It breaks his heart in two to think it, but honestly how could Jason not assume that he's been utterly disowned at this point? Is Dick even right to still think of him as family? Maybe this was a long time coming...

Tim blushes an even deeper red and rolls his eyes. "Well, gee, thanks for helping to keep your little brother's thoughts chaste."

The words 'little brother' hit him like a psychic mac truck to the forehead.

It's supposed to be sarcasm, but his tone is far too fond and too flirtatious, and his eyes are still far too low, and 'little brother' wasn't said like the punchline it was said like it was true, and they're smiling at each other as they each sip their coffee and-

That's when he spots it.

Bright red and perfectly centered between them. One large container of coffee. Folgers. Coffee.

Dick officially snaps.

The x-files theme plays over clips of that goddawful commercial and the image before him of his own two siblings reenacting that same energy right before his eyes.

Dick stealthily goes back down the hall and right out the window and up to Tim's front door and rings the doorbell repeatedy until Tim opens the door, looking flustered and just a touch guilty.

"Uh, hi? Wha- are you good?"

Dick pushes passed him and marches right up to the kitchen. "Got a case, sorry about this, but there's no time to explain."

"Should I be getting my suit on??"

"Nope! No, no, no, you just stay here. Just don't touch anyone for the next like twenty four hours and you'll be fiiiine!"

Jason has predictably vanished by the time he gets there, but Tim's coffee is still hot and on the counter.

He swipes both the cup and the container of grounds right off the counter and starts marching back towards the door to leave, to go down into the batcave and test this shit for psychoactive chemicals!

"My coffee? Seriously?? Dick what the fuck?!"

"Crane and or Ivy, don't ask, no time, just don't touch anyone!"

Tim looks at him like he's a lunatic as he runs back out the door, but he's earned that lunatic status so they can both be excused.

---

Jason eyes his coffee, takes another sip. It doesn't taste poisoned. He shrugs and drinks the rest.

---

(Dick is ultimately glad that the lab tests come back clear. Whatever is happening between them it's better that it's not... chemically induced.

He's still gonna have to have a whole internal crisis about it though.)