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supernaturallyobsessedchic · 3 years

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More Dean

Firsts

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Warning: Smut (MUST BE 18+, Rough, Choking, Clothed sex, 69’ing, Blowjob, Oral fem recieving, squirting, unprotected (wrap it up boys), NSFW, flat out porn), MoC!Dean, language, some fluff, long one.

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Ever since their first night, they’ve been very experimental in the bedroom.

And it turns out, Dean’s former virgin girl is not as innocent as she seems. Proving to him, the quiet ones are the kinkiest kind of people to sleep with.

But as of late with Dean and the mark, he hasn’t been showing her the love he was giving her. Until one day, while Sam was out on a solo case, he felt like he was going to explode if he didn’t get some.

She got into the steamy shower, wetting her hair. Working the shampoo through the strands of hair, cleaning the dirt and oil built up from the day before and overnight. She then worked on rinsing her hair out.

She heard the door open.

She knew it was just her and Dean in the bunker. She got ready to squirt a dab of body wash on her wash rag. She heard clothes hitting the floor. Dean must be wanting to join her in the shower.

Ever since getting the mark and getting the first blade he was a bit distant from her. But she was patient.

He stepped into the same stall as her, letting the warm stream of water hit his body.

She turned to face him.

She saw an unreadable expression.

“Dean, everything okay?”

“Just need you baby.”

“I’m here.”

His hands reached for her face, as he caressed her.

His lips gently press against hers in a soft and gentle kiss. After a few kisses not leaving, his kiss began to turn needy and hungry.

She felt his soft cock hardening between them.

He pushed her against the wall, beginning to lift her leg at his hip. She gripped his shoulders, so as to not fall.

“Dean,” she whines. Whatever's gotten into him, she really liked it.

She saw his eyes darkened with lust, his once bright green eyes darkening with every kiss.

She could feel him rub the head of his hard cock between her folds. Nudging her now sensitive clit, her breathing hitched in her throat.

She didn’t object, whatever he was needing, you didn’t object because you were now needing the same thing as him.

He inched inside her before thrusting hard in one go. Filling her up with ease.

His hips then began a ruthless pace as he thrusts hard in and out of her.

“Oh god, yes!” she moans.

His lips found her pulse point as he licked and sucked her neck. Giving her goosebumps as the water temperature began to drop.

She clung to him for dear life as the coil in her abdomen grew tighter and tighter with each thrust Dean delivered.

“God, Dean I’m close.” She pants.

“Let go baby, I’m not far behind.” He growls.

He thrusts a few more times before her coil snaps. Her walls squeezing him hard pulling him into his own end. Filling her up full of his seed. He tries to keep up a moderate pace as he rides them through their high. Her legs trembled around him as he continued.

His thrusts began to slow to a stop, and he held her close as they calmed their breathing.

“Are you okay Dean?” She asked, panting.

“Just needed you, felt like I haven’t been giving you any love lately.”

“It’s okay Dean, I know your plate is full lately with the mark and all. Just don’t push yourself. I’m always here.”

She felt him relax, and even snuggle more into her as they stayed there for what seemed like hours.

She noticed Dean was just acting horny all day.

She chilled out in their room they shared, and he joined her only to make out and deliver her hungry kisses and a good amount of hickeys on her neck.

His hands even traveled up her shirt pushing her bra cup aside as he pinched her sensitive nipple. Causing her to moan in his kiss.

But now she planned for a real big pounding as she cooked them dinner and dessert in the kitchen. She wore her long black skirt with nothing under it so it would be easy for him.

Turns out she assumed correctly. He came in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist gently yet protectively. And delivered gentle neck kisses. She allowed him more surface area as he peppered her neck with more marks.

She made the mistake of bumping her ass against his growing erection, straining in his jeans. He grunted at the sensation.

“You are so asking for it aren’t ya, Y/N?” He growled in her ear.

“Maybe, now fuck me Winchester.” She returned a growl that could be mistaken for a moan.

He pushed his hand through the hem of the skirt to discover she wasn’t wearing anything under it.

“Oh, good girl, you’re ready for me.”

He pulled his hand away, hiking her skirt up, and unzipping his jeans, working his erection out and barging in. Sheathing fully seated in her in one fell swoop.

Her breath hitched in her throat at the sudden stretch. But he didn’t stop there, he didn’t allow her time to adjust before he began thrusting at a rushed and hungry pace.

Her breathing began to pick up as he built her up quickly.

“Oh god,” she moaned, her eyes rolling in the back of her head.

“More Dean.” She moans.

He gripped her shoulders tight as he picked up the pace. She felt her walls twitch, she was close. Just the thought and sight of Dean fucking her over the counter in the kitchen, something about it just turned her on.

One hand of his found her throat, her breathing became labored as he began to slowly squeeze.

“Fuck,” He growls.

Her hand finds his wrist at her throat, giving it a couple taps. He releases his hand.

Her orgasm surprised her, like a wrecking ball hitting a concrete wall. Her walls slam tight around him, squeezing every ounce of his hot seed out of him.

A whimper could be heard from the both of them as they ride their highs out.

Her hands planted firmly yet shakily in front of her as he came to a stop. He rests his head in the crook of her neck on her shoulder as he tries to calm his breathing.

“Was I too rough?”

“Oh, fuck now, that was hot.”

He chuckled.

“Just, don’t let me be that rough again. I don’t know what came over me. I could have hurt you.”

“But you didn’t, you listened to me when I tapped you.” She felt him nod.

He lifted his head up, leaning his lips against her neck again.

“Dean, I’m not up for round two, I need to cook supper.” She laughed.

She felt him smile against her. “I know sweetheart, just loving you some more.”

“I love you too baby, but I’m gonna burn supper and your dessert if we keep this up.”

He gently pulls out of her. She could feel his release drip down her leg as she continued cleaning the counter. His hand reaches the back of her neck and he guides her lips to his in a loving kiss.

They sat in the library reading up on the mark of Cain lore to save Dean after he kills Abaddon.

Dean entered the library with his third bottle of beer.

She sat in front of his spot, she stayed in her skirt, wearing nothing under it. With Dean’s horny mood, it had rubbed off on her. Now not only was he horny but so was she.

But she saw him not relaxing after nursing the bottle, he showed no interest in reading. They were reading for hours now, they were getting burned out from the books alone.

She took it upon herself to show her man love.

She gets up from her seat, and walks over to him. And no warning, lands a gentle loving kiss on his lips.

He hums in her kiss. His hand finds her cheek, bringing her deeper into the kiss. His tongue entering her mouth, dancing with hers.

Her hand roams his chest and down to his belt. He doesn’t stop her when he felt her undo his belt, and pop the button to reach in and grab his hardening cock. Giving him slow and calculated pumps.

His breathing quickens in her entrancing kiss.

The faster her pumps went, the harder he got. Eventually he began to twitch in her hand.

He started to whimper in her kiss, he was ready to pop.

She pulled away from the kiss, allowing him a breath as he grew closer.

“Y/N, I’m…” he panted.

“Let go Dean, come for me.”

His hips began to jerk off the seat, his back arched as he came. The squirts of come flying and hitting the floor under the table.

He began to soften under her touch, his breathing slowed down and he relaxed in his chair.

Grabbing some tissues that sat on the table, she cleaned him up and worked him back into his pants.

“Feel better baby?” She asked.

“Much better, you’re in for a treat tonight.”

She smiles, her eyes still dark with lust. “Can’t wait.”

They laid in bed together, she laid on top of him. She bobbed her head up and down, taking him in as much as she could. Her free hand pumped him, working him in sync with her mouth. Her breathing picked up as he circled her clit with his warm tongue. Locking his lips around the sensitive bud, sucking it lightly.

She felt him twitch in her throat, he moaned against her as he grew closer.

Her other hand wrapped around his thigh, she gripped him when her orgasm crashed through her.

His hips at the same moment, jerked against her, causing his cock to go all the way in her throat. She felt the warm strips of come squirt from him. She swallowed instinctively.

But he did not let up. She released him with a pop, he was still hard. Her orgasm began to calm down. But the coil was building up in intensity again.

How can he keep this up? She wondered.

She began to sit up and allowed herself to ride his face as he continued to work her up again. He gripped her hips, allowing her to not completely sit on him.

“Oh god,” she moaned as the coil began to tighten. “Dean.” She whined.

She felt him tighten his grip, telling her to let go.

And the coil snapped so hard she came with a gush and a scream.

She planted her hands on his hips to hold herself up right as she trembled from the intense release.

“You good?” He asked, patting her thigh.

“God you’re good.” She moaned.

He chuckles, taking that as she needs help being moved. He was able to move her off of him, letting her lay on her side.

“Too much?”

“Never too much Dean.”

He leaned in to give her a loving kiss.

“Sam should leave the bunker to us more often.”

“He should that way he could get some sleep.” she says. “Plus at this rate, you’d probably knocked me up with a kid.”

“I probably knocked you up with all kinds of kids.” he hums as he leans back in to kiss her.

She hums.

He pulls away, admiring her with a loving stare.

“You want kids Dean?”

“I’ve always wanted a family. When I was with Lisa and Ben back then, I really enjoyed it. I loved being like a father to Ben, I loved Lisa. I liked the apple pie life.”

“And, that hasn’t change, you want that apple pie life?” she asks.

“I would give this all up for you.”

She smiles. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Saving People, Hunting Things, it’s something you’re good at Dean.” Earning a smile from him. And another loving kiss.

She could feel him enter her for another round. But he started doing a slow pace. Just making love to his girl.

Dean Girls:

@luci-in-trenchcoats, @supernatural-jackles, @becs-bunker, @evansrogerskitten, @mlovesstories, @jayankles, @akshi8278

Want to be tagged for future stories, keep up whenever I post? Send an ask, I’ll add you to my tag list.

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shima-draws · 4 years

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Hiro is here!! We've all been waiting for him!!

You know the drill by now, all the yummy details about his background are under the cut ;) Also be warned it is VERY long I went a little feral writing his backstory lmao

Hiro

Age: 17

Hair color: Orange

Eye color: Pink

Element: Psychic & Forest

Okay so a lot of this is gonna be stuff I'm pulling from posts I've already written to make it easier on myself and so I don't have to repeat anything.

Before he was born, the Novune Forces approached Hiro's parents because they knew that he would be born as a dual elemental. Part of their goal was to raise several dual type children to become human weapons--they targeted dual type babies specifically because they're said to be more powerful since they can use more than one elemental type.

It was the perfect opportunity for Hiro's parents because at the time they were not ready for a child despite agreeing that they were going to have it. Ofc the Forces did not reveal their plans so to them it turned into a nice surrogate parent situation where Hiro's mother would give birth to him and he'd immediately be given up for adoption afterwards. It was definitely hard for them to part with him but they trusted he'd be in good care. Well. That turned out great, as you can probably tell :')

Hiro, along with Kaz and Mallary, became the Forces' iconic trio, with Hiro considered to be the golden child and the most dangerous between the three of them because of his high intellect and skill in combat. He grew up under a very strict regimen and would spend hours each day dedicated to training both his mind and his elemental powers. He's an extremely gifted psychic elemental and took to his abilities almost immediately--he’s able to read his opponents movements and set up traps before they can even get to him. He’s usually airborne for most battles he’s in; he finds it easier to strategize from a higher vantage point, and he also just likes to float around and dodge enemy attacks and act like an ass lmao. He’s a pro at immobilizing his enemies so they can no longer move, ending his battles swiftly and cleanly. Physically he’s not very powerful so he uses a magic staff to fight. His intelligence more than makes up for his lack of super strength!

He has a special power like Kaz’s extra dragon typing (and, like Kaz, he has a streak in his hair from the experimentation)—Hiro gets visions of death, basically predictions of the future, and his visions are never wrong. He’s able to see who dies in battle and the Forces use this to their advantage so that they can prepare around any casualties. Hiro hates getting these visions because he doesn’t like seeing people die, he witnesses their last moments and it’s certainly traumatizing for him;; and like Kaz, this power was something he only unlocked through lots of experimentation on him, so he usually passes out for hours after getting a vision since it’s not a “natural” ability he was born with.

As for his second typing, it was something he never really clicked with. Forest elementals have to be very attuned to nature and are generally more kindhearted and gentle people, but since Hiro grew up in a base with only limited access to the outside (and because he’s forced into acting as an antagonist), his forest elemental powers were repressed over the years. He’s already powerful enough as a psychic elemental so he doesn’t feel the need to resort to a second power, especially since his superiors viewed his second typing as useless and he never received proper training on how to use it. He's already a huge threat as he is so they said good enough. The Forces believe that if something is useless, throw it away, so they eventually abandoned any hope of him succeeding in bettering his forest powers, and focused solely on enhancing his psychic abilities and making his death visions clearer.

Before Hiro became the cold-hearted and snarky colonel that the Forces know him as, he was actually a very kind child with an aversion to violence, and cried often. That got forced out of him pretty quickly though--he learned right away that disobedience means punishment and the only way to pay for his mistakes is by verbal and physical abuse. Poor baby :'( He and Kaz and Mallary go through a LOT of unfair shit as kids. The event that really drove home his intense determination and flawless record was the first mission he was ever sent out on.

This happened when he was around 13. Usually members of the Forces don't get to go out on solo missions unless they have a high position or are old enough to, but he was the exception because of his talent and because it was an experiment to see if he could handle it. His mission was to infiltrate a small, family run guild and basically gather intel and find out what their agenda was, as there were rumors they knew of some of the Forces’ plans. Upon Hiro’s arrival to the town where the guild was situated, he ends up rescuing the Guildmaster’s daughter, Lorelai, who is around his age. Unknowingly, he triggered his forest elemental powers, which caused them to land in a field of flowers he’d bloomed. Because of this, Lorelai starts to call him Flower, since he couldn’t come up with a codename in time and he doesn’t have a real name anyway lol

A couple weeks pass and Hiro spends more and more time with the guild, growing closer to Lorelai and being lulled into a false sense of security. He becomes extremely jealous of how the guild lives, and is very emotional at how much of a family they are, and how sweetly they treat him. Hiro starts to ponder over whether or not he should be sneaking around behind their back, when one day the guild is attacked while he’s out. When he returns, the village is set ablaze, and when Hiro demands what’s going on, his superior informs him that he was merely a decoy to get their defenses down, since apparently the Forces had definitive proof that they knew of their plans. His superior orders Hiro to search the village and kill anybody who was left.

Hiro, panicked, searches for Lorelai, and finds her hiding in the forest nearby. He apologizes to her and has a mental breakdown, blaming himself for all of her misfortune. Lorelai realizes that he’s being kept in the Forces against his will and begs him to run away with her. Hiro knows that he’ll be hunted down if he does, and Lorelai could get hurt, so he tells her he has to stay with them. In the midst of this, they are confronted with the current colonel of the Forces, who encourages Hiro to kill Lorelai. Hiro refuses, and the colonel calls him out for insubordination. The colonel then decides to kill both of them in order to get a promotion. Hiro leaps to defend both Lorelai and himself, and in the scuffle, receives the scar on his head, and accidentally kills the colonel. Traumatized, bloodied, and terrified, Lorelai is the one to apologize to him as he cries his eyes out. Hiro numbly reassures her and tells her to run while she can. Lorelai admits that she loves him and bids him farewell, hoping that they can meet again, and that she’s sorry she can’t do more for him.

This is when Hiro decides to become the perfect agent—dangerous, cruel, and flawless, so that something like this never happens again, and so that he can have enough power to make the decisions rather than just following orders to mindlessly kill people. From then on out he does what he’s told without any complaints and has a record for never failing a single mission the Forces have given to him. Any enemy considers him to be absolutely ruthless because he does not hesitate in battles and will neutralize with no questions asked. He’s a cocky little bastard around enemies lmao he loves to snark them and tease them. He’s strictly against killing after what happened to the colonel, so instead, if it’s a high risk operation, he erases the memories of his targets to reduce the threat. Because he’s so uncomfortable with the thought of death in general he reasons that losing your memories is better than dying, and that makes it easier on the Forces as well since they’ll leave less of a trail rather than just killing people left and right.

Growing up, Hiro didn’t interact with Kaz very much, and they usually just saw each other in passing. However they both respect each other a great amount, and they sympathize with each other, being in the same sort of situation. Both the Hiro and Kaz hate their upbringing and hold a grudge against their superiors for their treatment and experimentation on them;; As for Mallary, Hiro became enamored with her because she reminds him a lot of Lorelai (who he later admits to being his first love). He finds her strength captivating and the way she doesn’t give a shit about other people’s opinions admirable. Hiro eventually falls prey to her manipulation and falls over himself to please her, which bothers Kaz because he knows Mallary’s just toying with him.

After the Forces’ plan to kidnap Ginni and use her as a hostage blows up in their face, Hiro finds out that Kaz had escaped with her, and commends him on the extremely smart decision to do so lol. He wonders if he should start considering leaving the Forces as well, seeing as he’s mature and responsible (and smart) enough to make it on his own. He’s ordered to retrieve Kaz which was a HUGE mistake on the Forces’ part because they didn’t realize Hiro’s loyalties lied more with people on the outside. Hiro meets up with Kaz and Kaz eventually convinces him to desert the Forces and work with him to stop their plans. Hiro agrees to work as a double agent for a while, leaking all of the Forces’ information to Kaz, Ginni, and the guild. In the midst of all this, Hiro meets Olivia, who pretty much calls dibs on him and she’s like “Listen Ginni got to give Kaz his name so can I give the colonel a name?? Please???” So she starts calling him Hiro! And finally baby boy smarts up and starts crushing on a girl that actually gives a damn about him and god dammit it’s the cutest fucking case of puppy love since Dusk/Nozomi. Hiro absolutely adores her, but he’s too nervous to actually do anything about it because he’s got huge abandonment issues (thanks again bad parenting! And Mallary!) and doesn’t want to ruin one of the only genuine friendships he’s ever had. But he is head over HEELS for Olivia and it’s so……softe.

Mallary finds out that Hiro’s acting as a spy, and retaliates. Hiro realizes just how awfully she’s treated him and defeats her, allowing him to escape and officially join up with the guild.

After that it’s a whole bunch of crazy action stuff as plans come together and they get to take down the Forces. Hiro falls harder and deeper for Olivia while she remains oblivious (at least, for a little while, until she finally starts noticing). He grows closer to Kaz and Ginni as well, and begins connecting with Kaz on a deep level because of their shared history. (They’re kind of like brothers, and Hiro considers him to be his best friend :’) )

Once the Forces are defeated, Hiro and Kaz both decide to go on a journey of self discovery in order to better themselves and learn more about the world they haven’t seen due to being locked up for so many years. Kaz and Ginni are already on the verge of forming a relationship, but with Olivia and Hiro it’s still tentative since she’s unsure and he still feels inadequate as a romantic partner. Olivia admits that she likes him and Hiro is so happy he’s ready to burst, but then he realizes it’s not the right time for them to be together so he gently rejects her. (Olivia takes this as an actual rejection tho not a “I’m not ready to be in a relationship with you yet tho I WANT to” and Ginni’s like YA’LL ARE SO DUMB I S2G).

Hiro and Kaz go their separate ways, and Hiro travels around for a while! He eventually settles in a lovely little village where he learns about his forest elemental powers and how to use them better. He’s finally able to connect with other people and essentially becomes way softer around the edges, revealing the true personality he had when he was a kid. A year or so passes and suddenly Kaz, Ginni and Olivia show up to reunite with him, and not long after that Hiro and Olivia FINALLY get together and start dating 😔👌 (Ginni: TOOK you look enough, god)

At some point the four of them go on a journey together and Hiro runs into his biological parents again…!! And he finds out he has a younger sister and they all reconnect and it’s SO EMOTIONAL

Other than that I think that’s all I have 🤔 Thanks for reading though this epic rollercoaster ride of a story plot lol!

Extra personality traits

-Hiro’s sarcasm and snarkiness is a defense mechanism to prevent anybody from seeing his vulnerable side, and also a way to trick the fear inside of him. Kaz is the one to point this out actually lol

-Despite that he does enjoy teasing people lightheartedly and being sassy, once he gets comfortable enough with them! There is a difference between his snarkiness towards enemies compared to that towards friends

-Is EXTREMELY loyal to the people he cares about. At first he tends to act prickly and kind of standoffish towards people he doesn’t know well. Over time he becomes more open to trusting others. Once you earn his trust and he deems you worthy of his friendship he instantly becomes softer and kinder haha, it’s like a switch

-Often dismisses people that he thinks aren’t worth his time or aren’t smart enough to hold an intelligent conversation with him

-Spends a lot of time reading and gathering knowledge. He is very book smart—but not very people smart :’D He and Kaz will spend hours in the guild’s library, since they’re both very thirsty for information outside of what they studied during their time in the Forces

-Touch starved as FUCK. He flips his shit every time somebody touches him in a friendly way, and will melt into a puddle if he gets hugged

-He can be very nosy and insensitive sometimes, prying into other people’s personal affairs if he thinks he can solve the issue

-Absolutely a tactics expert. He calculates all of his moves very carefully, and uses prediction tactics to leave no room for error. He enjoys coming up with mock battle situations to challenge himself.

-Very self-sacrificial;; he views the lives of those he cares about to be far more important than his own. He’ll lay his life on the line for his friends in an instant

-Is the person in the group who is the least fond of violence. If he can find a way around injuring someone, he’ll do it. He prefers to restrict his enemy’s movements or slow them down so they can’t fight back. He is VERY good at neutralizing opponents before they can even register it

-SUPER speedy. Due to his small size he’s very quick, most people don’t see him coming

-He’s really sensitive about his height fjmaksldmas he snaps at people who make fun of him for it

-Tends to levitate when he’s in deep thought. Olivia finds this very cute

-Blooms flowers when he’s happy/embarrassed

-He’s actually. A very talented dancer :0 During his year away from the guild he learned a lot of folk dances at the village he was living in, and when the others witness it they get really starstruck because it’s super mesmerizing!! He blooms flowers as he dances

-At his core he’s a very compassionate character!!

-After escaping from the Forces, he’s able to express his emotions more openly, and goes back to the way he was as a child. He’s a crybaby :’) He cries whenever someone he cares about gets hurt

-The only person in the group with the fucking brain cell, and the most rational one. Unless Olivia gets involved, then he gets stupid and flustered lmao

#This got SO long oh my god. I am so sorry. Except I'm not #My character bios keep getting longer and longer!! WHICH IS GOOD BC THEY ALL NEED GOOD DEVELOPMENT #OC #Original character #Character art #Character design #Character sheet #Character ref #Character reference #Art #Digital art #Long post #Shima arts #Shima's OCs #Among the Stars #ATS #Hiro #shima-draws

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roguishredaxion · 3 years

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My BnHA AU List

Sorry for the length. Fics that are currently available to read have links. To those of you mentioned in this post, I wanted to make sure people knew where the ideas originally came from. (And you’re all awesome anyway!)

Can't See The Forest For The Trees - Genderbent Midoriya Izuku who became a vigilante known as the Forest in Musutafu. Has been operating for five years dealing mostly with information gathering and dispersal and some smaller situations that crop up on the streets. Todoroki Shouto is on patrol in the area and takes an interest in the unknown vigilante after she helps out with a situation where he got in over his head. AO3

A Piece of Patchwork (Improperly Placed) - AU where Izuku and Aizawa swap places in canon. Izuku fights the hero system to become the first quirkless hero, graduating alongside Present Mic. He gets called in to help in a situation where the villain has the ability to steal quirks, five years before the start of canon, providing part of the back-up team for All Might. Part 1 is the battle against All for One, part 2 is an alternate ending to the fight. Part 3 is Izuku learning to use One for All, which was forcefully given to him by All Might at the end of the battle. Part 4 is the other half of the role swap, where Aizawa grows up alongside Bakugou and is trying to get into UA. AO3

The Fallacy of Greatness (AKA Tenth, in my files) - AU where the whole first year class of UA in canon is born 4 years later than in canon. All Might encounters a 10 year old Izuku who asks if he can be a hero. Even after rescuing Bakugou and proving his heroic spirit, All Might elects not to give One for All to a child as young as Izuku. Izuku, desperate for someone to believe in his dreams, realizes that he has to be his first believer and decides to take matters into his own hands and prepare for a future in heroism on his own. AO3

The Capture Scarf Caper - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus Izuku finds Aizawa's capture scarf discarded in an alley and takes it home. He figures out how to use it and becomes so proficient that it accidentally gets mistaken for a quirk. Deciding to capitalize on the strange bias he's come up against, he uses the capture scarf to get into Class 1-A. Unfortunately, this means his teacher is the original owner of his scarf. Suddenly his deception is a lot more desperate and precarious. Meanwhile, Aizawa is trying to figure out why his instincts are telling him to pay such close attention to this anxious kid. AO3

The Better Part of Valor - Suspected Traitor Izuku AU a la @gentrychild. After Aizawa discovers one of Izuku's hero analysis notebooks, he drags Izuku to an interrogation room trying to get him to confess to being the traitor in UA. Izuku comes to realize that several of his classmates were also made aware of this theory and have been feeding information on his movements to their teacher for a while. Betrayed, he starts to pull away from class, falling back into some of the same habits from middle school to go unnoticed and fall off of people's awareness. At some point, his classmates realize that he's no longer staying in the dorms, they only ever see him in class, and All Might is the only person he will voluntarily interact with.

Civil Disobedience - All Might doesn't track Izuku down after the slime incident, but Bakugou's parting words cut far deeper after the day he's had. Realizing that everyone talks about how great of a hero Bakugou will be, Izuku comes to the conclusion that he wants to be the exact opposite of what Bakugou is. He elects to become a villain who goes after and exposes corrupt heroes. Adopting the username Wasureta for his villain work, he collects information on heroes who aren't performing their job as they should and releases it to the court of public opinion, taking away the support that has kept them from being exposed before this. As he digs deeper into the cesspool of rotten heroes, he manages to collect enough information to rake Endeavor over the coals and ends up with an interesting new follower. Dabi, meanwhile, is shocked by the ruthless but polite teenager he found when he tried to find Wasureta and he's not sure if he's impressed by what the kid has accomplished on his own, or horrified by the scope of what he controls.

Hunting Prometheus - There is another quirkless student attending Aldera Middle School, but she wasn't born that way unlike Izuku. When she was seven, her quirk was stolen from her by a man with a smooth voice and a forgettable face and she's been existing in a state of carefully cultivated rage since that day. Before, she never even considered becoming a hero. Now her only goal is to become a hero so she can find that man and punch him in the face. (OC fic, obviously)

Lost Stars in an Indifferent Universe - Leverage AU, five parts, origin for each member of the team. Izuku is told to be realistic and he tries to be following his disastrous encounter with All Might. But realistic means that he has already exceeded the life expectancy of quirkless individuals, acknowledging the fact that no amount of studying or work will let him join a remotely helpful career, and he is stuck living with his mother while he wastes away as a janitor at a nearby middle school following the completion of his high school education. When he returns to a tall building he hadn't managed to convince himself to jump off of yet, he finds that the abandoned space has been taken over by a black market of sorts and gets folded into a world of grey morals and an underground economy based on merit instead of quirk. When he becomes aware of an illegal quirk experimentation operation and tries to blow the whistle, several attempts are made on his life in order to shut him up. Instead of disappearing, he gets angry and decides to collect a team to strike back and prove the shady shit the lab is up to. (Izuku=Mastermind, Shinsou=Grifter, Hatsume=Hacker, Shoji=Hitter, Eri=Thief)

Love and Other Things Not Bound By the Laws of Time - Mr. Peabody and Sherman AU. Nezu adopts a young Midoriya Izuku whose mother died shortly after he was diagnosed as quirkless. Determined to show his new son that one's quirk or lack thereof means nothing in the grand scheme of things, UA's principal develops the WABAC machine to travel through time and prove just how capable people were before quirks manifested. He indulges Izuku's passion and curiosity, encouraging him to look into as much or as little as he wants on any subject. It becomes clear that, while not supernaturally intelligent, Izuku is a genius whose ability to make connections and strategize is by far his greatest asset, especially as he still holds onto the goal of becoming a hero.

The Quiet Revolution (collab w/ my sister) - The Todoroki siblings need therapy. Instead of getting that therapy, they decide to meet up for dinner every Saturday night, begin a tradition where they burn their father in effigy each week, accidentally start a highly successful Minecraft YouTube channel, and generally cause the downfall of the existing hero system through the power of networking.

You Can Tell What I Am By The Lines In My Skin - BnHA/Naruto AU. Naruto dies in his own universe and is reborn into the My Hero Academia Universe as Midoriya Izuku. He remembers who he was, but his chakra, which followed him into this life, is always out of reach. He trains as best he can to keep up his regular ninja skills but can't break through the barrier separating him from his chakra. He still meets and trains under All Might. When he receives One for All, however, the sensation that fills him is entirely familiar. It breaks through the barrier as though it isn't even there, and settles inside like it's always been there. Honestly, he had been missing the angry furball anyway, so he was glad Kurama managed to follow him to this world. With access to his chakra again, the world is about to discover just how effective one shinobi can be in a world of heroes.

War Games - (Inspired by RogueDruid's Hero Class Civil Warfare and others similarly inspired by it.) A year-wide hero class exercise is announced. Bakugou is announced as the Hero leader while the villain leader's identity is kept secret. Izuku knows it's him before the letter appears in his room. The students are allowed to pick whichever side they want, but most choose the hero side, which has won the exercise every time it has been run. This year is no different. Todoroki realizes that Izuku is the villain leader and signs up with him. Izuku goes and recruits Momo and Monoma to his side. Then, after consulting the rules, he folds in Shinsou and Hatsume as well. Monoma plays decoy villain leader and attempts to collect a few more people, but they've already signed up for the hero side. Izuku, without explicitly saying that he's signed up with the hero team, gets folded into the hero strategy sessions since no one expected him to make a different choice. He proceeds to get "taken out" in the first villain assault, and most people don't realize what's happening until it's far too late.

Life's A Game (And I'm Player One) - AU in which Izuku realizes that he does have a quirk but can't tell anyone about it because a) he can't prove it and b) it could be dangerous if he talks about what he can see. His quirk, which he privately calls Stat Check, freezes time just for him in order to open up what looks like a video game character bio that explains a person's quirk, as well as containing vital statistics. It only works in person or on unaltered photographs with a person's face or a distinctive enough feature to identify them. As he gets older, more tabs are added to the bio, and he starts to notice signs above certain people's heads telling him what level he needs to be to fight them (he stops seeing these after receiving OfA, until he sees AfO in Kamino Ward). In pictures, only the first tab is available unless he took the picture while time was frozen, in which case all the tabs are accessible. Because of this, he has accordion folders filled with photographs of people instead of analysis notebooks.

Of Unpainted Fences and Raw Ingredients - Smart Izuku AU. He has been writing essays about hero society, morality, and several other issues since before UA, but he doesn't realize how much people are paying attention to them until the essays start becoming required reading for certain classes. Meanwhile, the teachers are desperate to get in contact with him, not expecting that the essayist they have been gushing over is sitting near the back of the class, trying not to blush.

In A Mirror Darkly - Aizawa is out on patrol with Shinsou and Midoriya when they are attacked and the boys are apparently obliterated by an enemy quirk. The rest of the class attempts to help Aizawa, but he blames himself for their deaths. It doesn't help that he keeps seeing flashes of them in the mirror out of the corner of his eye and could swear he heard one or both of their voices in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Shinsou and Midoriya are stuck out of sync with the rest of the universe and can't communicate with anyone except Aizawa, and only through mirrors. Izuku figured out that they have maybe two weeks before they waste away since they can't interact with anything being stuck in this in-between space. The only way they can get out is for Aizawa, who was there when they de-synced, to touch them and bring them back in sync with the rest of the world.

Guerilla Tactics - Vigilante Class 1-A AU. After the slime villain debacle, Izuku runs away from Bakugou and the heroes. He literally runs into Todoroki Shouto and they commiserate about how the heroes have failed them. Realizing a bit late exactly who Shouto's father is and why he's trying to run away, Izuku offers to come up with a plan to help him get away cleanly. (This is sort of the worst timeline, where most of the good teachers aren't employed at UA, Nezu is not the principal, and the HPSC is in charge of almost everything.) The plan they come up with involves Shouto failing the recommended exam, then disappearing the day results arrive home. Izuku, meanwhile, attends the regular exam and sees how the whole points system benefits those with flashier quirks and easily aimed egos. He gets to talking with a lot of hero hopefuls and sort of steals them out from under UA when their applications are rejected. They move into an abandoned sector of outer Tokyo and start working as vigilantes. Dadzawa makes an appearance, as if summoned by the horde of teenagers with no form of parental guidance to speak of.

No Rest for the Wicked (Or The Damned) - Person Of Interest AU. Instead of apologizing to Izuku when he asked if he could still be a hero without a quirk, Inko points out the other ways he can be a hero, by building the things they would need to fight crime. Figuring that one of the main problems with villains is that no one knows when they're going to attack, Izuku creates an intelligent program that can assess a high volume of data and extrapolate when and where a villain attack will take place, and who the villain will be. When his mom is killed and he's badly injured in an attack his AI predicted, Izuku realizes that no one is taking his information seriously because he's quirkless. He decides to take matters into his own hands and reaches out to an unlikely helper. Dabi doesn't know why this kid decided he was the best option to stop a lot of the more violent crime he somehow knows is going to happen, but he promised and then delivered Endeavor's fall from grace, so he's willing to see where this goes.

Binary Stars - Slight Megamind AU. Before their respective planets were destroyed, Izuku and Bakugou were placed in small space pods and sent towards Earth. Bakugou's people were warriors who looked enough like humans that they intermarried (unbeknownst to humans), thus bringing about the first quirks. Izuku's people, however, are survivors. Their planet was populated by predators so their greatest asset was their ability to camouflage themselves. As Bakugou's people often hunted Izuku's people, they gained a sort of sixth sense for them, which is why Izuku's very presence pisses Bakugou off. (All for One is from Bakugou's planet. He was exiled for stealing power. The last power he stole was what he gave his brother, and the brother always resented him for getting them both sent away.) Izuku still receives OfA, and is the first of his species to have a quirk/power like that.

The Wings of Icarus - Spy AU. Todoroki Shouto works for Yuuei, an espionage agency run by his father. He's been training practically since birth, no thanks to his father, and is second in the spy business only to a person known as Icarus. When something goes wrong on a mission, he is rescued by a short man with freckles and deep green eyes shortly before he passes out. He is found at one of the entrances to Yuuei with a note from Icarus to the tune of "I think you lost this", making Shouto the only person to have actually seen Icarus. Meanwhile, Nezu is running a small but successful info brokerage out of a bakery with three kids he picked up off the streets years before: Izuku, Shinsou, and Hatsume. Codenames: Icarus, Psyche, and Daedalus, respectively. Nezu is known as Zeus.

Dark is the Night (Momo is Batman: version 1) - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus . Momo loses her parents in a villain attack when she's eight. She throws herself into her studies in earnest, determined to be a hero. In the meantime, however, she has a hard time ignoring all of the hardship she sees on the streets, all of the crimes that go unanswered. However, to duck the vigilantism laws and disguise her identity, she wears a suit that covers every part of her body (think Cassandra Cain as Batgirl) because no one would assume that someone with a creation quirk that needed exposed skin to function was under it. She produces everything she needs at home. Aizawa notices that there's someone off about Yaomomo, something fake. It isn't until he runs into her on patrol that he figures something out.

Used to the Darkness (Momo is Batman: version 2) - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus . Bruce Wayne was reincarnated as Yaoyorozu Momo. She remembers everything about her previous life, but she has adapt all of the fighting training she knows to her new female body. The intelligence and detective skills are useful in this new world, especially since a good portion of logic and deduction has fallen by the wayside for the majority of those in law enforcement. The quirk is something else to get used to, but it's highly effective at producing materials of various things needed for vigilantism. She's interested to see how far she can take the limits of the superpower this universe had given her. At the very least, she's more than capable of recreating the gear she had. Even though her parents haven't died in this universe, she still ends up going out at night and trying to help in whatever way she can. Upon meeting and befriending Todoroki Shouto, she realizes the good she can be in this universe. She attacked the corruption in Gotham wherever she could. Why shouldn't she be able to do the same here? The night is still dark and the people who hide in it are the same cowards they've always been. It's about time someone reminded them that the dark hides more than just their actions.

A Rose By Any Other Name (AKA the Haruhi AU) - Based on a prompt found on @rayshippouuchiha‘s blog. Midoriya Izumi is having trouble staying in uniform after starting middle school because her bullies have decided to step up the abuse a little bit and keep burning them. She had three sets of uniforms, and all three are burned by the third day of classes. What's more, the nurse doesn't have any spare girls uniforms and her teacher insists that she needs to be in uniform and not in her gym outfit. Since the nurse does have a boys uniform that would fit her, Izumi elects to follow her teacher's instructions and shows up in a boys uniform as she doesn't care as much about the clothes she's wearing as she does about following what her teacher said. Cue a gender identity crisis. AO3

Nothing But The Truth - Izuku is hit by a truth quirk while out on patrol and Aizawa is made to babysit him until it wears off. Although he tries to avoid more sensitive lines of questioning, Aizawa asks about his analysis notebooks and ends up accidentally learning about One For All, Izuku's life prior to receiving it, and what his Problem Child's true goals regarding heroism are. (Might become a series with this as a oneshot, or a multi-chapter story as originally planned.)

Panacea - Izuku has a hidden quirk his whole life, one that people didn't even consider could be a quirk. He has a super-powered immune system, and it can and will treat damaging quirks as an infection to fight. His burns from Bakugou's quirk heal faster and faster, emitter quirks used on him start to be less effective after the first couple of times until they don't work at all. He has the ultimate cure in his blood and no way to share it. And then he receives One For All, a powerful stockpiling quirk with a secondary aspect that makes it capable of passing from person to person regardless of heritage. Izuku doesn't realize it, but his invisible quirk got a free pass to start changing the world, one touch at a time. (Possible Dad For One) (Just had the stupid thought that Izuku's quirk is basically Cure For All)

Prototype - While getting scolded after the Slime Villain incident, an underground hero known as Prototype shows up and forces the other pros on the scene to back off. They then walk Izuku home (accidentally forcing him to miss All Might's offer). During the walk, Izuku confesses that he is giving up on his dream of being a hero since everyone says it's impossible. Prototype points out that Izuku was the only one on the scene who was thinking about a solution from more than one angle, which is a useful skill for an underground hero to have. They offer to take him on as their apprentice in the underground, promising that if he still wants to be a hero, an apprenticeship would be more flexible and faster than trying to become a hero through one of the heroics schools. They advise Izuku to think about it and discuss it with his mom, since he would probably be spending a lot of time training out of the house and not every parent is willing to let their child basically move in with someone they barely know. Izuku, after talking things over with his mom, decides to go for it, embarking on a totally different journey to being a hero than he ever expected.

Yesterday's Sunshine (A Storm On The Rise) - Based on @hey-hamlet's End of An Era AU in which the mind of a 19 year old Izuku fighting a losing battle against Paranormal Liberation Front and the League of Villains is sent back to his 14 year old body, a mere month after he started training with All Might. He is traumatized and trying to hide the fact that he is shocked to see the people he knows died walking around again, untouched and whole. He's determined to make everything better this time, to keep his loved ones from dying or betraying him in the worst ways. He also needs to try and stay ahead of the people around him, who are trying to figure out why this child who shouldn't have encountered many villains in his life, is so terrifyingly good at putting them down hard. (I'm considering adding an aspect of DFO.)

Searching for Tododeku - Or Five Times Shouto Tricks Midoriya Into A Date and One Time Midoriya Asks Him Instead. Featuring semi oblivious Izuku, Shouto stealth-competing for the title of supreme memelord with Kaminari, and a cameo of Endeavor's crippling addiction to tabloid magazines.

Planar Shift - An All For One-Izuku body swap just weeks prior to a fight that would have left AFO and All Might both greviously injured. Izuku is quick to realize that the person he ended up in doesn't seem to be a nice person (and he tries not to think about what it would mean if the person is in his body around Kacchan) and has a lot more quirks than a person should have. His childhood doctor is there, as is a strange boy with delicate skin, a disintegration quirk, and a love of video games but little else. Then there's the purple mist person who reads as both alive and dead to one of Izuku's new quirks. When he figures out that All Might is trying to track this villain down (and will probably think it's a trick if Izuku tries to explain his situation), he decides that he should get himself, the kid, and the not-dead-but-not-alive person out of there. He doesn't know how long he's going to be in this body, but he wants to be the hero those two need, even if he's technically a villain.

Environmental Damage - Hitman Izuku AU. When Izuku's mother is killed when he's young, he manages to track down the killer but the police won't take him seriously because he's quirkless. Neither will any of the heroes he approached with it. So instead he goes back to the criminal underground where he found most of his information and talks to an assassin who had a soft spot for him. Izuku agreed to become the man's apprentice so he can take out the person who killed his mother himself. After that, he starts selling his services to people who can't get out of bad situations, offering a much reduced rate compared to other contract killers. Then a kid his age with red and white hair approaches him about killing the Number Two hero.

Summertime and Seaglass - Aizawa keeps running into this mute homeless kid on his patrols. He's not sure what to make of him, except that he needs someone to care for him, especially as the nights are getting colder. Treating the kid a bit like an abused and feral cat, he starts taking food with him to offer the kid when they meet up. It's more or less an accident when he learns the kid's name is Midoriya Izuku, a child thought to be dead and burned three years before when he and his mother were caught in a villain attack that was ended violently by Endeavor. Aizawa wants to give Midoriya and all of the other victims of Endeavor's carelessness the justice they deserve, and maybe by the time he's done the kid will let him bring him in from the cold.

The Importance of Being Batman - (Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus .) Izuku spends a lot of time on forums for quirkless people, getting support and advice from other people like him who don't have a quirk. He gets the attention of an old Admin, Toshinori, and they talk about heroics, pre-quirk comic books, and the importance of representation and symbols in modern media and culture. After failing to get into heroics in the entrance exam, Izuku shifts his focus slightly. Batman didn't have any special powers in the comics, but he was one of the best heroes in his universe. Izuku decides that if he can build the skills, knowledge and (most importantly) money to become his own version of Batman, that would be almost like being a hero. It's time that society learns that 'useless' is a matter of choice, not birth, and even someone who doesn't have a quirk can do incredible things.

#MHA AUs #BnHA AUs #My AUs #BnHA AU list #MHA AU list #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #fanfiction #my fanfic ideas

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justanotherlifeff · 3 years

Text

Levi Ackerman × reader

Genre: Angst, Hurt/comfort, Fluff, matured themes, slowburn

Warning: There's mentions and descriptions of underage rape and suicidal themes and self harm and other triggering stuff. THERE IS SMUT IN THIS CHAPTER

6 months later

"Oi Hanji! Give her something for the pain and do something fucking useful for once!" Levi growled as (Y/N) almost sprained his hand with a squeeze as she held his hand during another contraction. Levi deeply regretted teaching her those exercises to improve her strength all those months back. "Calm down Levi. I'm not the doctor here and I am not using some experimental pain killer that I made without any human testing on my best friend." Hanji replied to him calmly. Levi was loosing his grip as he wasn't ready for it.

When (Y/N) told him that her water broke at dawn, he panicked more than he ever did in his entire life. More than when Kenny taught him how to use knives by almost killing him. "Sir, we can't allow you to stay here... She will have her delivery soon..." a nurse meekly told the fuming captain, only to receive a deadly glare from him. If looks could kill, the nurse would've been dead by now. "Levi, listen to them. They delivered more babies than most of the survey corps’ titan kills." Hanji tried to reason with him. However, that seemed to stop working for the last 8 hours, after (Y/N)'s contractions began. "Levi, as the commander of the survey corps, I command you to get the fuck out of this room." Hanji told him in a commanding tone as she lost all patience with him. He was testing her like a spoilt child for the last 8 hours about almost everything.

Levi fell asleep on the chair in the waiting room. Hanji was sitting beside him, quiet sleepy herself. At least she took an afternoon nap yesterday and she felt immensely guilty for giving a huge pile of paperwork to Levi the same day. He had been working all day and wasn't able to sleep at night too as (Y/N)'s contractions started at dawn. Buying their home at Trost was a great decision as the hospital was nearby as (Y/N) had a hard time riding a horse to get there. Both Levi squad and (Y/N) squad was there except Marie, who apparently had a headache.

Hanji personally never liked Marie either and she agreed with Levi about the fact that this girl was trying to double cross (Y/N). However, Hanji saw why (Y/N) refused to let her go. If she only cooperated, she could've been a good asset to the team. It had been 2 more hours since Hanji got Levi to get out of the delivery room, 10 hours since (Y/N)'s water broke. After these agonising two hours, a nurse entered the waiting room with a pained look but a smile while rubbing her hands. It didn't take long for Hanji to figure out that she offered (Y/N) to hold her hand, given that her hand looked red. Watching the nurse, Hanji was barely able to tap Levi's shoulder twice as he jerked awake and asked the nurse in panic.

"Is (Y/N) okay?". Hanji realised that Levi took the pained look on the nurse's face as a signal to something is wrong other than the fact that (Y/N) squeezed the soul out the poor woman's hand. "Yes they both are fine. They are cleaning the baby as we speak. Congratulations Mr Ackerman. It's a boy. Would you like to see them?" The nurse asked with a smile. Hanji noticed that Levi looked paler than usual. His hands were shaking a bit too. "Yes." Levi answered after getting a grip on himself.

Levi followed the nurse into the cabin where (Y/N) had been transferred. Everyone else followed too. They were made to wait till (Y/N) was transferred into the cabin but that didn't take too long. As the nurse opened the door and walked in, Levi saw a scene that he, even in his wildest dreams never imagined. There on the bed right opposite to the door laid (Y/N), a small white bundle in her arms. She looked tired, almost as if she would pass out but there was a slight smile on her face as her eyes were filled with curiosity and love as she looked at the small bundle. "She doesn't look like herself at all..." Levi internally thought.

Yes, (Y/N) didn't have the look of a ruthless killer anymore. She looked different. "She's giving off the same expression that my mother used to have..." Levi thought curiously as he stepped towards (Y/N). That's when he realised why (Y/N) had such a sudden change. That's because what he saw affected him too. Almost as greatly as it did to (Y/N). Inside the small, there was this small baby, with raven hair, eyes the exact copy of Levi, only they were (E/C) instead of the steel grey that Levi's eyes hold. "He even got that constipated look" Hanji muttered as she followed Levi towards (Y/N).

At this point, Levi sat down abruptly on the chair right in front of the bed. His legs were shaking. There was no balance in his body. Years of training, his unbreakable balance, his extreme reflexes, all gone after looking at this sight. "I have a kid..." Levi's voice croaked out suddenly. Both his squad, (Y/N)'s squad, Hanji and (Y/N) herself looked at him as if they just saw something extremely unexpected happen. It was unexpected after all. Levi, the person who never got his guard down after meeting Kenny, was weak, vulnerable and he didn't bother hiding it.

"Levi, are you okay?" Hanji asked Levi before anyone else as everyone was extremely taken aback by Levi's actions. Even (Y/N) was taken aback as she never saw Levi like this. "Levi... " (Y/N) tried to say but her voice was raspy as her throat was dry. Without saying any more, (Y/N), extended a hand towards his, held his hand gently, trying to make him feel better. "Can I hold...it?" Levi muttered, as he got some grip on himself after (Y/N) held his hand. "Oi Levi! Don't call your own son it!" Hanji exclaimed. "Hanji, let him be. I'm sure he's having a hard time processing it all. I am too." (Y/N) told Hanji, her voice still raspy. The nurse helped to take the baby from (Y/N)'s arms and gave it to Levi, teaching how to hold the baby.

The baby simply stared at Levi, as if he was hugely disappointed with the fact that he was taken from his mother. Levi just stared at the baby for a few moments. He had a family now. He found someone who gave him the reason to live on and now he has a child, someone who he could give the good childhood he never got. Hesitantly, Levi placed a light kiss on the baby's forehead, surprising the whole group of people in the room, not surprising (Y/N) too much as she saw Levi showing emotions before. (Y/N) just smiled, knowing that the man before her was at peace.

They both were at peace. Her dreams came true. She now has a family. The both of them finally found happiness. "You guys, I'll contact the Reeves company and get meat for you all. Sasha, you will be cooking and arranging everything at my house. I'll pay for everything." Levi told everyone, looking at them with a small smile on his face. "M-meat? You will buy meat for us?" Sasha stammered before shouting out, "HEICHOU! YOU ARE THE BEST SQUAD LEADER ANYONE CAN POSSIBLY GET!" while crying like a maniac. Everyone else looked happy and thanked Levi for the treat.

"Guys, get out now. I need some rest" (Y/N) stated after a while. Everyone already took turns to hold the baby and Levi proved to be an overprotective father, as he inspected everyone as they took the baby and snapped at Connie when he made a mistake trying to hold the baby. No one wanted to leave though, as the baby was just too cute to leave alone. After some groans of disappointment, they all left. All except Levi.

"What will we name him?" (Y/N) asked him. She didn't want to bring the topic up in front of the others as she didn't want their contribution in this matter. "What about Farlan?" Levi answered after thinking for a moment. "Sure. It's a nice name. Farlan Ackerman sounds good." (Y/N) answered with a smile. The baby was asleep on the cot beside the bed. Levi looked at him and sighed. "Yeah. It sounds nice" He answered, a small smile forming on his face. He then walked towards (Y/N), patted her head gently and said, "Take some rest. I'll be back soon. I'll have to take a nap myself.". That's when (Y/N) noticed how tired he looked. Levi was used to being sleep deprived. That's not what tired him. What tired him was the amount of tension he went through for the last 11 hours. He very much needed a nap.

(Y/N) was woken by the sound of the door of the cabin opening. She had a sound sleep as the nurses took care of Farlan except for the times when he had to be fed. (Y/N) noticed that it was already evening as she saw the orange light coming from the window into the room. It was Pixis who just entered the room. Of course, it didn't surprise (Y/N). After what he did on her wedding, she came to acknowledge the fact that Pixis was completely unpredictable.

"I see that I have a grandchild now." Pixis stated with a smirk. "Yes. That part was obvious." (Y/N) replied with a stoic expression. "Don't be so bland (Y/N). I'm just here to see the baby. I haven't seen many new-borns in my lifetime." Pixis answered as he walked towards the cot. "Did you ever see me when I was a baby?" (Y/N) asked in return. Pixis stopped in front of the cot and answered, "No. I didn't.". He tried to hide it but his voice showed some remorse and so, (Y/N) didn't further question him. "His eyes look a lot like Levi. What's his name?" Pixis asked (Y/N), as he looked at the sleeping baby. "Farlan" (Y/N) answered. "Ah I see." Pixis answered. Before he could say anything more, Levi entered the room.

He just came back after getting the best sleep of his life as he felt like the happiest person on earth. However, seeing Pixis there worried him. That guy abandoned (Y/N) after all. "Should I give you some privacy?" he asked (Y/N) as he figured that (Y/N) would like to talk to Pixis alone. After all, their relationship was worse than just shaky and Levi thought that him being there would just make things more awkward. "No it's fine. You can stay" (Y/N) answered. After Levi entered the room, Pixis told him, "Congratulations on being a father" with a smile.

"Thank you." Levi answered curtly. The baby was awake by now as Pixis picked him up. "So, we all will pretend as if we are one big happy family?" Levi asked Pixis, raising an eyebrow. After all, the last thing Levi expected was that he would see Pixis holding his son. "Whatever helps him sleep at night" (Y/N) scoffed. To that Pixis let out a brief laugh before saying, "No wonder you're my daughter. However, you've got the sharp tongue of your mother...". At that, (Y/N) stopped him and said, "Don't compare me to that foul woman." with a frown.

"Okay. I won't. Anyway, I will have to take my leave now. And Levi, everyone likes to play family at some point. I won't deny that I'm the reason for which (Y/N) had a horrible life but we can't change that now can we?" Pixis answered before keeping Farlan in the cot and leaving the room. "Are you okay (Y/N)?" Levi asked (Y/N) as he didn't know how (Y/N) felt about the whole thing. "Yeah I'm fine. I personally don't accept him as my father but I'm glad that Farlan will probably have a grandfather. At this point, the only thing I care about is Farlan's happiness as I already found mine" (Y/N) told him with a smile.

1 month and a week later

(Y/N) made certain errors in her prediction from 6 months ago. She had her delivery a week before it was predicted. Farlan however, was healthier than ever. She also took more than a month to recover. A month and half to be exact. Thus, the expedition had to be delayed for a week. Levi didn't even have to push Hanji about it because Hanji figured out how long (Y/N) would actually take to recover a few weeks after she gave birth. She made all the arrangements for the delay of the expeditions by then much to (Y/N)'s disappointment. She however couldn't complain later when she really took a week more to recover. That gave them two weeks to eradicate all titans left in Wall Maria.

Hundreds of titans were killed using the executioner from hell before winter. The plan was that there would be two expeditions. Each with 3 days worth of supply. The survey corps would be divided into two groups. One would be travelling from Trost, eastwards, facing every titan on the way and travelling in groups, 2 squads in each, to attract the titans till they reach Utopia. The other would be travelling from Utopia, westwards till they reach Trost. The only two strategists capable of leading a team if something went terribly wrong were Hanji and (Y/N), with Hanji clearly being better than (Y/N) due to her longer experience in battle. Thus, it was decided that (Y/N), along with Levi's experience, would lead the group from Trost while Hanji would lead the group from Utopia.

The Survey corps had 201 members by now, Levi squad having an extra. The usual squad had 5 members including the squad leader. 20 squads would be there on each group. The formation would be such that every group of two squads would be 10 km apart from eachother. If something went wrong with the formation, red smoke signals would be used. (Y/N) squad and Levi squad, partnered with two other squads, would be positioned in the middle of the formation so that they could immediately run to help if any other squad is harmed. It would, however, take about an hour to get the formation done as the distance between wall Maria and Wall Rose is 100 km and survey corps horses could run at a speed of 80km/hr. Levi squad will give Armin to Hanji squad so that the other team could use the strength they are lacking due to the absence of either one of Levi, (Y/N) or a titan shifter, given that, Armin was the most powerful titan shifter on the team.

Thus, the team from Trost would have a hundred members while the team from Utopia would have a hundred and one. The survival rate this time, would only be a 50% however as everyone is expected to charge straight at the titans instead of running.

"You all will be using your 3DMG to go and get all the dummies cut. However, from today till the expedition, you'll all be competing against (Y/N) here. If any of you can get around the forest before her, congratulations, you stand a chance against her if she just got out of a delivery. If any of you gets tangled in your own wire again, I swear I'll kick you out of the survey corps." Levi lectured all the cadets. (Y/N) joined them as planned today, so that she can brush up her training. The last night, Levi personally took (Y/N) to check if she can use 3DMG, and (Y/N) surprised him.

She was almost as good as before her pregnancy leave. Sure, she was still rough around some edges, her movements weren't as flawless as it was before, her speed decreased noticeably too but she still was better than all recruits combined. All the cadets were greatly interested in watching (Y/N) in action. (Y/N) was the only person in the entire Survey corps who's 3DMG skills were comparable to Levi's. Everyone knew that and as the new recruits never saw (Y/N) in action, competing her seemed like a very good sport to them. Defeating (Y/N) meant coming second to the strongest in humanity. Levi squad and (Y/N) squad however knew that it wasn't possible. "Everyone, assume positions!" Levi commanded and everyone ran to the line drawn in front of the forest. They all stood in line, ready to take off. "And go!" Levi instructed and everyone took off.

The new recruits were surprised to see (Y/N) getting way ahead of everyone at a speed that was impossible for them to reach. "What the hell? She isn't even using too much gas..." one of the recruits exclaimed. (Y/N) was out of their sight in no time and as they found the dummies, every one of them had a perfect slice cut off it's nape. There were 16 dummies in total. It took the others 30 minutes to find and cut down every single one of them and getting out while (Y/N) did the same in 13 minutes. Levi squad and (Y/N) squad took 25 minutes while Mikasa took 18. "Good work out there." Levi told (Y/N) as she flew out of the forest. "Well, I usually am faster than that." (Y/N) answered, as she got her blades in the sheathes in the 3DMG. "Yes. I know that. If you didn't just have a delivery last month, I'd have been disappointed." Levi answered to that. (Y/N) just gave a "mhhm" for reply before she spoke again.

"I'm not so sure if leaving Farlan with Hanji was a good idea..." (Y/N) muttered. "Well, he'll be fine." Levi answered casually. "Are you sure about that? Hanji did try to make him walk at the age of three weeks for her experiments... " (Y/N) muttered remembering the time when Hanji tried to test if Levi's genetics had something that made them become physically developed more easily than others given that all the other known ackermans, Kenny and Mikasa, had good fighting abilities. Of course, Hanji's experiments didn't work and Farlan got hurt and cried, which sounded more angry than pained, thus scaring Hanji to death as Levi gave Hanji a death glare once it happened. After all, Levi did try to kill a commander before.

5 days later

"Hanji, the milk is in the cupboard in the kitchen with the bottle. Boil the bottle before feeding Farlan. The nappies, shirts and blankets are in the third drawer in the wardrobe of mine and Levi's room. If Farlan wets himself, just take anything from there. I kept everything packed in a bag which is also in the wardrobe so that you can bring it when you come to the headquarters. And Hanji, don't try to do any experiments. I'm trusting you on this." (Y/N) explained Hanji. "You explained all of that to me every single day of this week you know." Hanji mentioned in a flat tone. "Well, I was just reminding you..." (Y/N) started before Hanji stopped her and said in a light tone, "Come on (Y/N)! I literally lead the survey corps! Farlan will be fine. Don't worry so much.". "Yeah... I guess I'm a bit too paranoid... Thanks for all the help Hanji." (Y/N) answered with a smile. "Yeah yeah I know. You'll be late for training if you keep trying to remind me stuff now. So, get out." Hanji pushed (Y/N) out of the house.

(Y/N) POV

When I reached the survey corps headquarter and walked in the training grounds, Levi was already there. "You're late. You're doing 50 laps after training." he told me with a frown. Yes, I obviously never got special treatment from him in case of work related matters. I appreciated it though as our personal lives shouldn't interfere with work. The female cadets looked happy with the fact that I got laps. Well, it doesn't matter. It isn't like they have the guts to make a move on Levi. "Well, assume positions now. I'll be following you all." Levi commanded everyone. I joined everyone in front of the starting line. "And go!" Levi instructed as we all shot forward.

"Make as less moves as possible. Preserve gas. Find the locations of the dummies and cut them." my mind kept repeating as I sped towards the forest. The slightest movements caught my attention as some recruits were left to move the dummies. One, two, three... My mind counted as I kept making perfect cuts on every dummy. Just as I landed outside the forest, I found no one. Of course, Levi mentioned that he will be following us in the next training exercise. He probably is with the other recruits.

After about 20 more minutes, everyone else appeared with Levi. Levi looked at me, his eyes showing appreciation. "You reached your previous records. Your moves are as good as before now. Good job." he complimented before turning to the new recruits and saying, "You all couldn't improve any more than 30 minutes in six fucking months and she did the same fucking job in 11 minutes by a week after having a delivery about a month and half ago. This is why I don't train brats like you all. I don't know how Shadis keeps his cool with you all.". He said all of that calmly with a stoic expression but the girls in the group almost started crying already. Levi then turned to my squad and his own squad and said, "You all did okay. There's still room for improvement though.". They all saluted and Levi motioned them to be at ease before looking at me and saying, "Well, what are you waiting for? Go get the laps done."

2 hours and 30 minutes later

I finally was done with the laps. Hanji came by with Farlan and saw me doing laps in the training grounds. 400 meters each lap. About 20 km. "And here I thought shorty was getting soft..." Hanji shook her head as she ran beside me carrying Farlan when she found me. "Well, he honestly got softer than before. I remember him shouting at me back when I took a minute to get a dummy down. Now he's saying his squad that they did a good job after they took 25 minutes to get 16 dummies." I answered. No wonder they weren't improving.

I went to my office to get the extra uniform I usually keep there incase if the one I'm wearing gets dirty. With that, I went to the female bathrooms and took a bath, changed my uniform, went to my office to grab the stack of paperwork Hanji told me that she would leave in my office and went for Levi's office. I knocked on his door and heard his voice saying, "State your name and business.". "It's (Y/N)." I answered. "Come in" I heard his voice, now sounding softer and went in his office. His table had three stacks of paperwork, his face showing the stress that he was on. I sat down with my own stack and started working silently, helping Levi with his paperwork sometimes while he helped me with mine. When I was done, he still had two stacks to complete. I looked at him, he looked tired. Thus, I got up, walked towards his chair and went under the table.

Back when I was about 6 months pregnant, I had this phase when I was horny all the time and that's when I found out that getting a blowjob while he's working calms Levi down when he has to do a lot of paperwork. Thus, this little tradition started where I helped him out every time I saw him struggling with work. I heard a sigh of content from him as I took his dick in my mouth, swirling my tongue around it's tip. I felt his hand on my hair, gently pushing me on his length. I didn't give him the chance to guide me as I started going all out on him, taking all of his length in my mouth and bobbing my head on it, my tongue working at it's tip the entire time. The gentle touch on my hair turned into a harsh grab as Levi took control, making my movements even faster.

I heard Levi's breathing getting disoriented and suddenly, there was a knock on the door. I stopped my assault on his dick so that he could answer the door without having any distractions. "State name and business" I heard him say with a flat monotone voice. He had this way of keeping his body entirely under control, which fascinated me to bits. "It's Cadet Schwarz. I need to talk to you, heichou." I heard Marie's voice. What is that girl upto? "Come in" Levi answered as I heard the door open and her footsteps coming into the room.

"Schwarz, the last time you were in my office, as much as I can recall, (Y/N) gave you a warning about your attire. Why are you violating the dress code again?" I heard Levi ask her. That's it. I know very well what she's trying to do. I'd have to write a report against her and probably give her a talk about backing off from my husband. "Heichou, I will get straight into point. I only joined the survey corps for you. When I heard that they were taking members in the Special operations squad, I thought it was your squad. However, I wasn't lucky enough and ended up in hers. Heichou, I can keep you much happier than she ever can. Just..." Levi stopped her before she said anything more.

"Listen, what you're doing is highly inappropriate. I'm a married man and I'm in a happy marriage. I even have a kid. Even if I wasn't married, I would never leave (Y/N) for anyone. So, I'll tell this to you for the last time, stop embarrassing yourself." Levi answered, in a stoic voice. "Is that right heichou? Then why does your face look so flustered? You know what heichou? You can be with your wife. She doesn't have to know what happens behind closed doors..." Marie continued. I quietly stuffed Levi's penis in his pants and started buttoning him up when I heard Levi's surprised and slightly disgusted voice saying, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?". To that, Marie replied, "I'm just trying to show you exactly what got you so flustered. Isn't that what you...".

"Enough" I spoke up, stopping Marie. I got up from under the table and Marie clearly understood why Levi was flustered after seeing my messy hair. "Marie, go to my office. We need to discuss your expulsion from the survey corps." I told her with a cold tone. "Expulsion? But I haven't broken any rules. By the way, isn't the commander the only person who can expel someone from the survey corps? You can't do that!" Marie scoffed. It was time to put her in her place. "Well, if you don't trust me on this, you can ask Levi if I was nominated to be the commander of the survey corps only a few months ago." I told her, my tone getting colder by the second.

Marie looked at Levi and Levi simply answered, "She's right. See, I told you to stop this bullshit. Even if (Y/N) didn't take actions, I would have.". "Actions? But I haven't broken any rule!.." I stopped her at that and told her, "Marie, five buttons of your shirt are opened. You just ignored a direct warning from a superior. If you think I didn’t write a report on you violating the dress code before, you are wrong. Of course, that alone can't get you kicked out of the survey corps but I also have further complains against you, which we will discuss in my office. So, go.". "No! I refuse to go!" Marie made a bitch face at me.

"You refuse to go? Well, you see, unfortunately as long as you are a survey corps soldier, I will be your superior. You will have to follow my orders or else the consequences would be severe." I told her in a commanding voice as she retreated from the office. "Thanks for having my back, Levi." I told him as he looked at me with worry. "No, it's fine. Just don't kill her." he told me, his eyes showing suspicion. "Don't worry. I won't kill her. I'll just ruin her career." I answered before getting out of Levi's office and going to mine.

Marie was already in the office. "Well, let's discuss your insubordination." I told her before sitting on my chair. "Sit down. You'd prefer not to fall on the floor after I tell you the few things I'm about to say." I told her, motioning to the chair in front of me. She sat and I started. "Do you know what happened to the last person who tried to take Levi from me?" I asked her. She looked uncomfortable at this point as she knew that I had her cornered. "No?" she answered.

"Her name was Petra Ral. She died on the 57th expedition. The female titan stomped on her. Surprisingly, the female titan was able to do that in my presence. The next expedition is coming soon and who knows, maybe you would be eaten by a titan too and I wouldn't be able to save you." I stopped. I saw her face losing colours. Just the reaction I wanted to see.

"You see, as your superior, I had to report every time you almost got the squad killed to the commander. The commander herself questioned your worth and I have been defending you for the whole time. However, it seems like you aren't fit to be in the survey corps anyway, even if I don't consider the fact that you tried to fuck my husband. Honestly, I shouldn't be telling you all these. I should just let you die on the next expedition. You just proved to me how worthless you are today.

However, ever since Farlan was born, I couldn't shake this feeling off me. I don't want to make your family suffer. I know how your mother would feel if you die. So, I would give you a second option. If I talk to the commander and expel you from the survey corps, that would be the end of your career in the military. If I don't do anything, you will die. If you give me a letter asking for a transfer to the Garrison or the Military police, your career would be saved, you would live and I could keep you out of my relationship. Now, go back to your room and decide what you want. I will be expecting a letter from you. You're dismissed." I explained to her in my monotone voice. With that, she left the room without a word. I rested my head on the head rest of the chair. "Fuck.. Farlan really changed everything..." I wondered. After all, I didn't feel like the cold hearted person I was anymore.

To be continued...

Taglist: @reality-is-often-disappointing, @kingtamakimurder

#levi smut #levi aot #levi x reader #levi attack on titan #shingeki no kyoujin levi #levi x fem!reader #levi×reader #captain levi #levi ackerman

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whatwashernameagain · 4 years

Text

The Dreamer - Chapter 2

Summary/prompt: The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes– they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, they mumble “…didn’t know where else to go…” then collapse into the villain’s arms.

Pairing: Logince

Word count: 7232

Notes: After meeting the terrible Utilitarianist and learning about his manifesto, we get to see the origin story of the Dreamer. (Without a beta. Sorry bout that) It looks like he has a long way to go if he wants to free himself from the propaganda he grew up with.

Warnings: internalized homophobia, republican brainwashing, manipulation, mentioned pedophilia, violence, threatened sexual abuse, critical comments on traditional values and capitalism

Previous Chapter

Chapter 2

Young Roman was shaking with righteous anger. How dare this – this fiend targeted the company of his father? He was the hardest working man in the world! His idol, his hero! He was donating to charity, pursuing a career in politics to support the attempts of the republican party to protect this great country’s safety and now he had to deal with an investigation into the state of his breeding facilities!

He could understand the wish to treat animals well, of course he wanted them to live a happy life, but his father was doing the best he could, he was a good man! The caramel colored Highland cow he’d given Roman for his twelfth birthday attested to that. It lived in a huge stable and was brushed daily and was still hand fed and braided by Roman himself. It showed how much his father loved his animals!

And now this upstart maniac was terrorizing his father and other facilities of hard-working Americans and instead of catching him, law enforcement investigated the outrageous claims this terrorist had made against his dear father. It was victim blaming!

Roman could not stand for this! It was gross injustice! He wanted to help, to support his father and show him that he could trust him! He was almost twenty now – a man – and it was time he finally managed to prove himself!

Admittedly, he hadn’t managed to do a very good job of it yet. He lacked the sense for business and asked the wrong questions about wages for the workers and made stupid suggestions about the wellbeing of the animals that embarrassed his father in front of his colleagues. Shame rose into Roman’s cheeks as he remembered his silly question about fencing in a meadow for their calves in their Laredo facility to play in with their mothers. He’d just remembered how much Nugget had always enjoyed jumping around with them. Of course he should have known they needed to be separated from their mothers after the first day to avoid losing the milk they sold. It was necessary, he guessed. So they’d said.

He really knew nothing about business.

His father had it hard with him. He was the only child of the family, the only hope to continue their empire, yet he lacked a sense of ruthlessness a strong man needed to improve the world. He was a bad hunter, had the wrong interests, sometimes he spoke too softly, sometimes too loudly, or too effeminately, and somehow couldn’t bring himself to fit in with his peers. All he wanted was to make his father proud, though! There must be something he could do to stop this maniac from causing more trouble! He’d shown up out of nowhere, disabling factories and leaving made up accusations behind and it looked like he was only getting started.

Roman had one thing going he was good at, though. He was strong, brave and determined. Someone needed to put a stop to this renegade liberal, and it might as well be him. It wasn’t like all the other things he’d tried and failed at. This time, he felt a calling to fight the war of the righteous!

Astonishingly, his father hadn’t scoffed at him as he’d passionately pleaded his case. The paper in his hands had been filled with speculations about the black clad silhouette barely caught on camera. The elderly republicans rightfully arguing against him had been banished to page eight, pushed aside by the intriguing puzzle the anonymous terrorist presented.

He’d looked at Roman as if he’d never truly seen him before. As if he was something of value. For the first time in years, the young man had his father’s full attention. It was like being in the spotlight he’d secretly dreamed of – bright and warm and exhilarating. He felt worth something for the first time as his father rose and walked around him, taking in his tall frame, filling in well from the workouts he tried to burn frustrated energy with, the sparkling, green eyes, the luscious curls, the strong cheekbones and attractive features. There was no denying that Roman was handsome. A figure to be displayed, as long as he kept his mouth shut. This time however, he’d found a tone his father wanted to listen to.

Over the course of the next months, the extremist’s deeds grew more frequent. The liberal media was lapping up his speeches, stilted and uncreative as they may be. He seemed to be gaining support online as well – lonely, misguided souls as his father put it. His destructive agenda was threatening to destroy the moral of this good society and plunge them all into anarchy.

There was no cause for fear, though! The good people of the greatest country in the world were once again showing why their resolve would not be stopped by anything. A revolution was on its way.

His father had created a community of wealthy, caring American patriots ready to sacrifice whatever it took to counteract the threat to their traditional values. Their researchers were using the latest, barely tested military technology to strengthen their soldiers for the fight for America’s future. It would be a great risk they were taking together, but Roman, their first (and only) courageous candidate, would not back down from the challenge.

They needed someone his fellow citizens could look up to. Someone who would stand up to the terror caused in these insecure times. Someone kind and strong and good to give them hope for a better future. A future Roman believed in with all his heart. Humans were amazing creatures! The feats they had accomplished awed the young man and deep down, he believed they could solve their problems together. He trusted their combined creativity, love and unity to save this planet in the end. There were problems his father always complained about they needed to face – terror and hostile foreign countries, leftist propaganda and the lying media trying to divide them, but he believed they could conquer the world and their fears if they could only work together instead of being torn apart by a monster like this terrible man! Roman wanted to unite the world. He wanted to give them something to believe in. He wanted them to know they needn’t be afraid, like he told them to. They could trust their government, their leaders, each other. Peace was a possibility if they only believed. And he knew he could give them this belief.

For months, he subjected himself to test, procedures and surgery with no complaints. He saw no daylight for almost half a year as his father’s and his partner’s scientists, the people who worked for the Conglomerate, did their best to make him worth putting their faith in. His bones were infused with crystallized carbonium, his muscles strengthened with steroids and drugs and his healing capabilities increased with experimental stem-cell therapy.

It was agonizing.

It was glorious.

Finally, Roman could be something his father could look at with pride.

As he saw him again, months after being sent to the research facility (his father was a busy man after all), Roman had become someone worthy of carrying the name Prince. His origin story had only begun, though. The moment he was able to walk without obvious pain, his grooming for the media began. He wanted to get out there and stop the villain from hurting people as soon as possible, but he was given to understand by Karen, the leader of his supportive team of experts, that the psychological damage he was inflicting on America’s soul was much greater than the wounds he tore into their economy.

Roman humbly accepted the choices of those smarter than him. He worked hard on his enunciation, his posture, his all-American accent, so they would deem him ready faster. The terrorist was growing more and more dangerous every day. His acts were growing more sophisticated, his public appearances increased from flashes of a tall, slender form caught by cameras, to manifestos read in a passionate, though clearly untrained voice over the internet. And now, he’d killed for the first time.

Roman could barely be held back. The man who’d been killed, Richard Snyder, had owned the largest chemical production company in the world and had been blamed for the death of a large amount of people in Vietnam due to a herbicide that had leaked into the phreatic water.

He’d also been a father of three girls and felt behind a grieving wife.

Roman had been upset about the news of the many deaths overseas, but he also grieved for the people this terrible crime had left behind. Accidents were a terrible thing and he was sure Mr. Snyder hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. People were good and cared about each other in his opinion. After the public blame the terrorist had put on his shoulders before – there was no other word for it – lynching the poor man, the media reacted to the crime in a manner that deeply shocked the sensitive young man. Instead of condemning the horrifying acts harshly, they discussed the accidents that had caused the unfortunate deaths in Vietnam and demanded consequences to avoid such accidents in the future!

Of course people needed to be protected, every life had value and had to be treasured, but to besmirch this victim’s life work, so soon after his execution – it left Roman angry and terrified for the state of the world he loved. He needed to stop this man, right now! He was strong enough to do it, why must they keep holding him back?

Tortured by grief and pressured by his need to prevent more loss of life, Roman pleaded to be allowed to do something, yet his team of intelligent, professional experts hired specifically to make him the best possible hero he could be, demanded he wait for the right moment.

“You’re just not quite ready yet, dear. We mustn’t risk making the wrong impression with a young stallion like you.” Karen had told him gently, patting his cheek.

He’d woken in agony after having his muscles cut open all over his body and suffered through a truly terrible withdrawal after a failed test of a drug that was supposed to improve his durability but had instead corroded the lining of this throat and stomach, yet nothing had ever been as difficult as enduring this waiting for Roman.

Finally, after more than a year of changing and preparing him, of whittling away at the inadequate shell that had been Roman Prince, the odd, weak disappointment of a son, a new man was revealed to the world. A man who was confident, brave and kind. A man who spoke clearly and showed the frightened society the way to a better world. A hero.

The terrorist was executing his greatest, and most terrible crime yet. He’d rigged a factory producing military equipment for the protection of their brave soldiers overseas with explosives. Painting himself as the vigilante and avenger of the suppressed masses in war-wracked countries, he’d given fair warning to the workers to escape, but had shown his true colors in the end after all. The board members of the armament manufacturer had been kidnapped and trapped inside the building to be executed for their supposed crimes of trading with dictators.

It had been the day the terrorist had stepped from the shadows into the light of the cameras to blame his victims in person before they met their end. He’d exposed their alleged crimes against the helpless, suppressed minorities the weapons were used against – lies and exaggerations as his team had assured the young hero – and had finally shown himself to the world. Part of him, at least. Like a true villain, his body had been clad in a skin tight, black suit and his face had been masked from the light of truth and justice. He’d named himself the Utilitarianist.

Yet, at his greatest moment of triumph, a hero rose to meet him. Stepping from the ashes of the detonated building, the Dreamer emerged, leading out the disoriented victims of the Utilitarianist’s terrible plan. Showing his handsome, young face to the camera, unmasked and alight with his passion for the defense of all that was right, he’s faced the other head on and finally gave the just and good Americans a hero to believe in. The time of fear and helplessness was over. He had risen from the dust of his nemesis’ destructive acts to beat him.

Their battle, caught from every angle in high definition, had been dramatic and terrifying. The Utilitarianist had grown into a formidable enemy while Roman had been prepared for him. He was lightning quick and fought dirty, twisting out of his hold like a snake. Narrowly, the villain escaped the young hero.

Roman had felt defeated even as he’d stood in the rubble to be celebrated. He’d been supposed to put an end to the terror and lead the world he loved so dearly to a kinder, better future where people trusted and supported each other once again. He knew it was possible, he wanted it so much he ached with the need to bring it about. Hadn’t he suffered so much so they wouldn’t have to anymore?

Yet he smiled bravely at the awed masses and aided their attempts to secure the scene and calm the frightened onlookers. A hero must never show his inner struggles. He wanted them to know they needn’t be afraid anymore. He would fight for them. He would bleed for them and die if he had to.

Karen had reassured him afterwards. He had done well. The tone in the newspapers had changed. Everyone was looking at him and listening to his voice. He could give them the stability they needed. Interviews were planned for him and he was briefed extensively for all of them. He was to portray a hero that had chosen to fight on his own volition, because it was the right thing to do to stand up and protect the suffering people. He would be there to shield them from this terrible violence. There was no need to worry and listen anymore. The good, hard working people of America could sleep calmly and focus on their lives and families again instead of getting involved in the danger the Utilitarianism tried to drag them into with his ruthless calls for action. He was a threat to the love and kindness their country was built on and the Dreamer would not let him get away. He would take care of it all.

Despite his wish to brag with his father’s great plans and the selfless efforts the other CEOs, lobbyists and republicans had invested, they asked him to never mention the Conglomerate that had created him and steered his actions. The public needed a legend to put their faith in now, they said. Not a bunch of old men bumbling about. Though he felt selfish when he claimed to be acting by himself with nothing but the help of volunteering patriots, he trusted their knowledge more than his own. Though the Dreamer was a great hero, Roman would not forget that he was just a young man trying to be good enough for his father’s love he’d failed to deserve before.

In the coming months it became clear to Roman that catching the Utilitarianist would be no easy feat. Many of his plans were carried out in secret or committed over the internet, where his brute force had no power. Whenever he managed to face the cowardly villain, he rudely evaded his demands to bring this rivalry to a dignified end and attempted to ignore him like a fly buzzing about his head. The outrage!

While his organization grew into a network over the globe, the Dreamer was left to calm the suffering public in interviews and entertain them with photo shoots for calendars and merchandise. Though he’d always dreamed for being a star and acting at a Broadway production as everybody’s darling as a child, he found the publicity work hard to bear at first. His team reasoned they needed to create a brand that represented the American values they tried to preserve. His fans would find it easier to act with the kindness he tried to preserve if they had an ever present, well defined idol. Saving the world in the age of Instagram and twitter worked differently than it did in his comic books.

Chastised, Roman had deferred to their expertise.

The Utilitarianist used Discord, Tumblr and the darknet the same way after all. Groups doing his dirty work popped up all over the web like toxic mushrooms. Roman was starting to worry there could never be enough magazine covers to keep up with his vile influence.

In the face of such inspiration, it was hard not to be discouraged sometimes. Yet, he preserved. Tirelessly, he tried to remind the world of what mattered, using bold words to paint a bright and colorful picture of the future he truly believed in. A future of unity. They mustn’t lose sight of what mattered – standing together, fighting the hate the Utilitarianist spread with his extremism that called to simple solutions. To violence. Being kind was harder, almost impossibly hard, but Roman would not lose himself in hate, and he knew his fellow Americans wouldn’t either. Breaking the law and turning to murder would not save the planet, it would turn them into monsters. Many people followed his example and joined what generation z called Team Dreamer, yet even as Roman got to shake the hand of the president, he felt he was not doing enough. He should be out there, fighting harder.

Even after chasing him for almost a year now, Roman felt those things as strongly as ever. He was right, gosh darn it! How could this irritating man not see the merit of a peaceful solution? Who didn’t want peace?!

Finally, despite having been cautioned repeatedly not to get involved in arguments where his scripts couldn’t help him, he confronted the other with his anger. The wind created by the rotor blades of the approaching helicopter whipping at their clothes on the roof-top almost carried away his words.

“Why must you be so impossible?” He’d cried, completely at the end of his patience while he tried to untangle his foot from the steel cable he’d caught Roman in. He wished he could stamp his foot in childish anger. The McDonalds headquarter? Seriously? This man would be the death of him! He’d kill him with exasperation. The unbelievably dramatic di- person had flooded the topmost floors of the almost finished new building with used frying oil through the sprinkler system and set it on fire. Roman smelled like fat and was covered in grease and ready to tear his own hair out.

Startled, the villain had stopped in his tracks.

Half turning to him and staring at him through the mask covering most of his pale features, he seemed to struggle to find the right words. His voice was as deep as he remembered from all of the horrifying videos put together by his team he’d watched obsessively, yet, it held an incredulous edge to it.

“You cannot be serious. How dare you refer to me as impossible, you simple fool?”

Deeply offended, Roman forgot about his struggles with the cable and instead flailed his arms in outrage.

“I am not the one constantly ruining everyone’s day by kidnapping people or setting things on fire or blowing up perfectly good structures or almost drowning me in frying fat!” He’d screeched. The ever-polite voice in his earpiece was quickly going from asking him to stop to begging him to.

Flabbergasted, the Utilitarianist fully turned from the helicopter hovering above him where he’d usually would have swung his body up gracefully to make his escape.

“I am not executing my plans in order to be a mere nuisance to you, you selfish welp. My organization is attempting to save the planet from the certain destruction our thoughtless actions are bringing about. You ought to return to your cameras to perform your monkey dance for the press and allow the adults to bring about the revolution we are in desperate need of.”

Monkey dance?

Never, in his whole life, had Roman been this insulted.

“You- you unbelievable, impossible, infuriating villain – how could you dare to- I am attempting to save the world! You are trying to destroy it!” He’d howled, flailing uselessly with frustrated energy.

His righteous claim seemed to rile up the terrorist even more. Taking a few steps towards him over the cement that was starting to heat with the flames beneath them, he jabbed his finger at him.

“How do you manage to be such an irritation while having no idea what it actually is I am doing? Your stupidity awes me!”

“My stupidity?! How is it not stupid to claim to want to save the world and then divide it by causing fear and hate? Don’t you know how to be nice or are you just pathologically evil?!”

“Are you seriously insinuating you believe I am the stupid one? You must have suffered a concussion during your infancy! I will not be lectured by a man who believes the world will be saved by selling topless calendars and who attempts to catch me in heeled boots!”

The villain’s rant was interrupted as a sneaker hit his head from above. His supporters were exasperatedly waving at him to climb into the helicopter they had been screaming over before the police managed to arrest them, just as Roman’s operator had frantically urged him to free his leg and catch the man standing mere feet from him.

Needless to say, Team Utilitarianist vs Team Dreamer was trending on twitter the next day, along with the hashtag #savetheworldtopless and #justpathologicallyevil.

Also, his poor operator quit.

Roman felt guilty for getting into an argument and behaving unprofessionally, but somehow, he felt like it had also gotten him closer to understanding the other man. He wasn’t a faceless monster but a person one could talk to – if a truly irritating and rude one – and people could be changed. Roman was good at convincing others of his position. His bright, attractive smile, warm and sweet manners and his polite reasoning had brought plenty of people around. Despite the continued threat of an escalation between the Utilitarianist’s supporters and his opposition, most people still liked Roman.

He brought the idea up at a team meeting, believing he’d finally found a way to work more effectively. However, he was turned down gently. They gave him to understand that he had misjudges the villain and that his attempts to negotiate with terrorists could have disastrous consequences. Chastised and feeling like a child make a dumb suggestion at the dinner table, he gave up. Still, despite his best intentions, he wound up arguing with the other again and again.

Their rivalry came to a crescendo when one of their fights once again distracted both of them. He had no idea why this man managed to make his blood boil this much with his talk about superior logic and necessity. Necessity his ass. (Roman would of course never say such a thing out loud, but still.)

They’d gotten caught in their argument about the effect of the Utilitarianist’s crimes on the families of the victims – a topic that made Roman especially passionate – when a heated pipe transporting steam from a coal-fired power station burst above the villain’s head, threating to burn his skin right off.

Acting on pure instinct, Roman had jumped the three meters separating them after the runway had been blown to bits and pushed the villain to the ground, shielding him with his body. He hadn’t even known he could jump this far, but he knew the painful burns over his back would heal on him. On the Utilitarianist, they would be fatal.

He’d regained consciousness in the ambulance, learning that the villain had apparently carried him there. His sneer had chased everyone away. Before the police was able to gather their courage to apprehend the man who had become more legend than person, he’d disappeared in the shadows.

They had been fighting each other for almost two years now.

While he recovered, his father visited him. He hadn’t seen him in months. Roman understood he was doing important work, though. It was alright. Sadly, his father had not been as pleased as he had so desperately hoped.

“Son, I want you to explain something to me.” He’d demanded. Despite being the strongest man in the whole facility and a beloved hero, Roman felt like a frightened child immediately.

“Of course, father.” He’d muttered, drawing his knees close in his sterile hospital bed. His back burned terribly, yet he showed no pain, like he’d learned.

“What on earth were you thinking when you saved this terrorist? You had him where you wanted him. This could all be over but instead you’re damaged and he’s running free.”

The rebuke hurt sharply. Swallowing, Roman tried to explain his reasoning he’d never thought he’d have to defend. The place was filled with people who were supposed to support him, yet he felt entirely alone.

“Yes, father. I’m sorry. But… he would have died. I- I mean- the Dreamer is supposed to be a hero. He has to save people and bring criminals to justice, not-”

“You’re not a police officer, son. You have one task to perform, and that is not to save random people but to stop the Utilitarianist. You can’t kill him – that would make you look bad, but if you can’t catch him, you’ll stop him another way. This would have been the perfect opportunity. You need to decide if you have what it takes or if you weren’t the right choice after all. Next time this chance presents itself, you let this god damn terrorist die instead of spreading his filth from a luxury prison.” His father had barked at him before leaving him alone to fear losing everything he’d bled for. Everything he’d become. Without the Dreamer, he had no idea who he was.

He’d hugged his knees to his chest and tried to breathe through the terror.

He couldn’t stop wondering, though. Was this really what the Dreamer was? He’d tried too hard to keep the peace and catch the Utilitarianist when there were other things he could be doing. They’d told him to leave the crime fighting to the police. His image was the most powerful thing about him. Superman couldn’t concern himself with petty thieves either, after all.

Wonderwoman would, he thought defiantly.

And yet, the Utilitarianist had made him think. He hadn’t left him to die either. Could he be a hero that allowed the villain to die when he’d saved him in return?

His doubts wouldn’t leave him alone until eventually, he chose to do what he was most afraid of. He went against the advice of his team.

He’d been sitting around for months, while the Utilitarianist had been busy attacking the Hong-Kong Stock market. Roman quietly wondered why he was never dispatched to other countries to help. His nemesis had stopped limiting himself to the States long ago. Just last week, he’d wrapped the Burj Khalifa in a huge, blood-red banner that apparently refused to come off as a statement accompanying his latest attacks against rich, emirate capitalists keeping immigrants as modern slaves and straining their buildings with their metaphorical blood. The following riots had filled the city for days.

Yes, he knew America’s intervention was not popular and had couldn’t cause a diplomatic mess, but there were people there who needed him too! Perhaps his team was worried he’d upset someone by remarking that the conditions of those workers truly were less than glittery.

He could keep his mouth shut though, if that meant he could help! For example the civilians stuck in a hostage situation in a bank in Mexico. There were children there, and a pregnant woman with her wife! The standoff with the police had lasted for two days already, with no end (or a bloody end) in sight. Finally, he proposed a tactical plan to his supervisors he was quite proud of. It would work, for sure! His ill-mannered, ill-tempered new operator Virgil had grumpily hacked the bank’s database and gotten him the floor plans as well as control over the security systems and cameras. He could be in and out in less than half an hour, dragging some hostage takers with him. The longer he’d uselessly chased the Utilitarianist, the more helpless he felt. His powers were growing every day Roman was idle. People coordinated and acted for him all over the world. Even without his interference, his idea was taking flight. Roman may be America’s darling, but he was growing more impotent and useless every day he spent as a glorified symbol of American values. This was the right thing to do, he felt it. He had to breathe new life into the idea of the Dreamer. He had to be a proper hero again.

The idealistic young man felt like he’d been punched in the gut when his plan was discarded like a child’s idea once again.

Being denied was something he could handle, he was used to it, yet this time, there was something different about it. Instead of the usual, fatherly patience and kind amusement at his misplaced enthusiasm, he was told off curtly. Without results, Roman was losing their favor.

Feeling unsteady, he shuffled onto the cold light of the corridor of their underground base. Despite his terror of losing the place he called home, the reporting about the children held hostage would not stop replaying in his head. He’d been told watching the news would only upset him and he should rather rely on the updates they cut together for him, but he was starting to think he would only have found out about the situation far too late when irritated reporters would have asked him where he was when the children were shot. He couldn’t let it come to that!

“Slinking home with your tail between your legs?” The scathing voice of Virgil growled at him from the shadows. Roman jumped, startled despite his extensive training. He swore the emo acted like he was aiming to become a villain himself. He certainly disliked Roman enough. Despite trying not to show it, Roman had always dealt badly with being disliked. It made him anxious and insecure. He wanted Virgil to like him, despite his manners.

Puffing up his chest like a proud peacock, Roman readied himself to defend his honor, when he noticed the disappointed slump of the other’s shoulders. Though he’d complained, he’d worked hard on their plan. A new resolve warmed his insides.

“No. I’m not backing off. I’m taking a running start.” He’d promised, before striding down the corridor and grabbing a startled Virgil’s wrist on the way. He still needed that one.

Leaving the facility on his own, without planning or permission, felt oddly like breaking out of prison. They had a lot of sneaking about to do, but once they were safely over the border, he felt… freed.

The armed robbers were no match for the quiet, cat-like stride of the trained hero. He caught one after the other, knocking them out with ease. This was far simpler than fighting a man like the Utilitarianist.

Claudia, the pregnant woman, was in urgent need of medical attention, so Roman carried her out of the building in his arms. One of the little girls hung off his shoulder, pulling on his costume in awe, while the other hostages followed his tall form into the sunlight and flashing lights of the cameras. Surprised exclamations greeted them, before the crowd erupted in ecstasy. Roman barely managed to calm them. He hadn’t been greeted with such honest joy in so long, he was utterly baffled by their adoration. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was thick with emotion.

“Fellow citizens of the world, I have realized that the time for borders is behind us! In these frightening times we must understand that our differences are mere illusions, stand together and give each other hope. Our love and belief in each other shall prevail over evil!”

“Fuck yeah!” Virgil whooped in his ear. It was the first time he’d heard the other sound happy.

Real, honest pride filled him. Finally, he was what he was supposed to be.

The atmosphere in the underground compound changed. Roman felt the shift, the tension around himself clearly and suffered it with disappointment. It was like being home again. A child whose childishness was barely tolerated. Quiet and shy and feeling unwanted.

Despite the repeated attempts to impress the importance of following his team’s directions, he planned and executed more mission with Virgil. He was his one saving grace. Since he was actually starting to make a difference, the two men felt more at ease with each other. Though they were mostly bickering with each other, Roman had found someone to rely on. His fluttering nerves around the moody man calmed, allowing him to fall back on the safety of the Dreamer’s personality less and less. They were a team of two now, instead of the pride of the Conglomerate. It was alright. He was one more person than Roman used to have.

The success they had encouraged him further. The Utilitarianist had published information about a human trafficking ring and left the rest to the public to deal with. How irresponsible! People would take it upon themselves to play vigilante and get hurt!

Virgil ran the data through his clever programs and determined the most likely targets for Roman. Together, they rescued a group of Philippine women from an armed gang, saved a child from the hands of their parents taking money from strangers to spend time with her and captured a number of members of organized crime selling kidnapped women to the highest bidder. All but one of their targets were apprehended within the week.

The Dreamer became a hero again. His global popularity shot through the roof.

The renewed attention softened his team and superiors to him. Slowly, he could feel their mood changing. They tried to support him in his quests.

“You two have been doing such a good job on your own. But it’s about time we step up again and help guide you, dear. We can’t have you unintentionally support the Utilitarianist again and validate his message, can we?” Karen had told him kindly. Roman hadn’t considered the fact that he’d unwittingly cooperated with the Utilitarianist by acting on his intel. Already, people were taking up the idea of them growing to be a team. He was an idiot. His team could have prevented this mistake.

Discouraged, Roman tried to follow their advice more closely again. He was truly glad to be back in their good graces and have their support again.

“It’ll be alright, my gloomy friend.” He’d assured Virgil. “We convinced them of our ideas, now we can all be together again and avoid silly mistakes. We can do good things together!”

“We were doing good things, man.” He’d growled, hunching his narrow shoulders. Roman had sworn to himself to help him feel more accepted in the team. He’d never wanted anyone to feel as isolated as he had most of his life.

To his horror, the mistake he’d made was developing a life on its own, though. The Utilitarianist was already a favorite of the LGBTQ+ community and soon consolidated his place by rescuing a group of gay rights activists from a Russian prison. The images of him pulling a pink haired woman into his helicopter while an androgynous person proudly raised a large rainbow flag billowing behind him was taking over the internet by storm. The Utilitarianist was becoming a gay icon and he wasn’t doing anything to contradict the claim. The outline of his masked image painted in rainbow, asexual, lesbian or bisexual flag colors was sprayed on walls all over the word. And because Roman kept being drawn into discussions, because Roman had saved him and because he’d now acted on his behalf, following his direct call for action, a lot of people had started imagining them to be more than they were. They were publicly ‘shipping’ them.

Roman had been beyond horrified and humiliated as his sympathetic team had put together a dossier of the things people on the internet thought he’d do. They truly believed he’d subject himself to be the Utilitarianist’s pet or that the older man could overpower and capture him, tie Roman up and-

He’d been unable to keep looking at the pictures and horrible, humiliating stories published for all to see. How could he allow this to happen? This was what people saw in him after he’d allowed himself to be experimented on, cut apart and be put back together and worked so hard to give them something to believe in?

Deeply mortified, he’d fled to his room. The dossier of sinful, deprived actions people thought him capable of was saved on his tablet and seemed to burn a hole into his confidence even as it innocently sat on his desk.

A knock on his door made him flinch. He couldn’t be seen right now!

Virgil had never cared about politeness, though. Letting himself in despite the lack of a reaction, he’d settled on the bed next to the curled up hero.

“Hey. Um, so I saw the dossier.”

Roman groaned, hiding his burning face. He’d never even looked at porn, so seeing himself pictured on his knees, the villain’s hand in his hair, about to- oh god. This was out there. The Utilitarianist would see it and think- irrational fear of things he hadn’t ever considered the other capable of mixed with the humiliation and made Roman tremble.

“It’s not like that, dude.” Virgil promised softly, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

“What’s to misunderstand?” Roman growled bitterly. “I know you all think I’m not smart enough to understand, but there’s really nothing to mix up this time!”

“Don’t say something like that, man! You’re much smarter than they make you believe! They just want you to stop thinking for yourself!” A frustrated growl escaped Virgil. Pulling uselessly on the powerful man’s shoulder, he tried to get him to look up.

“They showed you the worst of the kinky shit horny people come up with, but most isn’t like that. Shipping isn’t about subjugation and- and bondage porn. It’s about liking two people and rooting for them, despite any opposition. People just care about both of you, even if you’re on different sides. It just shows that most of them aren’t as black and white as they all say. They aren’t the perfect, traditional families on the cereal boxes and they aren’t the masked activists throwing Molotov cocktails either. They’re just people who like some of both of your positions and they like you and him and what they like most is the idea of you two burying this feud and stop fighting. They want what you want, when it comes down to it, dude. For the arguing to end and people to just get along. I’m not making this up, look!”

Finally, his energetic pulling made Roman have mercy on him and miserably and fearfully look at the tablet he was shoving in his face. If he had to see another drawing of himself struggling in chains while the Utilitarianist groped him he thought he might throw up.

It really wasn’t like that, though. The Ecosia search bar simply showed the search for Dreamer/Utilitarianist and the pictures were… cute, actually. Feeling his rabbit fast heart slow down, he tentatively scrolled through the images. There was a photoshopped argument of both of them before the rainbow flag under the caption #married.

Next to it, Roman spotted a dynamic he hadn’t found in the dossier at all. It was him, draw with glitter in his hair and perfect, gleaming smile, dipping the Utilitarianist in a dramatic pose. A flush was painted on the older man’s pale features under the mask.

Beside it, both of them were drawn out of uniform, dressed like ordinary people with Roman in a lovely shirt and scarf and his nemesis in an honest to god sweater vest. They were strolling through a park, holding hands.

Another picture showed Roman reclining on a couch, cuddling the other between his legs. The Utilitarianist was battling papers and a tablet and complaining about something while Roman was ignoring him in favor of the music playing on his headphones. His expression was indulgent.

A large, detailed full colored digital painting divided in two halves portrayed the Utilitarianist on one side obviously arguing passionately in front of a wall of pictures, maps and red string while Roman stood on the other side, gesticulating in front of an equally cluttered wall containing cute postcards and balloons and a unicorn pinata. Again, #married titled the picture.

He found an interpretation of their fights depicting them as a golden retriever and a sleek black shepherd, yapping at each other.

Then, a picture of himself standing proudly before a group of happy, butch lesbians next to his nemesis who was accompanied by cute, femme ladies giggling and holding onto his arms. #lesbian.icons was scrawled sideways between them. Roman felt a surge of protectiveness for these women immediately. He was awed that they actually wanted him to be there for them.

A little smile lit up his features quite unconsciously.

The pencil drawing on lined paper clearly made by a child showed both of them simply hugging.

A t-shirt was printed with photos of them cut together before a bright, starry universe.

Comic panels made their younger versions bump into each other at a college library, dressed as a football player and nerd respectively.

There were screenshots on gray background about short, funny dialogues they never actually had.

Roman’s gaze got caught by a digital drawing in soft hues. It was him, leaning over the villain, his hand cupping the angular jaw, kissing the attractive, masked man as the other melted against him. Both of them were drawn with such attention to detail, almost lovingly.

None of the search result showed Roman degraded, captured, used.

Aside from the one where he was dangling upside down, flailing at the villain who was apparently attempting to show him a detailed power-point presentation about his plans. Roman laughed wetly through the tears he’d been suppressing. It looked like something the arrogant know-it-all would try.

“I don’t understand.” He muttered, glancing at his own tablet, filled with data carefully compiled for him.

Virgil’s gaze was worried.

“I guess there are things they’d rather you don’t see, for whatever reasons. Maybe you’ll let me double check the info they give you from now on, man. I get unrestricted internet.”

“Oh. I didn’t know the internet here was restricted.” Roman muttered softly. His head was buzzing. He huddled closer to Virgil, gazing at the images without really seeing them. He felt like everything he knew was shaken in its foundations.

‘****************************

Roman is starting to realize how much his information was manipulated, how exciting! The next chapter is promising to be a lot more fun (and angsty), actually! There will be bickering and romance! I already got started on it. Please let me know if you want to be tagged! And remember, reblogs help writers ;)

(Spoilers from after I wrote the next chapter - it wasn’t more fun. BUT it will be)

Next Chapter

#The dreamer #villain!logan #hero!roman #Sanders Sides #Logince #Logan Sanders #Roman Sanders

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thesnadger · 4 years

Note

Hilbert, Thoughts?

I sure do have them!

(I’m just finished with episode 31, spoilers up to there below.)

An interesting theme I’m seeing develop around Hilbert is the idea of “can you depend on or bond with someone that you can neither forgive nor trust.”

Despite everyone on the crew having reason to either kill him or keep him only as a prisoner his role on the crew feels remarkably ambiguous. At first they only went to him when they felt they had no choice, but after a while he seemed to be helping with a remarkable amount of work and repairs.

Part of that might be practical - - in addition to his knowledge, three warm bodies and an AI was a skeleton crew to begin with. Going down to two bodies and a severely damaged (thanks to Hilbert) AI on a ship that’s breaking down is rough. They need every resource they have.

But it feels like there’s more to it than that. Maybe it’s the lack of people again - when you’re alone in deep space and you can count on one hand the only people you ever see or speak to . . . it makes the betrayal hurt more, sure, but it also makes it harder not to be attached to someone even if you truly hate them.

Don’t think I didn’t notice that when Minkowski was arguing with Lovelace she talked about leaving “half my crew” (i.e., two people) behind, or referred to the “three people” depending on her. She was unambiguously including Hilbert in the crew in spite of everything. Doug heard Hilbert’s voice in his mind along with everyone else’s when he was trying to comfort and motivate himself while alone in space. When Lovelace began to seem like the greater danger, Hilbert became someone the others trusted enough to include in their plans.

And hey! Doug comes back after a two year time skip and he’s apparently walking around without a gun to his head. What happened in those two years? Was it just time, and weariness, and the slow inevitability of becoming comfortable with someone’s presence again? Or did he do something that made the others trust him more?

Either way, now that they have a new bigger threat to everyone (one Hilbert seems genuinely afraid of) it seems all five of them are positioning themselves as a pack defending themselves against the interlopers. (Hey, isn’t that funny - Lovelace becomes a part of the team in opposition to a greater threat, just as she was the greater threat that made the others work with Hilbert.) I’m very interested in seeing where this could go.

That said, I don’t trust Hilbert at all. He’s quite capable of hiding his motivations and of turning on people he considers friends with absolute ruthlessness. I’m still not even 100% sure whether that story about his sister was even true or just something intended to make Doug sympathize with him - hoping it might make him more receptive to being a voluntary guinea pig.

(It would be more interesting to me if the story was true, though. It wouldn’t excuse any of his actions, but it would humanize him in a way that makes him more interesting!)

And as much as the new arrivals might provide a shared threat for the crew to unite against, they could also give Hilbert more reason to turn on the crew again. They’ve got instructions from command, and one of them has some uncomfortable history with him. Then there’s the talk about “his work.” Are they going to expect him to resume it? Is Doug going to be forced to submit to more doses of an experimental virus? What happens if either of them refuse?

Much to think about! Can’t wait to see where this goes!

#wolf 359 #w359 #w359 spoilers #Anonymous

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multiverseforger · 3 years

Text

Ophelia Sarkissian was orphaned as a child in Hungary. Part of her face was scarred at one time, although it has since been healed. Among 12 other girls, Ophelia was taken in by HYDRA and raised by Kraken. For 22 years, Ophelia excelled and became Kraken's best student.[4] She eventually rose through the ranks of HYDRA and frequently came into conflict with Captain America and the organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. She first appeared as a leader of HYDRA under the codename Madame Hydra, and first fought and captured Captain America while trying to contaminate New York City's water supply.[5][6] She captured Rick Jones to bait a trap for Captain America,[7] and then subdued the Avengers with gas, planning to bury them alive, and battled Captain America again. However, she was apparently killed when Captain America and Rick Jones dodged missiles she fired at them and she was caught in their explosion.[8] Some time later, it was revealed that the Space Phantom had exchanged places with her and her whereabouts at the time were undisclosed.[9]

She eventually severed her ties with HYDRA.[10] Madame Hydra helped Jordan Stryke, a supervillain codenamed Viper, escape custody in Virginia, only to proceed in assassinating him and usurping his alias and leadership of the group known as the Serpent Squad.[11] As the new Viper, she kidnapped Roxxon president Hugh Jones, in order to put him in thrall of the Serpent Crown. She battled Nomad and Namor the Sub-Mariner.[12] Viper was the founder and leader of the elite criminal underworld through sheer ruthlessness, treachery, and the cunning of her black heart.

Viper took over the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, and planned to crash it into the Congress building. She employed Boomerang and the Silver Samurai as operatives, and battled Spider-Man, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Nick Fury.[13] Viper later employed the Silver Samurai as her chief operative, and attempted to kidnap Michael Kramer, a man carrying a fatal experimental disease, in order to release it on America. The Viper battled the first Spider-Woman, and became convinced that she was Merriam Drew. Drew was the mother of Spider-Woman and was considered deceased since 1931. The issue revealed Merriam had become allied to Chthon and was granted longevity in return. The Viper revealed herself to have been a pawn of Chthon for 50 years, but saved Spider-Woman's life by defying Chthon.[14] Viper, employing Constrictor as her chief operative, captured Spider-Woman, believing she was responsible for making her think they were related. It was revealed that Chthon had actually granted Viper false memories of mothering Jessica as part of a plan to place both women under his control. Viper captured Captain America, and planned to release her new bubonic plague.[15] Whether Viper actually has extraordinary longevity was left uncertain.

Re-employing the Silver Samurai, Viper attempted to coerce Team America into stealing the Cavourite Crystal, and then battled the New Mutants.[16] In one of her many terrorist acts, she would try to gain control of the snake-themed organization called the Serpent Society, with Slither, Copperhead, Puff Adder, Fer-De-Lance, and Black Racer as her operatives. The latter four operatives infiltrated the Serpent Society in an attempt to take it over. Viper dispatched Cobra, Boomslang, and Copperhead to poison Washington D.C.'s water supply with a snake mutagen. Viper terrorized the White House and the President, and battled Captain America.[17] She attempted to assassinate the organization's former leader Sidewinder, but she was betrayed by Cobra and arrested by Captain America.[volume & issue needed] Viper was later freed from prison by Tyrannus. She used a snake mutagen on drug addicts, and then battled the Punisher.[18] She then turned against and battled Tyrannus.[19]

Madame Hydra has also been in conflict with the X-Men. She first came into contact with them upon trying to assassinate Mariko Yashida on behalf of her ally and presumed lover Silver Samurai, and tried to poison the team while disguised as Mariko's unconscious maid.[20] She nearly killed X-Men members Rogue and Storm on two separate occasions, with Storm being nearly killed by Viper during the invasion of Khan.[21] She also faced the New Mutants and was considered responsible for the presumed demise of Karma (Karma was only wounded and was abducted by the Shadow King for his own reasons).[22]

Madame Hydra is a professional terrorist and has her own organization. She has come into conflict with many superheroes and supervillains over the years. Her nihilism and tendency to spread death around her has made it hard for other villains to associate with her. Only the Red Skull has found it a charming tendency and pursued a relationship with her for a while. The relationship ended when the Skull found out Viper was using his resources to finance massacres with no apparent financial benefit for either of them.[23]

For a time, the Viper employed a team of doppelgängers (known as "Pit-Vipers") to impersonate her. However, acting on her own, Pit-Viper 12[24] became involved with the Punisher during an international crime conference in Las Vegas[25] and later tipped off S.H.I.E.L.D. to the real Viper's attempt to steal Russian nuclear missiles in Moscow.[26] For compromising her anonymity, the Viper personally killed her treacherous double.[27]

Later she blackmailed Wolverine into marrying her as a means to secure her criminal empire in Madripoor. Although this was a marriage of convenience, she did request to consummate the arrangement. Some time later, her body was briefly inhabited by the spirit of Ogun, and Wolverine mortally wounded her as a means of driving the spirit from her dying body. In return for seeking medical attention to save her life, Wolverine demanded a divorce.[28] It is later implied that she actually had feelings for Wolverine.[29]

Viper was then a member of an incarnation of the Hellfire Club, working with Courtney Ross, briefly under the title "White Warrior Princess".[30] She has also associated with the Hand and resumed her ties with the Silver Samurai. She has also retaken the name "Madame Hydra".[volume & issue needed]

For a time, Viper was the dictator of the nation of Madripoor, using the nation's resources to support global terrorism via HYDRA.[volume & issue needed] She was overthrown by new S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Tony Stark and Tyger Tiger, the latter of whom is now ruler of Madripoor.[31]

In Secret Warriors #2 during the Dark Reign storyline, Viper is seen leaving her lover, the Silver Samurai, to rejoin Baron von Strucker and the ruling council of HYDRA.[32] It was revealed in Secret Warriors #3 that she is no longer Madame Hydra, as she was replaced by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, taking up the mantle of Madame Hydra, wearing an elaborate tentacle headdress and elaborate HYDRA robes.[33]

In Secret Warriors #12, Viper is kidnapped by the mysterious group Leviathan, who are determined to find out the location of a mysterious box that both she and Madame Hydra procured from the Yashidas. Madame Hydra arrived at the Leviathan headquarters and offered the box to its leader, much to Viper's dismay. Madame Hydra then shot Viper to death. However, when HYDRA arrived, the Hive resurrected her, giving her tentacles that stemmed from her head, and she renamed herself Madame Hydra.[34]

Following the Fear Itself storyline, Madame Hydra joins up with H.A.M.M.E.R. after Norman Osborn escapes from the Raft and regains leadership.[35] After the defeat of Osborn and the Dark Avengers, Madame Hydra uses the resources of the now-defunct H.A.M.M.E.R. to begin rebuilding HYDRA.[36] She later tips off Spider-Woman and Hawkeye about a heist Mister Negative is planning on a S.H.I.E.L.D. warehouse. While the Avengers deal with Mister Negative, Madame Hydra attacks a different S.H.I.E.L.D. facility and steals several captive Skrulls left over from the Secret Invasion.[37]

Madame Hydra later led an attack on Avengers Tower while the team is away. She and the rest of her forces are defeated by Angel and his younger self from earlier in the timestream.[38]

In "Death of Wolverine", she was revealed by Nuke as the "Green Queen" and current leader of Madripoor who sent out a contract to capture Wolverine.[39]

Viper is part of the HYDRA High Council that the new Madame Hydra is collecting to assist Steve Rogers, who had his history altered by Red Skull's clone using Kobik's powers to be a HYDRA sleeper agent for years.[40]

During the "Secret Empire" storyline, Viper attends the meeting of the HYDRA High Council and talks about the opening of two new detention facilities to double the amount of Inhumans held in indefinite custody.[41] While doing business with some men, Viper is told by a HYDRA agent that they have apprehended Black Widow. This is part of a diversion so that the Champions can infiltrate a HYDRA base. When Viper figures out that Widow is planning to kill Hydra Supreme, Viper tries to persuade Widow to join up with her enterprise.[42]

During the "Hunt for Wolverine" storyline, Viper is seen in Madripoor where she leads the Femme Fatales (consisting of Knockout, Bloodlust, Mindblast, Snake Whip, and Sapphire Styx) into ambushing Kitty Pryde, Domino, Jubilee, Psylocke, and Storm at the King's Impresario Restaurant. While Psylocke, Rogue, and Storm are defeated and taken prisoner by Madame Hydra and the Femme Fatales, Kitty Pryde escapes with Domino and Jubilee.[43] Viper congratulates the Femme Fatales for their work as they now have Psylocke, Rogue, and Storm as their prisoners. Mindblast suggests that they put a bounty on the ones that escaped, stating that every gang member in Lowtown will be looking for them. Viper states that she will discuss with her client on where to proceed next and to deposit Rogue and Storm to the client as "special guests." As Viper gives the status report to a representative of her client, she mentions that Sapphire Styx is still draining off of Psylocke just like she did with Magneto. The representative tells Viper that Sapphire Styx tends to prefer the life force of the mutants and tells Viper to focus on delivering the package as all that they are serves the will of Soteira. As Snake Whip asks if they are going to ignore Sapphire Styx's vampiric appetite, Viper says that they have to obey the representative's orders and "let the @#$%& feed."[44] Viper is contacted by a representative of Soteira who was displeased that the launch was delayed by a torrential rainstorm and suggest that they launch before sunrise. While reluctantly taking the representative's suggestion, Viper and Snake Whip check up on Sapphire Styx who knocks down Snake Whip and claims that Wolverine's Patch alias is present even though Sapphire is the only one who can see him. Viper calls Knockout and Mindblast away from the prisoners to help deal with Sapphire. After hearing that the launch site for the rocket bound for Soteira is under attack, Viper gives the orders to launch it now.[45] After Sapphire Styx explodes, Viper maintains the higher ground while Snake Whip joins the fight. When the Femme Fatales are defeated, Viper flees as Magneto plans to pursue her in order to purge Madripoor of Viper's criminal empire.[46]

In the pages of the Ravencroft miniseries, Viper is seen as a member of J.A.N.U.S.

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sapphirestarxx · 4 years

Text

Through the Night

Chapter 8

Also posted on my AO3!

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~☆~

The room shifted around her and suddenly Sango found herself being pulled through a substance that felt viscous and sticky in the space between one breath and the next. A glance around revealed only that she was alone. Everything was gray and distorted. Was it possible she was inside one of those mirrors? Had all of them been drawn into one? There had been four looking glasses, one for each of them. Her premonition of feeling like this was a trap was solidified into an understanding that this is exactly what it had been.

A movement caught her eye and turning she gasped in shock. A woman stood in front of her. Only it wasn’t just any woman, it was her. Her reflection. The literal mirror image of her smirked and drew her wakizashi, beginning to advance on her. Swiftly, her reflection attacked and Sango swung her Hiraikotsu in front of her, shielding herself from the blow. At the same time she drew her own wakizashi and slashed out. The reflection laughed and avoided the blade just as easily as Sango would have.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to put up a fight. You know you’re so weak.” Her reflection taunted.

“If you’re supposed to be me, you would know that I am far from weak!” Sango shot back, throwing her Hiraikotsu at the impostor. The reflection responded exactly as she would have and ducked and rolled forward, avoiding the boomerang and striking out at Sango’s feet with her sword. Sango side-stepped and swung down with her own weapon and the blades connected in a clang of metal as her reflection gained her feet again.

“I think you know the real truth of that statement.”

They exchanged blows back and forth and Sango panted with the effort. She was a formidable opponent and had never had to fight herself before. She was also at a disadvantage. The effects of her hangover were still lingering and all her moves were no secret to this reflection. Everything she thought of, every move she made, her reflection knew it. If this really was supposed to be some twisted version of herself then it made sense and it also meant she was in real trouble. How did one defeat your own self?

If anything her reflection was far more vicious, holding nothing back. She was ruthless, and had no reserves about injuring Sango. Every strike she landed burned like fire across Sango’s skin and she knew she was bleeding freely from several places. If any of this was even real. Or maybe it was all in her head. She had no idea.

Every wound that opened up on Sango appeared on her reflection’s body. If she received an injury to her left side the same bled from her reflection’s right side, as if she was an actual mirror image of Sango. But that didn’t seem to slow her down in the slightest. Her reflection laughed, seemingly unbothered by all of it.

“Look at you. Look how weak you are! A few cuts and you’re out of breath and bleeding all over the place. You should just die. You clearly don’t have what it takes to do what is necessary. How you managed to survive this long is a mystery.”

Rather than reply, Sango tried to focus on defending herself. Her footing slipped and her reflection pressed her advantage, bearing down on Sango and knocking her to the ground. Or what appeared to be the ground in the weird dreamlike space she seemed to be in.

“You’re pathetic. Is this the best you can actually do? Is that because you’re still nursing that hangover from drinking yourself into a stupor to try to forget your feelings for that monk?” Her reflection laughed bitterly. “You know he’ll never actually love you. He’s just bored, and you’re shiny and new. Except he hasn’t seen all your scars yet, has he? You think he’ll still want you after seeing that monstrosity on your back?”

“Shut up!!”

“You know some part of you has been secretly hoping he’ll understand since he’s part of the supernatural world but let’s be real. He’s a man. He wants someone whole, not damaged like you. Weak like you. Pathetic like you.”

The words her reflection were saying were striking their own wounds in her heart. Deep-seated insecurities and her reflection knew every single one.

Her reflection sneered down at her and Sango hastily brought her arm up, triggering the hidden wrist blade to deflect the strike at her neck. Straddling her, her reflection pressed her wakizashi harder against her, and Sango strained against it, her arm aching from the effort of keeping her enemy’s blade at bay. How ironic that her enemy was herself. How was she going to get herself out of this mess? How could she refute the words of her reflection when they were thoughts that echoed inside her own mind??

~☆~

The world seemed to turn inside out before righting itself around Miroku. He tried to get his bearings and came to the conclusion that Ayaka had worked some dark magic that had pulled each of them into one of the mirrors. There was a large expanse of gray nothingness around him and he waited for the other shoe to drop. There had to be something more to this than trapping them in mirrors. The amount of black magic she had been working was far too great for something as simple as that.

The clinking sound of rings chiming on a shakujo was his only warning before Miroku turned around, thrusting his own out to deflect the blow from...himself? The man standing before him was a mirror image of him, and more of Ayaka’s words ran through his head.

“Because you’ll all be dead or comatose soon, fighting versions of yourself.”

“I take it you’re supposed to be me?” Miroku questioned as he readied himself into a battle stance.

“Brilliant deduction.” His reflection returned sarcastically, and he attacked again. Miroku defended against the onslaught but it was surprisingly difficult. Each strike was easily blocked and his reflection returned the blows with a savagery that drove Miroku backwards. For every trick and move he knew so did his reflection, which made sense if this was indeed a version of himself.

Experimentally, Miroku lashed out with a tendril of his power and wound it around his reflection’s wrist, stopping him mid-thrust in his assault. It left a red welt on his left wrist and rather than flinching his reflection just looked at him and laughed mockingly. It was a little disturbing seeing his own face twisted in such a mocking smirk. Miroku soon found out why a moment later when an identical wound appeared on his own right wrist and he hissed at the burn, nearly dropping his shakujo in equal parts surprise and pain.

“Go ahead, hurt me all you like. I can take it. The question is, can you?” His reflection taunted before striking out with his own power. Miroku raised a barrier quickly, just barely shielding himself from the burning touch of reiki.

“If you’re really supposed to be me, I think you know exactly how much I can take.” Miroku responded.

“You always act so glib and unconcerned, as if you have nothing to hide, no secrets, no insecurities. But we both know that’s a lie, isn’t it?” His reflection retorted.

The sound of wood striking wood echoed in the strangely vacant space as his reflection resumed his charge and Miroku struggled to keep up with him. Although he didn’t want to think too hard about his words, Miroku couldn’t help but silently admit to himself the truth of them.

“What is your point?”

“We know deep down the guilt you harbor for the death of your father. Why are you fighting this, fighting yourself? Just give in. It’s easier. It’s what you deserve. After all, it’s your fault your father is dead.”

“I was a child!”

“That doesn’t make you any less culpable. That’s no excuse, and you know it. That’s why you keep the truth buried deep down. How do you think that slayer you’ve been trying so hard to win over will react when she finds out?”

“We all have our own crosses to bear. Sango would understand. It was years ago!”

“You tell yourself that, but do you actually believe it? That’s part of why you flit from girl to girl so quickly and can never settle down. You think Sango actually wants you? You probably just wore her down.”

“For someone who’s supposed to be me, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really? You don’t think that drunken ‘I love you’ was just the alcohol talking? You don’t actually know what she wants to talk about tomorrow, do you? You only just assumed. She only let you kiss her because she feels like she owes you for taking care of her.” His reflection sneered as they fought.

“That’s enough!” Miroku snapped, starting to lose his composure. He didn’t realize he could find himself so irritating. Not to mention all his accusations were hitting a little too close to home. Somehow this version of him seemed to know every secret fear of his and was using them as a weapon of their own.

If every injury on one of them showed up on the other, how was he to defeat himself? There had to be a way out of this but Miroku had no idea what it was. Before he could try to continue pondering a way to escape this situation his double was on him again, their staffs cracking against each other in a twisted duel against himself.

~☆~

Kagome was disoriented after being sucked into...whatever this was. She suspected it may have something to do with the rather large mirrors that had been placed along the walls. Ayaka had said something about them fighting versions of themselves and she had a single moment to wonder what exactly that had meant before she sensed a presence behind her. Turning, she stiffened in shock. It was as if she was looking into a mirror, and her dark reflection had an arrow notched on her bow and arrow.

Almost reflexively, Kagome raised her hands in front of her and summoned a barrier just as the arrow flew towards her. It struck her barrier and fizzled out of existence and the mirror image of her glared at her, readying another arrow.

“What is happening??” She demanded.

“You always were slow on the uptake, weren’t you?” Her reflection sneered. “I’m you, or haven’t you figured that out already?”

“So I’m actually supposed to fight myself? If you’re me why do you want to hurt me?”

Her reflection laughed and rolled her eyes, lowering her weapon as she regarded Kagome.

“Because you’re insufferable. Do you understand what a burden you actually are? You’re useless!!!”

“I am not useless!!” Kagome said hotly, preparing her own weapon, notching an arrow. “I’m a Head Priestess and perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Right. That’s why you have a half demon acting as your babysitter.”

“It’s not like that! We’re working together.”

“You and I both know that’s not how he sees it. You even heard it from his own lips.”

“He told me he didn’t mean any of it! I believe him.”

“Do you, though? He was probably just tired of you sulking like a child.”

“Just shut up!!” Kagome drew back the string of her bow, taking aim.

“Go ahead. Shoot me. You’ll only be hurting yourself.” Her reflection taunted.

Kagome wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean and to be safe she aimed for her doppelganger’s left arm. The arrow struck and red bloomed from where the arrowhead was buried in the flesh. She merely grabbed the shaft and pulled it out, dropping it to the ground and Kagome suddenly cried out in pain. She looked down and saw blood spreading from a similar wound that had appeared on her right arm. Oh God, it hurt, as if she had actually been pierced with an arrow.

“See what I mean? Slow on the uptake. And unlike you, something like this doesn’t bother me. God, you have no tolerance, do you? How are you supposed to fight when you can’t even take a little pain?” Her reflection disparaged before raising her hand and shooting a blast of spiritual power Kagome’s way.

Quickly jumping to the side, Kagome dodged it before lashing out with a blast of her own. No matter what this perverse version of herself said, if she had to suffer a little pain that’s what she would do. However, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to defeat herself if any injury to her reflection was also an injury to her.

Her reflection deflected her attack and diverted it back to her. Kagome cried out as it struck her in the shoulder, unprepared for such a move. But it was exactly what she herself would have done and she cursed herself for not seeing it coming. Her other self smirked, giving the wound that had appeared on her own shoulder a brief glance and shrugging.

“And this is why you’re useless. You haven’t figured it out yet, have you? How to end this? So I’ll tell you the easy way out. Give in. Just let go, and this all stops.”

“As if I would do that!” Kagome yelled.

“Why not? No one will ever love you, especially not Inuyasha. You know you’re only a duty to him, nothing more. Once this is all over he'll go back into his forest, relieved the burden he had to bear is done.”

It was as if her reflection had driven an arrow into her heart with all her words. She wanted to tell this horrible version of herself exactly how wrong she was, ask how she could say such things if they were the same person, but her mouth wouldn’t work. All the denials in the world couldn’t erase the way they seemed to strike at the darkness inside her heart. All the secret insecurities she harbored were being exposed one by one.

~☆~

When that dark priestess cast her spell, Inuyasha knew it was bad. Just the overpowering and foul stench of the black magic was enough to tell him how wrong it all was. Well that, and all the human sacrifices beneath the runes etched onto the back wall-- sacrifices that would soon be dead. Their lifeforce would no doubt help to fuel whatever spell Ayaka was casting. This bitch wasn’t playing around.

The spell wrapped around him, pulling him into-- another dimension? The mirror? He didn’t know, all he knew was that he was alone in this strange gray space devoid of anything. Only he wasn’t actually alone. A movement stirred and a figure coalesced in front of him. It was himself. From the appearance to the scent it was his exact double and Inuyasha didn’t know how that was possible but figured it definitely had to be that damn spell. Ayaka had said something about them fighting themselves.

Drawing his sword he prepared to fight this mirror image of himself. His reflection grinned, showing fang.

“What’s a half breed like you gonna do?”

“Kick your ass, obviously.”

“Go ahead and try it, then.”

Needing no further encouragement Inuyasha leapt at his reflection, swinging his sword. His reflection drew his own sword, blocking his strike. Then he reached out with his hand, slashing with his claws at Inuyasha. The half demon leaned backwards to avoid it then pressed forward again. They fought each other with an intense fury, twin pairs of golden eyes flashing.

Inuyasha was growling in frustration as they traded blows, neither gaining the upper hand. Then his reflection scored a hit on his left side. It bled, but it was hardly the worst injury Inuyasha had ever received. No, the part that gave him pause was seeing the same wound open on his reflection’s right side. His reflection smirked and the sight of his own face pissed him off. What kind of twisted magic was this?

“What the fuck?!” He snarled.

“What’s the matter?” His reflection taunted while swinging at him again. “Like I said before, what's a half breed like you gonna do? Kill yourself by killing me? You might as well. Just end your miserable existence.”

“I don’t know what game Ayaka is tryin’ to play here, but I’m gonna figure it out and break out of this. If you’re supposed to be me you know I aint got no problem kicking whoever’s ass I have to to make that happen.” Inuyasha snapped, defending against the attack.

“You always talk a big game but we both know you’re all bark and no bite.”

“You wanna test that theory?”

His reflection laughed and threw aside his sword. At the same time, the more demonic nature of his mirror image started to emerge, jagged purple stripes appearing on his cheeks, eyes turning red with cerulean irises. When his reflection spoke again it was a guttural rasp.

“Yeah, actually.”

His demonic reflection stepped forward in a rush, grabbing Inuyasha’s sword in his hand and while he held it hostage, stabbed a hand through his middle. Inuyasha grunted in equal parts pain and surprise and his reflection laughed evilly. As he gasped in pain and tried to regain his bearings, he felt his own demonic half start to come out. He tried to fight against it but this whole situation had him twisted up and not knowing what was real or not. The same wound had opened up on his reflection but that didn’t seem to make any difference to him.

“Why do you fight it? Give in.” His doppelganger urged. “If you’re caught so easily by something like this you don’t deserve to protect that girl anyways. We both know how bad you want her, how bad you want her to accept you. All of you.” He laughed mockingly. “As if anyone would ever love a dirty half breed like you, least of all a priestess. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Inuyasha ground out with blood in his mouth, finally pulling back and swinging again with his sword. His senses heightened as his demonic half continued to rise and for a second he considered surrendering to it.

“You’re not even qualified to protect her. Where is she right now? You don’t even know, do you? Pathetic half breed.” His reflection spat, blocking his strike.

“I thought I told you to shut the fuck up!!”

“You’re going to die alone, so you might as well die now. She’ll never want you; she'll never love you.”

“I already know that! What the fuck is your point?!”

“Some part of you is still secretly hoping she meant everything she confessed last night. Because you recognize her as yours. Your mate. How pathetic do you have to be when your own mate doesn’t want you?”

Inuyasha didn’t like having all his dirty laundry aired out in the open like this. There were some truths that just didn’t need to be spoken aloud. It was getting harder to fight back against the rise of his inner demon, especially at the mention of Kagome. How the fuck was he gonna get himself out of this?

~☆~

Sango was growing desperate as she and her reflection continued to fight. She still had no idea how she was supposed to break free of this spell. Her strength was starting to waver but she refused to give in. Maybe it was the blood loss, or maybe it was the verbal assault she was facing that cut their own wounds into her soul.

“Even if he could accept your scars, do you honestly believe that monk wants a woman who could kick his ass?” Her reflection laughed shortly as she spun, arcing her blade towards Sango, who barely deflected the blow. “You’re far too intimidating. Not nearly womanly enough. A man wants someone who he can take care of. Of course, he’s had to save you so many times already, so maybe that doesn’t even matter. How pitiful! How can you call yourself a slayer when you have to rely on someone else for protection? Just die!”

Her reflection landed another hit across her thigh and she gritted her teeth against the cry of pain that threatened to escape. If they were truly mirror images and the wounds inflicted appeared on opposite sides, then… An idea was forming in Sango’s mind, and she only hoped it wouldn’t also kill her in the process. But she was out of options, and feeling more than a little reckless.

“It doesn’t matter what you say!” She yelled back. “Even if these are all things I’ve secretly thought or feared, it doesn’t make them true! And I’m tired of listening to you!”

Dodging another strike from her evil twin, Sango spun, hooking her foot around her double’s ankle and causing her to fall to the ground. She then took her own blade and drove it into the right side of her chest. The metal of her wakizashi sliced clean through to her back where it protruded and Sango gave a short scream at the pain. Blood began to leak from the wound and she gasped, still gripping the hilt, and falling to her knees.

Another scream sounded, echoing around them and coming from her reflection who stared up at her in shock. A red stain was spreading over her reflection’s heart and she began to cough up blood.

“Y-you…” She choked out before the world around Sango began to fracture. She watched this version of herself die and felt...relief. Withdrawing her blade from herself she gave another grunt that turned into a whimper. Everything seemed to shatter and as she blinked Sango found herself back in the abandoned shrine. She raised her head and met the startled eyes of Ayaka.

As she had suspected, all the injuries she had sustained were merely imaginary, with the exception of the gaping wound leaking blood in her chest. The wound that had freed her.

“Surprise, bitch. I’m back.” She glared as she struggled to her feet, holding out her sword and preparing for another fight.

~☆~

Miroku still had no idea how to end this. It was clearly some kind of dark spell and therefore there had to be a way to break it. Between fighting his reflection and listening to every dark part of his heart being spoken into existence he was getting worn down.

“Why are you still fighting? Just let go.” His reflection taunted and Miroku blocked another strike with his own shakujo.

“I don’t give up so easily.” He returned, swinging his staff out again at his double. There was still something he had not yet tried, and at this point he was willing to try anything. It was risky, but he honestly couldn’t think of anything else and it was better than being stuck indefinitely in this limbo.

As his evil half attacked him again he dropped his own weapon and grabbed the shaft of the double’s shakujo, stabbing himself in the right side of his chest with the point of it. He hoped his logic was correct. Assuming this was indeed a mirror image of himself and the wounds inflicted appeared on the opposite sides… he prayed to Buddha he was right.

He grunted at the pain as the metal tip of the shakujo cut deep into his flesh. He looked from his wound to his reflection and saw the stunned expression on his face that was quickly morphing into one of agony.

“I’m tired of listening to your words.” Miroku grunted out as his reflection cried out at the injury that was a literal mirror image of Miroku’s own. Blood dribbled from his mouth at the strike to his heart and he glared balefully at the monk. “Whatever dark fears and insecurities of mine you hoped to expose...well, who cares? I already know them; I don’t need you to tell me. And I also know that’s all they are.”

Miroku pulled the tip of the staff out, giving a short groan himself at the pain. His reflection dropped to his knees, clutching at his wound and gasping for the breaths that were coming fewer and fewer.

“I-I can’t believe y-you...actually…” He trailed off as the life faded from his eyes, and the world seemed to twist and fracture around Miroku. His reflection breathed his last and as Miroku retrieved his shakujo from the ground he found himself back inside the abandoned shrine. There was shattered glass all around him.

A quick look around revealed Sango was also there. She was standing on her feet unsteadily, bleeding freely from her own wound to the right side of her chest. It was far worse than the one he had sustained. Her face was pale and he became worried, wondering how much blood she had lost. Noticing his sudden presence, she spared a quick relieved glance his way before turning her attention back to Ayaka.

“How are you all breaking free?!” The dark priestess demanded.

“It appears you’ve underestimated us.” Miroku responded, pushing away the pain at his own wound and taking a step forward.

~☆~

Kagome didn’t know what to do. She dodged and defended as best she could against the physical assault of her evil doppelganger but she hadn’t tried to attack her again. What was the point if the same injury was going to show up on Kagome herself? Was she willing to kill herself to break free of this mirror prison?

And that’s exactly what this was. A prison. She was wandering across the edge of sanity, trying to fight herself. It was like a nightmare yet it felt so real, every wound inflicted burning like fire across her skin. Her reflection continued to laugh at her, throwing out more taunts.

“What’s the matter, little priestess? Out of ideas? Like that’s a surprise.” Her reflection fired another arrow that Kagome dodged again. She was panting, and this sustained attack on her body and mind was exhausting her. Something...there had to be something she could do.

The only thing she did know was that for any wound she received so did her double, only on the opposite side of her body. Like an actual mirror. Like an actual reflection. That thought stopped her for a second. There was one thing. There was the possibility it may kill her but she was growing desperate.

Waiting for her reflection to attack again, Kagome tensed on the balls of her feet. The arrow flew towards her and this time Kagome twisted to the side but still let it strike home. The shaft buried itself deep into the right side of her chest and she couldn’t stop the small scream of pain. God, she had never felt any kind of pain like this before. It was awful and she almost went to her knees from the way it overwhelmed her senses.

Another scream resounded and Kagome turned to see her reflection clutching at the area around her heart, blood seeping through the spaces between her fingers while more blood dripped from the corners of her mouth. The sight was more than a little unnerving considering she wore the same face, and there was a look of hate and disbelief on it as she fell to the ground.

“You’re not me. Not really. And I’m tired of fighting you and listening to you voice all my insecurities.” Kagome managed to grit out around the pain.

“S-so…you actually f-figured it out…” Her reflection managed to gasp out while the life literally bled from her chest. Kagome felt a small sense of triumph and satisfaction, and firmly grasped the arrow embedded deep inside her, breaking off the shaft. She would have completely removed it but something told her that was a bad idea.

Everything turned bright and reality itself seemed to crack around her as her reflection gasped her last breath. Then everything broke into pieces and suddenly she was back inside the abandoned shrine, still gripping her wound and looking about wildly. She caught sight of Sango and Miroku and felt a brief flash of relief that they, too, had managed to free themselves. Ayaka looked livid and shocked.

She saw no sign of Inuyasha, though. Glancing about she noticed that three of the mirrors were shattered into a thousand fragments while one still stood whole. Without a word, Kagome notched an arrow onto her bow and took aim at that last mirror, wincing at the way the motion pulled at her wound. Letting it fly, her arrow slammed into the surface of the mirror and with a small blast of pink light, broke it apart and purified whatever dark spell had been cast upon it.

Ayaka screamed in rage and Inuyasha shimmered back into their plane of reality. He looked...different. But before she could fully grasp what that difference was, he was at her side in a few strides, pulling her to his chest in a fierce embrace. She froze in surprise and when he pulled away from her, he seemed the same as he always was. Then he noticed her wound. It seemed every injury she had received in the mirror world had been all in her head with the exception of the one that had freed her from its prison.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t protect you, and you got hurt.” He apologized, still holding onto her shoulders and his expression was anguished.

Before Kagome could respond, they heard an exhale of annoyance. “What a touching reunion.” Ayaka said sarcastically. “Guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

As she spoke she turned to one of the human sacrifices and with a flick of her wrist a shard of her power shot out and struck one of them, the figure of a young woman. She twitched violently before stilling, the life completely fading from her body. The rune she lay beneath flared and the mirror on the altar Ayaka stood in front of gave an answering pulse of its own. That was their only warning before demons began to pour from the mirror, breaking through the surface.

As if by some unspoken communication Inuyasha and Miroku surged forward to meet the rush of the demons, engaging in battle again. They were all lesser demons but there were so many of them that the tide was constant and it wouldn’t be an easy task. It was only made more difficult when Ayaka killed another of the sacrifices, causing the mirror to pulse again and release another stream of demons. Miroku and Inuyasha found themselves fighting back to back as they tried to keep the horde at bay, slicing and purifying in equal measure.

"Inuyasha, I won't ask what that mirror showed you, but do you have your inner demon under control? I saw your face when you first exited the mirror." Miroku commented as he burned another demon into ash with his shakujo before twirling the staff and driving another one backwards.

"I'm fine! Mind your own damn business!" Inuyasha snapped while he alternately hacked the demons to pieces with his sword and lashed out with his claws.

"It kind of is my business as your friend." Miroku shot back. "If you go full demon with all of us in here, who knows what will happen? You don't exactly have it under the best control."

"I said I'm fucking fine!! Rather than worrying about me you should worry about yourself! I can smell your blood, you idiot!" Inuyasha returned and Miroku let the subject drop, opting to focus on the fight.

As they argued and fought the outpouring of demons, Sango and Kagome advanced on Ayaka. Kagome notched another arrow onto the string of her bow and let it fly. It shot towards the mirror on the altar like pink lightning and shattered the surface, breaking the spell and stopping the inundation of demons. Ayaka threw the bowl sitting atop the altar at the two women in a fury and Sango merely batted it aside with her sword. That whole display did not go unnoticed by Inuyasha, who almost tried to break away and go after Kagome.

"Inuyasha! Let them handle her! We have our hands full with these demons!" Miroku called out.

"Kagome is already injured and I can smell Sango's blood too! In case you've forgotten, I'm supposed to protect that damn girl!"

"Without her demons and mirrors, Ayaka's strength has been halved. There's only one of her and two of them. Have some faith."

Miroku didn't say it but he was also worried. Sango was acting like she was fine but her pale face told him otherwise; her blood loss had to be considerable. And Kagome seemed to be in the same physical state as well. Still, they had proven to be very capable women and he knew they had what it took to take Ayaka down.

Sango and Kagome had cornered Ayaka, where she stood with her back to her altar. She glared at them with hate, and reached into her robes to withdraw a ceremonial dagger while whispering an incantation under her breath. She slid the blade across the palm of her hand and blood welled up. It dripped down onto the ground before her and activated some kind of barrier, a thin sheen of red dividing them from her. Then it slowly seemed to settle over her skin, acting as a sort of armor.

Kagome fired another arrow at her and Ayaka flicked her wrist in its direction, sending out a dark tendril of power that incinerated it. While she was distracted with that, Sango leapt forward with her wakizashi and Ayaka met her charge with her athame. Sparks flew as the two blades met.

Sango wasn’t sure if it was because of the blood loss or if it was because of Ayaka’s strange blood barrier but somehow Ayaka managed to drive her back a step. Ayaka smirked, bringing her blade up, and Sango whirled, using the momentum of the move to drive her wakizashi into Ayaka’s side. Just as the sword was about to slice into her flesh a red spark flared at the spot of impact and her blade stopped just short of injury.

“Nice try, slayer bitch.” Ayaka mocked even as she deflected another arrow from Kagome.

“She must have cast some kind of dark protection spell on herself!” Kagome called out, stringing another arrow onto her bow and trying to wait for an opportunity to present itself.

“I figured as much.” Sango replied, her attention on defending against another strike from the dark priestess.

They needed Ayaka’s concentration to break long enough to pierce through that dark shield of hers. Sango was going to have to create a distraction that would allow Kagome's arrow to land a hit and purify the spell. A regular straightforward attack was not going to work, as she and Kagome were finding out. An idea came to her and it wasn’t pleasant but it would work. Miroku and Inuyasha were busy keeping all the demons off of them so it was up to her and Kagome.

“Kagome, get ready to fire!”

Kagome had no idea what Sango was planning but trusted her best friend. She raised the arrow on her bow, drawing the string back and waiting.

“What do you think you can do?” Ayaka sneered as she drove her athame down towards Sango. Instead of evading the blow Sango let the dagger sink in all the way to the hilt in her thigh, grunting at the pain. She needed both arms for this and already had a bad gash in her chest. At least with an injury to her leg she could still limp and kick out with her other leg if necessary.

Quickly dropping her own blade she reached forward with her hands and grasped Ayaka’s wrist, holding her in place. The dark priestess looked at her in shock, trying to free herself from the slayer’s grip, and Sango drove her back against the edge of the altar table.

Kagome swallowed her own gasp of shock and let the arrow fly. It hit Ayaka in her side, purifying whatever dark magic she had been working over herself and burying itself deep between her ribs. As Ayaka screamed, Sango took one of her hands and reached behind the dark priestess and grabbed one of the broken mirror shards on the altar. She stabbed it into Ayaka’s throat, severing her carotid just as the dark priestess sent out one final shockwave of power. It billowed out across the room and swept Kagome up in it, throwing her against the wall. Her head hit the wall with a crack and she fell to the floor in a heap, motionless.

Inuyasha saw the whole thing happen and froze. Kagome. She was bleeding. She wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t she moving? Everything became too much and suddenly his inner demon was beginning to rise again and with it already so close to the surface from his fight in the mirror he couldn’t hold it back. Not at the sight of his mate lying on the floor, bleeding and still as stone. Never mind that she clearly wanted nothing more from him than what they already had. She was hurt. She was in danger. She was his only purpose in life.

Giving in to it, he let it take control. He couldn’t fight it even if he wanted to. He felt his claws grow, his aura expanded, his fangs extend and nick his bottom lip, and his senses increase. He focused briefly to hear if his mate was breathing, as she was his first priority. He heard a very shallow short breath. She was alive. She had to stay that way.

Growling, he dropped his sword and tore into the demons around him and Miroku with a savagery his half demon self did not possess. Miroku noticed the difference and then, doing a double take at his visage, slowly backed away from him and towards the wall where Sango had hobbled over to Kagome’s side.

The slayer was panting and trembling from blood loss and exhaustion. She looked like she might be going into shock. He couldn’t believe she had let herself be stabbed in the leg, especially not after the already grim wound to her chest. Was she trying to kill herself?? He didn’t know if he wanted to yell at her for her recklessness or hold her to him. He would figure that out just as soon as he got her and Kagome the hell out of there.

Inuyasha’s demon half was in full control and that was to say there was no control left in him at all. He had told Miroku about it once, and that if he ever saw it emerge to run . Don’t try to reason with him, don’t stick around, just fucking run. Inuyasha wouldn’t recognize him as a friend, only as prey. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. Friend, foe, there was no way to differentiate.

With that thought in mind Miroku reached the wall and knelt where Sango was sitting next to Kagome’s prone form. She looked at him, her eyes wide.

“Wh-what’s happening? What’s wrong with him?” She gasped out.

Sango could feel the edges of her vision start to fade and she knew unconsciousness hovered over the horizon. She fought against it; she couldn’t afford to pass out right now. Not with her best friend lying on the ground and with a crazed dog demon going on a rampage. He was tearing through the remaining demons in the abandoned shrine as he snarled, eyes red and fangs protruding.

“His inner demon has come out. It was probably something he saw in those mirrors, and Kagome getting hurt was the last straw. His sanity broke and now his demon is in control.” Miroku answered, turning his back to her. “I have to get you and Kagome out of here. He told me if this ever happened to just run. Get on my back and I’ll carry Kagome.”

Sango struggled, giving a pained grunt as the wound in her chest stretched at the movement. Still, she managed to pull herself up on his back, wrapping her arms over his shoulders and around his neck. Miroku scooped up Kagome in his own arms and gave a strained groan as he stood. Sango gently ran a hand over the injury to his own chest.

“Sorry. You’re hurt, too.”

“Not as hurt as you are. What the hell were you thinking?!”

Apparently he was going to yell at her.

“Got her, though, didn’t I?” Sango returned, not sounding the least bit sorry.

Miroku didn’t respond, figuring they could talk about it later. He was just trying to get them all out of there in one piece. Once the last demon was ripped to pieces Inuyasha was likely to turn his attention onto them and he wanted them to be long gone before that happened. As he reached the door Kagome stirred. She squinted and blinked rapidly as if trying to clear her vision.

“Miroku? Why are you carrying me? What happened? Where’s Inuyasha?” The questions spilled out of Kagome as she struggled to gain her bearings. Ugh, her head was killing her. She remembered getting thrown and she felt something wet on the back of her head. She was bleeding and likely had a concussion.

The sound of animalistic snarls drew her attention and she twisted in Miroku’s arms even as he replied to her. “Inuyasha’s demon half has emerged. We have to get out of here. We can find him later when it’s subsided but for now we need to leave.” He told her.

“Put me down.” She demanded.

“Kagome, I don’t think--”

“Put me down! We are not leaving without Inuyasha!!” Kagome’s voice edged on hysterical. She wiggled until Miroku acquiesced and set her onto her feet. She stumbled a little bit, leaning onto him for support while her head cleared again. Fuck her head hurt. She felt nauseous, like she had the worst ride on the tilt-a-whirl. Was she dreaming? Everything was so fuzzy. But she felt somewhat coherent. She finally looked up after steadying herself and her breath froze in her lungs at the sight of Inuyasha. Adrenaline kicked in; the shock from gazing upon him made her dreamlike state almost disappear.

Demons lay dead all around him and he had just finished ripping the last one to bloody shreds. Then, as if he sensed her gaze, he raised his head and met her eyes. Eyes as red as the blood staining his hands, irises as blue as the sea stared at her. There were twin jagged purple marks streaking his cheeks. The immense aura emanating from him should have made her cower in fear but she wasn’t afraid. She hesitantly took a step towards him.

“Kagome! Don’t!” Sango called out, fearful of what would happen should she approach him in this state. She knew Inuyasha cared deeply for Kagome but Miroku had just told her that he didn’t recognize anyone when he was like this.

“It’s okay. He won’t hurt me.” Kagome assured them as she continued to slowly walk up to Inuyasha. He growled at her in warning and she paused, swallowing.

“Get away from me.” Inuyasha’s voice was a guttural rasp and he took a step back, away from her.

“No.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“You won’t.”

“I can’t control this!”

“I don’t believe that.”

Inuyasha snarled in response, flexing his claws. Kagome closed the distance between the two of them as Sango and Miroku watched, scarcely daring to breathe. One wrong move and this could end very badly. The dog demon tensed as if thinking the same thing. Miroku was frankly astonished he hadn’t yet attacked Kagome, although it appeared he was fighting the bloodlust that his demon blood demanded from him. Inuyasha, for the first time Miroku had ever seen, was scared.

Kagome wasn’t sure what to do. Inuyasha was starting to lose the fight with himself and that, more than anything, was what scared her. She had to stop it. She knew he would never forgive himself if he hurt her, but she refused to abandon his side just because his demonic nature had taken control. There was only one thing she could think of, and it was almost an impulse. Maybe she could blame the concussion for her actions. Or maybe she was just looking for an excuse to test Sango’s words. Who really knew how or why she came up with the idea she had as she stood just a few inches from the half demon.

Carefully, she reached up with her hands and grasped the sides of his face. After a brief hesitation she pulled him down towards her and her lips met his. She closed her eyes as she kissed him and felt him stiffen, felt the vibration of his growl reverberate through his chest and tickle her lips. Slowly, ever so slowly he relaxed into her and he placed a hand at the small of her back. The growling stopped and she felt his fangs shrink back to their regular length. She let herself press her lips against his for a moment longer, savoring the intimate touch, almost swearing she felt him kiss her back, before pulling away. Inuyasha was looking at her with a strange expression, his eyes returning to their normal beautiful golden color.

“Oh. Well that’s interesting.” Miroku commented faintly as he and Sango released a breath they hadn’t realized they had been holding.

“I...I wasn’t expecting that to work.” Sango agreed, her voice weak. Her head drooped against his shoulder and Miroku looked back at her in alarm.

“Sango!”

“Mmm?”

“Don’t lose consciousness on me.”

“Trying not to. It’s hard after all that.”

She had definitely lost too much blood, and that coupled with the trauma to her body...Miroku swallowed. She was so strong to have held up as long as she had. They had to get out of there soon and get everyone looked at and healed. Himself included, he acknowledged silently. His stab wound wasn’t nearly as bad as hers or Kagome’s but it was still deep.

“Inuyasha...it’s okay.” Kagome told the half demon even as her head pounded again. She felt weak; between the blood loss and all her injuries she was on the verge of losing consciousness again. That or puking. Likely both. But she had to make sure Inuyasha was okay. She wasn’t sure how but it appeared she had managed to bring him back to himself. She smiled weakly at him before her legs finally gave out from both weakness and relief as her head fell against his chest.

“Kagome!”

Inuyasha gathered her up in his arms as her eyes closed again, holding her tightly to his chest. She had kissed him. She kissed him. She. Kissed. Him. His thoughts were all in a jumble. He couldn’t focus on anything that was happening. The woman in his arms was literally all that consumed his mind. Then realization dawned on him as he held her close; the wetness on the back of her head. She was bleeding. She had gotten hurt. She was unconscious. Fuck. Where was Miroku??

He finally looked over to see his best friend with Sango on his back. She looked pretty worse for wear too. They needed help. Without thinking twice, he leapt over to where they were waiting.

“We need to get them out of here.” Inuyasha stated, trying to distract Miroku from making any other additional comments until his mate and the monk’s girl were taken care of.

“Agreed. I'm going to give Jinenji a call and see if we should meet him or if he wants to come to us. He may not want us to move the girls too much, especially with Kagome's head injury." Miroku replied as they walked outside. He quietly added, "I'm glad to see you've returned to yourself."

Inuyasha gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

"Who's Jinenji?" Sango asked, her breathing labored.

"A half demon with minor healing abilities. He works as a doctor and helps out when we need medical assistance with no questions asked." Miroku answered.

Inuyasha had introduced them shortly after they had met when Miroku had gotten injured on the job. Even though Jinenji was a half demon like Inuyasha, his true form was much more monstrous but his glamour allowed him to blend in with regular society. Despite his appearance he had an incredibly gentle and kind soul, and rather than avoid people like Inuyasha, he had decided to try to help people with his gift in the best way he could. Some injuries were too hard to explain to the regular medical staff unaware of the supernatural and that's where Jinenji stepped in.

The sun had set long ago and the darkness was almost stifling. Or maybe it just felt that way due to how high tensions were running. Finding a tree in the overgrown courtyard, Miroku gently lowered Sango to the ground and leaned her against it. She said nothing, just looked at him with pained eyes that were beginning to unfocus as he knelt next her. Inuyasha stood nearby with Kagome still in his arms. Miroku doubted if even God Himself would be able to pry her from his grasp right then.

Quickly, Miroku retrieved his phone from his jacket's pocket and made the call. As he had suspected Jinenji recommended they wait where they were and he would meet them at their location. It would take about twenty minutes for him to arrive.

As they waited in silence Miroku looked Sango over. There were streaks and flecks of crimson on her stark white face, likely from the spray of blood caused from striking Ayaka in the throat with that mirror shard. Between the darkness and the black leather of her outfit it was hard to tell how covered in her own blood she actually was but he assumed it had to be all over her chest and likely her back from where the stab wound had bled. And then there was the gash in her thigh from where Ayaka's athame had dug deep. He frowned.

Carefully, he reached out with a hand to test the wound on her chest and ever so gently pressed down. It didn't feel like it was bleeding anymore from what he could tell and he wasn't sure that was a good sign. With his other hand he pressed against her thigh and felt a slow trickle of liquid still oozing. With a silent apology to Sango he pressed harder against it, applying pressure to stop the bleeding.

"You trying to feel me up?" Sango gasped out, half joking. "Want me to smack you?"

Miroku gave the smallest smile at her attempt to lighten the mood. "Checking to see if you're still bleeding. Also, I doubt you'd be able to hurt a fly in your current condition."

"You'd be surprised." Sango returned with a false bravado. Then she shivered violently. Her limbs, already trembling, shook harder. "I feel so cold."

That was not good. While the air was a bit chilly with autumn now in full swing, the more likely reason for the sudden onset of cold in Sango's bones was the blood loss she had suffered. Miroku shifted both himself and her so that he was sitting down with Sango practically in his lap, his right arm wrapped around her shoulders as he pressed down on her thigh with his left hand firmly, still trying to staunch the flow of blood. She sighed and relaxed into him, resting her head against his shoulder and leaning into his embrace.

"You're so warm." She mumbled and Miroku only held her to him more tightly, saying nothing. For once, words failed him.

Inuyasha said nothing during this entire exchange, his focus solely on the woman in his arms. Kagome still hadn’t regained consciousness and that worried him along with about a thousand other things. Like the small bit of arrow shaft still sticking out of her chest, blood soaking the area, or the blood leaking from the crack in her head. Or how he had almost killed her in his demon state. Just the thought of how close a call that had been made his own blood freeze in his veins. He was a danger to her, that much was clear.

Finally, Jinenji arrived in a white van. He exited the driver’s side then opened the doors to the back where all his medical supplies were. After retrieving some things he made his way to where they all had gathered by the tree.

Sango squinted at him as he approached. She was so tired, so close to just closing her eyes but she held on. Even in her current state she took a moment to assess his appearance. She assumed he had to be wearing his human glamour because there was nothing overtly demonic about his figure. The things that stood out the most to her was how incredibly tall he seemed to be; he practically towered over them all. His hair was black and his skin was tanned and covered in faint scars, which she thought was interesting considering not only his glamour but his profession. Maybe some wounds went too deep to truly heal or hide. She could understand that.

After a quick verbal exchange with Miroku, Jinenji went to work. He knelt next to her first and placed his hand on her head, closing his eyes. Then, seeming to come to some sort of conclusion, stood and did the same to Kagome in Inuyasha’s arms.

“I’ll see to the slayer first.” Jinenji told them, and then when Inuyasha started to growl, continued. “She’s lost far too much blood and has multiple deep lacerations. Also, she’s still conscious which means she is suffering more right now. The priestess is badly hurt too and I will see to her next, but although her breathing is shallow her heartbeat is steady. The slayer’s pulse is becoming thready. Then, Miroku, I will see to you. I smell your blood too.”

“Fine. But make it quick.” Inuyasha practically snapped.

Jinenji didn’t reply and knelt next to Miroku and Sango again. He laid his hands upon her once more, this time on her chest where she was stabbed and a soft green glow spread from him to the wound. After some time he removed his hands and gently moved aside Miroku’s grip on her thigh wound, pressing on it himself and that same green glow shone out from his hands.

Sango was definitely starting to feel much better. Her chest still hurt and it likely wasn’t completely healed but it was far better than before. She also felt some of her strength returning and breathing wasn’t such a struggle anymore. In addition, the ice that had taken a hold of her was slowly thawing. She silently acknowledged to herself that was in part due to being held by Miroku. Jinenji pulled his hands away and spoke, addressing his words to her.

“Your injuries are not completely healed,” he told her, confirming her suspicions. “I did speed up the healing process quite a bit, though. That stab wound in your chest will take about another week or two to completely heal rather than the months it likely would have. As for the laceration to your thigh, it is almost entirely healed. It will be a day or two before I would recommend putting weight on it and it should be only about four days for that to finish healing. I have also tried to help replenish your blood supply but you need much rest. Eat and drink when you get home; it will help.”

“Thank you.” She told him simply.

“You are most welcome.” He smiled at her before moving on to Kagome. Inuyasha reluctantly lowered her to the ground so Jinenji could do his work.

He took some of his supplies and then cut her sweater partly open to allow himself better access to her injury. Expertly removing the remaining piece of arrow in her chest he then placed a piece of gauze soaked with disinfectant over it to stop the flow of blood that followed. After a moment he focused his power into her, healing the deep puncture. When he was done with that he moved onto her head injury. As he began to pull away, Inuyasha spoke.

"Hey, if you're done why isn't she waking up?"

"After such a trauma her body needs rest to recover. It's the body's most natural way of healing itself. She will be fine and likely wake up tomorrow. She’ll need to take it easy for at least a week or so. Her balance will still be skewed for the first couple of days so she’ll likely have on and off waves of nausea and severe migraines. Tell her to drink water and to sit down until it passes. Her body will have to readjust to being upright and she shouldn’t lay down unless she is sleeping. Her migraines will likely continue but they won’t be as bad or debilitating after a few weeks or so." Jinenji answered.

“I thought you fucking healed her. You told Sango you shaved off time.” Inuyasha snarled.

“Yes; however concussions are different Inuyasha. There are more lasting effects than a stab wound. I healed her as best as I could and I did speed up the recovery. The problem is that brain trauma often can have effects up to a year if not more. She will be able to fight again at full strength within a couple weeks, but the headaches will likely still be present.”

He healed Miroku's own stab wound then left them with a few supplies of their own. Miroku mentioned the humans clinging to life inside the shrine and Jinenji told them he would take care of it which was a relief. They were all ready for the night to be over.

Inuyasha picked Kagome back up, cradling her against his body gently and reentered the shrine, returning a moment later with his sword at his waist. He didn't say a word as he left with Kagome.

As Miroku began to help Sango to her feet so they could leave as well, she gripped his arm, stopping him. "Wait! My Hiraikotsu. It's still inside the shrine too."

"I'll go get it." Miroku told her. "Wait here a moment." He left her leaning against the tree before she could respond and went to retrieve the weapon in question. Seeing it lying on the floor in front of one of the broken mirrors, Miroku picked up and almost staggered for a second at the weight. 'This thing is so heavy. She always makes it look so easy.' He thought as he slung it across his back, impressed again with the slayer. Jinenji was at the side of the people meant to be sacrifices lying against the wall, doing his best to heal them as well.

"Thank you again for all that you've done here." Miroku told him sincerely and Jinenji simply smiled in return. He walked out and reached Sango's side. "Okay, let's go."

Sango started to try and hobble her way back to Miroku's car but without any warning Miroku picked her up and began to carry her before she could even register what was happening. She made a small sound of surprise, clutching onto his shoulders to steady herself.

"Th-this isn't necessary! You don't have to carry me!"

Miroku glanced down at her briefly and shook his head at her protests, smiling a little at her embarrassment.

"You heard Jinenji. You're not to put any weight on that leg."

"I can't have you carry me around everywhere for the next couple days!"

"I am more than okay with doing that."

"I'm not!!"

Miroku merely chuckled in reply as he helped her into the car, then set her Hiraikotsu and his shakujo into the back. As he drove them back to his apartment he considered saying several things but discarded them all. It could wait until tomorrow.

#Inuyasha fanfiction #MirSan #Miroku x Sango #InuKag #Inuyasha x Kagome #MiroSan #SanMir #Through the Night #this chapter was a monster to write and its SO long but I'm pleased with how it came out

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avengerofiron · 3 years

Text

the people who built me || danny & tony

summary: tony has a choice to make when he encounters iron fist during an enforcer patrol. he chooses family. (solo incoming when lola gets time about The Consequences TM - sorry tony)

when: a few days before the siege

word count: 10,094 (we thought we were brief. we were not.)

trigger warnings: torture mention, abuse mention, death mentions

featuring: danny rand

TONY: Everyone made mistakes. It was a fundamental part of life — a fundamental part of science — to do something once, find out where you went wrong, and improve on it for the next situation that came your way. That innovation was what Tony lived for, what he breathed every single day in Stark Industries or as he acted as Iron Man. It was innovation that other people boasted about, too, until the point where mistakes became too much for them to simply brush off, when mistakes were too large to sweep under the rug, that’s when things got dicey.

Tony Stark had a habit of making things dicey.

The Sentinels weren’t his doing, though. For once, he wasn’t the guy in the room to create the targeting system, or the artificial intelligence, or even the giant, maniacal robots designed for one purpose and one purpose alone. These robots were created by men before Tony was even born, years before most kids would remember their first appearance on the scene just after the events went down in Cuba.

Their design needed a little work. Tony could say that with certainty. Their morality needed a complete overhaul, and if Tony could see that, if he could spot it a mile off with no hesitation, he didn’t see how they were going to spin it to make the public agree — but they did. They did, even if Ross stepped into every meeting with a face that looked like he’d been chewing on a wasp because his ass had been well and truly handed to him by the World Security Council. . Security. Sometimes it came at the cost of what really mattered in life. Sometimes, in the process of making a better world, you destroyed the old one that was perfect in its own unique way. Sometimes, people needed a little bad to make the good worth it.

Tony was still learning that. Of course, it was a little hard to learn with Ross breathing down his neck, the warning lingering on the horizon of every decision he made or didn’t make in the field.

He couldn’t afford to mess up. He couldn’t afford to make a dicey mistake, couldn’t afford to pull a Tony Stark.

Inevitably, that was exactly what would happen.

The Sentinels tracking system picked up an anomaly that wasn’t significant enough to investigate, but enough to suggest that something not entirely above board was going down in Hell’s Kitchen. Someone had latent powers they were aware not to use was one of the suggestions thrown around the meeting room. Others said it could be a fault with the system. Either way it needed checking out, and enforcement agents had been put on clean up duty while the robots handled the real, perceptible threats that they didn’t need to negotiate with. . Not just enforcement agents — Tony, specifically. Iron Man, glorified janitor, delegated to the bottom of the pile for the past month because he dared not to disclose some minorly crucial facts to his employers.

Bastards.

“You’ve reached the point of the fluctuation, boss,” FRIDAY informed him through the helmet’s sound system. “So far I’m picking up a single heat signature other than your own.”

“Tell me it isn’t burning up,” Tony replied. “I’ve had enough of fire people for one lifetime.”

“I wasn’t with you during that one, boss. Must’ve been the other computer.”

“Must’ve been.”

“The temperature signal appears human. They’re moving slowly — no adrenaline spike as of yet. I would suggest landing before things get nasty.”

“When have you ever known my missions to get nasty?” Tony asked. FRIDAY remained conspicuously silent, but her presence was noted. Tony could almost imagine her rolling her eyes. “Alright, darling. Let’s get this show on the road.” . He landed on the pavement in the alleyway, hand up and palm glowing. “Hi there,” he announced, voice robotic but not nearly as warped as he would like it to be. (Doing things you fundamentally disagreed with was easier when you were wearing a mask, he had found — Iron Man had always been more of his true self than Tony Stark, billionaire playboy.) “I’m Iron Man, you’re in breach of the Sokovia Accords, and we’re going to need to have a little chat. If you don’t mind, come easily and this’ll all be—”

The figure turned. The way he moved was as familiar as someone stepping around Tony’s kitchen counter, or pulling Tali over on the couch onto his knee, or messing around with Colleen in the gym, clearly holding back while Tony was watching because Tony didn’t know, couldn’t know, the truth.

The truth that was staring him in the face now.

He was wearing a mask, of course. Even Danny wasn’t trusting enough to know that running around with his own face in New York City in the current climate would result in anything but trouble. Tony still knew him, though. He knew him when he was a kid, chasing after him at galas. He knew him as a man, talking about a plane falling from the sky and snow surrounding him. He knew him as a cousin, broaching a subject, a word, Tony had always dodged, backing off the second Tony didn’t bite.

(Sometimes he wondered what would’ve happened if he did. If he gave Danny the truth in that moment, if he opened himself up, if he admitted something to both of them that he’d been carrying since he was fifteen years old. Sometimes he wondered, but not tonight. He was a little preoccupied.)

The man in the mask, the man on the Sentinels’ system, the man on FRIDAY’s tracker, the man he was sent to arrest …

It was Danny Rand.

DANNY: Over the last few years, Danny had had a few very close calls in his life of vigilantism. He’d been stabbed (multiple times now), shot (though only by Harold), kidnapped (also multiple times, which was worrying), maimed… The list went on and on. He had plenty of personal experiences to tell him just how dangerous this life was, plenty of scars and near-death moments to inform him just what he was risking every time he pulled that bandanna over his face.

He’d only recently come to consider the law to be one of those potential consequences.

Danny had never been arrested before. He’d certainly come close a few times in his early days back in the city, when his heart beat too quickly in his chest and he swung his fists at anyone who looked at him too closely, but he’d never seen the backseat of a patrol car. Thanks to Harold’s meddling, he’d even found himself on a federal watchlist for a moment or so, but Jeri took care of it before it could lead anywhere substantial. The closest Danny had come to prison was his forced stay in Birch, an experience he desperately wanted to avoid repeating.

If he were smart, he supposed, he might have scaled back the vigilantism to prevent an arrest. It was what Ward had advised him to do, on more than one occasion. Money can do a lot of things, Danny, he’d warned, but this isn’t one of them. If they catch you, they will send you to the Raft. Not some nice prison for tax evaders, the fucking Raft. And he was right. Danny knew he was right, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hang up his worn hoodie and yellow bandana. Every time he tried, Ward’s voice was drowned out by a thousand others.

Protect my city. Matt, who hadn’t died for him but almost did, who’d trusted him to save a city he hadn’t even managed to stay in.

Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande, who had been cruel and ruthless and right. . You should never have borne the Fist. Davos, angry and bitter and hitting the nail on the head every time. Danny had power, and he didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t earned it. Not really, not in the ways that counted. If he did nothing with it, if he failed New York the way he’d failed K’un Lun, what was the point of him? What did any of the sacrifices made to get him where he was mean?

So he didn’t stop. He kept fighting, kept roaming the streets with his Fist glowing as if there weren’t robots out to drag him in and enforcers less understanding than Colleen looking for a high profile collar. Because he needed to make amends. (Because he didn’t know how to stop.)

Tonight had been quiet. He hadn’t seen any sentinels, hadn’t run into any enforcers. He’d barely even seen any crime, only taking out one mugger by well into the morning hours. He probably should have been glad for it, but his skin itched and his chest was tight and he wanted to hit something. When he heard a quiet tang of something unmistakably metallic landing behind him, he was almost relieved. Finally, finally, a chance to let out some of that pent up rage on something he didn’t have to feel guilty for breaking.

But then he turned around, and the world tilted on its axis.

Everyone knew who wore the Iron Man suit, but even if he hadn’t there was no mistaking Tony’s voice beneath the modulated tones. Danny had been following Tony Stark around since he was a little kid, been clinging to his pant legs since he could walk. The fifteen-year gap in their relationship amounted to surprisingly little when he crashed on Tony’s couch as often as he did as an adult. Tony was there in good moments and bad, there on Christmas and in hospital rooms, at family dinners and in the moments when he couldn’t scrape himself off the floor. Tony had been there for all of that, and now, he was here for this.

And Danny froze. . Tony was frozen too, and though Danny couldn’t see his face, he had a feeling the wide-eyed expression beneath Iron Man’s mask was a pretty close match to the one he wore on his own face right now. Uncertainly, Danny shifted. Half of him wanted to walk towards Tony while the other half screamed at him to move away. He didn’t know which half was right. Maybe neither of them was.

“Hi,” he said experimentally, as if checking to see if his voice still worked. “I don’t… Uh, I can’t go to jail.” He bit his lip, barely stopped himself from adding, ’Please, Tony,’ because if Tony didn’t know who he was now, there would be no hiding it after something like that.

TONY: At least Batman roamed the rooftops of Gotham with a voice modulator. At least Daredevil pulled off that dark, mysterious, brooding, silent vigilante type. At least for the few weeks Tony himself managed to keep an alter ego on the down low, he wore a mask that covered the entirety of his face, his whole squishy human body, and his multitude of self worth issues all in one handy package. Danny was out here in a hoodie that wouldn’t have been out of place in Rhodey’s grungy backpack in MIT and a bandana that was riding up on his entirely too familiar nose, his voice breaking through in a weak attempt at a different pitch that Tony could see through in an instant, because he wasn’t a moron.

He was a genius, a fact that he often lamented over, and a genius who loved Danny Rand, at that.

Christ, it was looking at his own heart staring back at him, wide eyed and about to bolt, feet two seconds away from running down the alleyway and never looking back. Tony could catch him, of course. The suit could catch a rocket, if it wanted — but the question was whether he wanted to. The question was whether he wanted to see for himself, up close and personal, what Danny learned in the years he was gone, what knowledge he shared with Colleen that made the woman utterly terrifying. The question was whether Tony was willing to put someone else he loved in cuffs while the man he’d asked to marry him remained on the run, being fed intelligence from Stark systems, being told that if it came down to it, Tony would make the hard choice because it was the right one. . Making the right choice always seemed so difficult. Tony told himself that he needed compasses, like Steve or Sharon or Jarvis, Yinsen or Rhodes or Rumiko (not all of them were good compasses, but that was beside the fact), in order to make them. He told himself that he didn’t know the difference between wrong and right, because when he looked back at his extensive list of personal defects and lifelong tendency towards making mistakes, he figured that was proof of some void in his chest that other people had filled, something his parents failed to cultivate or he burned away with liquor.

But he knew, now. He knew it as much as he knew when Steve looked at him he’d burn down the world to put things right. He knew when he looked at Danny, he could never put cuffs around his wrist. he could never let anyone touch a hair on the kid’s goddamn head, and he wasn’t a kid anymore, Tony knew that, but he was. He always would be.

Tony lost him once before. He wasn’t losing him again, not by choice, not like this.

Of course, of all the words Tony could have chosen to put that sentiment into the universe, he went with something completely …

Well, completely Tony.

“Yeah,” he said, helmet retracting quickly. “No shit you can’t go to jail.”

“Boss,” FRIDAY interjected, “perhaps we should shut off the Panel communication servers-”

Tony clicked one of the panels on the suit’s arm, and FRIDAY faded into nothingness — along with Ross’ feed to this conversation. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tony demanded, taking a step forward. “Do you just think you can go around the city in … in not even spandex. You’re in less than spandex. You look like you raided a Goodwill and then they kicked you out because you were making the babies cry. I … I do everything I can to try and stop you from getting into shit, Da— Iron Fist, and you and all the, uh … the other ones, you all keep doing this!”

DANNY: Surprisingly, this wasn’t actually a situation Danny had been in before. When he first returned from K’un Lun, he had seen no reason to lie to people about where he had been and what had been done to him. He told the Meachums everything, didn’t understand why they didn’t believe him immediately because it was real. He knew it was real, had the scars and the nightmares to prove it. He told Colleen who, while more receptive, still spent the first few hours of their acquaintanceship looking at him like a bomb about to go off. He told the doctors at Birch, positive that they would understand what he was saying and let him go, so sure that it would reinforce his sanity. He told anyone who would listen about the Fist, and everyone looked at him like something inside of him was broken. Like it was some wild story invented by a child’s mind in order to avoid accepting the truth.

Danny had never wanted Tony to look at him like that. He’d looked up to Ward as a kid, sure, but back then, Tony had been his hero. He’d wanted, so badly, to do everything Tony Stark did. He remembered saying as much to his mother one night as she was putting him to bed, remembered barely stopping for air as he launched into an elaborate retelling of what he’d done at the Starks’ that day, adding animated hand gestures to the conversation as he went on and on about Tony’s games that only he really knew all the rules to and the way he was never angry when Danny and Sharon made up their own rules on top of them, the way the three of them laughed and played and no one flipped the gameboard over when they were losing the way Ward always did and no one cried like Joy used to. The Meachums were family, but that had always been more because of Harold than the children. The Carters and the Starks were family because of Tony and Sharon. Because of Danny.

And now, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be the reason they stopped being family, too. . He didn’t think Tony would arrest him. Not if he knew it was him, not if he recognized the eyes staring back at him. On a logical level, Danny knew that Tony never put him in cuffs, never take him to the Raft. But old paranoia told him he was assuming too much, old anxiety clawed at his gut and demanded to be free. Ward had put him in a mental institution, had paid people to hurt him while he was there. Harold had traded him to the Hand, had pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. Joy had hired someone to kidnap him, knowing he might not survive the experience. Davos had cut into him, bled him out over a clay pot, shattered every fucking bone in his leg twice for good measure. Danny loved his family, he really did. But he had a lot of bad experiences with trust, a lot of scars he could have avoided if, for a moment, he had loved less.

Tony Stark was not Ward Meachum. Danny knew that. Tony never would have hired guards to chase him down the street with guns in hand because he was afraid of losing money, wouldn’t have hurt him over and over and over again to save his own reputation. Tony wasn’t Joy or Davos, either, and he certainly wasn’t Harold. Tony was a good man who loved Danny, who had always treated him like a person instead of a billionaire, who had let him be a kid when no one else seemed interested in doing so. The Carters and the Starks and the Rands, they were a different kind of family than he’d had with Harold and Joy and Ward. They were less cutthroat, less money-hungry. Sharon and Tony had never wanted anything from him except for him to be himself. Danny knew that. . But that old paranoia still hovered for a moment as he and Tony stared at each other, both still as they assessed the situation. Danny stood lightly on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt if he needed to, as if it would make a difference. He couldn’t outrun Tony when he was wearing the suit, and even the intimate knowledge he’d gained over the last few years of vigilantism wouldn’t help him much against Iron Man. He was pretty sure Tony had some kind of x-ray vision in that thing, so hiding in a dumpster would only end up embarrassing him.

Danny didn’t realize he’d been holding a breath until Tony spoke and he let it out, a quiet exhale as a wave of relief hit him so hard it threatened to knock him off his feet. Tony didn’t sound like Iron Man, enforcer of the Accords right now. He sounded like Tony Stark, exasperated older cousin getting ready to gear up for a pretty intense lecture. . Tony did something with his arm that Danny thought might mean the higher-ups couldn’t eavesdrop anymore, and Danny’s shoulders relaxed just a little. He still carried some tension in his shoulders as Tony launched into his lecture, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t getting arrested for the moment. It allowed him to relax enough to look mildly offended, if nothing else. “Hey,” he said, “Je --- uh, my friend said spandex is lame. And this is comfortable! I need to be comfortable.” Not that the outfit was the point, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it? He had to defend his style choices. “Look, you’re mad. I know you’re mad. Can I just --- I can explain. Okay? It’s just, uh, it’s a really long story, and I ---” He broke off for a moment, searching for words momentarily before continuing, “I punched a dragon! And now I’ve got --- I’ve got control over my chi, and I --- A building fell on Daredevil! And he told me, he said, ’Protect my city,’” his voice got momentarily deeper in a poor imitation of Matt, “and I couldn’t say no, because he was gone! And then --- And then my brother did a sacred ritual on me and I broke my leg and went to China, which you knew that part because of course you would have noticed that I was in China, right? And now I’m back! And, um, yeah. That’s it.”

It was an utterly nonsensical explanation, a series of stories strung together that, from the outside, seemed completely unrelated. Danny had never been the best at setting the record straight, especially not under pressure. Tony knew that, of course.

TONY: He wasn’t his father. Tony had never been his father, and recently, he’d stopped feeling inferior about that fact and started feeling grateful. He rarely gave over to anger. His rage, when it was prompted, came relatively smoothly. It built in him, gathered in his chest, curled around in his mind until he found the way most appropriate to put it to good use. There were rare occasions when Tony lost his cool, at least in that regard.

This was one of those rare occasions.

He was pissed. He was pissed off, and he was angry, and he was every word that he could think of to describe the rising heat on the back of his neck, the way his hands balled into fists. Any other man in a metal suit would use the mask to its fullest potential at this moment and hide his weakness. Tony had never been good at covering the emotions on his sleeve, not when it came to enemies, not when it came to strangers, or the press. Definitely not when it came to family.

He was angry, but he was terrified, too. His throat felt tight as he spoke, his voice raising but not nearly strong enough to have any kind of weight behind it.

“You know I’m mad?” Tony repeated, raising an eyebrow. “You know I’m mad? Are you fucking joking me?” Danny stopped talking, and Tony held up a hand. “Listen, this is the moment where you zip it, alright? This is the point where you stop talking, because I have a lot of things to say to you, and you just—”

Danny kept. On. Talking.

(Jesus, that ran in the family.) . The words that were coming out of Danny’s mouth were quick and panicked, and suddenly Tony was having flashbacks to when Danny was nine years old. Sharon assisted in the breaking of one of Tony’s vases, entirely accidentally, and Danny had a hundred and one excuses for Tony, not one of which included any form of a lie. At that stage, the kid had been utterly incapable of keeping a single detail from Tony. Secrets weren’t something that existed between the three of them.

Except they had. Except every time Sharon and Danny walked into his house in Malibu, Tony had to clean up weeks of evidence of his real life, the life he led on a daily basis. He had to hide the people he spent time with, the things he wasted time on, the things that kids didn’t want to see and he would die before he admitted to, because they, for God knows what reason, looked up to him. Cared for him. Loved him.

Danny was talking fast, and he’d never lied to Tony before except for when he had, but when he said dragon Tony couldn’t find even a piece of his heart that doubted the validity of what he was saying. “A building fell on Daredevil because he chases that,” Tony interjected, before Danny could go any further. “I don’t know the guy as anything other than a dot on my threat analysis, but come on. He goes out in a mask and he tries to make a difference, and that’s honourable and heroic and all of those things, but it’s also fucking stupid.” . What Iron Fist was doing was stupid. FRIDAY was in his ear reminding Tony that he was stupid, that there was a timer on this conversation and Ross would realise before long that Tony had tapped out, and that only spelled trouble when Tony was already on the shitlist …

“This life,” Tony said, taking another step forward, gesturing at Danny’s gear, “this life only ends one way. It ends with you in the ground. It ends with someone taking joy in putting you there. And that’s … I do this because I killed people. I killed innocent people for decades. I killed people, and I need to make up for that but Christ, you …”

Tony sucked in a breath, and all pretence went out the window.

“You had ten years.” He was yelling. No, yelling would be easier — he was trying to scream, but the words were barely coming out. “You were ten years old and you were dead. You were dead and that damn near killed all of us, you know that? You ever wonder why Sharon’s mom worries more than is even close to normal about her coming home in a box? You ever wonder why I … I was in a cave and I was seeing so much shit, and they were going to kill me and I saw you. I saw you and you weren’t even dead. You weren’t. You were alive the whole damn time.”

Tony stepped back, then, heart beat pounding loud in his ears. “You can’t do that to us again.” He said it the same way Pepper had, pushing herself out of bed, shooting him a glare on the way down to the couch. He said it like there was no other solution, like Danny would stop or he wouldn’t, and Tony would be able to walk away — but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even be able to stop himself if Danny asked him to. “If it wasn’t me,” he continued, “if it wasn’t me here, tonight, things would be different. You know that, right?”

DANNY: There were days when Tony reminded him so much of Ward that Danny ached with it, moments when his cousin got a look on his face and it felt like Danny was looking at his brother instead. This moment, with Tony clearly and understandably angry and Danny standing in front of him with some dangerous stunt only faintly in the rearview mirror, was one of them. Danny couldn’t help but think back to the thousand and one times he’d had this conversation before. In Ward’s office, when he and Danny were slowly making their way back towards being brothers. On his couch, bloodied and beaten, with Ward quietly trying to pretend not to be terrified. On the runway of a private airport, Ward threatening to lay down in front of a plane to keep Danny from going off on his own.

He’d had the conversation with other people too, of course. Colleen, who waited up until he stumbled home at five in the morning with bruised knuckles and blood on his hands, who asked him quietly how many times he’d lit up the Fist, how many hours of sleep he was running on. Claire, who told him how terrified she was that his obsession with being something he wasn’t would take away everything good about what he was. Jessica, Matt, Luke, Misty… Danny had people who loved him, people who knew what he did and tried desperately to convince him to do it in a way that wouldn’t kill him in the end. And Danny wished he knew how to do it for them. He wished he knew how to be the sort of man who might get a happy ending, the sort of man who could die peacefully of old age someday instead of the sort destined to bleed out in a back alley gasping and wheezing and waiting for help that would never come. He wanted to be that person for them, but he couldn’t. Most days, he still wasn’t confident he knew how to be a person at all. . Tony was talking to him as if he was one. Tony was talking to him like he was a child, perhaps, but he was talking to him as if he was a person all the same, like he was more than a weapon, and Danny had to remind himself that that meant something. He opened his mouth to say more, to dig his grave a little deeper, but Tony told him to be quiet and Danny had always wanted to do pretty much anything Tony told him to do.

It was Tony’s turn to talk now, Tony’s turn to talk about how buildings didn’t typically fall on men who didn’t run into them when they were already shaking, and Danny winced just a little. “A building fell on Daredevil because I ---” He cut himself off, taking a deep, shuddering breath. How much should he reveal here? How much did he tell Tony about the things Iron Fist had been a part of, the things that happened because of him. As far as the police knew, Iron Fist had been nowhere near Midland Circle. Danny Rand’s involvement in the collapse had been swiftly covered up by Ward, who made a hefty donation and requested that his brother’s trauma not be capitalized on to a very receptive commissioner with a very big check. Danny could tell Tony, right in this moment, that it wasn’t Daredevil’s stupidity that dropped a building on his head --- it was Danny’s. He wondered if that would change Tony’s perspective or make him angrier. . “I know how this ends,” he said instead, quiet and apologetic and utterly unafraid. Danny had always known how this would end, had thought he’d seen the end of it more than once, with Bakuto’s blade slipping silently between his ribs or Harold’s gun aimed firmly at his head or Elektra’s face inches from his own or Davos carving him up or Rhyno’s gang watching him shiver and shake and vomit blood onto the warehouse floor and laughing. Danny knew how this story ended, and he’d made his peace with it. If he died tomorrow, he still would have lived far longer than he had expected. He’d accepted death at ten years old with a plane shaking around him, accepted it again a few months later with sweat beading on his brow and boys his age hitting him over and over and over again because there was no mercy in K’un Lun, not even a little. He’d accepted his death at the mouth of a cave, welcomed it when he stepped inside with nothing but his clenched fists and his aching muscles to face a beast he’d only heard of in storybooks. Death was nothing new, nothing scary. Danny had known it for years.

Tony went on then, talked about why he put on a metal suit, and Danny took a shuddering breath, closed his eyes for a moment as the words rushed out before he could stop them. “So have I,” he blurted, sudden and thick and full of grief. “I’m --- I had a job. I had people to protect, and I failed them, and they’re --- I have things to make up for, too. I have scales to balance.” You are nothing. Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande’s words echoed in his ear, and they were true. They were true, no matter how many people claimed they weren’t. . When Danny’s plane went down, he’d never considered how it affected other people. He’d been ten years old, had his father’s body and his mother’s screams burned into the forefront of his mind, and thoughts back to New York had never been to think of how the people he’d left behind were coping with his presumed death. He remembered Joy talking about it shortly after he came back, quiet and mournful. He remembered the way Jeri looked at him with more emotion in her expression than he’d ever seen her wear before or since. He remembered Sharon showing up to his office and threatening to kill him for disrespecting the memory of a person she’d loved. He’d heard all those stories, but he’d never really stopped to ponder them.

Not until now.

Tony’s words rung in his ears, and Danny flinched. “I wasn’t…” He started, trailing off because what could he say? I’m sorry my plane went down? I’m sorry you thought I was dead and it broke you? I’m sorry you had to lose me? Danny had been a ghost for a very long time, a child haunting the people who had loved him, sainted by his death. And he was alive now, he was back, but they were still haunted. The ghost of the boy they’d known still hung in the corners of their minds, still rattled chains in the basements and made the floorboards groan. You couldn’t undo fifteen years of grief. . “I’m not trying to,” he said quietly, and it didn’t feel true even if it was. Danny didn’t want to die. He’d realized it all at once in Rhyno’s hideout, when BB crouched beside him and they’d both understood with abject certainty that the gang would be disposing of a corpse by nightfall. Danny didn’t want to die, but he’d still gone after Davos mere hours after he was rescued from that warehouse. He’d still gone out, alone and unarmed, to fight a man who’d already beaten him once, still landed himself in the hospital with doctors who whispered in voices they thought he couldn’t hear about the probability that amputation would be required to save his life. Danny didn’t want to die, but he didn’t know how to stop chasing death, either. He didn’t know how to walk away. “I know.” He said quietly. If any enforcer but Tony had found him, things would be different. Things would be worse.

Danny ran a hand through his hair, eyes burning. “I can’t stop, Tony. I can’t --- The way I was raised, after that plane went down, they taught me… I wasn’t a person to them. I was --- I’m a weapon, Tony, a, a thing, and I don’t --- It was expected there. That I’d… They expected it.” They expected him to die. Some of the kids took bets on it, in the beginning. ’If he lives more than a month, I’ll do your chores for a week.’ ’You can have half my rations for three days if he makes it a year.’ They hadn’t even tried to hide it, had spoken about it clear and outright well within earshot. Danny had grown used to that, over the years. It was how things were. He wasn’t supposed to live. He wasn’t meant to.

TONY: He’d been pretending his entire life. He’d been wearing masks since he was a child, going to galas with his father’s hand digging into his shoulder, leaving bruises in the shapes of his fingertips that expensive material always managed to hide. He’d been pretending from the first second he put on the metal mask in that cave, pretending that he was capable of becoming something bigger than former warmonger, Tony Stark, the boy turned man who was so naive as to believe that the person who helped raise him was incapable of hurting him, incapable of ordering his death.

Obadiah loved him, Tony had reasoned. Obadiah loved him, and he couldn’t possibly have known about any of the deals under the table, couldn’t possibly be the mastermind Pepper said he was. Obadiah loved him, and that was exactly why he wanted Tony dead, because loving Tony Stark had never been easy, not for anyone.

Rhodey’s career almost ended just by associating with him. Pepper was dropped into a blazing fire. Rumiko’s family all but disowned her, Tiberius’ stocks dropped, Sharon was forced to pick him up off the floor and discharge him from hospital, driving home silent and pretending that there wasn’t this large, unspoken thing sitting in the space between the driver and passenger’s seat. Loving Tony meant Maria cried every damn night. Loving Tony was so damn difficult that it made Howard want to hurt him, and he had. . ‘You’ll understand when you’re a parent.’ He’d uttered that more than once. ‘When you’re looking at someone you watched grow up, someone who has disappointed you, lied to you, failed to become what they should be — when that happens, Anthony, you’ll understand that it isn’t as black and white as you seem to think it is.’

Tony was looking at Danny. He was looking at Danny, and he felt like his heart had jumped out of his chest and was spluttering on the pavement between them, sustained only by the muddy water in the puddles of the alleyway, but he didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want anything to hurt him.

All Tony wanted, in that desperate, aching moment, was to bring Danny to a place where they never needed to have a conversation like this again, a place where they didn’t need to dance around the truth for months and years, because the Starks might have lied, the Carters might have made their name out of mistruths, the Rands may have misdirected, but their kids were honest. The three of them, they’d always loved each other different.

They’d always loved each other right.

(Tony was capable of that, after all — of loving someone in the correct way, of not turning into his father. In other circumstances, he may have been relieved. He had other things on his mind at this point in time.) . “Is that how you want it to end?” Tony would understand that, too. He would understand it more than almost anything else, that desperate need to go out in a blaze of glory to prove himself, to tip the cosmic scales, to cleanse his hands, to make himself worthy of being called hero by kids and parents alike. He’d tasted a human death. He didn’t much care for it. He would understand.

Just like Danny understood him.

I have scales to balance. Tony shifted, feeling like the conversation was on a Dutch tilt, like he’d had a few too many and the world wasn’t that blissful blur anymore but something far more disconcerting.

“Okay,” Tony breathed. It took him three attempts to make the word audible. “Okay, you can’t stop. That’s … we can work with that. We can make that happen, but you— if you want to do this, you have a chance now to do it right. Legitimise yourself. Get the protection of the Panel. Think of the good you could do if you didn’t need to look over your shoulder every five minutes for the cops.” Tony sucked in a breath, taking another step forward. “Register that weapon. I know you. I know what you stand for. Other people might not. They wouldn’t get it. If you …”

(It was Maria at the bottom of the marble staircase, head in her hands, shaking it gently when Tony asked if they were leaving after all. It was Steve, looking up, meeting his eye, putting the pen back in its case and walking away, taking the air in the room with him. It was Natasha on that balcony, or Rhodes in a plane saying hanging out with you is bad for our friendship, or Pepper asking what the hell was wrong with him that he could think, even for a moment, she would be okay with…)

“Please,” Tony said, reaching out a hand. “Come with me. Let me fix this, for you. Let me fix all of it.” We don’t have much time.

DANNY: In the months after he was brought into K’un Lun, after the wounds from the plane crash had healed and he had learned to breathe around the biting cold of air far crisper than even the coldest winters in New York, Danny had developed a habit of running away. It happened often in the beginning, so much so that sometimes he’d find Chodok waiting for him at the edge of the city with a knowing expression on his face, sad and disappointed and utterly unsurprised. He never got far, of course --- there was nowhere to go. There was no way out of K’un Lun, wouldn’t be until the gate opened fifteen years later, but Danny hadn’t wanted to believe that back then. He’d struggled to understand the complexities, had a hard time wrapping his mind around the new rules that seemed so strange compared to what he’d grown up with. How could something be there and then not be there? How could there be a way out one day and nothing the next? How could he exist for the rest of his life in a place that had made it so abundantly clear to him just how little he belonged?

He remembered Chodok, on one of the occasions he found him waiting at the gate for the next grand escape, looking especially exhausted. ’Why do you do this?’ He’d asked, frustrated and at his wits end and sounding more like a father than anyone else in the city had ever bothered and Danny had felt a rush of anger and grief so unexpected it had nearly knocked him off his feet. He’d wanted to scream, wanted to pound his tiny fists against the ground as if he had the strength to bend it to his will, to make it into something familiar and safe and home. His throat had felt tight and Chodok’s hand’s gripping his shoulders had been the only thing keeping him upright. ’I was trying to go home,’ he’d said, quiet and mournful. ’I’ve been trying to go home, I just want to go home and no one will let me. Why won’t you let me?’ . The outburst was embarrassing in hindsight, so childish that Danny felt humiliated at the memory, but the sentiment remained. There were days, even now, when he looked out into the city’s skyline and the thought would cross his mind, strong and certain and utterly nonsensical. I want to go home. Why can’t I go home? It reminded him of sitting in a helicopter with Colleen, of coming back to New York after months away, of looking down at the lights and feeling nothing where he should have felt safety. ’That’s the beauty of it,’ she’d said, ’it can be whatever you need it to be.’ ’What do you need it to be?’ He’d asked, because maybe if he knew her answer he could puzzle out his own. And she’d said home, like that was all there was to it, like one word was a complete sentence, and Danny felt nothing. He’d fought like hell to get back to New York, had nearly died for the city a hundred times over, and he felt nothing.

It took him a long time to understand why. It took him years to realize that it wasn’t buildings or sidewalks that got him out of bed in the middle of the night to run barefoot through the snow, desperate for a way back. It wasn’t his family’s old brownstone or his father’s office that tightened his chest with grief and rage and confusion when Chodok asked him why he insisted on running away time and time again. It was never New York that Danny was trying to get back to. It was Ward. It was Joy, it was Sharon. It was Tony.

Tony, who was looking at him like he’d ripped his heart out of his chest. Tony, who had accepted him back into his life as if he’d never left it, who had never once questioned where he had been or why he was different or why sometimes it seemed to hurt him just to breathe. Tony, who must have known all along that Danny had a nighttime hobby but who had never quite let it come to the surface because knowing meant he’d have to act on it.

Tony, who looked just as frustrated and tired now as Chodok had back then. . It occurred to Danny, quite suddenly, that there had been more than one driving factor in his grief that day with Chodok’s hands on his shoulders. It occurred to him that he’d spoken of home, but that hadn’t been all he’d wanted to say. The words hit him now all at once, quiet thoughts soaked in a child’s anger. Why didn’t you let me stay with you? Why did you give me away to Lei Kung? He doesn’t even like me, but you do. You’re the only person here who’s ever been nice to me, and you gave me away. Chodok must have known, when he’d found a boy in the snow, what would happen to him in K’un Lun. He must have known what he’d go through. He must have known they’d warp Danny into a weapon, must have known they’d beat him and berate him and hurt him, and he’d still done it. Danny thought, back then, that Chodok was the only person who’d never hurt him, but he had. Maybe not directly, but he had.

And now here was Tony, with that same expression on his face, and one key difference Danny recognized with ease --- Tony would never hurt him. Tony loved him the way Chodok couldn’t, the way Lei Kung and Harold couldn’t, the way maybe even Wendell couldn’t. Without consequence. Without condition. Danny had gone against him in a way that would have been punishable by death in K’un Lun, in a way that would have made Tony well within his rights to put him in cuffs and take him to the Raft, and Tony didn’t. He wouldn’t. There weren’t many people who loved Danny like that, and he thought Tony might have been first. He thought Tony might have been the first person to look at him, before K’un Lun and the plane crash and everything else, and decide he was worth loving.

He hoped letting him down wouldn’t change that. . “No,” Danny said, too quickly for it to be true. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and swallowing before amending. “I don’t know.” He knew how it was supposed to end for him. He knew he’d been meant to die on that mountainside, when the Hand’s soldiers invaded the path he was supposed to guard. The Iron Fist was always supposed to die an honorable death in battle, and there was no K’un Lun left to die for but there were still battles to be fought. If he lost his life in one, maybe it would make up for the battle he’d missed. Maybe the only way you could find redemption was through death.

Tony went on then, offered options, and Danny felt like he was suffocating just a little. Register that weapon. Could he do that? It left a sour taste in his mouth, twisted a knot in his stomach that he didn’t understand. “Tony…” The name fell from his lips in a whisper, and it sounded like an apology, even to him. How could he explain it? How could he talk about K’un Lun, about the lasting damage done to him there? He’d belonged to someone once. He’d been a thing, and they had owned him. He existed for them, bled for them, would die for them, and they’d treated him with as much respect as they treated their swords. You kept a weapon sharp, you kept it clean. You gave it a sheath to rest in, you recognized its power when it was in your hands. You showed a weapon respect, you understood the danger it represented.

You didn’t love it. . You didn’t call a weapon by its preferred nickname. You didn’t ask it how it felt about the solution you used to clean it with. You didn’t value its opinion, you didn’t tuck it into bed at night, you didn’t hold it close when it woke up screaming, didn’t wipe away its tears when it cried. When a weapon had an owner, it couldn’t be loved. And Danny wanted, with the same childlike desperation that inspired his outburst in Chodok’s arms more than a decade ago, to be loved.

If he signed the Accords, it wouldn’t make people love him less. He knew that. On a logical level, he knew that. But the heart was not a logical organ, and his was beating so quickly in his chest that some paranoid part of him feared his ribs might break. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “Tony, I just can’t.”

TONY: He wasn’t talking half as much as he was ten minutes ago. Danny wasn’t arguing, wasn’t trying to plead his case. He wasn’t putting the pen back in the case like Steve, or reaching a hand out to him like Sam had on the grass that day. He wasn’t looking at Tony how Obadiah used to, like he was exhausted and frustrated and disappointed all in one, like he couldn’t understand how Tony could be so intelligent and still unable to grasp what he conceived to be simple facts of the universe, and he sure as hell wasn’t looking at Tony like Howard used to.

He was looking at Tony a little how Maria used to, though — a little like Tony was breaking his heart. Tony decided not to think too much into that.

Maybe this would be easier if Danny was arguing. Maybe it would be easier for Tony to say he was convinced to let Danny go, or that he was persuaded to break the code that he’d signed up to enforce, if his cousin was standing in front of him in a goddamn bandana making a case for his vigilante activities that Tony had been resolutely ignoring for the past six months (years, really. Not just months. Years, since he came back).

Tony could’ve been dead in Afghanistan. He could’ve been dead and he wouldn’t even have the chance to stand in front of Danny and make a decision that should be difficult.

It wasn’t difficult.

“Stop,” Tony said, raking his fingers through his hair. What he’d give to be a few shots down right now — and with that thought, memories came flooding back of Sharon, barely out of high school, coming to sign him out of the hospital because he didn’t want Obie to see him, because of the shame that came with it. Memories came flooding back of Pepper, and of Rhodes falling, and of Steve in Siberia, and … . He turned from Danny. A tactical misstep, undoubtedly, but Tony wasn’t thinking tactically. He knew Danny wasn’t going anywhere. He knew that, because he knew Danny.

He also knew something else. He ran his hands down over his face, eyes burning, and turned back to meet his cousin’s eye.

“Just because you love someone,” he started, swallowing thickly around the lump in his throat. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you’re good for them, right? Just because … I mean, I’m not good.” The suit whirred as his hand went to his chest. “This thing, it’s never— I’ve never worked right. I’ve always been hard, you know, difficult to …”

Tony sucked in a breath. FRIDAY was in his ear, despite the mute order. (He really needed to work on obedient artificial intelligence — but like his friends, Tony always preferred having bots around him that were willing to call him out. A moral compass of his own creation.) They didn’t have much longer.

They didn’t have any longer. A holograph appeared from the arm of Tony’s suit, detailing several targets (colleagues) a few metres from the alleyway.

He looked up once more. “I want to be good for someone. I need that.”

A long sigh, and the helmet formed over his head. “No wonder I’m in permanent heart failure,” he muttered. “Come on, idiot. My co-workers are coming, and if they get a shot in on us, I’ll die of embarrassment before I get to kill you.”

DANNY: When Danny was ten years old, his childhood ended in a heartbeat. He was a boy one moment, sitting on a plane and listening to music that was probably a little too old for him, staring out the window at mountaintops that looked so small. Then the world started to shake and the plane started to groan and all at once, life as he knew it was over. His mother was sucked into open air, his stomach bottomed out, his father’s voice grew more and more desperate until he couldn’t hear it at all. Danny hadn’t died in that crash, but the boy he’d been when he stepped on that plane? He was gone the moment the debris hit the snow.

There were no children in K’un Lun. It was Davos who told him that, Davos who sat beside him when he was terrified and desperate and trying to understand what was going on, why he was being beaten and pushed and hurt even when he hadn’t done anything wrong. We’re kids, he’d said, almost pleading as he gripped bruised ribs and tried not to cry. Why are they hurting us? We’re just kids. And Davos, if anything, had been confused. He hadn’t understood that, in other parts of the world, things were different. He hadn’t been familiar with cultures that saw children as precious things to protect. There are no children in K’un Lun, Danny, he’d said, in what Danny figured now was a tone as close to gentle as he’d known how to make it. We’re weapons. And so he had been. For fifteen years, he had been a weapon instead of a child, a thing instead of a person. . But he didn’t feel like that now. Standing in this alley, with Tony across from him, Danny felt like he was nine years old again. He felt like a child, being scolded by a parent. He felt like he had when he’d knocked his mother’s wine glass off the table and shattered it against the floor, when his father sat him down and lectured him on caution. It’s so easy to break things, Danny, he’d said, it’s so easy to do damage. It’s hard not to. It’s hard to be good. We have to try anyways.

Danny’d broken something much worse than a wine glass now. He’d broken a law, broken more than one law, actually. He’d broken Tony’s trust, too. (And he’d broken more than that. A quick flash of a memory popped into his mind --- the Reaper, blood on his lips, grinning up at Danny. This is my favorite part. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Danny’s throat felt tight.)

He’d opened his mouth again, to explain or to argue or to beg forgiveness, but he snapped it shut quickly when Tony told him to stop. Obedience was an easy habit to fall back on after K’un Lun, especially when he was on edge. Tony wasn’t Lei Kung or Priya, wasn’t Yu-Ti or Master Khan. He wouldn’t beat Danny into submission if he didn’t comply without question. But Danny’s mind was split between two places, and there was some comfort in doing what you were told when you were at a loss. There was some comfort in silence, too. . Tony turned away from him, and Danny squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath. He was disappointed, he knew. He’d disappointed Tony, and that was the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. “You’re one of the best people I know,” he offered quietly, because it was true. “I’m not…” he trailed off, chest aching. “I’m not what anyone wanted me to be. I don’t know how to be what anyone wants me to be. Not you, or Ward, or Sharon, or Colleen, or…” He trailed off, smiling tightly and giving his head a self-deprecating shake. If he listed all the people he’d let down, he knew, they’d spend all night in this alley.

Something was happening inside the suit, and Danny wasn’t a smart man but he could guess what. Tony had been here too long, and enforcers didn’t work alone. Someone else was going to come soon. Someone who wouldn’t want to talk things over, someone who didn’t love him enough to forgive his transgressions.

For a moment, the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Danny was pretty sure Tony wouldn’t arrest him, but he didn’t quite relax until Tony told him to come on. His shoulders slumped and he nodded his head slightly. He moved to follow Tony before hesitating, pausing with one foot still lifted in a half-step. “You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you?” For helping him. For loving him.

TONY: Being a good man always came with too many terms and conditions for it to be something Tony genuinely strived for. Being a good man meant making choices that cost people their livelihoods. It meant dropping bombs in foreign countries and focusing purely on the statistics of such a move instead of the human impact. It meant saying no when you wanted to say yes, saying yes when you wanted to say no. It meant hurting the people you cared about and spending your entire life following those you didn’t, because they’d offer you a leg up the career ladder, or get you that coveted contract.

“No,” Tony said, holding his hand up. “We’re not doing that, okay? We’re not. I … I’m not the guy people put weight on, alright?” Tony was the fixer. He always had been for those he cared about, for those he didn’t, for his family and friends and strangers all in one. He was the guy people went to when they needed out of a bad situation, but the second people started loving him, the second they shifted into thinking of him as more than just a means to an end, the second they started looking at him like he knew Danny was behind that bandana, things changed. That was when people could really hurt you, when they could get inside you and twist you inside out, when they could let you down.

He’d already dragged Steve down with him, a truly good man, a man who deserved so much better than anything Tony could give. He wasn’t going to do the same thing to Danny, not without a warning. Not without a comprehensive list outlining all the reasons why Tony Stark wasn’t someone to consider a hero. . “You don’t need to know who you are,” Tony replied. “You don’t. You … I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, but you’re young, Danny. You’re so fucking young. You’re … I was still selling weapons when I was your age. I still believed Obie wasn’t trying to put a hit out on my head. I was still calling Ru every time I got drunk, and you, you didn’t even get your childhood. You didn’t get to be a teenager. You’re young. Your mistakes, they still count, but they’re not … you’re not irredeemable. You’re not.”

No one was. Not even Tony, not even when he found that hard to accept.

You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you? Tony hesitated, just for a moment, then shrugged a shoulder. “I’m already in a shit load of trouble, Danny,” he said. “Helping you isn’t going to be the thing that drags me down.” As it had always been, Iron Man’s greatest foe was himself.

And then the Enforcers arrived, providing a rather convenient outlet for the anger that particular thought prompted. “Keep tight,” Tony called over, “but the second you see a gap, you get out.” With that, and trusting that for once Danny would listen to a word he said, Tony sent a blast towards one of the Enforcers, knocking them back before their weapon could fire.

This was going to be so much paperwork.

#char: danny rand #discord

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elegant-etienne · 4 years

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Combat Mode - Etienne Clairemont

★★★★★★★☆☆☆ - strength ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ - offense ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ - defense ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ - speed ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ - durability ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - accuracy ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ - agility ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ - stamina ★★★★★★★★★★- teamwork ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ - stealth ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ - close combat ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ - bladed weapons ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ - blunt weapons ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ - polearms ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ - ranged weapons ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - magic/aether ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ - traps/setups ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ - medical

OVERVIEW

As a civilian growing up in the Brume, Etienne was not unused to having to occasionally defend themselves, but it was more of the occasional scrap than growing up a fighter. After the Gates opened, Etienne left home and eventually sought to study magic, but washed out of Melvaan’s Gate, feeling incompatible arcanism. After traveling to Ul’dah to explore and seek out work, Etienne felt spiritually called to Nald’thal after attending a service. Ironically, the same emotionally detached nature that made it difficult to command a carbuncle proved an asset to the thaumaturges. With an unusually large aether pool, and a disciplined, pragmatic and hardworking nature, Etienne found success among the thaumaturges. They took up leves and eventually adventuring in order to make extra coin to send back to Ishgard.

Following the man who’d become their ex-husband, Etienne eventually joined an adventuring company and gained a lot of practical experience working in their information gathering and research (read: spies and mages) division. During a period of dangerous mental instability, they cast a black magic spell without a soul stone, which had dire effects. Fearing discovery, they stopped working for the Ossuary regularly but maintained connections for spiritual guidance and assisted with their mortuary services on a volunteer basis.

After fighting a creature that nullified magical attacks, Etienne improvised the pointy end of their staff as a makeshift polearm, and begin sharpening it to use in a pinch. Feeling they could never, ever match up to the prodigies and geniuses in their company (and equally frightened watching many of them, including their then-husband, struggle with the temptation to perform forbidden, dangerous and experimental magics), Etienne decided to focus their strengths on diplomacy, espionage, and other practical matters they felt were generally lacking in their company. As a still-practicing thaumaturge, they appointed themself the “clean-up crew,” making sure the trail of bodies their adventuring expeditions left behind were always seen to in order to not cause further trouble by tempting voidsent to sites they just cleared. Following an incident of being unwittingly dosed with a Silencing potion and being unable to defend themself against superior strength, Etienne began to take strength training and blade work seriously, choosing to study them in private.

Due to a variety of mitigating circumstances, after an intense year or two of adventuring, Etienne parted ways with the adventuring company and joined Ashen Enclave, deciding to change careers and become a counselor. Due to combat not being part of their daily life, and the dysphoria they experienced in gaining muscles and becoming more “masculine,” Etienne gave up strength training for a few years and mostly focused on dancing and swimming as fitness techniques.

Their experience living around medics during their adventuring time, their work for a charity organization with a focus on medical care, and their training as a counselor has granted them knowledge of healthcare basics. But they will tell you to leave this to the professionals if you can.

Post-transition, they have taken up strength training and study the blade, lance, and Xaelic wrestling as a “hobby.” They are not particularly open about these interests and will swear up and down that it’s all for the sake of physical fitness, but they’re still haunted by the fear of being unable to defend themself without magic. Still, their primary preference while adventuring is to fight with magic and provide ranged back-up. They prefer strategy to confrontation, believing the only way to win a fight is to avoid a fight.

Etienne classifies themself as “retired” or “semi-retired,” believing their skills lie in their more charisma and intelligence-based attributes, so to speak. While they have a fair amount of potential as a mage, they tend to see magic as just another tool in their arsenal more than a lifelong drive or passion. Having seen what happens to exceptional mages, having brushed with greatness, they swear they prefer to be ordinary.

But they miss adventuring sometimes.

LASTING COMBAT INJURIES?

Etienne suffered some permanent cosmetic scarring on their backs, hips and face during their time in Ishgard, which they cover with makeup and/or glamour prisms. A later injury to their neck seems to have left the area occasionally prone to soreness and sensitivity, though it could be psychosomatic. Other physical injuries were quickly treated and left no permanent damage.

Etienne’s successful casting of a powerful blizzard spell several years ago left them unable to sense their own aetherpool. Their aether regeneration is sluggish, requiring them to quaff ether constantly while engaged in active combat. They seem slightly more aspected toward ice, and lose body heat and vitality quickly. Casting magic can leave them fatigued or feeling physically ill, and if they cast with more aether than they have they run the risk of pulling from their own vitality.

FIGHTING STYLE

commander / duelist / honorable / dishonorable / would have others do their fighting / stealthy / long-ranged / melee / technological / sorcery / superhuman abilities / has fought in an illegal tourney / a lover of fighting / a hater of fighting / cowardly / reckless / strategic / uses underhanded tricks / renowned for their skill / trained (magic and staff) / untrained / keeps skills secret / won a battle / lost a battle / ruthless / merciful

TRAITS

FLAWS

STRENGTHS

Bold - Commonplace | Italics - Occasionally

TAGGED BY: @cynfuldax, thank you for tagging!

TAGGING: YOU. Toss me an @ if you remember to and do this! Love reading this kind of stuff. :>

#meme #about

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sepublic · 5 years

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Energy Leeches

Centuries of research, experiment, and resources had been funneled by Makuta into devising ways to most efficiently harvest Life energy from any source possible, in particular the souls of the Okotans. By studying the way Masks of Power could drain a wearer’s life energy when removed suddenly and without permission, as well as various other sources of inspiration such as the properties of materials that could conduct life energy well, and so forth, Makuta finally created the ideal creature.

Born by splicing the DNA of countless creatures, as well as a few gene splices of his own choosing, original coding, and mutations, Makuta created the first egg that would later hatch into the original Energy Leech; Jumala.

A ravenous, simple-minded creature by nature, Jumala was the precedent for all subsequent Energy Leeches. He was a leech-like creature with a bulbous head, and soft, slightly translucent orange skin. He had two large, bulging eyes on either side of his head, and his suction mouth was lined with five curved fangs to latch onto victims with and drain their energy. His body was smooth, wet, and flexible, with bones –if he had them- being incredibly soft. His tail was long, slightly flattened at the end, and along his midsection were three short, trailing appendages like smaller tails or tentacles, to help him maneuver and move around.

[In other words, Energy Leeches are the Sea Squids from Bionicle G1, but bigger and longer.]

An amphibious creature, Jumala the Energy Leech could breathe in land and water, although was most adept in aquatic environments and preferred them. Most notable of all, however, was Jumala’s ability to latch onto prey, and through his five fangs, pierce their bodies and begin draining their life force until nothing was left.

Such a process would leave a victim a dried-out, emaciated husk of their former selves, and the energy-draining process was even more efficient and faster than the machinations Makuta had installed below the City of the Mask Makers. As a deliberate design choice, Makuta ensured that Jumala’s nature left him constantly hungering and ravenous for life energy, draining multiple beings in order to satisfy himself.

Cruelly, to not only encourage Jumala and his successors’ ruthlessness and efficiency in draining power, as well as to keep as much life energy for himself as possible, Makuta intentionally starved his Energy Leech. Upon draining a certain amount of energy, Makuta in turn would have Jumala plugged into a machination that would transfer the stored life force inside Jumala, leaving him with barely enough to keep his life processes going.

Despite this blatant abuse, Jumala continued to be in his father’s servitude, knowing nothing else and not wanting to put forth the effort of forging a new life for himself. After forging a larger, stronger exterior body for Jumala (like he did for Fenrakk), Makuta proceeded to mass-produce several nests of eggs containing gestating Energy Leeches, and waited for them to mature and hatch. Due to the recent, uncertain nature of his creations, Makuta was unable to send the Energy Leeches after the Okotans during the Skull Spider Wars.

Shortly after the Battle for the City of the Mask Makers, Makuta’s first wave of Energy Leech eggs hatched. Triumphant, Makuta conditioned and starved his new army, and alongside his remaining Brotherhood forces and the second generation of Skull Spiders, sent them to attack the Okotans. Many Okotans died, their life force suddenly sucked from their bodies without warning as they were ambushed by these strange, organic creatures they had no precedent for. Although the first attacks yielded plenty of life energy, Makuta unsurprisingly hoarded most of it for himself and his experiments, leaving the Energy Leeches who actually fought for their food with barely any of their spoils.

In the ensuing battles that occurred, Makuta ensured loyalty from the Energy Leeches by brutally cracking down on any attempts to leave the Brotherhood and escape into the wilderness for a better, more nutritious life. He even dabbled in and experimented with a few techniques, such as purposely getting some Energy Leech broods addicted to drugs in order to ensure they always came back to him for additional doses.

As the war continued, the Okotans learned to better adapt to the techniques of the Energy Leeches, but nevertheless found themselves horrified by the slimy, fleshy creatures. Worst of all was how much of an invasive species they were, constantly sucking the energy not just from Okotans, but from any nearby flora and fauna, and even inorganic features such as stones or fire (the latter which burned themselves in the process, but the Energy Leeches were starving and ravenous anyway). Led by Jumala, Lord of Energy Leeches, the creatures began to severely damage Okoto’s environment by attacking various species and draining areas of their energy. Places were rendered desolate by the Energy Leech attacks, with some resembling brief accounts of Okoto during the moments it had all of its energy drained by the Mask of Life.

Likewise, the Energy Leeches weren’t inherently tied to the existence of their Lord, unlike the first generation of Skull Spiders, so if Jumala died the rest would continue functioning as normal. The Energy Leeches were without a doubt Okoto’s worst parasites and invasive species, causing destruction on what would be an unprecedented level had it not been for the Great Cataclysm. Discussions were made about wiping out the species in the wake of Makuta’s defeat, although some felt it was unfair on behalf of the Energy Leeches, who had been designed and made this way without input, and suggested preserving them in stasis instead.

The scourge of the Energy Leeches was already terrifying enough… But then it would soon worsen to levels that not even their creator Makuta had anticipated.

During his alliance with Umarak the Hunter, Makuta entrusted a few Energy Leeches in his care, curious to see how Umarak would tame the creatures. Umarak, detesting them as horrific abominations of nature who senselessly devoured with no end in sight, declined to preserve the gluttonous creatures in The Darkness Below. So instead, he pawned them off into the care of one of his personal allies he’d recruited for the war.

This ally was given the strict feeding requirements of the Energy Leeches, as well as the ways in which they would be taken care of, disciplined, etc., and… Promptly forgot about it. Instead, he just shoved them all into an underground lake, and taking one good look at their entire stash of food meant to be spread out across several months, instead threw it all in with them, figuring the Energy Leeches would engorge themselves, be full for months, and THEN he could later come back to check on them. Such a feeding exercise was unprecedented due to Makuta’s aforementioned greed, and that night one brood of Energy Leeches felt a fullness and contentment their species had never known…

Within the next few weeks, one of Makuta’s agents in that ally’s command, a recently-inducted Okotan who was still of flesh and blood, was ordered to check up on the Leeches and feed them. Unknowing of how they had been fed beforehand, the supervisor came in with buckets of food, loudly signaling for them to come, knowing his status as a Brotherhood agent would keep him safe, for the Energy Leeches feared Makuta’s wrath most of all.

At first, came no response from the underground lake, no movements. Getting annoyed, the agent began loudly banging the metal pots with a tool, until he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned…

…Just in time to see a strange, large creature emerge from the darkened waters, viciously flapping its wings as it fluttered maniacally towards him. Yelling, the agent attempted to fight back against this creature that, while new, somehow seemed very familiar to the Energy Leeches he was supposed to find, and quickly found himself ganged up upon by several other Leeches. Within seconds there was barely an emaciated husk, and soon even thatwas devoured as well.

The ally of Umarak soon after came in to check on the progress, saw several newly-grown, mutated Energy Leeches, and surprised and unsure of what to do, contacted Umarak, who in turn came to the area with Makuta’s summoned spirit. A surprised Makuta listened to what Umarak’s ally had done, and although partly angry at him for not listening, was ultimately more preoccupied by the novel discovery he’d made.

In all his experimentation, Makuta had never anticipated such a growth, and speculated that because the Energy Leeches were able to keep the life force they’d drained and properly digest it, were soon afterwards mutated by the power of the life energy and metamorphosized into larger, winged creatures. Umarak, no doubt sarcastically asking why Makuta had starved literally every Energy Leech since their creation, pointed out that he counted far too few mutated Energy Leeches. There should’ve been way more, and yet there wasn’t…

It was suggested by his ally that maybe the mutated brood ate the others to feed and fuel their transformation and sudden change in metabolism and dietary requirements, but Umarak used the shadows to feel throughout the area and felt an unseen exit in the underground lake, leading outside…

And sure enough, he investigated this hidden pathway and found a trail of dried husks, most of them dust scattered about. Further along the path, Umarak came across dried-out, brittle husks of what seemed to be Energy Leech skin…

What followed was an epidemic as the remaining members of that lost brood began to feed without restraint, no longer hindered by Makuta. Their minds had gone virtually rabid from the mutations, causing them to lose their fear of their creator as they feasted on the wilds of the Region of Jungle, left unchecked and free to roam and devour. Even as Makuta intently watched, observed, and experimented on his own Energy Leeches, the escaped brood continued to feed.

And as they did… they began to mutate even further. The mutated Stage 2 Leeches that survived hunts from the Okotans and captured by the Brotherhood were able to devour enough to begin metamorphosis into a new, larger, third Stage- One that lacked flight but was far more proficient and ravenous than the previous stage nevertheless. And as each stage progressed, more energy was required to not only transform, but then to maintain these new, twisted bodies…

Afterwards came Stage 4, and at first Makuta assumed that was the end of the line, because surely his Energy Leeches couldn’t develop any further when he hadn’t even planned for it… But then before he knew it, at least three of the remaining Stage 4 Leeches devoured entire forests, and undergoing a painful, boiling-hot metamorphosis, grew into the dreaded, massive, Stage 5, a little bit larger than a real life T-Rex. And with this final mutation, the Stage 5 Leeches gained the ability to drain life energy on contact, no longer needing to pierce a victim’s form, and were thus able to simply stuff beings such as the indestructible Skull Puppets into their mouths and absorb their entire souls.

While everyone else was horrified, Makuta himself was undoubtedly ecstatic and celebrated. Obviously, this unexpected success was a testament to just how good of a genius he was- It seems that Makuta could surprise even himself with how amazing his results were, with his own best creations continuing to yield greater results he hadn’t even considered! And so while Makuta stroked his ego and celebrated this new bolstering to his forces, he in turn began selecting the most loyal, most ruthless Energy Leeches in his command, and began feeding them in hopes of evolving them into the next stages of their unstable life cycle.

Indeed, the Brotherhood of Makuta soon added several Energy Leeches of various Stages to their arsenal, although with each increase in a stage, there was less of that number of Leech, due to the high energy costs. Makuta had to be careful about how he managed his resources and fed his Energy Leeches, and which ones he fed as well, all while ensuring each one continued to be loyal to him by beating back that fear into a Leech with each successful mutation.

Obviously, the Okotans were less than thrilled, but still had to make do with the situation and adapt. Nevertheless, the Energy Leeches continued to be a scourge and bane upon the Okotans, even with the new Masks of Power and weapons provided to them by Ekimu. In his hunts for the Elemental Deities, Umarak even employed several of the larger-stage Energy Leeches, though used only Stage 1 Leeches when subduing Rahi, not wanting to kill them outright.

Even amongst the Brotherhood of Makuta, there was some contention about the further-stage Energy Leeches. The more they grew, the more unruly and difficult to control they became, and reports came in of developed Energy Leeches even attacking and draining allies in order to sate their unsatiable hunger. By the end of the day, however, Makuta saw the senseless destruction and waste he had wrought upon Okoto as worthwhile, at least in light of the ends he was attempting to accomplish; That is, taking his rightful place among the gods, of course.

The evolved stages of Energy Leech continued to serve as a powerful asset and force within the Brotherhood of Makuta, and amidst all of the chaos, a lone, masked-and-armored stranger appeared from nowhere to hunt down and kill as many of these evolved Energy Leeches as possible, taking DNA samples all the while. With the business of the war, nobody really noticed this individual until much later, and by then they had bigger concerns to worry about.

When Makuta took control of Umarak, he unleashed the latter’s Elemental Beasts upon Okoto to raze the land away into nothing. To assist the already-unstoppable Elemental Beasts, Brotherhood forces backed them up, in particular Energy Leeches of various evolved stages. Due to the wild, frenzied madness brought upon by the Elemental Beasts by Makuta, many allies were slain by the horde in their mindless destruction. Likewise, the ever-ravenous Energy Leeches sensed the power in the Elemental Beasts, and a few even attempted to feast on their allies; However, the Elemental Beasts proved to be too dangerous for even the Stage 5 Leeches.

Likewise, the Energy Leeches assisted in Makuta in his assault on the City of the Mask Makers in which he successfully damaged the Mask of Creation beyond repair. When the Toa and Ekimu ventured to stop Makuta from gathering his soul and reuniting it, Energy Leeches were among the forces that went to stop them, but they too failed.

Following Makuta’s demise, all Energy Leeches have conspicuously gone into hiding to the point of practically disappearing. A few stragglers have remained, however, and the general Okotan consensus is to wipe out these unnaturally-made, invasive bioweapons for good. However, a few feel an inevitable empathy for the species and have made efforts to preserve as many of them in stasis as possible, and discussions on possibly trying to rehabiliate and tame the Energy Leeches has ensued. Of course, even if one were to succeed in this, the issue of their extreme dietary requirements would still keep the Energy Leeches as a severe threat to Okoto’s welfare…

Energy Leeches, in general, prefer wet environments, and the ratio of water in their body is greater than that of Okotans, at least for Stage 1. Their ideal home is large bodies of water, although swampy marshes suffice as well.

Upon mutating into Stage 2, Energy Leeches grow a more defined, prominent rib-cage as their bones begin to harden. Their heads become sleeker and narrow alongside their eyes, even as their fangs become more developed and twisted. The fin on the end of their tails is more defined, and most shockingly of all, they begin to develop additional limbs. Stage 2 forms long, spindly-fingers and hands bigger than their bodies with webbing in-between, creating a hybrid of flippers and wings. These wings, when flapped quickly, can grant Stage 2 brief bursts of fast, sudden flight- Otherwise, their flight capabilities are poor and thankfully, cease entirely following additional mutations. Stage 2 also develops smaller nubs along the sides of its tail, a precursor to hind legs, and one of its three tentacle growths falls off as the other two begin to grow larger, longer, and more versatile. Their size is about that of a grown adult, with their wing-span a little past that of an Okotan adult’s arm-span.

Stage 3 is another matter entirely. They develop more teeth, as well as a proboscis-like limb within their mouths with a talon at the end, which can extend and pierce victims to grant greater range to their lunging bites. Stage 3 just as quickly after gaining its wings loses them, if only because the growth of its body unexpectedly outpaces that of their hands. Thus, while the hands do get bigger, the rest of Stage 3 increases in size too much for them to continue having minor flight of any kind.

Their rib-cages become more pronounced and their heads larger and sleeker, as usual. Their hands grow into out-right limbs with articulated elbows, which are long and stretch forward from their bodies and out in front of them, bending downwards the way a spider’s would. Stage 3 begins to form a solid, defined pelvis along the length of its tail, and its nubs develop into flippers. The fin on their tail further grows, and their remaining two tentacles increase in size and length massively, becoming long enough to wrap around prey, with sharp points at the end to pierce them and drain fluids (though not Life energy), weakening prey for the rest of the Leech’s body to latch onto.

Stage 3 has a hunched, curved-over posture like that of a mosquito, and they support their body on their two front limbs and their curved tail beneath them. Stage 3 is over the size of an adult, easily around that of a lion or bear. They gain the ability to not only absorb Life Energy, but even charge themselves with the stored energy they’ve absorbed and unleash it in bursts, waves, and beams to attack enemies from afar. Stage 3 can even charge its body with an aura of crackling energy, making themselves dangerous to touch.

Afterwards is Stage 4. The Energy Leech suddenly and without warning loses its tentacles, which drop off its back as its body mutates, becoming more lithe and muscular. Its hind-flippers develop into digitigrade hind legs, and talons begin to develop and emergy at the ends of their front hands. Their bodies become more angular as their skeletons define themselves and harden, and their front-limbs now curve inward the way a cougar’s would. Their necks are stronger and longer, and their circular mouths form begin to form into an upper and lower jaw with larger incisors and canines. Their proboscis fails to increase in size, retracting further back into its growing throat. Their webbing becomes less pronounced, and their tail, again, increases in length and develops. Stage 4 has a hunched back and despite its lanky build is still huge, about the size of a storage truck. Stage 4 becomes more animalistic, prowling and snarling like a conventional predator. It can also rear back on its hind legs, and is able to rapid-fire sudden bursts of energy bolts at prey to subdue them, and gains an incredible leaping ability.

Finally is the most dreaded stage of all- Stage 5. Stage 5 is easily a little over the size of a real life T-Rex, and its proportions change to be more like one (albeit with larger arms). Their bodies become far thicker and more muscular as their skin and flesh distorts into slightly-frilled edges along their limbs and folds. Stage 5’s pelvis becomes larger, taking up more of its mass as its hind legs inexplicably grow larger than the front limbs, developing thick talons and webbing between fingers and toes. Webbed spines emerge along a humped ridge in the lower-back, and their tail becomes thicker than most trees, incredibly powerful and able to deliver powerful blows, and along the tip is their transcluent, frilled fin at the end.

As the rear portion of Stage 5’s body becomes larger, this leads to the Energy Leech mostly squatting on its powerful rear legs which nevertheless can’t fully extend due to the constant weight and bulk of their frame. The rest of the body’s skeleton is no longer discernible beneath massive, rubbery folds of flesh and skin, and along the elbows are webbed spines. Its skin’s orange coloration becomes more solid, no longer translucent, and its bones thicken to incredible durability. Stage 5 additionally no longer moves on all four limbs, now walking on its back two, leaving its front limbs free to slash forward, lunge, and grab onto objects and food with opposable thumbs.

The head of Stage 5 becomes its largest and most defined with a flatter shape than the previous Stage 4, with slightly-frilled edges alongside the sides of its face. Its giant, bulbous eyes blaze red beneath a constantly-furrowed brow, burning with a seething, eternally-hungering gaze. Its mouth has unexpectedly reverted back to a more circular, leech-like shape (albeit more oval than circle), the inside of its throat lined with countless barbed teeth as the main front fangs increase in size. Emerging from the sides of its face, constantly wriggling, are small tentacles that are useless, possibly more for sensory than grabbing onto things.

[Basically it’s that giant orange Ancient Sea Behemoth that Kongu summons when fighting the Barraki, albeit smaller, yet nevertheless terrifyingly huge, and with a few other visual differences here and there.]

In return for increased mass, the Stage 5 loses its leaping abilities, but also gains huge power, strength, durability, and girth in the process. Its gains the ability to drain beings without even puncturing them with its fangs, so long as they’re in contact with its mouth, and it can bite into the ground and drain an entire section of the surrounding area and plants of its life-energy, rendering it into dust.

Worst of all, Stage 5 even possesses the ability to somewhat messily, chaotically mix the various forms of Life energy it’s absorbed in its stomach, and meld that energy into various other forms such as lightning blasts. Stage 5 can also blast beams of energy into the ground, super-heating it and spreading the surrounding area with blazing energy that branches throughout and cracks apart the area, making it lethal to stand there. The strength of its tail increases to the point where it can slam into the ground to cause powerful, short-ranged tremors to knock prey off their feet. As soon as it makes contact, Stage 5 can instantly drain even the largest, most resilient forms of life completely and instantly, reducing a massive tree into dessicated, splintered halves shattered by the force of the Energy Leech’s powerful bite. Stage 5 is the most ravenous and dangerous of all, requiring enormous energy costs, and has even been seen eating other allies, and even fellow Energy Leeches, to sustain its colossal dietary requirements. And to top it all off, they possess a powerful, terrifying roar that can bellow through the air and be heard from afar, and their thundering steps are impossible to not notice unless they deliberately choose to move stealthily.

Thankfully, Stage 5 seems to be the last part of the Energy Leech life cycle, at least for now… Nobody, not even Makuta, knows the full extent and capabilities of the Energy Leeches, which is why many are so insistent on completely destroying their species in case a hidden, undiscovered Stage 6 emerges.

As Energy Leeches develop into further stages, the ratio of life energy to physical body-matter increases, becoming more life force than flesh due to their mutations being fed and maintained entirely by the souls they’ve drained. With each Stage, an Energy Leech’s body temperature rises (necessitating frequent returns to the water, with all Stages retaining aquatic capabilities, with Stage 5 swimming like an otter). Their unstable forms become held at the seams on the molecular level mostly by the energy they constantly devour and drain, and upon being damaged and wounded enough, an Energy Leech’s unstable form will begin to break apart and collapse, parts of it dissipating as pure life force into the area while other parts of its body collapses as boiling flesh. The death of a Stage 5 has been observed to yield the least proportion of its body-matter despite its mass.

Energy Leeches are aggressive and animalistic (these qualities worsening with each developed stage), and lack sapience. As far as anyone can tell, they’d make terrible pets, but then again no one has actually tried, and not without reason. Despite this, they seem able to understand orders, and the more developed a stage becomes, the better it can understand tactics. Still, it’s best to be careful and not overestimate their intelligence in understanding you, while not underestimating their intelligence when trying to drain you. Despite Stage 5 having the best intelligence, it’s the hardest to control of them all and very carefully contained and supervised between battles.

[Yeah, I’ve based the Energy Leeches’ life cycle and stages almost entirely off of the Metroids from Metroid: Samus Returns. I think playing that game can give you a good idea of what the Energy Leeches and their growth and habits are like.]

#bionicle #Bionicle RaE #sea squids #energy leeches #makuta #brotherhood of makuta #umarak #skull spiders #life energy #metroid

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