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gingkos-eldritch-secret · 7 months

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Fanfiction Commentary and Recommendations: Lex Luthor´s Ascend from Supervillainy to Fatherhood Part VI (chapters 26 to 30)

The Original story by @halfagone can be found here.

The previous parts of the commentaries can be found here:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VII

So, just to begin with: we still continue where the last part cut off. This will include discussions of injury, blood, torture and death. Also, discussions about the morality of killing someone, even in self-defence.

Many good and interesting and also important discussions happen in these following chapters. Which is very, very nice, but also makes for a bit of an emotionally exhausting bit to read. It´s absolutely wonderful, but at the end I lay in my bed and was like 'how. How do I even feel now? What should I feel now? What?' So yeah, be prepared for that.

Now included: Memes and (hopefully) gifs. You´ll see if it worked. As of now I have no clue. And with that: have fun with the commentary :D

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So: Dick is still floored by Lex just leaving after admitting that he forgives them for their behaviour. And has the same opinion as me: That he´s a freaking miracle worker. Good for him! He really DOES deserve Alfred´s cookies for this.

And now we get back to the interrogation. I mean. It should be just Gordon doing this, but Batman has been allowed to stay. And knowing how the bat behaves in such scenarios I´m not really sure that that´s a good idea.

A fun fact: the bats are ALL listening in to the conversation. And as I already know how this will go I´ll just say: they´ll be facepalming. A lot. Or will be commiserating with Danny in a way. Because god damn, he kinda verbally eviscerates Bruce. And Bruce freaking deserves it.

I mean, true, Bruce has made it clear that he´s not offering any input. But it´s Bruce. Even if he wanted to, can this man even hold back his opinions and questions?

Jason and Dick hide it out on the roof - more or less in a mix of civilian and vigilante outfits, having their own conversation while listening in.

And listening in they do. I´m not sure that 'What´s one more bad memory in a hospital?' is a wonderful conversation starter, but god damn. It sure sets the mood. You can decide what that mood is, but I´d say a mix between resigned, shifty (if that even is a mood and not a state of being) and exasperated. So Fun mix.

At least Jim doesn´t seem all too happy about the conversation either? Small mercies, I guess.

At least there´s a lawyer present.

(If I´m very wordy in this: blame the mix of melatonin and caffeine that is unique to night shifts. I am VERY giddy right now and that translates weirdly into commentary. It´s weird to write while kind of dancing to a space documentary YouTube video lmao.)

The first question is just. Basic. 'What happened? Begin from the kidnapping'. That was the moment I decided that I needed popcorn. Because with how done Danny seemed from the whole situation to begin with that could only go so well.

So, it begins with Danny beginning at the. Well. Beginning. With him running off and befriending the crazy local lesbians (I love them your honour) and how he spent his time there, how he doubled back after the explosion and the whole Van business happening after that. All the while Jason is still reeling about his relationship with two ex-Villains. But really, should he be so surprised about that? It´s Danny 'i'mma rehabilitate villains' Luthor we´re talking about.

Then he tries to explain why he thinks the Joker targeted him - he brings it back to his connections with said man´s ex and her new girlfriend. Which is understandable. I doubt he knows that he was mistaken as a Robin when he was taken.

And then we get into the nitty gritty. The things that happened after the camera was shot and the stream was ended.

And just oof. There had just been a whole freaking table full of torture instruments. FULL OF THEM. None of them like that revelation.

And of course, Batman interrupts and asks if the camera was shot on purpose. What the fuck man. WHAT THE FUCK. YOU ASK A TRAUMATIZED CHILD IF HE SHOT A CAMERA ON PURPOSE AFTER BEING BOUND AND TORTURED ON A LIFESTREAM? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU????

Danny stays calm. Only just. He explains how he´d meant to get the man in the shoulder or the back to run as far away as possible. How he still managed to get away and knocked out any goons he met on his way. How he found bomb equipment and used it against the bad excuse of a clown when he got too close to a hiding spot. How he´d tried to shoot him in the back and just met his chest instead. How the Joker just LAUGHED and tried to kill him then and there because 'two killers killing each other'. Really. Fuck him.

Jim, bless his soul, just gently prods at what happened next. Which Danny lies about. Says he just tried to drag himself away, but was slow because of the blood loss and the wounds. That Red Hood came soon after that. It´s a good lie. And it´s nearly the truth. But we all know what went on was just a tad more eldritch. Not that he can tell them that. Who´d ever believe it after all? Or react well to that? No one. that´s who.

Now Gordon tells Danny that the goons were all found dead. All of them. Danny … does not take this well. At all. Even the lawyer asks if they should stop for now, but … well. Then they´d have to do it a second time and I highly doubt that would go any better.

And now the million-dollar question. Where did our boy learn how to wield a gun? This is where the bad parenting choices of the Fentons come in. And how they led to Danny and Jazz chasing each other around the house with loaded guns. In a playful way…. Now where is that Danny protection squad. I need a membership.

And of course, Batman asks why they taught their children how to use lethal guns. He´s still not holding himself to the earlier 'promise' of: he´ll stay out of the conversation. I´m still mad at him for that. And I will continue to be mad at him for that.

Go Jason. Own that cringe at the behaviour of your father figure. Though we´ll all agree that the Fenton parents are, in fact, fools.

So, while Danny tells them that he learnt because he had to, that he never liked guns. Which Batman then uses against him with his next question. And Gordon is not happy about THAT either, trying to interrupt. But of course, the great batman just ignores the head of the police force and asks why Danny chose the gun instead of any of the other weapons.

Danny´s just like 'What? Should I have taken a melee weapon? With the joker? How´d I have gotten away that way? It would have been so much harder?'

And Bruce, not understanding or not liking the reasoning is just like 'You could´ve just ran away'

Like. Danny´s right. He´d been trying to do that from the start? Why´d Batman suddenly fault him for this? For self-defence? I repeat myself: WHAT THE FUCK BATMAN?

Now the man is trying to talk Danny into a corner so that he may 'confess' or whatever the hell is going on in his head. Because why ever else would he hide somewhere? If not to just ambush the Joker?

Which is, I think, when Danny gets really fed up and was also the time I was sitting there like

Batman be like 'I just need to know why' and Danny? Has had ENOUGH. Jason may find his eyes creepy at this point. And I do imagine him letting a tiny little bit of his ghostliness slip through. Because all of those accusations? I´d have had enough of that much earlier than Danny.

And that´s when Danny eviscerates Batman. How do you ask? Well. Because he researched. Everything from crime rates to rogue statistics and even looked into the rogues themselves. And the Joker would´ve had the death penalty several times if it was not for his 'plead to insanity'. He´d left behind half a baseball stadium full of bodies. And nothing was ever done? He told about the second Robin´s death and how he enjoyed it. And batman says things about death and playing god by choosing who dies.

And he asks the real questions:

“You talk about how people play god by choosing who dies, but aren’t you playing god by choosing who lives?” Danny sneered; teeth bared. “Who do you go for? The civilian in need or the criminal who caused their suffering? Who’s the priority to you? Who do you chase after first?”

God damn - going right for the metaphorical throat.

He continues. Calling out that bullshit mentality of 'choice', when the Joker still would´ve just gone back to Arkham after killing him when he´d not even wanted to be there in the first place.

Talks about how there´s people who can be reformed. Who can live normal lives again. But that there must be a life for them to get back to and that the Joker had nothing else. He simply had nothing to live for except for his 'jokes'. And even if they´re reformed. They´d have to live with all the people who have heard of their exploits looking at them with scorn.

There´s just so many good points to this conversation, I love it :3

I kind of think that Jason really needed to hear all of this as well if we go by his reaction. Poor man´s been going through the wringer that day.

When Cass and Tim find the corpse, she´s not sure what to think. Should she be upset that Danny has killed? Should she even be upset that it was the Joker in the first place? Sould she be relieved? I think it all depends on the why´s.

In the end. Nearly all of them had killed before. So, what makes Danny all that different?

Meanwhile Bruce is just having big thoughts and would like to be alone for now please. I think what he actually needs is a hot bath with some scented candles. Self-care, my man. It would do you a world of good. Also: introspection. Always good.

But in the meantime, Bruce and Jason talk things out and it´s beautiful. Some parts of it are quite funny - always trying to ease the mood this one. But in the end Bruce is right. He´s not Jason´s therapist, but he´s his father. He just wants him to be well.

And if things have to be talked about for the going well part? It must be done. Even if it very clearly is hard for either of them. But that´s what family is for, is it not? To be there for each other even when things get uncomfortable …

I cried at some parts of the conversation, but Bruce nearly puts his foot in his mouth so many times … like Jason tries to understand, but Bruce doesn´t make it any easier.

They talk about why Bruce feels so tense at Danny being the one to kill the Joker. Why he´s so insistent on Danny. How it shouldn´t have been Danny. But if not Danny, who then?

Jason? Dick? Bruce? Any way has it´s pros and cons. Who´d have been able to live with it? Who´d have come out of it unchanged? Would the Joker even have been able to reform? No. Not in this life. Never in this life.

Jason´s question threw me out the loop a bit because 'Since when do you talk about these things?' is a very justified question xD

Then the talk shifts. Towards Dick, towards the 'golden boy' and how it was originally Jason who gave his older brother that title. Not Bruce or anyone else. And how Jason has always been the favourite.

Jason predictably doesn´t believe that. Which is of course his right, but it made me just so freaking happy? How he disbelievingly tried to make any of his other siblings into the favourite while Bruce just explains that no. The child who´d so earnestly tried to do well in school, who did his homework without asking, who was excited to stay with him, who didn´t leave freaking scars (and god damn Dick you feral child) and who didn´t fake an uncle so that he´d not be adopted.

And Bruce? Just says that he´d never be mad at Jason because he tried to steal the cars of the Batmobile because it gave him Jason in the end. And that really let me tear up a bit there. Cause that´s just so wholesome? My poor little heart.

Then the impossible actually happens: Bruce apologizes. He actually apologizes. That he´s sorry to make think he was never loved, but that he´s his son and it never should have been thought to have been otherwise. That it never changed to begin with. That he loves him now and god damn I´m a puddle on the floor now. I died of family feels my friends. Bury me shallow though. I have the feeling I´ll be back.

After Danny is released from the hospital, him and Lex go to a Diner for some food and conversation. And let´s just say Lex would like to have a TALK with Bruce Wayne still.

He´s also very happy about Danny´s healing factor as that means his boy will be pain free much sooner than he´d be if he´d been human… well if he´d been completely and utterly human he´d probably be dead because he would´ve taken a much longer time escaping his bonds … anyways

Though this also lets Lex think about how Danny had explained his healing factor. How it´s emotion-bound. And how sometimes when the emotions are right and good, he´ll heal, but when he feels bad or if the wound had emotional damage attached it would heal slower or even leave scars. Though the latter would only happen if the psychological damage went over a certain threshold.

And because he´s a dad he won´t beat long around the bush and tells him about his talk with Dick, about how he knows he collapsed after seeing Jason and if he knew why that was and then they talk about cores. And how the 'parasite' may not have had one, but it had certainly reacted to the proximity to one.

Soon after Lex goes outside to talk with Bruce. Bruce apologizes directly to lex - noice. He really needed to do that in person, otherwise it´d have been quite insincere.

Lex compliments Bruce in how his children care for him. How they certainly do care for him, because otherwise? They wouldn´t even bother.

Lex still warns Bruce that he´ll it slide this once and that if it ever happens again? There´ll certainly be hell to raise. Which is quite understandable. If my child had faced what Danny has faced I would not in any way be calm either. In fact, I´d be furious. So, the little warning is certainly appreciated.

While Bruce is surprised by how well Danny already looks since he´s only been out of the hospital for a few hours, he wants to apologize to Danny. And the little shit? Just says 'I´m waiting'.

Honestly, this man xD

Bruce actually, really, honestly apologizes with a whole explanation of why they did that how he´s also sorry that they did not take his trauma response seriously. He´s also understandably confused when Danny asks if he´d taken a blood sample.

And when Danny emphatically asks if he´d tried? Well. Let´s just say that a little of the eldritch energy slipped through and Bruce got a whole lot more attentive. Danny can be creepy. As a treat.

And when Bruce says 'yes`? And sees the reactions has to that? He realizes that Danny´s afraid. Honest to god afraid even though this could not be as bad as his confrontation with the ex-clown. He also doesn´t know how to feel when Danny warns him about trying it again.

Though here I´ll have to throw something in. Bruce may not have gotten a sample. But do you remember that Danny´s been tortured? With knives? And that there´d understandably been blood from his wounds all around the warehouse? And that the hospital probably also had some of his blood from the bullet removal as well as the cleaning of the other wounds? Let´s just say it will come into play later. I completely forgot about the left in my first read but god damn. This just makes the situation so much worse. But first it´ll get better. I swear this is like a roller coaster ride of emotions.

Where were we? Ah yes. Danny asks about the parasite. And if they´d taken it into the Batcave. Bruce is. Not amused. The first question out of his mouth was 'how' and the second was 'did you tell lex Luthor'

Dannys reaction´s just a wrinkled nose like 'ew, why would I do that?'. Which is honestly kind of adorable. And Danny does this whole spiel about secret identities and how they´re not his to tell and that he´s not exactly following lex´ agenda at all.

And after that rant Bruce just focuses on the word 'parasite' like a confused puppy. Danny´s just like 'yes. It´s a parasite. No, I don´t know how he got it' *thinks about ectoplasm* … 'was it a green liquid’ the instant reaction of 'LAZARUS PIT KNOWLEDGE' is funny as frick if you ask just always me. He just always assumes things first before he asks. Let me remind you peeps: To assume makes an ass out of u and me.

And then Danny explains how his parents used to work with 'something like that' and that it´s the reason his blood probably wouldn’t even ping as human because of all the contamination.

As Bruce asks if that´s the reason he´s so shifty about his blood samples Danny´s just like 'Nah. I just don´t trust you with this sort of information. Someone would get it and then they´d just use it maliciously. I KNOW that. Already lived through that'

Then this heartbreaking part follows:

There was only this soft, sad expression on Danny’s face as the boy said, “Oh, Bruce… There is no fixing me.” And then, Danny looked away, gaze falling to the half-eaten plate now. “Not anymore, anyways. Had someone tried a decade earlier, maybe it would have worked out but… No one bothered to try when I was still worth saving.”

I just want to put him in a blanket burrito and hug him until he´s happy and safe and no one will harm him anymore …

Bruce wants to talk about that topic further, but Danny just deflects back to the parasite. He talks about ectoplasm! Achievement unlocked! Knowledge about ectoplasm gained! Congratulations!

Bruce is fascinated. Danny is horrified that Jason was basically put into extremely unhealthy sludge that´s just a very bad representation for Ectoplasm. He´s not surprised about the side effects it had though. Which. If you think about it. I wouldn´t be either. I mean that stuff runs on emotions. And you can´t tell me that the League of Assassins has many positive emotions. Especially around the pits.

And then everyone´s just horrified that the parasite is sentient. Not as horrified that it´s not sapient. Can you imagine a green sludge parasite being sapient? God that sounds like some horror movie stuff.

Now the million-dollar question: Why isn´t Danny as affected by the whole thing? Easy answer? Because he´s been surrounded by that stuff since before he´s been born. It´s integrated in his DNA. Of course, it won´t affect him the same. And of course, there´s no fixing him. But his parents never did realize, did they? They never did understand what they´d been doing to their own flesh and blood. But their work was more important in the end, I guess.

And then we´re back with a mixed bag and some sadder emotions as the talk swaps to Danny´s parents and then to Lex and the situation at the hospital and Damian´s reaction and Danny´s 'mask' being just as much of a mask as Brucie is and. So much information in such a short time. Ouch :')

Good emotions. But too many D:

And now Cass has switched in! She´s taken Bruce’s seat and they ... Talk. Cass is not really all that jazzed about Danny knowing their vigilante secret. She´s also not happy about how the whole situation came about. Not sure what to think about Danny having killed someone.

And … Yeah. She has killed before. Has seen how the life of a man left him and decided: never again. She was raised as a weapon. Only a weapon - that leaves it´s traces.

And then she came to Gotham. She came to Bruce and became a vigilante and there´s the no kill rule (not that it always stops them from killing someone). And Danny just killed someone.

But it was the Joker. He´d done horrendous things to both Danny and her family. And in the end, if it´d been a member of her family who´d done the deed she would still feel not quite right about it. But the kill was not done out of some twisted sense of revenge or someone thing else. It was self-defence in the end. It was accident. So …

And in the end: she can´t be upset about all of that. She wouldn´t have wanted to lose Danny either. Even if she´d always had the feeling of not understanding him.

But that´s the thing about relationships isn´t it? They´re hard. They´re a work in progress. You can never know another person as intimately as you know yourself. We go into a relationship, any kind of relationship, with the intent to learn more about another person. Maybe also to learn more about ourselves. But at the core relationship works out if both people want to see the other for who they are and how they can make it work as a team. The same is true for friendships and family relationships. And there´s always more to learn.

Also. They´re just cute. Cass then asks what his parents did to Danny and his eyes just flash green.

There is no further information before the scene changes to the fathers trying to be subtle about spying on their kids through the window lmao

He recounts a number of their neglectful behaviours, their questionable morale standards, their involuntary hurting their children and just. Not once did they ever question themselves. Not once did they try to change or apologize. And then in the end? They used their blasters on him and he just ran. Danny´s so tired of running. So, so tired of it. He just wants somewhere to belong. A home without the danger of his own parental figures turning on him every second he´s there.

Cass is just so sweet as she gently reminds him that he´s not less important just because he hurt someone. Because in the end no one´s life is worth more, than one’s own. That she´s just glad she´s safe and god, I’m getting diabetes.

AND THEN THEY KISS. It´s all very romantic and cute and the fathers want to protest, but Tim is just sitting next to them with a camera making photos of the whole scenario because he wants to show them on their future wedding party. I understand you, my man, I understand you. That´s just the sibling in you. As well as the photographer. Those two go remarkably well together!

Tim be like:

While going home Lex and Danny make a pit stop at Harley´s and Ivy´s house where Harley and Lex badger Danny into going to therapy for the low price of Lex repairing their home and them basically becoming Danny´s Wine and Vodka aunts. Ahhh yes. Found family at its finest.

Danny also gets permission for a pet from Lex. LONG LIVE THE KITTEN EYES.

Of course, the public has already been informed about the death of the joker and how Danny had been involved. Gotham is throwing a party for him and they´re showered in confetti on their way to the airport. It´s all very heroic and nice. Until the antis come out. But they´ll always come out the little buggers.

And then. AND THEN. My favourite parts about this fic: one of the social media chapters. God damn.

It starts with their excitement about Danny coming to Gotham, worrying about the Joke r and then Danny in his custody, Danny’s health status as well as his being saved by red hood, people worrying about the joker, people being confused at Danny talking with Bruce in a diner, people insta-shipping Cass and Danny and being just so damned happy for them? It´s adorable. The social Media peeps are just CUTE.

And when they find out that Danny killed the joker all hell breaks loose. The stans, the antis - there´s fights breaking out over it, there parties, there´s just so much joy about that little fact.

And then people freak out about a pic Harley shared with the sirens and Danny and Bud and Lou during the Uno game. The Fanart is adorable and people are just joyous about Harley being like 'I´ve only known Danny for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself'. Which. Yes. Dany protection squad RISE UP.

People are not comforted hearing the 'nah don’ worry I’ve had worse' comment upon being asked about his wellbeing.

The exact way Danny revealed that Danny and Cass are now dating just absolutely adorable. It´s so fucking sweet. The whole family is exasperated and the PR team probably wants to cry but god damn, it´s cuuteee

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ggomos-maribat · 1 year

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[59/?]

original prompt | complete masterlist

CW: Non-graphic violence, death

“Hey Pix can I ask you something?”

Marinette puts down her sketchbook, looking at her brother at the head of the table. “Sure, what is it?”

“Your . . . Miraculouses.” Jason motions to his ears. “You have one that time travels right?”

Marinette averts gaze. “Yeah . . . why?”

“Have you ever gone back in time as a kid?”

“Umm . . .”

---

One Year Ago

Marinette dusts off her shoulder. Today, she’s dual-wielding the fox and the rabbit—the first for altering her appearance and the second for going back in time. She’s been asked a favor to deliver some messages so to be safe, she shifted into a younger version of herself. No suspicion. No traces.

She looks at the mirror. Hmm, guess this will do.

After completing an errand, a certain portal in the Burrow catches her eye. She recognizes Red Hood—Jason—and witnesses a killing: bullets straight to the chest, no mercy from the crime lord.

Out of curiosity, she hops into that timeline only to be greeted by her brother pointing his weapon at her. She imagines his eyes narrowing beneath the helmet. “Where did you come from, kid?”

Marinette hums, noting his appearance. This must be the time when Jason had just begun his illegal activities, before he had some reconciliation with the family.

“You better leave before you end up like them,” Red Hood growls, gesturing at a body.

Marinette only smiles. “You won’t shoot me.”

“And why not?”

You have a soft spot for kids. You won’t take an innocent life. She shrugs. “I just know you won’t.”

Prolonged silence.

“What do you want from me?”

Marinette thinks for a moment. “Come here.”

“What?”

“Come on, I have something to say to you.” She beckons him for a second time.

Tentatively, Red Hood crouches down to her level. Marinette moves, as if to whisper to his ear, but instead, she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him tightly. She feels him stiffen, but he doesn’t pull away.

“You need this,” Marinette says softly. “Everything’s going to turn out okay, Jay. I promise.”

Before he can ask any more questions, she moves away, summons her Burrow and jumps back into it.

---

The second time she “interferes” in a timeline, it’s to see young Richard Grayson, freshly adopted by Batman and given the Robin role. Marinette leaps over an Old Gotham, successfully steering clear of her father but attempting to grab Robin’s attention. The high crime rate is evident at that time, when criminals are yet to fully fear the Bat and his fellow vigilantes.

Finally, she reaches one rooftop, sits next to a gargoyle, and Robin follows her there. He puts his hands on his hips, lips pursed. “Who are you?”

Marinette can’t stifle the giggles spilling from her lips. “They were right. You were more serious before.”

Robin slowly reaches for his belt, preparing to strike. “Who are you?”

Marinette ruffles to the top of his head. “I’m no enemy.”

He swats her hand away. “Right. Like I’ll believe you.”

“No weapons, see?” She raises her arms.

“You have that . . . flute. And umbrella.”

“Oh these? Pfft, these are more for defense, trust me.”

Robin isn’t convinced. He backs away from her, perhaps planning to get Batman before engaging.

“You like to do flips right?” Marinette asks.

“Ye—” He clears his throat. “I’m not telling you anything about me.”

She grins. “Smart boy. I like doing flips. Want to see some tricks?”

Marinette freezes all of a sudden, sensing the Bat nearby. As much as she wants to see her father, she can’t tell how it will affect the timeline if he sees her. “Oops, I gotta go!” She smiles sheepishly at Robin. “I’ll see you–um—back in the manor, Dick!”

Again, she makes her escape, leaving behind a bewildered Robin.

To be continued

Taglist:

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#maribat fanfic #maribat fic #bio dad bruce wayne #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #maribat batfam #maribat marinette dupain cheng #fox dcw

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channajen · 2 years

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Welcome to Amity Park ch. 4 up!

Chapter 4 of “Welcome to Amity Park” is now live! This completes the story! Read all of chapter 4 HERE. First chapter is HERE. Link to series is HERE.

Summary: Jazz and Jason have a talk, and Danny finally meets Jason as Phantom. The two exchange some information, and Jason gets an education on what it means to be a ghost in the U.S.

Teaser: “You know Danny’s secret, don’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

A million answers went through Jason’s head at that moment, but he couldn’t find it in himself to lie to her for no reason. She was her brother’s protector, after all. He knew what that was like. He nodded. “Yeah, I figured it out last night doing some research. You guys need to cover your tracks better.”

The red-headed young woman slumped on the bench. She almost looked defeated. Jason wanted more than anything to take that feeling away from her, but there was too much at stake to tell her everything right then. She looked up at her companion’s taller frame and said, “Did you really meet Danny in Gotham?”

Jason looked her straight into the eyes. “I did. He woke me up—or rather the ghost he was chasing woke me up.”

Jazz sat up straighter; her face took on a calculating look. Narrowed eyes stared back at Jason. “The only person Danny talked to in Gotham was the Red Hood. Either you are the Hood, or you’re a liar. Which is it?”

Jason was stunned. Just a few seconds ago, he had briefly contemplated telling her everything; he never would have thought that she would simply figure out the truth with simple logic. Oh, but she would make a great Bat…

“Well? I’m waiting.”

He quickly shook his head. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking. I guess since I know Danny’s secret, it’s only fair that you know mine. I am the Red Hood.”

Jazz’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected him to answer honestly; she had been prepared for lies or misdirection, not the truth. A soft “oh” escaped her lips.

Jason wasn’t sure how to take that. He looked at the ground and scuffed the paving stones with his boot. “I don’t kill anymore, if that’s what you’re wondering. There were…external circumstances involved with that situation that are not an issue anymore. The Bat wouldn’t allow me in his city otherwise.” At least he didn’t give away his connection to Batman…

“I’m not worried about that. I know how to read people...and I can tell you’re not a killer, at least not anymore. I believe you—I get that you had your reasons for what happened back then. What matters now is how this is going to affect my brother. Why are you here, Jason?”

***Read the rest at A03***

#danny phantom #jason todd #batman #jazz fenton #dp x dc #anger management #danny phantom fanfiction #crossover #complete story

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guns-n-robins · 2 years

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Bruce stands there, halfway stripped of his gear after a night's patrol, looking mutely at the cowl stands in the Cave. By pure chance, he'd caught from the corner of his eye how a layer of dull dust has begun to settle on the sanguine helmet Jason called his own.

Has it been that long already? Since my son left because of me? The Bat wonders. I couldn't bear to dwell on it, he tries telling himself. Tthe mission is always there.

The Red Hood, untouched since the wordless farewell, is equally silent on its' perch.

The night following that involuntary rumination, the Hood's gear is found to be missing. No history of entry is saved on the Batcomputer, and the cameras saw nothing.

But Barbara's sharp eyes catch signs of tampering. Looping footage of the same bats flocking in a specific pattern above a deserted Cave floor, spliced in to obstruct the true happenings. It's only a short splice, an in- and out again type of visit, presumably just to hide the identity of the person taking the Red Hood outfit, because one moment the outfit is there, and the next it's not.

Jason, you don't have to hide from us, Batman thinks, face stoic but thoughts reeling.

He goes out to search for his son at the first reports of Red Hood sightings around Park Row. He witnesses the skilled masked marksman incapacitate his targets - using real bullets, but making no direct kill-shots - and prepares his ambush. He just wants to talk, see his son's face for the first time in months. Should he plead for him to leave the Lantern Corps and come home? Would Jason mock him and say "too little too late"?

He trips Hood up on his grapple line a few roofs later (odd - Jason had always excelled at getting out of these kinds of take-downs) and the red-clad figure curses as he hits the roof turf.

"Shit. Hey, Bats." The Hood says in greeting, his body not quite radiating the defiant attitude Bruce was used to getting from him.

"Stay." Bruce pleads automatically, that single word piercing through the veil of his whirling thoughts and worries.

The Red Hood slumps. Then gets to his knees, shoulders hung low to communicate deference until his hands raise up to unclasp the helm's pressure seal. With a hiss, he pulls it away, revealing his face.

Roy Harper. Arsenal.

"Sorry to let you down, Batman." Harper sighs, probably guessing why the Batman had been tailing him so doggedly. "Coupla weeks ago, Jay asked for a favour from me. He wasn't in contact long - God only knows how far away he is right now, but he gave me his cave access codes and the means to spoof your cams. I couldn't retrieve the gear earlier, but since the Signal broke his leg recently I finally had a window to get in this night."

The archer puts a disarming hand up, the attempt at reassurance falling flat. "Jay just wants me to look after the Alley a while 'till his apprentices are ready to take on the Hood's name. We'll all be outta your hair for good in a manner of weeks."

This is the opposite of what I wanted. Batman responds in his own mind. Without another word, he turns away, melting back into shadows from whence he came.

Somewhere in the back of his head he registers Harper calling out that he wishes Signal a quick recovery, but Bruce doesn't pay it much mind.

His brain is hung up on another string of words.

God only knows how far away his little Jay-lad is, right now.

#Batman #Red Hood #Arsenal #Bruce Wayne #Jason Todd #Roy Harper #Bruce Wayne's control issues #Mutt's scribbles #Lantern!Jason AU

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camels-pen · 1 year

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greater good

Summary: Tim becomes the first magical boy.

warning: major character death

Ao3 Link

When Tim clawed his way back to consciousness, his eyesight blurry and unfocused, it took him a moment to recognize his surroundings.

At first, he thought he’d woken up in the Batcave’s medbay, staring up at the stalactites and sleeping bats. He relaxed automatically, noting a familiar black shadow just out of his peripheral.

Then the ringing in his ears died down.

Someone—Oracle—was in his comm, trying to get him to respond. The sound of bat-grade explosives going off followed the shadow—Batman—as he led someone around the roof. Notably, leading them away from Tim.

He tried pulling himself up, tried to assure Babs he was fine, but even the slightest twitch sent a feeling of unimaginable pain through him, only able to silently hiss. Nothing was wrong with his throat as far as he could tell, but the pain stole his voice every time he tried opening his mouth.

Tim had forced himself to move around, operate a jeep, and carry Pru when he got his spleen stabbed, but this? This was so much worse.

He couldn’t use his grapple like this. He’d have to wait and hope that Bruce could handle whoever he was fighting on his own.

Speaking of which, who was this person? Tim couldn’t remember fighting anyone before he blacked out. He and Bruce were swinging past WE last he checked.

Did someone get the drop on Tim and Bruce had been fighting them ever since? And if so, who?

Resigned to his predicament and wanting answers, he slowly turned his head to watch the fight.

It was a young girl wielding a spear. She didn’t seem to be getting much hits in, as Bruce was largely unscathed, but that wasn’t the main thing on Tim’s mind.

He groaned internally. Of course, right after saying that whole speech over the comms about how bo staffs are the best long reach physical combat weapon, he gets taken down by someone with a spear. Bruce is probably gonna tease him when they get home and Damian’s never gonna let him live it down.

A pained grunt from Bruce brought Tim back to full attention. Within the span of a few seconds that Tim was distracted, there were almost a dozen new cuts in the armor, several of them bleeding profusely.

Tim’s eyes widened. Did she have enhanced speed? What—

Batman threw down a smoke bomb, the thicker kind that are usually meant to flush people out of a building and not typically meant to be used like the standard ones due to the sheer amount of smoke output from the capsule.

In a moment, Batman was in front of him, grimacing as he knelt by Tim’s side.

Something glinted over Batman’s shoulder.

He got one arm under Tim’s legs and the other behind his shoulders, leaning over Tim as he prepared to get up—

And Tim—

He still couldn’t speak—

Couldn’t warn—

The spear was thrust straight through the centre of the bat symbol, splattering blood all over Tim’s face.

Bruce coughed, like all of the air wooshed out of his lungs at once. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

And Bruce—he didn’t go down. He removed the hand under Tim’s legs, likely trying to reach for another smoke bomb, but—

The spear was torn out of him. Then thrust back in. Through his heart this time.

Then it was torn out again. Then back in. Right lung.

Then out. Then in. Left lung.

Out. In. Brain.

Then. It stopped.

“Huh. Guess this means the Batman wasn’t a witch after all.” An unfamiliar voice said. “Oh, you’re still alive? Woopsie. Well, if he wasn’t a witch, then you probably aren’t either. So don’t worry kid, I won’t kill ya.

“And I suppose I should say sorry for my mistake. Or rather, sorry that I’m not sorry?”

The telltale sign of shifting gravel as someone jumped off the roof barely registered.

“Why?” he croaked, some time later, finally able to speak the words that were repeating over and over in his mind. “Why did you protect me? Why didn’t you run?”

His father stayed silent, still leaning over him. Both of Bruce’s arms moved to either side of Tim’s body while he was being stabbed. The final blow had knocked him over, but in the end, Bruce was still covering him.

Tim laid there, unable to move as his father’s body slowly started to cool on top of him.

He screamed.

---

“I’ll admit, I was surprised. You’re not within the usual age range or gender demographic,” a little white creature said. “But your potential far outweighs almost all of the girls I’ve ever seen before.”

Tim stared blankly at it. With each breath he felt his dad crushing his lungs with his weight.

The creature’s tail curved over its head. It stared at him with unblinking red eyes.

“So, what do you think? Would you like to become a magical boy, Timothy Drake-Wayne?”

---

The Wayne family and their friends were all gathered round their dining room, setting down dishes of food and messing with table settings. The smell of mouth watering homemade meals filled the air. The pictures on the wall shuddered as Damian jumped on Steph’s back and she stumbled into the wall, laughing. The others were either engaged in some kind of conversation or presumably in the kitchen with Alfred.

Dick appeared through the doorway, looking the same as ever, followed by—a surprised inhale—Jason, looking haggard, but otherwise… happy.

The others sat down, starting to dig into the food when Jason spoke up.

“Wait.” All eyes turned to him. “We’re missing someone.”

“Oh, he’s probably in the Cave. You know how he gets with cases about missing kids.” Dick set down the last plate he was carrying and moved to the empty spot beside Cass. “I’ll get him when we’re done.”

“No need.”

Dick jumped before turning to glare. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“Oh, I think I am,” Bruce said with a smirk. “I also think you need to work on your situational awareness.”

“Come on, I’m never fully alert when I’m home. ‘Home’ is literally in the name.”

He didn’t hear much else after. Alfred closed the cracked window and they all settled down for the meal.

“You’re not going to join them?” Kyubey asked, sitting on the fresh layer of snow dusting the ground.

“No.” Tim watched them a moment longer through the window, an it’s better this way trapped on his tongue, before turning and walking in the opposite direction. “New intruders?”

“There’s a new magical girl who just crossed the Kane Memorial Bridge. It seems she’s lost.”

“Fine.” His costume—not the Red Robin one, a new one meant for fighting magical girls and witches alike—took the place of his hoodie and jeans. A large black and red poleaxe appeared in his hand. “Let’s hope she listens better than the last one.”

#dc #dc fic #DCxPMMM #PMMMxDC #tim drake #nemo the writing ho

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stupid-sloot-headcanons · 6 months

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Heart of Ice is a fantastic series but I'm thinking of how more fucked up it would be if Jason did have his Darling, and how he had the militia kidnap Nora. He knows exactly how it feels to love someone so much that you will do anything and everything to save them, no matter the cost. And Jason justifies it the same way he does all the terrible things he's done as the Knight, but also reasons that if Fries really loved Nora, he would have prepared countermeasures and kept her from being taken. Jason is NOT going to make that mistake with his Darling, and he'll keep his Darling under a very tight lock and key so what happened to Nora can't happen to them.

I also think it would be nice if Nora got to meet or get a glimpse of Jason's Darling after she wakes up, and they have a shared feeling of understanding and compassion for each other. Both of them love men who have done terrible things for their sake, but they desperately want them to understand why they want them to stop. Logistically it would be hard to put them in the same room during the story, but maybe it's an optional bit of dialogue if you haven't yet finished Darling's side mission to rescue them. I think it would be a nice little moment narratively to have the first person Nora sees be someone in a similar position to her.

Jason doesn't want to hurt Nora and wants her kept safe, so he has her moved to Darling's safehouse when she's initially taken and thawed. Then when he finds out Batman and Victor are tracking Nora down, he has the militia move Nora so there's no chance Darling will be taken by Batman too or put in danger by Victor as a form of revenge. So in that brief moment of time, Darling and Nora get to talk. Maybe Batman can find an audio recording some of their conversation in the Arkham Knight safehouse or near Nora's cryochamber if you finish the Heart of Ice DLC after the main story.

Nora: If you don't mind me asking...The man keeping us prisoner. He sounded different when he talked to you. More gentle. Is he...did he kidnap you because he's obsessed with you? I'm sure that once Victor and Batman find me, we can get you out of here too. That man won't be able to hurt you anymore. Darling: No, no, it isn't like that. Well, it is, but not exactly. He was my boyfriend, but then...I thought he was dead. We all did. I only found out a few weeks ago that he was alive and he blames Batman for not saving him. Nora: I'm so sorry. But why is he keeping you captive down here with that tracker on you? It sounds like he's been doing something in the city, working with all these other criminals. Did he kidnap you? Darling: Yeah, he did. He keeps saying that it's just to keep me safe while he carries out his plan, since the whole city is a warzone right now. I know it sounds bad--it IS bad. I love Jason, I always have, but he's changed. He's killed and hurt so many people, he wants to kill Batman and get revenge...I told him, I TOLD him that Batman did everything he could to try to find him, but he wouldn't listen! He's been through so much, and I hate that I couldn't do anything to stop what Joker did, but all he's doing is hurting more people. And everything he says he's doing to protect me? I don't want people to get hurt because of that, because of me! I don't want anyone to die because of me! Nora: It isn't your fault. He may be doing this for you, but if he loves you he should listen when you tell him this isn't what you want. You both deserve to be happy and together, but this isn't the way to show his love for you. Darling: Thank you. I guess you've had this kind of conversation before? With Freeze--Um. With Victor? Nora: Not yet. But when we're together again, I'm going to tell him. I'd rather die having a few more days together than spend another second in this damn box without him. Darling: Do you think he'll really stop trying to cure your disease? And he won't make you get back in there? I don't want to act like I know him better than you or insult him, but...he's done a LOT to keep you safe since you've been in there. A lot of terrible things. He might not be able to accept it. Nora: He will. I know he'll listen to me. Deep down, I think he's always known that I wanted to just spend my last days with him. I think he's finally able to accept it now.

Darling: You know, for a dying woman that just climbed out of an icebox, you're pretty damn strong, Mrs. Fries. Nora: You're sweet. You know, it's funny, Victor said that about me all the time. Though to be fair, I was actually the more physically fit one before my symptoms got worse. He's always been...more academic-minded, heh. I remember when we were on one of our first dates in college after I had tennis practice one day. Ha, after a few drinks, I decided to show off a bit and asked the bartender for a lemon. I crushed it and the look on Victor's face was so adorable, he looked like he was seeing Superman lifting a truck or something. I never let him hear the end of it, either--there was this silly running joke we had where if he needed help lifting something or opening something, I'd tell him that "Super-Nora" was coming to help. Darling: ...I hope you two enjoy the rest of your life together, Mrs. Fries. Nora: Thanks. I hope that you and Jason can, too.

#.dc #.arkhamverse #.arkham knight #yandere dc #yandere arkhamverse #yandere arkham knight #.myshit

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truthseekerthedragon · 2 years

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Thoughts on The Flames of Hope

TW: references to abuse, minor body horror, references to violence, brief reference to drugs

And here… we… go.

So, the book was dumb. Like, in my opinion, worse than TDG levels of dumb. How is it possible for someone to set a bar that low and then trip on it? Like how? I must know how Tui fumbled writing a climax this badly. Tui, you already set up an arc, the payoff was right there, and you still missed it by around two million miles. Somehow.

I’ll be analyzing The Flames of Hope from a storytelling or “troper’s” perspective, meaning I’ll be examining the story in terms of plot, characterization, and how well it tells the story it wants to tell. I’ll be looking at how well characters like Luna are written and dissecting why I like or don’t like certain characters or plot points; I won’t judge the story by whether my favorite character died or if a ship I liked worked out, because that would be silly, although expect my personal opinion on things to slip through every once in a while. Expect a lot of sarcasm.

This has been stewing in my mind for some time, so prepare for a lot of thoughts. Trust me, there is a lot to unpack here.

If you disagree with anything that I say, I wholeheartedly respect your opinion. These are just my personal thoughts, of course, and you hold the right to like/dislike this book or any of the characters in it.

There’s a prologue, I think, but it isn’t important. Who was the PoV in it again?

The story begins with Luna thinking about how she’s some kind of glorious Chosen One and how she wants all the HiveWings to die. Is this supposed to be the good guy? Well, it doesn’t matter, because after the first chapter she will lose all this personality and become blander than cardboard! Tui will, of course, prop up an illusion of a personality by making her think about tapestries a lot. This gimmick will be fun the first couple times it shows up but will wear thin very, very quickly.

Speaking of illusion of personality, pretty much everyone on the secret stealth team has, uh, lost their character traits. Not counting those who had no personality in the first place, of course (Sky), or lost it earlier in the series (Moon). Seriously, I can’t think of a single personality trait of anyone on this team other than “annoying.”

So Luna thinks about everyone on the team or whatever, to maintain the illusion of personality, and at one point she remarks that Bullfrog, the MudWing, has a personality that’s “buried deep inside” or whatever. This is Tui’s excuse for not giving him an actual personality. Seriously, what does Bullfrog do except be dumb, dull, and think about cows? He’s a walking MudWing stereotype. And Tui, being stoic isn’t the same thing as having no personality. You have to show something beneath the emotionless surface, otherwise the emotionless surface is the personality.

The team sets off toward Pantala with the magic items they have. Now let’s go off on a tangent and talk about expectations, and I swear this is relevant to the conversation, so stick with me here.

Before this book came out, fan theories and speculation was wild. Tui had released a few tidbits of information thus far, and we were hungry for more. There was a lot of wild mass guessing about what was going to happen in the book. For instance, there was a lot of talk about the possibility of a cure to the othermind being found, or Monarch being restored to the SilkWing throne, or an “I know you’re in there somewhere” fight between Luna and Blue. Standard fare like that. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a mediocre, tropey writer like Tui T. Sutherland.

Heck, I even wrote a parody of the story based partially on what I thought was going to happen! You know, the usual fare: Sky does something dumb and gets the entire team captured, Wasp keeps prisoners instead of, you know, killing them, Pineapple and Bullfrog dies to establish how dangerous Pantala is, and a few jokey things like a Batman reference and a Wasp redemption arc. *sigh* And an othermind redemption arc, too. It was supposed to be a joke. *sob*

No one honestly believed there was going to be an othermind redemption arc, and no one thought Wasp would get randomly taken out by a side character. Heck, in my parody—which I wrote to be intentionally bad—Luna confronts Wasp directly! There was the occasional joke about the othermind getting redeemed or secretly being a scavenger, but no one took these ideas seriously because no one expected Tui to pull something like that.

And… well, Tui did exactly that, thus subverting audience expectations and sacrificing the story for the sake of shock bait, but I’ll explain that in more detail as I go.

Anyways, back to the story. So the team goes to Pantala. They immediately encounter a HiveWing force before they even reach the main continent, because Tui has to establish how dangerous Pantala is, and—gasp—Moon, who is the most useful member of the team by virtue of being able to read minds and see the future, is captured! Oh noes! Pantala is super dangerous, y’all! Oh, and Qibli and Pineapple get captured too, I guess. And Tsunami.

Also, we see a mind-controlled SilkWing, yada yada oh no everyone’s in danger now! Didn’t we already establish this two books ago? Anyways, the mind-controlled SilkWing uses their spidey-sense—wait, I meant lateral line—wait, I meant antennae—to try and find the invisible protags, but the good guys stay still because that’s totally how “air vibrations” (read: sound) work, so they only grab Moon, Qibli, Pineapple, and Tsunami. That’s actually a lot of dragons.

Oh noes, we need to save Moon now! Speaking of her, you know what makes me sad other than her personality vanishing after MR? We never see her read the minds of the mind-controlled dragons and remark how blank they are or use them to predict Wasp’s movements. We never see her get a vision of the future about anything. We only see her use her powers, like, twice, and once in an incident that doesn’t make sense when you think about it for two seconds, but we’ll get to that later.

So Sundew and Lynx decide to go off and rescue Moon—offscreen, of course, because nothing interesting is allowed to happen in this book—and everyone stays invisible. This is gimmicky for a while, but the novelty of it wears off very quickly, and eventually it just comes off as silly.

The team runs around underground and meet the nonbinary representation character, Axolotl the scavenger! They will only be there to be a cave guide and then will fade into irrelevance, only to reappear in the epilogue where they treat Cricket like a pack animal. Hooray.

What? I’m not salty about the scavengers gaining relevance in this series at all, or the fact that they ride sentient dragons like they’re horses or something! I’ll probably explain this scavenger nonsense in detail in a later post, and why usually-standard fare like scavengers riding dragons is especially egregious in this series.

So anyways. Axolotl the nonbinary rep. I was kind of hoping that a) they would get to assert their gender in the story and b) they would get a lot of screen time. We got neither; Wren just heard their pronouns offscreen. Oh well, at least there isn’t an awkward misgendering moment. Oh, and I wanted the nonbinary representation to be a dragon instead of a hairless monkey, but we can’t have everything, I suppose! No, I’m not bitter at all!

Okay. To be fair, I understand the enby rep getting minimal screentime; Tui’s hands were probably tied due to executive mandates. But I digress.

Tangent: How do Wren and Axo understand each other perfectly even though their societies have been separated for five thousand years? Language drift exists, you know, and given that Tui’s first written work was Shakespeare fanfiction she really should know that. This is like if an English speaker could understand someone speaking Swedish or Dutch, except it’s worse in this case because Pyrrhia and Pantala have been completely isolated from each other, meaning zero loanwords or any of that fun linguistics stuff. The thing with dragons is slightly less egregious, because they’ve been separated for two thousand years and Tsunami describes Willow with a strange accent, but it’s still egregious. This is basically the field of linguistics being set on fire for the sake of plot convenience. And honestly, wouldn’t it be more interesting if dragons struggled to communicate with one another to tell each other things like how dire the situation is?

Anyways, Luna and co get led to a group of other dragons also hiding underground, where we meet a few characters, like Pokeweed. Pokeweed is consistently described by the narrative as slow and dull, but his dialogue is actually quite snarky. This is a problem Tui has in general; she relies too much on tell instead of show, leading to disconnects like this and Bullfrog supposedly having a personality when he doesn’t. Oh, and she overuses said bookisms and adverbs in dialogue tags, which is another symptom of the tell-not-show disease.

Luna also meets a bunch of dragonets, because Tui really likes her dragonet characters. I get that she’s a mother of two, but can we not bog down the narrative with useless tiny sidekicks, please?

One of these dragonets is Dusky the orphan SilkWing from the horrendous Bloodworm Hive, because we need to establish sympathy points for him ASAP! Luna gets attached to him, or something, and later she will do arguably the dumbest action ever undertaken in the series for him. My friends, we call this type of character a plot device.

Some people on Discord also brought up that Dusky's backstory only seemed to be there to justify the Bloodworm Hive burning, so there's also that, I guess. Ugh.

Tangent: I’m still angry that Bloodworm Hive’s burning wasn’t addressed at all. Like, the LeafWings probably killed a bunch of HiveWings, and even if no one died—which is unlikely—that’s still a ninth of the HiveWing and SilkWing population displaced plus all material goods in the Hive lost. Why is no one talking about this? I’m pretty sure this qualifies as a war crime and it wasn’t even brought up in this book. I mean, if the HiveWings did something similar to the LeafWings, we’d hear no end of it, but hey, the good guys did it, and that makes it okay! Remember, kids, if you’re fighting for freedom and the oppressed, that gives you the green light to do whatever horrible things you want, because as we all know, the ends always justify the means! Uh, that got a bit racy there. Let’s go back to the book.

Several chapters go by in which pretty much nothing happens, and then Luna decides to go exploring with Dusky. They come across a mural or something, and Luna thinks about the Scorching and how scavengers took something dragons had or something, according to the myths.

Okay, time for another tangent. Fans have been begging Tui for information on the Scorching since the beginning of time, so Tui decided to hand it over, apparently. This book felt a lot like fanservice at points, and so did the previous book. There’s nothing wrong with blatant fanservice (see Spider-Man: No Way Home), but in this case it felt like a monkey’s paw situation, where we technically got what we asked for, but in the worst way possible. Here, the fanservice itself was bad and hurt the story overall. I’ll dissect this later.

Around here Luna meets that random scavenger we saw in the epilogue of the last book… why was she in that epilogue again?… Anyways, this random scavenger we don’t care half an iota about, Raven, appears here and then disappears for the rest of the book. So what was the point of her appearance—wait a second. Why does she have a raven feather in her hair? Doesn’t she spend, like, all her time underground? Speaking of underground, where do the abyss humans get their food? Do they exclusively eat lichens and mushrooms or something? Why is the worldbuilding in this series so broken?

Oh, right. The thoughts post. Ahem.

So then Vole runs up and kidnaps Dusky, and Luna is like, “Oh no!” And she runs after them.

Short tangent: Vole made an appearance earlier in the story, and Luna described him to have a scraggly beard. I must ask… is there a word in draconic for “beard” now? How does Luna know what a beard is when so far she’s only met female scavengers? Why does Luna distinguish a beard on Vole as opposed to, you know, describing him as hairy and scraggly in general? Questions!

Another short tangent placed here because I don’t know where else to put it: This is a problem pervasive throughout the whole book and the series as a whole, but this book was filled with cheap chapter cliffhangers. You know, like, “The monster turned toward them! Want to know what happened next? Go to the next chapter!” And in the next chapter it turned out to be not a threat. (1) It’s cheap, it’s transparent, it’s annoying, and it’s used as a hook to keep the reader in the book when the plot or characters can’t sustain the reader’s interest. Please stop using them, Tui, or if you have to use them, please make them lead into something interesting.

Anyways, Vole jumps into the glowing green abyss—which, by the way, is near Lake Scorpion as opposed to the sinkhole that appeared in TLC. Oh, you thought that random hole that appeared in the beginning of the arc had to be a Chekhov’s Gun? Nope! It wasn’t important, which pretty much relegates the sinkhole to a random thing that appeared and amounted to nothing. It wasn’t even set up as a red herring.

And here… *sigh*

Here Luna does the dumbest thing anyone does in this entire series.

She YEETs herself after Dusky, plummeting toward certain doom and mind control, to rescue a dragonet she’s only known for a few days.

Who cares if she gets mind controlled! What will the team do without her? Who cares! And it’s not like she’s guaranteed to get mind controlled since she’s literally entering the lair of the othermind. Nope, she’ll risk everything, the entire world even, to rescue a random dragonet.

Now to be fair, someone on Discord pointed out that this actually ties into Luna’s character arc of struggling with her bystander status. But it’s pretty telling that I don’t remember any of that character arc stuff, isn’t it? Shouldn’t something as important as the protagonist’s character arc be remembered by the audience? Oh right, Luna doesn’t have a character arc because she has all the personality of a piece of cardboard. You can’t multiply by zero.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of giving Luna a proper character arc Tui was only paying lip service to it to justify Luna’s monumentally stupid decision.

Now here’s a point you might bring up: Luna was a hero! Of course she had to save Dusky!

Uh, no. Luna had no personality to speak of; we never saw her do anything heroic, we just saw her walk around and act stupid for the entire arc. She’s basically a walking plot device that Tui’s using to further the plot. Luna complaining about the treatment of SilkWings even though she grew up in the system and we, the audience, can clearly see SilkWings being discriminated against? She’s just there to explain things to the audience! Her deciding to leave the caves to use her newfound wings even though it was extremely dangerous outside? She did it so she could get attacked by HiveWings! Her deciding to use her silk while being attacked by HiveWings and being unable to stop spinning silk for some reason while she gets blown away like a chump? She did it so she could get whisked off to Pyrrhia and found by Jerboa!

I’ll bring up a counterexample of someone doing something similar to what Luna did: Peter Parker rescuing the kid in the burning building in Spider-Man 2, and I’m using that film because I’m assuming everyone has seen it, not to mention that it’s brilliant and anyone who says otherwise can zip it. And hey, both Peter (in the Raimi films anyway) and Luna have organic web-shooters and were trying to rescue a kid at huge peril to themselves, so it fits!

At this point Peter has given up his responsibility as Spider-Man after a) being a superhero interfered too much with his normal life and b) he lost his powers. At one point he sees a burning building and, upon hearing that there’s still someone trapped inside, he immediately runs in to rescue the kid at risk of him dying a horrible death, and it’s especially risky since his powers are on the fritz. So why does this work? Because Peter has been previously established to be heroic—it’s part of his backstory of not standing by while something bad happens—not to mention that at this point in the film he’s given up his responsibility as Spider-Man, so to him, he can afford to die.

Does Luna have either of these points going for her? No. She has zero characterization because she’s a walking plot device, and she’s probably the only non-mind-controlled flamesilk at this point and she’s on the secret stealth team—there’s a prophecy, remember? Talons need to unite? That includes Luna. Ergo, she’s important, and she should know it.

Short tangent: I am so tired of these either/or prophecies in these arcs. Did this arc need a prophecy, even? The prophecy just undermines tension, because look, the prophecy said the team would succeed if we did this thing! If we need a prophecy, could we make it ambiguous or easily misinterpreted instead? “You need to do X or Y will happen” wears thin after a while.

But no. Luna YEETs herself after Dusky the plot device even though she really shouldn’t have, and don’t try to pretend it’s anything but Tui using Luna as a puppet for plot reasons.

So she enters the abyss and gets mind-controlled, because of course, but before that she sees a room… with a scavenger husk and a dragonet husk, but with plants growing out of their heads. Gasp! Body horror! Whatever, I’ve seen way worse on the SCP Foundation.

And here we get to the point where the book stops trying to make sense, or even form a resemblance of sense.

Because here, Luna is subjected to three chapters of flashbacks! Hooray! It’s not like that got old in the last book.

Yes, you heard that right. Flashbacks. And to pre-Scorching times. How does this work? It’s never explained! When I was reading this, I initially thought the flashback took place on Earth because the descriptions were confusing. And in case you were wondering, the flashbacks take place on the good ol’ dragon planet. Which still doesn’t have a name, by the way.

So in the never-explained flashbacks, we learn that humans used to rule Pyrrhia, but at one point someone named Cottonmouth decided to steal a bunch of dragon eggs to use as weapons of war, which essentially makes this a poor dragon’s Temeraire. As revenge, the dragons flew out and destroyed human civilization. How the dragons defeated the scavengers during the Scorching when previously they’ve been pushed to the fringes of the wilderness by those same scavengers is never explained. Maybe their rage gave them a powerup or something.

To escape impending death, Cottonmouth and a group of followers set out with a dragon egg, making it to Pantala, finding the breath of evil, somehow connecting it to Cottonmouth’s brain—this is also never explained, by the way—and then Cottonmouth connecting the dragonet from the egg to his brain also. And then they died but their consciousnesses remained alive in the breath of evil. Somehow.

“Animus scavenger” would’ve made more sense. And it would’ve been less convoluted.

Short tangent: People keep asking, so I’ll answer: A cottonmouth is a kind of snake, so named for their white mouths. Because in this series, everyone with a snake name has to be evil or at least be very, very nasty.

It really feels like Tui here was like, “Oh, you don’t like the othermind being a sentient plant? And you want to know what happened during the Scorching? Well, here you go! Might as well kill two birds with one stone!” And we ended up with the othermind being a scavenger and a dragon. Plus a bunch of flashbacks that padded out what was supposed to be, you know, the climax of this arc. Can’t we save this Scorching stuff for a Legends book or that dragon field guide Tui’s working on?

You see, monkey’s paw.

After the flashbacks are done, we’re introduced to two new characters, both of whom I absolutely despise: Cottonmouth the scavenger and the proto-LeafWing-RainWing he has with him, then called Lizard, now called Freedom. I’ll be calling her Freedom throughout this even though she’s technically called Lizard until near the end of the book.

Why do I hate these characters, you might ask? What has Freedom in particular done to earn your seething hatred?

Cottonmouth is obviously meant to be hated, but I don’t hate him because his character is despicable, I hate him because of how he’s written. He’s obviously meant to be the Worst Big Bad Ever in the series, even worse than someone cool like Scarlet, and Tui keeps trying to tell us how obviously dangerous he is. Look! He controls, like, everyone on Pantala! He’s been around since the Scorching! In fact, he started the Scorching! He’s so bad and dangerous, y’all, fear and hate him!

Unfortunately, his execution falls flat. He just comes across as a mean old guy with no real character substance, nor does he have villainous panache to make up for it like Scarlet. I don’t know why I should respect this guy, much less fear him. He kind of reminds me of Hush from the Batman comics in this regard: the OMG Most Dangerous Villain Evar who’s just… blah and boring. And also an annoying jerk. Who’s also gimmicky. Look, folks, Cottonmouth is an old guy who’s dead and his consciousness can mind control things, and he started the Scorching! Look, folks, Hush is a doctor dressed up in bandages for no reason who spouts Plato, and he’s Bruce’s childhood friend and he nearly killed Batman the first time they fought! (2)

There is nothing less cool than an author desperately trying to convince you that their character is cool.

Similarly poor execution afflicted the other character who appeared here, Freedom. She’s obviously meant to be pitied because of her backstory, but she has a terrible personality and it’s hard for me to sympathize with someone like her. She’s abrasive, whiny, selfish, sadistic, and 100% willing to help Cottonmouth, none of which are good character traits. It doesn’t help that she unironically says things like “I BARF at you” and “you bozo,” nor does it help that the narrative is desperately trying to get us to sympathize with her. No one calls her out on her actions; instead, everyone is all, “Oh, poor baby! Cottonmouth abuses you and it’s so sad! Here, have some happy memories!”

And this is coming from the person who sympathized with Winter on account of his abusive family backstory, even though he was a jerk—albeit one who was fundamentally good. Cricket, too, even though she had a less nuanced personality than I normally prefer. I sympathize with characters with abusive parents at the drop of a hat, so you have to be impressively nasty or badly written for me to hate you with a backstory like that.

Now, if Freedom had been instead been written as a terrified dragonet, horrifically traumatized from millennia of abuse from Cottonmouth, afraid to speak most of the time but willing to help Luna out of the goodness of her heart, that would give her way more sympathy points than someone who only helps Luna because it will give her memories and enjoys puppeting dragons.

Hmm, let’s do another comparison. Take Anfang the gryphon from The Gryphon Generation, a self-published series that by all evidence has been read by a total of, like, three people, myself included. This will require a bit more context. Anfang is a nasty character. He toys with his murder victims, he eats people, and yet he still comes off as sympathetic due to a combination of factors: he was a lot nicer before the military experimented on him as shown in flashbacks and Thyra’s thoughts; his horrific crimes, horrific appearance, and lack of societal knowledge make wider society reject him, with Thyra being the only individual who still thinks there’s good in him, and even that can get dubious; Anfang wants to be accepted by Thyra and actually tries to be a better individual, which feeds into his character arc; there’s also the fact that pretty much everyone calls him out on his terrible actions. It helps that he has a nuanced and interesting personality, with differing perspectives on things like love and religion allowing him to foil off characters like Thyra, the protagonist, and Matthew, the big bad.

Both characters have been taught that humans/dragons/whatever are fundamentally selfish and horrible, they’re both controlled by nasty bad guys, and they’re both sadistic, but Anfang isn’t a Karma Houdini—he faces actual consequences for his actions, such as rejection by characters who otherwise might have given him a chance. Freedom, though, is, and no matter what she does, she will be given a free Authorial Get out of Jail Free card, because she’s supposed to be sympathetic, look at the babey! Hey, I think I found the biggest reason why I dislike Freedom so much. (3)

Oh, and how many people expected the othermind to be a scavenger? No one. There were jokes, sure, but no one expected a scavenger othermind for real; again, Tui is pulling twists from thin air because it’ll surprise the audience and subvert expectations. Because what we clearly needed after a plant was revealed to be the twist villain was a second twist villain where we learn that the big bad is actually a scavenger! How thrilling! It’s not like this is gimmicky or cheap or anything. Heck, even Disney dropped the twist villain thing after a while because it was getting old.

Is it possible to write a good villain twist? Yes. Pretty much every Brandon Sanderson story has a twist villain in it. However, these are good twists, and always feel like an extension of the story, where the twist makes sense in hindsight and doesn’t feel gimmicky. Unfortunately, Tui does not have Brandon’s skill in executing plot twists, so her villain twists feel shallow and flat.

Anyways, back to whatever the heck the plot in this book is. Luna, Cottonmouth, and Freedom are chilling in a “mindspace,” which also makes zero sense. Where did it come from? How does it work? Very good questions that Tui will never answer, because details are for suckers. Anyways, using the mindspace, the group telepathically views a scene where Wasp tries to get Pineapple and Qibli to get mind controlled by her or something. Where’s Moon, you may ask? She got busted out earlier by Lynx and Sundew in a daring infiltration scheme that happened entirely offscreen. We will never see this scene, by the way. Nor will we hear a recounting of this story by any of the participants. Instead, we get to listen to Freedom whine, because that’s way more interesting than a retrieval mission!

Short tangent: Why does Wasp always want to mind control dragons and leave them alive for them to be rescued instead of just killing them immediately? Sure, she likes mind control, but she literally has thousands of dragons. She doesn’t need two more drones or puppets or whatever. Oh right, I forgot, she’s a villain in the Wings of Fire series, where intelligence isn’t required for villainy.

At least Malachite is in this scene. He wasn’t forgotten or anything, so kudos to Tui for remembering that he exists.

So Qibli and Pineapple attack Wasp. Oh, right, Tsunami was in this too, I forgot. There’s a fight scene here, except it isn’t very exciting because Luna, the protagonist in her own book, is relegated to a passive bystander while she watches Pineapple defeat Wasp with magical death spit.

Yes. Pineapple, the random side character who was introduced in the last book, was the one who defeated Wasp. Not Luna, who is the protagonist, nor any of the other third arc protags. Pineapple. The random side character. Defeated Wasp.

*sigh*

Again, this is Tui trying to surprise the audience for the sake of a surprise, because who cares about things like payoff? Basic narrative structure is for suckers. It’s not like this undermines the story or anything. And as we all know, The Last Jedi and the eighth season of Game of Thrones are beloved for being pure shock bait!

Oh right, the rainbow blood. For some reason, Wasp has green blood in this scene, and Tsunami’s blood is blue. I have zero idea why Tui made this decision, and it’s even more inexplicable that the editor and beta readers failed to catch this, but whatever. Fandom made a big deal out of it, but I have much bigger problems in this book to dissect, so I don’t really care. It was a mistake on Tui’s part, no one has not-red blood except for IceWings, move on.

Short tangent: By the way, Malachite gets his face set on fire in this scene. But the next time we see him, he’s perfectly alright. Tui does realize that getting your face set on fire is potentially lethal, right? At the very least he should have second-degree burns, which are extremely painful, and facial burns need emergency medical treatment immediately to prevent infection as well as prevent or mitigate a potentially deadly inflammatory response. At the very least Malachite should have some facial scarring and/or be seriously traumatized from the experience. But he’s fine, don’t worry about him!

So anyways, Wasp is defeated by a side character, and Luna wants Freedom to help her friends, but Freedom is selfish so Luna has to trade her memories. The friends escape, but Cottonmouth says he has already infected someone on the team… it’s obviously Pineapple, because Tui displays blatant favoritism towards characters who used to be protags, especially Qibli, and it would be especially undignified for him to get mind controlled! Her boi is too smart for that to happen to him! It would be similarly undignified for this to happen to Tsunami, so by process of elimination the mind-controlled dragon is Pineapple.

After that we see Cottonmouth superimpose himself over Pineapple’s body while he’s flying, which kind of reminds me of that Spider-Man: No Way Home meme. It makes me smile. Seriously, it does.

Now, where was I? Oh, right. It’s pretty clear at this point that Freedom is going to be redeemed, otherwise Luna will be stuck in the abyss forever, and there’s no way Tui’s going to let that happen. I wasn’t looking forward to the redemption arc then and I still hate it now.

So Freedom demands Luna to give her her memories. Oh, right, Dusky was in this too, and she wants his memories as well. So they give her their memories, she sees them, and whines about how boring they are because instead of fighting, she sees… gasp… friendship and family! And Luna starts thinking about how she can manipulate this five-thousand-year-old dragonet into helping them.

Is anyone getting a feeling of deja vu?

Because this is a retread of Snowfall’s character arc in the last book.

A whiny dragonet with immense power and sorely lacking in compassion is shown a series of flashbacks, memories, visions, whatever by a plot point outside her control. This causes the character to reconsider her compassion level and perspective on life and becomes better, or something, and does something that says she’s good now.

It’s almost the exact same thing as the last book. The exact same thing, because… I dunno, because Tui liked what she did with Snowfall and wanted to repeat what she did? Did she consider TDG her best book before TFoH came out, even though it was her worst Wings of Fire book by far at that point? What was Tui thinking here?

Short tangent: Around this time we see a bunch of trees near Lake Scorpion or something like that, meaning Wasp was either too lazy to do her job properly or was a liar.

Oh, and Moon appears in the mindspace, even though she isn’t mind-controlled. This is explained by the fact that she can read minds, but… she listens to dragons’ thoughts, she can’t project them or anything. She’s like a mind radio (does anyone still use radios?); she can pick up transmissions, but can’t broadcast them herself.

But, you may ask, what about in MR when Moon and Darkstalker talked to each other?

Darkstalker was a highly trained mind reader; he was likely taught a method to amplify his thoughts so Moon could hear them more clearly. He can’t project thoughts, and neither can Moon; they were two mind readers conversing with one another by reading each other’s minds. In fact, according to Tui, only a NightWing telepath hatched under a blood moon can project thoughts.

In other words, Tui forgot her own rules about mind reading. All for the sake of plot convenience, because poor babey needs memories because she’s so sad y’all, pity her!

So everyone shares happy memories with Freedom, because there’s nothing sweeter than manipulating an ancient dragonet into helping you while not giving her the full picture of what dragonkind is like, because dragons can’t be vicious at all. Aww! Did Tui and I even grow up on the same planet?

As if the “you’re more than your parents” thing in previous books wasn’t bad enough. Subtle, my a—I mean, uh, subtle, my bucket of worms. Right. Hmm, we’ll shelf the theme discussion for now and talk about it later.

Moon uses her mind reading powers to find out that Pineapple is mind-controlled. Everyone freaks out, Pineapple gets frostbreath to the shoulder, something something. At least the end is near, y’all.

Short tangent: I needn’t mention how the frostbreath to the shoulder is possibly deadly, due to the large amount of important blood vessels, nerves, and muscles in the shoulders, and should’ve incapacitated Pineapple, right? But he’s fine! It’s like nothing happened to him at all! He can still move and fight. It’s like no one can get hurt in this book or something.

Oh, and Freedom gets “redeemed” sometime in this horrendous mess of a plot, because she’s nice now! She thinks all dragons are wonderful and warmhearted. How she missed all Luna and Dusky’s memories of HiveWing oppression is beyond me. How does the memory sharing thing work, anyway? Who cares! Explanations are for losers. (4)

There’s some problems here.

So first, the redemption happened way too quickly. It happened in what, a day? Does Tui expect me to believe that a dragonet who has lived with a certain mindset for thousands of years will just change said mindset in a single day or two because she saw some warm fuzzy memories? I know Tui is the queen of unrealistically quick character development, and it’s always egregious, (5) but it’s the worst here.

Freedom’s actions here are also deeply out of character. She has been selfish for thousands of years; having her suddenly decide to help Luna is deeply out of character and just doesn’t make sense.

Oh look, more examples to contrast this book with! I’ll go back to works everyone’s heard of. Take Anakin Skywalker, for instance, particularly his portrayal in the Clone Wars TV show (the 2008 one, although I’d recommend everyone watch the 2003 miniseries as well). He has a key character trait demonstrated again and again throughout the show: he will sacrifice a lot of things, put himself at risk, and go against orders to save those he loves, like Ahsoka and Obi-Wan. The show highlighted this trait a lot better than the prequel films did, and makes Darth Vader’s sacrifice in Return of the Jedi retroactively better, because fundamentally Anakin never acts out of character; it’s just that the circumstances under which he acts changes. He’ll kill a spy/saboteur to save Obi-Wan and a ship full of politicians, he’ll kill a bunch of kids to save Padme… eugh… and he’ll kill Palpatine to save his son Luke.

I’ll use another example from Spider-Man 2 because I feel like it; you’ll just have to deal with it. Early in the film, Otto Octavius tells Peter that intelligence is a gift, not a privilege, and that he should use it for the good of mankind, establishing that he likes science but prioritizes helping humans. He tries to build a fusion reactor specifically to help humans obtain a source of cheap energy. However, after the reactor experiment goes awry and the tentacles fuse to his spine, the tentacles’ AI start whispering into his brain like tiny metal psychic raptors, influencing him to become a supervillain with no regard for human life; he decides to recreate the failed fusion experiment despite the very real possibility of the reactor going wrong again, this time wiping out a good chunk of NYC.

During the climax, Peter even has to reteach Ock that "intelligence is a gift" lesson from earlier in the film. Ock then demands the tentacles to listen to him, and the metal raptors—I mean tentacle arms—cower and stop influencing him, very clearly demonstrating that Otto could've stopped listening to the tentacles at any time. While events such as the failed fusion project and his wife's death did make him more suscetible to the AI, he still chose to listen and do what the raptor arms said. After that, Otto opts to destroy the out-of-control fusion reactor by dragging it into the river, sacrificing himself in the process and preventing NYC from being destroyed by a miniature sunball. In other words, his "help mankind" nature kicked in, and he did what he had to do.

Why did I use these two examples? Because they’re both examples of the “redemption equals death” trope and their heel-face turn itself occurs at the climax of the story, which is also Freedom's whole deal. I was going to use Zuko as an example of how to do a redemption arc, but didn’t because a) he doesn't fulfill either of the above criteria, making him less relevant to this conversation and b) don’t get me wrong, I love Zuko, but there are roughly two million thinkpieces about what makes him so awesome, making anything I say very redundant, and if you want to compare him to Freedom it wouldn’t be hard to dig up one of those thinkpieces. But I digress.

Is Freedom like either of these characters, where her redemption results from a natural extension of her character? No. She’s been selfish for five thousand years, but will suddenly become selfless because the book demands that you feel bad for her right now!

Some people will argue that Freedom changing her mind makes sense because she’s been exposed to new information, but in my experience, people do not change their minds easily; a conspiracy theorist would rather continue believing a lie than admit they were wrong, even when faced with all evidence to the contrary. A shift in mindset, such as Vin in Mistborn slowly learning to trust and open up to others, only works if it occurs over the course of months or even years. Tui does not do that here.

Also, this redemption wasn’t earned. Characters have to actively work toward their own redemption—they have to strive to be better people. They have to realize what they did was wrong, atone for it, and work to be better, making up for their past decisions. Freedom, though, just suddenly decides to be better because warm fuzzy memories. She doesn’t apologize, much less atone, for thousands of years’ worth of mind controlling who knows how many dragons, because all that happened offscreen and no one cares about those dragons anyway. She doesn’t have to work for her redemption, either; she’s handed the warm fuzzy memories on a silver platter, and she has zero self-doubts or internal struggles. She doesn’t have to work for anything, because look at the babey, isn’t she cute! If you don’t feel bad for her, you are a heartless monster and therefore all your criticisms are invalid!

Take the previous redemption examples I brought up. Anakin had to choose between ol' Palps and his son, and Otto had to fight the AI. There were, you know, actual hurdles to overcome in these moments.

And here's another thing. Notice how Anakin brought down the Empire he had helped found, and Otto dismantled the fusion reactor he had built? They were atoning for actions they had directly taken, a sort of 1:1 "I did this bad thing, now I'll fix it" scenario. Freedom, though? She shows how to destroy the othermind, even though the othermind's establishment wasn't her fault; it was all Cottonmouth, that dastardly, evil, mustache-twirling goateed villain. She's atoning for something she didn't do! Tui was so desperate to show how amazing and innocent her super speshul babey was that she forgot to give her something to atone for, and the atonement process is important in a redemption arc. Well, I guess her jerk behavior could be atoned for. That should've been what Freedom did.

You could argue that her atonement came in the form of her willingness to die to save the continent, and that’s a valid interpretation, but I personally think death isn’t as big of a deal for immortals compared to regular mortal people, because they’ve been around for so long and suffered so much that they usually see death as a kind of reprieve; in fact, I'm pretty sure Freedom hated Cottonmouth and wanted to get away from him as fast as possible, and was tired of her life. And I’m usually lenient toward the “redemption equals death” trope, because I see death as the ultimate atonement of sorts, but only for people who are actually scared of death and see it as a bad thing, especially so if resurrection or a fakeout death isn’t a viable option. Not to mention that a bad immortal did a lot more bad things than a bad mortal by sheer virtue of being around for way longer. But I digress.

And here’s another thing. A lot in a story hinges on whether we care about a character or not, one of which is whether we care about their journey and personal growth through the story. We are given zero reasons to care about Freedom, and thus zero reason why we should care about whether she’s redeemed or not. Sure, she has a sob story, but her personality is so loathsome that, by all accounts, everyone should hate her. Well, I certainly did, but Tui must’ve sacrificed her firstborn son to cast some sinister black magic spell that made most of fandom like Freedom or something. My point is, if a character already starts off horrible and unlikeable without any redeeming qualities, such as Freedom, then the author shouldn’t waste their time trying to “redeem” them, at risk of making the character seem like they were too easily forgiven or they got off too lightly for their crimes or the like. In fact, this is exactly how I think of Freedom, if my earlier thoughts were any indication.

Okay, back to the story. Freedom tells Luna how to kill the othermind, though it’ll get rid of her and Cottonmouth as well. Somehow Luna manages to escape the mindspace and wiggle toward where the plant is connected to the husks, intending to sever the connection.

Meanwhile, Cottonmouth has used a bunch of dragons to attack the team, intending to inject them full of breath of evil using a dragon named Carabid. He talks about this fight like he’s a sports commentator or something, except it isn’t any fun because we can’t even see the game—I mean fight.

So while the main action is somewhere else, Luna decides to sever the vine from the husks with a strand of silk. So to defeat the big bad, the protagonist has to do essentially some garden trimming.

This… is such a pitiful anticlimax that it puts the other anticlimaxes in this series to shame. I shouldn’t have to explain why this is bad. Shouldn’t there at least have been a large battle between the team and a mind-controlled army, or a confrontation with Wasp, or at least one explosion? Haha, no. Instead the protagonist spends half the book not doing anything except passively watch stuff happen, and in the end it’s Freedom who tells Luna how to defeat the othermind. We can’t have the book be interesting or even at least follow basic narrative structure like having a decent climax! That might lead to people actually liking the book!

Luna tries to sever the connection between Cottonmouth and Freedom because she doesn’t want Freedom to die, and I actually expected Tui here to have her cake and eat it too. I wouldn’t have put it past her. Surprisingly, though, Freedom actually has to die, because… something about how the breath of evil is semi-sentient or whatever.

So if the plant is semi-sentient and Cottonmouth was keeping it at bay, then wouldn’t getting rid of Freedom just make the plant problem worse? Or is it only semi-sentient when it’s connected to a mind? How does that work? Even without a mind making the plant semi-sentient, then isn’t it still a parasitic mind-affecting plant, as shown in the flashbacks? Why does getting rid of Freedom fix the problem? How does this make any sense?

But then, it means Freedom dies, so I’m not complaining much.

However, since *checks notes* Dusky has skewed priorities and wants to give this dragonet a name instead of, you know, saving the world before something bad happens, everyone’s all, “Oh, you sad poor babey, you need a name other than Lizard!” And she picks… Freedom.

Why, out of all things, did Tui have to pick a word so closely associated with ‘MURICA!? Because Tui loves ‘MURICA! and wants everyone to know it. It’s not like a childish yet cute name like Destroyer would’ve been good. Nope. Had to be a word that was associated with ‘MURICA! Tui wants to proclaim her ‘MURICAN! patriotism to everyone who might listen; it’s not like this is distracting and puts off all non-Americans and a lot of Americans reading this story.

Someone argued that Freedom picked this word because she was now free from Cottonmouth and the breath of evil. Fair point, but why didn’t Tui pick one of the numerous synonyms of the word “freedom” that doesn’t remind the reader of ‘MURICA!? You know, such as independence, liberation, or amnesty? Because, again, ‘MURICA! IS! THE BEST! AND TUI WANTS YOU TO KNOW IT!

And then Freedom dies and it’s supposed to be sad, but I didn’t feel a thing except relief this book was nearly over. Gasp! I’m such a heartless monster!

And now for the ending. There are so many problems with it I don’t even know where to start. Warning, it might get a bit racy here.

So first, Wasp and her sisters are dealt with offscreen while Luna makes out with Swordtail. What. The. Ffffffffudge. Why why why why why is the bad guy we're first introduced to in this arc and made to be a big deal in the books handled by Sundew offscreen, instead of by the actual protagonist? You know what, I already talked about this when Pineapple defeated Wasp, so I'm not going to repeat myself. You know how bad for the story this is.

For contrast, I'd like to add that Brandon Sanderson's decoy antagonists, despite not being the big bad, aren't tossed aside like garbage after the true villain reveal. They still have a large impact on the story as a whole and are dealt with accordingly. I'd list examples, but Brandon Sanderson isn't well known in the Wings of Fire fandom, probably because he mainly writes adult fantasy, and I don't want to spoil. (6)

In addition, we're told that all Wasp's sisters except Jewel were locked up in the flamesilk cavern. We were given some lip service to Bloodworm's cruelty, sure, but what about the other sisters? We're never told, much less shown, why these other sisters are terrible. We're just given Tui's word for it. I would've appreciated at least a comment or two about what the other sisters did to warrant a punishment as bad as the one given to Wasp and Bloodworm.

Anyways, in the epilogue we see a bunch of Pyrrhians coming to Pantala. Uh, why are they coming here other than because the author wanted a nice visual image? Are the Pyrrhians coming because they intend to move here? I mean, from what I've seen throughout the series the Pyrrhians in Possibility and the like live pretty cushy lives, and as for places like the Scorpion Den, if the way Tui thinks about queens is any indication, such places will probably be improved in the near future. So why would Pyrrhians risk their prosperity and happiness to move to a continent they had never seen before? I mean, unless everyone was told that Pantala was like 'Murica, aka the land of opportunity, then it could've made sense, but we never see that. It's just, "Oh, a bunch of Pyrrhians are here now and Luna is making a tapestry, hooray!"

Or maybe they're just tourists and I'm overthinking this, but you probably came here to see me overthink things anyway.

Sundew's replanting trees on Pantala, meanwhile, using… Pyrrhian trees. Okay, no. Just no. Those trees will either die because the soil composition, climate, etc is different, or those trees will become invasive and harm the growth of native trees by way of stealing resources. The Pyrrhian trees will be bad for the Pantalan wildlife, too: they may have defense mechanisms such as poisonous leaves or thorns that Pantalan animals just aren't accustomed to. All in all, terrible idea. There is a reason why trees planted in, say, the Northwest Coast are native to the region. And since according to this very same book, non-jungle trees are still present on this continent, maybe use the seeds from those? And even if there weren't, Cricket literally found a tree seed on a field trip. Those things are probably everywhere. Why use invasive species? Just… why?

Short tangent: Cricket's tree turns out to be from the fig family, even though when we were first shown the sapling, it was a conifer. But I digress.

Luna has the wonderful idea of splitting the SilkWings, HiveWings, and LeafWings into two separate nations, with the SilkWings and LeafWings living in some kind of forest paradise called the LeafSilk Kingdom; the SilkWings, LeafWings, and three good HiveWings in the entire tribe are going to live there. Putting aside the fact that Luna could have, you know, called it anything, this is a terrible, terrible idea. Splitting up the historical oppressors and oppressed isn't going to make things better, it'll just make them worse, because now interactions between the groups will be more limited, allowing more ignorance, and more hatred, to fester. And what about things like the fact that SilkWings made up, like, half the HiveWing empire's work force? I'm not saying that SilkWings should stay at their menial jobs, mind you, although they need a pay raise at the very least. What I'm saying is that the HiveWing economy will collapse if the SilkWings move to a separate country. But who cares! The HiveWings are the bad guys, so we don't care about their livelihoods.

Also, the HiveWing kingdom and the LeafSilk kingdom will fall into a cycle of warming relations and a violent war. How do I know? Search up India-Pakistan relations. It isn't a perfect 1:1 comparison, but they both involve ethnic groups that hate each other moving to different countries. And you can't say that the HiveWings and LeafSilk kingdom will never have a disputed territory. Luna and friends are carving out a whole new country from an old one, there's bound to be a border dispute.

The HiveWings, meanwhile, get a new queen! It's Jewel. You know, the dragon who literally has objectified SilkWings in her Hive? The one who throws parties all night instead of taking care of her Hive and probably has terrible crime rates as a result? Yeah, she'll make a good queen, all right. At least they don't call her "Jewel the Illiterate" or something because they think she can't read.

We're also told that some HiveWings want Wasp back, mind control and all. Gasp! This is obviously Tui trying to make a statement on white privilege (note to self: make a post talking about why the racism metaphors in Wings of Fire are… bad), but let's put that aside for a moment and look at it from the HiveWings' perspective.

For your entire life, you've been told that LeafWings are terrorists that need to be stopped. You think it's all propaganda and LeafWings are actually extinct, but around this time, a bunch of rebels steal the sacred text of your religion. Wouldn't that be scary? You don't even know why they stole it; for all you know they plan to burn it. Oh, and then it turns out that LeafWings are still alive, and they burn down an entire Hive. Maybe you were from that Hive and barely escaped with your life, losing all your belongings, or maybe you had a friend or loved one who barely escaped or died, or maybe you keep hearing about all the horrible eyewitness accounts of the stampeding panic and thick, choking smoke and the flames as they crept closer and closer.

As retaliation, Wasp gets everyone and sends them to attack the LeafWings and wipe them out once and for all in a decisive strike. You think this is justified, of course; they hurt the country, and you want them to get what they deserve. There's maybe a battle and it's confusing, but Wasp seems to think she's won, and everything kind of goes back to normal.

And then a bunch of strange dragons, from tribes you have never seen before, show up out of nowhere and throw Wasp and most of her sisters into prison. They get all the SilkWings to live under a separate government, the LeafWing terrorists return to your country's lands, the lands which Wasp pushed them out of, and now Jewel, whom you've always viewed as the most incompetent of the sisters due to her constant throwing of parties and neglect of crime rates in her Hive, is queen now. And those new dragons? Well, even more of them are coming to your country now. Maybe they're tourists, but maybe they're here to take over your country and subdue you. For all you know, these new dragons collaborated with the LeafWing terrorists and SilkWing traitors to take down your queen, and they probably did, in fact! Maybe they want to carve up your country and take the pieces for themselves! You don't know!

What I'm saying is that I'm surprised there aren't any HiveWing rebellions or resistance or separatist movements. Oh, and the "good guys" automatically dismiss these HiveWings as "evil," because this is a message about white privilege or something. Why do authors keep putting bad racism allegories into their fantasy books? Please stop. Just… stop.

So there's all this, not to mention all the things that weren't wrapped up and were seemingly forgotten by Tui. What happened to the flamesilks? Were they freed? I'd assume so, but we're never told what happened to them. How are they doing in actual society? Did Blue make amends with Admiral? What about the underlying and systemic oppression of SilkWings? Is anyone working to dismantle the system while the brand new separate kingdom is being planned? How did the HiveWings react to the arrival of Pyrrhians? Do they see Moonwatcher as the reincarnation of Clearsight? What about the fact that HiveWings learned that everything they were ever taught is propaganda? How are they dealing with the LeafWings returning? Speaking of LeafWings, did the PoisonWings and SapWings ever reconcile? What about the Pantalan refugees who moved to Pyrrhia? How many of them came back, and how many chose to stay and why? How are the queens handling the new scavenger law? Is anyone actually following it? How is Snowfall handling the IceWing nobility now that she destroyed the most important aspect of their culture and traditions? What happened to Pineapple, Bullfrog, and the other Pyrrhians? Did they go back to their continent, or are they staying to help run things in Pantala? Oh, and why is the burning of Bloodworm Hive still not brought up?

Absolutely none of these questions are answered, because the book was rushed and was probably only half done when Scholastic published it.

And now, let’s talk themes. They’re not as important to me as plot and character, but they encompass the overall work, so I’ll talk about them here.

Tui has gone on record saying that the theme of the third arc is empathy vs resistance. To quote an interview, "Arc 3 is about empathy and resistance - Tui wants her dragons to get along and understand each other, but at the same time there’s a point where you have to stop trying to understand the bad guys and just stop them."

It's a nice theme that allows for some nuance, although I would've preferred more of a gray area. This is clearly the theme, the central message, of the story in the first two books in the arc: how far should you go when fighting a dictatorship? Should we reach out to the citizens or attack them? Accomplish goals or empathize?

But then the thirteenth book rolls around, and the bad guy is revealed to be a sentient plant this entire time! And if you inhale its smoke, you'll get mind controlled!

Okay. The breath of evil is weed. We get it, Tui, don't do drugs. That's the theme now. Don't do drugs.

But then we get to this book and we learn that the sentient plant is actually a scavenger, and that scavenger stole a dragon egg once? Is the theme of the story now "don't steal dragon eggs?"

And thus, the original theme is discarded in favor of drugs, which is discarded in favor of… this. I mean, what? I am so confused. Where did the empathy and resistance stuff go?

Oh, and the title of the book makes zero sense. Tui was probably mandated by Scholastic to put the word “hope” in the title, but at this point this is just extreme nitpicking, so I'll stop.

All in all, this book was a complete dumpster fire. It is terrible and I will never reread it, even if I'm offered a million dollars to do so. Okay, then maybe if I’m desperate, but otherwise, no. This was Tui’s worst Wings of Fire book, and she should admit to mistakes made and learn to improve her writing in the future.

Unfortunately, Tui actively avoids criticism of her books. I understand that criticism can hurt an author’s feelings, but many authors have coping mechanisms to deal with this—Brandon Sanderson, for instance, reads one-star reviews of Terry Pratchett books, since Pratchett’s his favorite author, to remind himself that there will invariably be people who dislike even the best authors. One suggestion I have for Tui would be for her to request her friends or family members to read negative reviews of her books and summarize them to her; this would minimize exposure and reduce the sting of the reviews.

However, since Tui avoids criticism, she can’t learn to improve her writing. She continues to make the same mistakes: clumsily written characters, telling instead of showing, flailing around with the plot, prioritizing characters she likes over telling a good story. In fact, the second half of the third arc seems to be her worst work: the characters are bland or straight-up unlikeable, she tries too hard to please the fans and sacrifices story as a result, the pacing is a mess, there are too many poorly handled plot twists, and the anticlimax is worse than in the previous arcs.

And here’s what I’ve concluded from all this: Tui is tired of writing Wings of Fire.

She’s been writing the series for about a decade now. That is a long time to be writing a single book series without any breaks, and her writing quality near the end has taken a turn for the worse. She’s clearly rushing the books, trying to finish the series so she can move on to other projects.

And I get it. Writing is hard, and writing something for long periods of time even more so. Tui needs to stop writing the series, even if the fans won’t like it, even if Scholastic won’t like it. She needs to stop, get away from the laptop, and book a trip to the Bahamas or something. Her mental health probably isn’t the best for the aforementioned reasons above, not to mention the death of her pet and longtime companion Sunshine, which occurred while she was writing TDG.

Tui, I know it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see this. You actively avoid social media and actively avoid fan reviews. However, if you do read these words, I’ll drop the sarcasm and directly tell you this:

If you need a break, take it. If writing has become tiring for you, stop for a while and work on something else. Learn a new hobby. Dust off an old hobby. Find a TV series to watch. Go for a walk. Find a therapist if you’re still struggling over Sunshine’s death. Wings of Fire isn’t the totality of your existence, and don’t let it be.

Sincerely, a fan,

Truthseeker

(1) My brother likes to use a hook in the Warrior Cats book Fire and Ice as a prime example of a bad cliffhanger: “These half-starved WindClan cats were ready to attack.” Turn the page. “Fireheart realized they would follow the warrior code and wouldn’t attack.”

(2) I would use the term Villain Sue here, but the term Mary Sue and its constituents have been so overused that they’ve lost their meaning at this point.

(3) It doesn’t help that Freedom is mollycoddled by the fandom, and I seem to be the one of five people on the planet who don’t like her. And to me, there are few things more annoying than a character I dislike being widely liked by the fandom for some inexplicable reason. To me, it seems that Freedom is widely liked despite her jerk tendencies and authorial bias toward her due to her backstory and status as a dragonet. If you like her and want to tell me why, feel free to elaborate; I’d genuinely like to know why people like her so much.

(4) At this point I checked the wiki to clarify some points, and according to the wiki, Freedom has a high, clear voice. In other words, she sounds like Tui! Jeez, no wonder Tui loves her so much.

(5) Pretty much the only circumstance where I will accept character development occurring over a period of time less than a week is if it occurred in a film, simply due to medium restrictions—plot events in a film can only occur over a short period of time, so by necessity things like character development need to be speedrun. A novel, though, can take its time.

(6) I'd suggest reading Brandon Sanderson's books yourself if you want to know more, although you should be reading them anyway. They're that good. Don't worry, they're clean but it's adult fantasy so expect a lot of potentially triggering content. Brandon also has a few YA and middle grade books if that's your cup of tea; they tend to be less existentially heavy, with less potential triggers as well.

#wings of fire #the flames of hope #wof luna #wof wasp #wof pineapple #wof cottonmouth #wof freedom #wof jewel #truthseeker thoughts

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ladyelissarose · 2 years

Text

Warnings: lots of angst, fight scene mentioned, and this one is a LOONG chapter, so be prepared.

“The Secrets of Gotham-Unmasked”

Chp. 29pt.2

Batman’s POV

When he was ready to go Batman soon drove around in his Batcycle near by the burned down church, and stopped behind the place.

‘I guess the fire was bigger than it seemed, building is done for. For sure no one would be around here anymore.’

And in that moment his Batphone beeped, and checking it he saw that he had gotten a anonymous message.

‘The place you’re looking for with the man you’re after is not in the church but under. The place is infested with goons and the RedHood is on guard. Last facility they were in was burned down too, so they came here.’

-Blocked-

‘What the heck? Same like Gordon. He texted a helpful message but then blocked his number so we wouldn’t track it. It’s gotta be that guy that saved Y/n and sent Danny to us. But why is he helping us? Is he setting us up? I’ll take the chance, but I’ll be prepared for any ambushing.’

Batman got off the bike and began to creep inside the burned church, and sure enough goons stood everywhere, carrying the largest rifles he had ever seen, all were masked.

‘So I came to a gun fight with my fists, this should be fun.’

Coming behind one of them Batman chocked the first goon and put him down silently and successfully as so he thought until shots began to ring along with shouts,

“ITS THE VIGILANTE!! TAKE HIM DOWN!”

“DONT LET HIM THROUGH!!”

BANG BANG BANG!!!

‘SHIT!’

Batman’s ears began to ring for how loud and close the shots were, but he used the body he took down as a human shield to block away most of the flying bullets. One of the goons approached Batman so he threw the dead guy at him and at the same time pulled the rifle out of his hand and smacked him with it,

‘Maybe I don’t fire guns but I can play with them differently.’

The suit he wore protected Batman from most of the bullets that bounced off his chest plate, but that didn’t stop his chest from feeling the burn and hurting him as it was slowing him down. But he either way persevered as he drew closer inside the church, hitting anyone that came close too him. The still managed to hurt him with the head of the gun when they ran out of ammo, some hits landed on his head and on his legs. There were more than 15 goons and it seemed that more came towards him,

‘Damn I wish I had a partner, or a team-‘

Someone then came behind him unexpectedly and quickly after they threw a two gas grenades towards the oncoming goons, pulling Batman into a secret room and shutting the door.

Batman grabbed the goon’s arm trying to get his grip off of his shoulder,

“Get your hand off of me-“

“Shh shhh.”

The goon wore a mask up to his eyes and signed him to stay quiet, in the background out side of the closet you could hear the goons on the other side shouting,

“WHAT WAS THAT?!?”

“WHERE DID HE GO!!”

“I guess he couldn’t take all of us, you five go stand outside and make sure no one comes in or out!!”

Batman looked at the goon in the eyes as he shoved him into a wall raising him to his toes saying in a low whisper but you could hear the confusion and slight pain in his tone,

“Why did you pull me in? Who are you???”

“That’s none of your concern I just saved your life! Now put me down! And I’ll explain.”

Batman dropped him carelessly but still stood with his chest plate against the goons chest, standing tall and intimidatingly. The goon simply looked up at him but Batman could read his eyes and saw that the goon wasn’t intimidated by him. Making Batman a little concerned,

‘What does this guy want?’

“Explain.”

Taking a deep breath the goon began to say,

“First I want you to know we’re safe here, I built this secret sound proof closet for reasons, second, I want to help you-“

“Why-“

“Because I-I know you’re a good guy, yes I work for the-the Professor that wants to kill you to take your identity, but, well- that doesn’t mean I want that for you. Y-You have to trust me-“

Scoffing unbelievingly Batman smirked,

“Trust you? Why would I trust a goon like you?”

The goon then looked at Batman dead in the eye and squared his shoulders to matched up to Bruce’s height without even trying much, as he said in a deep serious tone without a stutter,

“Because I’m you’re only chance Bruce Wayne.”

Batman’s eyes widened with shock and without second thought he grabbed his shoulders and slammed him against the wall again as he narrowed his eyes and muttered,

“How. Do. You. Know?”

Resting his hands on Batman’s shoulders to hold him self up a little the goon responded,

“How do I know? Maybe Strange is obsessed with the Batman and Bruce Wayne, but he hasn’t concluded that he’s the same person, but I did. Who else but an orphaned man with past childhood issues would be a rich vigilante but you? It only makes sense you’d want to fix something for someone else when you couldn’t back in the day, your trying to make up for what you can’t change-“

Batman knew the goon was right but he hated to hear it and realize it, it all hurt too much. So he shoved him harder and put forth angrily,

“You know nothing about me!”

“You know, for being shot at like a freaking target you got quite the adrenaline-“

“You’re pissing me off.”

“Fine, but I know everything about you. Because I was exactly like you, until I let it consume me and make me more than I should’ve of been. That’s how I know-“

He then put his hand over the Batsymbol that rested on Batman’s chest as he said,

“I let the vengeance to get back at the people for what they did to me in the past compromise me and change me from what I was supposed to be at first. And if I can’t save myself anymore from it, I’ll save someone else who still has a chance. Let me help you.”

Batman’s heart clenched in his chest and his mind ran millions of miles as it filled with thoughts and doubts about this mysterious man. But he could see the sincerity in the goon’s eyes on how he really wanted to help,

‘Maybe you do want to help.. but I’ll keep an extra eye on you.’

Batman then placed him down gently this time and said firmly,

“I’m here for the chemical Professor Strange is making, if you want to help, start there-“

The goon then stuffed his hand in pocket and pulled out a small tube as he said simply,

“Here. This is a sample of it.”

Batman slowly reached for it and held it close to his face as he examined it,

“How’d you get it? And why?”

“I wanted to know how he made it, so I could make an antidote. For the kid he’s keeping. He already injected him once, and well, the kid doesn’t look the same, he’s more vigorous and stone cold. I want to save him too.”

Silent Mans POV

He could see Batman’s face drop slightly at the mention of Jason Todd, and the silent man could only think,

‘Does he know him?’

“You know the kid?”

Batman shook his head slightly and took a deep breath in before saying,

“He’s my son, and his name is Y/b/n, Y/b/n Wayne.”

‘Y/b/n... such a nice name..’

“Hmm.. ok, well, I’m willing to help you save him, go make the antidote, I’ll stick around and make sure they don’t continue to wipe his memory and inject him. I’ll keep them all busy, but first I need to get you outta here.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“Follow me tough guy.”

Batman’s POV

From estimating the gruff of his voice to his height Batman concluded that this goon was probably around his early or late 40s.

‘I wonder who he is..’

In a subtle tone Batman asked,

“Sense you know my identity, shouldn’t I know yours?”

“No, it’s too risky.”

“Risky?”

“Hm hmm, don’t ask me again.”

‘Shit ok.. what’s so special about your secret identity huh?’

Batman shrugged the thought off as the goon began to lead him through a dark hall and soon down a steep flight of stairs, saying,

“I built this up all in one night, in case of an emergency escape. These guys are psycho, and back stabbers. I gained the Priests trust, to be one of his favorite guards or goons per say. The other is injured-“

‘So you’re the guy that saved Y/n, bingo.”

“Yeah you hit him didn’t you? To save someone? Why did you save her?”

The goon stopped dead in his tracks and faced Batman as he said,

“I thought she was dead, it was all over the news, and when I saw that she was alive, I gave her a chance to go. Like I’m doing with you.”

‘You must be the one that also brought Danny to us.’

“You worked as a janitor at the Boys’ Shelter? I never saw you there.”

The goon scoffed and said,

“You’re connecting the pieces huh, from the incident with your fiancée to Danny?”

Batman muttered,

“Quickly, the same person saved them both, which was you.”

The goon shook his head and went on to say,

“Yeah that was me at the shelter. But, for a night only, I needed to know who you as Bruce Wayne was seeking to adopt, to protect him too. And I found him instantly, he only talked about you and your fiancée. Until the kids began to mock him and say she was dead, when I had already found out that she wasn’t. So I told him, and though he insisted on going on his own to the place I told him about, I followed closely behind until he made it safely and inside.”

Batman nodded his head and gestured for the goon to continue walking, and soon they made it to a door, the goon opened it and walked out, they now stood outside.

“We are basically two blocks away from the church, it’s like an underground tunnel I made. Now, you must never tell a soul about what just happened tonight. Take the chemical and make the antidote-“

“What about you? What are you going to do?”

“Keep the RedHood away from you. He’s ruthless and being controlled. And I have some sort of ways to keep him put. Plus, he’s out of money sense it was burned by your fiancée, and he needs to purchase more of the items he needs to make a stronger mind controlling chemical. So he’s stuck figuring out how to get more.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Don’t worry about that. Just trust and listen. Now go, I’m supposed to be coming back from a mission they sent me on.”

“Which was?”

“None of your concern again-“

“Then how am I supposed to trust you if you don’t talk? You think I won’t find you out? You’re the one sending the anonymous messages aren’t you?”

“Batguy you’ll never catch up to me, I’ve been around longer than you, been there, done that. And yes I was, who else would know more about this stuff than me? Now go home.”

Batman simply rolled his eyes and scoffed as he walked away,

“You’re unbelievable.”

In the distance he could hear the goon’s response,

“Hmph, Maybe. Keep your phone on you.”

Later that morning...

Y/n’s POV

Y/n came to his aid as soon as she saw Bruce come back and poured her attention to him when she saw how he was limping badly and clutching his chest. Y/n stripped him of his suit and nearly bursted to tears at the sight of the horrific bruises that lingered his sin, quickly she cleaned him up, making sure not a bone was broken, (which gratefully none were broken) but once Y/n knew he was going to be ok she gave him the largest scolding of his life, making Bruce cower on the cot and hugging the blanket she gave him tighter around his shoulders as if to block away her upset shouts to how he should be more careful. But then after a few minutes she calmed herself down when she saw the guilt that covered Bruce’s face as he muttered small apologies.

Immediately Y/n felt bad and realized the risk he took to bring her the sample and comforted him as she simply explained how she was scared to lose him too,

“I can’t loose you too Bruce, you’re one of the few I have left to live and fight for you know?”

“I know.. I’m sorry-“

“It’s ok I said. But, I don’t want any of us out until the night of the funeral, it’s too dangerous. But for now, explain to me what went down? How’d you get the sample?”

Bruce explained exactly what went down from point to point, from how he got there to how he got out of there. Y/n then sat back and tried to register everything he told her as she put it together in a simple sentence,

“So he saved your life, Danny’s life, my life, and is now trying to save Y/b/n all because of a past he refused to tell you about?”

“Yes.”

“It’s so confusing, I mean, scary too to know that he knows everything about us, about you especially, as Bruce Wayne.”

“I know, but I’m willing to trust him, at least some of him, he gave me the chemical that Alfred is testing now. He said he was trying to make an antidote for it too, but it’s kinda impossible when he’s always around his boss. So he gave the job to me.”

Saunders now sat around with them too as he said,

“At the end of the day Bruce I’d keep an eye on him, you never know his true intentions, he could be those who don’t have a backbone and just betray everyone in the end. Though at the moment he seems believable.”

“Don’t worry. I have a tracker on him, he probably doesn’t know that, but I placed a small one on the sleeve of his jacket.”

Y/n then asked,

“Did you recognize him?”

Bruce shook his head no as he pulled out his lens and loaded up the video of their conversation, but when he pressed play the voice was muted and the goons face was blurred, even though he had a mask that covered half of his face, he must’ve known that Bruce’s system could detect the retina of the eye and pull out an identification, Saunders looked at the screen as he said

“Why is it like this?”

“I don’t know, the system has never done that-“

Beeep*

Bruce’s phone beeped with a message and he told Y/n,

“Can you check that for me please.”

Y/n picked it up and read the anonymous message out loud,

“Bruce Wayne I told you not to tell anyone.. I muted the video purposely and blurred my face. Yes, I hacked into your system.”

-Blocked-

Scrunching her nose in confusion Y/n said,

“I’m assuming he has total control of everything, why won’t he let anyone else hear his voice or see him? Why did he speak to me in sign language? Why is he only trusting you?-“

“I don’t know, maybe because we both have a connection in some way. Huhhh... I hate leading on with something or someone without a trace or source of where they come from and with what intentions.”

Saunders then implied mockingly,

“You just have trust issues and daddy issues, that’s what it is, he sounds fine and somewhat ok to me.”

“Trust issues maybe, but daddy issues? You gotta be kidding me?”

“You do have them, you insist on working by yourself, hate being confronted by older male figures, and you hate being bossed around. Except by your girlfriend of course.”

“She’s my fiancée-“

“I still don’t see a ring-“

“It’s complicated!-“

“You’re a freaking billionaire!”

“I’m not talking about the money! I’m talking about the time!”

“So you’re disorganized?”

“You’re a bully.”

Bruce ended it with that and pouted on his chair crossing his arms tucking his chin on his chest, basically being a man child, even worse because first he was scolded by his fiancée and now by her obnoxious Uncle.

Y/n ignored the two men whom argued like little girls, and was thinking hard on who the goon could be, he had hacked into Bruce’s system and blurred out his image and muted his voice, making him impossible to make out or identify.

‘Come on buddy who are you? What are you afraid of us finding out? What’s your ordeal plan in the end? Who do you really want to save in the end, the good old reputation you couldn’t keep as you grew worse, or are you actually trying to make a difference, because you know there’s no saving for you? Why are you helping us? Why do you know so much?’

The elevator door opened and Alfred walked out with a pleased face as he said,

“I tested the chemical and it doesn’t look like I’ll have a hard time to change a few things to make the antidote, it’s not that strong.”

Bruce stood up and limped towards Alfred as he said,

“Then let’s work on that, we’ve got nothing to do until the day of the funeral, Professor Strange is stuck in place as long as he’s out of money, making Y/b/n stay put. Mackenzie only gets his evidence until the feds see the cash and drops in the casket, meaning we’re not going anywhere for now.”

Y/n then mentioned,

“Changing but not changing the subject, how did the goon know about my father’s secrets place? Where he kept all the evidence-“

“I’m telling you Y/n/n, this guy’s probably a spy or something, there’s no way he knows so much and is everywhere at once as so it seems. He won’t even let us know who he is, while he knows everything about us.”

Y/n shook her head as she rubbed her face trying to take away the sleep that was being craved after staying up all night waiting for Bruce to come back with the sample. But Alfred caught on,

“Dear, you and Bruce go sleep, let me and Saunders take care of this. And in the meanwhile we’ll begin to plan out what’s going down that night-“

“No it’s ok-“

“Y/n, I’d listen to Al, go to bed, you too Bruce.. sleep for at least 4-5 hours, we’ll handle this and Danny if need be.”

Y/n knew she couldn’t argue with them both as now they seemed to be partners in crime, so she took Bruce’s arm and wrapped it around her shoulders as she helped him walk to the elevator as she mumbled,

“I’ll see you guys later.”

Alfred smiled warmly as Saunders cooed with a sarcastic tone,

“Sweet Dreams kids.”

Danny’s POV

Danny woke up to the sun rising and slowly peaking through the windows curtains, he sat up quickly as he realized he didn’t recognize the place, the clock on the nightstand next to his comfortable bed ticked ‘6:45’.

‘Where am I? Oh! I’m at Y/n’s house!’

Danny pulled back the covers and got off the bed, he looked down at his clothes and saw he was wearing a rather large Nirvana t-shirt and long black socks that were huge for his little feet, he was wearing his small thermal pants tho, that’s the only thing of his that he was still wearing. He then heard shuffling and grunting outside of the door, but then he heard Y/n’s comforting voice,

“We’re almost there Bruce, just a few more steps baby, come on.”

Danny ran to his door then tried to quietly open it, but the door creaked loudly making Y/n turn her head to the noise, she still held onto Bruce as he rested his head on her temple, but Y/n didn’t move him, she only had moved her head to see her little boy peaking his head out from the door as he wore bed hair, making her smile,

“Hi honey, are you ok?”

Danny looked at Bruce as his bare back was exposed to him, the bruises were large from the bullets as well as the hits from the head of the shotgun, making Danny frown,

“Is he ok?”

Y/n’s POV

Y/n right away looked at Bruce as he turned his head towards her,

‘Shit what do I say?’

“Um, yes, he’s ok.. he just, had a bad fall that’s it.”

Danny tilted his head as he suspicioned,

“That’s a funny fall then, I didn’t know the stairs had hard balls on the steps, making his back have polka-dotted bruises.”

‘Damn kid doesn’t let a thing slide. Ok work with him. Cooperate.’

Bruce then spoke up changing the subject,

“Say, it’s still early, aren’t you going to rest a little more?”

Danny shook his head no but he began to rub his little blue eyes and yawn like a baby, Y/n looked at Bruce as she held puppy eyes and asked in a low whisper,

“can he come to bed with us please?”

Before Bruce could answer her Danny whined softly,

“can I come with you please?”

Bruce finally with Y/n’s help, he turned his body to face him as he tried his best to hold a good warm smile saying,

“sure, come.”

With his good hand Bruce stretched it out to Danny, which Danny ran up to quickly to wrapped his smile hand around Bruce’s pointing finger.

Soon they were cuddled together as Danny passed out first laying on his tummy, his little body moved calmly as he took small breaths in and out, he was in between Y/n and Bruce as the both laid on their side facing each other watching him sleep peacefully, wishing deep down that it could be them. Y/n then fixed her gaze on Bruce as she could see the calm in his eyes but his brows furrowed like If he was thinking hard on something, so she quietly asked him,

“a penny for your thoughts baby?”

Bruce took his eyes off of Danny for a split second to look at Y/n then he put his back where they were at first as he let out a small but visible smile,

“I wish sleep came to me this easily, but it’s helps when you don’t have wild thoughts running through your mind keeping you awake. Also, I want to change his name.”

“To what?”

“Well, the few times we talked we thought about it he always insisted that he liked the name Tim, so I said we could work with that, but I’d like a middle name for him.”

“Aww.. Tim sounds cute, our little Tim. I’m glad we took him in.”

“Me too..”

Y/n felt compassionate for Bruce and she reached over carefully and planted a kiss on Bruce’s head as he moved Danny’s long hair out of his eyes and pulled the blanket to cover his little shoulders,

“It’s cute to see you so soft, I never knew you could be like this.”

“Neither did I, but I love all of you, Danny, Y/b/n, you. I-I never thought I could do this, love someone so madly I can’t imagine my life without them, regardless of anything. I love to know I have someone home to come to, whether it’s Danny’s little hands and arms wrapping around my legs begging me to walk around as he clings to them, or when Y/b/n was around and I loved to tease him, and with you, I love you. All of you.”

He stretched his hand and wiped the tears that fell from Y/n’s eyes as she teared up at his sincere words. She grabbed his hand and planted a kiss to his bruised knuckles,

“Thank you for not giving up on him, on Y/b/n. I remember when he used to sleep on the bed with me, he was so little, happy, innocent. He was untouched, like Danny. I miss him so much.”

“I miss him too, and like I promised before we’ll get him back, and we’ll work with him, help him. He’s a part of our family.”

Hearing the word family from Bruce’s lips made Y/n’s heart soar with love and so much warmth,

“Family.. it’s sounds so beautiful.”

“It does, and it will be, I promise.”

“It’s scares me though Bruce, everything.”

“It scares me too, especially what’s going to happen.. in like a few days or so.. but I’m sure we’ll make it out alive, and come home all together.”

“But when do we go for Y/b/n, we have to get Mackenzie down as well as William-“

“Wherever I am, Y/b/n will be, his mission is to take me down. So no matter where I go or do I’m sure he’ll be around.”

“But-“

“Shh shhh... no more talking.. go to sleep, then once we’re ready we’ll go and talk it through with Alfred and your Uncle. Ok?”

“o-ok..”

“Don’t be afraid, it’ll all work out, in one way or another.”

Y/n simply nodded her head and sent him a smile as she took his words to heart, she then cuddled closer to Danny. And in his sleep Danny shifted and wrapped his arms around her and snuggled into her chest like a baby. Y/n’s heart just about melted as Bruce spooned her and Danny as they were wrapped around each other, he brought them close to his chest and enveloped them with his arms, reminding himself that they were safe, and that it was possible to love and have a family, even with the struggles.

In that afternoon...

Saunders POV

Saunders had his eyes locked on Danny when he saw him sitting quietly playing with his action figures, he actually liked having his company. Y/n had put him to babysit him for a little while as she, Bruce, and Alfred went over the plan somewhere else where Danny wouldn’t hear and get scared or worried. Saunders already knew the plan and suggested that Alfred tell them about it. He knew it would be better that the news came from Alfred than him.

‘They might not like the plan, but I feel that’s the only way it’ll work. We might want to take down all of them, at once, but there’s a risk. That maybe one or no one might make it back.. Mackenzie is a smart man, and he took my only friend that was once unstoppable and unbeatable, we have to be prepared and play this right... we have to.’

Alfred’s POV

Alfred sat in front of a teary eyed Y/n and Bruce holding a serious gaze as he continued to say,

“All of this is too risky, and as much as we went back and forth with different plans, we only come back to this one. That’s the only way it’ll work.”

Alfred could see Y/n’s hands tremble on her lap as she tried to remain calm, Bruce held her waist from behind as he leaned his head against hers. He was hoping deep down they agree, so they could start landmarking the seawall location, which was where Mackenzie was going to make the trade. Alfred and Saunders had planned to make it work where they’ll all be taken down there, even William Kenzie with the feds.

‘Please see this from my point of view.. no one should die, and all of you should make it back safely so we could go save Y/b/n next, by morning it should all be taken care of.. and we all should be back home safely.’

Y/n’s POV

‘I wish there was another way... but I believe it’ll have to be this.. then we’ll go for my son.. we’re going to get you too Y/b/n..’

Y/n then grabbed Bruce’s hand tightly into hers and she sat up straight, looked Alfred dead in the eye and confidently said,

“I’m in.”

Bruce’s POV

‘If she’s in.. I’m in. Regardless of how much I hate all of this.. regardless of how terrified it makes me.’

Bruce kissed Y/n’s healing knuckles and said in the same confident tone,

“I’m in.”

Alfred nodded his head and stood up,

“We have 10 days, to prepare, both mentally and physically for this.. I know it’s going to be a struggle, but we have to make it one the other side. Alive. And together.”

RedHoods POV

RedHood sat on a metal chair as they plotted around him, he had just been injected with the chemical, making his mind a little wheezy with his surroundings, but he could clearly hear his own thoughts, as he tried to fight within himself,

‘Come on remember! I’m Y/b/n Y/l/n, I’m 16 years old, born in Washington D.C. on December 26th. My mother and father are Y/n and Bruce Wayne. I’m Y/b/n Todd, no, I’m Jason Y/l/n, wait.. no no.. my mission- no! My parents are is Y/n and Bruce Wayne. No Y/b/n remember!!!’

Professor Strange

Strange watched how his new asset struggled silently in his seat, he saw how the RedHood’s face would twitch with confusion as tears began to run down his face. A wicked smile creeped on his face as he saw a white streak begin to grow in Y/b/n’s hair, or as he called him Jason Todd. This meant the chemical was beginning to run through his veins and into his brain. Walking up to Y/b/n the Professor yanked off the tape he had to cover his mouth and said in a demanding tone,

“Who are you? And what is your mission?”

The RedHood looked up at the Professor and said steadily,

“I’m Jason Todd the RedHood. And my mission is to take down the Batman and bring you Y/n Y/l/n alive.”

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