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v-thinks-on · 3 years

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We are driven by forces we cannot control to return home and take a wife. Or die. — Spock (TOS: “Amok Time”)

My contribution to the @trektribute zine.

Every seven years, all Vulcans are compelled to return to their native planet to engage in the ancient ritual of pon farr or die trying (TOS: “Amok Time”; “The Cloud Minders”). Among fans - and some writers of the series itself, if the odd Tumblr post is to be believed - the most contested feature of this unusual mating system is the suggestion that they only mate once every seven years. However, as a biologist, far more remarkable is the fact that any Vulcan who fails to mate dies. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s astounding that such a system could possibly evolve, but there are some possibilities.

Before I go any further, I should clarify that I will only be discussing Vulcans as they appear in Star Trek: The Original Series. I’m certain there’s fruitful discussion to be had about Vulcans across the Star Trek franchise, but I will exclusively be looking at what’s presented in the original 79 episodes.

First, the most pressing question; why only every seven years? Obviously, there are narrative reasons a writer may want to change this. Even The Original Series, which introduced the Vulcan mating system, seemed conflicted about it (TOS: “The Cloud Minders”). However, as a biologist, that Vulcans only mate once every seven years is perhaps the most normal thing about their reproduction. Humans are one of relatively few species on Earth that reproduce year round. Most species only mate during a particular time of year when there are enough resources available not only for survival, but also for the production and care of offspring (Wingfield & Kenagy, 1991). It makes sense that Vulcans, which live on a desert planet, would have more constraints on when they can reproduce.

Mating every seven years may sound strange, but there are species that reproduce on multiple year cycles; thirteen- and seventeen-year cicadas (Williams, 1995) are probably the most well known. Alternatively, it could be that “the seven-year-cycle” (TOS: “The Cloud Minders”) is measured in Earth years, and is actually one year on Vulcan, or is some equivalent ecologically relevant unit. Being entirely celibate outside of the mating season is also fairly typical. For example, birds that reproduce only once a year often have testes that regress for the rest of the year, making it physically impossible for them to mate - not to mention the hormonal changes that make them no longer have any desire to (Wingfield & Kenagy, 1991). This makes evolutionary sense because if you’re putting a lot of energy into a big reproductive bout, it would be a waste to expend some of that energy on other times of the year when offspring are less likely to survive.

Somewhat more unusual, however, is that it appears that Vulcans’ mating cycles are not synchronized. While Spock is obviously in the throes of plak-tow - blood-fever; the “madness” that precedes pon farr - none of the other presumably mature Vulcans present at his pon farr exhibit any of the same symptomes (TOS: “Amok Time”). Different members of a species mating at different times is uncommon in nature (but not unheard of; Wingfield & Kenagy, 1991) because it makes it difficult for them to find another individual who is also ready to mate. More often, in the wild, variation in when individuals are ready to mate is likely to cause one species to split into two because individuals will only mate with those that are ready at the same time, effectively isolating the two populations and enabling them to differentiate (Taylor & Friesen, 2017). However, like Humans, Vulcans engage in prolonged courtship (TOS: “Amok Time”), so they don’t have to go through the process of finding a mate when they enter pon farr, and unlike the aforementioned birds, they appear to be physically capable of mating even when it’s not their time, so the partner that isn’t going through pon farr can still be receptive. It may be that the environment on Vulcan is harsh enough that the optimal strategy is to mate at a different time from everyone else to minimize the amount of competition your offspring will face.

So far, everything has been fairly straight forward. As a biologist, the really strange thing about the Vulcan mating system is that they mate or die. In the episode, “Amok Time” (TOS), Spock compares this to the salmon, which, when it is ready to mate, leaves the ocean, and “must return to that one stream where they were born, to spawn or die in trying.” This is a pretty analogy, but it leaves out a very important detail; the salmon that mate die too, just perhaps a little bit later. There are many species that use up all their resources on one mating attempt, and then die; salmon, cicadas, many species of butterflies, the list goes on (Young, 2010). There are entire families of moths that stop eating entirely when they reach sexual maturity and just mate until they run out of reserves (Janzen, 1984). This may seem a little strange; why shouldn’t they try to live longer and maybe have a few more chances to mate? But often, these are species that have a lot of predators or otherwise wouldn’t live very long even if they didn’t spend all of their reserves on reproduction. So, instead of wasting energy on defending from predators or building up their immune systems, they just use it all on one big reproduction attempt.

Clearly, Vulcans do not do this. If they successfully mate, pon farr ends and everything returns to normal so they can try again in another seven years. This makes sense; Vulcans generally live long lives and should have many opportunities to mate. Then why do they die if they don’t mate? To my knowledge, there are no species on Earth that die only if they don’t successfully mate. There shouldn’t be because they don’t have any offspring and dying ensures that they’ll never have any more, so there’s no one to pass on their genes. Before I go any further, first I should clarify an assumption I’ve been making implicitly this whole time. For a trait - which could be as simple as eye color, or as complicated as a whole mating system - to evolve, it has to be genetically heritable. That is, there has to be some gene - or often, many genes - that code for it, that are passed down from parent to child (Dawkins, 1976). I’ve been assuming that the Vulcan mating system is composed of genetically heritable traits, which is assumed to be the case of any biological mating system (human mating customs notwithstanding).

To determine whether a genetically heritable trait, such as reproducing or dying could possibly evolve, biologists often imagine what would happen to a single individual with the trait that suddenly appeared in an otherwise identical population of individuals without the trait. So, suppose we have a population where individuals have the opportunity to mate every seven years, but if they don’t mate, they just keep living. Then, suppose an individual is born with a mutation that makes it so that if they don’t mate, they’ll die. If they enter pon farr for the first time and don’t have a mate, they die right there and the trait dies with them; they never get to pass on their genes for mating-or-dying. However, even if they do manage to mate that first year and have a child, and maybe even mate the next year too, they’ll still, on average, have fewer opportunities to mate and therefore have fewer children than their neighbors who can go a pon farr without mating and survive to try again in seven years. It may seem like a small difference, if our mutant only has four children before they don’t have a chance to mate and their neighbors have an average of five, but over evolutionary time, even such a small difference is likely to drive a trait to extinction.

The only purely biological explanation I can think of for the evolution of this strange mating system is based on one of the many hypotheses for why aging may have evolved (Bourke, 2007). The idea is that if an individual doesn’t mate one year, they’re not very likely to have a mate the next year either, or the year after that. This sad, lonely Vulcan has probably had all the children they’re ever going to have; at this point their remaining fitness is close to zero. However, they may have some relatives - children, or siblings - who share some proportion of their genes - children, for example, receive half their genes from each of their parents. If this lonely Vulcan happens to have the gene for surviving, whether they reproduce or not, they’ll continue to consume resources that could be used by their children or siblings who may still have a chance of reproducing. If, on the other hand, this lonely Vulcan instead had the gene for dying when it failed to reproduce, their siblings or children would get those resources and would therefore have an even higher chance of reproducing in the future and having more offspring, and, most importantly for evolution, passing on the lonely Vulcan’s genes, including the genes for dying if they don’t reproduce. This could be especially powerful on a desert planet, like Vulcan, where resources are presumably scarce.

This is also a valuable lesson in why we shouldn’t let evolution dictate how we live. Just because I’m never going to have children and therefore have no fitness doesn’t mean I should die, even if it would help my relatives have more children. Reproduction is so important to evolution because it’s how genes are passed on, and that’s what evolution is; the change in gene frequencies in a population. However, in life, there are things that are a lot more important than gene frequencies.

Now, back to the lonely Vulcan; this explanation may sound all fine and good from a theoretical evolutionary standpoint, but it doesn’t actually work with other things we know about Vulcans. I mentioned that it’s based on an explanation for why aging evolved; the idea is that animals die of old age to give their younger relatives a better chance of surviving and reproducing (Bourke, 2007). Therefore, we’d expect that if Vulcan doesn’t have the resources to support individuals who don’t have mates, it certainly wouldn’t be able to support individuals who are too old to reproduce. It may seem strange, but Humans are one of very few species on Earth that have menopause - i.e., a time when individuals are still alive, but no longer reproduce. One theory for how it evolved is for almost the opposite reason of aging; after a certain age, individuals’ genes are passed on more effectively by staying around and helping care for grandchildren than by having children of their own (Johnstone & Cant, 2010). However, this can only happen if there are enough resources around to support all three generations at once. Even though Vulcan is relatively inhospitable, it seems like Vulcans do still exhibit something like menopause. I doubt Spock was still going through pon farr every seven years by the time he crashes into the alternate universe (“Star Trek” 2009). If Vulcans have evolved to stop reproducing within their lifetimes, then it doesn’t make any sense for them to die after a single failed reproductive bout.

In that case, we need an alternative explanation. I said my first hypothesis was the only purely biological explanation I could think of; to try again we need to delve into the realm of culture. Many animals are capable of social learning, but none on Earth exhibit culture to quite the same extent as Humans. At this point, Humans evolve in a context that is, in many ways, shaped more by culture than nature (Richerson & Boyd, 2004), and like any proper species of humanoid aliens on Star Trek, Vulcans are the same. And, lucky for us, Vulcan culture is by far the most clearly defined alien culture introduced in The Original Series. They value logic to the point of rejecting all emotion and are particularly ashamed of their mating drives (TOS: “Amok Time”). It is not much of a stretch to think that if they didn’t have to endure pon farr, Vulcans would not mate at all. That cultural climate could easily be enough to result in the evolution of increasingly powerful mating drives, as only those with the strongest desire to mate would have any offspring. Eventually, it appears that Vulcan culture became so strict that the only way they would mate is if they would die otherwise.

This is consistent with what little evidence there is in The Original Series of what Vulcans were like before they adopted such a strict philosophy. The Romulans, who split off from the Vulcans around the time their philosophy of logic became widespread, appear to be more similar to humans; when Spock attempts to woo a Romulan commander to infiltrate her ship in “The Enterprise Incident” (TOS), she seems to have some physical interest in him. Even stronger evidence of what Vulcans were like historically comes in the episode “All Our Yesterdays” (TOS), where Spock reverts to behaving like an early Vulcan - for perhaps less than adequately explained reasons - which includes a strong sex drive even outside of pon farr, suggesting that their mating system has changed significantly in somewhat recent history. This is not to say that the evidence is conclusive; to determine that we would need to conduct an empirical experiment, which is unfortunately impossible, but this theory seems to present a promising explanation of the facts.

References

Bourke, A. F. (2007). Kin selection and the evolutionary theory of aging. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 38, 103-128.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford University press.

Janzen, D. H. (1984) Two ways to be a tropical big moth: Santa Rosa saturniids and sphingids. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 1, 85–140

Johnstone, R. A., & Cant, M. A. (2010). The evolution of menopause in cetaceans and humans: the role of demography. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1701), 3765-3771.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2008). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago press.

Taylor, R. S., & Friesen, V. L. (2017). The role of allochrony in speciation. Molecular Ecology, 26(13), 3330-3342.

Williams, K. S., & Simon, C. (1995). The ecology, behavior, and evolution of periodical cicadas. Annual Review of Entomology, 40(1), 269-295.

Wingfield, J. C., & Kenagy, G. J. (1991). Natural regulation of reproductive cycles. In Vertebrate endocrinology: fundamentals and biomedical implications, 4(Part B), 181-241.

Young, T. P. (2010) Semelparity and Iteroparity. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10), 2

#v thinks #Star Trek: The Original Series #Vulcans

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Tarn the Uncaring and his Locus Vile remain creepy as fuck, but I can’t help but feel that this Hellions issue would be a lot more impactful if we had any clue whatsoever what Tarn and his ick squad’s powers actually are. Its the same gripe I have with the last Wolverine issue and that Arakki pirate guy......I feel like the writers are making all these new Arakki characters but aren’t bothering to figure out what they can even do beyond just make them look bad-ass or intimidating or whatever and just be vague as to their actual capabilities.

For the most part its not a big deal, but I do think sooner rather than later we do need an ACTUAL clue about what the hell Tarn and the rest of the Great Ring’s powers are, given that its been well established that the Arakki ONLY let omega level mutants sit on their ruling council, so like......I think they should have bothered figuring out what the Great Ring’s powersets are before introducing them at least, and I feel like a big reason for the vagueness is that so far....even the writers only have the vaguest idea about what most of them can do. I mean, the only ones we know for sure are Isca and Lactuna or whatever her name is....and we have a reasonable sense of what the fish dude’s powers are and they’re fairly epic....and Idyll’s powers obviously are precognition related, so....okay y’know what, I take it back.

Of the Great Ring, the only ones we don’t really have a sense of are Tarn and the other random dude whose name I forget, and Tarn’s obviously have something to do with genetics/power manipulation.....but every time I see that giant caterpillar mutant, Xili or whatever his name is, I’m just like....okay we saw him in action but I still don’t get how his power works even a little bit.

Anyway, Hellions was an interesting issue, I enjoy seeing Sinister’s fuck-ups come back home to roost and all the Hellions finding out just how badly he screwed them on the Amenth mission, and I am intrigued by the mention of Chimera towards the end of the issue. I’m guessing all of this is building up to the reveal of Sinister’s first experiments in creating the triple-powered mutants we saw in Powers of X a hundred years in the future - and that series did mention that the first Chimera were ‘grown’ in the Vats of Mars, which is now Arakko, home of.....the people Sinister just admitted to stealing the DNA from to create these Chimera. So it all fits.

What I’m curious about is how much of this is just leading up to the same events that already played out in Moira’s last failed lifetime, versus how much things are going differently this time around. Like, we’re finding out about the Chimera being created already, which would seem to suggest events so far aren’t playing out too differently from the last time around, given the references to them being made on Mars....BUT in Moira’s last lifetime in Powers of X, like, it was clearly referenced as MARS having been where the Chimera were first made.....while ever since the Hellfire Gala, the books have all been pushing really hard that the planet’s name is Arakko now. So what I’m wondering is if Moira’s last lifetime - where she was allied with Apocalypse for at least part of it as well - if Arakko and its mutants were ever successfully retrieved from Amenth....or if Mars was simply a Krakoan colony in that past lifetime, and the Chimera we saw a hundred years in its future were just the results of Sinister’s experiments with mutant/Krakoan DNA, with him never having had access to Arakki mutants or Tarn’s own experiments with mutation.

Because if the latter, then that would suggest that the key difference this time around, and the potential game changer for the future, is not actually Krakoa itself, but Arakko’s presence and the Krakoa/Arakko alliance, spread across two planets.

Hmmm. Must ponder more.

As for the new X-Men issue, it wasn’t bad but it was mostly meh. It felt like a lot of just action sequences with Duggan narrating how they all used their powers together to defeat the Annihilation Wave, and like....yawn? The mutant synergy idea is fine conceptually, but they are milking it WAY too hard, its like we get it, can you do something with the actual STORY rather than just being like look what happens when these two mutants use their powers at the same time? LOL. For what its worth, what story there IS in this issue is intriguing. I mean, the idea of Gameworld and its bets on the fate of Earth is pretty interesting, and Dr. Stasis is shaping up to be a dangerous threat, especially with him seeming to be on to the Krakoan resurrection capabilities (uh, not that they’ve been all that subtle about it, tbh), and allied with Orchis - thus them knowing about the great Krakoan resurrection engine as well, lmao. Like, they probably really should have put a bit more effort into keeping that under wraps awhile longer instead of just being like:

"Oh Jumbo Carnation famously was murdered a few years ago with it all over the news and now we’re making a big deal about him designing all the outfits for our highly publicized Hellfire Gala, and you want to know how that could be possible, Mr. Reporter? Uh...look! A squirrel!”

Also, that plus the big fight between the Locus Vile and the Hellions on Krakoa after Ororo specifically WARNED Tarn that she was going to fuck his shit up if he tried to retaliate against Sinister - and that Isca and the rest of the Great Ring promised to back her on, lololol, its kinda funny that they all seem to hate Tarn as much as the rest of the Quiet Council all hate Sinister - anyway, all that has me wondering what the official policy on dead Arakki mutants is. I assume given that they’re mutants no fundamentally different from Krakoan mutants, that like, ever since they emerged from Otherworld, there’s no reason that Cerebro shouldn’t back up their consciousnesses as automatically as it does any other mutant’s....so is Krakoa sharing its resurrection technology with Arakko at all? Assuming of course that once they saw how Krakoans did it, they don’t have specific mutants of their own capable of matching the capabilities of the Five and doing the same for them.

BUT then again, the idea of resurrection seems to fly pretty heavily in the face of Arakki culture, so I don’t imagine on the WHOLE they’re all that interested in it in the first place.....BUT BUT, that doesn’t mean that INDIVIDUAL Arakki mutants aren’t interested. And given that we know now that it was Solem who was pulling strings in Wolverine’s solo title and X-Force, and that he was behind stealing the Shi’ar logic diamonds, which are used in resurrection, and he seems to have aims towards stealing the Cerebro Sword from Mikhail in Russia......from what we do know of Solem, it would make perfect sense for him to be interested in resurrection, given how many of his own people want him dead (especially after how he fucked over War in X of Swords), and I can’t imagine Solem being all that interested in like, applying for Krakoan citizenship just for that perk if he felt he could finagle resurrection on his own terms instead.

Or that he thinks they’d even offer it to him at all at this point, given that Emma, a key figure on the Quiet Council, is personally gunning for him to get payback for what he did to Christian and the Marauder (yesssss, this is one Emma + Wolverine teamup I’m here for lololol). Course, I can’t help but think, you know who else would want payback for Christian, and who might be extremely helpful in going after a notoriously dangerous Arakki warrior with adamantium skin? Oh, idk, Christian’s boyfriend, the omega mutant capable of freezing anything so cold it can shatter with a touch....even vaunted adamantium. I’M JUST SAYING. We saw Bobby get his vengeful on after Kate was killed, and him applying that same energy towards going after someone as dangerous as Solem on Christian’s behalf, would be like....potentially the most interesting thing they’ve done with him in years.

Like, I know it won’t happen because it probably hasn’t even occurred to the writers, since most of them barely even acknowledge that Bobby and Christian are IN a relationship, but how fucking great would it be to have Solem smugly convinced that he’s a match for Logan only for him to be like “the useful thing about NOT being a loner loser like you and actually having friends and people who like me, is sometimes it pays to have a bigger gun than yourself on speed dial.” Cut to....Heeeeeere’s Bobby! You know, the dude who just singlehandedly gave your spiffy new homeplanet its ice caps. And whose boyfriend your pirate patsies tossed overboard and left for dead when stealing his ship.

Solem: Aww, fuck.

#wednesday spoilers

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need-a-fugue · 3 years

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We Grow Together (28)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Tessa Sullivan (OFC)

Chapter Summary: Tessa begins some light undercover work while Bucky pouts in the background... And Clint sheds some light on what happened years ago in Minsk.

Summary: Relationships can be tough, especially when one person is a recovering-from-being-brainwashed-and-tortured former assassin and the other is an overworked mutant scientist. But hey, every couple has their struggles. Right?

They all agreed – some more begrudgingly than others – that it would be a good idea for Tessa to see what she could find out from Cal before getting in any deeper with Lobe. The ingenious businessman, as he had referred to himself, had invited Tessa to come out to his temporary facility outside of Albany. But try as they might, none of them could find anything about this mysterious site. And – “You’re not going out to some off-the-radar science lab on your own. Not with the current lack of intel we have.” – Steve was the one giving the orders.

Well, if intel is what he wants...

“I’m telling you,” she says, as Natasha hooks up the not-even-remotely-noticeable bug in the hem of her sweater, “He’s not going to help.”

Steve looms in the foreground, arms folded across his chest. “He doesn’t have to help. Just get him talking and we can sift through all of it later.”

“It’s looking like this might be more than we thought,” Clint mumbles from his position at the conference table. He’s busy looking through all of the virtual files that he and Nat had spent the last few days compiling. Swiping through another page on the holoscreen in front of him, he says simply, “Since all of the Terrigenesis stuff started, people have been paying more and more attention to… super people.” He glances up to raise a single eyebrow at Tessa. “Depending on what his end game is, this Lobe guy could be the next big bad.”

“Then by all means, let’s go waste some time grabbing coffee with some crony instead of figuring out what the big bad is up to,” she snarks with a pout.

Natasha triggers the bug to make sure everything is set up and pats Tessa on the shoulder. “You’re good,” she tells her. “Just don’t conveniently spill a drink on it when you two start in about the past.” She shoots her a playful, crooked smile before turning to gather her things.

“Alright,” Steve starts, manner and voice all business. “I’ll be in the back of the café.” He moves over to Tessa and gently reaches out to grab her shoulders. “I know this should go without saying, but do not leave my sight.”

She rolls her eyes. “You really think I’d take off with him?”

“I might,” Nat mutters from across the room.

“That,” Steve intones, pointing at Natasha, “is why you three are all off comms.”

Clint rises and shuts down the computer in front of him. “See? Once again, your sexual appetite has us sidelined.”

Natasha cocks a brow in his direction. “My sexual appetite has gotten us out of more jams than it’s ever gotten us into.”

Steve visibly winces. “Enough. Come on, guys. Can we just… not?”

Natasha shrugs and shoves some equipment into Bucky’s hands. He almost drops it and has to regain his balance as she piles more crap into his arms. “Make yourself useful, Sargent,” she tells him. “You can’t just stand there brooding in silence all day.”

“I don’t know,” Clint says as he takes some of the load off Bucky. “If anybody can do it, he can.” He gives the silent, gloomy looking man a wink and heads for the door.

000

It makes perfect sense, of course, that the three of them would be sequestered in a van down the block. Well, maybe it doesn’t really makes sense why all three of them would be… Natasha was the only one actually needed in here working the recording equipment. But Clint wasn’t about to sit any part of this out. And Bucky was obviously not going to let Tessa go out there without being close by. Even if no one really believed that she was in any danger.

After all, this was just a simple, casual meetup with a potentially knowledgeable contact who might be able to supply some intel on what now seemed to be an ongoing op. Fine. No big deal. His lab rat girl was just now invariably working out in the field. He could handle that.

Well, he’d be able to handle it a lot better if he had her in his sights. And if he had a weapon, some sort of recourse, in case something did go wrong. But no sniper should be needed today – especially not one who admittedly kind of wants to blow off the head of the guy she’s meeting with.

“How you holding up, Barnes?” Clint asks as he bumps Bucky’s shoulder with his.

He sighs, long and loud. “I’m not used to being non-essential.”

“Yeah, well… Think of this,” he says, sweeping his hand across the tight space of the cargo van, “as a chance to play stakeout. It’s like we’re the FBI!”

“Hunting down mob bosses?” Natasha supplies as she hands each of them an earpiece. There won’t be any comms going, so they can’t talk to Tessa. And they’ll only be in contact with Steve if something goes wrong. But thanks to the high-tech bug in Tessa’s sweater, they’ll be able to hear everything going on at the café down the block.

“Exactly.” His smile fades a bit when he looks back over at Bucky and notices the concerned look on his face. “Did you two get a chance to talk?” he asks him in a low tone. Natasha would be able to hear, of course, there’s barely a foot of space between them. But his voice makes it clear that this talk is between just the two of them.

He nods. “Yeah. We’re good.”

“Cause, you know, the other day… we were just joking around. I mean… I was there at the tail end of their thing. It wasn’t anything like what you and Doc have.”

The sincerity in his voice, makes the corners of Bucky’s lips quirk up into a small smile. “I know,” he says. Then, his face transforming into a confused sort of pout. “I forgot you said that you met him. That was when you first met Tessa, right?”

Clint settles back into the cushioned bench that runs the length of the van. “Yep. Minsk.”

“Funny, isn’t it? How we mark moments in our lives by either the name of the op or the location of the mission,” Natasha utters, without turning around. She continues to busy herself with the recording equipment, doing one final test to make sure everything is working as it should.

Clint lets out just the shortest of chuckles. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“So what happened there?” Bucky asks, genuine interest perking his voice.

Clint gives him a suspicious look. “She never told you?”

He shakes his head. “In case you haven’t noticed, Tessa’s not great about sharing things from her past.”

Natasha finally turns and joins the men in the rear of the van, all equipment up and running. “Did you know she graduated from med school when she was 23?” she asks incredulously. “I only found that out last year.”

“How’d she manage that?” Clint asks, taken aback.

She merely shrugs. “That, she did not share.”

He pulls in a deep breath and drops his raised brows. “Well… the thing in Minsk was kind of a shit show.”

“You were sent by Fury, right?”

He nods. “Genetech had a facility on Long Island that was shut down back in the 1980s. SHIELD found out about some nanocontagion they’d let loose, and they moved in and took out the whole operation. Or so they thought,” he says with a glint. “Fury heard rumblings about the company starting up again in Eastern Europe, so he sent a couple of us to go check it out.”

“Who’d you go with?” she asks.

He shrugs. “McAllen.”

“Ugh,” she responds, obviously sharing his less-then-enthused view of whoever Agent McAllen is.

“So Genetech was what?” Bucky inquires. “Some kind of medical lab?”

“Hardly,” Natasha answers. “They were a powerful med firm, specializing in genetic research. They were started by a guy who designed bio-weapons with Howard Stark.”

“Can’t say they were always exactly reputable,” Clint intones. “But they did manage to get a big following in the scientific community. No surprise, really, that some new facility popped up even after the company was supposedly shut down.”

“And no surprise that someone like Tessa would want to work there,” Natasha says simply.

“True,” Clint declares. “But, she knew something was up. And she was the only one there willing to help me figure out what it was.”

“What was it?” Bucky asks.

“Long story short? They were engineering a gene that would mutate when exposed to radioactive energy.” He frowns briefly. “I’m still not really sure about the science of it, but the theory was that, if they could introduce it into a human host, and then expose the host to radioactive material, they could create a… super person.”

Bucky grimaces. “A super soldier?”

He cocks his head as if to say, maybe. “The higherups didn’t really share their plans with Doc… and she was the only one who shared anything with me.”

“So wait,” Natasha interrupts, suddenly onto something. “The radioactive genes, or whatever they were… the samples that Tessa accused Calvin of stealing – ”

“One and the same.” He clears his throat before going on. “I shared some confidential intel with Doc about what Genetech had been up to all those years ago. And she agreed to hand over some files on the work they’d been doing. But before she could get them all copied, the facility went on lockdown – with us trapped in it – because samples of the nearly perfected genes had been stolen. She knew right away who did it. Went on a little tirade in the office while alarms were going off around us. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and she’s mumbling and yelling about how that son of a bitch had sworn he was there for her and not some damn job.” He smiles and shakes his head. “Whew, she was pissed.”

“How did you get out?” Natasha asks. Her chin rests on her fist as she watches the man, clearly enthralled by his story.

“Right, well. First we got caught. Armed guards rushed the office, saw we were stealing files. Chaos ensues… yada yada yada,” he says, waving his hand in a glib gesture. “I got shot. Doc let loose.”

Bucky frowns. “She used her powers?”

“Yep. Smoked ‘em. All eight of them. They just… dropped.” He takes in a deep breath. “She got us out of there and we holed up in this old factory outside of town while she fixed me up.” He turns to Bucky and says, utter sincerity lacing his words, “That was about two weeks before my daughter was born. If not for Doc, I never would have gotten to know my little girl. Never would’ve even made Nathaniel.” With a small smile, he tells him, “I’m never gonna be able to repay her for that.”

Natasha scoffs. “Sounds like you never would’ve been in that position if it hadn’t been for that asshole Calvin.”

“Oh ho,” Clint says, raising a brow, “So now you agree he’s an asshole? Is your crush fading?”

She shrugs. “He’s still hot as hell. But it sounds like he almost got two of my best friends killed. So if I meet him, I might just have to end him.”

Bucky looks to Clint, curiosity lacing his features. “You said you met him?”

“Ah, yeah,” he breathes out. “During my first meeting with Doc… I showed up a little early at this bar and saw them together. He was laughing and whispering in her ear and shit. And she was looking not amused. I stopped him on his way out of the bar… asked if he was an American… you know, play the whole what a small world card. He told me he was in Minsk on business, but would only be in town a few more days. I asked about the woman he was with at the bar, if she was his girlfriend… small talk,” he says with a wink. “The guy just laughs and says when I want her to be. Prick. Then he lights up a cigarette, shakes my hand, and disappears into the night.”

“And no one ever caught him? After stealing the samples?” Natasha asks.

“Nah. Doc said he was sort of a mercenary… doing whatever needed to be done for whoever was the highest bidder. So it was no surprise he managed to disappear. That guy in Africa, the one that Ultron got the vibranium from? Saw Calvin with him in some photos taken about ten years back. That’s the kind of guy he is. Anyway, it was just a few months after Minsk that he got made by MI-6… doing some kind of dirty deal. But then he conveniently got blown up in a car bomb before they could nail him.”

Bucky lets out an irritated huff from his corner of the van. “Nice,” he says with a nod. “Good story. I feel much better about this guy now.”

Clint laughs and slaps him on the shoulder. “The takeaway from all of this is that Doc’s been done with that guy for years. And she knows who he really is. She’s not gonna get sucked into his lies or manipulation.”

“I never really expected her to,” he mumbles.

Clint takes in the thoughtful expression on Bucky’s face and adds, “She’s grown up a lot since then. I, for one, think she’s been making much better decisions.”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth quirks up. “Yeah, from asshole mercenary to brooding ex-assassin.”

Clint tosses a reproachful look over his shoulder at her. “Even I think that was crass.” He turns back to Bucky. “Sarge, after what she did for me, I’ll have Doc’s back for life. So if I thought she was wasting her time with someone who didn’t deserve her, I’d chase him off in a heartbeat.”

Bucky cocks his head at the man to his right. “You haven’t been trying to chase me off these last couple years?” he asks with a smirk. “You’re saying this is just how you are?”

Clint snorts. “Hilarious. See?” he says, turning to Natasha. “They’re made for each other.”

She throws up a silencing hand and presses the earpiece into her ear. “We’re on,” she says, tone suddenly all business. “The asshole is in the building.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky x oc #bucky barnes x oc #bucky barnes x original female character #bucky x original female character #marvel fanfic #avengers fanfiction #supernova #artists on tumblr

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tsipasce · 4 years

Text

Same Difference, ch.05

Chapters: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04

AO3 | Fanfic

The door opened and she saw what looked like a control room with a window that overlooked what seemed like a training arena. The walls and floors of the arena were much rougher than the pristine surfaces of the lab. Whatever had happened in there prior had been overhauled multiple times over.

I wonder just how much he lets loose in here… and on who?

Snapping her out of her daydream, Overhaul began,” You’ve seen my—”

“No, I haven’t.” She cut him off, knowing he was eager to see her use it first. “I may have read reports and seen photos, but I haven’t actually seen you use it. So…” she motioned her hand for him to begin.

He scanned her for a moment before indulging her, “Alright, what would you like to see?”

“Just do whatever you were trying to do to me in the back of the car, hm?” she smiled but the emotion didn’t reach her eyes.

He narrowed his gaze at her, seemingly amused. He went to a place on the wall, looking between Nanami and it comparatively before removing his glove. He pressed his bare hand to the wall, taking a chunk out of it to create a golem-like figure of her. It didn’t have much detail specific to her, but it had arms, legs, and a head. He removed the other glove slowly placing both hands on either arm of the golem. Within a second both arms were gone, now particles floating in the air. Within the next second, they were back, formed exactly the same as before. It was odd seeing it used on stone walls when all the reports spoke of flesh and bone. Though she’d never wish anyone to be a test subject, it was a little underwhelming seeing it this way.

Overhaul must have seen the thoughts across her face as he paused before calmly rolling up his sleeve. She could see him tense for a split second before his arm was disassembled then reassembled in the same breath.

As terrifying as it was to see him dismember himself so easily, she was also professionally (and morbidly) intrigued. How much detail would one have to know and actively apply in order to disassemble and completely reassemble something as complex as a limb in that short a time span? It was as fascinating as it was terrifying.

“Now,” He began, rousing her from her thoughts, “I’d like to see something from you. What exactly did you do to me in the car?”

“Oh… that? That was um...” suddenly she was embarrassed, feeling her cheeks warm as she remembered the moment and her very ill-timed thoughts. “It was nothing.”

“It didn’t feel like nothing. Explain.”

“Well, I call it Reverb—not the most interesting name, I know—but it’s basically…” his eyes narrowed as she hesitated to answer.

“Out with it.” He said, getting impatient.

“I... tickled you?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s really a harmless move.”

“Harmless?” He said with more incredulity.

“Ok, so your ego was a little bruised, but your cells should have recovered just fine. How are your abdominals and obliques doing?” She asked sincerely this time, hoping he wouldn’t think she was trying to tease him further.

Sighing, but still quite irritated, he replied, “They’re fine. What exactly did you do to produce that... ‘tickling’ feeling?”

He’s definitely pissed…

“I guess another firsthand demonstration would be out of the question, so here” she replied as she approached the wall, placing both hands on it carefully. She turned to see if he was watching her and though he was obviously still irritated, his eyes were tracking her every move. Nanami focused, replicating what she had done on him days before. Small pieces of the wall began to undulate, disassembling and reassembling in the same instant making the wall seem as though it was rolling. She stopped and the wall continued to reverberate the movements she had started as she explained in detail what was happening.

“… I see.” He spoke affirmatively as though he was mildly impressed, his eyes now trained on the wall. She had to admit a certain sense of pride welled up in her at the thought of impressing him in some way. It was difficult not to imagine having some kind of connection when you know you share such an intimate part of yourself with another person… Even if they are a bit more morally ambiguous than I’m used to…. Nanami admitted to herself.

“How else do you utilize my qui— I mean overhaul?” He queried.

The correction was small, but she was appreciative nonetheless. Thinking in earnest how to answer the question, she began,“ Well, it’s nothing special since I don’t use it on as large a scale as you, quite the opposite, really.” He gave her a look encouraging her to elaborate. “I prefer to use traditional methods in my line of work, but if the situation calls for it, I can also use it to create and remove clots.”

“You mean causing a pulmonary embolism?”

“NO. My gosh, no for the exact opposite reason. Everything train goes straight to Murder Town™ with you, huh?” exasperated Nanami before she continued, “If reaching the artery is too invasive, I can break it down through a small incision in the skin preventing fun things like what you mentioned. Besides healing, I usually only use it for self-defense and smaller transformations. I… don’t use it very often.” At this Overhaul noticed what sounded like shame in her voice. She’d been told throughout her childhood she was a freak after the incident as she’d refer to it. Even now, it felt like a sore subject. He knew he’d be able to coax the story out of her, but it wouldn’t be tonight.

“Then tell me, how were you able to negate my attack in the car?”

“That I can’t tell you.” She replied simply.

He shifted his weight, folding his arms, “If we’re going to make this research count, we’ll have to cooperate. Don’t you want to see how far this power can be taken?” He coaxed.

“One, I don’t have a particular lust for power, so that ~thing~ you’re doing with your eyes won’t work on me. And two, even if it did, I couldn’t tell you. Not just because I find the idea of you being able to nullify a quirk to be… unsettling. But because I literally don’t know how I did it either. It just happened.”

He searched her features for signs of deception but found nothing. “Then it looks like we’ll have to get to the bottom of that as well. “ He moved suddenly towards her and she braced herself, but he continued to walk past her and back into the lab.

It looks like we’re playing the long game then… Nanami noted inwardly. He could have tried testing her again physically, but hadn’t. It was an intentional show of restraint to get her to let her guard down. She wasn’t naïve enough to think it was just out of some newfound comradery, but she also wasn’t 100% sure it was some malicious power play. Manipulation was something she assumed he’d employ but seeing it in action was a different story. He’s good at this.

She followed him after a beat into the lab to see him writing notes down on the white board.

“Now that we’ve demonstrated what we know to be physically true, we can begin crafting a hypothesis and concrete testing procedures, a.k.a. the fun part.” He said after hearing her enter the room. He finished the observations he was writing and sat down at the workbench, motioning for her to sit across from him. “Let’s compare notes, shall we?”

She sat down and began looking through the file of her he’d created as well as some hypothesis he’d come up with. It was odd reading such a detailed report about herself and even more so imagining how he’d gotten the information so quickly, but she was relieved to see there wasn’t a mention of the incident. Brushing the obvious invasion of privacy aside, she was grateful to see that even though quirks were a virus to him, his assessment of why they shared the quirk was very similar to hers: genetic mutation.

Closing the folder on the table, Nanami began “It looks like agree on the premise of this experiment. Now we can—”

“Not entirely.” He cut in.

“Please, don’t say it…” Nanami sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“But it has to be said. We can acknowledge quirks as a genetic mutation while also acknowledging the origin of that mutation was a virus.”

“That’s just… no. Sure viruses can be ‘passed down’ in the sense that their genetic leftovers might show up in offspring, but that doesn’t mean that’s what quirks are. They’re much too drastic of a change to just be caused by a virus. No other virus behaves that way.”

“Until recent history, quirks were not normal. They are an anomaly so it’s no stretch of the imagination to say that the virus that created them would also be an anomaly. You’re being close-minded about this, and it will hinder the process.” He stated matter-of-factly.

“I’m being close-minded? This coming from the guy who won’t accept the consensus of thousands of scientists. If I’m close-minded, you’re downright obtuse!” She retorted.

The argument went on for the next 15-20 minutes, both of them behaving much like children in the eyes of Kurono who had returned 10 minutes ago, but decided it was best to wait outside until they’d finished whatever spat they were having. Now silent, they were both standing, leaning over the table and glaring at each other. Suddenly, Nanami saw an epiphany flash across Overhaul’s face and consequently a look of annoyance came across hers.

“Let’s make a bet.”

“No way.” She responded immediately, but judging by the look in his eyes, he had already made plans to change her answer.

“You haven’t even heard the terms. “

“Knowing what I know about you, I don’t think I want to...”

He continued as though he’d already won, “If your hypothesis is correct, you may ask one favor of me. Anything you want.”

“And if you win? What fresh hell will I be in then?”

“I get the same; nothing more, nothing less. Any favor I ask, you have to grant it.”

“There is literally zero reason for me to indulge in this.”

“That sounds like something a loser would say.”

Brows raised in disbelief Nanami retorted, “Are you... trying to goad me?”

“Is it working?” He replied smoothly, knowing the answer.

“… You’re on.” She knew she’d regret letting her pride get the best of her, but she also knew she’d win. Nothing wrong with a casual, life-altering bet every now and again. She reassured herself.

“Perfect. We’ll begin blood sampling and testing during your next visit. In the meantime, I’ll be thinking of a fitting favor as my prize.”

“As if you haven’t already decided…” Nanami said under her breath. When she looked back at his face, she caught a glint of pure mischief in his eyes.

Yup, definitely going to regret this.

#enjoy your terrible decision ma'am #overhaul fanfiction #overhaul #overhaul x oc #bnha #mha #fanfic #ao3 fic #mha overhaul #chisaki kai #kai chisaki #mha chisaki #same difference #mha oc #mha fanfic

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hi-i-love-u-bitch · 5 years

Text

Turns Out Being a Super Hero Is Actually Really Gay! - Chapter 3

I am so, so sorry this is late guys! A lot of things have been going on and I wasn’t able to finish the chapter on time yesterday. But it’s here now and I hope you like it. As always I would like to thank the lovely @sugarglider9603 and @ask-spiderverse-virgil for there lovely AU for without it I would not have the inspiration to write this. ENJOY!!!

Master Post

Beginning

Next Chapter

So, after the group of teens were done freaking out because “holy shit, Thomas Sanders, top YouTube celebrity, is THE Rainbow Weaver!” Thomas decided to take them to a small but cozy pizza place down town. He bought them six boxes of pizza, hot wings, fries, onion rings, ice cream shakes and a few other goodies, much to the teens protests and insistence that they could pay for themselves. Thomas assured them that it was fine but that still didn’t stop them from arguing that it wasn’t. He payed no mind to their comments as he payed for the food and lead them towards the back of the restaurant where a large circular booth resided, big enough to fit them all.

As Thomas watched these teens…these children scarf down their food like they hadn’t eaten a day in their lives he couldn’t help but worry. He knew exactly how scary it must be for them to suddenly gain strange new powers and not know what to do with them. But the difference between them was that Thomas got his powers near the middle of his senior year of high school and these kids were still…sophomores? Junior? Either way, they were still much to young to be worrying about powers and weird things like that. Unlike them Thomas didn’t have much of a “social life” in high school and college so being Rainbow Weaver was a good distraction from that but these kids…he doubt they were the same.

They had come searching for him for help and honestly Thomas was totally willing to give them whatever help they needed. He just didn’t know what? He wasn’t a teacher, he was a chemical engineering and theater major that did YouTube videos and super heroing on the side. I mean, if they needed help controlling their powers Thomas would to the best, he could to teach them but if they wanted to become super heroes…

“Are you okay, Mr. Sanders?” Thomas looked up to see four pairs of curious eyes looking at him, still munching away at their meal. He was pretty sure it was the stoic looking kid that asked him this, Logan he believed his name was.

“Hmm, yeah,” Thomas said, shaking his head “yeah, why do you ask?”

“You kind of have this…” The loud kid, Roman if he was remembering correctly, gestured towards him “…face, like you’ve just kind of walked into your doom.”

Thomas saw how the groups shoulders slumped, the mood severely brought down by that statement and he really didn’t want to see these boys in anymore distressed then they already were.

“Oh, no, no, uh, I was just…thinking you know,” Thomas sighed, rubbing his face tiredly “like, how is it that Oscorp can screw up twice and let a multimillion-dollar mutant spider escape…again! Like, they’re supposed to be a bunch of geniuses, right? But they’re letting this happen again and god only knows how much more powerful that little spider is. I was lucky enough to have accidently stepped on mine and killed it but it seems that little guy you got there is a bit smarter.”

“Indeed,” Logan perked up “from what I was able to study and pick up from its distorted speech pattern, it seems to know what it’s doing. It was trying to kill us as it saw us as a potential threat, which is why the venom dosage increased with each victim, but it unknowingly mutated our DNA. To say it was disappointed that I woke up the next morning is…an understatement.”

“It likes me though.” The gloomy kid, Virgil he recalled, stated smugly.

Logan rolled his eyes, “Yes, well you did help it escape out your window so of course it sees you as some sort of ally.”

“Are we just going to skip over the fact that it TRIED to kill us?” Roman said worriedly.

“Yes, because I don’t wanna think about it,” The cutesy kid, Patton, whined childishly but there was a glint of fear in his eyes “and for the record tell that creepy crawly death dealer that I don’t like it either!”

“It’s nothing personal Patton,” Virgil assured “consciously or not it’s just a defense mechanism all spiders have when they’re scared.”

“I don’t care,” Patton cried “I still don’t want it anywhere near me!”

Thomas watched as they continued to argue and bicker, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips and the bitter taste of dread at the pit of his stomach. These were kids, teenagers really but still kids none the less, still full of life and wonder. He couldn’t burden them with the life of a hero. All the worry and sleepless nights and existential dread that came along with the job would definitely snuff out whatever innocence these boys had left. But he couldn’t just leave them to their own devices, they needed guidance on how to navigate their new-found powers. He’d be willing to do that, only that, nothing else. His job was dangerous as it was and he didn’t need to drag these kids into it, especially if they still don’t yet know how to control their powers.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Thomas said, finally interrupting the boys’ argument “I can help you guys out, well, I can try. I’ll help you guys understand what you’re going through and how to control your powers better, though I’m not sure if we’re exactly the same in that regard. Again, I have no idea what advances Oscorp has made in genetic splicing. You all could have totally different powers then what I’m used to.”

“We have all the basic functions,” Logan explained helpfully “though only Virgil and Roman can make webbing and I assume you can’t hear at the frequency we have; thus, you can’t hear the spider talking.”

“You would be correct in that assumption,” Thomas nodded “though, I mean, sometimes I can sense where they are and how they’re feeling but that’s about it. Nothing too crazy. Anything else?”

“None that we know of,” Roman shrugged “we’ve just been sticking to things all day and seeing weird colors radiating off each other like fireworks and this weird buzzing in the back of our head that keeps telling us somethings happening.”

“Yeah, that would be your spidy sense.” Thomas said.

The boys tilted their heads like some sort of adorable, confused puppy, “Spidy sense?”

“It’s a thing that I have and you guys have that makes us a LOT more aware of our surroundings,” Thomas explained “how do you think I’m able to attack, dodge, and shoot things without even looking at them?”

“Oh, you mean precognition,” Logan said “like the crab spider.”

“Sort of,” Thomas said “think of it as a sort of alarm clock that goes off every time dangers near.”

“Oh great, just what I need in my life,” Virgil said sarcastically “even more anxiety.”

“Yeah, that’s gunna be a tough one for you to handle bud,” Thomas said sympathetically “given that you have anxiety it’ll feel like one and the same but I’ll teach you a few tricks to help tell the difference.”

Virgil gave him a shy appreciative smile and Thomas all but melted as the kid mumbled, “Th-thanks…that would…help a lot actually.”

No Sanders! Do not get attached to these kids! Do not!

“So, um, what are we gunna do now?” Patton piped up shyly “Are you gunna teach us to be super heroes?”

“Do we get to be your sidekicks?” Roman asked excitedly, practically bouncing in his seat.

Thomas bit the inside of his cheek anxiously, “Um, well, I’ll teach you guys how to control your powers and understand yourselves better and everything but I don’t think-”

“Obviously, we would have to train a significant amount before even considering becoming his sidekicks.” Logan stated plainly.

“I know that Einstein,” Roman huffed “I’m just asking!”

“Wait, if we’re gunna do this are we gunna have to make our own costumes or something?” Virgil asked “Because I don’t know if I’m willing to put in that much effort.”

“Ooo, Roman and I can help you guys if you want,” Patton offered “I’m good at sewing and Roman sometimes helps out the costume department at the drama club.”

“Thank you, Patton, but I don’t think we should be thinking about costumes until after we’ve completed our training.” Logan said.

“Boo you whore,” Roman grumbled “you’re no fun.”

“You are not super heroes!” Thomas said firmly causing the table to go quiet, all four boys staring at him with a mixture of confusion and disappointment. He sighed, “Look, guys, my job as Rainbow Weaver, it’s not a game. It’s dangerous and tiring and…is the biggest responsibility you could ever ask for.”

The boys fidgeted in their seats, having now realized they were sort of jumping to conclusions and not seeing the reality of the situation. Thomas continued on, “You guys are just kids, you’re still in high school, you’re still growing, you still have a life! I don’t want you guys to leave that behind. Being a super hero may seem cool and glamorous but it’s a lot of work and sometimes…” There was a look of pain that flashed across Thomas is eyes, too quick for the boys to properly evaluate “…sometimes you won’t be able to save everyone. This is a job where you can’t afford to make mistakes because they have dire consequences. For you, the people around you, their families, everyone, they’re all affected. And no one will give you the benefit of the doubt because you’re a hero and it’s your job to protect them.”

It was silent for a moment then Roman asked, quiet and unsure, “If it’s such a burden then…why did you become a hero?”

The look of pain and regret returned to Thomas is eyes as he ran an anxious hand across his salt and pepper brown hair, “To become a better person then what I once was.”

“What does that mean?” Virgil asked bravely but still quite gentle.

“Sometimes,” Thomas began carefully “things happen and…people get hurt and then you have no choice but to take responsibility for that.” No one pressed him any further but it seemed Thomas still had more to say, “You guys have an opportunity to…live a normal life. I had that opportunity but the choices I made forced me to abandon it and I regret it so much. But I knew it was something to be done and because of it I did end up helping a lot of people but…also hurting a lot of people as well.”

Finally, Thomas looked back up at them, a strong determined look in his eyes, “I don’t want you guys going through the same experiences as I did. I want you boys to live your lives as normally as possible. Go out, make friends, date, have parties, worry about exams…live a life. Because if you choose to go down this path this will be your only life, do you understand?”

It was quiet again, this time much longer and this time it was Logan who chose to brake it, “No offence, Mr. Sanders, we understand completely what you’re trying to tell us but what else do you expect us to do with these abilities?”

Thomas sighed tiredly, “Look, kid-”

“No, we get it,” Logan continued “well, at least, I know I do. I can not speak for us all but I understand how big of a responsibility this is. But do you really expect us to go about our lives normally as we did before? How are we supposed to live “normally” when we know that we are anything but? How are we going to go our whole lives doing nothing and letting our powers sit dormant when we can feel it itching beneath our skin? Honestly, could you have done that?”

Thomas thought a moment, flashing back to when he first got his powers and how everything felt jittery and loud. How he had trouble sitting still and had been restless for days. Then he became Rainbow Weaver and everything changed, it was difficult yes but it really helped get out a lot of that nervous, restless energy he had inside him. He felt he was using his powers correctly and not just sitting there while his head buzzed like an angry hornets’ nest. When he first got his powers, he knew he needed to do SOMETHING with them but he didn’t know what. That lead to a lot of trouble be even then after he knew that he still couldn’t just sit there.

“I’ll admit that I would have been restless and miserable my entire life if I hadn’t become Rainbow Weaver,” Thomas answered honestly “however, I think I still would of chosen to do so instead of taking on the mask.”

“Do you really hate being Rainbow Weaver that much?” Virgil asked. He looked…hurt? Disappointed? Thomas wasn’t quite sure but he knew for sure that he didn’t like it.

“I don’t hate being Rainbow Weaver,” Thomas said, looking out the window next to their booth “it’s just…after a couple of years it kind of takes a toll on you. I’m just a tired, grumpy old man, nothing special.”

More silence, the boys quietly mulling over the conversation, fidgeting with that same restless energy mentioned earlier and then…

“You’re special to me.”

Thomas looked back to see Roman staring back at him with a pout and a gentle yet fiery look in his eyes. “You may not think yourself special as a person but to me, be it Thomas Sanders or Rainbow Weaver, you’ve brought…just a little bit more joy into my life. And maybe it’s not a lot to someone like you but it’s a lot to me. So…if I could be able to do that for someone, even if it’s just one person, I’d be over the moon.

“I understand your concern and you’re absolutely right, this is not a game. But Logan is, dare I say it, right, we can’t just sit around letting these powers fester inside us. What are we supposed to do with our selves for the rest of our lives? Can’t go back to being normal when we know for damn sure we’re not and I don’t know about the rest of you but I want to do more with my life. Especially now that I can!”

Thomas sighed once more, rubbing a hand over his face and hair, “You gotta understand kid, this isn’t like the comic books. The dangers and hardships are real and once you’re in there is no going back.”

“And I accept that,” Roman replied firmly “I accept all of it and everything and…if I live to regret it then oh well. But I know that I’ll regret it more knowing I had the power to do something but instead chose to do nothing. In the end it’s my choice and nobody else is.”

Well, I’m not sure about the whole super hero thing,” Virgil pipped up “but…I do feel like I should be doing something with these powers. I’ve taught my self to play it safe and keep quiet my whole life but now…now I wanna do something more. I don’t want to just sit here letting the world pass me by anymore I want…I want to do something spontaneous and brave.

“A-and I know this isn’t some sort of hobby you pick up like dancing or painting or something,” Virgil said quickly “but I feel like…it’s something I need to do. Something I have to do. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“I…” Thomas wanted to say yes, yes, he understood everything that they were saying because it was what drove him to be Rainbow Weaver in the first place. But he also wanted to lie and say no, just so he can protect these kids from the horrors that awaited them down the hero’s path.

“Plus,” Patton added “you look like you could use the help. It must be difficult looking after an entire city alone. And since we all have powers now, we can make the work a whole lot easier for you in return for you helping us control our powers.”

“Indeed,” Logan said, readjusting his fake glasses “crime rate will surely go down in numbers with five on the team. It will give you time to have optimal rest between shifts as well as pursue what ever other hobbies you previously could not do. It’s a solid business proposition for all of us, we get the proper training we need to control our new-found abilities and you have a more balanced out schedule for both your vigilante duties and personal life.”

Thomas looked over these kids, determination in their eyes and fire in their bellies, ready to take on the weight of the world for him. They were stubborn and foolish and so not ready for anything yet to come…but it would be very hypocritical of Thomas to deny them this path. Plus, he wasn’t their parent, it wasn’t like he could completely tell them what to do. All he could do was warn them of what was ahead and hope to whatever god above they take his advice. Thomas sighed again, then he groaned, then he banged his head against the table because these kids were so stubborn, exactly like him, and it was all just so frustrating. He looked back up at them, face squished against the table as four pairs of worried eyes stared at him, he probably looked insane. He probably was insane but was too deep in shit to actually be affected by anything now.

“Fine.” Thomas said, he was so going to regret this.

“Fine what?” Roman asked.

Thomas made a vague gesture with his hand, “Fine, I’ll…teach you and train you guys and, if you really want, I’ll…consider letting you help me out a bit.”

“Really?” Logan said, somewhat excitedly, like a child on Christmas.

If this were not such a serious matter Thomas would of laughed, “But nothing to dangerous, just…common things, purse muggers, corner store robberies, assaulters, jay walkers, all that jazz.”

“Hey, that’s good enough for me.” Virgil said, a small excited smile growing on this face.

“Me too!” Patton exclaimed.

“I second that motion.” Logan added.

“Epic!” Roman cheered.

“But!” Thomas interrupted “You guys are still minors and in high school so you all are under my rule, got it? You do exactly as I say when I say it.”

They all nodded enthusiastically, still jittery with excitement as Thomas continued to give out instructions, “This is a dangerous job and I want you all trained first and for most. So, we aren’t gunna be going out on patrol anytime soon, get that into your head right now. Secondly, it is imperative you keep all of this a secret, everything we do can not only put you at risk but your families and friends.”

“Luckily, I don’t have any friends.” Virgil half joked.

Logan rolled his eyes, “Gee, thanks.”

“Thirdly,” Thomas cut in, his expression growing dark and serious “if you guys are going to do this, you have to be willing to put everything you have into this. No short cuts, no half assed effort, no walking away. It’s all or nothing, got it?”

“Got it.” They echoed, just as serious and determined as Thomas feared they’d be.

“Alright,” Thomas huffed, leaning back to stretch “let’s finish up here and then we have to go somewhere.”

“Where?” Patton asked curiously.

“There are a few people I want you to meet.” Thomas smirked mysteriously.

---

Thomas had been worried at first, it was very suspicious for a grown adult man to take for underaged teenagers to his house. It gave off the wrong impression to people and made him look like a creep. But what else could he do but make sure the boys were safe and comfortable, assuring them that nothing bad would happen even though when he said it out loud it still sounded mildly disturbing. Like sure, he was Rainbow Weaver, but he was still a stranger to these boys and he did not want to scare them off when they had no where else to turn to for help.

Thankfully the boys understood Thomas is worry and were careful to not crowed around too much to make it seem weird. When they got to his neighborhood Roman commented that the two-story brownstone townhouse Thomas lived in looked like the house from Stuart Little. Thomas paused a moment, tilting his head back to get a good look at his house before chuckling and reluctantly agreeing that, “Yeah, you’re kind of right.”

Inside, the house was spacious and neat, band, concert, musical and play posters hung on the wall alongside pictures of Thomas and his friends and family. There were lots of colors, figurines from movies and shows, potted plants on shelves, tables and corners, and just and overall warm atmosphere.

“Whoa, your house is really neat-o!” Patton exclaimed, excitingly looking over one of the potted plants filled with sweet peas.

Thomas smiled bashfully, “Oh, thanks, I-”

“You went to a My Chemical Romance concert?!” Virgil gasped softly as he stared at one of the hung-up posters “And you got it signed?!”

“Yeah,” Thomas nodded “me and Joan went-”

“You went to see Hamilton!” Roman squealed, looking up at another poster “And you got it signed by Lin Manuel Mirandas!”

“Yes and-”

“Do you have the entire anthology of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle’s work?” Logan asked excitedly, he ran his finger over the books of the bookshelf and plucked out The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

“Not entirely but-”

“Oh my gosh!” Patton squealed, running over to the living room towards the shelf filled with pop vinyl’s “You have a bunch of Winnie the Pooh pops! And Steven Universe! I love that show!”

“I heard Steven Universe!” Roman exclaimed, rushing in behind his friend.

“Where?” Virgil chimed in, not to far behind with Logan tailing along, nose deep in a Sherlock Holmes book.

“You have a record player!” Roman gasped, quickly kneeling to look through Thomas is record box “What types of records do you have?”

“Oh, David Bowie!” Patton smiled as he pulled out a record.

“Cool, the Beatles White Album!” Virgil grinned.

“Isn’t that the one that Charles Manson was obsessed over?” Roman asked.

“It’s still a good album.” Virgil and Thomas said at the same time. They blinked at each other in surprise before dissolving into a fit of giggles. It was all a little more chaotic then what Thomas was expecting but it wasn’t unwelcome. Thomas didn’t usually have many people over except for Joan and Talyn so it was…nice hearing the house so full of laughter.

Speaking of Joan and Talyn…

“Thomas? Is that you?” A voice from down the hall made it’s way closer and closer to the living room where it was revealed to belong to a lanky, scraggily looking person in an orange beanie. “Talyn and I just finished-”

They paused, looking over the scene carefully as the boys all froze like deer caught in headlights. They scanned over each teen one by one before making direct eye contact with Thomas and carefully asking: “What the hell is going on?”

“Joan, uh,” Thomas flubbered in place, caught way off guard “look, hears the thing, uh, they have what I have.”

“That isn’t making any of this look any better Thomas!” Joan exclaimed, frustrated.

“Uh…”

“We have spider powers!” Roman butted in, shooting a web at a nearby picture frame causing it to fall and brake “Sorry!”

“God damn it Roman!” Virgil shrieked “Be careful, this isn’t your house!”

“Oh please,” Roman huffed “as if you weren’t just going through his vinyl collection not five seconds ago. And without permission might I add.”

“You did so as well,” Logan rebutted “so it’s kind of hypocritical of you to make that statement.”

“Right back at you!” Roman shot back, gesturing to the book in Logan’s hands.

The bespectacled man flushed with embarrassment, setting the book down on a nearby table as Virgil bounced back up, “Well, he’s not the one that broke something!”

“Come on guys, please no fighting.” Patton begged but it fell on deaf ears and soon the room was filled with loud arguing. Joan and Thomas observed the chaos unfold silently, contemplating what their best course of action should be. Wait it out? Get involved?

“What’s going on?” Another voice chimed in and the room went silent once more, turning to find a short person with orange and black hair. Joan pointed to Thomas who merely shrugged sheepishly and said: “Talyn, you’re never gunna believe this.”

---

They head down towards Thomas is basement (which still sounds super fucking creepy) and find that it has been transformed into pretty sizable high-tech lab. If Logan had been excited by the books that Thomas owned, he was over the moon by all the gadgets and text books he had down there. He kept asking question after question about how everything worked and what did this do and what did that do? Thomas found the whole thing very amusing, like watching a little kid at a candy store.

“Did you all make all this stuff?” Logan asked excitedly.

“Well, it was mainly Joan and Talyn.” Thomas said.

“Don’t sell yourself short man,” Joan scolded lightly, patting their friend on the back “you did a lot of the designing and schematics. Not your fault you had to be out saving everybody.”

“Stay still please,” Talyn ordered gently, seating Logan on a near by chair next to Patton, Roman, and Virgil who had a few suction cup wires stuck to their foreheads, necks, chests, and arms. “The scanning process will go a lot faster if we’re able to draw blood from you and use is as a sort of blue print to navigate your body. Is that okay?”

The boys looked at each other tentatively before all nodding in agreement. As Talyn got a few petri dishes and micro slides ready Joan had taken the spider from Logan’s backpack and transferred it into a small containment unit that was hooked up to the large motherboard computer. Thomas watched anxiously from the sideline as his friends scurried around to get everything ready.

“So, what are you gunna do to us?” Virgil asked nervously as Talyn carefully wiped down one of his fingers with rubbing alcohol.

“Well, we took a sample from the spider and scanning it right now to see what’s been mixed in to it,” Talyn explained as they took a clean syringe needle and pricked his finger with it dropping blood into the petri dish and micro slid before bandaging it up. It hadn’t even hurt. “Then we’re gunna use your DNA to see what’s been transformed as well as to easily scan your vitals.”

“Why are you doing that?” Patton asked as he watched them move on to Roman.

“Well for one, to make sure your mutation is stable,” Joan chimed in helpfully “and to also see what other abilities you guys may have. Keep in mind you guys may or may not have other abilities within you that will take a bit of time to, uh, activate.”

“What happens if our mutation isn’t stable?” Roman asked, rubbing his bandage finger.

The adults were quiet for a moment which of course did not sit well with the teens one bit. Talyn gently smiled at them, wrapping up Patton’s finger before finally moving on to Logan. “Don’t worry about it, it’s most likely not going to happen. You boys seem pretty stable from what we’ve observed.”

“That’s not ominous at all.” Virgil said sarcastically.

“Starting scan,” Joan announced once Talyn was finish getting their sample from Logan. They typed away quickly at the computer as a long beam of blue light scanned the quartet up and down and a light tingly sensation was felt where the suction cups were attached. The boys didn’t move once, much to fearful they might accidently mess up the scanning process, Virgil didn’t even want to breath.

Finally, after a few seconds, there was an audible beep and the blue lights shut off. Virgil, along with the other three, let out a loud sigh, shoulders still a bit tense but not as much as when the scanning was happening. Thomas quickly walked over towards them to make sure they were okay.

“You guys good?” He asked.

“We’re okie dokie,” Patton giggled nervously “just, uh, a bit frazzled.”

“I think I’m stuck to my chair.” Virgil admitted bashfully, his hands had been gripping the sides of the stool and Thomas could now see that he was physically trying to pull them off.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re gunna hurt yourself,” Thomas cooed softly “just breath, in for four…hold for seven…out for eight. Good job, keep it up.”

Once he was able to calm Virgil down enough and get him unstuck, he looked to the others to make sure they were okay too. As Patton said earlier, he was a bit frazzled but ultimately okay, Roman was a bit jittery but seemed to be calming down as he followed Virgil’s breathing technique. Logan was just fine and was once again talking and asking a dozen questions about what just happened and how it worked and what did they find and etcetera, etcetera.

“Good news, your mutation is stable,” Joan announced and there was an obvious sigh of relief from both Thomas and the boys “we have found some interesting data though. This poor little spider has been spliced through hell and back. It’s practically a new species on it’s own, way different then the first generation that bit Thomas.”

“How so?” Logan asked, intrigued.

“Well, for one it has a few functions not typically normal for a spider,” Talyn said, looking through a few graphs on their tablet “it’s been extremely enhanced and mutated over and over again. Like if they were copying the same piece of paper again and again. It just all stacks up into this…it can barely be called a spider, I honestly don’t know what it is.”

“Well, it still looks like a creepy crawly spider to me.” Patton pouted.

“Looks are one thing, the function of it is another,” Joan said thoughtfully, pressing a few buttons and gesturing towards the containment unit the spider was in “watch this.”

The boys and Thomas looked towards the chamber and watched the spider scuttle around as the soft buzz of electricity filled its tank then it disappeared. Their eyes widened as they did a double take to make sure that really happened and the spider really wasn’t there anymore.

“Where’d it go?” Roman asked.

“It’s still there,” Joan said, typing once more and the tank was soon glossed over in Infrared light. There they saw the spider, still inside, scuttling around its tank as if nothing has changed. “Besides invisibility it seems to have other super abilities as well. We can’t for sure name all of them but I’ve got a few here listed out and ready for testing.”

“Sit back boys, Thomas move out of the way, please,” Talyn ordered gently “this’ll tingle a little.”

They typed something out on their tablet and the boys felt a slight tingle of electricity move throughout their bodies. It didn’t hurt and it didn’t last long so the boys were left confused as to what happened. Until they looked to Virgil.

“Virgil?” Logan called out, looking around the lab when he saw that his friend was no longer seated on the stool “Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here.” A disembodied voice said.

Patton screamed, jumping out of his chair and on to Roman’s lap, “There’s a ghost!”

“What?”

“V-Virgil, is that you?” Roman asked, holding Patton close.

“Yeah, what are you guys looking at?” The voice demanded.

“We aren’t looking at anything, we’re looking for you.” Logan said.

“But I’m right-” There was a sudden pause then a shriek of fear “I can’t see my-my hands or my feet or my anything!”

Thomas quickly turned to Joan and Talyn when he heard the panic rise in Virgil’s voice, “Whatever you did, stop it now!”

Talyn nodded, quickly typing on their tablet and another small tingle of electricity was sent out. Virgil reappeared slowly, arms hugging around his waist as he curled into himself and eyes squeezed shut. Thomas was by his side in an instant, gently coxing him back to reality, “Hey, its okay, you’re okay. Breath for me, please.”

Virgil took a breath and peeked out from one eye before looking down and sighing with relief when he was able to see himself again. He looked back up to Thomas with fearful eyes, “W-what was that?”

“I’m not sure,” Thomas admitted before looking over and firmly pining his two friends with a look “what did you guys do?”

They gave an apologetic smile as Joan leaped to explain what happened, “Well, we sent the same small electric pulse we used on the spider towards your brain to see if you would have the same effects. Obviously, it did and obviously we should have prepared you guys a bit more in advance. We’re sorry.”

“Yeah, that’s our bad.” Talyn added.

Thomas sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Guys, we talked about this, please give substantial warning BEFORE the experiment happens. Not everyone is super geniuses like you two and know exactly what’s going to happen.”

“I take it this has happened before?” Logan stated, having now gotten up to be by Virgil’s side, a hand placed gently on his friends back rubbing soothing circles.

“Yeah,” Thomas admitted “but usually it’s with me on the receiving end. I’m used to it by now but of course you guys aren’t so…” He gave his friends a pointed look “warning next time.”

“Next time?” Virgil squeaked.

“Oh, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Thomas assured quickly “we can do this another day. I know today has been really stressful for you boys already so I understand if you guys want to go home already and get some rest.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Virgil said quickly “really, just…you know, a little freaked out. Might as well get it over with now so we won’t have to worry about it later.”

“Are you sure?” Logan asked, his hand still remained in contact with Virgil’s back.

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Roman added “mental health is just as important as physical health you know.”

“Yeah kiddo, if it’s gunna be too much for you we rather just wait for a bit to cool down.” Patton said sweetly.

Virgil cheeks flushed a light pink, head ducking down so that his bangs cover his eyes, “I’m fine, really. Th-thanks for checking up though. But, like, what about you guys? How do you guys feel about all this…experimenting stuff?”

“Yeah, I want to make sure you boys are all comfortable with all of this,” Thomas said firmly “if anything crosses a line or you want to stop, tell us okay?”

“I’m good.” Roman nodded.

“I am as well.” Logan confirmed, sitting back down.

“Me too.” Patton chimed in as he climbed off of Roman’s lap.

“I’ll be fine.” Virgil murmured.

“Excellent,” Joan said excitingly turning back to the computer “the next set of tests will be of a similar fashion. We’ll send a wave of electronic pules to your brain’s nervous system and see if we can get a reaction.”

“Remember, if you guys get uncomfortable or need us to stop don’t be afraid to tell us, okay?” Talyn added.

With one last nod of confirmation Joan said, “Let us begin.”

---

“Roman can you sing a note for me?” Talyn asked.

Roman gave her a look of confusion, “You want me to sing? I mean, not that I won’t do it but why?”

“With this test we seem to only be getting a reaction from your brain so I want to see if the ability we’ve unlocked is active,” Talyn explained “but make sure to face the wall over there, please.”

“Uh, okay,” Roman said, shifting in his seat towards the directed area “can I ask what ability this is?”

“Sonic sound waves,” Joan said casually “we all might want to take a step back just in case.”

Thomas and the other three stepped behind Roman who in turn rolled his eyes before focusing on the task at hand. All he had to do was sing a note, but like what note? How high? How loud? How would this even work? Roman sighed, shrugged, and decided to just riff Ariel’s theme.

“Ah, ah, ah! Ah, ah, ah!”

The room shook and shuttered like an earthquake. Everyone covered their ears from be beautiful yet ear piercingly loud tune that shook the entire building. The wall which Roman was facing when he sang had shook so violently there was a large crack that ripped down the middle of it.

Roman was quick to cover his mouth, eyes wide at the destruction he’s caused, “Oh dear…”

“Yeah, I think we should have that dormant for now until he learns how to control it.” Thomas suggested, trying to settle the ringing in his ear.

“We can’t exactly turn their powers on or off,” Joan explained “these are just electric pulses that activate their powers for them artificially. On their own we don’t know when these powers will pop up or how they’ll be able to activate them. It could take days, months, even years.”

“I just hope it doesn’t come out during the play this winter.” Roman moaned.

---

“This one is simple,” Joan said as they walked over towards a light switch on a wall “it shows that each of you have some variation of night vision, though I’m not sure how strong it is. I’m gunna turn off the light and you guys tell me what you see, okay?”

Four nods of agreement were seen and Joan finally flipped the switch. Nothing happened, well, at least for Logan. He looked around confused, was the light switch broken? Everything still looked the same to him.

“What do you see?” Talyn asked, they stared straight ahead at nothing and Logan wondered why that was.

“You still haven’t turned off the light.” Logan stated obviously.

Joan, who was also looking into the nothingness, pulled a face of confusion before breaking out into a large grin, “Logan, we just switched them off.”

“No, you haven’t,” Logan argued “I mean you used the light switch but they’re still….on.” He looked up to the florescent lights above him that were now dark and it suddenly dawned on him “I have night vision…”

“I think I do too,” Virgil piped up, squinting around the room “but when you turned off the light everything just kind of got dim.”

“Yeah, me too.” Patton chimed in.

“It all turned black and white for me,” Roman said “like, I can see everything fine but it’s all just shades of gray.”

“Excellent,” Joan smiled, flicking the light switch back on “it seems like Logan has the better night vision out of everyone. Roman’s vision is probably more what the spider would see normally and Patton and Virgil’s are about the same as Thomas.”

“Why do you think that is?” Logan asked curiously “We all got bit by the same spider so you would assume we would all be the same ability wise.”

“You’re all different,” Talyn said obviously “if you were the same person then maybe you’d have similar reactions but depending on your DNA your bodies will react to the venom differently. Plus, you did theorize that with each victim the spider used more and more venom so that can also be an important factor.”

Logan nodded thoughtfully, “I guess so.”

---

“We’re gunna do a quick test on just you Patton,” Talyn said as they tied a blindfold over Patton’s eyes “we’ve been picking up some strange brainwaves coming from you and we want to if we’re right.”

“Uh, okay,” Patton said tentatively, squirming in his seat “is it something bad?”

“No, no nothing bad,” Talyn assured “it’s just we’ve noticed that you seemed to be a very empathetic person and we want to see if that has been enhanced in anyway with your mutation.”

“Oh, well, what are we gunna do then?” Patton asked.

“Well, we’ve given everybody a note card of a certain feeling and they’re gunna try to emulate that feeling,” Joan explained as they passed out the note cards “your job is to guess what that feeling is.”

“How am I gunna do that?” Patton asked, head turning to try and track Joan’s voice.

“How ever you deem it necessary,” Joan said “I’ve known some people to sense thing through auras and given your ‘spidy sense’ that could be the case. But sometimes physical contact is needed to truly pick up what the other person is feeling.”

“Mmh, okay,” Patton said “but why the blindfold?”

“Eye contact and facial features can sometimes give away what a person’s feeling very easily,” Talyn chimed in “so this a ‘no cheating’ blindfold.”

“Oooh, sorry, I’m dumb.” Patton giggled.

“You are NOT dumb, Patton!” Roman said firmly, arms crossed stubbornly and glaring at his best friend even though Patton couldn’t see him.

Patton smiled passively, “Whatever you say, Ro.”

“I will punch you in the name of friendship!” Roman declared dramatically.

The group laughed at the two friends’ antics before quickly settling into silence as Joan lined them up in front of Patton with them going first. Patton fidgeted nervously as Joan stood in front him, he could tell someone was there but he just couldn’t read them properly. Shyly, Patton extended both his hands out, palms up, and Joan silently replied by carefully setting their own hands over his.

“I feel…curious,” Patton hummed “like, I have a lot of questions, well, they have a lot of question. I have questions too but that’s not me feeling question…wait can you feel question? Oh, it’s changing. They’re amused but also satisfied that they’re questions have been answered. Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.” Joan chuckled, letting go of Patton’s hands.

“Oh, Joan,” Patton said surprised “I didn’t know you’d be participating too. I don’t have to guess names, right? I don’t think I can do that.”

“No, just feelings.” They assured, stepping away and letting the next person go up.

Virgil carefully stepped up, looking down at his note card before stuffing it in his pocket. He just stood there a moment, staring down at Patton’s extended hands before carefully reaching out to grab them. Patton hummed curiously, soft warm hands squeezing Virgil’s gently.

“They’re kind of nervous,” Patton stated “they really don’t know what they should be doing right now. Aw, don’t be nervous, you’re doing great. Oh, they’re relaxing a little, that’s good. Glad I could lend a hand.”

Virgil snorted, Logan groaned in the background and everybody else chuckled. Patton giggled delightfully, “See, they think I’m funny! Did I do good?”

“Doing great Patton,” Joan assured “Next please.”

Virgil stepped out of the way for Thomas to move forward. The older man was hesitant at first but ultimately sighed, handing his note card off to Joan before grabbing hold of Patton’s hands. Immediately, Patton’s smiling face morphed into a melancholy frown, brow knitting together as if in immense pain.

“Oh they’re…i-it feels…sad,” Patton whimpered, voice cracked and watery “b-but it’s not a normal sad it’s like…like they lost someone precious to them.”

The others watch on with amazement and worry as tears began to stream down Patton’s face, “They’re in a lot of pain but…they also feel empty and cold. N-now they feel guilty, oh don’t feel guilty! I’m fine, really it’s just…can I give you a hug?”

Thomas looked down at Patton’s tear stained face, fear and guilt clawing at his chest for causing so much destress to such a sweet kid. Taking a breath to calm himself Thomas stepped forward and engulfed the teen in a big hug. Patton was quick to wrap his arms tightly around Thomas’s waist as if he was trying to physically mend all of Thomas is broken pieces back together. Warmth bloomed in Thomas’s chest at the sweet gesture and he couldn’t help but squeeze a little tighter and hold on a bit longer. The room was calm and quiet, no one wanting to disturb the gentle moment being had between the two.

“I know it’s hard but…I promise we’ll get through it eventually.” Patton murmured gently into his chest.

They final let go after a long while and Thomas sheepishly side stepped away while Patton wiped away the tears from under his blindfold. Roman was about to step forward but Talyn held him back to take his place, seeing that Roman’s note card also had an extreme emotion they figured Patton could use a bit of an emotional cool down. Gently, Talyn grabbed onto Patton’s hands, rubbing soothing circles over his fingers.

“They’re very clam,” Patton sniffed, taking in a breath then slowly letting it out “it’s gentle and nice, very soothing. Like, aloe being put over a burn mark…that’s weird analogy, I’m sorry.”

Talyn huffed out a laugh, “I think it’s suitable.”

“Oh, Talyn, you’re here too,” Patton smiled “did I get it right?”

“Mmh,” Talyn nodded before realizing Patton couldn’t see them “yeah, you did. We can stop now if you want, we have plenty of date.”

“No, I wanna finish,” Patton said determined “I’m fine to continue.”

“You sure?” Talyn asked carefully.

Patton nodded, “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay, next person.” Talyn stepped aside and let Roman take their place. Roman handed them his note card before firmly taking Patton’s hands in his. Patton pouted, his brow scrunched up in annoyance.

“I feel…angry,” Patton said “well, maybe not ‘angry’ angry but like…kind of annoyed, maybe a little more frustrated. Also, a tad bit worried. Geez, what’s got you so riled up?”

“Because my best friend thinks he’s dumb but he’s not and I love him very much!” Roman grumbled, stomping his foot childishly “Also you were crying earlier and I don’t like seeing you sad.”

“Aw, Ro-Ro,” Patton giggled, pulling Roman in for a hug “I love you too, sorry for making you worry.”

“It’s not your fault Peaches,” Roman murmured, burying his face into Patton’s hair “but to quote you: ‘if you keep talking bad about yourself, I will physically fight you!’”

The friends giggled, holding each other for a little while longer until Roman finally “forgave” Patton and moved out of the way for the last person. Logan fidgeted nervously, quite unlike his usual calm and cool self, frowning down at the note card in his hand, “Happy” it read. Logan was pretty sure that Virgil switched out their note cards if the smug face he had was anything to go by. He glared at his best friend before handing off the note card and stepping in front of Patton, who extended his hands readily.

Logan gulped nervously, no that was not the right emotion to be having right now. Happy, he had to be happy. Think happy thoughts…what kind of happy thoughts? His mother’s homed cooked Mansaf…his first telescope his brother got him on his 7th birthday…the first time his father took him to the aquarium and the jelly fish looked like stars…the time Virgil fell down the stairs…Logan huffed a small laugh on that last one.

Carefully, Logan lifted his hands and hovered them a few inches above Patton’s own. He gulped again, face red hot and all eyes (minus Patton’s) were on him, waiting. Why was he nervous? Why couldn’t he move? Why were his hands suddenly so sweaty? This was just an experiment, it was not big deal!

“Um, are you still there?” Patton asked, confused as to why it was taking so long.

“Give them a minute,” Joan said helpfully, but the knowing smirk on his and everybody else is face wasn’t helpful at all. At least not for Logan.

“Oh, okay, take your time.” Patton said soothingly, a soft smile painting his face. Patton always had a nice smile, it made everything feel lighter. Logan was quick to stop that train of thought and immediately dropped his hands onto Patton’s.

Patton hummed quietly, his hands were soft and warm, short and fat compared to Logan’s cold, clammy, spindly fingers. They were so different and yet they felt completely natural together. It was a completely absurd and illogical thought to say the least but it was a common thought process Logan had whenever he was around the bright sunshine of a human being known as Patton Foster.

Patton smiled, a pretty blush spreading across his cheeks, “It’s really warm and fluttery.”

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ Logan thought to himself ‘Abort mission! Abort mission!’

But he was frozen in place as Patton continued to explain, “Like a thousand butterflies in my stomach but I also want to throw up at the same time. Not in a bad way though. They’re a bit nervous too but also kind of excited. They’re in love!”

Logan choked on his own spit and he heard Virgil and Roman in the background quietly snickering to themselves. He threw them a glare to shut up before turning back to remove his hands but found that Patton still held them firmly in his own. Turns out he wasn’t done yet.

“They’re embarrassed now,” He said tentatively “was I not supposed to say that? Sorry, I got excited. You’re love is a very nice feeling and whoever that lucky person is to receive it I hope they know how wonderfully blessed they are.”

Logan was pretty sure his face was on fire now, he’s surprised that the smoke alarm hadn’t started beeping. Or maybe it has but he just couldn’t hear it over the beating of his own heart in his ears and Roman and Virgil’s annoying laughter. Logan cleared his throat, shaking his thoughts out of his head before carefully removing his hands from Patton’s gentle hold and rejoining the group.

“Did I get it right?” Patton asked.

“Uh, it wasn’t what was written on the note card but I think you still got it right,” Joan chuckled as they went to remove Patton’s blindfold as well as the suction cups on his head and neck “I think that’s enough testing for today. It’s getting late and you kids should probably start getting home.”

“Should we come back tomorrow?” Patton asked, blinking his eyes to adjust to the light.

“Only if you want to,” Thomas butted in before either Joan or Talyn could answer “and only if you guys are not busy. Remember, you still have school and a life to attend to.”

“Don’t remind me,” Roman whined “I still gotta finish my homework when I get home.”

“That’s ironic since we told our parents we were in a study group.” Logan said.

“What time is it anyway?” Virgil asked, stretching out his arms.

Talyn looked down at their watch, “’Bout to be eight thirty.”

“Eight thirty!” The boys exclaimed, panic rising in their eyes as they scrambled to pack their things.

“Aw, man my mom’s gunna kill for missing dinner!” Patton shrieked.

“You’re mom? Have you met my mom?” Roman voice cracked “She still thinks I’m sick and wanted me to stay home!”

“Thanks for everything Mr. Sanders, uh, we’ll come by tomorrow if we aren’t grounded.” Virgil said in a rush as they all raced up stairs.

“Pleasure meeting all of you!” Logan called out as he dashed out the basement door with his friends. The door slammed shut and there was a rumble of feet running across the hall before they heard the front door open and slam shut too.

“Nice kids.” Joan said after a moment of silence.

“Don’t get too attached to them,” Thomas warned as he walked over to the containment unit where the little spider was still scuttling around in “this all has to be taken seriously and professionally. These kids have no idea what going on to them or what they’ve just gotten themselves into so we have to there to guide them.”

“Mmh, are you telling us that or yourself?” Talyn smirked.

Thomas sputtered uselessly, “I-I…wh-what are you talking about?”

“Don’t think we don’t see how you interact with those kids,” Talyn chuckled “all maternal and such.”

“I’m not – it’s not…I don’t do that…” Thomas said meekly, but even he was starting to doubt that “I mean, they’re just kids and I know what it’s like going through what they’re going through. God knows I would have liked a bit of guidance. And they’re also younger then what I was when I first got my powers, we have to keep a careful eye on them.”

“I have a theory,” Joan announced dramatically “that by the end of the week they’ll have you wrapped around their little fingers.”

“Yeah right,” Thomas grumbled “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m not really ‘hip’ with the kids.”

“You’re right, I should give you the benefit of the doubt,” Joan said solemnly “one and a half weeks it is.”

Talyn and Joan laughed while Thomas groaned but it wasn’t because he was frustrated but because he knew Joan was probably right.

Tag:

@immortaldystopia @metaphoricalpluto2 @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @misunderstood-shadow @fairytailtwists @0callmevirge0 @blenderkit17 @galaxy-lilies-main @lumi-1 @paint-in-flames

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #sander sides fanfiction #patton sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #logicality #prinxiety #spiderverse au #tobashiarg!

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Marvel Team-Up Volume 4 #3 Thoughts

And so comes the end of this arc and I guess Eve Ewing’s whole run???? Didn’t know this was an anthology team up title jeez.

Did it go out with a bang or a whimper? Well...a bit of both.

...And by both I mean there were literal bangs in the issue so the whimpers...you get it...

Okay so for starters the cover lies again like in issue #1. The cover promises us Peter in Kamala’s body with spider powers and Kamala in Peter’s body with Inhuman powers.

And in the issue we get...the same shit from the past 2 issues, standard Freaky Friday.

It’s less bad here than in issue #1 though. Issue #1’s lie was actively reductive to the reading experience. Here it’s just artistic licence and really the idea of seeing Spidey with Kamala’s powers and vice versa is only good for a strong visual. If Peter in Kamala’s body got the same power set it’d seriously undermine the creative legs of the Freaky Friday dynamic in the first place. So a quick cover for an eye catching visual is good enough.

Moving on...this issue is kind of the weakest instalment in this already kind of shakey arc. If you turned your brain off you could kind of enjoy issues #1-2 but the creative energy in this issue was waning a lot.

You can tell this because once the Jackal, the villain of this arc, gets defeated the issue continues for over 11 pages. Over 11 pages of restoring the status quo.

And when I say restoring the status quo I don’t simply mean Peter and Kamala inevitably swap back, I mean they swap back and also forget everything that happened, leaving you wondering what the point of any of this was.

Kamala will go forward in life never knowing the impending dread of job interviews or unpaid bills and Peter Parker will never remember the pain and discomfort of a period or the sweet taste of cotton candy lip gloss...okay maybe for both parties forgetting this ever happened isn’t the worst idea.

But the issue could’ve been mitigated if Ewing had just restructured the story a little bit so that the swap lasted way less than two days. In fact even if they forgot what happened wouldn’t it raise big red flags that 2 days have elapsed within which they remember nothing?

Even putting this aside the story continues the trajectory of having a lot of small problems that add up. Some of these don’t break the issue per se but the numeracy of them adds up to an over all lack of thought and planning put into the story.

Let’s talk about one example I actually forgot to bring up in issue #2. So in the first issue when the Jackal showed up and declared Rosario’s Polly tech would be useful in his cloning experiments my first thought was ‘how’? But I let it slide because maybe the story would elaborate.

And in issue #2 it did but having Spidey throw out a theory, and in issue #3 we got that theory confirmed.

The plan goes like this. The Jackal’s wants to use Rosario’s tech alongside his cloning tech to create clones with the consciousness of another person.

When that happened my thoughts Digivolved from ‘how?’ into ‘why?’

Like...okay, the Jackal has a God complex.

OBVIOUSLY.

Even shitty BND era writers picked up on that.

This would definitely come under the remit of playing God, but even during the nadir of the Clone Saga (we call that Maximum Clonage kids) you could just about see the method in his madness. It wasn’t rationale but it added up within his warped logic. He wanted to destroy life on Earth and replace it with the life HE created.

Cool.

Now in this story he wants to...basically transfer someone’s mind into someone else’s body, but not even their actual body a copy of their actual body.

What possible purpose would that serve?

I could KIND of see it if he wanted to transfer people’s minds into clones of their own bodies. Like what happened to Xavier after he was infected with the Brood.

But into a clone of someone else’s body?

That’s some Underpants Gnome level planning.

Not to mention can’t he basically already do that?

He created the Carrion virus IIRC which genetically reprograms the infected subject into basically believing themselves to be Miles Warren. He was also able to update Ben Reilly’s memories so they’d match Peter Parker’s. If you can do that then surely you could already put someone’s consciousness into a body that isn’t theirs? Or at least the scientific leap from one to the other isn’t that huge.

Another rather significant issue with the plot revolves around the Isotope Genome Accelerator. Yeah remember that? The thing that separated Peter and Spider-Man back in Spencer’s opening arc.

Remember how it heavily implied to explode in ASM v5 #5 and thus merge Peter and Spidey back together? Apparently not. It was either undamaged or got rebuilt apparently. Even better it has plot convenience powers now. It’s used to swap Peter and Kamala again.

So just so we are clear the Isotope Genome Accelerator’s scientific applications include:

- Irradiating shit

- Irradiating house spiders to the point where biting people gives them spider powers which may or may not include organic webbing

- Removing super powered mutations (see Spider-Man: the Final Adventure #4)

- Temporarily ‘masking’ super powered mutations (see above)

- Separating people into different sides of themselves (and also maybe creating different clothes for them too?)

- Swapping people’s minds which is somehow an extension of the latter application

- Copies and/or transfers the super powers of one person to another (we’ll get back to that)

Holy shit this thing can do everything short of toast bread!

Good lord...the issue tries to explain that it’s ability to separate people into two different entities is how they’re going to affect the swap but...that doesn’t make a lick of sense even by the already bullshit science in play.

How is physically separating the thrill seeking adventurer from the responsible everyman out of the one person (or in theory the man from the cannibalistic lizard monster) remotely similar to swapping the minds of two people?

What did it separate both minds from both bodies and then...they just snapped back to where they belonged?*

This isn’t even mentioning how for what is presumably a gag the Accelerator also apparently gave Rosario Kamala’s powers. How? Why? Does this mean Kamala lost her powers? Does it mean the Accelerator copied her powers into Rosario?

Never explained who fucking knows the Isotope Genome Accelerator is the plot device that just keeps on giving.

There are other lesser contrivances in the issue that are contrivances nevertheless.

Remember how I said in issue #1 how it’s weird that everyone is so concerned about destroying Rosario’s polly device because surely she has the plans to another one? Well this issue confirms she does, she has schematics to another device.

Which raises two big questions.

a) If the device is going to make all the difference in swapping Peter and Kamala back...why do they need the accelerator? Why the drama and tension over that, they could just build another device and swap back easy peasey

b) Why was there any tension over destroying the device in issue #1 and thus kicking off this whole arc’s premise?

Another piece of technological contrivance comes from the chip Peter off panel implanted in his brain ages ago without telling the readers. So apparently it was useless all along because it’d only work if whoever was trying to mind swap with him also had a chip.**Oh and it’s eroded away any how.

This is a mind bender this one.

We have a non-Spidey comic by a non-Spidey office establishing Spider-Man did something major that was very smart and very obvious provided it was possible (which we were never led to believe it was in Spidey stories proper). That same non-Spidey comic upon establishing this plot device then uses it as a possible explanation for the scenario it’s setting up. Then in resolving that scenario reveals the plot device wasn’t working, never was going to work, wasn’t a factor in the first place and thus paints Spider-Man as stupid.

WTF!

WTF was the point of the anti-body swap chip then?

You might as well have never had that in the comic and thereby not made Spider-Man storytellers look dumb for not considering that or made the character look dumb for not considering it enough.

Just lose that plot point altogether and nothing changes.

Everything else wrong with this issue is less egregious, it’s smaller things that further spell out the lack of attention being paid to the story.

They range from minor stuff like typos to pretentious narration at the start of the issue.

Not only pretentious by the way but pointless given how they forget what happens and it doesn’t seem to serve the story. It pays lip service to us as people accepting our good and bad traits but...that hasn’t got anything to d with this story in the first place. Also after 2 issues of talking out loud NOW thought captions are a thing?

Let’s see what other shit is wrong with this issue.

Oh right, Rosario has been tied up and conscious in her office at ESU (on a weekday no less) all night but NOBDOY heard her calling for help in all that time? Or she didn’t try yelling before Peter and Kamala conveniently showed up?

Not to mention Kamala says her spider sense (which wasn’t working in the last issue for no explained reason) is alerting her to maybe getting the right location for Rosario but...didn’t they have her office listed? Wasn’t that what they were following? And why would the spider sense (from her and Peter’s POV) tingle if there wasn’t any danger the issue implies it’s the mere fact they’re zeroing in on Rosario.

Other smaller problems include Peter complaining that teens are so mean as though this is a revelation. Peter...Parker...is learning teens can be jerks....um...did Ewing not read Amazing Fantasy #15...page 1...?

Similarly talks about how he’s learned to focus on the problems of the present and not worry about the future. My kneejerk reaction to that is to call BS, Peter clearly does fret over the future.

Final little complaints Spidey bangs on about his knees not hurting when Kamala in his older body never brings them up and seems fine. Aaaaaand there is a line of dialogue from kamala about how the Jackal doesn’t understand that humans are more than bodies and stored ideas yadda yadda yadda,. But like...from her point of view the Jackal never said any of that shit. I guess maybe she’s right but she shouldn’t know to be right if you see what I mean.

I’ll finish off with a little positivity.

The art was lovely again.

Spidey owning Jackal with Kamala’s powers was bad ass.

Spider-Man acting the older mentor figure to Kamala was awesome, just wish it wasn’t undermined by him being in her body when he was doing that.

So all in all...this arc is very unimpressive.

You know how online, maybe on tumblr, maybe on CBR, maybe on Google images or scans daily you see a selection of pages from a comic book story? Basically the highlights?

Yeah if you were to experience issue #1 and #2 like that that’s how I’d recommend experiencing this story.

Reading or God forbid buying it is highly NOT recommended.

*Shit now I think about it the way Roasrio’s device was explained it doesn’t even add up to being able to mind swap. It turns the mind into data and stores it. Okay...how does that mean we’re swapping the minds of two meatbag humans with no mechanical storage device or interface involved?

**Even though again Doc Ock DIDN’T swap minds with Peter he uploaded a copy of his mind into his head and vice versa, Peter’s real mind was still in his body the whole time but buried.

#Spider-Man #ms. marvel #ms marvel #Kamala Khan #peter parker #marvel team-up #Miles Warren #the jackal #jackal #Eve L. Ewing

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emperorsfoot · 6 years

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Osmosians

Whether you choose to accept the Omniverse ret-cons that Osmosians are mutant-Earthlings, or still remain loyal to the Alien Force/Ultimate Alien canon that they’re aliens, you have to agree that they deserve more development. One of the “core three” main characters is an “Osmosian” yet deplorably little is actually explained about them. Not only is that not fair to the character, its also just plain bad writing.

But this post isn’t complaining about that. This post is suggesting a Fan Theory and sharing a head canon.

Using Omniverse Ret-cons...

Osmosians are mutant-Earthlings:

Okay, so they’re not aliens. Osmosians are humans from Earth that just happen to have super-powers. That’s fine. This is fine.

But we should have been shown more of them. Other human-Earthlings with “Osmosian” powers. Or, if they didn’t want to create a whole bunch of other characters, then give us more information. Servantis seemed to know what he was talking about. Give us some statistics. “1 in every 11 people has the mutation”. Too common? Okay, the mutation is unique to [x] demographic, but only 1 in every 11 people in that demographic have the mutation.

If its a genetic mutation then it’s passed genetically. Mrs. Levin does not appear to manifest the gene, so how did Kevin get it? “Devin” Levin might not have ever existed, but he had to have some kind of father. Since Mrs. Levin doesn’t carry the mutation, it had to come from him. Is the Osmosian mutation attached to the Y-chromosome?

After all, all the Osmosians we actually see are male.

My main man, Kevin. Our central Osmosian!

Aggregor, our Osmosian warlord. Terror of the Andromeda Galaxy, Predator of Celestialsapians, and super-sexy badass spear-fighter. (Sure, because of the Omniverse ret-cons he’s no longer his own person but a failed “clone” of Kevin. Servantis trying to reproduce the Osmosian mutation. But he’s still one of only 4 Osmosians we ever see on screen.)

Devlin, Kevin’s son from the future who’s super cool and (much like the next one on this list) was only ever seen in ONE episode.

Finally, our sexy space-dad, Devin Levin. Sure, Devin doesn’t exist. But we actually get to see him on screen. That’s more than can be said about a lot of other characters that supposably exist in this franchise.

Now, one could easily just say, “Renkon, you’re thinking too hard. We don’t see any other Osmosians because its a NEW mutation. For all we know, Kevin is the first. That’s why all the Osmosians are directly related to Kevin. That’s why Servantis took it upon himself to coin the name ‘Osmosian’ in the first place.”

Well, ya know what, you’re probably right.

But I have an alternate theory!

And now, the actual Fan Theory:

So, in the original series, Max says that almost all of Earths myths and legends can actually trace their origins to alien encounters. I suggest that Osmosians are old as any other Earthling myth. Just nobody noticed because the myth -and Osmosians themselves- are from a small ethnic group that has been marginalized (and persecuted) consistently across human history.

I have said it before on this blog, but “Levin” is a Jewish name.

And guess what, we Jews have a mythical monster that actually fits Kevin’s powers pretty damn well!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, גולם the golem.

But what makes the golem such a good fit for Kevin? Allow me to explain.

Golems are mostly male. There are a few instances of creatures fitting golem characteristics that are female. But, over all, the vast majority of golem we see in the mythical canons are male -just like every damn Osmosian we actually get to see in canon is male.

Golem are not creatures for “good times”. They are meant to be threatening and ominous figures. Rather like Kevin. Yeah, he’s a good guy, but he’s also got a dark streak to him. He’s edgy, and dangerous, and violent, and kinda gets off on people being afraid of him.

But while they might be dark and threatening figures, golem are not malevolent creatures. In fact, they’re guardians and protectors. All that ominousness and intimidation is for the purpose of deterring outright attacks and intentional harm to the Jewish people. Now think about Kevin and how territorial and defensive he is. Ben raises his voice to Gwen, Kevin turns around and tells him to shut the fuck up and respect her. Kevin’s house is destroyed and he straight up murders the guy who did it. Just imagine literally any scene when his car is involved. Kevin is territorial and protective, just like a golem.

Finally, lets talk powers.

Golem are creatures molded from cray, or sculpted from stone. They are stone men. And Kevin’s most used power is the ability to absorb and copy stone (among other materials that would make acceptable golem).

But that’s not it. Golem are also supposed to be shape-shifters. And what’s Kevin’s second favorite power?

His shape shifting.

And, let us not forget that Kevin was shapeshifting before he ever learned to control it.

“Osmosians” are actually golem, or at the very least the decedents of golem, and the “Osmosian mutation” or “golem gene” is attached to the Y-chromosome which is why the only Osmosians we ever actually see are male.

So, that’s my theory.

Y’all are free to disagree with it. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of you will disagree with me. But I’ve been thinking about this for a while and felt it was about time I shared.

Obviously, Kevin himself is secular.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t be of Jewish decent and descended from a line of golem. Or that “Osmosians” are just what a stupid goy like Servantis calls golem.

[ Part 2 of this post can be read HERE ]

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ravensimps · 5 years

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Welcome To Gotham Part 2 (Victor Zsasz x OC)

"So who are you exactly?" The woman asks as I help get Jim out of the car "Raven Volturi, I just got into town" I laugh "Montoya, Why did you stay and help him?" I smile "Because I have an annoying habit of trying to save people" I groan as we get Jim into a university lab "In here" A young woman smiles as we put Jm on a table "Ugh he is heavier than he looks" I groan and the man laughs "I'm Detective Allen" I shake his hand "Nice to meet you" I smile and take a seat while the woman patches up Jim.

I take the piece of paper out of my pocket along with my phone and start calling landlords.

30 minutes and about 4 calls later, I have seen pictures of a perfect industrial loft. So I call the landlord to make arrangements.

20 Minutes later I have agreed to meet the landlord later today at the loft, With that all sorted out I relax until Jim wakes up.

A couple of hours later Jim wakes up coughing, I decide to wait until the woman checks him over before I walk over to him.

"Raven your still here?" He asks surprised "Yup I wanted to wait until you woke up" I smile "Your walking fine? How? I saw you get shot twice" I laugh"You must have hit your head Jim, I wasn't shot" I gently pat his arm "I have to go and meet a man about a place to stay, I'll give you my number" I write my number down and hand it to him "You can't leave! If Zsasz finds you..." I smile softly "Jim I will be fine" I gently hug him and walk out of the building.

I decide to walk to the loft it is not that far and its almost time to meet the landlord and yes I am using a map on my phone.

20 Minutes later I get to the loft and a man is already waiting "Miss Volturi?" He smiles "Yeah sorry I'm late" I smile shyly and shake his hand "It's fine, Your the first to show any interest in this loft...Oh my name is Mike" I materialize money into my back pockets as we walk inside the loft.

"Wow it looks even bigger and better in person" I smile like a little kid "I have to tell you the rent is not cheap, It is £1.000 A month and I need the first months rent in advance" I smirk and take the money out of my pockets "I'll take it! trust me payments won't be an issue" His jaw drops as he hands me the paperwork.

The paperwork only took about 10 minutes, Mike gave me the keys and left a few minutes ago.

"Welp better get to work" I mumble and go sit in the middle of the floor cross-legged. I let my powers flow out of me and all around the loft until it is decorated to my liking.

5 Minutes later everything is done and I love it so much! And now I am starving! I walk into my now fully stocked kitchen, Too lazy to make a proper meal I just shove a frozen curry into the microwave and put it on for 9 minutes to cook.

9 Minutes later the curry is done and I grab a can of cola before going upstairs to my bedroom to watch TV and eat.

15 Minutes pass as I ate my food and my ears pick up rustling from downstairs "Really?" I groan and summon a knife that I don't need but hey acting human. I sneak down the stairs and hide behind 1 of the sofa's, I slowly use the knife as a mirror and I can see it is the bald man from the police station! Well that was quick. I pull the knife away as he slowly turns around "Come out...Now" I hear the sound of the safety being taken off his guns, I tuck the knife into my jeans and cover it with my top "I'm coming out! Don't shoot!" I softly yell and stand up with my hands up, He whistles and points 1 of his pistols to an empty spot about 6 feet in front of him. I nod and slowly walk over to him, He is watching me with his head tilted "Hmm I am pretty sure I shot you...Twice" He says slightly confused "Uh nope you missed...Evidently" I laugh slightly and he looks right into my eyes "Let me explain something to you. When I mean to shoot someone I do not miss, I meant to shoot you" I smirk "Maybe you're having an off day?" He glares and backs me into the wall, THUD The knife hits the wall before my back and the man smirks "Whatcha got there?" I smile innocently "Uh nothing" He suddenly turns me around and presses his chest to my back "Last chance" I shiver as his breath hits my neck but stay silent. He lifts up my top and I jump as he runs a finger along my hip before taking the knife "You know next time it's better if you just tell me the truth" I nod "You first, Why are you here?" He turns me back around and steps back "My boss Don Carmine Falcone wants to meet you and talk about your 'Stunt' at the GCPD" I groan "Do I have to?" I pout and he smiles "I have orders not to harm you...So let's go" I growl and raise my eyebrows "And if I say no?" He smiles again but this one is very creepy "Then we can do this the fun way" I think for a second "Fine I'll go" He sighs "Buzzkill" And grabs my arm before leading me out to his car.

"Wow!" He pulls up to a huge mansion "Get out" He growls and I step out of the car, There are about 10 armed men outside "Huh that's a lot of guards" I mumble and jump as he grabs my arm and pulls me inside.

"What's your name?" I ask as we get to a huge door "You'll find out soon" He smirks and opens the door "Ladies first" He slightly pushes me into the room and an old man late 50's early 60's stands up and faces me. "So you're the girl I have heard so much about? Didn't you shoot her?" He asks the bald man and I can't help but laugh "S-Sorry" I cough covering my laugh as the man glares at me "What's your name?" The older man no doubt Falcone asks "Raven Volturi...Sir" I smile "Call me Carmine" He smiles and offers his hand, I shake his hand "Nice to meet you Carmine" I smile "So first things first, What brings you to Gotham? Obviously, I can easily tell you are not from here" I laugh a little "I just got to town today actually...I would rather not talk about why its personal" He nods "How did you come to meet James Gordon?" He asks "I got a lift into town and the man told me the GCPD could help me find a list of landlords and apartments. So I walked into the GCPD looking like a lost puppy and Jim helped me, That is until Mr. 'Can't shoot shit' over there came at Jim" I can feel the man glaring at me and I turn to him "What? You wouldn't tell me your name" I smile innocently "Boss?" He says through Gritted teeth "His name is Victor Zsasz, Why did you help a man you just met?" Carmine signals Victor to calm down "Because he helped me and I'm a nice person" He suddenly looks into my eyes "You have Red eyes? That's odd" I jump as Victor is suddenly in front of me and he looks right into my eyes "Huh I didn't even notice those" Victor groans a little and I look away "Uh genetic mutation" I mumble feeling very awkward "Anyone in your family have it?" Carmine asks noticing how awkward I look "Uh yeah my dad and uncle have it...My mother has natural purple eyes so it is kind of a family thing" He smiles and nods "I assume being new to town you won't have a job yet?" I shake my head "No not yet I don't even know where to look" I tuck my hair behind my ear "I am in need of a housekeeper, Would you be interested?"I take a minute to think. I mean he doesn't seem bad and I would seem more normal "Yes I'm interested"I Smile "Good! Obviously, you'll cook, Clean, etc. Do you know any self-defense?" I smirk and look at Zsasz "Oh how is that girl's jaw?" Carmine looks at Zsasz "What happened?" Zsasz glares at me "She snuck up on 1 of my girls...Celia and she punched her in the face with enough force to dislocate her jaw and throw her into the side of a truck" I shrug "I'm stronger than I look" Carmine raises his eyebrows "You did that?" He asks and I nod "Yeah, Oh tell Celia I'm sorry about the jaw" I smirk at Zsasz "I'll let her know" He says again with gritted teeth "Well you start tomorrow morning, Victor will take you home tonight and pick you up tomorrow morning" I groan "I can make my own way home" Carmine shakes his head "As my new house-keeper Victor will take you home" Knowing this is a losing battle I nod "Fine, Thank you Carmine" Zsasz grabs my arm and leads me back to the car.

End Of Chapter 2! Hope you enjoyed!

-Ray

@thefandomfires

#Gotham #Victor Zsasz #OC #FanFiction #Jim Gordon #Harvey Bullock

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derangedhyena-zoids · 3 years

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I guess now that I featured The Kids in something I can elaborate on them and everything related slightly without seeming completely insane. BIG HEADCANON BLATHER TIME: Raven and Ryss had 2 kids, both boys.

Ryss wasn’t a terribly good mother. She loved her kids but was a little panicked about them at all times, and didn’t really like the distraction they were. Specula was a good mother and did the majority of keeping them out of trouble.

They were also psychic as fuck, but that didn’t show up until they were hitting puberty. I’m sure that was an entire Time.

Ryss literally didn’t think she could get pregnant by Raven. She based this off of both what she’d been taught by Hiltz (humans=/=Zoidians) and the fact that Fiona had never been pregnant despite sleeping with Van for years*. So, once Ryss figured out she was pregnant**, telling Raven was a bit of an event because Raven was under the impression that such a thing wasn’t possible. He also had little interest in being a parent. Ryss also had no idea what pregnancy even entailed for a Zoidian, and neither did Fiona. Again, all she knew was what she’d learned from Hiltz, and it wasn’t as if he went out of his way to teach her the finer points of anything. (Knowledge is power after all, and he wanted wanted to hold as much power over her as possible. What she didn’t know to begin with, she couldn’t know was being withheld. All she knew from Hiltz on the topic was Zoidian pregnancies are of a greater duration than human pregnancies - mainly because he’d irritably snapped about how ‘the vermin’ reproduce faster.) Raven’s main reluctance about parenting had to do with... you know, his massive unresolved parental trauma. Which after some extreme stress he and Ryss managed to work through, largely because they had a lot in common in this department. Afterwards Raven warmed up to the idea of being a father, and was... well, Okay.jpg at it. Let’s just say he had Shadow helping Specula with the kids a lot. ...the kids were raised by Organoids. SO.

An attempt was made to keep track of Ryss and her offspring, especially after Raven’s death and she began to make herself scarce. But nobody expected the kids to be psychic af, and they quickly sussed out that something was up and followed their mom’s lead, making themselves and their families impossible to find. ....

The Guardian Force pretty quickly lost tabs on them, but did know what to “look for”, so to speak.

However, this attempt was never linked up with the information the Empire had on Ryss, mainly because too much time had passed and no one knew to bridge the info.

Anyways. All three Zoidians were aware there were differences between themselves and humans, Hiltz more than most. Hiltz was the only one of them that had an adult level of knowledge from Zoidian times. Fiona and Ryss were literal children and were only ever, at best, taught the very basics about things. Part and parcel of subscribing wholesale to the we’re-the-best group’s newsletter, Hiltz also a keen interest in biology/related, obviously interested in scholars of that group’s discussion on what amounted to Zoidian eugenics. ‘we’re the best, and here’s why.’ Hiltz didn’t even remotely consider that humans and Zoidians could hybridize, nor was he interested in finding out. (though he had well-established to Prozen and the Imperial scientists his “ownership” of Ryss and the fact she was not to be messed with, I’m sure he had to mindfuck and/or sic Ambient on a swath of folks to get them to stop bothering him about jizzing in a cup.)***

Joke’s on him because he fathered *at least* these three:

while living in the small colony with the scholar.

because he, Hiltz, the weird guy, was hot, amazing in bed, and quite DTF. scholar: ... Hiltz: (ツ) scholar: ... Hiltz: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ scholar: ...sure, whatever, what could it hurt anyways ^^^THESE FOLKS HAD A TIME. Unlike with Ryss’s kids, who at least had a slight understanding they were different and some guidance on the situation, any and all of Hiltz’s offspring HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON. And not that any of the fertility restrictions were enacted at this point in time (there’s wars, you live in the wild west, please have kids), but the addition of Zoidian into the mix fucks the inbuilt population-control-genetic-engineering-bullshit straight up, which resulted later in a lot of confusing surprises for people annnnnd is part of why miscarriages became common later down the line.

Nobody expected the spanish inquisition weird side-species fuckery. Nobody even knows to look! By NC0 times there’s just starting to be coherent, unified inquiry into the various vanilla-human mutations running around.

WHOOPS THO: Backdraft & Co have been at this shit for a while and already know a lot about this. Because they have a hard-on for the Empire and a lot of OG Backdraft are basically really rich, bitter offspring from Imperial families who think they’re better in just about every way. Including genetically. When Backdraft became predominantly a moneymaking, black-market, illegal-battling underground enterprise, a rift began and never stopped growing. Backdraft has a strong preference for recruiting folks of Guylos descent (hi, Bit), but in recent memory had stopped turning people away for not being so. Because money. It did kinda... go in peoples’ file though. In the game of historical telephone, Ryss (and Raven’s) bloodline were more or less demoted to the same: ‘from Guylos.’ Alteil was in range of figuring a few important things out. Unfortunately, HE DED. His successor with this information is Layon. Surely nothing can go wrong there. ANYWAYS. A massive and valid concern Ryss had was what would happen with hybrid offspring, since to her knowledge her kid would be the first. Hiltz’s were already adults, they were fine. They were better than fine, they just needed a lot more water and salt than everyone else. So, as we all know, Hiltz uh, actually succeeded in removing a sizable chunk of the human population on Zi. Once everyone had scraped semi-functional society back together, the powers that-were-to-be basically prioritized secure settlements and making everyone feel safe so... you know, they’d have kids. Important for the whole rebuilding society thing. The Zoidian offspring became slightly more statistically relevant during this time, because them and potentially even their kids had all been scared shitless and fled into the hills from the Death Stinger bullshit long before anyone else had. Once there they were good at Not Dying In General, because they had a variety of inexplicable abilities and were just WELL I’M A FREAK BUT I’M ALIVE SO, YOU KNOW, WE’RE COOL.

Greater than zero chance that someone started a cult. Very, very obviously: these folks knew to keep to themselves. Though the original offspring and their mother had NO idea what was going on, over time any kids at least had fair warning, and knew to keep oddity to themselves. When the most blatant expressions of things were bred out, only the subtle but strongly expressed items remained, discussion of familial strangeness subsided. Then you’re left with people like Brad who can basically see in the dark, but thinks everyone can see in the dark, it’s no big deal right? RELATED, BUT NOT: This is technically a spoiler, but not really, because I’m not sure this actually “plays into the plot” so much as it is just “a fact of the plot” annnnnd I sort of want/need to explain this a little because it’s related to all of this. In this hc, the Zoid Eve is a metaphorical hyper-simplification of ‘resources.’

Back in Zoidian times, some scholars - namely those aligned with the group(s) Hiltz was eventually born into - theorized that the Zoid Eve’s power was not an infinite resource as many believed, but actually an incredibly finite one. Not in the sense of it being used up, but the sense of “there are only ‘100′ of these, there will only ever be ‘100′ of these, we cannot add to or take away from this” (sidenote: I subscribe to the idea that the Zoid Eve was some kind of supernaturally-occurring power source that the Zoidians shaped into what everyone now calls the Zoid Eve. They did this so long ago that its origins became unclear; beliefs from various groups ran the gamut from “LITERALLY GOD” to “it was built by us”) The power of it gave life and longevity not only to all Zoids but them too. And it seemed that the more individuals there were, the smaller the “slice of the pie” they received. They began to project apocalyptic futures in which the “slices” were so small that death ran rampant, and Big War would be inevitable. Obviously, nobody wanted this. But unfortunately the group who theorized this also started a huge, lengthy campaign to reduce the population, which - after many years, a lot of societal sabotage and and many smaller conflicts between groups - eventually culminated in ongoing, wholesale slaughter, which led to the big Zoidian-apocalypse nonsense that we’re all familiar with. Cool story bro, right? Well, y’see, those ancient scholars weren’t wrong, though. To an extent that’s actually what led to the hyper-concentration of strength in the DSaurer/DScorpion battle, and why Zero and One are functionally god-tier Organoids. But what this means in modern times, is that the remaining Zoidians - and to a proportionately-relevant extent, the hybrid offspring - are the only remaining folks (besides the Organoids and Zoids) benefiting from the pie anymore. Ryss is the last Zoidian; she’s basically non-aging at this point.

First-gen hybrids? Aging at a complete snail’s pace. Second gen? Still having a very strange time. So on and so forth... Can they die? Absolutely, but it’s pretty hard to kill them. Basically only complete destruction of vital parts works. Does this also apply to Organoids and Zoids? Absolutely. “then why’s Fiona dead” Because the double-bond with Zeke seriously fucked her up. Van dragged her down, hard. “but-” Zeke could’ve pulled away from her at any time and she would’ve lived. Been a nutcase probably, but lived. She suspected it, Zeke was outright in denial; she never called him on it because she cared about him too much and didn’t want him blaming himself for whatever happened. This is what Ryss suspected/understood as well, and likewise didn’t want to break Zeke. “wait, what about zeke?” HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM IN CLOSING: I don’t have names for any of the offspring discussed here, but I have thought about the appearances/other stuff. Obviously. I’ve never specified how many original offspring(s) were running around. But it couldn’t have been too many. So anyone in NC0 times related to either Ryss or Hiltz can trace back to ^^^the folks pictured above, most likely. I actually have no idea how to properly calculate the amount of population vs how much impact a handful of reproducing individuals would have over x generations. So please excuse vagueness there, as I’m both open to adjusting that number when/if it becomes feasible to do so, and also don’t think it’s terribly necessary to have this information nailed down because let’s be real nobody cares and that’s a lot of work. Also as I’ve mentioned before, there’s several serious confounding factors here: -these people can LIVE A LONG TIME. The original hybrids and their kids ARE POTENTIALLY STILL ALIVE. They mature relatively rapidly, but then coast into a very slow aging process. That means that - especially the males - could still technically be producing offspring. -that makes my head hurt and makes figuring out lineages stupid nightmare mode. so don’t expect me to actually do that because I’m not sure how to. The main Facts(tm) you need are: Sara is 4th gen. Vega is 5th gen x2. Brad is 5th gen. Stoller is 7th gen.

that’s the important part, okay. (*’s from earlier: ) *tl;dr the bizarre situation they’d inadvertently created with Zeke wreaked havoc on Fiona’s ability to reproduce. Conversely, Raven and Ryss *almost* had a ‘proper’ setup, so Ryss was fine. Nobody knew this. **Ryss figured this out with Fiona’s help - and who did they both go to, to ask in confidence?

Yep. ”isn’t he-” YEP. ***The Empire knows next to nothing about Hiltz. The Republic, however has AN OBSCENE AMOUNT of information about him. Difficulty level? The data was both classified, and never really tied back to him. Because Hiltz murdered the scholar and burned down his house/lab, the connecting information was all lost. The scholar had moved the material to his house in secret, due to fears of an Imperial spy in their research facility - he was telling Hiltz the truth. The most that the Empire ever learned at that time was that the Republic had “captured” a Zoidian (Hiltz), and that was about it. This drove the fervor which led to them grabbing at the Republic’s continued excavations - eg what happened with Shadow, and presumably them attacking (and IMO, overpowering) the Republic group that’d also seized Ryss. Before Hiltz became involved, Imperial scientists gleaned a lot about Ryss, but as I’ve mentioned before, she wasn’t treated anywhere nearly as poorly as Hiltz had been. She also had Specula, which helped a lot. So, the Empire knew nothing of Hiltz, but a lot about Ryss. Thanks to Alteil and his predecessor’s longstanding obsession with the Imperial military, Backdraft has almost all of the Imperial military’s data from the past few centuries. Ergo...

#headcanon #long post #spoilers kinda?#in this house everything is a MESS

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bastardsunlight · 5 years

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//Vampire Hunter D meta blabber no one asked for--but I gotta get it down

Idk if you’ve seen my theories about the Nobility, but I DO like to go on… In the novels, they talk about the “Greater Nobility” and sometimes there’s a number attached—I think it’s 1000, but you know that could also just mean “a lot but not a zillion”. They also refer to “Lesser Nobility”. There’s also a class called the “seven kings”. (And then ofc the Sacred Ancestor). Okay so since the books don’t ever explain WHAT vampires ARE… I’mma just throw this out there and say that it’s the headcanon system I usually run with when I write D.

So the seven “kings” are seven natural-born Vampires. They were born of human mothers and, at some point in their lives, died, but did not stay dead. Some legends hold that these people angered god to such an extent that he wouldn’t take them and forbade the devil to do so, so they’re cursed to wander the world forever, or some such—most likely, it’s a genetic divergence from the regular human genome, thus making vampires a mutation. Now, they’re not… REALLY undead, not these vampires; they can sire children. So, it seems, can the Greater Nobility (of which Magnus Lee is one). Obviously, he fathered Larmica, who is a dhampir, but he still managed to get a boner and do the do, so they can’t really be dead. The question is “can female vampires have children?” I’mma say yes and I’ll go into that l8r.

I’ve counted the “sacred ancestor”, Dracula, as one of the seven kings, in the past, but given the way the literature talks about him, I don’t think he is. Either way, he’s like the others. Carmilla is one of those seven “kings”. She got greedy and Dracula got fucking sick of it. That’s usually the story. Well, in my headcanon zone, her greed went far beyond bloodlust and extended to the dark lord’s son, a sweet little dhampir boy. Attacking Dracula’s son is a good way to get yourself impaled, just sayin’.

Ahem, back to the Greater Nobility. By the time we have these classifications, it’s thousands of years into OUR future. There’s been time for those “kings” to reproduce. Thus, my theory here is that the Greater Nobility are the biological children of the Seven Kings. Seven doesn’t seem like enough to pop out that many babies, but man the first Vampire Hunter D novel takes place in 12,090 AD—though the “decline of vampire society” kind of starts in the year 7,000 AD. So let’s do some math… Seven people of indeterminate gender have, let’s say one kid every… five years, starting with 0 AD, because I am just about sure some of these critters are older than THAT, but 0 is kind of an even number. They will only mate with each other, because well damn they’re like vampire royalty, why fuck a peasant?

7,000 years of fuckening. Divide that by five—oh and we’ll say it’s an even split between the Seven “kings” and for this exercise we will include Dracula in that number and then remove him for sanity’s sake—so six Nobles, three male and three female (again just for funsies). 1,400 per Noble, but let’s say 700 per coupling. Now, that’s damn near 1000 already, and we’re pretending they just stopped doing the do at year 7000. Not to mention the amount of screwing that might have happened outside that—or twins/triplets… who knows? My point is that 7000 years is plenty of time—and honestly, the rank of the “seven kings” might be a fairly new designation. There might have been more true born vampires before the Cataclysm.

Alternatively the Greater Nobility are those that come from direct lines... so like, if they’re not the children of the Seven Kings, they’re the grand children, and great grand children. That’s plenty of time for there to be 1000, no problem.

Now, I’ve always considered it somewhat canon that mating with humans is like… humping a cow to most Nobility. D’s existence is anathema, but back in the day, folks knew who he was without asking. He’s the vampire prince. The sacred ancestor had a son with a human and though they’d love to hate him to his face, they cannot. Tradition dictates he’s like vampire jesus. He might also be genetically modified and enhanced beyond the normal capabilities of a dhampir. But that’s for later.

So if the Greater are the biological children/grandchildren/greatgrandchildren of the seven kings (with whom they have a cordial relationship, hardly warm, but polite and honestly who’s to say the seven even remember who their children are? The kids might, you know, for lineage shit, but I’ll bet the “parents” don’t gaf, trying hard as they can to distance themselves from anything vaguely resembling humanity), then who are the Lesser Nobility? Simply put, these are bitten vampires. Any vampire turned by a Greater Noble is lesser Nobility. The Greater Nobles can make thralls of humans, as Magnus Lee did with Doris, but she had not drunk of his blood yet. That was the “induction into the house of Lee” Larmica feared, and the goal of Rei Ginsei, the mutant who could bend space. So these vampires DO have a power to turn! But it’s the ol’ blood exchange thing.

Now the question is can a bitten human-turned-Noble reproduce? I don’t think so. Magnus Lee says he enjoys “mating with the human female” meaning Larmica’s mom was human, if under his thrall, when Larmica was conceived. She was not a member of the Nobility, but it seems as if Larmica KNEW her mother as a vampire—so either the marks of Magnus Lee’s turning faded before Larmica was old enough to notice them, or Larmica’s mother did not survive long enough for Larmica to know her and all she knows is what she has been told by her father. She clearly thinks her mother was also a vampire, presumably one of the Greater Nobility. I sort of headcanon that traditionally, Lesser Nobles, while still treated as Nobility, don’t ever rise much higher than a Lord or MAYBE an Earl, certainly no Count (who had been administrator of Fronteir Sector 10 during his first reign over humans). A Greater Noble might look upon their Lesser progeny with favor and bestow lands and titles, but it’s not in their power to bestow an equal title to their own and why would Magnus Lee take a wife who was less than he? Larmica is all about Noble Pride™…

Could her mother have BECOME Lesser Nobility with this theory in mind? Sure! She’d be Countess and she would probably love her baby girl very much—but Larmica strikes me as a cold woman who never knew the love of someone who remembered being human because Magnus Lee, as a member of the Greater Nobility, never WAS human. He was born of two of the Seven Kings and that’s his whole life.. Cold detachment and a superiority complex the size of Rhode Island.

#aboutDmeta #aboutlarmicameta #she's in here so I'm counting it

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ladyseaheart1668 · 6 years

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Endless Summer Book 4: Daughter of Vaanu (Chapter 22)

Description: Alodia tells all. An alliance is solidified.

Tagging: @xo-endlessmayhem-xo , @princesstopgun ; @mysteli

Alodia

They know almost everything. I know what Jake and Diego meant to tell them. They know now what the Prism Crystal is. What I am. But some secrets had to be kept until they met me. Because some secrets are only mine to tell. Our guests sit down. After a moment of exchanging glances, they introduce themselves.

“We can guess who you are,” Grayson Prescott says with a nervous laugh. “We have heard a lot about you. But we don't know who the...um...blue gentleman is...?”

I bite my cheek to keep from laughing. “The 'blue gentleman' is Varyyn. Diego's husband. He also happens to be a Vaanti.”

Varyyn passes me an amused glance, then looks back at Grayson. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Grayson. To answer your next question, no this is not a costume. The Vaanti are the inhabitants of the La Huerta. Our people were human once, but became what we are through exposure to the sap from the great trees that were nurtured by the Island's Heart. Kenji and Eva, that is actually the origin of your powers.”

“...What is?”

“Your ancestors were somehow exposed to the Island's Heart. To the sap of one of the Great Trees, to the energy of the time bubble...perhaps at one point, they even breathed in the ash from an eruption of Mount Atropo. However it happened, their blood was altered, just as my ancestors' blood was altered. The difference is that while my ancestors remained on the island and continued to be exposed, yours left the time bubble and returned to the world outside of it. That is true of you and every other superhuman in Northbridge, save Tahira.”

“...Because Tahira is fully alien,” Dax finishes. “And Alodia's biological relative. That's why the crystal reacted to her first. And why her energy readings were so much stronger.”

“But...then why wasn't my mother affected?” Kenji asks. “I mean, she was there, too...”

“It could be that it was your father's bloodline that was exposed to the Island's Heart,” I suggest. “Or...and this is just a thought...maybe the genetic mutation is strongest in the youngest generation. I don't know. True to form, the Endless gave us answers that only lead to more questions.”

“Where exactly does the Endless fit into all of this?” Rochelle asks. “Am I allowed to ask that?”

I feel my eyebrows lift in surprise. “I would have thought that much would have been obvious. But then...I suppose you only met her once. Maybe it's more obvious when we're side by side.”

“...What is?”

I sigh a little. This one is my secret to tell. Only mine. I don't want to tell it. But they need to know. “That I am the Endless. Or rather...she is—was—an alternate version of me.” I reach for Jake's hand, and he folds my hand between his palms while I tell them the story of the Endless. How the first version of me survived while everyone else died and learned to reset the time loop. I explain how she guided us from the shadows, how she went back further than she ever had when it became clear that she had to change the Vaanti or else we would continue to be slaughtered. I explain how it took over two thousand cycles to get it right, for the naive version of me to reach the Threshold with all twelve idols and everyone alive. I hesitate before telling them that the Endless was prepared to sacrifice the world in order to give me a life and an existence with the only family she had ever known.

“None of this is actually relevant to the situation at hand. The Vaanti...the Endless...any of it. But I did say I was going to tell you everything.”

“We appreciate your trust,” Grayson replies. “But...as to the matter at hand: do you know how to get Tahira back?”

“I know that I have the ability to get her back,” I answer. “Exactly how it's going to end up working, that's going to take a little figuring out. But I do have a good idea of where to start.”

“Where is that?”

“Tahira first came through the Prism Gate as a baby, right? I don't know for sure, but the concept ultimately seems similar to the Lernaean Gate.”

“But the crystal shards weren't enough to power the Lernaean Gate on their own,” Diego points out. “It needed half the Island's Heart.”

“Right. But clearly the Prism Crystal was enough to make a portal strong enough to send an infant child through. Clearly having my life energy contained in it makes it a little more powerful than the average crystal shard. Maybe not on the level of the Island's Heart, but there's enough energy in there to at least make a one-way portal.” I look at Grayson and Rochelle. “...I've been to Vaanu's homeworld before. Psychically, anyway. When I was touching the crystal pillar on the rooftop of The Celestial. The crystal shards had a way of...communicating with me. I have an idea that I may be able to find a way to communicate with Tahira. To guide her back through the Prism Gate.”

Rochelle swallows hard. “Do you really think that would work?”

“It might. I mean...I was able to reach Varyyn from Hartfeld with Diego's help. And Quinn was able to find the Island's Heart. It's a larger distance obviously, but we won't know until we try. But before we know anything, I'll need to get my hands on the Prism Crystal.”

“But we don't know where it is,” Grayson says grimly. “It was recovered after the gala, but we don't know what Dad did with it after that.”

“...Actually...we do. Sort of.” Dax looks thoughtfully past me, gazing out the window over my shoulder. “Silas Prescott briefly held Tahira captive before the big battle went down. She...escaped when her birth parents' voices came through the repaired Prism Gate. They somehow provided her with the power and strength she needed to escape.”

I feel my eyebrows lift. “...Well, that's a new one.”

“Only problem is...we don't know where she was held.”

“She never told you?”

“...Things were a little...crazy. I guess that bit of information slipped through the cracks.”

I sigh. “Well...perhaps if I'm in Northbridge, I can track it. I mean...it is my life energy. That's gotta be worth something, right?”

“That worked when we were looking for the idols,” Jake points out.

“But maybe we don't have to waste the time,” Poppy says slowly. “...Wasn't Caleb held captive with her?”

“We haven't seen Caleb at all since the Battle of Northbridge,” Eva protests.

“Normally, I'd say 'good riddance',” Kenji sighs. “But it would help if we don't have to send Alodia all over Northbridge, hoping she'll be able to track the Prism Crystal. Not to mention that if the Gate is intact...”

“Are you sure Caleb can be trusted?” Dax asks uncertainly.

“Hell, no!” Kenji snorts. “I have a policy of not trusting anyone who has literally put a flaming sword through my gut.”

“Good policy,” Jake agrees, smirking.

I smile faintly, but I don't comment. I've been suddenly reminded of Lila, and how she came down on the right side in the end. And that reminds me that the Endless said that Lila had been revived. ...And then I think of the woman I saw at the In-N-Out a few months ago...

“But,” Kenji goes on, breaking into my thoughts, “we need the Prism Crystal, and the Prism Gate. For Tahira.”

“We'll find them,” Eva promises. “We'll find Caleb and get it out of him. Even if it takes...force.”

I look at them for a long moment, taking each of them in. Finally, I say, “Perhaps this is a good thing. In the time it takes you to locate the Prism Gate, we can arrange to take the time off and fly to Northbridge.”

“I've already been planning to invent a family emergency,” Diego says. “Possibly in Mexico.”

“I know your reputation probably works in your favor when it comes to getting time off,” I say, unable to keep the pride from my voice. But then my smile slips. “...But Uncle Rob might not be so generous to Jake.”

“Nepotism isn't always all it's cracked up to be,” Grayson sighs. “We'll fly home first thing in the morning, and we'll contact you as soon as we have any information.”

* * *

Morning sickness prevents me from properly seeing them off the next morning—and Jake, since he refuses to leave my side while I've got my head down the toilet bowl.

“You feel crappy enough already,” he declares. “If you get it in your hair, you'll just add frustration to the mix.”

Problem is, I already feel frustrated that the puking hasn't stopped yet, and his goddamn thoughfulness is making me feel so fucking grateful, and for some reason, I'm furious about that, which only makes me feel guilty, and by the time I stop puking, I'm sobbing. I curl up in his arms, dabbing at my face with a wad of toilet paper, hiccupping and gulping while he rocks me tenderly and strokes my hair.

“I'm still waiting for this whole pregnancy thing to feel magical,” I grumble. “Right now, it's all puke and sore boobs and I'm tired all the time...and I swear to God, if you're laughing at me, you're a dead man.”

The soft chuckling above my head stops. “Not laughing, Princess. Promise. At least, I'm not laughing at you.” I feel him kiss my hair. “I admit, I don't actually have a lot of experience with pregnant women and their troubles. I'm gonna do my best because I love you and it's my kid doing all this to you. But Grace and Michelle are gonna be the ones to talk to about this.”

“...Just a few minutes ago, I was actually furious with you for being wonderful and holding my hair.”

“Not sure that makes a whole lotta sense. But when you got a new human growing in your gut like an alien and pumping your brain full of chemicals, I don't think you gotta worry too much about making sense.”

I groan a little, getting to my feet. Jake braces me on one side. “Like an alien is right. I've been wondering if the reason my parents had so much trouble conceiving is because my father was an alien.”

“Maybe,” he muses as I make my way to the sink and squeeze toothpaste onto my toothbrush. “We didn't seem to have any trouble, though.”

“...True. Vaanu and my mother had to use IVF...” I stick the end of my toothbrush in my mouth and scrub like I'm angry at my teeth and gums.

“Well...you're half-human. That probably makes a difference.”

I spit in the sink and notice a couple flecks of red mixed in the with the white foam. When I take a gulp from the sink to swish around my teeth, there's a faint coppery taste. I spit that out and straighten, meeting Jake's eyes in the mirror.

“...I worry about River. I worry that something will be wrong with them.”

“Ahh, Princess...” He comes up behind me, cinching his arms around my waist, letting his hands rest on my abdomen. “Every mom worries about that kind of stuff.”

“Not every mom had an alien father,” I murmur as Jake plants kisses along the curve of my neck. I feel tears starting to rise behind my eyes again. “...Jake...I wish my mother were here...”

Jake's mouth pauses on my neck. “Your mother...?”

“Someone who loves me, whose been through this and could help me through it...”

“What about Diego's mom? She was basically your mother growing up.”

“Yeah, but...” I draw in a shuddering breath. I don't want to start crying again. “I don't know, Jake. I just felt so envious of Tahira yesterday. To have her mother fighting for her like that. ...That's what I want.”

“Since Tahira is adopted and an only child, I must say I don't think Rochelle would be someone you could swap pregnancy stories with. At least...none that would do anything to ease your anxieties.”

“Maybe not. But that's such a small part of what I want. I mean...I was adopted, but it's not like the people who adopted me actually wanted me. The closest things I had to parents were somebody else's.”

“I want you. Your real family wants you.”

I sigh. “I know, Jake. I know...”

He is quiet for a moment, his arms tightening around me. “...I wish I knew what to say...”

“There's really no need to say anything,” I murmur, leaning into his embrace. “...Just hold me.”

“Well, that I can do.” He nuzzles my neck. “...I will say this, though: it ain't wrong to wish for something you didn't have. But your past also ain't gonna stop you from being a good mother, if you were ever worried about that. Hell, just look at what history Aleister and Grace had to overcome, but they're doing all right with Reggie.”

I smile a little. I probably know their histories more intimately than Jake or any of the others. “That's true.” I sigh a little. As I gaze in the mirror, it seems to me that I can see a bit of a potbelly starting to push out from underneath my babydoll pajama top. “I'm not sure if I'm starting to show, or if that's just bloating.”

“Hmm. I dunno. You do look different.”

“Different good or different bad?”

He chuckles. “You'll never look bad to me unless you're not healthy.”

I turn in his arms to wind my arms around his neck. “...You are very good at saying the right things,” I inform him, and capture his mouth in a tender kiss. I've got months left to worry about my baby. Right now, I just want to be with my love.

Kenji

I am entering my mother's office in disguise. Bronze all over my body to visit my own mother at work. If I were to visit as myself, she'd be annoyed with me for interrupting her day. The thought is a bitter one, and I feel guilty for it. Our relationship has improved by leaps and bounds lately, but there's still a big difference between the way she treats me and the way she treats Talos. Though, to be fair, her relationship with Talos has improved by leaps and bounds, too. It's how Minuet and I are able to walk into the DA's office without an appointment and not only be shown right in, but offered coffee while we wait in cushy office chairs in front of her desk.

It's about twenty minutes before my mother comes in and takes her seat behind the desk. She sighs as she sits down. She must be having a stressful day, because I recognize the way her eyelids droop slightly as she sinks into the chair. She's been known to make the same face sinking into her armchair at home after a particularly exhausting day at work. This chair is heaven right now, she often sighs. After taking a moment to savor the sensation of being seated, she seems to remember that we're here.

“Sorry to have kept you both waiting.”

“Not at all, DA Katsaros,” I reply, waving my hand dismissively. “We didn't have an appointment. We knew we might be waiting awhile.”

“How can I help you?”

“We were wondering if you have received any new information on either Stonewall or the Man on Fire. The latter in particular.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why the latter in particular?”

“Well, for a couple reasons. In spite of Dragonness recruiting him at least temporarily before the Battle of Northbridge, he hasn't been seen since. The alliance was a shaky one to begin with, built on questionable ground.”

“He joined us to promote anarchy and chaos by taking out this city's unofficial ruler,” Minuet adds. “We're concerned that with Dragonness MIA, he may revert to his old habits.”

“We're also hoping to persuade you to let us deal with him first.”

“And why is that?”

“Because we need him. We need some information from him. Information that will help us bring Dragonness back.”

Mom raises her eyebrows. “Back? Back from where? I had rather assumed she was dead.”

“So did we, to be honest. But she isn't. She's alive. But she's trapped in another dimension.”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind how we know. You'll just have to trust us on that. We know she is alive, and we know that we need access to the Prism Gate to bring her back.” I exhale slowly. “Silas Prescott repaired the Prism Gate. Dragonness and Man on Fire were both held captive in his facility where it was stored two days before the Battle of Northbridge. ...Man on Fire has been escaping from prisons and handcuffs probably about as long as you've been the DA, give or take. Let us find him and get the location of the Prism Gate out of him, and you'll also gain the location of the only cell that's ever been able to hold him. Certainly the only one you can trust to hold him since he gained his abilities.”

Mom pins me with a penetrating gaze. As the silence stretches on, I feel myself starting to squirm. I'm disguised as Talos, but I'm still Kenji. And nothing unsettles Kenji more than Mom's penetrating stare. Finally, she clears her throat.

“We don't currently have any solid leads on either Stonewall or Man on Fire. ...However, there were reports last week from some beat cops who came across a few petty criminals with a stash of liquid prism in an abandoned apartment complex in Bayside. The criminals were arrested before they had a chance to inject themselves and the liquid prism was confiscated and returned to Prescott Industries.”

“Are those criminals still in custody?” Minuet asks.

“For now. I expect you want to question them?”

Minuet smiles placidly, leaning back in her chair. “Oh, yes,” she replies, her voice somehow tranquil and gleeful at once. “Very much.”

Estela

My mother has been wondering about my comings and goings the past week or two. I explain the situation to her over breakfast a few days after the Prescott entourage get back from California. She watches me quietly while I lay out the facts for her, her expression carefully neutral.

“I had been wondering if you think you might be able to help us,” I remark.

“Help you? I'm not sure how I could.”

“Well, you were the first person to work out the Endless' abilities. You also worked on the Lernaean Gate. I suppose I just wondered if you might have some insights.”

She sighs. “I don't know. I mean, it's a possibility...but...”

“...But what?”

She doesn't answer right away. Silence stretches on for several minutes. I don't press her, but I can't help but grow impatient as she puts her chin down in her hand and turns to gaze out the kitchen window.

“...Working with crystals again...working with the Omega specimen--”

“She isn't a specimen, Mom. Her name is Alodia, and she's a person.”

“Yes, Estelita, I know. But...the point is that I thought I was leaving this all behind. I tried to leave because the things we were working with were dangerous. Because I didn't want to be a part of it. Because I wanted to stop it.”

“...It's all more complicated than what it appeared to be when you were working for Rourke,” I murmur. “An innocent...no, more than innocent...a woman who tried to protect people from a man just like Rourke and the corrupted power he was weilding now needs our help. ...Her mom needs us to bring her daughter home.”

“I know, Estelita. ...I will help you if I can. But I will not try to pretend I am not afraid.”

I feel my chest tighten. I reach across the table to take my mother's hand.

“...We're all afraid, Mom. ...I spent a long time feeling afraid. But then I found my friends.” I feel a smile form on my mouth. “...And now you and I have each other, too.”

She smiles back at me. “Even that feels a little frightening, though. ...I thought I was dead and gone...”

“I think you and Alodia might be able empathize with each other about that.” We lapse into silence for a moment, sipping on our coffee. Then as a thought occurs to me, I feel a frown crease my forehead. “Hey...Mom...?”

“Yes?”

“...When I first saw you again at the Prescott masquerade, you were dressed like Flora Sullivan.”

“Like who...?”

“The Bride? The Vaanti Bride? The woman who was one of the Vaanti's first human ancestors?”

“Oh, is that who I was dressed as? You mentioned her, but I don't know if you ever told me her name.”

I feel my frown deepen. “...Why that costume? If you didn't know anything about her...?”

My mother shrugs, looking a little uncomfortable. “To tell you the honest truth, the costume turned up in a package on my doorstep. The return address was from Rourke International. Although I realized the sensible thing to do might have been to throw it away, I figured that Rourke wasn't actually managing the company anymore, and in fact, my own daughter was in charge now--”

“Well, with Aleister.”

“Of course. ...I thought maybe you had realized I was alive and you were trying to reach out to me. In the box, though, all I found was the costume with a note telling me to wear it to the Prescott masquerade. Oh, and of course a ticket to the ball. The handwriting wasn't yours, though...”

“May I see the note? If you still have it?”

“Well...all right. I think I might still have it in the junk drawer here...”

She goes to open the drawer and rummage through it. I hear the rattle of pens and pencils for a moment, and then she returns to the table with a folded piece of lined flashcard paper. I take it from her and unfold it. I study the note, with its hand-printed letters neat and precise, each one perfectly placed between the blue lines. Each stroke of the pen is bold, as if whoever wrote it was pressing hard. It's instantly familiar. I saw it once in a small book that Zahra was passing around while Alodia and Jake were off on their honeymoon. I saw it before that, as I hunched over a piece of paper in Rourke's office at The Celestial with Alodia and Aleister, laboriously working out the password to his computer. Alodia pressed the pen hard to the page, her tongue caught between her teeth and her forehead creased with concentration as she matched constellations to names and months, and the pen left behind neat, precise printed letters.

...The note that brought my mother into my path was the work of the Endless.

Eva

It takes a bit of...persuasion, but the two petty crooks eventually give us a lead on Caleb. Unfortunately, that lead is irritatingly at least thirty miles outside the Northbridge city limits, in some podunk town halfway to Hartfeld. Seems Caleb wasn't keen to stay in Northbridge with Stonewall still at large. He's taken up with a squatter gang in some abandoned buildings at the edge of a forest preserve. Kenji and I have to park our car on the side of a crumbling road and hike up a hill through a maze of trees to reach the place. I wait to put my mask on until we're safely concealed by the trees. Following my lead, Kenji transforms into Talos when he's sure the coast is clear. Ultimately, though, it seems are caution was unnecessary, since we can't find anyone in the derelict village. But it is clear that people are still living here, if not legally, than at least relatively comfortably. There are mattresses, pillows, and blankets on the floors. Portable generators in each abandoned home power space heaters, fans, lights, microwaves, portable stoves, and mini fridges stocked with bottled water. An unlocked footlocker contains non-perishable edibles. There's no running water, but there are porta-potties. I don't know how they keep clean here, but maybe they aren't overly concerned with that. At the least, there are bottles of hand sanitizer and a first aid kit under the sink.

“Well, this place seems...not terrible,” Kenji remarks. “Well-stocked. Mostly liveable...”

“If you don't mind the faint smell of urine and...other stuff...” I mutter, well aware that I am breathing through my mouth as much as possible.

“Now if we could only find...” He trails off abruptly, his gaze drifting to the window. “Oh! Well, speak of the devil.”

I follow his gaze and see Caleb coming down the hill with a backpack on his shoulders. I press my back flush against the wall, keeping out of sight as I watch him. He glances furtively over his shoulder, but doesn't peek in our direction. When he seems satisfied that he's alone, he creeps toward another abandoned building. I slip towards the door, keeping him in my sight. Stretching out a hand, I gather my power. It's taken me awhile to gain as much control over time as I have now. At first, I was limited to slowing it down within the field, and I couldn't control who was affected, or how long it lasted, or how slow time went for them. But I have been practicing. While slow motion is still my speciality and the most useful, I've also learned how to accelerate time. I've gotten better at controlling the speed of it, too. For now, though, I go with the old standby. I reach out, grasping time around Caleb and stretching it like a piece of taffy. Within the narrow field, time slows to a crawl, and Caleb moves like he's suddenly swimming in syrup. I hear him swear under his breath.

“MINUET!” he groans. “What the hell?!”

I narrow the field further as Talos comes up behind him to wrap his arms around him. Caleb's arms are pinned to his sides. As I withdraw the slow-motion field entirely, moving into his line of sight, he struggles, his expression irritated more than anything.

“Don't try anything funny,” Talos warns. “You can't do much damage to me from your current position.”

“I'm not planning on doing anything funny!” he whines. “At least nothing that would concern you two idiots! What the hell do you want with me!”

“Just information,” I purr. “We want to know where Silas Prescott held you and Dragonness.”

He blinks. “...That's it? I'd have thought she'd have told you.”

“Unfortunately, she was a little distracted with the task of protecting Northbridge from Prescott,” Talos says flatly.

Caleb frowns. “Why do you need to know?”

“We need access to the Prism Gate. We understand that Prescott repaired it, and it was contained in the same facility where he held you.”

He starts to struggle again, his eyes darting back and forth. “Look...guys...I got some stuff I gotta take care of before Gigi gets back...”

“Gigi?” Talos repeats. “You got yourself a girlfriend?”

Caleb lets out a bitter bark of laughter. “Gigi? A girlfriend? Good one. I wouldn't wish that sadistic bitch on my worst enemy.” In an instant, his smile fades and his head snaps back up. He looks around wildly again, almost as if he's worried that this Gigi person heard him. “Look, the point is, I gotta take care of this stuff. If I tell you what you need to know, will you let me go?”

Talos and I exchange a glance. His eyes may be mostly concealed by a bronze film, but the brief incline of his head tells me what I need to know. I pin my gaze on Caleb.

“Start talking. Tell us what we need to know, and I won't leave you moving in slow-motion for Gigi to find.”

Blaire Hall

Cassandra Chandler. Who is Cassandra Chandler? Apparently, she used to work for my company, but she died about twenty-seven years ago. Back then I was still climbing the ladder at Mansingh Transglobal, not yet CEO, but well on my way. Her personnel files don't seem to exist anymore, at least not anywhere that I can reach them. I would have left it there, but the fact that Everett Rourke Senior was asking...my daughter's father-in-law...the man whose insanity almost got her killed...

I can't just leave it at that. Her name keeps creeping into my mind when I should be focused on other things. She's a song that's gotten stuck in my head, an itch at the back of my mind that needs scratching. I should be asleep right now, but instead, I'm digging on the internet for a ghost. I let Rourke keep talking long enough to gather that she died in an aviation accident, so that's where I begin. It takes almost an hour of clicking and searching and chasing down clues like breadcrumbs, but at last, I come across an obituary from a New York City paper. I sip at tea that's long gone cold while I read it.

Matthew Chandler and his wife, Cassandra (nee Sullivan) of Manhattan were victims of Wednesday's deadly plane crash. Cassandra, originally of Boston, MA, received both her BS in Communications and her Masters in Computer Science from Hartfeld University before moving to New York City to work for Mansingh Transglobal as a researcher. It was in Manhattan that she met Matthew, a history scholar who worked for the local library. The couple lived in SoHo.

The couple is survived by a seven-month-old daughter, Alodia Rose. Cassandra is survived by one sister, Molly (Robert) Fisher, of Riverside, CA.

...Alodia. Alodia Chandler. So that's it. Cassandra Chandler was the mother of Alodia Chandler. The girl who spent five years in suspended animation because of Rourke's insane obsession with her. I exhale slowly. It's no mystery why he would want information on her. What exactly made him fixate on that girl is anyone's guess, but obviously anyone associated with her would fascinate him, too.

Still...why, after five years, would he just be looking into Alodia's family now? Why now, when he and I have not spoke for years, would he suddenly call me asking for information on this woman? If he didn't know before that she had worked for Mansingh Transglobal, how did he find out when he is supposed to be locked away in a hospital for the insane?

I push back from my desk and stand up, wandering toward the kitchen. I need to put on a pot of coffee. I realize now I'm not going to be sleeping very much tonight.

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