DP x DC Prompt
…
There are no more heroes.
Well, okay. Rewind a bit.
Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)
The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.
And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.
Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?
Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.
So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.
There are no more heroes.
Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.
Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)
In other words:
Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.
Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.
(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)
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So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.
And I kept wondering: why?
For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.
So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.
But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.
The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.
Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?
That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.
My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.
Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.
Milsiril the puppetmaster.
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“Pearl? Why are you in my house?”
Pearl blinks up at Bdubs from where she’s sandwiched between the wall and the waterstream, curled up on herself in the narrow space. “Somebody destroyed all the lights in my base and now it’s full of mobs,” she says bitterly.
“It wasn’t me!” Bdubs cries, raising his hands.
“Well, I didn’t think it was you, but the way you just said that’s making me think—”
“No! I’d never! I swear!”
“...I believe you,” she says after a moment, and Bdubs feels himself relax. “Can I stay with you tonight? I don’t really feel like…” She gestures in the direction of her house.
Bdubs nods. “Oh, sure, for sure,” he says. Then, “Should we invite Joel over? His house got blown up too.”
“Ah, yeah, probably. Good idea, Bdubs.” She fumbles in her pocket for her communicator, eventually fishing it out. The screen is cracked. Her fingers shake as they tap against the glass.
“Are you okay there, Pearl? You look a little…” Bdubs forces his hands to tremble.
She glances up at him, face scrunching in confusion, before she lets out a small laugh. “Just the adrenaline, y’know.” She grins. “I’m red. It’s great.”
“If it was anyone else, I’d think they were being sarcastic. But with you! With you, I’m pretty sure you’re being serious!”
She giggles, hitting send on the message and shoving her communicator away. Bdubs doesn’t feel his own buzz; it must have been a whisper. “You know,” she says after a moment, “I’m a little surprised.”
Bdubs blinks. “Surprised about what?”
“That there’s still three of us.”
He laughs. “Yeah, I’m a little surprised, too! I thought for sure Joel would die today. For sure.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“Oh, no, never. But between you and me… that guy’s kind of a loose canon!”
She snorts. “Throwing stones from glass houses, there, Bdubs?”
“Surely I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mhm.” She pauses, eyes glancing down to where her fingers pick at a stray thread on her hoodie sleeve. “That’s kinda what I mean, though. Joel doesn’t live here, and you’re making friends with half the server, I’m surprised I’m not spending tonight alone.”
“Pearl…”
“What?” She snorts. “I know how these games go, Bdubs. People don’t stay loyal. Not for long, anyway.” She glances up at him, eyes half obscured by her hair. “People like Joel, people like you? I know how this ends.”
And Bdubs—
Well, he can’t pretend he doesn’t know what she means. Can’t pretend he doesn’t remember Impulse yelling as Bdubs’ arrow had found home in his throat. Can’t pretend he doesn’t remember Etho backing away when Bdubs had tried to get just a little too close. Can’t pretend he didn’t fight when he promised he’d run. Can’t pretend he hadn’t taken advantage of his broken home.
…He can’t pretend he doesn’t remember telling Martyn about their plans, or planning to do harm to Etho. Can’t pretend he doesn’t cross his fingers behind his back every time he makes a promise, just in case.
But at the same time, he remembers—searching for Cleo in a castle she’d been too dead to return to, pushing Lizzie to her death for a life he’d never received, taking two hands in his own and vowing to face the end as four instead of two, for once, for once in his life, choosing three and being pulled apart because of it—
Bdubs lets out a breath. “Pearl, hey, no,” he says. “I told you, didn’t I? I’m your weapon.” He gets down to his knees, lowers his head before her, feels her gaze burn into the top of his head.
“Bit late for that,” she says. “I’m my own weapon now, mate. Don’t need you to attack for me anymore.”
“Well, no—but—” He looks up at her. “Pearl. I’m yours. I promise.”
“Right. And you’re Martyn and Etho’s too, huh? We can share.”
“I’m using Martyn!” he protests. “That’s—that’s all it is—I’m usin’ him because he’s the first red and he knows his stuff! And Etho—”
“I don’t mind about Etho,” Pearl interrupts. “Like I said, I know you guys have your little thing going on. I don’t care about that.”
“I set a trap in his base,” Bdubs blurts.
Pearl blinks at him. “Excuse me?”
“I set a trap in his base. Tripwire hook.” He grins. “Right outside the bedroom. I—I think I got Grian, in the end? But—could have been Etho. I coulda—could’ve been Etho.” He swallows.
“And you’d have been okay with that?” Pearl asks, smile gone from her face, expression suddenly very serious.
“I—after I set it, I went up to them. Had a chat. Lied the whole time. I coulda—coulda told him. I didn’t.”
“And you’re okay with that?” she stresses.
She sounds dubious. Bdubs can’t blame her. He feels sick, swallowing back the bile that’s building in his throat.
“I—Pearl.”
“Bdubs?”
“I learned my lesson, Pearl. I learned—don’t put all your eggs in one basket! Because—because either they die, and then you get left alone, or—or it gets you killed, and you die. You gotta—I have two hands. I can be loyal to multiple people. But then I learned—when you do that? People aren’t loyal back. They don’t trust you anymore. Nobody else…” He laughs. “I feel like I’m the only one who can trust people like that anymore!”
“So…” She frowns. “So you’re making friends with everyone so you don’t get betrayed or left alone?”
“Exactly.”
“And you know none of us are gonna trust you for doing that.”
He swallows again. “Yeah, I know.”
“And you’re doing it anyway?”
“Well, what else—what else am I supposed to do? I can’t… I can’t go back, Pearl. That’s… I can’t go back. You know how it is.”
“…Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’m—I want you to win, Bdubs,” she says. “Out of everyone—I want it to be you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. So… You better not make me regret this.”
He blinks at her. “Regret what?”
She bows her head to him. “I’m your weapon,” she says, an echo of his earlier words. “And a bit more of a dangerous one at that.” Her smirk leaks back into her words as she glances up and winks at him. “So use me well, alright, Bdubs? I want you to win this.”
Bdubs’ heart is in his throat. He swallows it back down. It burns.
“I’ll do my best,” he promises.
The door slams open, startling them both out of their skin.
“Hey guys—uh. What are you doing?”
“Oh, for—Judas Priest, Joel, learn to knock!”
“You invited me over! Or, Pearl did—hey Pearl.”
“Hey,” Pearl says. “Come on in! Sleepover at Bdubs’ time.”
“I can’t believe this is the last of our bases left standing. It’s, like, the worst one.”
“Hey!”
“There’s no space in here!” To punctuate his statement, Joel slumps down against one wall, kicking Bdubs in the ribs as he does so. Bdubs grunts. “See?”
“It’s definitely not the most spacious…” Pearl acquiesces.
“Anyway. What were you guys doing before I came in?”
“Swearing loyalty,” Bdubs says.
“Oh.” Joel blinks. “Do you need me to do that? Because I’m a Mounder for life. Loyal to the end.”
Bdubs and Pearl glance at each other.
“Somehow I actually believe him,” Bdubs stage-whispers, and Joel squawks in offence as Pearl barks out a laugh.
“No, I think you’re good,” she says. Leaning her head back against the wall, she says, “This is probably our final night.”
The three of them are quiet for a moment.
“Well,” says Joel. “We gotta make it to the end then, don’t we?”
He’s looking at Bdubs. They’re both looking at Bdubs.
Bdubs nods.
“May the best Mounder win,” he says solemnly.
Joel grins.
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