Never actually seen it occur in canon, but I always imagine a young Dick Grayson at the start of his crime-fighting career, before people started to recognize Robin, busting out some circus skills as a distraction technique.
Like there’s a bunch of mobsters or whatever planning an assassination and then, boom, suddenly there’s a brightly-colored child standing on the table across the room, juggling and humming ‘Entrance of the Gladiators’, doing six backflips in a row, and then balancing on one hand from the back of a chair. He does a somersault and then bows deeply. The mobsters begin to clap, impressed despite their confusion. No one even thinks that Batman might be involved—this is so not his M.O. Is this kid a joke? Hired entertainment? Is it someone’s surprise birthday party? Will there be a cake?
And then it’s over before it began. They never got a chance to throw a single punch before Batman caught them.
Not only is this completely in line with Golden Age Robin but I think this would be the most cathartic thing for young Dick. “I’m unsure of your live fighting capabilities yet so preform some of your favorite sequences while I go out and punch the surrogates for your parents murderer. Keep going until I give you the signal to stop or I join in.”
“Dick, I believe in you, but you’re ten years old and weigh, like, 70 pounds soaking wet. I’ll train you to punch and kick like the best of them, but for now I think you should stick to what you do best: flips ‘n’ shit. Be adorable. Bask in the attention. Be too gosh darn cute to shoot at, and if that fails, be too fucking agile to actually hit. I’ll take care of the ‘gratuitous violence’ part.”
Tag: My writing
Sing Me To Glaumora
Okay, this scene from the giant crossover fic I’m writing in my head wouldn’t leave me, so I decided to write it. Warning for character death.
The instant she heard the crack! resonating through the air and felt the shift in the wind currents, Tiera knew what had happened. Spinning around in midair, she was able to spot Jann falling from the sky, his dagger falling from his hand. Her sharp eyes seemed to zoom in further, seeing the spot of blood on the wall behind him that the must have been smashed against.
Everything seemed to stop around her, as she hovered there for just a moment. The sound of fighting and screaming faded into the background.
And then she lunged forward, a desperate screech tearing from her mouth.
“Jann!”
She didn’t even notice that she was dodging bolts of lightning and fire, or the bolt of glitched aura that clipped her side, leaving her flesh stinging and her tattered shirt flashing a myriad of colors.
All that mattered was Jann.
Sing Me To Glaumora
Okay, this scene from the giant crossover fic I’m writing in my head wouldn’t leave me, so I decided to write it. Warning for character death.
The instant she heard the crack! resonating through the air and felt the shift in the wind currents, Tiera knew what had happened. Spinning around in midair, she was able to spot Jann falling from the sky, his dagger falling from his hand. Her sharp eyes seemed to zoom in further, seeing the spot of blood on the wall behind him that the must have been smashed against.
Everything seemed to stop around her, as she hovered there for just a moment. The sound of fighting and screaming faded into the background.
And then she lunged forward, a desperate screech tearing from her mouth.
“Jann!”
She didn’t even notice that she was dodging bolts of lightning and fire, or the bolt of glitched aura that clipped her side, leaving her flesh stinging and her tattered shirt flashing a myriad of colors.
All that mattered was Jann.
Tiera looked up from the Rattata she was tearing her talons into. They seemed drawn to this human dwelling, and the strange round construction that apparently contained nothing but rot and decay. Perhaps they had been too enthusiastic in this hunt, to get the attention of this dark-skinned human who they were now staring at.
The human stared back at her-a girl dressed in rags too big for her, with a pair of Hoothoot perched on her shoulder and a Quilava at her feet. There was blood on their mouths, and blood on their talons, and flesh in their jaws.
The next instant, she had fled and was gone.
The next time they met, he asked her quietly if she could understand him. She tilted her head. It wasn’t like with her siblings, where they could touch each others’ hearts without worry and understand each other almost wordlessly. But some part of her thought she knew what he was telling her.
“So, you can stay here. In return, you and your Pokemon will take care of my rat problem for me, as well as any other pests that come around here.”
She had heard tales of Pokemon and humans and the contracts they made. Perhaps this was one of them as well. She hovered forward, examining his face for signs of deception.
“Okay, I was not expecting floating…well, that’s okay. Come in. I’m Jann, what’s your name?”
It would be a long time before she could answer him with “Tiera,” the closest she could come to her name. She didn’t even try with her siblings, and so they ended up being referred to by just their relationship to her-Twin, Little Brother, and Little Sister.
But that was fine.
What started as a simple contract slowly started to change. She thought that, if she were to love a human as one of her flock, Jann would be it. If she were to call a human her father, Jann would be it.
When the dragons fought over their town and they had to flee, she took Jann’s hand and did not let go. If anyone wanted to hurt him, they would have to get through her.
When the strange portal opened up and they were sucked in, she held tight to Jann. She would not abandon her flock.
And even now that she was courting another avian in human form, one of the cloudwings, her flock came first. She would not fight in this war for a world that was not hers, a time that was not hers. Her flock would not fight. They would be safe.
And yet…in the end, she stepped out into the battlefield. It was not just because the one she was courting, the one she hoped to make her mate, was there. It was not just because of Little Sister’s insistence, the most empathic of them all. It was not just because she saw the fire-hearted human flock and was reminded of her own.
It was all those.
And Jann, despite all his protests, had come with her.
And he was falling.
Tiera felt as if she had crossed the battlefield in a flash, despite the distance between them. Already she was diving, her hand extended to grab Jann’s, to slow his fall. He was already unconscious, but he was still breathing! She just had to stop his descent-!
There was another crack! as Jann’s head struck the ground, her fingers just barely brushing his arm. She landed, hard, her knees scraping against the ground as she grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse like he had taught her so long ago.
There was nothing.
She spun her head around. The human called Nira-didn’t she have the power to bring back the dead? But in the chaos, she couldn’t see any of the versions of that woman who had arrived in this world. She called out, but there was no answer.
(Nira heard the call, she did-but her son had just taken a blow to the heart, her son, her Pompeii, he shouldn’t have been here-and she was standing over him, the earth flowing into his chest, remaking the ruined flesh and sending his blood pumping again.
(It was a blow that would have felled Anza, and Nira could not have that-could not have him die again, not after he sacrificed himself for them, and besides when she took the blow for him she could send a stone-coated fist flying into that bug bastard’s face-
(She had to maintain this shield, she wouldn’t let the hellfire hurt her precious creatures, she couldn’t do that and revive someone, she was so sorry-
(She heard, she heard, but she wasn’t one of the Niras with power to spare, with power from the god of the mountain. Her power was in the lightness of her step and the tip of her rapier, and it was all she had as she danced and parried between bladed arms and carapaced legs.
(It was Vern, this one, Vern and his mount both taken down in one blow, and Dust Storm was still conscious but Vern’s eyes were wide and staring and no, she would not let Death take her love now, not after all they had gone through, he would not die here-
(It was all she could do to hold on to her love’s neck as they flew through the air, her blade slashing at whatever was foolish enough to challenge them. Besides, she had used her last revival already, years before this, because Mako was fragile and he was mortal but now he was here, still here, for just a bit longer.)
Tiera tilted her head back and sobbed, sobbed “father” and “parent” and “mentor” in all the languages she knew, the languages she had picked up, the tongue she was born speaking. She had never called him any of those, had thought that the Noctowl who raised her was the only one she could call that, but she was a fool, should have seen sooner. This was not a word she should have hoarded, she should have learned from the people she met here.
Slowly, still not paying attention to the battle around her, she began to move Jann’s body, until his arms were spread at his sides, his face facing where she figured the moon would be, once all this was over (the sky had been overcast ever since these creatures appeared). She brushed one hand over his eyes, opening the one that had been closed in the fall.
And then she began to sing, in the tongue of the Hoothoot.
She sang of the world beyond, of the ones who would come to guide him there. She sang of the things he had taught her, how to call customers and the art of stocking shelves, how to keep accounts. She sang of the things they had survived together, how they had protected each other. She sang to the guides, calling to them to come despite them being worlds away from each other, to follow her song and guide Jann home.
And when it was over, she closed her eyes for a moment, singing a soft addendum: that they might guide her home.
When her eyes opened again, they were cold and vicious. She had loved only Jann, out of all mankind. She should have nothing tying her to protecting any of the other humans in this fight now.
But Jann was dead, and she would see vengeance wrought upon those who had killed him. And perhaps the best vengeance would be denying them the deaths they wished to cause.
She spread behind her wings of glowing air currents and took to the sky.
Antaeus
Welp, here I go, writing a fic for my ridiculous crossover OT3. If you look at the tags you can probably figure out who it’s about. Also from the perspective of one of my OCs, because I’m self-indulgent like that.
Fic is under the readmore.
Nira doesn’t like it when her feet aren’t on solid ground. She can stand on the tallest mountain peak and feel no sense of vertigo, but the very idea of flying terrifies her. When she’s grounded, she can feel Terrakion’s power flowing into her, strengthening her. She doesn’t like being cut off from that power, even for the briefest of moments.
It would be an exaggeration to say that she becomes totally helpless when lifted off the ground. She’s made ridiculously long leaps before, with power if not grace. And there’s enough natural strength in her arms and her spirit-she’s given more than one overconfident psychic a good whack in the eye when they figured her helpless and dangling. Still, she likes to avoid those situations as much as possible.
Being surrounded on ocean on all sides, with nothing but a wobbly deck beneath her feet, is almost as bad. There’s no stability there, and it’s all too easy to imagine falling overboard and drowning. She’s aligned with the mountain-god enough that her skin and heart are stone, and the element of water is antithesis to her.
And yet, when Mako’s boat pulls into shore, she grins and runs on board without a second thought. She listens to his stories about the places he’s been, while she tells him about her latest battles. As they leave the shore, she leans against him, looking towards the horizon and their destination. When it gets too much, when she’s going stir-crazy, he’s there to talk to her, to take her mind off things, to tell her how much longer it’ll be until they reach land again.
When they reach land, sometimes Celestia is there to greet them, and sometimes she is not. But the reunion always comes soon enough, either way.
Celestia’s enthusiasm is infectious. Sometimes when she pulls Nira closer the knight’s feet leave the ground for a moment. But Nira finds she doesn’t mind those moments, is too happy to simply be with her other lover at last. Sometimes she initiates the hug, running forwards to pull the alicorn into a messy, many-limbed embrace. Sometimes she actually hoists herself up to get a proper grip, and her feet leave the ground completely.
She doesn’t mind being lifted then, she learns to realize. She doesn’t even mind on those later occasions where Celestia grabs both her and Mako up in her telekinesis, taking to the air out of sheer joy. There’s the loss of contact with the ground, and the loss of power-but it’s okay. She can let herself be vulnerable, let herself let go of some of her strength.
So finally, there comes a day when the three of them are sitting on the beach together, and Nira places an arm around Celestia’s shoulders, ruffling her wings.
“I want you to take me flying,” she says.
Guard Growth and Ease Pain
So…me and songofsunset were discussing a bit about a Yugioh/Young Wizards crossover, specifically in regards to the early chapters/season 0. Considering all the death/mental destruction that happened, it’s only logical that some wizards would have tried to follow up on it. So…I wrote a short drabble, about one such incident. I initially wanted to use the canon YW characters, but it sounds kind of weird, considering how they don’t have any real reason to go to Japan. (Well…maybe Carmela does, but that’s for another time.) So, this drabble stars a Nameless Japanese Wizard. Enjoy?
Guard Growth and Ease Pain
The burger shop is, all things considered, quite peaceful. You’ve just finished a minor intervention concerning a potential brushfire caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette. Fires have always been a specialty of yours.
Just as you are halfway through your burger, there is a loud yell from the doorway. You recognize that man. Everyone may call him Prisoner Number 777, but you know his name is Jiro. It’s not that hard a fact to discover, but it seems that some people are more interested in sensationalism. Or maybe they don’t want to humanize a criminal. You know better than to fall into that trap, though.
When he demands that everyone get down, you do so too. However, you are already thinking of spells to disable guns or stop bullets. You are halfway through a gun-jamming spell when you hear someone challenge the convict to a game. You risk looking up, to see him focused on someone sitting across from him. From this angle, you can’t see who that person is. When Jiro waves the gun again, you put your head back down. No use risking him being antagonized further.
You go back to assembling that gun-jamming spell, now mostly ignoring what’s going on around you. However, when you hear a scream of pain, your head shoots up, the gun-jamming spell one syllable away from completion.
You don’t think you’ll need it anymore, though. Mainly because Jiro is on fire. You immediately hurry towards the scene, taking off your jacket and preparing to use it to help smother the flames.
Convincing fires to die down is hard. Convincing fires fed by alcohol to die down is even harder. Convincing the local air to leave the vicinity is easier, but that would kill him anyways. No one else hurries over to do anything once they see you approaching.
The fire dies quicker than it normally would have. You think he’s still alive. You hope he’s still alive. It takes some urging, but finally someone calls an ambulance. You stay next to him while it arrives, doing a basic life-support wizardry.
Once the ambulance finally takes him away, you start home. The whispers behind you of how “awesome” Jiro being set on fire was, and how he “deserved it,” terrify you. People seem more concerned about the damage done to the table and chair by the fire. And yes, you can feel that they, too, are pained, but they will survive this more easily.
Someone offers you a new jacket. You refuse it. It’s not too far a walk home from here. And on the way, you can start trying to remember that voice.
you stumble across this great, futuristic machine. taller than you and three times as wide, it’s a technological monolith. it is all sleek chrome and smooth round metal, and polished to such a fine shine you can see your scared face staring back at you. you’re shaking, and you don’t know why.
there’s writing on the machine, etched into the very metal. “perfection is possible,” it begins, bold and stark, and you are intrigued. of course you are intrigued, and then you start reading the fine print.
a drop of blood, and the machine will clone you – but not you, not quite. a perfect you. a you without flaws or imperfections. a you that exceeds you, that hits every single goal and expectation you could have only ever hoped to meet.
with a beep, a small hole opens, just big enough to fit a couple of fingers through. “insert blood sample here,” says the machine electronically. you look at your hands. your simple, human hands, and the blood running underneath your skin with all that opportunity underneath.
now, here’s where the story begins: do you clone yourself or do you clone someone else?
Trembling, you stick your fingers into the machine, not quite sure you believe it’s promises. A perfect you, all your inadequacies washed away… You cringe as the machine pinches your index finger, drawing blood, and when you withdraw your fingers from the machine a single drop of blood glistens on the pad of your finger. You lick it away, and listen as the machine starts to whirr and shudder.
And then, a few long moments later, there you are.
At first it is like looking in a mirror. Then you look closer and it is nothing like that, or rather, is is like you have always wished looking into a mirror would be. You are sure you have never been that tall, that thin. That spot that’s always red on your forehead is gone, and their hair curls around their face just perfectly, in exactly the way yours never will. And then they smile, with their perfectly imperfect teeth, inviting and innocent and all the things you have never been.
You realize you aren’t breathing.
You realize your hands are trembling.
You reach out and touch their face. It’s incredibly soft. The other you pulls back slightly, they are still you after all, and you have never been overly fond of physical contact. You don’t know what they think looking at you. ‘Here is me, if I were less attractive, less intelligent, less witty,’ maybe. Or perhaps ‘Why bother with them, when I am everything they are and more?’ or maybe not, maybe they’ve never seen themself in a mirror before, maybe they haven’t realized yet how objectively better they are than you. Maybe they never have to.
You slide your hand down their face. They are still smiling, slightly more unsure than they were, but trusting you all the same. Their throat moves like they are about to speak— you grab it, in both hands, and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. The other you struggles, and they are stronger than you, but you are desperate and they weren’t expecting this. They had been good, naive, they hadn’t expected that of human nature. Until the other you stops struggling, stops moving, stops being. Stops filing the role that you’ve tried all your life to fill, but have never been good enough, not quite.
You leave them there, on the ground in front of that machine, that horrible machine, their perfect face distorted, their perfect hair askew. And you hunch your shoulders and make your way back to your life, angry and unsettled. You try not to let to think about what might have been, but it will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Behind you, the machine shudders with glee.
The next person to find the machine reads the fine print, thinks long and hard, and makes the decision to try it. They give the machine their hand, and moments later, they are standing side by side with their perfect self.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“You are me.”
“I am you.”
“How much do you know?”
“I know everything that you do.”
And they stand there, and look at one another, and the original thinks and thinks and thinks.
“Okay, it’s yours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My life, it’s yours. Go live it, you’ll do a better job than I”
Silence
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
And the clone walked into the original’s life, and the original sat down next to the machine, and waited for oblivion. The machine was more than glad to make that happen.
A traveler finds the machine, reads the promise reads the fine print, and moves on. The machine makes no victories that day.
A woman who is perfectly content with herself finds the machine. ‘Okay’, she thinks, ‘Why not, I’ll try it’. And the machine makes a copy of her that is identical in every way.
They take each other’s hand, and walk together into her life, and they call each other sisters, and live a long and happy life together.
They are never quite sure who is original and who is the copy, and they can’t bring themselves to care.
Somewhere, in an alternate universe, a teenager finds a machine…
One blood donation later-
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT I’M AN ACTUAL DRAGON!!! THIS IS THE BEST. DAY. EVER!!!!!”
You watch, heart beating with a dizzying mixture of excitement and terror, as another version of you stumbles to his feet in front of you. Your heart can’t help sinking as you look on—the machine kept its promise. Your clone is taller, more handsome, looks more confident and well-at-ease—everything you’ve ever disliked about yourself is conspicuous by its absence.
The clone returns the gaze. “Oh, no,” it mutters eventually.
Your expression must have turned puzzled in response to that, for the duplicate elaborates. “The last thing I remember is putting a drop of blood into the machine,” he tells you. “So I guess you’re the perfected version of me, huh?”
You almost have to laugh with the sheer shock of it. “What? No. You’re the…” and then you have to stop yourself.
Suddenly you’re not at all sure who is who.
You look down at the schedule in your hands. A schedule of all the things you should have been doing, need to be doing. But it’s just not enough, to schedule it. Sometimes, you think, without your online friends who’d know nothing, you’d kill yourself.
You shove your finger in.
Your parents will later marvel about how much better you are doing at school all of a sudden. Your online friends wonder how you suddenly have so much free time.
Your perfection and your desire are conveniently nonintersectional.
This Is a Backup Blog 