Five Superheros!

[lycoris]

Title: Super Secrets
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Summary Dawn never realised there would be problems with her sister being a superhero.

It never occurred to Dawn that there could be any problems with having a big sister who was a real-life super-hero.

She and Buffy had always played games when they were little. Games where Buffy was a super-hero and Dawn needed to be rescued. They’d always been fun (even if Dawn did sometimes wish that she could be the hero) It had been one of their best games and Dawn had been sad when Buffy had abruptly insisted that they were too old to play anymore.

She found out before her mother did. It made sense really. She had been the one who'd found and read Buffy's diary. She'd been the one who'd noticed that Buffy was sneaking out more. She was the one who had to put up with Buffy when she was tired and cross. She'd also been the one to cover for Buffy sometimes. “Tell Mom I was here the whole time, okay? You're old enough to be by yourself, right? Just don't answer the door or the phone.” And of course, there came a point when she'd folded her arms, stuck out her lip and said "Not unless you tell me where you're going!"

Buffy had told her usually that it was to meet her boyfriend (which Dawn discovered later, was kind of true) Dawn had accepted it for a while but weird things kept happening. Things that didn't really make any sense. Like Halloween. Dawn didn't remember much of Halloween. She'd worn a goblin costume and it had been fun at first but then things had got strange. Buffy had told her that she'd eaten too much candy while trick-or-treating and told her to forget about it.

But then there was Ted. Ted, who'd been so nice and then Buffy had pushed him down the stairs and it had all been awful. And then he'd come back. Horribly. Her Mom had been unconscious and Buffy had told Dawn to stay upstairs but she hadn't and she'd seen ...

"He's a robot," she whispered. "You killed a robot!"

"Dawnie, I'll explain later. Go back upstairs to Mom and don't tell her anything, okay? Nothing."

So Dawn had obeyed and waited and eventually, after a few phone calls, Buffy came and sat in her room with her and stroked her hair and explained that maybe, some of the stuff in her diary hadn't been her getting sick and needing to go away to hospital. That maybe, there were real things out there. Horrible things. That Buffy fought every night, saving the world from evil creatures.

“You can’t ever tell, Dawnie,” Buffy said. “You have to promise. Mom and Dad … they can’t know. No one can know. Okay?”

It was easy to promise. Buffy was her big sister. Buffy had always taken care of her. Dawn always wanted to fit in with her big sister. Of course she wouldn’t tell anyone about the fact that her sister was a superhero! It would be just like the games they’d used to play.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. Buffy still wouldn’t let her get involved. Things got scary all of a sudden with Buffy’s boyfriend becoming terrifying. And then Buffy disappeared and Mom worried and worried and nearly forgot that Dawn was worried too. In fact, as far as Dawn was concerned, there was a lot of time spent forgetting her. Because she wasn’t a super-hero. She wasn’t special. She wasn’t anything.

There were a lot of problems with having a sister who was a real live super-hero.

Title: Which Superhero?
Fandom: Getbackers
Rating: PG
Summary Ban and Shido are fighting until Akabane puts an end to it.

Paul was very used to Ban having fights in his café. It was one of the things that regularly tempted him to kick the Getbackers out forever (something that he knew he’d never do but occasionally wished he could) However, this, without a doubt, was the stupidest, most pointless fight that he had ever witnessed.

“You’re an idiot!” Ban was raging, waving his coffee mug around furiously. “A flea-brained moron!”

“And you don’t have the brains of a snake!” Shido yelled back, equally stupidly and pointlessly involved.

Ginji, Natsumi and Rena had taken refuge under the table and were watching the fighting duo warily.

“You know nothing of fighting,” Ban announced. “That’s clearly it. You just sleep through any battles that don’t involve ravening wolves or dumb shit like that!”

“No, you’re just too stupid to see subtly when you see it!”

“You just don’t know anything about anything! Ginji, back me up here!”

Ginji whimpered from under the table. Ban apparently took this as agreement and opened his mouth to triumphantly complete his argument. He broke off when Akabane (who had just strolled in) spoke first)

“Well, Ban-kun,” he said sweetly. “While I do have the utmost sympathy for your position that Wolverine would destroy Batman in battle, I believe that I would beat both of them very easily. Wolverine is of course immortal but I’m sure we could work around that … ”

And that, to Paul’s slightly disturbed relief, put an end to that.

Title: Ruffles
Fandom: Animorphs
Rating: G
Summary Marco decides to try and cheer the team up. Set during #17. As usual, I can't do thought-speak marks so it's in italics.

It was Day Four of the Oatmeal Operation and I was beginning to notice that it was possible that being stuck in a shed together was causing a rift between us normally so well bonded Animorphs (morphing in a mole and digging underground wasn’t helping matters much either.) So naturally, I decided that it was only right and just that I could try to cheer everyone up.

“I’ve designed our super-hero outfits!” I announced cheerfully.

“Marco,” Jake said in his Serious-Leader voice. “Didn’t I ask you to stop doing that?”

“Yes,” I conceded. “But I analysed your words very closely and you only actually said that you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t bring the subject up again. You didn’t actually say I couldn’t.”

Jake’s lip twitched. Ah hah! I had him now! I held up the book where I’d been drawing the designs (which happened to be my Maths book but oh well)

“See?” I said triumphantly. “A tasteful and stylish costume, designed to be morphable and attractive to the eye.”

Wait, which is for the guys and which for the girls? Tobias asked, totally unfairly.

“Marco,” Cassie said after eyeing my drawings thoughtfully. “Have you waited until Rachel was underground on purpose before showing us this? Because you know that when she sees that, she’s going to morph elephant and stomp you, right?”

Jake didn’t say anything. He was too busy snorting and pretending to read his History textbook. I put on my most wounded expression.

“You people have no appreciation of fashion,” I announced. “And those shorts are very attractive.”

“They aren’t what I would call shorts,” Cassie said.

I am very confused Ax muttered.

I continued to look wounded until Rachel came out of the earth. Proving Cassie totally wrong, she did not stomp me. She just looked at my carefully planned art, raised an eyebrow and said “You’d need a flared ruffle around the hips to make that work. And I don’t think a flared ruffles would morph.”

“Well, that’s clearly the end of my dreams of our super-hero outfits,” I said, attempting to sound mournful.

“Marco,” Jake said. “Shut up.”

I did. After all, for now at least, my work here was done.

Title: No Superheros
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Rating: G
Summary Sarah Jane listens to Clyde and Luke discussing the Doctor.

“So … this Doctor,” Clyde said. “He really goes round space and time and just … does stuff?”

“Yes,” Sarah Jane said, busy trying to organise the papers she’d been writing. Luke had managed to knock them over while trying to avoid Clyde’s attempt to steal the fairy cake that he’d been eating. There were disadvantages to suddenly having a house full of children. Definite disadvantages.

“Imagine saving the world that many times,” Clyde said. “I mean, we’ve been pretty awesome. But he’s been like, a superhero or something!”

Sarah Jane paused in her rummaging. Like a superhero. She’d thought of the Doctor like that once. Like he was a magical being who could change everything that was wrong with the world. Only she knew better than that now. Knew that no one could ever fix everything. There were no superheroes, not really.

“Can we be superheroes?” Luke asked, sitting next to Clyde now that his cake had been safely eaten.

“Yeah!” Clyde said cheerfully. “We’ll be awesome superheroes. Just no spandex, all right?”

Sarah Jane smiled and shook her head. Boys. Her boys.

Title: Grounded
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Rating: PG
Summary Arthur never thought much of superheros until he met Merlin. Modern day AU.

Arthur didn’t like superheroes.

“It’s just not normal,” he informed Morgana. “People aren’t supposed to have special powers. It gives them airs that they shouldn’t have.”

“Everyone who has a talent can use it for good or evil,” Morgana snapped. “Not just superheroes. Look at you and Daddy’s money. And in case you hadn’t noticed, most of them use it for good.”

“It just makes them think they’re above the law,” Arthur said stubbornly. “No one should think they’re above the law.”

Morgana gave a cough that sounded like “Daddy’s money” and then ignored him. Which was how most of their debates on the superpower issue tended to end.

“You shouldn’t mind him so much,” Arthur heard Gwen saying once when they thought he couldn’t hear them. “Some people are too grounded in reality to think much about superpowers.”

Arthur suspected that this remark was not a compliment. He decided to pretend that he hadn’t heard it. This tended to work very well with most things that he didn’t want to think about. If it couldn’t be solved with some sort of physical activity, Arthur felt it was usually more trouble than it was worth. Which was probably why he and Morgana fought so much since she was doing a philosophy degree and spent most of her time debating anything that could be debated.

He didn’t meet a real superhero in the flesh until his second year of university. He was taking a short cut home through some fields, more than slightly drunk, when suddenly a young man was standing in front of him. He was tall and terribly thin, wearing black.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said gently. “Especially not in your state.”

“I am in complete control,” Arthur said haughtily and proved this by attempting to step around the man and crashing into a fence. “Oh … ”

“Yeah,” the man said. He stepped forward and took Arthur’s hand gently. “Let me see you home, yeah?”

Arthur frowned. The man’s face appeared to be swimming and hard to focus on. And not in a I’m-so-drunk way. In a I’m-doing-something-myself way.

“You,” he said slowly. “Superpowers.”

“Maybe,” the young man said, leading him back towards the road. “Sorry. I know that bothers you.”

“How?” Arthur demanded belligerently. “You don’t know anything about me!”

“Well, I do actually,” the young man said, sounding apologetic. “I know quite a bit about you, Arthur. It’s not really intentional. But I can’t help it.”

“You make no sense,” Arthur informed him, rather glad that they had reached the road again because the grass was too slippery for his drunken feet. “And are weird. Did I mention that?”

“Yes,” the hero said. “Well, no, but it was implied in your tone. Don’t worry. I just need to get you home, then I’ll leave you alone.”

Arthur let himself be led for a short while, trying to get his thoughts in order. After a few minutes of this, when he finally felt able to construct a proper sentence again, he spoke up.

“So, what’s your power? Or powers? Are you … Melty Man … or …?”

“First off, Melty Man is from Coupling, if you remember that show. And you won’t have heard of me. My powers are … very specific. You can call me Merlin.”

“Merlin? That’s a lame superhero name. It’s a bird.”

“Well done,” Merlin said, sounding rather testy. “It is indeed.”

“Does that mean you can fly?” Arthur asked, slightly distracted by this idea. Being able to fly would be pretty cool and despite what the comics made it sound like, most people couldn’t.

“Never tried,” Merlin said, a small smile touching his lips. “Maybe I will someday.”

“I think if you don’t know you can fly, you can’t,” Arthur said. He was pleased by the calm intelligence of this statement. Merlin, however, snorted and continued to pull him along. His fingers were digging rather painfully into Arthur’s wrist and it occurred to Arthur that they were moving awfully fast.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Merlin said quickly. Too quickly. “We’re fine. All good.”

“You might want to re-evaluate that,” a voice said from behind them.

“Oh crap,” Merlin mumbled, his shoulders slumping slightly.

Arthur blinked. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, they were surrounded by people. Like Merlin, they were wearing black. Unlike Merlin, they were wearing masks.

“Get out of the way, boy,” one of them said, looking at Merlin. “We only want him.”

“Again?” Arthur said wearily. Being the heir to the Pendragon estate meant facing kidnapping attempts occasionally but it didn’t make them any more bearable. Usually, Arthur was pretty good at fighting off attempts but there were a lot of people where and he was quite drunk. And it had been a long time since he’d had to deal with this. He’d thought people had given up.

“Nice of you to be so accepting,” the apparent ringleader said. “I’m sure Daddy will pay up without too much fuss, aren’t you?”

He took a step towards Arthur. There was a heavy clunk noise and a bright flash of gold. The man reeled back and the other kidnappers fidgeted uncertainly. Arthur looked at his new friend. Merlin’s eyes were glowing.

“Goldie?” Arthur suggested. “Barrier Boy?”

“Not. Now,” Merlin gritted. His fingers tightened around Arthur’s. His hand was weirdly hot and Arthur blinked at him.

“Get rid of the brat,” the ringleader snarled. “Break that barrier down!”

One of the group stepped forward, laying a hand on the now visible glittering barrier. A black patch appeared, small but rapidly growing.

“Damn,” Arthur said conversationally.

”Um, yeah,” Merlin said. “Arthur, is it okay if I take a bit of a liberty?”

“A what?” Arthur said blankly.

“I’ll take that as consent,” Merlin said. “Time is an issue after all.”

He leaned forward and kissed Arthur on the lips. Arthur blinked. Merlin’s mouth was burning hot against his and now both of his hands were holding Arthur’s arms tightly. He could hear the kidnappers jeering at them.

“Um,” he said, pulling his mouth away from Merlin’s. “What?”

Merlin’s whole face seemed to be glowing now. His eyes blazed with fire that almost hurt to look at. His hands were too hot and Arthur tried to pull back but Merlin tightened his grip.

“If you’ll forgive a cliché,” he said. “Don’t look down, okay?”

The kidnappers were suddenly shouting but their voices quickly seemed to fade. Arthur felt his stomach drop away and didn’t need to look down to know that he was no longer standing on the earth.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Indeed,” Merlin said. “Hold on, would you? I don’t plan to drop you but it would be reassuring.”

Arthur held on. He looped his arms around Merlin’s shoulders and curled his legs around his waist for good measure. One of Merlin’s arms stayed looped protectively around him, the other stretched out to the side in a traditional flying gesture.

“This is amazing,” he said happily.

“It’s terrifying,” Arthur said. “I am too drunk for this. Or possibly not drunk enough.”

“Rubbish,” Merlin said cheerily. “You’re drunk enough to stop yourself from having a breakdown and sober enough to feel sensible fear.”

“Oh sod you,” Arthur mumbled, risking a glance at the ground below. “You’d better be watching out for power lines.”

“Shit!” Merlin yelped and suddenly dropped several feet. Obviously, this hadn’t occurred to him.

“I think I could hate you,” Arthur said. “How did you suddenly learn to fly?”

“Could we wait until we’re landed?” Merlin asked. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”

Arthur decided not to argue with this. He certainly didn’t want it to end badly, not when he was hanging in the air with his arms around some random guy. After a while, he felt that they were flying lower. Merlin squeezed his shoulder gently.

“Which is your room?” he asked.

“Can we go by foot?” Arthur asked. “I feel sick.”

“This might be interesting,” he heard Merlin mutter and with a groan, he squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself.

It wasn’t too bad in the end. Merlin landed against the wall and Arthur quickly unlooped his legs to support them both. He stared into Merlin’s eyes, watching the gold slowly fade.

“That was pretty cool,” he said.

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I guess it was.”

He took Merlin up to his room and made them both a cup of tea. Merlin perched on his desk, swinging his legs and looking cheerful. Arthur noticed that the swimming affect on his face had faded, leaving him with big blue eyes, a stupidly big mouth and huge ears.

“Dumbo?” he suggested.

“So original,” Merlin said with an irritable eye roll. “I don’t want a superhero name, okay? My name is Merlin.”

“How come you can fly?” Arthur asked, handing him the tea and watching as Merlin poured sugar in.

“Well,” Merlin said, looking sheepish. “Well it’s … a bit complicated. See, I kind of … I’m not exactly your regular kind of superhero. I can’t do things the way most people with superpowers can. For ages, it was like I only had flashes of power. And dreams. Lots and lots of dreams. About, um, you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” Merlin said, playing with his mug. “It was ages before I realised you were a real person. I put it together in the end though. See, I kind of only have any powers when I’m around you. I know it’s a bit weird … ”

“A bit weird?”

“A lot weird,” Merlin offered with a lopsided grin. “I know. It’s … it took me a while to get used to it. I wasn’t sure I liked it when I did, not really. But … it’s true. I mean … I think I’m only meant to have powers for you. To protect you.”

Arthur’s head was beginning to swim a bit. He stared at the gangly boy at his desk and tried to rearrange his words until hey made sense.

“Are you sure you’re not mentally challenged?” he asked at last.

“Pretty sure,” Merlin said with a small grin. “See, when I’m near you, I can do stuff and when I’m not, I can’t. Except a kind of tugging which tells me where you are. Kind of conclusive, really.”

“Is that how you found me tonight?”

“Pretty much. I dreamed you’d be in trouble and so I looked you up. But um … I’ve been around. You just haven’t seen me.”

“Oh good,” Arthur said. “I have a stalker.”

Merlin looked hurt but didn’t say anything, probably because he clearly didn’t have a leg to stand on. Arthur shoved his mug aside and flopped down onto the bed, suddenly feeling as though his eyes wouldn’t keep open any longer.

“Deal with this in the morning,” he mumbled.

Gentle fingers tugged off his trainers and somehow, the duvet squirmed out from beneath him and tucked him in. When Arthur forced his eyelids open a crack, he saw Merlin’s eyes glowing gold again.

“I’ll see you soon,” Merlin promised. “Thank you for the tea.”

Arthur muttered something that was vaguely meant to be consent. He wasn’t quite sure what he made of all this but hopefully, he’d have a better idea in the morning. One thing was for sure, he was probably going to have to seriously revaluate his opinions on superpowers.