[Original] Better than the Fall - part 4
Title: Better than the Fall [Part 4]
Fandom: Original (superheroes)
Warning: violence and the consequences thereof
Rating: PG
Summary: Nothing like strife in the middle of an oh-shi-fight to say “teen team”.
Notes: teen team series. The tropes of B-rank teen team series are hard on the characters. I also need a title for the series, I’m thinking, even if the team remains unnamed.
[Issue #24]
“You lost them?” Shiner has never seen Stonecold look so furious. Hir lips, usually an earthy Mediterranean tone, have gone pale with anger. “How could you lose them? What is the point of winning the goddamn superpower lottery if you just lose the bad guys, Sun Boy?”
“Guys,” Coromell interjects, ill at ease. That’s a bit rich given that Stony is the one spitting at the mouth, but Shiner doesn’t retort. He did lose them. Like he lost against Dr Nightmare. The second heaviest-hitter in the team, and recently it’s been like he can’t do anything right. Stonecold’s got a point.
“They went too fast.”
“Then you should’ve let Coromell go after them,” Stonecold snarls. “If you couldn’t keep up.”
“Coromell was busy keeping Damsel from being run through with spears,” Shiner finally gives in, patience running thin.
Stonecold shows hir teeth. “And what a splendid idea that was. It’s not like Damsel’s wearing an armor that would protect her from the worst of it. Her handle stands for Damsel In Armor, remember? Not Damsel In Distress!”
By this point, Shiner is all out of goodwill.
Dr Nightmare floating before him, menacing. Coromell’s body, limp like a ragdoll’s. Damsel flung against the wall, shattering the brick. Her sword turned against them. Analogue’s scream.
Blood.
What must have happened later, when Sanji was unconscious, what must have musthavemusthave waking up o h g o d e v e r y o n e Promise Nathan Nathan.
“Maybe saving our teammates is more important than catching bad guys!”
“Maybe we can trust our teammates to save themselves and we can catch the bad guys!” Stonecold sucks in a breath. “Amateur,” ze grumbles.
“I’m sick and tired of being treated like some rookie who-” he starts.
Stonecold lets out a furious chortle. “But you are a rookie! You make rookie mistakes and you act like a rookie and you have the biggest chip on your shoulder I’ve ever-”
“Damn it, Stony!” he screams. “You’re the one to talk!”
“Guys,” Coromell intervenes again, firm.
She steps between them, and looks them in the eyes, one then the other.
“Stop it. Now’s not the time, and it’s not helping. Now, if Analogue’s trap worked, we can still get Dart and Rip, but for that we need to work together. And that mean you two can it for the time being.” She takes a breath, sends one last glance at each of them. “Got it?”
In the time it took her to speak, Stonecold’s face has smoothed over, reclaiming its usual controlled look. Ze shrugs and agrees like it’s all the same to hir, and for that Sanji resents hir as much as for the rest. Like he’s the one being a baby here.
“Okay,” he says, because Coromell’s steady gaze is weighting him up this time. He’s suddenly, irrationally afraid that she’ll send him to his room if he doesn’t do as she says. Which is… totally irrational because she doesn’t have that authority, no-one does, they don’t have a leader or anything like that.
She nods, all business like Shiner and his… sort of best friend, if that’s the name for the companionship between Stonecold and him, haven’t just almost succeeded in ripping the team apart.
“We’re going. Prophet,” she turns around to face their silent teammate. “You coming?”
Promise - Nathan - Prophet is still sitting in the same place he was before the argument, looking at the stars.
If it were Sanji asking, it would be a real question. Nathan hasn’t been. Hasn’t been. Well, if their team was the kind where someone had authority over the others, and if Shiner were the one with authority, he wouldn’t let Nathan take up, er, active duty or whatever Stonecold would call it. He would insist on Nathan seeing a therapist, someone who could help him. What Dr Nightmare had done to him-
He calls himself Prophet now.
He looks at Coromell when she reaches out for him, though she doesn’t touch him. He’s changed his costume, too. It’s eerier than Sanji would’ve supposed before he joined the team. He sees his friends wear different clothes everyday, he doesn’t know why seeing Nathan in a different costume is so unsettling. By all logic it shouldn’t be.
“There is no need to worry,” Prophet says. He’s not wearing a mask any more, and he’s blanker than most masked people Shiner’s met so far manage. “A friend will meet us.”
Sanji tries to meet Stonecold’s eyes, a shot at their normal camaraderie, but ze avoids him as ze strides purposefully forward, and grabs Coromell’s hand for transportation.
Coromell looks at him and he knows that she’s not going to say anything about Stony’s blatant violation of the deal-with-it-later rule she insisted on.
“Take Prophet,” she orders, and she rises in the air, leaving Sanji alone with the member of the team he least wants to have a face-to-face with.
Come on. He’s Shiner. He’s got super-strength, flight, solar beams that can blow bad guys out of the air, and the attitude to match; He can do this. He can help Nathan.
Before Dr Nightmare’s attack, Promise would’ve known something was up with him. Promise was really, really good at reading people, but more importantly he was really good at knowing what to do with the knowledge. He knew when to find you and when to leave you alone and, presumably, when to give you a kick in the rear end. He made things better. Sanji didn’t realise until after Dr Nightmare how much he relied on that.
Prophet doesn’t do any of these things.
It’s Sanji’s fault what happened to him. He was the one staying in the back with Analogue and Promise while Dee and Coromell took the frontlines. and if he’d managed to protect Promise from Dr Nightmare, the way a heavy hitter is supposed to, Promise would know and would still try to make Sanji feel better, except that if he did he’d be okay and that would mean Shiner did his job right.
“We should hurry,” Prophet says.
Prophet doesn’t tense when Shiner hooks his arms under Prophet’s armpits and pushes them into the air. But he doesn’t relax either. And, most of all, he stays silent.
Fandom: Original (superheroes)
Warning: violence and the consequences thereof
Rating: PG
Summary: Nothing like strife in the middle of an oh-shi-fight to say “teen team”.
Notes: teen team series. The tropes of B-rank teen team series are hard on the characters. I also need a title for the series, I’m thinking, even if the team remains unnamed.
[Issue #24]
“You lost them?” Shiner has never seen Stonecold look so furious. Hir lips, usually an earthy Mediterranean tone, have gone pale with anger. “How could you lose them? What is the point of winning the goddamn superpower lottery if you just lose the bad guys, Sun Boy?”
“Guys,” Coromell interjects, ill at ease. That’s a bit rich given that Stony is the one spitting at the mouth, but Shiner doesn’t retort. He did lose them. Like he lost against Dr Nightmare. The second heaviest-hitter in the team, and recently it’s been like he can’t do anything right. Stonecold’s got a point.
“They went too fast.”
“Then you should’ve let Coromell go after them,” Stonecold snarls. “If you couldn’t keep up.”
“Coromell was busy keeping Damsel from being run through with spears,” Shiner finally gives in, patience running thin.
Stonecold shows hir teeth. “And what a splendid idea that was. It’s not like Damsel’s wearing an armor that would protect her from the worst of it. Her handle stands for Damsel In Armor, remember? Not Damsel In Distress!”
By this point, Shiner is all out of goodwill.
Dr Nightmare floating before him, menacing. Coromell’s body, limp like a ragdoll’s. Damsel flung against the wall, shattering the brick. Her sword turned against them. Analogue’s scream.
Blood.
What must have happened later, when Sanji was unconscious, what must have musthavemusthave waking up o h g o d e v e r y o n e Promise Nathan Nathan.
“Maybe saving our teammates is more important than catching bad guys!”
“Maybe we can trust our teammates to save themselves and we can catch the bad guys!” Stonecold sucks in a breath. “Amateur,” ze grumbles.
“I’m sick and tired of being treated like some rookie who-” he starts.
Stonecold lets out a furious chortle. “But you are a rookie! You make rookie mistakes and you act like a rookie and you have the biggest chip on your shoulder I’ve ever-”
“Damn it, Stony!” he screams. “You’re the one to talk!”
“Guys,” Coromell intervenes again, firm.
She steps between them, and looks them in the eyes, one then the other.
“Stop it. Now’s not the time, and it’s not helping. Now, if Analogue’s trap worked, we can still get Dart and Rip, but for that we need to work together. And that mean you two can it for the time being.” She takes a breath, sends one last glance at each of them. “Got it?”
In the time it took her to speak, Stonecold’s face has smoothed over, reclaiming its usual controlled look. Ze shrugs and agrees like it’s all the same to hir, and for that Sanji resents hir as much as for the rest. Like he’s the one being a baby here.
“Okay,” he says, because Coromell’s steady gaze is weighting him up this time. He’s suddenly, irrationally afraid that she’ll send him to his room if he doesn’t do as she says. Which is… totally irrational because she doesn’t have that authority, no-one does, they don’t have a leader or anything like that.
She nods, all business like Shiner and his… sort of best friend, if that’s the name for the companionship between Stonecold and him, haven’t just almost succeeded in ripping the team apart.
“We’re going. Prophet,” she turns around to face their silent teammate. “You coming?”
Promise - Nathan - Prophet is still sitting in the same place he was before the argument, looking at the stars.
If it were Sanji asking, it would be a real question. Nathan hasn’t been. Hasn’t been. Well, if their team was the kind where someone had authority over the others, and if Shiner were the one with authority, he wouldn’t let Nathan take up, er, active duty or whatever Stonecold would call it. He would insist on Nathan seeing a therapist, someone who could help him. What Dr Nightmare had done to him-
He calls himself Prophet now.
He looks at Coromell when she reaches out for him, though she doesn’t touch him. He’s changed his costume, too. It’s eerier than Sanji would’ve supposed before he joined the team. He sees his friends wear different clothes everyday, he doesn’t know why seeing Nathan in a different costume is so unsettling. By all logic it shouldn’t be.
“There is no need to worry,” Prophet says. He’s not wearing a mask any more, and he’s blanker than most masked people Shiner’s met so far manage. “A friend will meet us.”
Sanji tries to meet Stonecold’s eyes, a shot at their normal camaraderie, but ze avoids him as ze strides purposefully forward, and grabs Coromell’s hand for transportation.
Coromell looks at him and he knows that she’s not going to say anything about Stony’s blatant violation of the deal-with-it-later rule she insisted on.
“Take Prophet,” she orders, and she rises in the air, leaving Sanji alone with the member of the team he least wants to have a face-to-face with.
Come on. He’s Shiner. He’s got super-strength, flight, solar beams that can blow bad guys out of the air, and the attitude to match; He can do this. He can help Nathan.
Before Dr Nightmare’s attack, Promise would’ve known something was up with him. Promise was really, really good at reading people, but more importantly he was really good at knowing what to do with the knowledge. He knew when to find you and when to leave you alone and, presumably, when to give you a kick in the rear end. He made things better. Sanji didn’t realise until after Dr Nightmare how much he relied on that.
Prophet doesn’t do any of these things.
It’s Sanji’s fault what happened to him. He was the one staying in the back with Analogue and Promise while Dee and Coromell took the frontlines. and if he’d managed to protect Promise from Dr Nightmare, the way a heavy hitter is supposed to, Promise would know and would still try to make Sanji feel better, except that if he did he’d be okay and that would mean Shiner did his job right.
“We should hurry,” Prophet says.
Prophet doesn’t tense when Shiner hooks his arms under Prophet’s armpits and pushes them into the air. But he doesn’t relax either. And, most of all, he stays silent.