Arthur didn’t remember much about his childhood- he had shoved those memories away, hidden them far beneath his happier, more recent ones- but he remembered the soldiers. He could recall their armor, the masks shielding their faces and turning them from men into horrific nightmare machines in the mind of a small child, the cold hard casings of ( Read more... )

For Alfred’s twenty-fifth birthday, his team planned one hell of an extravaganza. Yao had set up some gravity-defying fireworks with the help of his younger brother, a silent boy named Hong. Matthew and Francis busied themselves with decorating a small grove of trees with beautiful hanging lanterns, courtesy of Yekaterina. Even Ivan was helping ( Read more... )

He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying there. Minutes had passed into hours, days, months- maybe eternity had already flown by, and he was still just lying helpless on a table, hooked up to hundreds of little tubes and wires that felt like they were trying to carve their way into his core. Even breathing was painful. He could barely open his ( Read more... )

Their first mission together was a nothing short of a disaster. It was lucky that Professor Xavier had decided to send Ivan, better known to the world as Rusalka, along with them, or they would not even have managed to complete their goal. Not that Ivan’s presence did much to help Alfred focus- the boy was still just as temperamental as ever, and ( Read more... )

The street seemed to swim before him, rolling and pulsing along with the ache in Arthur’s mind. But even as his focus wavered, he forced himself to remain airborne, refusing to dip further down towards the road. The pain shooting through his side was overwhelming. He was pushing himself and his powers far beyond his limits, and he knew it, but he ( Read more... )

Stardate 8503. This is Captain Alfred Jones, newly appointed command of the starship Enterprise. Our continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no one has gone before.

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Sometimes Alfred forgot how different the world was in the new millennium. He could still remember the shock and wariness he’d felt that time in the café, when those two young men had walked in holding hands. He had immediately feared for their lives, and had nearly jumped out of his seat to protect them before Arthur grabbed his arm to stop him. ( Read more... )