Fic: Nothing Left to Lose: Thorns
Well now that RR #3 is out and Piper's all angst and wooby, and it's got me riled. It's also got me declaring it as canon to my mainverse because damn, it just works *LOL*
Poor Piper!!! DCU is cruel. I was going to post this later in the week but damn! Poor Piper!
Previously:
Prologue
Beside Myself
Boys Will Be Girls
Title: Thorns
Author: Katzedecimal
Rating: G
Characters: Pied Piper, Pipster (yep!)
Summary: Piper starts to realize something odd.
The floor of the auditorium was filled, packed with reporters and onlookers. At the podium, vice presidential candidate Maxwell Lord was giving his speech. Someone had just asked him about the supposed-to-be top-secret Project Salvation and Max was stammering, unable to reply. It was too perfect. He couldn't wait; it had to be now.
"I'll tell you about Project Salvation!" he roared. Heads turned and the sound fields focussed on his voice, projecting it to the far corners of the world, "Round up all the metahumans, capes and villains alike, and ship them off to a kill planet to fend for themselves. They come back stronger, meaner killers with a hefty grudge they're ready to take out on society and give the capes no reason to stop them, heck give them incentive to join them! What a brilliant plan that was!" He had the entire room's - heck, the entire world's! - attention now. He leaned back on his line, "Here's what we think of your plan, Max!" -- and jumped. Swinging down, cloak billowing behind him, he threw the pie at the apex of his arc and hit Max right in the face. He swung up to the far gallery, put his flute to his lips and ran.
"You bastard! You were supposed to wait for me!"
"I couldn't, man, it was too perfect, the moment was just too right! Dude, they had the international cameras on him and everything!"
"Aw man! I wanted to be the one to pie him!"
"Dude, with your shoulder the way it is?"
"It would have been worth it!"
"I can't wait to see the headlines, man -- 'Max Lord Pied by Piper!'"
"That's brilliant. We gotta catch the news, I'll bet you looked great!"
"Hey, Tricks?"
"Hm?"
"I stopped playing my flute a couple of minutes ago, so why do I still hear it?" They stared at each other.
"That would be me."
They turned and stared. "Damn," Trickster breathed, "A guy goes to get a sandwich and bam! - worlds collide!"
Hartley tilted his head, "You don't seem too surprised."
"It's been weird around here lately."
"Are you looking for Ray Palmer?" Piper asked suspiciously.
Hartley shook his head, "Sorry, just playing multiverse tourist."
"Passing through like cheap beer?" Trickster said brightly. He was the absolute spit-and-image of James Jesse, age nineteen, right down to the costume, which was somehow even gaudier than the one he'd adopted in his later years. Hartley found it hard to look at him; he kept seeing that face shattered, bloody and lifeless.
Not that looking at the other one was any improvement. What the hell possessed me to dress like that? Hartley thought.
"Your outfit is cool!" Piper said admiringly.
"And yours ought to be cold but I see you've still got the teenage hot thing going on," Hartley grinned, "You're what, sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Thirty-four," Piper smiled, appreciating the double-entendre compliment.
"Thirty-four?" Hartley gaped, "Either people age a lot slower here or you've really been hitting the Retin-A."
"I told you, it's been weird around here lately," Trickster grinned at Piper, who was still admiring Hartley's costume.
"The second my back is turned, you're heading straight to Gambi's, aren't ya," Hartley grinned.
Piper grinned back, "Mmmmaaaaaay-be." He looked at Trickster, "Whaddya think, should I ditch the old green jumpsuit in favour of a cloak'n'cowl?"
Trickster sauntered around Hartley with exaggerated appraisal. He tapped his chin, "Hmmmmmm, I dunno, babe... If it shows as nice as he does, I might have to get jealous."
"What's this, what's this?" Hartley said suddenly. He reached out to get a closer look at the ring on Trickster's finger, "You're married?"
Piper beamed and showed a matching ring, "Yup!"
Trickster grinned, "We were on-again-off-again for years..."
"Mr. Commitment-Shy over there."
"Footloose and fancy free!" Trickster retorted.
"Years, you said?"
"Yeah. Since we first met, really."
"It was love at first sight," Trickster grinned.
"Yeah, he took one look at me and went 'HIT THAT!!'"
Hartley grinned then sighed, "My Tricks was homophobic. I think maybe he felt something for me, but it scared him too much."
"Oooooo, too bad, man, his loss," Trickster said, stroking Piper's long coppery hair, "I mean sure, when I realized he wasn't a girl I was like whoa! But feel the fear and do it anyways, ya know? Never looked back."
Hartley smiled, "So what's with 'off-again?'"
"Mmmm, sometimes we needed a break from each other."
"Absence makes the Hart grow fonder," Trickster agreed.
"I thought it was out of sight, out of mind," Piper smirked.
"When you're out of sight, I go out of my mind."
"Hey getcher hand outta there, we're in public!" Piper blushed, grinning, "Sorry, Enchantress's teenager spell was pretty complete, if you know what I mean."
"Oh I'm sure you're upset about that," Hartley grinned.
Piper squirmed out of Trickster's grasp and grinned, "Anyhow... After he got shot, I decided to make it permanent."
Hartley nodded and smiled, then twitched an eyebrow at Trickster, "You were shot?"
Trickster scratched his head, "Yeahhhh... After the Rogues killed Axel Walker, we had to go on the lam. Turned out that was an excuse for Max's chief slave to send her dogs after us to drag us off to their kill planet."
"No matter where we went, they kept finding us!"
"Yeah, they had lousy timing too, we didn't get any sex at all," Trickster said wickedly. Hartley snerked.
"A-ny-ways," Piper said, blushing a little, "We'd stowed away on a freight train--"
"A train!! You'd think you could get a little privacy on a train but noooooo!"
"Trii-iicks!! He doesn't need to hear about that!"
"Yes I do!!"
"A-ny-ways! Deadshot ambushed us."
"I got shot in the shoulder, not that I got any sympathy."
"For you being an idiot?"
"Oh here we go again... He was trying to kill you!"
"You could have just shoved me out of the way!"
"I'm alive and so are you, so shut up about it!"
"You're just lucky the train jostled his arm, James, because I think he was aiming for your head!"
"He was," Hartley said quietly.
Awkward silence descended. "I wondered why you were alone," Trickster said finally, "Is that why you keep looking at me like that?"
Hartley sighed and nodded, "Yeah. Sorry. I was trying not to." He shook his head, "Axel Walker? On my Earth, the Rogues killed Bart Allen, the Flash."
Piper shook his head, "No, that was Axel. Bart's alive but not for lack of trying -- he's in the hospital under heavy guard, though. The Rogues killed Axel."
"Technically it was self-defence. Axel was trying to kill them too, but nobody'll believe it."
"Why not?" Hartley asked, curious.
"Dude, he's Max Lord's bastard son!"
"Yeah, emphasis on 'bastard,'" Piper snorted.
"I dug up that info plus I learned that Max was behind the deaths of several of the super-heroes."
"He hired the Enchantress to assassinate us but she'd been sent to Salvation so we told her who was behind that."
"After that, killing us was not an option."
"Right, so she got her revenge by turning us into teenagers again."
"I just wish she hadn't turned our clothes into teenagers again. I mean, look at Captain Cleavage here!"
"Me?! You're wearing the blue-and-yellow shorts over black-and-orange tights!"
Looking from one to the other following their dialogue, Hartley felt like he was watching a ping-pong match. "Why did she want revenge on you?"
"Oh not on us! -- on Max!"
"Right," Trickster agreed, "Because teenagers are trouble by definition and we've been a thorn in Max's side for a while."
"So she must've figured teenaged thorns would cause even more trouble."
"She was right!"
Can I stay here? Hartley thought wistfully, watching them alternately bickering and praising each other with obvious affection. He watched Trickster nuzzle Piper's ear, whispering something that made him blush and grin. They looked at each other and shared a brief but passionate kiss. I think I could watch these two all day, Hartley smiled, then frowned, "Do you hear something?" He turned his head, focussing his hearing.
Piper did the same, turning his head this way and that to triangulate. "OMAC," he announced.
"Oh crap!"
"S'okay, I got it covered," Piper said. He dug around in his pockets and produced a set of finger-cymbals.
Hartley arched an intrigued eyebrow, "Zills?"
"It's the only thing I've found that works on OMACs," Piper said, clattering the metal discs rapidly, "But it buggers them up real good! I can't keep the pace up for very long, though." He listened for a moment, "Crap, Tricks, they're the possessed ones!" Trickster nodded and touched a device on his ear.
"Possessed?" Hartley asked.
"Yeah, they're agents of something called Brother Eye. It took over Apokolips and got infected with something like a meme, called the Anti-Life Equation; now it's using its OMACs to spread the meme. Thing is, it destroys the minds of the people who hear it..."
"That's a meme alright," Hartley quipped.
"Right. Except it doesn't seem to work on me."
Hartley blinked, "It doesn't?"
"No. I've heard the whole equation and was like 'So? Sounds lame to me.'"
"Did you get taken to Apokalips?"
"Me?! No!!"
Just two then. Just two of us that I've met so far who went to that place. The thought disturbed Hartley and made him even more nervous about the boom tubes. Piper was still zilling fast and hard while Trickster wired something to a Slinky. "Is he immune to them too?"
"Tricks? No, he's under a deaf field right now, can't hear anything. The OMACs found a way through my cone of silence - ask me how I know - but they can't manage the deaf field because it works on his inner ear. I hate doing it to him, though."
Hartley nodded; that had to hurt, doing that to someone he loved so much, even if it was for his protection. He watched them, thoughtful. The OMACs were spasming and stuttering as though having seizures. No, the flute wouldn't do it, too steady of a tone. The rapid bursts are disrupting them somehow. Then Trickster threw the Slinky, tangling the legs of the OMACs and electrocuting them. Then he turned, grabbed Hartley's and Piper's arms, and the three of them ran.
Finally they stopped. Both Pipers listened intently but heard no pursuit. "Why'd you ask about Apokalips?"
"I got taken there," Hartley said, "Everything that happened to us was engineered by this guy, said he was a god. Thing is, he was trying to get me to play my flute. Said that my power came from this Anti-Life Equation and that I channeled it through my music."
"You believed him?"
Hartley's voice was bleak, "It was one of those times when the truth hurts more than any lie."
Piper and Trickster glanced at each other. "It makes sense though," Trickster said, "You control people with your music. You make them submit to your will. Maybe that's why you're immune."
"Are you immune?"
"I don't know," Hartley replied, "I'm not sure I want to risk finding out."
"No," Piper agreed, "They can force technology. They broke through my cone of silence and forced my implants to stay open so I couldn't turn off my hearing. So I heard the whole thing and was like, That's it? What is it about this that's destroying people's minds? It's the most ridiculous load of claptrap I've ever heard!"
"Especially the part about love equals lies," Trickster said, hugging his Piper from behind and nibbling his neck.
Piper blushed and giggled, "Trii-iicks!! Stop that!"
Oh don't, Hartley thought, Please don't, don't ever stop. It really helps, to know that somewhere, it worked out.
Poor Piper!!! DCU is cruel. I was going to post this later in the week but damn! Poor Piper!
Previously:
Prologue
Beside Myself
Boys Will Be Girls
Title: Thorns
Author: Katzedecimal
Rating: G
Characters: Pied Piper, Pipster (yep!)
Summary: Piper starts to realize something odd.
The floor of the auditorium was filled, packed with reporters and onlookers. At the podium, vice presidential candidate Maxwell Lord was giving his speech. Someone had just asked him about the supposed-to-be top-secret Project Salvation and Max was stammering, unable to reply. It was too perfect. He couldn't wait; it had to be now.
"I'll tell you about Project Salvation!" he roared. Heads turned and the sound fields focussed on his voice, projecting it to the far corners of the world, "Round up all the metahumans, capes and villains alike, and ship them off to a kill planet to fend for themselves. They come back stronger, meaner killers with a hefty grudge they're ready to take out on society and give the capes no reason to stop them, heck give them incentive to join them! What a brilliant plan that was!" He had the entire room's - heck, the entire world's! - attention now. He leaned back on his line, "Here's what we think of your plan, Max!" -- and jumped. Swinging down, cloak billowing behind him, he threw the pie at the apex of his arc and hit Max right in the face. He swung up to the far gallery, put his flute to his lips and ran.
"You bastard! You were supposed to wait for me!"
"I couldn't, man, it was too perfect, the moment was just too right! Dude, they had the international cameras on him and everything!"
"Aw man! I wanted to be the one to pie him!"
"Dude, with your shoulder the way it is?"
"It would have been worth it!"
"I can't wait to see the headlines, man -- 'Max Lord Pied by Piper!'"
"That's brilliant. We gotta catch the news, I'll bet you looked great!"
"Hey, Tricks?"
"Hm?"
"I stopped playing my flute a couple of minutes ago, so why do I still hear it?" They stared at each other.
"That would be me."
They turned and stared. "Damn," Trickster breathed, "A guy goes to get a sandwich and bam! - worlds collide!"
Hartley tilted his head, "You don't seem too surprised."
"It's been weird around here lately."
"Are you looking for Ray Palmer?" Piper asked suspiciously.
Hartley shook his head, "Sorry, just playing multiverse tourist."
"Passing through like cheap beer?" Trickster said brightly. He was the absolute spit-and-image of James Jesse, age nineteen, right down to the costume, which was somehow even gaudier than the one he'd adopted in his later years. Hartley found it hard to look at him; he kept seeing that face shattered, bloody and lifeless.
Not that looking at the other one was any improvement. What the hell possessed me to dress like that? Hartley thought.
"Your outfit is cool!" Piper said admiringly.
"And yours ought to be cold but I see you've still got the teenage hot thing going on," Hartley grinned, "You're what, sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Thirty-four," Piper smiled, appreciating the double-entendre compliment.
"Thirty-four?" Hartley gaped, "Either people age a lot slower here or you've really been hitting the Retin-A."
"I told you, it's been weird around here lately," Trickster grinned at Piper, who was still admiring Hartley's costume.
"The second my back is turned, you're heading straight to Gambi's, aren't ya," Hartley grinned.
Piper grinned back, "Mmmmaaaaaay-be." He looked at Trickster, "Whaddya think, should I ditch the old green jumpsuit in favour of a cloak'n'cowl?"
Trickster sauntered around Hartley with exaggerated appraisal. He tapped his chin, "Hmmmmmm, I dunno, babe... If it shows as nice as he does, I might have to get jealous."
"What's this, what's this?" Hartley said suddenly. He reached out to get a closer look at the ring on Trickster's finger, "You're married?"
Piper beamed and showed a matching ring, "Yup!"
Trickster grinned, "We were on-again-off-again for years..."
"Mr. Commitment-Shy over there."
"Footloose and fancy free!" Trickster retorted.
"Years, you said?"
"Yeah. Since we first met, really."
"It was love at first sight," Trickster grinned.
"Yeah, he took one look at me and went 'HIT THAT!!'"
Hartley grinned then sighed, "My Tricks was homophobic. I think maybe he felt something for me, but it scared him too much."
"Oooooo, too bad, man, his loss," Trickster said, stroking Piper's long coppery hair, "I mean sure, when I realized he wasn't a girl I was like whoa! But feel the fear and do it anyways, ya know? Never looked back."
Hartley smiled, "So what's with 'off-again?'"
"Mmmm, sometimes we needed a break from each other."
"Absence makes the Hart grow fonder," Trickster agreed.
"I thought it was out of sight, out of mind," Piper smirked.
"When you're out of sight, I go out of my mind."
"Hey getcher hand outta there, we're in public!" Piper blushed, grinning, "Sorry, Enchantress's teenager spell was pretty complete, if you know what I mean."
"Oh I'm sure you're upset about that," Hartley grinned.
Piper squirmed out of Trickster's grasp and grinned, "Anyhow... After he got shot, I decided to make it permanent."
Hartley nodded and smiled, then twitched an eyebrow at Trickster, "You were shot?"
Trickster scratched his head, "Yeahhhh... After the Rogues killed Axel Walker, we had to go on the lam. Turned out that was an excuse for Max's chief slave to send her dogs after us to drag us off to their kill planet."
"No matter where we went, they kept finding us!"
"Yeah, they had lousy timing too, we didn't get any sex at all," Trickster said wickedly. Hartley snerked.
"A-ny-ways," Piper said, blushing a little, "We'd stowed away on a freight train--"
"A train!! You'd think you could get a little privacy on a train but noooooo!"
"Trii-iicks!! He doesn't need to hear about that!"
"Yes I do!!"
"A-ny-ways! Deadshot ambushed us."
"I got shot in the shoulder, not that I got any sympathy."
"For you being an idiot?"
"Oh here we go again... He was trying to kill you!"
"You could have just shoved me out of the way!"
"I'm alive and so are you, so shut up about it!"
"You're just lucky the train jostled his arm, James, because I think he was aiming for your head!"
"He was," Hartley said quietly.
Awkward silence descended. "I wondered why you were alone," Trickster said finally, "Is that why you keep looking at me like that?"
Hartley sighed and nodded, "Yeah. Sorry. I was trying not to." He shook his head, "Axel Walker? On my Earth, the Rogues killed Bart Allen, the Flash."
Piper shook his head, "No, that was Axel. Bart's alive but not for lack of trying -- he's in the hospital under heavy guard, though. The Rogues killed Axel."
"Technically it was self-defence. Axel was trying to kill them too, but nobody'll believe it."
"Why not?" Hartley asked, curious.
"Dude, he's Max Lord's bastard son!"
"Yeah, emphasis on 'bastard,'" Piper snorted.
"I dug up that info plus I learned that Max was behind the deaths of several of the super-heroes."
"He hired the Enchantress to assassinate us but she'd been sent to Salvation so we told her who was behind that."
"After that, killing us was not an option."
"Right, so she got her revenge by turning us into teenagers again."
"I just wish she hadn't turned our clothes into teenagers again. I mean, look at Captain Cleavage here!"
"Me?! You're wearing the blue-and-yellow shorts over black-and-orange tights!"
Looking from one to the other following their dialogue, Hartley felt like he was watching a ping-pong match. "Why did she want revenge on you?"
"Oh not on us! -- on Max!"
"Right," Trickster agreed, "Because teenagers are trouble by definition and we've been a thorn in Max's side for a while."
"So she must've figured teenaged thorns would cause even more trouble."
"She was right!"
Can I stay here? Hartley thought wistfully, watching them alternately bickering and praising each other with obvious affection. He watched Trickster nuzzle Piper's ear, whispering something that made him blush and grin. They looked at each other and shared a brief but passionate kiss. I think I could watch these two all day, Hartley smiled, then frowned, "Do you hear something?" He turned his head, focussing his hearing.
Piper did the same, turning his head this way and that to triangulate. "OMAC," he announced.
"Oh crap!"
"S'okay, I got it covered," Piper said. He dug around in his pockets and produced a set of finger-cymbals.
Hartley arched an intrigued eyebrow, "Zills?"
"It's the only thing I've found that works on OMACs," Piper said, clattering the metal discs rapidly, "But it buggers them up real good! I can't keep the pace up for very long, though." He listened for a moment, "Crap, Tricks, they're the possessed ones!" Trickster nodded and touched a device on his ear.
"Possessed?" Hartley asked.
"Yeah, they're agents of something called Brother Eye. It took over Apokolips and got infected with something like a meme, called the Anti-Life Equation; now it's using its OMACs to spread the meme. Thing is, it destroys the minds of the people who hear it..."
"That's a meme alright," Hartley quipped.
"Right. Except it doesn't seem to work on me."
Hartley blinked, "It doesn't?"
"No. I've heard the whole equation and was like 'So? Sounds lame to me.'"
"Did you get taken to Apokalips?"
"Me?! No!!"
Just two then. Just two of us that I've met so far who went to that place. The thought disturbed Hartley and made him even more nervous about the boom tubes. Piper was still zilling fast and hard while Trickster wired something to a Slinky. "Is he immune to them too?"
"Tricks? No, he's under a deaf field right now, can't hear anything. The OMACs found a way through my cone of silence - ask me how I know - but they can't manage the deaf field because it works on his inner ear. I hate doing it to him, though."
Hartley nodded; that had to hurt, doing that to someone he loved so much, even if it was for his protection. He watched them, thoughtful. The OMACs were spasming and stuttering as though having seizures. No, the flute wouldn't do it, too steady of a tone. The rapid bursts are disrupting them somehow. Then Trickster threw the Slinky, tangling the legs of the OMACs and electrocuting them. Then he turned, grabbed Hartley's and Piper's arms, and the three of them ran.
Finally they stopped. Both Pipers listened intently but heard no pursuit. "Why'd you ask about Apokalips?"
"I got taken there," Hartley said, "Everything that happened to us was engineered by this guy, said he was a god. Thing is, he was trying to get me to play my flute. Said that my power came from this Anti-Life Equation and that I channeled it through my music."
"You believed him?"
Hartley's voice was bleak, "It was one of those times when the truth hurts more than any lie."
Piper and Trickster glanced at each other. "It makes sense though," Trickster said, "You control people with your music. You make them submit to your will. Maybe that's why you're immune."
"Are you immune?"
"I don't know," Hartley replied, "I'm not sure I want to risk finding out."
"No," Piper agreed, "They can force technology. They broke through my cone of silence and forced my implants to stay open so I couldn't turn off my hearing. So I heard the whole thing and was like, That's it? What is it about this that's destroying people's minds? It's the most ridiculous load of claptrap I've ever heard!"
"Especially the part about love equals lies," Trickster said, hugging his Piper from behind and nibbling his neck.
Piper blushed and giggled, "Trii-iicks!! Stop that!"
Oh don't, Hartley thought, Please don't, don't ever stop. It really helps, to know that somewhere, it worked out.