The ketchup bottle farts as the semi liquid pours out of it and over the sheets, covering them in slimy red goop.
Kris places the bottle on the floor momentarily and reaches down, spreading the ketchup across the bed like blood splatter. They stare as it dribbles down the side of the mattress, liking the way it looks.
After that, they go back into their inventory, pulling out a cheap pair of kiddy scissors. Mom would never let them have real ones, not after a dangerously close incident where they almost chopped their own ear off. But these would do. For now.
They cut a hole in the center of their shirt before grabbing the ketchup again. They pour it on themself, relishing in the the cold against their skin because they can actually feel it. It’s nice.
When they finish, they stare at the ketchup bottle in one hand and the scissors that lay in the other. They know if they place them back into their inventory, they’ll be gone just like everything else. They look over to their dusty, itemless shelves, then to Asriel’s, full of toys and photos and trophies.
Kris had started destroying all their stuff at the tender age of eight. They ripped the heads off all of their stuffed bears, crack plastic bats in half, even crushed a shiny, new piano the day after Christmas.
They had cried over the last one.
It had gotten to the point where Asriel held on to stuff they wanted to keep, like their game controller or their favorite cd. The only thing Kris kept any more was a simple ball of junk, the only belonging they had. It was just easier that way, no matter how often their mother tried to cajole them into filling their shelves again.
And now, again, they are faced with a choice. A bottle and a pair of scissors. They could probably save them if they buried them in the backyard or something. But, in the end, did it even really matter? It was simple stuff, stuff they had no emotional attachment to besides the desire to keep something, anything.
They tuck the items into their inventory and crawl into bed, pulling the comforter overhead. Just like clockwork, Asriel walks in immediately after.
“Kris!” he admonishes. “Are you still sleeping? Come on, you know we have church this morning.” His feet pad closer, and closer still. “Don’t make me-“ The comforter is ripped off, he cuts off with a scream, falling backward. “Oh gosh!”
Kris lets the moment sit for a moment longer, letting Asriel stew in the fear of it. Then they sit up, looking down at him with a blank face and piercing eyes.
“Oh Christ,” Asriel says in a wobbly voice, tears already blooming in the corners of his eyes. Kris can see the moment where fear turns to anger, shifting in his eyes so quickly. It was always so quickly. “You can’t do that Kris! You scared me!” The tears dribble down his cheeks.
Kris shrugs.
“No! Don’t just shrug!” Asriel says, pointing aggressively at them. “You have to apologize!”
Kris shrugs. “I will never do it again,” they say blandly.
There’s a moment of quiet, where the unstated “I will never do this again,” hangs in the air. There will be more pranks. There are always more pranks. This is just a practiced routine at this point, like two actors bumbling around stage with each other. Clumsily dancing around the true meaning.
Asriel blinks, more tears slipping out. Then he’s scrambling upward, huffing as he goes. He brushes himself off, wiping off the non-existent dirt. “Fine,” he says. “Don’t apologize.” He pokes a finger against their ketchupy chest, finger coming away red. He looks grossed out by it, as if not having expecting that outcome. He wipes it off on Kris’s comforter, saying, “But don’t expect me to wake you up for school tomorrow.”
He studies them, as if expecting some reaction to the threat. Kris stares blankly back.
“Ugh!” Asriel says, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what is wrong with you sometimes!” He looks down at their chest, huffing. “Just…just change your shirt and get downstairs.”
He storms out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. Kris watches the door, almost expecting it to open up again any second. Then they hear the angry stomping down the stairs and knows it won’t.
They stand up, ripping out an extra shirt from their dresser. Suddenly, in their soul there is a tug, a familiar pull. And suddenly they know they will be apologizing later.
Mob Psycho 100 / BNHA AU because I just reread @bunnyscribe‘s Sure As the Setting Sun and I have no self control. Also I just really love the intro cards on the show and I wanna make a fake screenshot of it lmao
Edit: Decided to edit a screenshot to add because re: no self control
Furihata is still eagerly waiting
his gallant rescue (as a superhero, he is aware how horrible this. It is a true
sign that he is a failure as a superhero, that he is counting on other heroes
to save him) when the door opens. His momentary resurgence of hope is quickly
dashed at the sign of another villain.
“Sei-chan! We talked about
this! Kidnapping is no way to begin a love affair!” the Hell and Heaven
Lady says, causing Furihata to blink.
“That is not what is happening,
Reo. As I explained to you, many times, this is a recruitment effort,”
Akashi says, not sounding particularly put out.
“Same thing,” Mibuchi Reo says, and she moves to sit over on the
couch next to Furihata. “You poor baby chihuahua! Sei-chan is being very
rough right now, but I assure you, he has a good heart and he just wants what’s
best for you.”
“Um,” Furihata says, a
little disconcerted by the fact that the Hell and Heaven Lady is talking to
him. Like Akashi, Mibuchi Reo is top level supervillain. Definitely in the top
five supervillains of the present day. Her ability to increase density so that
people either fall flat to the ground under intense pressure or float to the
air is the kind of super-ability that Furihata has always envied.
“You should probably uncuff
him, Sei-chan. This is no way to start a first date,” Reo says.
“Again, not what’s
happening,” Akashi says.
“You’re not going to run away,
are you, Furihata-chan?” Reo asks.
“Er,” Furihata says, once
again quaking a little under the intensity of her attention. He is really not
used to having powerful supervillains notice him. “No?”
“There, see? Furihata-chan
wants to join us!”
“No!” Furihata says, and
then, absurdly, feels guilty when Reo looks at him with a hurt
expression.
“You don’t?” she says,
sounding like Furihata just disinvited her from his birthday party.
“Well, no,” Furihata says,
a tad apologetically. “I really like my team. And anyway, I can’t believe
that you actually want me to join you. I’m really useless. You probably
have me confused with some other person. I say, we should just call it a day,
you let me go, I’ll walk away, no harm, no foul, everyone’s happy.” He
manages a weak smile and hope he’s successfully conveyed, I am not a threat
to you, with But I will never join you and a healthy dose of, Please
don’t kill me.
But Reo just looks indignantly at
Akashi. “Sei-chan! You’re doing this all wrong! How have you not told him
yet?”
“I was in the middle of that,
Reo, but then someone interrupted,” Akashi says, his smile a bit
like a shark.
“It should have been the first
thing you tried! Far before the handcuffs stage, I should think. That’s third
date stuff, at least.”
Akashi looks like he is very
carefully controlling his temper, which Furihata finds unusual. He somewhat
expects that supervillains are cruel, even to their teammates. When Akashi
speaks, his attention is solely on Furihata.
“As I was explaining to you,
Kouki, you clearly do not have any idea of your worth, and your teammates are
fools if they have led you to believe that you are less than them. They do not
deserve you.”
“No, that’s not—my teammates
are very supportive!” Furihata protests, because he will not let Akashi
insult his team. “I don’t need anyone telling me my ability is
useless, that’s fairly obvious to all! I win grocery store lotteries, and
occasionally help with timing, but that’s barely any kind of—”
“Port Kanagawa.”
Furihata immediately stops talking.
The Battle of Port Kanagawa had been Furihata’s first real foray into stopping
real supervillains, and the dangers and disasters of that day are still things
that wake him up at night. He looks at Akashi quizzically. “I didn’t do
much during Port Kanagawa. I was civilian assistance that day.”
“You did not get injured,”
Akashi returns. “In fact, you were one of the only people who did not. And
the civilians you assisted all made it out through an uncanny demonstration of
your luck, as you call it. Which is, perhaps, the most trivial way
I have ever heard someone with reality manipulation describe their
abilities.”
“Reality manip—that’s not what
I do!” Furihata says, almost indignant, because reality manipulation is
one of those godlike super-abilities only spoken about in legend.
“No?” Akashi says,
smiling.
“Of course not,” Furihata
says, blushing for a reason he doesn’t understand.
“Kouki, we can do so many
amazing things together,” Akashi says. “I promise you, if you join
me, we will be unstoppable.”
It’s a pretty nice speech, and
Furihata still can’t believe he’s getting a temptation-speech from a
supervillain. Only really cool heroes ever get temptation-speeches from a
supervillain.
“Well, I think at the very
least, you should take the handcuffs off now,” Reo says. “I’m
beginning to suspect this is a kink of yours, Sei-chan.”
Furihata startles, because he’d
forgotten Reo was still there.
A/N: Hahaha, the continuation of
this AkaFuri superhero/supervillain short I wrote! I wasn’t expecting to write
more, but people seemed to enjoy this one and then I had the idea of throwing
Reo in. I can’t resist Rakuzan roasting Akashi. Might write more, if I have
more ideas =D =D
Personally I think Clark should be a little older than Bruce, because Superman’s first appearance in comics was a year before Batman’s first appearance. THAT IS MY OPINIONNNNNN!
Older batman is passé we’ve seen it, it’s been done! – a more experienced and world hardened bat confronted with the hopeful goodness of Youthful™ Superman? non no more
Instead!
A still hopeful but struggling Superman, wounded by the way humanity treats him, as an alien outsider or as a god, (having always to submit to not exerting as much force in situations or getting involved where he thinks it’s necessary in case they all accuse him of being power mad because of the wide gap in power between him and them) and each other; the blind cruelty of man.. GETS CONFRONTED WITH THIS CRAZY ONLY-A-HUMAN BUT OH SHIT HE JUST BEAT THE HELL OUT OF ME THROUGH TACTICS AND HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE BAT OUT OF HELL!
AND THEN THE HUMAN TURNS OUT TO BE A MUCH YOUNGER VIGILANTE WHO KEEPS CALLING HIM AN IDIOT AND MAKES HIM SET UP A JUSTICE LEAGUE WITH THE OTHER SUPERHEROES HE’S WORKED WITH BEFORE AND OH GOD DID HE JUST ATTACK DOOMSDAY BY HIMSELF? AND HE KEEPS ADVISING HIM ON ‘PRESS’ STUFF WHICH CLARK WISHES HE COULD COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING IRONIC BECAUSE HE IS LITERALLY A MEMBER OF THE PRESS AND HANG ON ISN’T YOUR OWN MEDIA ACCUSING YOU OF BEING A LITERAL MONSTER??? And Bruce just shrugs like ‘that’s intentional’ or something (more dagger like to Clark’s poor battered ego) along the lines of ’I’M not the one scared of what other people think of me so long as I’m doing what I need to do for the greater good’ or ‘If I know what I’m doing’s right why should I let the opinions of people who don’t know me effect my work’ and Clark’s just like ‘well damn’.
And then there’s Bruce fucking Wayne who just bought The Planet and is a total cad who when Clark tries to interview him, accused him of being a has been, and maybe he should dye some of those grey hairs – Clark doesn’t HAVE grey hairs he ages extremely slowly but he can’t quip that at WAYNE
And, and just – Superman. Having his world turned upside down by a young Bruce/Batman who forces the set up of multiple superhero organisations and also rejects all efforts by the government to force the superheroes to out their own secret identities if they want to keep fighting with a counterbalanced very airtight proposal of his own – effectively shutting down any chance of a marvel style civil war, while doing his own Demon thing in Gotham.
Superman, a tired well meaning Superman, faced with an uncompromising HUMAN vigilante that is more than his match and just shakes all his world views to their core, And then suddenly Clark’s getting involved in incidents he never would’ve crossed the line into before (both in team ups and solo) because of governments on all sides that don’t want him there because suddenly he can? He suddenly feels free to do so even though almost nothing’s changed really just his perspective, but now he feels like he can actually allow himself and he won’t cross over into being a monster for it no matter what anyone says and it is intensely freeing. Also if he doesn’t Batman’s gonna judge him which would be infuriating because he is literally a goth child who has no idea how hard it is to navigate international politics as a literal alien / most publicly illegal immigrant there is but acts like he gets it better than Clark does and he’s infuriatingly brilliant and intelligent and Clark hates how much he’s starting to relyyyy on him but also kind of loves it because at last at last the weight of the world doesn’t feel like it’s on his shoulders alone anymore, the burden is shared and lifted with their JLA team members who are swiftly becoming Kal’s most trusted allies, best friends and support network all in one and it makes him want to cry out of joy at all the goodness.
I’m tiiiiired of an embittered aging Batman unable to accept the hope Clark symbolises.
GIVE ME YOUNG TWENTY SOMETHING BATMAN PULLING ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE TO FORCE HIM TO LOOK AT THE WORLD FROM A MORE GROUNDED PERSPECTIVE!
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
“Hey, that— that guy, in the corner, is that— is that Superman?”
Clark looks up from his computer at the new intern. “Oh, no,” he says. “You caught me.”
“Clark, you pull this shit every time, man,” his desk neighbor Steve says. “Shut the fuck up.”
“No, the kid’s right, I’m Superman,” Clark says. He gets out of his seat and cracks his back out. “I guess we’re gonna have a superhero fight.”
“Clark, sit back down.”
“Nope. Superhero fight.”
“Clark if you don’t sit the hell back down and finish your article by lunch I am going to tell Perry on you.”
Clark points at the intern. “You get off easy this time, buddy,” he says, and sits back down.
“So…” the intern says, very lost. “Uh…”
“That’s Clark,” a slightly older and more experienced intern says. “He’s Superman’s asshole twin.”
and any time someone gets a little too speculative about batman’s secret identity, bruce wayne spills champagne down a supermodel’s décolettage and the world collectively goes “naaaah”
tw: injury, mentions of blood, mentions of gore, mentions of death
Also it’s Serirei and there is a sickly sweet ending to this,believe it or not.
It starts with numbness on his left shoulder blade, about a week
after the incident at the Seventh Branch. Reigen, of course, shrugs it off. He’s
given enough massages to know tension pains when he feels them. He makes a
mental note to try a few exercises for that arm later, to help the muscles
loosen up.
They don’t. Weeks pass, and the numbness only grows,
sweeping down his back towards his right hip. This, however, gets quickly shoved
aside or at least included with the damage incurred in his stand off against
Mogami Keiji in the body of a 14-year-old girl. He’d managed to protect his
head, for the most part, but given the force of impact it was no surprise that
his back should have suffered too.
(There was no damage, the paramedics told him. He’d been
very lucky.)
Eventually, the pain in his concussed skull subsides. But
even though he patiently waits, the numbness does not.
hey wow this was great? thanks for punching me in m kokoro .,
Hey Joey, catch!
They end up sleeping on the office couch, which is far too
small for the two of them. Neither seem to mind, making up for the lack of
sleeping space by being as close as physically possible.
They’re both lying on their sides, both facing outwards.
Serizawa is braced against the back of the couch, one arm trapped under Reigen’s
head like a pillow, the other slung over the other man, holding as tight as he
can while still making him comfortable. Reigen seems oblivious of the tension
in Serizawa’s body, however, and lies limp and exhausted, still naked to the
waist. He’s taken Serizawa’s hand in his own, and has wedged himself in a way
that gives the impression that he’s using the bigger man as a blanket.
Batman’s whole basis is the idea of scaring criminals, right?
well, sure, outright intimidation through brute force works for that.
But the whole reason a bat was chosen is that the average person doesn’t understand how cute and cool they are, and finds them creepy and gross.
So let’s play that up. A Batman who uses his training in escape artistry, stage magic, and contortionism to move in ways people think humans shouldn’t be able to move. A Batman who reacts to things that he shouldn’t be able to (because his suit is wired with sensors and Alfred is monitoring things through hacked security feeds). A Batman who has a Slasher Smile.
Give me a Batman who, for the villains, seems like a cryptid. An urban legend on the level of creepypasta, some half-glimpsed shadow who, instead of being scary because of his muscles, is scary because holy shit what was that? What just happened? I’m outta here, man!
Give me a Batman where his battles with characters like Scarecrow and the Joker seem more like one of those crossover films where two horror movie monsters fight it out.
reblog, this had exactly one thousand notes. I was not expecting that, so i feel i should specify in regards to Robin:
I mean a Robin who is unsettling precisely because of people having the reaction of what the fuck is this bright and cheery child doing hanging around with an escapee from the SCP Foundation?
I mean a Robin who is a little too bright and cheery, maybe. And you start to wonder amidst all the smiles and quips, why exactly this particular “robin red-breast” has that shade of red on their chest. Why the red looks a little more brownish, why this child smells coppery when they lean in close to tell a joke. Are you sure they’re a child? Are you sure there’s just one of them?
While you’re wondering this, back at the Batcave, Bruce and the like six different kids who act as Robins are having a laugh and reapplying the fake blood Alfred bought in near-bulk quantities at the Gotham Party City during the last After-Halloween sale.
matches mallone is actually bruce wayne’s best columbo impression. that’s why they call him matches. he’s always looking for a fucking match.
Dick Grayson’s instructions had been: wear something scruffy; bring the old Pontiac; drive to the Coney Island Diner and follow Bruce’s lead.
As a rule, Bruce didn’t let Dick drive if he could help it. Dick thought he was a pretty good driver for a sixteen year-old, but that wasn’t good enough for Bruce. Alien invasions and sea monsters and cities wired to explode, those were fine, but God help him if Dick went a little too fast around a turn.
The Pontiac was one of Bruce’s shittier cars. The paint was worn and rusted and in some places the metal had holes right through it. It coughed and sputtered and kicked, and at anything faster than sixty it shook like a leaf that had just seen a ghost.
Dick still kind of loved it. All those things just added to the aesthetic, added character. Made it feel like a project car, like he was the kind of guy who’d spend time out in the garage fixing it up. He might, too, if Bruce would let him. But Bruce didn’t need more restored cars; he needed cars at varying levels of garbage, paid for in cash with doctored plates.
He pulled up to the diner, all old chrome and blinking neon lights. There was a small crowd gathered in the parking lot next to cars in only slightly better shape than the Pontiac. Dick rolled the window down as he slowed to a stop.
“There he is!”
Dick didn’t recognize Bruce until Bruce pointed at him. He was slouching, and it made him look smaller than he really was, shorter and narrower. He was wearing jeans that didn’t quite fit right, holes in the knees. A threadbare turtleneck the color of pea soup, a suede jacket with small holes and scorchmarks from cinders fallen astray. His hair was a mess, his right eye was in a perpetual squint, and he was pointing with an unlit cigar.
“There he is,” Bruce said again, with a voice Dick didn’t recognize but found oddly familiar. Didn’t sound exactly like dairy-ish, but it was about halfway there. “That’s my nephew, right there,” Bruce said to the bald man beside him with the scar over his eye.
“That’s your famous nephew, eh?” he asked, nudging Bruce with his elbow. “The football player.”
“No, no,” Bruce said, waving him off. “You’re thinking of my niece.”
“So dis here’s da nephew wit’ da tuba,” said a man in a tattered baseball cap and denim jacket.
“No, no, different nephew.”
“You got too many nephews,” complained a man with a large gold hoop in one ear. “How d’you keep ‘em all straight?”
“Well, for one thing,” Bruce said, “they’re not all straight.” A roar of laughter went up. “What’d I say that was funny.”
“Your uncle’s a riot, kid,” called the man with the scar toward Dick.
“Yeah, he’s great,” Dick called back, still not getting out of the car. He was trying not to grin too much at Bruce.
“Sweet kid, isn’t he?” Bruce said. “Lookit that car, he bought that car himself, yanno.”
“It’s a good car,” said a man wearing a Journey t-shirt with no sleeves. “You oughta be real proud of that car, kid.”
“I am,” Dick said, tapping on the door with his knuckles.
“You want some help gettin’ that thing fixed up, you come on down to Goodman’s,” he said, pointing to himself.
“Gee, Mickey, you don’t have to do that,” Bruce said, sheepish.
“Don’t you listen to him,” Mickey said to Dick. “I’ve known this guy almost ten years, never let me do a damn thing for him, at this point I’ll take any Malone I can get.”
The man with the scar laughed and tousled Bruce’s hair. Dick was grinning ear-to-ear. “That’s real nice of you, Mr. Goodman,” Dick said.
“That’s Mickey to you!”
“He’s a real sweet kid,” Bruce said again, “real respectful.” Bruce started patting down his pockets with a frown. “Say, I don’t suppose—”
“Yeah, I’ve got a match,” said three different men at once. They all laughed as Bruce scratched sheepishly at the back of his head. The man in the denim jacket gave Bruce a zippo; Bruce lit up his cigar, and started to put the lighter in his pocket before he was stopped.
“Ain’t havin’ ya lose annudda one o’ my lighters, Matches.”
“Aw, you know me, Bobby,” Bruce said, puffing on his cigar. “I’m just forgetful’s all.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know all about it.”
“I oughta get goin’, my wife’s expectin’ me for dinner.”
“When do we get to meet her, eh?” asked the man with the scar.
“I’m tryin’, Joey, I’m tryin’. She’s got a busy schedule, you know, with her work and the clubs and all that volunteerin’ she likes to do. Did I tell you about her book club?”
“Only about a hundred times. Get goin’, now, before you forget you’re leavin’ again.”
“Geeze, I’m sorry, you know how it is, I get to talkin’ and I just—”
“Yeah, we know.”
“You call my cousin, now,” Bruce said, pointing at Joey with his cigar. “You remember the number?”
“You wrote it down for me,” Joey reminded him.
“Right, right. Don’t lose it. You call him first thing tomorrow mornin’, he’ll get you the job.”
“Don’t you be getting my hopes up, Malone.”
“C’mon, now, would I do that? When’ve I ever let you down?” Bruce opened the passenger door to the Pontiac, cigar held in his teeth; Dick wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“See you in a couple months, Matches,” Mickey called after him.
“Stay away from the Tequila,” someone else shouted, and everyone laughed at a joke Dick was not privy to.
Within the first block, Bruce was rubbing at his eyes like he had a headache. They made it two blocks before Bruce put out the cigar, and another one before Dick asked.
“Okay, Bruce: what the hell.”
“The evidence we need was hidden in a shipment of clothing catalogs,” Bruce said, his voice back to normal. “It was loaded onto a cargo ship called the Virginia Blackbird, it will be leaving for Australia tomorrow morning.” The car smelled like cheap beer and cigar smoke and onions.
“That was not what I was asking.”
“Was it not?”
“Why were you just doing a Columbo impression?” Dick almost wouldn’t have recognized it. Before his time, but after the era of black and white that Dick made a hobby. He only knew it at all because Bruce sometimes left the television on for background noise, and his preferred television shows had a general theme that was easy to identify.
Columbo. Diagnosis: Murder. Murder, She Wrote. That Sherlock Holmes show from before Dick was born. Anything based on something written by Agatha Christie. He insisted it was because anything newer would be distracting, but Dick was pretty sure he was actually just a secret grandma. He even kept hard candies around the house.
Bruce sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“Were you pretending to have a glass eye? How would that even work?”
“It’s not hard,” Bruce said with a shrug. “Just squint and don’t let that eye move.” To demonstrate, Bruce rolled his eye. His left eye. Just his left eye.
“Augh!”
“What.”
“Don’t do that!” Dick said, torn between staring at his guardian in horror and watching the road.
“What, this?” Bruce’s left eye pointed left while his right eye remained still.
“Augh! No, stop, that’s horrifying. How are you even doing that?”
Bruce blinked, getting his eyes back together where they belonged. “Can you not do that.”
“No one can do that! Except chameleons.”
“Huh. Slow down.”
“I’m five miles under the speed limit. Explain the Columbo thing.”
Bruce rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “It was an accident.”
“How do you do that by accident?”
“It’s a long story.”
“The way you’re making me drive, it’s going to take five hours to get home anyway,” Dick said. Bruce did not respond. “You’ve been doing that for ten years? I thought Batman started six years ago.”
“It did. He said almost ten years. I was nineteen.”
“You started going undercover as Columbo when you were nineteen?”
“It was an accident.”
“You keep saying that like it explains anything,” Dick huffed. “You’re the worst at telling stories, you know that?”
“I’m not telling a story, I’m answering questions. You’re bad at cross-examining.”
“Don’t try to make it my fault that you suck at this.”
“I was home from Yale over winter break,” Bruce sighed. “Missing person case. Someone I knew. Police weren’t taking it seriously, so I thought I’d be clever.” Bruce reached over and set a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “I did find her.”
“What?”
“I found her. You looked worried. I thought I should let you know.”
“So you told me the ending? You do suck at this.”
“Use your turn signal.”
“There’s no one else on the road.”
“There’s a saying about a man’s character and what he does when no one else is looking.”
“I always thought that was a saying about why you shouldn’t touch yourself.”
“That’s because you’re sixteen.”
“You were investigating a missing person?” Dick prompted.
“Yeah.” Bruce ran a hand through his hair. “I was down at the docks poking my nose into someone else’s business when Joey found me. I already had the cigar, so I just… said I was looking for a match.”
“Why did you have a cigar?”
“I felt bad throwing it out. It was a gift.”
“From who?”
“Old man with a fruit cart.”
“Why did he give you a cigar?”
“Congratulations for the baby.”
“See, this is what I mean,” Dick said, huffing with frustration again. “You’re the worst at telling stories.”
“I don’t hear anyone else complaining.”
“That’s because they’re scared of you,” Dick scoffed. “No one wants to ask a follow-up question. ‘Hey Batman, why are you being trailed by a spectral alligator?’ ‘Well I couldn’t leave it in the hot air balloon.’” Dick’s impression of Batman involved lowering his voice as far as it would go and puffing out his chest, brow furrowed. “No one knows what the hell you’re talking about and no one ever wants to admit it.”
“That’s their problem, not mine.”
“We both know you do it on purpose.” Bruce didn’t respond to that. “Forget the cigar. An accident only explains it the first time.”
“Joey’s a nice guy,” Bruce said. Dick laughed. “He is. He really liked me, I don’t know. Introduced me to his friends, took me out drinking — God, so much drinking.”
“Matches?”
“I just said Malone. Just call me Malone. The Matches thing, that was all them. Because I kept…” Bruce gestured vaguely.
“Asking for matches?”
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t run into a single person who watched Columbo?”
“A couple. I tell them I don’t like to watch TV because I’m paranoid about subliminal messaging.” Dick laughed again. “They think it’s a coincidence, I don’t know. After that first case I wasn’t planning to do it again — obviously — but then every time I was back on break it seemed like I’d be running into someone. Hey Matches, Matches where ya been, wait’ll ya hear this Matches, Matches you’ll never guess what Bobby did…”
“And now you’re getting Joey a job?” Dick teased.
“He’s a nice guy, Joey, he’s got two kids — three now, he adopted his wife’s son—”
“You’re doing the Matches voice again.”
Bruce cleared his throat. “Right. Anyway. He’s good with heavy machinery, we’ve always got openings in warehouses. Did you just run a red light.”
“It was yellow.”
“Yellow means stop.”
“Yellow means if you go fast enough you can beat it.”
“Richard,” Bruce warned.
“Matches,” Dick shot back.
“This is why I don’t let you drive the Batmobile.” Despite his complaints, Bruce yawned, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat.
“I once saw you go one-sixty down a sidewalk,” Dick said, slowing down and being careful that his driving wouldn’t jostle him.
Bruce yawned again, closing his eyes. “There are no red lights on sidewalks.”
“I feel like these aren’t the lessons you’re supposed to be teaching an impressionable teenager.”
“You want a lesson? Here’s an important life lesson: never pick a cover story you’re not willing to be stuck with for the rest of your goddamn life.”
Scooby Doo idea: Daphne Blake as the weird rich kid whose parents signed her up for a shit-ton of rich-kid extracurriculars like polo, fencing, and all of this other shit so they wouldn’t have to deal with her/bolster her college resume. She puts a lot of effort into actually being good at all these extra-curriculars bc she’s competing with all of her ~super successful and talented~ sisters for attention and ends up athletic as hell and socially stunted and like…really aggressive and competitive and never quite satisfied with anything she’s doing. The only other ‘High Society’ kid who can put up with her is Norville “Shaggy” Rogers —an anxious stoner with freaky strict parents whose only friend prior to Daphne was his equally anxious rescue dog—Daphne’s been beating up Shaggy’s bullies for years. Then there’s student council dweeb Fred Jones who’s always been groomed to be this ‘leader’ by his parents and is always pressured to go to these youth leadership things and stuff and yeah he’s pretty good at directing group projects, but really Fred’s kind of shy and more interested in engineering, forensics and maybe criminal justice and he’s been friends with this chick Velma Dinkley in engineering club who’s brilliant but she’s also tactless, awkward and very bitterly sarcastic to cover up for the fact that her book smarts far outweigh her social skills.
So then there’s this mystery downtown and all five of them show up and there’s a mutual, “Oh hey it’s you: The weird kid from my school. What are you doing here?” and everyone goes around. Fred’s like, “Oh I knew the owners of this place and they said they might have to close down because of this ghost and I told Velma about it and Velma thinks we can get to the bottom of this.” And Shaggy’s like, “Scoob and I didn’t want to be home right now and we honestly didn’t know about the ghost but hey Daphne’s here so we feel safe enough to hang out and maybe Scoob can sniff out some clues or something.” And then everyone turns and looks at Daphne and Daphne’s just like, “I want to fight a fucking ghost.”
I appreciate all of this.
fine, you know what, FINE, i’m just going to LEAN INTO being an on-fire garbage can, whatever. this is who i am now. whatever. WHATEVER!!!! death comes for all of us.
Daphne Blake is very good at almost everything. She should be: she practices. Fencing, polo, archery, dance, tennis, volleyball, karate, yoga. She wrings them out of herself minute by minute, gesture by gesture until her muscles have memory.
She doesn’t mind the work. Daphne likes to struggle. She likes the feeling of victory when she gets to the end: learning a music piece, defeating an opponent, adding a language to the résumé she’s been building since she was ten. She doesn’t have to be the best, but she likes to be better.
She likes looking down.
Daisy revolutionized city-based trauma centers, Dawn redefined modeling with her The Body Is Art campaign, Dorothy was the first woman to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport, and Delilah is so highly decorated she’s run out of room on her dress blues.
Daphne’s sisters were born with the promise of one perfect thing written on their palms. Daphne was born with empty hands, and cannot make anything perfect. Daphne is only ever very, very good.
Norville “Shaggy” Rogers is high, right now. He is looking at the spiral of stucco on his ceiling, his dog Scooby’s head on his stomach, one hand in a bag of Cheetos and the other holding a joint. He isn’t floating, but he’s thinking about it.
“Daph,” he says, heavy eyes blinking open. “What time’zit?”
Daphne lowers her epee. She has a national tournament this weekend. Her parents might come.
Then again, Shaggy knows, they might not.
“Four-fifteen,” Daphne tells him. She flicks her red ponytail off her shoulder, adjusting and readjusting her grip on the sword until it meets some unwritten standard. “When you finish your Cheetos we’ll go over to the fair grounds. It won’t open until seven so we can have a look around before it gets busy.”
Daphne is a nationally ranked fencer; captains the Crystal Cove Country Club women’s polo, archery, and tennis teams; speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian; she can even apply eyeliner on a train. Shaggy saw her do it once, in Paris.
Daphne is the child Shaggy thinks his parents probably wanted. Good at everything she tries, and tries at everything she does.
Shaggy had his first panic attack at age nine. He was seated at a piano. It was his first recital and he was going to play a piece by Béla Bartók. He had liked the song while learning it: fast, uneven, somehow new every time, new enough to keep up with the way his brain could never seem to settle. Shaggy liked it because he was never bored playing it, and he was always bored, in a strange way, in a way that made his heart beat fast and, sometimes, his stomach ache as if he was starving. Sometimes he was bored even when he wasn’t bored–sometimes he became distracted and forgot what he was doing. He lost things all the time. It drove his mother crazy. It made his parents yell like the first three bars of the Bartók piece, Norville! focus Norville! sit still Norville! Norville! Norville!
Shaggy fell apart in trembles on the piano bench, in front of everybody, in front of his panicked teacher and his wide-eyed classmates and his father, who only sighed and said he was doing it for attention.
“Shaggy,” Daphne says, and he realizes his eyes have fallen shut again. When he opens them, she’s bent over him, grinning, too sharp. Daphne is always a little too sharp.
“What?”
“You’re not gonna chicken out on me, are you?”
Shaggy thinks about it. He feels good. Calm. Daphne always makes him feel calm. She’s kinetic and sharp-sharp-sharp. She sucks up all the energy in the room and leaves him feeling like he finally has enough room to breathe.
“No,” he decides, “but I’m bringing Scoob and we’re stopping for burgers.”
Fred Jones is an Eagle Scout. The boys on the football team make fun of him, but the boys on the football team also go nuts for the jalapeño cheddar popcorn he sells, so frankly Fred thinks they can shut it. Fred had liked having tasks he had to complete before he became an Eagle. He had liked learning about nature, about how to survive in the woods, about how to build a fire.
He had liked learning how to identify tracks and what a branch looks like when it has been broken by human hands. He’s not going to be a park ranger or anything but he likes knowing how to leave something undisturbed. He likes thinking of nature the way they’d taught him to think of a crime scene at Forensics camp: How are things? How should they be?
Anyway, Fred’s dad had been excited. He likes when Fred gets elected to things–captain of the football team, president of Student Council, Editor-in-Chief of the high school paper.
Fred hadn’t wanted any of those positions, but his dad didn’t get excited about a lot of things, and…it was nice. When he did.
Fred’s phone buzzes. He flicks open the lock screen and reads Velma’s text: meathead bring a flashlight.
hi Velma, Fred types back. my day was great thanks for asking.
Fred has enough time to go to the kitchen and make himself a ham sandwich before Velma replies. The text says neat story. Thirty seconds later, she follows up with, i’m outside.
Fred looks out the window behind the sink. Mrs. Dinkley’s terrible van is idling in their driveway and Velma is already getting out of it, jogging up to Fred’s front door. He shoves his feet into the tennis shoes he’d last abandoned in the foyer and opens the door before Velma can knock, catching her with her hand half-raised.
“Lookit you, eager beaver,” she drawls. “D’you have the flashlight?”
Fred lifts his keychain. It’s got a small but powerful flashlight dangling between his house and locker keys. “Always be prepared,” he recites.
She cranes her neck as she peers over her shoulder. “Is your dad home?” she asks.
“No, he’s got a town hall meeting until dinner. They announced the plans to build a parking structure where the Neubright Community Center is and everyone’s pissed.”
“With great power, etcetera etcetera,” says Velma, then pauses. “Wait, the community center in south Cove? The only one with free daycare and after-school programs?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Like, fuck your dad.”
Fred doesn’t say anything. He knows. He knows. But it’s his dad.
Velma winces into the silence. “Uh. Anyway. We should get going. The fair opens at seven and we want to get there before the crowds move in.”
Velma Dinkley is almost always right, but never says the right thing. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t mean to. Words come tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them, and they almost always lead to that terrible beat of silence where the wrongness hangs, suspended, until someone is gracious enough to speak into it.
Everything lines up in Velma’s head: numbers, logic, equations, puzzles, those stupid Mensa games. But it never comes out right, or at least not just right. Her mother says she gets “a tone” when she speaks sometimes that makes other people feel like she thinks they’re stupid.
First of all, it’s not Velma’s fault if people are stupid, and it’s not her fault if they know it, and it’s not her fault if they find out only in comparison to Velma being smarter than they are.
But of course Velma lives in the world, so it’s not her fault but it is her problem.
She hadn’t meant fuck your dad, for example. What she had meant was: fuck the mayor. The mayor is Fred’s dad but she hadn’t meant to say it like that. Fred idolizes his dad. Velma knows that.
Anyway, Fred never gets mad. Everyone else gets mad eventually but Fred hasn’t, not since they were kids at Forensics camp together and Velma hadn’t had anyone to partner with and had been trying so hard not to show anyone that it bothered her. And then Fred had said, “Hey, we can have three in our group.”
Velma gets things right and people wrong. Her mother says she’ll grow out of it. Velma isn’t sure.
“So what makes you think we can do what the police can’t?” Fred asks, taking a left-handed turn that Velma wouldn’t have risked.
Velma rolls her eyes. “The police said that a ghostpirate tried to commit murder by tampering with a roller coaster, Fred. If our baseline of detection is ‘jinkies! we think a ghost did it,’ I am sure we can find something to bring to the table.”
Fred laughs. “We can put that in our report,” he says.
“Scoob wants a BLT,” Shaggy informs her, and Daphne rolls her eyes.
“Scooby’s a dog, so he’s getting the cheapest thing on the menu,” she says.
Shaggy frowns. “Daph, you’re like, a literal millionaire,” he points out. “And we’re at the drive-thru of a Denny’s. Splurge on the BLT, dude.”
“Potheads who live in four-story houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Daphne snaps back.
“Okay, girl wearing a Burberry tracksuit–”
“Uh, ma’am? Is that all?”
Daphne blows a long breath out of her nose. She glances at Scooby, who is sitting in the back seat but with his head on the arm rest between them. He looks up at her and whuffles what she swears to God sounds like, “please.”
“No,” she tells the machine, sighing. “And a BLT.”
“Sweet!” Shaggy cries and holds his hand up for Scooby to high-five. He ruffles the hair at the top of his dog’s head and beams over at Daphne like she’s won him a prize. “The Scoob looooooooves bacon.”
In the fourth grade, Daphne found Shaggy in the hallway, shaking so hard she thought his teeth might fall out. Some kid from the grade above–Red something–was standing over him, calling him names. Daphne hadn’t really thought about it before punching that kid in the nose. She hadn’t thought about it before crouching down in front of Shaggy and trying to get him to breath steady. She hadn’t known what to say, but Shaggy had joked, “Like, wow, you hit like a girl,” between shuddering breaths and Daphne had laughed.
Nobody in Daphne’s family is good at telling jokes. Not like Shaggy is.
“Eat those quick, you two. I’d hate it if the scent of delicious burgers lured the pirate ghost to us.”
Shaggy swallows a big bite. “Like–you didn’t say there would be a ghost!”
Daphne is neither convinced nor unconvinced of the reality of ghosts, so she shrugs. “I said we were going to check out the fair grounds! I thought you knew they said it was haunted.”
“Like, why would I know that?”
“It was all over the news!”
“I don’t read the news!”
“Well, ghosts probably aren’t real,” Daphne assures him as they pull into the parking lot.
“‘Probably’ is like, not as reassuring as you think it is, Daph,” Shaggy mutters, but gets out of the car and directs Scooby to get out, too. He’s still gently high, and his belly is full, and it’s not dark out yet.
And anyway, Daphne’s here. He’s seen her split an apple with an arrow from across two tennis courts.
“C’mon,” Daphne wheedles. “I’ll make you guys some Scooby snacks when we get home.”
Scooby’s ears perk up.
Shaggy’s about to answer when another car pulls into the lot–with any luck, it will be fairgrounds staff and they’ll be told to leave.
Instead of that, Fred Jones gets out of the car with a girl that Shaggy has Latin class with. Shaggy knows three things about Fred Jones:
His father is the mayor.
His Student Council presidential campaign rested on cafeteria and vending machine reform.
He and Daphne kissed once, in the seventh grade, on a dare.
“Jones, what are you doing here?” Daphne asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
Shaggy guesses it wasn’t a very good kiss.
“Hi, Daphne,” Fred says. He likes Daphne. It’s not that he can’t tell that Daphne basically hates him; he can, but he likes her anyway. He likes what her hair looks like when she sits in front of him, and how she grips her pencils too tightly. As far as he can tell she hates him because he beat her for Most Promising in their freshman year yearbook, which seems unfair because it’s not like Fred voted for himself.
Velma knocks his shoulder with hers. “They’re saying a ghost broke that roller-coaster that fell apart last week,” she says. “We’re going to figure out what really happened.”
“So, like, you don’t think it was a ghost?” asks the guy Daphne’s with, a tall and shaggy-haired kid Fred’s pretty sure is stoned. “Ha, ha. Ghosts. Right?”
“Right,” says Fred, as reassuringly at he can. The guy seems nervous, so Fred puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure it was just mechanical failure.”
“Anyway, what are you doing here?” Velma asks, eyeing Daphne Blake skeptically. Fred had kissed her in the seventh grade and told Velma afterwards that her lips had tasted like clouds. Velma had said that clouds had no taste.
“Scoob and I just came for, like, the free burgers,” says the guy with Daphne, who Velma is pretty sure is named something preposterous like Orville or Neville. “We hunt neither ghosts nor, like, pirates.”
“Well, great news for you: we’re going to prove it wasn’t either of those stupid ideas,” Velma tells him. “Right, Fred?”
“Sure thing,” Fred says.
Daphne snorts, then tightens her ponytail. “Whatever,” she mutters. “Come on, Shaggy.”
Velma frowns. “Wait–you do think it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Roberts?”
“The existence of the afterlife can neither be proven nor disproven,” Daphne says, and throws a grin over her shoulder that’s so sharp Velma feels her lip get bloody from it. “All I’m saying is, if it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Whats-His-Name…” she shrugs, and shoves the sleeves of her track suit up over her elbows. Fred’s smile widens.
¯_(ツ)_/¯ 
You must be logged in to post a comment.