Happy Pride From Your Local Queer Robin :]

brb crying about the fact that vaughn did NOT get to choose the thing that ate them

Crew Swap AU

Commander Lovelace is having one of those few good days on the Hephaestus when Hera tells her that something’s docked at the airlock five

The crew scrambles, something they’ve been getting better at recently.

Those with firearms training head to the armory while Victoire and Kwan and Selberg go to the airlock where Lovelace knows they’ll be doing whatever they can to figure out what’s happening. In under three minutes the entire crew of the Hephaestus is gathered outside airlock five, mostly armed and entirely ready for a fight.

Hera can’t communicate with whatever’s on the craft but she can tell that there’s only one life form on board. Lovelace’s choice is either to let what just docked into the station, or to leave it hanging onto them like a leach on their oxygen.

Throughout her time on the Hephaestus Lovelace has grown to hate unknowns. They always lead to someone dying. It means that they have to deal with whatever’s clinging to them before they’re in the middle of the next emergency. Lovelace tells Hera to open the airlock.

Instead of aliens or monsters, what comes through the airlock is a man. He looks exhausted. His cheeks are sunken in and one arm is wrapped around his waist in an attempt to hold together what he can. His other hand holds a gun, shaking.

For a moment he looks confused, like he’s expecting people other than Lovelace’s crew to be there. Then his eyes lock onto Selberg and his expression turns murderous.

“You.” he rasps.

Lovelace lets herself look away from the stranger and at Selberg for a millisecond, it’s all she needs. Selberg looks scared. He looks terrified. The man that Lovelace can barely get to listen to her is stood, staring in abject horror at a man who’s barely holding himself upright.

“No.” Selberg whispers, eyes wide. “No, you died. I watched you die.”

“Really Doc?” says the man through gritted teeth, “I thought the whole point was that I wouldn’t be able to do that any more.”

And then his eyes start to glow.

Well, Lovelace thinks, cocking her gun as Selberg drops in a dead faint, maybe it is an alien.

Who ran your childhood alignment chart edition

I almost forgot about what a legend Derek Landy is and had to make the second one.

Head Archivist Sasha AU:

- You’ve heard of Sasha’s head archivist with Tim Martin and Jon as her assistants, but have you heard of Sasha’s head archivist, replacing Jon, with Tim and Martin as her assistants?

- Gertrude got killed ~4 years earlier than in canon. Elias gave Jon the job of head archivist almost as soon as he started working at the institute in a move which everyone, including Jon, found Very Weird.

- Elias thought it might be funky fresh to make Jon very isolated to make sure it would be easy for the lonely to get him in the future and hence gave him zero (0) assistants.

- Jon spends the next 4 years getting up to hijinks, becoming more and more isolated, gaining more trauma, and just Not having a good time.

- Jon stops being head archivist/disappears for reasons I am yet to decide on and Sasha gets promoted.

- Elias doesn’t have any particular plans to make Sasha The Archivist since he still reckons Jon is going to fulfill that roll and decides to give her some assistants when she starts running the archives. As a Treat™.

- Sasha is an excellent head archivist and her Martin and Tim are all Besties.

- One of them discovers a tape Jon made when he was Archivist. It implies some very spooky things about the institute as well as some of Jon’s fears about what Elias and the dread powers have planned for him.

- The gang collectively goes ‘oh shit’

- Shenanigans ensue.

I just finished writing a 20k fic and anyone who says drugs are a better high than this is a liar and a fool

“I would like to suggest a temporary truce.”

Luz has no idea how Hunter got in.

From the looks of bewilderment on Eda and Kings faces Luz is pretty sure that they’re in the same boat. The same very confused, very concerned boat that’s being tossed by the whims of the boiling sea.

Luz turns back to Hunter who’s looking at the three of them expectantly, waiting on a response.

“Hootyyyyyy,” Eda calls into the house. Hunter keeps just standing there and Luz pinches herself to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

Then there’s an owl coming out of the floor. At least some things are normal.

“Hello!”

“How is he here?” Eda demands, “Why is he here?”

“To offer a truce? It’s a very good truce, and I said that I would recommend it, and what better way to recommend it than letting him tell you all about it himself!” Hooty pauses to check if anyone’s nodding in agreement of his clearly very sound decision making process. He’s met by a stony silence and expressions of particularly strong disapproval.

For once he seems to read the room.

“Okay, you guys have lots to talk about, bye!” His face shoves itself through the floorboards back the way it came and a hole is left in the floor between Eda, King and Luz and Hunter. Luz imagines the hole widening into a chasm, it feels more appropriate.

“As I said,” Hunter continues slowly, “I’m here to propose a truce.”

Eda scoffs. King growls. Luz glares.

“And what common ground could we possibly find to build a truce over?” Eda asks icily.

Hunter takes a breath. “I was hoping we might work together to kill Kikimora.”

Huh.

“Okay then,” Eda starts, voice full in equal measure of interest and surprise. “I’m listening.”

I tried to make the ‘oh no they can be birds how terrible’ thing make more sense and here it is:

At first it’s wonderful.

Everything’s just as it was before. Tai still flirts with Raven, Qrow still spends too much time on his scythe, Summer still rolls her eyes at them constantly, even if she’s smiling. The only thing that changes is that Raven and Qrow spend their nights spying on their enemies instead of sleeping with their team. Sometimes they change forms during the day and sky-dance for a while, cackling at their freedom with croaking voices.

Sometimes Ozpin will give Raven and Qrow these looks, like he’s already mourning them.

They don’t pay the looks any heed, their second mistake. Their first was taking his poisoned gift in the first place.

Things start to change when the pain begins. It’s a twinge at first, something both of them barely notice, but it gets worse with every transformation. After a few months it makes Qrow throw up for the first time. It’s flecked with blood and specks of something black that leaves an awful taste in the back of his throat.

“Gross.” Raven says in her human form next to him before walking away. She doesn’t tease him about it so Qrow is fairly nice to her when she throws up the next time they need to transform.

Ozpin doesn’t stop giving them those looks. All sad and regretful and grieving.

Tai and Summer start to notice that something’s going on pretty soon after that. They already knew about the extra missions, of course, but Qrow and Raven figured that their new power could be a Branwen Tribe secret. It should have been an easy secret to keep, but then Raven starts to distance herself and Qrow starts to snap and both of them hurt all the time and nothing’s ever easy any more.

“We’re worried about you guys.” Tai says, voice full of concern. Summer nods in agreement, far too earnest, and both Raven and Qrow feel it tear at them a little.

Neither of them have an answer and so they’re forced to find ways to cope. Raven starts talking to their family a little too much, visiting home a little too often. Qrow starts to drink.

It only works for a while.

“Humans are not quite whole,” Ozpin says when Qrow goes to him, begging for answers. “Maybe all it took was a brush with magic for your soul to remember its missing piece.”

The conversation makes Qrow feel worse so he drinks enough that he’s forgotten it by morning. He never fully remembers it, even if his soul always does.

“Did you hear that?” whispers Callum to the more hardened criminals around him. They snort in derision at his caution, just the new guy being on edge about the job, but he keeps his gun held tight in his hand.

“I heard it too.” says Tony, the other new guy. He doesn’t look as worried as Callum because fine maybe Callum is a bit nervous about this whole ‘becoming a criminal’ thing but he can see that Tony holds his gun with just as tight a grip. “Sounded a bit like laughing, yeah?”

The rest of the gang goes very still and Callum feels like he might be missing something.

“Yeah,” Callum agrees cautiously, “like a little kid.”

Someone swears. Everyone turns so that someone else is defending their back.

“What’s the problem?.” Callum asks, also turning to keep someone at his back.

The laughter sounds again, clearer this time and that’s definitely a little kid. It makes even some of the more hardened men in the room flinch.

“Anyone here got a problem shooting a kid?” asks the member of their group that Callum thinks might be in charge.

What he really wants to say is yes I do have a problem shooting a kid that really isn’t what I thought I was signing up to here but Callum thinks that saying any of that would be a very good way to have the guys shoot him instead of the kid. He doesn’t want that either so he stays silent and pretends that he’s cool with everything that’s happening here.

Turns out that he doesn’t need to worry about shooting any kids.

Turns out that kids are more likely to shoot you.

They don’t even see the boy before there are sharp things knocking the guns out of their hands and, just as Callum tries to pick his up, tiny fingers are around his neck and he’s blacking out before managing to put up even the imitation of a fight.

~

Callum wakes up he doesn’t know how long later. He’s in the ally behind the warehouse he’d been in when he got knocked out. A kid in a domino mask is perched on the street light across from him.

“You should get a different job,” the kid says to him, “you’re too scared for this one.”

Callum would have loved to have said something cutting back, the kind of one liner the real bosses can come up with in an instant, but his throat is sore from being squeezed shut and his head is swimming so all he comes up with is a raspy, “am not” as he tries not to puke.

“Your hands are shaking.”

Shit, they are. Callum sends as scathing a look as he can at his traitorous hands. The effort of that actually does make him puke and he’s forced to ignore the somewhat pitying look the kid is sending his way.

“Yikes, you really aren’t suited to this kind of thing, are you? Maybe you should try and get one of those construction jobs going at that place round the corner. Oh! Or you could be a chef! I think you’d make a great chef.” The kid looks behind himself at something Callum’s vision is too blurry to see. “I’ve gotta go, but it was nice meeting you. Hopefully see you never, yeah?”

The kid backflips off the street light for no discernible reason.

Callum lies on his back and stares at his hands for twenty minutes until they stop shaking. For the whole time he thinks about how the construction place round the corner already rejected him and there aren’t any jobs for chefs in this part of town.

I got batgirls #1 and the art is BEAUTIFUL