An Outsider

Before The Dawn

I don't have a problem.

Young Justice: Season One

F E N R I R

T H E S A N C T U A R Y

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^{July 3rd, 2020 | Mount Justice, Rhode Island}

Magnus knew Andy was following him, even before the younger boy spoke. The advantage of superior senses. There was an odd smell that seemed to linger around Hellfire, too faint for a normal person to scent, but heady and pungent to the wolfman. It was like the high-summer sky before a thunderstorm, the aroma of sweet and tangy ozone. No one else he had ever met carried such an odour. It was like a promise of power, a signifier of the puissance held within the boys unassuming frame. And powerful he was, if half the stories about Hellfire’s supposed potential were true. Of course, great potential meant very little if you couldn’t realise it. Magnus didn’t let people’s potential influence his opinion of their abilities. After all, he had the potential to be a great poet, but no one was studying the body of his romantic works, because he hadn’t written any. Judge a man on the acts he had committed, not the acts he was capable of committing. And so far, Andy hadn’t committed many.

He pushed the door open, leading a gabbing Andy into the gymnasium, to be met by a scene of mild destruction. Training dummies lay in a haphazard broken ruin, littering the vinyl floor. The perpetrator of the destruction stood amidst his handiwork, and embarrassed smile upon his sweaty face. The stink of shame filled the air, tinged with a hint of the unknown. Tachyus always smelt different, though not in a way that Magnus could place. It wasn’t as if his scent changed, it was more that his aroma was completely identifiable, equal parts mysterious and surreal, almost like it was halfway between a physical sensation and an abstract one. It put Magnus’ hackles up, and he disliked being around the godling because of it. At least, that was one of the reasons.

Tachyus had been to only one of them left unable to finish the fight, and therefore had marked himself as the weakest member of the team. Even the runt, Mirage, had fared better. It was an embarrassing display for someone who consciously described themselves as a ‘demi-god’. Breaking some metal puppets wasn’t going to make up for that failing.

Not that you’d know he had failed, the way Andy consoled and joked with the weakling. Massaging his bruised ego. A soft growl escaped Fenrir’s lips, involuntarily vocalising his annoyance of the pair. ’Don’t sweat it’? Naivete. If they had all performed as poorly as Tachyus then they’d all be dead and the Jokerz would still be free to continue their rampage, to ruin more lives and spill more blood. He and Andy came from two different worlds, that much had been clear from the beginning, but he hadn’t been aware of just how blind to the real world his team mates really were.

The whiff of artificial freshness came wafting towards the gymnasium. Juno. She clarted herself in expensive cosmetics, thinking it added to her appeal. Magnus detested them. They clogged the air and stung his nostrils. He much preferred a person to wear their natural musk proudly, rather than try to mask it with foul, imitation scents. Ironically Juno had quite a pleasant smell. It filtered though the wash of her nauseating products occasionally, earthy and sweet. He didn’t know why she would try to cover that up.

"Impressive." Came her voice at his shoulder. She was surveying the wreckage Tachyus has wrought. Worse, she looked like she meant it. He had thought that she would be the person on the team most likely to agree with him in that the Godling shouldn’t be coddled in the face of his incompetence, but it seemed she was as bad as Andy. He growled again, a pang of anger sparking in his chest, though it was oddly directed at Tachyus rather than Twilight.

“No,” He replied, knowing she hadn’t been speaking to him, but unable to resist the urge to answer. His frustrations were getting the better of him. “It isn’t. Dummies don’t hit back.” He glared at the Godling, clenching and unclenching his fists, over and over again, blood up. He had voiced the sentiment loudly, but if she heard him she didn’t react. That annoyed him even more. By the time she mentioned training he was more than ready to get his claws stuck into something. Though her suggestion for training against projections was less than enticing. He didn’t like to fight against anything that didn’t bleed. It didn’t feel right. It lacked viscerality.

Still, it was better than nothing.

“Fine. Make projections. Quickly.” He was eager to get started. If he didn't vent some of these pent-up aggression's soon, he was in danger of gutting someone. Probably Tachyus.

Absolute Comics: Rebirth

@Omega Man Bat's only let Ben win cause he was feeling sorry for him.

Young Justice: Season One

F E N R I R

T H E S A N C T U A R Y

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^{July 3rd, 2020 | 6:30p.m. | Mount Justice, Rhode Island}

The team was mostly quiet on their way back from the mall, subdued in the face of their victory. Fenrir was reminded of a quote Shayera had made him read once, written by a man who’s name he had summarily forgotten: “…nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won…”. He hadn’t understood it at the time, a victory was something to be relished. What aspect of dominating an enemy wasn’t to be celebrated? Looking at the morose features of his teammates however, he could almost begin to understand the meaning of those ancient words.

At least Dinah Lance-Queen, the woman who insisted upon calling herself Fenrir’s ‘den-mother’, didn’t seem to share the other’s pensiveness. While hardly enthused by the group’s performance, she did seem to recognise that they had been victorious. She mentioned that they would need further training, but allowed them the night off. He trooped out after the rest of the team, still dragging the mallet he had commandeered from Bonk. He wasn’t sure why he had taken it, but it felt right that he had. Perhaps he would keep it, as a trophy. That was a good and proper way of celebrating a victory.

Andy and Steph made dinner, Fenrir watching them like his eyes were glued to their forms the entire time. When presented with his steak he accepted without a word, instantly tearing into it. He gobbled the meal down, quick and messy, pausing every ten seconds or so to cast suspicious glances around the room, as if afraid that one of the others may have been planning to steal the meal from him. He finished long before the others, and spent the rest of the meal time licking his fingers clean and picking shreds of meat from his teeth with the talon upon his index finger. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

The others finally finished, and talk shifted towards the night’s activities. Hellfire was of a mind that they should all do something together, training or dodgeball, while Twilight pushed for practicing working as a unit. Mirage simply wanted to be included. She was the runt of this litter, but at least she knew her place. There was something to be said for that kind of self-realisation. Most everyone else he had ever met spent all their energies jockeying for a place they had neither earned, nor deserved.

Tired of the talk, which seemed to wind round and round itself in an endless loop, he pushed himself up from the table and began walking towards the door and down towards the training rooms. The rest would follow in his wake.

Young Justice: Season One

F E N R I R

W E I S M A N S T R E E T M A L L

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^{July 3rd, 2020 | 3:34p.m. | Happy Harbour, Rhode Island}

He managed three steps before he stumbled, tripping over his own feet like an old man who had just run a marathon. He caught himself from falling at the last moment, and thrust Bonk’s captured mallet under his arm, a makeshift crutch. His chest beat like blacksmith bellows, but no matter how many great lungsful of air he sucked in it felt like he was suffocating. Black dots danced upon the surface of his vision, while his head pounded fiercely, almost like that damned clown was still swinging away at his temple. A low whine escaped his lips. What was happening to him? His body had never betrayed him like this before.

What if Bonk had broken him? What if he’d suffered damage that could not be fixed. Was this to be his life now, dizzy and breathless, blind and uncoordinated? In a word, weak. He felt the sharp edge of panic brush at the edges of his consciousness. He couldn’t live like that. The broken warrior. The de-fanged wolf. It was the promise of a life not worth living, chill and mocking. Anger rose to meet the growing terror, and with it a new surge of strength. He wasn’t going to roll over and surrender to meekness, not so easily as this. With a cackling growl he ripped the wolf-shaped helmet from his head, determining that if his vision was failing him anyway, it wouldn’t pay to impair it any further.

The relief from his torture was near instantaneous. Within seconds his head pain was receding and the stars that flooded his vision dimmed. He breathed a sigh of relief, his chest moving more freely now. The solace that flooded him was tinged with confusion, until he caught a glance at his helm, which now sported an indent larger than his clenched fist. Bonk’s first mallet blow must have caused it. No wonder he’d been feeling so weak. That gouge would have been pressing down upon his skull. Bloody helmet, if it couldn’t protect him properly, what good was it? Shayera’s next offering would have to be of higher quality.

"Fenrir, are you alright? Do you need medical attention?"

Twilight was hovering nearby, eyeing him critically. They’d been on the team together for only two weeks, and the two had barely exchanged words. Not that Fenrir was all that talkative to begin with – he struggled with words, finding his mastery of speech to be clumsy and inept, and generally preferred to remain silent rather than open his mouth and subsequently make a fool of himself – but he felt that the light-wielding heroine looked down upon him, as if he was something dirty, unworthy of her time or attention. Even now, it felt like she was judging him.

He turned his nose towards her, before hawking loudly and spitting a glob of bloody phlegm. He wondered how bad he looked. The side of his face felt sticky, so he was reasonably certain that he was half-covered in slowly cooling blood – most of it his, unfortunately. Nothing he couldn’t deal with though. No need to involve doctors. He wasn’t some weakling that couldn’t take a beating under his own power.

“I’m fine.” he muttered softly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. She was immaculate. How’d she manage to get through this without getting her hands dirty? He wasn’t sure whether he was annoyed or impressed. He settled for the former, pointing at the rest of the team who had surrounded the Dee Dees, new victims to vent his frustrations upon. “Let’s finish.” He hefted Bonk’s mallet, and took a step forwards.

Absolute Comics: Rebirth

_{Collab featuring @Roman}

ONE DARK LOVE

G o t h a m C i t y

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_{November 18th, 2017 – 7:15am | The Cave}

The car rumbled steadily through the hidden tunnel systems under Wayne Manor, the powerful engines roar reverberating back down the silent stone corridors. The Batman hardly heard the noise, nor did he pay undue attention to the ‘road’. He’d navigated these byways so often that at this stage he could do it in his sleep. Right at that moment he had far more important things to concern himself with.

The night had been frustratingly fruitless. Hours of digging, and all he’d managed to dig up about the victim from the park was a name, Karl – which very well may have been an assumed named – and the fact that he was homeless, which even the rankest amateur detective would have been able to gather after just one look at the body. The investigation may have been more successful if he hadn’t had to divert his attentions to the GCPD. The signal had been lit without authorisation, not an entirely uncommon occurrence, but not usual enough to ignore, either. The perpetrator had been long gone by the time he arrived, though his initial suspicion was that the lighting of the signal was merely a smokescreen, designed to distract him from some other action.

He rolled into the Cave proper, steering the car onto the round carousel that bore the rest of his active road vehicles, before popping the canopy open and clambering out. The air in the cave was cool and crisp, hardly the stuffy mugginess one would expect from a hole in the ground. That was all testament to the many air conditioning and filtration units that he’d installed. The place lacked the homeliness it had when Alfred still frequented its depths though. Gone were the days when the old man was there to welcome Bruce home with a mug of steaming coffee and good-natured ribbing. Despite continuing in his services as the Wayne Manor butler, the Englishman was just too old to be spending all night down here, and his illness …

No. Don’t think about it. If you think about it, you make it real.

He would get an hour’s work done at the computer before heading upstairs for bed. He had a few leads on who was shipping the venom derivative into Gotham he’d like to chase up before the night was over. He realised something was amiss as soon as he drew close to the monolithic workstation. There, dumped carelessly upon the keyboard, was a folded enveloped.

The Dark Knight paused, taking stock of the situation. Alfred never came down here anymore, certainly not to drop off mail, and he doubted any of the boys would ever write him a letter. If Babs wanted to get his attention, she’d merely contact him through the comms, and Cassandra would meet him face to face. It could have been Clark, of course. He had always been quaintly old fashioned like that. Something didn’t feel right about that though. His instincts said that this wasn’t a letter from anyone he would want to receive a letter from.

He took a steadying breath, picked the letter up, ripped it open, and began to read. He wasn’t through the first sentence when that feeling from earlier returned, ten times as strong. Bruce ripped the cowl off, throwing it to the floor, before collapsing into a chair. His spine tingled violently, like the feeling that you get when you’re alone at night and know, with a certainty that borders on religious fervour, that you are no longer alone in the dark. That something is hiding just out of your sight, lurking in the deepest recesses of shadow, waiting for you to drop your guard and show your vulnerabilities.

With a sick feeling of dread, he forced himself to pick up the letter once more, unwillingly stalking the words across the page. He couldn’t have read it right the first time. It couldn’t possibly have come from who he thought it had. The Cave was too well hidden for anyone to have found it, to secure to have been compromised, not without Bruce receiving some kind of alarm. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D could break in here without Batman knowing about it. He finished the letter, but it still contained the exact same nightmare.

With a dry mouth, he started reading it once more, knowning now that the contents weren’t going to change, but unable to stop himself.

He knows.

How could he possibly know?

Justice League Unlimited

@Member 00492 Oh yeah? What is the episodic format then?

Across the Great Sea - A Witcher RP (OPEN / STILL IN INTRO STAGE)

Hey guys.

Sad to say but I've lost my verve for this RP. I'm backing out, but wish you all the best of luck, and hope to see you all in the future.

Cheers, Sam.

Justice League Unlimited

@Member 00492 Hey buddy. Unfortunately this is just one of those innocuous lurking occasions. I Was just seeing what you're up to now.

Young Justice: Season One

I should also mention that this Chucko has legs. He doesn't get around on a ball, lol.

@GreenGrenade

For now.