They leave the office, Mai pretending that all her senses aren’t full of Zuko’s warm, spicy scent, and he keeps looking worried. She wonders if it’s this he’s worried about, now that she’s thinking about it. They agreed they’d share their next cycles together, but again, they haven’t really talked about it. They can talk about it now, Mai thinks. Unfortunately, that means now they actually have to talk about it.
To be clear, Cassie is Wonder Girl. Very much so is she Wonder Girl. She likes being called that; she likes being called “she”. She likes being Amazon-adjacent enough to almost count as a sister to Themyscira. She doesn’t always like . . . other things associated with being Wonder Girl, though. Or even being a girl at all. Anyway, that’s why she just broke two pairs of scissors trying to get her stupid fucking hair to just fucking cut already in one of Titans Tower’s communal bathrooms. One of the girls’ communal bathrooms, which isn’t really helping how she feels right now.
"So, uh . . ." Kon says, skeptically eyeing the softly glowing rock in his hand. Metallo, like, threw it at his head. He has no idea why. "Is this supposed to do something or . . . ?" "It's pink," Kara says leerily, staying very firmly back.
Jazz meets her soulmate in, of all places, Park Row. Or as the locals call it, Crime Alley. Seems about right for her life, she decides as she kicks the shit out of the guy who was trying to stab him for his wallet fifteen seconds ago. Her soulmate watches her curiously, seeming unconcerned by the fuss, and takes a sip of his smoothie. Also seems about right, for her soulmate. A guy who got too nervous when necessary violence happened was not going to survive Thanksgiving in Amity Park, much less Christmas. Well, it is Gotham.
It’s not like the world is spilling over with clones, is the thing; especially not genetically stable super-powered hybrid clones with– Wait, Tucker thinks, and lifts his head to stare blankly at the poster on his bedroom wall. Well, there’s a lot of posters on all of his bedroom walls, admittedly, but a specific poster on a specific wall. “You’re a genetically stable super-powered hybrid clone,” Tucker says to his poster, still staring at the digitally-rendered face of a teen idol superhero. Superboy continues to grin cockily at him, because he’s a special edition poster and obviously isn’t gonna stop doing that. Tucker, very slowly, reaches for his phone and types something into Bing after all.
Bernard is maybe not doing all that great at his first gala but Tim Drake is nothing if not a problem-solver and Conner Luthor . . . well, he's here too?
"Crap!" the food truck worker shrieks in alarm. "Don't hurt him, Superman, he's just a kid!" Clark . . . pauses, then looks up from the kid that he is currently pinning into the street as said kid struggles underneath him. "'Hurt him'?" he asks in reflexive confusion, and then realizes how batting a teenager around like a person-shaped cat toy and pinning him to the street hard enough to crack it probably actually looks to an outside observer. . . . um. Whoops. "Um," he starts awkwardly, and then the kid slips his pin while he's distracted and throws his arms around his neck with a gleeful laugh and a bright grin. "Dad!" he crows triumphantly, and hugs Clark harder than literally anyone has ever hugged him before.
The wedding’s going to be tonight, presumably so no one involved has time to get cold feet, which gives Geralt just enough time to clean up and get the dirt off his armor and overthink every tiny little detail of this arrangement.
"There's no point in killing Superboy," Match says reasonably. "It's not like you'd care if he died." "The Agenda thinks I wouldn't care if Superboy died?" Superman asks incredulously, just staring at him. "Why, because he's a clone?" "Because I reported back my interactions with you when I was pretending to be him," Match corrects, puzzled by the vehemence of the response. "And also the lack thereof." "What?" Superman says, still just staring.
Look, the Batman may be an eldritch inhuman cryptid, but he still needs an emotional support sidekick, and Tim Drake still doesn't have any consistent adult supervision in his life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A cryptid!Batman AU where Superman has explained to newly-cloned Superboy that the Batman is a terrifying eldritch horror given human(-ish) form and Superboy is therefore under the impression that Robin is going to be into weird shit like being brought damning evidence and deadly criminals and dangerous problems to solve and will appreciate being slightly stalked. The Bat-cryptids stalk everybody, right? So it’s like their love language, Superboy figures as he’s collecting a bunch of random shiny trinkets to leave out for Robin like he thinks he's a magpie or a crow or something, and maybe also some nice pebbles to cover the penguin angle just in case. Just stuff he might like to decorate the cryptid-nest Superboy is assuming he has with. Superboy is fully correct about Robin appreciating the weird shit and shiny trinkets and being reciprocally stalked, actually, but now Tim has to figure out how to explain that he's actually just a normal human teenager who just decided that his local protection spirit needed an emotional support sidekick before it could get corrupted into a local vengeance spirit. Though he does like the shinies, please don’t assume this means he doesn’t like the shinies or wants a normal relationship with, god forbid, boundaries about not stalking each other or whatever.
“I need you,” Tucker blurts immediately as he bursts into the living room where he left Kon half an hour ago. Or maybe two hours ago. Hopefully not more than three . . . ? “Like in a sexy way?” Kon asks, sounding halfheartedly hopeful as he looks up from his position draped across the couch with one of Tucker’s mom’s blander gossip magazines, where he’s clearly been bored out of his mind. Tucker will make that up to him later, definitely, but right now– “Like in a rogue attack way,” he says, and Kon makes a face.
Darcy thinks maybe her new intern is a slut. Like–a big one. Big ol’ slut. Both metaphorically and literally, since he's 6’3” of Kansas beefcake and maybe the literal only human being alive who has a build remotely comparable to Thor's. So like, a billion steroids or secretly an alien, Darcy’s assuming.
“Repeat that,” Tim says slowly. Kon gives him a defensive look. “I panicked, okay?” he repeats. “And ‘panicking’ meant you decided to kidnap . . . how many kids, exactly?”
"Superboy will be staying at Mount Justice for now," Bruce says. He doesn't look at Clark as he says it. Clark doesn't look at him either. ". . . Mount Justice is a cave," Captain Marvel says, clearly even more bewildered. "And Superboy is solar-powered. Isn't that kind of . . . I don't know . . . mean?" "'Mean'?" Clark repeats in disbelief before he can think better of it.
“What will happen to me now?” Anakin asks much later, voice very quiet as they make brief, fleeting eye contact in front of Qui-Gon’s blazing pyre. Obi-Wan doesn’t have an answer for him. ----- “I swear to you, Anakin Skywalker, no one is going to own you while I breathe,” she tells him fiercely.
Jaskier’s just debating how much trouble he’s actually in when Geralt, marvelously, talks them out of it. After that, well . . . Jaskier still wants to eat him very badly, but he supposes it’d be a bit ungrateful of him. Geralt isn’t very impressed with the song he writes for him, unfortunately—which, rude—but doesn’t try to run off and leave him either, so . . . Well, Jaskier’s a bit smitten. A delicious-smelling witcher who can talk his way out of being murdered is very impressive. And he always has wanted a pet.
“You’re sharing a room?” Yennefer says, eyebrows raising. Hm. There’s a surprise. She’d have expected Geralt to want privacy and Jaskier to end up staying up all night and up some farmgirl’s skirt. “It’s cheaper,” Jaskier says. “Or it’s a habit. I don’t know. What do you care?” “I’m just surprised,” Yennefer says. “I thought you two weren’t having sex.” Geralt chokes on his ale.
The bard is an omega, young and pretty but poorly received by the tavern crowd. He smells like a stray, is barely older than a pup, and isn’t very good at his work. Geralt isn't interested in him besides that, but for some unfathomable reason the other is interested in him. He lets the bard follow him mostly just because getting rid of him would be more annoying, and maybe because he pities him a bit. But it's not going to be that interesting a job, he's already sure. There's no harm in letting a human hang around. Of course, then they get kidnapped by vengeful elves. So . . . fuck.
Geralt doesn’t wear his courting jewelry—the medallion is apparently a witcher thing, not an omega one—and Jaskier supposes that makes sense. Geralt leads a very active life, and probably saves the jewelry for situations it won’t run the constant risk of getting ruined in. Certainly a nice set of earrings would be a lot more fragile than the plain studs he wears instead. A lot of omegas don’t wear their courting jewelry day to day, anyway, or at least not most of it. Geralt’s hardly unusual in that. It’s a bit of a shame, though, because Jaskier’d like to see him in it.
“He’s traumatized from being brainwashed and imprisoned and can’t submit to an alpha with combat training without either having a panic attack or straight up trying to kill them,” Sam says bluntly. “He’s detoxing off illegal suppressants before we can put him on new ones. Dr. Cho was going to cycle off hers for him, but he burned through faster than we expected.” “So . . . he’s in heat, and there’s nobody around he doesn’t see as a threat?” Darcy summarizes, frowning. “Long story short, yes,” Sam confirms. “. . . and long story long?” Darcy asks skeptically, genuinely unable to help herself. He tells them. “Jesus Christ!”
