#dyce's supers universe

[dycefic]

Tom Saves The World

Everyone knows that it’s super-heroes who save the world. They fight the aliens, or the monsters, or the bad guys. And mostly, that’s true.

But not always.

I’m a psychic. The thing is, my range isn’t that great. I don’t have much detail more than about 36 hours out, 48 for something really big. I’d had a nebulous sort of bad feeling for about a week before this one finally hit, and it was big. Something very tough and very supernatural was going to come up out of the harbor of Nova Roma, and the death-toll was going to be high. Crazy high.

I did all I could. I told the Unaligned Supers Job Placement Agency, and they put the word out to everyone on both sides of the Line. The Henchman’s Union don’t like natural disasters any more than anyone else, and they’re often quite helpful against eldritch horrors and stuff like that. Things that don’t hire henchmen and ruin the property values.

The trouble was, nobody big was around. The only really big team of heavy hitters on the West Coast were away dealing with some sort of doomsday cult - I never was clear on what that was about - and Guarde and Dog Fox were out of touch and even Mx Frantique was out of town at someone’s wedding. It was going to happen in less than two days and we couldn’t find anyone to help and I was seriously considering calling in some kind of bomb threat or something to get people away from the docks, at least.

And then, about eighteen hours out, it just… went away.

Which never, ever happens.

My powers might be short range, but they’re reliable. I don’t get stuff wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find any way to prevent what was going to happen, or even been able to identify anyone who could. But someone did. Someone had done something to stop the threat, something that happened literally while I was opening my car door. When I reached for the handle, thousands of people were going to die. By the time the door was open, there was no threat at all.

At first I thought it must have been a ranged thing. Like, whatever I’d been seeing (all those teeth, I saw them in nightmares for months after) had been distracted by something tasty on its way here and gotten off track, that it’d come up somewhere up or down the coast. My range isn’t that big, either. Anything outside about thirty miles might as well be on Mars for all I know about it. So we kept a watch out, and warned the chapters of the Union and the Agency in other cities.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I couldn’t explain it, and I was really unpopular for a while. Supers do NOT like people who cry wolf. There’s enough freaky shit we have to deal with without someone panicking everyone with a dire prophecy that fizzles out.

Thank all the gods that Tunny showed up. Nobody’s really sure what Tunny actually is - sentient fish creature, some kind of really mutated human, an alien, or what. She changes her story a lot. But she’s pretty friendly, especially for a twenty-foot-long horror-movie-mermaid-thing with four arms, so when she came into harbor to pick up some supplies a guy from the Agency went out to tell her what I’d seen. I’d gotten a wharf and dock number, so she went down to check.

I don’t think anyone had ever seen Tunny scared before. Her English wasn’t good enough to really explain what she’d found hibernating down there, but it was something very old and very powerful and very dangerous, and if it’d been woken up my vision would just have been the start of the crisis.

She rounded up a bunch of whales to help her move it, once she was sure it hadn’t been agitated and wasn’t likely to rouse if moved carefully. They towed it out before dawn, not wanting to scare the civilians, and when I saw the footage from the helicopter the Union sent up, when I saw how big the swell was, how many whales were pulling, I swear I nearly crapped myself. No wonder I’d been getting hints a week in advance. Somehow we dumbass humans had built a whole fucking city almost on top of some kind of Ancient Old… THING, and eroded the sea-bottom until it was exposed, and if someone hadn’t done whatever it was we’d all have been dead long before Tunny arrived. And not just all as in ‘all of Nova Roma’, it could have taken out half of the continent... or all of it.

It took me years to find out what happened. YEARS. It turned into a kind of hobby, tracking everything that might possibly have come into contact with Wharf 38 on that particular day.  

And what I found, eventually, was a city employee named Thomas Briggs.

I’d found out early on that 38 wasn’t in good repair. Not that bad, but not great. It was old, things were getting a bit saggy in a few places, but there’d been no sign that anything was likely to fall off on the day. It had sat there for a couple of years after the crisis that never happened,, doing its job without problems then been rebuilt without any drama at all.

Entirely, completely, and totally because of Thomas Briggs.

The story, when I finally pieced it together, went like this.

There’d been some project or other to build some sort of high-budget science project over on the other side of the harbor, hanging it off’ve Pier 8, the furthest out on that side. Something about tracking sea-life or ships or something. My conversational English is near perfect, I’ve been here for years, but I don’t speak science nerd in ANY language. It’d all been approved, some university was covering most of the cost, it was all gonna be fine. And it was gonna be over on 8 because that side of the harbor is the shallow end. It’s where the sailboats go. All the big stuff that would block visual sensors and deafen the thing with engine noise was over in the thirties, in the real deep water.

They were almost ready to install the thing when a bunch of rich dudes suddenly got their panties in a bunch over having a big sciency tower thing ruining the view from their yachts, and tried to get it moved.

To, and I’m sure you guessed this, Wharf 38.

Which was completely insane. It wouldn’t be able to do its job over there, it’d be way more in the way, and (although they couldn’t have known it) the installation would definitely have woken up the Thing sleeping by the wharf and we all would have died. But rich dudes with yachts don’t care about that stuff. They’d bitched out and bribed up their friends on the city council, and those friends had done their thing, and the scientists had been left in the dark, and it’d almost gone through. They’d figured to install it right away, so that when the science guys found out it’d be too late and they’d either have to pay a lot to move it or just use it where it was.

Enter Thomas Briggs.

Mr Briggs, Tom to his friends, didn’t give a crap about the yachts or the science. He was a senior money guy for the commercial wharfs, the one who figured out things like how much money they’d take in in a quarter, and what the repair budget should be, stuff like that. He found out about this thing two days before the disaster would have happened, and sat down and did the math.

Then he sent out an email to the guys trying to push this through, and he ripped into them like they’d threatened to knife his mother. I got my hands on that email, and I didn’t understand a lot of it any more than the council guys would have. It was ALL numbers. But at the top he wrote it out in plain English. Pier 8 was new, and rated to handle the weight of the thingy. Wharf 38 was going to be scrapped in a few years, and it was NOT rated for that kind of structure. Pier 8 had plenty of room around it. Wharf 38 was already a tight fit for the big commercial ships, and adding a structure sticking out on one side would block off at least half of the wharf to those ships completely.

Bottom line, putting the thing on Wharf 38 would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year than putting it on 8, AND the city would have to eat the cost if 38 collapsed under it which it could easily do, AND the city would have to pay to move it in a couple of years anyway when 38 was due to be rebuilt.

And he cc-ed every important person he had an email address for, including the mayor, the anti-corruption people, and several reporters.

He must have sent that email right when I was opening my car door.

The whole plan collapsed right there, and some people got fired. There was no news story because the whole plan got killed before the reporters even got to the right office. The installation was started on Wharf 8 a few weeks later and I never connected it to a commercial wharf on the other side of the harbor.

One email, and a man who I never could have located in time, a man who had no powers at all, a man who was just conscientiously doing his job looking after the city’s money saved the city, and the continent, and maybe even the world.

Who could have predicted that? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

I can’t deny that I went home and got drunk off my ass that night. Just thinking about how close that had been made my hands shake. One man. One honest man who’d done the math.

I put the word out, once the hangover wore off. What had happened. That Thomas Briggs was the reason we were all alive and everyone better make his life real nice from now on, because he’d done what none of us could do and nobody but the supers would ever even know it.

He’s got a lot of luck coming to him, I can tell you. We don’t forget debts like that.

And I knew that’d freak him out, because honest men don’t like it when people start doing them a lot of favors for no apparent reason, so I tracked him down at the little bar where he likes to have a quiet beer on Friday nights before he goes home. Hell, I was the one who’d gone through it all, back then. I should get to tell him.

I sat down beside him at the bar and looked at him. I saw a thin, small, balding man who looked like he worried too much and didn’t get enough sleep, with lines around his eyes. Yeah, he looked like a man who’d do the math. “Thomas Briggs?”

He blinked at me through his glasses. “Yes? Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t. My name’s Barkhado Omar, and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” I offered him my hand and he shook it, still looking confused. Which was fair, ‘cause I doubt a lot of seven foot tall Somali women came up to him in bars even when he was young. He’s got to be close to retirement now.

He frowned. “Looking for me? Why?”

I smiled at him. “Tom, let me buy you a drink and tell you about the day you saved the world.”

It’s usually us who save the city, or the world. We have all the intel, all the advantages, all the powers.

But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s someone like Tom Briggs, doing the right thing at the right time and never knowing that he changed the course of history.

Wild, huh?

--

This story is a direct result of me and my ex chatting about how different the entire Marvel Universe would have been if Jean’s first ‘resurrection’ - being found in a life pod under a wharf, IIRC - had happened at like... any other time. Earlier. Later. It would have changed SO MUCH.

And we speculated about how it could happen, how someone just puttering around in middle management might have unknowingly saved countless lives, prevented Madelyne’s corruption, the legacy virus, all of it, just by postponing that particular set of repairs a bit longer.... and I couldn’t resist writing a version of the story in which Tom does, in fact, save the world.

#short fiction #dyce's supers universe #comics inspired #sometimes something just goes right #horseshoe repair

[cywscross]

Any recs from fandoms you don't follow that closely or just fandoms you've only read a few fics from?

Hmm.. some. I can rec a few fics from a handful of fandoms.

LUCIFER

Devil's Bargain by WolftheForsaken (WIP)

Trixie gets kidnapped. Lucifer disapproves.

-0-

NIRVANA IN FIRE

implacable tide by forbiddenstars for One_Hundred_Zeros

When Lin Shu turns ten, he is fostered into the household of the Empress. Jinghuan grows up alongside his new, irrepressible foster brother. This changes everything.

Like Thunder Under Earth by troubleinmind

"Once I have my official post in the military, I will ask General Mei to appoint me as your personal guard.”

Lin Chen at Meiling in four portraits, and a long apology.

Events As They Happened by aboxthecolourofheartache

Xiao Jingrui and Yan Yujin get themselves into a scrape. Lin Chen saves the day. Mei Changsu brings everyone back from the edge.

-0-

JURASSIC WORLD

Pushing Boundaries by Macx (WIP)

Owen Grady had always had a talent for animals. Like his grandfather. It was a talent that ran in the families.

Masrani Global recruited him to train raptors. It was an intriguing, novel idea, something only a crazy or insane person would attempt.

Owen wasn't crazy or insane. He knew he could do this.

He just didn't know how deep he would get into it, how strong the connection to the pack would become, how close... they, the four of them, would become to him.

His grandfather had always warned him: don't get too close. Don't let them connect. Well, it was too late for that now.

-0-

KUROKO NO BASKET

Designation: Miracle by umisabaku (WIP)

It's been three years since seven human experiments, called "Miracles," escaped Teiko Industries, alerting the world to the presence of super-powered children. Now they're finally integrating into society-- going to normal high schools, playing basketball, falling in love-- and trying to find out if it's possible to truly escape their past.

-0-

LOG HORIZON

Begin and End by Rikkamaru (xHP crossover)

This is how it begins: a boy rejected by his family, a boy reunited with his brother by his sister-in-law's intervention. A boy who found a family in an online game. But how will it end?

-0-

X-MEN

your head caught in a waking dream by addandsubtract

in which charles is sent to a mental institution as a child and by the time raven breaks him out, he's irreparably damaged. because this is me, there's also a road trip involved.

and these, from atoms by kay_cricketed (WIP)

Five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Charles and Erik find themselves in a situation where they must rely on each other for survival. Trapped in a coal mine deep beneath the earth's surface, and having lost his wheelchair to a disaster, Charles fights the nature of his physical limitations while Erik struggles to remain distant. Ironically, in the dark, it is impossible to hide your heart.

-0-

GOOD OMENS

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see by Azzy

For some entirely unfathomable reason, after the end of the world hadn’t happened, Crowley didn’t go back to his flat for a solid month.

-0-

THE MENTALIST

the dead outside my window by pprfaith

In one world, the lie Patrick Jane tells is, "I am not a psychic."

-0-

GINTAMA

Pandemonium by Xparrot

The Yorozuya trio gets an unexpected reward. They really should've checked their daily horoscope before accepting: Beware of old women bearing gifts, don't count your lizards before they're hatched, and be careful when life seems too good to be true, because it might be a sign that everything is soon going to go very, very badly.

-0-

HAMILTON

177(6) by ashilrak, lol-phan-af (lol_phan_af)

Reincarnation is normal in this verse.The Hamilsquad is at college guys, and guess what, they all fucking remember lol

-0-

DELTORA QUEST

On Paths Unseen by lovelyleias

It was supposed to be a temporary secret, but it tore them all to pieces.

(Or; what would happen if Faith was real, and Lief and Doom knew).

-0-

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW

The Saga of Kollr by oneiriad (xVikings crossover)

One minute Leonard Snart is standing with his arm deep in the Oculus, waiting to die in a temporal explosion. The next he's stuck in the Scandinavian winter at the beginning of the 9th century.

-0-

HUNGER GAMES

The Avalanche And Little Pebbles by Dyce (WIP)

What if someone else caught the eye of the public and the revolution before Katniss? When a boy from District Seven wins the Games and captures hearts everywhere, the revolution comes when Katniss is only fourteen. Tiny, poor District Twelve may be an afterthought for everyone during and after the revolution, but to Katniss, it's all that matters.

-0-

K-PROJECT

Building Up Walls by DarkrystalSky (WIP)

Deviates from episode 7: Shiro decides to let himself to be captured by SCEPTER 4 at the stadium, in a twist of events that will bring him face to face with the Gold King himself.

-0-

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

Arthur in the House by taywen (WIP)

The AU where the Trustees decide to raise Arthur.

-0-

CRAZY RICH ASIANS

Siege by Ashling

“Either you meant it when you asked me to marry you,” she says, “or you didn’t.”

Love and loyalty, war and witchery, Nick and Rachel.

-0-

XXXHOLIC

The Professor's Wife by foolish_mortal

The students all said that Professor Doumeki had a wife who made him lunches and impeccably pressed his shirts. Watanuki found this hilarious. For the wtfholic fest prompt: "The only people who can see Watanuki are customers with wishes."

-0-

TWILIGHT

Swansong by pprfaith

She's Swan and she's just passing through, accumulation of all you never knew.

-0-

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE

Hearts and Their Consumption by setepenre_set (SO MUCH LOVE FOR THIS TBH)

Wizard Howl eats hearts. This isn't just a metaphor.

-0-

TEMERAIRE

All True-Hearted Souls by mardia

"For God's sake, if someone doesn't talk Laurence out of these constant heroics, I wouldn't bet a farthing on his chances; no, and not ours either.” Four times that John Granby helped save William Laurence's life.

-0-

ME BEFORE YOU

but I'm not ready to say good night by violentdarlings

Before Louisa has to face a world without Will, Will has to live in a world without Louisa.

Or: bizarre twist of fate = happy ending. Happyish ending.

-0-

THE MARTIAN

i'm coming home by kearlyn (WIP)

Mark Watney never manages to make contact with Earth and NASA never realizes that he survived the storm and evacuation on Sol 6. So, needless to say, the crew of the Ares IV is incredibly surprised when they land on Mars to find a scruffy, malnourished, mentally unbalanced, but still-alive astronaut waiting for them.

These are the stories of Mark's long journey home and the lives of the people he touches along the way. (Mostly told from not-Mark POVs.)

-0-

FAST AND THE FURIOUS

Along the Way by nightrider101 (WIP, very very old, prob long abandoned, but this was my first F&F fic I ever read and I loved it)

Dom has questions. He hopes Brian has answers.

The Next Quarter Mile by astolat

“We going to get somewhere anytime soon?” Dom said.

Brian was staring out the windshield. “Do you trust me?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Dom said.

“If you say yes, I’m going to take you on the worst fucking ride of your life,” Brian said. “Do you trust me?”

-0-

KINGSMAN

Care and Custody by esama

Eggsy takes out the medal in slightly worse circumstances, asking for a miracle.

-0-

HIKARU NO GO

Watch and Learn by Trial and Error by esama (wip/abandoned)

When God gives Hikaru his wish, he begins his journey again with a new goal in life, to prevent Sai from fading.

-0-

STAR WARS

Re-Entry by flamethrower

Re-Entry is an alternate universe epic that spans time and possibility. Obi-Wan Kenobi, while still a young Padawan, suffers an injury and wakes up with all of the memories, experience, training, and Force-strength of Old Ben Kenobi. It isn't long before the Jedi discover that Anakin Skywalker, a five-year-old slave from the Outer Rim, has undergone the exact same change. Obi-Wan and Anakin bear the scars of harsh lessons learned; those who love them must learn those lessons quickly, before the mistakes of old are repeated.

-0-

YOWAMUSHI PEDAL

One of the Better Days by heihua

Based off the anime post-ending scenes: Imaizumi, tired of having to watch Love Hime but unwilling to hurt Onoda’s feelings, ends up asking Onoda for anime recommendations. Everything goes downhill from there.

#Message #Misc Fanfic Rec #Yowamushi Pedal #Star Wars #Hikaru no Go #Kingsman #Fast and Furious #The Martian #Me Before You #Temeraire #Howl's Moving Castle #Twilight #xxxHolic #Crazy Rich Asians #Keys to the Kingdom #K Project #Hunger Games #Deltora Quest #Legends of Tomorrow #Gintama #The Mentalist #Good Omens #X Men #Log Horizon #Kuroko no Basket #Jurassic World #Nirvana in Fire #Lucifer

[dycefic]

I love all your work, and especially your Evil Mart stuff, but I noticed the Evil Mart sequel used a stereotype I see a lot, where not only are there genuinely decent & responsible people on the villain side but also all the heroes we see are either assholes or victims of said assholes. What would happen if a superhero in civvies walked into Evil Mart just because they were doing shopping for a villain friend who was out sick (like WW getting Cheetah a rabbit box)?

Honestly, it's unlikely that anyone would notice. I've mentioned that henchmen, families of henchmen and villains, and non-aligned nonhumans also shop at Evil-Mart. If someone not immediately identifiable as the enemy walked in and told the greeter 'Hi, I'm here to pick up (item) for (villain)' or even 'hi, (henchman) told me I could get the best sensitive-stomach catfood here', they'd probably just get directed to the right aisle. As long as the hero's bright enough to keep their head down and be polite, they wouldn't have any trouble with the staff.

Even a known superhero could canonically get an online order (though they probably wouldn't be allowed into the physical store), if they managed to get a referral from a union member in good standing, or a supervillain was willing to vouch for them, or they just had a good enough reason. If a hero's just adopted, say, a strange green baby that eats a lot of frogs (I've been rewatching the Mandalorian, in case it wasn't obvious), clearly they're not going to get the finest organically-raised live frogs at their local supermarket, and nobody at Evil-Mart gets judgy about strange dietary requirements.

The Evil-Mart stories do come from a skewed viewpoint, in that the narrator is a trained henchperson from a family of henches, and therefore isn't a big fan of superheroes, thus a lot of the stereotype. Most people do tend to think of themselves as being on the 'right' side, even literal card-carrying bad guys. And given that the henches are almost all union, while the good guys are almost all freelancers, well, that's a thing too.

All my superhero stories are set in the same universe, though, and there are good and bad heroes as well as villains - Dog Fox, for example, probably shops at Evil-Mart even after he decides to switch sides after he starts dating Guarde, though he'd get crap about it. Tank could probably get in after helping Nemea out, although he's so recognizable that he'd probably get thrown out for causing too many fist-fights in the aisles. And there are supervillains who wouldn't be welcome - supervillains who treat their henchmen badly can't expect good service from a union store. (My Patrons also got a non-Evil-Mart look at some of the less good 'heroes' not long ago, in an exclusive story called 'The Man With No Name'.)

Mostly, though, if you know enough to know where Evil-Mart is, and how to get in, it's assumed that you're allowed to be there unless you're a very obvious enemy.

#welcome to evil-mart #dyce's supers universe