Silmarillion Superhero AU - NevillesGran - The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth (2024)

Chapter 1: Original Concept; Dramatis Personae; Plot(?)

Chapter Text

Original Tumblr Post:

elaborate superhero au of The Silmarillion, but specifically set in the sort of very genre-savvy superhero world you get in tumblr-based fiction where being a superhero or supervillain is basically a particularly weird career, maybe there’s guilds or something, and everything is very chill. Like, the intense interpersonal drama IS still involved, and heartfelt, but the fact that several years ago Fëanor said, “Fine, I’ll show you!I’ll show you all!” and turned officially Villain, and took his whole immediate family with him, has mostly resulted in things like,

Fingon, aka The Valiant, slapping some papers down on the desk of the Director of the Hero Agency, who is of course his dad: Here’s my report on how I foiled Mae— that is, the dread villain Phoenix today!

Fingolfin, aka Ice King, so tired: Yes, I saw the live news feed of the two of you making out on the roof of the bank. For fifteen minutes. On camera.

Fingon:But he didn’trobthe bank, did he?Foiled.

or,

Maglor, aka Songbird, pausing between soundwave blast attacks: It’s after 10pm! Why aren’t you kids in bed?! I specifically made sure you were in bed before leaving the house!

Elrond, aka Nightlight, leaping between buildings to avoid a crumbling roof-edge:Because you’re aterrible foster-parent!

Elros, aka Knightlight:And 10 is a bedtime for babies! We’re 15 years old!

General

• The Valar are the sort of cosmic entities where they’re definitely cosmic entities too powerful to casually comprehend but also they’re people who are mostly kind of dicks. They aren’t the origin of all superpowers - there are more superheroes in the world than the House of Finwë and extended relations! - but they’re definitely the origin of those
• Maiar are basically a power level categorization, usually but not always associated with one or more Valar
• The Silmarils boost Valar-derived powers (by proximity? by physical contact with gem? Idk)
• As a rule, Edain characters are Batman-style mundane badasses; Elves have superpowers
• “Orcs” are what we call all variety of monsters, usually but not necessarily resembling standard orcs, which grow in…places of neglect. Usually this means trash dumps, dingy underfunded inner-city neighborhoods, abandoned lots of cut trees in the middle of once-pristine forest…but sometimes the sheer disdain for human life in a corporate office makes orcs breed in the vents. They’re kind of a natural phenomenon, kind of deliberately created by a malicious cosmic being who directs them as part of a larger plan.
• The more I consider it, the more I think this family has superpowers bc Finwë heroically earned some sort of 1 Wish from the cosmic Powers That Be, or maybe from Eru itself, and he earnestly wished something like, that he (and his family and/or friends?) would be able to help people, or maybe protect them from the one evil PTB. And for some reason the answer was “superpowers.” There are also standard supers in this world who got their powers from radioactive waste, being aliens, etc, but this ain't about them.

The Fëanorian Crime SyndicateFëa

• Fëanorhas powers but really he’s the Tony Stark/Reed Richards kind of character wherein he’s dangerous bc there is NO situation you can put him in that he can’t clever and/or invent his way out of. His superpower has nothing to do with this; it’s…ok it’s NOT “mind control”, that implies too much, well, control. It’s what superhero scientists call “non-targeted projective domineering empathy/telepathy” and what everyone else calls “freakish force of personality” or “poorly trained mind control that works best on crowds.” It’s just, y’know, [gestures helplessly]Fëanor. People flinch back when he’s enraged and fall in with him when he’s impassioned.
  • He might’ve also invented something to give himself fire powers at some point. For the aesthetic.
  • He’s dead for quite a while after he’s killed, but he’ll be back bc comic books. I think nanobots are involved, but I won’t rule out cloning or time travel
• Maedhrosis the only one of his children to inherit the, ah, raw force of personality. He does hone it in a way Fëanor never bothered, to be more targeted and, er, controlling, but it’s still best for whipping up mobs or making swathes of enemies flee before him. Andhisreal superpowers are project management and strategy, and also he fights with a sword Curufin made for him which uses some chemical mechanism to catch fire when he presses a button on the hilt. Maybe a short-range jetpack for full Phoenix aesthetic?
  • Fëanor was all ready to move permanently to a volcano island, but Maedhros is really a Lex Luthor-style villain, ie, everyone knows he’s a supervillain but he’s also running a very successful international corporation so what are we gonna do¯\_(ツ)_/¯. After Fëanor’s death, he rebrands the family tech company toFëaand starts building.
• Maglor and Finrod have the same power, the ability to temporarily manipulate their environment/listeners/maybe the fabric of reality itself (we haven’t tested it) (much) by singing. I think Finrod is better at people and Maglor is better at physical environment. Maglor is definitely the one who’s figured out how to hit a note that shatters whatever solid material he aims it at. He's a multi-genre music star and ghost-VP of Fëa Public Relations, though his official position with the company is "consultant."
• Celegorm’s designated superpower is enhanced senses, strength, speed and endurance (predator stuff, basically). The fact that he can talk to animals came later and is mostly unrelated, as is the fact that his best friend is a mostly-normal giant dog created for him out of cosmic dust by Oromë. He's a bounty hunter first and foremost, and field commander of a lot of Fëa's more "underground" operations, with some sort of legal connection to the company wherein they're not liable for illegal activity but still get tax writeoffs for the costs.
• Caranthirgrows plants. My pet Caranthir theory is that the reason Thargelion is also called Dor Caranthir, one of few instances of lands of Beleriand picking up the name of their lord, is that he put a lot of time, effort, and elvish care into his land, in maintenance and cultivation. So: hyper-sped plant growth powers. He specializes in the angriest thorny whips and barriers you’ve ever seen, ofc, but when he’s happy, wildflowers grow around him. He’s probably the least involved insupervillainy but most involved in the mundane business affairs (also often villainous). Fëa Vice President of Trade and Acquisitions.
• Curufin is mechanokinetic, ie, he has an intuitive understanding and ability to telekinetically manipulate anything that can reasonably be defined as a physical, manmade (or alien-, crow-, etc) mechanism. Basically, if it's an inanimate object with any sort of moving parts, Curufin can move its parts at will, but a knife made of one carved piece of stone would elude him completely. Can control hardware but not software of electronics. Will never know if he would’ve been as genius as his father without superhuman ability. Fëa Director of Research & Development (fully in charge, but has other people to do the paperwork).
• Celebrimbor:same as his father but instead of physically focused, can understand and manipulate anything (man-, etc-made) run on electricity. Hecanmanipulate software, though he has to focus more for it.He works as an intern in Maedhros’s evil company all through high school, but sometime in college he defects to the side of good, or maybe normal civilian life.
• Amras & Amrod:unofficially, Amras time travels (can take anything he can carry) and Amrod teleports (ditto). Officially, they keep breaking into anywhere that keeps records and changing the official records to mis-identify who does which. Then break in and change it back a few years later. They keep implying that they’ve broken and fixed the spacetime continuum twice and averted at least three Bad Timelines; they’re either exaggerating or severelyunderstating and nobody’s sure they want to know which. The only brothers not employed by Fëa; they's professional thieves for fun and profit, and on Maedhros's speed dial for maximum-urgency rescues/assassinations/etc.
• Nerdaneldoesn’t have superpowers and she disapproves of her husband’s and sons’ criminal enterprises…officially. And truly! But she is anexcellent forger as well as original sculptor, and, well, if the twins just want to rob a few museums of their ill-gained artifacts and screw a few unnecessarily wealthy people out of their fine artwork…
• Assorted Minions, some of them less trustworthy than others…

The League of Heroes

• Finwëis the founder and former head of the League. Idk what his powers were - something very traditional, maybe a flight/strength/speed package. But his main contribution to the plot is, as ever, screwing his kids up in the head despite his good intentions, and then dying.
• Fingolfinis the current head of the League and has classic ice powers, idk if concentrating it out of atmospheric moisture or just unlimitedly.(Did Fëanor give himself fire powers specifically in response to his younger half-brother developing ice powers? I mean, I WISH I could say he’s not that petty and jealously competitive…but we know I’d be lying…)
• Anairëgrew up in like Mississippi shooting possums from her front porch. She might’ve been a secret agent for several years before joining the new League of Heroes. She’s a crack shot with most fierarms and she can out-argue her husband, which is probably a superpower.
• Officially,Fingon’spower is supernatural skill with any weapon he’s handed. The truth is, he’sjust that good, and he can resurrect the dead once per person. It is not clear whether Fingon himself could die; nobody has tested it. This is generally kept secret because a) even among the wide range of powers in the family, this isreally the sort of thing that gets you trapped for life in a government and/or pharmaceutical lab, and b) better to keep your emergency healer from being targeted. Of course, Fingon flings himself into every fight he can, so that’s a moot point…
  • Also he can fly, on proportionally accurate giant spectral golden eagle wings gifted to him by Manwë shortly after the Valar declared that they weren't going to involve themselves with Earth ever again. They're semi-material and they disappear and reappear at will.
  • Yes, Maedhros taking the name “Phoenix” for his villainsona was 50% for his father’s fiery legacy, 50% “hey remember that time your brought me back from the dead” @ his boyfriend. Sometimes this is said with heart eyes, sometimes it’s implicitly followed by a mocking, “guess that was a mistake!”
  • Fingon, channeling my mother: I brought you back into this world and I can take you out–
• TurgonandIdrilhave the same power, which is…being an Earthbender, basically. But Turgon does it like an Earthbender whereas Idril does it like a Waterbender who’s still manipulating earth, if that makes sense?
• Elenwëdiddrown in frozen water when Idril was young, but she came back for non-Fingon, creepy supernatural reasons, as a ghost who could kill people the way she had died (they would be found soaking wet, half-frozen, with water in their lungs). But her loved ones managed to talk her down and get some magic to make her solid andprobablyalive again, so she can still do the“drowning on dry land” thing but she’s not a ghost. She doesn’t use her powers for heroing; it’s too hard to do non-lethally.
• Aredhelcan turn invisible, and is exceptionally skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Partly inspired by her sister-in-law, she takes the name“White Lady” and totally leans into the ghosty aesthetic. She and Celegorm are officially registered as nemeses but she’s the antihero of her family; half the time she just shows up to wherever Celegorm and/or Curufin are committing crime and sneaks up on them to freak them out, then hangs out and mocks them rather than doing anything to particularly foil them.
• Maeglincan summon darkness. Mostly it’s just dark, unsettlingly pure dark, but if he makes an effort it can be an almost physical thing, clinging enough to slow movements or to smother breath. He can also just gently dim the light in a room, but that delicate touch is just as hard as giving the darkness weight; the easiest thing is pure dark.
• Argon…[googles a few chemistry facts; throws them arbitrarily in the blender with mythology] Argon can see what’s going on anywhere on Earth, or off Earth, so long as he has something he knows to focus in on - a person, an object, a specific location.“Knows” can include“saw a photo of it”, but that’s harder to find/see clearly/keep in view. His hero name is Argus. [Argon is the 3rd most abundant gas in the atmosphere, ie quite omnipresent, and Argus ofc is the eye guy from Greek mythology!]
• Lalwen…unlike Argon (sorry, Argon), Iamvery invested in this entirely headcanoned character, but I really don’t know what power to give her. Something…not flashy but versatile and very powerful if used cleverly. Random power generator suggestsenergy conversion, ie, light to heat to kinetic, and I like that.
• As discussed,Finrod,like Maglor,can manipulate emotions, the nearby physical environment, and possibly reality by singing. Again, we try not to test the “reality” thing, but he didget into a fight with Sauron once that was either about breaking an illusion or for control of the narrative itself.
• Angrodcan turn his skin to flexible iron, with the expected resistance to most physical attacks and the strength to back it up. He throws ameanpunch.
• Aegnorcan catch himself afire, either full-body or individual parts of him, a la the Human Torch.
• Galadrielwas Fëanor’s nemesis even before he officially turned Villain because, well, because she thinks he’s a dick, but also because her superpower is classic telepathy, including mind-reading, mental communication, and the ability to make and share telepathic shields. So she’s resistant to his [gestures helplessly at Fëanor], and can shield others from it as well.
  • She’s officially registered with the League, but only On Reserve, by which I mean Earth-in-danger situations and sometimes she shows up to Maedhros’s press conferences to ensure that he doesn’t charm all the reporters too much. Fëanor is still her official Nemesis, though. Quoth Galadriel confidently,“No way that asshole is going to stay dead. And only a madwoman or a voyeur would want to get in the middle of whatever Valiant and Phoenix are doing.”
• Orodreth…man, I don’t know. I’m running out of powers and characters I’m invested in.“Orodreth” means mountaineer, so let’s say he can climb anything, like a chameleon.
• Finduilasis invulnerable to all physical and most psychic damage because FIGHT ME, GLAURUNG AND ALSO TOLKIEN. LET HER HAVE NICE THINGS AND LIVE. She’s an expert in several forms of martial arts. Her dad wishes she’d get herself into less danger but he can’t actually argue against it very well because, y’know, invulnerable to all physical and most psychic damage.
• Badass Normals:Hador,Húrin(no relation),Morwen(ALTERNATELY, Morwen is literally a sorceress. Every superhero world needs at least 1 person who is straight-up doing magic).Tuorexcept he’s also Ulmo’s Special Little Boy;Túrinexcept he’s so cursed that he almost has superpowers, they’re just bad.

Notable Civlians

• I really want to sayElu Thingolis, like, the President of the United States, but that’s not a permanent position so idk maybe he runs an international, famously eco-friendly corporation to rival Maedhros’s.It’s so f*cked up that those can have more power and permanent leadership than many entire countries.Or he’s the, like, consistently in-control Speaker of the House or President of the Senate? Yes this takes place in America; it’s a vague American comic book world. That’s where elaborate superhero AUs take place. I don’t think Thingol has superpowers, but he is married to Melian…
• Cïrdanis part of the UN in an administrative capacity, a very neutral party. Specifically, he's the Director of the Office of Metahuman Inspection, which keeps official records of which people are "superheroes", "supervillains", and Metahumanly Able Non-Combatants and classifies them by potential threat level. You may or may not choose to officially register and go along with inspections by the OMI; they'll keep an eye on you nonetheless (as much as they can, with a UN budget).
  • Círdan has been heartily blessed by his friend Ossë, Lord of Storms, so he can breathe underwater and survive lightning strikes. This enables them to hang out.
• No Maiar are associated with either Fëa or the League, except ofc Huan. All Maiar should be assumed to have roughly Silm-canon abilities. Many are not and never were human.
• BerenandLúthienare likewise as canon: just a dude, but a really badass due; and Lúthien motherf*cking Tinúviel.
• Findis…f*ck, I dunno. She refuses to use it. She’s not involved in this family bullsh*t; she has a thriving career in academia or maybe she’s in some sort of clergy. Or both.
• Indisdoesn’t have superpowers, except the superpower of being Grandma, which is not to be underestimated. Alas it is not effective against the descendants of Fëanor.
• Finarfinsees the future, usually but not always through dreams. He’ll be the first to admit that the future isn’t fixed. He’s the only person who has a real idea how many Bad Timelines Amrod&Amras have averted. It is generally accepted even among Fëanor’s side of the family that if Finarfin frantically calls you in the middle of the night, you should at leastlistento what he says, even if you end up ignoring him.
• Eärwenhas no interest in superheroics, but she CAN manipulate water in all forms. NB:notfor the same reason the Finwëans all have powers. Maybe she fell into radioactive…water…
• Halethis a self-employed criminal defense attorney who takes a lot of court-appointed cases (ie, when they have too many for the public defenders to handle), which is how she ended up defending a few of Caranthir’s minions. Normally that family is very good about hiring lawyers, but these mooks got lost in a bureaucratic shuffle, didn’t call in, etc etc… Caranthir showed up to personally pay their bail and read them the riot act and Haleth was already there and was like,“Excuse me, these aremyclients andIwill be the only one telling them everything they did wrong. Who the f*ck are you anyway?”

Is There Plot?

• No.
• I pretty much just wrote nearly 2k of bullet points here to rationalize the amount of time I’ve spent in the past week thinking about Fingon strapped to a slanted table above a death trap and Maedhros walking around him then cupping his chin in one cool hand and whispering in his ear something about how he’ll give in eventually
• Not that that scenario doesn’t obviously rationalize itself
• Ok so obviously therecould be plot, but mostly I just want the semi-friendly rivalry energy…
• At some point Morgoth did a whole invasion of Earth, to steal the Silmarils, which he ultimately did, and also killed Finwë. Fëanor promptly declared himself a villain (”If a villain is how you paint me, if a villain is the only one who will do what must be done, then a villain I shall be!”)...and equally promptly got himself killed about it.
• After setting like half of Northern Europe on fire. Literally.
• The Valar stepped in and did some light reality warping to make Northern Europenot a pile of slag, and possibly never hadbeen a pile of slag. They then announced that none of them were going to have any more involvement with Earth - no, not even Melkor! Look, he got what he wanted, which were probably bad for you to have anyway - we can all walk away, now. We should all walk away now.We will walk away now, and trust us, we'll keep an eye on Melkor so he doesn't return. Goodbye!
  • The official position of Maedhros/Phoenix/Fëa (no real secret identities) is: Bullsh*t. Morgoth is going to be back to finish his conquest of Earth at some point and we have to be ready - and if we can be ready first, we're taking the fight to him, taking back the Silmarils and murding that father- and grandfather-killing sonofabitch, almighty celestial power or not. Maedhros is willing to play nice (Lawful Evil if "Lawful" includes "has minions for the Unlawful stuff"), but he’s not willing to be stopped by anyone.
    • I really think Maedhros would be a happier, healthier individual if he got to live in a world where it was socially acceptable to be Affably Evil. I think he'd flourish.
  • The official position of Ice King/the League of Heroes (yes secret identities) is: Morgoth is likely to re-invade but we're working with world governments about it, not starting our own private army nor breaking any laws, etc; and in the meantime also stopping crime like any good citizen would :)
  • The official position of almost all world governments is: All the other Valar said Morgoth is not going to re-invade; how alarmist this one family of superhumans is!! (Would you people shut up, it’s bad for morale and bad morale is bad for re-election, and nobody cares about a problem that might not even happen!)
  • The official position of Ulmo, Lord of Waters, is: [puts the rest of his almighty kin on read]
• The fact that Phoenix and Valiant are extremely dating is the world’s worst-kept tabloid secret. It does, however, very effectively cover up the fact that the League and the more actively criminal elements of Fëa are 100% coordinating their preparation for Morgoth’s inevitable next attempt to conquer Earth. Up to 30% of fights between the two are just joint training exercises. (Another 10% are just Fingon and Maedhros flirting.)
  • The fact that Phoenix and Valiant are extremely dating is the world’s worst-kept tabloid secret, BUT the fact that Maedhros and Fingon got married 3 years ago and happily share a luxury apartment in Dor-Lómin is a quite well-kept secret, in order to a) have some peace from paparazzi and b) hide the fact that they're not just, like, sexy Friends-Turned-Enemies who still care a great deal for each other; they are in fact both roughly at "yeah I'd let half of Northern Europe burn to slag again to save him" levels of Devoted(TM). Fingon would just fling himself heart and soul into fixing it afterward, whereas Maedhros would adapt the new slag-land into his master plan.
  • Tbh Fingon probably doesn't have much of a civilian identity either, so they might both have secret, even more civilian-y identities for this. Maedhros puts on glasses, hunches a little, and turns off the Scary Charm(TM), and nobody guesses a thing. Fingon...is a terrible actor, and has some sort of perception-altering high tech or magical doohickey.
• Everything I’ve thought of takes place in the decade(s?) between major invasions. The time between Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Endgame, essentially.
• Ask Me About the Very Specific, Time Travel-Inclusive Scenario Wherein Finrod and Beor Meet and become Mutually Beloved
• In the sort of nonsense that can only happen in superhero comic books, ie, soap operas with scifi and fantasy components, Lúthien and Beren do their thing and then settle down happily to start a family…but before they get properly started, an adult version of said son comes from the future!
  • Adult!Dior is here to avert…something terrible. Possibly he has a Silmaril, because then we could end up with 3 again but it's really just 1 repeating. Dior avertshis bad timeline, falls in love with Nimloth and decides to stay here/now (or is unable to return to the now-cancelled bad timeline?) They hook up…and get as far as having twin boys...heck, maybe even a daughter...
  • Then adult!Eärendil, Idril & Tuor's baby son, arrives from the future to avert something terrible! Followed closely by adult!Elwing, with the Silmaril again! Falling out of the sky as a swan and turning into a woman in his arms, because that's important!
    
    • Every one of these time travelers glaresfuriouslyat any of Fëanor’s scions whom they meet.
  • But here's the thing: Elwing also brought their sons with her. Or, she meant to bring them but they got separated in the space-time continuum. Which is how Maglor finds 2 random kids by the side of the road and is like, “huh, they look kinda Turgon-y - guess I’d better keep them.”
• At the end of Whatever Raw Shenanigans Happen Next, maybe including the long-anticipated Second Morgoth invasion, Eärendil has been retroactively made into a star that’s always been part of the night sky; Elwing is in a lighthouse at the edge of reality; Dior and Nimloth are in the future with Elured and Elurin; Beren and Lúthien are dead trapped but living peacefully in an alternate dimension that might be a fantasy world; Idril and Tuor are stuck with the Valar somewhere (they’re fine, Ulmo is looking after them); and Maglor somehow still has these 2 children. Elrond&Elros don’t mind bc they’ve decided it's their responsibility to make sure the Fëanorians don’t end up the their maybe-future selves. Turgon tries to get custody instead and Maglor nearly bites him in public.
• Fëanor is probably also alive again after Whatever Happened There
• NB: I think the only other Edain who reallyneedto exist in sequence in order for the plot to make sense is the family of Húrin, and I guess Huor & Tuor, for which I think we can just say Húrin and Huor are introduced as adults and their kids are in that second generation of Idril, Celebrimbor, f*ck it I guess I’ll let Orodreth be Finarfin’s son in this one so Finduilas can be here, too. As mentioned, Haleth and Hador are also here, but not genetically related to any of these people.

Chapter 2: Beor and the "I swear I'm not a Faerie Lord"

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• Finrod gets trapped in some sort of temporal prison that makes him physically manifest in a random woodland glade in like West Virginia from sunrise to sunset every summer solstice between approx the years 1900 and 1950. For Finrod, each day followed the next…mostly. The time in between was dreamlike and quick-moving, and he didn’t really age. But he was lonely. He was awake enough to feel trapped and bored and lonely.
• Beor is a local boy raised on stories from his mother’s old home in Ireland, who recently became a father but still went out with friends enough to, one night, wander away from said friends while drunk in the woods, and wake up to what he logically assumed was one of the Fair Folk—on account of the beauty, the idle supernatural singing, and the inability to leave a single circle of trees
• It’s at least a decade before Finrod convinces Beor he isn’t a faerie lord. He might never actually do it; Beor just stops arguing. But Beor does keep coming back every midsummer, and other times too—for a few days on either side, songs echo around the clearing like the voice of a ghost, though Finrod is nowhere to be seen.
• Over the years, a) they fall in love (“I’m engaged…but Amarië would want me to find solace and love…and we always joked about swinging…”) and b) Beor collects odds and ends of random tech things to help Finrod build A Device to escape. Or maybe components for A Magic Ritual? (I haven't really addressed "magic" in this world, but every superhero world needs magic, too.) Close enough to the same thing for a man in 1930s West Virginia lbr.
• Finrod isn’t the most technologically and/or magically savvy, but he saw what was used to lock him in here and he can jury-rig something to at least break the cage. He can only hope breaking it will drop him back out in his own time.
• In the process of this, they figure out how to let Finrod leave the clearing, but he still snaps back and disappears as the sun sets. Beor definitely also brings his wife and sons to meet his friend the totally-not-a-faerie-lord.
• This fetch/building quest becomes more urgent as the alignment of celestial bodies shifted with time and Finrod manifests less strongly, most ghost-like. (Don’t worry, when they slept first together it was the peak of his physical materiality. Good times…) Soon he’ll miss his chance to get away…and whoever/whatever first trapped him (Sauron?) begins to notice what they’re doing, and sends orcs to stop them!
• So suddenly in the year 2010 a random blond is falling out of thin air onto Barahir, bloodied and weeping, with one last orc grappling to him and trying to kill him. Barahir shoves it off and helps kill it, and Finrod, still weeping, probably bleeding, thanks him and recognizes him, says he knew Barahir’s great-grandfather—
  • Barahir:The one who went into the woods to his “fairy circle” and disappeared one day??
  • Finrod:[weeps harder yet because that’s confirmation that Beor did indeed hold off the orcs unto his last breath, giving Finrod the chance to escape back to his own time]
  • He gives Barahir a ring and swears eternal friendship, any time you need a favor, etc etc. returns home, where he’s been missing for a year and a half and everyone was VERY concerned
• BUT WAIT, PLOT TWIST! There’s still a little juice left in the time travel escape doohickey and/or spell! (Or maybe Finrod asks Curufin and/or Morwen for help repairing it enough for one quick temporal round trip…)
• So he and Amarië go back together with ready Song (which he couldn’t do in full force in his prison) and, like, sawed-off shotguns, and save Beor from the orcs. History says Beor disappeared that day…so they invite him to the future with them. He agrees, of course: he’s lived a good long life here, all his kids and grandkids will be ok, and really, it’s about time his faerie lord invited him Under Hill, instead of just taking advantage of Beor’s hospitality.
  • Finrod: I’m not— never mind. I know you’re just messing with me at this point.
  • Beor: [is 90% messing with him but still isn’t entirely sure his first guess was wrong]
• And the future has MODERN MEDICINE! So Beor was a spry 70yo in the early 1950s but now he’ll live to be like 105, and Amarië, who is vanilla-human but has the superpower of “gleefully rolling with weird sh*t”, gets to spend many happy years giving introductions like, “This is my husband, Finrod,” [gestures to charming blond professional Hero] “and this is Finrod’s boyfriend, Beor.” [gestures to nonagenarian, also entirely charming]

Chapter 3: Celebrimbor's Haunted House Adventure

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Partial transcript of in-house call between the desk of the CEO of Fëa Technologies, Inc., and Mechanics Workroom C, where someone finally tracked down the Director of R&D, placed 12:25pm:

M:When this afternoon am I getting the rundown on the new killer robots?

C:What? Next week, when you said you needed the new killer robots by.

M:Thisweek, I saidthisweek. Today, Friday the 13th.

C:Well, you’re not getting them today, because they’re not nearly done yet and I’m leaving early. It’s date night.

M:Yes, yes it is! Which is why I need the killer robots!

C:Tough. Our dinner reservations are at 6:30 and we already got Tyelpe a sitter.

M:Can you come back afterwards to manually—

C:Datenight.It’s our anniversary next week. I got a welding studio and a hotel room.

M:Just for an hour—Mala can come too, obviously—

C:Because I want to havefutureanniversaries, I am not bringing anyone I love, including myself, within 3 miles of your and Fingon’s weird foreplay ever again.

M:…Fine. Say, the robots run on electricity, right? Who’s babysitting Tyelpe?

C:What the f*ck did I just say, Nelyo?

Transcriptof in-house call between the desk of the CEO of Fëa Technologies, Inc., and his secretary’s desk, placed 12:36pm:

M:Deb, get me a car at 4pm today andreschedule anything I have after that. I’ll be kidnapping my nephew from his after-school program, and when we get back, I’ll need some sort of DVD player, bothHome Alonemovies, 2001: A Space Odyssey,and anything else you can think of that’s instructive in that genre. Also a large pepperoni pizza—actually, one large pepperoni and one medium everything-meat—and 2 large jars of lightly irradiated peanut butter. And highly caffeinated soda, but I’ll update you on what kind from the car.

LOH Mission Report 002745, filed by Valiant; Summary Page

Operation: Knife’s Edge

Objective:Infiltrate Fëa Tech main offices and steal back the plans for the neutron-splitting knife recently stolen from NOGROD, believed to now be in Fëa’s R&D vaults.

Agents:

• Valiant (Operative Class A, 3c-mod 5, flight/weapons skill, team leader)
• Blink (OpC B, 2c-mod 2, invisibility)
• Rabbit (OpC C, 3c-mod 3, hacker)
• Aqualia (OpC C, 3c-mod 2, hydrokinesis)
• Phantom (Contractor, 2c-mod 1, professional thief)

Foes:

• Spark (3c*-mod 3, electromechanico*kinesis)
• Phoenix (3c-mod 5, empathic influence (mostly just there to gloat toward the end))
• Huan (3c-mod 2, giant Valarin dog (mostly there as babysitter))
• Way too many robots. Even the roombas.Also lights, microwaves, the whole security system, Rube Goldberg-y monstrosities...

Objective Result:Mixed.

Summary:Plans retrieved (Phoenix’s personal safe, not R&D), but Phoenix likely had copies made and backed up elsewhere. Phoenix iscapable of being a Cool Uncle, but pride is still his downfall; I left himhandcuffed temporarily incapacitated. All 5 agents injured, 1 serious but not life-threatening (Aqualia, broken ankle, ball bearings on stairs). Everyone but me got dragged out before reaching objective. Spark could be a real problem if he commits to supervillainy, but right now he’s mostly just 9 years old.

Chapter 4: Zephyr (1-2C–mod 4–R)

Chapter Text

“…and as their mighty jaws close around you, you will see just how ‘conditional’ my power is—briefly, as you die!”

“But that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Celechwes said patiently—or, as patiently as she could manage in the circ*mstances. Pretty impatiently. “You need to drop me into a pool of sharks in order for me to experience the consequences of your ability to control sharks—that’s conditional. Even if you got those reverse scuba suits working—nice work, by the way—the effect of your abilities would still depend on having sharks nearby, in some sort of water. That’s why you have a C by your threat rating.”

Selachimaster, a dark-haired, pale-skinned man with a physique that did not live up to the grandeur of his shark-head cowl, puffed up at the compliment to his engineering prowess. Celechwes didn’t dissuade him—honestly, if he applied those skills more constructively, or destructively as the case may be, she might formally recommend boosting him to 3C. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to suggest it—the traps in his cliché island volcano fortress were already bad enough. Obviously.

Selachimaster quickly remembered that his pride was still being injured.

“2C is the rating of an average, powerless human. You admit as much on your website!”

Celechwes shrugged, as much as allowed by the handcuffs chaining her to a slanted slab suspended above a pool full of sharks, in the center of the cavernous central chamber of a classic volcanic supervillain lair. (The sharks, she’d been assured, had free access to the sea, ‘so that they can roam naturally when I don’t need them.’ She could respect that, actually.)

“The easy accessibility of big guns is a real problem in many countries worldwide. I work for the UN. We have to factor that in.”

Selachimaster snarled, and pressed a button on the remote control in his hand. The slab tilted her more directly down toward the sharks.

“Hey, I’m only a 2C,” Celechwes argued quickly. So long as Círdan didn’t follow through on his threat to upgrade her for being ‘concerningly clever.’ “I’m terrible at combat, and I’m not even fast enough to vibrate myself through solid matter!” She rattled her chains in demonstration. “And, hey, Phoenix is only a 3C, did you know that? What’s wrong with being one level below one of the world’s top villains?”

“Phoenix is an unvarnished 5,” Selachimaster snapped. “'Apocalypse at a word'! Everybody knows that.”

“Mod 5,” Celechwes complained. “2-3C–mod 5.” 2-3C–mod 5–P, in full, but Emergency Mortality Protocols weren’t public. “And anyone can boost their social modifier—aren’t you part of any leagues or alliances? Have you considered joining any, or better, founding your own?”

No, because he was an arrogant, shark-obsessed weirdo living on a tiny volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, who captured and tried to kill a licensed UN meta-inspector instead of playing by the limited international laws like a team goddamn player. Ugh. Her real job, park-ranging at Beleriand National Park and Preserve, never gave her trouble like this. The really obnoxious tourists usually got themselves killed by cold or bears.

Predictably, Selachimaster scoffed.

“‘Alliances’ are just cheap tricks to make weak villains seem stronger, by clinging like a remora to the truly great! I don’t need any of them—soon they will all fear my wrath!”

“Okay, listen, I didn’t want to do this…”

Selachimaster had taken all of Celechwes’s specialized gear when he caught her in that stupid tripwired-tractor beam, including her emergency comms. She was down to her t-shirt, shorts, and the hairtie holding back her short blond ponytail…and her “wedding ring.” Only the truly desperate or truly despicable took a wedding ring—and Celechwes, aka Zephyr, might not have been speedster enough to phase through matter, but she could still vibrate her hand at the frequency that triggered the small gold band’s distress beacon.

Classic shark-alert beach alarms went off overhead. Selachimaster threw his head back with a gloating laugh.

“I knew you had one last emergency flare! Little did you know that, like a shark, my security system senses all electrical impulses…and the other great flaw of government oversight is that it moves so slowly! By the time any aid you summoned can arrive, you will long-since be nothing but chum…and soon after, so will they! Then they’ll all see what kind of threat rating my beautiful selachimorphs and I deserve!”

“Okay, first off, no creature born of the sea would dream of harming my boss, so jot that down,” Celechwes snapped. “Also, I’m technically a freelance contractor.”

She stretched, tugging some of the tension out of her chained shoulders, and informed him with a smirk, “You have no idea who else answers my distress calls.”

As though on cue, a redhead in even redder spandex appeared crouched on the slab beside her with a snap of displaced air. It wasn’t a costume so much as a jogging outfit, but that’s what emergency distress beacons got you, sometimes. There was still an eight-pointed star splayed in gold across his chest.

He slid for a split second before grabbing hold of the slab’s upper edge, as he’d been posed to do. In his other hand, he held a key that looked exactly like the one on Selachimaster’s belt.

“You called?” he asked, bobbing his head and sweeping his arm with melodramatic gallantry. Then he got right to unlocking her handcuffs.

“Hey, Slipstream,” Celechwes replied with a grin. His domino mask was black, but if you paid attention, the faint existential disorientation of someone time-traveling right next to you was distinct from the faint vertigo of someone teleporting right next to you.

Slipstream stuck his tongue out at her. The twins hated it when you got them right in any way.

He handed her the key so she could get her legs herself. With his newly free hand, he drew a sleek, gold-brushed gun from a fanny pack and aimed it without looking between Selachimaster’s eyes. An ornate C curled around an eight-pointed star on its hilt proclaimed it a Mechanist original—Eru only knew what it shot.

“Unh-uh!” Slipstream said in a sing-song voice. “Haven't you already caused the lady enough problems today?”

“What?” Selachimaster sputtered. His finger was frozen on the big red button to flip them both down to the sharks swimming below.

Celechwes had finished uncuffing herself. Holding onto a loose chain with one hand, she offered the other to her red-clad white knight. “You need secondary geo-coordinates?”

“Yeah.” He glanced at one of three watches on his wrist. “Time was 1604:52 local, by the way. Tell me in your about five minutes.”

“Got it.”

She towed him up the dangling slab’s pulley chains at a near sprint. Momentum helped with this sort of thing, but mostly Celechwes had learned balance growing up on storm-tossed crab boats in the Gulf of Alaska.

She left Slipstream on the far side of the cavernous death trap room and dashed back to where Selachimaster was still sputtering over the sudden turn of events. He’d twisted to stare at the son of Fëanor now waving his hands in the air like a tourist trying to find cell service.

“Is that really—”

“I tried to warn you,” Celechwes pointed out as she plucked the remote from his hand. She lingered by the edge of the pool to obviously drop it in.

A mako shark leapt up at her as its master snarled in impotent fury.

“See?” she said as she stepped back from its snapping jaws. “Conditional!”

The wailing shark-alert alarm went off again.

“Ooh, I think he got second coordinates locked in,” she said.

“What second coordin— what sort of freelance work do you do?” Selachimaster shrieked.

“Environmental consulting.” Celechwes smirked, and stole the handcuff key off his belt. She barely even had to speed up.

The second snap of displaced air was twice as loud—it accounted for two bodies rather than one. Sidestep (flat 4–mod 5–R) had teleported into the middle of the lair’s grand hall, dressed either for a casual birdwatching walk or for casing a museum—jeans, merch shirt from an old Lothlann Fields tour, discreet binoculars hanging around his neck. He’d also pulled on a tac vest and of course a white domino mask.

Slipstream (flat 5–mod 4–R)—another Slipstream, looking exactly the same as the one who’d unlocked Celechwes’s handcuff—was in Sidestep’s arms when they appeared. Both could only take what they could carry. He leapt down and they went back to back before the displaced air finished echoing, guns drawn.

Celechwes gave them a second to relax their trigger fingers before she dashed over.

“Hey, you two! Thanks so much for the help. It’s mostly done, I think—you just need to let me out.” She tossed Slipstream the key. “Time was 1604:52 local, and the last thing I said was, ‘You have no idea who answers my distress calls’, if you want to say something cool again.” She pointed at the dangling slab above the open shark pool. “I’ll run you over and show you how to pose so you don’t fall when you pop in?”

Slipstream spun his golden pistol around his fingers and tucked it back into his fanny pack with a grin.

“See, this is why I don’t mind the interruption,” he told his brother. “Isn’t it nice to work with someone who knows how we work?”

“Because she spies on us for the government,” Sidestep pointed out.

The other, slightly later Slipstream had jogged up, though he left a careful space between himselves. He argued, “Yeah, but she’s cool about it.”

“I try,” Celechwes said demurely.

They started strolling toward the shark pool together, the Slipstreams keeping the other two between them (something about ‘erring on the side of caution with the time-space continuum’, as Celechwes understood).

“Seriously, thank you guys for the help,” she said. “I owe you one.”

Sidestep scoffed, “Don’t worry, it’s on Nelyo’s tab—hey!”

Nearly simultaneously cracks as he teleported twenty feet ahead and yanked another remote control from Selachimaster’s hand—and a ruthless crack of elbow to solar plexus as he laid the villain flat.

“This better not be a self-destruct,” he threatened, waving the red-buttoned remote as he stood over the gasping shark-master. “ We are going to be the only ones destroying your little fortress here.”

“I’ve got him,” said the Slipstream who’d let Celechwes out of her handcuffs. He pulled Selachimaster to his feet and twisted his arms sharply behind his back, eliciting further gasping.

“Show me where to hop from?” asked the other, gesturing at the hanging slab.

Celechwes should probably have been concerned about the manhandling of the weaker supervillain, as a government official and all that. But he’d been about to feed her to sharks, so…

“Sure thing.” She cupped Slipstream’s neck to avoid whiplash and towed him back up along the chains.

But no sooner had the surplus Slipsteam vanished, back to five minutes ago, than Selachimaster managed to slip free of the other and dive into the shark pool himself. A moment later he resurfaced on the back of a great white, his helm transformed into a diving helmet.

“You haven’t seen the last of—”

Like many inactive volcanoes, Selachimaster’s lair was open at the roof, with a retractable cover to keep out weather. It was open, now—so nothing slowed the silver-clad figure diving from above in a tight furl of giant spectral golden eagle wings. Wind rushed through the cavern as he flared his wings at the last second, slowing just enough to grab Selachimaster by the collar before swooping over to drop him ungently back on the hard floor. The hero landed with his weight perfectly balanced and his hands planted on his hips. The wings disappeared as they folded in behind him, leaving only the iconic silver uniform with gold trim and a cobalt V across his chest (and gold-beaded dreadlocks, and face that recently graced the cover of People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue).

“The only place I’ll be seeing you is behind bars,” he grandly informed the fallen, gaping villain.

“Babe!” Celechwes cried in delight. She scrambled back to land and went up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “I didn’t know you were in the Pacific!”

Valiant (3C–mod 5–U, one of the world’s top heroes), caught her in a quick hug.

“I was helping evacuate a city in Polynesia,” he said, stern Hero Face giving way to a warm smile. “It’s all fine—I left Silverfoot talking down the angry volcano maia. She’s got it handled.”

Some of the seriousness came back as he looked Celechwes over with a field commander’s eye, and then around the cavernous lair. “What about you? Are you okay? I came as soon as I got your alert…”

“I’m fine,” she promised him. “You’re actually Emergency Backup Round Two, today—Russo was quicker on the speed dial than you were on the wing.”

“Yes, and we’ll be the knockout round, too. This loser is ours, not your stupid ‘justice’ system’s.”

The casualness has vanished from Sidestep’s demeanor like it’d teleported away on its own. Slipstream was equally abruptly cold. They’d switched their masks again—or potentially their clothes, and Celechwes was falling for it—and they stalked over in tandem, every inch the Fëanorian Twins.

“The boss was really specific,” said Slipstream, twirling his pistol between two fingers. “A number of people have been disrespectful recently, so we’re going to show the world what happens when you mess with someone under the Phoenix’s wing.”

Sidestep drew a small glass vial from a pocket on his tac vest, containing a blob of glowing red gel suspended in clear liquid, and Celechwes couldn’t help but gasp. She’d never seen Fëanorian Fire in person. Rumor said that nobody was sure how much of it was even left in the world, not even the legendary supervillain’s own sons. They had most of it, of course, but international gossip said that at least three governments had vials of their own hidden and locked away, and it wasn’t necessarily three that you’d guess…

Fëanorian Fire was one of the infamous inventor's last creations, made for war against gods. It was like Greek fire, if instead of merely burning on water, Greek fire exploded on first contact with oxygen and then consumed everything solid it came into contact with—wood, flesh, plastic, metal, stone—until it hit bedrock below and sufficiently large bodies of water on all sides.

20 years ago, Fëanorian Fire had destroyed most of Northern Europe before the Valar themselves did stopped and then undid it. It was the last thing they’d done before (officially) leaving Earth completely.

Valiant drew his shining resolutium sword. He took a defensive stance between the now-cowering Selachimaster and Phoenix’s personal fixers.

“Boys, boys!” Celechwes stepped between them and pushed them all apart with her hands. “We can compromise, here!”

She pointed to Valiant and to the wannabe-supervillain hiding behind him. “You, arrest him, take him away, et cetera.” She pointed to Sidestep and Slipstream, then gestured at the volcanic lair around them. “Then you two, burn this place to the world remade.”

“…‘Unfortunately, I was unable to stop the villains from returning after I left…’” Valiant said after a moment’s consideration, rehearsing a report to an imaginary figure. He nodded, though he didn’t drop his stance. “Yeah, I can work with that.”

“One moment,” said Sidestep. He took Slipstream by the arm and Slipsteam hopped, to be counted as “carried” as they teleported to the other side of the shark pool.

While they whispered at one another, Celechwes dashed off to get some rope she’d seen on the next level down, and bound Selachimaster’s hands while he was still overwhelmed by the sheer scale of his f*ck-up. The twins returned just as she tied the last knot, a few seconds later.

“Works for us,” Slipstream announced, as Sidestep tucked the Fire carefully back into a pocket. “Phoenix will be pissy, but he’ll be even pissier if we break his ‘nemesis’s’ pretty face.”

“Controlling asshole,” Valiant said fondly. Then he smiled sharply at the twins. “I mean, you could try.”

“I want protective custody,” Selachimaster whined. He’d managed to stand, but he was still hunching his shoulders and hiding behind Valiant. “I can turn state’s witness—I know tons of stuff. Nothing evades the keen senses of a shark!”

“We have teleportation- and time travel-proof cells at the Fortress,” Valiant assured him.

Slipstream and Sidestep fixed Selachimaster with identical predatory smiles.

“But are they Hunter-proof?” Sidestep asked softly. “Because, you know, we’re much nicer than he is.”

Celechwes clapped like she was grabbing the attention of a bunch of Junior Rangers.

“Compromise!” she reminded the villains and hero alike. “Give me a couple minutes to find my stuff that he took, and make sure all the sharks can get away—there’s no reason they should suffer. And then we can all get out of here for good. Okay?”

Chapter 5: UN OMI Classifications

Chapter Text

UN Office of Metahuman Inspection classifications:

Potential Threat Level
(Factors include both metahuman and standard abilities. Publicly available knowledge for known superheroes and supervillains, but NOT for non-combatants. Individuals are informed when their public/private status changes.)

1 - Baseline normal. Could hypothetically kill another person with bare hands if sufficiently motivated.

2 - Could cause damage equivalent to a small bomb or large mass shooting. (Eg, kill everyone in a movie theater.)

3 - Could cause damage equivalent to major but localized natural disaster (eg, Hurricane Katrina, 1906 SF earthquake - damage in cities, counties at most, not countries.)

4 - Could cause damage equivalent to major war (eg, food, radiation, economic problems for multiple adjacent countries for years.)

5 - Could cause global apocalypse or worse (includes damage to reality itself - there’s no real point in differentiating beyond “global apocalypse.”)

Add "C" if threat level is conditional on some specific weapon or circ*mstance which the individual is LIKELY or REASONABLY PLAUSIBLE to have but doesn't have constantly. Ie, a magical, power-granting amulet worn at all times should be factored into baseline PTL, but easily purchasable weapons add a Conditional boost.

PTL Social Modifier
(Ie, how much damage could they cause by asking allies for help rather than on their own? Can be lower or higher than pure PTL. Publicly available knowledge for known superheroes and supervillains, but NOT for non-combatants. Individuals are informed when their public/private status changes.)

[Same scale as PTL. Likely conditions are assumed.]

Emergency Mortality Protocol
(NOT public knowledge, not even officially collected [but everyone knows they do])

S - Standard. You can kill this person in all the ways an average human will be killed.
R - Ranged (sniper advised). If you’re in melee range or they see you coming, you (assumed 2c) are very unlikely to win a fight. But they’ll die like a normal person if caught by sufficient surprise.
P - Personalized. You need very specific conditions (eg, kryptonite for Superman) and/or an opponent of equivalent or inverse powers.
U - Unknown. We’re not sure this person can be killed.

Chapter 6: Celebrimbor’s Haunted House: EXTENDED FINGON POV!

Chapter Text

The door to the office of the CEO of Fëa Technologies, Inc. was cracked open. By the twinkle of city lights coming in through the hallway windows and the faint glow of his sword, Valiant inspected it carefully for wires strung across the gap, tripping hazards on the floor, a bucket full of Eru knew what propped against the inner doorframe. Every few seconds, he paused to listen intently for the quiet whir of electronics, any electronics.

He was perfectly aware that a camera was watching his every move and that he looked completely ridiculous. But it had been a long night.

Finding nothing, he used the tip of his sword to push the door another inch open. Someone was breathing in there, and shifting as though restless. But no new traps triggered…yet.

He kicked the door the rest of the way open and strode into the dark office.

Valiant knew where everything in this room lay. The tall, broad central desk, built to intimidate. The respectably stuffed bookcases, at least one of which disguised a hidden door, with a handful of comfortable chairs beside them for more casual conversation. The rare original art on two walls, the family crest on a third, and the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the fourth, now tuned to impenetrable darkness.

A single beam of light illuminated only the tall-backed black chair behind the desk.

It swiveled to reveal its occupant: a nine-year-old boy with light skin and dark hair, and electric-blue eyes bright with the Light of Vala-derived powers. He was wearing pajamas with a cartoon robot on the shirt. In one hand he held a tablet computer, screen out of view, and with the other he stroked a roomba which was whirring softly on his lap. A pile of what were probably encyclopedias boosted his seat on the chair, which (along with the desk) was made for a man over six feet tall.

“Congratulations, Hero, for surviving my Tower of Terror!” he cried.

Fingon lowered his sword, though he didn’t quite lean against the doorframe. Nor did he discount the roomba. One of those things had eaten half a sleeve of his semi-indestructible supersuit.

“Tyelpë, where is your uncle.”

“My name is ‘Spark,’” the young villain argued, leg bouncing petulantly.

“Alright, Spark. Where is your uncle?”

“Nowhere!” Spark said promptly. Then he giggled, “I mean, which one?” He said virtuously, “I think Hunter is still in jail this week, so he can’t have done anything wrong.”

It had been a long night. This was supposed to have been a fairly simply b&e and retrieval job, little more than a training exercise, albeit with killer robots in the way, then home for a late romantic dinner. Instead, Valiant and all four teammates with whom he’d started out had been attacked by half-built but very active robotic dogs, exploding microwaves, malevolent roombas, a pile of wires that was functionally a tentacle monster, and a variety of other random possessed electronics, not to mention tripped on strings and ball-bearings, hit by falling bookcases and buckets of orange soda, and pursued by flashing lights, randomly opening and shutting doors, blasts of hot or cold air, and creepy childish laughter in the PA system… Valiant was the only one who hadn’t been dragged out a door or flung out a window.

But Fingon valued his reputation as a ‘fun uncle’, including to his only nephew-in-law, as well as his title of one of the world’s top heroes. So he raised his sword again (he hadn’t taken his attention off the roomba, anyway) and settled into a particularly impressive offensive stance.

“So you alone have been my nemesis for the evening, you electronic evildoer!” he cried. “Well, now it’s time for the off switch!”

“Nothing has a switch anymore! You’re so old!” Spark yelled back. He raised his hands as though shoving forward.

After three grueling hours working his way up Himring Tower from the covert basem*nt entrance to the penthouse office, however, Valiant knew to close his eyes against the sudden flare of office lights. He swung at the whir of the suddenly airborne roomba and his shining blade cut it clean in two—jesus, did that one have a knife taped to it?

The office was dark again, except for the flexible desk lamp, which swung around to blind him as he started to pace around the desk. The shifting light revealed several empty bottles of caffeinated root beer as well as several pizza crusts on a paper plate, an empty jar of peanut butter, and a mostly empty party-sized bag of M&Ms, all seemingly shoved to the side to clear the earlier spotlight. That explained more than it didn’t.

“I have bested your robotic minions, you scurrilous sparkle,” Valiant declared, and let the desk lamp do its worst. “I have survived your direst traps!”

Spark waved his hands again, eyes bright with powers and sugar, and Valiant defended himself against a strangling security camera, a lethal spinning blade usually hidden in the ceiling, and a desktop computer which he was fairly sure was brand-new and unnecessarily expensive. Well, if Fëa’s CEO didn’t want it sliced in two, he shouldn’t have left it in a room with his precociously villainous electrokinetic nephew and Valiant.

“I have even taken back the plans for the Nucleic Knife which you stole from the good researchers at NOGROD!”

“No you didn’t!” Spark cried triumphantly. He jumped from the chair to stand on the desk, to stay ahead of Valiant as he came around the corner.

“Yes I did!” Valiant retorted. “Right out of the vault in R&D!”

“That was a fake, you dummy hero! Uncle– Phoenix and I put the real plans in his safe right here—oh!”

His exclamation was for the click-on of a small standing lamp by the bookcases, and a rich, commanding tenor saying, “That’s enough, I think. Tyelpë, do you see what you did wrong just then?”

The warm light puddled on the famous copper-red curls, shining grey eyes, and sharp smile of the CEO of Fëa Technologies, Maedhros Fëanorion, the supervillain Phoenix. He, too, was wearing pajamas, one of his ridiculous silk sets patterned and tailored like a full business suit. He was leaned back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other like he did this every night.

His smile sharpened like a knife as he met Valiant’s gaze. Fingon’s heart pounded as it always did at the sight of his archnemesis. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

Spark chewed on his lips.

“I shouldn’t’ve told him he got fake plans,” he said. “I should’ve let him take them and blow up the League of Heroes when they tried to make it.”

Fingon’s eyes widened with some concern.

“They wouldn’t blow up anything, they just wouldn’t work,” Phoenix corrected. “But, yes, that was your first mistake. We were listening on the security system when they decided those plans were probably fake, remember? And then you compounded the error by…”

Celebrimbor chewed his lips uncertainly. His gaze darted between them.

‘Right here’, Fingon mouthed, and gently kicked the lower desk drawer which he knew from nemesis experience had a false back hiding a safe.

“But– I didn’t even monologue!” Celebrimbor wailed.

“You also have to be careful with banter, Tyelpë,” Maedhros said gently. He uncrossed his long legs and stood, tailored silk clinging to his tall, strong form. “Okay, you’ve done great tonight, but it’s finally bedtime.”

“One more thing!” Fingon put his hand up, and rushed to forestall a potential sugar crash meltdown. “Not you, Spark. You wreaked havoc and despair on me and my team all night! But your uncle made a couple tactical mistakes here at the end.”

He pointed at Phoenix, still standing elegantly near the window.

“See, he’s all the way over there, without most of his usual weapons or armor, while I’m standing right here, with my resolutium sword, in easy reach of both his non-resolutium safe and the most dangerous, but also most personally defenseless person in the room—”

He had only reached halfway toward Celebrimbor’s arm when there was a huff of hot breath and a low, rumbling growl just behind his left ear. It was the sort of growl that had come from the forest while early hominids hid in their caves, prey more than predator against what stalked the night.

“Hello, Huan,” Fingon carefully, once he’d wrestled down the atavistic instinct to flare out his borrowed wings and fight to the death. “I didn’t know you were there. The actual, Curvo-assigned babysitter, I take it?”

The peanut butter. He should’ve paid attention to the peanut butter.

Huan gave a canine snort of agreement. The celestial hunting hound wasn’t heard sneaking up on someone unless he wanted to be. His low growl did not abate.

“I was only going to hold him close enough to not drop another light fixture on my head,” Fingon promised.

The growling still did not abate, though the sense that large, sharp teeth were half an inch from the back of his neck did pull back a little. A full inch at least.

Fingon leaned down slowly and placed his dimming sword on the floor, and kicked it under the desk.

Huan rewarded him by backing up, dropping his spine-chilling growl, and generally returning to his usual form as a mutt of a wolfdog, rather than a hulking monster out of humanity’s primal nightmares.

The wolfdog was plenty big, as he promptly proved by headbutting Fingon in the side and demanding pets with a friendly, “Boof!”

Celebrimbor was cackling again, at the sight of his would-be-foe so thoroughly bested by his canine bodyguard.

Phoenix only smirked. But there was fire in it, and Light in his eyes, and altogether he held Valiant’s attention like a magnet.

“Thank you, Huan.” The villain prowled toward Valiant, practically purring. “I do like a defenseless hero.”

Oh, Valiant was going to wipe that smirk off his face. He raised his fists.

“The only defense I need against you is righteousness, villain! Oh, sorry, I forgot—that’s a concept you no longer understand!”

“I understand righteousness just fine, my hero.” Phoenix stopped several feet away and spread his arms. The softly clinging silk still revealed no weapons. “It’s where you get all your overconfidence.”

It was Valiant’s turn to stalk forward.

“I’ll show you over-confidence—”

“You certainly will—”

“Euch,” Celebrimbor proclaimed disdainfully. He slid off the desk with a soft thump. “C’mon, Huan, let’s go—they’re about to start kissing.”

Phoenix dropped some of his grand menace to say, “Go to bed, Tyelpë. Huan—”

The boy complained; the dog boofed agreeably and herded him through the bookcase door into the small but luxurious spare apartment behind it.

Fingon managed to wait until the sound-blocking door was closed before he burst into laughter. He leaned his head against his husband’s shoulder as he caught his breath.

“What the f*ck happened to ‘training exercise’?” he complained (though with very little real bite—his adrenaline was up and Maedhros was wearing clinging silk). “And you know we can’t just go home now, if Tyelpë is going to bed here—though you’ve already proven yourself a much worse babysitter than Huan on his own. How much sugar and caffeine did you feed him? It’s nearly 5 AM!”

“So much,” Maedhros admitted, settling his hands on Fingon’s hips. “All your people got home okay, by the way—well, that hacker girl is probably still in the emergency room. But I thought her ankle looked like a clean break?”

“Yeah, probably just straight-up snapped.” Fingon had seen a lot of broken bones over the years. “She’ll be in a boot for a month or two and then she’ll be fine.” He smiled warmly up at Maedhros. “Thanks for keeping tabs.”

“No problem. I could have warned you that Mechanist had flaked on me, with the robots and with being available to drive them anyway, so I was going to improvise...”

Phoenix smiled, slow and sharp, and tightened his grip on Fingon’s hips.

“But then I wouldn’t have gotten to watch you work it all out, and fight your way towards me for half the night.”

Valiant retaliated by pulling away and stretching some of the multi-hour-workout soreness from his muscles, which he knew made his costume cling in notable ways—where it hadn’t been torn away by killer roombas.

Maedhros’s pupils dilated and the urge to shove him against the nearest wall and kiss him breathless intensified about tenfold. So Fingon knew he was rocking the post-roomba battle look.

“Well,” he drawled, “I do have to get those top-secret stolen plans back tonight. I’d rather not leave this room without them, really. For my honor as a hero.”

Phoenix’s eyes shone dangerously.

“Is it truly honor and reparation that you seek?” he sneered. “Or something more base?”

Unable to answer honorably, Valiant shoved him against the nearest wall, and wiped the smirk off his face the old-fashioned way.

— — —

“…so I left him handcuffed—”

Turgon covered his ears, then attempted to shove his older brother off his desk, then gave up and covered his ears again.

“Stop! Stop telling me things, you are so gross! Do you report to Mother and Father with this— detail?”

“Literally all I said was that after Tyelpë left, Maedhros fell asleep eventually and I handcuffed him to the bookcase—”

“I don’t want to know about the handcuffs! Nobody wants to know about the handcuffs, Finno!”

“He’s a supervillain and I’m a superhero,” Fingon said innocently. “Shouldn’t I—”

Turgon gestured, and a large stone paperweight started floating threateningly towards him.

“Okay, okay!”

Fingon abandoned his seat on the corner on his little brother’s desk at the League of Heroes Home Office, and showed his sincerity by straightening the papers he left behind.

“I’m not reporting to you, anyway. I’m telling you because you need to start making nice enough with Curufin to invite Celebrimbor to super-cousin playdates with Idril. I’ll talk to Aredhel and Orodreth, too. Because otherwise the closest thing that kid is going to come to ethics lessons will be from the dog.”

Turgon raised his eyebrows. “You’re serious about the recommendation to up-rate Spark, then? He’s just nine years old.”

“By the end of the night, he was tired, unfocused, and mostly just throwing stuff at us,” Fingon said seriously, “but at the start, Rabbit says he was manipulating basic software, not just the mechanisms. Maedhros confirmed it. And he’s just nine years old.”

He couldn’t help adding, “Maedhros actually talks a lot after—I’m going! I’m going! Help, treason of kin unto kin! Don’t forget to schedule a playdate!”

He dodged a second and third paperweights as he ran out of his brother’s office, laughing.

Chapter 7: How Celechwes Got Involved

Chapter Text

The first day that the fracking started, just within the northeastern border of Celechwes's park, the sounds of the drills set clouds of anxious birds to flight, and she lodged a formal complaint with Parks Management, wrote a pissed-off letter to the local newspaper, and bitched with her friends (mostly fellow park rangers), as they'd been doing since the rental of land use was first proposed.

A few weeks later, plants on the banks of Celon Lake, near the new fracking site, started to wither. The grasses went first, but the trees started to cringe like pines never should. Baby blackfish died. Celechwes and her friends wrote a whole storm of letters to local newspapers, radio stations and the one tv station in central Alaska. They picketed the mayor's office, and managed to get a meeting with their state legislator, though Celechwes was nearly late to that (she'd gotten paged to observe a hero-villain fight in Mexico City).

Celechwes wasn't one for politics, but this was f*cking personal. This was Beleriand. Beleriand National Park and Preserve was the biggest national park in the United States and it was well-deservedly famous for having everything: mountains and meadows; forests and fens; lakes, rivers and even a narrow strip of rocky coast... It was home to over 60 endangered species, 22 species of megafauna and other large animals, trees older than the state of Alaska, glaciers older than the human species, and Celechwes. since her parents had taken her to visit when she was nine years old and she'd nearly run away well enough to never have to leave.

Or, it had felt very near when she was nine. In retrospect, as a ranger, she'd barely left the most basic trails. Beleriand was 13.2 million acres. She'd been working in it for 14 years now, summers and then full-time, and she'd barely explored any of it.

(Sure, she'd run through all of it. But nature was harder to appreciate at hundreds of miles an hour.)

The mayor and the legislator both did nothing, of course. The city council to which they gave a whole powerpoint presentation did nothing.

Celon Lake was one thing (Celon Lake was a square kilometer of freshwater with hundreds of grasses, bushes, trees, fish, waterfowl, insects, animals coming to drink...) Then the Little Gelion, whose spring was in northeast, started to show signs of poison as well. The Little Gelion ran south until it met the Greater Gelion, whereupon they combined into the Gelion proper, which fed the entire western half of the park.

Celechwes snuck into the fracking site one night with a screwdriver and unscrewed every screw she could find nearly, but not entirely, out of place. Unless they looked like they're part of environmentally important safety equipment. There weren't a lot of those. Moving at high speed, she finished with time to run home for bed—that is, back to the spare bedroom in the nearest ranger station.

The crashes in the morning woke her up. She smiled.

The motherf*ckers fixed everything, however—and so a swift and vicious war began.

Celechwes cut the tires of every vehicle on site, siphoned the gas into gallon jugs and hauled them all the way to Juneau (in many short trips—she was a speedster, not a strongman). Northern Oil replaced the tires and refilled their tanks without blinking, and didn't even pause their pumps.

Celechwes broke every lightbulb at the site, including as many indicator lights as she could. She nearly got caught on that one—breaking glass was loud even if you were moving almost too fast for standard human eyesight. She got away, though—and Northern Oil replaced them, and kept fracking.

They had new guards after that, honest-to-god goons. Henchpeople, professional or semi-professional. Celechwes had been an on-call observer/assessor with the UN Office of Meta Management for three years; she knew was a professional henchperson looked like.

"You should stop," said Pennel, best friend and confidante. "Of course it's terrible, Celechwes. But this is getting too serious! You can't fight real villains—and don't tell me they're just henchpeople. Who hires real henchpeople? Supervillains! And I did the research same as you—Northern Oil is owned by ColdPlains Energy is owned by FëaTech."

"I'm probably a villain, too," Celechwes pointed out. "The paper called it 'environmental terrorism.'"

She couldn't technically argue with the rest. Pennel was refastening a bandage on Celechwes's right shoulder. There'd been a whole spray of bullets, in the dark (her fault), and she'd gotten dinged.

The next night, Celechwes tried the screws trick again. That had stopped them for nearly a month...

The screws were glued in or something now, and the henchpeople were good at their jobs. She jammed her screwdriver into a vulnerable-looking part of the fracking rig and ran—and got away clean, of course; there were about thirty people and two dozen inventions in the world that could outpace Celechwes, and basic henchpeople with basic guns were none of them.

The next morning, the fracking resumed like nothing had happened whatsoever. Then, just after noon, there was an earthquake.

It wasn't a natural earthquake. Beleriand had earthquakes sometimes; they were on the Pacific Ring of Fire. But Celechwes knew this land in her bones and this one was wrong.

Celechwes technically, arguably, had an in with supervillains. Celechwes had tried to do this both normally and locally. And Celechwes was righteously pissed.

It took about twenty minutes to run to Echo City. At no point did Celechwes stop being angry enough to fight a moose.

She slowed at the doors of Himring Tower and stalked in at a mundane speed, waving her OMM badge at the guards and front desk.

“Random surprise inspection,” she announced. “I need to speak to your boss.”

Greeter and guards all hesitated. The greeter started, “My manager—”

“Your boss boss,” Celechwes corrected. “It’s fine, I can figure out the way—penthouse office, right?”

She didn't wait for an answer, just dashed past them into an elevator that was about to close.

She realized that this was a mistake as the elevator moved slooowly between floors (compared to her), and the doors opened on the very next level to reveal a security guard (very professional henchpeople, all of these) looking toward the elevator while answering her comms. Celechwes ran out and took the stairs instead.

If there were traps, they didn't activate. A faint shimmer of force field in front of the single door on the top floor—behind a secretary's protective antechamber—faded as Celechwes approached. She didn't hesitate to slam the door open.

Maedhros Fëanorion didn't blink. Nor did he stand from his desk. He glanced at his computer for a split second, then said as amiably as though this was a scheduled meeting, "Hello, Ms. Perolhaliel. What can I do for the OMM today?"

Celechwes slammed her hands on his desk. "You can get your f*cking poison out of my f*cking park!"

Maedhros Fëanorion—the supervillain Phoenix, heir of Fëanor, leader of a company whose GDP rivaled many countries', flawlessly composed in a suit that somehow accentuated both his strong jaw and his porcelain cheekbones—blinked in confusion.

"Beg pardon?" he said.

"Don't play coy," Celechwes hissed. "The fracking at Beleriand National Park—you've commented on it publicly. You said it wouldn't cause any harm. Well let me tell you, buster, I work at the Park, and it is causing irreparable harm. At this rate you'll be the one breeding orcs, Mr. 'Foe of Morgoth!'"

His gaze flicked again toward his computer, then at the OMM badge still clutched in her hand, then back to Celechwes. His inhumanly bright eyes were like a cat's watching birds through a window.

"What a fascinating use of inspectorial authority," he purred. He stood, all nearly seven feet of him, and gestured at her elegantly. "Do have a seat, Ms. Perolhaliel, and I'd be happy to discuss your...grievance."

It was at roughly this juncture that it occurred to Celechwes that she was, in fact, yelling at Maedhros Fëanorion—the supervillain Phoenix, heir of Fëanor, etc; one of the most dangerous people in the world (by social modifier). And not only had she barged into his office and started yelling at him, but she'd been personally foiling (or, trying to foil) one of his schemes for months, anonymously...until now. And Phoenix wasn't known for public killings, but he was implicated in a lot of...disappearances...and Celechwes had come here without telling anyone where she was going, and absolutely everybody in this building would claim in court to have never seen her, and Círdan would not be impressed if he found out she'd been using her official badge for distinctly unofficial purposes...

But Beleriand was being assaulted, broken apart, and lethally poisoned.

Celechwes balled her hands into fists and glared up at him.

"I will not," she snapped. "Do you know what fracking does to an ecosystem? Have you even been to Beleriand? The waterways…”

. . .

Fingon carefully carried two full, steaming mugs of tea from the kitchen to the living room. He put one into his husband's half-ready hand (it was the bionic hand; it could handle the heat) and sipped the other himself, as he leaned over Maedhros's shoulder to see which of his many open browser tabs had him making that little moue of contemplation.

"Why are you studying a dossier of one of Círdan's irregulars?" he asked. He'd met Celechwes Perolhaliel a few times in official capacities—that thing in Greenland, that other thing in Greenland, a baseline inspection of the League of Heroes training yards...

"Maybe I'm planning on suborning her," Maedhros drawled. He took a long sip of the steaming tea and smiled in contentment. "Mm, thank you."

Fingon pecked the top of his head in you're welcome, then rounded the sofa to take up his usual Cozy Sunday spot on the other end.

"You wouldn't do that in the living room," he said reasonably, as he tangled their feet together. Their apartment living room was a strictly superwork-free zone.

"She randomly barged into my office on Thursday and yelled at me about the importance of undisturbed national parks for thirty minutes," Maedhros admitted.

Fingon had been about to take another sip of tea. He was glad that he hadn't. Strangled by a laugh at the mental image—wasn't that woman like five feet tall?—he said, "Beg pardon? And you let her?"

Maedhros smiled wryly. "She refused to be intimidated by me."

Fingon raised his eyebrows, impressed. Psychic resistance on top of superspeed?

"I mean, I didn't try very hard!" Maedhros said defensively. "I didn't push. But yes, instead of backing off, she doubled down. She had a powerpoint." His expression slipped back into that thoughtful moue. "She had several good points about the evident dangers of one of our newer business ventures, which my people may have 'asked' the EPA to ignore otherwise. And she was very...passionate about it."

Fingon poked him in the thigh with his toe. "You're still not telling me something."

Maedhros look away, a faint flush creeping up his neck.

"...I don't want to insult you in any way," he said delicately. "And I'm very certain that you'll laugh at me."

"Oh, now I definitely need to know." Fingon leaned forward, then on further thought set his tea carefully on a coaster, then leaned forward again. "Speak, villain! I'll have the truth out of you sooner or later, you know, for truth shall always prev—"

It was Maedhros's turn to deliver a savage toe poke. Though he didn't stop blushing. And he did confess:

"It was a little like being lectured by my mother, if my mother was a 5'4" environmentalist and being lectured by her was hot."

About ten minutes later, when he'd finally stopped laughing so hard that he cried, Fingon wiped the last tears from his eyes and asked, "So are you going to stop it?"

"What, being married to you?" Maedhros grouched. He never liked being laughed at.

Fingon elbowed him good-naturedly in the ribs. (They’d gotten closer together while Maedhros moved tea mugs and laptop safely away of Fingon’s hysterical flailing.)

“The fracking,” he said. “Are you going to stop the fracking?” He grinned. “Because the pretty girl who yells at you like your mother asked you to?”

Maedhros elbowed him back. Then he retrieved both their teas and draped his spare arm around Fingon’s shoulders.

“‘Asked’ is a very generous term,” he grumbled. But his gaze drifted back to the dozen tabs of environmental studies on his laptop (plus the thorough report on Celechwes’s life assembled by some loyal staffer, and what looked like her personal email inbox). “…I might. She made some very good points about long-term costs and benefits, as well as the…incalculable value of the place.”

“Good,” Fingon said decisively, and rewarded him by snuggling in. “I don’t know a thing about the environment but I’m pretty sure we, you know, live in it. And we can’t defeat Morgoth without a reliable home base planet. And then you can invite her to lunch or something!”

Maedhros just barely swallowed rather than spat his tea. “I– thought I wasn’t allowed to suborn her, now?”

“As a friend, you weirdo,” Fingon said fondly. “You need more friends.”

“I have friends!” Maedhros insisted.

“I have friends,” Fingon corrected. “You have my friends, half of whom think you’re a mild-mannered office manager, and you have employees and brothers. You need friend-friends.” He added thoughtfully, “Though I also want to be Celechwes’s friend, if she can pull a powerpoint on you. That’s like judo. That’s like that Greek guy who fought the lion with its own claws. I’m going to invite her to lunch if you don’t. Or do you think she’d like mild-mannered pickleball?”

. . .

Celechwes had added a slow-down in the northeast to her morning run around Beleriand, these last several months. On Monday morning, Lake Celon was still ailing; the spring of Little Gelion had no more fading grasses, but also no fewer…

The fracking equipment, however, was still and silent, and the henchpeople were actually…dismantling it?

She hadn’t heard anything new about the monstrous site. She hadn’t done anything new about it either, since awkwardly excusing herself from Maedhros Fëanorion’s office last Thursday after finishing her powerpoint. She’d only realized afterwards that she’d definitely left her email open on his computer (she’d needed to access it in order to get at the slides).

She went straight to the main northeast ranger station.

“Does anyone know— Why is everyone crowding around my locker?” she asked.

The station manager, the intern, and three other rangers all turned and stared at her with wide eyes, ranging from concern to alarm.

“Celechwes, what did you do?” Pennel whispered.

“What? What did I do?” she asked. “Have any of you heard anything about the Chainer-cursed fracking machines being stopped?”

Pennel moved aside to reveal Celechwes’s open locker, an intrusion which she might’ve been annoyed at had there not been a small fire burning inside it—a perfectly contained, steady fire. A single burning red feather, burning and burning and never going out. The world’s most infamous calling card.

Until Celechwes stepped closer with dreadful fascination. Then the feather was consumed in a single flash of flame, and in its place remained a real, cardstock calling card. It was glossy red and gold on the back (gold eight-pointed star on red background, of course, and nothing else). When she quickly flipped it over, half-expecting more fire, elegant handwriting in red ink said, “Chez Étoile, Madison Ave, New York. Friday. 1:00 pm.”

“What did you do?” Pennel repeated with horror.

Celechwes poked the card again, still waiting to see if it would burst into flame again. It didn’t. Nor did it give her any more answers.

“I think I got invited to lunch?”

Chapter 8: Patch Notes; Character + Plot Supplements

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Team Gil-Galad

Chapter Text

Gil-Galad is the Teen Titans of the Silmarillion Superhero AU. That is, Gil-Galad is 5 teenage superheroes living mostly unsupervised in a tower; it is unclear why any of their parents agreed to this.

That is, once upon a time there was a coastal kingdom called Lindon, ruled and protected by a noble king called Gil-Galad. He wielded the spear Aeglos, a mighty and magical weapon which glowed, flew, shot blasts of light, and, legend says, even spoke and advised the king.

Gil-galad died eventually, as men do, especially men who run off to war to personally fight evil demigods. Aeglos was broken..but it healed, over time, as magical objects do, and found its way back to Lindon to rest and wait for one noble, heroic, and generally kingly enough to bear it again.

In the year [comicbooktimelinesmumble], it was found by Finduilas Mithrieliel, of the famous House of Finwë. At Aeglos's urging, Finduilas put on hold her usual hero-name, Indestructibelle, and took up instead the title "Gil-Galad, Guardian of Lindon."

(Lindon being now not so much a kingdom as one city in a state in a country.)

With the gifts of Aeglos and her own innate Light-souled power of invulnerability, Finduilas defended Lindon from everything from petty theft to the giant evil dragon which followed at least one of her several romantic partners home. (There was a family curse. It's a long story.)

When she finished the college degree she'd technically come to Lindon to pursue, Finduilas gathered up spear, title, and the castle she'd at some point rebuilt from the ancient ruins of the original Gil-Galad's fortress, and left them all to her younger brother, Rodnor.

Inexplicably to the genre-cynic, yet necessary for the story and the enjoyment thereof, Orodreth and Mithriel decide that they're not entirely comfortable letting their teenage son live alone with only an ancient sentient spear for supervision...so the solution is to invite several other teenage cousins to live with him!

It turns out that they're all worthy of bearing Aeglos.

Which brings us to: our cast!

* * *

TEAM GIL-GALAD:

Rodnor Orodrethion, aka G-Force

• 1st to wield Aeglos
• Superpower: Manipulates the gravity of any object he can see to make them temporarily stick one another. Works easily on solids, iffily on liquids, with great effort on gasses. Works most easily if he can touch the object he's affecting. The larger and farther away the object, the harder to manipulate the gravatic field.
• Angsty Teen Personal Problems That Will Inevitably Become Everyone's Problems: Very determined to measure up to the high standard set by Finduilas as hero of this city and bearer of Aeglos, very scared that he can't. Also the standards for heroism set by...pretty much everyone else in his family, too. Defensive of his role as Team Leader and as Gil-Galad. Holds a particular grudge against Sauron, whose temporary conquest of Tol Sirion essentially ended his father's once-notable hero career.
• Age Order (it matters because most of them are related): Second oldest
• Team Dynamics: Will-they-or-won't-they romance with Jill. Feels threatened in leadership by Erein, but they become fast friends once he gains more confidence in his own leadership & heroism (he has to do it himself—he can't take Erein's advice on it). Never really clicks with Finellach, but comes to respect her, and bonds with her gecko. Bonds with Finwain over some kids tv show they both adore.
• Five Man Band Role: Leader, eventually Lancer

Ereinion "Erein" Fingonion, aka Kid Valor

• 3rd to wield Aeglos
• Superpower: He has a supernaturally sharp sword (though not blessed resolutium like Valiant's) and a very good jetpack, and he's very skilled with both. Off the field, he has more "I know a guy" guys than possiblyanyone in the metahuman community, because, thanks to a great many Take Your Child to Work Days, he knows the all guys Fingon knows (field leader of the International Hero Agency since Fingolfin semi-retired to desk work) and all the guys Maedhros knows (undisputed head of both a major international corporation and a major international crime syndicate).
• Angsty Teen Personal Problems That Will Inevitably Become Everyone's Problems: Despite being a genetically hybridized test-tube baby created by his villainous dad to "destroy" his heroic dad (whom they took out of the test tube at a normal baby age and lovingly raised together in their secret identities as a mild-mannered married couple), Erein is, like, shockingly mentally/emotionally healthy. He doesn't even suffer (much) from the classic "must measure up" neuroses like Rodnor, despite [gestures at parents]. (Fingon and Maedhros both made conscious effort toward this.) The fact that he chose Heroism over Villainy isn't even a problem! Maedhros is very supportive, albeit in no way ceasing his own villainous activities!
  • No, Erein's issue is that his Light-souled superpower is neutralizing other people's superpowers—or even their particular abilities, like, he can make a professional ballet dancer trip over their own feet. He can slow an Olympic runner to the speed of an average schmoe. That's how his power works: he makes peopleaverage—and average people don't have superpowers. It requires skin contact and it lasts about a day...and he hates it, tries to hide it, because literally everyone in his extended family from about Finduilas and older has Ungoliant-related trauma about not being able to access their powers, and even when they tried not to make him feel bad about it, he felt bad about it.
• Age Order: Second youngest, but it's hard to tell because, "shockingly mentally/emotionally healthy" aside, he did learn Eldest Child Syndrome behavior from both parents
• Team Dynamics: Peacemaker of the team...but clashes with Rodnor over team leadership, especially when Aeglos first accepts him as a bearer, too, because, listen, Erein doesn't necessarily want to lead the team, but he's been getting off-the-cuff lessons in personnel management and battlefield tactics since age 0, plus practical sidekick experience, and he doesn't like to see a job done poorly, and Rodnor hasn'thad all those lessons and has much less sidekick experience. Keeps trying to convince Finellach that Heroism is cool actually. Quick and easy friendship with Jill. Manages to give Finwain advice on how to handle the pressure to measure up to your intimidating relatives when you really want to just be yourself.
• Five Man Band Role: Lancer, sometimes pushing against Leader. Eventually settles into Heart, where he belongs (knows all possible guys & connects them in friendship!)

Finellach Aradethiel, aka Reptillia

• 5th to wield Aeglos
• Superpower: Talks to, and recruits help from, reptiles—snakes, lizards, tuatara when convenient (but they're endemic to New Zealand), and turtles; NOT (she will irritatedly and pedantically explain) crocodiles/alligators or birds. Skin sometimes breaks out in scales. Amateur hacker and forensic accountant.
• Angsty Teen Personal Problems That Will Inevitably Become Everyone's Problems: Is initially, and to an extent remains, proudly apathetic and even disdainful toward this whole "Heroism" business. Her mother is a math professor and tax (evasion) consultant; her father, Caranthir, is President of Mergers & Acquisitions (including hostile corporate takeovers) at FëaTech. Finellach thinks reasonable heroism should max out at, like, whatever the Leverage crew is doing—though not againsther evil corporate family, obviously. They need all the money and resources to build an effective army against the sentient force of entropy and discord.
• Age Order: Oldest
• Team Dynamics: Erein is designated "annoying prissy-Heroic baby cousin whom I'm duty-bound to look out for" (he's a year younger than her at most). Finwain quickly joins this category, though they get a break on the Hero thing on account of being, technically, the legendary Great-Grandpa Finwë. Finellach first comes around to liking Rodnor because he will stick to the wall with her gecko and just hang out with him, and Foeclinger (the gecko) reports that he's good company. She introduces Jill to the joys of snakes and petty/white collar crime, and Jill introduces her to the joys of going to the mall and assorted other activities that "normal" girls do (as opposed to villainous scions who talk to snakes and really like math).
  • When she thinks Rodnor is being stupid, she turns to Erein, pointedly calls him "Nelyafinwion", and refuses to heed any authority but the (unofficially) acknowledged heir of her house, like the good Fëanorian girl she is. When she thinks Erein is being stupid, she pointedly calls him "Fingonion", in a tone like she's attending a British boarding school and only knows him by surname (which she disdains), and does more or less whatever she wants, which may or may not align with Rodnor's ideas.
  • She didn't really have friends other than reptiles before this team.
• Five Man Band Role: Token Evil Teammate Smart Guy

Finwain Merilu, aka Nova

• 4th to wield Aeglos
• Superpower: Light constructs...hypothetically. More often mostly-controlled blasts of incandescent force, thrown from hands. Basic shields, emergency-catching falling people, rocket-style flight.
• Angsty Teen Personal Problem That Will Inevitably Become Everyone's Problems: In order to explain Finwain, I first have to explain Finwë. To keep a very long story short: Finwë was a Hero, one of the greatest in the world; and a father; and he died. Finwë is the Uncle Ben of this story, in that Miriel may return, Fëanor may return, but Finwëwill remain dead...for the most part. A spot of time travel here, a shapechanging imposter there, a memory temporarily made solid through Song...
  • Once, teenage Finwë—from before the Valar granted him the Light of the Fire of Creation—got time-traveled to the present day. Finwain is not that time-displaced teen Finwë. For reasons of his soul being present past a certain point in time, (teen!)Finwë's typical superpowers started to manifest, and he had some heroic misadventures. Among them, he got Musically copied (distinct from cloning), and the copy got de-aged to a baby, and, though teenage!Finwë was eventually returned, memories of the "future" hazy, to his proper time to live out his life, baby!copy!Finwë was stolen discreetly absconded with by Meril, Finrod's by-then-distinctly-ex-girlfriend who'd been involved in the villainous plot that brought teen!Finwë forward in time in the first place.
  • She raised him as a single mother, until he—they, by then; Finwë was a Silver Age superhero who didn't know about Gender(TM) but Finwain is a modern teen who is interested in it—until they started manifesting adult!Finwë's Light power around puberty...but without adult!Finwë's control and, like, experienced self-possession, self-expression, self-determination, and etc. things it's really hard to have when you're a) a copy-raised-60-years-later of a legendary lost hero and b) 13 years old...
  • So Meril reluctantly let them go get training & oversight from their technically-relatives, who have experience with superpowered teens (though the older generations are generally not capable of being normal about any iteration of Finwë).
  • (Also, TBD to the writer, the audience, and certainly the other characters [except Finwain] if Meril is still some sort of villainous spy and Finwain is helping with a new Plot.)
  • Prone to a loop where losing control of their power, especially destructively, makes them stressed, which makes them lose even more control.
  • Not even certain theywant to be a superhero professionally. Definitely wants to get their powers under control, though.
• Age Order:Youngest
• Team Dynamics:Thinks Finellach is very cool, has a crush on her tbh, and isn't opposed to breaking laws on principle, but is consistently so bad at practical crime and so instinctively Heroic—saving people, etc—that they mostly embarrass themselves trying to impress her. Is actually comforted by the knowledge that Erein can shut down their powers if they lose control. Is handshake!meme with Jill over being "the normal ones" (grew up without powers in the suburbs, etc). Bonds with Rodnor over some kids tv show they both adore (Jill knows it too but she's not, as she would say, a dork about it).
• Five Man Band Role:Big Guy

Jill Conniedaughter, aka Stupendi-Girl

• 2nd to wield Aeglos
• Superpower: Just your basic, average girl, and she's here to save the world; you can't stop her 'cuz she's— Cheerleader (acrobatics), martial arts, pluck and moxie
• Angsty Teen Personal Problems That Will Inevitably Become Everyone's Problems: Jill is a normal teenage girl, born and raised in Lindon, who wants to be a superhero because what's better than being a superhero, morally and because it's cool? She loves her city and she wants to protect it from crime. She has enough free time for it if she studies for fewer tests. She's reasonably popular in school, but in that way where she doesn't have any truly close friends. Definitely has some imposter syndrome, in this group of "real" superheroes.
• Age Order:True middle
• Team Dynamics:Finduilas!Gil-Galad was her focus of hero worship and bisexual awakening, and this carries over to Rodnor at first...except he's not nearly as cool/badass/all-around-amazing as his older sister... Jill has suggestions for improvement. This doesn't go over well at first. Brief crush on Erein, who is very classically Heroic, but gets over it and they're just friends. Bonds with Finwain over being the "normal" ones (grew up in the suburbs, without powers, etc). Thinks Finellach is weird at first, in a "prep/jock girl snubbing nerd/goth girl" way, but they end up best friends, and Jill even gets her own pet snake.
• Five Man Band Role:Heart at first; swiftly "rises" (all roles are important!) to Lancer, and eventually Leader. When the team breaks up, as they naturally move on in their lives, she alone will stay and bear the mantle of Gil-Galad.

* * *

Now, you might be asking: does this part of the au have plot?

f*ck no! But here are some, for lack of a better word, "episodes":

• Ok truth be told it might be more like Young Justice than Teen Titans, in terms of how much well-known adult heroes interact with the main cast. But thevibes are more Teen Titan, first and most beloved (non-PPG) superhero show of my youth, you feel?
• Also, please note that all Finwëans have to wear some sort of glasses in their civilian identities, enchanted to hide their shining eyes. Clark Kent style IS traditional.
• Anyway, EPISODES:
• Music Meister-esque villain. Plot twist: it’s NOT Maglor.
• Powerswap! Jill gets Finwain’s powers and tbh does kinda better with them once she gets past the initial bewildered panic, because she has a better sense of herself and her goals. I wanna say… Finwain gets Finnelach’s and it’s very relaxing, Finellach gets Erein’s and immediately changes her outfit to better fit her new supervillain potential, Erein gets Rodnor’s and immediately starts walking on the ceiling, and Rodnor gets Jill’s lack of powers and has a whole little character development lesson about how the true power was the strength of his heart etc. etc.
• Girls’ Day Out
• Boys’ Day Out [these each happen twice so Finwain can join each group once]
• Beach episode
• Everyone gets trapped in their nightmares and they have to find and help free each other in the dreamscape
• Erein gets hit with a Morality Reversal ray and it seems like it was a dud… Everyone wakes up the next morning and he’s locked down their powers in the night and locked them in the tower, and has already killed three people and recruited/coerced half the criminals in the city into a plan to kill a lot more. 99% of the time Erein comes across as very Valiant Jr., Fingon in miniature but even more optimistic, friend-making, and generally heroic. Everyone abruptly remembers that his other father is Phoenix.
• Finwain gets hazy memories of Finwë’s original life as they age (mostly of growing up in the Great Depression/early WWII so far). They start to get nightmares when their memories hit the terrible mad-sciencey accident that resulted in Miriel (girl next door best friend/crush) nearly dying and getting superpowers. They go to talk it over with Miriel herself (alive again because comic book plots), as well as Indis because those two live together. Many flashbacks! (and yes, Finwain thinks they’re both GILFs.)
• An inspector from OASIS (the UN Office for the Administration, Supervision and Intervention of Superhumans) shadows the team for a few days to assign them all official/updated Potential Threat Level ratings, sparking competition and “gotta get a good grade on superpowers, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve” among the teens. (Erein, cheerfully: “Hi, Aunt Celechwes!”)
• Rodnor attempts to take Jill to her high school prom.
• The head cheerleader at Jill’s school turns out to be a supervillain.
• The team goes to a con, just for fun (but inevitably fighting orcs or something). Rodnor and Finwain cosplay as characters from their show. Erein loses a Kid Valor cosplay contest.
• Giant mutant sewer alligators! Finellach angrily explains how crocodilians aren’t REAL reptiles because birds aren’t either, while running from giant mutant sewer alligators.
• A slightly frantic 2am phone call from Finarfin (superpower: prophetic dreams) alerts them to an imminent and terrible threat which they only have 12 hours to avert
• A slightly frantic 2am phone call from Finarfin alerts them to an imminent and terrible threat which they accidentally cause while trying to avert it. Sometimes this is how prophecy goes.
• A slightly frantic 2am phone call from Finarfin alerts them to a wild goose chase which keeps them out of a danger they couldn’t have stopped, because sometimes knowing the future means lying to your loved ones to keep them safe.
• Whenever Finellach can’t hack something, she calls Cousin Celebrimbor for help. The first time this happens, she hypes him up really dramatically to the team then it cuts to show him working quietly on a laptop in a library, because he’s in grad school. Every time Celebrimbor is called, the grad school activities in the background intensify—at first working on his laptop in increasingly weird sitting positions and/or with more and more mess around him; then duct-taped to the ceiling at a LAN party, then fighting a killer robot in a lab with other grad students, then creating entropy-slowing Music-tech devices…
• Eventually he gets kidnapped for those, by Sauron of course, and Team Gil-Galad needs to rescue him. Sauron is their ultimate Big Bad.
• One time, Finwain unexpectedly halts a 15-person, 4.5-faction Finwëan family argument by shouting, “Everybody stop!” in their hitherto unknown (Gran)Dad Voice.
• Space adventure fighting the Bor! Who are, to be clear, overt expies of the Borg. They’re technically Phoenix’s allies but really it’s that some time many years ago they nearly assimilated Maedhros until he used his mind control powers to, basically, nearly assimilate them back and then escape, and ever since, he and the Borg Queen have had an intense hom*oerotic rivalry/game of friendship chicken. They wanna assimilate him so bad it makes them look stupid, including not letting anyone else kill him first. The rest of Earth is still fair game, though.
• Time travel episode where they meet the original Gil-Galad and he is, in fact, INCREDIBLY badass. He tells them that they all have great potential as leaders and heroes, and it’s hinted that Jill is his direct descendent (through her mom; her dad is an immigrant from…somewhere)
• Everyone gets trapped in their own lotus eater dream and they have to find and help free each other from the illusions of perfect happiness
• One time they do, in fact, pull a Leverage-esque heist/con. Some businessman is so cruelly neglectful that his workplaces are breeding orcs, which are killing people, which he still doesn’t care about because the profit is still good.
• Kidnapped into a metahuman fight ring!
• After Erein’s power is publicly revealed, he’s kidnapped by some shady government or non-government agency that wants to use his blood—or anything else they need from him—to make weapons to stop metahumans.
• Baseball episode??

Chapter 10: Methods of Persuasion with Kid Valor

Chapter Text

[Footage from a home camera, the camera wobbling as the cameraman (Fingon) suppresses laughter. Recording is: 5-year-old Ereinion Fingonion trying to persuade his dad (Maedhros), to give him a cookie from the jar atop the fridge. They are both seated at the kitchen table, which is strewn with papers, crayons and colored pencils; they've been doing art.]

Erein: Can I have a cookie?

Maedhros: Not until after dinner.

Erein: [turning on the biggest, shiniest puppy dog eyes]Can I have a cookie please?

Maedhros: No. You can have an apple now, if you want. Do you want an apple?

Erein frowns contemplatively. Then:

Erein: When’s dinner?”

Maedhros: In a couple hours.

Erein clambers around to stand on his chair, plants his hands heroically on hips and declares:

Erein: But I need a cookie now! For SAVING PEOPLE and JUSTICE!

Maedhros: [also trying not to laugh, more successfully] I don’t think you do.

Ereinplants his hands on the table and leans forward with all the commanding menace a 5-year-old can muster.

Erein: Then Ithink it’ll be a shame when something…happens to them.

Maedhros: [doing less well at hiding his laughter now, but managing to be stern anyway] I said no, Erein.

[Erein considers this for another moment, lip wobbling, then bursts into tears, to Maedhros's alarm. The camera swoops down then turns off as Fingon jumps in to help.]

o ~ o ~ o

Many Years Later...

Vinnie loved her job, she really did. She especially loved it in Lindon. Sure, she was tied to a pole right now, by dint of a massive boa constrictor wrapped around herself and the pole, being whisper-argued over by pair of costumed teenagers. But they were just teenagers. Sure, they’d blown in the door of her gang's HQ (the abandoned firehouse in the north docks, thus: the pole) and knocked out the rest of her gang. But they weren’t nearly tough enough to actually hurt her. They weren’t even good at whispering.

“She’s not afraid of snakes, so I’m out of ideas. You should do the thing,” said the girl in black and green—Reptile Girl or something; she had a lizard sitting on her shoulder, and she was the one who’d commanded the boa. She was one of those Noldor weirdos, with glowing eyes. She had a Fëanorian star on her back; she was doing some teenage rebellion antihero thing.

“I hate doing the thing," the boy argued. “Why can’t we do good cop, bad cop?”I’ll be the good cop, you’ll be the bad cop…”

That was Kid Valor, Valiant’s own sidekick, out of place in Vinnie’s moody warehouse in his bright silver and gold. Also shining-eyed, obviously, and a total goody two-shoes.

Vinnie, aka Vincenza Malvolini, aka Domina, had henched with some of the worst against some of the best. She'd helped rob banks from New York to Los Angeles, and once in Amsterdam. She'd guarded test subjects for Dr. Mutato, where she'd picked up some superstrength, speed and durability. She'd been one of the Sixty-Four in the Gang of Eight. She'd even gone hand to hand with Valiant himself a couple times, during a few years doing freelance work in and around Echo City. She'd never met the big red boss himself, of course, but one time, she'd gotten pulled in last-minute for a quick and dirty murder with the Hunter, when he'd needed an extra pair of thumbs, and his killer hound had licked her approvingly afterward.

And now she was in Lindon, not just serving under some other supervillain but making a name forherself. She had a crew, in total three times bigger than just the schmucks who'd been hanging around the warehouse when these teenagers kicked in the door. She had a costume (black leather) and a name. Today, she'd been kidnapping baby heroes and delivering them to a magic weirdo in the woods, for his nefarious plans, but who knew? Maybe tomorrow the Necromancer would be delivering her enemies to Domina, supervillainous gang boss of all of Lindon,forher terrible vengeance!

”I said, she’s not afraid of snakes!" Reptile Girl hissed. "Or lizards! Or tuataras!"

"Aren't those basically just lizards?"

"I've told you amillion times, they're an entirely distinct lineage endemic to New Zealand!"

Vinnie rolled her eyes. Yeah, and it helped that her enemies here were literal teenagers. Easy marks, no real threat of death to herself or her employees, but it'd still look soooo good on her resumë, if she ever decided to apply for a job again. She was even certain that she could flex her way out of this boa constrictor, if she put any real effort—she bet Reptile Girl would rather she broke free than her pet put up a real fight and get hurt.

“We don’t have time to argue—Stupendi-Girl, G-Force and Nova are in trouble. Suck it up and save the day, Nelyafinwion!”

Vinnie shook her head in disgust. The bright-eyed freaks couldn’t even speak American English.

"Fine," Kid Valor huffed. He stomped sulkily over to Vinnie, straightened and flashed her a bright grin which no doubt brought all the squealing teenage girls to the yard, and some boys, too.

“Hey!” he said. “I’m not sure we’ve ever actually been introduced—I’m Kid Valor! And this is my cousin, Reptilia.”

He gestured at the girl. Reptilia rolled her eyes like it was a competitive sport. Vinnie related.

Baby Valiant continued like they’d both responded enthusiastically. ”And you’re Domina! It’s nice to just talk, isn’t it? For instance, you didn’t answer when we asked before, but we were destroying your front door at the time, so I figure I gotta try again: where is the rest of our team?”

Vinnie snorted.

”Go pick on someone your own size, ‘Kid,’” she drawled. “Like maybe one of her lizards.”

She jerked her head at Reptilia, who scowled.

”Please?” Kid Valor looked at her like the world’s saddest puppy, if puppies had freakishly bright sea-gray eyes in a silver domino mask. “We’re not even focused on stopping your operation tonight, ma’am, just on saving our friends. I know you’re a villain, but you must have friends? Whom you’d bust a few heads to save? Just tell us and we’ll be out of your hair, and maybe even out of the Necromancer’s as well if we can move fast enough.”

”You’ll be out of my hair when you’re dead.” Vinnie bared her teeth. “Or maybe not even then, if the Necromancer has his way with you. Maybe it’s already too late for your friends.”

Reptilia and the lizard on her shoulder both made angry clicking noises, and the boa around Vinnie’s torso constricted another inch. She flexed her arms to put it in its place.

Kid Valor’s earnest smile faltered only to be replaced with a firm-jawed look of determination that she bet he practiced in the mirror.

”You know, you don’t have to be like this,” he said passionately. “You’re smart, you’re strong, you’re cunning—“ He gestured at the firehouse turned hideout and warehouse around them, and the handful of unconscious goons piled to one side. “You’re a leader and a businesswoman! You don’t have to be a villain—if you tell us where you delivered our friends right now, I’d be happy to help you turn over a new leaf and go legit. Go hero even, and get all the awards and admiration you deserve!”

He started pacing a little, gesticulating like an over-caffeinated theater guy.

"You could open the windows in this place, brighten it up—or not, if your taste is more goth! But you could reopen it for business, working with the city or just doing good in the neighborhood. These sonic guns your gang's been using recently would be great for clearing debris from the harbor, and maybe even controlling fires, if you just blasted the oxygen out of the way? People will pay for things like that, more than crime does. Add a little gold and purple to your costume, lean into the regality—you could really stand for something! Freedom, justice, the rights of the people!"

He offered her his hand, heroically begging her to take it.

"You can't have wanted to be a villain, as a kid. Don't you want to want to follow your heart and do something good in the world?"

It was, Vinnie had to admit, an attractive idea. She might look into the color scheme, and the sonic guns’ uses in fires…for better arson, obviously.

”Pass,” she drawled, after ‘considering it’ long enough to build a hopeful look on the baby hero’s face. Sucker!

Kid Valor’s face fell. He turned away, eyes scrunching like he was holding back tears.

Vinnie laughed.

”Fine,” he said roughly, and swiped at his face. “Fine.”

He gestured, and the girl suddenly yanked Vinnie’s hair from behind to slam her head into the pole. Ugh—she was sneaky, while her partner had been distracting. Vinnie started to blink the blow away, ready to tear her way out of the snake and hand these kids their asses—

A cool hand gripped her chin and pulled her head back down. All her strength seemed to drain away into the touch, all her heightened reflexes and quick healing. She felt like jelly from her head to her toes.

"Let's try this again," said Kid Valor, eyes too bright behind his mask. Gone was the puppy. Now there was a wolf, playing with its food.

He raised his other hand as though to backhand her, then stopped it in front of her face. it was rough from sun and weapons-work, even as a teen. There was a gemless golden ring on his middle finger, carved with an ornate eight-pointed star.

"Do you know what this is?" the boy asked coldly.

Vinnie's head swam with concussion and confusion.

"It's a Fëanorian star?" she said. "But—"

"Correct." His other hand fell from her chin to her throat, wrapping around it just above the coils of the boa constrictor. "It's also a distress beacon and an emergency all-access key to FëaTech facilities, thanks to my uncle's nanotech. But mostly, it's the ring traditionally worn by the firstborn heir to the House of Fëanor. For only two generations, I'll admit, but that's enough for tradition, isn't it? My father wore it until I was born, whereupon he gave it to me. My grandfather forged it, a personal gift for his eldest son."

"But," Vinnie managed, "aren't youValiant's kid?"

Kid Valor smiled cruelly. "Like a lot of people, I have two fathers."

His hand tightened on her throat. At a hiss from his cousin, the snake tightened around the rest of her.

"So," he said softly, "will you tell us whereexactly you took our friends, and anything else you know about the Necromancer's plans for them? Or shall I start by blacklisting you with every halfway reputable villain in the world, and improvise from there until you do as I say?"

.

Thirty seconds after she was done telling him everything she could think of, Kid Valor was all bright smiles again, thanking her and apologizing earnestly for scaring her, and scrounging up an icepack for her to lean her head against while they left her handcuffed to the pole. Reptilia was rolling her eyes again, amidst feeding her boa a raccoon and cooing at it that it had been sucha good girl, and it could go home now because they were going to fly now and apparently the snake got airsick.

Vinnie just stayed quiet, and kept a way eye on them all.

"See, this is why I hate doing the thing," Kid Valor complained, as he fired up his jetpack. "She's going to make it weird, now. Everyone always makes it weird, afterward."

"Because they know you'rewasted as a hero." Reptilia gave her boa one last pat and let herself be scooped up in a princess carry. (The lizard on her shoulder was going with.) "Come on, the others are being haunted or something. Let's go set things on fire, with all due care for the local wildlife and their biome, until we get them back."