PROJECT STEEL

ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴄʀᴜɪꜱɪɴ' ꜰᴏʀ ᴀ ʙʀᴜɪꜱɪɴ'

[pr0jctsteel]

#PR0JCTSTEEL . an independent && private, homebrew adaption of dc's superboy. characterisation and interpretation a combination of multiple media including '90s superboy / young justice, aspects of early 00's and a hodge podge of random n52 concepts. aesthetic and themes inspired by fantasy, cyberpunk && scifi horror, exploring themes of identity, your body isn't your own, and what it means to carry a mantle.

[ ¹ ] CARRD.         [ ² ] HEADCANONS.        [ ³ ] META.       [ ⁴ ] PROMPTS.

mains. tim drake , inkdevourer .

disclaimer . all graphics & artworks are made by / drawn or redrawn by me, do not save or upload without explicit permission.

[pr0jctsteel]

unrelated, do y'all think this deep tissue massage is gonna make me shit myself? be honest

[pr0jctsteel]

good news friends, no one shit themselves

[pr0jctsteel]

unrelated, do y'all think this deep tissue massage is gonna make me shit myself? be honest

[pr0jctsteel]

kon, when faced with heroes that kill people: heeey man, that's like, not cool

[pr0jctsteel]

anyway i started redrawing how my version of kon looks (again) and he's just so cute dudes. i might also draw a version of him and clark but maybe just sketches this time instead of full colour because that shit takes me too long

[inkdevourer]

⊰ 《◉》⊱

Tim had played along, looking like a deer in headlights before it smoothed out over a few seconds into a grin. Kon was the prettiest and Tim wanted to admit it often, but the words never made it past his lips. Instead, he enjoyed the time when it was just the two of them and all their secrets they had shared with each other over the years. 

Among his four points of view that were checked, glances to his best friend were given. Fondness seeped into that expression as he watched Kon playing with the wind like Tim used to do when younger, the rush of air that seeped in and made his curls shift or how his shirt seemed to vibrate with that flow or air. It wasn’t just pretty, Kon was beautiful. “Not so resistant now a days. Finally.” teased since Tim had been the leader for some time to their merry little group of misfits. “Too late. You like me in control, admit it.” Tim did not think Kon would. 

“Mmmhmm. One day we are going to test that with RedBird.” After some adjustments were made on her. Firebird, his civilian car, could not handle that kind of pressure. They continued to drive for a half hour from the county into the next city over. One, Kon was more familiar with. Metropolis looked industrial and clean in comparison to the old gargoyled towers in Gotham. They also had better stories and social places for people their age group. It was also a place where Tim did not have to worry about any of his regular villains putting on a show. 

Tim glanced down at his phone where the silent navigation had been on to display a destination. While he told Kon that he could pick (still an option for after), this was something he already had in mind. They played video games and watched things all the time, but had Kon ever done mini putting? Tim had once when he was younger so this would be something both were absolutely horrible at. 

The building was large and blacked out, with no windows that could be seen. Parking, he turned to Kon and did a pair of jazzy hands. “I’m glad you admitted that because I had this in mind already before we left. My pick first, then yours.” He got out of the car, waiting for Kon to join then locked it up. “Miniture golf. Monster version. Ever done it?” Tim moved to the door first to open it up and wave his best friend in before entering after.

The place was lit up with multi colored paddles and small golf balls along the walls. Art work of various famous and lore monsters decorated the walls but looked nothing special. In the golf room beyond, it was all blacked out with fluorescent lights to cast every splash of color to glow, including those who stepped inside. Due purposes because they would have some silence of privacy while also being in public. Also to avoid the accidental ‘you look familiar’ that happened at times because Tim and Kon were famous for different reasons.

[pr0jctsteel]

Kon laughed, a light sound that was carried out the window by the wind. Tim had proved time and time again that he wasn't just able to make snap decisions in the moment, he was also able to lead them in ways that no one else could. He listened when the team spoke, he was open to suggestions, to working together rather than alone. Tim had shown them all what a good leader was, so much so, that Kon often compared others to Tim in order to determine if they were worth following or not.

"Not a chance," Kon retorted, casting a sidewards glance at Tim through half-lidded eyes. He slouched, breathing in deeply. Under the smell of leather seats and air freshener, the interior of the car smelt like Tim. The city passed by them while the sun set over the horizon, only once the air started to cool did Kon pull his hand back inside the vehicle, winding the window back up and slouching back against the passenger seat. The journey out of Gotham felt simple and easy, a brief reprieve from their usual every day adrenaline rush of crime fighting and patrolling. Know usually found the stark contrast between the two existences disorientating, almost unsafe, always waiting for the other shoe to drop but when he was with Tim it was different some how.

Kon watched Gotham's gothic cathedrals and gargoyled towers slowly fade out, replaced by a wide open road until eventually another city appeared as tall clean lines, and eco-friendly curves. Not quite the city of tomorrow that Metropolis dressed itself up as but quieter and softer. Kon straightened, leaning both arms on the dashboard as he peered through the windshield at their new surroundings, he glimpsed open diners, the flashing lights of an arcade, a cinema tucked between a strip mall and a casino. When Tim pulled into a car park, Kon straightened upright with a raised brow. He followed Tim out of the car, leaning an arm on the roof as he peered at Tim with feigned suspicion.

"Miniture golf or the monster version? 'Cause it's no to both." Kon admitted, glancing back at the dark building and tipping his chin slightly to one side as he followed Tim indoors. The interior was a stark contrast to the outdoors, bright flashing lights, multicoloured paddles, décor of large monsters painted in vibrant reds and greens. Kon grinned as he inspected the walls, he mapped the building's layout on instinct but the place itself felt new and exciting. "Oh, I'm gonna crush you at this." Kon challenged with a wide, toothy smile.

[krypptonian]

☀️— He was fully aware that this was boring. Clark had found it similarly unfair the first number of times he'd done farm work without using his powers after they'd started coming in. He laughed just a little. He could see himself in Conner with this.

"Stacking hay isn't going to make a good impression, what it can teach you is. You've got some amazing powers, but they can be more of a hindrance than a help if you don't adjust your output to meet your situation." Clark grinned at Conner. "You don't have to follow my example or anyone else's, but you'll find that a lot of the time it's not all about world ending threats or that take everything we have. The bigger majority of the things we're up against on a daily basis are ones that people like you and me can't use our full strength against. I don't put my all into most of the fights I'm in, believe it or not. A lot of the people I'm up against are human."

Clark took it two bales at a time now for the last few, "So that's what this is about: Learning to be gentle with your strength. Besides, you'll get pretty bored if you're always waiting for something big to happen."

With this side taken care of, Clark jumped down from the loft, floating gently to the barn floor. Then he said, “You try doing what I just did, all right?”

As for how he learned he could fly, “Some of my powers came in a lot more gradually than yours have. Flight was one of those, it started with floating and that eventually turned into flying. I was about 11 or 12 when I figured out I could fly. I fell out of a tree and just... took off. It was kind of similar to when I first used my super speed.”

Clark looked up at the second loft and back to Conner. "We'll do the same routine but on the last couple of bales I want you to try throwing them up there."

[pr0jctsteel]

Conner resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead reminded himself that he had wanted this. He had wanted to spend more time with Clark, to get into his head and understand him, and learn from him. If working alongside the other members of Young Justice had shown him anything, it was that there was more to being a superhero than being able to punch things really hard. Neither Robin or Cassie had powers and yet they stepped into the line of danger without hesitation. He wanted that. To have that certainty, that dedication.

"Sure," Conner agreed slowly, "but isn't it better to go all out and finish the fight quick?" Conner glanced at Clark as he stacked two bales at once and mirrored him, careful to balance the bales properly before carrying them and reminded himself not to use his TTK. He listened as Clark spoke on learning to be gentle and sulked when he had to admit that it was something that he had to think about.

"Being gentle doesn't come naturally. I have to think about it all the time." Conner admitted as he set his two bales down. "If I don't I end up putting my foot through the asphalt. Everything's so…fragile."

Conner followed Clark to the edge of the loft, watched him jump and float to the ground floor. "Yeah but how?" Conner pressed, "I mean, are you thinking about floating? Do you like, become one with the air or something?" Conner asked waving his hand in the air as if to emphasize his question. He squinted down at Clark, not because he couldn't see him, but because he was suddenly painfully aware that he was probably going to embarrass himself. Conner sighed and stepped off the edge of the loft. He plummeted and hit the ground hard, sticking the landing but leaving two fairly large Conner sized footprints in the barn floor.

Conner winced.

[pr0jctsteel]

kon waking in a cold sweat in the middle of the night: what if i inherit lex's baldness???

[inkdevourer]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ 𖦹

From anyone else, that smug might have annoyed him but Jaime had gotten used to Kon's behavior, enjoyed it sometimes too. "Ah, good. That would make things more awkward then I am making them." One hand rose up so it could cup the back of his own neck and rub in a nervous gesture. Jaime missed Kon's contemplation, but when the kryptonian clone spoke again, that attention was right back to him. There was some embarrassment, but not because he could never take a compliment. They were really nice, Jaime thrived from compliments with an encouraging family. It was just that Kon was a little higher up there being the clone of Superman and all. Even if their age. "No. I mean, yeah. Thanks." Hand left his nape as a soft sigh came out. "You know, we don't always coexist well together. It's hard sometimes." Khaji-Da had made Jaime vanish from others for a year, had forced him to fight lanterns and run away from them, caused his back to have a literal target on it. "Being a hero was not my goal, but now that I am here, I can't imagine doing anything else."

[pr0jctsteel]

Kon glanced back at Jaime, glad that he had taken what Kon had said with a grain of salt rather than as a serious proclamation. Jaime seemed a little more awkward than Kon had ever considered him before, but he figured that had more to do with the conversation than anything else. Having honest conversations was hard, but sometimes the most difficult ones were the most important and Kon thought this was important. He didn't want Jaime to feel like he had to pull punches or somehow contain himself into a box just to spare Kon's feelings, or anyone's for that matter.

"I can imagine," Kon said lightly, while he could never truly relate to Jaime's experiences with Khaji-Da, he could at the very least imagine how difficult it could be to try and find some semblance of equilibrium with something that was both so separate from him and infused into his very being.

"You pull it off," Kon praised easily. He then shoved Jaime's shoulder, a light shove, friendly and a little teasing, "And you look damn good doing it too."

[fatehunted]

Artemis can't help but snort into the spout of her water bottle when she tosses it back to take a sip. She rubs her mouth on the back of her wrist guard. It was no secret that Canary was one of the greatest fighters the Justice League had to offer—it is one of the reasons why the archer admires her so much. But she says nothing further, returning her attention back to Superboy's piercings. ❝ Just a little wrong, ❞ she says with a smirk, walking over to him so she can take a closer look. ❝ Nicely done, SB. Did it hurt? I need to re-do my orbital, maybe you can do that one for me if you promise not to rip my ear off. ❞

[pr0jctsteel]

Kon smiled, he still felt a thrill of giddiness whenever one of the team called him SB. The team were the only ones that ever did. "Not really. Getting the angle right was more annoying, trying to stretch around these guns took way longer than I thought it would." Kon emphasized by flexing his biceps, though the grin on his lips hinted that he was only joking. Mostly. "Hey, I have a light touch, your ears are safe with me. I might have to watch a few youtube videos before I do an orbital though."

[yoursdndispatcher]

Yeaah no fuck 'oh' Robert thinks, looking at him without even an attempt at veiling that thought. Maybe he's overstepping with that whole dad vibe he's got going on, but he sees Kon-el, and he sees the possibilities of a life fully lived. But supposing that Kon-el is telling the truth and even makes an earnest attempt at just being a normal kid. He knows the ugly side of heroism no one teaches anyone about. It's hard to do both. The drive to be a hero becomes its own living entity taking territory from other (very valid) drives around it. And it doesn't ask permission as it takes more and more emotional real-estate. It just does.

"No need to be sorry," he says, putting his hands up in a gesture of peace. No hard feelings- no offense meant and none taken. "You'll find its pretty hard to freak me out." Honestly the closest he's coming to that is perhaps the one voice of dissent among literal legends. He doubts the likes of Superman or Wildcat or anyone of that peer group would have tried to dissuade Kon fully. And who knows- maybe history won't take kindly to Robert's hot take, but he had to give it a shot.

[pr0jctsteel]

"You have this frown line right here," Kon said, pointing to the centre of his forehead, "that tells me you disapprove." He'd seen the look before, though usually after he'd done something reckless or said something stupid, or flirted with someone's wife in front of their partner. It was a new experience to see the look on someone's face because they disapproved that Kon was living his life as a superhero. Or maybe he disapproved of Kon's methods, or maybe it was something completely different. Either way, it was hard for Kon not to tease him a little.

"You know, I believe that." Kon said, leaning back in his chair again, fingers laced behind his head. "You've got this whole stoic, nothing gets to me thing down."

Kon tried to imagine what kind of life Robert had lived that he could operate so calmly. Dispatchers were often the ones who heard the threats and the dangers before anyone else, often more than one at a time, but he didn't have the luxury of superspeed or flight to get there in time for each of them. Instead, he had spend those few seconds prioritising who to send, how to send them, and trusting that those that went could pull off a rescue. Kon couldn't imagine the kind of trust and faith in others that Robert needed to do all of that.

At least when Know as out in the field, all he had to worry about was his own actions.

"I tried to be stoic once, but I just have so much I wanna say, you know?"

[pr0jctsteel]

i wanna post my art but i haven't coloured them yet T-T

[pr0jctsteel]

oki so the wip of the yj team + m'gann for reasons

[pr0jctsteel]

i wanna post my art but i haven't coloured them yet T-T

[pr0jctsteel]

when y'all see what i've been cooking

[krypptonian]

☀️-- Clark knew what Conner had been expecting, and he did want to give him that change to prove himself... but before that, there were other things that needed attention. Things he had learned long ago, but were fresh lessons for Conner. Things that he could maybe teach the younger half-Kryptonian in less blunt and painful ways than he had learned them. He couldn't do it for everything, that was inevitable, but he could at least start with this --

Clark turned at the call and caught the bale before it could really hit him or make impact with anything else like the barn wall or another bunch of hay and make an even bigger mess. He set it down and came to look over the edge. He bobbed his his head slightly. "Come on up. We have to count and stack what we've got up here before we do any more. We might even be able to move on to the other side of the barn."

The hay loft gave a pretty decent berth above walking space, going in about eight feet and covering the stalls on either side of the barn. The barn itself was a modest size, certainly not the biggest in the area, but the Kent's certainly did well enough.

He was just finishing doing a count on the bales when he spoke again with his hands on his hips. "Looks like we've got about what will on this side. We'll see when it's stacked. No extra strength or force and stack them just as high as those others are." Walking a bale over to the others, he set it down and stacked the nearest one on top of that. "This is why I wanted your help, Conner. I know you want to show the League what you can do, but just being eager isn't enough to make a good impression. I might have a bias and Diana might be understanding, but Batman will be the harshest even if he feels for you. So. I thought that today, aside from helping out my folks, we could go over some important things with these chores. A lot of things around a farm require a more delicate hand than you or I are used to giving out naturally. We're just stronger and it might seem silly, but these chores went a long way to helping me learn more than a couple of lessons about dealing with my powers. The fastest way to do something isn't always the best method. It's fine if you don't care about stacking hay, but you still have to give the job the care it needs." It went unsaid: It's was fine if you don't think that something small is important, but if you want to be a hero, you still owe whatever situation you find yourself in the care it's due.

[pr0jctsteel]

Conner looked up at Clark as he peeked over the lip of the hay loft and invited him up to join him. Conner didn't know a lot about farming, he knew enough to understand it theoretically and if he thought about it long enough he could probably figure out why bales of hay were stored above the ground but he didn't want to think about it. Conner took the ladder to the top of the hay loft, reluctant to jump and take out the roof or land too hard and smash through the deck.

He joined Clark in counting and eventually stacking the bales of hay. They were light enough that he could have stacked them on one hand and carried them to where they needed to go, instead, Conner mirrored Clark. One bale of hay at a time, pushed against the far wall, straightened then the next stacked on top.

It was mind numbingly boring.

"And stacking hay is going to make a good impression?" Conner asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'll help your folks out with anything, but it's not like I want to be delicate when I'm fighting bad guys." The opposite really. He straightened his bale of hay, nudging it lightly until it was centered.

"It's not that I don't care about it," Conner argued, "I just care about other things more. Like flying. How'd you learn how to do that?"

[pr0jctsteel]

and on that note, violent crime, he will interfere. petty crime? he doesn't see. suddenly actually he is blind. and sometimes he will even do the petty crime. financial crime? he may or may not resort to violence and threats of violence to rectify the situation but you didn't hear that from me. but if you're stealing from corporations? sorry, suddenly he's not financially literate and he is also now legally blind.

[krypptonian]

☀️-- "Come on, Con, it's not that bad. I know it's not as exciting as stopping the bad guys and all of that, but the small stuff is just as important. I used to do these chores every morning and evening when I lived on the farm."

Clark hefted another bail of hay onto his shoulder, floating up to set it back into the hayloft. The daily chores had gone a long way in teaching Clark control and precision and he hoped that they could do some of the same for Conner, even if the teen-apparent seemed less than enthused by the prospect.

@pr0jctsteel // starter call

[pr0jctsteel]

❝ Oh no, this is exactly what I thought we'd be doing when you invited me over. ❞ Conner lied dryly, trying not to make a face as he watched Clark heft a bail of hay onto his shoulder and fly it to the back of the hayloft. In reality, when Clark had asked if he was busy with anything, he had assumed that they would be patroling together, at the very least he had hoped that maybe he was finally getting an invite to show him and the rest of the big three what he could do.

❝ Who doesn't like stacking hay? ❞ Conner lifted one of the hay bails with one hand, eyed the hayloft from where he was standing on the ground floor, then hurled it towards the back end. Only once the hay bail left his hand and was airborne did Conner realise he'd used a little more force than was needed. ❝ Head's up, ❞ he called out.