: THE FOUNDING FATHERS : LEE TAEYONG, KIM YONGSUN, and YAMAZAKI KENTO
Phantom is not a team or a league, but a group of magical heroes who are fed up with being treated as the star players in Aku’s puppet show...A member of Phantom boasts no loyalty to the League of Magical Heroes or adherence to their rules... A member of Phantom is not blind to the deadliness of magic, and will do all it takes to make sure nobody signs a contract without knowing exactly what it entails...A member of Phantom does not willingly fraternize with cards and recognizes that cards are nothing but human-passing incarnations of deadly entities...A member of Phantom recognizes that defeating monsters and collecting cards are not the focus of the movement; the goal is to destroy Aku, not to be distracted by his nor The Hanged Man’s relentless smoke and mirrors.
We don't play by league rules. There's no league, there are no teams, because this isn't a game.
he’s barely feet away from the body of the beast when he glimpses the scene, the familiar frame defending one he doesn’t recognize, losing his shield in the process and becoming suddenly so incredibly vulnerable in a split second. time stops. taeyong didn’t even know he would be here, not when events like this were frivolous in his family’s eyes. but he’s darting in the direction of the vulnerable heroes nonetheless, because they’re hurt and unarmed and even if he’s not an actual hero, he’s sure as hell not letting anyone else die on his watch-
taeyong shouts at him, the only quick warning to brace himself to get out of the way, before he puts himself between kento and the monster, deflecting a pair of pointed wax limbs with the blade of his greatsword. he glances back over his shoulder just barely, opens his mouth to ask if he’s okay, then hears a sound akin to the world preparing to open up and swallow them whole, a sound like the one he was expecting before.
“LOOK OUT!!”
the building collapses from above them and all he thinks to do is shove kento out of the way.
only he doesn’t, he can’t, he can’t move, his feet are glued to the ground, and when he looks down to see how that can possibly be, he sees grotesque wax hands pulling him below the wax surface of the ground, the blurred, distorted faces of his mangled team attached to them. it’s the last thing he sees before he’s pulled further under hot wax, his airways filling with the scalding substance-
he woke with a start, sitting up so quickly it made his head spin. he caught his forehead with the heel of his hand, shutting his eyes against bright white flourescents and letting the steadily slowing beeping of his heart monitor lull him into a clearer state of consciousness. then he realized it was a heart monitor he was hearing, that the blinding lights were not the dimming yellow of his bedroom overhead, that the flimsy feather-light fabric clinging to sweat-dampened skin was not a cotton t-shirt or well-worn sweatpants.
tw: hospitals, blood, ptsd, brief mention of needles just to be on the safe side
a hospital, he was in a hospital, and he remembered with a jolt the happenings of the expo, the wax replicas, the events of his dream that had actually occurred in real life, his own blood running between his fingertips, the sounds of screams ringing in his ears almost at the same steady shrill rhythm of the heart monitor attached to his fingertip--
“ken--” he uttered to himself, recalling his dream, unable to remember what parts of it had been reality and what parts his conscience made up in his sleep. he had to find ken, he had to know he was okay, if anything were to happen to him--
he swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed, moving quickly to hop out of it and sneak off before any nurses could arrive to scold him for being out of bed--
he hit the ground hard, his entire left side catching the brunt of the impact, his forearm scrunched up uncomfortably against the side of his torso, his head knocking against the tiled floor. he was a tangle of tubes and freshly blooming bruises as he attempted to gather himself, tried to figure out how the hell he’d ended up on the floor like an idiot.
then he saw it, and it felt like time had stopped. he found himself enveloped by the overwhelming urge to vomit and cry all at once, bit back what would’ve been something resembling a dry heave but only because he found he had very little oxygen to spare all of a sudden.
where his left leg used to end in a perfectly functioning foot, a stump ending just below his knee remained.
he began to tremble violently, stared unblinkingly at where his leg used to be as if it might suddenly materialize back. then he shouted, instinctively, terrified, desperate, because this couldn’t be happening, this had to be another horrible nightmare. he felt a hand on his shoulder, than another pair on his arms and he thrashed wildly, certain that this was another one of the hanged man’s tricks, that the hands on him were trying to tear him apart limb by limb.
“taeyong, you have to calm down, you--”
“NO!”
“taeyong--”
“WHERE IS HE? WHERE’S KENTO? WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?”
“you have to calm down or you’re going to hurt--”
“NO! GET OFF OF ME! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
his elbow collided with something hard before another pair of hands closed in on him. voices sounded around him from every direction in strikingly calm tones as he continued to struggle, until his body began to weaken and black crawled into his vision, taking it over completely, a result of the sedative injected directly into one of the tubes still embedded in his skin. he weakly protested still, until he went completely limp in the arms of the nurses.
[ . . . ]
when he awoke a second time, hours later, his head felt foggy, heavy, as if his brain had somehow been confined in a cloak of weighted smoke. if he’d had nightmares again, he couldn’t remember, and after a familiar voice sounded at his side, all thoughts of trying to recall them flew out the window.
