I'm curious: how did the rest of the villains find out that Crowley is Yuu's bio dad? Did Azul/Leviathan let it slip during the next villain's meeting (I have a feeling some also use it on occasion as an excuse to complain about certain heroes and it's one of the few times they don't fight/argue with each other) since Crowley only seemed to make that "don't tell anyone" threat to the twins? How would they have reacted to this revelation and how does Crowley either deal with it or twist it into his favor?
“I want to tell the other six.”
Azul stops and stares at the reporter. They keep walking, hugging their arms close to their body.
“A-are you serious?” He sputters.
“Yes.” They turn and fix him with a level stare. “It’d be better for them to just hear it from me straight, rather than if they find out during a more high stress situation where people could get hurt.”
“Of course, because there’s no way the situation wouldn’t get out of hand once those guys hear about this.” Azul mutters sourly, walking so he’s alongside them. “It’ll go just as smoothly as one of our League picnics.”
He accepts the gentle nudge to the side that earns him as they continue their journey to the exit.
“It’s not like I’m going to tell any heroes, the civilians, or Great Seven forbid, my boss’s boss. I’m not stupid.” The reporter looks down at their shoes. “It’s just. Better for them to hear it from me than to hear it from him.”
“From hi—?” Oh, they have to be joking. “Yuu. You can’t be suggesting that you’re willing to expose a secret of this magnitude to the people who could view you as a rival to their ultimate ambitions so recklessly, just because you dislike Crowley-sama.”
The reporter’s expression twists. “It’s not just ‘dislike’. Besides, do you know what he’s probably doing to Jade and Floyd right now?”
He shoots them a suspicious glance. “And what, pray tell, is that?”
“The stupid bird’ll be finding a way to twist this whole thing into a way for him to blackmail you, rather than the other way round.” Their steps become more akin to stomping, shoulders rounding as they hunch in on themself. “That’s what he always does. It’ll never be his fault, never his problem, he’s just soooo kind and sooo gracious, it’s always your fault for daring to try and make something of yourself outside of his plans for you, you’re the selfish one, you’re the ungrateful one, you’re the self-destructive one, exposing yourself to all those dangerous supervillains that he’s just trying to protect you from!”
Azul can only blink in befuddlement as Yuu exhales harshly at the end of their rant. The reporter must catch sight of his expression, because they sigh and begin again in a slightly calmer tone of voice.
“That’s one of the things the old bird tried to use to control me, you know. After he met me for the first time in twenty-two years.” Yuu scoffs, bitterly. “He claimed that you all were guaranteed to find out about me and kill me, or worse, to take my place as his successor. That is, unless I abandoned everything I loved and worked for to go ‘live’ under his protection and ‘defend my birthright’, as he put it.”
Azul’s mouth works silently for a moment.
He wants to deny it vehemently, to sputter at the sheer audacity of Crowley to think that Azul could do such a thing to Yuu—
Except, whispers a small part of his brain, would you have really been so kind, back when all you knew of Yuu was that they were a cute reporter who poked their nose into supervillain business? If you knew that cute, nosy reporter could be a threat to your ambitions back then, can you honestly say you wouldn’t have done your best to get them out of your way by any means necessary?
He doesn’t like the answer.
So Azul just swallows to try and find his voice again. “He...he may have a point, you know. With some of the others. Maybe not all, but. Some.”
“I know.” The reporter keeps rubbing their arms, like they’re cold. “But hey, at least it’ll beat the suspense of waiting to find out!”
Azul blinks, trying to digest that sentence and the false cheer that accompanied it as they near their destination.
“You’ve—you’ve been scared of that all this time, haven’t you?” He mutters, as they stop in front of the door to the outside. “Whenever you got kidnapped.”
The reporter lets out a suspiciously wet sounding laugh, dabbing at their eyes with the sleeve of their jacket. “It was worst with my first kidnapping by Royal Flush, back when all this started, because I had no idea what he wanted from me. At least when I got into snooping around on everyone else’s schemes later on, I knew you guys’d be more likely to kidnap me for that rather than anything else.”
Azul massages the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He thinks he can practically feel his blood pressure rising. “I thought you were supposed to be the stable one out of all of us.”
That actually gets him a real, honest laugh. “With how little sleep I get? Azul, please.”
They linger at the door for a while, until they hear a car pull up outside and honk it’s horn.
“You’re really going through with this?” He asks them, resigned.
The reporter swallows, hands trembling slightly, but nod, resolute. “Yes. It’s the best option for everyone here.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” He grumbles. “Just. Promise me. Promise me you’ll tell me when and where you plan to do this.”
Yuu blinks. “Why wouldn’t I? I was planning on asking you, Jade and Floyd to come with me anyway.”
“I won’t accept you being stubborn over this, I’ll draw up a contract if I have—” Wait, hold on, what had they just said? “What–but–why–what??”
“Well, you haven’t exactly being trying to make a contract with me so that you can become the heir instead, or murder me for it on the way out.” Yuu glances up at him, almost...shyly? “I figured that meant I could trust you, at least.”
Oh Great Seven, please don’t let his heart explode from this. It’s pounding so fast in his chest it feels like it might.
“A t-terrible decision really.” He hears himself say, and wants to bang his head against the wall the moment the words are out of his mouth.
Yuu laughs again, almost gently. “Well, I am known for making those. I think I can live with this one.”
And on that bombshell, the reporter slips out of the lair’s door and into the taxi that will hopefully see them safely home.
Azul watches the car pull away, and then closes the door. He turns around and goes to find the first pair of minions he can, ordering them to tail the car and call him immediately if any of the other six supervillains show signs of trying to stage a kidnapping en route.
Azul then strides further into the lair, mind whirling with all the favors he can call in and strings that he can pull.
If he’s going to be ensuring that his naive little reporter is able to go through with this insane plan safely, then he needs to be prepared to be able to defend them against the six potential threats they’ll be up against.
