So even with the Meta human acts, there are still people hunting and kidnapping metas to kill trafficker, or other horrible things.
Unfortunately for Dani, her main cover while traveling (if someone sees her use her powers) is that she’s a metahuman.
Well, she told the wrong person.
Dani has been in the meta fight rink for 3 months now, and lost a huge chunk of he hearing in her left ear, her entire body was covered in lightning scars and her right leg has horrible burns scars from some of her fights. She looked worse for wear.
In the middle of her latest fight when she got a glimpse of someone in the shadows watching her round with interest.
They locked eyes and Dani could see them share a glance with a member in the crowd.
Unfortunately, he opponent realizes she was distracted and pummels her into the ground, knocking her out cold
The teen titans caught wind of a metal human fight rink happen in the city next over, and decided to put a stop to it.
Damian was in the rafters and he locked eyes with the current fighter
A teenager girl, around Damian’s age (Dani and Dami can be anywhere from 13-17) covered in horrific scars.
Damian glanced at Dick, who was in the crowd, but when he looked back, the girl was out cold, and her opponent was about to deliver a killing blow.
Damian swung down, and fought the guy himself.
By the time the fight was over, police there and talking to the victims.
dani was regaining consciousness, but the moment she was awake, she told the nearest hero “no hospitals”
Damian, who just assumed the girl didn’t like hospitals or was at an hospital when she was taken/sold, honored her request and took her to the Titans Tower
When Dani awoke, they found out she didn’t have anywhere else to go, and decided to recruit her to the Teen Titans (keep in mind Dani is her in human form)
Meanwhile before Dani got rescued, Danny reached out to John Constantine, asking her to find his sister, worried after she hasn’t checked in
Cue John going on a manhunt around the world even though Dani’s literally been in Jump City for weeks
If you're a registered hero within the limits of the city or any of its county limits, and you are injured in the line of duty, there are procedures for you.
There's the Healers' Guild, powered by the might of the ConVex company and its CEO. There's all the independent contractors who are members of that Guild, and whose clinics, hospitals, and treatment centers are open automatically to anyone with the right ID card.
It's only fair, is the general consensus. If a person is tasked with using their abilities to work for the betterment of the people around them, then there have to be at least some perks. You can't ask a pyrokinetic to help snuff a fire that takes all night and then expect them to don a suit and go to their dayjob just to make ends meet, any more than you can expect them to hope that their gear has what it takes to protect their lungs.
That's with registration, though. Doing it the right way. The way with the tests and the measurements and the comparisons, the assignments that maybe you aren't really the best for but you're the best they've got so go on, chief, the world needs you.
If you do it the other way- the, shall we say, under the table way- it's a lot harder.
Of course there are people out there who help vigilantes. People burned by the registration system, people rejected by it or who simply conscientiously object to the entire thing, claiming- and not without proof- that it shoehorns those with certain powers into molds they don't fit, buries people considered too powerful to exist, and makes others disappear completely.
There are people who make gear, people who listen in on police scanners. There are spotters and coders and people who just spend an hour every other thursday at that one coffee shop just in case they need to open the back door.
There are podcasters and radio DJs, underground film makers and punks and in amongst all of these there are of course healers. Nurses, doctors, community medics, some with entirely irrelevant powers, some with abilities they've managed to force into usefulness through training and willpower and then.
Then there's Carpathia.
But you only go to Carpathia when it's really, really bad.
-
Officially, no one knows who Carpathia is.
There's no way to contact them. There's no phone number, no dead drop or firewalled email. You find Carpathia by word of mouth alone, and with any luck BEFORE you need their services.
What if you do?
What if something's gone wrong, or several somethings? What if you know your leg is broken, and you can't miss work in the morning or at least that's what you'd be telling yourself if you could think straight, and there's actual Registered Heroes nearby and if they catch you it's a fine or a holding cell or maybe something worse?
Then you break a pearl.
They're not REALLY pearls, though they look a little like them; small, round, glassy, a color between black and purple that somehow manages to be neither. They aren't naturally occurring, and who knows how you got yours- from a fellow vigilante after a job well done? Slipped to you by a bike messenger who recognized you from that gas station robbery? Maybe a part of a payment offered for your services, one of the thousands of little sins you allow yourself to commit so that you can stand against those bigger?
You break it. It's easy. More brittle than glass, it could be crushed to powder in a palm and you wonder, not for the first time, if there has to be some intent behind the breaking, because what if someone just fell down with one in their pocket? What if one rolled off a table and got smashed on the floor?
It doesn't matter now.
What matters is you break the pearl and you are gone. Anyone who comes around the corner now might find evidence that SOMEBODY was draped against those trash cans, but you and everything you had on your person is gone.
(so don't forget your gear, when you break your pearl.)
This isn't your first time so you don't move around much when you feel yourself drop onto what you know now is an old fashioned and very sturdy exam table. It hurts like a bitch, of course, and you whimper because it's safe to be hurt here.
It's the safest place in the world.
The specifics of the space you're not entirely sure of. It's a big room, you know that, with at least one sink, one bookshelf, and some medical equipment on a cart.
You can't see any of these things because the room is entirely pitch black.
Well. Almost entirely.
Blue eyes blink at you in the dark, hovering at a height that infers whoever they belong to must be pretty damn big. They shine a little like a cat's but the shine never quite leaves.
There's a soft sigh, like a disappointed father.
"You again?" Carpathia asks, but there's no judgement there. There never is. He blinks his glowing eyes slowly at you.
"My leg," you manage, and it's all you need to say. You don't even need to say that but it feels like you should give him at least a little guidance. You feel a hand, warm and calloused, gently pat you on the shoulder.
"Deep breath," he says, and his other hand cups the back of your neck like a chiropractor but he cracks no bones.
It just happens.
There's no light, no shimmers or hums or anything only the momentary agony of your body firing on all signals trying to keep up with what is happening to it because Carpathia is healing you.
This should be impossible. According to the Official Meta Registry it IS impossible. There is no registered person, hero or non, who can heal traumatic damage on a physical level in milliseconds, possibly multiple times in a single day. If such a person did exist, it's almost guaranteed that they would be snatched up by any number of companies or guilds, that they would never see the light of day again.
So Carpathia does not work in the light of day.
As far as you know, he never has.
Between a choked scream and a breath you go limp on the table, and Carpathia helps you down, making soothing noises. You are physically as able bodied as you were this morning. Your leg is not broken. Your ribs are not cracked. All your blood- aside from what was already outside of you- is back where it should be.
As you try to regulate your breathing, to bring your physical self back into line with your mental self, you feel Carpathia dutifully making sure your gear is all at least touching your person. He never tries to move it much, only be sure it is with you.
You feel him open your belt pouch, place a fresh pearl in it.
"Thanks," you whisper. It feels so meaningless.
The glowing blue eyes crinkle at the edges. You get the feeling he is smiling at you.
"You're welcome, homeh buddeh," he says, and then he takes your hand, puts another pearl in it, and helps you crush it.
When you open your eyes again, you're seated at a well hidden bench in a public park on the outskirts of the city.
It's going to be a bitch and a half to get home, but you will get home. You'll shower, and cuddle your cat, and fall asleep at your desk tomorrow morning. You'll probably get dragged into your boss's office and reamed out over it again knowing full well she won't fire you because if she does she'll need to train someone else on the ancient filing method and no one else is willing to be martyred for the cause.
You will live to fight another day.
And you did it without the Healers' Guild, or the Meta Registry. You did it without the Alchemist and his ConVex company.
You promise yourself, as you do every time, that you'll try to lighten Carpathia's workload. That you'll be more careful, more considerate with your battles. It's a nice notion, and maybe you can stick to it.
Maybe.
--
A/N: oh boy here we fuckin' go -_- I make no promises.
If you're thinking to yourself 'huh what a weird hero name for Skizz I wonder if it has anything to do with that post about the little steamer ship that tried to rescue survivors of the Titanic' you are 100% right and it felt fitting in a myriad of ways.
Namely, that the Carpathia and her crew did what they could to help in the face of unspeakable disaster even though by most metrics they failed, and that Carpathia isn't a word one would associate with someone who has healing powers and is therefore mostly safe to mention in passing.
I do expect to eventually flesh out this world a little bit but here's some answers to immediate questions just for brevity's sake:
-I simply could not swing the idea of Impulse not knowing what Skizz is up to. Bonded Pair Do Not Separate in basically all things. Therefore, the pearls are his invention. He isn't a hero and he isn't an employee of ConVex, but he DOES have access to all sorts of fun things in labs that let him do things like, you know, mass produce short-run teleportation pearls.
-the 'you' in this story is purposefully vague and could be anyone. I legit did not have a single hermit in mind when writing it.
-This world is operating on slightly tweaked BNHA logic, which is to say almost everyone has some kind of meta ability. The usefulness of that ability and how it can be legally used is up to the Meta Registry. We are reducing Horikoshi's poor math from 20% of the population to 1% of the population being without some kind of power.
-we are not entering weird heteromorph territory beyond actual living things I will have no background characters with fucking windex bottle heads or gun hands in my minecraft vigilante au.
-Yes, Cub is the CEO of ConVex. No, Scar is not involved in ConVex.
-Imma try my best but it's inevitable that this AU is probably going to share at least SOME real estate with other better known superhero/vigilante AUs because that's just how shit like this goes.
The trope/headcanon I simply adore is when the super powered character kinda loses control of their powers in a very harmless and non-destructive way when they're happy and content.
Heroes In the dark - The meta crisis - All chapters in one place!
Cover art
Welcome to 1991. The world has changed.
When a mysterious meteorite crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1980, it didn't just fall, it rewrote the rules of the world. Everything changed there, people with powers appeared, heroes flying in the skies and villains using their powers for what they could. An entire world order was rewritten.
Detective Beatrice Vieira from Chicago leads a covert operation to take down Andrea Marconi, a ruthless crime boss and chief of the mafia. But when a ritualistic serial killer starts targeting both sides of the law, everything goes sideways.
This will reveal a world of hurt and a world of differences, this reveals a web of ancient and new tales, of political conflicts and building tensions. Welcome to the Meta crisis!
ok so for my au I’ve been working on it’s both dc AND marvel but I’ve run into bit of problem with meta humans and mutants being the same exact fucking thing
like straight same fucking thing, so I’m turning them into ONE THING people with the x gene are called meta humans, this is also cause mutants feels weird for like a term to call people, like how does that work for medical shit? Idfk and idfc cause now it’s just meta human
also fuck that one explanation of meta humans having nth metal present in them YOU ARE NOT GETTING GLORIFIED LEAD POISONING
here it plays out like the x men but with slight changes on how it works less of a superpower gene and more of a forced adaptation stemming from one power shared by blood lines, for example killer croc here if push comes to shove he’ll get more crocodilian and some guys in his family are also crocodilian
that’s just an example there’s many more but that’s not important right now
Nicknames my oc Fenix likes that Constantine calls her
Dove (it makes her feel nice it's her top favorite)
Love (her favorite favorite like he calls her love and her chest just feels all warm and nice the first time she blushed so hard she glowed a little which of course made John do it more)
Birdie (she doesn't mind this one but she prefers dove)
Lover (just as good as love in her book she claims ir as her title lowkey)
"My little ember" (she likes this one but of she's ever asked directly she'll deny it and he can only call her this in private)
Pet (she has mixed feelings about this but John uses this one sparingly but sometimes when he says it she just feels a soft warmth bloom in her chest)
For reference she's a meta with basically fire in her veins and massive black wings and firey flaming curly hair she can fly wnd other then her having gold eyes she's very much humanoid and yes she's dating John Constantine
As always be kind and respectful reblogs are off until I feel more comfortable posting about my oc and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments I love seeing what people think and it you hate it then keep scrolling don't bother posting it in my comments I'll just block you
I hate to be that guy, but the no metas rule in gotham doesn't exist and never existed
Bruce doesn't like that other heroes come meddling in his city but this has nothing to do with powers, metas are humans and citizens, some of them are hidden or just don't do hero stuff and it'd impossible for Bruce to forbid a whole percentage of the population to be there or protect the city
Booster Gold is from Gotham, Black Canary is from Gotham, Duke Thomas is from Gotham, they are all meta super heroes and Bruce has never made a deal out of it
He doesn't care if people have super powers, he just doesn't want outside heroes fucking with his business
