Hi all! Treasure Treasure Volume 2 will be coming to tumblr tomorrow all being well with editing! However, if you’d rather read it now, it’s live on both Ao3 & Quotev, links below!
absolutely love abusing the power that comes with 3rd person limited pov and just ignoring things and being vague sometimes. does the character know all the details? no? then I don't have to either.
Just so you guys know I'm still alive and writing I'm going to try & do these WIP snippets from now on, promise
"That's because I'm not a criminal. I'm a 'villain', thanks. I'm in the Rogue Gallery & everything. Batman's tried to fight me! And he put me in prison, like, twice. It just didn't really, ya know, stick. Spatially." She looks down at you, eyebrow raised.
"'Rogue Gallery'? Wait, Batman's a real guy?"
"Yeah?"
"Huh." She looks away thoughtfully, "I thought he was like, a metaphor or something that the Gotham Gazette was taking literally." Her gaze focuses back on you. "Still, you're like weirdly proud of the whole villain thing. You have such a cool power, wouldn't you consider, I don't know, trying it out for good?" The cackle escapes you before you can even try to stop it.
"Careful, you sound like my mother." Your smug tone immediately clams up at the spark of interest that lights up her eyes.
"So you have a mother..." She's fighting a grin for getting anything out of you, you can see the twitch in her jaw where she wants to smile so bad. "I'm sure she would be super proud to have a superhero for a daughter."
"Yeah." The word rolls around on your tongue. That was her goal after all. "She had a superhero for a son already."
"Oh yeah?" She sounded ecstatic to finally be getting fragments of information out of you. Nothing useful, just concrete chips. But chips are still tangible. "What did he do?"
"He killed her." To protect me. You watch her expression fall, eyes wide and face aghast and you drag your eyes back to the lab building across the street. "You don't have to worry about him coming round, he's been dead for months." You shouldn't let you mind wander. You should be staying on task.
Polka Dots & Bleach Spots [Superman 2025 x Reader]
Masterlist Here
Summary: You had hoped "moving away" (heavy on the air quotations) from Gotham after your brother got arrested and "died in an unfortunate accident" (you saw the videos, you would hardly call a giant alien starfish an accident) would put you on the up and up. Stop your life of petty crime, find a job (not likely), maybe even make some friends!
Sadly Metropolis isn't much friendlier than Gotham, it just hides better. So back you go to hiding out in void spaces to avoid avid good boy superheroes who just will not give you a break.
Trigger Warnings: Referenced past child abuse, referenced past medical experimentation, referenced past human experimentation, swearing, canon typical violence, nudity(? Reader character is basically a mannequin but won't make a habit of wearing clothes)
Word Count: 6,074
[Metropolis Day 1] {3 Years Pre-Superman 2025}
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From what you heard, Metropolis was weird.
Growing up in Gotham, you already knew you had a skewed view of normal, and growing up in S.T.A.R. Labs in Gotham pushed the dial further as well. Add in a little inter-dimensional alien virus, a bit of genetic tweaking, a dash of seven dead siblings and the only one other than you that’s still alive able to produce multicoloured polka dots that could melt through most every surface on the planet and you tipped right over into full blown freak before your 9th birthday. (Thanks Mom!)
But even by your standards, Metropolis was just so strange.
Bright, clean and allegedly friendly (you can’t really verify, you’ve only stuck your head through on accident once or twice), the entire city thrummed with a constant thread of “life is good.”
You disagreed.
But you were also trying to push a 10 kilo ATM silently through a hole in the floor of a bodega on the outskirts of Gotham city like a round of hole.io (relevant pop culture reference, a-check (you’re so hip and with it)) so maybe you should give it ten to twenty minutes before thinking too hard on.
Until the metal base of the ATM made an ungodly screech against the linoleum of the bodega, and every head in the store turned to look at you.
Yeah, scratch that, screw Gotham and Metropolis and the universe, you weren’t calling life good.
Listen, you’ve been working on the whole “stop being pessimistic, you’ll receive the energy you put out into the universe so be positive” blah blah, etc. You have! But it’s been hard. Life didn’t start off great. No need to do the whole sob story, there are enough of those going around, but you really really thought trying to get out of Gotham would set you on a better path to a better life sort of deal. Theft probably wasn’t the greatest of plans to start of this “new good life” you had been planning, but your family aren’t exactly well known for their great successes (see crazy scientist mom and several dead siblings point from earlier, though you thought your and Abner’s track records were a bit better than that.)
(You also thought Abner would be at least alive in Belle Reve, even if he was trapped for the rest of his life, so maybe you really weren’t as clever as you thought. A giant alien starfish snuffed out that pipe dream pretty solidly a few years ago.)
The thought of him set your teeth on edge (wait, what teeth?) and you dismissed the thought as quickly as it appeared.
Slowly you lift your head from behind the ATM to meet the eyes of the (annoyingly busy, seriously where did these people even come from at 10:50 on a Tuesday?) entire bodega, the pink beanie bedazzled with a rainbow patch declaring “Not Today Satan!” that hardly disguised your bald white head and the galaxy patterned fabric face mask was slipping off where your face should be and destroying the (very clever) illusion you used to walk around like an actual human person. The oversized purple hoodie with the S.T.A.R. LABS emblazoned across the back and baggy jeans (because literally nothing fit your form right anymore, you might as well be Flubber’s paper mâché cousin) that were barely secured around your waist with a stolen belt just left you looking like an awkward college student, not an intimidating criminal.
Not even a villain of the week.
“Mooooommmy? What’s wrong with that person’s faaaace?” The little girl peeking out of the aisle beside you was truly emblematic of subtlety, especially with the directed point and the exaggerated whine as her mother shushed her, telling her that it’s rude to point and stare. Too late, but you mentally thank her for making you today’s teachable moment.
Straightening up to full height (too awkwardly but hey that’s your schtick), you clapped your hands together and waved with them both at the small crowd gathered in the store, only to mentally recoil as you realise how perky that looked and pulling them back into your chest to tap your index fingers together, clearing your throat.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Do not be alarmed,” you pull the mask and beanie from your head, and reform your face hole into the centre facing them instead of where it had been disguised as two smaller eye-like pits (ignore the clever disguise comment from earlier, you were not skilled at hiding), “I am just your friendly neighbourhood meta-uh, well, just kind of a freak really, here to do a very casual, non-violent robbery. So please just go about your day, I will be here. Manoeuvring this, outside…”
You gesture at the ATM behind before throwing your body full force into it with a grunt before the clerk lets out an appalled squawk.
“’Ey, EY! What the fuck man?! Get out of here, you can’t just say you’re robbing the place and try to be all casual with it, leave that shit alone!” He squeezes around the counter, grabbing his bat as he goes, and passes a few grumbling customers, stalking through the aisles towards you as sweat(? Is it sweat? Or is your silent theory of being made up of corn starch and water finally ringing true?) begins to bead at your brow, bare feet scrabbling for traction on the slick lino.
As you fumbled, you silently wish your body would lose whatever small amount of tension that was keeping you solid so that you could melt into the pile of oobleck you knew your gummy body was actually made of, but alas, life continues to dismiss your pleas and you were left to scramble around onto your ass, back pressed against the machine as the clerk towers over you.
“Listen, listen, listen! I-it-well-look, it’s hard for me, here-uh, you see-!” He completely ignores you rambling stutters as his bat swings down at your head, only for it to pass through the hole in your face completely and come out the other side.
Right into the glass of the fridge door to left.
“Yeaaaah, sorry. You see if you had just let me take the ATM, that wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t be liable for criminal damage… Though you did do the damage yourself so maybe hold off on reporting this to avoid accusations of insurance fraud?” Several of the customers were staring at you, completely aghast (and the clerk actually too, what was he expecting to happen).
“What the fuck are you?” He asked, mouth still agape at the puddle of broken glass now littering the bodega floor, completely missing your hands as it taps around on the ground behind you, searching for the lip of your spot that was still sunk into the floor.
“Well, do you want the long answer, or the short answer?” Your question comes out hesitantly as your fingers graze the familiar texture of your spot, the familiar not quite solid texture pulling under your fingers as you gently begin tugging it closer, “I’m used to giving the shorter one, because people normally come at me with guns not bats, though one kid has come at me with a tyre iron actually. But um, wait what was the- oh yes, me? Or what is me, w-what am me. A-re me, no, I-I’m just, yaknow,” you gave the spot a final tug, placing it directly beneath both you and the ATM, but it was still a bit too small for either to fit through, “I’m just a freak I guess. But youuu,” another hole appeared as you chirped up at the clerk, voice more confident now, and pop your hand through the hole hovering in mid-air, grabbing the bat’s batting end and in one fell swoop pushing it back out of your face, catching the clerk in the stomach and widening the hole beneath you for both you and the ATM to topple through, “Can call me the Spot.”
With a crash you and the ATM crash and topple over on to the pavement and with a final thumbs up to the crowd now clamouring around inside the bodega, you snatch the spot out of the air, closing the portal and effectively sealing the chaos behind you as you slap the spot back onto your wrist triumphantly.
And immediately sag against the ATM, head in your hands and muttering to yourself because, why was that so difficult. Store robberies were so awkward when people spotted you, it almost made you wish pickpocketing was easier. But that would involve going out and looking like a convincing member of society, and that was a ship that had sailed a long time ago for you.
And the bat?! Since when do business owners in Gotham use blunt weapons and not firearms?
“Sounds like it threw you off.” A man’s voice called from behind you.
“You know it really did?!” As you swivelled your head around to face the speaker, you finally notice where you are. Or more where you aren’t.
Because this, is not Gotham. The sky is bright, unimpeded by the constant low hanging smog clouds over a polluted river and bay. The pavement around you is clean and uncracked.
Looks like you had arrived in Metropolis a little ahead of schedule. Oops.
You awkwardly shuffle your way upright again, trying to look casual as you lean back against the cash machine, gaze darting around at the gaping pedestrians staring at you and your stolen prize.
“If you were committing a robbery, I’m guessing that ATM doesn’t belong to you?” You swivel your head round to stare at the speaker, a tall man in a red, white and black leather jacket with his arms crossed and his face deadpan. Your face spot shrunk slightly, the edges spiralling as you leaned your head forward to look closer at him.
“We-well, if we really want to get into semantics, it didn’t belong to the bodega either…” He had a few weird little spherical drones floating about him and a T shaped mask on his face that did absolutely nothing to hide his features, “It belonged to the bank, so really they were just leasing it out- has anyone ever told you you look like a sunburnt penguin?”
He blinked at you for a moment, and then again, and again as a small murmur of confusion leaves the crowd around you.
“What?”
“Because you’re-” You look at the crowd around you, most of whom seemed unimpressed and every one of them clueless, “-really? No one’s ever joked that because you’re black, white and red all over? Or do they do the one with the newspaper instead?”
“Criminals don’t normally try to have fun with us when they’re being dealt with around here.” He replied shortly, face scrunched and unimpressed. The tension fell from your body in a solid lump and if you had eyes to roll you would. This guy was either really boring, or Metropolis was.
“Oh, come on, there aren’t any nemis-i or supervillains wandering around here that monologue their whole plan before getting whapped in the face? We have plenty in Gotham if you want to practice the whole witty banter thing, though it does get dull with like, Kiteman or Condiment King, they kinda suck.”
“We don’t have supervillains here.” As he continues to talk, you start kicking at the pavement, marvelling at the fact there wasn’t any gum or anything cemented to it. “Criminals get dealt with accordingly and in a timely manner, they don’t get the opportunity to- are you listening to me?”
“Wha? Oh yes, yep, absolutely, no villains, criminals are taken care of efficiently and with no flair or interest, and Metropolis is as boring and weird as I thought it would be.”
As you chattered, you don’t see his fists clench before the spheres hanging in the air around him begin to swivel and concentrate their ‘attention’ on you. “If this is going to be a running theme of this place maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to leave-HEY!”
Your thought gets cut off as something fires out of the little spheres hanging in the air, hitting the ground at your feet as you hop out of the way as he sends his little drone spheres to circle you in a tight perimeter, red lasers targeted on you, all sniper-like. You stare at the small singe left on the concrete before moving your stare back to the spheres hovering around you in the air. “Oooh you’re one of these techy guys. What else do they do, other than lasers? What’d you think, or do you guys know this guy’s set up already?”
You wheel your head round to some of the several bystanders surrounding your little standoff and catch two staring bewildered at you, a freckled auburn-haired man carrying a two trays of coffee and a dark haired with a leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder and a paper one close to bursting with paper wrapped bundles (oof, bad day to get stuck on lunch duty for the office, sorry folks.)
“Uhhh.” The man tries to blink back into reality, ice rattling as he shifts the drinks in his hand, eyes flicking from you to the hero guy, back to you. “He’s- yeah I mean, we see him around, I-I’ve shot him before-?” His voice trails off in a squeak as you pull the hoodie over your head, calmly flicking a black void onto the cement and tossing it in.
“You shot him?” “You shot him?” “You shot me?”
Several voices echo your sentiments, primarily the hero himself and the lady stood next to drink carrier as he jumps to defend himself.
“WITH THE CAMERA! PERRY-” He spun on the woman’s aghast expression, “Lois you were there when I showed Perry the photos, how else- yo-you think I own a gun? We should also be more concerned with the weirdo stripping in the middle of the street, put your pants back on, pleasE-” he gestures the drink trays at your figure, presenting the striking image of you wrestling the rough denim over your gangly knees while balanced on one leg.
“Excuse you, clothes are nothing but a detriment to me and my powers.” You comment plainly, finally winning the fight with the fabric and tossing them into the black void of your spot along with your hoodie. “The spots come from my skin,” you sweep your foot over the spot on the ground, and the bystanders watch stunned as the black melts off the concrete of the pavement and climbs up over your foot and settles mid-calf, “so to use them I need access to said skin,”
You calmly pluck one of the inky dots off your pectoral and fling it to the ground below the ATM where it promptly disappears into its shadow, “so clothes just get in the way really, besides!” With a snap of your fingers, the spot opens into a gaping maw of pitchy blackness that the machine hurriedly topples into, “It’s not like I’ve got anything to cover up, I’ve looked like this for years!”
This being an almost mannequin-like physique, the general shape of a human but completely devoid of any and all identifying features. The last time you’d had those was at least 15 years ago, before mom decided it was your turn on the A-Star virus that, until that point, only your oldest brother had survived.
So now you existed as a faceless, person-shaped mass of antimatter in stark white with a black so dark dotting your body, it’s like they had been scribbled in the worlds blacked ink.
“That’s your skin?” The hero asks monotonously.
“Yeah, why, did you think it was a suit or something?”
“I was hoping.” You shrug, hands on your hips.
“Sorry to burst that bubble for you, Pingu.” His face drops from expressionless to unimpressed.
“Your penguin joke was not good enough to start doling out nicknames.”
“Agree to disagree then.”
“I dunno, Mr Terrific, anything is better than what you’re sporting now.” You follow the bystanders’ gazes up, eyeing the newcomer. Of course they have one that flies here. You would roll your eyes if you had them, swinging your head around to catch this ‘Mr Terrific’ again.
“Is he with you?”
“To an extent.” “Unfortunately.”
Neither seemed pleased that they were being lumped in with the other, the distain clear in the voices and faces.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be too chuffed either if I worked with a NASCAR reject who stole his hair style from a 14th century Capuchin Friar.” You just hoped his powers were cool, because although his jacket wasn’t all that different from Mr Terrific (except in green instead of red), that in combination with the bleach blonde mushroom cut was just deeply unfortunate. “Can you like, angle yourself more to the left over here? Like stay up there but move over more?” He scoffed at you.
“Why?”
“Looking at you is giving me so much second-hand embarrassment it’s actually hurting my stomach, and since I can’t really throw up, considering I don’t really eat food anymore per say, I was hoping if you angled yourself properly you could like, bloat out the sun? So I can’t actually make out your features, ya know? I-I can deal with the silhouette, but looking at you is just not, I, it-No.”
“Wait” It’s the lady from earlier, her pretty face set in a harsh furrow as she looked over you “You don’t eat food?” You gesture at the void on the front of your head.
“No face, no mouth.”
“Wait, so you’re like this all the time? This seriously isn’t like, a costume for your crime sprees? How do you work anywhere?” You clap your hands together gleefully before pointing at her.
“Excellent question! I don’t! Or I can’t. No one wants to hire someone with no face (which feels like it should be discrimination really) and since I was mutated as a child, experimentally mind you, I don’t think I legally exist? Or if I do, I have no proof of it, sooooo,” You spin back to Mr Terrific and the Green Goof hovering 10 feet in the air, “I don’t have a choice but to find a work around. ATMs just happen to be easy targets. Normally.”
“ATM? Like a full ATM machine?”
“Yes, Green Lantern a full ATM.” One of the spheres spirals out of the formation surrounding you to hover up to ‘Green Lantern’ (stones in glass houses comes to mind with his Mr Terrific comment, but you can’t really judge here either), projecting a small read hologram of you, falling out of your hole and collapsing on top of the ATM that fell before you.
“Okay then, we’ve just got a fancy little thief here. Easy peasy.” The thrusts his fist out towards you, and another fucking hologram appears around you, this time in green, shaping into a large dome…with ridges along the side. (And a handle? What the fuck, is this a giant fucking measuring jug?!)
“Does everyone here just have weird hologram powers, or was I just lucky?” You thought out loud, carefully skirting under the circle of spheres (who were trapped in here with you. Or were you trapped with them? How does that quote even go again?) and tap on the green light. It was completely solid.
“It isn’t a hologram; it’s an energy construct. Obviously I don’t expect you to understand. It’s an incredibly advanced level of thinking-” He turns away from you and his creation as you grab the edge of the spot you had left on the ground earlier and pull it up to sit on it’s side like a giant coin. “-that most people can’t grasp. It’s about focus, and willpower and the desire-” Setting a foot on the bottom of your spot you haul it up. A red light mixes with the green tint in the air around you as the spheres begin to scan you and your spot, a few more passersby stopping to watch as it stretches up and up until you can comfortably step through. Which you do. “-to help people, so you wouldn’t-”
With one swift punch, you strike him straight in the nose, interrupting his tirade and sending him fumbling back in the sky, eyes wide and mouth agape as he stared at you in your perch, feet curled around the lip of your spot, upper body dangling out to reach him.
“Sorry. I was tired of your voice.”
With a snarl on his face, he began to hurtle back at you, so you ducked back into your spot, closing it behind you as you stepped back as the scene of him careening towards you was smothered out by a swirling black void.
The floating droid spheres whirred to life around you, red lasers focusing and quickly you shifted your spots placement, leaving you space to hop out on to the street next to your green jug prison and beside Good-Question-Lady and Probably-A-Photographer-&-Not-A-Sniper-Man, who let out a startled yelp-shriek hybrid. It was probably at your sudden appearance, but could have something to do with exceptional mess of lasers firing behind you as you emerge from your spot before quickly smacking it away and redirecting it towards the Green Lantern, leaving him to scramble away from the hail of friendly fire.
“Howdy! Oooh, do I spy a bagel?” You happily go to snag one from Good-Question-Lady’s bag but she attempts to smack you away in defence of the lunches in her care. You huff indignantly, “It’s not like I’m going to steal it! I already said I can’t eat.”
“Exactly.” She scoffs at you, “What are you gonna do, smell it?”
“Rude…” you grumble as another weight slams into the pavement behind you. You groan and roll your head back, expecting the green guy to have finally stopped flailing and decided to join the fight at ground level, but nope!
Kneeling behind you and rising to her feet, dust curling around her from the crack left in the sidewalk, there’s now a third hero making an appearance. She shrugged herself upright and casually swung a ridiculously heavy looking mace on to her shoulder, a large ornate headpiece saving her from clipping herself in the face and a large feathery cape rippling around her.
“’Sup?” Your face spot spiralled in tightly to a dot as the feathered cape surges up and rests above her shoulders, and you realise that it’s a pair of wings attached to her shoulders as nice as you like. As cool as you thought that was there was only one thought wrapping itself around in your mind at that moment.
“Seriously?! Another one? I’m literally one person and haven’t even committed a crime in this time zone! You do not need three different heroes to fight me, Mr Terrific-Man or whatever, I’m still not clear, and I probably would’ve gone to bat for a bit before I inevitably went into one of my spots and disappeared into an untraceable pocket dimension and would’ve been out of your collective hairs. Is there nothing else going on in this city right now? You can seriously spare three different heroes to fight one person?”
“We don’t need three people,” Mr Terrific mutters as he comes alongside the feathery woman, Green Lantern landing on his other side, slightly singed from the bullet hell you had subjected him to. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of this one.”
“It didn’t look like it, from where I was.” Green Lantern answers easily, plucking at his jacket sleeves to tidy himself. It wasn’t working.
“I only turned up because Guy set off his emergency thing.” Bird-Woman shrugged, wings fluttering behind her, already mentally checked out of the situation. (Good.)
"Seriously?!" That was the most emotion you had heard from him so far, and seen from him given his face had hardened into a dead eyed glare as he rounded on his (teammate?) fellow hero.
"Yes seriously!" Green Lantern defended, "You were letting them walk all over you, gave them complete control of the situation as they yammered on for no good reason!"
"I WAS ASSESSING THE THREAT LEVEL. I still am, given you interrupted the base level information gathering I was doing, before you swooped in acting like you have any idea of what's going on when, surprise surprise, you don't! Oh look, they've got portals, I would've been able to tell you that if you gave me five minutes instead of just barging in, like you're some almighty hero who's better than the rest of us."
"Sooo," You lean into Good-Question-Lady's space, causally dropping a spot over Not-a-Sniper-Man, letting it fall over him and sending his body (from the torso up) appear between you, at perfect height for you to use at an arm-rest, ignoring his high pitched squawks of terror. "Is this like a thing? Are we watching a domestic, or is this like, workplace microaggression central, I can't quite tell."
"I-um... They're normally working on like, bigger scale threats? So not really at street level." You hummed thoughtfully at the bickering heroes, and decide to take the opportunity being handed to you. "Superman's quicker to help with the little things..."
"Alrighty." You peel the spot off the poor ginger man, leaving him to stagger for a moment as he got recombobulated after having his equilibrium displaced and flicked it down beneath the bird woman's feet.
With a shriek, she tumbled into lack of space, the other end of the hole appearing above the heads of her male colleagues as she catches herself on the concrete, one flailing foot mid-air and catching the Green Lantern in the nose (for a second time, nice) sending him stumbling as Mr Terrific ducks out of the way and begins heading straight for you.
With an 'eek!' you drop a hole in the ground and fall backwards through it, dropping straight down on top of him with a solid thud. You quickly roll to your feet and try to put some distance between the two of you, scrambling away as he diverts the now free droid spheres to attack you. Tossing a few spots in the way, they barrel through and into one another as you gather the spots back to yourself, leaving small smouldering wreckages in your wake.
"Sorry!" You hollered over your shoulder, clumsily sprinting away from the group but anxiety tumultuously swirling inside of you as you try to explain yourself, "Shooting me doesn't really work but it still doesn't feel great!"
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Jimmy sighs heartily as the heroes take off after the weird “Spot” person, shifting the drinks trays in his hands as he turns to Lois, watching as she stares after the retreating figures.
“Please tell me you’re not considering making this into something?” Her eyes drag behind the rest of her head for a moment as she turns to him.
“Huh? What?”
“The 'Spot'? Please tell me you aren’t going to try and hunt them down to interview or something. I know you’re still frustrated about the whole Superman thing with Clark, but I really don’t want you to get yourself in trouble chasing down interviews for a story if there isn’t one just cuz they seem slightly more interesting than what you’re covering right now.”
“The Metropolis City Bank shootout is as dry as anything, Olsen. And you heard them though, experiments on children causing full body mutations? And they were wearing something from S.T.A.R. Labs…” Jimmy could already see the rough article plan forming in her head, eyes drifting towards the fight again, dots appearing and asking for connections to be made. “They seemed weirdly casual about living nothing but a life of crime.”
“Uh, yeah. Because they’re, ya’know? A crim-i-nal? From Gotham, they said so themselves?” This was a losing argument, Jimmy knew it already. Lois had found a tiny, infinitesimal, microscopic thread to pull, and she wasn’t about to let blow away and get tangled into nothingness. There was more to that weirdo, anyone with a shred of journalistic instinct could see that, but experimentation? Full body mutation of a child? All you hear is that Gotham was weird, but he didn’t stuff like that was happening over there. This had the makings of being a big juicy bone of a story, and there was no tugging Lois away from it now, her brow set, and grasp of the deli bag determined. Ah shit. “Right, let’s get back to the office before Cat decides barbequing Steve sounds like a better plan then waiting on her stupidly specific sandwich.”
Jimmy was surprised that Lois let him steer her away from her view of the ongoing fight in the city centre, but as he tugged her back into the rush of mid lunch rush foot traffic, he had a sinking feeling this wouldn’t be the last time they cross paths with The Spot.
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You flinch as a shadow lances across your own, the large silhouette betraying the winged heroine as she swoops down at you, mace swinging at your head. She's quick, quick enough to dodge out of the way of her own swing as it barrels through the portal that appeared at the back of your head and hurtles towards her own face, ducking closer to the ground as she goes. You drop the ground out below you and behind you simultaneously, falling through and kicking up into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her and sending her face first into the concrete.
Using your momentum, you carry on in the air for a moment, flipping the right way up and catching yourself to keep on running into the scattering mass of people out on their lunch breaks as they duck out of the way of things that have begun slamming into the ground behind you.
Risking a glance back as you come to a intersection, you barely dodge the huge fucking green hand as it slams into the ground behind you, following by another, and another, as the Green Lantern swipes at you as you weave under and around them, popping in and out of spots that you drop on the street below you, narrowly dodging a bus baring down on you and using another spot to send a cyclist forward a few feet to avoid the head on collision you were nearly caught. You hop away from that one and find yourself face to face with a ruby red food cart, decorated with the menu of gyros and pitas full of seasoned meats and runny sauces, the scent wafting around you making your not-mouth water, and suddenly you really miss the whole eating thing. The owner (presumably) manning the cart starts swearing wildly and desperately shoos you away as another green transparent hand comes swinging down towards you and you sigh. Is nothing sacred to these people?
You throw down another spot, letting it spread and pull the entire stand, owner and all into a void to avoid the barrelling destruction the hero was throwing about, and you slide along behind it, giving the hand a second to clear the area in it's swipe before the cart emerges, unscathed and drops right back into place. The owner gasps desperately inside as you fall carefully onto the roof-cover-thing and swing down, plucking one of the funny soda's off the display and wave it at him.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"I'm just taking this as compensation, you're welcome for your livelihood not getting trashed."
"CAN YOU EVEN DRINK THAT SHIT WITH NO FACE?" His scream rattled over the chaos in the air around them as you whip a few spots through each other, catching around Green Lantern like the rings of Saturn and pushing him out of sorts, knocked into a zigzag like a precarious tower of blocks.
"You know, these questions are really starting to piss me off, what's it to you if I have no face, maybe I just wanna try the experience out again!" Your response to his question was quick, mirroring your deflection of the Bird-Woman's second attack, her previous attempt obviously not leaving a clear enough message as she once again shoots through the spot you pull off the ground. It sends her divebombing into the racing figure of Mr Terrific, sending them both into the pavement with a slam and a groan. "You know what, I'm going to prove you wrong right now, Mr Food-Cart-Man."
As you pop the tab on your, ew, cream soda can, he ignores your insolence in favour of screaming profanities at something descending quickly behind you, leaving you seconds to spin around and (instinctively) chuck the now open can at the attacker. The attacker you thought would be either the Green Lantern or the Bird Woman, both of whom were impressively persistent but no.
Instead your sloshing can makes contact with and explodes across a large stylised ‘S’ in bright sunny yellow, superimposed across a broad chest of a large, friendly-faced man. He would almost look stupid in the costume if it weren't for the sincerity radiating off him, the fantastical cape actively chasing his heels as he lowered himself to be level with you, the action thoughtlessly gentle. The brilliant red and blue ensemble looked both wacky and almost cool, though any of that effect was ruined by the ridiculous underwear and the fact he was now dripping with caramel coloured liquid.
"Oh come on. How many heroes does it take to fight one criminal?" Not really wanting this to turn into a 4-vs-1 fight no matter how quippy you get, you prance back out of his reach as he raises a hand towards you, just as some sort of delivery van speeds down the road at you. (Apparently no one cares if there's a superhero fight in progress, can't fall behind on deliveries.) With a panicked yelp, the ground falls out beneath you, leaving a gaping hole in the road that the van just barely doesn't speed through, the new & very colourful addition to the fight proving himself more useful then his comrades by catching it before it could go through all the way. You were not so lucky, misplacing your exit spot and falling, gut first, over the intersection lights, leaving you winded and nauseous before plummeting head first the rest of the, what, 15 feet to the ground below.
Or you would have, had you not thrown out one final spot, slipping through just as the colourful ensemble of superheroes join their caped crusader (can you call him that if he's not Batman? He has a cape?) and disappear into the void, finishing your first foray into Metropolis.
You heard right. Metropolis was weird.
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Guy's jaw was working over time, chewing on the inside of his cheek angrily as he glared at the empty Spot (fuck) the freak had disappeared into. People have begun congregating in the area again, phones out recording and muttering scornfully at the mess left behind. While this had been one of their tidier dealings with crime/villains/people with powers, there was now a Metropolis intersection with a physics defying flower delivery van sitting half in the cement road, and half dangling 17 feet in the air above the streetlights.
No, the mess left behind was mostly personal, that freakazoid made a fool out of all of them, and as Hawk Girl & Mr Terrific alight beside him and Supes in the middle of the fucking sidewalk, he makes a final call on the situation, because he is not doing that again and he cannot be fucked with arguing about it.
"We're leaving Superman to deal with the Spot." He claps the alien meta on the shoulder and smiles grimly before leaving huffily, "You didn't even get to see most of the action! You'll love it."
Superman eyes the charred pavement behind them, the bedraggled bystanders and the teetering delivery van and sighed.
"Ho boy."
Author's Note: Please excuse any mistakes and any poor dialogue/fight scenes! They are not my forte and I try but it still feels awkward
Anyways, welcome to Polka Dots & Bleach Spots! I'm making this a one shot collection because the idea kept bouncing around in my head like the DVD logo and I need to get them out before I truly go insane.
Reader is based on the Spot from Spider-verse and Polka Dot Man's backstory from The Suicide Squad (2021) because Gun completely redid his origin, so I'm using that to my benefit and smooshing it all together in my brain ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧
You had hoped "moving away" (heavy on the air quotations) from Gotham after your brother got arrested and "died in an unfortunate accident" (you saw the videos, you would hardly call a giant alien starfish an accident) would put you on the up and up. Stop your life of petty crime, find a job (not likely), maybe even make some friends!
Sadly Metropolis isn't much friendlier than Gotham, it just hides better. So back you go to hiding out in void spaces to avoid avid good boy superheroes who just will not give you a break.
GIF by ayatou
{A collection of one-shots following Reader, otherwise known as The Spot, as they navigate life sans a brother and rife with idiotic supers who just won't quit}
Read on AO3: Here
Read on Quotev: Here
Poor Beginnings: Starting a fresh in Metropolis goes awry after a botched robbery lands you in the lap of their very own Justice Gang (plus two nosey reporters you're going to regret chatting to)
Polka Dots & Bleach Spots [Superman 2025 x Reader]
Masterlist Here
Summary: You had hoped "moving away" (heavy on the air quotations) from Gotham after your brother got arrested and "died in an unfortunate accident" (you saw the videos, you would hardly call a giant alien starfish an accident) would put you on the up and up. Stop your life of petty crime, find a job (not likely), maybe even make some friends!
Sadly Metropolis isn't much friendlier than Gotham, it just hides better. So back you go to hiding out in void spaces to avoid avid good boy superheroes who just will not give you a break.
Trigger Warnings: Referenced past child abuse, referenced past medical experimentation, referenced past human experimentation, swearing, canon typical violence, nudity(? Reader character is basically a mannequin but won't make a habit of wearing clothes)
Word Count: 6,074
[Metropolis Day 1] {3 Years Pre-Superman 2025}
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From what you heard, Metropolis was weird.
Growing up in Gotham, you already knew you had a skewed view of normal, and growing up in S.T.A.R. Labs in Gotham pushed the dial further as well. Add in a little inter-dimensional alien virus, a bit of genetic tweaking, a dash of seven dead siblings and the only one other than you that’s still alive able to produce multicoloured polka dots that could melt through most every surface on the planet and you tipped right over into full blown freak before your 9th birthday. (Thanks Mom!)
But even by your standards, Metropolis was just so strange.
Bright, clean and allegedly friendly (you can’t really verify, you’ve only stuck your head through on accident once or twice), the entire city thrummed with a constant thread of “life is good.”
You disagreed.
But you were also trying to push a 10 kilo ATM silently through a hole in the floor of a bodega on the outskirts of Gotham city like a round of hole.io (relevant pop culture reference, a-check (you’re so hip and with it)) so maybe you should give it ten to twenty minutes before thinking too hard on.
Until the metal base of the ATM made an ungodly screech against the linoleum of the bodega, and every head in the store turned to look at you.
Yeah, scratch that, screw Gotham and Metropolis and the universe, you weren’t calling life good.
Listen, you’ve been working on the whole “stop being pessimistic, you’ll receive the energy you put out into the universe so be positive” blah blah, etc. You have! But it’s been hard. Life didn’t start off great. No need to do the whole sob story, there are enough of those going around, but you really really thought trying to get out of Gotham would set you on a better path to a better life sort of deal. Theft probably wasn’t the greatest of plans to start of this “new good life” you had been planning, but your family aren’t exactly well known for their great successes (see crazy scientist mom and several dead siblings point from earlier, though you thought your and Abner’s track records were a bit better than that.)
(You also thought Abner would be at least alive in Belle Reve, even if he was trapped for the rest of his life, so maybe you really weren’t as clever as you thought. A giant alien starfish snuffed out that pipe dream pretty solidly a few years ago.)
The thought of him set your teeth on edge (wait, what teeth?) and you dismissed the thought as quickly as it appeared.
Slowly you lift your head from behind the ATM to meet the eyes of the (annoyingly busy, seriously where did these people even come from at 10:50 on a Tuesday?) entire bodega, the pink beanie bedazzled with a rainbow patch declaring “Not Today Satan!” that hardly disguised your bald white head and the galaxy patterned fabric face mask was slipping off where your face should be and destroying the (very clever) illusion you used to walk around like an actual human person. The oversized purple hoodie with the S.T.A.R. LABS emblazoned across the back and baggy jeans (because literally nothing fit your form right anymore, you might as well be Flubber’s paper mâché cousin) that were barely secured around your waist with a stolen belt just left you looking like an awkward college student, not an intimidating criminal.
Not even a villain of the week.
“Mooooommmy? What’s wrong with that person’s faaaace?” The little girl peeking out of the aisle beside you was truly emblematic of subtlety, especially with the directed point and the exaggerated whine as her mother shushed her, telling her that it’s rude to point and stare. Too late, but you mentally thank her for making you today’s teachable moment.
Straightening up to full height (too awkwardly but hey that’s your schtick), you clapped your hands together and waved with them both at the small crowd gathered in the store, only to mentally recoil as you realise how perky that looked and pulling them back into your chest to tap your index fingers together, clearing your throat.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Do not be alarmed,” you pull the mask and beanie from your head, and reform your face hole into the centre facing them instead of where it had been disguised as two smaller eye-like pits (ignore the clever disguise comment from earlier, you were not skilled at hiding), “I am just your friendly neighbourhood meta-uh, well, just kind of a freak really, here to do a very casual, non-violent robbery. So please just go about your day, I will be here. Manoeuvring this, outside…”
You gesture at the ATM behind before throwing your body full force into it with a grunt before the clerk lets out an appalled squawk.
“’Ey, EY! What the fuck man?! Get out of here, you can’t just say you’re robbing the place and try to be all casual with it, leave that shit alone!” He squeezes around the counter, grabbing his bat as he goes, and passes a few grumbling customers, stalking through the aisles towards you as sweat(? Is it sweat? Or is your silent theory of being made up of corn starch and water finally ringing true?) begins to bead at your brow, bare feet scrabbling for traction on the slick lino.
As you fumbled, you silently wish your body would lose whatever small amount of tension that was keeping you solid so that you could melt into the pile of oobleck you knew your gummy body was actually made of, but alas, life continues to dismiss your pleas and you were left to scramble around onto your ass, back pressed against the machine as the clerk towers over you.
“Listen, listen, listen! I-it-well-look, it’s hard for me, here-uh, you see-!” He completely ignores you rambling stutters as his bat swings down at your head, only for it to pass through the hole in your face completely and come out the other side.
Right into the glass of the fridge door to left.
“Yeaaaah, sorry. You see if you had just let me take the ATM, that wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t be liable for criminal damage… Though you did do the damage yourself so maybe hold off on reporting this to avoid accusations of insurance fraud?” Several of the customers were staring at you, completely aghast (and the clerk actually too, what was he expecting to happen).
“What the fuck are you?” He asked, mouth still agape at the puddle of broken glass now littering the bodega floor, completely missing your hands as it taps around on the ground behind you, searching for the lip of your spot that was still sunk into the floor.
“Well, do you want the long answer, or the short answer?” Your question comes out hesitantly as your fingers graze the familiar texture of your spot, the familiar not quite solid texture pulling under your fingers as you gently begin tugging it closer, “I’m used to giving the shorter one, because people normally come at me with guns not bats, though one kid has come at me with a tyre iron actually. But um, wait what was the- oh yes, me? Or what is me, w-what am me. A-re me, no, I-I’m just, yaknow,” you gave the spot a final tug, placing it directly beneath both you and the ATM, but it was still a bit too small for either to fit through, “I’m just a freak I guess. But youuu,” another hole appeared as you chirped up at the clerk, voice more confident now, and pop your hand through the hole hovering in mid-air, grabbing the bat’s batting end and in one fell swoop pushing it back out of your face, catching the clerk in the stomach and widening the hole beneath you for both you and the ATM to topple through, “Can call me the Spot.”
With a crash you and the ATM crash and topple over on to the pavement and with a final thumbs up to the crowd now clamouring around inside the bodega, you snatch the spot out of the air, closing the portal and effectively sealing the chaos behind you as you slap the spot back onto your wrist triumphantly.
And immediately sag against the ATM, head in your hands and muttering to yourself because, why was that so difficult. Store robberies were so awkward when people spotted you, it almost made you wish pickpocketing was easier. But that would involve going out and looking like a convincing member of society, and that was a ship that had sailed a long time ago for you.
And the bat?! Since when do business owners in Gotham use blunt weapons and not firearms?
“Sounds like it threw you off.” A man’s voice called from behind you.
“You know it really did?!” As you swivelled your head around to face the speaker, you finally notice where you are. Or more where you aren’t.
Because this, is not Gotham. The sky is bright, unimpeded by the constant low hanging smog clouds over a polluted river and bay. The pavement around you is clean and uncracked.
Looks like you had arrived in Metropolis a little ahead of schedule. Oops.
You awkwardly shuffle your way upright again, trying to look casual as you lean back against the cash machine, gaze darting around at the gaping pedestrians staring at you and your stolen prize.
“If you were committing a robbery, I’m guessing that ATM doesn’t belong to you?” You swivel your head round to stare at the speaker, a tall man in a red, white and black leather jacket with his arms crossed and his face deadpan. Your face spot shrunk slightly, the edges spiralling as you leaned your head forward to look closer at him.
“We-well, if we really want to get into semantics, it didn’t belong to the bodega either…” He had a few weird little spherical drones floating about him and a T shaped mask on his face that did absolutely nothing to hide his features, “It belonged to the bank, so really they were just leasing it out- has anyone ever told you you look like a sunburnt penguin?”
He blinked at you for a moment, and then again, and again as a small murmur of confusion leaves the crowd around you.
“What?”
“Because you’re-” You look at the crowd around you, most of whom seemed unimpressed and every one of them clueless, “-really? No one’s ever joked that because you’re black, white and red all over? Or do they do the one with the newspaper instead?”
“Criminals don’t normally try to have fun with us when they’re being dealt with around here.” He replied shortly, face scrunched and unimpressed. The tension fell from your body in a solid lump and if you had eyes to roll you would. This guy was either really boring, or Metropolis was.
“Oh, come on, there aren’t any nemis-i or supervillains wandering around here that monologue their whole plan before getting whapped in the face? We have plenty in Gotham if you want to practice the whole witty banter thing, though it does get dull with like, Kiteman or Condiment King, they kinda suck.”
“We don’t have supervillains here.” As he continues to talk, you start kicking at the pavement, marvelling at the fact there wasn’t any gum or anything cemented to it. “Criminals get dealt with accordingly and in a timely manner, they don’t get the opportunity to- are you listening to me?”
“Wha? Oh yes, yep, absolutely, no villains, criminals are taken care of efficiently and with no flair or interest, and Metropolis is as boring and weird as I thought it would be.”
As you chattered, you don’t see his fists clench before the spheres hanging in the air around him begin to swivel and concentrate their ‘attention’ on you. “If this is going to be a running theme of this place maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to leave-HEY!”
Your thought gets cut off as something fires out of the little spheres hanging in the air, hitting the ground at your feet as you hop out of the way as he sends his little drone spheres to circle you in a tight perimeter, red lasers targeted on you, all sniper-like. You stare at the small singe left on the concrete before moving your stare back to the spheres hovering around you in the air. “Oooh you’re one of these techy guys. What else do they do, other than lasers? What’d you think, or do you guys know this guy’s set up already?”
You wheel your head round to some of the several bystanders surrounding your little standoff and catch two staring bewildered at you, a freckled auburn-haired man carrying a two trays of coffee and a dark haired with a leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder and a paper one close to bursting with paper wrapped bundles (oof, bad day to get stuck on lunch duty for the office, sorry folks.)
“Uhhh.” The man tries to blink back into reality, ice rattling as he shifts the drinks in his hand, eyes flicking from you to the hero guy, back to you. “He’s- yeah I mean, we see him around, I-I’ve shot him before-?” His voice trails off in a squeak as you pull the hoodie over your head, calmly flicking a black void onto the cement and tossing it in.
“You shot him?” “You shot him?” “You shot me?”
Several voices echo your sentiments, primarily the hero himself and the lady stood next to drink carrier as he jumps to defend himself.
“WITH THE CAMERA! PERRY-” He spun on the woman’s aghast expression, “Lois you were there when I showed Perry the photos, how else- yo-you think I own a gun? We should also be more concerned with the weirdo stripping in the middle of the street, put your pants back on, pleasE-” he gestures the drink trays at your figure, presenting the striking image of you wrestling the rough denim over your gangly knees while balanced on one leg.
“Excuse you, clothes are nothing but a detriment to me and my powers.” You comment plainly, finally winning the fight with the fabric and tossing them into the black void of your spot along with your hoodie. “The spots come from my skin,” you sweep your foot over the spot on the ground, and the bystanders watch stunned as the black melts off the concrete of the pavement and climbs up over your foot and settles mid-calf, “so to use them I need access to said skin,”
You calmly pluck one of the inky dots off your pectoral and fling it to the ground below the ATM where it promptly disappears into its shadow, “so clothes just get in the way really, besides!” With a snap of your fingers, the spot opens into a gaping maw of pitchy blackness that the machine hurriedly topples into, “It’s not like I’ve got anything to cover up, I’ve looked like this for years!”
This being an almost mannequin-like physique, the general shape of a human but completely devoid of any and all identifying features. The last time you’d had those was at least 15 years ago, before mom decided it was your turn on the A-Star virus that, until that point, only your oldest brother had survived.
So now you existed as a faceless, person-shaped mass of antimatter in stark white with a black so dark dotting your body, it’s like they had been scribbled in the worlds blacked ink.
“That’s your skin?” The hero asks monotonously.
“Yeah, why, did you think it was a suit or something?”
“I was hoping.” You shrug, hands on your hips.
“Sorry to burst that bubble for you, Pingu.” His face drops from expressionless to unimpressed.
“Your penguin joke was not good enough to start doling out nicknames.”
“Agree to disagree then.”
“I dunno, Mr Terrific, anything is better than what you’re sporting now.” You follow the bystanders’ gazes up, eyeing the newcomer. Of course they have one that flies here. You would roll your eyes if you had them, swinging your head around to catch this ‘Mr Terrific’ again.
“Is he with you?”
“To an extent.” “Unfortunately.”
Neither seemed pleased that they were being lumped in with the other, the distain clear in the voices and faces.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be too chuffed either if I worked with a NASCAR reject who stole his hair style from a 14th century Capuchin Friar.” You just hoped his powers were cool, because although his jacket wasn’t all that different from Mr Terrific (except in green instead of red), that in combination with the bleach blonde mushroom cut was just deeply unfortunate. “Can you like, angle yourself more to the left over here? Like stay up there but move over more?” He scoffed at you.
“Why?”
“Looking at you is giving me so much second-hand embarrassment it’s actually hurting my stomach, and since I can’t really throw up, considering I don’t really eat food anymore per say, I was hoping if you angled yourself properly you could like, bloat out the sun? So I can’t actually make out your features, ya know? I-I can deal with the silhouette, but looking at you is just not, I, it-No.”
“Wait” It’s the lady from earlier, her pretty face set in a harsh furrow as she looked over you “You don’t eat food?” You gesture at the void on the front of your head.
“No face, no mouth.”
“Wait, so you’re like this all the time? This seriously isn’t like, a costume for your crime sprees? How do you work anywhere?” You clap your hands together gleefully before pointing at her.
“Excellent question! I don’t! Or I can’t. No one wants to hire someone with no face (which feels like it should be discrimination really) and since I was mutated as a child, experimentally mind you, I don’t think I legally exist? Or if I do, I have no proof of it, sooooo,” You spin back to Mr Terrific and the Green Goof hovering 10 feet in the air, “I don’t have a choice but to find a work around. ATMs just happen to be easy targets. Normally.”
“ATM? Like a full ATM machine?”
“Yes, Green Lantern a full ATM.” One of the spheres spirals out of the formation surrounding you to hover up to ‘Green Lantern’ (stones in glass houses comes to mind with his Mr Terrific comment, but you can’t really judge here either), projecting a small read hologram of you, falling out of your hole and collapsing on top of the ATM that fell before you.
“Okay then, we’ve just got a fancy little thief here. Easy peasy.” The thrusts his fist out towards you, and another fucking hologram appears around you, this time in green, shaping into a large dome…with ridges along the side. (And a handle? What the fuck, is this a giant fucking measuring jug?!)
“Does everyone here just have weird hologram powers, or was I just lucky?” You thought out loud, carefully skirting under the circle of spheres (who were trapped in here with you. Or were you trapped with them? How does that quote even go again?) and tap on the green light. It was completely solid.
“It isn’t a hologram; it’s an energy construct. Obviously I don’t expect you to understand. It’s an incredibly advanced level of thinking-” He turns away from you and his creation as you grab the edge of the spot you had left on the ground earlier and pull it up to sit on it’s side like a giant coin. “-that most people can’t grasp. It’s about focus, and willpower and the desire-” Setting a foot on the bottom of your spot you haul it up. A red light mixes with the green tint in the air around you as the spheres begin to scan you and your spot, a few more passersby stopping to watch as it stretches up and up until you can comfortably step through. Which you do. “-to help people, so you wouldn’t-”
With one swift punch, you strike him straight in the nose, interrupting his tirade and sending him fumbling back in the sky, eyes wide and mouth agape as he stared at you in your perch, feet curled around the lip of your spot, upper body dangling out to reach him.
“Sorry. I was tired of your voice.”
With a snarl on his face, he began to hurtle back at you, so you ducked back into your spot, closing it behind you as you stepped back as the scene of him careening towards you was smothered out by a swirling black void.
The floating droid spheres whirred to life around you, red lasers focusing and quickly you shifted your spots placement, leaving you space to hop out on to the street next to your green jug prison and beside Good-Question-Lady and Probably-A-Photographer-&-Not-A-Sniper-Man, who let out a startled yelp-shriek hybrid. It was probably at your sudden appearance, but could have something to do with exceptional mess of lasers firing behind you as you emerge from your spot before quickly smacking it away and redirecting it towards the Green Lantern, leaving him to scramble away from the hail of friendly fire.
“Howdy! Oooh, do I spy a bagel?” You happily go to snag one from Good-Question-Lady’s bag but she attempts to smack you away in defence of the lunches in her care. You huff indignantly, “It’s not like I’m going to steal it! I already said I can’t eat.”
“Exactly.” She scoffs at you, “What are you gonna do, smell it?”
“Rude…” you grumble as another weight slams into the pavement behind you. You groan and roll your head back, expecting the green guy to have finally stopped flailing and decided to join the fight at ground level, but nope!
Kneeling behind you and rising to her feet, dust curling around her from the crack left in the sidewalk, there’s now a third hero making an appearance. She shrugged herself upright and casually swung a ridiculously heavy looking mace on to her shoulder, a large ornate headpiece saving her from clipping herself in the face and a large feathery cape rippling around her.
“’Sup?” Your face spot spiralled in tightly to a dot as the feathered cape surges up and rests above her shoulders, and you realise that it’s a pair of wings attached to her shoulders as nice as you like. As cool as you thought that was there was only one thought wrapping itself around in your mind at that moment.
“Seriously?! Another one? I’m literally one person and haven’t even committed a crime in this time zone! You do not need three different heroes to fight me, Mr Terrific-Man or whatever, I’m still not clear, and I probably would’ve gone to bat for a bit before I inevitably went into one of my spots and disappeared into an untraceable pocket dimension and would’ve been out of your collective hairs. Is there nothing else going on in this city right now? You can seriously spare three different heroes to fight one person?”
“We don’t need three people,” Mr Terrific mutters as he comes alongside the feathery woman, Green Lantern landing on his other side, slightly singed from the bullet hell you had subjected him to. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of this one.”
“It didn’t look like it, from where I was.” Green Lantern answers easily, plucking at his jacket sleeves to tidy himself. It wasn’t working.
“I only turned up because Guy set off his emergency thing.” Bird-Woman shrugged, wings fluttering behind her, already mentally checked out of the situation. (Good.)
"Seriously?!" That was the most emotion you had heard from him so far, and seen from him given his face had hardened into a dead eyed glare as he rounded on his (teammate?) fellow hero.
"Yes seriously!" Green Lantern defended, "You were letting them walk all over you, gave them complete control of the situation as they yammered on for no good reason!"
"I WAS ASSESSING THE THREAT LEVEL. I still am, given you interrupted the base level information gathering I was doing, before you swooped in acting like you have any idea of what's going on when, surprise surprise, you don't! Oh look, they've got portals, I would've been able to tell you that if you gave me five minutes instead of just barging in, like you're some almighty hero who's better than the rest of us."
"Sooo," You lean into Good-Question-Lady's space, causally dropping a spot over Not-a-Sniper-Man, letting it fall over him and sending his body (from the torso up) appear between you, at perfect height for you to use at an arm-rest, ignoring his high pitched squawks of terror. "Is this like a thing? Are we watching a domestic, or is this like, workplace microaggression central, I can't quite tell."
"I-um... They're normally working on like, bigger scale threats? So not really at street level." You hummed thoughtfully at the bickering heroes, and decide to take the opportunity being handed to you. "Superman's quicker to help with the little things..."
"Alrighty." You peel the spot off the poor ginger man, leaving him to stagger for a moment as he got recombobulated after having his equilibrium displaced and flicked it down beneath the bird woman's feet.
With a shriek, she tumbled into lack of space, the other end of the hole appearing above the heads of her male colleagues as she catches herself on the concrete, one flailing foot mid-air and catching the Green Lantern in the nose (for a second time, nice) sending him stumbling as Mr Terrific ducks out of the way and begins heading straight for you.
With an 'eek!' you drop a hole in the ground and fall backwards through it, dropping straight down on top of him with a solid thud. You quickly roll to your feet and try to put some distance between the two of you, scrambling away as he diverts the now free droid spheres to attack you. Tossing a few spots in the way, they barrel through and into one another as you gather the spots back to yourself, leaving small smouldering wreckages in your wake.
"Sorry!" You hollered over your shoulder, clumsily sprinting away from the group but anxiety tumultuously swirling inside of you as you try to explain yourself, "Shooting me doesn't really work but it still doesn't feel great!"
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Jimmy sighs heartily as the heroes take off after the weird “Spot” person, shifting the drinks trays in his hands as he turns to Lois, watching as she stares after the retreating figures.
“Please tell me you’re not considering making this into something?” Her eyes drag behind the rest of her head for a moment as she turns to him.
“Huh? What?”
“The 'Spot'? Please tell me you aren’t going to try and hunt them down to interview or something. I know you’re still frustrated about the whole Superman thing with Clark, but I really don’t want you to get yourself in trouble chasing down interviews for a story if there isn’t one just cuz they seem slightly more interesting than what you’re covering right now.”
“The Metropolis City Bank shootout is as dry as anything, Olsen. And you heard them though, experiments on children causing full body mutations? And they were wearing something from S.T.A.R. Labs…” Jimmy could already see the rough article plan forming in her head, eyes drifting towards the fight again, dots appearing and asking for connections to be made. “They seemed weirdly casual about living nothing but a life of crime.”
“Uh, yeah. Because they’re, ya’know? A crim-i-nal? From Gotham, they said so themselves?” This was a losing argument, Jimmy knew it already. Lois had found a tiny, infinitesimal, microscopic thread to pull, and she wasn’t about to let blow away and get tangled into nothingness. There was more to that weirdo, anyone with a shred of journalistic instinct could see that, but experimentation? Full body mutation of a child? All you hear is that Gotham was weird, but he didn’t stuff like that was happening over there. This had the makings of being a big juicy bone of a story, and there was no tugging Lois away from it now, her brow set, and grasp of the deli bag determined. Ah shit. “Right, let’s get back to the office before Cat decides barbequing Steve sounds like a better plan then waiting on her stupidly specific sandwich.”
Jimmy was surprised that Lois let him steer her away from her view of the ongoing fight in the city centre, but as he tugged her back into the rush of mid lunch rush foot traffic, he had a sinking feeling this wouldn’t be the last time they cross paths with The Spot.
࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐ ࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐ ࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐
You flinch as a shadow lances across your own, the large silhouette betraying the winged heroine as she swoops down at you, mace swinging at your head. She's quick, quick enough to dodge out of the way of her own swing as it barrels through the portal that appeared at the back of your head and hurtles towards her own face, ducking closer to the ground as she goes. You drop the ground out below you and behind you simultaneously, falling through and kicking up into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her and sending her face first into the concrete.
Using your momentum, you carry on in the air for a moment, flipping the right way up and catching yourself to keep on running into the scattering mass of people out on their lunch breaks as they duck out of the way of things that have begun slamming into the ground behind you.
Risking a glance back as you come to a intersection, you barely dodge the huge fucking green hand as it slams into the ground behind you, following by another, and another, as the Green Lantern swipes at you as you weave under and around them, popping in and out of spots that you drop on the street below you, narrowly dodging a bus baring down on you and using another spot to send a cyclist forward a few feet to avoid the head on collision you were nearly caught. You hop away from that one and find yourself face to face with a ruby red food cart, decorated with the menu of gyros and pitas full of seasoned meats and runny sauces, the scent wafting around you making your not-mouth water, and suddenly you really miss the whole eating thing. The owner (presumably) manning the cart starts swearing wildly and desperately shoos you away as another green transparent hand comes swinging down towards you and you sigh. Is nothing sacred to these people?
You throw down another spot, letting it spread and pull the entire stand, owner and all into a void to avoid the barrelling destruction the hero was throwing about, and you slide along behind it, giving the hand a second to clear the area in it's swipe before the cart emerges, unscathed and drops right back into place. The owner gasps desperately inside as you fall carefully onto the roof-cover-thing and swing down, plucking one of the funny soda's off the display and wave it at him.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"I'm just taking this as compensation, you're welcome for your livelihood not getting trashed."
"CAN YOU EVEN DRINK THAT SHIT WITH NO FACE?" His scream rattled over the chaos in the air around them as you whip a few spots through each other, catching around Green Lantern like the rings of Saturn and pushing him out of sorts, knocked into a zigzag like a precarious tower of blocks.
"You know, these questions are really starting to piss me off, what's it to you if I have no face, maybe I just wanna try the experience out again!" Your response to his question was quick, mirroring your deflection of the Bird-Woman's second attack, her previous attempt obviously not leaving a clear enough message as she once again shoots through the spot you pull off the ground. It sends her divebombing into the racing figure of Mr Terrific, sending them both into the pavement with a slam and a groan. "You know what, I'm going to prove you wrong right now, Mr Food-Cart-Man."
As you pop the tab on your, ew, cream soda can, he ignores your insolence in favour of screaming profanities at something descending quickly behind you, leaving you seconds to spin around and (instinctively) chuck the now open can at the attacker. The attacker you thought would be either the Green Lantern or the Bird Woman, both of whom were impressively persistent but no.
Instead your sloshing can makes contact with and explodes across a large stylised ‘S’ in bright sunny yellow, superimposed across a broad chest of a large, friendly-faced man. He would almost look stupid in the costume if it weren't for the sincerity radiating off him, the fantastical cape actively chasing his heels as he lowered himself to be level with you, the action thoughtlessly gentle. The brilliant red and blue ensemble looked both wacky and almost cool, though any of that effect was ruined by the ridiculous underwear and the fact he was now dripping with caramel coloured liquid.
"Oh come on. How many heroes does it take to fight one criminal?" Not really wanting this to turn into a 4-vs-1 fight no matter how quippy you get, you prance back out of his reach as he raises a hand towards you, just as some sort of delivery van speeds down the road at you. (Apparently no one cares if there's a superhero fight in progress, can't fall behind on deliveries.) With a panicked yelp, the ground falls out beneath you, leaving a gaping hole in the road that the van just barely doesn't speed through, the new & very colourful addition to the fight proving himself more useful then his comrades by catching it before it could go through all the way. You were not so lucky, misplacing your exit spot and falling, gut first, over the intersection lights, leaving you winded and nauseous before plummeting head first the rest of the, what, 15 feet to the ground below.
Or you would have, had you not thrown out one final spot, slipping through just as the colourful ensemble of superheroes join their caped crusader (can you call him that if he's not Batman? He has a cape?) and disappear into the void, finishing your first foray into Metropolis.
You heard right. Metropolis was weird.
࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐ ࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐ ࿐⸻༺༻⸻࿐
Guy's jaw was working over time, chewing on the inside of his cheek angrily as he glared at the empty Spot (fuck) the freak had disappeared into. People have begun congregating in the area again, phones out recording and muttering scornfully at the mess left behind. While this had been one of their tidier dealings with crime/villains/people with powers, there was now a Metropolis intersection with a physics defying flower delivery van sitting half in the cement road, and half dangling 17 feet in the air above the streetlights.
No, the mess left behind was mostly personal, that freakazoid made a fool out of all of them, and as Hawk Girl & Mr Terrific alight beside him and Supes in the middle of the fucking sidewalk, he makes a final call on the situation, because he is not doing that again and he cannot be fucked with arguing about it.
"We're leaving Superman to deal with the Spot." He claps the alien meta on the shoulder and smiles grimly before leaving huffily, "You didn't even get to see most of the action! You'll love it."
Superman eyes the charred pavement behind them, the bedraggled bystanders and the teetering delivery van and sighed.
"Ho boy."
Author's Note: Please excuse any mistakes and any poor dialogue/fight scenes! They are not my forte and I try but it still feels awkward
Anyways, welcome to Polka Dots & Bleach Spots! I'm making this a one shot collection because the idea kept bouncing around in my head like the DVD logo and I need to get them out before I truly go insane.
Reader is based on the Spot from Spider-verse and Polka Dot Man's backstory from The Suicide Squad (2021) because Gun completely redid his origin, so I'm using that to my benefit and smooshing it all together in my brain ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧
Question for yous
I’ve got two ideas I’m working on, project wise (not the anime Treasure Treasure, sorry the writing block is bad with that one) and I’m wondering which one you guys would prefer first (both will be posted, most votes gets priority)
More details below read more
COD 141 (mostly Ghost) x Magical Girl reader AU
Superman (2025) x Reader where the reader is basically spider verse’s Spot
Voting ended onSep 24, 2025
Option A: Task Force 141 (CoD remakes) x Magical girl reader. Reader was chosen as a magical girl as a preteen and thought she defeated the big bad at the time with her childhood best friends. They grow up, grow apart and the magical girl transformation items get hidden again. Reader still feels a sense of duty to protecting people so ends up in the SAS and ends up on 141 …. While on a mission the transformation items are released along with the big bad, each of the members ends up with an item and they work together to take it down (basic jist)
Option B: Superman (2025) x Reader who’s basically the Spot from Spiderverse. Reader is Abner Krill’s youngest sibling and where he ended up with colourful dots that can destroy stuff, Reader ends up losing all their human features and can make holes in space and reality (<- they don’t know the second one yet). Starts off pre-canon with reader as a villain of the week that keeps messing with the justice gangs early years and of course a fresh new Superman. Hijinks ensue and eventually reader gets hero-ified. Endgame Clark x reader
Righto, looks like I’ll be doing a couple of chapters of the spot story first! The first one should hopefully be up by the end of the week (I’ll be waiting for after ao3 comes back after maintenance, I try to upload across platforms at the same time 👍)
Question for yous
I’ve got two ideas I’m working on, project wise (not the anime Treasure Treasure, sorry the writing block is bad with that one) and I’m wondering which one you guys would prefer first (both will be posted, most votes gets priority)
More details below read more
COD 141 (mostly Ghost) x Magical Girl reader AU
Superman (2025) x Reader where the reader is basically spider verse’s Spot
Voting ended onSep 24, 2025
Option A: Task Force 141 (CoD remakes) x Magical girl reader. Reader was chosen as a magical girl as a preteen and thought she defeated the big bad at the time with her childhood best friends. They grow up, grow apart and the magical girl transformation items get hidden again. Reader still feels a sense of duty to protecting people so ends up in the SAS and ends up on 141 …. While on a mission the transformation items are released along with the big bad, each of the members ends up with an item and they work together to take it down (basic jist)
Option B: Superman (2025) x Reader who’s basically the Spot from Spiderverse. Reader is Abner Krill’s youngest sibling and where he ended up with colourful dots that can destroy stuff, Reader ends up losing all their human features and can make holes in space and reality (<- they don’t know the second one yet). Starts off pre-canon with reader as a villain of the week that keeps messing with the justice gangs early years and of course a fresh new Superman. Hijinks ensue and eventually reader gets hero-ified. Endgame Clark x reader
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