One step, after the other.
That's what his dad always says. Life doesn't stop for you or for anyone else, always keep moving, one foot after the other and one step after the other, never stop moving, otherwise you will be left behind. A philosophy that kept them afloat after years of being one bad day away from homelessness in the middle of New York, the infamous city that never sleeps.
And a philosophy that kept him alive as many others took a wrong step and could not continue.
Being a child in this city is hard when you live smacked in the center of the new Teeth territory, especially when they don't allow you to leave and you have a sick father to take care of. Fucked up as it was, violence has always been the answer with the Teeth, and like the hedonistic nihilists thY they are they don't care about much beyond blood, sex, and drugs. Finding a job as a kid in the center of the territory of the worst gang in New York was a nightmare, but it wasn't all that bad considering they still had a roof over their heads.
And then his dad got sick.
He didn't know what sickness it was, but he couldn't get our of bed and no ambulance was stupid enough to enter the Teeth territory after what the Butchet 12 did to the last people who called an ambulance into their territory... Derek was still young then, but he still remembers the blood and screamed as the crazy idiot used his powers to skewer the paramedics and hang them from the windows of the the apartments.
Every single piece of them.
Large swaths of skin hanging on one, a few entrails on the other, an eye here, a dick there, a few bones pulled apart here, long stretch of the lungs that were pulled taunt there and- oh, it was a shower of gore everywhere.
His inability to speak was what made him "weak" in the eyes of many. It was a psychological thing, his vocal cords were all there and theoretically useful, but he couldn't find it in himself to form the words and push them out of his lips. Whenever he gets kicked or punched by somebody, he can scream or make some painful noises, but words are what abandon him.
One foot after the other.
One step, then another.
Keep moving.
With a weary sigh, Derek ducked over after a fallen piece of debri from the fight between the Teeth and the Protectore last week- fucking assholes just making everything worse. Capes, man, they just end up making everything worse by trying to keep everything together. His dad used to speak of Vikare and his powers, how he would soar around and help others, and how his death was what changed everything for the worse, how the Golden Age of Capes ended with the powerful swing of a baseball bat.
Sometimes, he fantasizes.
Him, crawling under the distracted eyes of those stupid enforcers that believed him deaf as well as mute, invade the Teeth base, where the Butcher would put their blood sport for all to see, and waiting for them... It was just a dream, he knew the stupid woman could not even sleep properly and she was constantly aware of blood, thus constantly aware of anyone close to her so his fantasy of bashing the Butcher's skull while they're asleep was just that: a fantasy.
But a man can dream.
He was just going to snatch his hidden stash of "merchandise" - drugs, he is a drug dealer. Okay!? His dad is dying, he has nothing else to do but sell drugs! -when he paused. The weight of his satchel was lighter, and he immediately opened the bag-
"Hello there."
-and he closed it immediately after.
There was a man, inside his man. A man with purple eyes that had looked at him from the darkness of his bag and smiled, waved his hand and greeted him. With an almost dumbfounded expression of his face, Derek lowered his head and looked back at his bag- it was impossible for somebody to be inside of this thing! It weighted absolutely lighter than a full grown man, and it was too small to even hold a man inside.
Is he going crazy?
A hand tapped his back- he turned around immediately only to see this long arm stretching over and around him, with way too many joints, the arm clicked and clacked like the bones were playing some sort of symphony before it stopped. The arm led directly to the bag, and the hand tugged the cord that tied the bag closed, undoing his hurried knot with an almost careless and suave gesture.
"Now, that was quite rude."
That same voice spoke, and a head pushed out of the bag. Derek felt his arms freeze before he let go of the bag, letting it fall to the ground instantly. The man, like a spider crawling out from a crevice too tight for its large bulbous body, seemed to squish his way out of the bag by simply bending and twisting his entire massive body that stretched out of the bag before contortions of impossible forms and shapes cracked the man in half.
No blood spilled out.
Instead, another hand pushed its way out of the hole formed by the cracking, and a card floated out. The man repaired himself, and he simply shaked his entire existence back into being a simple normal man.
A normal, regular guy.
"Here you go, kid." The card, purple with golden lettering, allowed him to see the sky by reflecting it. Above, the clouds were dark. "An invitation to the next Chaos Game. Do you accept it?"
[You have been invited!]
[Gambler]
He accepted- Immediately, the man smiled and... swallowed him?
It was weird.
There was darkness and just... a thought echoed through his mind: What sort of fool would not agree, would not take a chance, would not accept such an invitation?
January 12nd, 2011
Brockton Bay
"I refuse."
"Did you just Jojo reference-d me?"
"I- what?"
Danny never thought himself much. He is a realist. He is a man who sees things as they are. It's not his fault that until very recently, things were going to shit.
He had arrived at his home late. His daughter was in a friend's house doing something, that Theo boy was somebody he did not know how to react beyond feeling like his daughter was too good for him, despite her insistence that they were "not dating", even though it was pretty obvious the kid worshiped the ground she walked on.
Just like her mother.
Danny didn't know just how lucky he was that Annette had chosen him- the dorky, the nerdy, and the stupidly oblivious guy who didn't even know the girl who he spent hours talking about Dungeons and Dragons with was actually flirting with him and trying to get into his pants for the past two years. It was inconceivable to his eyes that somebody who looked like she had been blessed by Aphrodite herself- nay, a woman even more beautiful than that Greek goddess.
He just- what did she see on him of all people?
So he thought it was all on his head, and he respected her. Until one day, after knocking the teeth out of yet another guy who had tried getting their hands on his friend, said friend pulled him aside and jumped him.
That's how they started dating after.
Annette, in her fiery passion for social justice and feminism- which Danny, raised by a single mother, youngest of 3 sisters, completely understood and was totally on board with -decided to make more female friends on college... and then she somehow got involved with Lustrum? It was a pretty toxic environment and they almost broke up because she wanted to follow their movement, but he saw the writing on the wall, the increasingly aggressive looks those women were giving him whenever he went to pick her up from her rallies, the way those women tried to convince Annette of false things, and the way they seemed to almost...
Well, get even more aggressive with passing time.
It was an echo chamber of toxic affirmations that spiraled into an echo chamber mixed in with a cultist ideology of female supremacy that became downright hostile to all men and males. He and Annette came to a very strong disagreement when one of the girls wanted to stab him and get rid of him so Annette could be "free" of him but missed, and it became a brawl, and that spiraled into a fight that had the cops called and- Well, in the end, it became his word against the word of fifteen different women.
Annette included.
He went to jail because of that.
They said he tried killing one of them. They said he was trying to "rape" her. They said so many things that it came to a very complicated issue that he only got out of because of- ironically enough, considering the bay -the PRT. It was later revealed that one of Lustrum's gang members was a Social Thinker and a possible Master who "poisoned" the social gatherings, making many women abandon their families to join the gang.
That information made him, technically, a suspected Master victim. He was taken into a Master/Stranger room, and he was tested... apparently he had been subtly mastered? It was more akin to a Stranger effect that made him more aggressive or less likely to listen to reason, so his charges were dropped under the Parahuman Master/Stranger Aggression Law, which dictates that all victims of a Master or Stranger Parahuman who can cause them to do actions against their will are to be presumed under their effect until proven otherwise, go through examination, and be released of all charges should they be truly affected.
And he was.
So all charges were dropped on him.
Later, Annette would come to apologize- she was also affected by the Parahuman of Lustrum's gang who had been subtly and not so subtly manipulating the women, making them more aggressive, more radical, more reckless, and more willing to die for their cause. She had gotten worried about him and decided to leave, the guilt eating away at her heart when she took the girls side instead of his, and that was what ended up saving her in the end because the Lustrum gang would end up rioting.
It was the effect of the death of that Thinker, it sent a ripple of something that made the women under their influence go berserker.
Annette, due to being under voluntary Master/Stranger screening at the time, was one of the few that was not affected.
57 men were castrated and killed due to the death of the Thinker.
In this number, it included a 3 year old boy, his 16 year old brother who had taken him to play ball in the park where the riot ended up starting. Ever since that day, ever since he saw first hand the effect Parahumans had on the world, he started to...
Not dislike them, bit distrust them.
The veil had been pulled out of his eyes, so to say. He used to see them as true comic book heroes, a nerd like him was quite keen on some discontinued things that he grew up with like Detective Comics, Marvel Comics, and more. People actually had powers now, why would anyone read about them? Instead of wanting to see Spider-Man swinging from building to building, people wanted to see Parahumans and their powers on paper.
He still has the very first edition of the Protectorate Pals comic that was discontinued in 1989.
The death of his soulmate, the other half of his being, was what truly shattered him. He had been dealing with years of constant work, the stress of the riots that had ended up creating the boat graveyard- he continuously insisted that it was way too convenient that some people went crazy and rammed boats into other boats as a form of protest, it stank so much of Parahuman influence, but nobody believed him without any proof -plus the death of his industry that was taking a toll.
When she died, he didn't believe it.
How could Annette, goddess of his heart, have died to a simple car accident? That was impossible! She is a star, she is the light, she is the burning heat in his heart. She is not meant to die in such a mundane way, she is meant to die in a blaze of glory.
Like she always wanted to do.
She would joke to him, about going out in a blaze of glory like a hero. How she would wield her cunning like Odysseus, her courage like Heracles, her soul like Orpheus, and have a happy ending like Perseus.
She loved the Greek classics.
She wasn't meant to die in an accident. Which is why he didn't believe- which is why it broke him so badly when he saw her there, bloodied, legs missing on that fucking cold steel table as they were preparing. She looked so pale, so cold, so... dead. And isn't that the thing? The dead always look, well, dead. They're dead! They should look dead- but it felt like a slap to the face to see Annette like that. A woman so full of mirth, of life, of happiness and heat and fire and passion and heart- dead.
Cold, blue, pale.
Dead.
So, when his daughter- the only one left he had -was sent to the hospital, he almost broke down again. Fear, fear blinded him and he signed those damn papers that he wishes he hadn't, but he is both angry and ashamed to say that the money given and used to pay the hospital bill- 130,000 dollars -was what he needed. What they needed.
But it felf like a betrayal. Like his daughter, fragile and innocent, had been stabbed in the back by him as he couldn't fight back at whatever happened- he only saw the video once, her banging on the door to be freed, the dread on her voice, the screams turning to gurgles of pain and vomit spewing out of her mouth.
He knew that sound, because he also threw up after watching that video.
He had been planning to burn that fucking school to the ground when he got the call that his daughter had woken up and had been dismissed by Panacea. He went to pick her up and there he also met her... friend.
His dad senses were tingling.
He didn't like the guy on principle for the entirety of two whole minutes before he saw him figuratively (and later literally) kneel before her when she asked him to get something for her... and the next few hours after they got home were a blur. He watched the second episode of the Chaos Games under his daughter's request, all the hours they spent together sitting down in front of a phone screen while his daughter told him what she had been thinking as it happened- and only later did she show him she was a parahuman.
Oh yeah, seeing your daughter literally grow spider legs out of her skin makes you VERY sure she is a parahuman.
And then he watched the end of the episode.
He watched her get shot in the head by FUCKING PIGGOTT (and watched how that Theo boy helped her... hmph, he'll never be good enough- okay, maybe he's not so bad)
He watched her recover.
He watched her eat a glowing rock.
He watched her lose an arm.
He watched her outsmart an asshole.
He watched her destroy a universe.
He watched her become what many despised and feared.
And he watched her grow from a girl into a lady right before his eyes... Annette would be so proud of her. So when she asked him for his help, he immediately agreed.
But as he stand right now before a very normal man that had somehow normat entered through the closed door of his home, sipping coffee and talking about normal things, he was suddenly very not so normal about the idea of getting powers of his own.
So when the man offered his the card, he refused.
"Oh, but you see, what sort of God would I be if I followed the words of mortals? And don't you want to help your daughter? Don't you want to be beside her and face all problems she would face? Don't you want to be a father, be her father, and protect her from all dangers?"
Danny clenched his teeth as each word echoed inside his skull- he wanted to, but there was no guarantee he would win and he would stand proud by his daughter's side.
No guarantee that she would be proud enough to call him her father even if he won.
"And besides..."
The man pulled something out of his sleeve.
It was a feather. Beautiful, golden and orange and red and pink and somehow purple all at the same time, emanating a beautiful shimmering heat of power.
"Don't you want her back?"
And before his eyes, a screen appeared. Floating, familiar, and with golden letters into a purple background just like the card he had rejected a few moments ago.
Taunting him, provoking him, whispering promises that he could never keep.
[Pheonix Feather]
|Legendary Item|Black Souls - "Enraged by the haughty bird, god picked its wings clean" placing this feather on top of a corpse whose soul still exists and is not prevented from being resurrected by a legendary rank effect or above will revive them in exchange for burning the feather.
Restock Timer: 720 hours
And then he looked down at the card.
[You have been invited!]
[Bark]
Everyone believed him to only have a bark.
"All bark, no bite." His father would say.
'Annette... I guess I'm Orpheus now.'
"Well, if you insist."
Let's see how hard he can bite.