A possible series of short stories that are based entirely around the same world, exploring things that I feel comic books tend to avoid exploring.
Explorations (Kitchen Sink Sci-fi/Fantasy, Oneshot(s?), Comicbooks)
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OP and snippet 1
Author's Preface: The status quo is a staple of comicbook universes for reasons of accessibility and authorial preference. Outside of Events, or highly advertised series, nobody wants to open a comic and wonder what the hell is going on. The USA has to be the USA, Europe must be Europe. The Earth must remain like our own. It leads to... a lack. Aliens invade and there is no greater political reach beyond the stars that doesn't involve alien and spacefaring heroes. Magic is real, but it's always being hidden or destroyed because otherwise it'd be a normal, mundane college course. Events resolve so utterly that no trace of them exists apart from the side comment of a muggle a month later.
I want to explore a world where that's not the case.
---
Materials
Harold tackled the younger man as he stumbled over his own feet trying to turn. The boy in the red hoodie crashed into the wall and dropped whatever he was fishing out of his pocket, and a quick glance showed it was a fucking train ticket.
You have got to be goddamn kidding me.
"Kid, do you have any fucking idea how dangerous that was?" he said, holding onto the kid by his arm, pushing him against the wall. "A train ticket? What the hell were you thinking? If you were any further away, if I thought that was a gun, I could have shot-"
"Holy shit Harry, why the fuck are you so fast!?"
Harold's partner, Kennedy, wasn't out of breath, but the sprint to catch the kid, running on foot from the scene of a robbery wasn't what he was used to. Cops weren't athletes, really - and the ones patrolling the part of New Liverpool City that was colloquially called Deathtown due to the crime didn't like to run, anyways.
Harold, a square muscular mass of a man, was a contrast to Kennedy, who wasn't fat, but had no muscle at all. A pencil pusher in a badge.
"I keep active. Kid pulled out a train ticket like it was a goddamn gun on me." Harold gestured at the ground of the alley. Kennedy obliged and bent down to pick it up.
"I don't think the kid stole a train ticke-" His hand brushed the ticket and it burned away in a blast of flame, bright enough that Harold winced and looked away.
"Kennedy!"
Kennedy was gone. The kid however wasn't, despite the quick attempt to wrench himself free.
"What the fuck was that!? Tell me right now!"
"It was a fucking ticket outta town, I don't know!" Harold bent his arm a little upwards, and the younger boy screamed. "Fuck! That's all I know!"
"Where'd you get it, huh?"
"Eliza Graves gave us it!"
Us? There's more of them.
Harold fished for his handcuffs. "You fucked up real bad. Magical artifacts without a permit is a longer sentence than guns, weed ad a dead hooker in the trunk at the same time, you know that, right?"
"I didn't do anything!"
Harold roared. "You pulled that out like a goddamn rifle, you knew it'd do something!" He wrenched the kid as he moved his hands in position to cuff him, and then marched him back to the car, ranting the whole time. "Taking a ticket from the goddamn Oliver Twist Fagin gingerbread witch herself! Are you out of your goddamn mind?"
"It was just a magic ticket! It's not hurting people!" The boy hesitated for a moment. "I think?"
"Kid, you said that's a ticket out of town. Hell itself is out of town!"
"It's not going to send him to hell," a woman cut in.
Harold turned around after he'd shoved the kid in the back of the police car. It was one of the street level heroes. Green and black armoured costume, the face covered, barring some black hair leaking out of the hood.
"So where is my partner?"
"Where else," she said. "On the nearest train leaving the city." She held out a hand to shake. "Hexbeacon. I'd like to talk to your perp."
Harold didn't take the offer. "If I let you talk to him, he walks free."
"If he goes to court, I won't b able to stop Graves. She's been offering magical trinkets like cursed candy all across the city to anyone under the age of eighteen who'll listen, and it's causing havok. I can stop it before it stops being magical train tickets that take you elsewhere and keys that open any door."
"We have the Magical department for that."
"And superheroes are beyond rapid response. I can stop it all-"
"Costumed vigilantes are cowboys who cause half these issues. I can't arrest you right now, but I'm thinking of at least three crimes I can probably come up with."
"Please. She's offering cursed toys out as we speak. I just stopped a ten year old kid from killing his older sister with a toy gun that shoots lightning an hour ago."
Harold stepped back, and let Hexbeacon interrogate the kid. He didn't like it.
I want to explore a world where that's not the case.
---
Materials
Harold tackled the younger man as he stumbled over his own feet trying to turn. The boy in the red hoodie crashed into the wall and dropped whatever he was fishing out of his pocket, and a quick glance showed it was a fucking train ticket.
You have got to be goddamn kidding me.
"Kid, do you have any fucking idea how dangerous that was?" he said, holding onto the kid by his arm, pushing him against the wall. "A train ticket? What the hell were you thinking? If you were any further away, if I thought that was a gun, I could have shot-"
"Holy shit Harry, why the fuck are you so fast!?"
Harold's partner, Kennedy, wasn't out of breath, but the sprint to catch the kid, running on foot from the scene of a robbery wasn't what he was used to. Cops weren't athletes, really - and the ones patrolling the part of New Liverpool City that was colloquially called Deathtown due to the crime didn't like to run, anyways.
Harold, a square muscular mass of a man, was a contrast to Kennedy, who wasn't fat, but had no muscle at all. A pencil pusher in a badge.
"I keep active. Kid pulled out a train ticket like it was a goddamn gun on me." Harold gestured at the ground of the alley. Kennedy obliged and bent down to pick it up.
"I don't think the kid stole a train ticke-" His hand brushed the ticket and it burned away in a blast of flame, bright enough that Harold winced and looked away.
"Kennedy!"
Kennedy was gone. The kid however wasn't, despite the quick attempt to wrench himself free.
"What the fuck was that!? Tell me right now!"
"It was a fucking ticket outta town, I don't know!" Harold bent his arm a little upwards, and the younger boy screamed. "Fuck! That's all I know!"
"Where'd you get it, huh?"
"Eliza Graves gave us it!"
Us? There's more of them.
Harold fished for his handcuffs. "You fucked up real bad. Magical artifacts without a permit is a longer sentence than guns, weed ad a dead hooker in the trunk at the same time, you know that, right?"
"I didn't do anything!"
Harold roared. "You pulled that out like a goddamn rifle, you knew it'd do something!" He wrenched the kid as he moved his hands in position to cuff him, and then marched him back to the car, ranting the whole time. "Taking a ticket from the goddamn Oliver Twist Fagin gingerbread witch herself! Are you out of your goddamn mind?"
"It was just a magic ticket! It's not hurting people!" The boy hesitated for a moment. "I think?"
"Kid, you said that's a ticket out of town. Hell itself is out of town!"
"It's not going to send him to hell," a woman cut in.
Harold turned around after he'd shoved the kid in the back of the police car. It was one of the street level heroes. Green and black armoured costume, the face covered, barring some black hair leaking out of the hood.
"So where is my partner?"
"Where else," she said. "On the nearest train leaving the city." She held out a hand to shake. "Hexbeacon. I'd like to talk to your perp."
Harold didn't take the offer. "If I let you talk to him, he walks free."
"If he goes to court, I won't b able to stop Graves. She's been offering magical trinkets like cursed candy all across the city to anyone under the age of eighteen who'll listen, and it's causing havok. I can stop it before it stops being magical train tickets that take you elsewhere and keys that open any door."
"We have the Magical department for that."
"And superheroes are beyond rapid response. I can stop it all-"
"Costumed vigilantes are cowboys who cause half these issues. I can't arrest you right now, but I'm thinking of at least three crimes I can probably come up with."
"Please. She's offering cursed toys out as we speak. I just stopped a ten year old kid from killing his older sister with a toy gun that shoots lightning an hour ago."
Harold stepped back, and let Hexbeacon interrogate the kid. He didn't like it.
Roswellville
As a child, Emily Reaver had once thought the new name for West Glory City's formerly named Kirkwood Heights was stupid. Sure, Roswellville was basically the alien area, but it felt uniquely weird to her in a way that Chinatowns, Jewish Quarters, and Little Italy's. Then she went and visited one, and saw the difference.
The buildings in Roswellville were mostly human, but three of them had been knocked down and rebuilt to galactic community standards, and it showed, with the several balconies, red tinted windows covering the outside, odd angles where floors extended in strange ways, the reverse taper on the outside leading to a top floor wider than the bottom one, and the expansive doors on each of the three buildings. She couldn't tell if it were an alien architect trying to ape humanity with their own twist or a human one experimenting with New-galactic style, which was a school of architecture that arrived in the eighties after the martian-earth agreements, and had upset some people far more than brutalism ever could.
Reaver thought that the fact you could take a brick to the glass of an alien inspired one more easily than the concrete of a brutalist one was a big part of it.
She stepped through the main entrance and was immediately hailed down by a Martian in a suit. "Emily! Xari's waiting in her office!"
"Thanks, Jackie. She's not busy, right?"
The four eyed alien shook her head, ruffling the large feathers that stuck out where a ponytail on a human would be. "Nope, just head right up."
Emily climbed the stairs, each step a little more filled with trepidation. Straight out of college on a biochemistry course, she ended up working for Greene and Ropher Pharmaceuticals, researching and developing transxenotypical drugs. After a an incident that was effectively a faerie assisted terrorist attack, Reaver had spent five months as one of the stimulants she was researching, only taking consciousness (and by that, she means taking full conciousness control of the injestee) when any "Reaver Essence" was coursing through the biostream of anyone in the galaxy.
In those short months she was split over a thousand ways as people learned the details and abused her circumstances, from a failed attempt by a US black-ops team to turn her into a superweapon, a more successful attempt at coercing her into being party to a kidnapping on the galactic senate, and being used as a goddamn hostage herself countless times.
One particularly awful "user" was some jackass alien who'd fully clued into the whole situation early and had both proliferated her magically-tied drug throughout the galaxy and simultaneously used her as a fucking spy network. The utter satisfaction she had when his fucking spaceship was raided by galactic peacekeeping forces was not enough for what he'd done, but she had enough and swore to never even touch that part of the world again. No more magic, no more superheroes or supervillains, no more leaving planet earth, no interviews, and no more laboratories.
Just her, maybe Xari, and a cottage outside the city.
Xari was on her lunch break, drinking tea, her face scrunched up when Emily entered the office and closed the door behind her.
"Eating spicy food again?"
"Cucumbers are absolutely delicious," Xari replied without hesitation. "Just- too much this time."
The Martian palette was fun in how similar yet odd it was. Gourds were spicy, apples were savoury, and peppers were toxic, which was an amusing irony, seeing at how birdlike the Martians were. Aliens could eat alien food simply because of convergent evolution, scientists claimed. All sapient carbon aliens were of a similar body structure, and it was because carbon based life could only veer so much in any direction chemically. It was why paracetamol was a galactic staple drug.
As well as Reaver Essence.
"I thought I made my fruit ramen the same every time?" Emily asked, trying not to dwell too much in her mind. Her heartrate was racing.
"I like the surprise," Xari smiled coyly. "You visited me at work. I guess you have something to ask, beyond tomorrow's date?"
Take the plunge, Emily.
"Well, heh... I was curious about... renting. I mean, you complained about your apartment, and I uh-"
"Oh. If you bought a house for us to live together in, you didn't have to." Emily's heart sank. "I'd have been happy living with you in your current apartment."
She perked up again at the last bit. "Former, now. It's um, a little out of town. But I own it."
Xari hummed teasingly. "If I didn't know any better Emily, I'd suspect you're trying to hide me away from the hustle of the city."
"I'm not a fan of the city," Emily tried. "So are you- um... would you? It's far too large for myself."
"The commute would be annoying," Xari smiled and leaned back in her seat, before standing up, placing her thermos of tea down, and walking over to Emily. "but I'd love to. I'd be the wonderfully successful businesswoman with an amazing girlfriend at home who loves me so much she spent some of that money she earned in court to buy a place for me to live with her in."
The buildings in Roswellville were mostly human, but three of them had been knocked down and rebuilt to galactic community standards, and it showed, with the several balconies, red tinted windows covering the outside, odd angles where floors extended in strange ways, the reverse taper on the outside leading to a top floor wider than the bottom one, and the expansive doors on each of the three buildings. She couldn't tell if it were an alien architect trying to ape humanity with their own twist or a human one experimenting with New-galactic style, which was a school of architecture that arrived in the eighties after the martian-earth agreements, and had upset some people far more than brutalism ever could.
Reaver thought that the fact you could take a brick to the glass of an alien inspired one more easily than the concrete of a brutalist one was a big part of it.
She stepped through the main entrance and was immediately hailed down by a Martian in a suit. "Emily! Xari's waiting in her office!"
"Thanks, Jackie. She's not busy, right?"
The four eyed alien shook her head, ruffling the large feathers that stuck out where a ponytail on a human would be. "Nope, just head right up."
Emily climbed the stairs, each step a little more filled with trepidation. Straight out of college on a biochemistry course, she ended up working for Greene and Ropher Pharmaceuticals, researching and developing transxenotypical drugs. After a an incident that was effectively a faerie assisted terrorist attack, Reaver had spent five months as one of the stimulants she was researching, only taking consciousness (and by that, she means taking full conciousness control of the injestee) when any "Reaver Essence" was coursing through the biostream of anyone in the galaxy.
In those short months she was split over a thousand ways as people learned the details and abused her circumstances, from a failed attempt by a US black-ops team to turn her into a superweapon, a more successful attempt at coercing her into being party to a kidnapping on the galactic senate, and being used as a goddamn hostage herself countless times.
One particularly awful "user" was some jackass alien who'd fully clued into the whole situation early and had both proliferated her magically-tied drug throughout the galaxy and simultaneously used her as a fucking spy network. The utter satisfaction she had when his fucking spaceship was raided by galactic peacekeeping forces was not enough for what he'd done, but she had enough and swore to never even touch that part of the world again. No more magic, no more superheroes or supervillains, no more leaving planet earth, no interviews, and no more laboratories.
Just her, maybe Xari, and a cottage outside the city.
Xari was on her lunch break, drinking tea, her face scrunched up when Emily entered the office and closed the door behind her.
"Eating spicy food again?"
"Cucumbers are absolutely delicious," Xari replied without hesitation. "Just- too much this time."
The Martian palette was fun in how similar yet odd it was. Gourds were spicy, apples were savoury, and peppers were toxic, which was an amusing irony, seeing at how birdlike the Martians were. Aliens could eat alien food simply because of convergent evolution, scientists claimed. All sapient carbon aliens were of a similar body structure, and it was because carbon based life could only veer so much in any direction chemically. It was why paracetamol was a galactic staple drug.
As well as Reaver Essence.
"I thought I made my fruit ramen the same every time?" Emily asked, trying not to dwell too much in her mind. Her heartrate was racing.
"I like the surprise," Xari smiled coyly. "You visited me at work. I guess you have something to ask, beyond tomorrow's date?"
Take the plunge, Emily.
"Well, heh... I was curious about... renting. I mean, you complained about your apartment, and I uh-"
"Oh. If you bought a house for us to live together in, you didn't have to." Emily's heart sank. "I'd have been happy living with you in your current apartment."
She perked up again at the last bit. "Former, now. It's um, a little out of town. But I own it."
Xari hummed teasingly. "If I didn't know any better Emily, I'd suspect you're trying to hide me away from the hustle of the city."
"I'm not a fan of the city," Emily tried. "So are you- um... would you? It's far too large for myself."
"The commute would be annoying," Xari smiled and leaned back in her seat, before standing up, placing her thermos of tea down, and walking over to Emily. "but I'd love to. I'd be the wonderfully successful businesswoman with an amazing girlfriend at home who loves me so much she spent some of that money she earned in court to buy a place for me to live with her in."