#green shadows

I have been tossing around a Bruno and Macaque fic for a bit and yeah, that is the vibe. My thought process, however, was the Madrigal kids going on a school trip to China and Bruno being a chaperone (pushed by Alma) who ends up entranced with the cool shadow play they watch.

And maybe the puppeteer.

These characters came to me in a dream, and as I woke up I had the visual of a pair of green and black lights rocketing through the sky, and since then I've been working on fleshing them out as actual characters

Jess (she/her) is a Green Lantern, she got her ring years ago and was trained by John Stewart. She was posted to Earth, told that one day there would be a society-destroying alien sent to Earth that she would have to neutralize.

Vikka (she/her) was sent to Earth to destroy human civilization and cause destruction, with the ability to create hard-light constructs, and the ability to evolve to overcome obstacles that stop her from her goal.

I still have a lot of details to clear up and uncover, but the idea is that Jess initially fought Vikka in order to try and stop her, but found that the malice she was showing wasn't genuine, and tried showing Vikka kindness instead, and was able to stop her from destroying anything more. Now, Vikka lives with Jess, learning what it means to be human, and learning about their culture.

It was September now, and that meant that it was time for Jess to get back to active duty as a Green Lantern.  Like before, she was posted to Earth, since there were so many Lanterns already, and she was still technically only a trainee.  With the amount of extraterrestrials that landed on Earth, however, she was still getting plenty of on-the-job experience.

Some days, the job was easy, just capture a space gerbil or something that was running amok on the Watchtower. Maybe a wayward asteroid that just needed a little course correction, and she might get another hero to help, no big deal.  There were fun days, too, when some other dimensional weirdo would appear in the middle of a city, and she got to put to use all the imagination she had from when she was a kid, watching superheroes battle on TV, conjuring objects with her ring to drive her opponent into defeat.

"And then there's days like today," Jess mumbled to herself, picking herself up out of the newly formed crater in the dirt, rubble in her hair, before launching herself back at the manta-like alien that had thrown her to the ground, her large green baseball bat already swinging.

There are different ways to observe a superhero fight, each with varying levels of danger. The most dangerous, one might guess, is being a direct part of combat, exampled by the stinger plunging into Jess's side, eliciting a scream of pain.  Next would be those on the scene of the fight, who scramble to avoid beams of energy shot from the combatants, trying to find safety in the chaos.  Depending on the reporter and camera crew, they may be put in between these two levels, doing their best to get a good view of the hero, trying to to track her as she gets slammed into the side of a building.

The lowest level of danger, of course, is those at home, watching the battle as a live broadcast, watching in terror as her friend yells in pain when the alien wraps its spiky tail around her arm.  Someone watching the TV can do nothing more than clutch a pillow to her chest and watch in fear as the most important person in her life dangles from an alien appendage, her blood looking alarmingly dark against her green suit.

"I hate days like today," the lantern mumbled to herself as her eyelids became heavy, faintly recognizing the whistle of an arrow as it thudded into the alien's face next to her, and a second arrow latching onto her back. The last thing she felt before she lost consciousness was the feeling of something warm covering her body and cocooning her.



The moment Jess’s eyes closed, Vikka froze.  The chatter of the reporters faded away, the sights of claws and arrows on the camera became dull, and everything brightened.  One sound pierced through the dull ringing of the world, a metallic clink, and when looking down to find the source, Vikka found her bracelet in pieces on the ground.

Jess was born on April 19th of 20XX, making her 22 years old when she met Vikka.

Vikka was born on ... Well that's a difficult one to answer, actually. Part of the difficulty is that Vikka is an alien, engineered to be a force of destruction on Earth, similar in development to that of Superboy from the Young Justice cartoon. She's not been alive for a long time, but she's physically and mentally around Jess's age.

Let's see, I've got an idea on how to give her a birthday, though

"Huh! Would ya look at that?" Jess said, scrolling on her phone while eating some cereal, and then turning it to show Vikka. "You've been here for almost a whole year! We should celebrate!"

Vikka, for her part, knew about human celebrations, birthdays, anniversaries, these were all things that were covered in chapter 6 of the Justice League's Introduction to Earth and Human Society video lessons she had been given, but all the same, she looked confused.

"What's up buttercup? Don't tell me you've already forgotten what a party is?" The lantern said, patting the spot on the couch next to her.

"It's not that, I just realized I don't have a birthday," she said, sitting down and leaning her head on her partner's shoulder, "it's not easy to figure out when you were born when you were made in a giant test tube,"

"mhm," came Jess's response as she leaned her head on the alien's.

"In space no less!" Accompanied by a dramatic arm gesture.

"hmm..." The lantern hummed against Vikka's head, "here's an idea, what if we say your birthday is the day you chose your name? It is your birth, in a way"

"Oh! I like that idea! Let's see," Vikka began counting on her fingers, "Summer month, June July August, which one wa-"

"June 15th! I got it saved in my calendar right here!" Jess said, pointing to a black heart in a calendar on her phone. She gave a half-hug, wrapping the other arm around her partner, in addition to pressing a kiss on top of her head. "How do you like it, your highness? Is that a good birthday for you?"

"It's not my fault that you're the perfect height to be my headrest, its just how the cards get played," the lantern said in a sweet voice, indeed resting her head upon her companion's, feeling the irritation radiating off of the girl below her.

"If I remember correctly, it very much is your fault that I'm this height, I used to be tall enough to reach the ceiling here," the alien hissed at the girl above her, not wanting to disturb the other people in line.

"Mhm, yeah, you were real scary, I bet you could have terrified at least a kitten, a puppy if we're talking ultimate levels of power," Jess said, poking Vikka's sides, having already decided what she was going to order, and now waiting on her shorter friend.

"I decimated cities, you should be bowing down to me!" said Vikka, swatting at the fingers poking her and distracting her from her lunch-to-be.

"Bowing down to you? That's one way to be taller than me, though if you want me on my knees, you need only ask, oh grand destroyer of the worlds of puppies and kittens," said the lantern in a playful tone, before being elbowed in the stomach, and then pressing a hand to her forehead "Oh I've been wounded! I must alert the League right away that you've gone AWOL!"

"Oh hush, you still serve a purpose, so I'm not gonna destroy you right away, though if you keep calling me short, it may tip the scales against you," the alien conceded, turning her attention back to the menu above the counter.

"Mhm, I love you too~" Said the taller girl with a grin, hugging her arms around the other girl's shoulders.

Space, a beautiful thing.

Many people love to look at the stars far above, and marvel at what it's like up in the galaxy.  As a Green Lantern, Jess had the rare pleasure of flying through the void, and seeing alien constellations with her own eyes.  Some friends of hers got her into constellations, actually, and she had long ago been taught the various stars and constellations that make up the night sky.

This is how Jess knew that one of the constellations she was seeing right now wasn't in the right place.

"Don't get up, the doctors said that you're going to be physically weak from the poison that you got injected with," said the constellation sternly, walking towards her and waving a gloved hand in front of her face, checking her responsiveness, "you're going to be out of it, too, so don't try anything goofy, or I will tie you to the gurney."

It was around that moment that Jess's mind cleared up enough to get a bearing on her surroundings.  The stars she was seeing were in fact stars, albeit outside a very thick window in the Watchtower medical wing.  The lost constellation, however, was not in fact stars, and instead just a depiction of Orion's Belt, on none other than the suit of the local vigilante, Hunter.

"Oh, Hey Big O, fancy seeing you here!" The lantern replied, feeling only a little dizzy.  She tried to wave but found her arm felt like lead, so instead smiled at her friend.

"You really need to learn to call for backup before your opponent starts to sweep the floor with you."  The masked fighter moved to one of the chairs beside the bed, continuing with an exasperated tone,  "You wanna know when I learned you were in danger? When I got a breaking news alert from the news that there was a fight going on. I can't just will my suit into existence like you can, some of us need to get dressed to fight!" They emphasized their point by gesturing to the various belts and harnesses on his own suit.

While her friend talked, Jess found a workaround to the numb limbs situation, and conjured up a green arm to wave away her friend's concerns.  "I don't know why you're so worried Orion, I'm alive, aren't I?"

"Yeah, because Selene and I arrived before that alien bit off your head," he said, handing Jess's phone to the glowing hand for her to see.  Before she unlocked it, she could see 17 missed calls and 39 unread texts from the contact "My Beloved 🖤", accompanied by a notification that Vikka’s bracelet was detecting no life signs.  Seeing that grounded her very quickly, and she turned to the fighter next to her.

“Where’s Vikka, is she alright?  How long was I out?  Does J’onn know?  I need to get home and find her!  Help me get ou-” The lantern was asking questions at a fast pace, panicked by the idea that Vikka had been harmed while she was out, but she was cut off when the door to her room opened, and in walked two familiar faces.

The taller of the figures, a muscular woman with fangs and wolf ears, smiled widely and began wagging her tail at the sight of Jess sitting up in bed, and turned to say something to the other person entering the room, too slowly, however, as the second figure nearly slammed into Jess within half a second of being in the room.  Wanting them to have time alone, Orion got up and joined Selene, standing guard outside the room, making sure the pair wasn’t bothered.

“You’re alright! You’re alive and you’re okay and you’re alright!” Vikka managed to say, her voice giving out at the end, holding Jess in a tight embrace, her body shaking with sobs of relief.  The lantern was holding onto her partner just as tightly, grabbing onto the edges of her clothes, as if she might disappear at any moment.  “Yeah, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, nowhere you can’t come with,” was all she was able to say to reassure her partner, before she too broke down in tears.

The pair held each other for a long while, neither one wanting to let go.