![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schizoauthoressTitle: Feint
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Adventure Comics (2009) #3
Warnings: I fanwank away the things that bother me; unorthodox POV
Note: Krypto can see things in color because he's a super-dog. Also I'm too lazy to come up with another identifier for Stinger (of the Silicon Dragons) that doesn't depend on the color of his uniform.
Word Count: 1674
Summary: He's happy when he's fighting bad guys.
Word of the Day: mettle, noun:
1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.
Feint
Boy has been sad. Krypto does not like it when Boy is sad. They still have fun, they play Fetch and go Flying, and Boy had him play Follow the Smells a few times. There's one smell in particular that he can't follow, and that made Boy sad, even though he tried to hide it when Master showed up.
Krypto tries to think about what makes Boy happy. Playing with Krypto makes Boy happy, but not for long enough.
Boy likes it when Lady makes sweet things. Boy likes it when His Girl comes to visit. Krypto can't ask Lady to make sweet things. Krypto can't make His Girl come visit. What else does Boy like?
Krypto realizes what else Boy likes, and that he can bring it to Boy, and he turns a loop-the-loop in midair, barking with glee.
He flies toward the islands called Hawaii first.
****
There are lots of smells on the islands. The Boy's scent is an old one here, but Krypto's nose is the best nose on Earth. He follows the smell around, pinpointing a few that cross paths with Boy, that put an angry tang on Boy's scent. He ignores the ones that make Boy's scent deepen with happy, especially when the strongest one leads to a field of grief stones. Krypto paws at his own nose, trying to shake off the salt and sadness and anger that clung to the ground around that place.
One of the smells is still here, still fresh. He follows that and finds a Silver Man. He's not like the Silver Robot with the sick-making rocks, or the Machine-Man who pretends to have Master's face. But he did fight with Boy before. Krypto flies up and tries to grab him by his silver clothes.
Silver Man makes lots of angry sounds and tries to cut Krypto with his hands that have gone all sharp. He will be good for making Boy happy! He likes to fight!
Krypto makes his eyes hot and cuts the top off one of the trees. The treetop falls down and hits Silver Man, making him fall down. He doesn't move, but Krypto can still hear his heart beating, and that's good. Krypto barks and cavorts happily on the sand for a little while, before grabbing the cloth draped over Silver Man's shoulder and flying back to Kansas.
****
Two of the scents from the islands, he picks them back up when he gets to the mainland. One leads to the dark city where he can smell both Boy and Master, the one that they visit a lot. He tracks the smell and finds that it belongs to a Man in Red.
This one is easy to get, because Good People are keeping the Man in Red in a cage with other Bad People. The Man in Red is lifting up little pieces of metal and setting them back down again, over and over. It's funny! Those are tiny little pieces of metal and the Man in Red is sweating a lot. Krypto swoops down out of the sky and picks him up by the clothing at the back of his neck.
He flails around a lot, and Krypto almost drops him. He tries to hit Krypto, so Krypto goes higher and drops him on purpose. He screams a lot. Krypto catches the Man in Red before he gets close to the ground, but now the Man in Red stinks like fear.
They have to stop halfway home, because the Man in Red keeps making noises and making it hard to fly. He hurts his hand trying to hit Krypto. Krypto jumps on him and knocks him down. They wrestle for a while, and Krypto is careful not to be too rough. Man in Red gets tired too soon and flops onto his back, and it's easy for Krypto to butt his head against Man in Red's, knocking him out.
****
The next smell takes him down south. As he flies over the city with the white monuments, another scent tickles at his nose, almost like Boy... but not. Boy's smell is there, sharp and angry and different from this one.
Krypto follows the new scent after he and Shark-Man wreck a few buildings at a port city. The new scent trail takes him halfway around the world. Krypto is excited. Different Boy should be really good to fight, and fighting him will make Boy happy!
****
As usual, the people he had been hired to take out had no idea that he was following them. It was hardly a challenge anymore, but if he wanted to maintain a good reputation, he had to fill his contracts.
He reached out with his telekinesis and wrapped it around their ankles in preparation for the 8:45 Number 10 bus, which was fast approaching the intersection they waited at -- what he advertised, after all, were untraceable deaths that looked like unfortunate accidents.
And then it felt like he was hit by a freight train.
Which was, of course, illogical. He was nowhere near the train lines. And even if he had been, an actual freight train would have hurt far less than this!
"Ow!" Match exclaimed. He wrapped himself and his attacker in his telekinetic field and pulled upward, taking them higher than the skyscrapers of Dubai. His cover was blown for now, but he did not need to make things worse by wrecking public property the way his American counterparts did.
"Rrrrrr..." The animal -- he was briefly taken aback by the fact that his attacker was... metacanine -- growled and tried to grab his forearm in its teeth. Match didn't bother putting up a second layer of TTK. He rarely ever did nowadays, since his Kryptonian genes had kicked in, and thus was unpleasantly surprised when the dog's teeth slightly scratched his skin.
"Bad dog!" Match shouted. They were now safely above the skyline and he dropped his shield. "Release!"
The dog stared at him, a little wrinkle of confusion marring the fur between its blue eyes. And Match figured, well, hell, it was worth a shot...
Match modulated his voice to a scolding tone. "That's not how you play!"
With a confused whine, the dog let go of Match's arm.
"Good boy!" Match praised, silently thanking the Agenda for the knowledge downloads that included civilian obedience training as well as K-9 Officer training (they had been... ridiculously thorough in some areas). The animal wagged its tail, and Match finally got a good look at it. He had pale blue eyes and white fur -- bright red collar and cape, pentagonal "diamond" shaped tag with a familar symbol on it -- and he resembled a Labrador mix. Reasonably current intel on his progenitor's associates identified the animal as 'Krypto' -- Superman's dog. So Match praised again, "Good boy, Krypto!"
This was all calculated to confuse the canine Kryptonian -- though Krypto was smart, he was still an animal and arguably non-sentient. And Match had been genetically engineered to be a super-genius. As Match had predicted, using the animal's name had marked him (tentatively) as a friend, because Krypto barked and zoomed playfully around him.
Match smiled and pushed one hand through his fine, milk-white hair, making sure to rub his fingertips against the scalp along the sphenoid and occipital bones -- that was where he sweated the heaviest, and where his scent would be the heaviest, at least on his head. Then he offered his hand to Krypto to sniff.
He was not genetically identical to Superboy -- alias Kon-El, alias Conner Kent -- but neither was Superboy genetically identical to Superman. They should be similar enough, and smell similar enough, that Krypto could label Match as "family" or "pack".
Krypto panted for a moment and barked again. Match floated back and sort of crouched in midair, and slapped his hands against his thighs, calling out, "Come on, boy! Come play!" And when Krypto bounded toward him, Match flew east toward India, laughing to make sure that the dog knew this was a game.
****
Krypto chases Different Boy, sure that this is a new game. He likes new games!
Different Boy doesn't just smell different, he looks different from Boy and Master with his light-colored hair. He's even different from Master-Lady and Girl. Everyone else in the family has blue eyes -- even Krypto himself has blue eyes -- but Different Boy's eyes are grey. He's not as big as Master and Boy, with their broad chests and thick shoulders. His build is similar, but slightly smaller, somewhere between Boy now and the pictures of Boy that Krypto remembers from the Fortress.
But he knows how to play! Even though Boy and Different Boy got into fights, maybe it was just pack play times, and Krypto made a mistake. Bad People don't know how to play right...
Krypto flies faster and pounces on Different Boy, licking Different Boy's cheek as they tumble.
****
Match yelped with surprise when Krypto jumped him -- he suppressed the ingrained, trained response and only ruffled his hands against the dog's white fur. "Good boy, Krypto!"
The petting seemed to do the trick. Krypto's tongue lolled as the dog squirmed onto his back in thin air, showing his belly. Match rubbed a hand over the soft fur, then lightly thumped his palm against Krypto's leg.
"Nice boy, good boy!" Match said. Krypto barked and dove down to the ground. Curious, Match followed him down (even though he could have used his telescopic/microscopic vision to follow the canine's path without moving himself) and watched as Krypto pulled up an old tree from the Gujarat-area pasture below. "Oh dear... Fetch?"
Krypto tossed his head, releasing the tree and making it fly up into the air. Match zipped over and grabbed the tree before it could start falling.
"Okay," the Kryptonian hybrid clone sighed, "Fetch."
It took about half an hour before Krypto seemed satisfied. He flew off all of a sudden, leaving Match holding the bite-scarred tree.
"...that was bizarre."
*-*-*-*-*
Note: That was based on something I blathered during my answers to the latest Tumblr headcanon meme for Match. I think I have at least one other fic in this 'verse.
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Adventure Comics (2009) #3
Warnings: I fanwank away the things that bother me; unorthodox POV
Note: Krypto can see things in color because he's a super-dog. Also I'm too lazy to come up with another identifier for Stinger (of the Silicon Dragons) that doesn't depend on the color of his uniform.
Word Count: 1674
Summary: He's happy when he's fighting bad guys.
Word of the Day: mettle, noun:
1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.
Feint
Boy has been sad. Krypto does not like it when Boy is sad. They still have fun, they play Fetch and go Flying, and Boy had him play Follow the Smells a few times. There's one smell in particular that he can't follow, and that made Boy sad, even though he tried to hide it when Master showed up.
Krypto tries to think about what makes Boy happy. Playing with Krypto makes Boy happy, but not for long enough.
Boy likes it when Lady makes sweet things. Boy likes it when His Girl comes to visit. Krypto can't ask Lady to make sweet things. Krypto can't make His Girl come visit. What else does Boy like?
Krypto realizes what else Boy likes, and that he can bring it to Boy, and he turns a loop-the-loop in midair, barking with glee.
He flies toward the islands called Hawaii first.
****
There are lots of smells on the islands. The Boy's scent is an old one here, but Krypto's nose is the best nose on Earth. He follows the smell around, pinpointing a few that cross paths with Boy, that put an angry tang on Boy's scent. He ignores the ones that make Boy's scent deepen with happy, especially when the strongest one leads to a field of grief stones. Krypto paws at his own nose, trying to shake off the salt and sadness and anger that clung to the ground around that place.
One of the smells is still here, still fresh. He follows that and finds a Silver Man. He's not like the Silver Robot with the sick-making rocks, or the Machine-Man who pretends to have Master's face. But he did fight with Boy before. Krypto flies up and tries to grab him by his silver clothes.
Silver Man makes lots of angry sounds and tries to cut Krypto with his hands that have gone all sharp. He will be good for making Boy happy! He likes to fight!
Krypto makes his eyes hot and cuts the top off one of the trees. The treetop falls down and hits Silver Man, making him fall down. He doesn't move, but Krypto can still hear his heart beating, and that's good. Krypto barks and cavorts happily on the sand for a little while, before grabbing the cloth draped over Silver Man's shoulder and flying back to Kansas.
****
Two of the scents from the islands, he picks them back up when he gets to the mainland. One leads to the dark city where he can smell both Boy and Master, the one that they visit a lot. He tracks the smell and finds that it belongs to a Man in Red.
This one is easy to get, because Good People are keeping the Man in Red in a cage with other Bad People. The Man in Red is lifting up little pieces of metal and setting them back down again, over and over. It's funny! Those are tiny little pieces of metal and the Man in Red is sweating a lot. Krypto swoops down out of the sky and picks him up by the clothing at the back of his neck.
He flails around a lot, and Krypto almost drops him. He tries to hit Krypto, so Krypto goes higher and drops him on purpose. He screams a lot. Krypto catches the Man in Red before he gets close to the ground, but now the Man in Red stinks like fear.
They have to stop halfway home, because the Man in Red keeps making noises and making it hard to fly. He hurts his hand trying to hit Krypto. Krypto jumps on him and knocks him down. They wrestle for a while, and Krypto is careful not to be too rough. Man in Red gets tired too soon and flops onto his back, and it's easy for Krypto to butt his head against Man in Red's, knocking him out.
****
The next smell takes him down south. As he flies over the city with the white monuments, another scent tickles at his nose, almost like Boy... but not. Boy's smell is there, sharp and angry and different from this one.
Krypto follows the new scent after he and Shark-Man wreck a few buildings at a port city. The new scent trail takes him halfway around the world. Krypto is excited. Different Boy should be really good to fight, and fighting him will make Boy happy!
****
As usual, the people he had been hired to take out had no idea that he was following them. It was hardly a challenge anymore, but if he wanted to maintain a good reputation, he had to fill his contracts.
He reached out with his telekinesis and wrapped it around their ankles in preparation for the 8:45 Number 10 bus, which was fast approaching the intersection they waited at -- what he advertised, after all, were untraceable deaths that looked like unfortunate accidents.
And then it felt like he was hit by a freight train.
Which was, of course, illogical. He was nowhere near the train lines. And even if he had been, an actual freight train would have hurt far less than this!
"Ow!" Match exclaimed. He wrapped himself and his attacker in his telekinetic field and pulled upward, taking them higher than the skyscrapers of Dubai. His cover was blown for now, but he did not need to make things worse by wrecking public property the way his American counterparts did.
"Rrrrrr..." The animal -- he was briefly taken aback by the fact that his attacker was... metacanine -- growled and tried to grab his forearm in its teeth. Match didn't bother putting up a second layer of TTK. He rarely ever did nowadays, since his Kryptonian genes had kicked in, and thus was unpleasantly surprised when the dog's teeth slightly scratched his skin.
"Bad dog!" Match shouted. They were now safely above the skyline and he dropped his shield. "Release!"
The dog stared at him, a little wrinkle of confusion marring the fur between its blue eyes. And Match figured, well, hell, it was worth a shot...
Match modulated his voice to a scolding tone. "That's not how you play!"
With a confused whine, the dog let go of Match's arm.
"Good boy!" Match praised, silently thanking the Agenda for the knowledge downloads that included civilian obedience training as well as K-9 Officer training (they had been... ridiculously thorough in some areas). The animal wagged its tail, and Match finally got a good look at it. He had pale blue eyes and white fur -- bright red collar and cape, pentagonal "diamond" shaped tag with a familar symbol on it -- and he resembled a Labrador mix. Reasonably current intel on his progenitor's associates identified the animal as 'Krypto' -- Superman's dog. So Match praised again, "Good boy, Krypto!"
This was all calculated to confuse the canine Kryptonian -- though Krypto was smart, he was still an animal and arguably non-sentient. And Match had been genetically engineered to be a super-genius. As Match had predicted, using the animal's name had marked him (tentatively) as a friend, because Krypto barked and zoomed playfully around him.
Match smiled and pushed one hand through his fine, milk-white hair, making sure to rub his fingertips against the scalp along the sphenoid and occipital bones -- that was where he sweated the heaviest, and where his scent would be the heaviest, at least on his head. Then he offered his hand to Krypto to sniff.
He was not genetically identical to Superboy -- alias Kon-El, alias Conner Kent -- but neither was Superboy genetically identical to Superman. They should be similar enough, and smell similar enough, that Krypto could label Match as "family" or "pack".
Krypto panted for a moment and barked again. Match floated back and sort of crouched in midair, and slapped his hands against his thighs, calling out, "Come on, boy! Come play!" And when Krypto bounded toward him, Match flew east toward India, laughing to make sure that the dog knew this was a game.
****
Krypto chases Different Boy, sure that this is a new game. He likes new games!
Different Boy doesn't just smell different, he looks different from Boy and Master with his light-colored hair. He's even different from Master-Lady and Girl. Everyone else in the family has blue eyes -- even Krypto himself has blue eyes -- but Different Boy's eyes are grey. He's not as big as Master and Boy, with their broad chests and thick shoulders. His build is similar, but slightly smaller, somewhere between Boy now and the pictures of Boy that Krypto remembers from the Fortress.
But he knows how to play! Even though Boy and Different Boy got into fights, maybe it was just pack play times, and Krypto made a mistake. Bad People don't know how to play right...
Krypto flies faster and pounces on Different Boy, licking Different Boy's cheek as they tumble.
****
Match yelped with surprise when Krypto jumped him -- he suppressed the ingrained, trained response and only ruffled his hands against the dog's white fur. "Good boy, Krypto!"
The petting seemed to do the trick. Krypto's tongue lolled as the dog squirmed onto his back in thin air, showing his belly. Match rubbed a hand over the soft fur, then lightly thumped his palm against Krypto's leg.
"Nice boy, good boy!" Match said. Krypto barked and dove down to the ground. Curious, Match followed him down (even though he could have used his telescopic/microscopic vision to follow the canine's path without moving himself) and watched as Krypto pulled up an old tree from the Gujarat-area pasture below. "Oh dear... Fetch?"
Krypto tossed his head, releasing the tree and making it fly up into the air. Match zipped over and grabbed the tree before it could start falling.
"Okay," the Kryptonian hybrid clone sighed, "Fetch."
It took about half an hour before Krypto seemed satisfied. He flew off all of a sudden, leaving Match holding the bite-scarred tree.
"...that was bizarre."
*-*-*-*-*
Note: That was based on something I blathered during my answers to the latest Tumblr headcanon meme for Match. I think I have at least one other fic in this 'verse.