Asgard all-powers threesomeverse (connor, sophie, pyro)

[ana]

The war was over but Asgard was incredibly loud all of a sudden. Connor cracked a bleary eye to check the clock… it was still dark as if it was the middle of the night, and sure enough, 2:41 in the morning. What the hell. He didn’t think much of it at that moment, just rolled over to crush the pillow over his ears or burrow into Sophie’s neck or something that would allow him to get back to sleep.

But Sophie wasn’t there.

That itself would not have been cause for alarm; maybe she went to the bathroom, she was allowed to urinate. What was alarming, and thus caused Connor to bolt upright and stumble out of bed in terror, was the fact that Sophie was a black amorphous lump that was flopping off the other side of the bed. He’d seen it before, in the other world and in nightmares since, but this wasn’t a nightmare. He knew because falling off the bed hurt, and the thump of his side on the floor was so incredibly loud he felt like it would blow out his eardrums. He cried out in shock and pain, and that only made both worse.

Pressing both hands over his ears Connor struggled to his feet, speaking as loud as he could manage. “Sophie? Sophie?!” Fuck, it was so loud. So loud he could hear his heartbeat through his hands and see every thread of their sheets even in the near pitch black of their room and was what he thought was happening actually happening? Desperate now he lowered a hand to the blob, grimacing as it squished down under his hand, and shook. “Sophie! John! John!!!”

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[ex_outofcontrol435]

John snaps awake at the screaming, bolt upright and half out of bed before the shift in his mind becomes evident, then almost overwhelming. It's happened once before - twice before, if he counts his life before this place. The information flooding through his head, temperatures and heat signatures and combustion rates, like data from infra-red goggles pouring right into his mind and getting computed at an astounding rate.

Where's his lighter? He doesn't keep close enough track of it anymore, damnit. Climbing out of bed, still aware of Connor's screams but suddenly not all that disturbed by them, he fishes in the pocket of the jacket he wore last night and finds it. Flicks it open and lit. Holds his hand over the flame.

Slowly, like a waterfall running upward, the flame climbs up and into his palm without so much as a tingle of warmth.

"Holy fuck," he whispers, eyes going wide as both power and fear surge through him at once. He remembers last time all too well, what a harbinger of danger these powers were and how horribly they warped his mind after too long without them. But at the same time, they're back - he's whole. He's a mutant. No more question in his mind.

Letting out a shaky breath, he finally runs down to the room Connor shares with Sophie. This is probably what's upset him, and who knows how a shapeshifter could be glitching out right now. "Connor, are you - whoa, shit."

Okay, that's how she's glitching out. Gross.

[worthtempting]

Gross indeed, but between the hand on her and the sudden approach of footfalls the amorphousness that is Sophie shudders and then resolves back into herself, more or less. She's missed some details--she is far too pale, has no freckles, and her skin seems thin, the veins beneath it dark. Some ugly dark scars appear and disappear as she settles into herself. That self is currently facing John, instinct leaving her crouched and protective, eyes bright in the dark and teeth showing in a near-snarl.

Then she registers that it's John, and stops looking like she may leap at his neck. In fact, she turns her back on him, which is quite a matter of trust considering all the things surging through her at the moment and the fact that if she is herself again and Connor is freaking out, John is likely experiencing the same.

"Connor," her voice is a bare murmur, "I'm here, John's here." No matter that she still usually calls him Pyro to his face. Somehow she moves aside so that John can kneel beside Connor as well. "We're both right here."

[daddyissues]

They might be right there, and that's good, but they're not okay, any of them. Connor remembers the last time this happened and it ended well for no one. Still... they're here. Sophie's whisper is a blessing and Connor takes his hands down, trying to adjust to the overwhelming barrage on his senses that came with suddenly being part vampire again. He looks from Sophie to John and struggles to slow his breathing,

"Check your bracelets." He winces at his own voice, then follows its instruction -- everything seems fine. His brow furrows and he struggles to focus over the sound of all their heartbeats and the glints of light assaulting his eyes from everything in the room and the bird screeching on the rooftop and how did he ever live like this? He dealt much better the last time it happened in Asgard, somehow, less like the powers had been crammed in with him and more like everything was different -- shit.

"Jo-- Pyro, are you okay?"

[ex_outofcontrol435]

It's amazing, how quickly instinct comes back; he's been using physical force against threats for months now, aside from one horrific bubble where he felt this very same thing, but the moment he sees the threat in Sophie's posture his lighter is open and he's ready to roast her to ashes. He doesn't even hear her words, connect her with the person who's taken him in and shown him every bit as much unexpected kindness as Connor - and without the deep, inexplicable bond he shares with the boy beside him. Simply because that bond exists and that's enough for her to honour it.

No, his instinct floods back, and only a reverberation of what Sophie's said in his mind - John's here - brings him back to reality. She's never called him John before. Even though she welcomed him into the fold so easily, she respected whatever distance he placed between them, and the name represented that more than anything. Now that they're in crisis, they really have merged into a single unit, and John's reaction was almost to kill her.

"No." Because he hears Connor loud and clear, and that switch to Pyro is the most astute observation Connor's ever made, whether he knows it or not. He is Pyro, through and through. "Shit, no. I need to get outta here."

It's for their safety, of course. Not a horribly selfish, regressive move, but for their safety. Instead of crouching beside Connor, he makes for the door immediately.

[worthtempting]

"No, you don't." It's instinct again that makes Sophie throw her hand out, the door disappearing behind an impenetrably black shadow. It's as natural as breathing and doesn't make an iota of sense because how can she be both? She changes again, scales unfurling over her body in a way that should look familiar to John. But Sophie is not a mutant, she has simply covered herself in the golden scales of a dragon, impenetrable to heat.

Her back is still to John, but her stance has gone wary again, hunched over her much larger boyfriend. Connor is vulnerable, and Sophie will not let him come to harm. The Red rises in her in a sudden tide. How dare he threaten what's hers? Her vision hazes red as her teeth bare in a silent snarl. She could snap John into pieces, even as his body healed again. She does not love Connor, not now, not seeing the world through this lens of Red, but he is hers and that has nothing to do with love.

Look at you. Pathetic child, the Devil isn't even here and you can't hold onto yourself. How Christine would laugh.

She remembers the future that hasn't yet happened, the heat of the furnace around her, searing her hair away, withering her down to an ashy thing, curled around her brother's fingerbone. Sophie knows what it is to burn. John belongs to Connor, but he has turned against them, hasn't he?

Connor will will never forgive you. He will cast you out, as they have all cast you out, and Christine would dance on the ashes of all you have burnt.

And for all that the world is purposeless, for all that they are walking corpses playing at life, that is still unacceptable.

It has been the space of a breath, and Sophie takes another one as she shoulders the hateful pointlessness of the world once more, and looks at Connor with a pleading expression.

"What do I do?" she murmurs. "What is the right thing to do?"

[daddyissues]

"How... how are you doing..." Are they both? Are all three of them both, now, somehow? Is that why he feels so awful, like two people and two people's worth of powers crammed into one, like his old differences are going to break him in two? Connor doesn't know the answers to how this is happening, but John is Pyro and Sophie is under the red and now he has to make a choice but he doesn't want to sacrifice either of them to themselves.

Sophie's question hangs in the air and Connor looks between the other two in the room, something in him knowing that If he traps Pyro here, if they fight over what he is, John will never forgive him. He reaches out for Sophie's shadow, pulling it down from the door. "There's no right thing. We have to figure this out... be careful. Please. I'll check in."

The latter is to Pyro, in the hopes that maybe he's not running away from them but rather trying not to hurt them or destroy their home. The hand he used to pull the shadow away reaches for Sophie, for help standing up in a world too sharp and bright.

"Try not to burn anything down?"

[ex_outofcontrol435]

The shadow. The shadow. That piece is wrong, impossibly wrong, if what seems to be happening here is actually happening. Both abilities can't exist at once, can they? Or was that something else she could do before?

Any hope of figuring this out is lost to him when she begins her transformation, because he's seen transformations before, but this is both one he recognises as a complete block to his own abilities and terrifying. Even aside from the physical shift, she radiates danger in that clear way that usually encourages him even further into chaos and violence - this is not the usual situation, though, not the three of them with newly regained powers and these two being people he has, for better or worse, allowed into his life and his heart.

He can't win, and he can't even fight. But his head is pulsating with the need for the latter, and it makes him double over as he seems to tear in half between his old craving for pure destruction and his new shadings of a moral compass.

Thank god for Connor bringing down the barrier. Those first words to him, he does hear them, and I'll check in reads almost as a warning. Don't get in trouble. Don't hurt people. Don't be the agent of disaster that you embody so naturally. Old resentments surging back with the old ability, only deepening the rift inside him, until he sprints out and misses the last.

Probably for the best. The final statement was far too close to a pointed don't burn anything that would only take him to an even uglier part of his past, one that never fully seemed to resolve itself here before the source disappeared. Like everyone does. Everyone but these two.

He runs and runs, all the way to Sigyn district and the home where Soushi bid him do all the damage he could manage - he's got to be gone by now too, right? Everyone leaves. So there's no problem with barging inside and starting a massive house fire with both systematic and utterly wild swipes of fire. It doesn't take long before he's laughing, loud and broken and insane, giving in to the need as completely as he knows he must.

[worthtempting]

For a long moment after John is gone and she has pulled Connor to his feet as though he was six feet and change of feather, all Sophie does is breathe, fighting down the Red in her, forcing her heart to slow and even. It hadn't felt unnatural until Connor pulled her shadow away, took control over something that she had forgotten is not simply part of herself. Now there is simply another thing in her that does not belong, vying for space in a tiny body already so polluted with other magics. She twists shadows in little snakes around her fingers, a complex weave of them to give her something to focus on.

"He's going to burn something down," she finally says, though she suspects that Connor is more than well aware. Her voice is still soft, in deference to his hearing. "Can his own fire hurt him?" Do I need to find him for you before he accidentally kills himself? is what she means, of course. If whispers and footsteps are deafening him, there's no way that Connor could stand a burning building.

[daddyissues]

"He'll stay away from places with people." Connor sounds more certain of that than he feels, using the hand Sophie used to help him up to in turn tug her into his arms. If she was anyone else, it's possible his grip would have fractured her wrist. He doesn't seem to have any control of his abilities, no way to focus his senses or his strength while he's still in control of shadows. Too much power crammed into too little space, indeed.

"The fire is part of him, and if he's still got his healing too, that's more reason we need to figure out what's happening. This is wrong." He rests his head on Sophie's, armored scales and all. "If people's heads are going to start exploding all over the city, someone's gotta know about it besides us."





Should John check his bracelet at all after he's done burning the shit out of that house, he'll find a simple text from Connor:
Please be careful.

It's less carefulness for other people's sake or property damage, but for his own, for John's sense of self. They aren't going to go out searching for him unless he doesn't come back, but Connor sure is going to worry.

[ex_outofcontrol435]

It's through the fire that he discovers the rest of it: rafters falling and snapping his spine, breaking limbs, only for them to knit back together in moments. He crawls out from under countless piles of debris without a scratch on him, regeneration taking care of the wounds and fire no longer a concern. He's merged into a near-perfect being.

(He still can't create fire. That's a weakness it appears he'll never escape. But what a small one now.)

Unfortunately, he loses such control of himself that he isn't able to keep his clothes protected, and comes out of the literal firestorm of destruction completely naked. There are smudges of soot all over his body, of course, but he's still eerily unmarked. And the city is eerily quiet with so many having gone home, thankfully quiet as he walks down the streets without clothes or a single care in the world. The flashing of his bracelet only catches his eye once he's found one of many abandoned homes in which to rest, and he sends a quick message back.

I really am a god among insects now.

[worthtempting]

"I hope so." Sophie's body simply accommodates Connor's accidental clumsiness without comment, her bones turning to stone beneath her resilient scales. After a moment, she is her human self again, the scent of apothecary still clinging to her hair. Beneath that is new strangeness, though: the scent of burning, of cool, dank places, a metallic scent distinctly not copper, and the barest hint of seawater and linden blossoms. And human, of course. She is technically still that.

Her arms wrap around him, tight enough that he'll feel the squeeze of them. "It doesn't feel like any of the other times. What could we even do? Call upon the gods? What could they even do for us?" She sighs. "Besides resurrect us yet again."

Connor isn't quick enough when Pyro's message comes through that Sophie doesn't see it. She gives a snort, the anger rising in her again before she pushes it down and replies through her own bracelet.

It is impolite to call one's friends insects. She does not mention that she could utterly destroy him before he even had the chance to flick his lighter, though she would very much like to at that moment.

[daddyissues]

"We'll see what happens. Maybe they'll make an announcement... I'd just rather not get blown up again."

Even if that's what it feels like is happening. Sophie and John adjusted much faster and easier than Connor, who sticks close to Sophie through the afternoon for two reasons. 1) This is fucking terrifying. 2) He wants to show that he doesn't care about the strangeness, about the animalistic viciousness put back in her. His is back as well after all, and by the time this text exchange is underway he's started to feel like his old self... his old self with the addition of shadow mastery.

This is bad news for Pyro's attitude.

Connor glances up at Sophie, who he was cuddling upon when the text came in and hadn't bothered to move, and raises an eyebrow. Either of them could track him through the city without having to think about it, now. "Should we see what he's gotten himself into?"

[ex_outofcontrol435]

I'd like to see what you could do about it.

Invincible. Even if fire can't touch something, it can't keep him down for very long either. Why was Logan such a bitchy pain in the ass most of the time? This is amazing. It's perfect. He's holed up in a large house in Sigyn, still personalized and decorated but deserted, just another reminder that their time here should have come to an end and they don't really belong any more.

But he won't go back. After all that time with something stolen from him, the gods have made amends. They've improved him. All that's waiting for him is another shitty war, one that's been going on for decades, and mutants dropping like flies because humans have somehow figured out a way to cure their DNA - yet another one of the twists and turns in their attempts to eradicate their superiors, attempts which will never end. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, right?

Not that he knows that saying or what it implies, but it's his general feeling as he creates a little palace of fire around himself, all just edging the surfaces of the living room so that nothing truly burns. He wants to be wrapped in it, cocooned. He wants the pressure gauge in his brain low and the thermostat high, just how he likes things. There will be time for more destruction, absolutely more time, but right now he wants to relax.

If he's allowed. He has a feeling his friends will come after him, which will probably mean a fight. But that's not a switch in mood to which he'll object at all, because when is he not fixing for a fight?

[worthtempting]

No, I do not think you will.

John's naivete would be almost cute if she was in any kind of mood for it. It's not precisely that she wishes John any harm (he belongs to Connor, after all), but if a lesson must be taught by force...well. Let him learn.

She lifts her head to look at Connor, smile brittle and sharp. It's been some time since he's seen that smile, but Sophie is feeling the full depths and heights of her abilities, and that eternal itch of ill-fitting skin has finally ceased.

"I do believe we have assigned ourselves his keepers," she says, and does not stand up so much as she is suddenly standing, hand extended to Connor. "Somehow I doubt he will be difficult to find."

Just follow the smoke to come upon the fire. Still holding Connor's hand, she leaps for the rooftops, bare feet sure on the tiles.

[daddyissues]

They follow the smoke to the fire traveling by rooftop, and though Connor already nearly always traveled by rooftop in Asgard his movements are different now. It takes so much less strength to make each leap, so much less focus to see where he's landing and what the next hand or foothold is. He and Sophie no longer look like travelers in the night, but predators locked on to prey. They drop down beside the remains of the burning Sigyn building and Connor breathes in, catching the scent of his friend and the flames that have taken him over, it seems in body and mind.

"This way," he tells Sophie, unnecessarily since they're so in tune, and she could alter herself to track on her own... but this is what Connor has been doing since he could walk, and he settles back into the role of hunter more comfortably than he'd admit.

Pyro's path is winding, but leads them to another abandoned house. So far no one's been hurt, and Connor doesn't smell anyone inside but Pyro and his fire. His fire, it's amazing how he can tell the difference between the flames at the other house and the ones that Pyro's controlling. They're different. Just like Pyro is different from John in a way he can't explain.

Connor pulls shadow armor up around him (he's both, how are any of them both at once and how will they ever be stoppable?) as he did in Alfheim -- unless Pyro really wants to hurt him, he should be able to keep the flames off his skin. Still, he gestures to the door for Sophie to go first. And that's the order they'll enter in, a girl covered in dragon scales and the inky black shadow of a boy.

[ex_outofcontrol435]

He's very much holding court in the living room beyond the walls of flame, sitting in an armchair as though it were a throne, casual but coiled all at once. His weapon is all around him now. He just needs to think of it and they'll have the bowels of hell raining down on them.

"Still hiding behind your scales and your shadows," he sneers, as though he isn't hiding just as much behind his fire. "What's it gonna prove, busting my ass over and over again? You'll never leave a mark that sticks. I can do it as long as you can."

And that's when he stands up, pulling a stream of fire down from the ceiling and into his hand. If they have to do it, then fine. Whatever it takes to get them past this idea that he's something other than this - more, in their eyes. This is everything he was ever meant to be.

[worthtempting]

He's naked. An interesting choice. Then again, she doesn't appear to be wearing any clothing at the moment either But by the time he pulls the fire from the ceiling it doesn't matter anymore.

"Hiding?" Sophie says the word like a laugh. "You know Connor, Pyro, but you know nothing of me." One of her hands motions for Connor to stay back as she continues to slowly walk forward. "And you mistake me. It is not that I desire to break you. It is that I have a goal, and it will be accomplished. If that requires your suffering, or mine, so be it."

As she walks forward, the hand that she had used to gesture Connor back grows long claws, wickedly sharp.

[daddyissues]

It's impossible to tell that the shadow is the one speaking, as the light of the flames is sucked into the black hole of his armor the sound of his voice echoes through the darkness. He sounds sure of himself now rather than scared like earlier, and angry.

"You both think that, don't you? You think I'm an idiot, that I only see what I want of you and not the rest. It's you who's blind, thinking that all you are is what you can do. When you're both still in there." Connor hangs back for the moment, knowing that the tables have turned and at the moment he's the weakest in the room... and the only one who's not willing to hurt the others.

[ex_outofcontrol435]

"Connor, stay out of this."

His own anger is a bit too defensive to be threatening. Sophie and Pyro can fight precisely because they don't have the same kind of bond yet, but Connor's a chronic blind spot, and he won't let it get in the way this time. As long as he's been here, people have been trying to belittle the loss of his identity as a mutant and push him past it as though it were like losing a weapon or some other important but external belonging; then, when he gets it back, suddenly everyone knows that identity better than he does. Everyone always knows him better than he does himself, be it a better or worse opinion, and has from the day he was born.

That's all he's got to say, though. The time for speech-making has passed with those vicious claws coming for him. With a flick of his hand, the coil of flame in his hand becomes a steady, white-hot stream, engulfing Sophie's scaled figure entirely before melting into the burning walls around them.

[worthtempting]

Sophie's scales glow brightly gold, but she doesn't even falter in her progress toward John. It's steady, fearless, and as she gets closer, something in her expression changes from fierce to calm, almost sympathetic. A second eyelid protects her eyes, making a reptilian blur over her pupils, and she tilts her head to the side.

"You are not a god, Pyro. Nothing good comes of infinite power, anyway."

Her arm reaches out, those claws settling with infinite delicacy around John's throat.

"I don't think even your healing could bring you back from the loss of your head." She sighs, some of John's fire snorting from her nose. If he moves too much, her claws will nick his skin like razors, but she is actually trying not to hurt him. "This is enough. You're hurting Connor. Come home so we can figure this out."

[ex_outofcontrol435]

He can't knock her back, or even slow her down. Several times, he draws his arms back and appears to "throw" a greater force of fire at her, but nothing's working. Every pulse of energy rolls right over her and she shows not a flicker of fear.

It's infuriating. By the time she's got a grip on him, one he knows could be deadly, he doesn't even care about his own safety anymore. He's blinded by the months (the lifetime, really) of rage that's built up around people belittling and underestimating and pigeonholing him.

"You don't decide who I am. No one does. If you don't like it, fucking kill me already."

[worthtempting]

Connor is calling to her, practically yelling. It is just audible over John's flames, but Sophie can't turn away just now to hear him.

"I'm not deciding anything. If I intended to kill you then you would be dead. You are deciding whether you want to be a naked 'god' alone in an empty room of flames or come back home with Connor and me." She shakes her head, just a little. "All my life, people have told me what I ought be, and all I ever wanted to be was Sophie. Is this what you want to be?"

[ex_outofcontrol435]

All my life, people have told me what I ought to be.

There's just something about the people in Asgard. There always has been. They turn to empathy when he's expecting judgment, dismissal, almost anything else, and it gets him in an area he never thought to shield because that was never necessary. An area that's all too vulnerable because he's only ever braced for attack.

Slowly, the flames die back - not from the walls, not from the ceiling, but from Sophie. Little nicks around his throat are perpetually opening and healing because he simply won't stop shouting and ranting, but now he's finally still. Still and visibly troubled.

"Let me go. I wanna talk to Connor."

[daddyissues]

Connor could only just hear that they'd been speaking over the roar of the flames, and he hadn't liked the sound of it... until Sophie's question. And then the unbearable blast of flame dies down, the fire that had kept him back, screaming himself hoarse because it was so hot and he had so little shadow to work with that even armored he was starting to feel like his blood was boiling beneath his skin.

He has to fight the urge to run to Sophie to check she isn't burnt, or John to check he isn't bleeding. He holds himself perfectly still as Pyro asks to be released, and as Sophie's claws retract and she steps out of his personal space, her scales still glowing white-hot.

Instead of stepping forward Connor lets his shadows thin and melt away, knowing full well that there's so much light in the room that if he lets them go completely he won't be able to protect himself. He does it anyway, and waits for his friend to approach.

[ex_outofcontrol435]

He doesn't even know what he's going to say when he makes the demand, but the sight of Connor's shadow melting away definitely has an impact. Where Sophie stormed right in because she couldn't be hurt, Connor is saying that he trusts he won't. Pyro is free to do what he will without any retaliation in return.

That's when the rest of the fire evaporates, almost before Pyro - John? - realizes he's done it. Slowly, he moves closer to Connor, and it starts to dawn on him at last that he lost every single stitch of clothing in that house fire. He sure is bare-ass naked right now. The only indication he gives is a twitching of his arms and hands, like he wants to cover himself but isn't sure where to start.

"This won't be the last time," he says, with no threat or warning in his voice. It's just a simple statement of truth. "You really see who I am, all of it? That means you know it already. You don't just get to put this side away 'cause it might cause trouble."