Twitchfire plot in the Hero AU

...

She laughs at her. “If you can’t beat them, make them join you? I think you’ve got it backwards.” But then her expression sours, dropping the self-assured mockery for once. “No, joining us is a fate I wouldn’t even wish on you.”

“If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?”

“Do you have a clue how much worse it would be if they got their hands on me after that?”

“We wouldn’t let that happen.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t, hero.” The title is said dismissively, but it seems to spark something in her. She leans a bit closer. Twitch half wonders if she’s going to bite her.

“You are prophesied to stop our ‘great evil’, aren’t you… and you’re not half bad.” The blade is finally pulled away from her neck, much to her relief. “Maybe you’ll actually succeed... with my help.”

“You’re… really going to help?” Twitch asks, in disbelief that this hail Mary plan is apparently working

“I’ve already given up the best chance I’ve gotten to kill you, so it sure seems like it.”

Twitch is relieved enough to not be dead that she shrugs off the morbid joke.

Tiana has a bit of a new routine after school, sitting at one of the tables in front of a local café, trying to enjoy her drink while she ignores the growing feeling that she’s being watched.

She’s scouted this place. It’s close enough to the middle of town that she can get just about wherever she’s needed in a reasonable time frame, with dark, rarely traveled alleys nearby where she can disappear to transform and leave quickly.

But the bad thing about a routine is that it’s easy to track. And she’s almost certain she’s being tracked. But she can’t let the enemy know she knows, so she can’t just stop coming here. But they might very well catch her transforming and find out her identity. She doesn’t know who’s watching her, how well organized they are, and what their intentions are.

"Boo."

Tiana nearly jumps out of her chair, just about squealing. The culprit stays exactly where she was when she was half leaning over her shoulder, with her arms crossed and a smug grin on her face. Tiana starts to calm down a bit as she realizes that was the most the prankster planned to do, and then her fear turns to annoyance, and then fizzles out as she looks closer at the 'stranger'.

She’s exactly the same height as Tiana, with the same body shape, the same face shape, the same hair type and the same… just about everything. She was almost identical to Tiana. Almost, except for the way she was dressed, her hair being styled different and dyed a vibrant and almost iridescent blue, and the fact that her skin is white. Her eyes are also dark blue.

She chuckles slightly as she walks around the table to sit at the other chair, eyes on her like a wolf waiting to pounce. She picks up Tiana’s drink as she’s about to sit down, looking at the label. “Is there caffeine in this thing?”

“Yes,” Tiana says, only realizing the absurdity of the question after she's answered on reflex.

“Damn,” the stranger says before Tiana can say anything else, putting the drink back down on her side of the table.

She quickly grabs it and pulls it to her chest. “Who are you? Do I know you?”

She makes a ‘so-so’ motion with her hand, leaning back in the chair a bit. “I changed my look a bit, I guess you might not recognize me. I figured you’d prefer this, though.” She shoots her a look like she should understand the implication.

It suddenly clicks. “You?! Why…” She doesn’t know how exactly to word her question, trailing off instead as she looks her up and down.

“I think I look good.”

Tiana clutches her drink a bit closer as her face starts to heat up. "What do you mean...?"

She just chuckles a bit. Tiana huffs. It makes her feel weird.

"What, you wanna talk about it?" she asks, leaning on her hand. "Somewhere more private?"

She wonders for a second if she can trust her, but it occurs to her... she could've killed her quite easily before. Why wait just to kill her a few days later?

"...Fine," she says, standing up and slinging her bag over one shoulder.

The shapeshifter stands up too, stretching. She starts walking leisurely, hooking Tiana's arm as she walks past and dragging her along. She lets it happen with a tired sigh.

Her transformation has been changed, too. Twitch is trying not to stare too close so the shapeshifter won't make another remark implying she's attracted to her own pale doppelganger.

What is red on her is a light teal on her, and what is yellow is blue. The black is left exactly the same, except for bright teal lining around the eyes of her mask, creating a better contrast against her eyes which are mostly a deep ocean blue with sky blue irises. It looks to be the only artistic liberty taken with the form other than the color changes.

She's sitting dangling her legs over the edge of the building's roof, looking down at the people below. Twitch is sitting cross-legged a little bit further from the edge.

"So... What's with the colors?"

"What, did you like me better when I looked exactly like you? I figured that would get confusing."

"Well, yeah, but... I just mean... why those exact colors?" Her eyes drift to the exposed half of her face.

She looks down at her arm. "Closer to my colors. My real colors. You could say it's more comfortable." She shrugs.

Twitch feels kind of relieved. "Oh! That makes sense. It looks a bit more like the real you." She wonders if her transformation somehow reflects 'the real her'... in a less literal way...

"Oh, no. I mean physically. It's just easier. Slightly less to change, a bit less effort." She leans back on her arms to look over at Twitch with that mischievous smile. "The whole fire look wasn't so bad," she says somewhat ominously, then chuckles and turns back to the street. "But I'll stick with this. For now."

Twitch grimaces and looks away from her, entirely unsure what to make of her unpredictable new "ally". She'll probably be helpful during the fight against her kin, but what will she do afterwards? As mean as she is, Twitch doesn't want to plan to lock her up once she's not 'useful' anymore. (She's also kind of worried she would escape at some point and wreak catastrophic vengeance.)

She remembers something. "Oh right! What is your name?"

She glances back at Twitch. "My name?"

"...Yes?"

She turns back away. "I don't think you could pronounce it."

"I could try," she says tentatively.

"Also it would probably drive you insane."

Twitch narrows her eyes. "...How?"

She shrugs. "That's just how it works."

"I think you're making that up."

"Are you willing to risk it?"

Twitch crosses her arms, unamused and somewhat annoyed she isn't looking at her now. "Is it embarrassing?"

She laughs, but it sounds a bit forced. "Even if it was, how would you know?"

Twitch gives a long sigh, giving up on the conversation and letting the silence sit for a while.

"Okay, I was bullshitting. It's Spitfire."

Twitch almost asks why her name happens to be an English word before realizing it definitely wasn't. "That's a cool name," she says a bit softer.

"Yeah," Spitfire mumbles.

"Who is that?"

Twitch tenses up, opening her mouth and saying... nothing.

"Spitfire." She crosses her arms as she stares down the older hero, still hovering in front of him instead of landing so as to be closer to his eye level.

Shard looks between her and Twitch, realization dawning in his eyes. "Alright Spitfire, can I talk to Twitch alone for a second?"

"If she can stand you for that long."

He grimaces and gives Twitch the kind of look you give a pet when they drag a dead animal onto your bed.

"That's just her sense of humor," she tells him with a very nervous smile.

Shard huffs and starts walking towards a nearby room. Twitch follows him, turning back to look at Spitfire and not seeing her there. She shakes her head and hurries into the room. Shard closes the door. Crosses his arms. Opens his mouth to speak.

A moment of incredibly tense silence. He sighs.

Twitch starts instead. "Yes, she is that shapeshifter, but–"

"But what?! What could possibly make you think it was a good idea to bring her here?!"

"She turned against them! She's on our side now!"

He shakes his head and looks away. "Of course she told you that, she's a spy!"

"A shapeshifter."

Both of the humans jump at the disembodied voice.

"Why would I bother to earn your trust when I had the perfect chance to steal it?" With a brilliant shimmer she makes herself visible again, back to looking like Twitch with a very disapproving look. "You never would've known the difference. You didn't before."

Twitch gives Shard a confused look. He looks horrified, and a bit guilty.

"You don't know what you're up against. You don't know how we work, how we fight, how we think. And no one we've caught off guard has ever won. Unless you want to count on a deus machinae showing up, you need my intel."

She pulls out her weapon, extending the blade (which is blue, despite her otherwise still using Twitch's palette). "And I can use her abilities better than she can." Her form shimmers and the rest of her colors switch back to her own. "I know exactly what she needs to do to improve. I know exactly how good she needs to be. She needs me."

Twitch looks really tense, blush just barely visible on her face. Shard just stares at her, still looking very disturbed but maybe, just maybe, considering it.

She thinks to retract her blade so she seems a bit more safe, putting her hand on her hip instead. Shard sighs, and Twitch looks up at him, but nothing else happens quite yet.

Spitfire half wonders if she could convince Twitch to leave these goons. Just the two of them, taking on the Quintesson mothership. It would be ridiculous, but if it worked, it would be one of the most impressive things any two people had ever done.

"I think we should give her a chance," Twitch says, kind of quiet but not actually whispering.

Shard shakes his head a bit, looking away. "... Fine. But I wouldn't trust her completely."

Twitch perks up a bit and nods sheepishly, then smiles at Spitfire.

She doesn't show it, but she feels a little relieved. This will make things easier. For Twitch at least.

Tiana yawns as she closes her bedroom door, finally ready to go to bed. She flicks off the light and sits on her bed.

Something's... wrong.

Her room is darker than it already would be on a rainy night. There's a shadow blocking the light through the window. A shadow that stirs, a human figure sitting up from half leaning against the glass. Two insectoid antennae stand up on the head, and translucent wings cast half-shadows. Not a human figure, then.

The figure turns to look into the room. Tiana catches a flash of blue eyes. She squints a bit, then cautiously reaches over to flick the lights back on.

The figure recoils from the sudden light, blinking rapidly and looking annoyed, miserable, and completely soaked. Tiana is especially drawn to the eyes. A deep ocean blue with bright sky blue irises. She gets up and approaches the window. The eyes light up with hope.

The alien readily climbs into her room the second the window is opened. "I'm so sick of the rain," she growls, "I'll sleep on the floor, but... I just want to stay out of the rain for tonight." She sounds way more tired than she's used to hearing her, but her voice is still the same.

"Spitfire?" Tiana asks sheepishly.

"Yeah? Oh, yeah, I..." her antennae turn down and her wings press flat against her back. She sighs, then spreads her arms gesturing to herself. "This is what I 'really' look like."

Tiana looks her up and down. Her figure could almost be human, but she's also... almost a bug. Like a wasp, or bee, maybe. Her waist is too narrow, everything a human has there probably moved to the pointed insect abdomen Tiana had almost mistaken for a bushy tail. Most of her body is blue with some darker blue stripes and white spots. And of course, she's still soaking wet.

"Do you need a shower?"

Her antenna twitches. "I was just in the rain," she mutters. Then very slightly nods.

Spitfire opens the door quietly, glaring at the tiny squeak it always makes. She glances up at Tiana, antenna flicking when she notices she's still awake.

She gives her a small smile as she puts her phone down. She pats the bed beside her, and Spitfire somewhat cautiously takes the invitation to sit next to her.

"Why aren't you asleep?" Spitfire asks her, quiet.

Twitch looks away, trying to find the courage. "I... feel bad about you sleeping on the floor."

Spitfire shrugs. "I'm used to it. Nicer than some of the places I've hidden out before."

That only makes her feel worse about it. She stares down at her hands folded in her lap for a moment. "I... I just wanted to give you the choice, at least... We could share the bed?"

Spitfire's wings and antennae perk up for a second before she forces them back down. Tiana can't help but smile at the small break in her stoicism. "If... you're fine with that," Spitfire says, looking at the bed instead of her.

"I offered," she reminds her, a little amused to see her almost acting bashful. She's pretty sure Spitfire isn't as good at hiding her emotions in her true form. Or at least, she's more expressive with body parts her human form doesn't have.

Spitfire eyes Tiana like she's waiting for her, so she moves to lay down first. Spitfire still seems reluctant, or even confused, but after a moment she lays down next to her. It does occur to Tiana that Spitfire usually seems to curl up when she sleeps on the floor. She wonders if that's natural for her, or a habit learned from sleeping in small hiding spots and under sparse cover. The thought makes her heart ache a bit, but at least she can give her something better now.

She feels Spitfire gently wrapping her hand around her arm. It's oddly endearing.

She wakes up to find Spitfire wrapped around her. She doesn't have to move much for Spitfire to wake up a bit and try to pull her closer.

"Uh, Spitfire?" she says quietly, still not wanting anyone to know she has someone in her room. Especially if they'd walk in to this.

But Spitfire seems to realize what's going on now and quickly extracts herself, antennae folded down. "I didn't mean to do that," she says, voice a bit strained and quickly dropping to a mumble. "Just... how we usually sleep."

"It's fine," Tiana says, smiling a bit. "Are your wings okay?"

They instantly stop the weird fluttering that sparked her concern and Spitfire tenses up, looking annoyed. "Shut up. Just. Ignore that." She fully turns away from Tiana.

She wonders why that was embarrassing to ask about. She kind of wishes she had a less emotionally distant window into Quintesson culture sometimes.

The first thing she noticed as the door opened was that the dust stopped abruptly at the threshold. As did the rust. It was as if not a second had passed for thousand of years.

“Wow, this place looks nice,” Spitfire remarks, looking down at the cutoff as she steps over it without a worry. “I guess the cleaners still do their job.”

Twitch scowls at the disrespect but keeps pace with her. “This place was a tomb, Spitfire.”

Spitfire half laughs at her. “Why are you whispering? Afraid you’re gonna wake the dead?”

Twitch huffs and rolls her eyes. “It just feels more respectful, I guess.”

“Who did they bury here, anyway? Maybe they’ll be happy to hear anything after all this time.”

“From what we know, it was someone very important, related to the royal–”

“Twitch.” Now Spitfire’s voice is hushed. It immediately puts Twitch on edge. “Who buried them?”

“An ancient, highly advanced, pre-history civilization.”

“On this planet? Holy shit– you’ve dragged us into a Xenobot structure?!” she whisper yells, despite getting quieter.

“You know the name of–”

“The Xenobotic Empire are one of our– the Quintessons’ most fearsome foes. And they’re robots. They don’t just ‘die’! Someone destroyed them.” She mutters something indistinguishable at the end, but Twitch guesses it was something like ‘Probably one of us’.

Spitfire points to what Twitch had taken for a statue placed against the wall. There are identical models flanking the door, painted in shades of gray. They almost look like anthropomorphic wasps. Maybe like Quintessons.

Their eyes are open, pitch black, unseeing. For now.

“That’s what they look like. One model, at least. Similar to what one of their royals looks like, actually… I always heard he was the only one who looked like that. And maybe he is now… Fuck, this place is old…”

“Are they going to wake up and attack us?” Twitch asks, afraid to look away from them.

“They would’ve done it by now. Besides, Xenobots tend to be more colorful than that. I think these are dead models. I’ve never heard about them being… kept like this. They must have been important.”

Twitch nods, finally looking around the rest of the room more.

Spitfire chuckles quietly and leans her head on her shoulder. Her voice overly sweet, she says “Whatever we find down here, you don’t have to worry. You have me to protect you.”

Twitch feels her face flush as she realizes how close she’d gotten to her. She half pushes her and half pulls herself away. “You were whispering!” she says, justifying the proximity. Spitfire laughs again, knowing her too well to accept that excuse.

Spitfire takes her hand and starts walking, so Twitch follows, hoping that her partner knows this culture well enough to navigate the halls better. Twitch will gladly forgive the teasing if it means she doesn’t have to be here alone. She forgives it every time, but still.

Spitfire is uncharistically careful as they continue down the halls. On the one hand, it’s nice to see she can be careful when she thinks she needs to be. On the other, the thought of what could possibly make Spitfire think she should be careful fills Twitch with dread.

She carefully watches every monochrome corpse, waiting for one to finally spring to life. Their shapes are greatly varied, most resembling some kind of anthropomorphic animal. The moving shadows from their lights gives them an eerie facsimile of a second life, especially when it happens to catch on something particularly reflective.

Another door stands before them, a panel like the one which first let them in on either side. Twitch looks to Spitfire, who studies the door for a long while before looking at Twitch and hesitantly nodding. Twitch squeezes her hand before letting go to move to open it. Spitfire moves to the other side of the door.

Twitch suddenly remembers the wasp-like bots “guarding” the other door. She can almost imagine them with her and Spitfire’s colors respectively. A matching set. A pair.

She shakes the thought from her head and plugs her weapon into the slot on the panel and turns. The door clicks and slides open, even quieter than the other.

The first thing she notices, in the dead center of the room, stands yet another bot. This one has an eerie sense of authority. It has a very slender build, standing at attention with hands folded on a scepter or cane of some sort planted against the ground. It’s mostly painted, with a white mask over the face that extends back into two symmetrical twisting horns.

But as Twitch studies it more, she notices the golden bands around the limbs. They’re… golden. She freezes, glancing at Spitfire who is watching it intensely. Twitch looks back at it. There’s red markings on the mask, as if mimicking closed eyes. Even the black might actually be a very dark blue, straining her eyes in the dim lighting. It catches the light like a thousand tiny stars.

Eyes open. Black, for a moment, then cyan star-shaped pupils flare to life.

Across the robot’s body, pale blue LEDs light up six-pointed stars on the balljoints.

The skeletons of wings wrapped around the robot suddenly come to life. Red light pours down between them, giving the appearance of membranes stretched between the bones. They unfold and hang delicately behind them for a moment.

Then their grip on the scepter tightens, they almost brace against it, their wings flaring up, and electricity cracks from their hands, coursing through the scepter and into the ground. Previously hidden lights web out from the center of the floor, surging toward her and finally startling her out of her trance.

“Twitch. We can not win this fight.” She looks over at Spitfire, already holding her blades with a look somewhere between absolute horror and grim determination. “But xe’ll attack me first. If you run fast, maybe xe won’t chase you outside. If xe catches you, we both die today.”

“What? You want me to leave you to die?!”

“It’s that or we both die! I–“

“Interloper.” The robot’s voice is very commanding, but sounds completely natural. It reminds Twitch more of a medieval woman in a TV show than a murder robot. “Your kind truly have some nerve.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Spitfire tells them, pointing one blade at them with a shaking hand.

They respond by picking up their scepter and, with a quick flourish, extending a double-edged light blade from one end. “Have your kind changed in all these many years?”

“Wait, this is a mistake! We didn’t mean to disrespect anyone!”

“Twitch, go!”

The robot moves with a surprising speed despite their height, sprinting across the room in a moment. Twitch quickly levels her blaster and tries to land a shot, but the holographic wings make it harder to judge where the actual target is.

She extends her blade instead as they close in to melee range. She swings for around where she thinks their torso is, but her blade instead connects with theirs with a startling amount of force and she’s thrown off balance. Before she can steady, her leg is literally yanked out from under her, and she sprawls on the floor.

“Twitch! Leave her out of this!” The bot’s attention flits back to Spitfire, their weapon moving to block hers like it was the natural continuation of their swing. She’s knocked back, but manages to keep her balance and continue the backwards movement to avoid the next rapid swing.

Twitch looks down to try to figure out where her weapon went, then remembers how it works. She curses her inexperience and summons it back to her hand.

Her attention jerks back to Spitfire as she cries out, both her weapons falling to the ground and dissipating as she spasms, involuntarily shifting to her native form. The bot’s weapon sparks ominously.

“No, wait, Spitfire!”

The bot grabs her by the neck before she can collapse, holding her up against the wall. Weapon pointed to her neck.

“Please, don’t do this!”

“She... isn’t part of this,” Spitfire strains to say. “Just… throw her out. She won’t come back. She hates upsetting people.”

The bot seems to consider this. “You would trade your life for hers?”

“No, please, just let us both go! We’ll tell people not to come here!” Twitch begs to no avail.

“...You’ll kill me either way,” Spitfire chokes out, tears in her eyes. “At least she can go…”

Twitch fumbles with her weapon hoping to catch the bot off guard. But before she can even aim…

The bot gently places Spitfire back on her feet. She immediately falls to the ground anyway, quickly dissolving into tears while still nervously eyeing the bot, her hands around her neck. Her antennae are folded back, blending into her hair.

They even take a step back.“Perhaps your kind have changed. Or perhaps you are an exception. Either way, I apologize.” Their voice seems softer now.

Twitch looks up at them, still a bit nervous this is some kind of cruel trick, but they do look kind of sorry… somehow. Twitch glances between them and Spitfire before finally moving over to Spitfire.

She reaches out kind of hesitantly, not wanting to startle her if she doesn’t want contact right now. But Spitfire grabs her hand and pulls her close enough to wrap her arms around her in a vice grip. Her wings are tense against her back. Twitch isn’t sure if she’ll find it reassuring, but she isn’t sure what else to do, so she rubs her wings.

It’s heartwrenching to see Spitfire stripped of her pride and reduced to crying on the floor, but all Twitch can focus on is how relieved she is that she’s alive. As long as she’s still alive, she’ll have a chance to be happy later. Twitch will have a chance to make her happy again.

“Twitch, is it?” the bot asks softly, immediately drawing both of their attention. They’re now sat cross-legged on the floor a few steps away, their blade retracted. Spitfire whimpers a bit, her wings buzzing softly under Twitch’s arms as her grip tightens.

“...Yes.”

“You don’t seem surprised. You knew your companion’s true nature.”

“You knew? Is that why you attacked her?”

“Yeah, there’s no fooling one of them,” Spitfire mutters. “ ’S why I knew xe’d attack me first.”

Twitch thinks for a second. “I do know her true nature. All you knew was her species.”

They blink, then nod. “True. I have never known a Quintesson to endanger themself for the sake of another, especially one of another species. You’ve found a valuable ally.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Spitfire asks them, almost sounding calm despite her heart still racing in her chest, so hard that Twitch can feel it. “I always heard the Empress was the only who could use electrokinesis like that and you’re not… blue. Not as much as xen…”

“Ah… No, though xe might be the only one left with the Empire who uses it. It was a symbol of our line. I am Princess Starlight, and I was once next in line for the throne. If your people have lost record of me, do you even know what this place is? What importance it has to my people? To yours?”

“They’re hardly ‘my people’ at this point,” Spitfire mumbles.

“No, we didn’t even know this was a Xenobot structure until Spitfire recognized the…” Twitch glances around to see if there’s a statue to point out.

“… I overestimated the record keeping of Quintessons. I would expect they would remember this as a great victory. A pyrrhic victory, perhaps, but one nonetheless. For us...”

Spitfire flinches as they move to stand up, then scrambles to get up too. She offers a hand to Twitch, which she knows is usually her teasing. She lets her ‘help’ her up, though, just happy to see her being a bit more playful. Spitfire gives her a small smile once she’s standing, then turns to follow the bot.

“Are you going to let go of my hand?” Twitch asks her quietly.

“My hand now,” Spitfire tells her.

Twitch shakes her head as she looks away, unable to supress a small smile.

Until she realizes the princess was watching the whole exchange, and is now giving her a knowing look. She feels her face heat up. She’s not sure what it is about her relationship with Spitfire in particular that gives everyone this impression. Even someone who isn’t from either of their cultures and might have a very different concept of romance! Is that proof there’s something there; maybe even something deep enough to transcend culture?

She tries to push those thoughts out of her head, reminding herself that this place was seemingly the site of a vague tragedy for the robot princess and the understandable lingering distrust just nearly got her partner impaled.