Chapter Text
The League had been fighting a villain when the green light explode and blinded them all.
Batman had been the first one to wake up, and as he sat up he was quick to take note on the people scattered all around him, once he was sure no one was missing he took it to stand up, his comm didn't work, the place looked like a beach, but the sand was pink, and the water was purple, same as the sky.
And there seemed to be a giant forest behind them, a forest with blue bushes, white grass and blue palm trees with neon spotted coconuts.
"Uh... Spooky?" Flash's voice caught his attention and he turned to look at the speedster, he was sitting on the ground, staring at him with a strange look, Bruce hadn't noticed it before, but Barry's boots had wings. Actual wings.
But Flash didn't seem much bothered with that, he was staring at Bruce, and he couldn't help but look down at himself, wanting to see what the hell had Allen so speechless.
He wasn't sure what to think of his clothes as he saw himself shift into a blob of darkness, just to shift back into his usual self, and back into a blob... it didn't felt different, he still felt all his limbs, despite the blob of darkness.
It kept shifting, just like the wings on Flash's boots.
They weren't the only ones with the freaky glitches.
As the rest began waking up, strange glitches began taking hold of them too.
Like Aquaman's shirt glitching between a shirt and flat out golden scales. Or more like he was covered in several places with those golden scales.
Or Superman changing between his regular appearance and a hillbilly guy who hasn't shaved in months. With stereotypical farm guy clothes. That one had made Hal and Barry break into a fit of laughter. Because Superman with a jumper and a straw hat on top of his head was way too ridiculous.
There was also Green Lantern who had a glitch between looking normal and wearing pilot gear, something that had made him freak out at first, thinking the ring to be malfunctioning or something.
Hawkwoman had feathers across her arms that disappeared in between glitches.
Martian Manhunter kept shifting in between his civilian form and his original form.
And Wonder Woman… her clothes kept shifting in between her old armor long before she left Themyschira and her regular one.
But the one that did got several heads turning and even Batman staring had been Captain Marvel, he was walking near shore, close enough that the waves reached him, he didn't seem bothered in the least with their stares nor what he had.
Which was a chain.
An honest to God chain attached to a collar around his neck. The collar was a translucent gold. Inside, a flow of interlocked energies spun round and round. Like a storm of golden flames. A bright white aura surrounded the translucent collar.
The chain attached to it was covered in strange sigils that no one could decipher, a chain that went up and up, disappearing somewhere between the clouds.
There was also the child.
Or well, the translucent shape that never materialized quite right looked like a child, kept appearing whenever the chain did, right infront of Marvel, sometimes behind him, the silhouette seemed to almost have a mind of its own, kept poking at Marvel, tugging at his cape, jumping infront of him or just running around him, almost as if it were teasing him.
Marvel's sole acknowledgement of it was tripping it whenever it tried to run past him or kept running around him, he honest to God tripped it. The silhouette didn't have a chain, but it did have a cord that was latched on its chest and connected with Marvel's.
It was a bit off-putting, both the child and what looked like a leash to put it bluntly. And he didn't seem bothered by it at all.
“I have good news, and bad news.” Marvel's sudden voice caught their attention, the League hadn't even noticed he had come to stand before them now. The child was gone, and so was the chain.
Still.
“Which are?” Hawkwoman asked, he had said before that he could give them a location based on the magic from this place, which was something he could apparently do, identify worlds based on their magic.
“Good news, I know how to get us back home. Some worlds have doors that serve as portals, this one is one of those worlds. Bad news? That door is underwater.” At their looks he was quick to elaborate. “In this world, the ocean is infected with these little creatures, they look cute and like little Pacman ghosts, act friendly even.”
“But?” Aquaman asked, sensing a ‘’but’ there.
“They are also extremely vicious and can devour a person within seconds, think of them as piranhas, but worse, because once they latch onto you it's nearly impossible to pry them off of you. Like a leech on steroids.”
That… was not promising at all.
“I could make a submarine with my ring.” Green Lantern said, but as soon as he made the submarine in question, and his clothes glitched to the pilot gear, the submarine disappeared.
“We are f*cked.” Flash said after a beat of silence, dropping on the sand with a sigh, the child and the chain were back, and the silhouette of the child was now moving its arms around, it looked like it was talking, but no sound came out, and even so, it was hard to tell, its face barely there, and still, Marvel's full attention was on it.
He genuinely looked like he was listening to something.
“You sure?” He asked, to the silhouette. And the silhouette crossed its arms over its chest, seemed to say something that made Marvel frown. “Fair point.” He looked back up at them with a grin, as if he wasn't just talking to whatever that silhouette was. He looked way too comfortable with this whole situation. “New plan.”
“Hold it.” Flash said, holding his hand up, unable to keep on ignoring the elephant in the room, the island, whatever. “What's with the chain? Who's the kid? And why do you look awfully comfortable with this whole thing?”
Marvel frowned, seemed to have some kind of revelation before growing apologetic.
“Right, forgot, those glitches are harmless, in this world, people kind of get metaphorical things about them, it's a side effect of the magic in this world. Like, Batman's the darkness, or Flash's so fast he looks like he is flying.” Captain Marvel explained, he had forgotten completely that the League would definitely not know any of this, but to be fair he was used to people knowing the why of their surroundings whenever he was in another world.
“And you have a leash and a child?” Marvel winced at Superman's words, Billy's laughter alongside the Gods' as Superman switched into a hillbilly look distracting him a bit, but he had to admit it was hilarious to have Superman wearing a jumper and a straw hat with a straight face.
He bit back his smirk, he had the feeling he should take this serious, for some reason..?
He looked up at the chain as it reappeared, went up to the skies and disappeared among the clouds, and he knew, without proof, that the other end of this chain was safely latched around six very immature Gods who might be rolling all around Olympus' floor right now over Superman's looks.
He turned to look at Billy who was doubled over, his laughter echoing inside his head. He still found it strange, to be able to see him while in this form.
Still.
He smacked him on the back of the head, light, but it got the kid straightening up and jumping at him, disappearing before he could so much as touch him.
“Jerk!” Came Billy's annoyed shout, Marvel smirked, he had to admit it was hilarious to mess with him.
“The leash is not a leash, I have told you before, I am, in a way, the representative of six Gods, the chain is just a way of showcasing my relationship with them, I know it looks like a leash, but it's not.” The League didn't seem to believe his words, and Thavma sighed.
He knew how humans and most people felt about chains, and he did admit it looked like that, but it wasn't. He was no one's puppet.
But he didn't felt like explaining to full length his relationship with the Gods.
Thus, he went with the other thing.
“The child is a representation of the person who acts as my host. Has a mind of its own because he is a different person altogether.”
“A host? Like a possession?” Green Lantern asks, glancing at the reappearing child who was now using Marvel's cape as his sole support to stay upright, the man didn't so much as budge under it, just yanked the cape and the kid fell face flat on the sand.
“No, not possession, it's a switching thing, similar to Etrigan and Jason Blood, he is Jason Blood in this scenario.” Marvel said with a straight face, as if a child-sized silhouette wasn't currently on his shoulders giving him a headlock he wasn't so much as blinking at.
“He is a child.” Superman felt the need to point out, he didn't understand magic much, but he did know Etrigan and Jason Blood were two different people locked in a switching spell of some sorts.
“He is 13, he listens to no one but his parents, and he's managed to convince them to let him keep this up, whoever else tries to talk him out of it just ends with neon hair or flying co*ckroaches following them all over the place for weeks. You don't want to argue with him, trust me.” Marvel told as a statement of fact, Billy could be a total menace when he wanted to, and the worst is that the Gods praised his habit to put silly curses on people. “Anyways, I have an idea on how to get us out of here.”
He didn't want them to get stuck asking about Billy, he would rather not have this conversation here, even less now when he had said kid's astral form messing around out of boredom.
Not that what was coming next would make the conversation he could see ahead any less exhausting.
“What kind of idea?”
“It's quite simple, see, uh, I can open a portal, but since we are here and going to our original world, there's like 98% probabilities that we end up at the Rock.”
“And that's a problem because…?” Martian Manhunter asked, sensing that there might be a big good enough reason for Marvel to not have brought this idea up first thing first. Wasn't the Rock that place he went to whenever he wasn't doing hero stuff? Was it sacred or something?
“The problem is that there's currently one single exit in that place, which is the kid's house, which for obvious reasons you can't use, another exit can be made, but you would have to wait, and potentially get harassed by five kids in the meantime.”
That… didn't sound as horrible as he had made them expect.
“Five kids? That's all? I thought you were about to say something about magical taboos or something.” Flash said, relief in his voice.
“Don't underestimate them, that's how people end up cursed and traumatized.” Captain Marvel told, looking dead serious, and then he smiled, opening a portal, as if he didn't just say something very ominous. “Anyways, if you really don't mind, you can step through.”
And the League did just that, stepping through the golden portal, glitches disappearing the second their foot landed on the hard floor, of a giant looking cave, with several bizarre statues covered in stickers, makeup and silly string, some were even dressed up and had wigs.
There were lots of Christmas lights too, lava lamps, two arcade games, some couches, a giant flat screen on the wall, and there were seven thrones of stone across the room, with a familiar lightning bolt painted on the wall above the thrones, and even then the whole place looked like a kid's hideout. There was even a huge glowing sign that spelt ‘LAIR’.
“You have your own Batcave?” Green Lantern asked in awe, he wanted his own Batcave.
“Theoretically speaking.” Captain Marvel conceded as he shut the portal behind him. “Though the kids were the ones who made it like this.” Thavma was not about to tell the League half of this stuff was stolen, but to be fair? Freddy and Billy had egged him on, and he had actually thought there was nothing wrong with it.
Mary had spent hours lecturing him about the laws of the modern world when she had first found out about the stolen stuff.
The sudden sound of a shout and lightning rumbling down the hall caught his attention, he grinned as he felt the missing stamina from his power come back to him. Eugene was back.
“There's a child approaching… a child with a, uh, quite a strong opinion about someone called ’Thavma’?” Superman said, giving Marvel a doubtful look, because there was a child cursing his way here.
And Marvel smirked.
“That would be Eugene, he's harmless.”
Not soon after, a child no older than 10 appeared, covered in multicolored smoke and glitter. He stared at the League for a full minute, frozen in place, and then his gaze fell on Marvel and he went from shocked to full on anger. Pointing at him.
“You! Do you have any idea how much food with glitter I had to eat these past hours?!” The child snapped as he stalked up to Marvel who looked beyond amused.
“Wasn't it edible glitter?” The Captain asked, the kid's anger wavered.
“It was, but that's not the point! I-”
“Wasn't the food good?”
“It was, I even stored a whole cake in a pocket dimension, and- that's not the point! You locked me with the fairies, the fairies! I can still hear them singing! And people will still find glitter on me on my funeral!” The kid snapped, shaking his shirt and making a ton of glitter drop. Marvel gave him a condescending pat on the head with the fakest guilty look humankind had ever seen.
“There, there.” He said, also in the most condescending tone ever, but the glitter did disappear, as if it was never there, leaving the kid only covered in the multicolored smoke.
“What about the smoke?”
Marvel raised an eyebrow, the kid scoffed before throwing his arms up.
“You know what? I give up.” The League watched the kid stalk past Marvel and up to the door with the sign ‘Home Closet' hanging on it. He left through that door, not before flipping Marvel off, and Marvel honest to God flipped him back off. The kid didn't even seem surprised, just gave him a double flip off before slamming the door shut, and Marvel snickered.
“I have so many questions right now, but I'm just gonna ask this, did you lock a kid for hours with… fairies?” Superman asked, not sure what to think of his own question. Marvel gave him an innocent look.
“What? Fairies are harmless, Darla loves them, and to be fair? He had it coming, he tricked me into drinking poison.”
“Aren't you immune to any kind of poison?” Batman asked.
“So? It tasted awful.” Thavma defended himself, Eugene was a demon who kept making him drink whatever he got within reach, as if expecting a reaction. And each time he got his sweet revenge, from throwing Eugene into Fairyland or Jurassic World to locking him in time loops and switching his stuff with jello duplicates.
He was way worse than Billy. It was like the Gods had chose to throw him in the middle of six demonic kids and see who survived. But he wouldn't deny it, he would die for those kids.
“Anyways, I should be going now, I have to make you a door, remember? Make yourselves comfortable, and if you hear the statues whisper to you, ignore them.”
“I'm sorry the statues do what?” Flash's high pitched question went unanswered as Marvel disappeared through the door with a sh*t eating grin.
And since when has Marvel ever been such a smug menace?
Still.
The League sat down, or at least some of them did, Superman, J'onn, Wonder Woman and Hawkwoman. The rest was either snooping around without shame (Aquaman, Flash and Green Lantern) or faking passing but actually snooping too (Batman).
There was a board with lots of headlines, old and new, from different members of the Justice League, and the Justice League. There were some from Captain Marvel, though several of those were scribbled over, a mustache had been drawn on him, glasses, monobrows or just had stickers on them.
And Batman didn't have to wonder much on the kind of relationship that might be there between Marvel and the six kids, he's seen that exact behavior in his own kids. He did wonder if Marvel's immature behavior was connected to the fact that a teenager was his host. He wondered if the man would be willing to elaborate on his relationship with the kid.
For what he knew, Jason Blood and Etrigan's relationship was complicated, the man loathed switching to Etrigan, he wondered how the kid felt about this whole thing…
A loud gasp caught his attention and he turned to look at Green Lantern.
“Guys? I just realized something.” Hal said, sounding quite shocked if not a bit in awe. Diana gave him a raised eyebrow.
“About?”
“Captain Marvel's name is Thavma.”
“... Well, Thavma is the Greek word for Marvel.” Diana told after a moment of silence. She found it a bit amusing, if his name was Thavma, he had been parading his name for years and none of them had even realized. Smart.
“I feel like he's been laughing behind our backs over that little detail.” Green Lantern said, hadn't Marvel gave him and anyone who asked him for a name a look? As if he wanted to laugh but knew it would be rude? Hal had asked Marvel if he had a name to be called by. That smug son of a bitch. His name was literally his name. Marvel. Thavma.
Hal had to give it to him, he was clever.
