"You know, if there's anything that can bring togethehr people in opposition, it's a common enemy. Oh, you look like you don't believe me.
499-449 BCE, Greece.
The Athenians, Spartans along the other city states had been competing over cultural, socio-economic and political differences, then Xerxes I waltzed into their land with his Immortals like he got that dawg in him. And all of a sudden, all those pesky differences became utterly inconsequential.
And it fucking worked.
With the combined efforts the now famously known Hellenic Alliance, the Persians were finally pushed out of Greece. Keep in mind that at the time, the Achaemenid Empire controlled most of the Middle-East and parts of India,…etc. It was vastly wealthier and more influential than the tiny, constantly squabbling Greek city-states that were still arguing over which divine arse to kiss and who had the better football team.
But maybe I'm going too far back… Maybe you want something a little… Closer to us chronologically?
How about the Christians and the Muslims joining forces to quell the Mongol hordes? I'm sure you already know how bad the blood was between those two factions, right? Crusades, massacres, centuries of religious hostility, the whole package. And all it took was the Mongols rampaging across the Middle East for Christian states to allow Muslim forces passage through their territories…
Though, given the similarities in their religious beliefs and practices, along with the shit the Mongols were pulling in the conquered lands, I suppose it was to be expected.
So how about an even better example for 'the enemy of my enemy'? It was the Winter of 1972, the height of the Cold War, and there the United States and Communist China were, sitting at the same table. Smiling for cameras. Shaking hands like they weren't ideologically opposed superpowers that had spent decades making the other guy out to be the Spawn of the Devil, simply because the Soviet Union was becoming a problem.
And just like that, the Capitalists and the Communists were suddenly all up each other's ass…
Funny how quickly all that bullshit ideological purity goes straight out the window when there's a bigger, meaner bastard jerking it at your border.
So… where exactly am I going with this? Most of those enemies-turned-reluctant-allies went right back at each other's throats the moment the third guy kicked the bucket. Mine, Ivy's and Victor Fries' little Alliance didn't.
With the crazies running our streets, the even crazier bastards probably plotting more bullshit behind the scenes, and the military quarantining the entire island city, we were pretty much all we had left. And there's just something about having each other's back that really brings people together…
I'm betting it's the adrenaline.
The fact we were never really enemies to begin with, coupled with the fact I could offer one what he wanted and the fact the other had a few forbidden desires involving me, definitely helped.
Who'd have thought years of celibacy after a frankly disastrous breakup would make somebody starved for romance? Who could've even imagined the city's resident femme fatale, the home-wrecker who stole boyfriends and husbands with a bat of her lashes, was on a dry spell to begin with? Not me, certainly…
Though now that I think about it, women do seem to have this weird fascination with taming monsters and bad boys, which I totally blame 'Beauty and the Beast' for invoking.
And given Ivy's list of options, most of which consisted of total psychos, disfigured men old enough to be her father, or furries, I suppose a six-eyed Demon wasn't exactly the worst choice available… Especially when said Demon was a head and a half taller than her, had shoulders nearly twice as broad, and, not to toot my own horns, had a pretty handsome face if I do say so myself.
As for why I was pushing all her buttons despite our… Alligences…
Well, I'd just experienced the entirety of puberty compressed into the span of a few weeks, and it was Ivy. Need I say more?"
— [HELLBRED] —
"It's fascinating…"
Victor Fries couldn't help but mumble in amazement as he reviewed his and Ivy's findings. As long as the liver and kidneys were functional, toxins didn't usually linger in the body. Take alcohol, for example. Depending on the amount consumed, it circulated through a person's system for roughly twenty-four to forty-eight hours before being pushed out through urine and feces.
This did not…
This lingered despite the fact the body should've recognized it as an invader. It behaved more like a virus than any toxin he'd ever seen, morphing and modifying to alter the brain structures, and therefore affect the behaviors of the Afflicted the longer it stayed in their system. The scan of his subject brains even looked the same as those of prolonged substance-abuse.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! FUUUCK!!!"
Victor wiped the fogging glass of his suit before increasing the dosage. He had never imagined his first attempt at altruism would be more arduous than planning a heist, but as always, Gotham had once again proven itself capable of surprising even the likes of him.
He sighed again.
He'd touched on biology in his efforts to cure his wife's ailment, but Victor knew in his heart he wouldn't have had the slightest confidence in curing… Whatever it was that the Joker had dispersed across the city.
Fortunately, that was where Ivy and her PhD in biochemistry came in. With her spearheading the research and Victor following closely in her wake, the two of them had been making rapid progress toward developing a counteragent.
There was only one tiny, teeny problem.
"It's killing the active cells too quickly."
That, and the Imp refused to let them test the cure on the samples. None except himself, that was, and considering the vigilante's many… Abnormalities, the data they were getting was understandably skewed. Although Victor had to admit the Imp made a fair point. If even he struggled to survive the treatment, it would be nothing short of poisonous to the majority of Gotham's population.
"I know. I have eyes and ears," the woman snapped back, though Victor hardly held it against her. Few people understood better than he did the kind of fury and helplessness that came from watching somebody you loved suffer right before your eyes.
"If it helps at all, he's screaming a lot less than before." Victor offered. Surely that had to count for something.
"It doesn't."
She scoffed, though remained in her seat.
To her credit, she did a remarkable job appearing calm, as befitting her reputation, but the slight tapping of her fingers against crossed arms gave her state of mind away to Victor.
He had never understood the desire to hide one's affection toward a beloved, and perhaps he never would. If Nora were in agony before him, he wouldn't hesitate to pull her close, no matter if she cursed, scratched, or struck him.
To each their own, Victor supposed…
Plus, given the Imp's condition and absurd strength, perhaps Ivy restraining herself from doing the same was for the best, lest their still budding love story turn into a Shakespearean tragedy.
Only once their willing 'test subject' stopped thrashing from the after-effects did Victor allow himself a quiet hum, mentally recording the counteragent's newly observed side effects together with the symptoms that had lessened or disappeared altogether.
And by then, the sun had already begun to rise.
He did not enter the containment room with her. He had no desire to intrude, nor any wish to be reminded of the countless moments he'd once shared with Nora, so while Ivy tended to the delirious vigilante, he quietly took the back exit.
It wasn't the first time Victor had quietly slipped away, nor would it be the last, so Ivy paid his departure little mind as she continued dabbing Rowan down with cold water. They'd attempted a cold bath during the first trial and quickly learned that even Demons, especially ones graced with flesh and blood of their own, could still fall ill.
As she dabbed cold water across skin that only seemed to accentuate the sheer definition of his muscles, Pamela found herself… Marveling.
A week and a half ago, the Imp had stood to her chest. Now he loomed over her like some absurdly handsome wall of muscle. Whether that transformation stemmed from his natural biology or the serum he'd injected into himself, she honestly couldn't say. Not that she cared when the end result looked this good.
In the privacy of her own mind, Pamela reluctantly admitted that had the two attended high school together, she probably would've developed a crush on him… And then gotten thoroughly ignored in favor of prettier, more popular girls like Tracey Lockheart.
Poison Ivy hadn't always been Poison Ivy, after all. A very long time ago, she'd simply been Pamela Isley, the awkward, bookish girl boys felt embarrassed being paired with. Joke on them, really. Pamela Isley went on to become Poison Ivy while most of her former classmates had hit the highlights of their lives in school and now meandered through their miserable marriages and even more miserable nine-to-fives.
Tracey Lockheart, in particular, had apparently resorted to selling dubious makeup products through social media after… How tragic. 'Would it really have been that bad, though?'
A traitorous little thought whispered at the back of her mind.
The few times she'd crossed paths with former classmates as Pamela, or quietly observed them from afar as Ivy, they had all looked exhausted. Worn down. Beaten by life and routine and all that normalcy was consisted of. Yet in spite of that, they had had somebody waiting for them at home. Ivy only had her 'children' that, while she loved dearly, hardly made for stimulating conversation.
Her thoughts drifted back to Woodrue and the pathetic desperation with which Pamela had clung to him, born from years of insecurity and loneliness, and for perhaps the thousandth time, she found herself wondering whether things might've turned out differently had she met somebody—anybody else first.
Then her attention returned to the Demon who'd been occupying her thoughts lately, lingering briefly on his slightly parted lips. Only when she noticed his eyelids fluttering a little too erratically did Ivy finally snap out of it, and promptly slapped his abs with all her might.
Rowan nearly folded in on himself with a wheeze, clutching his stomach as though she'd just hit him with a speeding truck. However, having seen him survive blows that would stop actual trucks dead in their track, Ivy remained thoroughly unimpressed. If anything, Ivy was fairly certain she was the one who came out worse from that exchange, given how badly her palm was throbbing.
"If you're done embarrassing yourself, go take a bath. You smell terrible." She hissed, hastily burying her embarrassment beneath a veil of irritation while Rowan giggled the entire way to the bathroom.
For her part, Ivy quickly retreated to her bed of vines and attempted to sleep, but the moment she closed her eyes, all that came to mind were defined abs, veiny biceps, and crimson skin.
'I wonder if his—' She barely caught herself in time, burrying her face into the vines with a groan. "… No."
This wouldn't do.
Ivy cracked an eye open, glanced toward her makeshift lab, then abruptly pushed herself off the bed.
After seven straight hours of working on the cure with Victor, Ivy should have been exhausted enough to pass out instantly. Instead, she found herself very much awake and thinking increasingly dangerous thoughts. Perhaps throwing herself back to work would do her some good.
And so Ivy promptly buried herself in work, beginning with blood samples, cellular degeneration analyses, and neurological scans. When she ran out of things to examine, she simply restarted from the beginning. Anything to stop herself from dwelling on the deeply unfortunate discovery that Demons apparently came with unfairly attractive physiques.
Just when she was beginning to think she'd finally gotten over it, Rowan's voice suddenly floated by her ear.
"How's it going?"
Suppressing the instinctive flinch that would have revealed he'd successfully caught her off guard, Ivy calmly continued jotting down the notes and findings she'd missed earlier. That lasted right up until his hand rested against the edge of the table, followed shortly by the rest of him entering her field of vision.
His crimson skin stretched across an absurdly sculpted physique, with well-defined abs, broad shoulders. His thick arms were lined with faint veins that shifted beneath red skin whenever he moved, highlighted further by the droplets from his bath that trailed slowly down dense muscle.
The closest comparison Ivy could draw were Bane and Batman, but the former was a grotesque, Venom-pumped monstrosity who barely qualified as a man, while the latter was very much off-limits thanks to her long-time cat-themed friend and occasional accomplice.
And those eyes…
God, those stupid glowing eyes.
The worst part was how unfairly well everything just… Clicked. The silver hair. The sharp jawline. The inhuman features. The claws. Even the extra eyes somehow circled back around from unsettling to bizarrely attractive in a way she deeply resented.
'This is bullshit,' She thought bitterly. Then, before her traitorous mind could wander any further, she narrowed her eyes at him. "Where, pray tell, is your shirt?"
"Somebody made a compelling case for hygiene." He tilted his head, mirth oozing from his smug eyes before moving down his mouth. "Why, feeling embarrassed, Red?"
"Embarrassed." She repeated like the word offended her. "Please. I invented embarrassing people. Whatever you think you're doing right now, I've done it, and I've done it better."
"That's not what the blush says…"
"I'm not blushing."
"Aren't you?"
He swaggered forward, slowly closing the already pitiful distance between them.
Much to Ivy's irritation, her heart thumped loudly against her chest while her legs instinctively retreated. It was… Strange, being looked at like prey for once. Usually, she was the one doing the hunting. "I'm not blushing," she insisted stubbornly despite the warmth in her cheeks and the literal wall pressing against her back. "See?"
"I'll need to get a closer look."
Before Ivy could retort, his taloned hand rose to her face, claws surprisingly gentle as they brushed against her cheek and carefully tucked loose strands behind her ear.
"Well, would you look at that?"
His grin widened just enough for sharp fangs to peek through as his other hand drifted higher, fingers grazing along her thigh before settling on her ass and refusing to move.
"Maybe you're not blushing after all."
"We shouldn't." Pamela whispered, though the words rang particularly hollow when she neither pushed him away nor stepped out of his grasp. Rowan didn't look convinced by the objection either, judging by the amused look creeping across his face.
"Here's what I have to say to that," He leaned in and stole her lips, swallowing the muffled objection she made against his mouth about the grammatical misuse of the word. Ivy had kissed more people than she cared to count, with the vast majority of which being a press of lips that ended in a corpse or a puppet.
This was neither.
It was heated in a way she hadn't anticipated and passionate in a way she couldn't attribute to pheromones or theatrics.
Some deeply inconvenient part of her wanted to simply stop fighting it, except that her pride had apparently decided to seal his tongue out. And Ivy couldn't decide whether she wanted to be grateful, or annoyed that it was.
'This is wrong…' She thought.
He should be with someone his own age, not a woman in her mid twenties! They were on opposing sides, and once Gotham stopped burning they'd probably go right back to being enemies. All reasonable points, and none was any match for the hand that slipped past her leotard and stole the breath from her lungs. 'Bastard,' She thought as his tongue reached for hers, while his hands touched and explored and squeezed as they pleased.
— [WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT] —
The flowers along her vines bloomed all at once as his talons found the seam of her leotard and did away with it, leaving her with nothing between herself and the open air.
Not one to be outdone, she went for his waistband, specifically the outline straining against it, and very nearly got there before the Shadow rose from the floor and lifted her off her feet, pulling her legs apart and baring her wet, glistening cunt under a patch of red.
Ivy was no shy maiden, but there was exposed and then there was this, and this was too much even for her.
She opened her mouth to chide, only fot his tongue to slither out. It was longer than it had any right to be, pointed at the tip, and nothing like what she remembered from the kiss.
And it was heading straight for her private area, lapping slow at her dripping labia, then her clitoris, neither of which had ever known anything close to such shape or texture. She shook, shuddered and twitched, her arms and legs squirming against the Shade that held her tighter the closer his tongue got to the entry. And then it actually entered.
His tongue wasn't too thick, but the muscle was as impossibly flexible as it was long, finding angles and depths she hadn't known were available, and her body apparently had much to say about it. All good things, she feared.
"Do-Don't stop, Rowan!"
He smirked and prodded deeper, his lip enveloping her clitoris whole, "Wasn't planning on it, Red." Then, as if unsatisfied with her muted moans and gasps, his tongue wiggled and thrashed against the fleshy walls which tensed just as she did. Her nails dug into her palms hard enough to draw blood and her toes curled as she wailed and cried his name, until inevitably, slick clear liquid spilled out from her core, splashing onto his face and into his mouth.
With the release, the seasoned villain went limp in the Shadow's hold, her green tits and even greener, darker nipples jiggling with each labored breath she took. "Are-Are we done, or is there—Mhm—more of that to sit through?"
Lapping up the juices on his palms, Rowan grinned, "Not even close," And stripped himself of his pants, revealing a nine inch monstrosity that caused her drooping eyelids to fly up in shock.
'Ah...' She mused internally. 'It is as veiny.'
—————
A/N: So, recently, I've been messing around with AIs in an attempt to compile every surviving grimoire, magical papyrus, and ancient text documenting spiritual or esoteric practices into one massive collection.
And I'm not just talking about Western occultism. I'm throwing in everything I can get my hands on: Buddhist and Hindu texts, Sumerian and Babylonian tablets, ancient Chinese practices, and even declassified intelligence documents like the CIA's Gateway Process reports.
The idea is pretty simple. Gather as many original sources as possible, have the AIs translate them independently rather than relying solely on existing translations, and then cross-reference the practices, symbols, rituals, and underlying concepts to see whether any meaningful patterns emerge.
Who knows? Maybe there's something humanity discovered centuries or even millennia ago that we've since forgotten. Maybe there's something buried in those old texts that nobody thought to connect.
I'm calling the project Codex Universalis, and once I've assembled enough material and had the AIs analyze it, I'll make the whole thing publicly available on GitHub. Original scans, existing translations, AI translations, cross-references and findings. That way, anyone interested can examine the sources, challenge the interpretations, and contribute their own research.
The ultimate goal? See whether there's anything to this whole magic business beyond superstition, coincidence, and wishful thinking and, if not, find out the real history of mankind. Who knows? Maybe you and I will end up being the idiots who bring magic back into the world. And if it turns out to be nothing but fairy tales?
Well, at least I'll still have one hell of a magic system to steal ideas from for my writing. And to imagine this all started with 'Forever Mysteries' (Rough translation) book series I bought as a kid.
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Speaking of which, if I don't get on the Ranking this week, ya'll gay. GAY!