Erza Scarlet stood rigid in the center of the cramped room, her armor gleaming with a cold, unforgiving light under the flickering overhead bulbs. Her blade was leveled straight at Barbara Gordon's throat, the tip of the steel perfectly still, held there by a hand that didn't tremble even a fraction of a millimeter. Her eyes burned with a barely restrained fury that made the air in the room feel heavy, as her magic seemed to fill the room, as if the oxygen itself were being displaced by her killing intent.
"What do you think you're doing?" Erza growled, her voice vibrating with the threat of imminent violence.
Barbara Gordon didn't flinch. She stood her ground, her spine straight despite the staggering exhaustion of the past days etched into the lines of her face. She held a Batarang loosely between her fingers, her glare sharp enough to cut through the metal of Erza's sword.
Harley Quinn and Jim Gordon hovered tensely at the corner of the room, caught in a middle ground before them. Behind them, the rest of the ragtag resistance, Signal, Green Arrow, and Black Canary, spread out in a semi-circle behind her, Weapons drawn.
"What am I doing?" Barbara snapped back, her voice low and dangerous. "I'm protecting what's left of my home. What are you doing bringing that thing into our sanctuary?"
She pointed a gloved finger straight at Vandalieu.
Van sat on a rusted metal crate beside Harley, his legs drawn up to his chest in a posture that would have looked childlike on anyone else. He was staring forward with empty, unfocused eyes, the heterochromia of his pupils looking especially eerie in the dim, sickly yellow light. He didn't react to the sword at Barbara's throat or the arrow pointed at his heart from the green arrow. He simply sat there watching in a state of hollow stillness, as if the world meant nothing.
"How could you bring one of those bloodsuckers here?" Barbara continued, her volume rising as she rounded on Harley, her frustration boiling over. "Do you have any idea how many people we've lost to those monsters? Do you know what they did to Jason? To Tim? to my friends?!"
Harley ducked instinctively, offering a sheepish, frantic grin. "Heeeey, Babs, easy there! Junior ain't like the other creeps. He's... he's got a different vibe, ya know? He didn't try to bite me once, and honestly, he's more polite than most of the guys I used to run with!"
"Vandalieu is not like the vampires outside," Erza said firmly, her voice cutting through Harley's chatter like a gavel. "He is our companion. And you attacked him without even attempting to allow us to explain."
"And we're just supposed to take your word for it?" Green Arrow spat out from the shadows, his grip tightening around the riser of his bow. "In this world, we don't do 'benefit of the doubt' anymore. We do survival."
"Yes," Erza answered without a flicker of hesitation. "You are."
The tension hadn't started with blades. They had been talking, trying to bridge the gap between their two groups. But then, Signal had caught the "wrongness" in Van's physiology. He had seen the aura around Van, and apparently, it was similar to the vampires of this world, and well, let's just say they didn't take too kindly to a vampire being here.
Erza had stepped in before the first Batarang could fly. Honestly, as she looked at the battle-worn heroes, she wasn't entirely sure who she was protecting. She understood their fear, this world was drowning in blood and shadows, and trust was a currency they had long since spent.
But she also knew Vandalieu. Over the months they had known each other, she had gotten to know a lot about her friends from the group chats, and she had come to realize that Van was frighteningly similar to Kenji.
Both loved testing themselves, pushing the boundaries of their power, and discovering the limits of their own existence. They were researchers of their own strength. But beneath that ambition of getting stronger, both preferred a quiet life, they didn't seek conflict, but they were devastatingly efficient at finishing it, from everything she had heard from them and their actions.
Erza knew that if these heroes attacked Van, he wouldn't argue. He wouldn't try to convince them of his innocence. He would simply remove the threat. Permanently. so that they no longer bothered him. Looking at them, Erza knew they wouldn't survive a single serious retaliation from the Dhampir. They may be this world's heroes, but she doubted they really had the power to win against Van.
She sighed, a sound of weary resignation, before, in an act of extreme goodwill, she returned her sword to her spatial inventory. The metal vanished into a shimmer of blue light.
"As we have already informed Mr Gordon and Miss Quinn," Erza said, her voice regaining its calm, authoritative edge, "we are not from your world. We arrived here by accident, and we have nothing to do with the Vampire King or the vampire plague overrunning your Earth." She gestured toward Van. "And he was born like that. Vandalieu is a dhampir, a half-vampire, half-human."
The heroes didn't relax. Oliver Queen kept his arrow nocked. "Yeah, right. A half-vampire who just happened to stumble into Gotham right when the King's forces are looking for our front door? That's a hell of a coincidence, even for this city."
"Elf."
A flat, emotionless voice cut through the room like a cold blade. Everyone froze, their eyes darting to the source.
"…What?" Black Canary asked, her hand hovering near her throat, ready to unleash a sonic cry.
Van slowly lifted a hand and brushed his pale hair aside, revealing the sharply pointed tip of his ear.
"Half-vampire," he said, his expressionless tone making the words sound like a recorded message. "Half-elf."
There was a long, stunned silence. The sheer absurdity of the statement seemed to paralyze the minds of the Justice League survivors.
"WAIT WAIT WAIT—LET ME SEE!" Harley shrieked, breaking the spell. She bounced forward and grabbed Van by the shoulders, lifting the small boy halfway off the crate. "Oh my god, you're serious! He's an elf! Like Legolas but way more goth! He's adorable! Can I keep him? Babs, can we keep him? Think of the branding!"
"An elf?" Duke Thomas (Signal) muttered, lowering his stance as his brain tried to process the new data. "Are you kidding me? That's... that's not on the apocalypse bingo card. I had 'Nuclear Winter' and 'Alien Invasion,' but 'Fantasy Creatures' was definitely not on the list." Oh, if only his brother could see this now.
Vampires, they could understand. They had seen ghosts, demons, and even mermaids. But a literal elf? It was so wildly out of place that it shattered the aggressive momentum of the room.
"So..." Duke Thomas said slowly, "you're really not with the King? You're just... from somewhere else entirely?"
"No," Sora and Erza said in unison.
Sora stepped forward, rubbing the back of his head with a sheepish smile. He looked human, vulnerable, and profoundly exhausted, which did more to ease the heroes' nerves than Erza's armor ever could.
"Honestly, we didn't even know about the whole 'vampire apocalypse' thing until we were already surrounded when we arrived," Sora admitted. "We landed here, the sky was red, and suddenly, a flying vampire was trying to eat our friend. I know it's hard to trust us, given what you're facing, but please... give Van and us a chance. We're just trying to get home."
Barbara narrowed her eyes, her mind still searching for the trap. "You say this isn't your world. If that's true, why help? Why risk yourselves instead of just... going back?"
Sora let out a dry, hollow laugh and pointed at the bat-symbol on her chest. "Why do you wear that? Why do you protect people you don't even know in a city that's already fallen to the dark? You could have fled months ago, couldn't you? Taken a boat, a plane, or hidden in a cave?"
Barbara went still.
"Because you can," Sora continued, his voice softening. "Because it's the right thing to do. You risk your lives for strangers every night because your heart won't let you do otherwise. Why is it so hard to believe that there are others out there who feel the same way? Kenji stayed behind to fight to buy us time, not because he had to, and certainly not for a reward. He did it because he saw people in trouble. Is that really so hard to believe?"
Silence stretched for several long seconds. Barbara looked at Jim, who gave a small, weary nod, then back at Sora. Finally, she exhaled a long, shaky breath and lowered her Batarang.
"…Fine," she said, though her gaze remained hard. "But I don't trust you. any of you. Not yet. If I find out you're a Trojan horse for the King, I'll deal with you myself. And I don't miss."
"Fair enough," Sora replied.
The atmosphere lightened, though it remained wary. Harley immediately resumed pestering Van, firing off a barrage of questions about whether he sparkled in the sun or if he could talk to trees. Van responded with his usual one-word answers, seemingly unfazed by the jester's manic energy.
Later, once the groups had moved in, Sora asked the question that had been gnawing at him. "So... what's the plan? We can't stay in this place forever."
Barbara glanced at Green Arrow and Black Canary. They exchanged a silent look before nodding. "There's a main base," she explained, keeping her voice low. "The core of the resistance. It's a mix of heroes, rogues, and survivors. We're gathering our strength, waiting for a few more key players before we launch a full-scale counterattack against the Vampire King."
She didn't give a location. She didn't name the "key players." Sora noticed the omission, but he didn't care. Truthfully, his priority wasn't this world's survival, it was the mission, cold as it may sound. to get the shard and leave this world and get back to his own, to his precious sister. He glanced at Van, who gave a microscopic shake of his head.
Van had already told him that he had tried to discreetly snatch the [Chaos Shard] during the chaos of the Arkham extraction when the locator had flared, when he had seen where it was when the vampire king arrived with all his men as they were trying to get into the plane.
But he seemed not to be able to, and the System had informed him that the Shard was currently "Anchored" to the wielder, and it couldn't be removed or claimed until it was "Exposed", which meant it had to be in use, or carried out into the open by its current wielder.
Sora sighed inwardly, leaning back against the stone wall. 'What a crappy game,' he thought bitterly. The System was forcing them to play along with the apocalypse, dangling the prize just out of reach, like it was trying to ensure they stayed for the final act.
"Well," Sora muttered to himself, thinking of Shiro waiting for him in another reality. "I guess we play hero for a little longer."
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