[A/N]: Aight. First, thank all y'all for, like, welcoming me back so fast and so earnestly. Really warms a rotten heart. Also! I finally got the aux-chapters up. One of 'em lists Lucian's abilities and what they do, and the other has lists of both his and Maxine's equipment. I accidentally uploaded the equipment chapter earlier instead of setting the timer, so that was embarrassing :P
Also, this is a smut chapter. It'll only take up the first part of the whole thing, so you can skip it if you like. Lucian just became a changeling and I have to capitalize on it, so here we are.
Smut Tags:
• Maxine Awakens a Monster-Fucker Fetish
• Spit Kink [Drinking, specifically]
• Tentacles [tendrils, technically, but this is hentai-speak]
• Deep Cunnilingus [Monster Tongue!]
– • × • –
Like he did when taking her to the Batcave earlier, Lucian flew Maxie back home. They landed on the rooftop, then rappelled and swung their way into their apartment's balcony.
Tired both physically and mentally, Max stripped down to just her underwear as soon as she passed through the door. She didn't even bother with a change of clothes and just slumped into the couch. "Hungry," she whined, tracing aimless lines over her stomach with her fingertips.
"Craving anything?" Lucian asked, eyeing her body without shame.
"Fast food, please..." She then proceeded to lie down on her back and stretched languidly.
Lucian vanished his equipment and returned to casual clothing. "Is that jealousy I smell?" he teased, moving to squat by her. "Did you not like that someone else got to ride me?"
Maxie whimpered, eyes staring straight ahead at nothing instead of looking at him.
He hummed, amused, then pecked her cheek. "I'll be back with takeout still warm," he said. Before he could get up fully, she pulled him back down and basically demanded a proper kiss.
No sane man would refuse to indulge someone so adorable.
...
Lucian returned with a prodigious amount of food. Maxie was delighted that there was so much to eat—the bats' training methods were demanding. Since there was basically an edible hill on their table, Lucian waited for her to have her fill before gorging his own bottomless stomach.
While they were both resting to digest their food before bed, Lucian decided it was time to make some revelations to her.
"So... we're having a reveal night tomorrow," he opened.
Maxie hummed, only half-paying attention.
He continued. "There's something I wanna show you. I plan to let the others know too, but you have to be the first."
That woke her up. "Does it have to do with you skipping out earlier...?"
He nodded. "I felt weird all day. Like I was exhausted and overflowing with energy at the same time."
"Is something wrong with you?" She asked. "With your body, I mean," she hurriedly appended.
Lucian put on an easy expression to ease her concerns. "Quite the opposite," he replied. "Alright. Here goes." Taking a deep breath, he went up on his feet and stripped himself topless. Maxie observed intently, not minding the show in the slightest.
He pulled on his new class abilities. His already pale skin turned paper-white. Bones crackled and extended, and joints popped and shifted as they moved. His muscles swelled in some areas and shrank in others, while scale-like plates of natural armor formed along his backside and extremities. A long, thin tail sprouted from the bottom of his spine, and his face warped into something not quite human, growing a lipless snout and while his ears turned cat-like.
He ended up as this seven-foot-something humanoid, wearing his pants on his digitigrade legs like they were a couple sizes too small.
Maxie stared, wide-eyed, blinking as she processed the sight before her. "Luce...?"
"Still me," he responded with a distorted voice. Somehow, the oddest thing was his ability to produce a bilabial noise without any lips. "I can uh... transform now, I guess. This form was the first thing that came to mind."
Max stood up from the floor. She toed the distance cautiously, though nothing about her betrayed any real fear—only a mild apprehension. Having drawn close, she slowly brought her hands up to Lucian's chest. Her fingertips ghosted at his changed skin as if the slightest touch would make the illusion crumble. She jerked her hands away when the muscles twitched beneath Lucian's skin.
"Sorry," he mumbled. "Didn't expect that to tickle."
Chuckling in turn, Maxie returned her hands to where they were, this time applying more pressure. She felt around, taking in the roughness of his skin like old leather. There was warmth underneath it, radiating from deep within. An electric feeling shot up through Maxie's bones at every moment of contact.
Trailing down with one hand, she felt her stomach turn as she touched the skin that wrapped itself lazily over Lucian's thick ribs. His abdomen just beneath seemed to have shrunken in on itself. In reality, the rest of his body had just grown more proportionally compared to it. His waist's width remained the same even as his body stretched and swelled, leaving it looking emaciated when it really wasn't. It was the illogical extreme of "snatched."
When Maxine moved her hands back up and went further, Lucian had to sit himself down. She placed herself on his lap to proceed with her exploration.
His collarbone was more prominent than before—something she'd already liked in the first place, now enhanced. She traced along to his traps and felt body armor there, which spread around to his shoulders and stopped just shy of his biceps.
Fascinated, she had her fingers flutter down along his arms until she grasped his hands, armored with scales and tipped with claws. She guided them to her cheeks, nuzzling into one of his palms. Just one of them alone could completely encompass half of her face, and his fingers would no doubt close around most of her head.
In that state, any and all apprehension was replaced with intrigue and excitement.
Maxine stared past Lucian's hands that held her head so gently. Her eyes met his—emeralds and obsidian. They both gleamed with absolute recognition and irresistible desire.
Maxine wasn't sure whether her heart had stopped beating or actually gone faster. There were even butterflies in her stomach during that moment, and ants crawled all over the inside of her skull. Gulping, she struggled to speak.
"You know... I really did get jealous of Spoiler after you left..." Her hands reached up, pulling Lucian's head down to put their foreheads together. "Prove your loyalty to me, won't you~?" she whispered, panting heavily.
Though she hesitated to close the distance between her lips and his exposed teeth, she pulled through and pushed forward. He was already cupping her face, hands holding her steady. His mouth opened, and a grotesquely long and slimy tongue slithered out from between his jagged teeth, stopping just shy of her lips.
She parted them in invitation.
...
Maxine didn't know what she expected, but having slow, romantic sex with a monsterized Lucian wasn't it. Everything was so soft. So... fluttery and gentle.
Time had essentially stopped for her as she melted in his lap, grinding her hips with his cock inside her. At her request, he had given the underside of his dick some ribbing and made the skin much rougher. Combined with her slow, undulating movements, his prick scratched itches deep inside that she never knew were there.
'Fuuuuck... not even Tammy's toys have anything on this...!'
Moaning and whining, she swirled her tongue so Lucian's would wrap around it. It was so long, so soft and tough at the same time. Thick and slippery drool flowed down his writhing length, and she drank as much of it as she could. She didn't understand why it felt so good—it just did. There was no point thinking too much about it though, so she just kept gulping it down for a while.
Eventually, Maxine pulled away to catch her breath. "You can do more to me, you know...?"
Lucian nuzzled his snout to her nose. "Yeah," he replied. "You just looked so peaceful this whole time... didn't wanna break your rhythm."
She leaned up to him and stuck out her tongue, licking at his lipless mouth and wetting his exposed teeth. "That's sweet, but... breaking me is exactly what I want you to do right now," she all but demanded, trying to sound as sultry as she could.
"Guess it's time, then," he reasoned. "I do need to tell you... I didn't take this form just for the aesthetics."
Before Maxine could let her mind consider the tantalizing possibilities, she was in the air, suspended by familiar dark tendrils. 'Tentacles,' she mused, thinking back to the various hentais that she used to watch with Tammy while they experimented years ago.
'Woah... did all of that put a sleeper kink in me...?'
She didn't mind, really. All she could do was clench her teeth and throw her head back. Her entire body tightened, muscles flexing hard—something hot, wet, and slimy had just slithered between her thighs.
Unlike his dick, Lucian's long, slippery tongue gave her a drastically different experience. There was ticklish sort of stimulation as it wriggled in, and it had her brain short-circuiting in excitement and confusion. Contrasting that, his sharp, messy teeth pressed into her skin. There was enough pressure to feel the danger of how sharp they were, but they were also light enough to only leave faint red marks all over.
Combined with Lucian's slobber, Maxine gushed with fluids all over. They got on his snout and dripped down his chin, along his body, all the way down to the floor.
It didn't take long for her to cum. Literal waves of heat washed over her entire body as she lost control. Her brain jolted, vision flashing white. Lucian didn't stop. Rather, he just kept on going and going and going, swirling his tongue all over her insides until she was sobbing from pleasure.
Just when she found it hard to breathe from her bodily spasms, he slowed down and pulled out. The tentacles loosened around her body, allowing his arms to cradle her as he licked at her face. The tentacles didn't disappear, though—they simply changed their role. They swirled and brushed all over her body at just the right speed and direction. It was soothing, and helped her calm down from her overwhelming orgasm.
Lucian pulled her in, cradling her. Maxine felt tiny against his transformed body. "Was that too much?" he asked.
She giggled, then panted while sobbing. "N-no... no, that was good," she assured him. "I was just surprised... fuck, that was so good..."
She caught her hands moving on their own, rubbing at her clit and lower belly. She couldn't help but laugh. "Wanna go another round...? I think I got some other ideas for your powers..."
– • × • –
Their pleasant night came and went. Since Lucian completely exhausted Maxie by indulging her spur-of-the-moment desires, he stayed awake for whatever time they had left. He spent those hours funneling lifeforce into her so she wouldn't be a zombie during the day. As for himself, sleepless nights were common in his old life, as well as back in the Academy. He could take some eyebag growth.
Their morning was spent in the increasingly familiar environment of Iñigo's restaurant. Luce introduced Max to Jodie that afternoon, and the two ladies hit it off surprisingly well. All three of them spoke at length. Stories were told and advice was given, and Maxie workshopped her vigilante outfit with Jodie before returning to work. Everything was arranged to her specifications, and the day went on.
Once work hours ended, Luce and Max stayed at the Watsons' until nightfall.
With some sneaky help, Joseph's recovery was accelerated. Tammy, though still unconscious, was recovering at a staggering rate. Her body would be completely healed in weeks, maybe less, and they held out hope that she would soon be able to wake up.
That night, when they returned home to prepare for their meetup with the bats, Lucian took Maxie out to his training area.
"You built all this?" she marveled, turning this way and that to admire the staggering sum of improvised equipment.
Lucian, smiling proudly, stood next to her. "I did. Just never got to show you 'cause stuff kept happening."
Maxie leaned on his side. "So... what'd you really wanna show me?"
"This," he replied, taking out his Shock Bolt tablet. "It's a spell thing. First of many."
Max reached out, taking the surprisingly heavy item into her hands. "And what's it do...?"
Pointing to a pile of pebbles, Lucian instructed, "Aim that thing at them rocks over there. When you're ready, push some energy into it like I taught you for your other stuff."
She nodded, took aim, and braced herself. After a second of loading up the tablet with her energy, it lit up and spit out a bolt of lightning that cut a perfectly straight line. The buzzing whistle that it produced shocked her ears, and the sheer light of it fucked with her vision for a second. Still, most stunning yet was the result: the pebbles toward the epicenter were glowing red, and for a foot or so outward, everything steamed with heat.
"Woah..."
Lucian chuckled at her amazement. "Fuckin' cool, right?"
"I didn't think magic was real," she whispered.
He snorted. "Really? We have a literal goddess... wait, no... demigoddess? Whatever. We got Wonder Woman out there with the League—of course there's magic."
Maxie shrugged. "Eh, can you really blame me? Shit's weird, and even when we see it live, all of that Justice League stuff's hard to believe." She blasted lightning a few more times before returning the tablet, rubbing her hands together as her skin tingled with residual static. "I didn't even believe that Batman was real until I met you..."
Lucian just took a deep breath and basked in the silence that followed. "This is nice, isn't it?" he said randomly, staring up at the patterns in the smog high above. Though the air wasn't quite fresh, it was better where they were compared to the rest of the city. The night gave it a pleasant coolness as well.
"Yeah," she eventually agreed. "I wish we could have more nights like this," she added.
He pulled her by her hands and held her close. "Soon," he assured her. "And we'll make sure it lasts."
...
When the time to meet up drew near, Lucian and Maxie suited up and awaited Oracle's call. When it did come, she told them both a few things before giving them directions
First was that the coming meetup was a show of goodwill on the Bat-family's end. The ghosts wouldn't be made to join anything bigger, nor was it something that should put any pressure on them. The bats electing to reveal themselves would only serve to clear any unsteady airs and make assurances for both sides.
The second thing was that, like Spoiler had mentioned before, some of them truly did want to reveal the people behind their masks. Nightwing towards the Phantom Knight, most of all, and Spoiler and Orphan for Wraith.
Oracle even admitted that she'd grown an attachment to both of them, and Batman himself seemed to approve of the aforementioned friendships. The last thing was a wish and hope that a connection would form, somehow, and that it would last no matter where they end up in the future.
Lucian thought that last part was a bit cheesy, but he kept that opinion to himself.
Once expectations had been set, Oracle told the ghosts to move out. They were first instructed to hop into Gotham's subway network through obscure access points. That was followed by a turn here and breaking in there, and they ended up in what looked like old and nearly-abandoned tunnels that resembled Paris' catacombs—just without the thousands upon thousands of human remains to line the walls.
The ghosts took on a rapid pace from there, and Oracle reacted to an oddity.
"You're both running...?"
"We are, yeah," Lucian answered, voice casual. "Wraith might have some trouble responding to you, though. She needs to focus at the speed we're going."
"She doesn't have to push herself," said Oracle, but Maxie cut her off.
"I'm fine!" She puffed between huffs for air. Several pairs of wings flapped behind her as she ran, forming a fluttering cape-like structure with their tattered-clothlike forms. "Just getting some cardio in... Phantom can top off my energy when we're there...!"
Towards the last stretch of their journey, the ghosts slowed down. Wraith let herself settle into a more casual jog while her partner fueled her with energy to recuperate what she'd lost. As nobody could see it, her chosen method of vitality transfer was a leash formed using one of Phantom's tendrils...
...
At last, they reached their destination: the primary Batcave. The true base of operations for Batman and his family. Though the event had already been explained as an expression of goodwill, Maxie was still surprised. She hadn't expected their goodwill to extend that far. When she about it some more though, it did make sense—what purpose was there in hiding that place when they would be knowing each other's faces soon anyway?
Lucian had a much easier time rolling with how things had gone. He even knew exactly where they were going before Oracle told them.
As he ran with Maxie earlier, he had Penny pull up the map of Gotham that he'd been forming in the background over the weeks. Areas he'd visited were more filled in and could expand into three-dimensional models, while others were formed by cross-referencing physical and digital maps that he's seen while going about his day-to-day.
Tracking his location, the meetup spot was obvious even just a quarter of the way in: the Wayne estate.
He and Maxie emerged from the tunnels and out into a cliff that overlooked a pristine-looking river. Max hadn't seen any water that pure in her entire life—the closest by far were the Reservoir and Gotham's zoo. Lucian was tempted to leap in and test if he could form gills, but set it aside for later.
Oracle directed them to follow along the narrow ledge path to reach the Batcave. Lucian extended his hand for Maxie to take, and she accepted it. They walked hand in hand until they reached the waterfall that fueled the clear-watered river.
The torrent was deafening up close. Lucian had to willfully dull his own hearing to prevent a headache, and Maxie was left to cup one ear with her hand. Luckily, the mist and splashing were much easier to deal with—a Blackwhip barrier took care of them with minimal effort.
Behind the waterfall, dead center along its width, was a cave entrance. Further in was a mechanical door that looked like it belonged in a dystopian sci-fi setting, and right at the center-point, Batman's emblem had been embossed.
"I see you," said Oracle, her voice now coming from a camera that had been camouflaged in the cave wall. "Opening the door."
The structure hissed open, splitting in two from an invisible seam. More layers were revealed from behind it, each splitting open from alternating angles. Soon, the ghosts were free to enter, and Lucian led the way in.
As the sequential doors closed behind them, the ghosts were greeted to the sight of Batman, standing in the far back, facing away. When he turned, his presence asserted itself—tall, armored, imposing. An obsidian monolith that stared right into the cores of their being.
Maxie fought the instinct to shrink back, standing her ground even as her body broke into a cold sweat. Lucian's internal energy flared, his body temperature rocketing sky-high. His immediate reaction was the total opposite of his partner's: throw hands. He fought against himself to avoid making a racket so soon.
"Batman," he greeted in a chorused voice, excitement barely masked.
"Phantom." Batman nodded as he responded in kind. There was the barest hint of a smile as he spoke. "And Wraith. Thank you both for coming."
"Thank you for the invitation," Lucian responded. Looking around, he asked, "So, uh... where's the others?"
"They'll be with us soon. I'd unmask myself right now, but Spoiler insisted against it."
Mustering the courage to join in, Maxie voiced her thoughts. "She must've really wanted to coordinate with everyone."
Batman shrugged. "That's just how she is. For now, make yourselves at home. It'll be some time before the rest arrive."
—=—=—=—=—=—=—=—
[A/N]: RAGH
Batman's not a grouch, not in this universe. Broody and moody, sure, but he's still Bruce Wayne. He knows damn well how to accommodate guests, and there's no way Alfred didn't drill some manners into his skull.
Also, just to address this now: Lucian's Changeling form is subject to change, like, a lot, so just don't worry too much about the specifics. I haven't drawn him yet, so if you really need some visuals, I think a 'friendlier,' more cat-like version of Absolute Joker's demon form should work.
Anyway, we'll get into the meat 'n potatoes of the Black Mask arc soon, and I aim to deliver. Since I've already drafted the story, my presentation won't be as scattered as before, so yay!
It'll also take a lot less chapters to show what happens and how they go down hihi
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If you like my work and/or wanna support me, you can go right over to "https:// ko-fi.com/ mr_blorp" after removing the unnecessary spaces.
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HUZZAH! JUMPSCARE!
PENIS BLAST!!!