Gritty Stories

[Male Reader x Marvel] Being a hero is a hard task, and not because of tough enemies, or the threat of death, but because it was about making a choice, a choice to take responsibility into one's own hands, and strike out for what they believed was right. In a world filled with far-out aliens and hellish demons, killer androids and super-powered maniacs, being a hero was even harder. From a young age, [Y/N] always had a keen understanding about what he believed was right and wrong, that people who hurt others for money and fame or out of sadistic enjoyment deserved punishment, that justice was necessary, and without it everything would fall apart. The death of his mother by the hands of some rogue gunman only solidified his resentment towards those he considered to be the scum of society. He had always wanted to be a hero, like Captain America or the Human Torch, from the comics he had always read, front to back. Men who held the power to change the world for the better, and weren't afraid to do what was right, despite what obstacles laid ahead of him. However, unlike his heroes, he held no superpower to help him on his path, no super-strength or speed, hardened skin or flaming skull, setting the rookie vigilante up for a bitter struggle. And yet, on a day that would have appeared just like any other, upon the seemingly unimportant bite from a strange, discoloured spider. On a less-than-interesting field trip, he would be granted the powers needed to fight for his convictions. the ability to now truly make those who hurt others pay for their actions. He made a promise as a child that he would make the world a better place, a world where people like his mother wouldn't have had to die, and he intended to follow through on that promise to the very end...

❝𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞.. 𝐈'𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.❞ 𝐀 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐈 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐜𝐫𝐲.. 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 "𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐨𝐤𝐚𝐲.. 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐮𝐬, 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧." 𝐈 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝, 𝐰𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐤. 𝐌𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐦. . . . Z'airee was a caretaker at a old people's home and he took care of many patients. The only thing was that it happened to be one of the few nursing in homes in NYC. So many patients wounded up from the hood where many of the patients were from different gangs. Z'airee wasn't supposed to have favorites but he always had this particular one.. Mr. Sinaloa. Heaven was a drug dealer who visited his grandpa, Tyreek Sinaloa everyday. His grandpa was everything that his parents wasn't to him. The trenches of New York was where he came from. All his mom cared about was drugs and his dad walked out on him. He grew up running the streets because his mom was too high one everything to care, with men coming in and out they house. He never had that support system so he was wit older kids for as long as he could remember. So as soon as his grandpa got custody he was good but he always knew he wanted to move out as soon as possible..Or so he thought. EXT

Much Fact, Little Fiction. They say the truth is stranger than fiction. In Mike Miski's world, the truth is a Jackson Pollock mess of rebellion, survival, and high-stakes consequence. Before the federal audits and the Second Chance logistics of 2026, there was the Detroit Bunker. It was a world of raw, electric energy, underground punk shows, and life lived strictly on the edge. But falling down the rabbit hole has a price, and Miski has spent forty years paying it in full. In this visceral, 40-chapter memoir, Miski navigates a non-linear landscape of memory where time is distorted and the stakes are life and death. From the drug-fueled chaos of the 1980s to the cold reality of a federal interrogation room, "Living in My Own Private Rabbit Hole" isn't just a book-it's an uncompromising portrait of a generation that refused to play by the rules. Inside these pages, you'll find: The Detroit Underground: A front-row seat to the grit and noise of the Bunker scene. The High-Stakes Hustle: Navigating the Alphabet Agencies, international utility bonds, and the legal incidents that follow a life lived sideways. A Masterclass in Redemption: How a Superstar of the underbelly automates a second chance and finds meaning amidst the detritus of a past life. Equal parts a testament to personal struggle and a vivid work of surreal art, this is non-fiction reimagined. Whether you're here for the true crime, the punk rock history, or the story of a man who looked the Secret Service in the eye and lived to tell it-one thing is certain: Prepare to fall down the hole. You may not return the same.

One world is dying. The other is about to be conquered. Lena Voss is a legendary Courier of the Mojave Wasteland, a woman who has survived bullet wounds to the head and the treacherous politics of New Vegas. But when Mr. House's experimental portal technology malfunctions, she is hurled across dimensions into the vibrant, dangerous Kingdom of Vale. She isn't alone. Following in her wake is an army of Securitrons, Caesar's brutal Legion, and the expansionist NCR-all looking to claim the rich resources of Remnant for themselves. In the middle of the chaos, Lena encounters Ruby Rose-a young Huntress with a scythe and a heart full of hope. While Lena is a pragmatist hardened by radiation and betrayal, Ruby believes in the power of heroes. Forced into an uneasy alliance, the two must navigate a landscape of shifting loyalties, invading armies, and the ever-present threat of the Grimm. As the Mojave's grit clashes with Remnant's soul, a bond forms between the Courier and the Huntress that neither expected. To save both worlds, Lena will have to decide if she's still just a girl delivering a package, or if she's found a home worth fighting for.

A thousand years ago, they were their saviors. Today, they are nothing more than a bedtime story used to frighten disobedient children. The denizens of Etrea-powerful and breathtaking-have faded into oblivion, leaving behind only echoes of legends: tales of beings with platinum hair and deep purple eyes. But as the world of Etrea began to wither, a final hope was cast unto the realm where they were once worshipped-the world of men. Nolan has no memory of where he came from. Found as an infant, he was raised in the shadow of the lash, amidst the filth and hatred of a cruel Baroness's estate. To the world, he is a 'monster'-a half-breed whose face is partially masked by black, obsidian scales. He has no way of knowing that these scales are not a curse, but a divine seal placed by his mother to shroud a heritage that would terrify even the gods. In a realm where everyone is born gifted with a combat class and the spark of magic, Nolan appears empty. Devoid of talent, he endures every humiliation in silence, protected only by the unwavering bond with Lili. But the Marquis Thorne saw what the others missed. Rescued from the execution square, Nolan and Lili are thrust into a world of grand politics, lethal intrigue, and murderous training. As they push past their limits, the truth begins to shatter the foundations of the kingdom: Lili is far from the helpless girl the world sees, harboring a secret potential that defies all logic. Meanwhile, Nolan's seal is cracking. One by one, the scales fall away, revealing an unearthly visage. While the world counts his "zero" circles, a dark, primal force awakens in his veins-a power of five classes and an ancient beast that hungers for more than just survival. When the Great War arrives, no one will ask about his scars. They will ask whether the god who has returned brings salvation... or total annihilation. Betrayal. Revenge. Legacy. The path to godhood begins with blood.

​"He's a failure. A nobody. A mistake." ​That's what they say about MC. In a world of elite cultivators and divine warriors, he is the man who always falls short. ​But what happens when the "failure" is actually a cage for two legendary spirits who could burn the world to ash? As the "strongers" laugh, MC is busy surviving a war inside his own mind. ​The joke is coming to an end. And nobody is going to like the ending.

|VAST. DARK. The Subconscious Consumes| The world is not what it seems. Jasper, known on the streets as Jay and in the system as Zurich, has spent his life outrunning the trauma of his youth by embracing a dangerous, criminal numbness. He survived his childhood and prison by building a wall of rage and violence, believing connection is weakness. But when his release lands him face-to-face with Aurea-the sweet, idealistic girl he loved and lost in the fourth grade-something inside him cracks open. While the rest of the world walks blind, the seams of reality have begun to fray before their eyes. There are things that cannot be unseen: the black ooze, the swirling void eyes, the malevolent entities controlling it all. These forces haven't just been watching; they've been waiting-patiently-for the beacons to reveal themselves. For the opportunity to prevent humanity from evolution. Forced to confront the violent truth of their past and the terrifying scope of their present, the two must survive a harrowing spiritual evolution to embrace their newfound abilities-abilities that reveal a brutal, secret truth about their world. Now, they must race across layers of time and reality to prevent total subjugation. ___________________________________ JOIN THE (r)EVOLUTION| Weekly lore drops, character dossiers, and access to archive available at: 👉 https://ashjpeterson.substack.com/

In a world owned by Vought International, being a "Natural Born" hero isn't a miracle-it's a death sentence. Ruby Rose was supposed to be the company's greatest secret: the biological daughter of Queen Maeve, born without a drop of Compound V in her veins. For fifteen years, she lived in a gilded cage within Vought Tower, trained to be a corporate product and a scripted savior. But Ruby's power-a displacement speed that leaves red petals in its wake and a mysterious silver light in her eyes-can't be controlled by a boardroom. When the "Red Blur" finally breaks free, she finds herself caught between the cold-blooded pragmatism of Billy Butcher's "The Boys" and the escalating obsession of a humiliated Homelander. From the high-stakes boardrooms of Vought Plaza to the gritty underground of the Supe resistance, Ruby must decide what it truly means to be a hero. In a civil war where gods can bleed and corporate lies are the only law, one girl's "simple soul" might be the only thing capable of stripping the Godhood from the monsters and igniting a revolution that Vought never saw coming.

Lucy MacLean was prepared for many things in the wasteland: Radroaches, Raiders, even the occasional Ghoul. She was not prepared for a quantum anomaly to drop her 30,000 feet above a Chicago that wasn't a crater. Detained by the Global Defense Agency and labeled a "Class-V" threat, Lucy quickly discovers that the strange hum in her blood isn't radiation-it's inheritance. Born to a mother who was a Viltrumite infiltrator, Lucy is a hybrid powerhouse in a world already teetering on the edge of a superhero-sized cliff. When she meets Mark Grayson, a rookie hero struggling with his own alien legacy, the spark is instant. But as Lucy trades her 10mm rounds for super-speed and her Pip-Boy starts tracking Viltrumite gene sequences, she realizes that "finding her family" might mean fighting the very empire she was born to serve. In this alternate-universe retelling of Invincible, two hybrids must decide if they are destined to be conquerors, or if they can forge a new home among the ruins.

A samurai watches the mist move across the fields and tells himself it is nothing. A knight on a distant wall feels the same wind and thinks the same thing. They are both wrong. Nine realms. Eight centuries of peace. One war about to wake them all. A multi-POV fantasy story in style of Game of Thrones, featuring imperial legions, samurai clans, and knightly orders, alongside elves, dwarves, beastfolk, and many other mythical creatures that inhabit the world.

(I do not take credit for Better Call Saul or any of its characters. This story contains some foul language, and some descriptions of the cartel/violence. This contains many chapters and is still being written, so please be patient!!) After Hector Salamanca's sudden health decline, Lalo Salamanca travels to Albuquerque to run things- and he decides to bring his 22 year old daughter Esperanza along for the ride. Esperanza and the cartel's money distributor, Luis Varga, develop a stronger bond than they would like. While things in the cartel get grittier, Lalo gets more suspicious of his daughter's affairs with Luis. How will Luis and Esperanza manage their feelings for each other whilst Luis deals with the grief of the death of his older brother, and Esperanza desperately tries to prove herself to her father? (This story takes place during seasons 4, 5, and 6 of bcs. Most plot points are the same to the show, except in this universe Lalo has a daughter and Nacho has already passed away, and his younger brother Luis is here to replace him. PLEASE do not be disrespectful, this is just for fun, and to fulfill my joy of writing an action/romance in the bcs universe. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!) There are plot twists, character development, and most importantly lots of emotions!

In the soot-choked streets of London, Benjameni Tomashvili, a former duelist from the Georgian territories of the Russian Empire-arrives with nothing but a blade, a name no one recognizes, and a fighting style that might get him killed. As he claws his way into the city's brutal dueling circuit, Benjameni searches for more than victory-he searches for purpose, identity, and a place to stand his ground in a world that rewards those who know when to give up. But beneath the surface of ranked matches and formal records lies something far darker and brutal: whispers of an Underground, where rules dissolve and survival is never guaranteed. To reach it, Benjameni will have to confront not just stronger opponents-but the flaws in the very philosophy he built himself on. Also... This story serves as a prequel to a future project: Duel! For extra content plus more chapters, check out the series on the Royal Road!

The night the world burned, everything changed forever. The city of VAGG, once a fortress against the wasteland, fell in a single, catastrophic moment. Fire devoured its streets. Monsters crawled from the ruins. And in the chaos, something far more dangerous slipped through the cracks-a child. Francesca fled into the desert, encased in shattered armor and guided by a voice that refused to let her fall, hunted by soldiers, stalked by impossible creatures, and carrying a secret powerful enough to reshape what remains of the world. Behind her, the flames still rage. Ahead of her, the unknown waits. And somewhere in the shadows, they are already searching. But she is not the only survivor. Another wanders the endless sand. Waiting to be found.

Black Ledger is a dark, cinematic supernatural thriller following Sawyer Kestrel, a former special-operations contractor who descends into a covert war of demons, vampires, and occult power networks while searching for a vanished woman in Panama. What begins as a personal rescue mission spirals into a global conspiracy tied to demonic corporations, corrupted elites, and a mysterious artifact known as the Black Ledger-an infernal record that exposes who truly controls the modern world. As Sawyer is forcibly turned into a vampire and hunted by both human and inhuman enemies, he must choose between reclaiming his humanity or embracing the monster he's becoming to stop a looming supernatural war.

the ruins of the former United States, the fundamentalist regime of Gilead has crushed the world into a silent, prayer-filled nightmare. But the status quo is shattered when V, a high-octane Solo from the neon-soaked streets of Night City, flatlines during a Badlands gig and wakes up in a red robe. Trapped in a body labeled "demonic" for its combat chrome and high-tier cyberware, V is forced into the role of a Handmaid. There, she meets Emily-a woman broken by the regime but harboring a flickering spark of rebellion. As an unlikely, slow-burn romance ignites between the chrome-laden mercenary and the resilient survivor, they plan a high-stakes escape that will take them from the suffocating Ceremony rooms to the frozen, blood-stained borders of Canada. With Gorilla Arms against Guardians and Sandevistan speed against Scripture, V must decide if she's just a ghost in the machine or the spark that will burn Gilead to the ground.

Humanity lives behind vast walled cities, bound to gods through divine contracts that grant power at a terrible cost. Fire burns life. Healing steals from the future. Time erases memory. And when debts go unpaid, angelic Collectors arrive to claim the souls of contractors, leaving behind monsters known as Defaults. Aeron is the only person who cannot contract with a god. Instead, he can see and alter the invisible debt binding everyone else to them. When a breach throws him into the heart of the city's system, he is forced to survive with a power no one understands - and one that draws dangerous attention. The deeper Aeron pulls at the debt beneath the city, the more the rules begin to fracture. And the more he learns, the clearer it becomes: the gods did not build this world to be understood.

With those final, mocking words from a dying sorcerer, Lieutenant Demetrian Titus is hurled into the screaming void of the Warp. He expects the end; instead, he crashes into a world of neon lights, celebrity heroes, and a morality far softer than the cold steel of the Imperium. In the contemporary superhero landscape of the Dispatch universe, Titus is a walking war crime-a seven-foot-tall genetically forged god of war who knows only duty and slaughter. Assigned to the Phoenix Program for "rehabilitation," he is paired with the one person who isn't intimidated by his ceramite-clad shadow: Courtney, known to the public as Invisigal. She is a snarky, self-loathing ex-villain who hides behind perfect invisibility and sharp quips. He is an Ultramarine whose soul is as armored as his body. As the two are forced into an uneasy partnership, Courtney begins to see the broken man beneath the Mk X Tacticus armor, while Titus realizes that even in a "decadent" world, there are souls worth saving. But the Warp does not let go easily. As echoes of the Thousand Sons begin to bleed into this new reality, the soldier and the invisible woman must forge a bond that transcends their universes. In a slow-burn collision of duty and desire, Titus must decide if he is still the Emperor's weapon, or if he can finally become something he never thought possible: human.

New York City doesn't mean nothing. It never sleeps, yet it never wakes. D.T., a man who once sold out Madison Square Garden, has returned to the Lower East Side-a graveyard of neon and broken promises. Haunted by the ghost of his friend Tex and pursued by the debts of a violent past, D.T. is drifting through a strange reality where memory and addiction blur into one. Watching from the shadows is "The Bum," a former architect turned archivist of the city's misery. Through his eyes, we witness the final, desperate act of a man trying to write the one song that might finally offer absolution. The Neon Penitentiary is an atmospheric, hard-hitting story about the agony of relapse, the cruelty of fame, and the search for meaning in the ruins of a life burned to the ground. Can you come back from burning your own life down, or do the streets always claim you in the end?

Never thought I'd join Blue Spirits, but you know what they say, when stars align, they shit on you. When I was a kid, life was all about my sister. Everyone I'd ever known growing up had some poik spots somewhere. It was normal. Then these freak kids were born who never got em. Clean, and my sister was one of them. Those kids started to disappear. It had to be the Supremacy, and since they had been coming around more often, I felt like I had to guard my sister with my life. No one ever really questioned Supra around here. They just kind of let them do whatever. But there was one kid who wanted to make a difference, and everyone knew him by his nickname like a Super Hero. Rebellion. The Kid Crusader wanted to be behind it all, and for whatever reason, he wanted me to join him. Blue Spirits? Well that comes later. Just let me tell my story, for cryin' out loud. This is my story. It's kind of slow, but it's still mine nonetheless. Buckle up, kids. -Alex This book takes place within the Inherited universe *See also Locus: The Age of Spring, for another book/series in the same universe that has mention of this character. It is not necessary to read it to enjoy this book. Content Warning: This book will include violent scenes, death, and deteriorating mental psychosis.