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[OPEN] FIC PROMPTS
I might as well put this to good use since it's here. Fic prompts! 'Cos gameplay's looking a little slow lately and I'm sorely in need of practice. Help me out, toss me a prompt? ♥ New requests are always welcomed!
You can name characters, a setting, a scene, and/or a word or line to get me started. I'll see what I can do! (Note — I guarantee: words. I don't guarantee: quality of life for your eyeballs, post-reading.)
Anon comments are on, so you needn't log in if you don't have an account. :X
| WHAT I CAN [TRY TO] WRITE Chances of a decent product are highest with Air Gear, D.Gray-Man, Durarara!!, Pandora Hearts, Kingdom Hearts and Katekyo Hitman Reborn!. A good rule of thumb is anything I've played from, but for specificity's sake: Puella Magi Madoka Magica, 07-Ghost, Tales of the Abyss, Leverage, The World Ends With You, White Collar, No. 6, Code Geass, most young adult urban fantasies. . . |
You can name characters, a setting, a scene, and/or a word or line to get me started. I'll see what I can do! (Note — I guarantee: words. I don't guarantee: quality of life for your eyeballs, post-reading.)
Anon comments are on, so you needn't log in if you don't have an account. :X
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welcome to nightmare
It was a Kogarasumaru victory.
There's been a string of them lately, Kazu's pretty sure, except he's finding it kind of hard to count right now. It's an awesome night, he knows that much—Ikki's still standing on the main junction of tables, arguing Buccha down about who's going to outdrink who, all while the rest of the team boasts and chatters throughout the room and Onigiri sinks into satisfied, leering dreams in a corner. Kind of early for Onigiri, but they've got a good mood going, and as long as the leader's still going and nobody's about to die, there aren't going to be a lot of complaints.
(Actually, while he's on that thought, Yayoi'd been the one to hand Onigiri that cup at the start of the party, hadn't she?)
Thoughts flick by like fish, slippery in his mind's hands. Kazu gives them up with easy grace. What the hell, anyway. The world's hit that point of pleasant sharpness—every color warming to the eye like sunlight, honing everything to brilliant edges and lines. He thinks about unbraking his A-Ts and taking a spin through the room—see how far he can get before he has to touch somebody to get past. The way he calculates it, he could get to forever if he times it right.
Right now, everything feels like it could last forever.
It's that thought which unhitches him from his chair. He throws a paper cup at Ikki's head to tell him that he's heading out—decides against saying anything when it sticks instead on the back of their illustrious leader's head. In fact, by the time he catches up to his own plans, Kazu's already taking the steps two by three up the stairs.
It was a good match, he thinks as he climbs, for what must be the hundredth time that night—and by now it's degenerated into one of the Great Truths of the Universe, and nothing Mikura Kazuma has to think about or acknowledge for it to be real. That doesn't unravel the memory, though—of wheels spinning, sharpening, sparking beneath his feet, twisting into flight as he jumped the ledge, caught steel and stirred it into flame. The kind of clean victory that technology's really always been meant for. The remembrance's close enough to scorch him, and it's in the flush of that warmth that he shoulders the door open and steps through it into the night air.
What's been bothering him about the party clicks into place as something cuts through shadow. In the seconds it takes for Kazu's eyes to adjust, he recognises it less by shape than by instinct: in all the world, there's no wind or knife or insult so sharp as Agito sober. His movement's as good as a fingerprint.
He lifts a hand. "Yo," he starts.
The silhouette jerks its head. "Don't come anywhere near me, fuck. I can smell it on you from here."
Kazu ducks his head and laughs. There's a heady feeling telling him to jeer back, the easy kind of feeling that always comes after a few drinks. He swallows it down with cold air and the rest of his greeting. People say that Kazu sees too much—actually, they tend to say it with a hint to their tone, and now that he's thinking about it, that's more insulting than anything. But the point, he reasons, trying to circle back around to logic—the point is that he kind of gets what they mean—and, then again, he kind of doesn't. The way Agito's leaning against the fence, for instance: fingers idly hooked in the mesh, eye tracking every bit of motion in the gloom, letting his weight sink against it in the tiniest—and possibly the only—concession he's ever made to relaxing while in possession. Kazu notices these things because he looks for them—they call out to him like signs saying don't piss off a shark today and maybe they won't need to mail you home in barglasses. He doesn't see how that's a bad thing.
At least it tells him that Agito's not about to kick him off the roof for intruding.
"Thought you'd be gone by now," he says, for lack of anything else to start. He slumps down by the door. The coolness seems to rub off on his palm; Kazu turns his hand over and runs his knuckles across a stretch of stone. Wonders, almost immediately after, if he could use it to make the jump to the next roof, and the next. The idea pulls at him; everything ties back to flying right now, with adrenaline bright as electricity lighting up every thought.
A scoff answers him, curling like a hiss, and Kazu drags his attention back. "You're getting slow, beanpole," Agito remarks, but there's no venom in the words. "We're outside territory and we just cut another worthless team down." His mouth cracks a jagged grin. "Thought we might get visitors."
"Still nothing, though, huh," he observes. This comment is greeted by stark, heavy-jawed silence. Only when it lingers does Kazu figure out what he's said wrong. He rakes a hand through his hair. It's easy to forget sometimes that Agito isn't older than Akito—isn't, for that matter, older than him—and that for all his scars and airs and knife-quick efficiency on every kill, it's really his pride that trips people up.
The quiet's left to stew for another stretch of minutes before Kazu breaks it again. "Hey, Agito."
"Now what?"
"Thanks."
Another silence receives this—and a little mutter even Kazu's ear doesn't quite catch, though he's got a pretty good idea. "If anything but your voice comes out of that mouth," Agito says in its wake, all disdain and no impression made at all, "I'll crack your teeth in their gums and you can drown in it."
Kazu grins, wider. If life were a video game, he's pretty sure, this would count as a fifteen-hit combo. He waves a hand. "You just cleaned your A-Ts. Don't waste that on me."
"Don't worry about that," Agito says, all teeth. "If it gets some quiet around here, it won't be a waste."
He tells himself that this doesn't, in fact, terrify him, and the alcohol agrees. Secured, Kazu stretches his fingertips out and the flex of bone and sinew and thinner veins jerks him back to the flame and grit of battle only a few hours earlier. But this movement costs him nothing. He gets up; the world expands, seems to breathe a little as he stands—and the best part, he knows, is that there's more of it, always more. He wanders over to the fence, taking a little grace in the fact that Agito doesn't stop him. His fingers lock in the wire mesh as he looks down. The city's awah in lights: streetlamps like firefly sparks spilling together in the distance. A constellation of roads. The night air tightens in his throat; it's early yet—he knows it, feels the promise in every breath. "Guess I could always do a run," he says.
"Your balance is shit," Agito says—he doesn't even look. "You'll run down the wall, smash through a window and spend tomorrow picking glass out from between your wheels and what's left of your leg."
"—oi."
"If you're lucky."
"Oi." This strikes Kazu as a vast insult. He straightens, much helped by the fence, and jabs a finger at Agito, all aggrieved. "A thousand—a thousand-thousand years of dumbing me down wouldn't make me stupid enough to run on a window!"
The gesture gets Agito's attention pretty much the way words didn't. One visible eye tracks the movement; his teeth slide over his lip in deliberate show—and actually, is it just the night or has he always had fangs? "You wouldn't even need that long. Fuck, the sky'll be there tomorrow. Day after tomorrow, too." He flicks upward; even his hands curl with disdain. "Get over it."
Kazu follows the gesture, tipping his head back to look as he hangs onto the fence by his fingers. The moon's out in full force tonight, almost too big to seize in a fist—though he isn't even tipsy enough to try. He likes the look of it, though, and it's impossible not to wonder how far he could follow the light before sight fails him and he has to start running off of sparks on railings through the dark. Hell, the whole city's open for flight and they're here, cooped up on a roof and just watching. Storm Riders, watching. Isn't that crazy enough?
"Focus, beanpole. Fuck, if you're going to take up space, don't be dull about it."
Under night, it occurs to him that what's oddest about Agito's expression is the way he looks like Akito—which is a damn weird thought, but it's true. Close up, even without the eyepatch, it's hard to mistake them. Akito holds his breath when he's thinking too hard, casts a low glance before meeting anybody's eyes, drifts from thought to thought with such a lack of effort that it's almost a surprise every time when he shows intention. The years of layered scars pale over him; he touches them least of anything, and they almost seem to disappear for the inattention. Agito wears his scars, every ridge and stain printed in his skin like a tattoo. There's nothing hazy about him—even the little pull of his mouth into a smile tugs at ice in the spine, sweat at the nape. Any half-baked instinct for self-preservation would whisper: predator in the grass, stay the fuck down.
Right now, though, they're mingled; even the eyepatch could be a straying shadow. Only his raggedy-rough voice is sure enough, and there's no promise to trust in that but blood.
Kazu looks up again—saves him thought, and it's enough if they know the difference between themselves and stay. It's not his business, but it's important, somehow, that Agito does. "It's worth it for you too," he says, and the words tumble easy off his tongue. "Right?"
He knows it's a dumb question even before the sneer twitches at Agito's mouth, stretching his scars tight. These are the things Kogarasumaru's meant to understand without question—and everybody (read: Itsuki "That Drunken Bastard Downstairs" Minami) knows that real Storm Riders don't talk about their feelings. but he's always wanted to know, in the idle way of curiosity. How much of it was Akito and how much was blood—and how much of it, really, was for the sheer thrill of seeing the ground racing close in a fall? Talent doesn't mean anything except that he can outstrip them, and it doesn't matter if Kazu knows that he can run.
That's not what he's asking.
"Fuck," Agito spits, as if emotion might get its germs on him and he could be forever tainted, like Akito wouldn't have passed on automatic immunity to those. He turns his head, looks past the buildings and towards the horizon. "It's not bad," he admits. Every word's pulled like teeth. "Flying just to fly."
Kazu's great flaw, he knows, is that he's aware of the little things, but never of a bigger picture; his sleeves bunched above the elbows and hood hanging steady against his back, the fence's bite against his palms, moonlight softening his sight into shadows. And there's Agito, too, in fragments: his stiff-pressed mouth with a trace of tooth at the lip, blood flecked along his wrist, distance and an empty horizon in his lightless eye. At the moment, he really can't count how long he's known Agito—and, as a matter of fact, numbers in general seem kind of mystic and deserving of some acknowledgment right now, like the foundation of the Get-A-Goddamn-Calculator Road.
The number doesn't matter, anyway. He doesn't know the right words, never has, is kind of resigned to a life of inarticulate handgestures. But it's a good answer to have. That's all it needs to be.
Then Agito looks at him. His mouth flattens; his eyes narrow. Kazu barely has warning enough to back away, and he's aware that to a shark's suspicious eye, the curve on his mouth probably looks really, really bad. Like team reminiscing. Like fondness.
"Fuck," Agito repeats, more viciously, and kicks him off the roof.
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/hides
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Sora/Rika/Kilik, the past. >)
PLACEHOLDER | an excerpt
*
On a typical afternoon—
"A motorcycle. One of those curvy ones, all smoke-like, with a chrome finish or somethin'."
"Given the advance of technology, I believe we would outstrip current motorcycle designs within the decade. There would be nothing impressive about it in five years."
"All right. A dragon."
"Ridiculous."
"A duck."
"Are you proposing to have a duck inked into your skin?"
"Nah," Sora says. He flashes a grin wickedly sideways—just a turn of the head, and no more. An afternoon of racing tricks along the tower's burned any energy for more right out of them; they've flopped on its highest floor, side by side, to watch the clouds evaporate with the sunset. "Just wanted to see how many other words you got for 'ridiculous'. You been readin' the dictionary again?"
In spite of dignity and the certainty that he has nothing shameful on his side, Kilik reddens. It had been one particularly sweltering day in the summer when Rika had trailed back to the base to borrow their shower, slinging off her jacket in the corridor and working open the laces of her shirt as she went, starting with the knot at her throat. Caught in an open door, Kilik had reached for the first book on a shelf and stuck his face in it; he couldn't look up all afternoon until Sora came searching for him and found him in the middle of the Gs, trying to unravel some meaning out of geromorphism that wouldn't drag up the memory of slick skin.
But, as playwrights had it, that was long ago, and the memory was dead. "You would do well to read it yourself, Sora," he says. The metal is warm as skin beneath him; he stretches his fingers out and lets his eyes lid against all the sky's light. "It might, at least, be of some use later in your life."
"Aw, who cares about uses? A dragon would be fucking cool."
Impossible to guess from where the idea emerged, but there it lay: a tattoo is a cool thing, and Sora means to have it. What Kilik had imagined to be one of his passing fancies has only bloated over time into a monstrous fantasy. Sora has even taken to snagging books from the local library. Real books: pages swelling with jagged clockwork painted into dizzy images, intricate skeletons, coils metallic and serpentine. The base overflows with them as he pores over each in search of the perfect sign—and now, apparently, it's even begun to slip into his conversations, ink etched over every word.
Someone, however, must remind him of the practicalities. "A tattoo fades over time, Sora," Kilik points out, though he says it without harshness. Exhaustion's a pleasant pulse underneath his bones, the dim ache of accomplishment; his breaths have slowed to sleepiness, shallow as pulling smoke. Insofar as he might calculate it, this has been a good afternoon—though it's not a thing to tell Sora, who's shown a tendency both to mock scores and to keep obsessive track of the numbers. "Especially a larger one. Your dragon will grow patchy."
"You're cursin' my dragon tattoo with baldness," Sora says after a moment's impressed silence. "That's harsh, man."
"It would hardly be a problem if you removed your shirt less often during matches."
But Sora only laughs. "You out to crush all my hopes an' dreams in one day? Kilik—you're killin' me here."
"If you're beginning to dream of removing your own shirt," Kilik answers, dry as metal, "I am the least of your problems."
"C'mon, do I look like that kinda guy? I got better things to dream about." Abruptly, Sora bolts upright, fist to hand. "Hey! Maybe that's it."
"What is?"
"Hold on, I got a picture of it right here." Sora rummages through his pockets, all the laziness blurred out of his motions by inspiration. He turns, uncrumpling a page, and braces on a hand as he leans into Kilik's vision. His grin's bright enough to catch on. "This," he says. He holds up a glossy crumple of a pin-up model from one of his oldest magazines. Kilik actually recognizes it; it is one of the few they had Black Burn toss out on a day when only half the team attended a match, for fear that Rika could chance upon it and destroy the building in her ensuing embarrassment for dating such an idiot. Apparently their venture to get rid of the worst of Sora's collection had been less successful than calculated.
He looks at the page, then at Sora's face.
"Sora," he says. "No."
And so it goes.
( plurk fic. )
DOCTOR WHO | 200 words
There's always an elsewhere.
But. But - and there's always a but, lovely conjunction, he's never known a species that hadn't carried contradiction in them yet - but. He doesn't owe them justification. Perhaps it's easier. Perhaps it's a kindness: a raggedy man carrying straw in his pockets and up his sleeves. It stops being wonderful eventually. He knows it; he's heard it said before. (He doesn't like it, still.) Another life in another skin to the same two hearts.
It all stops.
Up on the glass platform, he stops by the ship's brightest console and leans there. He looks at the lights winking at him: their own universe.
He wants to be sorry. In a sense, he always has been.
SADGEAR | 100 words
Their eyes flick to meet as if in mirrors.
"I hate this. Hiding. Shit--" It catches, aching, in his throat. His grip tightens. "I'm sick of it."
Agito says, "Get over it, bean king." Bitten contempt. "You don't get to be sick."
He jerks away and steps past, first to the open dark and the evening's rising breeze.
TALES OF THE ABYSS | 100 words
"This is no more your mask than Sync is your true name. Would you say that a plank owns the nail hammered through it? Listen. A replica can't possess anything in this world. Replicas were never meant to exist, and so the Score allots no objects for them to own, no place they may keep.
Do you see, Sync?
Do you understand?"
Perhaps he dreams it. Perhaps he doesn't. Either way: it is his only memory of warmth.
HOBO LESSONS | 100 words
"Yeah!"
"First you gotta put up a fist. Holdin' it real tight!"
"Ummmm." A motion. "Like this?"
"I dunno... you really squeezin'?"
A pause, all thought, and five little nods, strung together in earnest succession. "Uh huh!"
"Now hold it out... careful, careful! Y'only wanna do this with friends you trust, got it? All right..."
A bigger hand reaches down. Gently, their knuckles bump together. His sinking glasses flash; he pushes them back as his grin breaks wide.
"Now that," Mister Noodle explains, beaming, "is called a hobro-fist!"
PANDORA HEARTS | 100 words
And, in the neighboring grave, the last trueborn son.
"But you'd hate that, wouldn't you... being set apart. Really, you always fussed so."
Vincent laughs.
He wears magpie black to the burials, and bows his head to each.
D.GRAY-MAN | 100 words
Better than most.
"Here I am," he declares, "here I'm staying!"
Bookman rolls his eyes. A black sleeve whips out.
Hours later, he wakes trussed in a wagon hobbling into French countryside.
(They never speak of it again.)
YIN | 100 words
It's winter now. The scepter's heavy--it glares, little lights; its metal bites at a touch. I imagine, often, carrying it to your old rooms through the dark. My shadowy, coiling hands nearly reflections.
Not yet close enough.
NOT FREE! ENOUGH | 100 words
"Makoto."
"What now?"
"They're sinking into the water."
"You're wet anyway!" His brows cinch, his mouth a moue, all pleading. "You can wring them out, can't you?"
Haru levels him with a look. "Not with a fish," he remarks placidly, "swimming up through the left leg."
PRAY (FOR DIGNITY) PROJECT | 100 words
The knots twist tight; his pulse shudders under each jerk.
He breathes. The corners of his mouth curl as he leans back. Listens idly to a palm's tell-tale rasp down the wall, centimeters away. Watches a shadow fall, furling over him.
Under the dark, his laugh cuts short.
NONONOPLACEHOLDERGATARI | 100 words
She does not dream, does not delude. If she has any weakness, let it never be this.
The offering's all there is. The asterisms suffice.
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sadgear!kazu and agito, set during that month agito leeched off his base.
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