What was supposed to be a five hour bus ride somehow turned into a ten hour bus ride so… 
Hail To The (Semi-Phenomenal, Nearly Cosmic) Queen, 4/? (2016-08-24)
(four: she who makes the crown)
She smiles. “It’s called Konohagakure,” she says, shifting her arms to show off the metal plate sewn onto her sleeve, a leaf engraved in its center.
His brother’s dream comes true…
Apparently, Tobirama has work to do.
He doesn’t do it alone.
—
It’s a different world, this time period (she would know, after all.) There’s a sense of division that she’s unused to. Konoha as she’s grown up in has always encouraged teamwork: the many and diverse banding together to make a stronger force.
She explains it to Tobirama who doesn’t look so much scornful as he does honestly baffled. Subtly, of course–he’s not one for overactive facial expressions–but she is Shikamaru’s sister, was on a team with Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei. She’s a lot better at reading emotions than she used to be.
The Akimichi-Nara-Yamanaka alliance, though, has always been older than Konoha and this at least Tobirama understands. Can see why a Nara girl would feel a certain way about complementary skills building up to a greater whole.
But it’s one thing to see centuries of servitude turned fealty turned alliance, it’s another for clans actively at war to put down their weapons and live together in peace.
One day, she promises him, one day it will happen. After all, she’s living proof of it.
—
Shikako never does meet Hashirama–an active decision on her part. The dance between him and Madara not something she wants to interrupt (corrupt).
But she does meet Mito–and that’s a lot more fun, she thinks. Maybe it’s an Uzumaki trait, or maybe it’s just coincidence, but Mito is friendly, gregarious, and ridiculously powerful.
She also admires Shikako’s tattoos the same way Ino would particularly beautiful kimono.
“And this one?” Mito asks, a finger tracing down Shikako’s arm. Tobirama has been listening with exasperation to Mito’s squeals of delight–as if he hadn’t been equally curious about her seals when they first met, too.
“Resistance seals,” Shikako answers, pulling her sleeves up higher to show the rest of the sequence, “Better than weights and easier to use.”
Mito nods, analyzing the arrangement eagerly, and Shikako smiles when Tobirama gets drawn into the discussion.
There’s something about them. They may not be Hashirama and Madara (Naruto and Sasuke) but they are heroes in their own right.
—
Team Tobirama is, frankly, bizarre for her to interact with. Mostly because she actually remembers meeting most of them when they’re well into their years. The Hokage, Konoha Councilors; even Torifu she met before at Chouji’s birthday parties–a well-liked Akimichi elder with a tolerant fondness for quiet Nara children.
These kids her age are nothing like the septuagenarians she remembers.
Especially not Danzo who looks nothing like the bitter sociopath Shikako knows he will become.
There are some things she tells Tobirama–she’ll give him clues about jutsu and techniques, show him a completed Sword of the Thunder God, even offer tidbits about her friends and their village–but even more she keeps secret. This is one of those things.
But she makes sure to guide him in the right direction. The right successor.
—
Tobirama gets to live to see his grand-niece, a loud and happy girl who the village calls princess.
Shikako tries not to laugh.
Being intimidated by the Godaime Hokage Tsunade-sama–one of the Sannin, legendary shinobi, miraculous healer–is one thing. Being intimidated by Tsuna-chan who loves candy and playing games is another.
She tries to keep the two separate in her head, honestly, but it’s hard when little Tsuna-chan is especially fond of extracting sweets out her grand-uncle’s team by any means necessary. As ruthless and imperious as the woman Shikako knows will rule the village well.
Until then, she makes sure to keep a stock of Tsuna-chan’s favorite candy in Hammerspace–maybe Tsunade-sama won’t remember this, but better safe than sorry.
—
Tobirama’s life plays before her in fits and bursts, like a glitchy recording playing only parts of a song. She appears sometimes, but not always, remains the same age during each summoning as if no time passes for her at all.
But that’s not true.
It’s been a long time since she’s been home–her Konoha with her people.
The villagers of now are growing suspicious and it doesn’t matter that the ones closest to her are highest up in the hierarchy of Konoha–or perhaps that makes it worse.
She is only ever seen around the Nidaime Hokage or his heirs apparent. How long has she been manipulating the heart of the village? How long has she been pulling the strings?
A seemingly immortal girl who the Nara do not know, who has made changes to a destiny they will never even see.
“Don’t mind them,” Tobirama says once, a large hand landing gently on her shoulder for the briefest of moments. She remembers when he first summoned her–he had been shorter than her, smaller and younger–still as reluctant to initiate physical contact. “You have done more for this village than any of them, and one day they will know it.”
She doesn’t scoff, doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t quite believe him either.
This is a different world, after all, and it’s been a long time since she’s been home.
—
Tobirama does not die fighting Cloud nin, but all men must die eventually.
As he breathes his last breath, she tells him one last time, “You always were my favorite Hokage.”
He smiles, and she smiles back. He closes his eyes, she closes hers.
Neither of them see the next day’s sunrise.
—
Shikako opens her eyes to an unimpressed Senju Hokage and tries not to laugh, images of Tsuna-chan warring with Tsunade-sama.
“I can no longer be bribed with candy,” the Godaime Hokage says, almost solemnly.
Shikako fails, laughs, and gives herself a coughing fit. If there are tears, well, that’s perfectly understandable.
“You’ve been missed, Shikako-nee,” says the little girl who trailed after Team Tobirama. A brief and gentle pat to the shoulder, before she leaves, letting the other medics handle the ICU’s most frequent patient.
Visitors are allowed in not long after, her friends and family–her Konoha with her people. For all that she’s been missing home, when the room empties, she finds herself thinking of that different world she left behind. Like Dorothy coming back to Kansas, dreaming of technicolor Oz.
—
One day they will know, Tobirama had said, had promised.
It’ll be decades before she understands what he meant, looking out at the village they helped build together while his grand-niece gives her the Hokage’s hat.
~
A/N: I probably didn’t convey quite the feelings I wanted to, but I hope it’s still enjoyable. A bit of a mini-crossover: a Hail To The Queen installment in the Semi-Phenomenal, Nearly Cosmic universe.
I still don’t quite know what’s going on, actually, or why Shikako’s stuck but I thought it’d be interesting if Tobirama sort of gives her a gift decades into the future. And by gift, I mean names her successor to the hat.
Missed Post (2016-08-23)
Will post something in a bit, but seeing as how I missed the midnight deadline I’m just making this post for my records.
Cross Post: Triptych pilot [incomplete] (2016-08-22)
A/N: So a few years ago, Triptych: Origins was going to be my debut for NaNoWriMo. I had it all outlined and meticulously world built and everything was so exciting all through October. The November 1st hit and I wrote nothing. I choked, I wrote nothing for all of November and utterly failed my first NaNoWriMo.
That’s actually what prompted me to make this blog. I figured I had built it up too high in my head–tried to bite off more than I could chew–but posting something each day no matter how small, well, I could do that.
Anyway, Triptych originally was Star Trek fanfiction which I repurposed into original fiction after writing only this tiny incomplete bit.
original here. dated 2013-08-07.
~
Oddly enough, zie has more qualifications to lead a team than they do. It’s not that zie’s dumb, is the thing, it’s just that they’re so bloody competent that in comparison hir position as team leader seems superfluous at best. It helps that zie’s the only one of the three to have graduated Command track, though zie diversified enough that zie’s authorized to wear the Science blues and Operations reds as well.
All students are highly encouraged to diversify, just another change in the Academy post-Nero so that personnel can be rearranged depending on the situation (and casualties). Edmundo is technically listed as a Science officer, astrophysics in particular, though he is also in Operations as an engineering physicist; the administrators tend to use him in either division interchangeably so he’ll often be the only blue shirt in a room of red. Br’Joci, in comparison, is inarguably an Operations officer–dual specialties, Communications and Security–who decided to also take the psychology track and happened to complete enough courses to wear Science blues if she wanted (she doesn’t).
The first introductory psychology class was actually where zie met Br’Joci, and where hir own Science track qualifications come from (hir Operations specialty is tactics, which zie was surprisingly good at factoring the striclty passive culture zie was raised in). Edmundo, zie met after they had all graduated and been assigned to the Enterprise, him as a dual-division idiot who kept inventing (and exploding) unapproved weapons for the hell of it and hir as the unfortunate yeoman tasked with figuring out whom the subsequent report would go to and how best to phrase it to appease their superior officers.
Luckily for them both, the Enterprise is populated with similarly destructive genii so neither Commander Spock nor Chief Engineer Scott particularly mind. And though Br’Joci’s fascination with weaponry quickly bound the three of them together in some kind of violent, sarcastic brotherhood, the number of incidents (and reports) resulting in damage to someone or something only increased. While they aren’t quite at the chaos level to register on Doctor McCoy’s (frightening) radar, Nurse Chapel’s glare whenever one of them (unfairly, typically hir) lands in med-bay is intimidating enough.
Considering such an incident happened just last week, zie’s rather confused by why they’ve been chosen for an away mission that zie’s pretty sure is definitely above hir ability to lead.
Nameless, Worthy (Infamous) — now on ao3!
Combining all of my unrelated and untitled gen Descendants ficlets into one collection called Nameless, Worthy (Infamous) on archiveofourown. Check it out here!
Cross Post: Ode to 11010201, Prior Claim [incomplete] (2016-08-21)
A/N: Next couple of days will be incomplete posts set in my Ode To 11010201 series. Most of these were written back when the series was suuuper thinly veiled Teen Wolf fanfiction. Like the characters are so recognizable even though I’ve changed their names and swapped some roles around.
This one, in particular, is VERY obvious.
original here. dated 2013-05-22.
~
Though the unexpected magical ability was entirely odd, it was just another thing that she felt supplemented their burgeoning familial relationship. She was as clueless to their shared powers as he was, but it seemed to rid both of them of any lingering doubts. They were family now. Magical family, apparently, but still family. It explained some of their first encounter at any rate, his insistence that windchimes and a dropped length of rope would stop someone now seemed perfectly valid when magic could conceivably make those seemingly innocuous items a formidable defense. Though she hadn’t considered to ponder on who he was trying to keep out. Or what.
In her brief time with him, she had learned a little of his life. Knew that he wasn’t exactly popular by any means, but had a loyal best friend and long lasting crush on a girl and a dislike for someone who he wouldn’t name but referred to often enough in conversations and a penchant for trouble. It was the last that made her wonder about the rest. Because even though they had been getting along, there were just some things–some secrets–that couldn’t be brought up randomly even to a suddenly appearing family member.
It was during one of her solitary explorations of the town–Zim had bowed out of more familial bonding with an apologetic but desperate expression; she figured that space probably was needed on both ends and had reassured him that she didn’t feel slighted in the least–that she stumbled upon a group of people she really wouldn’t have thought were involved with her nephew until she picked up on their angry, loud, and unsubtle dialogue. Or rather, she stumbled into them.
Yes, just play it off as if she had tripped just to catch their attention. Not that she was just bad at basic coordination. The tear in her cardigan and bleeding elbow was definitely on purpose.
“How do you know Zim?” She asked, after her embarrassment and brief introductions.
“Bring her with you. Your chances of fixing your mistakes will increase,” The woman–a doctor from the looks of the white coat and the automatic offering of wet-wipe and bandage–gave a familiar, patronizing pat to the older boy’s–Tarek’s–head before walking away. From his expression, he was displeased at the world in general and at the dismissal in particular, but ultimately resigned. The younger boy–Kevin, same as Zim’s best friend– had wide eyes made even wider by concern, and looked less sure. About seemingly everything, in her opinion. Though from what her nephew told her, that may just be his default.
“Where are we going?”
“The forest. There’s an… issue… with Zim.” Kevin unhelpfully didn’t explain, kept looking at Tarek for some kind of cue, hesitant and waiting.
—
She wouldn’t have picked it out as a clearing by sight–being an urban dweller for the majority of her life left her severely unequipped with forest-related terms–but she felt something the closer they got to it. Sharply cold, yet fuzzy and heavy in her lungs. Kevin went straight for the girl shockingly armed with a short sword of some type–who somehow mystifyingly still looked friendly and approachable despite it–while Tarek stopped enough that she stepped up to his side, no longer needing to follow.
“Where’s Kaiza?” His sister, with similar hair and eye color and penchant for leather jackets, glared at him perplexed.
“She said to bring her,”
“What’s happening? Where’s Zim?”
…
—
The group of faeries revealed themselves, the light going hazy for a bit, four of them with a dazed looking Zim in the middle.
“Is this your negotiator or have you brought us another pet?”
“This is… R… she’s here to take him back.”
“Oh and how will you do that, Miss R? What do you have that they do not?”
What did she know about faeries? What did anyone know about faeries? This was so out of the realm of her knowledge it wasn’t even funny. What did she have that three werewolves–and she and Zim were going to talk about this, though she’s not at all surprised they exist considering… magic–and one extremely well-armed warrior didn’t? She has magic. No, Zim has magic too and more experience with it besides, that’s not it. Wait… yes… there is something specific that she has that the others don’t. Something that has nothing to do with ability, something that… then it hit her as she looked at the others around her: Laila and Tarek were siblings. Kevin was part of their pack. Kevin and Madison were dating.
“I have prior claim. He’s mine, you can’t take him.”
“Prove it.”
“He… he is blood of my blood.”
Their silence implied it was not enough. And, that made sense. She wasn’t his closest relative, he wasn’t hers necessarily.
“I… he… he was named after me! His mother named him after me!”
“His name is Zim-”
“His true name and my true name. Two of my names were given to him by his mother, that is more than anyone else even his father. So he is mine.”
Cross Post: Ode to 11010201, Familiar and Flight [incomplete] (2016-08-20)
A/N: Next couple of days will be incomplete posts set in my Ode To 11010201 series. Most of these were written back when the series was suuuper thinly veiled Teen Wolf fanfiction. Like the characters are so recognizable even though I’ve changed their names and swapped some roles around.
original here. dated 2013-01-12.
~
They have other people in their lives–mutual, if still separate, family; his pack, her coven–but they developed a somewhat unhealthy dependency on each other. Despite the fact she’s already returned home (back to where her apartment is) and his school has started up again, they keep in contact and continue to practice magic with each other. With Dr Kaiza being extremely unhelpful and unnecessarily vague as usual, most of what they “practice” is improving what they’ve already done and testing what ideas from science fiction and fantasy novels are possible. There’s a googledoc list they both have access to, which changes whenever one of them comes up with something new to try or has to record a successful or unsuccessful attempt.
Unsurprisingly, there are more failures than not.
They’re supposed to be working on the simpler, less dangerous things due to the distance. But she honestly didn’t think this one would do anything, so she gave it a half-hearted shot. Now there’s a leopard in her bedroom. Specifically, on her bed.
She had practically flung herself to the corner of her room in an act of self-preservation. Somewhat dumb self-preservation because it had been away from the door and windows, and now there’s a leopard between her and the escape routes. She doesn’t know what to do. So far, it’s just been staring at her, but that doesn’t mean it won’t attack at some point. She stays as still as possible, because that’s worked for the past five minutes and she doesn’t want to push her luck. And anyway, she doesn’t have access to a near enough water source or an effectively threatening plant form. While she has been working on wind based moves, it’s her third element for a reason and she can barely summon a mild breeze to set off her wind chime much less a gust strong enough to knock over a full grown leopard.
It’s tail swishes back and forth menacingly, hypnotically. Maybe it’s waiting until she passes out from fear or exhaustion before attacking. One giant paw creeps toward her. Or maybe not. It begins to step off the bed when …
—
This was not his original intent. It wasn’t quite an accident, but he didn’t begin with this in mind. That happened later.
He had meant to work through some of the more harmless spells from the Harry Potter series–helpful, nothing too dangerous. But there were only so many cover stories he could tell about why all the locks were melted before logic demanded he give up on Alohomora. Though that didn’t stop him from deliberately melting the lock to Mrs Jerry’s classroom, conveniently postponing the physics exam until tomorrow since no one could actually get to them.
Cross Post: Ode to 11010201, Training Wheels [incomplete] (2016-08-19)
A/N: Next couple of days will be incomplete posts set in my Ode To 11010201 series. Most of these were written back when the series was suuuper thinly veiled Teen Wolf fanfiction. Like the characters are so recognizable even though I’ve changed their names and swapped some roles around.
Although, to be honest, Doctor Kaiza was one of my earliest original characters and has always been my frustratingly vague supernatural font of knowledge.
original here. dated 2013-01-12.
~
“Salt?”
“Yes. Your observational skill are unparalleled, have you considered a career as a detective?”
“Well that’s just rude. And what do you expect me to do with it? I’m trying to live a low-sodium lifestyle, get a head start you know?”
“What he means is, why are you giving us salt?” She cut in, glancing at the small pile in her hand. The individual grains are already sticking to her damp palms uncomfortably, but she didn’t want to just upend them onto the work table. That’d be messy, and surely Dr. Kaiza had a reason.
“You asked for a way to use your abilities in close quarters”
—
“I don’t know why you think I’d know more about your ability than you do. I’m a doctor. Yes, I’m the leading metahuman doctor, but that’s because I’ve built up decades of experience in trial and error. It’s still trial and error. Most of my patients are entirely new generations of metahumans. Your abilities… well, most magic-users’ abilities are from bloodlines. And not necessarily genetics. There’s a family that have magic because an ancestor signed a contract with a demon, they themselves don’t have any genetic predisposition towards magic. It may help if you looked into your family history, obviously it’s not from the Szymanski line, so it must be from the Michalis.”
“Or the Chacone.”
“What?”
“My mother is Michalis, my father is Chacone. Iris must have dropped Chacone when she married John… though, I don’t really understand why considering… well. How that ended up.”
“Riveting.”
“Sorry,”
I just wanted to say that I really like your last untitled post with all the little snippets. I really related to the first one as another child of immigrants. I think you really conveyed that we only have some of our parents’ culture and that hurts. Um, I also really liked that tone and melancholy (?) of all of the snippets (i kinda feel that that’s mean but). Anyway, hope everything’s ok with you.
Hi, I’m glad you liked them. And thanks for asking, I really do appreciate it. I do love writing fanfiction, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes being able to write nonfiction is freeing. Its not mean at all–I’ve been dealing with depression for the past year or so, and this blog has actually helped a lot. It’s like a daily reminder that, hey, not everything is bad, hey, you’re not worthless, hey, there are people out there that appreciate something that is uniquely you.
The child of immigrants thing had always been something I’ve been keenly aware of growing up. Especially since I do have some cousins who were born/still live in the country my parents are from and seeing how much they understand each other is just like–I am missing half of this conversation and not just literally, given my lack of language skills.
But there’s good in it too, if you’re lucky. My hometown was filled with a lot of children of immigrants like me so it was interesting to see the way we fell in together, how some of us have different bits and pieces and missing others. And the way new habits and traditions form from this patchwork society–new slang, combination of food, etc–like we are building something together with parts of this and that.
Untitled (2016-08-18)
This is what it means to be the child of immigrants:
You eat the food, but don’t know the language spoken over meals. You have the principles, but not the history behind them. You have the ethnicity drawn out on your skin, but not the land of your ancestors.
You only have half your parents’ culture, desperately trying to fill in the gaps with what you see around you. And so you end up with an amalgamation, not quite Other but still not the same.
—
When nostalgia is the most positive emotion you’ve had in a long time, you may want to consider a lifestyle change.
But it’s hard to remember what it’s like to not be tired and angry and sad. You find yourself nostalgic for more than just food and places and friends. You find yourself nostalgic for yourself, the yourself you used to be before.
You find that summer makes it worse, the stretch of daylight mocking and cruel. But maybe that’s a lie. Maybe you are just being nostalgic for winter–romanticizing the briskness of the air and the cool rain on a parched land. Maybe you hated the cold wind, maybe you hated the constant damp and you’ll think that you miss the warmth and brightness of summer.
You look out your window and yearn for better days.
—
This is not your place. A space you rent, a room of your own, but its not yours.
You can hear the snores of other people through your wall, you tread lightly in common areas, only speak when spoken to.
It’s been a long time since you sang out loud and you think that’s a shame.
~
A/N: I’ve been needing to purge some more negative emotions and also I’m stuck in a car stuck in traffic.
JackSGreyson Says 