Found a mistake at work costing the company thousands of dollars. Guess who’s the lucky bastard that gets to stay overtime to fix it?
Needless to say, no post today.
(En)Closure (the Stars In His Eyes remix), (2016-08-11)
A/N: A little thing for @esamastation’s Random HikaGo Event (if I’m not too late). A sort of B-side to my series (En)Closure, but this ficlet can be read alone since it’s from Hikaru’s POV and my character is only briefly mentioned and doesn’t actually show up.
Enjoy!
~
Sai has barely begun telling his story before he is rudely interrupted by Hikaru. It is something that he will grow accustomed to in a bewilderingly short amount of time.
“Does this mean I can see ghosts now?” Hikaru asks, looking at his own hands in amazement as if that will explain his sudden supernatural ability.
“Perhaps it is–”
“Or is it only you,” Hikaru continues, turning his gaze toward Sai, narrow eyed and suspicious, “Because if it’s the first one then that means I have a cool new skill that I can do stuff with. But if it’s the second one, then that probably means I’m possessed and you need to exorcised.”
In the bare handful of hours that Sai has known Hikaru, he already knows this: children in these times are willful or, at the very least, Hikaru is. Which means it’s not an idle threat.
There were onmyouji in Sai’s time–and in Torajiro’s time, too–no doubt there are still some to this day. No doubt they could very well exorcise Sai, and how will he play Go then?
“No!”
Hikaru’s face only pinches up into even more suspicion.
“I, that is,” Sai rescinds, “I am sure such a thing is not needed. Yours is a fledgling talent, perhaps I am meant to teacher you.”
After all, Sai was an instructor for both the Emperor and Torajiro. No doubt, he is meant to do the same for Hikaru. He just didn’t specify which talent; it’s not a lie.
Hikaru considers for a moment, then nods, “You better not be as annoying as Navi.”
A non sequitur, but seeing as how it’s not an outright refusal, Sai will take it and gladly.
Then, Hikaru cheers, “Let’s go find some more ghosts!”
(It’s at this point that Sai realizes he has very little control over what happens next. This is also something that he will grow accustomed to soon enough.)
—
Given the sheer size, population, and history of Tokyo finding supposedly haunted places is easy.
Getting into them is another story.
“This is the… fifth time, Shindou-kun,” Ueno, the unimpressed police officer, says way more exasperated than the situation calls for. It’s not like Hikaru was actually doing anything wrong besides, maybe, the whole trespassing thing.
“I didn’t know it was private property?” Hikaru tries, because it worked pretty well the first time and decently the second…
And then it got less effective each time. Apparently, going by Ueno’s expression, it’s not going to fly at all this time. Especially since she was the same officer that found him three of the other times.
Sai, too, has gotten used to inside of the small police station–no longer flitting from desk to desk and asking about each little detail while Hikaru tries not to answer out loud. Getting brought in for trespassing is one thing–he doesn’t want the police to think he’s crazy.
This whole ‘seeing ghosts thing’ is way harder than he though it would be.
“You’re…” A grimace flashes across Ueno’s face, before quickly fading into carefully crafted calmness. “Is there a reason why you don’t want to be at home, Hikaru-kun?”
If anyone else were able to see Sai, they’d know that both he and Hikaru had shared a quick glance of mutual confusion.
“… No?” Then because it looks like that won’t be enough of an answer to satisfy Ueno, he admits sullenly, “I just wanted to see if that place was really haunted.”
“Oh god, not another one,” Ueno blurts out, horrified at the prospect and herself. One desk away, another officer bursts out laughing.
Again, confusion.
“I’m not saying I believe,” Ueno begins, rummaging through her desk for something, “but the number of cases solved speaks for itself.”
She then hands Hikaru a business card with a phone number on one side and two lines on the other:
KUWABARA
Consulting Medium
“Pretentious, isn’t it?” Ueno says with a shrug, “But I’d rather have you call her than have you running around unsupervised.”
“That’s like telling one puppy to guard the other,” says Ueno’s fellow officer, “Though puppies wouldn’t charge each other an arm and a leg for it.”
At the, no doubt, blatant confusion, Ueno explains, “Kuwabara is a teenager, too.”
Everything goes back on track–Ueno letting him off with yet another warning, though this time far more stern and believable–and when Hikaru and Sai leave the station they both decide to stop trespassing in their search for other ghosts.
When Hikaru doesn’t throw the card away, but he definitely shoves it in a pile of random stuff in his room and forgets about it immediately. He doesn’t need to meet some other psychic kid who’ll just boss him around.
(They’ll end up meeting each other in a few months, anyway, but as an insei and the Honinbou’s granddaughter. She definitely ends up bossing him around.)
—
The second ghost Hikaru sees isn’t haunting a place but a person. A weird blonde guy in a white suit who has a job involving Go because that’s how Hikaru’s life works, apparently.
Hikaru doesn’t realize it’s a ghost, at first. Actually, if it weren’t for the fact that no one else could sense Sai, Hikaru probably would have thought that he was just a weirdo wearing really old-fashioned clothing.
The second ghost’s clothes isn’t nearly so out of date, but it’s definitely not something a kid would wear now. Because that’s what the ghost is–a kid.
At first, Hikaru thought it was a just that blonde guy’s son or something, just some kid making comically exaggerated disgusted faces as the adults next to him flirt. That is, until one of adults’ arms swings right through the kid’s head.
Hikaru stares.
The kid–the ghost–stares back.
At least until the blonde guy walks away, the ghost following as if compelled, into some building which, aggravatingly, kids aren’t allowed into unless they’re insei or, apparently, ghosts.
Sai is perhaps a bit too enthusiastic to voice the obvious solution.
And far too pleased when Hikaru grudgingly goes along with it.
(Hand of God or Destiny? Do all roads lead to the same place?)
~
A/N: This has nothing to do with esama’s Fallen Stars but I swear I’ve read it SO MANY TIMES IT’S JUST SO BEAUTIFUL.
edit: changed HARU to KUWABARA, to make it in line with one of my previous posts in the series
Missed Post (2016-08-10)
Today was exhausting, but truth be told the main reason I missed this post is that I honestly had no idea what time it was.
I’ve been in a new place since May, but it’s only recently that I’ve been able to move in more of my stuff–of which I have WAY TOO MUCH. It’s like a time capsule+Christmas+spring cleaning, it’s kinda fun.
Curiosity Kills (Satisfaction Guaranteed), 2/? (2016-08-09)
(two)
He tries to stand up. Fails. Nearly falls on his face for the attempt.
Crawling it is, then.
It’s not exactly dignified, but he’s always been more practical than that. Plus, there’s no one around to see him–nobody within his sensing range, the Kinkaku Force included.
He makes his way towards the trees, an almost childish desire for protection even though he’s the last of his brothers, and tries hard not to think about how none of this makes any sense.
Unfortunately, he’s rather good at thinking and so his mind is a whirlwind of facts tearing away at each other.
He died. He knows he did. Can definitely remember the feel of metal cutting through his chest, his heart futilely beating away his lifeblood.
The Kinkaku Force was right there, they wouldn’t suffer him being alive after he killed seven of their members and they looked right at him. But they were specifically searching for him, he’s the only white-haired piece of shit they were fighting, and yet…
A cat, though. They thought he was a cat. Perhaps that’s some kind of code?
It’s only when his back is pressed up against a tree (so foolishly sentimental) that he feels brave enough to look down at the somehow killing-yet-not blow.
It’s not there.
What is there, though, is an awful lot of fur. And… paws. He tries to sit up properly, but his body, this his-yet-not body, doesn’t want to move that way.
He lets it twist in a way that feels more natural, examines the rest of it: white fur and grey spots and paws and a tail. It almost looks like one of his snow leopard summons except it’s small, the size of a cub, if that.
He’s a cat. An actual literal cat.
He takes it back, he’d prefer some dignity instead.
But brooding is only a step up from panicking, in his opinion, so he shuts it down soon enough. Cat or not, he’s alive and mobile and still loyal to his village–even if he did technically pass on the hat to Hiruzen such that he’s no longer Hokage–so he turns tail and heads towards Konoha.
Unfortunately, he’s a little unsteady on his feet (literally and metaphorically), the size of a house cat, and has a fur coat which doesn’t exactly blend into the brown and greens of a forest. Konoha is a long way off and it’s war time.
Tobirama Senju is known to have snow leopard summons.
This time, he doesn’t get a warning.
—
(three)
He wakes up again. Still confused, but mostly coldly furious.
(And, maybe, a little scared and in shock, but he’s died twice now–would anyone blame him?)
It’s enough that the moisture in the air condenses, reflexively gathers around him in a protective mist. When he bares his teeth it liquifies further, three water bullets shooting off in the direction of his attackers.
They’re not expecting it, so it makes contact, and he follows the rush of instinct and rage that says take out the threat before they take him out first.
It’s nothing like the efficient and elegant taijutsu katas he’s developed over the years. It’s fangs and claws and his muscles straining, his heartbeat thundering, and for three minutes it’s just sheer violence and aggression unlike anything he’s ever felt before.
Three minutes is enough.
He tries not to gag at the taste of blood in his mouth, looks ashamedly away from the bodies. War is war, he’s always been a soldier, but this wasn’t… this isn’t him.
It’s him until he can undo it.
—
(four)
He gets attacked twice more on the way home, but at least this time he only dies once.
It’s a messier and redder cat that finally makes it to Konoha.
Tobirama slinks into the village, simultaneously relieved and annoyed by how easy it turns out to be. He’ll have to increase security as soon as he changes back, but there’s a lot he needs to do that will have to wait until he changes back.
Getting cleaned up is not one of them. It’s one thing return home as a cat, it’s another to return home filthy. A quick swim should take care of the worst of it, because he’s still trying to get the taste of blood out of his mouth and he’d rather not add to it. And anyway, he’s a Suiton master.
In his own village, he doesn’t need to be on guard. Here, Tobirama Senju being known to have snow leopard summons is a good thing. The villagers stare at him, but there’s no hostility or malice. If anything, the seem excited to see him–his cat form, that is.
The Senju compound isn’t very large–the remains of his clan choosing to live in the village, proper–but he has a place there, too, which he uses more as a laboratory than a house. It’s home, though, familiar and soothing in it’s own way.
His chakra is still the same–the gates letting him through–but when he enters, he pauses.
Everyone is in black–they’re mourning him already.
~
A/N: I wanted to make a Schrödinger’s Cat reference but knew it wouldn’t fit culturally so let me just say it here. Also, a Homeward Bound reference, because the idea of Tobirama as Sassy the cat just amuses the hell out of me, but I wasn’t sure how popular it was of a movie.
More of my series based on @blackkatmagic’s ’Tobirama is actually a cat: discuss‘
“I have to go water my cat” Karachi I don’t think that’S a good idea also you don’t even have a cat, can you imagine the chaos that would create with ur nindogs D:
lol So I’m currently discussing cat!Tobirama with a lovely enabler and this kind of slammed into that in my mind and –
Kakashi being adopted by picking up a stray cat that’s actually Tobirama. He managed to survive the war diversion by inventing a shapeshifting jutsu but then couldn’t undo it and apparently the nine lives thing is more literal than he had thought?? But just – Kakashi trying to deal with this super-prissy and unimpressed miniature snow leopard while all his dogs are NOT HAVING IT and Tobirama just wants thumbs again, you morons, why is no one noticing that he is not a regular cat??
(Spoiler: because, Tobirama dear, you are actually a giant cat, no matter which form you’re in, and no one can tell the difference.)
Curiosity Kills (Satisfaction Guaranteed), 1/? (2016-08-08)
(zero)
If it had been only five shinobi, he would’ve won by now.
(If it had been only five shinobi, he wouldn’t have sent his own team away.)
Maybe, if it had been ten shinobi, he could’ve defeated them.
He’s the Hokage. While he may not ever be as strong as his brother–may the self-sacrificing idiot never rest in peace for leaving him to run the village–he’s still a pretty damn strong shinobi in his own right.
If it had been ten, it might have been fine.
But the Kinkaku Force has come for him in its entirety, and while each individual member (for the most part) is hardly on par with Tobirama, as a whole he is outnumbered and thus outmatched.
But he’s not fighting to win. He’s fighting to stall.
(Maybe the self-sacrificing thing is a family trait.)
A fraction of his attention is on his team’s chakra signatures–risky, in a fight so unbalanced as this one, but not a decision he’ll regret–and that part of him is relieved when they slip out of his range, even as he’s busy dodging three different jutsu and sends two counterattacks of his own.
If he can’t sense them, then that means they’re far enough away that the Kinkaku Force can’t catch them.
Which means he can end this fight.
Against twenty, there’s no way he can win. Especially not now, when he’s already spent so much time and chakra stalling instead of truly fighting.
But that doesn’t mean he’s just going to give up and die. Ending a fight doesn’t always mean winning or losing.
(He always has one more trick up his sleeve.)
It’s experimental, but almost all of his jutsu started off experimental, and what better time to test it when it may very well be his last moments of life?
Doubutsurei no Jutsu
—
(one)
He wakes up and for a handful of seconds doesn’t remember a thing.
It’d almost be panic-inducing, except he’s Tobirama Senju and panicking has never been his preferred method of coping.
As it is, waking up gives him enough to deduce several things:
He’s still alive. Which means not only did his new jutsu not kill him but also, in his blacked out state, neither did the Cloud nin.
Given waking up requires unconsciousness to be woken up from, using this jutsu leaves him vulnerable for who knows how long which isn’t exactly ideal in the midst of battle.
He can probably improve this jutsu through practice and training in a more controlled environment, as in, not now while still potentially surrounded by twenty (thirteen, at this point, actually) enemy shinobi.
And that’s as far as he gets before the warrior part of him shoves aside the philosopher and reminds him that, hey, thirteen angry enemy shinobi are actually a lot more important than the results of his experimental jutsu. Which might actually not have done anything, anyway, since the chakra smoke clears and there’s no giant guardian spirit animal to protect him as planned. Also, his whole body hurts far more than the injuries inflicted on him would explain.
“What the fuck is this?” One of the shinobi says–one of the captains if Tobirama interpreted the team’s interactions correctly. Twenty members total, with four squads of five headed by their own captain.
A different captain, the one with the annoyingly accurate lightning techniques, asks, “Where the hell did that white-haired piece of shit go?”
Tobirama is starting to feel confused–something he hates with a passion–because he’s obviously right here and it’s not as if he’s invisible, but he figures discretion is the better part of valor. He stays silent (not that it’s much of a hardship).
“Spread out and find him!” roars Kinkaku himself who, unsurprisingly, is the ultimate leader of the Kinkaku Force–Cloud nin have no sense of subtlety whatsoever.
Three of the squads–or the remains of them, anyway–immediately split away to find him even though he is right here, what the hell is happening?
“And get rid of this damn cat of his,” Kinkaku adds to the remainder of his subordinates, and one of them moves toward him with a wickedly curved sword before Tobirama can even move his limbs which feel strained and achey and awkward and–
—
(two)
He wakes up again and definitely remembers everything.
He’s still confused as fuck.
~
A/N: I hope you don’t mind I take a crack at this as well, @blackkatmagic! You’ve given me so many Tobirama feels that I kinda just… please, accept this humble offering.
Hopefully I’ll get to the rest of it soon, but that seemed like a good place to stop and also it’s past two in the morning for me and I have work later so… enjoy?
Stars Also Dream 3/? (2016-08-07)
A/N1: *SCREAMING* okay, well, feel free to disregard this installment because I misread Ibiki’s age and thought it said 37 not 27 and then I wrote this and then went back to the narutowiki tab and realized my mistake but didn’t want to just delete this, god, why did i try researching at 3:30 in the morning I should’ve known it would just end in frustrated tears.
Anyway, if you do decide to read this despite my ranting, please keep in mind I honestly though Ibiki was 37 and thus within Yoshino’s age range.
~
After your crash onto this strange planet where no one has heard of the Force–much less the Jedi or the Republic or the Clone Wars–it takes you a while to trust people again.
In fact, the first person you trust–your first friend, really–is Morino Ibiki.
(Later he’ll admit that he was pretty sure you were a spy for the first three years of your acquaintance and he was mostly watching to make sure you didn’t do anything untoward to Konoha.
You’ll laugh, not because you think he’s joking, but because you know he’s telling the truth.)
It’s not that the Kinokawas are unkind. You only ever use the Force on them once, and that to make them forget about your crashed medical pod on their land. They don’t quite understand your desire to become a ninja, but they are supportive in their own way.
(You wish you could be a proper daughter for them, but you’ve never been a daughter before so you don’t quite know how.)
Navigating Konoha’s administration and joining the Genin Corps is really more of an exercise in diplomacy, while actually being part of the corps is half meticulous observation and half cautious mimicry.
(This is probably where Ibiki develops the misconception.)
You chatter easily with the other kunoichi, nod your head in the right places; smile and blush whenever the agreed upon cute boys pay you any attention. You can’t contribute to conversations about the Academy, but that’s okay, not everyone else can either. You’ll talk about the weather and food and the benefits of kunai versus senbon versus shuriken and that’s good enough.
(You don’t trust anyone.
Not yet.)
Morino Ibiki isn’t one of the cute boys–too stoic and stocky and solid–but he’s dependable and smart and a decent fighter. He’ll make chuunin one day for sure, which is, as the other members of the Genin Corps agree, very impressive.
It takes about three sentences into your first conversation with him that he tells you to cut the bullshit.
(No one knows yet that his main strength isn’t in fighting, but in watching.)
Because Ibiki doesn’t want politeness, would rather get punched in the face than smiled at, if that’s what a person really felt. He wants the truth–or acknowledgement of the truth–knows everyone keeps secrets and irritatedly wishes people would own up to them than pretend not to have any.
He never asks for your secrets, so you never tell him.
(To this day, he’s still one of your best friends.)
Which is why, when your head is near splitting open with the disturbance in the Force, he’s the one you go to first.
~
A/N2: I’m gonna be honest, did not see this one coming. I was trying to figure out who would be the least likely to be best friends with Yoshino “wears a pink apron and is secretly a Jedi from another planet” Nara and thought about Ibiki but then realized that might actually be a functional friendship.
edit: Also, I kinda needed some way for her to be off-planet without becoming a missing-nin but also sort of keeping it a secret from her family. But considering her husband is the Jounin Commander, there are many things that would be kept secret from him. Unless it’s, you know, Not His Division (as per Lestrade from BBC!Sherlock) such as it being an espionage/T&I thing. Hence, Ibiki.
Also, I wrote this before I podficced Chapter 100 of DoS, but I realized I remembered it pretty accurately and got him fairly spot on. So, like, maybe DoS!Ibiki is ten years older? Like… that just feeeels right from the vibe I get from him in canon and DoS.
Triptych: Origins (2016-08-06)
This far and this fast, the stars are smears of light in the windshield. No clusters or constellations, no shapes made of gravity or long ago mythology. Just pinstripes blazing away across the inky vastness of space.
And if this is what stars amount to, way out here in a sector of the galaxy no geshou has ever been before, then what does that make hir problems? Tiny. Miniscule. Laughable.
Surely zie can handle something as simple as a clan reunion.
Westerly listens to the hum of the ship around hir, the engines and the life support, the other crew members and passengers still awake. It’s not at all like the winds of Huaqu that zie was named for, nothing like the rustling of the Elder Tree’s leaves or the burbling of streams which crisscross Clan Twelve lands, but it’s peaceful, all the same.
There is dignity in making a home away from a planet, though others may call hir a dandelion puff–fickle and selfish and landing wherever zie pleases–if not something worse.
Zie hears familiar footfalls, familiar breaths, doesn’t need to turn to know who it is.
There is dignity, too, in making a family away from hir clan.
“Alright there, Westerly?” Edmundo asks, stepping up beside hir to lean against the railing of the observation deck.
Br’Joci bypasses words completely and brushes a quick hand against Westerly’s arm–qovesh tactile communication, a way to check how one’s trusted are doing without giving their position away. As useful in peace as in wartime.
Zie sighs. Their ship draws ever nearer to Huaqu. Closer to hir home planet than zie’s been in over a decade–not since zie jumped on the first ship out and away, as far as zie could go.
Truthfully, if zie could swing it, zie wouldn’t go back at all, but…
“Not quite.”
… but Clan Twelve’s Elder Tree is dying, which means all members of Clan Twelve are being recalled.
Maybe, if zie really had hated everyone on the planet, zie wouldn’t care. Wouldn’t heed the call. But there are some cousins–most of them on this ship, actually, the ones who had left the planet to join a Guild (though not nearly as many as zie did)–who zie got along with. And.
And, dandelion puff or not, the Elder Tree had always been kind to an abomination like hir.
~
A/N: I’m really just going through a lot of my original fiction for some reason…
The Adventures of Jack and Ness (2016-08-05)
Because he hiccups when he cries and says things like, ‘What if pigeons destroyed a country?’ and never, not even once, no matter how often he was asked, took the easy way out. Because he’s strange and and silly and noble and far too good at poker to be anything but an impeccable liar, despite his kindness, and that’s what she’s been looking for this entire time, apparently.
Ness looks him straight in his beautiful, brown eyes and says:
“I need you to help me fight an old woman.”
—
Faye Lin, neé Peridot, is downright evil and possibly a manifestation of planet Earth’s justifiable rage at humanity.
She also is the only signatory for a specific safety deposit box in a particular bank that holds the exact item that Ness needs in order to get paid and have enough money to do things like, say, pay rent and maybe eat at least once this week.
“Or, at least, something that isn’t instant noodles,” she says, before not so gracefully shoving another slice of pizza into her mouth.
Across the table from her, looking discomfited by both her eating mannerisms and the mysteriously sticky red vinyl of the booth’s benches, Jack puts his own slice of pizza back down.
“And… you need me for this?” he asks. He glances around, as if to check no one is listening, to then continue their conversation of robbing an old lady. Hypothetically.
Ness shrugs, cheeks filled with the glorious tastes of cheese and tomato or, at least, a very delicious approximation of both. “She knows what I look like, and she’s made it pretty clear that if I ever approach her again on the matter of the safety deposit box she’s going to kick my ass.”
“You talked to her about it?” Jack asks, all unimpressed incredulity as if he were the expert in acquisitions and she the new recruit.
“Duh,” she says, roll of her eyes quick and fleeting and more like a sideways check of the exits, “I had to.” She pauses, purses her lips, and admits with a sigh, “She’s my grandmother.”
~
A/N: Tagging this with Counterclockwise because Faye is Leanne’s younger sister and I kinda like this idea of outside POVs for the story… I’ll see where it takes me
Counterclockwise (2016-08-04)
“It’s not as if I wanted to leave,” she says, low and quiet, not wanting to disturb the stillness of the room.
Gently, she sets three fingertips against the bare skin of Alphie’s shoulder, who has yet to look at her, lying on his stomach and face turned away into his pillow.
For some reason, he too, doesn’t want to disturb this fragile quiet, he doesn’t jerk away from her touch, merely squirms until she pulls back.
“I wanted to come back sooner,” she continues, because Alphie has yet respond, “I would have, if I could.”
Still, Alphie says nothing. Maybe he wants her to beg, maybe he wants to punish her.
“Don’t–don’t do this, please,” she says, tone turning rough–irritation or desperation?
Or maybe he just wants to hear her voice again–it’s been six years, after all.
She sighs. Even without looking, Alphie can feel the weight of her hesitant seat on the side of the bed moving. Shifting, as if to stand up and go.
Blindly, he reaches his arm towards her, palm up and open. He turns his head to face her, jaw still pressed into the pillow. Still silent.
Don’t leave me, he doesn’t say. Don’t leave me again.
—
There’s a delicate art to simultaneously being a mercenary for hire, an on-call member of a vigilante team, and a parent, but the simplest method is:
Don’t.
Just give up one of them.
It’s okay to half-ass two things, but third-assing three things is just asking for failure.
Really.
At the very least, schedule the hell out of everything you do, and for god’s sake DO NOT HAVE OVERLAPPING OBLIGATIONS.
Otherwise you’ll end up being hired to fight your own team in the rafters of the school auditorium where your child is acting as Guard #2 in his school play.
And that’s not even the worse time she’s been triple-booked.
—
The time traveling bit is Doctor Kaiza’s fault.
And Anachron’s, obviously, given that it’s Anachron’s power and all, but Diana still blames Doctor Kaiza for the most part. Anachron is more of a fellow victim in this whole thing.
“Shit!” she screams, picks up a worn and faded floral monstrosity of a couch, and chucks it into the charred wall.
Anachron tries very hard to make herself a smaller target.
“Goddamn. Fucking. Shit!” Diana shouts again, grabs the behemoth of a television set with it’s cracked screen and warped frame and throws that as well. The cables show metal through the melted rubber casing, trailing like a comet’s tails.
Find Anachron. Catch her. Take her watch.
It doesn’t matter if Doctor Kaiza meant it with good intentions–hoping to restore Anachron to her proper time or at the very least stop her endless journey–she still sent Diana on an impossible quest and hadn’t warned her of the possible risks.
“When are we?” she asks, near to a growl. Anachron doesn’t flinch, but her fingers shake noticeably as she reaches for the grimy, soot-stained window.
A few moment’s haphazard cleaning gives a decent enough view to the outside world.
Sky nearly orange, but no sunset in sight; neighboring buildings as destroyed and burned as the one they’re in.
It’s not very promising.
~
A/N:… I guess this means Leanne has another traveling companion besides Bastian. At least temporarily.
Discovering things about my own story as I write random stuff is suuuuper fun.
Ode to 11010201 (2016-08-03)
The thing is, he looks like her sister. Obviously. Her sister is his mother,of course he would look like her sister.
Well, maybe not obviously–he could have taken more after his father–but the point still stands. He looks like her sister.
It’s not heartbreaking or anything like that. She can look at him and not feel grief or guilt or anything negative. Just growing affection for him and a fond nostalgia for Iris. But it’s odd, is all, uncanny.
Because Iris and R, for all that they were sisters, did not look similar to each other at all. Iris took after their mother, R after their father; their other two sisters were mixtures of their parents, but she and Iris had been opposite ends of the spectrum appearance wise.
Personality wise, too, though that has hardly any relevance almost a decade after Iris’ death.
They didn’t look the same, but growing up they had been… complementary. A matched set, despite their differences.
He looks like her sister, and because of that, it’s like they’re a matched set, too.
—
R gets to her apartment, tired and achey and hollowed out. Her current roommate is out–odd hours are to be expected from a vampire delivery bicyclist–which means she doesn’t feel at all embarrassed when she face plants into the sofa and groans long and low.
A twisting, jabbing gesture rips the magic from her body and gives it a form of its own–a leopard, to be exact–which immediately tries to curl on top of her as if it were actually a house cat and not a manifestation of her magic which weighs nearly twice as much as she does. She avoids being crushed, barely, and enjoys the full body vibrations of a giant cat purring.
“Today was awful,” she says to her magic, petting between velvety ears, “Just awful,” she repeats.
The problem with suddenly being the most powerful magician in the coven is that she doesn’t have any of the training or experiences to back it up. Which leads to situations where, instead of using magic, she’ll try to go the usual route which somehow ends with her spending two hours in some stranger’s pantry while rival magicians try to extract company secrets from her personal assistant.
Of course, Patrick is a lot more than just her PA–he’s one of the oldest members of the coven and, also, one of the company founders–but they knew how to inflict pain on a vampire and they knew how to make it stick.
“He’s going to take some days off, he really does deserve them” she continues, before her throat gets all choked up and her cheeks hot. She starts to cry.
Her magic grumbles when she clings to it, pressing tears into its fur, but otherwise doesn’t protest.
“It’s my fault,” she sobs, “it’s all my fault.”
JackSGreyson Says 