Untitled (2015-01-27)

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They are four the first time someone mentions how odd they are. With her, it is visible right off the bat: already her hair is streaked with gray and there is a large port-wine birthmark splashed across her face and arms. Her eyes are different colors, the left an eery colorless gray, the right an almost disappointingly mundane brown. But her brother appears normal–his hair is as average a brown as can be, his eyes equally so, there are no distinguishing marks painted across his skin. But they are four, and he has yet to say a word.

It’s nothing wrong physically–they’ve tested his hearing and all of the parts of the body that enables speech are in working order. He has cried out in pain and fear and sorrow, has laughed audibly in joy. But he has never spoken. His parents are worried. Other are concerned. His sister does not care, because she has grown up with this. Her brother has never spoken before and so she has no expectations for him to do so. She understands him well enough regardless.

They are four and a half when someone mentions how odd they are, not out of worry and concern, but out of fear and aggression and hostility. It is also the first time they get in trouble for fighting, though she’ll always say she was defending him from bullies and the teachers just walked in at the wrong moment. It certainly won’t be the last time such a thing happens, though both decrease in frequency as she improves her subtlety.

They live their lives this way, odd and content with themselves but not with the world at large. But there is one moment that will always stand out as the point when it could’ve been different.

When they are seventeen and one quarter, they begin their final year in high school. They struggled through the first three years and have built reputations around them like walls. Mostly as freaks.

She has grown into her silver hair and mismatching eyes and mottled skin. She looks exotic, one of a kind, which always appeals to the shallow who see people only as conquests. But just as she has grown into her odd looks, she has grown into the righteous anger.

And while he is still aesthetically average, so nondescript that sometimes even relatives don’t recognize him, he is undeniably talented in whatever he sets out to do. He can play sports as well as the athletes, he can ace exams without much trouble, he can flit from club to club and bring them to victory. But he still never talks. And that unnerves most people.

The moment is this: there existed such a person who saw her not only with her unique appearance but also with her headstrong attitude and felt desire. This same person saw him with his quiet, constant, effortless success and felt envy. A self-contented desire, which this person acknowledged and treasured but felt no need to act upon; and a nonviolent envy, which pushed this person to compete against he who didn’t really understand competition.

It so happened that when they were seventeen and a quarter, there had been a moment when this person could have been inserted into their lives with such a lack of conflict that in this person they would have found a friend to last all three of their lives. The missed opportunity was so inconsequential seeming that perhaps none of them remember it; what a sad missed turn of fate.

~

A/N: I think I actually wanted to do a weird… time travel rom-com twelve tasks of friendship sort of deal? But it kind of just. stuttered to a stop here.

Untitled (2015-01-26)

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Jack knows a secret.

[That’s a vague statement. What does that even mean?]

Jack knows many secrets, some of them are his and some of them aren’t. But there is one secret in particular, one that is not his, but one that he knows, that is relevant to what I am about to tell you.

[Don’t sass me.]

You may have heard about selkies, yes? Or some other mythological being similar. They tend to be women, they fall in love, they marry, they have a family, and all throughout their husbands only have to do one thing. Just one thing. And what do they not do?

[They don’t do the thing.]

They don’t do the thing. Well, in the selkies’ case, it was actually a good thing, as her husband had been holding her seal pelt hostage and she couldn’t return to the ocean without it. For the rest it’s usually–don’t tell this secret, don’t look in this box.

[What’s the point?]

The point is, what happens to those children?

[Oh.]

Yes. So Jack knows a secret, and the secret is this. His mother is a selkie.

[Wouldn’t that make it his secret too?]

Not particularly. He doesn’t have any special abilities–he’s not any better at swimming, he can’t talk to animals, he doesn’t prefer seafood to other food. He’s as average a person can get.

[Except for his selkie mother.]

Yes. Except for that. And to be honest, it’s not like it comes up very often throughout his life. Other kids have had to deal with worse than having a single parent, why his mother left doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

[Now that’s depressing. What’s the point of this?]

Jack knows a secret, he’s known it his entire life. But it’s not until he’s 34 that it becomes relevant.

~

A/N: So I guess I’m super late on this one. And I really couldn’t be bothered to finish it? But basically it was going to be that Jack was a police detective and there were whalers/pirates that somehow his mother’s selkie pod was going to help stop. I dunno.

Untitled (2015-01-25)

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You are in the middle of painting your nails when the twins burst into your room. All of you freeze, staring at each other with matching wide eyes.

All of a sudden you can hear your heartbeat rushing in your ears. Tammy makes quick, assessing glances at you in your undershirt and boxers, at the bed where your outfit is laid out, at your open messy closet. Tommy, always behind his sister, peeks shyly over her shoulder bouncing between your face and the bottle of nail polish in your hands.

You can feel the burn of shame crawling it’s way up your face, this was stupid. Why didn’t you lock the door? (You never lock the door, you always want your kids to have access to you). This was worse than stupid, this was wrong. So wrong.

“DAD!” Tammy yells–for the past few months, Tammy has stopped saying things when she has the option to scream it loudly instead–finally coming closer. “OH MY GOD, DAD!” She yells again, before glaring, as expected, at the dress on your bed.

You are bracing yourself for the stinging blow of rejection.

“BROWN HORIZONTAL STRIPES! THAT’S TERRIBLE! WE LOOK TERRIBLE IN BROWN, DAD! AND HORIZONTAL STRIPES ARE EVEN WORSE!” She stomps towards your closet, burrowing herself into the mess towards the furthest corners. “I KNOW YOU HAVE SOMETHING BETTER IN HERE. THAT NICE PASTEL FLORAL ONE,” Her voice, though muffled is still clearly audible.

Tommy, a silent shadow in comparison to his sister, but no pushover, has sidled up towards you. He’s already taken the nail polish bottle out of your shaking hands and with practiced neatness, paints the fingernails on your right hand which had been giving you trouble. He smiles gently at you, noting the sheer bewilderment on your face, and pats your bicep.

“PAISLEY! NOTHING AND NO ONE LOOKS GOOD IN PAISLEY! NEXT TIME YOU GO DRESS SHOPPING I’M COMING WITH YOU!” Tammy’s voice makes it’s way out of the closet.

“We saw them when we were playing hide and seek one time,” Tommy explains, still calmly painting coats of pink on your nails. It’s lighter than the shade of your favorite tie, “She said the same thing the first time she saw them, too.”

You’re trying really hard not to cry. Because all the worry and secrecy of the past few weeks, all of it had apparently been for nothing. Your kids don’t hate you, they don’t see you as wrong or sick. They still see their Dad, albeit a Dad who likes to dress up and needs help doing so.

Tammy strides out of the closet triumphantly, the pastel floral dress waving on the hanger like a flag. It’s the one that you were looking forward to trying on the most; you were working your way up to it.

“I FOUND IT!” Tammy announces smugly, as if the two of them weren’t able to tell, “OOH! THAT’S A NICE COLOR! ARE YOU GOING TO DO YOUR TOES TOO? WHAT SHOES DO YOU HAVE?” She glances down at the brown flats you’ve laid out next to the dress she’s already rejected. Her lips purse in displeasure; you aren’t all that fond of them either, but they fit, which can’t always be said about women’s shoes. “NEVER MIND. TOMMY MAKE SURE DAD’S TOES ARE DONE TOO, I’M PRETTY SURE THERE ARE FLIP-FLOPS THAT WOULD WORK. THIS IS A SUNDRESS, SO IT’S FINE.” After depositing her loot onto the bed, markedly on top of the other dress, she braves her way back into the closet.

Tommy, having already finished with your hands, looks warily down at your bare feet then back up to you, unable to hide his cringe.

You laugh, a little more than the situation warrants, “I’ll do it myself when my hands are dry,” you reassure your son. You just showered, so all of you is squeaky clean, and anyway your feet aren’t ugly just big. But Tommy has a mild fear of feet; you aren’t so incompetent with a nail brush as to make your son face that.

Gratefully, he closes the nail polish bottle and sets it down on your nightstand. He clambers up onto the bed next to you, fidgeting a little unsurely, before pulling your new outfit for the day into his lap. “This is better,” He nods, agreeing with his sister’s decision, and smiles back up at you.

Your relief has already crashed through you like a flood, but it’s only now that the tears finally come. You can’t wipe them away, because your fingernails are still drying and you don’t want to mess Tommy’s hard work.

“GOT THEM!” Tammy crawls back out, your light yellow flip-flops clutched in her left hand. It doesn’t quite match the dress, but it doesn’t outrightly clash either, so she’s satisfied with them. “DAD! WHY ARE YOU CRYING?” She drops the sandals and leaps onto the bed on your other side, the impact makes Tommy bounce half a foot into the air, but you’re heavy enough that it only just shakes you.

She flings her arms around your neck and shoulders from behind you–this is a hug to be received, not reciprocated. Tommy just leans his head against your side.

If anything, that just makes you cry harder. Your kids–your fantastic, supportive, perfect kids–stay where they are, waiting patiently.  

When you’re finally done, the twins gently press a tissue to each side of your face. Your face is warm and your eyes are probably puffy, but you feel better now.

“You don’t have much hair to work with,” Tammy muses, her hands ruffling through your still damp locks. You laugh, because in comparison to your partially balding coworkers, you have an envious amount of hair, “I have a clip that might work? So your bangs don’t fly everywhere like they usually do,” She’s inherited your wild hair, so she knows what she’s talking about.

“We could go to the beach?” Tommy suggests quietly, and he means well–it’s a nice gesture, they don’t mind other people knowing how their Dad likes to wear dresses sometimes, they’re not ashamed. But maybe you’re not as accepting or as brave because at the idea of other people seeing… all you can feel is a tightening in your throat and a tenseness in your shoulders at the idea. Tammy, still curled around you, feels it too.

“Let’s order in pizza! And we can play video games!” Your daughter says, careful not to completely reject her brother’s idea.

“Oh,” Tommy pauses for a moment, then adds, “Yeah, Dad, we can finally get through all of Nicktoons Unite.”

You love your kids so much. You smile and nod, that sounds like a good plan.

“OKAY!” Tammy yells, thankfully having jumped off the bed and far enough from your ears, “I’LL GO GET THAT CLIP! YOU GUYS ORDER PIZZA! NO BLACK OLIVES!” She runs out the door, footsteps stomping.

Tommy looks up at you beseechingly.

“We can get two different pizzas. One with black olives, one without,”

He nods and also leaves, probably headed to wherever he left his laptop to order the pizza online. You really can get anything on the Internet nowadays.

“Make sure both of them have other vegetables!” You call out after him. You’re not sure if he heard you or not, so if the pizzas do end up vegetable-less you’ll let it pass.

You look at yourself in your mirror. You’re still you, adam’s apple and biceps and square jaw. But each of your fingernails are painted taffy pink, and you’ve done your best at shaving away your facial, underarm, and leg hair. You have a dress waiting to be worn laying on your bed, you still need to paint your toenails to match, and your daughter is coming back with a hair clip to share.

You will wear that dress. You will paint your toenails. You will let your daughter arrange your hair to her liking. Then you and your amazing kids will eat pizza and play video games.

You are happy.

~

A/N: Well… I dunno if anyone noticed it while reading, but basically this is adult Timmy Turner of Fairly Odd Parents fame, with his two kids that we see in the Channel Chasers movie. But, uh, hopefully none of that is necessary to enjoy the drabble. Also, I’m not too keen on the ending though I like this drabble over all.

Wooh! This is the first time I posted way before midnight.

Adventures of Jack and Ness drabble (2015-01-24)

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She drives a powder blue Volkswagen Beetle around town, convertible rooftop folded when the weather permits. She is never seen without her phone which, despite her tendency to be ahead of the trend, has a sliding screen and a keyboard instead of the more common flat touch screens. She  has a pilot’s license, and is known around school for taking people on the coolest second dates in her family’s floatplane.

He rides a bright red Vespa everywhere, even when walking would be more convenient. The tiny netbook he uses for school fits in the altered front pockets of the hoodies he wears at all hours of the day, everyday. After school he helps out with his parents’ food-truck, he never does any of the cooking thankfully, but culinary skills aren’t necessary to dispense ice cream.

These facts are well known. They don’t seem relevant to each other, or even remarkable at all. She’s never outrightly snubbed him, but it’s clear that they run in entirely different cliques. No one at school can recall them ever speaking to each other.

But just because it can’t be remembered, doesn’t mean it’s never happened.

They met at night. Because all covert meetings ought to happen at night. But really, it was because he wasn’t free to meet until after the dinner shift, when the food truck was the busiest. And also it was only by the cover of darkness that all eight of them could properly meet up.

/How were the customers today?/ Dragonfly asked, sitting on the dock part of her amphibious garage. Her green wings were folded tight against her back to create room for the others.

/Not too terrible, though there was this one pile of scraps that nearly vandalized my paint job/ Pot groused, curled up awkwardly but not uncomfortably. Being the largest of the group, she was granted the most space out of necessity but didn’t want to be a total hog.

“You poor dear,” Ness crooned, rubbing a hand along the bright mural on Pot’s leg panels. Tick, wrapped around Ness in his headset mode, helpfully translated the other’s series of whistles and clicks into something humans could understand.

Knife, shaped more like a helmet, did the same for Jack. “Well, Rabbit nearly blew his cover in order to defend her honor. Also, he stole the jerk’s wallet,”

Machinery couldn’t blush, but Rabbit’s casing almost seemed to turn an even brighter red.

/Getting identification to press charges?/ Parasite said dryly. He was the only one to stay in his day-time form. Partially because he had no reason to switch into his other more humanoid shape, nor any other forms to change into. The other reason was that it was easier for the humans to join the meeting if they could sit on upholstered car seats. With the roof down, it really wasn’t any different from them sitting on one of the others’ laps or shoulder, just more comfortable.

/He didn’t get caught/ Knife defended, having been as present during the event as the rest of Jack’s troika due to having been in his sweater pocket.

“And that’s all that matters,” Jack agreed.

“We should all be more careful, though. We don’t exactly want to advertise to the world about the existence of living robots,” Ness cautioned. It may have been selfish, but she wasn’t keen on sharing her Transformers with anyone except Jack.

~

A/N: … Yes? I actually haven’t seen the Michael Bay movies so I dunno. I just wanted to use the general idea of Transformers, not any particular mythos. So Parasite, Tick, and Dragonfly are Ness’ car, phone, and floatplane respectively. Rabbit, Knife, and Pot are Jack’s vespa, netbook, and food-truck. All of Jack’s are sort of puns with his name–Jackrabbit, Jackknife, Jackpot. He’s a dork. Ness’ is mostly because my sister drives a powder blue Volkswagen beetle and I was just like… what if this adorable car was actually like an alien robot that could take down larger robots by attaching to them and stealing their energy.

(In)Difference drabble (2015-01-23)

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“How is Nae-chan lately?” I have asked this three times in the past month. It was probably getting annoying by now, but I was desperate to know.

“She got into a bit of trouble in Otafuku Gai, but nothing she couldn’t handle,” Nonetheless, Mito-sama answered my question with a smile, before shooing me off to join her granddaughter.

I tried not scowl overly much. But luckily, Mito-sama found it endearing rather than rude.

“Who is Nae-chan?” Tsunade asked, trying to be nonchalant, but by the twist of her mouth and the fidgeting of her dominant hand, I could tell she was irritated.

Nae-chan is not a person. Tsunade does not know this.

“Just a friend, Tsunade-hime,” I deflected, before moving into some warm-up stretches. It had been three months since Tsunade and I began exercising during our overlapping days off, five months since we both graduated from the academy.

Five months since I was passed over for a Nae-chan position.

She took the hint and began her own stretches too, but she didn’t let the topic drop completely.  “I don’t remember there being a girl named Nae in our class,” It’s not like we couldn’t multi-task, we’d be extremely poor examples of kunoichi if we couldn’t talk and stretch at the same time. And anyway, it wasn’t like stretching was something that we’d have time to do out in the field. It’s strange what things seem luxurious when you became a child soldier. “How come I don’t know this Nae-chan, but my grandmother does?”

Because your grandmother is the head of the undercover kunoichi network–she’s the one that founded the Nae-chan organization, I carefully don’t say. Instead I picked at the real reason for Tsunade’s curiosity.

“Are you jealous because I call her Nae-chan and I still call you Tsunade-hime?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her flush a fiery red. It obviously wasn’t from the minimal exertion of the warmup.

“What- I just. I just think it’s weird that you always ask about her but I’ve never even seen her! What kind of friend is that?” She crossed her arms defensively, and even as I turned to face her, she still had traces of an embarrassed blush on her cheeks. Even disregarding her famous shinobi lineage, Tsunade would not have been a good Nae-chan candidate at all.

“Well, Tsunade-hime-sama-chan,” I said the mouthful of butchered titles as saccharinely as I could, “I seem to recall you spending most of our time at the academy beating up a certain boy that you have the unfortunate luck to call a teammate,” Getting her started on Jiraiya was bound to distract her from the Nae-chan issue.

“That pervert!” She raged, resuming her stretches with vigorous energy, “I can’t believe I’m stuck with him of all people! He still calls me Princess Flat Chest! Even in front of sensei!”

Ooh, that’s rough. Considering her sensei was the current Hokage, she was literally being made fun of in front of both her commanding officer and the most powerful person in the village.

“It’s because you keep reacting, he left the rest of us alone once we started ignoring him.” Well, and after Suisen stuck him in an hour-long genjutsu; physical retaliation didn’t stick, but that had. She still won’t tell us what exactly she made him see. Hmm, “He might be a masochist, and you’re giving him his pain fix.”

Tsunade looked so horrified for a second that I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“I wish I had known this sooner,” She sighed wistfully, certainly more heartfelt than a matter of Jiraiya inspired irritation deserved.

Isolating Tsunade hadn’t been something the other girls and I did on purpose. I admit that part of it was because of the intimidating Senju name, though another part of it was simply a lack of advances on her part too. Mostly, though, it was the Nae-chan thing. We were candidates, and she wasn’t. She simply couldn’t be.

As previously stated, the Nae-chan organization was sort of an undercover kunoichi network. But it was less of a spy network and more of a secret standing army. Girls had smaller chakra reserves than boys, and often had better chakra control to go with it. Which meant that most academy-trained kunoichi could compress their chakra into seemingly civilian levels far easier than their male counterparts.

Throughout the towns of Fire country, and even a few allied countries, there was at least one Nae-chan living a double life. Especially in the capitol, which was teeming with the who’s who of the aristocracy and merchant sector, and also included the headquarters of the dwindling samurai army and the second largest Fire temple. There were at least twenty Nae-chans stationed in the capitol.

In the academy, I had been friends with my six fellow Nae-chan candidates. Close friends, even. It’s hard not to be when you’re ten years old and told you might be part of what basically amounted to a secret society of kunoichi. The seven of us had been pulled aside one day during our third year, we had been told that we had potential. Of course, many kunoichi who graduate the academy end up as a Nae-chan–but a lot of those end up in the small villages in the outskirts of the country; almost a border patrol, really. But the Nae-chans in the capitol… they were the elite. That’s what the seven of us had been training for.

So it sucked when, by graduation, my chakra reserves had developed enough to out me as ninja-trained. The six of them got the Nae-chan positions they wanted, and I couldn’t begrudge them that, but I also felt helplessly left behind when we all graduated.

Which must have been what Tsunade felt like the entire time, being excluded from the group of kunoichi that could actually keep up with her. We must have been intimidating in our own way, a flock of preteen girls whispering to each other, because it wasn’t until after the others had left for their new careers, that Tsunade approached me as the only other kunoichi to end up on a jounin team.

~

A/N: Terrible ending, but I didn’t really know how else to continue? First off, yes. It’s Naruto fanfiction. But really I just was like… why is there only one kunoichi for every two boys? WHY THE SEXISM? So to answer that I was like… well, obviously the other girls are being sent elsewhere. Hence, “Nae-chan” – Nae meaning seedling/saplings.

This is a semi SI!OC character who ended up in the same generation as the Sannin. She actually wanted to become a Nae-chan because that way she wouldn’t have to interact with canon people and possibly mess up the timeline but fate (by which I mean me) decreed otherwise!

The fic name, which I may actually do eventually or at the very least drabble in more, is tentatively titled (In)Difference. It features one Kiyoshi Utsugi who is extremely afraid to change something for the worse and thus tries not to interact with important canon characters. Only for them to seek her out anyway. She may or may not be Kakashi’s mother? I dunno.

Word Prompts (S91): Stitch

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Grandmother inspects our spellwork every Saturday when Papa drops us off for our weekly lessons. She says she trusts us not to do any major damage during the week, that her grandchildren will maintain the family name. But we also know that she sews surveillance spells into our scarves and gloves, threads it into our training bracelets. We pretend not to notice.

This week, our assignment was to create a luck charm for a non-magical person. Daphne made a broach for Mama, it has health and fortune runes crafted in semi-precious stones. If Grandmother approves, then Daphne’s going to give it to her as a gift for her birthday.

Iris just recently broke up with her boyfriend, they haven’t yet returned each others’ things, though it’s bound to happen soon enough. I don’t think Grandmother will strictly approve of Iris’ project, but it’s a pretty good showcase of magical skill. Even if it’s petty to make an ex-boyfriend’s favorite jacket the source of romantic catastrophes. Also, inexplicable itching.

Zoe and I aren’t allowed to work on our assignments together, even though our resonating magic means the enchantments would have been that much stronger. We honestly didn’t mean for the color change spell on Grandmother’s cat to be permanent, but Striker seems to be content with life as a purple cat.

But I digress, Zoe’s trying to do a multi-layered luck quilt. It’s somehow both ambitious and lazy–because she wants it to imbue the owner with bad academic luck while simultaneously giving good financial luck, and conflicting lucks is pretty difficult, but she has to make a quilt for one of her art classes anyway. I think she plans to give it to one of her classmates who owes her money.

As for me? Well…

“Arke, darling, what are those?” Grandmother asks, eyes narrowed and suspicious but voice still light and sweet. I’m pretty sure I’m Grandmother’s favorite, but I’m also sure she often despairs or regrets this.

“Cupcakes, I wanted to see if I could make edible luck charms.” The batch I brought today for grading was my fifth. The third successful one. Well… the first two might have been successful if the enchantment I had been going for was uncomfortable bad digestive luck. It was not.

“And could you?” My sisters laugh with varying degrees of bitterness, depending on which batch I asked them to test for me.

“Well, technically they are edible and they do bring luck to the eater,” I hedge, staring at the brightly frosted tops of my cupcakes.

“But…?” Grandmother prompts, impatient for me to get to the point.

“They taste awful.”

~

A/N: I really didn’t want to do this while I was writing it, but I honestly didn’t know what else to do? 

Word Prompts (S35): Sharp

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It’s the ticking that really bugs him. The constant, steady ticking of the hallway clock.

He doesn’t mind waiting for hours or filling out redundant paperwork or even the way the nurses recognize him on sight and shoot him sympathetic smiles. But that damned ticking hallway clock…

To be honest, it’s probably not even audible. He sits on the opposite side of the waiting room from it, and there are always other people with their own chattering drama going on. He doesn’t actually hear it, but he sees it. And that’s enough to make him imagine the ticking. 

Maybe it’s not the ticking of the hallway clock. Maybe the hallway clock doesn’t even tick. Maybe it’s the sound of footsteps crunching leaves, splashing through puddles, kicking through sand and snow. Maybe it’s the sound of squealing laughter, hitching sobs, tearing growls. The steady beep of a heart monitor. 

Tick. Tock. Tricks and Clocks.

“He’s ready to see you now,” Nurse Mendez gestures to him, and he finally gets up from the chair. Finally looks away from the clock. But he can still hear it.

“Thank you,” He murmurs, but his mind is already beyond manners, he doesn’t hear the response. Just the constant ticking.

Room 26 isn’t really a private room, but there is no one else in the second bed today. So it is just the two of them. He sits down in the chair next to the occupied bed. That’s all he ever does here. Sit and wait.

Sometimes he can get a conversation, if he’s patient and kind and lucky. Sometimes, even when he is, he only gets silence. He likes to err on the side of caution, he’d prefer to be disappointed than to not even try.

“Today was kind of strange,” He offers, because he’d rather his own voice than the beeping/ticking/silence, “I kept getting irritated, and while I was living it I thought it was terrible. But I achieved everything I set out to do, even if it took me longer than I wanted. So I realize now that today was actually a pretty good day,”

Today he gets a glance in his direction, and the upturned open palm waiting for his hand. He’s careful not to grab too tightly, careful not to stare at the bandages wrapped around his boyfriend’s wrists.

“Yeah, today was pretty good,”

~

A/N: I dunno… 

Untitled (2015-01-20)

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Joy is tired, angry, and bleeding. She is missing one of her shoes, has torn both legs of her pants, and will need to get a haircut to even out the still smoking mess on her head. But she trudges back to the apartment triumphantly, because she did it.

She killed the vampire that bit her brother. She even beat the one month deadline by a week.

“Simon,” She greets him, after a quick stop to dunk her head under the kitchen sink. Might as well try to save as much as she can, “Simon, I did it.”

For obvious reasons, the past three weeks have not been kind to her brother. To begin with, he had always been somewhat sickly–asthma, allergies, liable to catch four different strains of the flu–but the whole vampire infection being what it is, basically his body just started to systematically shut down. And she had been forced to confine him to their apartment.

“Simon?” Her call nearly echoes in their tiny, empty apartment. His bedroom window is open, the screen punched through from the inside.

“Oh god, no.” But even as her mind denies it, her hand is already pulling out her phone and calling the one person who may be able to fix this.

…

“You were too late,” The doctor intones, expression as irritatingly blank as always.

“No, I had one month to kill it.” Joy bites back, fists shaking in her pockets.

“If you had come to me sooner–”

“It was your team that fucked up, why would I trust you with something this important?”

“–I would have been able to tell you that you mistranslated. You didn’t have one month, you had one moon. Specifically, you had until the full moon.” Ellen’s face is still placid, but even she’s not so unaffected as to deny the sorrow seeping into her voice. The doctor had been fond of Simon, in her own way, and even his sister for all that the feeling wasn’t mutual.

“But that was…” Joy breathed out, horrified and unable to finish.

“Eleven days ago,”

~

A/N: meh… 

Untitled (2015-01-19)

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The Lavaeudeen School of Magick or rather, the North American School of Sorcery and Enchantment, is much less rigid than it’s British counterpart. While it does sort students into different houses, it doesn’t factor much into students’ every day lives beyond administration purposes. All students of each year live together, regardless of house, and classes are organized by skill not age. It makes inter-house and even inter-year friendships much easier, though seeing as how most students are thrust into a new environment, they tend to migrate towards those they already know.

So it’s not surprising that it took two years for Norman Babcock and Dipper Pines to meet. To begin with, they were in different years–the Pines twins being a year above Norman–and different houses. Norman had been sorted into Hawkridge, the house of honesty, intelligence, and patience. Dipper had been sorted into Bearglove, which encouraged bravery, curiosity and leadership in its students. Norman, descended from the Prenderghast family, specialized in Divination and Extrasensory Perception. Dipper, in contrast, preferred the more physical supernatural sciences such as Magical Flora and Fauna.

If anything, it was surprising that they met at all, considering Lavaeudeen’s population size. Those two years had been filled with near misses, like broomsticks passing in the night. They had overlapping social circles and had heard of each other, but never actually met.

During Norman’s first year he, like most other first years, clung to those he already knew. Which meant that, except for his Wolfthorn-sorted best friend, Neil Downe, he sought out his cousin Coraline Jones despite the age and house difference (she was two years older and sorted into Lionpride). She rather welcomed it, having only one other close friend herself, one Wyborn Lovat of Foxcrest house.

Although the cousins would have been content with that, their social circle grew nonetheless.

The earlier statement about houses not factoring much into students’ everyday lives was perhaps an overly generalized statement. House sorting doesn’t affect what students have to do, but like any unifying label, people enjoy connecting with similar people. So really, their tiny multi-house group of four should have expected to increase via house networking. What was unexpected were which houses. And considering how shy both Norman and Wybie were.

But Lili Zanotto was difficult to deter on good days, impossible to refuse otherwise, and Mabel Pines was some kind of all-powerful force unto herself. And with them came their respective, male, Bearglove counterparts–Lili’s boyfriend, Raz, and Mabel’s brother Dipper.

It’s funny that it took so long for Norman and Dipper to meet, funnier that they were the last to meet within their group of eight (although the way Neil and Raz met was far more hilarious). Because they sure as hell were getting along quite nicely, if the blushing and handholding were any indication.

~

A/N: Ha! That’s right, I did a Mystery Kids x Lavaeudeen crossover in order to ship Parapines. Am I late to all three fandoms? Yes, yes I am.

For those of you who have no idea what some of those are, and are unsure of where to go looking for that let me give you a quick rundown:

Mystery Kids is the fantastic crossover of Paranorman, Gravity Falls, Coraline, and Psychonauts. Specifically of each movie/show/game’s two respective main kids. There’s a fan-created show (only one so far), which is pretty rad. There’s also two(?) blogs for it on tumblr, here and here.

Lavaeudeen is the “American Hogwarts” and the houses are, funnily enough, based on the Old Spice deodorant types: Foxcrest, Hawkridge, Bearglove, Wolfthorn, and Lionpride. The characteristics and amazing backstories of the first four houses can be found here, the fifth one I tried do justice since the OP didn’t know Lionpride existed at the time. There’s also a general Lavaeudeen tumblr, here.

And finally Parapines… I’m honestly not sure if that’s the crossover name or a ship name but it seems to be used interchangeably for the crossover strictly between Paranorman and Gravity Falls, and the ship between Norman and Dipper Pines (and/or Mabel Pines?)

But… yeah. Hahaha… I’ve had all three on my mind so I guess it was just… SQUISH THEM ALL TOGETHER.

Now for the headcanons which are behind this drabble:

Norman and Neil are the youngest, Hawkridge and Wolfthorn respectively.

Raz, Lili, and the Pines twins are a year older–Raz and Dipper are again both in Bearglove while Lili is Hawkridge and Mabel is Foxcrest.

Coraline and Wybie are the oldest, Lionpride and Foxcrest respectively.

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The Big Heroes are losing when the battle comes to a screeching halt. Literally.

The lightning android had already absorbed most of Baymax’s power, leaving him in his stumbling drunken low battery mode. It had also hijacked the electromagnetic servos in both Gogo’s and Hiro’s suits leaving them tangled and awkwardly stuck together.

The fire android had made the Fredzilla suit’s fire-breathing abilities defunct, taking the three-eyed head and leaving Fred vulnerable. High heat also had the tendency to mess with Honey Lemon’s chemical concoctions, though she was beginning to adapt and send heat absorption capsules.

Which meant that the lightning one’s scream of pain was highly unexpected. Wasabi was a Big Hero in his own right, of course, but due to the lethality of molecular-sharp lasers, he tended not to fight directly. They all figured it would be okay–the androids had already proven highly resistant to most of the Big Heroes’ attacks, due to their shining metal outer shell–but apparently that was not the case.

Bright red liquid was gushing up from where Wasabi had cut into its… no, her arm. She had retreated a safe distance away, though Wasabi had already retracted the laser swords, clutching futilely to the bleeding wound. Her fire counterpart abandoned its… his own skirmish with a burst of speed even faster than his previously witnessed, almost impossible movements.

It was one of the reasons why the Big Heroes had thought they were androids this entire time. Along with their near impenetrable metal armor. And the fact that until now, neither of the not-androids had every said anything.

Not that gasps of pain and wordless, soothing crooning was particularly intelligible.

But the Big Heroes weren’t rookies anymore. While they didn’t use the opportunity to attack the distracted pair, they did take the moment of respite to lick their own wounds. Gogo and Hiro were carefully untangled from each other and Fred’s mask retrieved. They couldn’t do much about Baymax’s low battery mode, but they could at least stop him from flying away.

“I- I didn’t know!” Wasabi blurted out, looking down sickly at his hands. There wasn’t actually any blood on them, but still…

“None of us knew,” Gogo reassured him as best as she could.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Honey Lemon added, which did more.

“If they’re not androids, this totally throws off my theories!” Fred, or rather, Fredzilla’s arms waved about, only just missing the rest of the team huddled together, “Maybe they’re escaped experiments. Twin escaped experiments!”

“Uh, guys–” Wasabi tried to start.

“It doesn’t matter what they are, it matters what they did. Robots or not, they’ve been blowing up labs around the city,” Gogo gestured to the burning wreckage of the most recent attack.

“But never with people inside, it’s always been at night when no ones there, or right after some kind of evacuation,” Honey Lemon refuted, though she also looked discomfited by the scene. It hit too close to home.

The team did their best not to look too closely in Hiro’s direction, though they were waiting on his input.

“Gogo’s right. Regardless of their motivations or… consideration, they still need to be brought in. We can go on from their after we’ve caught them,” Hiro steeled himself, this whole case had been terrible from the beginning, but he was determined to see it through to the end.

“Guys, not to worry anyone, but the android twins whatever they are, are coming over,” Wasabi alerted the team, though he was still conflicted on how to go about fighting when he didn’t actually want to hurt other people.

With the silver-clad pair came the smell of burned meat.

“No way,” Fred breathed, beginning to look a little queasy himself. Gogo looked reluctantly impressed–they hadn’t heard a thing, no second scream of pain that’s for sure.

“Cauterizing a wound out in the open like this? That would actually increase risk for infection,” Honey Lemon murmured, fingers ghosting over the touch screen of her purse. Though she had excelled at organic chemistry as well, medicine wasn’t her specialty.

Both of them had stopped several feet away, hands loosely open in a blatant display of nonaggression.

“Truce?” The lightning one asked curtly, arm still shaking with pain.

The team looked at each other, briefly, with various levels of skepticism on their faces.

“What exactly do you want?” Hiro asked.

“Your robot, he’s programmed as a medic.” The fire one said, shocking the entire team for two reasons. Reason one–they knew that Baymax was a robot designed for healthcare. Baymax was a one-of-a-kind. Most people assumed the red flying hero was a human not a robot, much less a medical robot. That meant that the pair knew the identity of at least one member of the team.

“I’ll recharge him. I can give back what I took,” She added, not seeing the wide-eyed surprise on their faces. Or simply not caring.

“You make sure my cauterizing didn’t make her injury worse. We’ll surrender ourselves into your custody,” He continued, emphasizing ‘your’. Both of their armor molded to cover even their faces, but still…

Reason two– that was Tadashi’s voice.

~

A/N: Hahahaha, yeah. That damn movie… agh. My heart.

Anyway, this is a scene from an imaginary fic I will probably not write, regarding a maybe sequel in which Tadashi’s not dead? Maybe? I dunno.

I didn’t quite know how to add in drunken/low-battery Baymax shenanigans without completely derailing the scene. Though just imagine him stumbling around in the background while everyone’s all super serious.

And… yeah. Basically one part Sunfire, one part Winter Soldier, one part Maximoff twins (except they’re not really twins)… at least I’m sticking to Marvel, though right?

Although, yes, the lightning one is an OC of mine…