Blitzkrieg, part four (2017-04-05)

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yowling cat
outside my window
what is it you say?
though night falls
the dog next door
barks and barks away

trash bins lining
pockmarked roads
soldiers on their guard
streaking tail lights
sirens blaring
smoking wreckage charred

upon my skin
bright red ink
curves intertwined
pressure bruising
delicate vessels
wavering blue and lined

—

“What is it that you want to do with your life?” she asks, nowhere near as patronizing as she could have been. She is not asking the way his the school counselor does, ready to guide him on his way–university, training school, straight to work–but rather one honestly curious teen to another as equals. Or perhaps even one seeking the other as an example.

Often, choices are not a result of desire but of necessity.

“Maybe,” he says, hesitates, falls silent.

She does not prompt him to continue, does nothing but wait patiently and drink her tea. A snake poised, ready but still.

Snakes only attack those who encroach on their space.

He ponders and drinks his tea.

—

train tracks
clattering,
three am
whistles
beware,
look out,
railroad crossing
stay behind
the yellow line
incoming
southbound
four minutes
doors opening,
doors closing
on benches
we sit
skin prickling
excuse me,
fogged out
hunched over
strangers
waiting
same train

—

He has no future in basketball. He was never more than a one trick pony, an accessory to other, better players.

But that’s… selfish. It’s a self-centered way of thinking. Basketball has always been about more than raw talent and unstoppable techniques. It’s about teamwork and effort and the people that helped them win.

He has no future in playing basketball. He can’t compete on the court, not at the higher, professional levels. But that doesn’t mean he’s completely cut off from it. He can still be part of the world, even if he’s not center stage.

“Maybe,” he says again, still hesitant.

She watches, waits; doesn’t tell him to turn back.

She doesn’t need to.

—

precipice, propensity,
every little piece.
building, straining,
brand new world.

thread and needles,
winding through,
beneath our fingers,
a familiar pattern

preserve, procede
throw it all in the fire

—

This time, the card does not get hidden away, forgotten. This time, he enters the information to his phone, and offers his in return.

Superfluous, but appreciated for the gesture it is.

He tells his school counselor that he’d like to go to university, specialize in education or sports psychology. He wants to be a teacher or maybe a coach.

He has no future in playing basketball, but that does not mean basketball doesn’t have a future in him.

There is no need to rip himself away from that world entirely, jump headfirst into a world of shadow and flames and irreversible commitments.

There will be time for that later.

~

A/N: Word Prompt (S81): Stamp. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the ficlet, except for how it led me to writing it.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I was doing with this series, but it didn’t feel right to have Kuroko join Vongola out of high school (mostly because Tetsuki probably wouldn’t let him join Vongola out of high school). So I guess this is “the end” of the series. For now.

Like, mostly I just wanted them to meet. Maybe one day he will join Vongola (or act as an outside contractor, or he’ll be the teacher to the next wave of over powered teenagers) but that’s not… well. Never say never, I guess.

i really like it when i read your fics that are really short and compact but somehow it still manages to convey everything that needs to be said, either if the thought is mixed in the narrative or written. it usually takes me more energy to read fics with long paragraphs and yours is very refreshing to read!!

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Oh thank god. I always worry that my fics are too short? Or that I’m not conveying enough of what’s in my head?

Like, I love short fic too, but some of my absolute favorites are long fic and I will go back and reread them because of their encompassing imagery and swooping emotionalism and I’m just like: I cannot do that. I do not have the attention span for it.

And it always feels like when I try to do it it comes off as pedantic or overly descriptive? Like… yes, we know this person has this color hair, don’t do that.

In my heart, I want to one day write a super long in depth epic, but in my head I know I enjoy writing short slices of life where the feelings are subtly intertwined with, like, the way people take their tea.

i don’t know if canon did it, but i wonder if jiraiya allows naruto to write letters back to konoha? there is the risk of somebody tracking their whereabouts so it might not be often but the forum brought up an interesting point about naruto missing on a lot of things in the last three years (especially considering that the newest arc happens during more or less a year after he left) i’ve wanted to know your thought about this!!

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I forget which fic I pulled this headcanon from, or if it just kind of bubbled up as collective fanon thing, but I always imagined that Naruto was sending stuff back to Konoha either via toads or regular slow civilian mail. But, like, months off Small things–like a postcard or something from one country when they’re already two countries over, or sent along with a merchant caravan that will end up in Konoha eventually.

Naruto didn’t grow up with a lot of bonds, remember, so he wouldn’t really know the culture of gift giving and letter writing so much. A lot of his friendships are in the moment, in person–not that he no longer considers them friends when they’re long distance, but it’s not something I imagine him being so conscious of as to send gifts?

I mean, then again, this is all minutiae that Kishi never bothered with, but who is in Konoha that he’d want to send stuff back to in canon? Sakura and maybe Iruka and Tsunade? Possibly Kakashi, though what besides snippets of Jiraiya’s books would he want?

Contrast, of course, with DoS where Shikako did actively cultivate stronger bonds amongst her friends. Deliberately made post-mission team dinners a tradition, and fostered a sense of shared stuff amongst her team.

And I do think Tsunade and Jiraiya keep each other appraised of the respective situations to some extent–now, whether Jiraiya feels like sharing that is up to him.

I just listened to your last dos reading and i need to sleep soon (yeah, bad idea by my account). THANKS FOR THE NIGHTNARES.

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That one was pretty fun to do. Horrifying, but fun. 😀

(I kind of regret doing sound effects for the Yakumo chapters, because if I hadn’t then the only sound effects would be for Gelel, Jashin, and Shikako which would be ~gods only~)

Sounds like a kind of sensory overload; everything too loud, too bright, too scratchy, too hot, too everything. And music blocks out noises, and rythmic tapping/stimming behaviour gives your senses something predictable to focus on instead. A kind of peace, as is evenly filtered light, coolness, and rain that takes away excessive smells, even if your nose wasn’t the main thing bothered,

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Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way.

I kind of figured it was “reverse” seasonal affective disorder (or a reaction to everyone else recovering from their seasonal affective disorders and me being a dick and getting irritated at their rising spirits), but breaking everything down like that is pretty smart.

I was so exhausted from the day before yesterday that I literally slept for fourteen hours and didn’t find it weird to just spend the rest of the day in bed, and I feel so much better. I think it’s because, as you said, I could control everything–keep the lights to my level, the sound to my level, and there’s less dust and pollen or whatever in the air because I’m indoors instead of out on deliveries. And, also, no other people, so…

Painted Red (To Fit Right In), (2017-04-04)

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Naruto looks at her, head tilted to the side. He’s not smiling, but his face is still a comfort nonetheless–things went to shit when he was gone, and she knows his presence doesn’t automatically mean things will get better, but it’s a gut feeling, a visceral reaction. Naruto is here, he’ll do his best to keep all of them safe.

Optimism for the end of the world.

“Well, what do you want to do?”

—

She didn’t think much of it, at first.

Hostilities between the villages had already been increasing, war councils and updated procedures already in place. Fast tracked promotions, and greater interest in an otherwise dying science.

A buffer nation being attacked would cause concern even without totality of the destruction, the mystery of the circumstances.

She thought it was a logical progression of international tension; she thought it was natural.

It could not be further from that.

—

Sasuke had been on bodyguard duty when things finally came to a head.

Without a Hokage, there’s no one to hold him to that.

Without a Hokage, there’s no one to to relieve him of it, either, he’d argue.

“Don’t worry about me,” he would add, even in the early days when she was more dead weight than help, life energy pulled out of her and slow to replenish. He was taking double watches, kept running perimeters, running himself ragged.

It was just the two of them, then, surrounded by the shades of what used to be home.

—

In her old world, there had been plenty of media surrounding the idea:

The end of the world. The fall out of a major disaster. Post-apocalyptic survivors trying to scrape out an existence.

She believed, maybe, in her most paranoid yet fanciful imaginings, that it would be Edo Tensei. She knew that there was a very real possibility that zombies could happen because they had already happened, there was a technique to make them happen. It was why she had squirreled away notes on it, why she kept at her fuinjutsu studies–driven less by her original wonder, and more by a preparatory fear.

She was right about the what.

She was wrong about the how.

—

They are in Sora-ku when Kakashi-sensei finds them, along with a horde of mindlessly aggressive ex black marketeers.

It’s not as if they’re particularly hard to fight–nothing on the caliber of the reavers made from shinobi stock–but despite the seeming abandoned state of the city, there are many of them. Empty skyscrapers a good place to hide a community of smugglers and criminals, like maggots infesting the corpse of a fallen animal.

For a second, she thinks Kakashi is one, too. Stops a beat too long and nearly gets bitten for it, but his movements aren’t jerky and uncontrolled–somehow, impossibly, he’s still himself.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” he’ll say with a shrug, as if he weren’t sent to the frontline and unheard from for months. As if they weren’t miles out of the way from Konoha.

He doesn’t hug them back, but he doesn’t eel out of it, either.

—

She shut the gate, hijacked the ritual, blew up the foundation.

Jashin could not enter. Could not come to their world and consume it in its entirety the way the cultists had planned.

But that doesn’t mean nothing had come through.

Aggression and suffering and pain. Bloodlust threading through the air of an already highly militaristic society.

There wasn’t so much another world war as it was a world riot, a rampage.

She was immune (hello little god) because she had been at ground zero, she had been the last sacrifice, she had been the key.

Only inside her own mind does she think maybe a quick destruction would have been better than this.

~

A/N: … I guess, just some quick thoughts after reading some zombie things which led me to remembering this anon’s ask and, surprisingly, this cute post about how different MBTI people say “I love you.”

Team Seven’s MBTI designations I did over here, but basically I was working with:

Naruto – E(N/s)FP
“well what do you want to do?”
“i picked these for you”
“stay there, i’ll come get you”

Sasuke – IS(T/f)J
“don’t worry about me”
“i’m proud of you”
“that’s okay, i bought two”

Kakashi – IST(P/j)
“stay over”
“you might like this”
“i was just in the neighborhood”

(Kakashi’s is so perfect for him, I’m dying).

I did want to include Naruto’s “Stay there, I’ll come get you,” but I figured him showing up even though he started halfway across the world with Jiraiya is enough?

Uh. Sorry about the whole melancholic mood lately, y’all, it’s that time of year and work has been brutal. :/

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what does it say
that i am more
suicidal in spring?
that rain and clouds
rejuvenate me,
while sunlight
saps my strength.

what does it say
that waking up
before my alarm
always disappoints?
that morning sounds
only grate and
frustrate me.

what does it say
that i press my temple
rhythmic tap tap
imagining
that i rattle around pills
shaking, enticing,
reckless driving habits

i bleed and calculate
the volume
of my music
deafening, blasting,
i want desperately
the end of spring

jacksgreyson, Untitled (2017-04-03)

Untitled (2017-04-02)

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“I didn’t think it’d be you,” he says, sitting across the table from her. The plate on his tray nearly overflowing with unappetizing, dark red mush.

“What?” Her fork pauses midway in its path to her mouth. A glob of distressingly orange macaroni falls, splattering messily. “Ah, geez, that’s going to stain.”

Almost apologetically, and yet, simultaneously,  unimpressed, he slides a napkin over to her.

“What is that?” she asks as a distraction, nodding at his own unfortunate choice of lunch while wiping furiously at her shirt. It is a lost cause.

“Beet surprise,” he answers.

Ew.

“You’re not curious about what I said earlier?” he asks, eyebrow raising.

It’s true that in the past ten years of knowing each other–the way people growing in the same small town know each other–they’ve maybe said less than twenty words. They aren’t exactly in different leagues, per se, but neither do they run in the same social circles.

She’s curious, but not enough to follow through. If he wants to explain, he will, if not then she’ll just chalk it up to a bizarre interaction and forget it in a matter of days.

She shrugs.

“I thought maybe it’d be Belinda,” he says, apropos of his opener. They both struggle not to stare at the school’s queen bee, before he continues, “her or maybe Kevin.”

Kevin. Her goofy looking, wall-flower of a best friend? Who could not be further from hyper-competent, stunningly gorgeous, Belinda? That Kevin?

“He volunteers at the library on weekends; Silva doesn’t let just anyone work there.”

Okay, now she’s just confused. “What does the old librarian have to do with anything?”

If anything, he looks confused right back, “He’s a magician, obviously,” which is bewildering enough until he adds,

“Just like us.”

—

She spends the rest of the school day vacillating between honestly contemplative, suspiciously irritated, and full blown discombobulated. She doesn’t so much mutter like a madwoman as she does make wildly disconcerting noises of confusion.

Kevin notices, says nothing, and offers her his emergency chocolate bar which is much appreciated even if it’s both melted and crumbly.

Once school is out, though, that’s a whole other story.

Mostly because resident rebel, weirdo who willingly chooses beet surprise over fake mac n’ cheese, and, apparently, teen magician Geoffrey Haider is leaning against her third-hand car impatiently.

“What are you doing?” she asks, drawing herself up to full height. At five foot three, it’s unimpressive, but it prompts Kevin to do the same. He’s gangly and awkward, but six feet plus of sharp bones and overlarge hoodies is more impressive than her own efforts.

“We’re going to the library,” Geoffrey–who doesn’t even have the decency to spell his name with a J–says, which deflates Kevin’s posturing immediately. Unsurprisingly, he loves the library, and would much rather do his homework there than in the food court of the mall where she works at the Hotdog on a Stick even if she does give him endless refills on lemonade.

Kevin turns hopeful eyes to her, and curse his boyishly endearing face.

“Fine,” she huffs, already trying to figure out an excuse to text to her manager, opening the trunk of the car and tossing her backpack inside, “But if I get fired, I’m blaming you.”

No way is she getting fired. The uniform for Hotdog on a Stick is a travesty, and no one but potheads and people with no shame are willing to work there.

~

A/N: … unsure where I’m going with this.

Untitled (2017-04-01)

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A/N: Playing around with the famous storyteller bots collaboration website here, and I thought it was too hilarious to not share.

~

What about poetry?

Oleander,
soft as well as sweet,
delicate against my skin,
brutal within my blood.
I violently plunged for a girl,
who unquestionably could not love me back.

Edgar! Nevermore! Please, you are ruining my shapes.

Why unquestionably? Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.

Why violently? He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Friedrich, that doesn’t answer my questions!

Apple seeds and sunflower petals,
as all marvelous children learn.

Marvelous? In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

These beings of delight are not impressive in anyway. However, are they inherently delightful?

Children can zealously be cruel,
they can be heedless.
They, who didn’t smell the fire burning,
are braver, yes,
but reckless and uncaring.

Charles? There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

You’ve suddenly added a setting to this poem. Are these souls unburdened by melancholy on fire? Are they trapped?

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

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Cheers, he says,
glass in hand.
A toast to your risky venture.
You mimic him,
raise your own,
and give him one last smile.

See you on the other side.

Together you drink,
together you fall.
Maybe if you’re lucky,
you’ll reunite.

The last time you dreamed,
it was of flowers.
Petals vibrant yet
soft against your skin,
oleander and belladonna.

You wonder,
eyes slipping shut,
what you’ll see this time.

You hope it will be him.

—

I am the one behind the curtain.
Levers and buttons and tricks,
exhausted and flustered,
but still pushing onwards.

Maintain the illusion,
protect the legacy.
I am neither
omniscient or omnipotent,
but needs must.

Appearances can be deceiving,
lies can be well intended.
At the very least,
I will dance my way to Hell.

Until then,
take a seat.
Until then,
watch the show.

The Great and Powerful
will grant your wish–
(but only if you choose wisely)

jacksgreyson, Word Promts (P26): Poison