Tag: counterclockwise

Word Prompts (AA1): +

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It’s just basic arithmetic. If one death can save many, it’s logical to sacrifice the individual for the greater good.

Consider also this: two people and one of them must die. But one of them can save lives later down the road, whereas the other cannot.

Wouldn’t it make sense to choose the one who can save others? Exchange one death for another, since both cannot be saved.

If she can do this, if she can pull this off, then maybe the world won’t go to shit.

—

Right now, Leanne is approximately twenty seven years old and also exactly five years, three months, and eight days old.

Her older self is in Cadmium City, trying not to pass out as she helps Doctor Kaiza stitch her student’s organs back inside of his body, while her younger self is enjoying a relaxing breakfast with her grandparents in the town of Belleview.

Lucky brat.

“Oh god, I’m gonna hurl,” she groans–her older self, that is–behind the paper and elastic mask, trying not to move her gloved hands even though all of Brian’s blood has made everything very slippery.

“You better not, this is a sterile environment and I won’t have you ruining my surgery,” Kaiza scolds without looking up, a trail of neat black stitches following after her needle.

Leanne scowls, she wasn’t really going to, it’s an exaggeration, but she lets the matter drop. Instead, she aims a question at Brian, “Doesn’t this hurt? She didn’t use any anesthesia.”

He smiles, pale and shaky with bloodloss but amused nonetheless, “I have a high pain tolerance.”

—

In the eyes of society, the best thing for a metahuman vigilante to do is to have many children, raise them with strong moral values, and go around sacrificing their lives for the betterment of everyone else around them.

The second best thing is to die a martyr.

The superhero Griever never got the chance to do the former because he eventually ended up doing the latter before he ever got married.

But Leanne has never been a very good metahuman, much less a good metahuman vigilante, and in this instance she’s not going to let Brian be either.

—

Whenever she is shunted through time, the first thing she does is try to find a safe place. Whether the the trip is an hour or a month, it doesn’t hurt to have some kind of home base to work from and wait out her stupid pocket watch’s erratic decisions.

Of course, her stupid pocket watch is also very sadistic and likes to make such a notion as difficult as possible.

This time she lands in the middle of a battle that would be almost nostalgic were it not, well, a battle. It’s not her team, nor a villain she’s used to, but she lends her efforts in destroying the robots trying to stab the slower lingering civilians. She doesn’t scream when a massive wolf jumps over her and rips the head off of one such machine, wires still sparking at the end, nor does she quake when a seemingly ordinary young man punches his fist clean through two inches of steel.

No, it’s only after the fight–once the villain has been apprehended and the mass self destruct order activated–that she flinches: when the third member of this familiar-yet-not team lays a hand on a bleeding arm wound, and pulls away to reveal unbroken skin instead.

Alvin Chand she recognizes, both in his wolf form and his human form, though the version she met had more scars and gray hairs. Curtis Ives looks similar enough to his son–or perhaps its the other way around–that she isn’t at all surprised.

But this third man, the one who introduces himself as Brian Odell? Oh, she’s met him before, too.

When she was just a child, crying in a grocery store, and one of the stock boys helped her find her grandfather.

Not as one of the members of her vigilante team’s predecessor.

Who are you, she thinks, as Doctor Kaiza–almost annoyingly familiar to her–herds the team into the clinic. Why have I never heard of you before, she wonders.

—

Here’s the problem: as far as she knows, she can’t actually change anything.

Oh little things, sure, the kind of minor tweaks and rewrites that changes a punch to the cheek into a dodge and counterattack. The only reason why she was chosen for the team as a teenager in the first place–the only ability her pocket watch had at the time, or seemed to have, anyway. But she’s never been able to change anything major before.

That’s not going to stop her from trying.

~

A/N: It’s not like I actually did anything strenuous today but for some reason I am very tired. So here’s this Counterclockwise installment featuring Leanne (re)meeting Brian Odell. Read about their first meeting here.

Counterclockwise (2016-04-12)

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The day she finally gains full control over her powers is the day she realizes she can never go home. After the immediate stab of despair steals the breath from her lungs, she is left with only complete resignation.

She no longer has a home.

—

She’s spent more of her life traveling than she lived in her original time. Or, at least, she thinks so.

All she has to judge by is the way her body ages, how many days she can recall living–and there is no telling how accurate that is.

—

“Don’t I get a phone call, at least?” she asks, needling at the officer the same way his presence always scratched away at her, “Do you even have phones still?”

He remains silent, so she skips to the heart of the matter, “Where is Bastian?”

—

She has watched her father die six times: the first was when she was just a normal teenager, before she inherited the watch and all the perils that came with it.

Instances two through five were a futile attempt to stop it or, at the very least, figure out what actually happened.

She’d rather forget the last time.

—

Somehow, Leanne is able to say her goodbyes to two people–though it is not as much a blessing as she would have originally thought.

Faye is an old woman, with grown children and grandchildren to call her own, but it is Leanne who sits at her bedside for her last breath.

Thunderbolt, a lone vigilante now, goes out in a bright explosion of energy that Leanne just barely escapes, crying her eyes out.

~

A/N: I’VE FINALLY COME UP WITH A TITLE FOR THIS SERIES! WOOOHOO! Now I gotta go back and rename all the previous installments…

Counterclockwise (2016-04-10)

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Her life is ruined because of that damned pocket watch. No home, no family, not even a time to call her own.

But some of her best memories are because of that watch, so she can’t truly regret it.

—

There is a bridge. It is a perilous thing, people more prone to falling than crossing, but still it is a bridge all the same.

She crosses beneath, jumping back and forth from stone to stone across the river.

—

With a heavy thump, she drops to the floor, sitting against the wall in exhaustion. It is not the best place she’s ever stayed–the walls grimy and the corners of the room draped with cobwebs–it’s small and dirty and empty, but it will do until her watch takes her away.

It takes five months.

—

She waits: she’s gotten good at that. She’s also gotten good at hurrying and rushing around, but that is just the rhythm of her life now.

Running and stopping across time, a dance which she cannot hear the music to.

—

Maybe one day she’ll be done–though it’s far more likely she’ll die before that. But it’s a nice dream to have, when the nights are cold and the days stretch long.

Maybe one day she’ll get her life back.

~

A/N: A bit busy, sorry, here’s some stuff in the Leanne Peridot universe

Counterclockwise (2016-04-06)

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“My past few years have been kind of rough,” she responds before being seized by a fit of laughter. It’s a raucous thing, ugly and all encompassing, edging into hysterical as it stretches longer and longer, leaving her breathless and teary eyed.

Officer Sheridan looks unamused, but what does she care? It’s not as if she’s all that happy about this situation either.

—

Immediately after Leanne’s jump to the earliest in history she’s ever been, she ends up further into the future she’s ever been, too. Which is, in some respects, is lucky for her–the healthcare system can easily handle a measly stab wound.

In other respects, it’s rather unlucky.

—

Leanne wakes up with pain in her shoulders; one, due to the stab wound wrapped and recovering, the other stretched awkwardly with a set of handcuffs around her wrist to the bed. She smiles obnoxiously at Officer Sheridan and asks:

“What’s my safe word?”

—

The thing about having been a teenaged vigilante is that she never actually had to deal with the aftermath. She and her team showed up to fight the bad guys, wrapped them up for the cops, and went back to their normal non-vigilante lives.

Now she gets to see it all firsthand–albeit, from the opposite side–and can only be grateful that this way, too, she gets to sit out on the bureaucracy.

—

“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Officer Sheridan asks, honestly confused, perhaps even shocked. As if, for the first time in their maddening game of cat and mouse, he’s stopped to consider that maybe she might not be just a villain in this.

“How do you know it’s something I’ve done, and not something I will do?”

—

Time travel’s a bitch.

~

A/N: Something really quick bashed out because midnight is approaching. I kind of like the fragmented three sentence style, though I’m not sure I’m going to stick with it for future installments. Maybe just the ones that have Officer Sheridan in them… And yes, that middle bit is a repeat from yesterday.

Also… I should probably come up with a title for this series beyond tracking it with the main character’s name.

Three Sentence Fic, the Grab Bag edition (2016-04-05)

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A/N: Just a bunch of three sentence ficlets that my brain didn’t want to elaborate on…

~

It just didn’t seem fair, that he had loved so much, had lost so much, and didn’t even get to keep a trace of them. No scars on his skin, or trinkets to be carried around.

Just him and his ever fading memories.

—

“Not everyone gets second chances,” she says, hands fisted at her side, knuckles pale from the strength of it. She doesn’t want to fight, but it needs to be said:

“Sometimes, we don’t even get a first chance.”

—

Uzushio developed sustainable peace decades before the rest of the world did. There is danger in being the first.

They suffered the consequences for it.

—

Their son would never be king, regardless of his heritage. But he would be loved and, if nothing else, be kept safe.

Or at least, that’s what they had planned.

—

Sometimes she wants to shut her eyes, ignore Ryuk’s gravelly laughter, Light’s polite inanities, and L’s monotonous stream of conscious. She wishes she were anywhere else but here.

She can almost imagine the clicking of stones against wood.

—

“I wasn’t trained for this,” Starling says, brows furrowed above the line of his mask. Caleb looks away from the seething crowd of monsters thirty stories below them to his stepbrother, and stifles a laugh.

“I don’t think any of us were trained for this.”

—

Leanne wakes up with pain in her shoulders; one, due to a stab wound wrapped and recovering, the other stretched awkwardly with a set of handcuffs around her wrist to the bed. She smiles obnoxiously at Officer Sheridan and asks:

“What’s my safe word?”

—

Be brave, he thinks, stepping into the light, remembering the dragon’s words. All you need to succeed is imagination and courage.

He leaves the shadows and tries to remember what he is outside of dreams.

~

A/N: I don’t know if I want to tag all the things that these are from? I will for the ones explicitly stated but otherwise… guess that fic?

Untitled (2016-04-04)

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On the day of her brother’s wedding, Joy falls in love.

It is the second worst thing to happen to the Guerrero family.

Normally, Simon would be very supportive of his older sister having any positive emotions for anyone other than himself and maybe their neighbors the Bakers who ply his sister with free sugar and caffeine on a near daily basis. Frankly, it’s not even the fact that it’s his wedding that is the problem–Simon is not so selfish that he demands the entire day be about him and his fiancé/husband–it’s the who that is the problem.

Because it’s one thing for Simon to keep secrets from his vigilante husband about the real identity of the criminal Jaguar. It’s another thing entirely to not tell his sister that she’s fallen in love with a different vigilante Apex. Who himself is engaged to yet another vigilante Firefly.

This can not end well for his sister.

—

“Fly straight, fly true,” Bastian murmurs, before pulling the trigger. It is not quite the same–the differences in technology, between bullets and arrows–and he’s not actually invoking any magic. But it is a habit, or maybe a superstition, and the bullet does its job.

Bastian doesn’t know what the man did to get a hit called out on him, but easy money is easy money. And even though Bastian can never die, he’d still prefer not to starve.

Once, he was the prince of the most powerful kingdom in the world. But that was thousands of years ago: times change, the mighty fall.

Bastian stays put for two minutes more, waiting even though alarms and sirens sound off. Sometimes, when he does something she wouldn’t approve of, Leanne appears. But she does not this time, and so he flees just seconds before the heroes of the era happen upon his vantage point.

His kingdom is not the only one who has fallen.

—

It’s strange growing up knowing that you are only the middle man. That you were born for that exact purpose.

It’s not that his parents don’t love him, not like he can’t live his own life. It’s just that, at some point in the future, he’s going to have a daughter and he’s going to give her the pocket watch that allows her to travel through time.

He met her once already, when he was just a child: a green haired woman who had looked at him and started crying with a wobbling smile. His parents had been alarmed, catching on and fearing the worst, but she had stayed silent on the matter, hugged them all farewell, and disappeared.

It’s not that he’s not worried about what that kind of reaction might mean for his future–but there’s also some good in it. He’ll have a daughter that will love him enough to cry for him; everything else he’s free to choose.

~

A/N: So this is about a decade before Leanne is born. Just some snippets from the same universe, some world-building, I guess…

Counterclockwise (2016-03-23)

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In a different life, maybe this would be easier. Maybe she wouldn’t have to ignore his crimes and maybe he would forgive her frequent departures. Maybe they wouldn’t be so hurt, their relationship a double edged blade.

But in a different life, they likely would never have met. Him dead millennia before she is born, no cursed pocket watch bridging the gap in between.

“I do love you,” she says as a sigh, as a confession, before pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. His face, cradled between her hands, goes where she leads. Pliant in a way he himself is not.

“I have always loved you,” he says back, breathing against her cheek, “You would have been my princess.”

Leanne can’t help the laugh tearing out of her throat, “You were a brat, then, I highly doubt that.”

Bastian jerks, dislodging from her hold; the fragile peace surrounding the moment shattered into dangerous shards. Accusingly, he asks, “You were that far back?”

“Once,” she says, pulling away, resigned to telling this story, “just once.”

—

She had only been then for a few hours, a sudden stumble that sent her further back than she’d ever been before. So far back, in fact, that she had no idea what was going on.

A palace and people in strange clothes speaking a language so far removed from what she she could understand, all staring at her sudden appearance.

Until a set of guards tackled her to the ground. She was lucky she didn’t break a rib under the weight of four armored soldiers. As it was, she did hit her head against the marble and black out immediately.

—

During his lonelier, more lucid moments, Bastian thinks about possibilities. About the past. About how, if he weren’t cursed to live on, he would have died alongside his family.

He thinks maybe there would have been honor in that. To have fallen and been preserved in that moment as a prince.

Better than languishing and festering into whatever he’s become.

But Leanne loves him, even if she doesn’t always like him, and that’s not something he could ever regret.

—

She woke up in what may have been a infirmary of sorts, though it was unlike the hospitals she knew. If anything, it looked like a high end spa. Open and airy, beds lined up like lounge chairs beside a pool.

The doctor, upon seeing her awake, said something to her, but she still did not understand and didn’t care to. Not when she couldn’t find her watch.

“Where is it?” she asks, a twisting barbed wire of confusion and panic wrapping around her heart, “Where is my watch?”

Since inheriting it from her father, since it claimed her as its own, Leanne has never been separated from her pocket watch.

She doesn’t know what will happen if she’s not holding it when it triggers: if it won’t activate without her there, or if it will simply leave her behind. Or if, somehow, the physical watch no longer means anything, if all along the source of the time traveling has been her.

The thought is too horrific to be true. She needs her watch back now.

—

Bastian is the oldest human in existence. He’s met beings who are older–creatures that various mythologies would describe as spirits or angels or gods–but they are inhuman despite their appearances. They do not count.

Bastian also has had the honor of meeting Doctor Kaiza, had the pleasure of laughing at her paltry two centuries of extended life. He’s seen ten times that and will likely see another. He has yet to meet Doctor Kaiza’s counterpart, the estranged Professor Greyson, but it’s only a matter of time. Even their brief existences are better than the mayfly lives of normal humans.

He’s a hypocrite, of course, because what is Leanne but a mere blink of an eye in comparison to him. No matter how frequently she pops in and out of his life, she will only last a short while. But god, he loves her so much.

—

Even with a possible concussion and bruised ribs, Leanne could knock out an unprepared doctor and escape an unsecured infirmary. Her team may have been allies with Cadmium PD, but vigilantes were always outlaws. In order to catch criminals they had to be criminals.

And also, Leanne had been practicing her right hook.

The palace was huge and unfamiliar, but the layout was simple enough to guess. And her watch had always had a hold on her, she could feel its call anywhere.

No one was looking for her but given her appearance she’s a fairly obvious outsider. She’d have to be careful otherwise her ribs might actually break.

Onward, onward, her watch called and onward, onward she went. Until she ended up at a wall; luckily, one with a window low enough for her to reach and climb through.

But the climbing ended up not being necessary because the watch came to the window. Or, rather, the watch was brought to the window instead.

The face was smaller than she was used to, hands chubby with baby fat, and when he smiled she saw two gaps where teeth should be. But it was a face she knew, nonetheless, and she couldn’t help a matching–if bewildered–smile.

“Bastian!” She called out, surprised but pleased, “Give me back my watch,” she said with an outstretched hand, ready to catch.

But Bastian didn’t know her, not yet, and besides his name he had no idea what she said. The watch stayed in his hands.

“Bastian!” she called out again, frustrated, and this time he walked away.

A strange woman climbing into the window of the prince’s room is a very suspicious thing indeed. Especially when that prince is only six years old.

Leanne is stabbed through the shoulder by a guard, but the commotion startled Bastian into dropping the watch. It’s in her hands before it hit the ground, just in time to disappear.

She better end up somewhen with phenomenal healthcare.

~

A/N: On a bus for eight hours, this is what came out.

Counterclockwise (2016-03-22)

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He doesn’t know if the dead are watching him or if people simply cease to be when they die. Depending on his mood, his preference changes. He has a lot of dead to be watched by, after all; that’s what happens when you outlive everyone you love.

Sometimes he finds comfort in it–in imagining his family continuing on even after they’ve passed. Living somehow through him, his unseen shadows. Sometimes it pisses him off. That the dead would dare to haunt him, lingering where they’re not wanted. What right do they have to judge him? He is doing his best to survive a situation they’ve forced on him.

He hopes his father is ridden with guilt and his mother heart broken; he wishes his sister could see the disaster she wrought.

But, other times, he thinks it’d be best if the dead were no longer there.

“Look away,” Bastian says, to those who may not even exist, “Don’t watch,” he warns them before he sets the building on fire. There is no one inside, but it will be big enough that the heroes of the city will be called to help.

He wants to see Leanne again.

“Let me go.”

—

She doesn’t attend her brother’s wedding intentionally, but it is a good accident; one she wishes she had more of.

Her watch spits her out in a time that feels almost familiar to her. Close to when she would be if time travel never existed, but not exact enough for her to feel equilibrium. If she were ten years older, this would be perfect.

A church, decorated in white, flowers lining every door and stair rail. Too cold to be Easter, though, not festive enough for Christmas. Her guess is confirmed when a woman in a pantsuit and headset spots her and immediately begins rattling off details about seating arrangements and ushers.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Leanne says, if only to stop the flood of words.

The wedding planner, for surely that is who this woman is, blinks then startles. Then smiles, wide and fake, “My apologies, I thought you were the maid of honor. You must be one of the out of town cousins–you’re a few hours early.”

“Sorry,” Leanne says with a smile of her own, “I’m absolutely terrible with time zones.”

“Not a problem,” the wedding planner says, unaware of how much a problem it really is, “We can let you into the church early, if you don’t mind waiting. Family is always welcome.”

This, at least, Leanne hopes is true.

The decorations continue even inside the church, a trail of white flowers leading the way. The pots are discretely hidden away, and it occurs to her that maybe all of these flowers are still alive.

Well, if it’s Victor getting married, that makes sense. He’d never want cut flowers.

Leanne hears the susurration of voices down the hall–maybe the wedding party getting ready–she walks the other way. She’s not ready to meet her siblings again, or worse, meet someone who doesn’t know she’s their sister. If she doesn’t talk to anyone else, then she can be an observer still–a ghost in her own life.

When other guests begin to trickle in, Leanne takes a seat in the back. It puts her in the perfect spot to see the groom. The other groom.

“Caleb?”

—

Bastian has never met anyone with time powers before Leanne. She is the first and somehow, despite herself, the best.

As the years slip by, Bastian meets other time travelers. Including that absolute waste of atoms Sheridan, but none of them are like Leanne.

He is biased yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Whatever is behind Leanne’s ability, the source of power behind that damned finicky pocket watch, it’s much stronger than whatever the other time travelers are using. It’s almost as if they need a constant power source to exist in a different time, whereas Leanne simply steps between eras.

Maybe one day Bastian will ask a time traveler about the mechanics–though they all seem wary of him. He knows they are from the future, he wonders what kind of reputation he has then.

No matter, he’ll live to hear it himself.

~

A/N: still some family things but I actually got to sleep last night so I’m not dying. Still only have access to my phone but also wifi so good news bad news and all that.

Just wanted to know who this Bastian character is!

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You want to know who Bastian is?

O_O

… (oh my god, I am so pleased by this ask) …

Bastian is one of my many OCs that I actually created many years ago but never used frequently. Originally, he wasn’t even supposed to be in Leanne Peridot’s story–he was meant to be an antagonist for another character entirely–much less such a recurring/prevalent part of her story and not even solely antagonist at that. But it’s one of those things where as a writer you’re less like god playing with dolls and more like an anthropologist observing whatever the heck your characters are doing.

In this case, it kind of made sense since Leanne Peridot is my inept vigilante/time traveler and Bastian is my… “guy who is accidentally cursed with immortality because the magicians trying to save his life messed up very badly” is kind of unwieldy to say. I only have maybe a few other “immortal” characters and none of them would put up with his particular brand of bullshit, so…

The basis of their relationship is that they’re both each other’s most constant thing in the world. But it’s a poor choice to make a person your foundation, especially when you don’t even experience time in the same direction. And I also liked the idea that her constantly leaving him (not intentionally) because of time travel would also add to his increasing madness.

It’s harder for me to ramble about Original Characters because even though I really want to, another part of me is thinking that, hey, maybe I’ll write this character’s story some day so I shouldn’t spoil it quite yet.

But it is wonderfully flattering for anyone to take interest in my original fic (though I do, obviously, enjoy writing fanfic). I am still smiling and blushing like an absolute dork.

Word Prompts (Q2): Queen (2016-03-16)

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Once, when she had truly been a child, she wanted to be a queen. Not a princess, no, for princesses were often portrayed damsels in distress with crowns but no wits. They were passive and pretty and pleasant, and those were not things she had ever wanted to be.

But a queen? Queens, whether good or evil, they acted. They were rulers of nations. They made decisions and sometimes they failed but sometimes they succeeded, and regardless of the results queens could change the world.

Once, she had wanted to be a queen.

Now she is an empress over all of time.

She does not want that anymore.

—

There are people, a rare few, that she sees as more than simply fleeting sparks. Those who are cursed to live forever, those who she always returns to, but there is only one who is a constant companion.

And he’s an asshole.

Officer Sheridan begins reading her rights which is all he ever says to her, “You’re under arrest for the crimes of illegal time travel and…”

His equipment is newer–machines backed by actual computers calibrated to make every jump perfect–made centuries after she was born.

All she has is her pocket watch, scuffed and slightly dented, made with clockwork gears decades before she was born.

She will win anyway because, somehow, she always wins.

—

Once, just once, she intersected with her own timeline.

It was not entirely an accident.

She remembers this fight, vaguely, her team against a coven of witches and their reluctant demon counterparts. Thunderbolt had experience with both and was best suited to take point and, maybe, if that had been all it was they would have succeeded.

Except Bastian crashed the party and, for reasons unknown to her then, Bastian had the worst kind of grudge against her.

She knows now, why that is–the conflict of past and present and future with him twisting and clashing within her chest–she had once promised to stay with him always before she had ever met him. In a way, it was the truth.

In a way, it was a lie.

But now, from this side of the event, she realizes what must have happened. What she must do.

She had been aiming for this time only because it has been her goal for so long even if, now, she would no longer fit. And perhaps she is a few months off, but that is closer than she has gotten in a while.

And now she must abandon it.

“Bastian!” She shouts, and for one startling moment attention is on her. She sees herself turning her head to look but she doesn’t remember seeing herself and knows that she will be gone before she can.

This Bastian is mad, an abandoned wild dog, but there is still something in him that responds to her because when he lunges at her he does not go for her throat.

She takes his hand and takes him back. Back to when neither of them could hurt anyone but each other.

She will not see this century for seven years.

—

She’s never been far enough into the future to know what being arrested by Officer Sheridan entails. Truthfully, she never even knew there were other time travelers–actual travelers, not just people left to weather through the years–until said officer tried to arrest her.

She may have been the weakest of her team, but that did not mean she could not fight.

Of course, that only added to her list charges, but what does she care?

If she cannot be tethered to the present by her own will, how could any prison do the same?

~

A/N: some time traveling ficlets of the Leanne Peridot ‘verse.