Tag: counterclockwise

Word Prompts (O15): Origin

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The public is, in general, rather accepting of this new vigilante team. Cadmium City has long since been protected by superheroes–the consequences of also having so many super powered criminals–and this new team is, if not the same, then similar.

It’s not a secret that Zenith is the son of Apex, or Starling the apprentice of Firefly. And while Thunderbolt’s powers are nothing like her aunt’s, and Goldheart is very obviously a lion not a wolf shapeshifter, these are familiar to the citizens of Cadmium. Understandable.

The fifth member of the team is… less so.

For one, the media can’t really seem to figure out what her power is, or even agree on whether or not it’s powers at all. A speedster, maybe, or a teleporter? But obviously not a very skilled one, or one with a very limited scope. In which case, why would she be on the team at all?

She might be a regular baseline human with some kind of gadget. But if it were a device, then surely it’d be of better use with Starling–with someone better trained–her fighting is amateurish when she’s not pulling whatever trick she does, and frankly, almost embarrassing.

Also, she doesn’t have a name. A name would help–either in figuring out what her abilities are, or even to organize public opinion. Trying to report on the team’s heroics for the day while referring to one of the members as “the green haired one” or “the other girl” is unprofessional.

No one is sure how exactly she joined the team. Or why.

—

It’s not that Leanne isn’t serious about being part of the team–it’s both dangerous and important work that they do, stepping in whenever the police force is overwhelmed (although, that happens less often than it did in decades passed, now that the department is hiring more meta-humans)–it’s just that, unlike her teammates, it isn’t her life.

There’s a very distinct line drawn between her life as Leanne and her life as… whoever she is on the team. Not distinct as in secret–her family knows what she does–but distinct as compartmentalized. It’s as if being a vigilante is just an extracurricular activity. Like volunteering for extreme community service.

But that’s all it is to her. She’ll answer the call, put on her ridiculous costume, and go out and save the day, but as soon as she comes home it’s back into normal clothes. No more mask on her face. Even though she carries the watch with her everywhere, she doesn’t do the same with the job.

The watch came first–a family heirloom, a promise, a gift–the job is just an opportunity for her to use it.

—

After her first real fight, Leanne spends a week trying to hide an absolutely hideous bruise on her face with make up. Unfortunately, she is terrible with make up and, moreover, has to borrow some from her sister. Faye not only has a different skin tone than Leanne, she also has a sharp eye.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Faye says, while Leanne fumbles with all the brushes and containers and it’s just ridiculous. The sound of plastic against the sink countertop echoes maddeningly against the tile.

“People at school already know you’ve been hit in the face,” she adds, and suddenly Leanne is worried that everyone at school knows she’s a super hero and what’s even the point of wearing a mask if it’s not going to protect her face or her identity?

“Relax,” Faye says, gently turning her sister’s face so she can apply foundation properly, “Mostly people think you walked into a sign post or something. Of course, others think maybe you’ve gotten into a shitty relationship.”

“Well, I kind of did,” Leanne finally says, because being on the team is a little like dating four overpowered adrenaline junkies who have convinced her to join their dangerous hobbies.

She doesn’t know why Dr Kaiza didn’t choose Faye–Faye who would probably be able to keep up with everyone else and wouldn’t end up with stupid bruises on her face.

“Hey, no crying,” Faye murmurs, wiping away tears before it reaches her hard work, “It’s only the first week, you’ll do better,”

Leanne cries harder. It’s an ugly thing, sloppy, she’s babbling on and on about how she’s useless. She didn’t do anything in the fight but get caught off guard and punched in the face. The robber actually looked surprised when she fell, as if he wasn’t actually expecting to succeed.

He didn’t, of course, but only because less than a second later, a lion rammed into him full weight, top speed.

“What am I even doing?” Leanne blubbers to her sister, sitting on the toilet lid and weeping her eyes out.

“You don’t have to do this,” Faye says, unsure, but offering nonetheless, “Kaiza doesn’t own you. If you don’t want to do it anymore, she can’t make you.”

Leanne is silent.

“But if you do want to do this, I’ll help you,” Faye says, “and so will Victor. You’re not alone.”

This is one of the moments Leanne will carry with her when she’s years and decades and even centuries away from everyone she loves.

~

A/N: Just look up the Leanne Peridot tag for previous installments of this… “series”

Word Prompt (J8): Judgment (2016-02-17)

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In the middle of battle, Leanne runs and lives to fight another day. A strategic retreat, she’ll explain to her team, though no doubt they’ll hold it against her. Just one more failing in a long list of them.

Coward, Thunderbolt is fond of spitting in her direction.

Amateur, Starling will note in a far more objective tone.

Weak and distant and always falling behind.

Even Zenith, who doesn’t view her presence as a total eyesore, will say, “Not everyone is cut out for this. Civilians,” he’ll finish with a shrug, as if that explains it.

And maybe it does.

Because Leanne is a civilian. Or she was one up until a few months ago. She wasn’t born into this like Caleb, wasn’t trained for it like Henry, doesn’t have an endless well of power sparking at her fingertips like Tetsuki.

She’s just a girl who inherited a pocket watch that doesn’t tell time.

—

For the first eight years of her life, Leanne lived with her grandparents. Not too unusual, she supposes, except that she has siblings. Two of them, in fact, one on either side of her in age. But both of them lived with her mother during that span of time. And while Leanne did join them eventually–both of her grandparents passing away–it’s something that marks her as… different.

Eight years is not so much, in comparison to a person’s total lifespan, but that first bit is enough. Victor and Faye are much closer to each other than they ever were with her, their mother falls silent when it comes to the matter of Leanne’s baby stories.

Even in her own family she is an outsider.

Perhaps she gets that from her father–forever a wanderer; a fleeting, intangible presence in her life, even when she lived with his parents. He’s the one who gave her the watch, even though Victor is the oldest.

He’s the one that doomed her to this fate.

—

Leanne is nearly seventeen when she gets a visitor. A strange visitor.

Doctor Ellen Kaiza is not so much a celebrity as she is an urban myth, name so ingrained with the meta-human movement that it might as well be synonymous.

What the hell is she doing here?

Leanne isn’t a meta-human, not as the doctors classify it, anyway. Green, photosynthesizing hair might have counted fifty years ago, but not anymore. If that counted, Kaiza wouldn’t be here for Leanne. Not when Victor can actually boost plant growth, or Faye can occasionally harden her skin into tree bark, and both of them with the same hair as her. But even then, technically, neither of them count as meta-human either.

Leanne’s maternal grandmother did–a combination of powers that were stronger in a time when the requirements were lower–but that’s not what Kaiza is here for. Who Kaiza is here for.

No, this is about Leanne’s paternal grandmother–more specifically, Leanne’s broken pocket watch that she inherited from her father, who inherited it from her paternal grandmother.

The broken pocket watch made for Leanne decades ago, before she or her father were even born.

—

In the middle of battle, Leanne runs and lives to fight another day.

Except when Leanne runs, she goes farther than just one day. She runs into another year, another decade, another century. She runs backwards and forwards, jumps back and forth, unable to control when or where she lands.

Her pocket watch isn’t supposed to be able to do that. She figured it out, slowly but surely, but there are rules to it. One hour–that’s it–she can change one hour per day. Undo it, rewind it, relive it, tweak it. It’s not supposed to do this.

Or at least, she thought, it wasn’t supposed to do this. It’s been broken for a long time. What does time mean to someone like her?

In the middle of a battle, Leanne runs.

She never stops running.

~

A/N: Laalalalala, does not contain the woooooord again, but I don’t caaaaare… Just trying to kick start my writing because I have so many things I want to write but none of them are working! *cough* The Many Faces of Rudiger Smoot *cough* Light It Up (Burn It Down) *cough* political Dreaming of S(omething) *cough*

D:

Original Ficlets (2016-02-10)

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“Medical says you’ll be out in three weeks,” Jack says with a small, nervous smile. His hand, curled around the hospital bed’s railing, turns pale with pressure.

Ness stays silent, doesn’t even look at him.

Three weeks is too long. And that’s not even including the time it’ll take for her to get back to fighting fit.

She won’t say it–she won’t say anything–but it’s all Jack’s fault. And since it’s his fault, he has to be the one to make it right.

—

Westerly remembers Huaqu, remembers hir home planet fondly. Remembers its people less fondly–the way other geshou would look at hir, a mix of revulsion and scandalized fascination, even decades after hir sprouting.

Zie hasn’t been back in years, and truthfully, zie doesn’t want to go back. But Westerly has been summoned–hir clan’s Elder Tree is dying, and what made hir a pariah before now makes hir a candidate to become the next Elder Tree.

—

“I’ll come back for you,” Leanne promises, hand gripping his as tightly as she can, even as her body begins to fade into nonexistence.

“No you won’t,” Bastian refutes, but he says it kindly. The small, sad smile on his face is the last thing she ever sees of him, the panicked fear in her eyes the last he sees of her.

At least for another century, that is.

Next time he meets her is the first time she meets him, and the lack of recognition would almost feel like betrayal if he weren’t already in the midst of trying to kill her teammates.

~

A/N: Just a few tiny original ficlets I wrote while on a train.

Word Prompts (G22): Grasping (2016-01-29)

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A/N: I think I put too much pressure on myself to finish what I was working on yesterday, that I did absolutely nothing and now I’m frustrated with myself. But I didn’t want to have another missed post, so here’s a really quick Word Prompt.

~

I was five the first time I met a superhero, though I didn’t know it then. I had been grocery shopping with my grandpa–more like, clinging to the cart so as not to get separated from my grandpa as he went grocery shopping–and something caught my eye. I don’t even remember what it was now–probably something silly, like a fallen penny or maybe the colorful packaging of some candy.

Regardless of what it was, I remember that I had let go of the cart. Just for a second, it felt; I had looked away from my grandpa just for a second. And yet, when I turned to look back: he was gone.

I panicked, unsurprisingly. Felt a sudden bite of abandonment, and the sharp sting of betrayal. My grandpa had left me!

Of course, now that I am older, I realize he had just moved the cart around the corner of the aisle. No doubt, if I had walked a few steps, I would have spotted him immediately. But at that time, I was young and afraid and out of my depths.

I didn’t cry–only because I had always been a quiet child–but I did clutch at my shirt in confusion, unsure how to face the world all on my lonesome.

But, as this anecdote goes, I was not alone. A very tall man–or at least, he seemed very tall at the time, given my own childhood size–in the grocery store’s green uniform apron knelt down in front of me, putting himself at my eye level.

“Hello, there, miss” he said to me, voice soft and soothing, “Are you okay? Is there anything I can help you with?”

And I must have laughed, a little watery and tremulous, but a laugh nonetheless. Because here was this adult talking to me the same way adults talked to my grandparents, like I was an adult, too.

“My name is Brian,” he added, pointing at the name tag pinned to his apron.

“Hi, Brian,” I whispered back, “I’m Leanne.”

“I see your cart has misplaced itself, Miss Leanne. Would you like help in finding it?” He asked, not missing a beat.

I nodded, leading him to unfolding himself back onto his feet.

“And my grandpa,” I added, because I decided I could forgive his transgression if it had been an accident, “He’s old; I have to watch out for him,” I continued, because my grandma had said so.

Brian nodded, as if what I said had been perfectly legitimate.

It only took a few steps to round the corner where the cart and my grandpa–only just realizing I was not holding on to it–were. The ordeal was over in less than five minutes, and yet…

I remember he didn’t reach a hand out to me, but he did hold out one of his apron strings for me to grab–even though he had to undo the knot in order for me to reach it. At the time, I hadn’t thought it was strange. Truly, if that were the last of it, I wouldn’t have recalled that little detail.

But, of course, that was not the last of it. Unfortunately, that was the last time I met Brian because, not two weeks after that incident, the vigilante Griever was killed in action.

~

A/N: So Brian Odell, aka Griever, is an OC of mine whose super power doesn’t quite make sense? Basically, he has the ability to absorb injuries/pain and then transfer it to someone else with a touch. But he sort of has a max capacity, meaning that if he doesn’t get rid of the injuries/pain soon then they’ll either manifest on him instead… or on the next person he touches, whether or not he wants it to.

Hence why he doesn’t reach out to hold Leanne’s hand.

Leanne Peridot is yet another OC of mine who may or may not also be a superhero in the future? It’s complicated. There’s time travel involved…

Counterclockwise (2015-10-31)

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A/N1: I know, it’s no longer before midnight, but I came back from a Halloween party and spent about twenty minutes amazed at my activity because a BNF reblogged one of my posts. WOW, so many notes!

Anyway, let’s go!

~

Bastian has the temerity to let her try and fail five times before he says, “A time witch who can’t do time magic? That’s pathetic.”

Leanne, fed up with the blonde creep and his completely unhelpful and unnecessary comments, throws a rock at him. Annoyingly enough, he dodges, but she wasn’t actually expecting it to hit him anyway.

“I’m not a time witch,” she says through gritted teeth, because it’s true and she hates having to explain it to herself. In the day and age that she’s found herself in, they don’t have the vocabulary to explain what she is and how that differs from what they do know. As far as they’re concerned, she can do strange things, and so she is a witch. That her strange things involve time makes her, specifically, a time witch. But she’s not; she’s a meta-human with time based powers.

Actually, to be technically honest, she’s a meta-human with hair that photosynthesizes. Her time powers don’t originate from her, but from the pocket watch she inherited from her father.

The pocket watch that is, of course, broken.

After failure number six, Leanne pushes herself away from the spell components arranged on the ground, stomps over to Bastian, and grudgingly sits next to him on the canvas.

They sit in silence for a few minutes before Bastian, with the slightest hint of apology in his tone, says, “Time magic isn’t my specialty, either.”

And it’s still not right. It doesn’t make everything okay. They are both still stuck in this century that fears and hates magic, with all of the problems but none of the benefits of having it. Worse, they are stuck with each other until they can each find their way home.

But she’d rather be stuck with Bastian, a complete tool who can barely say three sentences without some kind of insult, than be by herself. Because for all that he’s a jerk, she at least knows that he won’t let her get captured by the witch hunters and executed.

At least, not unless he’s been captured, too.

~

A/N2: Somewhat related to this drabble… HAPPY BELATED HALLOWEEN!

Counterclockwise (2015-09-01)

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“This is our secret,” he says, within the small unmonitored room of the bank, where customers can check the contents of their safety deposit boxes in privacy. “This was my mother’s legacy to me, and now my legacy to you.”

You look inside. The box under his name–now your name, too–is a small one but it is held deep within the bank’s vault. Old, rare. It marks you and your father as elite patrons of the bank, before the more acceptable term ‘premium members’ began being used. Despite the paltry sums of money in your actual bank accounts.

Inside the old metal box is yet another box, a wooden one, the varnish has worn away from age. The area around the latch is a different color, the oil of generations worth of hands opening and closing the box. Within the wooden box, the inside lined with a red velvet similarly faded away with time, is a pocket watch.

You don’t know much about pocket watches, but this one looks unremarkable to your eyes. The front cover is metal, a simple repeating pattern of swirls etched into it. At your father’s nod, you reach in, pick the watch up, and open it. The numbers are roman numerals, but other than that it looks like any watch you can buy from anywhere. No gems or intricate designs, no additional smaller clocks within the face. The chain, too, is simple.

This is not a very impressive inheritance, you don’t say, but your expression must give away your skepticism. Your father laughs, amused, not offended at all.

“In time, you will see,” he says, clapping a hand to your shoulder, before gesturing back to the box, prompting you to return the watch to its place of rest.

It’s not impressive, but you are careful with it, nonetheless, laying it gently within the circular indentation of the velvet cushion. The chain you wind slowly around in a short spiral, before closing the lids of the wooden box then the metal box.

“That’s it?” You ask your father, as the both of you leave the privacy booth, as he waves down the banker who will help you return the safety deposit box to the vault.

He presses the key into your hand, “That’s it for now,” he responds mildly.

Two years later, you will finally understand what he meant.

~

A/N: HAHAHAHAA, I dunno. Just a quick thing that’s vague and unrelated but is really helping with my strange writer’s block.

I do have an original fiction that sort of starts like this, but I scrapped that because it was all kinds of shuddery and awkward. Maybe I can revamp it. It was originally called Time Taggers, so you can see why I would need to revamp it.

And yes, there’s time travel involved.

Oh, wait, apparently I did write a somewhat related drabble earlier this year.

Counterclockwise (2015-02-15)

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We know each other. Or at the very least we know of each other. It’s not like we’re part of a special club, go to a bar every Tuesday night, give birthday cards or gifts to each other. For one, considering who we are, that either would be very expensive or very confusing. For another, we don’t all like each other. I mean, if time allowed it, some of us would hate each other’s guts. But you can’t live for so long and not appreciate someone else who sticks around as long as you do. Or, alternatively, pops up every now and again and just knows who you are and what you’ve done… and what you will do.

True, the doctor and Jack have some strange kind of eternal awkward acquaintance thing going on. At one point they had a mutual friend, back when they were mortal, but some sort of drama went down and now it’s just the two of them for the rest of their eternal lives.

Then there’s Bastian, who, if I’m going to be honest, I don’t think is all there. For all that his kind are meant to be both magical and long-lived, that spell he’s under… or rather, curse if you ask him, is pushing it rather a lot. There’s a difference between a two century lifespan amongst others with the same longevity and a millennium of being the only one around.

Then Nyx and Michael and Azrael well, they have duties which put them above humanity so they’re actually designed for immortality. Though the next generation is going to be a real doozy from what I’ve been hearing.

As for me? Well, I’m only twenty three, and at the rate I’m going, I’m unlikely to hit thirty. But thanks to this stupid malfunctioning pocket watch I’ve played the doctor and Jack’s go-between for centuries, I’ve walked alongside Bastian throughout the millennium, and I have been pulled into more arguments of which angelic or demonic department is better than a priest could handle and still be sane.

I haven’t been back to my timeline in five years–five years for me, anyway. I miss it. I want to go back, but I can’t. And if you ever read these… I hope you know that I’m sorry. I’m still mad that you doubted me, but I understand why you did. I’m mad that you think I’d go evil so easily, but I am sorry for abandoning you during that last battle. It’s not like I had much of a choice, but I’m still sorry.

~

A/N: My unreliable narrator OC–the time traveling Leanne Peridot who was once a teenage vigilante until her mystical pocket watch malfunctioned during a fight against some villains and bounced her around time. She’s just mentioning some of the various immortals/cursed people she occasionally sees.