Tag: writing

Tara’koth (2017-10-24)

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In a passage of Surak’s teachings–one infrequently referenced and, thus, lesser known–he wrote of meeting a being who, on the outset, looked like a Vulcan and spoke like a Vulcan and, for all intents and purposes, was a member of the Vulcan race.

Except for how they were not.

This being thus spoke to him and told him of an oncoming era of logic and peace for the planet, of how Surak himself would be the one to bring it into fruition from the fields soaked with war and uncontrollable emotions.

For most Vulcan scholars, the being is presumed to be a metaphor: Surak’s own convictions manifesting as an animate being.

They would be wrong.

On planet Earth, such an incident would harken back to the Old Testament–eerily parallel with certain narratives of prophets meeting with their God.

They would also be wrong…

… but not as much.

///

She appears from the desert, unkempt and dusted liberally with the red sand of the planet, dark hair chopped unevenly. She does not wear shoes, her robes faded and dirty and far too large, sleeves dangling beyond her fingertips.

The surveyors are on the outskirts of the city, planning future developments in such a way as not to harm the environment, when she happens upon them.

She follows in the footsteps of a massive sehlat, which is alarming. She smiles when she sees them, which is even more alarming.

Vulcan children of her age should have already learned to control their emotions.

///

The sehlat will not be separated from her. It growls and snarls whenever they try to approach, tusks large and sharp and threatening.

Bulk alone, it is the largest sehlat that the zoologists have ever encountered. There are scars on the sehlat and it is missing part of an ear, a fearsome creature who has not only survived many fights but also won them.

Except for the gentle and almost fond way it brushes against the child, they would consider it completely wild. As it is, they decide not to separate the two.

///

There are no children currently undertaking their Kahs-wan, nor does she match any of the descriptions for those who failed to be found after the allotted ten days.

Children are precious, this is logical: they are the future of any civilization, and must be protected while they are vulnerable.

That no one can identify this child has progressed through illogical and into concerning.

///

She does not speak.

She does not know how to speak.

She reaches out, seeking contact, seeking the only means of communication she has. Vulcans are touch-telepaths, but such a method is generally only used amongst family or in dire situations.

This is a dire situation.

But even the healer who accepts her touch cannot understand what it is she is trying to convey. Her thoughts are unorganized, feelings more than words, images of the desert and the night sky and the massive sehlat that are less than helpful.

She has no memory of anything–anyone–else.

~

A/N: I’ve been rereading some Star Trek fic (as I do) and remembered an ST fic idea I had many moons ago and wanted to return to it for a bit. Maybe I’ll continue it? I dunno…

Untitled (2017-10-11)

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“I was here first,” she says, knuckles turned pale with her tight grip on the door handle. Her back is to you, forehead pressed against the door. You can’t see her face, but her shoulders shudder, once, twice.

“I was here first,” she repeats, “I was here long before you,” she continues.

“Yes,” you respond, “I know.” It’s not like her to make such obvious and repetitive statements–there must be a reason–then again, it’s not like her to cry.

The lock turning makes a heavy thunk; she removes the key a shaking hand.

When she turns around there is only the barest trace of tears on her face. Still, she has never looked more heartbroken.

When she places the key in your hand, her fingers brush against yours, cold to the touch.

“You will devote your life to this place,” she says, less command and more premonition, “you will protect this house, you will give your all, your everything.”

Your hand curls around the key, so tightly that the teeth bite into your skin. You would not be the first Caretaker whose blood has polished the key. It is poignant.

“Yes. I will.”

///

The day of your daughter’s wedding, you reunite with the love of your life.

You are walking her down the aisle, trying not to cry, and perhaps that’s why at first it doesn’t register. Your eyes filled with unshed tears, your attention on your daughter, the setting sun painting everything in soft but blinding light.

You let your daughter go, watch her walk to the man she loves, and take your seat.

It’s a moment of curiosity. Mere coincidence. Your eyes landing on the right spot at the right time.

Or, perhaps the wrong one.

Across the aisle, in the seat corresponding to yours, sits the father of the groom.

The years have changed him, aged him and reshaped him, but you recognize him in a heartbeat. A skipped one.

There he is. The long lost love of your life.

Trailblazers (2017-10-10)

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On the sixth evening, Naruto is the one who brings her meal.

“It’s almost a week, you know?” he says, confrontational but kind in his strange way.

“Are you bored already?” she shoots back, drawing her eyes up from the papers spread across her desk. She hastily clears a space for the tray Naruto has brought her, no doubt mixing up the order, but better that than food stains making things illegible.

She’s writing down her memoirs.

He shrugs, broth sloshing dangerously at the lip of the bowl. Ramen, unsurprising. She smiles.

“Not really,” he answers, “it’s nice being able to meet your precious people. They care about you a lot.”

For a moment, he lets the statement rest in the silence, stretch long and full across the room.

“Are you going to bring Kakashi-sensei?”

She glances at him, thrown off guard–that’s not what she had been expecting at all.

Her first, instinctual reaction is denial–defensive and sneering–why would she ever do that? If she hasn’t already, clearly she’s not planning to.

But Naruto wouldn’t have said it if it didn’t mean something, and for all his deference to her in battle he always was, in his own way, much wiser than her. She had always thought he’d be a great Sky.

Like the summoning of her friends, the papers beneath her hands are memoirs as she thinks would be best–not a journal transcribing every little thing she did, a mission report across reincarnations–but a way for her to attain closure.

They may not have been close–or, at least, in the ways that mattered, in the ways they could have been, her feelings of him conflicted and twisted and tangled up, respect and betrayal and feeble hope, blood and grudges and mistakes versus trust–but he was important to her, to the life she had and the person she had once been.

“Tomorrow,” she says, finally, staring down at the pages beneath her hand, “It’ll be finished tomorrow.”

///

The stranger that eels out of Tetsuki’s room on the seventh morning is like a plastic potted plant, really. Taking up space quietly and awkwardly in each room he visits, out of place but not so much as to require attention. A vague, monochrome blur in everyone’s peripheral vision.

Unlike the others that Tetsuki had sent out in her stead–even the surly pale-eyed man who has been making Kyoko’s army of minions all the more hyper competent and frightening–he doesn’t seem to want to interact with anyone at all. He drifts; not as if searching for something, but the way a tumbleweed drifts, aimless and useless and never belonging. Never catching on something to do or someone to talk to…

… until he meets Reborn.

Family does not mean friendship.

~

A/N: A poor offering on Naruto’s birthday, but the only thing that would come to mind :/

Mumu 3/? (2017-10-08)

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Family means a lot to you, obviously, you wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t, but that speaks more of obligation than your actual feelings.

When you were younger, you didn’t talk much. You were shy, even with your cousins–loud and boisterous and used to playing and fighting and play-fighting with each other–and preferred to trail after your uncle as he gardened, holding trowels or empty flower pots, and nodding as he explained what each plant was called and how to care for it.

Most of that went in one ear and out the other, your lack of green thumb a characteristic and no longer a disappointment, but they were good memories.

Useful in their own way.

///

When you open your eyes again, heavy but thankfully not desperately dry, you wonder for a moment if you’re seeing things.

On your windshield, delicate and patient, is a black butterfly. Frankly, you are surprised you can see it–if it is real, that is–in the dark even the woods outside are mostly a blur of imagined shapes.

Small and alone, wings flapping in a sedate rhythm, the butterfly flutters away.

You don’t know yet that this is a sign.

///

During one such gardening occasion, you were wearing your shirt inside out.

A small detail, not particularly noteworthy–even now you don’t care for the scratch of tags against the back of your neck, when your appearance is less important than comfort you still do the same–except that your uncle remarked on it:

“That’s good,” he had said, tugging on the tag, “this way you won’t get lost.”

At your look of confusion, he had explained that it was a saying: when a person is lost, they should turn their shirt inside out.

Hours later, you were still baffled. It wasn’t as if your address was on your tag, how could an inside out shirt save you from being lost?

Ingeniously, you remembered that your uncle had been part of the military; sometimes maps would be sewn on the inner lining of jackets. For a while, you considered the mystery solved.

Ingenious does not mean correct: you were missing the necessary context.

///

Up in the mountains where the air is thin and ground unsteady, it’s easy to fall. Short of breath, unsteady footing–sometimes people just don’t come back from a climb.

Sometimes people are disrespectful, loud and polluting. Sometimes mountains fight back.

And if they do, well, whose fault is it if the mountains win?

In this episode we talk about the mountains’ guardians: the tikbalang, a humanoid horse trickster with a bone to pick with trespassers and the ability to back it up.

Are you brave enough to travel into their kingdom and, more importantly, are you clever enough to escape?

This is Heritage Horrors!

~

A/N: Probably won’t be turning this into a script (or at least, not for the event I had thought I might) but I liked the idea too much to just leave it languishing.

Trailblazers (2017-10-04)

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Hibari’s report–if such a brief statement can be considered such–is punctual but useless. As per usual.

“The herbivores tried to fight back. They were bitten to death.”

Of the three Guardians he sent on the mission, Tetsuki-senpai is the most professional. Normally, she can be depended on for a comprehensive report.

Obviously, that is not the case.

Tsuna wrinkles his nose at the thought. It sounds so detached, so very much like a mafia boss and not the head of a Family. There is a difference, one he strives to stay on the correct side of.

He is worried about Tetsuki-senpai, of course, something is clearly wrong–but it is not his place to stand outside her door, cajoling.

He sent her on that mission. He is responsible for her pain.

///

There is creature comfort in staying curled under the covers in the dark. Wallowing.

It’s not really healing so much as pressing against her wounds and letting the muffled pain echo back at her.

But for now she allows herself this.

Well. Her conscious does.

Her subconscious, not so much.

Komadori enters, unhindered by the barrier because he is, in truth, only a part of her. Still he carries a tray of food and switches on the lamp desk.

It is not so bright–only a small radius, focused downwards instead of out–but it still sears her retinas, blinking away streaks of non-color.

“This is the reverse of what you used to do,” he admonishes lightly, helplessly. “Are you still trying to remember?”

He does not approach the bed, does not even look at it, and so she slouches from beneath the blankets towards him.

There is a small smile on his face: Komadori had always been overly indulgent of her.

“Remembering is not the problem. I have too many memories now. They want the Tetsuki from before all of this, before you and the others and everything I went through.”

“So, what, instead of remembering you’re purging?” he asks. If it were Naruto, it’d be loud, aggressive and provoking, an instinctive frustrated answer. But it’s Komadori, and so she eats and ponders and he lets her.

“Even if I could,” she begins, turning away back to bed. This admission will take more of her meager reserves than she can afford, “I wouldn’t erase what I went through. I just need… more time.”

~

A/N: My sister is getting married this weekend. Traveling tomorrow and no doubt a lot of work in the upcoming days so… posting will be sporadic at best.

Trailblazers (2017-10-03)

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She doesn’t remember what the mission had been–unsurprising given how many years-deaths-hours have passed–but she does know it was dangerous. Deadly. Terribly so.

Boss had sent his three most powerful–most lethal–Guardians on this mission, even despite the hostilities between two of them. Despite the high probability that Kyoua-senpai and fucking Mukuro would rather turn on each other than fight beside each other.

She doesn’t think she was sent as a mediating force–if so, then what a poor choice!–but rather as the only one who would survive if it came down to that.

It hadn’t, oddly enough.

But she hadn’t survived the mission, anyway.

///

When Tetsuki returns to Vongola HQ–Hibari departing for Namimori immediately and Mukuro almost literally disappearing into mist–she is quiet.

It’s not so concerning–Tetsuki isn’t one for talking, not in comparison to the Sasagawa siblings–but a week passes and no one can recall speaking to her.

This is only the beginning.

///

The problem is that she would trust any of the Guardians with her life–even Yamamoto (though, perhaps, less than fucking Mukuro as odd as that seems.)

Being Family does not mean friendship, it means blood and trust despite the lack. She can fight alongside any of her fellow Guardians without a second thought because she knows, if they can, they will fight for her life nearly as much as she will fight for theirs.

She trusts them with her life.

She doesn’t trust any of them with her death.

Kyouya-senpai is possessive, Mukuro beyond normal human mores, and at the end she had been voiceless.

She didn’t have a choice.

///

Tetsuki doesn’t open the door. Not for the Boss, not for Kyoko, not even for Ryohei.

Hayato respects her far too much to disintegrate the walls (never mind that the Vongola HQ steward would murder him if he did so) but he’s just cunning enough to slip a mobile phone into her room which rings and rings and rings with everyone trying to check on her.

She zaps it after a day.

But it works, sort of.

The door opens.

///

They mean well, of course they do. They’re just as kind as she remembered them; nostalgia and decades of distance hadn’t changed too much, it seems.

She’s not the same person she was days–lifetimes–ago.

She’s mourning.

She’s scared.

She’s furious.

She’s not ready.

///

The person–people–who leave Tetsuki’s room are not anyone Vongola has ever seen.

Their fashion is strange, their weapons stranger, and they look around HQ with curious, wondrous eyes.

They also close the door behind them and do not let anyone pass.

“She’s not ready yet,” says the blonde man with bright blue eyes. One hand scratches almost nervously at his marked cheek; the other has the fried phone.

Kyoko pockets it to hand over to Haru later–she and her engineering minions will take it as a challenge, no doubt–and decides to roll with the punches. She asks, “Do you know when she’ll be ready?”

This time, a woman with pink hair answers, stepping forward. “No, I’m sorry, but she wanted you all to know that she appreciates your concern and she’d like for us to share our knowledge. For example, I understand you’re a healer? So am I. My name is Sakura Haruno.”

///

There’s a part of her that wonders if it was all in her mind, no new scars or wrinkles on her skin, the same as she was before everything. She was so young then–this is the oldest she’s ever been–she had no idea what a lifetime really meant. What death really means.

She’s not the same person she was before.

She’s far more than that.

~

A/N: After everything, Tetsuki goes back home. But there’s consequences to that, too.

Multiphenomenal (2017-10-02)

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After she dies, she feels pretty embarrassed. Humbled, really, kneeling in front of the monolith that is Koenma’s desk.

To her side, a bunch of ogres wrestle a shouting, flailing demon to the floor, dog piling him into submission before dragging him away to a door she can hear vague screams from, a hint of brimstone wafting on heated air.

She kneels, patient and sheepish.

She thought she had a few more years until she died.

///

When Genkai makes a call for her apprentice, Tetsuki gets an invitation to the trials.

It’s not actually meant for her–or, at least, not specifically meant for the granddaughter of Hisae Kaiza, Genkai’s former teammate–just a general invitation sent to anyone with a certain level of spiritual ability.

Tetsuki’s spiritual ability is not the problem.

Grandmother doesn’t say anything when she receives the invitation, nor does she say anything when Tetsuki goes on the day of the trials.

It’s not a betrayal.

Tetsuki will never be Genkai’s apprentice, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have a say in who will.

///

It would be terribly convenient if the student Grandmother was looking for was Maya.

Unfortunately that is not the case.

Maya’s problem is that whenever she tries to realize or remember anything to do with the spirit world or even her own spiritual ability–which isn’t as strong as Tetsuki’s, but decent all the same–fucking Shuichi Minamino’s fucking amnesia pollen quickly wipes the thought from her mind.

If she had the training, Maya could cure herself of the pollen, but in order to be trained she’d have to remember more than five minutes of what Grandmother has to teach her.

It’s an untenable situation and a complete fucking nightmare.

Still, it’s not Maya’s fault and Tetsuki isn’t going to give up on her only friend.

(And if she spends the entirety of the Dark Tournament trolling fucking Minamino then who’s to say she’s not completely justified in doing so?)

Deuteranomaly (2017-10-01)

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Communication is dreadful at first.

There isn’t much of a Japanese presence in Gotham–not with New York so close and their prevalence on the west coast instead–and although she finds herself fluent in Italian, bewilderingly enough, she has powerful suspicions of how she ended up in this damned city to begin with.

The reigning mafia family recently had a major shipment disrupted… by a figure in glowing green.

One guess on what the shipment was; none for who the figure is.

Needless to say, Tetsuki is reluctant to follow that avenue.

She’d much rather make do with her minimal English and stammering, questioning translations between Romance languages and, when all that fails, complex charades that ends in futility more than success anyway.

But she barely needs to ask for help to get what she needs–she wonders if maybe she looks that pathetic or if, improbably, Gotham isn’t as heartless as she’d appear to be.

By the time she becomes comfortable with the languages of her new life, talking isn’t all that necessary.

—

Ivy is more than generous, sheltering and protecting and teaching with no payment needed, but there are some things she cannot provide which she says Tetsuki will need.

Especially if she ever wants to live a life outside of Robinson Park and the gifts of kindness Ivy bestows upon her.

But even in this, Ivy is kind, because she knows someone who can help.

Selina Kyle, perhaps the only Gotham Rogue who has never had a stint in Arkham, is also the best at maintaining her civilian life.

Tetsuki is in desperate need of that. She isn’t even sure if Tetsuki is her real name or just something she made up after being revived by glowing green light. The only clothes she has are some hand me downs from Edmundo’s near infinite sisters and the pair of boots she took from a would be mugger with conveniently small feet.

Tetsuki is basically a feral cat in human form.

Selina Kyle is well suited to this particular job.

—

Tetsuki becomes a pimp mostly by accident.

“Pimp” is perhaps the wrong word, but “madame” is even further. Bouncer would work if she were at a specific venue with consistent hours and pay, but as it is, she mostly just drops in and rains fiery green hell on any john who gets too violent and lets their would-be-victims play with her hair until their hands stop shaking.

She makes sure they get the money they earned and takes the rest for herself.

The workers get protection and payment, the Vasquez garage get an influx in cars, and Tetsuki figures out that she can electrocute people with her bare hands if she’s angry enough.

In a matter of weeks, Tetsuki’s nine block territory sees an increase in its night time population.

Externality 6c/? (2017-09-29)

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She’ll admit, later, that she probably developed tunnel vision trying to find Neji Hyuuga while also avoiding the angry mob. She gets into the rhythm of a task–even if this particular one is frenetic and stressful–and tends to forget her surroundings.

Luckily, Naruto Uzumaki is there to shove her out of the way of a barrage of kunai. They thunk into the tree beyond her.

As Tetsuki regains her bearings, she notices they’re in the perfect outline of her body.

TenTen?

A different blur, much larger and closer, drops down in her peripheral, and this time it’s her own hasty reflexes that have her dodge out of the way of a jab glowing with chakra.

Jyuuken.

Well, they found him…

… hooray?

Neji Hyuuga is not their year’s highest ranked student for no reason and for all that Tetsuki is fast, no one is as fast as him.

In short order her entire right arm is numb and absolutely useless, swinging around and throwing off her balance.

Any thoughts to negotiate a truce flies from her head. In the face of such overwhelming power only one concept remains: survive.

She tries to fight back, he defends easily. She tries to retreat, he follows unerringly. She tries to hold off his stupidly undefeatable attacks, she fails miserably.

And maybe if it were just Tetsuki by herself, that’d be it. But she’s not alone.

“Wait! Hold on you bastard,” Naruto Uzumaki says, brash and somehow endearing now, “We’re not here to fight you!” he says even as he throws a punch, trying to take the pressure off her.

He means well. She does appreciate the effort. Unfortunately, two against one when that one is Neji Hyuuga doesn’t make much of a difference.

But it jolts her out of her hindbrain panic, and she still has use of one of her hands: Tetsuki grabs the two purple armbands and throws them to the ground between them, almost like a gauntlet.

Neji Hyuuga doesn’t look down–Byakugan activated, he doesn’t need to–but he pauses for a moment, almost curious, which gives her and Naruto Uzumaki a moment to breathe.

“We don’t want your token,” Tetsuki says, slowly, still functional arm raised slightly to show no harm, “Or TenTen’s,” she adds, remembering the kunai.

Naruto Uzumaki makes an indignant noise, high in the back of his throat, and she shoots him a look. Tetsuki hasn’t forgotten he still needs another token, but they can’t get it from Neji Hyuuga and she’s not going to let him take it from TenTen (even if he could–he’s not as terrible as he seems in the classroom, but she’d put her nonexistent money on TenTen any day).

Speaking of TenTen, another figure peers out from the foliage, a brace of kunai at the ready between her fingers.

“… we’d like your help with something.”

Untitled (2017-09-26)

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Give them enough rope to hang themselves.

A cunning, cruel, almost hungry statement. Vindictive. Waiting patiently for the inevitable, bloody comeuppance. A predator in the grass, calmly running down their prey to exhaustion.

Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving humanity fire–light, warmth, intelligence. In the myth he is a hero unjustly punished for his generosity. But what if that’s not the case?

Give them fire, watch them burn.

In a different story, there was another who gave humanity intelligence–or, at least, gave them the idea to seize it for themselves.

A predator in the grass.

A new dawn for humanity.

Light bringer playing the long game.

—

“Go home!” he shouts, straining and desperate, eyes wide and burning, “Just go home, okay? It’ll all be okay, just go home!”

You stumble backwards, obeying subconsciously but unable to break his gaze. This may be the last time you see him which, if you listen to him and he’s telling the truth, may very well mean that this image is the last memory of him you’ll keep.

You’re not sure if future-you will want to remember him like this, trapped and fighting–losing–and sacrificing himself for your foolish, useless self, but it’d be disrespectful not to take it in while you can.

Forgetting would be worse.

You take another faltering few steps backwards, his shouts have turned into pained screams, his wide eyes no longer seeing you. Only then do you turn and run for your life.