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edenfallingI have a scenario and backstory and some general world-building for my Palestuck fic. I have a kinda-sorta outline. I have a couple of key emotional beats, and an intertwined action and character arc/plot thingywhatsit.
And I have no fucking clue whose POV I should be in, let alone whether I should be trying to write in second or third person.
*headdesk*
You know what, screw this. I am going to do a mini-ficlet prompt meme after all, because desperate times call for desperate measures, and maybe if I kickstart myself into finishing something it will make my other projects flow better thereafter.
So.
Leave a comment with one to three characters plus a mood, a scenario, or a prompt word, and I will write you a ficlet that is at least three sentences and/or 100 words long.
(Obligatory small print: Crossover prompts are fine. On the vanishingly unlikely chance anyone wants to read a snippet from any of my original worlds and stories, that kind of prompt is also fine. I reserve the right to reject fandoms I am not familiar with and produce ambiguous gen when attempting to write shipfic.)
---------------
Fill List:
1. Narutostuck: Tall Tales - 525 words, Naruto, John, Vriska, farce, written 3/6/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
2. But Not Quite THAT Bored - 150 words, Dirk, Dave, Second Triennial Human-Troll Flashstep Competition, written 3/7/16 for![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
madamehardy. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
3. In what distant deeps or skies - 625 words, Or, if you prefer, Dave, Jade, long-distance relationship, written 3/7/16 formadamehardy. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
4. For what you have tamed - 200 words, Um, Narnia, Lucy and Mr Tumnus, sleep or sleepy. (Something happy would be good.), written 3/7/16 for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cat_i_th_adage. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
5. Don't Get Caught - 275 words, Ginny and Professor McGonagall with prank advice, written 3/7/16 forwistfulmemory. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
6. Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind - 1,450 words, Narutostuck Jade, Aradia, Dave - apprehension?, written 3/8/16 formid-childan-puella-magi. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
7. Narutostuck: Riptide - 500 words, If you are still doing the ficlet thing - Narutostuck Jade, Feferi, Aradia - salvage, written 3/9/16 formid-childan-puella-magi. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
8. Noblesse Oblige - 500 words, For your Black Jewels/Homestuck verse: Dave, Jane, Responsibility?, written 3/9/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
9. Narutostuck: Family Planning - 775 words, Narutostuck -- Dave finding out he's breeding stock. I'm guessing it was hilariterrible, written 3/10/16 formadamehardy. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
10. Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World - 1,650 words, While on the subject of narutostuck, Jane and Roxy (& maybe Callie?) - repairs for the ficlet meme?, written 3/18/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
11. Narutostuck: Triptych - 1,150 words, Narutostuck: Dave, Karkat, Terezi: first encounters, written 3/27/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
And I have no fucking clue whose POV I should be in, let alone whether I should be trying to write in second or third person.
*headdesk*
You know what, screw this. I am going to do a mini-ficlet prompt meme after all, because desperate times call for desperate measures, and maybe if I kickstart myself into finishing something it will make my other projects flow better thereafter.
So.
Leave a comment with one to three characters plus a mood, a scenario, or a prompt word, and I will write you a ficlet that is at least three sentences and/or 100 words long.
(Obligatory small print: Crossover prompts are fine. On the vanishingly unlikely chance anyone wants to read a snippet from any of my original worlds and stories, that kind of prompt is also fine. I reserve the right to reject fandoms I am not familiar with and produce ambiguous gen when attempting to write shipfic.)
---------------
Fill List:
1. Narutostuck: Tall Tales - 525 words, Naruto, John, Vriska, farce, written 3/6/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
2. But Not Quite THAT Bored - 150 words, Dirk, Dave, Second Triennial Human-Troll Flashstep Competition, written 3/7/16 for
3. In what distant deeps or skies - 625 words, Or, if you prefer, Dave, Jade, long-distance relationship, written 3/7/16 for
4. For what you have tamed - 200 words, Um, Narnia, Lucy and Mr Tumnus, sleep or sleepy. (Something happy would be good.), written 3/7/16 for
cat_i_th_adage. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]5. Don't Get Caught - 275 words, Ginny and Professor McGonagall with prank advice, written 3/7/16 for
wistfulmemory. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]6. Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind - 1,450 words, Narutostuck Jade, Aradia, Dave - apprehension?, written 3/8/16 for
7. Narutostuck: Riptide - 500 words, If you are still doing the ficlet thing - Narutostuck Jade, Feferi, Aradia - salvage, written 3/9/16 for
8. Noblesse Oblige - 500 words, For your Black Jewels/Homestuck verse: Dave, Jane, Responsibility?, written 3/9/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
9. Narutostuck: Family Planning - 775 words, Narutostuck -- Dave finding out he's breeding stock. I'm guessing it was hilariterrible, written 3/10/16 for
10. Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World - 1,650 words, While on the subject of narutostuck, Jane and Roxy (& maybe Callie?) - repairs for the ficlet meme?, written 3/18/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
11. Narutostuck: Triptych - 1,150 words, Narutostuck: Dave, Karkat, Terezi: first encounters, written 3/27/16 for anonymous. [Tumblr crosspost; AO3 version]
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[Fic] "Narutostuck: Tall Tales" -- Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-07 10:18 pm (UTC)---------------
"You have got to be kidding me," Vriska says flatly as the Leaf-nin in the orange jacket (and what self-respecting soldier wears orange, how is he not dead eight times over?) finishes his story of cosmic war and redemption with a wide-armed flourish. "That's not how real life works. That's some kind of-- of stupid melodramatic farce that wants to be a serious drama when it grows up but has no idea when to stop. Also people coming back to life that often is cheating."
"I swear, it happened exactly like that!" the Leaf-nin protests as he signals the ramen stand chef for another serving. "It's not our fault you're so isolated on your side of the desert that you didn't notice anything weird going on even when it got flashy. And obviously you wouldn't have noticed the part with the tree and the moon because the point of that plan was to freeze and hypnotize the whole world."
"Um," says John, pushing aside his empty bowl. "I admit it's a hell of a story, Naruto-san, but I think there's one small problem. Even aside from the resurrection parts."
"Ooh, go on, apply logic," Vriska says gleefully. "I love it when you tear things apart." She elbows her teammate supportively in the ribs.
"The moon is only ever visible to about half the earth at any given time," John says, absorbing her blow with the flair and aplomb that Vriska deserves and demands from a partner, "and I don't know if you've noticed, but it does this thing where it constantly changes phase. How, exactly, was this Madara person intending to maintain his hypnosis for more than a single day?"
The Leaf-nin pauses with his chopsticks halfway between his bowl and his mouth. "Uh. You know, I don't think he ever explained that? But I did mention he was crazy and also semi-possessed by an equally crazy goddess who basically wanted to kill everyone, right? It would almost be more surprising if his plan actually made any sense."
"Yeah, sure," Vriska agrees. "If he were a character in a story, which he obviously is because like I said, you're making all this up. Now stop being a dumbass and tell us how you really lost your arm. I bet it's something completely stupid, like you got an infected cut trying to slice vegetables for ramen -- not something cool like the way I lost mine."
The Leaf-nin stares at her for a long moment, clearly frustrated that she's not buying his bullshit. Then he grins and rubs his left hand over his spikey yellow hair. "Haha, I guess you caught me!" he says. "I lost my arm in a training accident 'cause me and my friend were being dumb and careless, and I was totally making all that crazy stuff up to see how much you'd swallow. You should tell everyone you figured me out! But first, why don't you tell me how you lost your arm -- I want to hear what you think counts as a cool story that knows when to stop."
Vriska smiles back and settles in to brag.
[Fic] "But Not Quite THAT Bored" -- Homestuck
Date: 2016-03-07 10:20 pm (UTC)---------------
"No," Dave said, raising his hands with his index fingers crossed in an only semi-ironic warding gesture. "That got way too crazy last time, and I am not nearly bored enough to make a repeat sound like a good idea."
"I completely agree with you about the crazy," Dirk said, "which is why I wanted to talk about some proposed structural changes. Namely, robots."
Dave blinked at his brother, trying to process what the hell train of thought might have led to that combination of words coming out of Dirk's mouth at freaking six thirty in the morning. Then he decided he didn't care.
"I officially disclaim all affiliation with whatever insanity you create," he said. "Also, go talk to Jade and remember that if you build an invincible robot army, they'll probably turn on you first."
He shut his bedroom door in Dirk's face and collapsed back into bed with the sense of disaster timely dodged.
[Fic] "In what distant deeps or skies" - Homestuck
Date: 2016-03-07 10:22 pm (UTC)---------------
One side effect of working communications is that Dave gets first look at all incoming transmissions -- or at least, his sorting algorithms do, and they flag up anything that looks hinky and/or just plain interesting. He also dips into the raw flow at least a couple times a shift, just to keep an eye on his babies because machine intelligence is damn good these days but still not as good at high-context stuff as humans are.
The downside of this is he gets way too much information about his crewmates' personal lives, most of which he would frankly be much happier not knowing (though blackmail is useful, oh yes; Dave has whole sheaves of favors he can call in anytime he wants). The upside, of course, is he gets to snatch Jade's message packets off the public servers before anyone else notices he's received mail that technically breaks all the data limits for enlisted personnel. Transmissions don't officially exist on the ship network until they make it past his station, after all, so no passage, no message, no problem. He has a very carefully written program to tuck them aside in a hidden folder when his beta and gamma shift counterparts are on duty, until he can download them himself onto a private data stick.
(He's not quite sure how Jade gets away with sending them from her own ship. Bribery? Hacking? Intimidation? Probably a bit of all three, knowing her. It's not a good idea to piss off the person responsible for keeping your engine and life support together.)
The data stick in his pocket feels heavy and sharp with promise all through the remainder of his shift, and he knows if he weren't wearing his shades, everyone on the bridge would be able to see exactly how distracted he is. Fortunately nothing happens -- they're on a recuperative mission well within the Federation's border, recalibrating the unmanned sensor satellites that track instabilities in a massive blue-white star in order to send early warnings to its inhabited neighboring systems -- and the only real duty Dave has all shift is making final edits on the daily department reports before sending them back to the nearest starbase.
(He gets at least one pre-warp meme into each message -- three into the captain's -- and considers that a job well done.)
Finally he can flee, at a careful walking pace, to his cabin down in the belly of the ship. He's senior enough he gets his own space, tiny and overheated though it is, crammed up right against the engineering decks, and the beautiful thing about sticking Jade's messages onto the data stick is that the ship network now thinks they're his own personal files rather than regulation-breaking mail files. He plugs the stick into his terminal and keys open the holographic display.
Jade's grease-streaked face smiles at him from across some unimaginable stretch of space and time, and Dave sinks onto his bunk with an answering smile as her voice -- a little tinny, a little faint, but unmistakably her -- says, "Hey Dave, I'm still alive! We had another battle against the trolls last week, but no major damage and the supply convoy we're guarding made it through to Marinus IV. I'm starting to think we'll make it through to the end of our deployments, and maybe we should make plans for what to do once we're free."
Her voice softens a little from its determined good cheer, and a glowing, staticky hand reaches out toward the camera. Toward Dave. "I miss you so much. Every day. Messages aren't the same as hugging you for real."
"I know," Dave tells the holograph. "Me too."
He settles back to listen to her life.
[Fic] "Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind" - Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-09 05:36 am (UTC)Nothing explicit happens on-page, but pre-revolution Narutostuck is a dystopia and its unkindness does not spare children. Consequently, this ficlet got kind of grim. Sorry? (1,425 words)
---------------
The testing happens on Dave's sixth birthday. Soldiers knock on the doors of every kid who's turned six since the last round of tests, five months ago. Rose tries to persuade Dave's escort to take her too, but no dice. The list is the law, and he was born seven minutes before midnight while she was born six minutes after. The government doesn't care about her until the next round.
Might be two months. Might be two years. Nobody's ever sure when it's coming, just that it'll come. Even living outside Kouin won't save you; everyone winds up on a list in the end.
Dave waves goodbye to his sister and mom as the soldier leads him away. If he's lucky, he'll see them again tonight. If he's not, well, there's nothing he can do except try to take someone with him when he dies.
(He's really glad for the hood on his jacket. It hides his face a little, and if his eyes start to water, he can rub them dry without anyone noticing. Probably, anyway.)
The soldier isn't anybody special, just a brown-blood private maybe sixteen years old, back from her first deployment over the straits. She isn't cruel as they walk; she just doesn't care. She'd have to act like Dave was a person to be cruel.
The soldier ignores his attempts to talk until Dave's words shrivel like dry leaves in his throat. She wraps her hand around his upper arm and pulls him through the village like an untrained dog -- over Execution Bridge, past the Uchuukage's compound, around the crater where a rebel assassin tried to kill the Lady of Space last fall and got captured instead, and out into one of the training grounds where a bunch of other kids are already waiting. She says his name to someone at the gate, who makes a mark on a clipboard and waves them through the fence.
The training ground is an open field with a few scattered trees and bushes, the grass gone brown and tired with the onset of winter. The dirt underfoot is soggy from last night's rain, and most of the kids have clustered on the patches of slightly higher ground. Normally a group this big would be really loud, but nobody seems to be interested in talking, let alone starting games or fights.
Dave looks around for anyone he knows, and spots Jade and Aradia sitting in the lower branches of a leafless birch. He meanders toward them, hands in his pockets and glancing around to see if he can find any covered spots near the fence without a guard to keep watch over them. It's not like he really thinks he can escape -- or even wants to, not when Mom's been careful to tell him and Rose about what the investerrogators do to the families of known or suspected rebels -- but it's good to keep in practice, right?
"Hey," he says when he reaches the tree.
"Hi, Dave," Jade says, in a gray shadow of her usual enthusiasm. Her hair is a mess and her jacket is blue and white instead of green and black, which mean's it actually belongs to John. She has her hands stuffed into the wide front pouch like she wants to hug herself without being too obvious.
Dave trips over the weird sensation of having no words to throw into the awkward silence that follows Jade's greeting. He bites his lip, turns to face Aradia and hopes that something coherent comes out when he opens his mouth.
"Uh. Hey to you too, Aradia. We haven't seen you in a while. I think Rose wanted to talk to you about drawing a treasure map or something?"
Aradia looks weird without her lusus bouncing around her feet, but then, she's not going to have a lusus after today. Either she'll be in a training barracks, or she'll be gone. (Dave doesn't know what happens to the lusii. The official line is they get driven back into the wild to find new wigglers to adopt, but Mom says the official line is usually bullshit. He doesn't think he really wants to know the truth.)
"Oh, yeah, I remember that. We were going to play gamblignants, but I got distracted by other stuff," Aradia says. She looks past Dave, eyes narrowed against the nearly horizontal rays of the winter sun. "Where is Rose? Did they bring you two separately?"
Dave shrugs, tries to pretend they're not all off-balance. "Nah, they didn't bring her at all. Her birthday's not till tomorrow, so." It feels weird to be doing anything important without his twin at his side. He's not sure if he should feel glad that she's safe for a little longer, or worried about what she might do at her own testing without him there to distract her.
Jade probably feels the same way about John. And trolls don't have family like humans do, but that doesn't mean Aradia can't worry about the rest of their friends.
"Do you know how they do the testing, or what they're looking for?" Jade asks after another attack of awkward silence that Dave doesn't know how to fill. "Since your mom works for intelligence and stuff?"
Dave shrugs again. "I think it's for, uh, chakra affinities? For the breeding lists, and also so if anyone with special skills wants an apprentice, they know who can handle the lessons and who'd just get their head exploded by accident. Or on purpose. Even if I don't know why anyone'd want to explode their head on purpose -- somebody else's head, sure, but exploding your own is just weird and if you're going for an exploding body part assassination it's simpler to use your hand or something you can cut off and maybe survive, right?"
He should ask Dirk about that sometime. Dirk's pretty good with explosions.
"But anyway," Dave continues, "I don't know how they figure out who's affinitied with what elements. Or why some people fail or disapp-- I mean, except for failing because you can't shape chakra, because obviously you can't be a soldier if you can't soldj, although I don't know if that should technically count as failing because if everyone was a soldier we wouldn't have anyone to grow food and then we'd all starve and that would be the dumbest way to lose a war I've ever heard of. We'd have to go beg for scraps in the west and they'd look at all our starved skeletons and just laugh themselves to death which means they wouldn't win either, and actually laughing yourself to death at zombie skeletons might be an even stupider way to lose than just starving." And that line of thought grew legs and ran away from him at some point.
At least he has his words back?
Aradia is politely hiding her smile behind one hand. Jade is outright laughing at him. That feels pretty good too.
"Well, the test can't be too complicated, right? Most people our age don't know how to shape chakra yet, and most people pass anyway," Aradia says. "I bet we don't even have to do anything except stand in line."
"You're probably right," Jade agrees. Then her head tilts, like she's trying hard to hear something across the training ground. "Hey, I think they're about ready to start!"
Dave turns his head, and yeah, a bunch of soldiers have marched into the training ground and are organizing the other kids into columns and rows facing a small platform someone's raised from the ground. They should probably head over before someone comes to fetch them.
"We'll be done by noon, I bet," he says. "Why don't you guys come over to our place for lunch and we'll see who can tell Rose the most convincing lie about the test."
"Sure," Jade says. "Bet you a caegar I win."
"You're a terrible liar; I'll take that bet," Aradia replies as she leaps down from her branch.
Dave follows his friends toward the testing platform and lets himself believe that everything will be okay. They won't fail and be exiled to the prison farms, they won't pass too well and get noticed by anyone important, and most of all they won't disappear. They'll go home. He'll hug Rose and Mom. They'll invite John and Sollux and Tavros and maybe Terezi over for lunch. Everyone will be fine.
(The testing goes alphabetically by surname. Jade and Aradia each wave to him before they vanish behind the testing platform. He doesn't see them again for nearly ten years.)
---------------
---------------
---------------
And that is the story of how Jade and Aradia got conscripted into Abyss. Dave would have shared their fate if he'd been biologically female. As it is, he was merely listed as high-priority breeding stock… until he joined the rebellion several years later, got captured, and was reclassified as perfect raw material for the kind of science experiment where you don't much care if the subject survives so long as you get useful data from the tests.
Like I said, pre-revolution Narutostuck IS a dystopia.
[Fic] "Narutostuck: Riptide" - Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-09 11:10 pm (UTC)General content warning for dystopia, ninja violence and, you know, child soldiers and stuff. (500 words exactly)
---------------
"There reelly is no way to salvage this, is there?" Feferi asked rhetorically as Aradia held the painted Anbu operative slightly out-of-step with normal time.
Jade shook her head, still finessing her way through the traps and chakra-reinforced locks on the cell gate. "Not without also killing the target and blaming both deaths on a failed prison break. And that would just cause new problems."
Feferi glanced over her shoulder toward the emaciated wreck of a troll locked in the Uchuukage's private dungeon, and sighed. It was shameful that someone who'd come so close to killing the Lady once upon a time had let himself get so run down. Hadn't he ever heard of cooperation and compartmentalization, or even going out with a bang when he'd realized he wasn't getting rescued anytime soon? She had no idea what the Sufferer and Lionclaw saw in him.
"They wouldn't believe it anywave. He couldn't even kill himself right now," she said. "We'll have to notify the Demoness so the rest of Abyss can make it look like we went rogue on our own."
"I'll send a raven once we're out," Aradia said, just as Jade made a muffled noise of triumph and shoved the gate sideways into the wall until only a few bars stuck out like an abandoned construction project.
Feferi stepped forward and ran her hands over the target, checking to see if he could be moved as-is or whether they'd need to burn time healing him first. Luck was on their side; he'd probably survive without any immediate work. She made passing note of several badly healed skull fractures putting pressure on his brain, the utter wreck of his digestive system, and the residue of long-term genjutsu manipulation soaked into his chakra coils. Somebody would have to fix that eventually. It might even be her, depending on what the rebellion decided to do with her team now that their cover was blown.
(Something about him seemed naggingly familiar -- had her team ever dealt with another four-horned target? -- but Feferi shoved that distraction aside for later. She was an Abyssal operative. She would never break mission discipline over something so trivial.)
"We're good," she said, and heaved the too-thin body up and over her shoulders. "Clean up and let's go."
Aradia positioned herself behind the time-trapped Anbu, hands raised, and snapped his neck the moment she released her jutsu. Jade shoved the corpse into the wall (a dead giveaway of their responsibility in the long term, but useful for causing confusion in the short term) and pulled the gate back across the cell mouth, its bars only slightly contaminated with the stone they'd been phased into without Jade's active attention keeping both objects separate. Feferi cast a temporary illusion into the depths of the cell, just enough to make careless eyes think the target was huddled in the far corner.
"Stairwell is clear," Aradia called softly down the corridor. "Ninety seconds until the next patrol."
They were gone in twenty.
[Fic] "Noblesse Oblige" - Homestuck/Black Jewels
Date: 2016-03-10 04:50 am (UTC)---------------
"I never wanted to be anyone's Queen," Jane says as she and Dave sit on the gray, game-construct platform, studiously ignoring the battle planning session behind them. "It seems so invasive! People should choose how to organize our lives, not get yanked around willy-nilly by genetic compulsions."
She can still see her friends' faces, tense with the strain of fighting themselves in order to disobey her. She can still feel the way she'd choked them with intangible threads, scarred them with invisible claws. She can still taste her own cold, vicious anger that they dared to stand against her, her thirst for their coming punishment. And none of that was the Condesce; it all came from her.
"I don't even like gardens," she adds, somewhat illogically.
"Not even for, like, growing your own kitchen herbs? Home cooking and all that?" Dave says from a respectful two feet away, which feels simultaneously too far away and far too close.
Jane pulls her knees to her chest and makes a face at the glitch-scarred void. "No. Oh, I've given blood to my backyard, and the park down the street -- it would be irresponsible not to! -- but I don't care two beans about the land. I always wanted to be a hearth-witch and not have to worry about anybody serving me except in return for salaried remuneration. Capitalism and democracy aren't perfect by a long stretch, but they beat all hell out of rural feudalism."
"I'm from Houston. You're preaching to the choir," Dave says. Then he tilts his head, the joint-claws of his wings shifting slightly where they hook over his shoulders, and adds, "You are my Queen, though. And Dirk's. Probably everyone else's too, but it's not as punch-in-the-nose obvious for them as it is for Warlord Princes. We don't have to do anything about that connection, especially since we don't have anywhere near enough people to make an official Court, but ignoring emotional shit just makes everything weird and I am so fuckin' tired of making like nothing's wrong when everybody is obviously falling apart."
Jane rests her chin on her knees and closes her eyes. "I don't know, pretending has been working pretty well for me."
"Really," Dave says.
Jane sighs. "No, not really. Ugh. Why is it so hard to be a mature and sensible human being?"
"Hell if I know," Dave says. He moves closer and rests one hand on her right shoulder, bare fingers just brushing the skin of her neck. The contact feels oddly right somewhere in the darker parts of Jane's mind that she's been trying (and failing) to slam the lid on since she was deprogrammed. "But hey, we can all practice together once we beat this unbeatable demon and reconstitute the multiverse through the joys of radioactive frog-farming. Which is not a sentence I ever expected to hear myself say, but whatever. Life's full of surprises. We just gotta help each other roll with them."
"Yes," Jane agrees. "I suppose we do."
[Fic] "Narutostuck: Family Planning" - Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-11 01:36 am (UTC)...I think you are underestimating how screwed up Kouin is/was, and therefore how young Dave was at the time of the incident in question. But anyway! This is how that went down. (775 words)
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"Wait, but, does that mean you didn't want us?"
Dirk blinked at his son. "I didn't not want you. Anyway, Roxy definitely wanted you, and since I had to have kids with someone if I didn't want to get killed, we figured it was better to hit two birds with one stone. We got two awesome kids for the price of one so I’d say everything worked out fine."
Dave still looked devastated.
Dirk sighed. The kid was way too much like Roxy for his peace of mind. But screw it, he could do emotions if the situation was important enough. Keeping Dave's heart from breaking definitely counted.
"C'mere, you," he said, as he set aside his current repair job (tiny little poisoner's puppet, all steel and glass, disguised as a parasitic wasp) and tugged Dave's bird-boned body onto his lap. "I don't care about people I don't know up close and personal, and before you and Rose were born I only knew you in the abstract. Obviously. But now I know you guys for real and I wouldn't trade you away for anything."
"Oh. Um. Good," Dave said, still sounding unsure but less close to a sudden outbreak of sobs. "But who was gonna kill you? Are you okay now or are they gonna come back and then me and Rose will get a little brother or something?"
Dirk pursed his lips and cast a dozen mental curses in Roxy's general direction. She was supposed to be the one explaining politics to the rugrats, not him. Clearly she'd been falling down on the job.
"The regime keeps a list of people who have useful talents -- maybe a tricky kind of chakra manipulation, or a nose sensitive enough to sniff out poisons, or a knack for strategy. It would be wasteful if they died without passing those gifts on, so the regime makes sure every troll on the list contributes buckets on every collection day instead of just once a sweep, and every human on the list has at least two kids. Sometimes you can pick the other parent, but sometimes you have to pair up with a specific other person on the list."
"You and Mom were on the list?" Dave asked.
"I was," Dirk said, ruffling his fingers through Dave's hair. "Roxy wasn't, but we're cousins and that ups the chance of reinforcing recessive genes--"
"Huh?"
Dirk paused and recalibrated. "Uh, passing on traits that get drowned out a lot of the time. Like, most words don't rhyme so you have to pick them carefully when you're building a verse. Everybody has a different set of genes -- like a different set of words -- and close relatives are more likely to have words that rhyme with each other which makes it more likely they can write a cool rap together instead of just tossing a bunch of word salad. So the docterrorists let us slide even though Roxy wasn't one of the people they'd picked for me to have kids with."
"Oh," Dave said.
"Any more questions?"
Dave curled in on himself and pressed tight against Dirk's torso. "Um. If you were on the list, does that mean me and Rose are too?"
Dirk was going to give Roxy hallucinations of tap-dancing puppets for weeks in revenge for this, just wait. Also he was totally abandoning her to the long list of unnerving questions Rose would probably have once Dave reported this conversation to his twin. "Not yet. But you probably will be. Sorry, kid."
"Oh," Dave said again.
He was quiet for a while, probably chewing over the change to his worldview. After a few seconds, Dirk reached over the kid's head and started fiddling with the mechanical wasp's wings, trying to figure out the exact angle that was making them catch and stick. It kept changing, though -- probably some bit of sand or gunk shifting around the interior gears. He'd have to crack it open to get anywhere. He pulled over a sheet of drafting paper and a pencil so he could sketch records of where every part was now so he'd have a better shot of putting it back together after he started playing around.
He was just setting the tip of his smallest screwdriver to the hinge at the base of one wing when Dave jolted upright and said, utterly outraged, "Wait, if cousins make a better rap than people who aren't family, and the regime wants to make the best raps, and me and Rose are probably on their list, does that mean they'll make me and Rose have kids together?"
Dirk never did find where he'd flung the screwdriver.
[Fic] "Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World" - Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-18 04:54 am (UTC)I previously said that there are probably cherubs living in the deepest desert, but on due reflection I don't want to do the legwork to turn them from an eats-galaxies-for-breakfast level of deus ex machina into a functional everyday species, so this AU will remain trolls and humans only. (And the possibility of carapacians across the western ocean.) But! That doesn't mean I can't have a little fun around the edges. :) (1,650 words)
---------------
After the assault on the Uchuukage's compound, you find Roxy sitting on the cracked and soot-stained front steps of Kyokuchou-no-kami's shrine. The battle for Kouin is far from over, but even elite soldiers can't fight indefinitely without breaks for mental and physical rest and this district is well within the rebellion's current zone of control.
Even so, you disapprove of her choice not to tell anyone where she intended to go, nor how long she intended to remain there. Vanishing from her allies' awareness is both dangerous and irresponsible, and the rebellion cannot afford to lose one of its chief strategists to a poor choice made under the influence of sleep deprivation or prolonged stress.
(Losing track of your teammate also makes you feel a sick, swooping nausea that you refuse to acknowledge.)
So you tracked her down.
"Hey, Jane," she says without opening her eyes to look at you.
You sit beside her. The steps can hardly foul your uniform worse than it already is.
"Roxy," you say. "You forgot to notify headquarters where you intended to spend your downtime. We should report in before finding a more defensible location to rest."
"Mmm." She lets herself tip backwards until she's lying diagonally on the shallow steps, and stares up at the mid-morning sky, gray both with smoke and the threat of rain. "Did you know Kouin was founded around this shrine?" she says, rather than anything logically related to your own words.
You're growing accustomed to her non sequiturs. They seem to be a secondary manifestation of her ability to think around corners. Her casual assumption of friendship is less explicable.
(You vaguely remember knowing her before Abyss. But that was nearly twenty years ago, and neither of you are the same people you were as children, so you don't understand why she places such weight on that arbitrary scrap of connection.)
"That's not in the official histories," you say. And even if it were, you've never paid much attention to religion.
Your trident is heavy, and your fingers are sore from the force needed to wrench its tines free from the bodies of your targets. This district, you remind yourself, has been cleared for nearly thirty hours. The only people around are your fellow rebellion soldiers and a few civilians still detained (for their own safety) in underground emergency shelters. You set your weapon down within easy reach.
"There's a lot that isn't in the official histories," Roxy says. "But yeah, this shrine and Kirema-no-kami's shiny, huge-ass temple across the river go way, way back. It's just that death and destruction work better than plants and healing when you're trying to justify endless war and repression, so guess which god got all the repair funds over the years and which one got a guard reporting anyone who tried to leave an offering."
You turn to look at the dilapidated building: small and squat, its stones blotched by moss and lichen, paint peeling from its wooden doorframe, the basin at the foot of the goddess's weather-worn statue filled with rubbish instead of offerings or flowers. The disorder is aesthetically irritating. "That strikes me as a rhetorical question," you say.
"Yeah," Roxy agrees. "Here's another: did I ever tell you about the time I got lost in the desert?"
You shake your head, wondering what unknown factor connects this to her previous chain of thought.
"It was a long time ago, right after my first posting," Roxy says. "I got back from the war, they gave me two weeks to recover, and then bam, right into Intelligence trying to root out rebels and malcontents. Which turned out pretty useful in the end, but at the start I was just carrying messages around various outposts and bumfuck nowhere villages and keeping my eyes and ears open in case I found anything potentially seditious, or just profitable from a blackmailing point of view."
You nod. You've completed many missions based on intelligence gathered from similar sources. Some of them might even have been based on Roxy's own reports.
"Well, there I am doing a circuit between some ranches out on the edge of the badlands, and it turns out one of the families is up to their necks in smuggling -- I'm talking real illegal shit, all the way across the desert from Wind Country. And they notice that I've noticed, and they decide to make me disappear. So they knock me over the head while I'm trying to leave all polite-like, and haul me out into the actual desert to slit my throat."
"That sounds remarkably inefficient," you say.
Roxy shrugs. "Superstition, I think. Didn't want any death traces around for you creepy black ops types to sniff out or summon my ghost or whatever." She turns her head and smiles at you, tired and wry. "Abyss and the clown squad are sweet propaganda tools in all kinds of directions, you know? But anyway, my lovely captors misjudge their drug dose and I wake up while they're still arguing about how far away they have to get before my death won't look connected to them. And I have always been fuckin' awesome at escaping."
That, you think, reflecting on the three times you attempted to capture or eliminate her before Abyss collectively decided the Lady had become unworthy of your loyalty, is closer to understatement than boast.
"Did you kill the criminals once you freed yourself?" you ask.
Roxy snorts. "What kind of question is that? Of course I did. Couldn't exactly not and still look like a loyal soldier. Except it turns out that when you're in the middle of a trackless desert, killing the only people who know where you are and how to get out of that desert is, shockingly, not the most brilliant plan ever devised."
"True," you agree.
Something explodes to the west, near Execution Bridge. That is intolerably close to the rebellion's temporary headquarters.
You grab your trident and spring to your feet. You've had an hour to rest and regroup; you've fought longer in worse circumstances, and now of all times the rebellion cannot afford to lose. Every soldier is needed.
You rush toward the renewed evidence of battle.
Or rather, you try to take a step, only to discover halfway through that Roxy has one hand locked around your ankle. Only a quick burst of chakra, bastardized from the standard tree-climbing exercise, saves you from falling ignominiously on your face.
"There is an entire army on-shift and ready to take care of shit like that," Roxy says. "Also I don't care about your conditioning or your creepy stamina vampirism thing. We've been fighting twenty hours straight and we need a fuckin' break. Sit down, Janey. I'm telling you a story."
You sit.
(Something inside your chest unwinds fractionally, relieved at placing your trust in someone else's authority instead of having to create your own orders. Something else winds tighter at this continuing evidence of your weakness.)
"So there I am in the middle of bone-dry nowhere, still kind of out of it from the drugs. Also kind of woozy from blood loss because there were four of them and one of me, and this is back before I switched specialties from long-distance ninjutsu to close combat taijutsu. And I can find west by watching the sun, but finding west isn't much help at finding water, or navigating the canyons and sinkholes in the badlands. I think I walked about three hours before I just fell down and couldn't get up, and figured I'd be dead by morning."
"You seem to have survived," you say.
"Yeah," Roxy says. She twists and looks toward the rotting doorway of the shrine, and the shadowed darkness within the small and battered building. "I saw her, you know. Kyokuchou-no-kami. I woke up in the middle of the night and everything still hurt like fuck but it didn't matter anymore because she was there. The whole world was all green and peaceful, and she was made of, like, vines and bones -- life from death, you know? She touched my head and said I was very brave, and that she was sorry but I couldn't rest yet because my story wasn't done. Then I stood up and walked another hour until I found one of the streams that runs into the desert to die. And I lived."
You don't believe in any gods. The Lady wanted all your reverence reserved for her, and when she proved unworthy, you had no interest in finding another idol who would only disappoint you in turn. But you hold your tongue and don't point out that Roxy's divine visitation was most likely a hallucination brought on by some combination of blood loss, exhaustion, heatstroke, and dehydration.
"I'm glad," you say instead. "The rebellion would be weaker without you." You pause, then add, "I would be weaker without you."
"Aww, Jane." Roxy squeezes her fingers, still wrapped around your ankle. "You made it through Abyss and came out only a little crazy. You chose to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, and you keep choosing that every day. All I ever did was lie a bunch and let both my kids get chewed up by this fuckin' war. I'd be a lot more of a mess without you."
There is something terribly sad in her eyes, all the sharp edges of her mind turned inward instead of outward toward the Lady's rule. You think you've seen its echo, sometimes, when you catch a glimpse of your own face sidelong in mirrors: the knowledge that your life is broken and somehow you're the one at fault.
She should never look that way.
You let your own hand fall to rest lightly on her wrist. "Well. We are partners. And if you want help restoring the shrine after Kouin is ours, I'll help."
Slowly, Roxy smiles.
[Fic] "Narutostuck: Triptych" -- Homestuck/Naruto
Date: 2016-03-27 08:23 pm (UTC)---------------
1. There is a giant pearl-white egg in the middle of the forest, nestled on a bed of dried moss and propped upright by a ring of granite boulders still scored by the deep marks of massive claws. Karkat gapes at the incongruous sight, and wonders exactly how lost he is. All he wanted was to find some peace and quiet, and maybe a good spot for learning to use his new sickles without letting anyone else see him make a fool of himself. This is not peace and quiet. This is a baby dragon nowhere near any of the official hatching grounds, which means it's probably some kind of classified bullshit that crabdad will screech himself silly over when Karkat finally stumbles his way home.
Still... he wonders if he could feel a heartbeat through the shell. That would be really something, to say he touched a dragon egg. Or just to hold close as another, happier secret.
He takes a tentative step forward.
"If you hurt her, I'll kill you," a voice says from behind him as something cold and sharp presses against the side of his neck.
"Oh, fuck you," he snaps before his conscious mind can get control of his reflexes. "What would I even do with an egg that big? Make the world's biggest omelet? I hate to break it to you, but I don't think anyone has a big enough frying pan, let alone enough seasoning."
"That shows a sad lack of creativity on your part!" the person behind him says, but she pulls away the knife and when he turns, all her shark-like teeth are bared in a ridiculous grin.
"Hello, intruder!" she says, tilting her needle-sharp horns in a gesture that somehow manages to be simultaneously threatening and cute. "I'm Terezi."
"You're crazy and I'm leaving," Karkat says, and does his best to ignore her laughter for the next three hours as she follows him home, loudly correcting him whenever he makes wrong turns.
(She stays for dinner. He only pretends to mind.)
-----
2. Rose invites Terezi to her house for additional study and training five times before Terezi accepts. In the end, the chance to improve herself with the aid of their cohort's other top cadet outweighs the chance that this is somehow a setup.
"Wait here," Rose says as she drops her books on a table inexplicably situated in a food block. "My mother has some old mission reports that we can practice analyzing." She opens a door in the corner and climbs up a narrow staircase, as if she isn't worried at all about exposing her back or leaving Terezi unsupervised in the middle of all her secrets.
Terezi restrains her curiosity for all of two seconds. Then she's up and poking around various drawers and cupboards, trying to figure out what's just normal human stuff and what's specific to sub-adults or career military. She has just grasped the handle on the refrigerator door when someone taps her shoulder.
She spins, kunai in hand, but the person in question is already back on the other side of the block, well out of her reach.
Terezi blinks. The human boy blinks back, slow and deliberate. The left corner of his mouth twitches fractionally upward.
"Hey," he says. "I hear you're the girl making Rose quake in her boots at the academy. That true?" He leans back against the doorframe, crosses his arms, shakes his lusus-pale hair off his forehead. (It's the same shade as Rose's hair. Is this her brother, that she guards like a precious hoard?)
"I prefer to think of it as the two of us making all our fellow cadets quake in well-deserved despair at their collective inadequacy," Terezi says. She lowers her knife, but doesn't put it away. Not quite yet.
The boy's mouth twitches upward again, perhaps involuntarily. "Sounds about right. So yeah, welcome to our humble abode. Don't open the fridge; Dirk's got it stuffed full of poisons and shit 'cause the one in his lab broke yesterday, and it's fuckin' rude to let guests off themselves by accident."
"As opposed to on purpose."
"Well, obviously," the boy agrees. "Anyway, I'm Dave. Nice to meet you." He tips his head in the tiniest approximation of a nod.
Terezi sheaths her knife.
-----
3. The two Anbu goons toss Dave into an empty cell, slam the door, and lope off to other duties without even bothering to give him a parting kick. He has a sinking feeling that's not mercy; they just know anything they might do can't possibly match up to the pain Mindfang and her students will create just as a byproduct of their experiments.
It's a weirdly nice cell, though -- got a bed with a mattress and blanket, and even a window through which he can see the wall of the Uchuukage's compound. Maybe they think they can brainwash him into playing along, or that relatively pleasant surroundings will help him recover faster so they can space their tests closer together. Or maybe this is just temporary and he'll get moved to the dungeons tomorrow.
(He's pretty sure there are dungeons. It's contractually required or something.)
Someone moves in the hallway, comes to stand by Dave's door and peer in through the small, barred window. Troll kid, no mask or paint, irises still mostly gray but with a hint of rust creeping through in faint threads... and wow, those are the bittiest, most unthreatening horns Dave's seen since he and Rose spied on their mom's super-secret meeting of secrecy with the Sufferer. But if he's here and walking around free, he's gotta be one of Mindfang's, and that means he's bad news.
"See something you like?" Dave asks, not bothering to wipe up the blood still trickling from his broken nose.
"No, just another worthless, shit-for-brains traitor," the troll kid says, without much attempt at an indoor voice. His mouth twists up in a disgusted sneer. "I don't know why any of you rebels even bother -- it's not like you're going to win against the Lady."
And that right there, that's interesting. Because that's not how Mindfang's people and Anbu talk. That's how the Condesce's personal guards talk, loyal to the point of fanaticism, like she's their personal goddess stepped out of her shrine to guide them. But the Condesce only takes girls. So who's this asshole, and what's his story?
"Yeah, well, you'd think she'd have squished us by now if we're as useless as all that," Dave says. "But you do you, nub-horns, top-notch job with the party line."
The troll snarls, sclera shading toward orange as the colored threads in his irises flash weirdly bright for a second. "My name is Karkat Vantas, not nub-horns, and I hope you die screaming," he snaps, and stomps away.
Dave is pretty sure he's going to get his wish.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-03-07 08:30 am (UTC)Good luck with Palestuck.
[Fic] "For what you have tamed" - Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2016-03-07 11:51 pm (UTC)---------------
As the council drags on, five dozen people (because Narnia has no mechanism, yet, for winnowing representatives to manageable numbers) arguing over whether to allow the descendants of refugees back into the country, and if so how to identify valid claims and what to do about finding them places to live, Tumnus feels a small, warm weight settle against his side in the slightly too-large armchair set back in a corner where he can avoid the disapproving stares of those who collaborated less fully with the Witch.
"Do you mind awfully?" Lucy says, looking up at him from under sleep-weighted eyelids. "Only my chair isn't very soft and you looked lonely."
"I don't mind a bit," Tumnus says, and inches to the right to provide his queen a touch more space. She smiles in thanks, and lets her eyes drift shut.
By the end of the meeting, she is curled up like a kitten on his lap, crown askew and fingers tangled in his fur: a gesture of trust he will never deserve and will equally never refuse, because that would hurt her and he would give his life rather than let her come to harm at his hands again.
RE: [Fic] "For what you have tamed" - Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2016-03-08 12:27 am (UTC)Bless you.
Re: [Fic] "For what you have tamed" - Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2016-03-09 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-03-07 06:58 pm (UTC)For the ficlet prompt meme, I am going to be different and not do my normal Naruto AU prompts (as you're already working on the current chapter of that AU, and I don't want to be too greedy). I'm going to ask for Ginny and Professor McGonagall with prank advice.
[Fic] "Don't Get Caught" - Harry Potter
Date: 2016-03-08 12:41 am (UTC)---------------
"Miss Weasley, I see you're looking better," Professor McGonagall said as she sat neatly beside Ginny's infirmary bed and tucked the skirt of her robes aside.
Ginny shoved herself a few degrees more toward upright and wished she'd had time to brush her hair and teeth after breakfast. "If this is better, I suppose I should be grateful I've forgotten what happened to cause worse, shouldn't I?" she said, her voice still unnervingly hoarse after two days of recovery from an accident she didn't remember. (And nobody else did either, which suggested... a number of unpleasant possibilities, all of which started with the presumption that her accident was very much not accidental.)
"I shouldn't think so," Professor McGonagall said. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I believe we would all prefer to avoid repetition of this incident."
Ginny shrugged, the gesture pulling painfully at the deep bruise that covered most of her left shoulder and ribcage. "Well. I'll do my best to extrapolate."
Professor McGonagall folded her hands and favored Ginny with a stern look. "An excellent plan. Might I also suggest that you write to your family for support? I know that Percy could share some advice on the responsible exercise of power, and I suspect even the twins might dredge up a word or two of wisdom under the circumstances."
She stuck one hand into her robe pocket and pulled out a small item, which she tossed onto Ginny's lap. "Consider it, and don't push yourself too hard."
As the Professor stood and swept out of the infirmary, Ginny turned the Ton-Tongue Toffee over in her hands and began to smile.
Re: [Fic] "Don't Get Caught" - Harry Potter
Date: 2016-03-08 05:21 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Don't Get Caught" - Harry Potter
Date: 2016-03-09 07:45 am (UTC)ETA: Oh, and I'm glad you like the ficlet!