I Dreamt Tonight That I Did Feast With Caesar

Dear Yuletide Writer

mithrigil — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 03:43:32 GMT

Dear Yuletide Writer,

I'm in for a treat, because you're awesome. Also, you're awesome because I'm in for a treat! Thank you in advance for offering one or more of the fandoms I requested, and thank you for writing for me!

I promise, I'm easy. I try to request fandoms that I'd be happy receiving almost anything for, whether you hold to the optional details and prompts or not. If you've got a story you've always wanted to tell, I'm thrilled to read it. Please have fun.

I've been around the Yuletide block--I believe this is my seventh year!--and even if this journal is pretty barren these days, I've got a body of work on AO3 and a sporadically active tumblr if you want to know what I like. I'll also list the things that will always make me happy and the things that won't:

THINGS I LIKE
Deconstruction and Meta
Provocative topics
Writing in the voice of the canon (if there is one) - good pastiche and capturing the tone of the work always make me happy
Footnotes
Contracts and service
Music (always always music!)
Wittiness, highbrow humor, and puns. Bad puns. REALLY bad puns.
Glorification of art and the creative process
Men in dresses
Difficult situations with no right answers, and the people who tend to get into those situations
Ghosts and the insubstantial
Intertextuality
Shenanigans and capers
Clothesporn (which seems to be the theme for this year)
Snark
Priests
Otters (but I'm not sure how otters are going to make it into any of these prompts anyway)

THINGS I DO NOT LIKE
Fluff
Gratuitous happy endings (happy endings themselves are okay, even wonderful!, but I don't want it to feel forced)
Protagonist infallibility / unsympathetic comedy protagonists
Lack of research
Mpreg. Please, just don't, it makes me really uncomfortable.
Ignoring consequences

I'm okay with funny, and I think most of the requests this year lend themselves more to comedy, but I am also 100% okay with dark themes. I don't think of Yuletide as a holiday-specific good-feelings challenge, so if you would rather write pain than humor I totally understand. Play to your strengths!

And as for porn: A++ go right ahead. Love kink, love vanilla, love when characters love each other, love when they don't but still want to bone. I'd rather it be part of the story, though, or at least more about the characters and characterization than tab A slot B.

Now onto the requests, and notes if you want them!

Nana
Oosaki Nana, Komatsu Nana

I know I am not alone in screaming NOW KISS every time both Nanas appear on screen. I have to wonder if anyone else in-story shares my frustration.

Please lay the Yazawa-isms on thick, bust up that fourth wall, and somehow get our unlucky sevens to add up to 15.

If you want to go angsty, or don't want to write both of them, I am also down for fic about Nana O's issues of ambition/pride versus her desire to be loved, or something about Hachi being more than just a Team Pet to the Black Stones. Misato's not on the requested characters list, but I adore her too and I think she'd work well in any of these scenarios.

Anime, movie, and manga canon are all fine to spring off from for this, I am familiar with all three timelines.

Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Jean Tannen, Locke Lamora, Father Chains

Locke is a Priest of the Nameless Thirteenth, Jean (technically) an adherent of Aza Guilla. I would love to see a string of Clerical Shenanigans. Defrocking optional.

Teenage Bastards,
Teenage Bastards,
In the Priesthood,
Teenage Teenage Teenage Teenage Bastards!

I am fine with or without slash--and I am definitely fine with Locke/Sabetha, whether there is also Locke/Jean or not. Please no twincest if you do feature Calo and Galdo as well.

DRAMAtical Murder
Toue, Sei

Worldbuilding fic! Platinum Jail is rather aptly named. I want to see the gleaming dystopia of it all, the horrible experiments, the gradual retreat of Sei into his fragmented head and Toue's part in it.

...or you could just write the creepy, wrong, exploitative porn. I'm not stopping you. Neither is Usui, for that matter.

Porque no los dos?

Catherine Called Birdy - Karen Cushman
Catherine, Stephen

I want the reasonably-happy ever after. I'd love to see Catherine adjusting to affianced and then married life with the Son of Shaggybeard, through diary entries if possible.

If you're not down for that, I sure wouldn't mind seeing Stephen, Called Scruffy or something like that. I'm sure he's got a diary of his own.

I have a thing for the long, slow awkward of a developing relationship. Don't shy away from giving them problems, especially the ones that they'd realistically face as a new castle lord and a teenage bride, but in the spirit of the book I really hope it turns out mostly okay.

The Fox - Ylvis (Music Video)
Any

Take it seriously. Go noir, go eldritch horror, hell you can take it to Soylent Green if you want to. I want the question of what the fox says to be truly maddening.

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Yuletide Reveal~

mithrigil — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 23:18:26 GMT

Since two people guessed right (and I owe them fic now!) I'll do these in the same order.

BRONZE TIER
Fics 1 and 2: Only fics in their fandom. I wrote both. If you follow me on tumblr you probably know what the canon is.

Commander of the Vanguard
Sengoku Basara
Mitsunari is more valuable to the Toyotomi army than he knows.

Engaged in His Employment
Sengoku Basara
Toyotomi Hideyoshi has burned all affection, all attachment, all weakness from his life. He has no friends, only allies and subordinates. He has no family. He takes no women or boys to bed. He killed his wife to prove his strength.

He has not killed Hanbei.a

SILVER TIER
Fics 3 and 4: Also in the same fandom, with some character overlap. Also somewhat predictable given my recent fannish history.

A House of Dust and Darkness
Fate/Zero (and Fate/Stay Night)
After his brush with the Grail, Gilgamesh adjusts to life in the basement of the Fuyuki Church. The priest is not as accommodating as the King of Heroes deserves.

If Thy Hand Offend Thee
Fate/Zero (and Fate/Stay Night)
“Father,” the boy asks, “am I bad?”

“No,” Risei answers without missing a beat, and holds Kirei in his arms, pillow and all. “Never. You did something bad, but bad isn’t something you are. You’re beautiful and good and God loves you, and so do I.”

GOLD TIER
Fic 5: Not a fandom I have written in before, but one I have written about more than once. Nevertheless, the subject matter is something you would expect from me, if somewhat parodic.

Equus malus
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
He rides across the nation, the Thoroughbred of Sin.
He fights for subjugation, and of course he'll win.

(Of course.)

PLATINUM TIER
Fic 6: A fandom I have neither written in nor talked about before, and frankly one I don't think most people would immediately associate me with. But the canon is part of, well, the canon, of its source medium, by a creator universally respected, and deals with cultural themes and mythology that I'm really interested in.

The Age of Not-Believing
Spirited Away
Ten years after the bathhouse, Chihiro spends Golden Week vacationing with her real-world friends, but can't help keeping an eye out for some from the other side.

Yuletide Guessing Game!

mithrigil — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 05:11:47 GMT

So I wrote six fics this year! But some are more predictable-to-me than others, so I thought it might be time for another guessing game. If you're the first to guess right, I'll write you something, complexity dependent on just which one you guess!

The following people are not allowed to play: Puel, Meg, and Gil, because each of them betaed at least one of these, nor Dry, because I told him pretty much everything.

BRONZE TIER

Fics 1 and 2: Only fics in their fandom. I wrote both. If you follow me on tumblr you probably know what the canon is.

SILVER TIER

Fics 3 and 4: Also in the same fandom, with some character overlap. Also somewhat predictable given my recent fannish history.

GOLD TIER

Fic 5: Not a fandom I have written in before, but one I have written about more than once. Nevertheless, the subject matter is something you would expect from me, if somewhat parodic.

PLATINUM TIER

Fic 6: A fandom I have neither written in nor talked about before, and frankly one I don't think most people would immediately associate me with. But the canon is part of, well, the canon, of its source medium, by a creator universally respected, and deals with cultural themes and mythology that I'm really interested in.

Have at it!

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Ye Newe Yuletide Recse Poste

mithrigil — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 00:26:57 GMT

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This holiday has been busy as fuck (and also inclement), but neither rain nor sleet nor in-laws nor Megabus shall keep me from reccing the stories I enjoyed the most! A lot of the super-popular ones are absent from this list, and I'll admit that this year Puel and I have kind of an agenda for promoting anime and video-game fandoms, which have gone largely unrecced thus far, but this is a pretty comprehensive list of the things I have read and enjoyed so far! My gifts are asterixed, and mixed in with the recs because frankly they're so awesome I would rec them even if I hadn't received them!

Ten recs in the following fandoms: Erekos, Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night, Juuni Kokki (Twelve Kingdoms), Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, Moses und Aron, The Muppet Show, Stick It.

Erekos (A.M. Tuomala)

**Kalathykoi, in which Loukaros fucks with Erlen. This was a treat for me, and exactly what I wanted, and written in the beautifully lyrical language of the gods in this canon. And of course then Erlen gets fried. Best read when it's not raining. After all, Loukaros never misses save by choice.

What Can't Be Helped, in which no, the kitten is not saved from the tree, and it is gut-wrenching. Oh, Achane and Shabane, I feel both of your pain, so acutely. This reads like a missing anecdote from an early chapter of the book, seriously. GOOD PASTICHE. Best read with someone nearby to hold your hand afterward. And if you have a sister, call her.

Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night

Far-Distant Shores, in which Saber and Irisviel talk about Guinivere, FINALLY, in about the only missed opportunity for Saber in Fate/Zero. Seriously, that canon is packed tight, but this author wrote something that Urobuchi neglected--Kiritsugu is having Saber's dreams, and the parallels of his circumstances to Saber's is making him precisely as uncomfortable as he deserves. Also Saber and Iri are such wonderful company for one another and that shines through beautifully here. Best read with a little Tennyson and an eye for symbolism.

A Practical Application of Low Thaumaturgy On Fabrics, in which Waver and Rider make him some pants. Because Iskander the Fucking Fabulous, unlike Gondor, needs pants. Best read without...oh you get the idea.

Juuni Kokki (Twelve Kingdoms)

Left the Nest, in which Enki brings Rakushun's mother to En. I love it when peripheral characters who have a lot to say to each other but don't talk in-canon are measured against each other in fic, and I love the quiet, even, pastoral tone of this encounter. That's not to say it's fluff, because it's more than that: it's a reminder that the affairs of the Twelve Kingdoms don't just affect the royals and their Kirin, but the concerns of the common people are just as worthy of consideration, and Enki is the perfect courier for that particular mission because of his past. Best read with a nice juicy peach somewhere to hand.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

The City of Witches, in which OH HOMURA SWEETIE. Her devotion is so real in this fic, and so almost-ancient for how many times has it been, and the language surrounding it is beautiful. The weight of being the survivor, the rememberer, is palpable here, and the author captured both the despair and hope of the canon. Best read with a little love in your heart.

gaudium in veritate, in which Witches. Some evil witches. Which is ridiculous, 'cause Kyuubey is a dickbag and he preys on prepubescent girls and they're just in a special time of life which isn't evil really I'll be over here. Best read with SPOILERS.

Moses und Aron (Schoenberg)

Interactive Complexity as Indigenous to Human Systems, in which the most pretentious man in the world of modern music basically wrote Bible fanfic instead. I would be a bad composer if I didn't rec this. Seriously, they'd take away my badge and my baton or something. Like the author said in the tags, I'm not even sure if knowing canon will help, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S A SCHOENBERG COFFEESHOP AU. Best read atonally.

The Muppet Show

**The Muppet Show Yuletide 2012 Reunion!, in which The Muppets Take Multimedia. This was my giftfic and I am so, so fucking thrilled with it, you have no idea. It has sketch comedy and classic episode riffs and special guest stars and a really heartwarming frame story and is just what I hoped for from that prompt. Read it and be nostalgic. Read it and be happy. Just read it. But watch out for Rickrolls.

Stick It

The Genesis of Cool, in which Frank and Poot are Frank and Poot. They're such dorky hosers that I just want to take them home and feed them Mountain Dew until they crash in a pile of unwashed exxxtreme bikers and zany schemes. Teenage boys are occasionally adorable. Best read with appreciation therein.

Also, if you want to rec me something (especially in a game or anime fandom I might have overlooked), feel free to do so in the comments! I might make a second post, or forward them on to Puel for hers if she'd like them too!

Dear Yuletide Author:

mithrigil — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:07:28 GMT

You kick ass. You are boss like a boss thing. Thanks in advance for offering one of the fandoms I requested, because let's face it, mine are all over the place, and just by virtue of sharing one of these with me enough to offer it for the challenge you rule.

I tried to request fandoms in which I'd be happy receiving stories starring the characters you want to write most. Feel free to take my detail requests as guidelines instead--the optional details are definitely optional! But there are some things I definitely love, and some I definitely don't.

THINGS I LIKE
Deconstruction and Meta
Provocative topics
Writing in the voice of the canon (if there is one) - good pastiche and capturing the tone of the work always make me happy
Footnotes
Contracts and service
Music (always always music!)
Wittiness, highbrow humor, and puns. Bad puns. REALLY bad puns.
Glorification of art and the creative process
Men in dresses (also male-identified Muppets in dresses) (also Miss Piggy in dandy boy-drag)
Difficult situations with no right answers, and the people who tend to get into those situations
Ghosts and the insubstantial
Intertextuality
Shenanigans and capers
Making fun of the 1980s and 1990s (which is potentially applicable to 3 out of my 4 requests this year, I think!)

THINGS I DO NOT LIKE
Fluff
Gratuitous happy endings (happy endings themselves are okay, even wonderful!, but I don't want it to feel forced)
Protagonist infallibility / unsympathetic comedy protagonists
Lack of research
Mpreg. Please, just don't, it makes me really uncomfortable.
Ignoring consequences

I'm okay with funny, but also okay with dark themes, monsters and gods and angst and fear. I don't think of Yuletide as a holiday-specific good-feelings challenge, so if you would rather write pain than comedy I totally understand. But most of these fandoms could go in either direction, so please, play to your strengths and your desires!

As for porn. Porn is wonderful for any request but the Muppets: though the idea of Sam the Eagle getting caught watching Meet the Feebles on sextube is kind of awesome, that shit gave me nightmares in college and I'd rather keep any potential puppet sex to a joke. Every other request is fair game for sex and I'll talk a little more about that below. But in all cases I would much rather have the sex be part of the plot, if it's there at all.

Now onto the individual requests, and more notes if you want them!

Fate/Stay Night and Related Fandoms
Archer, Emiya Shirou. Past Me is an idiot. Future Me is an asshole.

Spoiler fic! Choose any routes of the game you like for event canon. We know how little Shirou understands, but what does Archer see, and when does he let it show?

I have played the visual novels and not really paid attention to the anime version, and I also love Fate/Zero and its contributions to the backstory. If you don't want to write the above request, something about the Fourth and Fifth Grail Wars would also be badass and fun, maybe Saber comparing them, or Archer or Shirou piecing the old story together.

Not gonna lie, I think Archer/Rin is about the hottest thing Nasu came up with outside of the basement of the Fuyuki Church. I'm also totally cool with Archer/Shirou as long as the implications are dealt with, and Rin/Shirou, and Kirei being a rat bastard with a bad haircut. If you bring Saber into things, I would prefer she be the badass King we all know her to be. Ditto for Gil. Mm, two Archers. Two Archers with bassackward definitions of heroism. That's another fic I'd be totally happy with if the Spoiler above isn't working for you.

Erekos - A.M. Tuomala
Loukaros. The gods walk among us. Loukaros, more than any other, meddles in our affairs. He wrecks our harvest, slays our soldiers, and descends from the mountaintop to sow the seeds of war.

I want to see the gods as the common people see them, Loukaros in particular. A fable or a fairy-tale, such as they are in Erekos. Was there ever any instance in Erekos, past or present, where the Gods had to piece someone out and fight for his or her fate, Once On This Island style?

Gods. Ghosts. Meddlesome deities. Inhuman patterns of thought. I loved the language of this world and the culture around telling stories, and I would just plain love to see more of it. In a fandom this small and this new, I think of this more as a prompt than a request, and honestly I would just be happy to see Loukaros fuck with people, however you think they deserve.

Especially Erlen. Loukaros can fuck with Erlen forever.

Pet Shop of Horrors
Count D, Leon Orcot. Casefic! I would love a story that emphasizes the magical realism and horror of the earliest chapters of the series. Tell the story you've always wanted to tell about the pet you never got to see sold! And it's always best to have Leon just out of reach of the answers.

If you're not interested in casefic, please kindly get Leon and D inebriated and talking about philosophy, and by that I mean. D's inhumanness (but not quite inhumanity) and Leon's compassion are so wonderfully at odds that I could read them playing off each other for hours. Trashy 80s shirts and wonky LA geography entirely optional.

From the tone of the request, yes, I am okay with D/Leon, requited or un-, anatomically human or un-, and if you end up picking a sensual creature that gets into relations with its owner that is also totally fine. Please keep the monster in humanoid form throughout your descriptions, though.

Some monsters and creatures that it might be fun to bring in...

The Muppets - All Media Types
Muppets and Memes! The Muppets have been having something of a second life of late, mostly on the Internet, and surely they've encountered some of the phenomena that make the Internet such a wonderful, magical place. Between appearances on the Daily Show and Call Me Maybe and OK GO, the Muppets have got to find some time here and there to socialize on social media, and I'd love to see some sketch-style comedy about the wank on Miss Piggy's fashion Tumblr, or Gonzo's attempts to get trending on Twitter with his latest YouTube stunt, or suchlike. Special Internet Guests! Statler and Waldorf being trolls as usual! Anything fun would be wonderful.

...this rather speaks for itself, doesn't it.

Wait, no. Because my no-longer-secret desire for this fic is for there to be at least one reference to Todrick Hall.

How to find these canons

If you're coming at this without having already played the visual novel of Fate/Stay Night, you're probably shit out of luck, and I apologize. You can torrent the translated patch version fairly easily, but it's got about as much text as LotR and the runtime of all three extended editions of the films at least. The anime is great for a brush-up or a taste but Studio Deen's quality is...dubious. But if highly recommend the VN, though perhaps not as your backup choice if you get assigned to me because of sheer scope.

Erekos, however, is readily available direct from the publisher and also an absorbing read. I finished it for the first time in about three days on my commute. Even if you don't end up writing for it I hope you'll check it out, especially if you like stories about stories.

Pet Shop of Horrors is ten volumes of manga, translated (though not very well in the first couple of volumes, thank you Tokyopop), and available in some libraries, and there are almost definitely scans online. There's also a 4-episode OVA that is available for free on YouTube, and if you choose to write casefic instead of D/Leon it's very easy to write based on just the OVA.

And The Muppets are everywhere.

Once again, Yuletide Author, you are amazing, and thank you so much! I hope you write something that you enjoy, and have a great holiday season!

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Two Suikothings!

mithrigil — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:18:15 GMT

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Sorry for the radio silence: I have had ridiculous(ly good) real world concerns for the past couple of weeks, and will continue to. But I thought the Suikoden fans on my flist would appreciate knowing about two new fics:

A Hasty Proposition, in which Flik names his sword and tells Odessa they're married now, with predictably awkward results.

And Grasping At Shadows by my beloved puella_nerdii, in which Jowy Atreides makes poor life choices.

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The Bastard Tea Party, Round Four: A Storm of Saucers

mithrigil — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:27:07 GMT

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Ahahaha um. It's been a while since I've had enough other-people's bastards in the tank to get a party started. So! In the grand tradition of the three previous installments, let the fourth Bastard Tea Party begin!

Step One: Select one or two of the following characters:
Haymitch Abernathy -- The Hunger Games.
Kirei Kotomine -- Fate/Zero. (And requisite Archer, who I expect will get along with Yuber like peanut butter and chocolate.)
Tyrion Lannister -- A Game of Thrones. For GRRM-is-against-fanfic purposes, let this be considered TV-Tyrion.
Shu -- Suikoden II.
Albert Silverberg -- Suikoden III. (Yuber is in the hall, as usual.)
Vayne Solidor -- Final Fantasy XII. (Gabranth is in the hall, also as usual.)

Step Two: Provide a prompt. One-word, short sentence, "Haymitch and Tyrion have a pun war", all are good. It's also totally cool to ask for characters more than once as long as you change the prompt or the topic.

Step Three: I write a ficbit or scriptbit. (Because the Internet is rather sporadic these days, I may post the things I write in bulk, so prompt away but immediacy may not happen.)

LET THE PARTY BEGIN~

Also the "tea" part of "tea party" may have a loose definition this time around, given the company...

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Amusing anecdotes.

mithrigil — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:01:23 GMT

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Years ago, I wrote a Futch/Sasarai epistolary epic and basically crack-shipped it.

Now, Puel and I are mucking around with Futch/Luc instead.

GO FIGURE.

It's actually really cute and they have a lot to say to each other and and and.

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Willow Bark

mithrigil — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:42:55 GMT

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It's been about a year since I wrote this, I think it's totally safe to de-anon now. And considering I'm seeing the movie tomorrow, I kind of want to get this out there before the potential SQUEE.

Title: Willow Bark
Author: Mithrigil
Characters: The eventual Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen, Haymitch Abernathy, and others.
Rating: PG-13, aftereffects of violence.
Words: 2900
Spoilers: None, all backstory.

Summary: Garrett Everdeen has been coming to Ilona Teller’s house for years, selling herbs and flowers at her back door. But the day he finally makes it into her house, it’s not by his choice.

Willow Bark

Garrett Everdeen is naked on Ilona’s kitchen table.

It’s not supposed to be the first thing she notices, considering his back is a mess of tangled skin and blood and raw muscle and the rest of him seems to spill out of that, a knot of twitching limbs and raw white teeth. His eyes are screwed shut as if someone sewed them down and his long black braid hangs with strips of his own flesh. But no, the first thing Ilona notices is that he’s Garret Everdeen, and he’s naked, and he’s on her kitchen table, and everything else hits her all at once like a slap to the face.

It’s nothing compared with what he feels, and she knows it.

“We’ll be lucky if the Peacekeepers don’t take my license for this,” Ilona’s father says, heating water on the stove. “Take over,” he commands, and Ilona steps into her father’s place over the saucepan. He hasn’t added the iodine yet, so she measures it out, lets the steam wash over her cheeks and eyelashes. Her hair slips into her face, so she makes sure to tie it back.

Soon enough, her father starts passing her scalpels and tools and bottles to sterilize, and she drops them into the water one at a time, and the tongs for good measure. She doesn’t ask her father any questions about what went on, and doesn’t dare ask Garrett, since even if he could respond it probably shouldn’t be to her.

She takes the knives out with the tongs, one by one, and sets them on a towel to dry. Her father has finished mixing up a poultice and sets it on the stove to warm, then goes around to the front of the table and kneels to Garret’s level. “Still conscious?”

“Yeah,” Garret says, “sorry,” and though it’s barely a whisper Ilona can still hear it in the same place his songs reach. All in the breathing, he told someone once, when Ilona wasn’t supposed to be listening. If you sing from the same place you breathe, they can hear you wherever you want to be heard, and some places you don’t.

“Don’t apologize to me for staying awake,” Ilona’s father says, and gently pats Garrett on the arm as he stands up. “The question is, do you want to?”

“Not sure it matters.” How Garrett can laugh at a time like this, Ilona doesn’t know. “If the pain hasn’t—ah—knocked me out by now, I don’t think it will.”

Ilona’s father sighs. “You haven’t felt the real pain yet.”

“Then I probably want something to hold it off. This is bad enough.”

Ilona pours the sterilizing water down the sink, then sets the saucepan aside to cool. She doesn’t wait to be asked, just heads out of the kitchen and through the house to the storefront. Someone’ll have to pay for it, but there’s probably some morphling they haven’t sold yet—

“Miss Teller,” one of the Peacekeepers in the doorway says, tipping his helmet. The other stands in the door, gun across his chest. “Don’t worry, you didn’t keep us waiting long.”

“I didn’t know you were here, sir,” she says.

“We’ll talk to the head, get you a bell for your door.” He leans on the countertop, looks up at her with his jewel-bright Capitol eyes. She wonders if he’s one of the ones who stood guard at the whipping, if that’s Garrett’s blood staining his crisp white shoes. He didn’t wipe his feet on the way in. Peacekeepers never do. “Right now, though, I’m sorry, but we’re just making sure; there’s a trail of blood leading straight to your back door. You aren’t treating any criminals in here, are you?”

Ilona glowers. “What if we are, sir?”

“Well, that’s the criminal’s business, so long as he’s already had his sentence done. But that means he has to pay for it. And considering this is a business and all—”

“He’ll pay,” Ilona says. “He’ll be back at the mines soon as he can, and we’ll make him pay, if you’re so concerned.”

“That’s good to know. But in the meantime, I’ve got some business to do here too. There’s a recall order from the Capitol. You didn’t get any morphling in with the last shipment, did you?”

“We did,” she answers, “but that’s all we’ve got.”

“Hand it over, then. I’ll be taking that back to the Head until we’ve got further orders. And I’ll need a list of the people you’ve sold it to since you got that shipment in, just to make sure no one’s using anything that’ll kill ‘em. Got that?”

The recall order is, to put it bluntly, a load of manure, but Ilona gets out the register all the same. The Peacekeeper looks over her shoulder as she copies down the list, the three or four people in the district who can afford to buy morphling and the amount they allotted to the emergency kits at the mines. Once that’s done, she tells him to sit tight, but he follows her to the locked cabinet. She wishes she could palm coins like some of the kids at school, or that she was wearing long sleeves, or anything, but the Peacekeeper counts each bottle with his eyes and she hands every single one of them over.

“Thanks,” he says, like it was a favor and not an order. “We’ll return or replace them soon as we can. Take care, Miss Teller.”

“Take care,” she repeats, no matter how much she’d rather tell him to go hang himself in the square, or at least that the door would hit him on the way out. It doesn’t.

Ilona takes a deep breath, and grabs a bottle of the strongest painkillers they have, not that they’ll ever be enough.

She tries not to walk into the kitchen with her figurative tail between her legs, but it’s hard to keep her head high after that. “They confiscated our morphling,” she says, before her father can ask. “Is this enough for now?”

Garrett laughs between his teeth, then backs out a sharp cry as Ilona’s father cuts through a hanging strip of his skin, too thin to replace. “Anything’s fine,” he says, and Ilona would swear he is trying to smile at her, but she’s seen plenty of people delirious with pain smile almost like that, and she tries not to read into it.

“Let me professionally disagree,” Ilona’s father says, setting a larger patch of skin back into place and cleaning under and around it. “They’re fine for a last resort. Do you think you can hold on a little longer?”

“I don’t have much of a choice.”

“Then Ilona, I need you to go to the Victor’s Village.”

She blinks. “What’s in the Victor’s Village?”

“Haymitch,” her father and Garrett answer at the same time, though her father’s is just an answer and Garrett’s is more stilted almost-laughter. Her father goes on, “He might have something Persil left behind, and even if he doesn’t have any morphling he’ll at least have something to knock Garrett out.”

That’s fair, Ilona thinks. “Okay,” she says, and grabs her jacket from the board by the back door. She has long since learned never to ask, are you sure you don’t need me here? It wastes time.

The trek from the center of town to the Victor’s Village is shorter than it would be from any other part of the district, but still far enough that Ilona thinks the victors can, or could, pretend they weren’t here. It’s an hour each way. Pine needles litter the side of the path, but no cones yet, and Ilona knows Garrett would have something to say about it if he were here. She tries not to think about the state of his back and the way he’s trying to smile, but dismissing the sound of his voice in her ears is damn near impossible. Just the way he counts out what he’s brought her that day: Marigolds and willow bark today, just this past Sunday, I’m sorry I found the marigolds so late in the season. He was probably out in the meadow getting the rest of them today when the Peacekeepers caught him.

To think, they’ll flog a man half to death for gathering flowers.

Garrett doesn’t just forage, and everyone knows it. But if the Peacekeepers found one of his hollow logs or snares or caught him with game, they haven’t said anything.

All the lights in Haymitch’s house are on, except the ones on the porch, so the windows stand out like a close cluster of stars. Ilona slows down on her way over, careful of the broken glass strewn all over his lawn. But there’s no sense in dallying, and less in holding her breath, so she knocks on the door loud enough to wake the dead.

For all of a minute Ilona is afraid she’s going to have to return empty-handed, but then there’s a clatter and a shout and a few choice filthy slurs from inside. Ilona stands back from the door, careful not to put her hands behind her back.

Haymitch used to be one of the most handsome boys at school. Then the Quarter Quell happened, and for the first six months after no one could say a bad word about him. For one thing, after his mother and brother died, that awful hardness in his eyes had burned away, and the rest of him grew up as if grief was a kind of benchmark, a last step to make a good-looking man too beautiful to touch. Ilona remembers she and Columbine Donner used to talk about who they’d want to fool around with, of all the men in town, and Columbine didn’t have much shame about saying she wouldn’t mind the privilege. Ilona understood, then. She doesn’t now, not with the way Haymitch’s ribs spear out of his chest and his skin yellows at the thinnest places, and he smells like sweat and sex instead of motor oil and coal like he used to.

He answers the door with one arm on the jamb like he can’t stand up otherwise. He’s not wearing a shirt, and Ilona scrunches up her nose and tries not to think about the stench. “And what d’you want?”

“They flogged Garrett Everdeen in the square today,” she says. “And they confiscated our morphling.”

“Then they obviously want him to suffer,” he snaps back.

“Well, do you?”

He glares at her, through the scraggly mess of his hair. She remembers he killed seven kids on television, most of them younger than Ilona is now.

She doesn’t care. “Do you?” she asks again.

His hand slides down from the doorjamb, curls into a loose fist at his side. “Just give me a minute,” he says, a growl on the edge of his voice as he turns away. “Come in if you want.”

“I don’t,” she says, “but thank you.”

He leaves the door open, but she turns away, a hand over her mouth now that he’s not looking. There’s more of a clatter from inside, and she shuts her eyes and tries not to think about just how much she’ll have to sterilize whatever bottle Haymitch comes up with. He comes to the door again and coughs, once and hard, and holds out two bottles, one large and one small. The alcohol is pretty obvious, and not the white liquor Ilona has seen some people bring back from the Hob. The smaller bottle is full of pills.

“Get your dad to verify these,” Haymitch says. “And if they’re crap, Garret can have this with my goddamn blessing,” he adds, shaking the bottle once, but nothing sloshes. It’s unopened.

Ilona nods. “Thank you.”

“You want me to come down there with you?”

“No, it’s fine,” she says, but gives it a second thought. “Come tomorrow, though, that way you won’t bother my dad. We’re gonna put Garrett up for a while.” She thinks of adding, shower first, but that’s none to polite to say to someone who’s sticking his neck out for you.

He nods and says he will, then scraps a hand through his hair. “Well, if you ain’t waiting for me, I think he’d appreciate it if you ran.”

She takes a deep breath, or as deep of one as she can around this house, and turns tail for home.

Her father is already done by the time she makes it back. Only Garrett is in the kitchen, stretched out on the table, still as the furniture. He might be asleep, so she shuts the door quietly, braces it on her palm so the latch doesn’t click. And that’s good of her, since even if Garrett might not be asleep, her father definitely is, on his chair in the corner of the next room.

The overhead light shines down on Garrett’s back, a mass of poultice and stitchwork and iodine. It’s probably not proper to say, but the crushed herbs and honey actually bring out the color of what healthy skin is left, and now that the blood is gone he’s so clean he shines. Ilona’s breath stalls in her throat, and she thinks if it never came out she wouldn’t mind.

“Welcome back,” he murmurs, turns his head to the side and looks up at her through his eyelashes. “Sorry to trouble you.”

“It’s never a trouble,” she says.

“Well, not for you.” His laughter shakes his shoulders, and she can see the corners of his mouth strain when the pain makes that laugh turn into a hiss. “I’ve gone through less to get to your door.”

A flush creeps up her cheeks. “Haymitch came through,” she says, and shakes the bottle of pills. “Though I don’t know what these are.”

“You don’t have to wake your dad,” Garrett says. “The worst is probably over, he said so.”

She nods, and leaves the pills on the counter, but goes for the corkscrew and opens the liquor. “He sent this too.”

“Then I guess I owe him almost as much as you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Your dad said I could stay here until I can get out. Of course I owe you.”

“No, really, Garrett—” She cuts herself off, and sets down a glass. “You can’t owe me for something I want to give.”

He doesn’t say a thing, and the sound of alcohol flowing into the glass echoes through an almost empty room. Ilona raises the glass to her own lips to take a sip of it—it’s vile, but strong, and should at least help Garrett sleep, until her father wakes up and gets to work again.

She pulls up one of the kitchen chairs, and steadies a hand on Garrett’s upper arm where the whip didn’t quite get him. “Need help lifting?”

“Just tilt it for me,” he says, and manages to stretch his lips to the glass. He takes a slow breath, the way he does when he sings, and she tips back the glass, slow enough that nothing will splash if it makes him cough. He does, halfway down, but he just wets his lips and says it’s fine, go on.

There’s a thin layer of sweat on his arm, creeping toward the poulticed cuts. She puts the glass down once he’s done, and wipes the streak away.

“Why do you go out there?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

“So many reasons,” he says, his voice a bit raw from the liquor, but soft, and resonant, and lovely like sleep. “I have to feed my mother,” he starts, “and I can’t stand the fence. I never could. But mostly...well. Someone has to bring you and your dad what you need.”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Ilona whispers, and covers her eye with the towel. There might be something in it.

He sighs, and settles closer to the table. “But I want it to be.”

Garrett Everdeen is naked on Ilona’s kitchen table. He’s in much better shape than he was when she first saw him like that, with his wounds cleaned and his needs met and a smile on his lips that isn’t all pain. But beyond setting his long braid off to the side, Ilona’s father hadn’t cleaned it, and there are still streaks of dried blood, filtering to brown amid the black.

Ilona gets up from her chair, and finds her schoolbag on the pegboard near the back door. She rifles through it for a hairbrush and sits back down, tilting Garrett’s head so that his hair spills into her lap, and he lets her without a word. She undoes the braid, piece by piece, and washes the blood away with water from the sink, and brushes it until he falls asleep.

* * *

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Unicorn Records - an exercise in suikocrack

mithrigil — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:54:37 GMT

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So one day, Puel and I were tossing headcanon around, you know, like we do, and I made a comment about how Luca Blight probably has a fine-looking pair of hands. Like, classical-guitarist level of fine-looking hands, long fingers, strong fingernails. Puel misheard the "classical" part of classical guitarist and envisaged Luca Blight holding an axe up over his head and yelling THIS IS THE POWER OF ROCK!!!!!!! as he smashed the poor instrument down upon the nearest amplifier.

Then this happened, because apparently if you turn Suikoden II into a boyband AU, it kind of works.

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Once upon a time, in a recording industry near and dear to our hearts, there was a major company called Jowston Records. The recent financial crisis and differences of opinion as to the state of the industry fragmented Jowston Records into several genre-specific imprints. Highland Records, a rival company, has been exploiting these fissures in the hopes of taking Jowston Records down completely and dominating the scene. But Highland Records is involved in some pretty shady shit, and that corruption has spread down from the executives to the bands themselves.

One of the most popular bands on the Highland Records label, a power metal band (with a sizable mainstream following) called The White Wolves, is in the middle of its second North American tour. Two unfortunate roadies and amateur artists witness lead singer and guitarist Luca Blight involved in an incident of arson, possibly to cover up a drug-related murder, and flee before they’re caught at the scene. This incident is covered up in the press, and these boys are outraged. They run into an indie duo, Blue Lightning and the Bear, who bring them on board as they search for ways to save Jowston from what looks like an inevitable buyout from Highland.

But one boy decides to expose Highland Records’ corruption by promoting the Jowston label, and the other decides to take Highland down from the inside...

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Highland Records

THE MUSICIANS

Luca Blight: Lead guitarist, singer, and composer of The White Wolves. A surprisingly complex and talented musician, but nevertheless has a habit of smashing his guitars at the end of every performance. Calls the band’s followers “pigs,” because they’re too smart to be sheep, but still pigs. (Trent Reznor has not yet sued.) Also, Luca is decidedly neck-deep in Highland Records’ drug trade. His management team and handlers (the latter don’t tend to last long, admittedly) cast him as a a classic bad boy rocker and the press eats it up; “violent psychopath” is probably more accurate, but hey, the music’s good. Has an extremely troubled relationship with his father, to put it mildly.

Culgan: Rhythm guitarist of The White Wolves. Strong, taciturn type, which is mostly him playing it up for the audience. Actually has one of the driest senses of humor in the country and a certificate to prove it.

Seed: Drummer of The White Wolves. Brash, coarse, and loudmouthed, which is not just him playing it up for the audience. At first glance he’s the type to act first and think later, but there’s a deeper game he’s playing: he and Culgan aren’t thrilled with the direction Luca Blight’s taking Highland Records in, and have quietly started scouting around for alternatives...

Solon Jhee: (Former) Bassist of The White Wolves. Kind of a dick. Jowy replaces him.

Jowy Atreides: Former roadie for The White Wolves, now their bassist. Remember those two boys who witnessed the arson incident? Jowy’s one of them. He’s just as determined to see the downfall of Highland Records’ current regime as Riou is, but he’s going about it in a different way. And by “different,” we mean he steals and leaks sensitive information about the former Jowston Records’ state and finances, which forces Anabelle to resign in disgrace. It gives him the in he needed at Highland, though, and since Luca’s in need of a new bassist after the other one got locked up for assault, Jowy finds his services in demand again. Once he’s there, he realizes just how deep the corruption at the heart of Highland goes -- and he might have to do more than destroy Luca Blight to get rid of it. Life was a lot simpler when he and Riou and Nanami were in an amateur garage-band back home. Too bad Jowy screwed the pooch on that one.

Jillia Blight: A classically-trained mezzo-soprano. Because of her company connections, she takes some post-production and backup singing gigs with a few of the Highland bands to pay the bills when she isn’t pursuing her operatic career. Jillia is Luca’s half-sister, but otherwise completely unaffiliated with The White Wolves (for now, dun dun dun!).

OFFSTAGE

Agares Blight: CEO of Highland Records and Luca Blight’s father, god help him.

Leon Silverberg: Current manager of The White Wolves. Luca likes Leon’s apparent laissez-faire. It’s not that laissez. Leon is a calculating sonofabitch who picks his battles carefully and is more committed to the music industry than to any individual band. Also, he’s a shareholder in Highland Records and doesn’t want it to go completely to pot.

Yuber: ...as slowly turns the grinding wheel in the court of the Crimson King~...

Lucia: Security coordinator for Highland Records. Nothing gets past her. Nothing.

Han Cunningham: A retired performer from the golden age of Highland Records, now one of its biggest investors.

Pilika: A little girl who also witnessed the arson incident, and has been selectively mute since then. Jowy has taken responsibility for her, since he can’t find her parents anywhere. She’s the only family he has now that his own’s kicked him out, and he’d do anything to keep her safe.

~~Jowston~~ Unicorn Records

THE MUSICIANS

Riou Genkaku: The adopted son of recently-deceased taiko drummer Genkaku. He might be a vocalist, but he’s never sought the spotlight -- Nanami and Jowy had that more than covered when the three of them were growing up. Now, though, Shu’s decided that Riou is going to be the face of the renamed-and-relaunched Unicorn Records, and for the first time, all eyes are on him. Under Shu’s tutelage and with support from the rest of the label, he’s starting to come out of his shell, but is the persona they’re cultivating for him really who he wants to be seen as? On the other hand, the “pretty sensitive young man recovering from heartbreak” thing is selling like crazy, and he wants to turn Unicorn Records into a force that can stand up to -- and stop -- Highland’s machinations.
As far as his sound goes, think a male version of Adele. Pretty similar content, too.

Riou’s backing band switches up occasionally, but these folks are usually in it:

Nanami Genkaku Riou’s big sister and Genkaku’s daughter, also by adoption. She inherited her drumming skill from her adopted father, but has a decidedly more rock bent. She and Riou might not be related by blood, but he’s her family and she’ll stick with him even if his career trajectory -- and the sacrifices he has to make for commercial success -- worries and infuriates her. She wishes it could just be about the music again, not the image or the demographics or the sales, but she’s not drumming in the garage with Riou and Jowy anymore, however much she wants to be. Still, she keeps up a cheerful front for her brother’s sake -- at the expense of her own well-being.

Luc: Pissy prodigy pianist, and usually handles keyboards in Riou’s backing band. Was part of a novelty act under Harmonia Entertainment, but left that shit behind, thank you very much, and his twin brother the trained violin monkey can do whatever the fuck he likes with his career. Luc studies with internationally acclaimed concert pianist Leknaat (and he’ll have you know it). He doesn’t mind performing, and he doesn’t mind money, but he does mind being paraded around like some kind of sideshow freak.

Clive: Riou’s bassist. Short, blond, and surly. The kind of guy that gets issued ASBOs, or would if he still lived in the United Kingdom. Apparently signed on with Unicorn to track down a woman he’s been chasing after for years, but he’s pretty close-mouthed on the subject. And on most subjects, really. I hear he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Eilie: Formerly associated with Jowston’s Two River imprint, she and her siblings transferred their allegiance to Unicorn Records quickly following Jowston’s dissolution into several smaller companies. This is due in no small part to her massive crush on Riou, which he apparently remains oblivious to. (Her guitar, it gently weeps, and it sounds like Girlyman.) In addition to guitar, she provides backup vocals for Riou when necessary.

Rina: Eilie’s older sister, and another guitarist and backup vocalist. She’s, uh, talented. Yeah. Very talented. Is she playing right now? I’m too busy staring. It’s a pity the guitar only lets her show one -- ahem. Rina’s a lot more direct than her younger sister, which makes Eilie both embarrassed and jealous.

Bolgan: Rina and Eilie’s younger brother and a drummer. Not the brightest bulb in the box, but a sweet kid. Has accidentally broken a few drum kits for wailing on them a little too hard. He has a real knack for the less-standard percussive elements, though -- if you need more cowbell, he’s your dude.

Other musicians who signed on with Unicorn after its creation:

Futch: A former member of the K-Pop boy band High Hopes who retired prematurely due to health issues. The band replaced him and preferred the replacement, but now that Futch has recovered he’s taking his stuff on the road. His manager Humphrey signed him on with Unicorn to ease him in to the American scene (and to piggyback on SNSD’s stateside success), and to work on his English. (Eventually develops a sound and style reminiscent of Patrick Wolf. My god, does Futch grow up pretty.)

Killey: Folk-rocker with an Iron & Wine sound, though his religious allusions are a little more on the occult side. Also stubborn about working alone, though apparently he and Lorelai collaborated in the past. That might be why he works alone now.

Lorelei: Indie girl-with-guitar a la Kris Delmhorst who signed on with Unicorn because they could take her to the next level. Doesn’t usually collaborate with Riou, but contributes some of the acoustic guitar riffs to his tracks post-production.

Pesmerga: ...the yellow jester does not play, but gently pulls the strings~...

OFFSTAGE

Shu: General Manager of Unicorn Records and basically dictator of the new company regime. Never without his sunglasses and an immaculately prepared latte in his left hand. Shu could give two fucks about music and musicianship, but oh, does the man know money. His stars are products and his audience is consumers. The (sad?) thing is, it works.

Kiba Windamier: One of The White Wolves’s former managers, Kiba jumped ship when the getting was good (or when Luca was worse than usual, to be more accurate) and sold his services to Shu. Kiba may have settled a few lucrative things out of court, but Shu’s convinced he got the better half of the deal, because Kiba sure as hell knows how to run a company. While Shu makes most of the decisions about policy, Kiba enforces them.

Klaus Windamier: Kiba’s son, and Shu’s latte monkey extraordinaire. Klaus is a whip-smart, witty, and well-dressed young man with a knack for image management and the little details that can make or break a performance. Because of this, he’s often tasked with Riou’s day-to-day and concert-to-concert management while Shu concentrates on the big stuff. Klaus intends to learn all he can from Shu and Kiba and then take over the music industry when he’s older. He might just manage it. Also, he’s the company bicycle.

Ridley Wizen: Unicorn Records chief of security, and not just in the bouncer sense. Responsible for several legal comments and articles on piracy and distribution. At this point, though, if it’ll keep the company alive, he’ll let a few leaks slide. Hasn’t lost his German accent, probably because it makes him sound even more terrifying.

Humphrey: Formerly a bassist, most notably with the internationally-successful Liberation. He joined when Odessa Silverberg was the lead singer and guitarist, and stayed on when Tir McDohl took over after her not-as-accidental-as-it-seemed death. Currently, Futch’s handler. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t have to.

Sierra Mikain: One of Unicorn Records’ most affluent and generous new investors. Don’t ask how old she is, or how much plastic surgery she’s had to look this good at her age.

Alex: Talent scout and promoter, though most of his discoveries in recent years have been duds. He’s hoping to turn that around for his wife Hilda’s sake as much as for his own.

Hilda: Distributor. Sweet and sweet-looking, but brooks no nonsense. Really wishes her husband would just take care of their son instead of pursuing an old avenue that hasn’t netted him much success.

Tsai: Post-production guru. In the middle of a messy divorce, because frankly he’s always been more married to his work. Sometimes he sleeps at the office.

Dr. Huan: Doctor-on-call. An ear-nose-throat specialist by trade, but a listening ear more often than not.

Tuta: Dr. Huan’s intern, studying sports medicine and chiropractics.

Georg Prime: Memetic badass. Used to have a solid international career as a lead guitarist with multiple bands (some more memorable than others), but came out of retirement to work as a mentor and coach to Unicorn’s young performers.

Jeane: A lighting designer who’s been around for a long time, though she’ll only smile and ~~jiggle~~ giggle if you ask how long. There are about a million possible jokes to make about Jeane’s rack and “putting on a show” here; pick the best one.

Viki: Drives the tour bus. She has a license. We think.

Jowston Records: MUSE Imprint
MUSE is the pop and Top 40 label within Jowston Records, though they haven’t had anything in the Top 40 in a while.

Anabelle: MUSE’s executive vice-president and acting CEO of Jowston until her resignation from both positions. She’s had an uphill fight since she took over from her father years ago, and has tried to distance herself as much as possible from some of his less-legitimate operations. Viktor admires her integrity, but integrity’s a hard sell in the music industry.

Jess: Anabelle’s personal assistant. Kind of a dick. Gets better.

Hauser: Anabelle’s general manager. Does not know the meaning of the word “fun,” according to Viktor.

Jowston Records: Southwindow Imprint
Southwindow is Jowston’s alternative imprint, and according to Flik, “still has some indie cred in all but the Pabstest of bars”.

Apple: Executive Vice-President of the Southwindow division until she throws in her lot with Unicorn Records. Her spot in the shadows and the background of the company is not due to lack of talent, but lack of confidence. But the eventual success of Southwindow after allying with Unicorn gives her a boost in the right direction. She still has horrible taste in men, though.

Viktor: Drummer and eponymous bear of Blue Lightning and the Bear, a guitar/drum duo with a lo-fi sound (think The Black Keys meet The White Stripes). Probably thinks eponymous is an insult. Seriously, though, he’s a good guy and a great musician and smarter than he looks, and always has an ear out for new talent. Loves to meet new people, and by “meet” we mean “drag them along with him on misadventures, which are often questionably legal.” Used to roll with Liberation in both its Odessa Silverberg and Tir McDohl days.

Swordy: Viktor’s disturbingly sentient iPhone. Gets a character slot because troll. The name is short for “Star Dragon Sword,” a sticker on the iPhone’s shell that Viktor can’t peel off, despite his best efforts.

Flik: Guitarist and lead vocalist of Blue Lightning and the Bear. A recovering hipster. Also used to play with Liberation, and has named his guitar after ex-girlfriend and former bandleader Odessa, but Will Not Talk About It, So Don’t Bring It Up. He’s also provided guitar for Riou on more than a few occasions. Flik is impetuous and stubborn, but has started to mellow out since the tragedy, and Viktor’s been a good influence. He still goes off the rails about mainstream music and the corruption in the system, though.

Freed Yamamoto: In charge of the books at Southwindow, and later at Unicorn. Somewhat excitable and easily flustered, but good at his job once you give him a little space.

Yoshino Yamamoto: Freed’s wife and the stagewear coordinator for Southwindow, then for Unicorn. She’s polite and deferent and the ideal Japanese wife, and teaches a self-defense class for women on the weekends.

Jowston Records: Greenhill Division
Greenhill is Jowston’s emergent artist and training program, and the strongest young artists are either debuted on the Greenhill label or filtered up to MUSE.

Teresa Wisemail: Acting Executive Vice President. Technically an Associate Vice President, but runs the division in all but name. While her ideas of the current market are a little behind the times, her heart is in the right place, and she’s committed to furthering the careers of all the young artists aspiring to be on her label -- occasionally to the detriment of the company’s financial state.

Shin: Assistant Vice President with a huge Thing for his boss, not that either of them talk about it.

Emilia: Runs the archives at Greenhill, then at Unicorn.

Jowston Records: Two River Imprint
Two River covers folk and world music within Jowston Records. Its budget is always the first to go.

Chaco: Isn’t supposed to be here today! Seriously, though. He hangs around the Two River offices trying to break in to show business and they occasionally give him gofer work because they’re desperate. Can’t sing for shit, but wouldn’t be a bad dancer if he had some training...

Jowston Records: Matilda Imprint
Matilda is Jowston’s Electronica, Dance, and Remix label. Currently thriving due to lots and lots of outsourcing, including songs by Highland bands.

Gorudo: Executive Vice President of Matilda, that fucker. He is on Highland’s take and he is gross. Really gross.

Camus: Radio personality and DJ. Too pretty for radio, by his own promotion. Camus has an easygoing demeanor and just as easy a personality, and a knack for making interviewees feel natural on the air. He’s also got a great sense of timing and knows the moment, though he can be awfully smug about it.

Miklotov: Mixer, sampler, and behind-the-scenes techno wizard. So Serious About This Business That It Practically Manifests As A Typing Quirk. Sends many angry e-mails to his colleagues when their commitment is not up to par. Also has an unfortunate bowl cut. He actually believes in professional standards of conduct, so when he finds out about what Gorudo’s involved with, it rather bites him in the butt.

Jowston Records: Tinto Imprint
The Real Rocknrollas.

Gustav Pendragon: Executive VP. Former rocker and hooligan. Would be perfectly at home in some socialist republic somewhere. Thinks the rest of the company can go fuck itself.

Marlowe: His personal assistant. Kind of a fanboy.

~~Empire~~ Republic Records

Lepant: President of the newly-christened Republic Records, after scandal and financial misdeeds and Tir McDohl forced Empire Records to undergo almost complete restructuring. (He offered Tir the job, but Tir turned it down.) Like any company, Republic has its troubles, but it’s done well for itself so far.

Sheena: Lepant’s son, though Lepant’s been tempted on more than one occasion to disown him. He used his dad’s position to release a vanity album a while back, but truth be told, he’s more interested in the social cachet of being a musician than in actual musicianship. Is fond of promising pretty young ladies that he’ll pass their demos on to his father. He seems to be gunning for Apple now, though it’s admittedly hard for him to keep only one target in his sights.

Valeria: Heads up Republic’s in-house publicity team. Lepant loans her and some of her staff to Unicorn for a while in hopes that bolstering Unicorn will get Highland out of the picture.

Kasumi: Republic Records chief of security. She gets sent to support Ridley at Unicorn when Highland’s attacks stop being exclusively financial.

Others

Richmond: Tabloid journalist. Richmond is decidedly on the take, and on Shu’s take in particular, so Richmond spends a lot of time promoting Unicorn artists and getting their names out there.

Fitcher: Music blogger ~~with a clever mouth~~ who runs That Didn’t Suck, one of the premier review sites. Fitcher’s a harsh and extremely prolific critic, and his blog is a go-to site for concert reviews, industry status reports, and the occasional interview. Fitcher himself is a master of Obfuscating Stupidity, though he’s running out of people to pull that trick on. He’ll come up with another soon enough, that’s how he rolls.

Nina: Maintainer of Blue Lightning and the BARE, a network of social media sites devoted to Flik (and sometimes the band and the music, but mostly Flik). Flik’s worst nightmare.

Tir McDohl: The son of renowned bassist Teo McDohl, Tir is a Grammy-Award winning, triple platinum guitarist and singer, who has since Done Fucked Off. Seriously -- he discovered and exposed Empire Records’ role in the death of Odessa Silverberg (among other scandals), catapulted Liberation to international superstardom, and completely reworked his corner of the music industry, and then disappeared after his appearance at the 2012 Grammy Awards all Sound Of Music style. His music is still on the charts -- some stations play Soniere like it’s still 2009 -- but he’s completely gone from the public view, and it is considered one of the music world’s greatest mysteries. Not many people know Tir outside of his capacity as a musician, but those who did trust that he’s okay, somewhere out there.

Gremio: Referred to on Fitcher’s blog as “Tir’s pretty blond handler” and not much else really, unless you ask Tir. If you ask Tir, Gremio’s the most important person in the world.

Nash Latkje: A corporate spy from Harmonia Entertainment who seems to get himself involved in just about everything, often at his own peril. Has ended up as a techie, a gofer, a security guard, a makeup artist, a stand-in, crowd control, an underwear-gatherer (that one time they tried to rip Flik’s clothing off him), a promoter for Stolichnaya, an ASM, and a video vixen.

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SO YEAH. We want to poke around in this universe but don't want to write the whole thing, so we're more content to ramble and gossip and and make jokes about Fitcher giving Shu blowjobs under the desk and retell the time that Odessa Silverberg took Flik to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and and and and and. THROW PROMPTS. Backstory! Onstory! Ridiculous lyrics about getting knifed in the front! The perfect Shu latte!

And yes, he is also an expert at the pimpsmack in this universe.

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Take a Third Option

mithrigil — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 22:21:56 GMT

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Shameless. Shameless, shameless Areyougame porn. Also Nash practice, because damn do I love his style.

Title: Take a Third Option (AO3 Version here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikogaiden
Characters: Nash, Seed, Culgan
Words: 2500
Rating: NSFW. Shameless porn.
Warning: Dubcon.
Don’t know the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Dudes in distress, m/m/m threesomes, take my body just don’t haul me in, snark, dirty talk.

Summary: Suikogaiden Chapter 3. Nash is shit out of luck escaping from the Highland camp. But he has to have some tricks still up his sleeve.

Take a Third Option

They say that the more time you spend on the wrong side of the law, the easier it gets. Whoever “they” are, Nash completely disagrees with them right about now. He’s lost his guide to the True Runes (not that Sierra was much of a help at anything), he’s been on the wrong end of Luca Blight’s sword twice, and now deprived of both those things he’s all but lost in the woods somewhere outside Greenhill, with no food, no money, no stars to tell the direction by, and an uncomfortable itch where the Highland uniform rubbed him the wrong way in the kind of place he can’t scratch.

This is the sort of thing he really should write back to his boss about. Priests love stories. Especially ones about lost souls who need their help and guidance right about now. Seriously. Right about now. Any time now.

At least he can get out of the uniform. In fact, it’s probably prudent of him to. Not only does it itch in said awkward places (and that better not be infectious, the last thing he wants is Highland crabs), it’s bright blazing white and blue, and that’s not going to do Nash any favors in this forest. So he finds a thick enough cache of trees and strips it off. Really, that blue is even more of a beacon than the Harmonian cerulean Nash is thankful not to wear. And sure enough, the itch subsides, thankfully due to no more than shoddy workmanship in the crotch. Where are they impressing their sempsters from, Kobold village? Come to think of it, he’s never seen a Kobold wear pants --

“Well, lookee here,” says a Highland-accented voice that apparently cares nothing for caches or clustered trees. “Hey, Culgan, it’s that Harmonian rat Luca told us about.”

Now, Nash has had years of training in the vaunted art of not getting caught flat-footed. The trouble with said training is that when he actually is caught flat-footed (in what are supposed to be rare incidents but are becoming decidedly less so the more this adventure goes on), he suffers a few crucial moments of what’s probably supposed to be self-recrimination but is actually a kind of subdued panic, because really he’s not supposed to get caught flat-footed. Or in this case, with his pants down. Literally.

So, what is there to do but pull them up the rest of the way and turn to address the sword at his throat? The Highlander holding the sword is rather obviously the Flaming General himself, Seed the Bastard, red hair and brazen grin and all. And General Culgan, over his shoulder, has his arms crossed in the very picture of dry implacability. Nash thinks Culgan would do a bishop proud.

“If you think you’re out of the woods, you’re mistaken,” Culgan says, huffs out a disapproving curl of air. “You seem to be good at getting out of scrapes. So get out of this one.”

Nash flashes his best grin, and wonders if being shirtless and unfastened helps it any. “Gentlemen,” he says, stalling for time and cursing the day Luca Blight was born to terrorize Highland and Harmonia. “I’m flattered that you want a demonstration of my abilities --”

“Oh, are you offering?” Seed asks, tilting the sword just slightly, almost like a quick breeze through Nash’s bangs. “I hear you pretty First Class boys like to give shows to the bishops. Is that what you mean?”

Nash can feel his grin wavering grimaceward, straining his jaw. “Actually, that’s just a rumor! First Class citizens aren’t allowed to be in shows! We’re barely allowed to even go to the theater without it being disrespectful. Or dishonorable. Or something.” Since it’s pointless to look at the sword when it’s this close, Nash darts a quick glance off into the trees. Nope, no way out, not with Culgan also armed and ready and too many trees at his back, and all of Nash’s kit and provisions just one step out of reach. What he wouldn’t give for even Grosser Fluss right now. There’s no need to tell friend from foe when he’s got no friends in the world. “But I’m a good whistler.”

“I bet you are,” Seed says, and it’s condescending enough that gravity itself thrills with another unit of sarcasm. “Is that what they teach you in the Guild? You’re a Guild boy, aren’t you? That’d explain why you’ve got the balls to sneak into our camp but not the brains to escape it.”

“You know, if I were from the Guild, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.” Really, that sounded so much better in his head.

Funny or not, it still amuses Seed, or maybe See just smiles like that all the time. “Culgan, get his sack.”

Well, that’s just plain unacceptable, so Nash takes a breath, risks his neck, and reaches out to swipe it first. It earns him the swat across the jaw he expected, but from the flat of Seed’s blade, not the edge. Good. They want him alive.

At least there’s something to be done about that.

“Not so fast, pretty boy,” Seed says, and now that he’s made his position on Nash’s face abundantly clear (Runes alive, that smarts) he seems to have turned his sword’s attentions to Nash’s scalp. It shouldn’t be possible for a blade to toy with Nash’s hair. It apparently is. Highlanders.

Culgan, his sword out now as well, grabs Nash’s coat, shirt, and provisions, and takes note of both blades of Grosser Fluss, bound carefully in the bundle.

Nash can’t help the “Wait!” that escapes his lips, and he doesn’t regret saying it, but stalling with something like wait means he needs an idea, and fast.

“Oh?” Seed asks, which at least gives Nash the precious seconds he needs. “Looks like someone’s got a last request. Don’t they teach you to keep your mouth shut when you’re being interrogated?”

“No,” Nash says, as natural as banter in a bar, “they teach us to keep our mouths open.”

He doesn’t regret it, precisely. After all, it’s going to work. But the wolfish grin Seed gives him still sends a chill down Nash’s spine, and contrary to the romance novels and operas of villainous ravishment, it doesn’t turn to heat when it reaches Nash’s groin.

Well, it’s not the first time Nash has put his body on the line to get out of this sort of predicament. But honestly, after Sierra took his blood, nothing else quite compares.

“So that’s what you Guild boys are good for, is it?” Seed leers down the length of his blade. Nash tries to play up the wariness in his eyes. It must work, or work enough, because Seed tilts up his jaw and laughs. “Get a load of this, Culgan. He thinks he can talk his way out of us dragging him back to Prince Luca.”

Nash shakes his head, fidgets with the flap of his pants, and tries not to think about the sword hanging over him. “I never said anything about talking.”

“Oh, now? Then why don’t you show me just how good you are at keeping your mouth open?”

Well, Nash certainly gapes.

It must be encouraging. “Culgan, take over,” Seed says, and sheathes his sword once it’s clear that Culgan’s complied. At least now the sword is pointed at the back of Nash’s head, not the front; it might be harder to keep track of, but his skull is thicker back there. Seed undoes his pants, and Nash gulps, which is probably just as enticing as it is reflexive because Seed’s cock has evidently already started to swell. “C’mon, pretty boy, I’ll even trust you not to bite it off. Here. Have fun.”

There’s a witty retort that Nash is supposed to make, but he can’t quite conjure it up: he just leans forward, lowers his tongue and covers his teeth and takes Seed in.

With a cock in his mouth, it’s harder to think of ways to stall for time than Nash thought it would be. The course is pretty evident -- it’s not the first blowjob he’s given, after all, and Nash won’t deny that the whole scenario has a certain kind of thrill in it, like the thrill of a well-kept secret but, well, lower -- and soon enough, the act itself is too distracting to machinate through. Seed tastes good, heady and clean, and maybe it’s just that Nash is as starving as he is hard up but he finds himself sucking too hard to be just make-believe.

“So that’s what the bishops taught you,” Seed says, and the ragged cadence of his voice, with a forward pulse just like his hips, sets Nash’s shoulders twitching, tightening. “You’re made for this, pretty boy. Is that how they test out those Guild guns of yours? I bet they make you take them in your mouth just like this.”

I never said I was Guild, Nash can’t say, but it’s better to let him assume.

“Man, those bishops must’ve loved you. I bet they kept you on your knees for days. Bet they still love you, just not as much as when you were a tyke. I don’t even have to tell you to tighten up. Is your ass anything like your mouth?” He threads his hand through Nash’s hair, pulls him back enough that Nash strains to fill this throat back up again. “I asked you a question, pretty boy. Is your ass anything like your mouth?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nash coughs.

“What, you don’t suck your own?” Seed laughs and thrusts back in, and Nash tastes that laughter clear as salt. “Aw, Culgan, the rumors aren’t true. First Class citizens can’t bend themselves in half.”

“A shame,” Culgan says over Nash’s shoulders, and the sword doesn’t waver at all.

“That’s just what I was thinking. But hands and knees’ll do, if you want to fuck him.”

Something curdles in Nash’s throat at the prospect. It might be want. It might not.

“That won’t be necessary,” Culgan says, and since the first thing Nash feels at those words isn’t relief, it’s anticipation, he seriously has to wonder just how long it’s been and what the hell else he’ll grow to find acceptable on the road. The sword circles Nash’s neck -- it’s a near thing, when the bulge in his throat stutters and swells around Seed’s cock -- and comes to rest on his bare shoulder. “I think his mouth’s got enough room for both of us.”

Nash’s eyes flare open, just enough to see Seed’s smirk and the long, hard line of Culgan’s sword, held nonchalantly in one hand while he works at his pants with the other. It’s -- well it’s not quite frightful, just strange, and new, and no, who is Nash kidding, he’s quite understandably terrified.

Both of them. At once. In a position enough to force Nash and still keep him from grabbing his things and running off. And calm about it.

If it weren’t so damned arousing, he’d panic. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Seed tightens his fist in Nash’s hair, tilts him back and jams his fingers into the outline of Nash’s jaw. The pressure of Culgan’s sword lightens, but only just enough, and Nash’s mouth strains at the corner to accommodate Culgan’s cock alongside Seed’s. “I think he looks even prettier like this,” Seed says, and pulls out just enough that Culgan can strike deeper, trip Nash’s gag reflex at last. “Don’t start choking now, you’ll ruin it. And here I thought Holy Hikusaak himself must have trained that out of you.”

“Don’t toy with him,” Culgan says.

That’s rich, Nash thinks, but can’t break through the haze to say.

There really are no other words for what they do than fuck his mouth; in tandem, vigorous and without compromise. Nash is undeniably hard, and most of his thoughts head in that particular direction, but the ones that don’t wonder how they manage it, whether they’ve done this before, whether all of Seed’s compliments about Nash’s tightness and slickness are true. They can’t get as deep together as Seed was on his own, but they pulse in and out like the weights on a clock, and the corners of Nash’s mouth water and twinge. He braces a fist over his groin, moves as much as Seed’s grasp and the sword will allow him.

He only remembers he’s supposed to be planning and escaping and being a good spy when Culgan comes down his throat.

Seed’s not far behind, but lets loose on Nash’s face instead, hot and dripping through Nash’s hair. It is a testimony to Nash’s presence of mind, what little of it is left, that he doesn’t balk or flinch and accidentally slit his own throat on Culgan’s sword.

Leaves crunch under Nash’s knees, and he slumps forward as much as he’s able, braces himself on his fists in the dirt.

Seed pants, and smirks, and pats the welt on Nash’s cheek. “Think we roughed him up enough, Culgan?”

“Enough,” Culgan agrees, already refastening his pants.

“You sure we can’t keep him?”

“If we took him back to the Prince we wouldn’t keep him for long.”

It’s strange to consider, but those words are as precious information as Nash has ever gotten, anywhere or anyhow.

“You’re probably right,” Seed says, and rakes his hand through Nash’s sticky hair before shoving him back onto his haunches. “Looks like this is your lucky day, pretty boy. You’ll live to suck another cock.”

There is probably something better for Nash to say than “That’s a dubious honor if I ever had one,” but, well, that’s what comes out, hoarse and raw and clinging on the come he’s swallowed.

Seed laughs. “Just give the uniform back and you might have that dubious honor again.”

Nash is all too happy to comply. He forks over the rest of the Highland uniform, and Culgan hands back the swords and Nash’s traveling clothes.

“Run,” Culgan says.

Nash doesn’t even put on his shoes, just gathers the clothes in his arms and leaps the first bridge he comes to. There is no way in however many hells there are that he’ll stick around this forest any longer.

Oh, sure, it’ll amuse the bishop. And whoever else hears of it, for that matter. And it worked, which amuses Nash enough to keep him running. He might even repeat the experience without duress, the next chance he gets.

Maybe it does get easier. Or maybe he’s the one that gets easy, when everything else gets hard.

This is no time for puns. He still doesn’t know which way Greenhill is.

And he’s not wearing any pants.

***

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A Knight's Service

mithrigil — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:34:53 GMT

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Sometimes there is adorable crack in this journal. Adorable, straightforward crack.

Clearly my girlfriend has been good for me.

Title: A Knight’s Service (AO3 version here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikoden III
Characters: Lilly Pendragon, Fred Maximilian
Words: 1150
Rating: PG. Maybe just PG-13 because Fred is oblivious.
Don’t know the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Headstrong girls and airheaded boys, silly fun things people do before they go off to war, utter failure to get laid.

Summary: On the eve of the battle for the Ceremonial Site, Lilly Pendragon desires the company of a young man of appropriate station...

A Knight’s Service

All of Grandpa Max’s stories about moonlit nights on the eve of battle seem to be just that: stories. So far, Fred has had supper at the tavern, gone through his forms, packed his provisions, and set Rico about polishing his armor (but only because Dominic is so busy, and Rico insisted she was finished with everything else she had to do). But the moon is already high in the sky, and the castle is quiet but for the watch, and none of those things Grandpa Max alluded to have come to pass.

Fred’s not sure what he would do with a “fine piece of tail” anyway. Is that something to sell? He’s already got plenty of money, and he doesn’t think Scott would trade on a night like this.

He should probably get to sleep. He’s in Futch’s company tomorrow and he doesn’t want to disappoint him and Franz and the dragon, and there’s no better way to disappoint someone than showing up to fight evil and falling asleep on your feet! So Fred cracks a few joints and stretches out on his bed, and waits for sleep to force its way in --

-- rather like someone just forced her way into Fred’s room.

He goes for his sword (trespassing is a hallmark of evil!) and levels it at the intruder before he realizes it’s just Lilly Pendragon and she isn’t even armed.

“Sir Fred!” she says, using her pointer-finger like it might as well be a sword, “put that away. Is that any way to treat a lady?”

“No, certainly not,” he says, and sheathes it. “Sorry, Lilly, you just startled me. Why didn’t Rico announce you?”

“That little girl? Oh, she’s already asleep.” Lilly flips her hair over her shoulder. “Besides, this is a matter for adults to discuss.”

“Oh.” Fred nods, and indicates the chair by the window. “Please, sit down.”

“Thank you,” she says, “you really are a gentleman, Sir Fred,” but she sits down on his bed instead of on the chair. Well, that’s okay too! That chair’s a little rickety. It’s probably more polite for Fred to sit in it instead of her, so he does.

The moon really is beautiful tonight. Fred glances out at it before Lilly coughs and demands his attention. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s trying to make herself comfortable, leaning back on her arms and sticking her chest out, and crossing her legs that weird way girls do.

“Sir Fred,” she says, “you know we’re on the eve of a great battle.”

“Of course.” He nods firmly. “And if the Flame Champion had assigned us to the same unit, you would have my protection.”

She coughs. “Thank you. I wasn’t finished.”

“Sorry.”

“As I said, we’re on the eve of a great battle, and one we might not return from. And while I have faith in my abilities, and yours, I think there are some things I want to take care of in case one of us winds up injured.”

“That’s really courteous of you,” Fred says. “And a good idea too, since if you go back to Tinto after this it’s not so far to Toran, and it’s on the way, so I’ll be able to report to your father if something happens.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I meant there’s something you can do for me tonight,” she says.

Fred puts his hand over his heart. “Just say the word, and my service is yours.”

The way Lilly smiles at that, bright but somehow crocodile-like, rubs Fred a little bit in the wrong direction. But at least she seems happy. “Good! Because I demand a Knight’s Service.”

“Any evil you place before me to slay, I will slay it!”

“That’s not what I meant either!” She shoves her way off the bed and over to his chair -- and he should stand, because it’s not right to sit when a lady is standing, but she gets to the chair first and holds his wrists against the arms.

“Wow, you’re pretty strong, Lilly,” he says, because he’s not sure what else to say. “I mean, I suspected as much from watching you fight, but I always thought you were more about swiftness --”

“Thanks,” she says, looking him hard in the eyes. Her eyes are a rather nice shad of blue, like Fred’s grandmother’s. “But I mean it. I want a Knight’s Service from you, Fred. Luc might kill us tomorrow!”

Fred would salute, but Lilly is still holding him down by the wrists. “Then I’ll go straight to the Flame Champion and tell him to assign me to your unit, so that doesn’t happen.”

“There’s no need for that.” She tightens up her lips and pouts. That’s less flattering than her eyes. “I mean the kind of Knight’s Service you can give me right here.”

“Oh.” Fred tilts his head and squints into her eyes. “Are you possessed? I can’t exorcise evil or anything, just kill it, but I can get in touch with the Marleys and --”

“No.” Then again, the way she’s holding on to his arms and the sweat on her palms might state otherwise, but he’ll take her word for it. “I mean,” she starts again, enunciating very clearly, “the kind of service a Knight performs for a Lady.”

“Is someone putting you in distress?”

“Yes! I mean no! I mean I want you to kiss me, Fred.”

Fred blinks.

Fred blinks again.

His mouth is hanging open, so he closes it.

“As I said,” Lilly goes on, her voice as tight and tense as her hands, “we might die tomorrow. I don’t intend to die without having experienced courtly love! And you are a man of appropriate station to perform a Knight’s Service for me. That, and Sir Percival is busy. So. Will you rise to the challenge, Fred Maximilian?”

It is, perhaps, disingenuous, but Fred is still confused, and he doesn’t want to do anything rash, especially where a lady is concerned. So he asks, just to be sure, “So there’s nothing evil for me to slay?”

It probably wasn’t the most gallant question to ask, because she slaps him across the face. “Forget it! You stupid brute, I hope no one ever asks you for a Knight’s Service again! Or a day’s service! Or anything! And I hope you have to face Yuber tomorrow face to face and run like a coward!”

“I wouldn’t run from Yuber,” Fred says, because it’s true.

But Lilly stomps out of the room before he can say anything else, and Fred gets to the door just in time for it to slam in his face. His cheek stings. Now his nose does too.

“Ouch,” he says.

He should probably go to sleep. War is much less confusing, at least when he’s had enough sleep.

***

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Resurrected Meme

mithrigil — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:55:27 GMT

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Haven't touched this one for about three years!

Give me a character from any fandom you know I know, or any original work of mine, and I will talk -- probably at length -- about what he or she or it is like in bed. Ask for one at a time, please; after I answer your first, you may proceed ad nauseum.

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Pre-nuptial Agreements, and other forms of sacrifice

mithrigil — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:18:38 GMT

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This is a prequel, I guess, to a longer thing that Puel and I are going to be working on. The tentative series title is All Stars are Bound by Gravity, mostly because we've been calling it Suikoden All-Stars for short. And it's going to be a big post-III epic Nash thing with plot and rune theory and romance and awkward reunions out the wazoo.

But first, this has to happen.

Title: Pre-nuptial Agreements, and other forms of sacrifice (AO3 version here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikogaiden
Characters: Nash, Sierra.
Words: 1800
Rating: PG-ish R. A vampire wedding complete with turning, tasteless jokes, and poorly tuned organs.
Don’t know the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Snarky couples, nonhuman definitions of love, gender-role play, desecrating churches, rebirth.

Summary: Nash and Sierra’s wedding night. In another faith’s church. With a corpse.

Pre-nuptial Agreements, and other forms of sacrifice

They don’t play organs at weddings in Harmonia. The crystal doesn’t take very well to the sound. Glass harmonicas, now, those make a Harmonian wedding, filling the silence with the barest twinges of perfectly tuned sound, fragile and ephemeral as the instrument itself, while everyone looks on silently at the theocratically-ordained property transfer. Or at least that’s how the First Class citizens do it.

This wedding, though, requires an organ, and Sierra doesn’t play it very well. One would think, with eight hundred years of experience at least, she’d have picked up a processional or two, but no, she’s terrible, and the instrument is several years out of tune.

“We should have held a rehearsal,” Nash says, because there’s only so far listening politely can go, even if he’s about to prepare himself for an eternity of it as far as Sierra goes.

“We should have gotten a priest,” she snaps, not looking up from the keyboards. She stomps down on one of the footpedals and a shudder runs through the entire chapel. “You’re the one who insisted on music.”

“It’s not a wedding without music.”

“It’s not a wedding without a bride in a white dress either, and I don’t see you wearing a white dress.”

“You could take yours off. I’ll wear it.” He’s entirely serious, whether he sounds it or not, and he knows she knows. “I could be the prettiest bride you’d ever ask for.”

She harrumphs, and leaves the song on the organ unfinished. That’s probably for the best. She turns around to face Nash and the cushion beneath her squeaks against the skin of her thighs, and Nash’s cheeks color and heat.

He wonders if he’ll ever blush again, after this.

“I’ve had prettier,” she says, stalking toward him, her feet almost soundless on the floorboards of the church.

“I’m sure you have, in your many years.”

“Prettier,” she goes on, “and smarter, and better behaved.” Her teeth glance past her lips. Muscle memory kicks up in Nash’s neck and he swears his veins are already responding to her, pushing closer to the surface, more willing than the rest of him is.

To think, he’s getting cold feet at the altar. He almost says that aloud.

Nash has carried Sierra for miles, up roads and through forests and down from fractured rooftops, and as much as he’s complained about it she never took up more space than her due. She does now. Corpses are heavy as a rule, but Sierra has wrists as skinny as a spindle and still she weighs him down, brings him to his knees with nothing more than a touch of his shoulder. The Moon Rune glows under her skin, chills the hand against Nash’s cheek.

“You still want this, don’t you,” she doesn’t quite ask. Her tone is as cold as her skin.

Nash reaches across his chest, covers her hand with his own, stifles the light. “You might have forgotten over the centuries, but it’s what we do for the women we love.”

“Die?” She smiles, drums her fingertips on his temple. “Invite corruption?”

“Make sacrifices,” he says. “Something completely alien to you, I’m sure.”

He’s wrong, and they both know it, but at least it puts a smile on her face. And that’s what this is about, after all, at least for him.

“I don’t give this lightly,” she says, around that bright, fanged smile.

He smiles -- not back, but down, into the curve of her palm. By now the light of the Rune is bright enough to sear his eyes. He closes them, and afterimages of stained glass swarm behind the lids, new arteries of rust between the colored panels. “I hate to remind you, but I know that intimately. You must be getting forgetful in your old age.”

Even with his eyes closed, he knows, sees, her mouth poised just a breath from his neck. He knows her quick pink tongue, her cracked pale lips, the barely-discernible beat that runs through them. She scrapes her incisors against his jaw, as much to prepare as to tease, and he feels it as both.

“You’re an idiot,” she purrs. It’s as much an endearment as she’s ever given.

He laughs, and it pulses his flesh against her teeth. “Is that any way to talk to your future wife?”

“If you insist on marrying me in the sight of his Holiness and the Circle Rune, do it now.”

“Without a priest? In a Toranese church?”

“You can tell your boss later. I’m sure he’ll be glad.”

“Yes, actually.” He breathes, the dust and the light thick on the walls of his throat. “I take you, Sierra, and offer myself; what was mine is now ours.” He’d dreamed, once, of saying these words to a nice enough girl from a good enough house as his family looked on and the walls rang with crystal. That road ended in fire and sulfur. This one began in blood and will probably end in the same, a river as much as a road. “Let us be as one in the eyes of his Holiness, and in our own.”

“So be it,” she says.

“Your turn.”

She laughs, and he knows he’ll never get as much out of her. “Hikusaak can go hang himself. You’re mine now.”

He opens his mouth to laugh, and her teeth cut off the sound when they bore into his throat. One moment of silence, and then a scream wells up, so distant and echoing that it can’t be his, and Nash thinks, dimly, hurriedly, that even the walls of the church are out of tune.

She’s taken his blood before. It hurt then, and it hurts now, and even the suckling pressure of her tongue can’t mitigate the absence and the rush. He blacked out, then. He doesn’t now. His heart stutters and struggles, as fast as it’s ever beaten, like a bowstring rippling with tension before it’s let go. Her hand leaves his cheek, anchors in his hair and tilts him back, as if his head could float clean away if she didn’t hold it down. It might. It’s light enough. Everything’s light enough. Everything’s light.

Dying, it seems, is a process, and one Nash can’t completely appreciate. The spray of blood on an altar cloth for a religion he doesn’t espouse -- Sierra’s tiny hands tearing his scarf, peeling away the collar of his shirt -- a million shards of glass, but no smoke, not this time -- cold tile beneath bare shoulders -- a steadiness and stiffness in his limbs even through the chaos and wet of her body atop his, a certain compassion even as she wrings him dry. He could laugh if his muscles weren’t hers now, if they didn’t belong to her and the Moon Rune and its caprice. Caprice, Nash thinks, and the thought echoes, as if his mind’s been drained with his blood.

Sierra never makes anything easy, but easy and pleasurable have never been the same. And this is pleasurable, under the sheen of chill and pain, like the first step onto a foot that’s fallen asleep. Outside himself, as if stalled on the ceiling of the church with the frescoes of magic and heroes and stars, he sees his body suspended over the floor, high enough that even his loose hair doesn’t touch the dust. Sierra isn’t lifting him. He wonders if she could. She stands over him, her dress soaked with his blood, already dry in the light of the Rune. She isn’t smiling, and Nash did this to make her smile, it’s why, it’s everything, he needs to touch her cheek and mold it and kiss his blood off her lips until she does, and can’t. Can’t reach. Can’t move. Dead, and hers in dying, and done.

He’d still laugh about it if he could.

His life doesn’t flash before his eyes, probably because it isn’t over.

“I guess this is the only way to shut you up,” Sierra sighs. She pats down her dress -- her hands come away red -- and pouts at him. Threads of shadow line her face. She’s usually too young for wrinkles. He ought to tease her about that. He can’t speak. “I should probably leave you like this. Quiet at last.”

He’d give her some retort about who else would carry her luggage or hold the carriage reins or front the cost of the inn, but, well.

She leans down to his cheek, cold and still on the air. She kisses him. He feels nothing, not even the pressure. “It wants you too, you know. I wouldn’t be able to do this if it didn’t. It hates to see you dead.”

I must be too pretty to die, Nash thinks, or thinks he thinks.

His veins are empty. His heart is still.

“Can’t be helped,” Sierra says, and then moonlight fills everything.

***

He comes to, with his teeth buried in flesh. Either his eyes aren’t open or everything is the same fervid red, and the taste in his mouth is the same -- not just the blood he’s grown accustomed to from scrapes and wounds in life but headier, like the difference between salted meat and fresh steak. He drinks without being told to. The pulse is so much faster than his own, dances under his lips, stings his molars.

“Go as fast as you want,” Sierra says, and Nash may be addled and starving right now but he knows sarcasm when he hears it. He slows down, takes it in gulps. She snickers, and her fingertips brush the nape of his neck. Her skin feels warmer now. His must be freezing. “If you’re careful, this might be the last you have to drink for a while.”

He clings to the corpse, someone else’s, not his, and tries not to think about whether he or she or this is more appropriate. It’s surprisingly easy. Either that, or philosophical quandaries on the subject of personhood are more than he can swallow at the moment.

He suckles even after the flow of blood stops. He realizes that he doesn’t have to breathe.

Her fingertips wind into his hair, and he turns so that they tighten.

“Good morning, husband dear,” she whispers, almost purely affectionate, and he opens his eyes.

Morning, indeed. The windows of the church are filled with light, brazen and warm and, somehow, abhorrent. Sierra’s the most beautiful thing here -- one of the most beautiful things Nash has ever seen. He’ll never tell her.

He holds her, and kisses her, as strongly as he’s able, which isn’t that strong just yet. “And here I thought I was the bride. Isn’t the bride supposed to bleed on the wedding night?”

“Idiot,” she says.

There. That’s the smile he died for. A shame his kiss hides it, but, hell, there’s plenty of time to goad her into another.

***

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Silent Affirmation

mithrigil — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:10:42 GMT

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This one's been a long time coming!

Title: Silent Affirmation (AO3 version here)
Authors: Mithrigil and Puella_Nerdii
Fandom: Suikoden V
Characters: Frey, Lyon
Words: 1600
Rating: R, first time sex, not very explicit

Summary: They’ve never needed to say a word.

Silent Affirmation

His Highness’s breath ghosts over the nape of Lyon’s neck. His elbows are nearer than they were too, one twitch away from Lyon’s arms, outside the sheets where hers are beneath. They must have nudged closer together in the night. Lyon’s not sure there’s anything wrong with that, exactly, but the Prince is a fitful sleeper, and there’s some time yet before either of them has to be awake, so she doesn’t move. He stirs again, and some of his loose hair drapes over Lyon’s shoulder. It tickles, and she bites her cheek to keep from giggling. It doesn’t tickle for much longer, though. Lyon’s not sure how to describe it, but it’s slow and light and almost drifting over her skin instead of touching it.

He opens his eyes, a quick tight blink and then almost a breath to settle them open. She meets his glance, opens her mouth to apologize for waking him.

The words stop unvoiced on her lips when he smiles and rests his hand on her shoulder, where his hair was a moment ago. His hands have gotten so much stronger, she thinks, and then she isn’t thinking much at all because she’s taking hold of his arm to bring him closer. His lips soften, parting, and it doesn’t matter which of them moves first because either way, their mouths meet.

Lyon’s tried not to wonder what it would be like to kiss him. She doesn’t have to wonder or try not to anymore. His breath feels as natural, as comfortable past her lips as it did on her shoulder, and the gentle urgency of kissing him is so easy it must be both of theirs. Their hands entwine, his left and her right, and that, that’s nearly a kiss on its own.

He sighs, threaded with the faintest trace of his voice, and she cranes up to pull him closer, kiss him deeper. His hair still tickles, on her arm this time, but instead of brushing it away she cards her hands through it, holds him at the nape of the neck. She blushes to think how bold this must seem, but it’s just as bold for him to hold her at the waist, and he is, and his palms are rough even through the sheets. He breaks away to kiss her jaw, her neck, her shoulder, and she clutches him like she’s never clutched anything before. She should return those kisses, though, and twisting her neck when his face is buried in it is difficult but she manages to press her lips to the hollow behind his ear, at least. He shivers against her, and that tingle travels down her spine, too, all the way to her thighs.

She has to break away to touch more than his hand. Almost as soon as she lets go, he pushes up the hem of her shirt, spreads his hands on her back, and she laughs to think they had the same idea. The sheets are a tangled mess now, shoved aside and caught between their knees, and Lyon shifts until she can touch him the way he’s touching her, match her lips to his skin the way his do hers, make his body thrill the way hers does. He gasps into her shoulder when her hands find his chest under his loose tunic. She almost apologizes, but he pulls back and kisses her instead.

Don’t stop, that kiss says, as clearly as words, as earnestly as his face. I won’t either.

She doesn’t, and runs her fingers down his back, traces his spine -- he’s grown so strong, and the way he flexes against her hands makes her proud and breathless all at once. He shoves the sheets aside, or aside enough, and slides his palms over her ribs. Oh, she thinks, or perhaps says, but then he brushes his thumb over her breast and there are no words at all.

She holds on. It’s all she can do. She’s never thought of her body as terribly sensitive or receptive but it’s the Prince, and this is right, and Lyon curls her fists around his shoulders, buries her face in the crook of his neck. Her leg nestles between his and it’s good, good everywhere, under his hands and his lips and her skin wherever he touches. She’d tell him he doesn’t have to, that he should let her take care of him, but there aren’t any words but the half-stuttered gasps that she stifles on his collar, and no answer but his ragged breath on her cheek.

Lyon presses her thigh between his more urgently, and he tips over onto his back with her flushed and tangled on top of him. From the way he smiles, though, he doesn’t mind. Has she ever seen him smile quite like this, from this angle? She doesn’t think so, and she doesn’t want it to be the last time either.

It’s almost a shame to kiss him again, but now she can feel that smile, not just see it.

He peels her shirt off, up over her head, and Lyon stammers out a laugh when it turns out to be more awkward than he’d probably hoped. But now his hands frame her back and shoulders, rush up and down her spine like they don’t know where to settle. She doesn’t know where to put hers either, but the way his thigh pushes at her groin -- oh, she didn’t mean to grab his shoulders so hard, but the room is reeling and hazy and bright at the corners of her eyes.

Her lips form his name, but they’re up against his, and no sound but her breath comes out.

He’s warm and solid beneath her, and that thought burns from her cheeks down to her groin. She bears down on him, grinds on his hipbone until the burn’s almost unbearable. He’s breathing as hard as she is -- she pulls back and runs her thumb over his cheek, which is as flushed as she’s ever seen it. She wonders if the rest of him looks like that, too, and now that she’s wondered she has to see, so she pushes up the hem of his tunic, maps out that skin with her hands, her mouth.

That faint blush leads down past the waist of his pants. His skin is so warm under her lips, her hands, her cheek when she stops to consider that this might be too far. She looks up, catches his eyes, glassed over but intent on hers.

Together, he says without saying.

What he’s offering almost dizzies her too much to nod, but she does. She slides his pants over his hips -- silver, she thinks when she looks down, and her lips twitch toward a laugh -- and settles herself higher on her knees. Not over him, exactly, but close, close enough that his hardness nudges against her hip. He sits up and kisses her, encircles her in his arms, holds her tight and steady like he never plans on letting go again. She kisses him back until she can’t breathe, rests her hands on his hips and then trails them lower, low enough to make him gasp.

And just as she takes hold of him, he slides his fingertip up between her legs.

They move together, breathe together -- her fist tightens, and his fingers press in, and if their hips clash a little it’s only because Lyon wants this, so much, wants him so much that she can’t help moving to let him in. Her body flushes with heat, at how wanton she must look and how wonderful it feels and how the Prince looks before her, just as bright and gasping and wonderful as she feels, inside and out. She can’t muster up a kiss but she does press her mouth to his shoulder, his neck, breathes in as much of him as she can. He crooks his finger inside -- she nearly bashes her forehead against his jaw but doesn’t, thank goodness, because then he might stop and she couldn’t bear it if he did. It’s already hard enough to think about what her hand’s doing to him, with what his hand’s doing to her, but moving the same, touching the same, that’s all that matters right now because he should feel as good as she does.

One look in his eyes tells her, clear as light, that he does.

And that, that feels like everything.

The coil of heat bursts at the base of her spine, and his skin sears and tautens in her hand -- it hits her like a wave, like a breaking dam. Holding him, touching him through it is all that matters, and Lyon anchors herself on his hands, and him on hers, and when she comes down and remembers to breathe neither of them has let go.

Even after it’s done, she doesn’t stop moving. He’s still moving, too, but differently -- his chest stutters against hers, his fingers curl in her hair. She leans back to look at him, and his smile fills her like sunlight. Lyon moves in to kiss him again, and apparently he had the same idea because their foreheads bump before they actually manage the kissing part.

She opens her mouth to apologize. They kiss instead.

It’s fine. They both know.

***

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Five Times Jowy Atreides Almost Believed in Luca Blight (and once he remembered not to)

mithrigil — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:54:25 GMT

I lost a bet.

Title: Five Times Jowy Atreides Almost Believed in Luca Blight (and once he remembered not to) (AO3 version here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikoden II
Characters: Jowy; Pilika, Pete, Luca, Jillia, Seed, Culgan, and a conspicuously absent Riou.
Words: 1500
Rating: R for Real, as in Shit Gets.
Warning: Discussion of rape as per Luca’s backstory. Also violence. Well, it’s Luca.
Not in the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Monsters, young people utterly in over their heads and the powerful men who exploit them, meditations on power, the apparently delicious irony of me writing characters outside my comfort zone.

Summary: “Today, I stood before Luca Blight once again. I listened to what he said, and I became something terrible. But maybe...no. Maybe I was only taken in by his strength. Taken in, and terrified of it. I asked for power, once, but maybe I was really grasping at Luca’s shadow.” - Suikogaiden 1, Chapter 2

Five Times Jowy Atreides Almost Believed in Luca Blight
(and once he remembered not to)

1: Prince Luca Blight’s Word is as Law

The castle Pete and Pilika have built, out of upturned buckets and bowls and earthenware cups, is a marvel of architecture. It’s taken over most of the kitchen of the White Deer Inn. They’ve spread out a tattered blanket for a lake, with a brown double-placemat island in the middle, and if the stacked teacups and sticks that make up the garrison wall spill out into the blue, it’s okay.

“That’s the moat,” Pete explains. “Except moats are carved in but this one was there all along. It’s the safest castle in the world because it’s on a -- um. It sticks out into the water.”

“Peninsula,” Jowy says.

“Pninsla,” Pete says, and as far as mispronunciations go, it could have been far worse.

Pilika says nothing.

The funny thing about playtime when your playmate is shy is that, more often than not, it turns play into work. Jowy knows this firsthand, all things considered, after growing up with Riou. (Nanami cancelled that out, sometimes.) But Jowy remembers building castles and chasing ghosts and games of manhunt that were as draining, as difficult, as any school session. Eventually, he’d run out of things to say. And with nothing to talk about, it always turned into a contest of who could build the highest tower.

He kneels to Pilika and Pete’s level, careful not to disturb the towers of buckets and cups. “Was it your idea to put the castle on the lake, Pilika?” He looks her in the eyes, keeps them for as long as he can before she curls up and stares at the floor.

“Uh-huh,” Pete answers for her. “Pilika put the lake blanket down.”

But she didn’t say anything, Jowy thinks, and forces the thought as far back in his mind as he can. Pilika doesn’t deserve fake smiles. “That’s great,” he says. “Can you show me around?”

She doesn’t call him Uncle Jowy anymore. She doesn’t call anyone anything anymore. But she takes him by the hand and leads him gingerly around the castle perimeter, as if all of them can walk on imaginary water without kicking up imaginary waves.

He asks her, here and there, if this bucket is where the soldiers sleep, or if that bowl is the kitchen, or what they could find to make a castle flag. Pete answers for her, every time. Jowy holds Pilika’s hand a little tighter, and pretends nothing’s wrong.

Luca’s sword never went anywhere near Pilika’s mouth, and he still shut her up, just like he said he would.

2: Prince Luca Blight Encourages Honorable Conduct in the Highland Army
(in a sense)

They’re flaying a rapist alive today. Attendance is mandatory. Jowy stands just slightly in Seed’s shadow on the Generals’ Dais while Luca sees to the punishment personally.

It’s hard to watch, but it’s death to flinch.

Jowy keeps his hands at his sides, and watches Luca’s. Luca’s hands are one of the most striking things about him, as broad as his face but with long fingers that don’t look nearly as brutish without gauntlets. And flaying one of his own soldiers alive is delicate enough work that he’s taken off the gauntlets. He’s spattered with blood and bile up to his elbows. The soldier looses his bowels and Luca doesn’t stop.

“Listen up, dogs!” Luca yells, holding the insensate soldier by the hair to keep him from collapsing into the dirt like a sandbag. “You do what this pig did to one of the refugees, you end up like this. You do this to another soldier, your entire company ends up like this. Any questions?”

Of course no one has any. They’re as mute as Pilika.

“Guess not,” Luca says, and drops the soldier where he is. There’s enough blood and filth that the dirt underneath them has turned to red mud. “No one touches this piece of shit. Not even after he’s dead. He’s not worth it. Got it? Good. Now start up the cooking fires, I’m hungry!”

3: Prince Luca Blight is Egalitarian in his Employ of Talented Subordinates

“So there I was,” Seed goes on now that he’s finished honing this edge of his sword, “not much older than you -- taller, but not much older -- and Kiba’s lefties were dragging me and that poor sap to the stocks like they were hussies pulling on our ears, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Jowy says, even though he doesn’t, but he’s found with Seed it’s better to let the story go on.

“And they throw us in and latch us down, and Kiba’s going on about how we’re disorderly disgraces and all that, and he makes a big speech. More eloquent than the Prince, I say.”

Culgan coughs into his fist.

Seed waves him off with the whetstone. “Hey, he won’t care if he hears. Anyway, Jowy, I tell you, if the brass don’t kill you and they don’t scare you straight, they’ll scares you straight here anyway, so don’t let him scare you off. And look! I’m still here.”

“Still here in the Highland Army?” Jowy asks, because what he really needs to know is still in Luca’s service?, but there’s no way to ask that if they’re so concerned he’ll get wind of it.

“Still here in the high command,” Seed corrects, which answers neither question and begs another. He swipes his whetstone down the blade. “I mean, the Prince is about the only one’ll take a bastard like me now, but that’s how things are.”

Jowy nods, because the story’s apparently over -- and then replays the words in his head. “Wait, you mean literally?”

“You don’t see me flinging a surname around, do you?” Seed laughs. “I’m about as much a bastard as you are. More of one, I think.”

“But --” Jowy cuts off the thought with a quick shake of his head. “No, I think I understand.”

“Give him a prize, Culgan,” Seed jokes. It startles Jowy into laughing. He hasn’t laughed since Riou.

4: In Terms of Raw Military Might, Prince Luca Blight is Unmatched

Between the Highland corps, the mercenaries, the refugees and conscripts from captive State towns, Luca holds direct command of thirty thousand soldiers. If Harmonia comes through, which Jowy is sure they will, he can revise that to fifty thousand.

The numbers speak for themselves. Loudly, at that -- to the tune of resounding yes, sirs that shake the earth. The Highland Army doesn’t bother with fifes and drums.

5: Prince Luca Blight is a Respectful and Caring Older Brother
(sort of)

“And then you’ll die,” Luca says to Jillia over dinner. “He’ll be a perfect knight at the wedding, and then he’ll hold you down and plow you until you scream, and then you’ll die.”

Jowy puts his spoon down on the edge of the bowl and doesn’t pick it up.

“Brother, please,” Jillia sighs.

“Fine, maybe he won’t.” Luca slices into his meat with the kind of cavalier zeal he usually uses on State townspeople.

That Jowy is able to have that thought and not cringe stands as testimony that he’s been by Luca’s side for far too long. Or, perhaps, that the antitoxins and poisons he’s been dosing himself with for the past two weeks are starting to eat away at his brain. He suspects the latter. And he suspects the latter, again, without cringing.

“Maybe he’ll make you like it first,” Luca goes on. “Maybe he’ll make you think you’re a slut for wanting it. And then you’ll die.”

Jillia shuts her eyes and tenses her hands before she can hide them under the tablecloth. “He’s sitting right here.”

“It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before.” Luca lets out a laugh that should make Jowy shiver. It doesn’t. “I bet Jowy did plenty of girls before he asked for you. And I bet they all wish they’d never been born. Unless they’re dead.” He grins, leans over at Jowy as if to put all his teeth on display. “Are they dead, Jowy? Did you kill all those whorish little sows?”

“I’d rather not talk about it, your Highness,” Jowy says, because as long as he says something it means Luca hasn’t stolen his tongue too.

0: King Luca Blight Lets Jowy Live, and That is Just Plain Foolish
(isn’t it?)

Jowy wakes up in a softer bed than the one he used to sleep in in his stepfather’s house in Kyaro. He stares at the ceiling until he can be sure that no, those are fixed images, a fresco of clouds and treetops and wolves, not a preview of the afterlife.

The Black Sword Rune pulses and stutters, in Jowy’s right hand. It might be laughing at him. Its laugh has the same pulse and vehemence as Luca’s, however silent.

The poison hasn’t left Jowy’s veins. It might never, no matter how many antitoxins he drinks.

***

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People Outside of Warrior's Village Sure Are Friendly!

mithrigil — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:05:40 GMT

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Puel and I have ventured into actualfacts co-writing again. Really, it's impossible to pass up a good slice of team gen with a badass lady commander, a very friendly bear, a pleasant enough gold brick, an accountant/spy, and the young lieutenant totally in over his head.

Title: People Outside of Warrior’s Village Sure Are Friendly! (AO3 version here)
Authors: Mithrigil and Puella_Nerdii
Fandom: Suikoden I
Characters: Flik, Viktor, Odessa, Humphrey, Sanchez, assorted rogues
Words: 5500
Rating: PG-13, some jokes that’ll go over the heads of the underaged. (Including Flik.)
Not in the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Party gen, ~~insurgence~~ resistance, lady commanders and the youths who have ridiculous crushes on them, the kind of stories where research into fletching is actually rather important.

Summary: How Flik got drunk and joined the Liberation Army.

People Outside of Warrior’s Village Sure Are Friendly!

The kid at the bar in the blue bandanna has four empty tankards in front of him and a fifth swinging in his fist. He hasn’t slammed it down yet, but Viktor knows how these rants go, and it’s gonna be any second now.

“Damn old fogies,” the kid says, and it’s almost a snarl. His voice is broken but his hiccups aren’t. “They just -- anything’s a tradition if they like it. If they like it for them. And they beat it into you, it’s tradition, tradition that you get to fight and die until we say you’re a man, unless you’re dead, and we’re just going to plot and play with your head until you’re old enough to do that part but not the fighting. Unless you’re dead. I think they think I’m dead. I didn’t come back. If I’m not dead I’m dead to them. So damn them. What was your name again?”

“Viktor.”

“Bad name,” the kid says. “No one’s a victor.”

“Heard that one before.”

“You know, I could be a victor.” Nope, the kid doesn’t slam his pint down, but he does wave with it, sharp enough that the last of the foam slops over the edge. “I have to win something. But they don’t want you to win. ‘Cause if you win, it means you’re stronger than them, and that means they’re irre -- irral -- it means they’re useless. Useless old garbage. So they don’t want you to win. They just want you to go and become a man.”

Viktor props his chin on his fist. “You don’t want to become a man?”

Yep, that’s the sound a half-full pint makes when you slam it down on the bar. (Viktor would know.) “Not their kind of man,” the kid laughs. “Their kind of man’s just a fogey twenty years early. I’ll be my own man,” he says, nodding to himself with the kind of resolve that only comes when you’re this drunk. “Maybe I am. I think I am. Am I a man, Baxter?”

“Viktor.”

“Whatever. Am I?”

“Beats me,” Viktor says, but something in the back of his head goes click. “But let me make sure I got this -- you don’t want the people in charge to make up the rules, you want to make ‘em up yourself.”

Well, Odessa didn’t tell him not to scout for recruits. Viktor sneaks a peek at the sword dangling from the kid’s hip. The leather wrapped around its hilt has light patches from where someone’s hand wore it away, and the scabbard’s simple but well-cared for. Looks like the kid might actually be able to lift the thing.

“Yeah,” the kid says. “I mean yes. I don’t. I mean I don’t want them.” He sighs, a laugh still lingering around the edges of his mouth. “Rules have to make sense. They can’t just be old. If they’re old there’s got to be a why to the old. I mean, if they’re young there’s got to be a why too but -- I don’t know what I mean.”

“No, I think I get it,” Viktor says, and maybe he’s filling in the lines a little but it’s worth a shot. “You don’t trust leaders when they just make stuff up to serve themselves.”

“Yes!” The kid slams his pint down. The beer leaps out of it like a trout. It’s only about a quarter-full now. “Yes! That’s it. It sounded like that in my head. It just didn’t come out right.”

He might’ve slammed his pint down too hard the last time, because a group of locals in local colors is glaring at the bar, which means they might’ve heard more than a slamming pint. In Viktor’s experience, that kind of attention isn’t good for much more than starting a fight. And Odessa won’t like it if he starts a full-on bar brawl on her doorstep. Point is, the guy glaring hardest at the kid has a neck as thick as a grizzly’s and the kind of jaw that fists break on, and that’s bad news.

The kid tilts his head at Viktor like he’s about to ask if there’s something on his face. He doesn’t. He says, “Those aren’t your friends, are they.”

“Nope.”

“Are you supposed to be in this bar?”

“I’m a --” He almost says paying customer, but drops the paying.

The kid raises his eyebrows, a little later than he probably meant to. “Is there a price on your head? I need the money.”

He hopes not, and he really wishes Grizzly Neck’s hands would stop flexing around his pint like that. “Do I look like that kind of guy?” he asks, and if the kid says yes Viktor might just slug him and finish the work the beer’s already started.

“Things don’t always look how they’re supposed to,” the kid slurs. “This innkeeper poisoned me on Mount Tigerwolf. He was real friendly. I mean, before he poisoned me.”

“Well, if he wasn’t friendly, you wouldn’t’ve drunk what he poisoned.” Viktor claps him on the back, and the kid pitches headfirst into the bar. Uh-oh. Hopefully the kid doesn’t bruise easy. Viktor hauls him back up again and says, “I’m not trying to pull one over on you. Promise.”

The only answer Viktor gets from the kid is a long, drool-laden snore.

Well, what do you know.

“Hi, fellas,” Viktor says, and gives Grizzly Neck and his buddies a wave. “Excuse my friend over here, he can’t hold his liquor worth a damn.” There, he hasn’t even lied.

Grizzly Neck just glowers, and his buddies take their cue from that. Looks like no one’s interested in fighting tonight, but probably better not to leave the kid at the bar. Grizzly there looks mighty hungry.

And the kid’s a good kid. Just a little lost.

“Up you go,” Viktor says, and slings the kid over his back like a sack of potatoes. The kid grunts but doesn’t wake up or throw up, and that’s all Viktor can ask for right now. “Add it to my tab,” he tells the innkeeper, and shuts the door to the room behind him before the innkeeper’s face boils any redder.

“-- Viktor?”

“Yeah, just me,” he says. “Well, not just me, I brought a friend. How many beds did we pay for?”

“Just the two,” Odessa says, and she’s already staked hers, shoes over the footboard and everything. “I don’t know if we have enough on us for one more.”

“It’s fine, he can have mine.” He dumps the kid on the free bed. The kid groans louder this time, his eyes scrunching up, but he settles back down. “Calling it a night?”

Odessa’s mouth quirks up at the corner. “Viktor, I called it a night two hours ago.”

“Good.” He jerks his thumb towards the door. “The local colors are out tonight.”

“We really should find a more permanent base,” Odessa sighs. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“The floor.”

She nods, and hands him one of her blankets before he can tell her not to bother. “I’d ask you to pick him up again so we can tuck him in, but --”

“You got it,” he says, and hoists the kid over his back again so Odessa can turn the covers down.

This time the kid does throw up, all the way down the back of Viktor’s shirt.

Ah well, his shirts have seen worse.

***

The young man’s thrown up twice more since the first time, but hasn’t roused himself for anything other than that. Odessa’s taken the liberty of unbuckling his sword belt and removing his shoes and armor, because sleeping in those won’t improve the hangover he’s bound to develop. She sits on the edge of his bed and watches him; he snores lightly, his arm curling around his pillow for comfort, and she can’t help but smile. Viktor guessed the young man was no more than eighteen, and Odessa is inclined to agree with him. An unseasoned eighteen in some regards, but in others -- she casts her eyes over his sword belt, now hanging from the footboard, and his armor, now laid out on the floor. Too young, like so many of the Imperial Soldiers Odessa’s known. Too young, and just the right age for the men in power to exploit.

He groans and clutches the pillow closer. He’ll probably wake up again soon, this time for good, and Odessa resettles herself on the corner of the bed, gives him more room. His eyes open blearily around a thick crust, and Odessa’s not surprised to find them as wide and blue as his cloak.

“-- You’re not Viktor,” he says.

“No,” she agrees, “I’m not. Good morning.”

“Good morning.” He breathes and hauls himself up from the mattress a little. It looks painful. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m in a state. I’ve never drunk that much before.”

She smiles, but softly, to show sympathy rather than amusement. “It’s quite all right. I’d ask how you’re feeling, but I think I can guess.”

He laughs through grit teeth, but the rising color in his cheeks is probably as much embarrassment as hangover. “There’s, um, some medicine in my pouch -- it’s still here, right?”

“Of course,” she says, and fetches it from the footboard. He checks the sword before he even touches the belt-pouches. The blade is well-oiled and recently sharpened. Definitely a more seasoned fighter than he looks, then.

“Thank you,” he says, squinting to rifle through his things until he comes up with a medicine bottle.

“Water?”

“Sure.”

There’s a pitcher on the stand near the door. Odessa figures that if Viktor didn’t mind yielding the young man his bed, he won’t mind yielding his water glass either, so she fills his and brings it to the bed.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, having some trouble with the cork on the medicine. “I should be more careful, and I shouldn’t impose on you, and I’ll definitely settle as much as I can of the bill for the room. I didn’t take your bed, did I?”

“No, you took Viktor’s.” Before he can apologize again, she asks, “You aren’t from Sarady, are you?” She knows the answer, but it’s as good an introductory question as any.

The cork snaps off the bottle. “No. Are you?”

“No, but I grew up near here. Where are you from?”

“A village south of Lorimar.” He throws back the medicine and drinks it in one gulp. That can’t be good for his headache. “Warrior’s Village.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Odessa says. “Why did you leave?”

“Not on my journey. Well, not really. I mean, that’s why I left, but the more I think about it the less I want to go back. Though that could just be the headache. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t lay this all on you, I already gave Viktor an earful last night. It’s probably good that I passed out.”

It is, but not for the reasons he thinks. “I don’t mind. I’m quite curious, actually.”

“It’s just as bad out here as it is there,” he says, once he’s all but drained the glass of water. “The same old men, the same cycle. They talk about tradition and rules and keeping the past alive, but it’s not a past any of them remember and it’s not the path that all the young people want to take. But the old men use the young men, they live vicariously through us because they don’t have the kind of power they need, and we don’t know what kind of power we want except for what they tell us.”

The glass trembles in his hand, and for a moment Odessa fears he’ll shatter it. She keeps holding her breath, though, because if she doesn’t she’ll interrupt him and spill all the secrets of the Liberation Army right there, and it isn’t the right time yet. But oh, almost. Hungover or no, his voice sparks and bristles with the kind of frustrated energy she knows all too well.

“And it’s the same out here. And I still can’t go back, even if I wanted to, which I don’t, because I’m not a man. Because they decide what a man is.”

Yes. Yes. He could be talking about the Empire as easily as his home village -- but he’s not, and Odessa needs to tread carefully or she’ll seem as awful and grasping as the men he’s running from.

“What have you noticed out here?” she asks.

He folds his fingers around the glass, stares into it like he’s searching for his reflection. “I’ve been out here for about eight months,” he says. “Every town I come to, there’s a leader or an imperial commander who won’t do anything about the bandits shaking his people down, of conscripting all the young people into service. I got poisoned on the way here, that was new -- and when I told the mayor about it he said it was Kirov’s problem, if I wanted to dispute it I should go back to Kirov. I’d just climbed the damn mountain. I said it was his problem. He threw me out of his office. I shouldn’t have taken on all four of his guards, but --” He stops. “It’s nothing. It’s just how things are out here. I get it. Once I get back down the mountain I’ll try my luck in Jowston.”

He’s too young to accept defeat so easily. “What will you look for in Jowston?”

“I don’t know.” He laughs, as bitter as before. “I don’t even know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Flik.”

The name suits him. She edges closer to him on the bed, but not so closely that he’ll jump, she hopes. “What kind of a man do you want to be, Flik?”

“You know, I don’t know that either.” He smiles, brilliant and far too drawn for a face as young as his. “And I might even be the kind of man they want me to be in the end, but even if that’s the destination I want to find my own way there.”

“Of course,” she says, softly as she can, and sets her hand down in the space between them. “And you should be free to decide. But there isn’t much in the way of freedom these days, is there?”

“Not from what I’ve seen.” He peers over the rim of the glass at her hand, and his fingers twitch but stay where they are. “Are you saying I should stop looking?”

Odessa shakes her head, forces herself to keep quiet; the innkeeper’s sympathetic to her cause, but that’s no guarantee that his patrons are, and walls only block so much. “Not at all,” she says. “But I am saying that looking might not be enough.” She glances at his sword again, to make her meaning plain.

He lowers his hand from the glass to the hilt of his sword, and says nothing.

“Have you heard of the Liberation Army?” she asks, her voice just barely above a whisper.

He nods.

“My name is Odessa Silverberg,” she says. “I’m the Liberation Army’s commander.”

And if she’s right about him, she should have his full attention now.

He stares into her eyes, and shapes words that don’t quite take voice. “You’re --” he tries, and then “-- oh,” and “-- I,” and his cheeks flush even brighter than they did last night from drink. “You’re recruiting me,” he says, when he manages to put the words together.

“I see the same kind of spirit in you that led me to start the Liberation Army in the first place.” She brushes the palm over the back of his hand but doesn’t quite hold it. Not yet. “You see what’s happening in this country, and you care. You care enough to break away from the unjust traditions in your village, and you care enough to challenge -- four guards, was it?” She smiles. “I wish I knew more people like you. No, I need more people like you.”

Whether she’s holding his hand or not, she’s close enough to feel the tremor that rushes through it, like a static charge.

“I need to think about that,” he says. “How much longer do you have the room?”

“Only for another six hours, I’m afraid,” she says. “But we’ll be near Sarady for a while longer, and when you’ve thought it over, find Viktor and he’ll bring you to our base. He’s hard to miss.”

Flik laughs. It’s such an open sound. “And if I tell him I’m not ready?”

“Then he’ll find something to do, I’m sure.” She laughs, too, but not for long. “But I do hope you’ll let us know.”

He will. He has to. Once his hangover’s faded and his head’s cleared, he’ll have no choice but to see.

“I should still settle the bill for the room before you go.”

“There’s no need.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Please. I’ll feel a little better about what happened if you let me, and besides -- you need the funds.”

“You need them, too, I imagine.”

“Not as much as you.”

This is getting silly. “If you insist,” she says, and names a figure about thirty potch lower than what his share of the room would really cost. “But don’t feel guilty or ashamed about what happened.” She squeezes his hand, however briefly, and when his hand tightens under hers, her pulse jumps. “I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”

By the flush rising up all the way to his bright blue eyes, she knows it won’t be the last time they meet, whether his answer is yes or no.

***

Humphrey’s not one to say much, but right now he plain doesn’t have much to say. Odessa is at the table, looking over the map to back east, and there’s not much for Humphrey to do other than watch the door and wait for Viktor.

Viktor’s late. It’s probably nothing, but too many people in Sarady have been flying the colors for Humphrey not to be cautious.

Odessa glances up from the map. “I told him to settle up at the inn,” she tells Humphrey, reading him like a book, like always.

Humphrey nods and relaxes a little, his back to the wall, but doesn’t stop watching to door.

Viktor knows how to walk two ways, one you hear and one you don’t. But in Humphrey’s experience with the man, he doesn’t know how to imitate two sets of footsteps at once, so when Humphrey hears two people approaching he’s less inclined to relax.

“Look what I found,” Viktor says, halfway through swinging open the door like this is a tavern, not a private hideout in a public house. He gestures ostentatiously at the young man just behind him, a mousy and wiry thing with a light sword and the armor to reinforce the speed he probably relies on to wield it.

Odessa straightens -- not the stiff-backed officer’s reception that Humphrey remembers too well, but like her whole body’s perking up. Excitement, maybe. “Hello, Flik,” she says. “I’m so glad you came. Please, sit down.”

Flik nods, and chooses a seat at the table that affords him a view of the door, and keeps his sword out of the table’s bounds. He’s not just a kid. Good. Humphrey respects that, figures he’ll let the kid know as much, and offers a long nod. Flik returns it. Also good.

“Have you thought about what we discussed?” Odessa asks.

“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” Flik says.

She smiles. “And will you join us?”

He smiles back. “I think I already have.”

Looking at that smile, Humphrey knows exactly what Odessa and Viktor saw in this kid. And if Humphrey’s following it in those two, he can follow it in Flik.

“Welcome,” Humphrey says.

“Humphrey,” Odessa explains, with just one wave of introduction between the two of them.

Flik only looks startled for an appreciable second. “-- Thanks,” he says, and that’s all it takes.

***

“She told him what?” Sanchez asks, to clarify. “Mere minutes after she met him?”

“Odessa’s got a way with this,” Viktor says, and as far as Sanchez is concerned he’s as thick and incorrigible as ever. “And it doesn’t matter. He’s here, now. Take advantage of it, I say. If the meat’s gone bad, deal with the indigestion later.”

“Indeed,” Sanchez says, and swallows a retort about not yet having developed a taste for Viktor’s metaphors. Really, he should be thankful that Lady Odessa has apparently decided to turn her Liberation Army into a refuge for beardless and untested youths, all things considered, but he must confess some disappointment nevertheless. He pours himself a glass of wine. “Well, we have to take what we can get.”

Viktor shrugs, dusts his shoulder off. “He held his own on the way here. That’s about as much as we can ask of a soldier. More, maybe. And he’s a good kid. I like him.”

“Clearly, so did Odessa.”

“Hey, she likes us too, so I say let’s trust her judgment, huh?” He laughs and pounds Sanchez between the shoulderblades in what he doubtless thinks is a display of manly camaraderie but feels much more like an assault. Thank goodness Sanchez had already swallowed his sip of wine.

Before Sanchez can say, fine, either way, no one asks me, the Commander in question makes her way into the room, the contentious young man on her heels and Humphrey behind.

“Good, everyone’s here,” Odessa says, stands aside. “Sanchez, I’d like you to meet Flik. Flik, Sanchez handles our finances and quarter.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sanchez says, and offers a hand so the poor brat will know what to do.

He’s surprised when Flik’s handshake isn’t childishly eager or compensatorily forceful. “Thanks for having me,” he says, and gives Sanchez’s hand a firm grasp and a single shake.

Odessa does know how to pick them out, it seems.

Damn.

“How did you find him?” Sanchez asks, of no one in particular but hoping for Odessa’s answer.

“He threw up on my shirt,” Viktor says, his grin wide.

“And you haven’t washed it since,” says Flik. Viktor, still grinning, sweeps Flik into a headlock and ruffles his thick mop of hair. Flik yelps and tries to throw him off, but after a few fruitless struggles he laughs, too. Humphrey glances at Sanchez, cocks his head as if to say you know Viktor, and yes, Sanchez does, but Viktor’s fast friends don’t always make it to the high command.

“Save it for later, boys,” Odessa says as she sits down at the head of the table. “Sanchez, you have the map for the Lorimar region?”

He rolls it out on the table, and Odessa leans over it, surveying the small eastern island in particular. “Our scouts report that the Milich Oppenheimer’s branch of the Imperial Army is practicing maneuvers in the eastern part of the region, and that Shulen’s navy is offering them support from the lake. It’s Milich, so we know there’s some kind of new weapon --”

“-- and not the kind we want to let them break out on us,” Viktor says. “Humphrey, your contacts in the army got anything?”

Humphrey shakes his head, no, and Sanchez says nothing because they didn’t ask him.

“We need a small reconnaissance team.” Odessa traces a meandering path across the map with her finger, frowning. “But it’s going to be dangerous. They’ll have to get much close to General Oppenheimer’s army than our scouts did.”

“You’ll need more than a small team,” Flik says. “We can’t approach from downriver.”

Odessa blinks. “Why not?”

Flik gives Sanchez a quick do you mind? look, so Sanchez steps aside from his place at the map’s edge and points out something the Empire would have much preferred for Sanchez to keep hidden. “There are rapids in the southwest section of the river, which means we’d have to approach the island from the Great Forest region in the east instead. They’re even more well-protected than our scouts probably reported.”

As dangerous as the rest of that statement was, the our in our scouts is what gives Sanchez the most pause.

“It sounds like you know the area well.” Odessa nudges the map closer to Flik. “How do you recommend we get past them?”

“Well, I don’t know the Great Forest as well as Lorimar, but I do know they can’t put troops there or patrol the area because the woods are so thick. If we came in from over here,” he points, “we’d have to risk crossing the river at a wider ford, but at least they wouldn’t be expecting it.”

“I know some folks in that forest,” Viktor says. “They might give us a few fishing boats. We’d have to trade with the Imperials, but I don’t mind buying them lunch now if it means we can stiff ‘em later.”

Odessa smiles, some of the lines around her mouth easing. “Fair enough. Flik, will you lead the team?”

Sanchez coughs. “With all due respect, Odessa, isn’t it a little early to entrust him with a mission?”

“Perhaps. But he knows the area --”

“No, Sanchez is right,” Flik says. “I know Lorimar, but I don’t think whatever team you send will trust me right off the bat. And Viktor’s the one with friends in the forest. I’ll definitely go, but I think someone else should be in charge.”

Odessa inclines her head, half-closes her eyes and allows herself a moment. “You’re right,” she says, and Sanchez supposes he should make an effort to look pleased. “Viktor, I’m giving you command. Take Flik with you, and choose the rest carefully.”

“You got it,” Viktor says, and Flik just nods his head. But when Flik looks up and catches Sanchez’s eye, he adds a quiet “Thank you.”

Sanchez thinks, again, quite clearly, Damn.

***

Odessa knew, of course, that they could only impose on the owner of the house for so long, and she’s slept in worse places than the cave they’ve relocated to on the outskirts of town. Well, she’s slept in worse places since founding the Liberation Army, at least, but after nights of layering enough furs beneath her to keep the rocky floor from mangling her back, she does miss beds. And baths, if she’s being honest with herself. And pastries -- what she wouldn’t do for a warm flaky bun some mornings, dripping with glaze and smelling of cinnamon.

But she’s chosen this life, so she keeps those thoughts private.

She scans over the inventories for the third time this week. Sanchez tells her that it’s his job to worry over such things, and true, he manages to scavenge whatever they need from fates know where, and he can manipulate numbers in a way that would make even her relatives envious. Still, she ought to know what she has on hand. The Army is running low on arrows, which isn’t as difficult to remedy as it could be, and its stockpiles of iron are nearly depleted, which she needs to address within the week. Particularly given the shape most of the soldiers’ swords and shields are in; thank goodness they haven’t met the Imperial Army head-on yet, or their arms would shatter on contact with Imperial steel.

Her lamp’s guttering. Can she spare the oil to keep it lit? She isn’t sure, and adds it to the list of supplies she needs to procure.

“Odessa?” Flik knocks on the doorjamb. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” she says, and looks up from-- “-- Flik, what’s that?”

He adjusts the rather large dead bird in his arms. “It’s a Caynasal,” he says, with the kind of hopeful, almost sheepish expression that Odessa’s seen on cats that show off their captured prey with triumph. “Sanchez said you were low on arrows.”

“ -- Ah,” she says. “That’s -- ” There is a word for it, one that isn’t patronizing, but Odessa can’t think of what it is. “Impressive?” she guesses, and ventures a smile. It is a sizable bird, after all, and she didn’t know he had any bowmanship to speak of. Unless he managed to bring it down with his sword. She covers her mouth to hide her widening smile as she imagines Flik racing across the plains after the bird, grasping it by the leg and wrestling it to the ground before it could fly out of his grasp.

His cheeks color. “There’s a story in Warrior’s Village. Um, I won’t tell the whole thing, it goes on for a while. But Eilina, the wife of Klift the Crusader, used to fletch her arrows with Caynasal feathers. So they always fly true. I mean, in the legend.”

Heat spreads through her cheeks, too. She hopes it doesn’t show too much. “Oh. Thank you. That was very thoughtful.”

“And, well,” he goes on. “I don’t think they’re bad to eat. So after we pluck it, I guess that’s...dinner.”

The bird slips a little out of his grasp, and he adjusts it again, holds it by the neck and an arm wrapped around its midsection like it’s some kind of limp musical instrument. He’s cleaned the wound, but the bird still has its head, lolling toward the floor. Odessa almost laughs, but she’d have to explain why if she did, so she stifles it.

“I have been getting tired of stew,” she says. “And the one we’ve been eating is more broth than substance now, I think.”

His smile brightens, but his cheeks are still pink when he sets the bird down on the table. “Do you mind if I help? I mean, if I’m not interrupting you.”

“Not at all. I really should stop looking at the same lists over and over again.”

When Flik sits beside her, he also moves the oil lamp out of the way and hauls the bird into its place. If it weren’t so ridiculous and, frankly, adorable, the shadows around the flattened feathers might be frightening. “I wish I could help with more than just the plucking. You have so much to take care of.”

Odessa pries a handful of the bird’s tailfeathers loose and shakes her head. “You’ve already been helpful, and the longer you’re with us, the more you’ll learn how to do.” She twirls one of the feathers between her fingertips, watches the lamplight cascade down its shaft. “Goodness knows I’ve learned enough. I never had to pluck birds before I founded the Army.”

“So I’ll learn,” he agrees, and gets to work on his side of the bird.

The silence isn’t quite comfortable, but it’s companionable, and the lamplight settles against the walls of the room. Odessa falls into a rhythm, sorting the feathers and setting the harder ones aside, and Flik follows her example. He’s courteous about where his hands are, she notices. They don’t brush against hers, not even accidentally.

“We should save the down,” he says.

“To sell?” Odessa can think of a few merchants who might pay for it, and can’t help remembering pillows and warm duvets.

Flik shakes his head. “No. Never mind. Um. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Unless you mean we should save it for the reserves,” she says. “We do need more bedrolls, you’re right, but there are more practical materials, even if this is, well, free.”

His cheeks almost glow brighter than the lamp does. “No, I meant -- ah. I thought you might like to sleep on it.”

Goodness, he can’t even meet her eyes right now; he picks at the vanes of the feathers in his lap and stares at his shoes with such effort that Odessa wonders if he’ll be able to unfix his eyes again. She clamps her lips shut, because laughing would be too cruel, and he’s already drooping the way the bird did when he held it by the neck.

“That’s very sweet of you,” she says, “but I don’t think it would be practical to keep a feather-bed in a cave.”

He shapes his mouth to say something, maybe contradict her, but turns his face away before any words come out, and resumes prying feathers out of the bird. The skin squeaks.

Odessa chuckles and tickles the bird’s beak with one of its tailfeathers, and finally, Flik lifts his head, a smile starting to peek out.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers, but at least there’s some laughter in it as well. “I’m just -- thankful. For you. And I think I have a better idea what kind of man I want to be.”

“What kind of man is that?”

There’s still a twinge of red across his cheeks, but his eyes are clear, assertive on hers. “The kind someone like you could respect.”

“I’d like that,” Odessa says. “And I think you’re well on your way.”

*******

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Things to Toast

mithrigil — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:33:19 GMT

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This one's from the most recent round of Porn Battle. Oh, how sweet it is to be back in this weathered, molded saddle.

Title:(AO3 version over here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikoden I/II
Characters: Flik and Viktor
Words: 4300
Rating: R. Victorious drunk sex.
Don’t know the fandom? You might still like this if you enjoy: Buddy comedy, beer, body hair, bawdy tavern ballads, bears.

Summary: After the events of Suikoden I, Flik and Viktor have survived a hell of a lot. That doesn't make Viktor any less insufferable. Getting drunk, however, does.

Things to Toast

The arrow wound’s not a big deal. Not in a bad place, either, the kind of place that leaves only a scratch on the skeleton and one ugly scar. Oh, it’s bleeding enough to leave a trail the rubble won’t erase and Flik’s going to need at least two new shirts, but he’s had worse and healed worse.

Nevertheless, when there aren’t any more Imperial soldiers in the immediate vicinity, Viktor slings him bodily over his shoulder and drags him out of what’s left of Barbarossa’s castle. Flik is convinced that the arrow just got a mind of its own and decided to shove itself somewhere deeper, and passes out.

Just like old times, he thinks. He wonders if he’ll throw up down Viktor’s shirt this time, too.

***

Even when he’s more unconscious than asleep, Flik has never been a heavy sleeper. Experience and frayed nerves have rendered him capable of awakening at a flash of light, or the drop of a bucket, or the unmistakable sound of someone failing horribly at woodcraft.

So when Viktor, at the top of a mighty set of lungs, staggers through the hall of whatever inn this is and belts a resounding “But the Beast Rune can never be buggered at all!”, Flik wakes like a shot, hits his head on the backboard, and nearly passes out again.

The door swings open, fills with a bleary black-and-gold silhouette of Drunken Bear, then shuts, leaving Viktor in the room.

“I’d better not need silence and bedrest,” Flik says, and rubs sleep out of his eyes.

“If you did, I wouldn’tve brought beer,” Viktor says. Sure enough, he’s got more than one tankard in his left hand and a pitcher in the right.

Flik sighs, checks his wound -- clean bandages, the sting of medicine, nothing left under the skin -- and decides, “Hand it over.”

“You healing up okay?”

“Okay enough that I’m taking your beer.”

Viktor laughs and hulks down on the edge of the bed. “So it’s not gonna start leaking out of the wound.”

“If it does, you’ll know.” Flik toasts. “To living to drink another day.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Viktor says, and does, a long and hard pull that Flik doesn’t try to match.

Flik drinks down enough to make the bandages strain. The beer’s warm, a little frothier than he prefers but there’s no sense in complaining now.

“There’s more where that came from, if we want it.” Viktor wipes his jaw.

More beer, at a tavern Flik doesn’t recognize and Viktor probably doesn’t have a tab at, after medical expenses and a bed -- wait. “How much money do we have?”

“Well, McDohl was carrying most of it, but I snagged a few things on our way out of the palace that should keep us afloat ‘til we get wherever we’re going.”

“A few things?”

“A couple vases. Hey, don’t look at me like that. The roof was caving in! If I didn’t save ‘em then no-one’d have the privilege.”

Flik hangs his head in the hand that isn’t holding a half-full pint of beer. He expects to sigh but laughter comes out instead, and once it’s past his lips and nudging at the still-sore wound he understands why -- and doesn’t mind it at all.

“We did it,” Flik says, “didn’t we.”

Viktor grins. “About time you got into the spirit.”

“Hard to get into the spirit when I’m unconscious.”

“Here’s to not being unconscious!” Viktor toasts, and if a little of his beer sloshes over the rim of his glass and onto the bedsheets, Flik doesn’t complain either. It’s Viktor’s side of the bed anyway.

There’s cause to refill, after that, and the toasts go on until Flik wonders how deep the pitcher goes. “To Humphrey,” Flik says, “hope he’s okay out there,” and then Viktor’s turn results in a toast “To toast! I love toast! To toast tomorrow morning!”

“To tomorrow morning, wherever we are.”

“We’re in Sarady.”

“Sarady?”

“Sarady.”

“I’m not toasting to Sarady.”

“Why not? We met in Sarady.”

“That’s exactly why not.” Flik grins into his tankard while Viktor sputters around his.

“Hey, I’m worth toasting to. You’d never’ve met me if we didn’t meet here.” Viktor’s out of beer again, and at this point, so’s the pitcher, so he sets the tankard down on the floor. “Or maybe you would have. Stars and all. Hey. Imagine if I had to recruit you like McDohl did, or something. Like, standing on a bridge somewhere with nothing else to do. Or starving. Or something.”

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Flik says truthfully.

“Then have another one!”

“Then get another pitcher.”

“I’ll do you one better. How about you get up out of bed and come down to the bar and we’ll get two pitchers.”

“I’m starting to like the way you think.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re wising up to the world.” Viktor swoops his arm over Flik’s shoulders, and if he’s not exactly gentle about helping Flik up, it’s not as hard a backslap as it used to be. “C’mon.”

***

Flik never knew there were that many verses to The Beast Rune can never be buggered at all. He suspects Viktor’s getting them confused with some of the ones from Little Nell from North Swallow, but singing’s more fun, so he sings along instead of saying anything.

And then he does have to say something, which is “Sorry!”, though it probably should have been “Pardon!” or something because that’s the more polite thing to say when you trip over someone and probably spill your beer. But it’s a crowded hallway. Viktor tends to fill up a hallway.

“I’m surprised you made it up the stairs, Sparky.”

Flik elbows Viktor in the ribs -- presumably in the ribs, it’s not like it matters with Viktor, whose ribs are probably the size of Flik’s wrists. Each. “I didn’t pass out.”

“Like I said, you’re wising up.” Viktor laughs at his own jokes enough when he’s sober, but he does it even more when he’s drunk, and when Flik’s drunk too -- which he is, though not as drunk as he’s ever been, and probably sober enough to fight his way out of here if he has to -- when Flik’s drunk too, laughing at his own jokes makes Flik laugh with him.

“Something funny about me wising up?” Flik asks.

“Only the part where you’re wise.”

This time, the requisite rib-elbowing is compounded by Viktor opening the door to their room, so Flik almost misses him on the way in. It’s probably good to remember that this door opens inward. Flik’s not sure he’s drunk enough to forget things, but he says that aloud just to make sure. “The door opens inward.”

Viktor shuts it behind them once they’re both in. “Good, you can still see straight.”

“Straighter than you.”

“I’d test that with a game of pitch-pot but we don’t have any arrows. We’ve got a vase, though. A couple.”

“From the Imperial Palace,” Flik reminds him, since he seems to have forgotten.

“Y’know, I think Barbarossa might just tear his beard out if he found out we were using one of his vases for a game of pitch-pot.”

“Probably,” Flik says. The bed’s still unmade. Viktor’s side of the sheets is still stained with beer. Flik sits on it anyway. “Viktor, we did it.”

Viktor laughs. “Of course we did it, we’ve been celebrating it for the last couple hours.”

“No, we did it.” Flik’s sure he’s said this more than once tonight already, but it’s so enormous and present in his mind, like light or air or pain, that it bears repeating. And emphasis. “We took him out of power. He’s probably dead. We did it.”

Viktor raises his tankard to toast and has clearly forgotten that he doesn’t have a tankard. It looks ridiculous. Flik laughs until he’s laughing to his knees.

“Out of beer,” Viktor says.

“No,” Flik corrects, “there’s plenty of beer downstairs where we left it. But we left the beer. It’s not gone.”

“Why did we leave the beer?”

“Because I said I didn’t want to drink anymore.”

“Are you tired?”

“No, I just don’t want to drink any more beer.”

Viktor flops down on the bed so loudly that Flik only hears the laughter after. “You really are wising up, aren’t you. I haven’t seen you even this drunk since Kimberley.”

Flik blushes and shudders. “Let’s not talk about Kimberley. Tai Ho can have her.” He rethinks that statement. “Tai Ho can have her any way she wants to be had.”

Between Viktor’s laughter, the creaking of the bed, and the massive hand ruffling through Flik’s hair, Flik is briefly convinced that maybe he is drunker than he wants to be. The room spins a little. But he shuts his eyes, and laughs -- because it’s funny, being propositioned by a seal forger is funny, and being drunk under the table by said forger is also funny, especially if it involves getting out of certain implicit obligations. He’d ruffle Viktor’s hair back, but it’s a greasy mess. He does it anyway. Straining up like that pulls at his wound a little, and even if Flik thinks he doesn’t stop laughing clearly he must have, because Viktor is lying mostly on top of him now, and he’s not laughing.

He settles his hand over the arrow wound, which isn’t an arrow wound anymore. “Still hurts?” His voice is strangely quiet, almost sleepy, after all that laughter.

Flik shakes his head. “It might when I’m sober.” He could say something else, about how Viktor’s as heavy as a damned bear and twice as stinking, but it doesn’t feel like the right moment.

Viktor makes a low sound of approval, like after he’s won a fight but not as loud. His hand slides away from Flik’s bandages, and up, until he’s curled his fist around Flik’s upper arm. And Flik’s so distracted by the gesture that he doesn’t even notice that Viktor’s kissing him until after he’s kissing back.

-- wait.

Now, Flik hasn’t kissed very many people, or any men ever, or anyone at all since Odessa in the last couple of years, but kissing was one of the things he liked most about the things he and Odessa did and it’s not bad with Viktor either. Different. Scratchier. Heavier. Slower. But good, in that dizzying way that Flik thinks he needs to hold onto to fully appreciate, so he does. Holds on. Appreciates it.

“Mm. You kiss good,” Viktor murmurs, with a low rumble that pulses against Flik’s chest.

“Odessa used to say,” Flik says, because agreeing isn’t polite but she did used to say that. Flik realizes that thinking about Odessa is probably not the best thing to be doing when he’s kissing someone else, but that trying not to think of her is worse. So he thinks about Viktor instead, which is better. Good, even, though his solid weight crushes Flik into the mattress and cuts off about half of Flik’s air.

Viktor doesn’t just kiss heavy and hard, he pets heavy and hard, and Flik dimly thinks he should have expected something like this. Flik holds on, and yeah, Viktor’s hair is as greasy as it was before but it feels natural for Flik to press his nails into Viktor’s scalp. Making Viktor gasp turns out to be as rewarding as making him sputter, or making him take things seriously, and soon enough there’s a beat to it, a pulse, that stars at Flik’s fingers and threads down through to their mouths, their chests, their hips. Viktor probably thinks he’s rocking gently. Flik hasn’t had that much pressure applied to that general area in months. He laughs -- difficult as it is when he’s not getting quite enough air -- and laughing doesn’t stop Viktor from kissing him.

Flik’s seen Viktor’s smile before, of course, and it’s less insufferable this close. Sleepier. Still like a bear with a honeycomb, but less insufferable. “You ever done this before?” Viktor asks, and Flik would ask Done what? if Viktor’s hand weren’t indicating, by its current location, just what.

“Not with you,” Flik says.

“I know that.” Viktor laughs. Flik’s close enough to feel that, that and what other muscles move when he laughs that deep. “I meant with men.”

“Oh,” Flik says, maybe a little too vehemently, “no. Is it different?”

“Not really,” Viktor says. And then, as if he’s just reconsidered his answer, his body shifts atop Flik’s. “Well. I mean the things you do aren’t that different. But everyone’s different.”

“I knew that,” Flik says. He might want Viktor’s hand back where it was, to tell the truth. He definitely wants something there. The first time Flik nearly scared Odessa off, she told him that sex doesn’t mean you’re married now, but sometimes it just feels good and is something to enjoy with someone you want like that, and Flik’s still not sure he agrees with her but it does feel good, right now.

Viktor kisses Flik’s jaw, like he was going for the lips and missed. It still feels good. “You want to?”

“Sure.”

“Good,” Viktor says, and gets Flik’s pants open.

Flik knows very well how large those hands are, and how incongruously light those fingers are. So Viktor takes ahold of him in one of said massive hands and, yes, it’s different, callused in similar places to Flik’s own but farther apart, almost bracken, and Flik thinks he’s thinking about this entirely too much because the sensation is honestly amazing. A coil of heat winds up Flik’s spine, sets him sweating into the covers. Viktor doesn’t weigh as heavily onto him as he was but Flik still can’t move his hips as much as he’d like to, and he’d like to, which is the important thing. He’d like more than he’s getting. There, that could be more -- Viktor’s other hand is holding Flik down by the upper arm. Flik cranes closer, stretches his neck and his tongue to test if Viktor’s hand tastes like it feels. It does, like sweat and beer and a little like stone, but not in a bad way at all. It turns out that sucking on one of Viktor’s fingers is like two of Odessa’s. Flik’s not surprised. Not better, just different, but good.

Viktor’s voice is low enough, heated enough, that Flik mistakes it for a growl at first, or the rumbling of the bed, or the crackle of fire. “You trying to tell me something?”

Flik’s only response to that is a blank “Huh?”, which isn’t even all that audible around Viktor’s fingers.

“I mean, we could, but we’d need more than -- hang on, I’ve got something,” Viktor says, and then he stops, and even if Flik’s having a much easier time breathing now he doesn’t want stops.

Flik sits up, which is surprisingly difficult, and takes stock of the room. The firelight’s lower than it was, and that’s fine -- the fireworks haven’t stopped outside, which is fine too -- Flik’s sword is at the edge of the bed and still in reach, even though his pants are around his knees, which was fine until Viktor stopped touching him -- and Viktor is rooting around in one of his rucksacks.

“Is this really the time?” Flik asks.

“Better before than after,” Viktor says, and then, “aha, this should work.” He sets a jar on the edge of the bed. “Might have to buy more from the healer for your wound, but at least this won’t hurt.”

Flik blinks. “Hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“-- oh.” That. Flik gets it. “Aren’t I too old?”

Viktor’s face screws into at least three different confused expressions, starting with one eyebrow raised, then the other, then both, and his mouth in three of the funniest grimaces Flik’s ever seen. “What the hell do they do in Warrior’s Village?”

“It’s a long story,” Flik says, because that’s true.

“Sounds like everything there’s a long story,” Viktor says, sits down on the bed again. “Don’t tell it. Look. I think I want to fuck you. Is that okay?”

Well it isn’t not okay, not how Flik’s body responds to the idea, warm and urgent and a little evaluative but curious, and nothing about this has felt wrong so far. And then he considers it, considers everything else he’s done since he left, and everything he’s learned, and the wound in his side from destroying the Empire in Odessa and McDohl’s names, with Viktor at his back through it all.

They’re alive. They did it. They should do this too.

So Flik says, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.”

Viktor grins and yanks Flik’s pants the rest of the way off, which has the added effect of tugging Flik farther off the bed than he was before. Flik flails, but doesn’t get to far in it, because as soon as the jar’s open and set aside Viktor taps him on the thigh, holds his legs apart. “Guess you’ve never done this before either.”

Flik shakes his head. “No. -- and not to her. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It was,” Viktor says.

“You like that,” Flik realizes, and that shouldn’t add fuel to the heat spread through him.

“Can’t say I don’t, I just hope you’ll like it too.” With a layer of slick balm over his fingers, they aren’t nearly as rough as before. Flik wonders whether he likes that more or less, with the unintended effect that just where said fingers go comes as something of a surprise.

“Easy, Sparky.” Viktor laughs. Flik hadn’t realized that feeling someone else’s laughter inside was a thing. It’s definitely a thing.

“Don’t call me that,” Flik says anyway.

“You’re the boss,” Viktor says, wriggling his fingers around. It hurts about as much as a stretch or a flex just barely out of range, which Flik supposes it is, more or less. Not bad. Different. Definitely distracting. Viktor’s other hand is even more distracting, to be honest, holding Flik’s legs open just slightly off-center so that his knuckles are right up against Flik’s balls.

Flik realizes he might have just been extremely impolite, and bursts out laughing.

That -- that hurts a little, and then doesn’t at all, and Viktor laughs with him or at him, it doesn’t matter. “You know, when I said you lost your funny bone, I didn’t think you shoved it up here. Though that does explain a lot.”

“I didn’t,” Flik says. “Sorry. Ah. Let me slick you up.”

“Oh?”

“I haven’t touched you. So let me slick you up.”

Making Viktor gape and grin like that is just as rewarding as making him gasp.

“You got it,” Viktor says, lets go of Flik’s leg to brace himself on the bed, and holds over the open jar.

Flik scrapes a fingerful out and readies his hand. Viktor’s as big and hairy as Flik expected him to be, bigger now that he’s hard, and Flik decides, consciously, not to balk at the sight. Or the thought. Or the feel, which isn’t all that different, or the low heady sounds that Viktor makes when Flik tightens his hand, which go straight to Flik’s groin.

There’s definitely more pressure where Viktor’s hand is, now. Flik never thought he’d be able to tell the difference between one knucklebone and two in this context, but he certainly can. He’s aware of the tightness inside and out, the kind that sears up to his eyes like the blissful crack from wringing out an overworked shoulder. Viktor overshadows him, shifting and weighing down on him as his breath loses its pace. New as the rest is, this part is familiar, and when Viktor asks if Flik’s ready, there’s no answer but “Ready when you are.”

It takes some repositioning, but once Flik’s body figures out that it’s not so different from some of the ways he held Odessa down, he lets Viktor handle his legs and tries not to laugh too much. Viktor shoves in. Flik stops breathing entirely, let alone laughing, let alone anything.

He thinks, somewhere though the jolt of foreign heat, that the fireworks outside have gotten louder.

Viktor groans, doesn’t move, and holds Flik behind the knee like he’s going to pick him up and throw him. “You’re tight as a damn vise.”

Flik blinks. Even blinking is hard. “Is that a good thing?”

Viktor laughs his face. Flik should yell at him. But then Viktor draws back and thrusts down again, still mostly laughing, and Flik yells something else entirely. And then it’s not so much yelling as trying not to yell, because if he says anything at all it’ll be obscene, if he has the capacity for words, which he doesn’t.

This part isn’t different at all -- well, that’s not true. But the motion is the same, and the searching out a rhythm is the same, and the fumbling around to touch and take and have as much as he can is the same, and if his lips come into contact with a hairier jaw or a thicker shoulder there’s nothing wrong with that. Viktor plows into him and Flik shoves back, Viktor holds him down and Flik strains up. It’s almost like sparring and feels just as easy, just as good, lights the same burn in Flik’s limbs and, well, almost the same pressure in his groin. Something strikes in him, that’s about the only way he can describe it, and he’d like very much to get a hand, any hand on himself because if he doesn’t come soon he might go insane.

His fingers tangle with Viktor’s once he tries. “Beat you to it,” Viktor says, all ragged broken breath just under Flik’s ear. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

Every other time Viktor’s said that, he’s meant it. That doesn’t mean Flik doesn’t stop trying, but Viktor’s already there, and Flik catches the back of Viktor’s hand just before he comes.

Viktor finishes while Flik’s still riding it out, and if that part’s strange, searing and wet in places Flik never expected to feel either of those things, Flik doesn’t have it in him to feel wronged or offended or anything but wrung out in the best possible way.

Then Viktor heaves out a breath that could put a Wind Rune to shame, and collapses on top of him.

On top of the arrow wound. The now-somewhat sweat-soaked arrow wound.

If that doesn’t warrant Flik throwing Viktor off the bed, nothing does.

“What?” Viktor makes what’s probably an attempt at an innocent pout and scrambles back onto the bed. Flik’s not buying it.

“Do you always feel the need to smother the people you have sex with?”

“Just the ones I like.” Viktor shrugs, grins, peels up a corner of the sheets to clean himself off. He’s Viktor. Nothing’s different.

“That’s your side,” Flik says, or hopes he says. “Of the bed, I mean.”

“Figured as much,” Viktor agrees.

The mattress tilts. Flik thinks he hears Viktor ask, “Ready to sleep?” but Flik’s not sure he’s awake enough to respond.

***

Either the fireworks are still going, or Viktor’s snore has taken on new dimensions.

Flik rolls over and wakes up. It’s the latter. He elbows Viktor in the back. “Cut it out.”

Viktor snurfles magnificently. “Howzat?”

Flik is about to tell him it’s time to get going, when the combination of a blinding headache, a persistent soreness in his lower body, and a hazy recollection of stubbly kisses change his mind entirely. “Did we just have sex?”

“Yup,” Viktor says.

“Oh,” Flik says. “Okay.” He rests his hand over the arrow wound, which isn’t stinging or sharply painful. Nothing’s amiss, aside from the somewhat expected headache. “Please tell me I was on top.”

Viktor’s nasal breathing pauses momentarily. Even the mattress stops creaking. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

“No, wait, I remember.” Flik lays back, tries to let his eyes focus on the ceiling. “Ow.”

The mattress lurches, and Viktor flings an arm out, rubs his fist through Flik’s hair. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

It does nothing for Flik’s headache, but Flik doesn’t swat him away. “You mean Barbarossa’s vase will buy me breakfast.”

“The vase I stole.”

“Let’s go with that.”

Viktor laughs, far too deep and resounding for this time of morning, and this time he ruffles Flik’s shoulder, which is only marginally better than ruffling his hair. Flik finds himself reaching up, but doesn’t shove him off this time either, or if he does it’s not exactly full-hearted.

After a long moment in which Flik fails to gain adequate focus on the ceiling, Viktor hauls himself up and stretches. The sound of his bones cracking reminds Flik to do the same, and Flik stretches out on the bed as much as he’s able. His sword’s within reach. He settles his fingertips against her hilt.

“You all right there?” Viktor asks, looking down from beside the bed.

Flik finds he appreciates the concern, irrelevant as it turns out to be. So he sits up, finds his pants, and nods. “Go have the vase appraised. I’ll get dressed and settle our tab.”

“You got it, Sparky.” Viktor reaches down, messes with Flik’s knee for a bit and snatches up the vase, whistling as he leaves.

Flik wonders if Viktor always touched him this much. After washing up, pulling on his pants, and buckling on his sword, Flik still doesn’t have an answer to that. Nothing’s unfamiliar but the context.

But there’s nothing wrong with the context, either.

***

.

Script #7: Nadir’s 108 Stars of Dragstiny

mithrigil — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:25:26 GMT

.

I'm home, Suikoden fandom! I...might've changed my game a little, but I'm home!

Title: Script #7: Nadir’s 108 Stars of Dragstiny (AO3 version here)
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Suikoden III
Characters: ...a lot of them.
Words: Over nine thousand.
Rating: Crack.
Warning: My girlfriend forced me to marathon three seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race over the course of a week. It was awesome.

Summary: A debate between two Suiko-Narcissists leads to a theatrical endeavor to boost the morale of the New Fire Bringer.

Script #7: Nadir’s 108 Stars of Dragstiny
a fabulous foray into Genso Suikoden III

It began, as all plays should, with a conflict.

“And I found it very confusing,” Shiba said, as he and Bazba strolled past the item shop, looking for a place to sun themselves. “I already have a hard enough time telling the humans apart, but this one was trying to disguise himself, so I lost him in the crowd.”

“What did he do?” Bazba asked.

“He put on a human woman’s clothes,” Shiba said. “You know how human men wear those leg-sleeves and human women sometimes don’t? Well, he hid his legs and put another skirt on over his head and I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

Bazba wrinkled his snout. “Dastardly of him. They must know how hard it is for us. Could you smell him?”

“I tried, but he put on this woman’s smell too, the kind that the ironheads spray to mask their scent. I want my bracelet back, Bazba. Once the chief is done with the council, I am going to the war room to demand satisfaction!”

“They should make a creed against that.”

“I completely agree,” Gordon called, slinking out of the item shop and leaning gallantly against the doorjamb. “Forgive me for interrupting, gentlemen, but I could not help overhearing your plight, and I agree that it’s an outrage! Unstylish in the utmost.”

“Unstylish?” Shiba asked.

“Indeed,” Gordon said. “Why, no true gentleman would ever lower himself to wear a woman’s attire. Nothing in this world is so gauche as that.”

“Excuse me,” Augustine said, intruding on the scene with one hand laid just a bit too tensely on the curve of his sword hilt. “I’ll have you know, my friend, that drag is a vaunted art with a long history, and how dare you imply that a man doesn’t have the right to wear whatever clothing he likes, if that is what expresses his fashionable spirit!”

Gordon’s smile, ordinarily so pristine and smug, tweaked at the corner. “It’s deplorable is what it is. Why should a man not be fashionable in his own clothes?”

“No, no, I agree that a man should be fashionable in his own clothes, but if he is too fashionable for the current fashion he must feel within his rights to branch into the wardrobe of the fairer sex.” Augustine flourished, and stuck a heretofore invisible red rose behind Bazba’s skull ridges. “A beautiful creature of any sentient race must look his best, whatever that best may be.”

Bazba, for his part, looked somewhat bemused at his new accessory.

“Fairer?” Gordon spat. “I’ll show you fairer!”

“En garde!” Augustine trilled.

“Take that poisonous thing off my brother’s head!” Shiba roared.

Many gloves were thrown that afternoon, and many beautiful men were party to ugliness. But Nadir, ever intent on the scene from behind his white mask, was subject to a truly exquisite idea.

***

CASTING ANNOUNCEMENT

Your Theatrical Director and Collaborator Nadir

is seeking men*

their number greater than 8 and fewer than 12

for an Entertainment, vaudevillian in nature

celebrating the ART OF FEMALE IMPERSONATION.

Auditions by appointment

Sign up for an audition appointment below:

*In the interest of fairness, only persons over the age of sixteen will be cast.†

†Guillaume, as per the theater’s agreement with Toppo, Nei, and Billy, remains banned from the tavern.

***

“Hm,” Jacques perused the announcement. “What does he mean, female impersonation?”

“He means a drag show,” Joker said. “Like in Matilda.”

“Jacques wasn’t with us in Matilda.” Queen leaned over from the bar. “It’s a show where men dress up in women’s clothes and tell jokes.”

Jacques considered this and squinted at the casting notice again, then nodded.

“Like in plays?” Aila asked.

Joker raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve seen drag plays?”

“Well, no, but in Karaya we have shamans, and when we tell stories sometimes the spirits choose a girl to speak the part of a man, and the other way around, or they choose people who aren’t either to speak for one or the other, or. Well, you know.”

“I didn’t, but that sounds like a riot,” Joker said, and went on to explain to Jacques. “Anyway, that’s the long and short of it. You put on a dress and do something funny.”

Aila sipped her soda. “That’s not how it goes in Karaya.”

“Well, it’s how it goes in Matilda, and I think that’s what Nadir’s up to. You should give it a go, Jacques, it might be fun.”

Before Jacques could say that he didn’t know any jokes (or, for that matter, any Karayan shamans other than Aila, who he didn’t think knew anything about female impersonation except that she was naturally female), Ace bumbled into the bar, stretching his hands over his head. “What’d I miss?”

“New play,” Queen said.

“High art,” Joker said. “Probably out of your league.”

Ace puffed out his chest and pouted. “Out of my league? Ha! Let me have a look at that.” He made his way over to Jacques and the bulletin, and read down the list. “Guillaume’s still banned?”

“Probably ‘cause only the young, pretty types’ll get anywhere in the casting. Which is why I say it’s out of your league.”

“Hey, I’m plenty pretty.”

“Yeah, and you’re plenty chicken.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Lay off him, Joker,” Queen said, a smirk pushing the corners of her lips. “He’s not man enough to wear a dress.”

The effects of this statement -- not all of which were visible -- resulted in Ace turning away from the casting notice, slowly, as if to menace a particularly uppity and out-of-line young pickpocket, or perhaps unleash Double Tusk on a plains rabbit whose only crime was to bite Ace in the ass.

Frankly, this entire enterprise was about to bite him in the ass, not that Ace knew it.

“Not man enough, huh?” he said, a glint in his eye that the Twelfth Unit had seen all too many times in their travels, though usually when Ace was a bit more drunk. “Who’s got a pen?”

“It’s hanging right there on the board, idiot,” Joker said. “What are you going to do, scribble out your stubble?”

Thus it came to pass that Ace signed his name to the casting notice right under Jacques’s, in bold accountant’s script, and Queen and Joker exchanged knowing glances and high-fives behind his back.

Geddoe, for his part, sat in the back of the tavern, drank his ale, and remained amused.

***

“Sounds like fun,” Percival said, once the matter was explained to him by an eager mercenary at the base of Budehuc’s grand stair.

“Fun?” Borus said from the doorway, his gauntleted fist curled tight (but not, as yet, punching any walls). “It’s a serious endeavor!”

“How serious?” Percival deadpanned.

“There’s makeup, of course,” Borus explained, “and deportment, and the matter of concealing your masculine attributes without diminishing their worth to your appearance -- and Nadir is imposing a talent competition as well, so the entrants not only have to be skilled at female impersonation, but at some other art --”

“So you’re entering,” Percival said.

Borus’s pale, shaved cheeks colored from the neck up. Perhaps it was only that drag was on everyone’s mind, but more than one person simultaneously imagined him in a curly blond wig with darling pink bows and a ruffled doily. It wasn’t altogether horrible, if disconcerting.

“Certainly not!” Borus said, still not punching the wall.

“That’s a pity,” said Percival. “I was planning on entering.”

“You’d look hopeless in a dress.”

“No more than you, with your man-calves.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Just that you have thick legs.”

“Of course I have thick legs, I ride. Yours are just as thick, and you’re entering.”

“Well, yes, but I’m planning on entering as a woman with thick, beautiful legs. You just have man-calves.”

“My manly calves are hardly an obstacle to my entering this contest, no more than yours.”

“No, they’re just an obstacle to winning.”

“That’s it, Percival. I am entering this competition, and I am winning it, and that’s final!”

This time, Borus punched the wall for emphasis, and all of Budehuc stood witness. That fetching red color, tinged with anger as it was, did not leave his cheeks.

“Ouch,” Borus said, because the bones of his hand were swelling from the impact inside his gauntlet.

“See you backstage,” Percival said on his way out.

All Borus could say to that was a rather unladylike “Damn you.”

When Borus was almost gone, he passed Edge, who had poked his head through the door to get a look at the fight. “What was all that about?” he asked Geddoe, who came out of the tavern a few minutes prior.

“New theater thing,” Geddoe explained. “There’s a cash prize if you win.”

Edge’s eyes brightened to the sheen of the jewel on the hilt of the Star Dragon Sword at the prospect.

***

In the end, even after eliminating a confused Muto (who had misunderstood and dragged the carcass of a troll dragon around Kathy’s racetrack faster than anyone else) and Hortez (who thought he had finally found last week’s audition for Madame Choe-Choe), Nadir found his ten men. They sat around the theater in ones and twos, and Nadir was quite pleased to find several new faces among this entourage. Such performances had a tendency to bring out the hidden talents in an army.

“Gentles all,” Nadir began, “I thank you for your commitment to this theatrical pursuit. I have great hopes that you will entertain our army and that morale will soar. So thank you for putting yourselves on the front line.

“As has doubtlessly come to your attention, this is a competition. In addition to showcasing your skills at female impersonation, and transforming yourselves from men into beautiful women with a degree of thespianic verisimilitude, you will perform twice: once, dancing as a group to a song of Mistress Nei’s composition, and a second time, in a performance of your own devising, in which you showcase your special talent. Before you ask, Nash, this special talent must be considered appropriate for viewing by an audience comprising persons of all ages and cultures, where possible.”

“Shucks,” Nash said, flashing a cat-in-the-cream-pot smile that left everyone in the theater wondering just what he was planning on doing. “I’ll think of something else, then.”

“I know I cannot ask for much in the way of tastefulness,” Nadir went on, “considering this is an army. But I do expect you to display your charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.”

The competitors nodded, except for Jacques, who silently raised his hand and waited several moments to be called upon.

“Yes?” Nadir asked.

With complete seriousness, Jacques asked, “What if we don’t have any talent?”

Nadir curled an elegant finger beneath the chin of his mask. “Surely there must be something that you can do that no one else can.”

As Jacques considered this and came to a presumably satisfactory conclusion, he nodded, and Nadir resumed his introduction.

“So, let us begin with our choreography! I hope you all brought women’s shoes--for those of you who intend to wear shoes, that is. Now, let us assemble in height order! Sergeant, you’re the smallest, you first, and Bazba last...”

***

“But why me?” Hugo grit his teeth, and tried not to flail out his arms, because if he did he’d probably hit Caesar’s in the process.

“Because you’re the Flame Champion,” Caesar said, with an undercurrent of duh. “Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t enter. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I’m the Flame Champion,” Hugo repeated. “Everyone would have lost to me on purpose if I entered.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Nash said from the corner of the war room.

“You’re a dick,” Hugo said, and then returned to Caesar. “Besides, I’m too young. Nadir still thinks I’m a child.”

“Guess so.” Caesar shrugged, and gesticulated with Toranese abandon. “But that’s exactly why you have to judge with us. Everyone expects you to be there, for one thing, and for another they’re all doing this to cheer up your Flaming Army.”

“Fire Bringer.”

“It means the same thing in Harmonian. Anyway, you’re a great actor, and you’ll round out the judging panel really well! Nadir says we need judges with charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, and I’ve got charisma--”

“I guess,” Hugo said.

“--Thomas has nerve--”

“Thomas is judging?”

“--yuh-huh, and Jeane has--” Caesar paused a moment. “...talent.”

“Talent,” Hugo repeated.

“Talent! And she knows what it’s like to be a real woman.”

Actually, Hugo had always wondered about that. But now was not the time. “And you think I have the uniqueness you need?”

“Sure,” Caesar said, slinging an arm around Hugo’s shoulder, not that that stopped him from gesticulating. “You’re the Flame Champion! What’s more unique than that?”

“I guess you’re right,” Hugo said, and let the matter drop. “All right, I’ll do it. Do I have to do any kind of research first?”

“Nah, just bring your unique perspective and choose what feels right. You’ll do just fine, I promise. Besides, we need a Grasslander on the panel. Joe and Bazba are in the show.”

Hugo was far too dark-skinned to blanch, but the expression that fell across his face might as well have put his face in black-and-white outline. “Sergeant Joe is wearing women’s clothes?”

“Guess so,” Caesar said with a shrug. “And that’s why we need you. I wouldn’t know the difference if you asked.”

***

Rarely is the backstage of a theater, whatever its size, a placid and pristine environment free of drama. The Budehuc Tavern and Stage was no exception. Jacques and Joe studiously rehearsed dance steps in the corner under the perpetually-under-repair flat for the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene. Ace and Edge exchanged nervous arguments about the order of the individual presentations. At the lightning-rune-lit vanity mirror, Nash and Bazba applied their own makeup and Rico assisted Fred with his, and Borus pinned a few more desert-peach bows into his ringlets.

And Augustine, somewhat expertly, explained to Percival, “Yes, well, you’re extremely lucky. In an ensemble such as yours, one can get away with several inconsistencies of the female form.”

“Is that so,” Percival said, entirely content with his choice of costume, thank you kindly.

“Well, yes -- but in something as revealing as mine or your fellow Zexen’s, one must take certain precautions.”

Borus looked up from the mirror. “Precautions, you say?”

Augustine proceeded to explain the practice of tucking, in some detail.

The human men (except for Jacques, and including also Sasarai, who had happened backstage to give the performers his blessing) and Rico cringed perceptibly with each detail of the process, in eerie unison.

“What are the humans going on about?” Bazba asked Joe, who continued to rehearse his dance steps.

“Hiding their penises,” Joe said without missing a beat.

“Oh that? That’s nothing,” Bazba said, and demonstrated how it works when the organ in question is bifurcated.

At that, even Jacques felt compelled to cover his groin.

***

As Hugo slid into his place between Caesar and Thomas at the long Judge’s Table, his feelings about this upcoming event smoldered from bad to worse.

“Um, Caesar?”

“Yeah?”

“Everyone’s here.”

“Of course everyone’s here, it’s the entertainment of the season! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! The strongest fighters in your army -- in dresses.”

Not to diminish Caesar’s enthusiasm, but Hugo turned up his hands and shrugged. “A lot of the strongest fighters in our army already wear dresses. Mom wears a dress. Lady Chris wears a dress sometimes. Emily wears a dress and she beat me at arm-wrestling four times this week.”

“You’ll understand when you see it,” Caesar assured him. “Here, take your scorecards, Nadir’s about to start.”

The spotlight came down upon Nadir, who bowed and accepted the attendant army’s applause. “Welcome,” he said, “gentles all, to the first entertainment of its kind on this part of the continent: a spectacle of transformation, innovation, technique, and style!”

Hugo thought about those four words for a moment. They weren’t on his scorecard. Jeane seemed to find it funny, though.

“Without further ado, I present: the Fire Bringer’s one and only Stars of Dragstiny!”

Nadir swept out his arm, and the stage became awash in white light, bright enough that Hugo shielded his eyes. When he let his arm down, he couldn’t believe them.

As Toppo, Nei, and Shabon played a jaunty, strutting tune, the ten beings on stage switched from one pose to another. Each performer was wearing a somewhat abbreviated and sequined outfit in the Flame Champion’s colors, red and black and white, but in the spinning stagelights and with the quick step of the music Hugo couldn’t keep his attention on the construction.

“F is for the Freedom we try to protect,” the first competitor sang. (Hugo didn’t recognize the voice, or the curly blond hair, but thought she had rather muscular legs for a woman.)

“L is for the Love we all try to collect,” the second one sang, enthusiastically if not very well.

“A is for our Army!”

“M is for the Men in it --“

“And E’s for Everybody that we’ll need to win it!” While Hugo was quite certain that #3 was Sergeant Joe and mostly-certain that #4 was Ace because of the unmistakable break in his, her, nose, he had no clue who #5 was, and, moreover that this person’s legs were shapely and attractive and oh Spirits who is that.

Competitor #6, as well as possessing a beautiful female form, had Augustine’s moustaches. “But also F is for the Fabulous life that we lead,”

“And L is for the Land that supports all we need!” #7 sang, and behind Hugo, Lady Chris groaned and hung her head in her hands.

”And A is for All,” #8 was barely audible and a little stiff, but not bad-looking.

”And M is for Might,” Bazba sang, clearly competitor #9 even under his prodigious warpaint.

”And E’s for Everything we need to make things right,” the last competitor sang, and he, she, looked entirely in her element onstage, flashing as much teeth as leg. Hugo felt a profound disturbance, deep in his stomach.

“FLAME,” they sang in ragged chorus, doing approximately the same kick-steps, ”flame is what keeps us alive! Just like the fire inside our hearts, we’re just getting started!” They punctuated this last with hip-popping choreography that was obviously influenced by Safir clan ritual dancing. “FLAME! Flame is our biggest inspiration! So gird up your grides, and stave up your staves, ‘cause fire doesn’t ever know which way to behave! Yes, FLAME! Flame is what keeps us alive~!”

They posed together, sequins aglow and fingers and wingtips flickering spiritedly.

Competitor #10 winked and added in rhythm, before the last beat of the music, “The Fire takes us higher, so we’re Bringin’ it home!”

For a long moment after the audience was so silent that Hugo heard, distinctly, Gadget Z drop a screw. Onstage, the performers held their smiles and their pose, some of their eyes valiantly searching for approval.

Cecile broke the silence with a whoop and flurry of applause. “Yay Budehuc! Great job everyone! Yahoo!”

That was enough to startle everyone else into clapping, and a few more raucous cheers, some bearing names that helped Hugo place a few of the unrecognizable faces. The SFDF units in the back were cheering for both Ace and Jacques, for one thing, and Hugo squinted through the stagelights and layers of makeup to discover that yes, in fact, one of the competitors was Jacques, the stiffly-moving and quiet brunette in the back row. The Lizards and the Ducks catcalled loudly and thumped the floor for Bazba and Joe, who made feminine genuflections as they hightailed it into the wings.

“Let’s have another round of applause for our contestants,” Nadir said, and stepped into the sweep of the spotlight, commanding another minute of cheering.

Caesar leaned over to Hugo, still applauding. “Now you get it?”

“Sort of,” Hugo said. It was definitely impressive, whatever else.

Oh Hugo’s other side, Thomas nodded. “It’s, um, great for morale! They’re working so hard.”

“While they prepare themselves for their individual presentations,” Nadir went on once the applause died down, “I will introduce the judges. First: hailing from the Toran Republic, and lending his insight to our cause, the charismatic, capricious, and occasionally cocky Caesar Silverberg!”

Caesar stood up and turned around to wave at the crowd.

“Next on the list, but first in our hearts: our very own Flame Champion, Hugo of Karaya!”

“Get up and wave,” Caesar whispered, and Hugo obeyed, still floored at just how many people had crammed themselves into the tavern, and how much ale, wine, and other spirits were circulating the crowd. He sat back down.

“Third, the young man whose generosity, tenacity, and nerve have sustained us so far through this conflict: the indomitable Castle Master Thomas!”

Thomas didn’t quite get out of his chair, but swiveled around to wave shyly at the audience, none of whom were cheering louder than Martha, Muto, Sebastian, and of course Cecile.

“And last, the one we all think of when we lie awake at night trying to define just what makes a woman, Runemistress Jeane!”

Jeane giggled, stood, and bowed. Scott, who happened to be in the front row, leaned forward to get a closer look and promptly fainted. His parrot flew off into the rafters, not to be heard from for the remainder of the night.

“We must also acknowledge our sponsors: the merchants and proponents of Budehuc Castle, who have sustained not only the castle denizens, but our army and its cause. Through every seemingly pointless recruitment effort, every treasure hunt and acquisition, and every mission to Mount Hei-Tou that seems to end only in crabs, this castle and its businesses have supported us and here, we thank them. We must also give especial thanks to Martha’s Lottery and Sebastian’s Save Point, without which funding this extravaganza would not have been possible.”

The applause for the sponsors, this being Budehuc, was especially fervent.

“And now, without further ado, I present to you the first of our entrants: a darling young Zexen lady we all know and love, the beautiful Borborella.”

The competitor who sung the first line of the group song emerged from the wings, wearing a bustled, ruffled dress that was short in the front and long in the back and carrying a shepherdess’s crook. Her hair was a torrent of golden ringlets and bows under a peaked cap, and her cheeks were rosy with what was probably supposed to be innocence but looked a great deal more like embarrassment. Aside from her face, which was round and shapely like a young girl’s, she looked altogether too old for this sort of girlish costume -- especially, Hugo thought, her obviously masculine legs.

But before Hugo could remark on this any further, Borborella nodded to the minstrels, and began to sing, in a clear piping treble voice that was both tuneful and eerily cute.

“Sweet Sadie,” Lady Chris muttered, seated by the windows. “That’s Borus.”

Those near enough to Chris snickered and gasped, but Leo asked, “Damn. How can you tell?”

“We were in the church choir together when we were children,” she said.

“You were in a choir?”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it,” she said, with the kind of tone that assured the matter was closed.

Borborella, undaunted, continued to sing about tragically lost sheep.

***

“He still has man-calves,” Percival said, watching from the wings.

Sasarai tittered. “I’m not complaining. Are you?”

***

With every high note Borborella sang, the audience creaked up from snickers to outright laughter. By this point, Borborella’s red flush had sweat through several layers of makeup and contouring, and on the last trilled note (which happened to fall on the word sheep) she cracked like a teenage boy.

Hugo had a much better understanding of what this entertainment was supposed to be about. And, frankly, the image of Borus Redrum in a shepherdess’s dress seared into his mind was a small price to pay for, well, the experience of everyone in the Fire Bringer laughing their hindquarters off.

Borborella’s curtsy was awkward but well-rehearsed, and if she seemed to stomp offstage, it was easily dismissed as all part of the show.

“The beautiful Borborella,” Nadir said once again with a sweeping gesture as he ushered her off. “Judges, take your time scoring. We will also give you time to deliberate when the show is done. And now, our next competitor, the Red Rose of Vinay del Zexay, the indefatigable Augustine!”

“This should be good,” Caesar whispered at Hugo as he shuffled to the next scorecard.

Hugo wasn’t so sure.

The spotlight came down on the stage, and Augustine...didn’t look any different than usual, really.

***

Borborella was far too much of a lady to punch the nearest wall. She thudded the butt of her crook into the floor instead.

“Damn!” Borus hissed through his teeth. There was a twinge of lipstick on them.

“What?” Percival asked, tenderly combing a snarl out of his long wig. “They thought you were a riot. I was about ready to concede defeat.”

“That’s just it!” Borus despaired and leaned his forehead onto the vanity mirror. “I’m such a failure. It wasn’t supposed to be funny at all!”

The music of Augustine’s routine drifted back to a silent, frozen dressing room.

“It wasn’t,” Borus said, the very picture of petulance.

Almost in unison, everyone else just gave up and resumed preparing their makeup and costumes.

***

“Let’s have a hand for Augustine,” Nadir said as the spotlight swept back to him from the still-vaguely-magenta stage, covered in petals.

Hugo and the other judges applauded about as politely as the rest of the audience (except Cecile).

Caesar scribbled a few Xs on his card. “That was surprisingly lukewarm.”

“Maybe he should have shaved,” Thomas agreed.

Jeane giggled to herself at the other end of the table.

“Now,” Nadir went on, “here’s an act I’m sure very few of you have seen before. From the glittering soul of the Grasslands, performing a traditional fertility dance of her tribe, here comes the fine, full-feathered Wingy Spann!”

Aside from the lack of clothing (except for a beaded cloth) Joe didn’t look much different either.

There was, however, no denying that Wingy Spann was an extremely talented dancer.

To the tune of a song Hugo (and several other Grasslanders) recognized as uniquely Duck, Wingy Spann flapped and strutted around the stage, shaking her tail-feathers (which did seem fluffier than usual for Joe) and jingling with bells and beads. In the back of the room, Rhett and Wilder flap-clapped along with the music, and others took their cue for appropriateness from that. Wingy Spann, however, seemed in deep concentration, and finished with a flourish of her cloth.

She was met with applause, and curled her neck, batting her eyes. The Ducks in the audience went wild, of course, but Thomas stood up from the Judge’s Table and cleared his throat.

“Um, Mister Sergeant, sir,” he said, gradually increasing in sufficient volume to be heard over the crowd, “could you please tell us some of the, um, techniques you used? So we can get a better idea -- I mean, so we can assess your, um, transformation better?”

Wingy Spann nodded politely and, with a much richer quack than Joe usually used, explained, “I’ve balanced out my tail-feathers to obscure the drake feather, which meant adding several new ones. They’re held on with a sugar paste. And furthermore, I’ve matted down, but haven’t removed, a great many feathers at the nape of my neck, which mature females typically lack after mating.”

It took Hugo a moment to process that statement. Once he did, though, it was entirely too much information.

“Thank you, Sergeant -- I mean Wingy! Miss Spann,” Thomas said. “I understand a little better now.” Thomas had probably come to the same conclusion, if the blush on his cheeks was any indication.

Jeane giggled.

“Thank you, Wingy Spann!” Nadir bowed and applauded. “And now, from parts unknown and circumstances untold, the lithe, lovely Jacquea!”

In complete silence, Jacquea stepped onto the stage. She wore a tight vest with a well-appointed bosom, a brown wig in a long braid, and one of Queen’s spare fringed skirts, and carried an enormous crossbow. Hugo quickly gave her a few good marks for effort at transformation, since she looked like a plausible, if unremarkable, woman.

Then Jacquea proceeded to Boronda Hawk Rune the back wall of the tavern.

Since that meant the crossbow bolts thudded directly over the heads of the Twelfth and Thirteenth SFDF units, this also forestalled some of the more inevitable applause.

“Nadir said to do something only I can do,” Jacquea said. Then, he left.

Instead of Cecile, Aila was the first to burst into applause. Joker gave her a bit of a sideward glance, but she scrunched up her nose at him.

“I liked it,” she said, took another slurp of soda, and applauded even more loudly until Geddoe, Cecile, and eventually a few others joined in.

Hugo still didn’t give Jacques very high marks.

Nadir quickly took the stage again. “The lovely Jacquea! And now, another Easterner with quite the story to tell, the precocious, plucky Pyrrhik Viktoria!”

Hugo recognized the young, round-faced and red-haired woman as the enthusiastic but not-too-talented singer from the opening number. He also immediately recognized her as Edge, because no matter how many frilly blue hairbows you put on the Star Dragon Sword, it’s still the Star Dragon Sword.

“Hi everyone!” Pyrrhik Viktoria chirped in an obvious falsetto. Hugo didn’t know what she’d stuffed her bosom with, but it squeaked audibly. “I’m here with my special friend, Flikerina, and we --”

“This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever been subjected to, in all my years!” the sword shouted. “Onstage, he said. Just a little show to cheer the army up, he said. He said nothing whatsoever about wigs and decals and getting flakes of eyeshadow in my immaculate polishing job.”

Pyrrhik Viktoria stood a little off to the side and drank a long sip of something that probably wasn’t water. Or juice. Or any of the things Anne offered to underage patrons at the tavern.

“But that would imply that I get polished at all. Oh, no, it’s more important to truss me up and parade me around onstage like one of General Oppenheimer’s prized azaleapoodles.” The sword glowered, if it’s possible for a sword to glower. “You’re worse than the Bear.”

“Aw, really?” Pyrrhik Viktora pouted dramatically. “I think I’m much cuter.”

In the audience, Futch groaned and hung his forehead in his hands.

Sharon elbowed him. “Too much to drink?”

“No,” Futch said. “Just picturing Humphrey in pigtails.”

Onstage, the sword went on, “You think you’re cute? Ha! You big dummy.”

“You’re the dummy, Flikerina.”

“No, you are! You’re as dumb as a rock golem with Silence cast on it!”

Hugo leaned over to Caesar and whispered, “What’s his talent supposed to be?”

“Ventriloquism, I think,” Caesar said. “But I’m not sure if counts if the dummy can actually talk.”

Onstage, the sword bristled (sort of) and scowled. “I heard that, you little Silverberg punk! Come up here and say it to my face! I bet the only swords you’ve ever gotten close enough to look at are between Hikusaak’s le--”

“Golly gee! There’s a Harmonian Bishop backstage, Flikerina! Don’t get us disqualified,” Pyrrhik Viktoria hissed.

The audience, including Caesar, however, found that joke appropriately scandalous.

***

Backstage, Sasarai watched with some amusement.

“Should I bother?” Nash asked beside him, still not quite in full costume.

Sasarai laughed. “Certainly not! We wouldn’t want to give him any ideas, would we?”

Nash smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I have to have good humor about such things. After all, I’m a guest in this army.” He flashed a bright, no-nonsense smile. “Besides, I’m sure my father would enjoy it.”

“Head from a Silverberg?” Nash snorted. “Ha. They suck in bed.”

***

“-- and that’s all I have to say about certain ‘historical plays’ about Neclord,” the sword concluded.

Hugo marked on his scorecard that a lot of these Toran and Dunan jokes went over his head.

Onstage, Pyrrhik Viktoria finished drinking whatever was in that glass, and accepted her last round of applause with a sloppy curtsy as the Star Dragon Sword caught its breath (such as it had).

“Let’s hear it for Pyrrhik Viktoria!” Nadir said, once the spotlight was on him again. For some reason unknown to Hugo, Nadir was now wearing a red-lined black cloak with a high collar. “You know, I witnessed a vampire fight once, but I didn’t have much of a stake in the outcome.”

Shabon provided a rimshot.

“But enough about that,” Nadir said, “let us proceed to our next act. May I introduce, a local girl just trying to make her way in the world: from the nearby village of Iksay, Lady Anna Notfellow.”

Now this was a joke that Hugo was sure everyone in the Fire Bringer would get.

Unfortunately, the man onstage dressed in Lady Chris’s armor wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Sure, he had all the hallmarks of the Silver Maiden: her white braids, the correct ironhead armor, and the air of utter dryness that would put Caleria to shame. On the other hand, Lady Anna Notfellow was rather clearly a fellow.

And Lady Chris would probably never do a Zexen peasant dance in full plate.

“Louis,” Lady Chris said through her hands covering her face.

“Yes, my Lady?”

“Did you know why Percival requested my armor?”

“No, my Lady. I swear! If I’d known it was for this, I wouldn’t have let him.”

Chris doubled over in her seat, as if down to a quarter of her constitution.

Salome leaned over. “Shall I institute disciplinary action?”

“No,” Chris whispered. “No, that’ll just make it worse. We have a war to fight.”

“I don’t think he’s half bad,” Leo said.

While none of the Zexen Knights in the audience were the type to elbow Leo in the ribs (possibly for fear of injuring their elbows), Salome was sorely tempted.

***

“He wasn’t convincing at all,” Borus said. From the wings, he watched Lady Anna Notfellow strike her final, exuberant pose, and sneered. The expression suited his still-mostly-made-up face rather well.

Bazba, waiting to go on next, tilted his head. “I don’t know about that. He has me fooled.”

“You don’t know Lady Chris as well as I do.”

“And I don’t care to. Human women hold no attraction for me. I only mean to say that the resemblance is uncanny.”

Borus, perhaps wisely, held his tongue on matters of subtle cultural perceptions. Besides, Lady Anna Notfellow was making her way off the stage, and she passed by Borus with a twinkle in her decidedly-not-lavender eyes.

“Man-calves,” Percival said.

Borus went after him with the shepherdess’s crook.

***

Hugo gave Percival high marks anyway.

Nadir took his place again. “Thank you, Lady Anna Notfellow. Now, this next act requires some explanation, and a warning to audience members in the front row. There will be live steel and live flame in this next act. No, that’s not a joke. While we do have water rune bearers standing by, I must caution those of you sitting this close to the stage against coming any nearer. If you would like to take your time to move during this interval, it would be much appreciated. There. Good. Now that that’s dealt with, let us proceed: gracing us from Great Hollow, the fearless Waggi!”

Hugo was not in the least bit surprised to see Bazba, covered in Lizard warpaint and jewels, walk out onto the stage with a gride that was on fire.

Bazba, or rather Waggi, then proceeded to dance with the flaming polearm in an impressive display of dexterity and courage.

The audience was dead silent throughout aside from a few gasps after impressive twists and stunts. Waggi swung her weapon about in arcs of flame that nearly caught the curtains, and sent sparks up off the stage floor when she flourished. By the time it was over, and she put the fire out with a gusty roar, Hugo was certain that this evening had not been wasted, men in dresses or no men in dresses, because Hugo now had a much better idea of what fun was.

Caesar, however, was much less impressed, and mad this known after a round of fervent, if startled applause. “Bazba,” Caesar said, “that was really great, but where’s the drag?”

“Excuse me?” Bazba said.

Caesar waved his hands, apparently unconcerned that there was an armed Lizard standing not fifteen feet from him, who had just danced with an open flame like it was nothing but a straw broom. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you put a lot of work into it -- I just want to know where the girl parts are.”

“How dare you!” Dupa roared from the middle of the audience. “That was one of the most feminine displays I’ve ever seen!”

“Yeah, because you know what to look for,” Caesar said, only turning briefly to acknowledge Dupa. “I don’t. Now, if this were just a talent competition I’d score you off the charts, but it’s a drag show, and I’d be much better equipped to score Bazba if I knew more about female lizards.”

Dupa started to shove himself out into the aisle. “Why you little --”

“Peggi can explain that!” Peggi shouted from her place at the bar.

“Oh,” said Caesar. “That...does explain things, actually.”

Once again, Jeane giggled and drew hearts all over her scorecard.

The crisis now resolved, Hugo saw to his own scores. He gave Bazba high marks for talent, but he had to admit that the criteria of this contest were more than a little skewed in favor of a certain kind of performer, and whatever else that certain kind of performer was, it wasn’t Lizard.

“Let’s have one last hand for Waggi,” Nadir said. “And now, it has been explained to me that this next act needs no introduction. So, without any ado whatsoever, I give you Thierra McPain!”

A delicate (if overtall), extremely pale woman emerged from the wings, wrapped in a pleated white dress and loose blue cloak, revealing thin, shapely legs. For a moment, Hugo thought this would be another Lady Chris -- this woman had silver hair as well -- but once Thierra McPain opened her mouth to speak she dispelled that particular notion.

“Hello everyone,” she said, sounding almost frighteningly bored, like Yuber. “I’m Thierra, just some old hag from the south. I’m arrogant, never keep promises, insist on being carried everywhere on the backs of strapping young men, and suck their blood at the first available chance.”

Hugo leaned over to Caesar and whispered, “Is that Nash?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s his talent supposed to be?”

Everyone vaguely connected to the Dunan region answered, “Impersonation.”

Onstage, Thierra winked and gave a tight, malicious laugh. “That’s right. And it’s good of you to educate yourself on such things. You never know when you might find yourself in a vampire’s embrace, you know. But I only turn the ones I like, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“That is disturbingly accurate,” Futch said.

“That is disturbingly attractive,” Lucia said.

“-- Mom!” Hugo tinged all the way to his hackles. “Yuck.”

Thierra went on, twirling a long lock of silver hair in her fingers. “Yes, I’m a vampire. The vampire. The oldest vampire in the world -- not that I look it, right everybody?”

A few people in the audience said “Right.”

Clearly, it wasn’t enough for Thierra’s taste. Her eyes flashed red. “I said right?”

“Right!”

“Much better,” she sighed. “Oh, but even though I don’t look my age at all, my husband’s run out on me! That dashing, bumbling ingrate is gallivanting around your quaint little country with a younger, burlier, less-pretty version of me.” Thierra shot the sort of glare at Lady Chris that Hugo had been wanting to shoot her for months now.

Chris must have taken this long to realize it was Nash up there.

“Go right ahead!” Thierra said cheerfully. “You can have him. I’m in the market for some new blood anyway.” She licked her chops.

Hugo didn’t believe her for a second. Neither did Chris.

“So,” Thierra began, “which one of you big, strong northerners is going to carry me home tonight?”

Not even Mua or Hallec stepped up to the offer.

***

“That’s exactly what I mean, Dios,” Sasarai said, backstage as before, and observing the onstage proceedings with some enthusiasm. “You should have that sort of a sense of humor.”

Dios scrunched up his nose. “I fail to see the appeal.”

“Look at him, Dios. Why, he’s put his reputation on the line.”

“I didn’t think he had a reputation to speak of.”

“Psh. Everyone here knows he works for me. And I only employ people of quality.”

Onstage, Thierra McPain attempted to drape herself across Leo Gallen’s back and remarked most sordidly upon the feel of breastplate against her thighs.

“Quality,” Dios repeated.

“Quality,” Sasarai insisted. “I’m sure his wife will be endlessly amused.”

***

Leo Gallen intensely regretted his Firefly Rune.

“Stop complaining,” Thierra whined, “I’m as light as a Duck’s neck-feather. And I’d know, I just helped Wingy pluck hers.”

That statement sounded a lot dirtier than it was. The image crossing Hugo’s mind looked exactly as dirty as it was, though.

“C’mon, put your back into it, you big brute.” Thierra pounded her fists on Leo’s armor. “Aren’t you ironheads supposed to be dauntless? A little old thing like me isn’t supposed to daunt you.”

Leo grunted and struggled to keep Thierra on his back. “That’s just what your husband said.”

In the audience, Lady Chris turned a brilliant shade of scarlet.

Eventually, and with further admonitions about Leo’s strength, character, and masculinity, Thierra drove him offstage like an ungainly horse. By the time Hugo realized that this was the end of the act, the audience had erupted into applause.

“Now that’s how drag’s supposed to work,” Caesar said.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “What if his wife finds out?”

“Nah, she’s not half bad. I mean, she’s a friend of my grandfather’s. I bet she’ll get a huge kick out of it.”

Thomas glanced over his shoulder at the remaining Zexen Knights. “Maybe Mister Nash is the one who’ll get kicked.”

Hugo agreed, at least on the level of Nash’s transformation. And maybe it had been a little mean-spirited, but Thierra was funny, and she’d made fun of the ironheads, and she’d made Lady Chris uncomfortable, so Hugo didn’t see any cause to complain.

***

As he took a long pull of beer in the back of the audience, Geddoe wondered why they hadn’t tried this to boost morale fifty years ago.

He proceeded to imagine the Flame Champion in a dress.

He proceeded to imagine Wyatt Lightfellow in a dress.

He took another long pull of beer.

***

Backstage, Leo deposited Thierra on a pile of flats from For the Love of the Empire. The flats miraculously declined to break, possibly owing to the presence of a Bishop nearby.

“That was genteel of you,” Nash said.

“Psh,” Leo said. “I’m feeling sporting.”

“Any reason?”

“Just won a bet.” Leo brushed off his armor. “Borus definitely has manlier legs than Percy.”

“He does at that,” Nash agreed. There was, apparently, something of a commotion onstage, and he leaned over to glance around Leo. “Who’s on now?”

“Fifty-two Pickmeup,” Leo said, and shrugged. “Weird name.”

***

Onstage, Ace posed melodramatically, hands in a vague approximation of one of the five classical positions of female distress.

“Erk in danger!” he recited.

***

Joker, laughing, fell clean off his barstool.

His beer splashed all over Elaine’s cleavage.

Nobody seemed to notice.

***

Ace, or rather, Fifty-Two Pickmeup, wore an unflattering and extremely revealing white gauze gown that she might have borrowed from Jeane, and what could only be described as romance novel hair. The drape of her costume flapped as Fifty-Two Pickmeup continued to pose, regaling the audience in a booming voice that showed no evidence of transformation whatsoever.

“Erk was stuck in a hole for the fourth time,” Fifty-Two Pickmeup said. “This time, it was not hot water that was poured on him, but cold! Icy cold!” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, crouched in the spotlight. “’Blast! I’m done for!’ His skin became blue. He thought he would die. Erk in danger!”

Hugo thought this was supposed to be a serious dramatic reading. Ace -- Fifty-two Pickmeup -- certainly looked...theatrical. It was hard to tell over the raucous laughter from the mercenaries in the back of the house.

“But no!” Fifty-Two Pickmeup sprang up (things jiggled) and assumed a pose of heroism, arms curled to show off their muscle like the statues in the Budehuc gallery. “Suddenly fire melted the ice! Erk was spared from the fire. The rain turned to steam! At the top of the hole, a man appeared. ‘I am the Flame Champion!’”

Hugo understood some of what Lady Chris had gone through twice tonight so far.

“The Flame Champion pulled Erk out of the hole. ‘Join my army.’ Erk saved!”

It was somewhat difficult for the applause to start, seeing as the entire back of the house was already laughing (yes, even Geddoe cracked a smile).

***

“Why do we keep employing these people?” Dios asked.

“Because he’s a very good accountant,” Sasarai said.

***

“The dramatic stylings of Fifty-Two Pickmeup,” Nadir said, his mask impassive though his tone was a little shaky. “And now, for our final act of the evening: hailing from Toran in the pursuit of justice and good, the inspiring Lady Ismene Maximillian.”

The lights dimmed, then rose, and standing center stage was the most beautiful woman Hugo had ever laid eyes on.

She had fine black hair in a feathery cut, armor forged close to pronounced curves, bare legs that looked both strong and streamlined, and she looked altogether like she could take anyone in the castle in a fight without breaking a sweat. Hugo thought he’d like to see her sweat. Or maybe make her sweat. And his mind drifted to the pattern of thoughts common to sexually interested teenage boys, scorecard and stage forgotten, as he envisioned himself and Lady Ismene sparring until they were both sweaty and steam was rising from his right hand --

“Damn, Fred makes a hot girl,” Caesar said.

It was suddenly very, very cold in Hugo’s seat.

Lady Ismene -- Fred, Hugo chanted in his head, Fred, Fred, Fred -- went through elegant sword and shield drills, displaying her strength and the beauty that overlaid it with martial grace. Her hair whipped with the force of her swings, as if each strand could spur or stall her blade. A good portion of the audience was as dead silent through her turn as they’d been through Bazba’s, perhaps because some of them were also thinking what Hugo was trying not to think. (And, since the majority of the audience was human or had human inclinations, it’s possible that an entirely Grasslander audience would have felt the same for Bazba, but that is neither here nor there.)

“That is supremely unfair,” Iku sighed. “He’s far too pretty to be real.”

Franz muttered something about maybe trying on a dress for Iku’s benefit.

Lady Ismene grunted, and stabbed her sword into the stage with such force that it stood upright when she lifted her gauntlet off the hilt. “Thus ends evil!” she hollered, in a strikingly female voice. “Let righteous beauty triumph over fear!”

Hugo had to slap himself across the face several times to remind himself: Fred. Fred. Fred.

To thunderous applause, Lady Ismene pried her sword out of the floorboards, saluted, and left the stage.

Hugo experienced a great deal of difficulty holding his pen.

***

“Master Fred!” Rico cheered, throwing her arms around Lady Ismene almost as soon as she was in the wings. “Master Fred, you were amazing!”

“Thanks, Rico.” Fred smiled and adjusted one of the straps over his things. “Aunt Isabel’s armor sure came in handy!”

***

Before Hugo could slip into a further stupor with regard to his sudden apparent attraction to Fred Maximilian, whom he’d previously found rather annoying and unremarkable, Caesar leaned over and elbowed him in the ribs.

“I think that’s the last of them,” Caesar said. “That’s ten.”

Hugo distracted himself from uncomfortable thoughts of Lady Ismene -- FRED -- by counting the entries. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Not a bad way to spend an evening,” Jeane said, making a few more marks on her last scorecard.

“Everyone seemed to enjoy the show,” Thomas agreed, though he also seemed a bit uncertain. Hugo wondered if there was any way to breach the subject of Fred Maximilian’s attractiveness without admitting to it.

The spotlight flickered one final time onto Nadir at his corner of the stage. “That concludes our Stars of Dragstiny showcase,” Nadir began. “Now, while the judges go backstage and deliberate --”

A flash of white light savaged through the theater, and Leknaat descended from the rafters.

She was a vision in flowing robes, the mark of the Back Gate Rune like a smoldering coal on her forehead. Her hair fanned behind her in a torrent of wind.

“I am Leknaat, Keeper of Balance,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper and yet piercing through the minds of all assembled. “And I am here to tell you you’re all a bunch of bitches.”

An eerie stillness swept through the rest of the theater, though the stage was awash in wind.

“Give it up, Hugo of Karaya,” Leknaat said, utterly sedate and deadpan. “You’re a patsy who needs a gryphon between his legs to kill a plains boar. Your Fire magic stats are shit. And you’re fate’s favorite chewtoy since Tir McDohl, except scrawnier.”

Hugo pounded the judge’s table. “Come down here and say that to my face!”

“I would, but even then I don’t think I could sink that low.”

To Hugo’s ire, the audience laughed.

“Have fun getting carded for the rest of your eternal life,” Leknaat said, almost cheerfully. “That is, if you manage to defeat Luc at the Ceremonial Site at all.”

“We will defeat him!” Cecile yelled, jabbing the butt of her halberd into the floor. “Just you wait and see, you mean old lady!”

“Yeah!” Muto yelled. “We’re gonna win!”

“No one can defeat our Flame Champion!” Wilder quacked, and Rhett chimed in with a “You said it. Get off the stage!”

The chorus of indignation rose and rose, until Cecile started everyone shouting “Budehuc! Budehuc! Hugo! Hugo!” Onstage, Leknaat’s lower lip quivered, and the wind around her strengthened until eyes opened and her wig fell off.

“-- Your Eminence?” Thomas dropped his pen.

Leknaat did, in fact, appear to be Bishop Sasarai.

The cheering slowed, then stopped entirely.

“Surprise?” the now-wigless Leknaat said.

It was by now so quiet that Caesar’s laughter rang out like an avalanche.

‘Leknaat’ basked in the resounding applause that soon filled the tavern, hugging herself in the pooled robes. By the time she teleported away, a red flush across that fetching girlish face, the entirety of Budehuc Castle was cheering. Even Jefferson, assigning inane titles somewhere in the corner, was forced to admit that morale had never been so high.

***

Sometime later, the judges gathered in the statue gallery.

Caesar drummed his heels on the empty pedestal he sat atop. “Have we reached our decision?”

“I think so?” Thomas said.

“Tee-hee,” Jeane said.

“Can this please be over with?” Hugo said.

Caesar groaned and flung out his arms, nearly toppling off the pedestal. “How about making this feel a little less like a hung jury?”

“You’re the one from the Republic of Toran,” Hugo said.

“Fine, Flame Champion. You’re the boss. Who do you think should win?”

***

All ten performers stood in a leg-flashing line upstage, with varying degrees of confidence on the matter. Borborina and Lady Anna Notfellow snuck glances at one another through their smudged makeup. Fifty-Two Pickmeup adjusted her undergarments through her clothes. Thierra McPain pursed her lips and mouthed what could only be obscenities in the general direction of the Zexen Knights in the audience. Jacquea shuffled her heels, and Lady Ismene fiddled with her sword, and Pyrrhik Viktoria scolded her sword for not keeping its bows on.

“Now?” Hugo asked.

“Now,” Nadir said, and escorted the judges onto the stage. “Thank you all so much for waiting!” he pronounced to the audience. “The results are in!” He yielded the stage to Jeane.

Jeane endured a few wolf-whistles, and shuffled her shoulders, which of course caused other matters to jiggle. “I have a special consolation prize for my favorite competitor. She brought back some beautiful memories, tee-hee! And she put a lot on the line. The winner of an Honorable Mention, and a free armor refit at Dominic’s -- and I think she’s going need it,” she giggled: “Thierra McPain!”

Still the perfect picture of righteous vampiric haughtiness, Theirra came forward, kissed Jeane on both cheeks (to the envy of most of the audience), and accepted a voucher, which she also kissed, then blew on as if to send her kiss soaring out over the audience in some sort of unite attack.

“In third place,” Thomas said, “um. Her act was exciting and educational too, and I think we all felt a little stronger after watching her. The, er, winner of a Rage Rune and a free attachment at Jeane’s, is Waggi!”

With a triumphant roar, Waggi raised her gride and accepted the voucher for her prize.

Caesar spoke next. “So, I guess it’s fitting that I present the next one, seeing as, like me, she came from somewhere far away and shook things up like you wouldn’t believe. I think I speak for everyone in this castle when I say -- Lady Ismene Maximilian, we didn’t know you had it in you!”

Lady Ismene flushed beet red, staggered forward, and clapped her hands over the golden eagle on her breasts.

“Come on down, Lady Ismene! Second place, which means you’re the winner of a weapon upgrade at Peggi’s, gratis, and after what you showed us today we’re sure it’ll be useful!” Caesar stood on his tiptoes and gave Fred a quick peck on the lips. “Great job.”

(It is possible that Sanae, Belle, and Mel fainted in the audience. It is also possible that Hugo now had a few more things to try not to think about.)

“Your turn,” Caesar said, and yielded Hugo the stage.

“This was a tough decision,” Hugo began, much more comfortable addressing crowds than, well, thinking about Lady Ismene. “For one thing, this wasn’t a conventional entry, and for another, it might be an unpopular decision. But I thought about the reasons we decided to have this contest in the first place. It’s not just about the transformation and the innovation and all that: it’s about bringing us closer as a fighting force, and boosting morale, and I think we can all agree that there was one act that stood out to us all as far as morale goes. And I want to honor that, because as leader of the Fire Bringer, I want to give all credit and respect to our soldiers and commanders who put themselves forward, regardless of their station or their homeland, to show that they’re part of this army and with us until the end. So: in first place, winner of a grand lottery prize of one hundred thousand potch:” Hugo took a deep breath. “Bishop Sasarai of Harmonia, as Lady Leknaat!”

It turned out not to be an unpopular decision at all. Even the remaining contestants onstage applauded and cheered, and everyone sought out whatever entrance Sasarai could emerge from.

After moment, the Bishop did come in from backstage -- but he wasn’t in costume at all.

“Thank you all very much for the honor,” he said. “But that wasn’t me.”

Everyone froze.

“...Cecile,” Martha asked, “if you’re here, who’s on watch tonight?”

“Juan,” she said, in a small voice.

Now that no one was clapping or cheering at all, the sound of Juan’s easy snoring wafted through the tavern windows.

“Well, fuck,” Duke said.

***

Meanwhile, at Mount Hei-Tou:

“I thought we were supposed to demoralize them,” Yuber said. “This is stupid.”

“Hush,” Sarah said, smearing cold cream all over Luc’s face to get the makeup off. “Master Luc just wanted to feel pretty.”

Luc groaned and submitted himself to Sarah’s ministrations.

“Pathetic,” Yuber said, flicking his swords in and out of existence. “I didn’t even get to kill anyone. What the hell was that, anyway?”

“One of my brother’s cockandable ideas to boost morale,” Albert said. “But their contouring was horrible, the acts were uninspired, and not a single one of those men knew the proper way to tuck.”

Everyone turned to stare at Albert.

“Except maybe Nash,” he scoffed. “Amateurs.”

“What’s tuck?” Yuber asked.

There were some things, Albert decided, that Yuber was not meant to know.

***

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Yuletide Reveal!

mithrigil — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:04:34 GMT

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gileonnen is, once again, a sneaky wonderful person, and responsible for God of Wine. Yunitsa over at AO3 is responsible for The Silent Woman and I look forward to reading more of her work!

As for the treats (which I forgot to link, sorry, but most of them had comments other than my own even before I read them!), I got four, three Greek Mythology and one more Stage Beauty!

Sun is Burning, by acrossthefloors - Scylla (of Metapmorphoses fame) as a human monster and vaguely-a-terrorist!

A Night at the Seiketsukan Spa, by Xixui, in which a modern Artemis attracts a peeping tom.

Light of our Reunion, by ViaLethe, in which Persephone's pathologist husband and gardener mother don't really like their arrangement.

And Ganymede, by lareinenoire, another Young Ned fic that goes into his theatrical history~

As for what I wrote: Four fics!

I told ya'll I would be writing Suikoden V fic! This isn't the one I planned to write, but when I was assigned Lelei/Lucretia for Yuletide, I was SO EXCITED. So I wrote A Matter of Translation, which turned out to be the only Suikoden fic at all this year!

I'm also responsible for A Disney Prince Consort, which may be the schmoopiest thing I have ever written, but I adore it.

I saw twincy's prompt for Castor and Pollux IN SPACE, and I jumped on it, and wrote The Dioskouroi, which I totally agree should be expanded into a more extensive SF story, maybe someday.

And, uh. Oh yeah. I'm the culprit behind The Big Gay Episode. Yay?

Yuletide this year WAS AWESOME. I had a blast, and I'm pleased with everything I wrote and received.

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Yuletide Haul, and Recs the First

mithrigil — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 04:36:03 GMT

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IT IS A VERY MERRY YULETIDE INDEED, both IRL and online, but hey, let's talk about the online parts because MAN do I have a shitton of recs for you.

First off, and outside the cut because I can do that, my two over-1000-word gifts, both of which I love:

Greek and Roman Mythology

Giver of Wine, in which the god of wine and revelry doesn't give a fuck about Pentheus's temperance laws. Features genderqueer godhead, men in dresses, absolutely enthralling drunk rambling prose, and did I mention we're in the Jazz Age? HOT AS BALLS. Best read with something that drips stickily into your hand, like baklavah. Or ouzo.

Stage Beauty

The Silent Woman, in which Ned Kynaston makes his debut onstage and off if you know what I mean, and it is everything I hoped for in a Stage Beauty fic, from young Ned still finding his voice to, well, men in dresses. Features as well a Pepys cameo as well that's utterly and completely in character. Best read by stagelight.

And now, I proceed to Fics I Also Liked. This is just my first run: I'll probably make another rec post when Madness opens because I'll have four more of my own to squee about, but for now, here you go!

16th and 17th Century RPF

Still Climbing After Knowledge Infinite, in which one William Shakespeare meets the gay atheist spy of his dreams. First, he falls in love with Tamburlaine. Then, he falls in tongue-twister for Kit. If you know me at all you know why I have recced this story, and not just because it's a well-researched and thoughtful piece of provocative work, but because it takes apart for two of the biggest literary icons in western history just how wonderful it is to know, and love, the person behind the words. Best read with someone beside you to parrot the pentameter and prose.

1776

A Passion for Polite Intercourse, in which Franklin and Adams (and Chase) go to New Brunswick for the handjobs and the drinking. Features perfectly in-tone banter, research, Ben still having syphilis, and John still loving Abigail. Best read with a Benjamin in your back pocket. No kidding.

Bring It On

Postcards, in which Torrance and Isis keep in touch after high school, and femslash ensues. Features enough positive appreciation of chearleading and its effort to make me look back favorably on my days as JV captain, no shit. Best read giving someone a B-E AGGRESSIVE.

Black Swan

swallow her whole star intact, in which Lily gets dangerous POV and she and Nina have equally dangerous sex. Features remarks about ballet so bitchy that the author must know an insider. Best read with someone else in the room, preferably someone who is indisputably not your dark reflection.

Classical Music RPF (Debussy/Ravel)

The Music Speaks For Itself, in which Debussy and Ravel get their da capo on, through the years. Features musical incidentals, accidentals, peripherals, impressionism, and MUSIC THEORY AS FIC. It would have my heart for that and that alone, even if the rest of it weren't so lyrically wonderful. Best read with headphones, and some background knowledge of how unbearable Pelleas et Melisande is.

Cutting Edge

how we spin (and spin), in which Mosley-Dorsey gets taken to its logical conclusion, namely, Kate Has Never Been Out Bowling. Features the perils of loving a brilliant, headstrong, conflicted woman with a mean toepick--just like the movie, really, plus about an hour of fallout. Best re--OW.

Toepick! *^___^*

Easy A

The Company You Keep, in which Brandon runs away with a hot black guy, though not as much like Huck Finn as you'd expect. My god, I remembered why I adore this movie so much. Features a really well-developed take on Josh and a very plausible rendering of high school that doesn't get overly preachy. Best read genre-savvy.

Hamlet

Chiaroscuro, in which Hamlet has definitely seen the world in a nutshell and the knowledge was too much to handle. HAMLET/LOVECRAFT, BITCHES. WARNING FOR THINGS ELDRITCH AND UNSPEAKABLE. You know what's also unspeakable? The praise I would lavish on this fic. Best read in a well-lit room. Also, please, don't have calamari for dinner.

Hey Arnold!

But Everything Happens For Reasons She Will Never Understand, in which Helga G. Pataki comes home from college to deal with her father's corpse the only way she knows how. Features one of the best depictions of truly complicated dealing-with-loss-that-isn't-really-grief that I have ever seen in fiction. Frankly, it sits close enough to home that I'm glad for the kudos button, because otherwise I'd probably have TMI'd all over the comment box. Also, this interpretation of Arnold all grown up rings utterly true. Best read with or without a shrine in your closet.

Jane Austen's Fight Club

Elizabeth Bennet and the Pandemonium Undertaking, in which oh fuck this shit, if you have read Palahniuk and any regency romances GET THE FUCK IN HERE, NOW. NOW. DO NOT FINISH TYPING THAT TEXT. DO NOT OPEN A NEW TAB. Best read RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Second Round, in which Elizabeth and Charlotte do much more than take tea. Features a much lighter spin on the aforementioned, but lighter doesn't mean less hot, not in the least. Best read with your stays loosened and your bosom heaving.

Luther

Butterflies, in which Alice and Jenny have a conversation that is, and isn't, about how DCI Luther is off his rocker. Features an Alice that reminds me, altogether, of petting a recalcitrant cat and waiting, waiting for it to bite you. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2, so be on your guard. Best read with a nice hat, on or off, doesn't matter.

Mulan

A Sense of Freedom, in which I can't spoil you for the ensuing Disney Princesses crossover, but you'll thank me later. Trust me. Features extremely fun development of the central cast without shattering the mold that Disney gave them! Best read with knowledge of the Disney animated canon, but still readable without!

Oglaf

Victory At Sea, in which Sandoval either fails or succeeds utterly at the Navy, I can't tell which. Features, in addition to sidesplitting humor and awful puns as per Oglaf, smoking hot art of Sandoval with a spyglass. Best read one-handed!

Princess Tutu

Frame Story, in which Princess Tutu continues to surprise me by churning out exactly the fic I want to read, at the same time every year, like clockwork. Features an enthralling fairy-tale voice and the single truest paragraph about Fakir that I have ever read. Best read with a healthy appreciation for fairy-tales, though if you don't have that already, what the hell are you doing reading Princess Tutu fic?

Real Genius

Etch Out a Future Of Your Own Design, in which Mitch grows up and Chris doesn't wax rhapsodic about it. I could, though. I could ramble on for ages about how this utterly subverts the bildungsroman AND plays with the audiences' foreknowledge AND is smoking hot because Chris Knight has a DOM VOICE and I never expected to say it, but, well, I just did. Best read on the Internet. You'll thank me for that joke later.

Red Cliff (Chì bì)

A Thousand Things, in which Zhou Yu falls in love with the younger Qiao very properly, quietly, and inexorably. Features a very proud warhorse and a pitch-perfect Zhou Yu. Best read with tea, though not tea ceremony, as tea ceremony should always occupy your full attention.

Revenger's Tragedy

Don't Try This At Home, in which Ambitioso and Lussurioso go out for a drink and Chumbawumba has the last brassy laugh. Features a wham of a last line, eyeliner, and lots of other lines to read between. Best read with curry.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

they that go down to the sea in ships, in which Kit and Nat get the life they wanted. Features PURCELL. PURCELL, GODDAMN IT. Best read on a mobile device, or a ship if you can get it.

Toepick~

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For those of you jumping ship:

mithrigil — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:40:11 GMT

I am also here.

I will likely be more regular about crossposting in the future (as regular as I am about posting at all, these days, that is).

My god, the new comment windows are ugly and unwieldy.

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So, about that Yuletide.

mithrigil — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:41:20 GMT

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I guess the fact that I received my assignment a little over a half-hour ago and have already done the preliminary research and written 400 words says how fucking excited I am.

Yes.

Fuck yes.

And the best part is that this one will be done in a week, because the fire under my ass is SO FUCKING STRONG that your pretty fan just caught fire, and I can write treats to my heart's content.

Thank you, Yuletide recipient. You've made my holiday season gay.

squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~

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Dear Yuletide Author:

mithrigil — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:03:22 GMT

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My Dear Yuletide Santa,

You kick ass. Thank you in advance for offering one of the fandoms I requested--they're a mixed bag this year, that's for sure--and I'm excited to see what you come up with! I tried to request fandoms and characters for which I'd be happy with just about anything you want to write, so feel free to take my requests as guidelines, and write something tailored to your own strengths, and have fun!

That said, there are some things I like, and some things I really don't:

THINGS I LIKE
Deconstruction and Meta
Provocative topics
Writing in the voice of the canon (if there is one)
Footnotes
Music (always always music!)
Wittiness, highbrow humor, and puns. Bad puns. REALLY bad puns.
Glorification of art and the creative process
Men in dresses (though that should be evident from this year's request list)
Difficult situations with no right answers, and the people who tend to get into those situations

THINGS I DO NOT LIKE
Fluff
Gratuitous happy endings (happy endings themselves are okay, but I don't want it to feel forced)
Protagonist infallibility / unsympathetic comedy protagonists
Lack of research
Mpreg. Please, just don't, it makes me really uncomfortable.
Ignoring consequences

I'm putting a lot of my requests on the lighter side this year, but I'm also entirely okay with dark themes, violence, and as I said above provocative topics. As for sex, I'll admit that I like a good sex scene, but I always prefer it to be in the context of the story--I can see the Twelve Kingdoms fic becoming about sex, and hell, I always love to picture Billy Crudup enjoying himself in his pants, but fading to black is always wonderful and a fic can also be about sex and sexuality without containing a scene therein, so don't worry, I'll be more than happy if you decide to write plotty or thinky genfic instead.

So, my requests and some extra details:

To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar:
No Characters Specified. Sheriff Dollard is wearing a dress. How he got there (and whether he qualifies as a drag queen, or just a man in a dress) is entirely up to you.

IF YOU OFFERED THIS, I owe you cookies. Big, tasty cookies. I love this movie, its spectacle and its lightheartedness and the sense of performance throughout. Please don't stray from making a fic that's just as exuberant as the source canon, and use whatever characters you like! Dollard doesn't even have to appear in the dress onscreen, as long as he's wearing it, somewhere out there.

Stage Beauty:
Edward Kynaston. Ned's grueling training as an actor of women's parts. How much of it glanced over him on the surface, and how much tripped him somewhere deeper?

If you bust out the Restoration research for this, I will love you forever. Keeping with the theme of men in dresses, how much of Ned's cutting personality comes on and off with the clothes? How much of his sexuality was informed by his ability to perform gender? I know the movie goes into a great deal of detail about how it worked out for him in the end, but I want the story of how it got started.

Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Shouryou, Enki. How did two taika acclimate to a "world without love"? En-Ou and Enki both have a lot of adjusting to do, as a ruling body and as men who aren't accustomed to seeing children born from eggs on a tree. It's up to you whether they acclimate together, or with other people, but I want to read the story of how En-Ou came to frequent the pleasure houses of his country.

Sex in Twelve Kingdoms is an issue I love to explore and see explored. Again, you can easily make this request not about sex at all--I'd be just as happy with fic about how a man from Feudal Japan instituted a functional bureaucracy in En--but the story of a Foreigner Making It Work is one of my favorites, and I hope it inspires you too.

Greek and Roman Mythology
No Characters Specified Update and modernize your favorite Greek Myth! Sisyphus chains himself to a post on Wall Street; Persephone's joint custody arrangement is the WORST THING EVER; Atalanta chucks her golden apples into a minefield; for once, Zeus can't get it up. Hades is an especial favorite of mine, but the God of Death is in no way required.

I love modern legends. I love seeing people have fun with modern legends. Please, just go to town.

Once again, Yuletide Author, you rule! I'll see you in December, and I hope you enjoy writing!

-Mith

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Teaching old friends new tricks.

mithrigil — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:57:33 GMT

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I finally did it. I managed to get Puel to sit down and play Suikoden V. And in doing so I think I have created a monster. She's fallen in love with it, and we're going to be combing through the rest of the franchise (except IV, because IV sucks dragonhorse balls, I'll just show her relevant cutscenes on youtube), and this makes me so excited you have no idea.

But something else that's really interesting to me is happening as we play, from a fanficcing perspective. I wrote the bulk of my Suikoden fics at least three years ago, most of them even longer ago than that. With Puel to bounce ideas off of, I find myself more open to new characterizations and headcanons than I held before. We're throwing around ideas for an SV prequel story and Prince/Lyon fic and Roy's Adventures On the Northern Continent, and it feels comfortable and new all at the same time! I compared it, the other day, to going back to an old art song or early aria after years of working on other pieces: I still know my way around, but things are easier technique-wise and I'm seeing things in the canon that I hadn't seen before. It doesn't invalidate all my old work in the fandom, but it definitely casts a new perspective and thus a new direction. I don't know if I'll be posting much fic to the journal, but we're definitely writing it.

In conclusion: yay Suikoden! Yay old friends and old fandoms and new love! Hopefully some of you are still around to share and squee about it.

Also, let us start placing bets: if Roy is Puel's favorite character in SV, who's she going to fall in love with when I sit her down with SIII once we're done?

I'm thinking Nash. Which may mean Nash/Chris on the horizon.

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