Waking up and getting up has never been easy

On the twelfth day of cough never mind

versipellis — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 21:37:12 GMT

Sooooooo I was like "I shall see if I can write twelve vignettes for the twelfth day of Christmas! Won't take me that long." This turned into planning an entire Battle Royale, because I guess that's how I cope with lockdown? Anyway:

[Title] The Lonely Girls
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] R for violence and death
[Notes/Summary] The game plays out differently. The Program can be a lonely place. Twelve girls choose how to deal with that.
[Link] To Chapter 1 of 12

On the ninth day of Christmas, or thereabouts

versipellis — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 20:36:42 GMT

my true love (finally) gave to me

nine sullen silences

[Title] The North Tower Girls Fight Crime
[Fandom] Malory Towers (superhero AU)
[Rating] G
The Story So Far: Alicia, able to heal herself from any injury, researches people with super powers, and becomes friends with Darrell, who makes things explode when she loses her temper; Belinda, whose drawings come to life; telepath Sally; super-strong Mary-Lou; illusionist Daphne; and element of chaos Irene. Gwendoline, former friend of Mary-Lou, can steal and use the powers (and ultimately the life force) of anyone she touches, but loses these powers after an ill-judged attack on Alicia involving power-limiting technology.
Alicia elects to bring together people with superpowers, including Bill, who can talk to animals (primarily horses), Ruth, who can control others, and Clarissa, whose power of flight was lost when she was experimented on with similar technology. Alicia manages to destroy the tech but makes some morally ambiguous decisions in the process, as well as experiencing weakness and injury for the first time in her life.
Darrell's sister Felicity, who was injured long ago when Darrell lost control of her ability, comes to live with the group, as does Alicia's cousin June. June attempts to get the group into trouble with the law, and, facing the brunt of Darrell's fury, reveals that she has her own power: immunity to everyone else's. Alicia has long suspected June conspired with Gwendoline to attack her previously, and realises she is correct.
[Link] Nine parts, spread over several chapters

On the cough tenth day of Christmas

versipellis — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 17:06:51 GMT

my true love sent to me

~~ten~~ nine more important thoughts

[Title] Shrapnel
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Refugees from the Greater East Asian Republic have generally been through some tough times. With the Program, though, it's different.
[Link] "Everyone seems to think Shuuya and Noriko have been to hell and back."

[Title] Axioms
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda knows what's true and what isn't. At first, anyway.
[Link] "It's easy at first."

[Title] Professional Murder Music
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] R for violence/torture (not graphic) and language.
[Notes/Summary] Coin survives the Rokkaku Corporation's attempt to take over the world, but that doesn't mean everything's easy.
(Me: it's 2021, I shall write my long-form JSR angst fic like it's 2000 and no one can stop me.)

White Noise

They’ve laid off him for now. They’ve thrown him into a pitch-black room that’s almost certainly a cell (he couldn’t really see where they were going, he was half-blacking out) and, okay, things are still seriously bad, but at least they’re not shaking him down for information right this second?

Use the seconds, collect your thoughts. Because things are seriously bad and they aren’t going to get much better, unless he suddenly turns into an escape artist, and he’s only good at getting out of tricky situations when he’s got his skates on and he’s outside. Being locked up in a room with what sounded like a seriously heavy door – kind of not much you can do about that. Not much you can do about a bunch of sharp-suited gangsters (or… whatever the fuck these guys are) who’ve decided you know something they want to hear about, either. Things are seriously fucking screwed –

Use the seconds. Pick out the thoughts like it’s sounds. Bass, treble. Normally you’d tell yourself to sit up and you’d start counting stuff off on your fingers but he’s not sure either of those things are possible right now. They went for his hands early on, if he thinks about it he starts freaking out, so don’t think about it. That’s just white noise, pick out what’s important –

What’s important is what’s always been important. Cube and Combo. Whatever happens – and whatever happens is not going to be good – these guys can’t get their hands on his friends. Hands again. Don’t think about it. He’s hoping like hell that seeing as he’s the one under lock and key, the one with the record collection, the gangsters-or-whatever will figure he’s gotta know the most, they’ll figure Cube and Combo are clueless. And they’ll work out something bad went down, the wholesale music destruction all over the floor of the loft’ll tip them off, they’ll see his message, they’ll get out of there. All he’s got to do is remember that when he starts saying stuff just to say stuff, he can’t point the finger (well, that’ll be tricky now) at those two.

(The broken records all over the floor, thinking about that is weird because one minute it’s like, normally it’d be the worst day of my life just to see ‘em like that but hey, you know what, it’s actually been the least worst thing about today so far, and then the next minute is like, yeah, they bust ‘em up just like that, and they’re gonna follow suit with me. Cube used to joke about was he trying to build a fort out of records but… they were his, they were him, and now they’re busted, and so will he be. People who kidnap people and have the time and tech to go to town on ‘em properly will have the time and tech to dispose of a body after.)

White noise. White noise. Listen for the melody –

Okay. Cube and Combo are the priority. Then?

Thing is, if he’d just put that record back in its sleeve and left it in another junk shop, he’d probably have already spilled his guts about it. No harm, no foul, right? Okay, there were those weird rumours about it on the message boards, but there are weird rumours about everything on the web if you know where to look. But he… he got spooked. He got stupid. He heard some dangerous people were looking for the record, and instead of letting them have it, he gave it to a pal of his who worked in the Bantam Street deli, told him to get it out of the area. Why? the guy said. Coin told him, Call it a scavenger hunt. I don’t wanna make it easy. He thinks he sounded chill enough to be believed. Get it out of the area, post it on, keep it moving, he’d said. He points these bastards in his buddy’s direction, he’s signing a bunch of people up for a world of hurt.

Shit.

So far he’s been taking the I dunno where it is, man, it was with the others, you guys must’ve picked it up, or wrecked it, I swear, please god I swear line. Give it time, and he’ll start making shit up just to get them to stop. As long as it’s useless shit, as long as it’s not pointing them to anyone else, then – then maybe –

Maybe he can make them kill him out of sheer frustration before he actually gets them on the trail of anyone else?

As a life goal, it’s not great.

Kind of all he’s got now. Strip down the sounds and end up with a basic-as-hell chord progression.

Better than nothing.

Eldritch Opera

He must have fallen asleep.

It was hours and hours of stuff he’s trying not to think about. Hours and hours of spilling his guts about so many false trails he can barely remember what the original truth was. Time went fucking weird because he kept passing out, or falling asleep, and then he’d get woken up by bursts of static, blared in from somewhere, so loud it was like being in a rainstorm, and then they’d haul him out and start the questioning up again.

It was hours and hours of that and then, somewhere along the line, it stopped being that, it started being just darkness and silence. For ages he wasn’t with it enough to register that, he was passing in and out of consciousness, or he was working really hard not to think about how much bits of him hurt (in the dark it’s worse, like you start kidding yourself the pain is an actual thing in here with you, like some kind of facehugger octopus alien tangled around you) –

There was that, and then, eventually, there was starting to think maybe they’d found the record and they weren’t even going to bother shooting him, they were just going to leave him to starve to death.

May have gone a bit crazy after that thought first occurred to him. Just a bit.

It was only after the crazy had died down that someone dumped a tray in, a cup of water and what felt like some convenience store snacks, rice balls and stuff. Then everything flipped and he was so goddamn grateful to them, he was listening to himself crying and thanking them over and over, and they must’ve got what they wanted from him because if they’d come in and asked him questions and threatened to take the food away if he didn’t tell the truth, he’d have done it, no problem.

It was hours and days and god knows how long, a few more trays of food, and he must have fallen asleep, and finally, the door rattles open and two of them come and grab him and wrench him to his feet. Standing up feels weird. Okay, it also hurts like hell, like knives through his feet, but it feels like a skill he gave up years ago.

The light hurts and more than that, it’s like it fills his entire skull up, like something seeing through everything he ever said. He’s got his eyes shut for ages, not like he can do anything about where they’re dragging him to, wherever they’re dragging him to. At some point, it feels like they’re going up in an elevator – the floating, the creaks and hums around them – which is new, which suggests this isn’t going to be more questioning. Maybe they are just going to shoot him. Well. Could be worse.

When he’s finally able to open his eyes for more than a few seconds, they’re out of the elevator, they’re in some fancy skyscraper room, floor-to-ceiling windows, minimal furniture, like the kind of place where you’d have the climactic scene in a movie about corporate espionage. Which is probably what these guys do, right? Corporate espionage and murdering people. It’s night, there’s a city spread out below them, all gleaming and glittering. Maybe they’re going to chuck him out of one of the windows. He should probably be… like… gathering his thoughts for some good last words or whatever, but he’s too – he’s too tired, like he’s been worn down to a thread. That might make dying easier. And he’d be okay if it’s falling, just like screwing up on a tricky jump only you plummet into the city lights. You black out before you hit the ground, so it’d be okay, those’d be the last thing you see. Could be worse. Could be worse. That’s the most important thing, it could always be worse. Hey, even if they do just shoot him maybe they’ll let him face the view –

One of them says to the other, “Thirty seconds.”

“You think those kids will show?”

“They’ve managed to every time so far. Not sure how no one’s managed to take them out.”

“This should take care of them, then. Doubt we’ll even need this one as leverage… may as well hang on for now, I guess.”

Coin’s brain’s moving like… like… whatever the opposite of a mile a minute is, so it’s as though he has to translate what they’ve said into Chinese and back before he can understand it. When he does, he’s not sure it was worth the effort. Kids. Leverage. If it is, if it is – like, Cube and Combo knew about these guys, they could’ve made it here, maybe, but if they do, it sounds like something bad’s about to happen and – they were meant to be safe, and the worry about them is mixing up with the whole probably-about-to-die thing, doubt we’ll even need this one, as though it’s one of them here and soon to be shoved out of a window, and there’s nothing he can do –

This weird singing noise echoes down from the sky. Like opera, but… eldritch opera? He can feel the vibrations of the sound through the floor, which suggests maybe a massive sound system somewhere, but –

Whispering voices under the song and then a beat starts up, and he gets it. This is the record. The one that’s pretty much got him killed. Actually a decent tune, shame he never got to listen to it before all of this.

The building trembles, and he hears something high above them – like a jet engine, like a tiger in the clouds – roar. And the sky – the sky is boiling with weird inky clouds, a giant Rorschach test overlaid on some seriously trippy visuals –

Guess the weird rumours were true after all. Oh, well, at least this wasn’t all for some bullshit hoax.

On the other hand, it’d have been nicer if his attempts not to break under torture had actually stopped the bad guys getting the cursed artifact.

The roaring, and the singing, and – from high above, red-orange flickers, like the sky’s on fire – maybe it is, maybe hell is opening above them –

The guys with him don’t say anything, just watch, with the inkblots and the fiery light reflected in their aviator shades. Professionals. Whenever a roar echoes out you can feel it in your bones, but they don’t even flinch. They going to kill me before or after the… razing the city to the ground starts, or whatever this is about? God, it is a seriously bad day when you even have to ask that question.

Something explodes above them, only he feels it before he sees it, the building shudders for real this time and they all actually stagger, and then the sound, hits like a giant hand about to swat you away –

One of the guys taps his earpiece, he’s shouting, what was that, or maybe Coin’s filling that dialogue in, his ears are ringing too much to actually hear. He’s not sure he can stand up much longer, to be honest. Although maybe that’s the floor shaking. Which it’s doing quite a lot. And there are a whole lot of groans and creaks all around them which are… probably not good.

“No response! The boss’s comms are down –”

“Communications Centre said – it just – the damn thing just exploded right on top of us –”

“Get out of here – leave him –”

They’ve gone, which is good, because at least they’re not going to be smacking him around any more. What’s significantly less good is the entire room’s shaking and cracks are snaking their way across the windows. Looks like I was wrong about the shooting. Looks like it’s going to be death by falling skyscraper. Is that better? He’s laughing, kind of, or maybe crying, he doesn’t actually know what face you’re meant to put on when you’re facing your imminent death. Maybe… maybe get back from the window, though. Falling’d be okay, but getting cut to ribbons by that glass would –

He’s staggering, and then he’s crawling, he thinks he can smell smoke, that’s okay, can I black out soon? Don’t think I want to be here for this, the room is enormous, like he could crawl for miles and still just be in empty blue light. The noise is louder, it’s too loud for thinking. A glass door, stuck half-open, cracked, is there no way to get away from the glass in this place? He drags himself round it, outside there’s a stairwell, he can sit here and wait to fall –

Through the screams of the building, he hears –

He hears –

“Hang in there, just –”

“We’re not gonna make it –”

“Shut up and grind –”

Hang in there –

Something to hold onto, maybe. Just a thought.

He is definitely about to pass out, he is feeling as sick and tripped-out as the building is, but at least he isn’t going out alone.

Wind Chimes

Darkness, and through the darkness, lines of light, like your eyelids half-opening. Voices, but whispering gibberish, or another language, or nothing, he can’t pin down what any of them say. He waits for more of the eerie singing to start up but there’s just the dark and the whispering.

Darkness, and lines of light, and his eyes are opening, and not to more darkness, which is – which is good, the sun’s out, he’s in some room with kind of knocked-about-looking cream-coloured walls, but there’s a window and there’s sunlight and he can hear wind chimes or something and the hum of traffic and people and nothing that sounds like a portal to hell…

Some guy in a shirt and tie standing over him, “How are you feeling? Coin, they said your name was?” Coin doesn’t know if he nodded or not – he feels exhausted, like he’s run a marathon in a spacesuit or whatever – but the guy doesn’t seem surprised, he says, “You’re probably feeling pretty woozy. You were in rough shape, and you’re still on a lot of painkillers.”

Coin sort of stammers, “Good,” because, yeah, there was pain and now he thinks about it, he can’t feel any of it, which is fantastic, but also kind of worrying because he can barely feel much.

It’s worrying, but then he kind of dozes off again, maybe because it’s easier than stressing out. When he opens his eyes again, the sun’s darker gold, it’s shifted round the room. He raises his head – okay, good, he can do that, he’s not like completely paralysed or something (wasn’t he killed in a collapsing building?) – looks round the room. A bookshelf, a glass-fronted cabinet with what looks like the contents of a pharmacy inside it, and, sitting on a chair, leaning forward and twisting his hands together, is a kid who looks about his own age and has all the hallmarks – headphones round his neck, goggles, fingerless gloves, and, oh yeah, netrium-powered skates on his feet – of someone Coin would have more expected to see hanging out in the skate park in Bantam Street.

“Um, hey,” the kid says. “So the doc says we’ve got to be chill and let you rest, but I thought maybe someone should… explain what happened?” He smiles, kind of nervously. “Although, you were kind of at the centre of it, maybe you should explain to me.”

Coin’s all yeah, comparing stories, that sounds smart, and he opens his mouth – his throat is dry – and says, “So I had this record –”

He just says it and nothing changes, there’s still just the sun and the wind chimes, but under all of that there is those rooms and one of the men in suits leaning over him, try not lying to us, it’ll hurt less, there’s blood in his mouth and pain and –

He about manages to breathe, and not to throw up, and stammer, “Hey, you know… you know what, maybe you should go first.”

The kid is looking anxiously at him but he doesn’t actually say are you having a breakdown, he nods, and says, “Right, okay, so… so I’m Beat, and… this is Tokyo-to, and… the evil CEO of the Rokkaku Corporation tried to take over the world with a cursed record, which… we think you had your hands on at one point? And we stopped him but that sort of… destroyed a skyscraper, which we were on the roof of, and while we were trying to get off the roof, we spotted you almost passed out on the stairs and… Combo basically dumped his g-blaster and hoisted you onto his shoulder instead, which I guess shows the depth of your friendship. Don’t worry,” he adds, “Garam picked up the g-blaster, he said it was a whole no true companion left behind thing. It’s fine. Combo’s fine. And, um, Cube’s fine, I should’ve told you that first, I guess? Your friends are fine.”

Coin was going to be cool about all of this, just nod and be like sweet, but he sort of didn’t count on how hearing your friends are fine was going to make him feel. Like, he hadn’t realised how much he was carrying that thought around, that maybe they wouldn’t be fine (and maybe it would be his fault) and what it would feel like if they weren’t.

“Like… really?” he manages to say. It’s not being able to breathe again, but this time it’s because he’s almost too scared to ask the question. “You’re… you’re not lying to spare my feelings because I’m on a ton of painkillers here?”

“Nope,” Beat says, and the guy sure seems good at radiating sincerity and mild-mannered chill vibes, so Coin can almost believe him. “They’ve been here – this guy and his wife patch up rudies for a living, though I don’t know how they actually make their living seeing most of us are broke, it’s probably better not to ask – Cube and Combo’ve been here for like two days and I said they should go home for a bit because they looked like they might fall asleep on their skates. If the doc’s okay with it, I’ll go fetch them. He says he won’t let all of us – I mean, us GGs, that’s my gang, there are a lot of us and we can be kind of rowdy – in at once, but I reckon he’ll be cool with two of them. If he won’t let them in now, then soon as you’re well enough, I’ll drag them down here. I mean, I say drag, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop them.”

Turns out really strong painkillers are on the same level as thinking you’ve been left to starve to death when it comes to making you cry without meaning to.

Rain Rattle

“Want to tell me what happened to you?” the doctor says, pulling up a chair. “I mean, I think I’ve deduced a fair amount from the nature of your injuries, but...”

The sun’s gone in, the windows are closed and Coin can hear the rattle of rain on them. It’s a weird sound of home – of any home, of his room as a kid, of hanging out reading magazines in the local store, of the loft in Bantam Street – like a slice of familiarity’s been blended into Japan. He still hasn’t quite got his head round being in Japan without remembering getting here. Probably doesn’t want to remember getting here. It was probably in the trunk of a black car with stolen license plates. (The rain doesn’t sound like static, it’s too soft for that, he has to keep reminding himself of this.)

This is distracting himself with pointless shit so he can pretend he didn’t hear the question. The doctor clears his throat, and Coin for sure doesn’t want to hear him say I know this must be hard for you, so he just blurts out, “I mean, no. No, actually.”

Isn’t like it isn’t hard to work out, anyway. He’s got both feet in plaster and on one of them it’s all the way up to his knee (he keeps remembering them doing that bit – some memories stick more than others, like pips in your teeth). Then his hands are strapped up and his fingernails are all black and blue and split. Doc’s already told him he thinks there’s a couple of broken ribs to contend with – the painkillers are keeping them at bay, mostly – and that’s not even getting into the guy who could, and did, shoot electricity from his fingers for some unknown reason.

“Like, I reckon you worked out the important bits,” he says.

The doctor sighs - “Okay, well, I’ve done my best. And you might as well rest up here and get over the shock – I can’t imagine your friends are living anywhere particularly fancy. But… you should know I’m no surgeon, I’ve always told the kids to go to hospital and worry about the repercussions later when it comes to anything that involves going under the knife… so I can’t promise your feet aren’t going to need a lot more work in the future. They went to town on them, huh?”

Coin would love to say something like, haha, yeah, imagining stubbing your toe, then turn that up to eleven, but he’s too busy having another extremely unpleasant flashback. When it passes, or maybe later, the doctor’s left him alone again and he’s staring at the ceiling, wondering why it is this feels more like the end of everything than literally thinking you’re about to be murdered does. Like, no way can he ever skate again, right? They even said that once or twice, as though he was stupid enough he couldn’t work it out. And, sure, okay, every skater, every rudie kind of knows sooner or later either they’ll get too old and creaky or they’ll bust themselves up too badly, but you figure that’s going to be years away. You don’t think you’ll have to be dealing with it right now. And most people, even if they do get unlucky, they don’t get this unlucky, right? Rudies break bones but mostly not all at once. He’s busted his wrist and his collarbone and a couple of fingers in the past, through falling off things, and it hurt and it was a pain to deal with for a few weeks but it wasn’t this, needing a twenty-four-seven nurse to function and feeling like you’re a collection of busted bones loosely held together with string.

Suppose all you can do is tell yourself things’ll get better, which should be a thought you can hang on to, but doesn’t seem like anything much. Or, be grateful to be alive, but that doesn’t mean much either.

Thrash Metal

The rain’s stopped by the time the doctor’s wife (who looks way too much like a housewife in a bootlegged Asian drama series to be nursing delinquents and probably smuggling drugs on the side) comes in and tells him his friends are here, if he feels up to seeing them. Time still isn’t quite lining up right, but that’s probably good, because as soon as she says it, he feels like he isn’t ready, he should be better (somehow? In some way?) before he sees them, they’re going to, to laugh at him or be mad with him or, or…

No fucking way is he going to send them away, of course, he’s still only ninety per cent sure they aren’t dead, so he nods and says it’s fine and tries to sit up a little and look like hey, welcome to my pad, just ignore the busted fingers and the medical cabinet.

The door slides open again and they’re standing there. Both of them do look exhausted, Beat was right. They stare at each other and then Cube grins shakily and says, “Um, hi?” and he smiles back at her and tries to pretend he doesn’t want to cry at seeing them.

“Are we allowed to hug you?” Cube says, as they creep into the room. “Like… you look better than – than you did, but you still don’t look great.”

Coin isn’t sure if they are allowed to hug him. The busted ribs sometimes make themselves felt, under all the drugs, but maybe he’s just kind of scared he might really lose it and end up sobbing in their arms. So he just says, “Right, I hear you lot found me and literally carried me out of a collapsing building. I mean… that was pretty awesome, just so you know.”

Cube snorts, and if she’s kind of sniffling they can both ignore it. “Damn straight it was.” She comes to sit on the bed, mock-punches his leg under the covers. “Combo gets bragging rights for eternity.”

“Maybe when I stop pinching myself it actually worked,” Combo says, taking the chair by the bed. “Thought you might be dead already, or we might just not make it out before it came down on our heads.”

“Well, I keep pinching myself you two aren’t dead, so… hurray for living in the good timeline? I… would high-five you, but, about that...” He lifts up his hands. Get it over with. Then he thinks maybe that looks like he’s asking for pity, and wants to kick himself.

Cube’s turned pale – she’s not wearing make-up except for a few smears of black round her eyes, which he suspects is leftovers – and Combo’s eyes have widened. After a bit, Cube says, “So you…” She swallows. “So you got pretty messed up.”

“So I did.” He’s almost glowering like, do not ask for details, do not, even though he’s the one who mentioned it in the first place, which makes it even more frustrating to feel like he’ll break something if they do ask. Cube takes the hint, though. She reaches over and puts a hand on his wrist instead, manages a smile: “Guess holding hands in a romantic walk under the cherry blossoms is out for the foreseeable, then.” He forces himself to smile back at her. “Seems so. As is moshing at a thrash metal concert, I think it’d turn me into paste.” She blinks back tears: “Oh, shut up, like… like you’d ever go to a thrash metal concert, you with your oh, it makes a good base, but on its own as a genre it’s like… it’s like...” Sniffing, she rubs a hand across her eyes. “Shit, I wasn’t going to do this.”

“I mean, you don’t cry easy.” He wishes he could say, s’okay, I’ve been crying for no reason for days, but it’s all stuck in his throat, in his chest, maybe caught on the broken ribs. “I’m taking it as a compliment.” Play the cool boyfriend who’s still able to crack a joke even with no working fingers.

Combo’s looking at him like he knows exactly what’s not being said, but he doesn’t call anyone out on it, just, “I was gonna leave you the g-blaster, but I figure the doctor might not like it. So Beat scrounged up a spare pair of ‘phones and a radio for you. We figured you must be missing some decent tunes.”

“And Jet Set Radio’s awesome,” Cube says. “Like, for real. Even if the DJ may be a wizard or something.”

Coin knows he should be happy about this – they’re right, the world being nothing but silence and lying in bed feeling like you got dropped off a cliff is no fun, music would make it better like nothing else would – but can they just not talk about – like I get it, it’s so freakin’ cool, knocks GRND Radio and all the stuff we used to listen to before out of the park, just like our cool new friends who are the best when I can’t even stand up –

The anger sparks up like a lit fuse and he has to take a deep breath to stop himself saying it all out loud. They’re both looking at him in bafflement and he’s baffled at himself, wasn’t this everything he dreamed of, getting to see them again? And it’s all fucked up suddenly, every other note wrong, setting his teeth on edge.

“Yeah,” he says at last. “Guess you’ll miss it when we’re back in Grind, huh?”

He didn’t even think about it, he just blurted it out like an idiot, like someone putting their foot in a hole.

They glance at each other, and Cube says, “So… about that.”

Coin finds himself staring at her with a too-cool-for-school, hit-me-with-the-revelation smile pasted on his face that he really wishes wasn’t there, before he swallows, and says, “You two want to stay put.”

“I mean… yeah, kind of,” Cube says, staring down at her hands, picking at her gloves. “Like… I miss Bantam Street, sure, but this place is really cool. While we’ve been fighting the corporate terrorists and hoping you were still alive, exploring it’s the only thing that kept me sane.”

Coin manages not to say, right, so it’s all my fucking fault, got it, it’s fine, everything is fine, whatever bullshit is going on in his head it’s not important. “Yeah? Combo, how ‘bout you?”

Combo doesn’t look away, at least. “The GGs… they’re good people, man. Like… sounds dumb and all, but I ain’t never had that many friends in one go, you know? Feelin’ like part of a gang...”

“Yeah.” Cube nods. “Like, don’t get me wrong, if we found you were back in Grind City, obviously we’d come back. Triple-C for life, you know that. But… you’re here, and we’re here, and… it feels right.”

Coin says, kind of sarcastic, “Well, for you,” because evidently maturity only gets you so far. The blood’s pounding in his ears. Thrash metal indeed.

“Okay, sure,” Cube says, frowning, “but you’ve literally only been in this room and a collapsing building, that’s hardly enough to make a judgement call.”

Which is true, and it isn’t like Coin didn’t think it’d be pretty cool to travel, isn’t like Japan wasn’t on the list, just…

Combo says, “Anyway, we ain’t… it’s as much we’re flat broke from getting here. We can’t get back, right now. ‘Less we got ourselves deported –”

“And I don’t want to draw law enforcement’s attention to us,” Cube says. “Specially not when everyone’s still asking what happened at Rokkaku HQ. We should keep our heads down. You should.”

“Don’t have much of a choice,” Coin says, and he’s trying to play it off like a joke, but not trying that hard, because he’s – because it –

I want to go home, I want to go home, I want none of this bullshit to have happened and I want to go home –

He thought that, said that a lot, when he was in the dark, when he was losing it, he’d kind of forgotten he did that until now. Could have done with not remembering it now, it’s like the dark is crawling up his spine.

“Look,” he manages to say, “I… I’m not feeling so… because I’m still wrecked, you know? Tires me out.”

Either he’s going to panic completely, or they’re going to get mad at each other and stuff will be said and if they decide to cut ties with him like they have with their old home, he will be so incredibly screwed –

Cube looks like he’s hit her – she must be tired, normally she’d give him a death glare at least – and it’s Combo who says, “Sure, man. Makes sense. Get some rest and we’ll come back. If you want us.”

“Course – course I do, dumbass,” he manages to say. Lies down again, tries to do an impression of someone tripped out on pain and painkillers rather than someone who’s sulking like a kid. He wants to say something as they reach out the door, but he figures it’d just be another sour note, so what’s the point?

Tokyo Top 40

More days. Sometimes waking up to the rattle of the rain, sometimes milky sunlight spilling across the floor. Turns out thinking you might be left to die in the darkness makes you appreciate the hell out of the glorious morning sky, you know? (There’s a lamp on the bedside table and the doctor must’ve noticed he keeps it on all night but doesn’t say anything. Maybe he figures it’s a sick-person thing? Like in hospitals they never turn the lights off, right?)

Turns out Jet Set Radio is actually pretty awesome, and sometimes he’ll kick back and listen to that for a good long while, but other times he finds himself sulking about it for no reason, so he tunes through the airwaves and settles on random j-pop or what sounds like songs for Japanese grandmothers. Even though it’s probably mainstream as hell, it’s a different mainstream and it’s good to have something to turn your brain off to. (He has to take the headphones off when he’s spinning the dial, hearing the static is… not good. Sometimes he tests it out, keeps them on, gently twists with his bruised fingers until he’s out of the Tokyo Top 40 and into no-man’s-land, but even knowing it’s coming he still finds himself feeling like his heart’s going to rip its way out of his chest.)

Cube and Combo come back, of course they do, and the three of them try to make conversation (make conversation like they’re strangers waiting for a bus, god) but it’s difficult when one of you has literally nothing to report but today I stayed in bed again and all the news the other two have is about their amazing new life. Coin’s genuinely trying not to be a dick about it, but it isn’t like he say sweet, can’t wait to get out there and bust some moves with you when he’s got that probably-needs-surgery, really-should-go-to-hospital stuff hanging over his head. (Doc agrees if he did go to hospital he’d get spotted as an extremely undocumented immigrant, and the last thing he wants is to end up back in America on his own, or in Japanese jail for being a rudie, so he’s staying put, but… yeah.)

He’s starting to feel less like he got dropped from a great height, and the sun’s out, and he’s been helped into a chair, he’s sitting by the window, listening to the radio and trying to make sense of a Japanese indie music zine Cube brought him, when the door rattles open and he looks round to see another skater kid, whom he figures must be one of the GGs. A girl, in a white minidress, with blonde hair and a determined expression.

“Okay, hi,” she says, striding towards him. “You’re sitting up and awake so I figure you’re okay for visitors, right?”

“Um. I guess? Hello, random GG?”

“My name’s Gum, but ‘random GG’ is cool.” She sits down on the bed. “Anyway, I came by because you sound like you’re in a really shitty mood right now, and I’m kind of the poster child for shitty moods, whereas everyone else is all happy-go-lucky and chill and stuff.” She frowns. “Except Slate, but he’s just permanently sarcastic, I didn’t figure that’d be helpful.”

“I mean, I didn’t ask for your opinion –”

“Well, you’re getting it, so you may as well listen. Because if I got kidnapped and dragged to some completely new city and tortured and nearly died and then survived all that and found out Beat and Tab were palling up with some new gang while I didn’t know if I’d ever skate again, I’d be pretty miserable. And I reckon it’s harder for you, if it was just the three of you before. The fact you haven’t actually bitten their heads off yet makes you a saint, in my book. Maybe it’d be better if you had, though. Then you could all have a proper shouting match and get stuff out in the open.”

Coin stares at her and he sort of wants to say I mean… yeah, that’s pretty much it and he wants to tell her to keep her nose out of his business and ask her if she thinks this is some kind of cheesy after-school special. He settles for a middle option: “You come here to get me to do that? Or… or are Cube and Combo in the other room and you’re going to pull a Jerry Springer?”

“I was tempted, but nope. The Jerry Springer thing, I mean. I’d need some guys to step in once you started throwing chairs at each other, and no one’s big enough to stop Combo, right?”

Coin laughs despite himself. Screw it. Just go with the madness. “Yeah, good point. So what are you here for? Because hate to tell you this, but you’re being a rubbish therapist.”

She grins at him: “You know it – ” before leaning forward, looking more serious – “Basically, I was thinking what I’d want if it were me. I mean, if I’m stuck here. Which I think you are.”

“Yeah, I know,” he snaps at her.

She shrugs – maybe she does kind of get how he’s feeling – and carries on, “If it were me, I probably wouldn’t want to live right on top of everyone. Specially if I couldn’t skate. I mean, it must suck enough being here, right, and people coming by? So I was thinking, we live in a garage in a busted-down industrial area, we can colonise some more rooms or buildings, you can come hang out with us as much as you want but if you find you hate our stupid faces you can go sulk in private.”

Coin sort of wants to pick holes in the idea just because she’s railroading him, but… it doesn’t actually sound so bad. He was kind of thinking if, when, he’s out of here, hanging around some other gang’s base like a weird invalid uncle was gonna suck. Be nice not to have to do that.

“Yeah?” he says, just to see what she’s going to add, not sure if he wants her to suggest something stupid or if he wants her to actually have another good idea.

“Yeah,” she says. “And, I mean, you’re into music, right? And you had this kick-ass record collection. So, there’s a bunch of indie stores here, weird ones in Kogane-cho that are probably a front for something and some in Benten-cho that are, like, almost hipster but not quite. I reckon you could talk your way into a job there. They’d probably be like, sweet, a cool American, totally fits our image. You’d have to lose the hobo beard you’re starting to get, though.” She smirks. “Go back to that look you had before. Cube’s got a pic of the three of you up on the wall. For real, though, most of the shops’ll hire sketchy people like us. Beat and Mew do shifts in the skate store and it’s so under the table it’s like…”

“A rug?”

“Exactly. And… and like maybe you could actually say to Cube and Combo, just so you know, I respect your decision to stay here, but it sucks and I hate it, also I’m fucking miserable. Then have a row and then make up and… I dunno, mostly I find that helps. Well, ‘cept when it gets me expelled from places, but I’m getting better at not doing that.”

She stares at him, looking like boom, great plan, what do you say, but she’s twisting her white-gloved fingers together, and he sees her take a nervous breath.

“Or… you know, don’t do any of that,” she says, finally. “Stay with us, or ditch us completely, or get yourself sent back home. Just please don’t tell Cube and Combo it’s because I pissed you off, because, to be honest, I’m not actually that great at – at, you know, reconciling people, and I’m kind of scared I might’ve just made things worse here.”

“But you showed up and sounded off anyway?” Coin says, and, as he’d expected, she grins: “Yeah, because tact and rules are for other people. And, for real… what happened to you really, really sucks. And apparently GGs can stand for Good Guys, so I thought I should… I dunno, do something.” She springs to her feet. “Anyway, I’m leaving now. If I have screwed things up worse I don’t want to get caught here.”

She’s hurrying to the door and Coin still doesn’t know what to think about the stuff she said but he calls, “You didn’t screw things up worse. Just so you know.”

She pauses at the doorway, sighs in relief: “Okay, good.”

“And thanks.”

Mood Music

“So I was going to say it looks nice in here,” Cube says, “but what it actually looks like is the beginnings of a record store back room. Which is your definition of ‘nice’, I guess.”

Coin holds up his hands, grins: “I gotta build back new. You knew this was coming. Lean into that sweet employee discount, you know.” The room’s not so big, so it’s basically him, a mattress, and some boxes of vinyl, but that’s not so different from Bantam Street. Except, in Bantam Street, Cube would already be right inside, sitting on the mattress and rifling through the boxes to find something she wanted to steal. Here, she’s still standing in the doorway, like a guest.

“Come on,” he says. “Come in, sit down, kick back and chill. You know Gum recommended we should have a massive screaming row?”

Cube snorts. “Gum thinks every problem can be solved by yelling at it. Or painting over it.” She steps into the room, comes and perches on the mattress next to him.

“Is she so wrong?”

Cube takes a deep breath, runs her fingers through her hair. “Dunno. Do we have a problem?”

He and Cube haven’t talked much til now, not one-on-one. Despite resenting the GGs for their very existence and the fact he’ll be beholden to them forever for saving his life, Coin’s prepared to admit they’re pretty fun to hang out with. Having people to eat with while they get you to tell them about the weirdest person who stepped through the record store door today is… it’s a good thing. Not to mention, the nights when you can’t sleep because you’re dreaming about people jumping on your hands, it’s good to be able to walk out and into a lighted room, just a staircase away, where there’s always someone up and playing pinball. They’re debating whether playing pinball counts as physical therapy for broken hands or whether it’s a bad plan. More research needed.

So he’s hanging out with Cube and Combo just like old times except there’s eight other people in the room and the two of them never invite themselves into his place.

“I dunno,” he says. “Guess… guess we should… talk about that? I mean, you have no idea how much I want to put on something really loud instead, but...”

“Yeah,” Cube says. She swallows. “Because… like, me’n’ Combo, we know it’s… it’s different. And… I still… I still feel like shit about… like, we chose to stay. I dunno if you can forgive us for that.”

“I mean… you were right. We couldn’t have got back. And...” He doesn’t exactly want to dive into this, but looks like it’s going to be a talk-about-your-feelings evening: “And even if we did, it still wouldn’t be the same. You guys tagging up a storm and me… not.” He can walk, he can even break into a fast walk-run if he has to, but his bones have definitely not knit back together the way they used to be. He could probably strap himself into his skates and roll across the forecourt, but anything more stylin’ that that, particularly anything involving jumping, seems like a great way to end up with more broken bones. Not to mention his hands are kind of creaky, which isn’t what you want when you’re trying to spray paint under pressure.

Cube looks over at him, like she wants to reach out to him but isn’t sure he won’t get mad. Which is depressing as hell, so he sort of punches her lightly on the shoulder and they manage to turn it into a hug. He feels her laugh: “This is like being twelve or whatever again, you know? Any minute now you’re going to pass me a note in class.”

“Maybe that’d be easier, maybe we should just throw notes back and forth. My handwriting’s gone to shit, though.”

“Good point.” She rests her hand over his. “I guess… well, I don’t guess. I don’t know what it’s like.”

“I mean… it sucks?” He tries to make it sound like a joke, but he sounds kind of bitter anyway. Oh, well. He’s probably entitled to be bitter. “It really sucks. But it could’ve been I fell off a roof or got hit by a truck or something. I’m… I’m all like… didn’t want it to be this soon I get taken out of the game, but...” His voice isn’t quite trembling, that’s good. “But I could’ve got unlucky in Bantam Street. That’s how things are.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Cube says. “Mortality’s dumb.”

“Says the goth chick.”

“Ha ha.” They’re kind of settling into the hug, now, it feels more like how things used to be. And it’s easier to talk about stupid awkward stuff when you’re not sitting looking into each other’s faces, which is maybe why Cube says, “You can’t sleep, sometimes, right? And… and you come down to us, and you and whoever else is being an insomniac hang out til you gotta go to work.”

“I swear to god Slate never sleeps. Guy’s awake every time I come in.” He feels her laugh, but she doesn’t say anything, so he makes himself carry on: “Nightmares are – they’re really fucking bad sometimes, if you want to know. I… dunno how to fix that, guess I just wait to get over it.”

“About… about what happened, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He can hear static in the back of his mind and he’s so damn glad the sun hasn’t set yet. Time enough to tell your super-cool thrash metal fan girlfriend (well, girl you appear to be able to cuddle with who’s holding your hand, so seems she could still be your girlfriend) you sleep with a night-light on. “It was…”

No. Not going to be able to get into that, not this time. He’s tensing and he thinks he’s kind of clinging on to her more than anything, but she’s holding him back, and actually that feels really good. You forget.

That’s a thought to hold on to. Haven’t lost everything.

“Okay,” he says, “okay, enough feelings talk for now.”

“That’s cool,” she murmurs against his throat. “I mean, I think we did pretty well. Didn’t even have a screaming row.”

“Gum’ll be so disappointed.”

She laughs. “Okay, so… want me to stay? Want me to go? Want me to stay but we get back to leaving room for Jesus? Um… want to… carry on not doing that?” She pulls back a little so they can look each other in the face. “I mean, I’m cool with… any of those things, so...”

“I mean, with the disclaimer that I’m as out of practice at making out as I am anything else… want me to find some mood music? Sexy skeleton seduction or whatever?”

She smiles.

Haven’t lost everything. You can build up from silence again.

On the eleventh day of Christmas

versipellis — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 19:57:33 GMT

my true love sent to me

eleven dark tunnels

[Title] In the Tunnels of the Mind
[Fandom] Until Dawn
[Rating] PG-13 (language, brief references to sex, references to violence and threat)
[Notes/Summary] Everyone tries to get back to normal after what happened. It isn't easy.
[Link] To Chapter 1 of 11

On the tenth day of Christmas

versipellis — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 20:36:54 GMT

my true love sent to me

ten important thoughts

Actually, only one important thought... for now. Will there be more? WE SHALL SEE.

[Title] Man's Best Friend
[Fandom] Fringe
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Walter has an idea.

“I’ve been thinking,” Walter says. He speaks as if they’d just broken off a conversation a moment ago. Peter groans, and tries to make his eyes open. With anyone else, he’d glance at the clock and then lead with, It’s three a.m., go back to bed, but there’s no point in having that conversation with his father.

“What have you been thinking about?” he asks, and almost stops it turning into a yawn.

“That poor young lady today had a dog, didn’t she?” Walter says, sounding perkier than he should considering said poor young lady was out walking her dog when she was murdered by a serial killer. “Well, I doubt her family want to worry about looking after the dog when they’re grieving. It’s a very difficult time. Funeral planning and such. I was thinking –”

“Walter, please tell me you haven’t stolen the dog.” Peter sits up, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, looks around for an illegally purloined rough collie swiped from a traumatised family. Thank god, his home is as quiet as ever. Walter, sitting on the edge of his bed, looks hurt. “What do you take me for? Of course I wouldn’t just go and – and steal somebody else’s pet.” He clears his throat. “I was simply thinking that it might help, and… well, you know, we never had a pet when you were growing up, did we?”

Right. It’s another father-son bonding exercise.

“I mean,” Peter says, “I’m not saying I’d never get a dog, but it’s probably not practical right now, is it? Given the nature of our work. We’re out all day –”

“Oh, but it could come to the lab, I’m sure it would enjoy it –”

“I’m not sure Gene would,” Peter says. “And… a lot of weird stuff goes in and out of that lab. We wouldn’t want a dog to get hurt. Eat something it shouldn’t.” There’s enough of a risk for people eating something they shouldn’t, he manages not to say.

Walter’s shoulders slump a little. Peter knows as you get older you’re meant to start seeing a shift in roles between you and your parents (though he could never imagine it happening with his father, not with how his father used to be). He didn’t expect it would be this pronounced, though.

“I just thought it might be good for you,” Walter says.

“Well, it might,” Peter says. “One day. I wouldn’t mind a dog.” He realises as he said it that it’s kind of true. He’s never been in a position to have any kind of pet, what with all the travelling and semi-legal activities, but he could stand to have a dog. Even if having one while sharing a house with Walter might feel like just another step to creating this funhouse mirror version of family life. “Just, not while we’re dealing with fringe science run amok on a daily basis. And not a victim’s dog. I’m sure her family will find it a good home, okay?”

Walter considers: “Well, I suppose so.” He nods, satisfied. “Glad we had this talk.” And he gets up to wander back to bed of his own accord. Peter figures that has to be a win. He resists the urge to reiterate no bringing home any dogs without discussing it with me, especially if you didn’t ask their owners about it first. His father will respect the sanctity of pet ownership. Probably.

On the eighth day of Christmas

versipellis — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 20:52:15 GMT

my true love sent to me

eight gun barrels

[Title] Skills Set
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Detectives in training have to learn to shoot.

Wammy’s House taught them to shoot, because it seemed overly optimistic that the greatest detective in the world would never have to use a gun. Which was all very well, Roger thought, but Quillsh and L didn’t have to supervise the actual learning process, and didn’t have to figure out how to balance it as part of the curriculum without rearing an entire class of super-genius easily bored children who also deemed themselves above gun control laws. He hired former Army personnel who were extremely stern about gun safety, stored the weapons behind securities even a bunch of Ls-in-training couldn’t get past, and came down hard on anything that even looked like it might be a gun-related misdemeanour, typically by assigning homework that involved memorising the finer points of gun control law across the globe in minute detail. You wait, Mello yelled at him after one such incident, I’m going to America, they sell guns in the supermarkets there. When he finally did storm out of the orphanage and the country, Roger told himself that at least he’d been taught the basics of safety. He still dreaded to think what the boy might be up to, but at least he’d avoid shooting his own toes off.

[Title] Self-Defense
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] There are various skills that come in useful in the Greater East Asian Republic.

Uncle showed Shinji a bunch of self-defense stuff, from when he was a kid, even, and that’s come in useful because the Greater East Asian Republic may like to spout off about how it’s this wonderful utopia but actually, there’s a whole lot of decidedly dystopian individuals you can end up running into. Uncle said to him from the start you know this isn’t a game, you’ll win far more fights if you try your hardest to avoid them in the first place, which seemed fair enough, Shinji’s seen enough of the idiots at school getting into pissing contests. Uncle said some stuff about how when the government shows people they can pick on the weak and helpless and different, that’s what the people’ll do. Which is self-evident, you only have to walk into Shiroiwa Junior High School.

What about guns? Shinji asked once. You ever have to shoot anyone?

Uncle gave him a look, but Shinji held up his hands: Come on, I know what you said about not starting actual in-person revolutions, but… I mean, the cops have ‘em. The secret police and the defense force. Just...

Yes, and if any of them are after you, getting into a shootout isn’t going to end well.

Uncle did own a gun, though, it turned out, an extremely illegal one, and he taught Shinji to use it, out on a patch of wasteground, shooting tin cans. It’s only much later Shinji thinks, it probably wasn’t because of revolution or anything that he taught me. It was probably because of the Program. A lot of the really rich kids get taught to shoot on Daddy’s private range, before they go into ninth grade. Just in case.

Shinji never gets an answer to the you ever have to shoot anyone question, but he finds out why, a lot later. It’s not something you want to dwell on.

[Title] High Score
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda found he was a good shot.

Matsuda enjoyed messing around on the kind of video games where you shoot stuff, and maybe even getting high scores, but he always figured if he fired a real gun he’d only screw it up somehow; drop it, or shoot off a toe, or just be a bad aim. Maybe that was why he almost didn’t notice for ages that he was a pretty good shot. Not that he was getting to shoot things much, because being in the NPA is a lot more about paperwork than dramatic gunfights, but the times that he did have to make a shot, or when he practised, he generally – well, almost always, really – hit the target he was supposed to. You think of a sharpshooter as someone cool and calm who never makes a mistake, and maybe it’s good, when you’ve got a gun in your hand, to assume you’re someone who could still make a mistake. It makes you careful. Of course when it comes to the Yellow Box Warehouse, and the pen in Raito’s hand, and the gun in his own, he isn’t careful at all, but by then he’s realised how big a mistake he’s made trusting Raito at all, and any others – like firing your gun blindly, shooting to hurt, shooting to kill – don’t seem to matter in comparison.

[Title] Riot Control
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Gum and Tab brief Beat on Tokyo-to's policing.

“The other thing about this city,” Gum says, as they sit on a bench in the sun, “is that the local police chief is something else.”

Beat stares at her, wondering if she’s messing with the new kid’s head, but she just says, “Don’t believe me? Tab, show him your bruises.”

“I’m not going to start stripping off in the middle of the bus terminal,” Tab says, peaceably. “He’ll find out about the rubber bullets soon enough.”

“Well, that’s better than actual bullets, right?” Beat says.

“Better as in they don’t actually kill you, sure,” Gum says. “Not better as in they still freakin’ hurt. It basically feels like getting shot would, not that I know, but I reckon the way things are going it won’t be long before I find out –”

“Yeah,” Tab says, “the police just got a massive donation from the Rokkaku Corporation to help clear up the streets, and according to Prof K, Onishima’s started building his own private army. I reckon bruises will be the least of our problems.”

“You know he’ll still be out on the streets, though,” Gum says, pulling a face. “Waving that stupid gun around and pretending he’s Dirty Harry.”

Beat glances from one to the other. “And yet you two are still okay with this forming-a-rudie-gang thing.”

“I have profound ethical concerns about the militarisation of local law enforcement,” Tab says, “and Gum takes any attempt to enforce rules as a challenge.”

“Challenge being, let’s cover more stuff in paint?” Beat guesses.

“Yup. Particularly Onishima.”

On such a sunny day, with your hands speckled in paint and the beginnings of a gang seated either side of you, it’s hard to believe you’ll need to worry about this kind of stuff. Beat shrugs. “Guess we better get good at dashing, then.”

[Title] Teaching Gig
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda has a proposition for Kei.

“You could teach me to shoot, you know,” Kaneda says, wandering into Chiyoko’s room.

Kei, dismantling and cleaning the guns, looks up at him. “I could, could I?”

“Yeah! Like, you’ve clearly been trained to kill since birth, so you know all about it. Also, it’d let me contribute to the team, it’s not like I want to be dead weight. Plus, girls with guns are hot.”

“All the more reason for Chiyoko and me to handle the artillery, then,” Kei says, smiling sweetly at him.

Kaneda rolls his eyes, sprawls down on the tatami matting. “I’m just saying. I mean, it’s not like I probably won’t end up having to do it anyway. I wasted all those bullets of yours in the sewers. I had to battle actual soldiers with an actual laser rifle. I – sooner or later, Tetsuo’s going to show up again, and… you know.”

“To be honest,” Kei says, “what exactly am I going to teach you? We won’t have enough time for me to coach you to improve your aim, and you clearly know how to pull a trigger. And somehow, I doubt you want me to talk you through the finer points of care and safety.”

“Fine. Geez.”

“I mean, I’d much rather you don’t have to shoot anyone else because we find a way of resolving this mess,” Kei says. “You know, this wasn’t what I was expecting a few weeks ago, either.”

“Hah. No.” Kaneda stares at his hands for a moment. “But… it’s not going to happen that way, is it? I mean, shit’s already way out of control and now the entire army is looking for us.” He turns, grins at her, rests his arms on the table. “Come on. Just tell me which ones have safetys so I can pull that trick about pointing it out when someone’s got you cornered. It’ll be useful.”

Kei shakes her head. “Okay. Fine.”

[Title] Muscle Memory
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell learns to use the portal gun.

She seems to be good at firing this thing. Device. Not that it’s that difficult. You point at an area of wall and pull a trigger and a portal bursts into life in front of you. There’s no recoil. How does she know about recoil? From books or movies? Or has she actually used a gun before? She hasn’t got a memory of carrying one. When she picked up the portal gun it didn’t feel familiar. And yet her hands have settled on it and she carries it poised and ready as she moves. That could be muscle memory, or it could just be that she needs to handle this thing properly if she doesn’t want to die.

Don’t know that I’m going to die.

But as soon as she’s thought it, it’s a piece of knowledge that falls into place, just like the gun does in her hands. She’s going to need all the tools for survival she can get, and hope like hell she knows how to use them as the tests get harder.

[Title] Gunplay
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG-13 for sex references, sexualisation of guns, language
[Notes/Summary] Mitsuko and her friends discussed their familiarity with weapons once.

They talked about it once, when they were in a bar, drinking really bad cocktails they’d talked some sap into buying them. Mitsuko can’t remember who brought it up – there were a lot of cocktails – but she remembers Hirono snorting, what, do I look like a yakuza-wannabe? You ask me, the only people who mess around with guns are guys with small dicks.

And you’ve got no time for them, right? Mitsuko said, and they both giggled. Yoshimi laughed too, a moment too late: I mean, don’t think I’ve ever even seen a gun, I’m sure not going to start waving one around. Mitsuko could’ve said something about how Yoshimi was too much of a fucking idiot to know what she was doing with an eyelash curler, let alone a gun, but she was feeling nice, or tipsy, or something. Hirono was like, what about you, Mitsu?

Mitsuko thought about telling them about the yakuza guy she’d dated who got off on gunplay, how she’d spent a lot of time licking guns and tracing them down her body, how, in between all of that, she’d talked him into giving her a few quick lessons, posed with it to get used to the feel, so she figured she could handle one if and when she had to. She didn’t mention it, in the end, just shrugged and said, Nuh-uh. Mess up this manicure? Just because she figured no need to spill information she didn’t have to. When they all woke up and found themselves in the Program, she was glad about that. Keep the element of surprise, at least a bit.

[Title] War Zone
[Fandom] Until Dawn
[Rating] PG-13 for violence and language
[Notes/Summary] Chris finds this situation is nothing like target practice.

Chris isn’t a gun nut or anything, but he would’ve said he’s not a bad shot. Trips to shooting ranges with his dad, that kind of thing. Steady hands, slow breath, pull the trigger, hit the target.

This is so much unlike that it would be hilarious if it wasn’t fucking terrifying. Running as fast as he can ever remember, slipping and sliding on the crunchy snow, the roars of the creatures echoing round his head, smell of smoke and blood, his hands cold and shaking on the gun, and god knows how he manages to level it and fire, let alone hit anything, it’s like someone else is managing that part of the operation while most of him is just oh god oh god oh god do not die.

He figures that’s probably what it’s like being in a war, storming the beaches or whatever. You practise the gun stuff over and over and then when it comes to it you hope some part of your brain remembers what to do. But then, that guy’s head was just sliced off right in front of him. Even then, practice probably won’t be enough.

On the seventh day of Christmas (again)

versipellis — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 22:13:50 GMT

my true love sent to me

two more broken pieces, for a total of seven!

[Title] In the Broken Places
[Fandom] Until Dawn (major spoilers for the game)
[Rating] PG-13 for violence
[Notes/Summary] Ashley and Mike made some choices they regret. Mike's paying for his. Ashley won't.
[Link] To part 1, with part 2 as the next chapter

On the seventh day of Christmas

versipellis — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 20:59:52 GMT

my true love sent to me

Seven broken pieces

[Title] Coffee Break
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda remembers messing up at work.

It was when Matsuda was still pretty new at the NPA. Like, still feeling like a college student who’d come to the wrong place. He was working really hard on being polite and getting stuff done quickly. But not so quickly he rushed it and made mistakes. Or if he did make mistakes, not the really bad kind. Though he was pretty sure a lot of people would be able to do stuff really fast and with no mistakes. But his dad had got him the position so he’d have to screw up really bad to get fired, right? But if anyone was going to do that it was going to be him…

He was carrying a bunch of files over to his desk and he’d probably picked up too many but he could hardly stop now. So he was tottering across the room and he could barely see anything but folders and yellowing papers and then he felt himself glance off someone’s desk and heard a crash.

Of course it was Chief Yagami’s desk and of course it didn’t just bruise Matsuda’s pride but sent a coffee cup flying off the table and smashing on the floor. Matsuda dropped the files onto the nearest desk (Ide’s as it happened, who glowered at him) and started apologising and trying to remember where the break room was and whether it had a dustpan and brush into it. His dad would have snapped at him that that was typical of him, not looking where he was going. Which it was, to be fair. Chief Yagami just said, after a few moments, “It’s all right, Matsuda, it’s not important.” For him it probably wasn’t, but Matsuda almost wanted to cry with relief that he wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. After a few more moments, Ide got to his feet, and said, “I’ll come and help you clear up the pieces. And get the Chief another coffee.” He had a look on his face like he thought Matsuda was an idiot, but at least he didn’t say it out loud. Matsuda worried a little less about being fired, after that.

[Title] Remixed
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] The GGs consider the pieces of a mysterious record.

“Well, at least we know where all the pieces are now,” Garam said, as Beat laid the three sections of the record out on the floor.

“Still doesn’t explain why these weird evil dudes in suits are after it.” Cube kneels down, studies the record more closely. “I mean, it’s just a bit of vinyl. Coin had literally hundreds of these.”

“And now it’s busted,” Combo said. “Surely it ain’t gonna be much use to ‘em now.”

“I was thinking about that,” Tab says, “and I was doing some research...”

The others groan.

“Excuse me, there’s nothing wrong with evidence-based work applied to the pursuit of anarchy. Anyway, I reckon, if we got hold of some superglue, and then were really careful, and didn’t let the glue get into the grooves… it still wouldn’t really play so good.”

“Thank you for your contribution,” Cube says. “You reckon that applies to possessed demonic records?” She traces the devil shape on the vinyl with a finger.

“You don’t actually believe it’s possessed, do you?” Garam says. “And, I mean… even if it is, you’d think breaking it apart might… release the demon into the atmosphere, right?”

Cube gives him a look and he shrugs: “I dunno, maybe? I’m kind of winging it here.”

“We’re all winging it, I think,” Beat says. “But I guess it might be worth trying to fix it. Keep it all in one place, right? And even if it only played for a moment, the sound might clue us in to something.”

“Great,” Tab says, grinning. “I’ll get the glue.”

[Title] Institutionalise
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] After the events of the first volume, Kaisuke takes time to get his head together.

Like, okay, Kaisuke figures, getting arrested by the army and slung into reform school ain’t good, but it has one advantage. In reform school, you spend most of the time being told where to go or what to do next – stand up, line up, sit down, collect a tray of what could be loosely termed “food” – and, Kaisuke isn’t a wuss but he’s prepared to admit that how things went down has left him kind of… spaced out. He’s pretty sure if he’d got away and was trying to make normal life work, it would’ve fallen apart by now. Although, you can’t really call it “normal life” when pretty much everyone who made it normal is dead. Like trying to glue a broken plate back together when it’s in a million pieces and a bunch of those have already been trodden on. That’s a stupid way of putting it, but it kind of helps, thinking about it that way. It still feels like the dust has only just settled and he’s just staring with his mouth open like what do I even do about this. At least when you’re in juvie they don’t want you to do anything except what they tell you. Maybe by the time they let him out, he’ll have got his head together.

[Title] Transform
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Mello lashed out at Near's toys once.

Mello always joked to Matt about how he’d stamp on all of Near’s toys whenever he got the chance, but the one time he actually did it, it wasn’t as satisfying as he’d hoped. It was a rainy day, and not only that, but Roger had caught him snooping in the attics and confined him to the library with a sarcastic admonition that he could use the time to study, given the disreputable state of his last Spanish test. Mello wasn’t getting along with Spanish and he didn’t see why he had to learn it, no detective could learn every language. Roger pointed out that Near seemed to be managing just fine with it, so Mello sat there in the library pretending to study and really hating everything. If he’d been on his own, he probably would’ve calmed down and just actually studied, but Near was there too, sitting on the floor, lining up a row of Transformers, then taking each one and transforming it from robot to car and back again. This was the kind of stuff he always did but right now he was doing it for no reason while Mello was stuck trying to memorise Spanish verbs, because Near was clearly smarter than him and clearly better at being a detective and obviously going to inherit the title of L just because he could speak Spanish. In the end, Mello scrambled to his feet, sauntered over to the nearby shelf, pretended to be really interested in Russian literature, and then, on his return, accidentally-on-purpose trod on Laserbeak. He stamped down hard and he was wearing shoes so he felt the toy crunch under his foot.

For a moment, he was really happy – serve him right, serve him right, making fun of me, always better than me – and he looked at Near expecting to see his rival glaring back at him, maybe even going to start a fight, which Mello would win because Near probably didn’t even know how to fight –

Near wasn’t glaring, and he wasn’t looking at Mello, he was staring, wide-eyed, mouth a thin line, at the broken Transformer.

After a moment, he grabbed up all the others – the usual uncanny ability to transport a whole army of toys in one go – and shuffled out of the room.

Mello glowered after him, and kicked the bits of Laserbeak in the direction of the door, before stomping back to his chair and carrying on with the Spanish.

Near didn’t tell on him to Roger, and at some point he must have reclaimed the broken pieces because Laserbeak returned, albeit glued back together and unable to transform. Mello told himself he didn’t care. He hoped Near wouldn’t tell L about it, even so.

[Title] Elephants in the Room
[Fandom] Endeavour/His Dark Materials
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Morse and Max talk about daemons. (Requested by still_lycoris, who also takes credit for the daemon assignation to these characters.)

“I do have to wonder,” Max says, “how the two of you don’t leave a trail of broken crockery and doorways everywhere you go.”

Morse glowers at him across the pub table. “She isn’t the size of a zoo elephant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“And besides,” Tatiana says, trunk waving in irritation, “I’m careful. You people with smaller daemons always assume we trample everything willy-nilly. It’s not like that. I’ve learned civilised behaviour, thank you.”

“Oh, it’s no disrespect to you and your size,” Max says. “More I’m surprised that a daemon attached to Morse has an awareness of the concept of treading carefully at all.”

Morse attempts to glower at him even more.

“Well, you do have to admit,” Max says, “you take a… straightforward attitude to things.” He has a slight smile on his face, mirroring almost exactly the expression of the toad perched on his shoulder. “Joking aside, though, I can’t imagine it was always easy to navigate the world with a daemon of that size.”

Morse shrugs. He can’t say that he’s necessarily noticed. Tatiana will tuck herself into a table-sized space in most rooms and almost all pubs, and if she can’t, he’ll generally be happy to skip going into whatever place it was to start with.

“My father –” he begins, and then wonders why he started to, and then decides that Max, whatever faults he has, is at least intelligent and not prone to blurting out platitudes – “my father found her frustrating. Always felt she took up too much unnecessary space. I think he thought I had coaxed her into settling as an elephant on purpose.” Or that having an elephant daemon was just the sort of irrational thing his son would do. “And there were the usual circus jokes, of course. But really, it isn’t a problem for us. And you talk as if she towers over everyone else. I’ve seen plenty of elephants and rhinoceroses and big cats in Oxford.”

“Well,” Max says, raising an eyebrow, “this is a home of the well-to-do and eccentric.”

“I’m hardly well-to-do.” Morse would like to deny the eccentric part, but he’s pretty sure he’d be shouted down by any number of his colleagues. “If we’re trading experiences, I can’t imagine having a toad daemon has always been easy.” Even when he was a child, he can remember hearing the old superstitions. “Although I’d like to think you’ve never actually been accused of being a witch. Not in this day and age.”

“Not to my face,” Max says, and Bombina smiles as well. She doesn’t talk much, Morse has noticed. Although, he’s seen her leaping onto the autopsy table to peer closely at the details of the latest corpse, and sometimes she and Max consult to each other then, talking over what they’ve noticed, and what it means. Max continues, “Although, had I been bothered by unnerving people at dinner parties, I probably wouldn’t have become a pathologist. When I tell people what I do, they seem to find her less surprising.”

“Well, that’s something you have easier than me. When I tell people what I do, it only seems to baffle them further. Apparently elephant daemons are not what people associate with police officers.”

“Of course not,” Max says. “There is an almost excessive number of dogs at Cowley Station, and I imagine it’s the same anywhere else. Although, to be honest, I don’t think you’re what people associate with police officers.”

“So I’ve been told,” Morse says, but he doesn’t mind hearing it from Max, who makes it sound like a gentle observation rather than a cloak for disappointment in wasted potential. “I imagine if I were, she would have settled as a dog after all.”

“I think you both startle people,” Max says, taking a sip of his pint. “Not that that is a bad thing.”

Last two broken pieces to come soon ;)

On the sixth day of Christmas

versipellis — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 17:47:17 GMT

my true love sent to me

six full backpacks

Happy New Year :)

[Title] Five-finger Discount
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Shinji went through a stupid phase, like many kids do.
[Link] "Kind of the reason he hasn’t told anyone"

[Title] Best Foot Forward
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Gum hates the first day of school.

Gum always hates first day of the new school year. You’re wearing a new uniform and no matter how many times you’ve been told it’s your size, it feels like it fits wrong. You’ve got a week ahead of you of not knowing your timetable and handing in the wrong homework on the wrong day and probably in the wrong place. Either you’re the new kid in the class and everyone’s going to think you’re weird, or you’ve got new kids coming into your class and they’re for sure going to be popular from the start and pick on you. And you’ve got the entire freakin’ year ahead of you and the summer holiday already feels like it was ages away.

And this is the first day of junior high, so it’s a completely new uniform with a dumb pleated skirt and there’s going to be a bunch of new kids who are going to think she’s weird.

Tab knows how much she hates the first day back, so at least he’s not going to expect her to be, like, excited about any of this. The only bearable thing about school is that he’s at the same one as her, but it isn’t like they don’t hang out together in the holidays all the time, and at school everyone is always like, oh, is he your boyfriend?

He’s at the bus stop already, and despite the fact his uniform looks too big for him, he’s wearing a definitely non-regulation hat pulled down low over his eyes, and he’s bobbing about like a pigeon to the music on his earphones – so basically he’s marked as a weirdo from the get-go – he seems to be in a good mood. Gum scowls at him just to underline that she isn’t.

“You look like you’re gonna hit me with your satchel,” he says.

“I want to hit everyone with my satchel.”

“It’ll fall apart.”

This is true, she’s had this bag since she can’t remember how long, it’s patched up with duct tape and string, but she sticks out her tongue at him: “Yeah, well, yours isn’t much better.”

Tab glances at the backpack at his feet. It’s maybe less beat-up than hers but it’s bulging at the seams. “Mine would be a better melee weapon, I think. More blunt destructive power.”

“Why do you even have all those books? It’s literally the first day at a new school. We don’t have any stuff yet. We aren’t even listed on their system as having turned up.” One of these days, she reckons, she just won’t turn up, but then she reckons Mum will kick her out of the house and she needs to get better at skating if that’s going to happen so she can go join a gang.

“In case I need something to read. I mean, I know it’s a new school, but I don’t reckon it’s gonna be any less boring.”

“Everyone’s gonna think you’re a dork,” Gum says. She knows she’s being mean, but she’s feeling mean. Anyway, Tab doesn’t mind. He just shrugs: “Yeah, but they’d think that anyway. And if anyone really got in my face about it, you’d hit ‘em with your satchel, right?”

Gum wants to keep scowling at him, but she figures it’s going to be the last time today anyone talks to her like they know and like her personality. And also, it’s kind of nice to be reminded that no matter how many people think she’s weird, at least she and Tab can be weird together.

“Yeah,” she says, grudgingly. “If I have to.”

“Cool. Want to listen to my radio? I’ll read til the bus comes.”

It’s still a rubbish day, but at least it hasn’t started too badly.

[Title] Don't Keep What You Don't Need
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G (non-specific mentions of bullying)
[Notes/Summary] Mikami has reasons for keeping his possessions organised.

Mikami once heard Nakajima chatting with Tamura-san’s secretary, who was laughing about how Tamura was constantly followed by a stream of papers and post-it notes and half-finished snacks and coffees. “He may have passed the bar exam on the first try, but honestly, if he didn’t have me, I’m sure he’d never turn up to court with anything close to the right case notes!”

Nakajima said that Mikami-san wasn’t like that, that he was always prepared for whatever the day might hold, “I wouldn’t dare touch the paperwork on his desk! He does all that himself.”

Mikami realised that he was eavesdropping and it was inappropriate so he walked away, he went to another coffee shop. He wasn’t surprised by what Tamura-san’s secretary said. Tamura’s desk was covered in piles of paper and books and miscellaneous items. Mikami tried not to look at it if he walked past the man’s office.

He thinks that probably Tamura, and people like him, never had the sort of difficult time at school that he had had. In high school, he very quickly got out of the habit of taking anything to school that he didn’t need, or even that he did need, because it was only going to get broken. It was far better to go without lunch than to bring food and have it knocked off the table and trodden on. Walking into school with a backpack brimful of items he wanted or needed or cared about only gave the evil ones tangible ways to hurt you. If he could have gone without his glasses, he would have.

That was a long time ago, and now things are better. He could be as messy as Tamura, or he could pile up stationery that pleases him like Nakajima does, or he could store snacks in his desk, or dress in clothes as expensive as he wishes without fear that any of it would be smashed and stolen and ruined. But he does not. He prepares carefully for each day, he takes what he needs and not more, he follows his routine. For his home, he has bought things that he values, things he would be sorry to lose. But they stay safe and hidden. Some people are followed by a trail of their possessions, because it never occurs to them how easy it is to lose things.

[Title] Semester Schedule
[Fandom] Thunderbirds
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Scott knows how to get ready for the new school year. Requested by still_lycoris.

Dad’s working late again, but Scott thinks he’s got the day before the first day of the new semester down pat by now. The light’s still on under Virgil’s bedroom door, so he knocks and sticks his head round: “You know, you should really go to bed.”

Virgil rolls his eyes, but without any real annoyance: “I mean, you’re not Dad.”

“I mean,” Scott says, rolling his eyes back, “I’m the one who has to put up with you sulking tomorrow when the alarm goes off at seven and you stayed up til two. Isn’t the light bad for drawing anyway?”

“Like you know anything about art,” Virgil says, but he puts his pencil down, pushes his chair back. “You better go lecture John too, though. He’s been stargazing for literally hours.”

“I’ll go drag him out of the attic, I promise.”

“And then you should go to bed. When you’re tired you get that face.”

“What face?” Scott says, glowering at him.

“Your deadly serious, I’m my father’s oldest son, what if a serial killer tries to kidnap Alan on the way to school face.”

“Ha ha. No serial killer would try and kidnap Alan. He’d annoy them to death within a week.” Scott says it by rote, because it’s what you say about your little brother. He did sometimes worry about that kind of stuff, like after Mom died. As in, what he would do if something like that did happen, if one of his brothers got into a car accident or kidnapped or all the stuff grown-ups warn you about. He thought, why do they warn you about it if it’s not going to happen? After all, it had happened to Mom. He made plans about it, what he would need to do, how soon he would know that something had gone wrong. That got a bit out of hand, in the end, and Dad had Had A Talk with him, and said he didn’t need to do all that stuff. Even so, Scott’s still drilled Alan on making sure he knows his address and who to go to if he ever gets lost and what to do if someone ever tries to drag him away.

Virgil knows about that, and Virgil is kind of smart for a younger brother, because he doesn’t carry on the joke, he just says, “You should probably check Gordon’s backpack. Pretty sure he got a joke shop delivery today.”

“Oh, like I didn’t already think of that,” Scott says. “Pretty sure I could open my own shop with the stuff I got out of it. I told him if he snuck any of it back into school I’d forge a note from Dad saying he was off swimming all semester because of a skin infection.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all under control, then,” Virgil says. “So why don’t you go kick back and watch TV like a normal person?”

“Are you just saying that so I’ll get off your back and let you stay up drawing all night?”

“Yes,” says Virgil, “but also, like, you’re going into junior high tomorrow, and it’s only going to make you even more grown-up and bossy than you already are. So, you should try and relax tonight. Watch something dumb. Eat some junk food.”

Scott hadn’t really thought about it being a new school. He thinks about it for a moment now and then decides there isn’t much to think about. “It’s fine. I know what I’m doing. I’ll go get John to step away from the telescope, and then – I’ll chill out.” He smiles. “Maybe.”

[Title] Working Holiday
[Fandom] Detective Academy Q
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Ryu and Kyuu enjoy a break, even if it's while they're meant to be mystery-solving.

A detective always remembers that he’s there to solve the mystery, but even so, Kyuu has to admit it’s been a nice day. The walking tour took them over winding mountain paths with views deep into lush green valleys, and he stood in the sun and breathed in the fresh air and kind of wanted to sing with the joy of it all. Ryu stood on the path and waited for him, and if he didn’t look as bowled over by it all, he was smiling, the small smile he had when his friends were happy about stuff.

They’ve walked all day and their backpacks were heavy and Kyuu’s feet ache a lot but the inn they’re staying in had a proper bathhouse, all polished wood and open-air, so he soaked in a tub and now he’s in a cotton bathrobe, in their room, watching the sun set.

“Maybe there won’t actually be any murders this time,” he says to Ryu, who’s making tea at the little table. “Maybe we’ll just have a nice holiday.”

“Do we tell Dan-sensei that?” Ryu says. “Or do we make something up so he doesn’t think we wasted our time?”

“I reckon there’s no way could we pull that off. He’d spot all the holes in whatever story we came up with. But, I mean, seeing as he’s pulled us in on summer vacation and we’re the only two of Q-class who could actually make it, maybe we’re owed a holiday, right?”

Ryu carries over two cups of tea, comes to sit next to him, by the window. “Indeed. And the anonymous letters said the killer would strike when we got to Kuroyamamachi. That’s still two days away. All we can do is observe and gather clues.”

“And relax and enjoy the countryside?” Kyuu grins at him, and Ryu smiles back. They sit in silence and drink the tea for a bit. Solving mysteries is, of course, Kyuu’s number-one favourite activity, and he’s pretty sure that no matter how nice everyone else on the trip seems, it’s all going to go wrong later, because it always does – but for now, everything is all right.

[Title] Escape Plan
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG (brief, non-specific mentions of abusive/damaging home life)
[Notes/Summary] Beat coordinates a plan to get out of town.

They always told Beat he was hopeless at organising things or planning stuff or getting anything right at all, but when it comes to it, Operation Get Out Of Home Free actually went off pretty well. You have to tell yourself this when you’re in an empty train station with a full backpack by your feet trying to catch your breath because two hours ago someone threw a plate at your head and you ducked and ran and you haven’t stopped running since.

He breathes in and breathes out and tangles his fingers together – his hands are only shaking a bit, which is good, if you’re going to run away from home and try and make it in the big city you need to be able to keep a cool head. He reminds himself he actually really got his shit together. He’d been saving cash from his shop job for ages, and keeping his promotion to floor manager secret so he could pocket the extra without anyone noticing. In the computer lab at school he’d researched how much train tickets to here or there might cost. He’d taken a long hard look at all the stuff he owned one night, when everyone else was out or asleep, and worked out what he could cope with leaving behind. And then all the stuff he didn’t want to lose he smuggled out bit by bit to his friend’s house, he picked someone who lived close enough to run to, and tonight he hammered on the door and was like, I’m done, I’m out of there, give me the backpack. Backpack, skates, boom. And he was off. It isn’t the first time he’s left home in the middle of the night – he’s fetched up in this station before, pretending he was just super-early for a train, or he’s skated and jump and ground til he’s found a place high off the ground to hide and catch his breath – but he knew if he was going to go for good, he was going to get out of town. So for the first time, he’s actually got a ticket, and he’s waiting for the fast train. The backpack’s comfortingly heavy against his legs.

On the fifth day of Christmas

versipellis — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 21:44:25 GMT

my true love sent to me

five flowing waters

[Title] What Lies Beneath the Streets
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio/Stephen King's It (did anyone ask for this crossover? No, no they did not, but I had a lot of fics to write and fond memories of playing JSR during lockdown, so here we are)
[Rating] PG for language, sense of threat, implied death
[Notes/Summary] The GGs saved the world. But something creepy is lurking in the Tokyo-to sewers.

It starts out as like such a nice day. Warm and mild, just on the beginning of summer, and Mew’s been dashing around Kogane-cho all morning painting tags and being too fast for the Poison Jam to catch her. She’s sitting by the river, in the shade, catching her breath and watching the sunlight sparkle off the water, and then she hears the chuckle from the entrance to the sewers. A gurgling kind of laugh, like Yuh-huh!

She turns to look – Poison Jam usually default to growls, but she wouldn’t put weird laughter past them – and there’s no one there.

“Okay, then,” she says, scrambling to her feet. Shakes a paint can. If it’s Poison Jam attempting to lure, she’ll bite. If it’s kids messing about, she’s pretty sure she can handle them. “Ooh, what could possibly be lurking down here? Gee, so strange...”

The laughter comes again, and this time she sees a colourful flicker of movement further back in the tunnel.

Probably another rudie, then.

“We going to do this?” she says, and dashes forward, splashing through the water.

The laughter comes again, and then – floating over her head, up towards the sunlight – it’s a balloon, of all things. Mew really hopes this isn’t some new gang, with a gimmick of –

Clowns or something –

There’s a channel flowing across the route, and standing on the other side of it, in the doorway, is a clown. Like, a proper clown. Not a guy in skates and face paint, but an actual clown in a baggy outfit with red hair and a ruff, a stark white face and red make-up like tears. Holding another balloon.

Their eyes meet, and he chuckles again. Same sound.

Mew’s faced down police cops and tanks and any number of rival gangs, not to mention that whole saving-the-city-and-maybe-the-world-from-a-giant-fire-breathing-demon thing, so there’s not much this guy can do to her, but the problem is?

She really, really doesn’t like clowns. A couple of bad horror film experiences and a scary story from her cousin and a poorly-drawn circus poster, it all combined to just leave her like she really doesn’t want to hang out anywhere near any stupid clowns.

This one smiles at her, with his buck teeth, and says to her, “Want a balloon?”

“What are you doing in the sewers?” Mew snaps.

“Maybe there’s a whole circus down here.”

“I’ve been down here. There’s nothing but mouldy water and weirdos in fish masks.” He definitely isn’t wearing skates. So not a rival gang. A serial killer, maybe? She shouldn’t have thought that. He doesn’t have a machete or anything in his hand. Just another balloon. Her heart’s going a mile a minute. Which is dumb. She isn’t six years old any more.

“You come down here a lot?” the clown says. “That’s a scary place for a little girl.” He draws out the words, pouts at her like she really is six years old. If anyone else were doing this she’d just get annoyed with them but – it’s hard not to feel he knows she’s freaked out, or that little-kid her is, at any rate, and he thinks it’s funny –

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s our turf, so if you were thinking about moving in on it –”

“Oh, no, no, no,” the clown says, “no, I wouldn’t do that! Don’t need to move in on anybody. Just wanted to play with you. You look like you can go real fast on those skates. We could have a race. Come on. I’ll give you a head start.”

It’s a dumb clown, it’s probably just a homeless guy being weird, or a Kogane delinquent messing about, and he’s in long curl-toed boots, she could outrun him in an instant on her skates, and what GG ever turns down a chance to show off their skills?

The clown chuckles again, and starts to walk towards her.

“Come on,” it says. “I dare you! Tag. You’re it.”

Mew runs for it.

It’s because she was freaked out. Nothing was going to happen. She runs for it, back up the tunnel, out into the sunshine, leaping to wall-ride up the steps, through Kogane-cho apartments, kicking over potted plants. She doesn’t stop until she’s standing on top of a roof with nothing but the sun and the world around her and absolutely no weird clowns.

She’s not going to tell anyone about this. You want your gang members to think you’re cool, and getting freaked out and forfeiting a race with one weird guy is very much not cool. They’d be like, what, you don’t think you could’ve won? He was in clown shoes.

Mew didn’t look back, while she was running, but she feels like he came after her, she feels like she heard him laughing in her ear, like his breath was hot on her neck. Like he was just as fast as her. Like he could be coming up behind any moment –

She whirls round, but there’s nothing there.

Off in the distance, another balloon drifts lazily into the sky.

No. Definitely not anything to tell the others.

***

Gum’s prepared to admit not all of Kogane-cho is a complete dumpster fire – the pollution-orange sunsets are pretty, skating down the rooftops is like running down a hill, the abandoned factory’s got its own shabby-chic charm – but she’s pretty sure she’s never going to love the sewers. Like, they’re sewers. Famously full of, you know, sewage. They’re also permanently cold and damp with chilly air that gets into your bones and every surface is just that little bit slippery. And if you screw up and fall off whatever you were skating on, the landing is going to be wet and smelly and you’re probably going to have to go get medical treatment for coming into contact with that water.

“The only good thing you can say about them,” she says to Garam, as the two of them spray paint at opposite ends of a long wall, “is the cops can’t get helicopters and tanks down here, and now the Rokkaku funding is gone it’s not like that’s even a problem any more.”

“They’re not so bad.” Garam’s focusing on his tag, hopping from foot to foot as he paints. “They’re a pretty neat place to hang out when you’re a kid and you don’t wanna be found. I practically learnt to skate down here.”

Gum pulls a face. “I preferred to do my learning somewhere I wouldn’t drown in filth every time I fell over.”

“Nah, that just makes you work harder not to fall over. And it ain’t that bad, this water. The Poison Jam swim in it –”

Gum shudders, and stretches out of it to put the finishing touches to her tag, and frowns at it as something occurs to her. “Hey… where are those goons, anyway? I was figuring they’d be menacing us about now. It’s not like they can’t have noticed we’re here, what with the echoes this place has.”

Garam turns to look round, at the empty walkways and the murky water stretching away into the dark depths, all of it free of horror-obsessed weirdos in rubber masks. “Maybe they’re… I dunno, asleep? Maybe they found some rare bootleg video nasty and stayed up all night watching it and drinking something they brewed up behind a radiator and they’re hungover.”

Gum’s prepared to admit this isn’t unlikely. But all the same – maybe it’s just the sewers getting to her, but she stands still, turns her staticky radio off, strains to hear, and the only sound is her own breathing and the ever-present running water.

“Maybe we should go look around,” she says. “If we find ‘em napping, we can go to town on their turf. And… you know, if they’ve got kidnapped and mind-controlled again, we should probably know about it.”

“Suits me,” Garam says, shrugging. “I’m not the one who hates this place. And it’s too hot out there, anyway. Bein’ a rudie in summer sucks.”

The GGs have never found where the Poison Jam actually sleep and eat and live their creepy little lives, and Gum and Garam don’t find it this time, but they don’t find much else, either. A few of their own tags. Fewer Poison Jam tags than there should be. They’re leaning against a barred gate, squinting into the darkness, the water here flowing faster, over their skates, when Garam says, “You know what?”

“What?”

“We passed one of my tags a while back. I remember putting that sucker up.”

“Yeah, and?”

“That was a few days ago,” Garam says, “and it’s still here. Whole reason we came down here was to tag this place up again, ‘cause they should’ve covered up what we did. So. They just been goofing off for a while?”

If they’d been above ground, Gum would’ve just been like ha ha, probably, those guys are the worst, or something like that, but they’re in the semi-darkness, with the tunnel yawning out ahead of them, and how do they know there’s not someone looking back at them from deep down inside it?

She starts to say something like this is some weird shit, and –

Something bobs against the toe of her skate.

She looks down and it’s a hand reaching out of the water.

She nudges it away with her foot – okay, she sort of kicks it, she just about manages not to let out a yell – and sees it’s not a hand, it’s a glove. It’s one of those Poison Jam gloves, the ones mocked up to look like a lizardy claw. Which is fine. Which is normal. The Poison Jam are hopeless, probably spend all their time accidentally dropping their stuff in the water. It’s floating away already, and she watches it, she doesn’t wade through the water to pick it up and check it doesn’t have an actual severed hand inside it. That’d be paranoid.

“Okay, I am done with going underground for today,” she says, and her voice sounds almost steady. “They’re clearly not here, so let’s go snoop around outside. I need some fresh air.”

***

Cube was kind of sort of meant to be making her way round Kibogaoka, slapping down tags, keeping an eye out for weird shit that was weirder than Kogane-cho’s usual fare, trying to draw the Poison Jam out of whatever weird Hellraiser dimension they might’ve got themselves trapped in through watching cursed DVDs. GG mission stuff. But… she’s in an empty mood today. Sometimes you just wake up like that and you don’t want to go through the motions of normal, you know?

Okay, she’s missing Coin. Which makes it sound like she should just be sad, but it isn’t like that, it’s feeling flat and tired and mad with the world, and like it’s wrong for her to be out in the sun pulling some sweet moves and covering everything with paint while he’s dead and buried under a pile of rubble and probably never even knew what hit him. Wandering off into the sewers seems overdramatic, like she has to go mope underground, but screw it. She just really wants to be on her own and not in the sun.

No sign that anyone’s been down here since Gum and Garam came back from it the other day. No more Poison Jam tags. Yo-Yo was all, Look, how do we know there isn’t a giant alligator down there? but he was kidding around, and Cube figures as long as she doesn’t fall into the water, she’ll be okay even if there is a giant alligator. Current hypothesis is still that the Poison Jam are holed up in a lair doing an extended Friday the 13th rewatch and forgetting about how if you want to hang on to your turf you have to defend it. Like Gum said, a lost glove doesn’t prove anything.

She’s on one of the walkways painting a tag she never drew before – a mess of black and white – she doesn’t feel like doing one of her old favourites, mourning her dead boyfriend and painting the stuff she used to paint with him and probably crying into the bargain, that all feels like she’s letting it take up too much space in her head. She came down here because she was feeling weird but that doesn’t mean she’s going to… to…

She finishes the tag and she does a little spin, like she’s trying to fake being satisfied, and as she does, she sees a flicker of movement and white on the other side of the sewer, across the water – another rudie, leaping and wall-riding off into the tunnel. Didn’t look like Poison Jam, didn’t look like any of her friends, probably worth checking out. If it’s some gang-less renegade she should send ‘em packing –

Dashing, leaping onto some rusted barrels and then onto another walkway and then over the bridge, it takes her mind off the weird stuff in her head. Silence now, except for the water – and the distant crackle of her radio, she’d turned it down, it was bugging her, and the signal’s messed up anyway, Prof K’s voice is coming at her through a murk of static. Maybe the other person’s got away. You think you’d still hear the echoes, though, wherever they are –

She dashes into the tunnel, leaps, vaults over more barrels blocking the way, and as she lands she sees –

The other person’s standing there, at the corner where the tunnel turns round, dancing to the beats on his earphones, that shambling too-cool-for-school move he always used to do back in the loft in Bantam Street. He’d have put on some remix he’d made, and she’d say, come on, bust some moves, don’t just stand there behind your turntables, and he’d dance like it was a joke –

She’s staring and letting herself roll forward and waiting for it to be someone else and it’s his face, his smile and wink as he spots her, his voice: “Hey, Cube, been waiting a long time for you to show up –”

She’s thinking, I’m going nuts, this is what you get when you start feeling your feelings, they become real, they talk to you, she’s thinking, not a scratch on him, he hasn’t changed, she’s thinking, she’s saying, “You – you could’ve come looked for me, we’ve been making a name for ourselves round here –”

“Didn’t know where I was, for a long time,” he says. Still shifting to the beat. Cube wonders what he’s listening to. She’s still got nothing but static. “Only made it out a little while ago, crawled my way up out of…”

She’s thinking, I should be happy. Like this is everything she wanted, right? She wanted it to have been a mistake. She wanted him to have survived. They came here to find him. She presses her tongue against her teeth, and they feel real, she feels real, she can still smell the air down here and hear the static, how do you know if you’re having a hallucination?

“Come on,” he’s saying. “I’ll show you. Show you where I came up.” Holds out his hand. Ratty skating gloves, pale white fingers. Like he’s just got out of the water.

She feels herself shake her head, say, “Nah, no need. I’ll believe you.” Looks into his face. He’s smiling like they’re both in on a joke. If he’d escaped from a corporate terrorist organisation and then climbed his way out through the freakin’ sewers he should look different, right? He shouldn’t look like he walked straight out of Bantam Street. Except he doesn’t, quite, he looks like – like people sometimes do in dreams, their faces aren’t –

She says, “Seen anyone else down here? The local gang seems to have vanished off the map.”

“That can happen,” he says. He’s still watching her. Beckons, quick finger-flick. “Come on, you could stand to welcome me home, couldn’t you? After you dropped the ball on watching my back to start with.” He says it like it’s a joke. They joked about a lot of stuff, the two of them would be sarcastic as shit to each other and Combo would just listen and occasionally snort with laughter. Just, just that they were in tune with each other then, the jokes were only ever things both of them’d find funny. Not stuff she’s thought about when she can’t sleep, what if I could’ve helped him, what if I could’ve stopped them getting him, what if he’s somewhere getting the shit kicked out of him and hating me for it – Combo had said to her, once, when she’d voiced some of this, stop it, you oughta know that’s bullshit, and now he’s here and just – saying it to her face –

“Hey, no biggie,” he’s saying, watching her face, like he’s trying to get a rise out of her, “we all screw up sometimes. You come see what I’ve found and we can let bygones be bygones.” Moves a little closer. The light’s bad but he still looks pale. Pale, but his smile, widening –

Thing is, if you’re a rudie, you learn to trust your instincts, because your instincts are what say yeah, you can make this jump or those guys are gunning for you or get the hell out of here, now – Cube spends a lot of time making decisions before she realises she needs to. If she’d thought about this one, she’d probably have figured it couldn’t hurt to see what he’d found, or like it might give some useful details on what happened to Poison Jam, or she should go because the last thing she wants is for him to think she meant to hurt him –

But her body’s like No and as he reaches out to grab her arm she is already turning to get away, get the hell away. Rudies are good at planning escape routes they didn’t know they’d need, too. The tunnel off to her left is one that gets you out of here and she dives into it, it slopes up, she’s skating as fast as she’s ever skated in her life, she hears him yell at her to come back, “Come on, you missed me, I know you missed me!” and his voice gets closer, rising up the tunnel behind her, like his skates are rocket-powered or something, he’s laughing and it’s all around her –

She bursts through an archway and into the abandoned factory and doesn’t stop there, keeps running, out into the sunlight, the dusty yard, up over a pile of wrecked cars, skates smashing in windscreens and mirrors and that laughter underneath it all, up the hill, she isn’t going to stop until she gets as far away from the sewers as possible, she isn’t going to stop because when she does she’ll have to feel the feelings again and think about what just happened and her instincts are saying that’ll be the worst thing of all.

***

Kogane-cho looks same as always. Beat doesn’t know what he expected. Blood red sky? Freddie Kreuger lurking behind the takeaway? Zombie Poison Jam?

But it’s just dust and long shadows and people selling stuff out of suitcases on the pavement. So it’s probably fine. So there’s probably nothing to worry about.

Except he kind of doesn’t want to go down into the sewers.

“What do you reckon?” he says to Tab, who’s rolling along behind him, looking as chill-and-slightly-bizarre as he always does.

“Like… how freaked out should we be?”

“Yeah. You know this city better’n I do. And you’re the designated smart one.”

“Don’t know about that,” Tab says. “And I don’t know Kogane-cho super well, either.”

“Yeah, but… weighin’ up the evidence. Poison Jam are off the radar, for sure, even Prof K doesn’t know where they’ve got to. Cube says she saw some weird shit down there the other day. And this city nearly got burnt to the ground by a giant demon rhino not so long ago, so there’s a precedent for strange. Just, how worried you think we ought to be?”

Tab frowns, silent for a few seconds, before he says, “I mean, Cube seems like someone who keeps a cool head. Her boyfriend got kidnapped by crazy gun-toting assassins and she just upped sticks and flew across the Pacific like it was no big deal. We had to tag up the streets while dodging bombs and flamethrowers and sniper rifles and she was like, I’m on it. She coped even when we were fighting a literal demon. And she’s a hardcore death metal fan. So… I figure whatever she saw, it was pretty out-there.”

“Yeah,” Beat says. “That’s… kind of what I was thinking.”

They’ve got to the open shaft that you can climb down to get into the sewers. Normally you hurl yourself into it and cheer as you fall, live for the speed, but today Beat and Tab are standing there eyeing it like it’s a portal to hell. Which, like, it maybe could be?

“We still need to check it out, though,” Beat says. “Like… if there’s something dangerous down there, if it’s… eaten Poison Jam or whatever, no way it’s not gonna target us. Like, rudies in general. No one’s gonna mind if we go missing.”

“We just have to step up and save the city?” Tab says, striking a pose. “Again?”

“I… yeah.” Beat wishes he sounded more confident. Just, it feels like they only saved the city through the skin of their teeth last time. It wasn’t like they gathered any secret intelligence about how you do it.

He takes a deep breath and jumps. He tries to tell himself it’s just like when they ran up a zillion flights of stairs to confront a crazed CEO summoning demons on the roof of a skyscraper. That is, potentially a really bad idea, but something you just have to do. It was way up high last time, so it makes sense it’s underground now. And maybe it will just be a giant alligator and they can make an anonymous call to Pest Control or the city zoo or something.

The sewer walls rush past him, the same smell of funky water, the same splash and ripple echoing through the air. It’d be really good if he shot out into the main tunnel and saw Poison Jam on the walkway doing their stupid Monster Mash dance routine. Then they could have a gang battle and it would turn back into a normal day.

He slows as the tunnel opens up, rolls to a halt and surveys the scene. No Poison Jam. No giant alligator, either. No obvious clues at all.

“Welp,” Tab says from behind him. “Guess we just act natural and see if we run into anything weird?”

“I guess. Like… paint some tags, pull some tricks...”

The tags Gum and Garam left are still on the opposite wall, untouched, which doesn’t make Beat feel any better. Someone should’ve taken them as a challenge.

“Let’s go tag up the staircase,” he says. “I mean, if it is a giant alligator, it’ll probably come through the water?”

“Act as bait. Sounds fun.”

Beat agrees it does not sound fun at all, but as leader he feels he has to go first, so he grinds down the banister and jumps lightly off at the bottom, where the water laps against the concrete. How deep is it, even? Well, he doesn’t intend to jump in and find out. Just slap paint on a wall. Like he does every day. If his hand’s kind of shaky and the resulting tags are more towards the casual vandalism than fancy street art end of the spectrum, doesn’t matter, hopefully it’ll inspire someone to come and cover ‘em up…

The problem with tagging a wall is it requires you to face the wall, which gives things ample opportunity to sneak up on you.

“I’m gonna go… I dunno, catch some air,” he says. “Get some practice in without anyone trying to shoot me.”

“Got it.”

Up on the bridge he starts to regret his decision – being nervous and kind of waiting for something to murder you is only going to throw off your skating game and, here, result in you taking a dive into sewer water – but at least he can see the whole area from up here. Tab painting a large tag, hopping from stair to stair – the main tunnel disappearing into blackness either end – rusted barrels – grimy strip lights –

A balloon floating by above him.

Which, okay, some kid could’ve let their balloon go and it got blown in here, sure, fine, but you’d kind of expect said balloon to look battered and half-deflated, and kids in Kogane don’t really have balloons anyway. This one is bright red and fat and shiny, bobbing along like it’s floating on the summer breeze, which is also weird, because there is no breeze down here –

Beat glances over to yell to Tab to look up and when he looks back there’s like three more balloons.

“Okay,” he hears himself say, “okay, that’s a bit weird.”

(This would make sense, if Cube saw something like this, something totally normal that just shouldn’t be down here –)

He’s watching the balloons and his heart’s pounding way too fast for nothing happening and the blood pulsing in his ears mingles with the gurgling of the water and what sounds like it could be something – something laughing –

Tab’s stopped painting, he’s taking a run-up to dash and get some speed, but the sound of his skates is drowned out by – the high, eerie singing –

It can’t be –

He hears Tab yell, “Holy shit, is that –”

(Like, if you try and describe what went down on the top of the Rokkaku tower, it mostly sounds like a fever dream, or at the very least, it sounds funny, like, oh sure, a giant golden rhino just swooped down and started breathing fire at us, also we were hundreds of feet off the ground, and there was a crazy corporate executive playing a demon record but it was scary as hell when it was happening and Beat’s dreamt he was back there a bunch of times since and woken up in a cold sweat –)

That song is playing, the laughter and the crooning echoing off the sewer walls, and something glows red-hot in the tunnel, and –

The twenty-foot-high rhino demon swoops out, up to the ceiling, its roar making the walls shake, and looks down at Beat, and draws back its head, it’s going to breathe fire, just like it did then, just like it did in his dreams, and he thinks, this is it, after we thought everything was fine, this is how I die –

Tab yells, “Move it!”

Maybe it wasn’t Tab, maybe it was just Beat’s own thoughts, but whatever, it taps into muscle memory or something and he finds himself dashing, leaping for the handrail, landing so hard it jolts his teeth, he feels the billow of heat on his back but he knows this, he knows it, he’s got away from huge angry machines trying to kill him a bunch of times, he’s gaining speed, he’s got this, he’s leaping and landing again and then, and then off the rail, into the nearest tunnel, sprinting for the closest exit. Not looking back.

***

Combo figures after the year he’s had, he should be gettin’ used to weird shit. Like, oh, sure, murderous… thing, possibly return of the rhino demon, in the sewers, cool, we on it. But with the night falling and the GGs watching Beat start mapping out the situation on the floor with a can of paint, he just feels like something’s tickling the back of his neck.

“Okay,” Beat says. “Here’s what we got.” He’s written, Poison Jam – missing?, followed by Rhino demon, followed by ?? Other weird shit?? Balloons??

“I feel like you need a whiteboard or a flip chart or something,” Tab says. “We should’ve scavenged.” He’s chucking a paint can from hand to hand like he can’t stay still.

“I’m making do with what we’ve got,” Beat says. “Which I think is what we’re going to have to do about this situation.”

“What exactly do we think we’re dealing with?” Piranha asks. “Like… you said you heard the same music. Is this another cursed record? Are we dealing with Rokkaku Evil Part 2, Electric Boogaloo?”

“I mean… that seems the most obvious choice,” Beat says. “Music, rhino demon, fire, creeping feeling of horror.”

“But in the sewers, though,” Yo-Yo says, coming to kneel by the painted list. “Why’d you release a demon down there? Whole thing about that demon was it was gonna fly around and rain down fiery death on the city. This one just kind of flew out at you and then… went away again.”

Beat shrugs. Tab glances at him and then says, “Yeah, about that.”

“About that?”

“Like, Beat got his ass out of there – which is fine, leader man, that’s what you do when something tries to set you on fire. I was at the bottom of the steps, and I figured just dashing up ‘em was a great way to get barbecued. So I ran down that corridor next to it, figured the demon was too big to get to it. Ran in and was like… well, tagging up the floor worked the last time we dealt with this thing. So I started doing some sweet art.”

“And?” Mew’s leaning forward, tangling her fingers together. “I mean, you didn’t get set on fire, so...”

“So remember how much I hate frogs?” Tab says. “Gum, Beat, you remember. The Poison Jam filled this place with ‘em that time and I had to go get some fresh air. So – so, it all goes quiet out there, I’m wondering if the demon thinks we both left and it’s… gone off to do whatever demons do when they’re not incinerating innocent vandals – and then… and then.”

“And then… Frogmageddon?” Gum says.

“Dozens of ‘em.” Tab swallows. “Not… not a good moment, I can tell you. I think if I hadn’t already been in apocalypse survival mode from the rhino demon I’d have had a frickin’ breakdown, but as it was I was like, paint the goddamn tags and try not to think about Satan’s amphibians.”

Combo ain’t got no beef with frogs, but the thought of standing ankle-deep in something you hate, trying to spray paint like normal, makes him shudder. “Then?”

“Then, I painted the most glorious pieces of street art I have ever created, making sure I kept moving closer to the door,” Tab says. He’s pale, even under the hat. “The fuckers jumped on me and more of ‘em just kept coming. I was seriously wondering if I might drown in ‘em. The radio was still static – which is another thing, always used to be able to get it even down in those tunnels – so I started singing to stop myself throwing up. Like Oh, I can hear ‘em running ‘bout the town, I can hear them all daaaaay, dah dah dah dah dah –”

Normally someone would’ve said something about his overenthusiastic singing voice, but now they just all stared at him. After a moment, Beat added ?? frogs?? to the bottom of his list.

“Yeah, I ain’t never seen that before in the sewers,” Garam said. “Poison Jam could get a bunch of frogs together but they didn’t just… swarm like that.”

“The thing is,” Tab says, “the thing is I swear to god, I looked back when I was making a dash for it – still singing like I was in the shower – and they… it seemed like they’d gone. I… this might have been panicked hallucinations, but I thought I saw, like… a clown?”

Mew twitches, and gives a little squeak. Combo looks over at her – the girl likes cute things but normally she’s no more fazed by scary shit than the rest of them. “You okay, kat?”

“I saw it,” Mew says. “Um. This sounds so stupid. I saw a clown in the sewers. A while back now. He – it challenged me to a race and I – because I hate clowns, I got freaked out and – I thought it was just some weirdo but –”

Cube’s not said anything. Combo’s been trying not to stare at her – whatever she saw, she’ll talk about it when she wants to, he ain’t gonna make her mad by picking at her – but whatever it was she saw, he’s long been wanting to go punch it, she looked like she wanted to cry when she got back.

“Did you see a clown too?” Yo-Yo asks her, though, because tact ain’t his strong suit.

Cube takes a deep breath, presses a hand to her mouth. Shakes her head. “I saw… I think...” Another deep breath. “Okay, Beat, I think I get what’s going on here.” She gets up, grabs another can of paint, rolls over to him, and starts to add to the list. They all cluster round to watch.

Poison Jam – missing?
Rhino demon <= Beat
?? Other weird shit?? Balloons?? Clown <= Mew
?? frogs?? <= Tab

And finally, she writes:

Coin <= Cube

Piranha says, at last, “You saw...”

Combo knows he should join in, but he feels like something just hit him in the chest.

“It wasn’t him,” Cube says. “Combo, I… I’m sure it wasn’t him. He was… he was the same, he wasn’t hurt at all, and he… he was laughing at me. He was trying to freak me out and then he was glad when it worked. Coin wouldn’t… he goofed around but… this thing was – it was mean.”

Gum says, “So it… so it’s something that… can shapeshift or whatever? Into whatever will get to us most? Like, Tab and frogs, and I know Beat was all like if that rhino demon kills us it’s my fault, and Cube sees her boyfriend trying to –”

“Trying to make me think it was all my fault he’d got caught,” Cube says. She swallows. “Which is what I’ve been tryin’ not to think but...”

Combo’s not going to lose it right here and now, not in the middle of a council of war, but that settles it, he is going to go find this thing and make it pay.

Slate, who’s been leaning on the pinball machine watching the discussion, clears his throat.

“So, I don’t got any anecdotes about clowns to add,” he says, “but Garam and me made some enquiries around Kogane-cho and… the word on that particular street is, yeah, people have been going missing. Not just the Poison Jam. Homeless dudes who’ve suddenly upped sticks. And kids. Only the usual Kogane-cho kids that the cops are figuring’ve run away, but… yeah.”

“I mean,” Tab says, after a few moments of worried silence, “that suggests it ain’t just we’re all going mad. So… that’s good.”

“What’s not good,” Slate says, “is I get the feeling our fearless leader is gearing up to marshal us to go save the world again. Or at least Kogane-cho.”

“Well, what else are we going to do?” Beat says. “This thing’s after people like us, people the cops won’t bother to look for if we go missing. If it had got any of you lot I somehow don’t think Onishima would bother to do anything but throw a party.”

“Plus,” Gum says, “Kogane-cho is our turf now, and if it’s not ours, then it’s Poison Jam’s. It’s not some, some murder clown’s. Fuck that. No.”

“And I mean –” Tab’s up on his feet. “Like, if it’s trying to scare us, then… we’re good at not getting scared under pressure. And I think that helped, with the – the frogmageddon. Singin’ and paintin’.”

“And, like, maybe it’ll get confused,” Mew says. “If there’s a bunch of us. It can turn into a clown and it’ll freak me out, but Cube can just punch it in the face, and then I’ll do the same to her undead boyfriend.”

“Okay,” Slate says, sighing. “These are all good points. I still don’t love this, as a life choice, but I get it.”

“Right,” Beat says. “Then, tomorrow, let’s do it. Let’s go kill a clown.”

On the fourth day of Christmas

versipellis — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:53:31 GMT

my true love sent to me

four hard shells

[Title] Head Cases
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG-13 for language, references to violence, drug-taking, references to broken homes, ablism
[Notes/Summary] They say a lot of stupid things about people like Kaneda and his friends.

Kaneda

They talk a lot of shit about kids who are in care, Kaneda figures. They mostly being cops and the principal and anyone else who’s mad about something he’s done. Which, okay, if you’re mad with someone, you’re probably going to talk shit about them, but that’s not the point.

The point is that sometimes – and it’s not just authority figures in his immediate circle, actually, it’s everyone, journalists and newsreaders and politicians sounding off about the delinquent epidemic sweeping the city’s youth – sometimes they go on about damaged children, who have never known a stable upbringing, never felt part of the fabric of society to which the rest of us belong, buried that sense of loss and abandonment under a hard shell of drug use and violence, and sometimes they’re all like ungrateful youths, who had a rough start in life but chose not to rise above it, chose to give in to their basest instincts, perpetuating the cycle... Kaneda’s kind of impressed he can remember even this much of it, he’s mostly zoned out ten minutes ago when they start in on him.

The point is that they make it all about how if you didn’t grow up in a happy home in the suburbs, with a mum and dad and probably a pet or something, then you’re some kind of headcase. Which Kaneda figures maybe makes sense if you started off with that and lost it –

Like Tetsuo, who hasn’t talked about his parents in years but the first thing everyone at the home knew about him was his mum and dad left him, who always drew pictures of houses and mums and dads and families, and then just figured everyone else would bail on him too, went round with a face like he wanted to be liked, and so of course everybody picked on him. Okay, sure, maybe the journalists and teachers and that are kind of right, with Tetsuo, maybe he is a little – not messed up in the head, but… maybe it had an effect. But, it wasn’t because of that that Tetsuo’s a biker and constantly in trouble at school. He’s a biker ‘cause he’s Kaneda’s friend, and he’s constantly in trouble because their school is a shithole. (Even some of the teachers used to pick on Tetsuo, in the way teachers sometimes do, like they could tell he had that just-wanting-to-be-liked face on underneath. Which makes it pretty funny when they start lecturing the kids about bad behaviour.)

But the point is, Kaneda never grew up with any stable home. His mum and dad died when he was like a year old, he doesn’t remember ‘em, doesn’t even have any pictures. If he has grandparents or aunts or uncles or anything it’s not like they bothered to make themselves known. So all his life he’s been in children’s homes and never known anything else, right? If he’s damaged, then if someone got into his brain and fixed him it would make him someone completely different. Whereas Tetsuo had had seven years of being not-messed-up and yet he’s the one with the… the stuff going on in his head.

The point is that the way those people talk, you’d figure every kid in care has a World-War-Three-style crater in their mind, and either they can’t dig their way out of it or they decide they don’t want to. Whereas from where Kaneda’s standing, it looks like most people do shit just because they want to, or because they never thought not to, or because their mum and dad told them to, or told them not to. Just makes people feel better to sound off like they know it all. Whereas anyone with an actual functioning brain would figure, hey, burning it down the highway at a hundred k an hour, having a drink, popping a pill, making out – you know what? That stuff is fun. And everyone goes after what they find fun, when it comes down to it. Just maybe kids like him aren’t afraid to admit it.

Tetsuo

Tetsuo thinks – well, he only thinks it late at night, when he’s kind of drunk, or he can’t sleep and he’s lying awake and the events of the evening, or some evening, or some day years ago, are on replay in his head – he sometimes thinks he actually must have something wrong in his head. He’d never say it out loud, because hell if he’s going to give people any more ammunition against him, but when you look at the facts…

Just, everyone else seems to… okay, have their shit together isn’t right, other people fuck up, or they’re stupid, or they get mad about stuff, but… it doesn’t seem to matter to them. Not deep down. Like they’re all turtles but he somehow ended up without a shell. Which is fucking stupid but he kind of feels it might be true.

He knows when he was a little kid he cried at everything and that meant everyone tried to make him cry more, he knows that, he tries not to think about it too much, it was ages ago, he was pathetic. And, okay, maybe that means part of him is still waiting to get jumped on again, just like that little kid always was, even though that’s pathetic, too. But that’s the whole point. He knows that when Kaneda was little, before they met, he got picked on by those same kids who pushed Tetsuo around. He said he did. (Could’ve been lying to make his wimpy best friend feel better.) But he said he did and it was probably true, those kids were assholes, they picked on all the little ones, so –

So why is it Kaneda never even seems to imagine that people might not like him? Just goes in there with a smile and a dirty joke and a plan to cause mayhem and it fucking works? How come he doesn’t ever think maybe... or what if... or… even though they grew up in the same place? Tetsuo can’t believe those jerks at the home, or the jerks in school, or the cops or the teachers or anyone ever chose to go easy on Kaneda, no one ever chooses to go easy on people if they don’t have to, so how come Kaneda didn’t let it get to him?

You just have to figure he’s got a thicker skin. A harder shell.

Tetsuo tries not to think about this too much because it always ends with the conclusion that guess I’m just fucked up, then, guess I’m pathetic, guess anyone could stomp me if they wanted, because how can you just make yourself grow that hard shell, if you didn’t get it by now? He tries and he keeps trying and it never works and by now, by now he’s so sick of trying, he’s so sick of all of it –

Sometimes, before he wrenches his mind onto something else, or goes to punch something that won’t punch him back, he wonders if there’s anything that could break through the shell Kaneda’s so lucky to have got. And what it’d be like if it did. That thought makes him feel better, sometimes.

Yamagata

You have an attitude problem, they’ve always told Yamagata, you should show respect for your elders and betters, you’re a troublemaker, you’re on a downward spiral and if you want to make anything of yourself... And blah blah blah, he’s heard it a thousand times and like any of them know anything.

Way Yamagata sees it, he has an attitude but he doesn’t have an attitude problem. As long as he can remember, if you don’t stand up for yourself, no one else is going to do it for you. Which is maybe what they mean when they talk about coming from a broken home, maybe other kids’ families don’t have knock-down storm-out wall-punching rows twenty-four-seven, but then, his friends are all in care properly, Kaneda’s never even known his parents, and they’re all on Yamagata’s side when it comes to this, they all know it’s them against the world. If Yamagata has an attitude it’s like because if people constantly chuck rocks at you, you’d put up a shield or a shell or something and chuck some back, right? That’s just sensible.

If Yamagata thinks about it – which he mostly only does in class ‘cause what the hell else is he going to do, listen to stuff he doesn’t understand which doesn’t matter? – if he thinks about it, he figures probably they’re… you know, on a scale of attitude problem-ness. Like, Kaneda mouths off when he wants to, and thinks most adults are morons, but he’s also pretty good at knowing when to lie (or… attempt to lie, his reputation sort of gets ahead of him these days) or keep something on the down-low. And, when they’re on the road, he’s the one who knows best about when to bring it, when to start a battle, and when to haul ass and regroup, which makes sense ‘cause he’s the leader. Sometimes people have said to Yamagata can’t believe you’re takin’ orders from someone else when they know he’s in a gang, which is bullshit, because, one, it’s not orders, not like they’re in the fucking army, and second, Yamagata doesn’t mind doing what Kaneda suggests because Kaneda mostly sort-of knows what he’s talking about. Yamagata’s pretty sure if it were him he’d probably have led them into some way more dicey situations. Or he’d have backed off when he didn’t need to and they’d be wusses. Kaneda seems to be able to walk the line.

Then, Kai on the other hand, Kai is probably smarter than the rest of them, and he tends to only mouth off at the teachers when they started it, but he isn’t a wimp. Some people might think he kind of is, but that’s because they don’t know he’s pretty clever. Clever people like Kai back off because it’s sensible. Wusses back off ‘cause they’re scared. Yamagata rarely backs off, because it won’t usually make it better, the other guy’ll just keep coming. Kaneda makes like he’s backing off, tells a lie that’s so outrageous it makes you stop and check you actually heard something that stupid, and then runs like hell or gets a hit in while you’re distracted.

Tetsuo backs off all the time. Like, not when they’re riding. He’s not always as good as the rest of them but he gets into the action. But up til recently when people gave him hassle, he’d only stand up to ‘em if Kaneda were around. See, that’s what pisses Yamagata off. People want him to have less of an attitude? That’d only mean he’s like Tetsuo, backing down just when he shouldn’t, waiting for someone else to fight his battles for him, and still failing classes in a dead-end vocational training school. At least Yamagata’s got some stuff he can be proud of. You’d think if you’ve got no parents at all you’d be better at fighting your own battles.

Tetsuo knows Yamagata thinks this, probably. He’ll give you a side-eyed glance if you call him out on acting like a loser, like he wants to punch you but doesn’t dare. One of these days, Yamagata’s gonna say, come on, do it, take a swing at me. One of them’s got to, after all. Kaneda won’t, maybe ‘cause he’s known Tetsuo so long, he’s used to him being like that, and Kai won’t, he’ll figure it isn’t worth the argument, but Yamagata figures at least if you have an attitude it means you get stuff sorted out. He might as well try and drag Tetsuo up to his level.

Kai

These days when the teachers are in full-on rant mode, Kai is just one of those troublemakers, the short one. Which is fine, it’s not like both of those things aren’t true. It was different when he first started hanging around with Kaneda and the others, the first time they got busted. A few people did try the line of you’re better than this, you could make something of yourself. Kai had let his grades slide even more after that, when the others had kept quoting back to him you could make something of yourself for like a full week. You can mark yourself out as a bit different, you can be late hitting puberty and short for your age and not dress like you just rolled out of bed, but you can’t push it too far.

He doesn’t quite know, sometimes, what’s the stuff he does because he wants to and what’s the stuff he does because everyone else is doing it and what’s the stuff he’d happily ditch except he likes not being a complete loner. He kind of tries not to think about it too much because it starts making him feel like he’s having an out-of-body experience (especially if he’s thinking about it while getting drunk or popping pills or trying to get through school on two hours’ sleep). It’s probably a stupid question to ask, anyway. Probably most people are in the same boat, building up a solid shell of an identity from who they hang out with. Maybe? But then he thinks of Kaneda, strolling through life like he set it up this way, like he was never anyone else but who he is, and figures maybe Kaneda’s different. If most people’s identity is sort of like a pile of stuff glued together from a bunch of different places, Kaneda’s is all of a piece and you can bounce rocks off of it. Which is weird, because from what Kai knows, it isn’t like Kaneda’s life has been much happier than anyone else’s, he and Tetsuo even grew up in the same place, and yet…

Maybe Kaneda did all the building-an-identity before all the rest of them came along, before Tetsuo even. Who tries to be like Kaneda, tries to be like the rest of them, fakes the attitude and goes out every night and mouths off to the teachers, but doesn’t pull it off, not quite. Has a look like he knows someone’s going to trip him up any second.

Kai tries not to think too much about this in particular because sometimes – mostly when he’s really tired or off his face – he starts to wonder if maybe it’s like that with him too, like everyone else can see he’s just built himself up from nothing, like it’s obvious he’s pretending to be… something or other. This is usually a sign he’s thinking too much. It’s certainly what Yamagata would tell him, if he ever knew Kai asked these kind of dumbshit questions. With Yamagata, it’s fine, he’d say Kai thinks too much and Kai would tell him he doesn’t think enough and then one of them would try and put the other in a headlock.

Tetsuo’s parents walked out on him, brought him to the children’s home and left him there (or someone did, Tetsuo can’t remember). Kai knows this because Tetsuo told him it, once when they were both kind of drunk. Kai could’ve risked saying, hey, me too. He could’ve told the story, how his folks just skipped town and he woke up and they were gone, how it was a good few days before – not that he remembers much of it, now, he thinks he had nightmares about it when he was small but now he doesn’t remember it, and he doesn’t really remember the nightmares, he just remembers being awake and crying, and being a kid who was making a fuss and needed to be brave. And it isn’t like he particularly wants to remember any of it. What’s the point?

He didn’t say that, he just said Man, that sucks, but I guess we’ve all got sob stories and started rambling about the music on the jukebox, which he sometimes feels kind of bad about, even though he’s got no reason to, it wasn’t like Tetsuo had a right to know his life story, and besides… he’s working really hard on pretending it never happened, it’s hardly like he wants to stick it right in the middle of the image he puts up. You should, too, he kind of wants to say to Tetsuo. There’s no sense in building up your shell and then painting a target on it.

On the third day of Christmas

versipellis — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 17:58:20 GMT

my true love sent to me

three alerting cries

[Title] Warnings in Dreamscapes
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell still dreams about where she used to be.

For a long time, after she was out, she dreamt of being back in. That didn’t surprise her. It was all she’d known for an untold length of time, and she had no memories from before it; what else could she make dreams from? Those dreams weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes they were; sometimes she was slipping and falling, or she was about to put a foot wrong, or she was falling into fire and woke up with her face feeling hot as if she had been staring into flames – but other times she was just there, she was walking through a corridor crawling with vines, or she was waiting in a room that looked like a hotel, or she was opening a portal, and diving into it, and flying. Sometimes there were voices that she remembered. Sometimes she was choosing what to do to them. She never dreamed about any of her choices being different.

For a long time, after she was out, she was still on her own. That wasn’t exactly a choice. First there were no people around, there was just her, walking, and sleeping in empty houses or fields at night, and dreaming. Eventually, she came to a city, and she supposed that there would be people there, but she kept out of their way for a long time. She doesn’t remember deciding to do that, but when she thinks about it, it made sense. People can leave messages on the walls and you can decide whether to trust those, but then when they talk to you, you have to decide whether to trust those words as well, and she has had to make a lot of those decisions. And that was only with a few beings. She can’t just dive into having make dozens of those choices every day. You practise, you watch, you learn the puzzles, and then when your life depends on it, hopefully you’ve learnt enough. Hopefully.

Now, a long time after she was out, she has let people talk to her, even if she didn’t (couldn’t?) talk back to them, and if she never said I trust you, she has at least allowed them to lead her to safety, or share their rations with her, or tell her the stories of what had happened while she’d been underground. After that, the dreams changed. She still dreams about being back there, but now the people she’s decided to trust are with her. She’s still the only person who knew this place, the person who had to practise and watch and solve the puzzles. Nearly always, the people she trusts don’t know enough, or she hasn’t told them enough. Nearly always, they’re the ones who are about to slip and fall, or put a foot wrong, or step into the flames. She tries to cry out and warn them, but she never can, because down there, when she’d been alone, it had been much better not to speak at all. She tries to cry out, but she stays silent. That’s as bad as the dreams where she died herself. Sooner or later, she knows, she’ll need to decide to speak again. Then, when someone’s life depends on it, hopefully she’ll be able to. Hopefully.

[Title] Magic Missile
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Gum rescues Beat from helicopters.

It happens before Gum realises it is. She’s grinding down the crash barrier, Beat’s tagging up the fence nearby all chill like he’s out for a pleasant evening walk, she sees the chopper out of the corner of her eye, and then she’s hearing herself yelling, “Look out –” and at the same time she’s hurled herself forward, off the barrier, grabbed him, and thrown them both off the embankment, through one of those unfenced gaps Kogane-cho has because health and safety is for losers, and –

They hit the ground and it knocks all the breath out of her and before that, or after, she hears the explosion as the missile obliterates the fence and whatever Beat had been painting on it.

Somehow they’re up on their feet and dashing into one of the narrow alleyways lined with rubbish and creaky air-con units. The air’s thick and smelly and the shadows are dark and could be hiding any number of rats, crows or axe murderers, but they’re also great at hiding rudies from police helicopters, and above her the chopper circles and then buzzes off, evidently figuring just taking out a chunk of Kogane’s residential district is going too far, even for Onishima.

She and Beat are sort of clutching each other and gasping for breath like holy shit, that just happened, but after a bit, they both start laughing, like, holy shit, that actually did just happen.

“Well,” Beat says, eventually, “I picked the right team to join up with. You were in there like boom. Push me out of the way of a missile like it ain’t no big deal.”

Gum tries to shrug, but she can feel she’s grinning like a dork, which is probably ruining the too-cool-for-school vibe she’s trying to project. “You know it. Clearly I’m taking this gang thing seriously.”

They’re still sort of hugging each other. Gum wonders if she should let go. With most guys, they’d figure you were propositioning them for a quickie in the alley. Except Tab, of course, but Tab’s been her best friend since she was old enough to remember, they’re constantly smacking each other across the head or leaning against each other or grabbing each other’s arms. Or, she supposes, dragging each other out of the way of missiles, no way today isn’t going to repeat itself given the way police brutality is going.

It’s Beat who coughs and says, “Um, we’re hugging. Are we a gang who hug? We don’t have to be a gang who hug.”

“Yeah, don’t commit me to mandatory hugs,” Gum says. She steps back now, starts brushing the grime off her dress. There’s going to be a wicked bruise where she landed. “We don’t know what kind of weirdos are going to fetch up with us. I’m not an equal-opportunity hugger, okay, I just hug Tab, and… guess I hug you.” She kind of hadn’t meant to say that, but –

The thing is, she finds a lot of people annoying, but even though she hasn’t known Beat anything like as long as Tab, it’s… like the opposite. Which she figures means she... genuinely likes him? Just, he’s such a dork, and he was like hey, thanks when she showed him how to pull some moves and sounded like he meant it, and he’s just – he just seems like a guy who’s pleasant to be around.

And he shows it now, because he doesn’t make a dirty remark, he just says, she can hear him smiling, “If only when we both nearly die?”

“That’s probably still gonna make it happen every other day,” she says. “Let’s get up there. Get some tagging done before the cops come back.”

[Title] Spring
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Ide considers asking Matsuda out on a date (as requested by still_lycoris)

It’s a very long time since Ide has asked anyone out on a date. He actually can’t remember the last time it happened. It was probably in college. It was probably at Aizawa’s insistence. He was probably half-hearted about it. Certainly for most of his professional life he’s been legitimately too busy to think about that kind of thing, and if that means he still hasn’t got married, well, that hardly seems a great loss.

But on the other hand, he is now hopelessly out of practice at how one actually does go about asking someone on a date. Which is unfortunate, now that –

Well. No. He isn’t considering asking anyone out.

It’s a cool spring day and the sky is bright blue and Matsuda is walking back to the car with a coffee in each hand and it is just because it’s the kind of day when you feel like you can do anything. Matsuda has reached him, hands him one of the coffees, takes the lid off the other. “Hey, hang on,” he’s saying, “Wait, you’ve got the wrong one –” He puts the open coffee on the roof of the car. “Sorry, I forgot which hand was left for a moment –”

He isn’t considering asking anyone out, least of all a colleague, which has always seemed to him an entirely too risky choice. Matsuda is his friend (he supposes; they seem to have ended up that way after five years on a nightmare case that culminated in a traumatic experience of near-death and betrayal), and his colleague, and male, and idiotic much of the time, and quiet and sad about the Kira case even now, over a year after it ended, and there are any number of reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask him out, not least because Ide doesn’t even know where to start.

And yet. Last year, they could both have died within moments of each other. Last year they found out they’d been being led wrong all this time. Not to mention the knowledge of the gods of death watching them from some unspecified other realm and the life spans hanging over everyone’s head.

“What did you buy yourself this time?” he says instead.

“Caramel latte. It’s all right, yours is plain black as usual.”

Ide is not going to ask Matsuda out because he doesn’t even know where to start, but perhaps on another day like this, he might work it out.

On the second day of Christmas

versipellis — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 15:22:34 GMT

my true love sent to me

Two friends together

[Title] What Not To Talk About
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Rating] PG for underage drinking and reference to previous canonical violence
[Notes/Summary] Yutaka and his friends play Never Have I Ever.
[Link] "I mean, Never Did I Ever want to see that"

[Title] Good Ideas
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG-13 for sex
[Notes/Summary] Kai/Yamagata. Kai's not sure how this happened, or what to say next.

Not that Kai had ever thought til now about how Yamagata treated his girlfriends after they’d just boned, but he would’ve assumed something along the lines of love ‘em and leave ‘em. No lying there basking in the afterglow, and certainly no snuggling.

But they’re sprawled in Yamagata’s bed together and Kai’s been steeling himself for a good few minutes now to be kicked out (perhaps literally) and probably told that this was a mistake and disgusting and all Kai’s fault and… none of that is happening. The bed’s pretty narrow and he doesn’t have much of an option other than to kind of lie on Yamagata, whose breathing’s slowed now and who’s absently drumming one foot against something or other, like he’s perfectly chill, like he makes out with his guy friends all the time. Which, hell if Kai knows, maybe he does, but he’s been keeping it pretty damn quiet if so.

Someone halfway normal would enjoy the moment – the last half an hour or so has been kind of awkward and messy and the bed was definitely not big enough for two people and it should’ve been weird, it being Yamagata, and yet, and yet it… the fact that it was Yamagata was good, like comfortingly familiar and weirdly hot at the same time –

But any moment now Yamagata’s going to claim he isn’t like that, okay, and so Kai should really stop reflecting on how hot (weird or otherwise) any of this was, and he should probably just get out of the bed and go. That kind of back-and-forth thinking gets old quick, and Kai figures he is probably not halfway normal (especially if anyone finds out about this) and so he says, “So… you offer this kind of hospitality to everyone you let crash on your floor?”

He feels Yamagata snort, and the other guy flicks fingers against his head. “You’re not on the floor, are you, dumbass?”

“Fair enough. That’s me told.” Kai sort of wants to… it’s dumb, but he kind of wants to provoke a fight, almost, like pre-emptively. No way is this anything but a mistake, no way is it going to happen again, so you may as well rip the bandage off in one go. Or maybe it’s not that; maybe it’s that he’s second-guessing everything now. Like is he meant to just carry on talking to Yamagata like they’re friends, or is he meant to be the one who’s angry, or should he have got up and left already or what?

“But do you?” he says, anyway.

“Do I what?”

“Do this with everyone. With other guys.”

Yamagata doesn’t get mad. He’s silent for a few moments, then says, “No.”

Asking so what’s so special about me is a recipe for a rude awakening. Why anyone would fish for compliments from Yamagata of all people…

“I dunno,” Yamagata says, shrugging – almost starts a landslide, Kai has to scrabble not to fall out of the bed, which he could’ve used as an excuse to leave but doesn’t – “Seemed a good idea, is all.”

It could be that. It could be nothing more than that. Yamagata does a lot of things because he thinks they were good ideas. They often backfire. Kai thinks it’d be nice if this one didn’t. If it seemed a good idea and turned out it actually was and that was all there was to it.

“I mean,” Yamagata says, oddly quiet for him, “I dunno what you think it was. I just figured… I dunno, you’re my friend and you’re less annoying than most people and… I was horny. Like I said. Seemed a good idea. But if you’re gonna start –”

Maybe Yamagata’s not been just enjoying the moment. Maybe he’s been overthinking stuff too.

Fair enough.

“I’m not,” Kai says, and hears himself smile, like he’s okay with where he is, like he’s happy. “It seemed like a good idea to me, too.”

On the first day of Christmas

versipellis — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:08:53 GMT

my true love gave to me
one unusual place

[Title] Tale of the City
[Fandom] Ashes to Ashes
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Shaz remembers home. The memories don't match up. (Slight spoilers for S3 of the show.)

People who weren’t from round here might think “London” when they heard her accent, sure, but when Shaz was growing up, trips into London were for treats, special shopping, matches maybe.

(Those memories are there, of course they’re there, just you look at them and something –)

Her family always joke about her “working in the big city” but it’s a joke that’s true. Living in London’s like swimming in it, you can feel the weight and size of it spilling out around you. She likes it, though. Likes the energy. Mostly.

(You look at them and something in them slides out of focus, like it’s getting covered by a reflection of your own face or –)

The clubs and the music scene, and the people you meet, all of that’s infinitely better than anything from home, where the only option is gin and orange in a pub that smells like old men and you get gossiped about if you hold hands with a boy in a cafe, never mind anything else, never mind dancing til three a.m., never mind going home with a girl.

(You remember that pub, and you remember your first kiss round the back of it with a boy in your class, but you remember he had Walkman headphones round his ears and there was a song playing in them that you remember hitting the charts last week, that can’t be right, that can’t be right –)

Work’s a whole other thing, of course. Mostly Shaz doesn’t want to talk about it with family. Mum would worry, Dad would say she was being a tool of state oppression, both of them wouldn’t say but would think maybe a girl should be doing something else, something safer, something lighter.

(When’s the last time you talked about it?)

(When’s the last time you talked to them?)

(Sometimes, at three a.m., after the dancing, or after staying at work all night, you feel like you’re remembering a dream you had, and the dream is that you called them, maybe even went back for Sunday lunch, and it wasn’t them, it was people with their faces, like you get in dreams. You feel you’re remembering a dream, but you don’t remember when you dreamed it, you just remember what day you went back, and if you looked in your handbag you’d find a crumpled-up train ticket for that day and then you’d know it was real.)

London’s more, more everything, more noise, more people, more crime and dirt and music and lights. Easy to forget about things in London. It all comes at you too fast.

(It was only a dream. So you forget about it.)

On the twelfth day of Christmas

versipellis — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 11:34:13 GMT

my true love sent to me

twelve great weights

[Title] Full of Potential
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 210
[Notes/Summary] For Yuichiro, happiness is a bag of new books.

The bag’s pretty heavy. Okay, really heavy. Okay, Yuichiro can see it starting to stretch in places. Okay, maybe he bought a little too much manga.

“Maybe? Try definitely,” Tadakatsu says, as they cross the road. “How’re you even going to read all of those?”

“Come on, when have you ever seen me do anything else but read manga?” Yuichiro says. “Unlike you, I don’t have my amazing baseball career to fall back on. Professional otaku’s the only route open to me.”

Tadakatsu shakes his head like, I can’t believe you just said that.

“Besides, you can borrow all the sports stories.”

Tadakatsu shrugs but he looks kind of pleased. He still doesn’t really get it, though, Yuichiro knows. To Tadakatsu, a super-heavy bag full of books is just a pain in the ass to lug home. Whereas Yuichiro can’t think of anything better. He figures some people would feel like this if they got to buy, like, a super triple chocolate ice cream sundae, or… a brand-name handbag, maybe? He kinds of draws a blank on what makes other people happy, sometimes. But it doesn’t matter. The fatness and shiny covers and page-smell of new books and all of them waiting to be read is heaven enough for him.

[Title] Uses For A Weighted Storage Cube
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 301
[Notes/Summary] What did Aperture Science design the cubes for, anyway? Rattmann’s not sure.

They didn’t design the cubes to be portable. Stackable, yes. But – he shifts his grip a little, rests his head on the Companion Cube’s surface for a moment, then takes a deep breath and keeps walking – they were called Weighted Storage Cubes for a reason.

Of course, it depends what you choose to store in them. The Companion Cube is empty. Well, probably. He never got his head round all the inner workings. There may have been some compressor technology. Some miniature portals. Possibly a soul or two. There’s a reason the product listing states that Aperture Science takes no responsibility for the preservation of goods stored within the Weighted Storage Cube and advises they not be used to store fragile items or materials sensitive to heat, light, damp, cold, radiation, motion, tachyon particles, or human tissue.

All right, so they didn’t design the cubes to be portable, and they didn’t design them as storage devices, and they definitely didn’t design them to be safe (in one office there’s an entire box of mouldering leaflets entitled So Your Pet’s Been Crushed By a Weighted Storage Cube… What Now?, part of a marketing campaign for some never-created robot dogs…)

Does it matter what I am or what I was designed for? the Cube says.

“No, of course it doesn’t. I was just thinking about the past, really.”

I’m sorry to be heavy.

“You’re not. I’ll rig up a sling or something, that’ll be better.”

He puts the Cube down against the wall, sits next to it, rests his arms on it.

Aperture Science can’t have designed them to be comforting, and yet the weight of this one, and the way it is far more solid than him, far more able to withstand the environment they’ve found themselves trapped in, is exactly that.

[Title] Marked Man
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G; mention of bullying
[Word Count] 391
[Notes/Summary] Even after the bullying stopped, Mikami couldn’t forget it.

They tell you that bullying isn’t really a big deal. Well, all right, they mostly don’t tell you anything, because they all pretend it isn’t happening, and if they ever acknowledge that it is, they tell you that you must be doing something to provoke it, that if you were only less you, it wouldn’t happen.

But even after it’s over (whether that’s because you are forced to flee or because something else intervened and wiped the people hurting you off the face of the earth), even after it’s over, you are not supposed to care. Not that Mikami ever talks about it to others, but he listens. When the classmates he tried to protect shrug and say, oh, those guys who died… they just roughed me up in the bathroom a few times, you know, the usual stuff. When he hears two shop workers talking and one says, he can be kind of rough with the other kids, but, you know, boys will be boys. When the girl who cried every day last year because no one talked to her flips her hair back and says, What are you talking about, Sa-chan is my best friend! It seems that you’re supposed to forget.

Mikami still has dreams, sometimes, about being in a bathroom stall and listening to them waiting for him outside, or walking into a classroom and seeing them smile, or trying to run on a summer’s day outside in the school grounds.

How can you forget? For one thing, they may be gone, but you’re still the same. You can’t forget the snuffly feeling of your nose bleeding, or the goose bumps on your skin because they’ve held you down and ripped your clothes off you, or the way your hands ache because they locked you in the supply cupboard and you’ve been thumping on the door for hours and no one’s come. It’s still your body, your skin, your hands. Maybe other people are better at detaching themselves from who they are.

But it’s not just that. It’s the way they smiled. The ideas they thought up, and their anticipation of how he’d react. They knew what they were doing. They tailored their games to make him cry. Once you’ve seen people like that, it’s nothing you can forget. It’s a weight you’ll carry with you forever.

[Title] Representing For the Analogue Era
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 285
[Notes/Summary] Beat and Cube don’t get why Combo sticks with his ghetto-blaster when there’s so much early-2000s technology to choose from.

“You never get tired of carrying that thing around, man?” Beat said to Combo as they were skating back towards the garage.

“What, the g-blaster? Hell, no. Reckon by this time if I went out without it, my balance’d be all off.”

“You might ask,” Cube said, “why he’s still relying on an eighties-era tape deck when there are these super-cool things called CD players - not to mention Walkmans –”

“Didn’t notice you complainin’ when Coin made you dual-track mixes on this, kid,” Combo says. “And you kiddin’? This baby’s got speakers to die for. Ain’t gonna rely on no handheld, I need that sweet sound.”

“I mean,” Beat said, dashing round to stand in front of them, skating backwards, “you can get some pretty decent headphones these days. I’m just saying.”

“Nope and nope,” Combo said. “Or, least not until the last second-hand cassette’s been sent to landfill and we’re all listenin’ through microchips in our brains or whatever. Til then, I’m representing for the analogue era. Plus, it’s seen me through a hell of a lot of close shaves. Be rude to ditch it for a younger model.”

“I guess,” Beat said. “Fair enough, I know most of the time when I started out I didn’t feel like a real rudie til I’d got my ‘phones on.”

“I felt like a rudie from the moment I was skating down the street praying I wouldn’t fall over,” Cube said. “You two are way too into your tech. On the other hand, Combo’s got a point about the mixes. And…” She shrugged, determinedly casual. “Coin’d be pissed if we got rid of the g-blaster before we find him again. Okay. Guess it can stay.”

[Title] Inner Workings
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 335
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda finds a broken-down bike.

Kaneda finds the bike on a patch of wasteground near the dorm. It’s blackened and burnt and the tyres are gone but it looks like its innards might have survived, maybe? And if they haven’t, no one’s gonna want it, and… really, if anyone wanted it, they shouldn’t have just left it here.

He lugs it back to the yard – nearly unknits his spine doing so and he stinks of sweat by the time he arrives, even by his standards – and then runs up to his room and grabs the screwdriver and wrench and stuff he’s been collecting (from older kids who’d moved on, from shop class at school, more junk left on the wasteground) and starts dissecting the bike. They had a couple of lessons at school where they taught you about engines and shit like that but not enough, even though that stuff’s way more important than history or, or gravity or whatever.

Tetsuo comes to find him after a bit – his hands are already covered in rust and oil – and Tetsuo’s always fine with listening so Kaneda starts explaining the bits he recognises under the casing and making up about the stuff he doesn’t. Tetsuo just listens for a bit but then he picks up some of the spare tools and comes to crouch on the oily ground and starts to prod away at the rest of the bike.

By the time it’s too dark to see, they’re both covered in oil and the bike is never going to be whole again, but Kaneda’s mind is buzzing with thoughts.

“I need to get hold of one that’s not wrecked,” he says. “Then I can take it apart and put it back together for real. Then if I can learn to ride…”

“You’re not gonna buy one,” Tetsuo says. “I mean, you’ve got no money.”

“I mean,” Kaneda mimics, “who said anything about buying? C’mon. When I’ve learnt, I’ll teach you.”

Tetsuo looks thoughtful, but eventually he grins and nods. “Okay. Sounds cool.”

[Title] Remedy for Eldritch Forces
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 468
[Notes/Summary] Tab’s kind of freaked out by the events of the night. Luckily, there is pizza.

Tab kind of thought he was fine. Like, okay, they’d nearly died even more than they regularly nearly die, and they’d seen a dude plunge off a building, and there’d been a possibly actual real demon up there, but, you know, they’d kept their heads and believed in each other and now the storm and the weird light and everything have all gone, it’s just a regular early morning, sun just starting to rise, the guy at the twenty-four-hour pizza joint frowning as he and Yo-Yo scoot in. “Early for you lot, isn’t it?” and Tab says, “We’ve had a hell of a night,” and as he says it, his mouth twitches and he has to work really hard not to burst out in laughter even though it’s seriously not that funny.

Beat gave them all the food fund and a big chunk of the paint fund and said, Go wild, I reckon we’ve earned it and so Tab’s like Ten large pizzas please and then Yo-Yo’s like with extra pepperoni on all of ‘em and Tab’s like Yeah, and make one Hawaiian, no, hang on, make two Hawaiian and Yo-Yo’s like and garlic bread, can we have, like, all the garlic bread and the radio – not Jet Set Radio, some mainstream station – is playing a Top 40 hit and the counter guy is shouting out the order to the kitchen and giving them the side-eye like How are you gonna pay for this? and it seems unreal that a few hours ago they were inches from being burnt alive or falling forty storeys. Like, okay, they’re often inches from nasty things happening or from falling off stuff, but this was…

“This was a trip, man,” Yo-Yo says when the two of them are staggering back, laden down with pizza boxes, basically just letting themselves roll down Center Street and hoping anyone ahead of them will move. “Like I keep thinking I can feel the ground spinning. I’m all for sick tunes but that was taking it too far, right?”

Tab’s really glad he said that. “Tell me about it,” he agrees from behind the boxes. “That whole thing – that was a thing that shouldn’t have happened. That shouldn’t have been a thing.”

“Oh, well,” Yo-Yo says. “Next time my mom starts getting on my case about me going back to school and getting a real job, I am going to have the best argument about the unhealthy influence of the corporate environment. I mean, preach it.”

Tab laughs, and breathes in the smell of melted cheese. The boxes are heavy and warm and slightly greasy in his arms, and the sun’s almost up. He feels like he’s slowly settling back into his own skin. He’s glad he volunteered to get the pizza in. He needed some grounding.

[Title] Portability
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 109
[Notes/Summary] The Portal gun is surprisingly… portable.

The gun was surprisingly light for something that could shoot holes in reality. She kept hefting it to check, like she was expecting it to suddenly wrench her arms down, like she was deluding herself that it could possibly exist or do the things it did and yet be so… portable. But it never did. It stayed in her arms, almost comfortable, and after a bit, it started to feel like she’d always been carrying it, always been walking down corridors looking for places to open the blue and orange circles on the walls. Perhaps she had. It wasn’t like she could remember anything before this time, after all.

[Title] Take A Last Breath
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG-13
[Word Count] 1606
[Notes/Summary] Aizawa/Ide. Ide and Aizawa take a walk in the small hours of January 28th.

Don’t be stupid, you didn’t do anything

[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh / Battle Royale
[Rating] PG-13 for death
[Notes/Summary] The game comes to an end.

Badass (1529 words)

What's Necessary (602 words)

Happy Ending (850 words)

Something to Live For (1255 words)

On the eleventh day of Christmas

versipellis — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 20:38:18 GMT

my true love sent to me

eleven shows of power

[Title] Frozen Heartlands
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG-13
[Word Count] 1419
[Notes/Summary] Shou/Shinji, AU where Class B didn't do the Program. At a high school graduation party, Shinji finds himself having an unexpected conversation.

I’m doing the rounds, saying goodbye to old faces

[Title] From Small Acorns
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] R for violence
[Word Count] 1196
[Notes/Summary] AU. Kaori’s woken up with a headache, and strange things are happening around her.

At first it’s just the headache.

Only it wasn’t just. Kaori’s had headaches before when she was sick or thirsty but they were annoying. Uncomfortable. This is –

It feels like her whole skull is screaming, like the blood vessels behind her eyes are going to pop, like –

She tries to keep quiet. She’d try to keep quiet anyway, because she’s not meant to be in Tetsuo’s dorm (even though everyone she knows sneaks in their boyfriend or girlfriend on a regular basis, and even though Tetsuo always said he didn’t give a shit if he got caught with her in his room –)

But right now, when she’s meant to be in hospital –

(It wasn’t a hospital, or if it was, it wasn’t one she’d ever known about, and Tetsuo, face red, glancing around warily, said this place is like a prison or a secret base or something, there’s no way we’re letting you stay here, they’ll probably do experiments on you –)

Right now, lying in his bed with the covers over her head and trying not to scream into the pillow, right now when (soldiers? Tetsuo said it was soldiers who took her away, after she fainted, after that little kid started screaming and all the shop windows burst –)

We’ll run away, he said, I dunno where but I’m not letting them catch you –

He’s gone to get some food and some painkillers and she is trying to keep quiet til he comes back but it hurts until everything else, getting caught by soldiers and you shouldn’t be here and you’ll wake people up and Tetsuo’ll get in trouble stop meaning anything and all she can do is, all she can do is fight not to slam her head against the wall to, to somehow burst whatever it is that’s building up inside it –

That freaks Tetsuo out, when he gets back and sees how bad it is. He sits her up and makes her take some of the painkillers but she kind of knows it won’t help, it’s too big for that. He sits and cuddles her and that should help but it doesn’t much. He doesn’t even start getting mad with her for being pathetic, he just keeps saying, “Kaori, please, please be okay,” like he’s really worried about her.

They’ve been doing that for what feels like hours when the footsteps come. Several of them. Loud and heavy. Kaori already knows who it is. She feels Tetsuo clutch onto her more tightly but she pushes him away, stands up. (Standing doesn’t make a difference; her head hurts whatever the rest of her is doing.)

He yells at her that he’s not going to let them take her, he’s pushing her back behind him and turning to face the door, fists clenched, and she thinks, she knows that they’re going to kill him. He’s going to stand up to them (because how can he back down while she’s watching? How can he back down when everyone already says that he’s a wuss?) and they’re going to kill him –

She doesn’t –

She is thinking that she can’t let that happen and she’s cold all over with horror at how it’s going to, even through the pain, and she’s saying, No and trying to pull him back and he shakes her off and she –

Not she, because she’s too small to do something like that, but something –

Something grabs him up and sends him flying backwards, as if a giant cat hit him with its paw.

Kaori doesn’t have time to think about it before the door bursts open and the soldiers – real soldiers, with real guns levelled at her like she is – like she’s someone else entirely –

They’re saying something but she’s not listening because she’s realising something. Yelling no and, and meaning it, that made the pain a bit less. It’s still there but it’s like – as though when you’re underwater and your lungs are burning to breathe and you know as soon as you break the surface and gasp the pain will stop –

Like her body already knows what this is.

Tetsuo is struggling to get up, shouting something, and someone’s aiming and –

This time the No is much louder. She hears it and she feels it and she’s at the centre and as she watches, the soldiers just

they just

They just turn to blood and, and pulp as if she, as if she stamped on them.

She only sees it for a moment because then the lights in the bedroom and the corridor all fizz out. She can’t see it any more but she can hear the dripping. And smell –

But inside her head it’s all calm and clear and the pain has gone and she’s so grateful it overwhelms anything else, even as she can feel herself starting to shake, she can feel screams sticking in her throat, they just burst, but it stopped, the pain stopped and – and –

Tetsuo –

He’s next to her, arms round her, gasping for breath, whispering, “Holy shit. Holy shit –” but he’s alive and he’s warm and safe and she clutches at him, “I didn’t, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t –”

At the other end of the corridor, the fire alarm’s going off.

“But...” Tetsuo is whispering in her ear, “but, it was… it was… you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry –”

“No, ssh, don’t be sorry, it’s okay. They were gunning for us, right? They got what was coming to them and holy shit, Kaori, that was – that –” He kind of sounds like he’s going to cry but then he takes a deep breath: “Okay, we… we need to get out of here. I’ve got supplies and stuff. We need to get on the bike and go...”

He’s letting go of her, she hears him shrugging the rucksack on, but then he takes her hand: “C’mon, just… I mean it’s just blood, it’s… no big deal –”

Tugging her forward.

She’s not going to walk through it. She’s not. She’s –

And suddenly they’re falling.

They’re flying past lit-up windows, the air rushing over their faces, and Tetsuo is screaming, Fuck, what the fuck and Kaori is screaming too but she, she knows already that this is something else to do with her. She clings onto him and prays that whatever’s doing this won’t smash him to pieces when they land and if she screams, this can’t be happening, this can’t be real, she thinks Tetsuo doesn’t hear her.

They land in the car park like they’ve been pushed out of a moving truck and she’s still in Tetsuo’s baggy T-shirt and her underwear and not much else and she can still just hear the fire alarm wailing above them but it doesn’t matter any more. He grabs her hand and they run towards his bike. He looks back at her and she sees him smile. A scared smile, but – but excited. It makes sense. She’s always the timid one, and – and after all, it’s all happened now. He yells back at her, “You are so cool,” and she tries not to think that this isn’t her, not really.

[Title] Performing Arts
[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh / Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 608
[Notes/Summary] Continuation of my earlier fics for this crossover. Sakaki doesn't want to play, but she will if she has to.

I'll do it! Don't think I won't!

[Title] Dance Dance Revolution
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 307
[Notes/Summary] Gum, Beat and Tab consider whether they need a dance routine as part of their gang identity.

“Maybe we should have a dance routine,” Tab said as he sprayed paint onto the Dolce and Gabbana billboard above Shibuya bus station.

Gum, who was a little way away watching for police intervention, turned to glare at him. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

Beat picked up a can of green paint and started to add shading to the letters Tab was marking out. “I don’t know, should we? You two are the Tokyo-to natives here.”

“You’ve seen our rivals,” Tab said. “Synchronised movement isn’t just about digging the ill beats.” He ducked down to add a splash of blue to the bottom of the tag. “It’s a show of power. Stand on a tall building and bust some moves… makes you look like a well-oiled machine ready to smash all who dare challenge you.”

“Bullshit,” Gum said. “It makes you look like rejects from the Thriller vid, or a badly-programmed VR simulation, or really pissed-off backing dancers. I don’t judge my competitors on whether they can dance in step, I judge them on how many of my tags they can cover up.”

“You’re just saying that because you can’t bust a move like I can,” Tab said, doing a spin around and throwing a paint can from hand to hand.

“I’m saying that we don’t have a uniform and we don’t have a kooky gimmick and so we don’t need a dance routine,” Gum said. “Unless our esteemed leader wants to make one up, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Beat said. “If it comes to it, if we need to dance, I reckon we can all do our own thing. You guys are pretty decent, and then I’ll dad-dance awkwardly in the centre. I think that’s on-brand, you know?”

Gum sniffs. “Fine. Guess that’s okay. But if I see Tab macarena-ing it up, I’m leaving.”

[Title] Power of Silence
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 193
[Notes/Summary] Chell has very little power here except in what she chooses not to say.

She doesn’t have much power. She’s stuck deep below the surface (every sound echoes here and the weight of the ground above her presses down on her forehead) and she knows nothing, less than nothing, not even her own name, much less how she got here or how to get out. And everything here is metal and hard corners and when it dies, it dies bloodlessly, while she’s soft and breakable and she’s already got several cuts from the bullets grazing her, blotchy brown-red blood sticking the sleeve of the clothing which isn’t hers to her arm. And nothing here gets tired, or needs food. And it only listens to programs that she can’t write, input through routes she can’t access no matter how many portals she opens.

Sometimes your only power is not to speak. Not to scream, but not to speak, not to say a word. She can think all of the words she wants to, but they stay hers, inside her (so easily-broken) skull. They’re making her run and jump and hide and think to their orders. Her voice is the only thing she can keep from them. For now.

[Title] Power Trip
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] R for violence
[Word Count] 682 in total
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda knows what an acceptable show of power is. Tetsuo’s learnt it.

Kaneda’s younger than some of the other guys on the road but he’s a quick learner, and what he knows is you’ve got to hit ‘em hard and make ‘em see you’re going to do it again if they don’t back the fuck off. It’s no different from school or the kids’ home. He’s always been like, if someone starts on you, you pretend you’re not scared and hit ‘em as hard as you can. Maybe they’ll cream you, but at least they know you won’t be a pushover, and maybe they’ll be so freaked out you actually did something you’ll get a chance to get the jump on them. Point is, you make a show. Point is, you don’t let ‘em see you’re scared. Tetsuo always fucked up the last one. Kaneda told him and told him and it never made a difference.

Now –

Point is, you do what’s necessary. You hit ‘em hard so hopefully they’ll stop hitting you and then you can both go get on with your lives. You don’t hit ‘em and keep doing it until they die. Waste of time and effort. People die, other people – their friends, the cops, other players in the game who think you went too far – get pissed off.

Kaneda always thought he’d never have to spell this out to Tetsuo because Tetsuo would be too scared to get more’n a couple of punches in.

Now every time he closes his eyes he sees Tetsuo tearing into that Clown, throwing him against the wall, kicking him and kicking him like he wants to burst his head open, a desperate, crazy frenzy, like Tetsuo doesn’t even know how to stop, let alone want to.

That’s not what it’s about.

Other people can be idiots like that, but he thought he knew Tetsuo better.

***

The point is, Kaneda’s told him over and over, the point is to put on a show.

Well, Tetsuo ought to demonstrate that he’s been listening, right?

He was kind of thinking, as soon as Yamagata and Kai walked in, he was kind of thinking he should make a point here. Yamagata’s always been unofficial second-in-command and acted like he didn’t know why Tetsuo was still hanging around, and Kai’s always thought he’s hot shit despite being half the size of everyone else. And both of them spend their lives kissing up to Kaneda. So if you’re looking for a show, these two are prime candidates, right?

Kaneda said, hit ‘em hard, but he never really believed Tetsuo could do it.

Well, time to give him a wake-up call.

He’s strong enough now he barely has to think for more’n a millisecond and Yamagata’s head jolts back and there’s blood everywhere.

Hard enough for you, Kaneda?

Certainly hard enough for Kai, who’s gone sick-white and is pressed back against the wall, staring at the rapidly widening pool of blood about to soak into his penny loafers. He stares at it and then he stares at Tetsuo and he’s got it, you can see.

Tetsuo nearly does the same to him, pastes him against the wall (hit ‘em so hard they don’t even look like they were ever a person, Kaneda, how about that?) but his thoughts catch up just in time. When it’s on the streets, when it’s a bike battle, then everyone’s in the thick of it and they see how it plays out. This – Kaneda’s got no reason to show up here. Kaneda may not even make it out of the secret lab. No, if Tetsuo wants to make it worth it, he needs a messenger.

“Go find Kaneda,” he whispers.

Kai stares at him for a few moments, and then back at the blood, and then he’s stumbling backwards, away from it all, and Tetsuo hears him scrambling up the steps, tripping a couple of times before he makes it to the surface. Guy’s practically pissing himself.

Kaneda always said don’t go overboard, do what’s necessary. Tetsuo grins at what’s left of Yamagata. He’ll be pleased to know his best buddy was listening all along.

[Title] Finale
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 554
[Notes/Summary] The GGs arrive at the Rokkaku Building for the final showdown.

There are a ton of stairs, they’re all leaping and dashing and grinding to get up them as fast as they can, and there are no windows so they can’t see the freaky yellow-green light, there are just stairs and white-painted walls and it starts to feel like a dream – or, not even a real dream, more like the kind of dream people have in movies. Stairs and stairs and stairs and then suddenly – no more, just a landing and a fire exit and Beat went on autopilot about twenty floors back and so he just dashes forward and hits it, slamming the bar down, and it flies open, and with a rush of chilly air he’s out there. On the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo-to. With the wind so strong he feels it gently sweeping him sideways. The sky boiling with clouds that look like ink going down a plughole, and the air tasting like blood and electricity.

Like, it couldn’t be more of an eldritch summon-dark-forces portal-to-hell setting, is his point.

All the way up, Jet Set Radio was dead, nothing but static in his ears, but now, rushing over him, there’s freaky music from the DJ booth (seriously? Seriously) in the centre of the – hang on, the floor ahead of him is black and shiny and it’s – it’s spinning –

“You have got,” Gum says from behind him, “to be kidding me.”

“Come on,” Tab says, “this entire thing has maxed out the weirdness scale, what did you expect?”

“Less of the my-grandad-providing-the-music-for-my-cousin’s-wedding vibe, is what.”

“This reminds you of a family party?” Garam says as he and the other GGS stumble through the door. “The hell kind of family you come from?”

“Just saying, he’s the CEO of a major corporation, this is dumb as –”

She’s cut off by a roar so loud it drowns out the music, and then, impossibly huge, the enormous Golden Rhino statue Beat saw when they came in, the one on the front of the building, just – it just flies up into view so it’s eye-level with them. Like it’s a blimp or something.

It stares at them and it rears backwards and –

Someone yells, “Run –” and Beat is already running, you don’t stay a rudie unless your instincts are spot-on, and he’s on the giant spinning record and it’s whirling him round but he sees the torrent of flame spilling from the rhino’s mouth as he goes, he feels it, and the air dries out in his lungs.

On the far side of the record he skids to a halt, lets it carry him while he scopes out the scene. Giant record. DJ booth with crazy man inside. Backing dancers (for god’s sake) in transparent glass tubes. Enormous rhino demon. But all of his friends, still standing, still not on fire, with identical what the fuck faces on but looking as determined to win this as they have every time they faced down Onishima’s latest excessive attempt at policing.

They’re the city’s last hope and they may well be the best-qualified, right? He can’t imagine too many other Tokyo-to citizens have spent the last week dodging people with flamethrowers.

“Okay,” he yells over the music as the wails and crackles and ominous chanting of it peaks. “Let’s do this!”

[Title] Put On A Show
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 223
[Notes/Summary] Mello knows how to win.

It’s all about a show of power, Mello knows. Like, go as apeshit as you want, but only go as apeshit as you need to. Keep something in reserve. So if they escalate, so can you. Also, never have a limit. You don’t want them to feel they can corner you. Like, obviously don’t actually set yourself on fire to prove a point, but… have it in mind as the back-up to the back-up. If you can even consider it, you’re doing better than most people.

No, Matt would say, you’re mental.

Yeah, well, Matt thinks life’s like a video game, that everyone’ll go down if you get enough hits in. Actually maybe that’s not fair. Or maybe it’s true, but the point is that you have to keep getting the hits in, plus make them realise that’s what you’re going to do. So dress the part (or dress a part, show them you wear what you want and maybe make them want you, just a little – another way of getting a hit in) and don’t hesitate and when you don’t know what to do, do something. Do something no one would predict. Do something that they all – especially Roger and Near, especially L – would hesitate over, or wouldn’t see coming. To get the power, act like you’ve got it from the start.

[Title] Power Chords
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 360
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya doesn’t even mind the bad gigs.

There are a lot of bad gigs. Shuuya figures that’s par for the course.

A lot of gigs where it’s you and your bandmates in a smelly New York basement and like two other people, and one of those is the resident alcoholic guy snoring in the corner. Or a good few where there are people there, but they’re all too drunk to do anything but sing other songs loudly, or start fights, or chuck bottles at you. Some where the people there are fans of some other local talent, and so start booing you when you strike the first chord, or heckle throughout your set. And the ones where the people are okay but a guitar string busts halfway through the second song, or you forget the words to that one you only practised twice, or your fingers slip on your big solo.

Doesn’t matter, any of it. Shuuya’s bandmates tell him he’s way too chirpy after every terrible gig but he isn’t even trying to be. He doesn’t say, Come on, guys, every gig’s a good gig for me because no one’s gonna break the door down and haul me off to re-education camp for rocking out, because that’d be bringing the mood down, plus he doesn’t like reminding them about the totalitarian aspect of his past. It’s true, though. A lot of things have been rough, and a lot of people have died, but he can still play guitar and he still has people to do it with. That counts for a lot.

And every so often, you hit all the right notes. Can be just a small audience, even, but they love you, and they love their lives, and some of them maybe even know some of your songs and sing along, and even the ones who don’t jump up and down and dance and everything fits together right, no matter how bad the drain or the spilt beer smell or how many hours you had to work yesterday. The power to do that, Shuuya doesn’t think he’ll ever stop finding it mind-blowing. He can put up with a lot of bad shows in the meantime.

[Title] Celebrate the New World.
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] R for sex
[Word Count] 2963
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Ide/Matsuda. Three people drink a toast to Kira's new world.

You were so convinced you were doing the right thing

On the tenth day of Christmas

versipellis — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 19:27:07 GMT

my true love gave to me

ten soaring hopes

[Title] With My Body I Thee Worship
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] R for sex
[Word Count] 845
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Mikami. Mikami's God shows his appreciation.

You deserve my gratitude for making this new world a reality

[Title] Everything to Gain
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 527
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya doesn’t get why other people feel the need to fake it.

They’re walking home after basketball practice. Just Shuuya and Mimura – Yutaka busted his ankle and stayed behind to wait for a lift from his mum, and Yoshitoki’s on extra cleaning duty. Sun’s out and the birds are singing and Shuuya’s hardly a basketball prodigy but it was a good game and at moments like this it’s easy to forget that bad things exist at all.

Except that before practice Tadakatsu was sounding off about how his mum was saying he should really think about doing kendo or something, a traditional sport, something to make him look patriotic. And Shuuya had said, Don’t do it if you don’t want to, man, you already do baseball and b-ball, you’ll burn out, and Tadakatsu had looked at him like he was an idiot and said, Yeah, well, I didn’t expect you to understand.

“You got that introspective look on your face,” Mimura says. “Like you’re trying to remember the lyrics to every Dylan song, backwards.”

“Introspective’s a big word for you,” Shuuya says, which is a half-hearted comeback but Mimura’s not friends with him for his witty repartee, right? “I don’t know, I was just thinking about what Tadakatsu was saying earlier.”

“You worried about your patriotic image? Because, let me tell you, getting kicked off the baseball team and taking up rock music is not going to help –”

“Ha ha. No, just… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like an alien who crash-landed here. I don’t get why you’d care so much about what other people think that you’re like hey, son, do this completely pointless sporting activity just to boost your image.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Mimura says. “You’ve never seen people talking shit to impress a girl they like? Or pretending their watch is brand-name to make it look like they’re rolling in it? I mean, if you’re really struggling, come round to my house sometime, see my parents working overtime to save face –”

“You should talk, you don’t put on an act either. You just are that disgustingly awesome.”

“You know it,” Mimura says automatically, and then, “Thing is, Shu, I reckon you don’t get it ‘cause you never had it. You’ve always been weird and just said what you think. You figure you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. S’why you’re so optimistic and full of hope about the world all the time. You’re the walking embodiment of things can only get better.”

Shuuya would like to deny it in order to prove a point but he thinks that maybe it’s kind of true. Even before Mum died, he was still kind of loud and people laughed at him because his dad was dead and he just said what he thought.

He shrugs. “What are you, then? An optimist under all the cynicism?”

“Nope, I’m so awesome I don’t need to fake it. Everything about me’s the way I want it to be.”

Shuuya rolls his eyes, even though he’s not going to disagree. “Guess hanging out with you can only help me. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it.” And Mimura grins and says, “You know it,” and they keep walking.

[Title] Borrowing Trouble
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G. Brief mention of bullying
[Word Count] 513
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda’s always been afraid.

When Matsuda thinks about it, he’s always been kind of afraid.

Not like anxiety-afraid, not like can’t go outside or anything like that. Maybe afraid’s not even the right word. Try uneasy. Or nervous.

Just… he was mostly lucky in school. He was never super-popular, never popular at all, but he wasn’t one of those kids who get bullied every time they set foot in a classroom. He got hassled a few times, of course. Everyone does, unless they’re really lucky, and he’s kind of an idiot, so of course he was going to screw up and attract the interest of someone who didn’t like him so much. It was fine. He learnt to goof around and get the jokes about himself in before other people said them, and then laugh and not mind when they did, and not annoy people who shouldn’t be annoyed.

(His dad said people who won’t stand up for themselves are cowards, but he also said people who make trouble for themselves and argue about the status quo are stupid, so it cancels itself out, really.)

So really it’s not that he’s afraid someone might hurt him. More that… more that there are bad people out there, and terrible things, and he wants – he really wants to be someone who’s stopping that. He wants to be in a world where it’s all been stopped. He’s relied on luck so far, luck and being a police officer and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those things won’t save you if you attract the attention of someone who wants to hurt you. You’re not supposed to admit that, you’re supposed to believe you’d be able to fight back, but Matsuda’s not that much of an idiot.

What he’s – what he’s nervous about, if he’s honest, is that sooner or later, something will come along that will test him, and he’ll be found lacking. That’s partly why he stays on the Kira case. The other reason is that the Chief does, and the Chief is someone who would never be found lacking, would always do the right thing, is never afraid, and never, never weak.

Sometimes, without meaning to, he thinks that Kira must be like that, too. He knows that’s wrong, that Kira’s doing the wrong thing by definition, but under that knowledge there’s something else. A lot of Kira’s victims are the kind of people who’d present someone like Matsuda with impossible choices. A lot of people, these days, are going along with a new status quo, one where people like Matsuda don’t have to keep deciding whether to not make trouble or to stand up for what’s right. Matsuda’s staying on the case, of course he is. But sometimes when he thinks about things staying like this and Kira just… making it clear what’s right, sometimes when he thinks about this, he feels… hopeful, like everything’s going to be okay. Not that he isn’t still nervous. Sooner or later there’s going to be a test. He thinks he knows what it might be.

[Title] Tested to Destruction
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 298
[Notes/Summary] Rattmann watches Chell as she works her way through the testing.

He watches her from behind the walls.

Of course she’s not the first he’s seen. He’s watched dozens by now, and knows there are dozens more who ran the mazes while he was asleep or in no state to watch anything. They make it through the first few chambers and then, as they get hungry and thirsty, as they get tired, as they get scared, they realise they’re going to die and he sees them realise it, the numb hopelessness in their eyes. Some of them give up right then, they curl up in the corner until they pass out. Some of them run at the High Energy Pellet or hurl themselves into the water. Some of them just fire portals blindly at the wall like one of them will open up to reveal an escape route.

She’s different.

She falls over and over again. She loses her footing, she nearly slips off platforms into the murky depths below. She misses shots. She gets winged by bullets. She rubs a hand across her forehead – once or twice across her eyes – swallows, licks dry lips, prods her teeth with her tongue and frowns at the noticeable taste of blood. Steps into rooms and spends a good while looking, and watching, and frowning. Works out potential solutions and narrows her eyes as she sees how precise the timing’s going to have to be. Stands on the edge of fifty-foot drops, opens a portal at the bottom. And dives.

The determination never leaves her eyes.

He tells himself he’s waiting for her to fail, that hope is dangerous, that it doesn’t matter how tenacious she is because these chambers were designed to test everything to destruction. But it doesn’t matter. Hope is dangerous but she’s given it back to him anyway.

[Title] Don’t Doubt Yourself
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 217
[Notes/Summary] Beat thinks about his arrival in Tokyo-to.

Two days after the whole saving-the-world thing, Beat finds himself back at Benten-cho subway station. Sun’s out, and light streams down the slope to the ticket barriers. He doesn’t go in, just rocks back on his heels and leans against the wall. It’s early afternoon, so not many people about; a few students and tourists is all. It’s still and quiet and he can kind of see himself, the guy he’d been weeks ago, rocking up in Tokyo-to like Hey, I’m gonna make my fortune here – except of course he hadn’t been, he’d been like, Shit, what am I doing, this is the big city, what if I get murdered? And wall-eyed from lack of sleep and kind of smelling of travel and train. He’d basically been figuring if he didn’t get murdered, and found a roof to sleep under, that’d be as good as he could hope for. Hadn’t been counting on friends. Definitely hadn’t been counting on saving the world. He grins at dorky past-him, who’d shown up in the small hours when it was still dark, and thinks, Hey, man – you got this. He’s full of dumb-ass hope for the future, even though there’s no guarantee he won’t be blown away by a police-manned tank tomorrow. He hopes past-him can catch some of it.

[Title] Start of Beautiful
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 353
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo/Kaori. It wasn’t very romantic when he asked her out.

It’s not really that romantic, when Tetsuo asks Kaori to go out with him. They’re sitting up on the roof like always, and he’s been quiet and kind of snappy and she’s wondering if something bad happened and then suddenly he just takes a deep breath, turns to her, and blurts out, “So I was thinking maybe you should be my girlfriend. Like. If. If you want to be.”

Kaori stares at him and she feels her face go bright red. Tetsuo stares back at her and he’s blushing as well, and scowling, and starting to say, “I mean, if you don’t then it’s fine, I just thought –” and she realises she hasn’t actually said yes. Her face is so hot and she’s smiling so much it’s hard to get the words out so she sort of stammers, “No, I mean – I mean, yes. Yes, I do want to,” too loudly, like she’s someone trying to show off in class.

Tetsuo stares at her bug-eyed like he honestly didn’t expect her to agree.

“Like, for real?” he says, and frowns now, looking at her like she might be trying to mess with him. He does that sometimes, even to her or to Kaneda, assumes that it might all be a trick. She doesn’t mind, she knows it’s not safe to assume anything with most people. So she gives him a smile – she means it to be reassuring, but it’s sort of giggly and shaky – and she nods again. “For real. I… I’d really… I’d really like to be your girlfriend,” and feels herself blushing even more, she’s not sure she knows how to be anyone’s girlfriend and Tetsuo is her best friend, what if she messes everything up? But he smiles back at her now, looking kind of stunned but happy, and says, “That’s… that’s awesome. That’s really, really great,” and then, nervously, reaches out and puts his hand over hers. She turns it palm up and squeezes his. She probably will mess everything up, but right now it doesn’t matter, right now she can believe that everything’s going to be perfect.

[Title] Role Model
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG, brief mentions of sex, infidelity and death
[Word Count] 402
[Notes/Summary] Shinji’s got reasons for enjoying his uncle’s company.

You ever asked, Shinji would tell you he hangs out with Uncle because the old guy’s pretty cool and gives him free soft drinks. Or because it gets him away from his parents. Or because no one else can challenge him at b-ball. Something like that.

The real reason’s sappy as hell and so it stays unspoken. But the thing is, being at home is kind of a drag. Yeah, yeah, food and clothes, think of the starving children in the decadent capitalist west, etcetera, but there’s his dad, coming back from a love hotel at three in the morning, and there’s his mum, telling a friend how much she cares about them and then calling someone else to talk shit about that best pal’s clothing choices. You kind of think Geez, is this all there is? A reasonable job and a reasonable house and a roll in the hay with a secretary while everyone gossips about each other and occasionally makes snide remarks about lack of patriotism just for the power play. Not to mention the way they close their eyes to every wrongful arrest or show trial or Program broadcast and just stick with things like that don’t happen to people like us. Either it makes you want to throw something through a window, or to crawl into bed and never wake up.

Uncle’s different. Uncle never talks shit about anyone, he just says what he notices, if it’s relevant, and sees both sides, when he can, and really doesn’t give a damn about how many rallies you go to or what brand names you’re wearing. He sees a bunch of ninth-graders having to massacre each other every year and he says what any normal person would think, which is, that’s horrific. If he’s got a girlfriend, or if he’s got several girlfriends, it stays on the down-low and, as far as Shinji can tell, no one gets hurt.

You watch him, you feel there’s hope for the future. You can think, hey, he’s a blood relative, maybe I can grow up to be a little more like this and a little less like the corporate stuffed shirt across the dinner table. You can think, there are options.

The real reason’s sappy as hell, but that’s not why he never tells it. More like he never put it into words until after Uncle died and he realised what he’d lost.

[Title] Lighthouse
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 232
[Notes/Summary] Yuka’s estimation of Yukie has just gone up several notches.

Yuka had always figured Yukie was a pretty cool friend, but this just takes the cake. Girl not only keeps her head when she wakes up in the Program, not only refuses to play, but comes to find all her friends and rounds them all up and takes them to a hideout? That is cool. The bedroom is small and dusty and smells of damp, but it smells of sea air too, and the walls curve round. There are two bunk beds, she and Satomi curled up on one of them (Satomi not asleep but pretending to be) and Haruka and Chisato on the other (Chisato snuffling slightly; Haruka had been crying earlier but now she’s gone quiet). Yukie outside, at the top of the lighthouse, keeping watch. Yuka thinks that it’s funny – in the Program, you’re not meant to trust anyone, and they all let Yukie take one of the guns and watch over them like it was no big deal. But it wasn’t a big deal. In here, in the darkness full of their breathing and the waves crashing outside, it doesn’t matter what’s happening to other people. They’re here and they’re safe and Yukie’s protecting them. In here, right now, Yuka can even believe her amazing pal might find a way out of this. After all, you’ve got to have hope, and people like Yukie make it way easier.

[Title] Frostbite
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 372
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya and Noriko, newly arrived in America, try and hitch a lift.

They’re standing by the side of a motorway. It’s freezing. It’s so cold Shuuya’s eyeballs might be solidifying, and he stopped feeling his fingers a while back. There’s piles of grimy snow around them, and hard, frozen mud under their numb feet.

Shuuya takes a deep breath and tries to pretend it’s made him feel better. It doesn’t, much. He’s hungry, and the petrol smell of the roadside is bringing back memories of the seasickness on the trawler. More than that, it’s bringing back memories of being on the fishing boat. When they left the island. Kawada’s shirt and hand glistening with blood –

Noriko, next to him, squeezes his arm.

“Sorry. I’m on it.” He needs to stick his thumb out again. Someone’s got to stop. If they don’t, it’s sleep-in-the-woods-and-hope-they-don’t-die-of-hypothermia time. How cold does it have to be before that gets to be a serious problem? Would they be better off carrying on walking down the road, trying to get to a town and sleep in a doorway? But America’s freakin’ huge, they could be walking for hours and still get nowhere. Someone could stop. Unless they’re a crazy murderer or something, in which case maybe walking would be better. He still feels sick and he feels so tired, even though he’s spent most of his time in hiding asleep. Come on, he tells himself, get it together, do right by her, but he can’t make the words mean anything –

“It’s all right.”

Noriko slides her hand into his, their gloved fingers entwined in his pocket, and sticks her other hand out, thumb up. Shuuya wants to tell her not to, he doesn’t want whoever picked them up to have done it because they saw a pretty girl, he doesn’t want any attention being drawn to Noriko. He tries to speak but the words don’t line up. She squeezes his hand. “Shuuya, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He wants to ask her how she can have any hope, after all that’s happened, when it’s so dark and so cold, but she looks back at him and manages a smile. “It’s okay,” she says again. “We’re here and it’s okay.” And turns back to stare out at the road again.

[Title] See a Better Future
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 209
[Notes/Summary] Kei was always cynical, but sometimes even she can feel hopeful.

Kei would probably have described herself as a cynic. Difficult not to be, when you’ve been part of an anti-government anti-establishment resistance group since you were old enough to understand the concept. Difficult not to be, as well, when you spent all your time reading up on the secrets and lies and corruptions of the people who are meant to serve the public good. Not to mention how you saw the city levelled and the resulting reversion to savagery that ensued.

They’ll rebuild Neo-Tokyo, just like they always do. They’ll elect new leaders, who’ll generate new funds and commit them to new useless flagship projects or new illegal and unethical human experiments. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the underclass will revolt and everything she and Kaneda have seen and done will be forgotten. Of course.

Yet, sometimes, when she’s clutching Kaneda round the waist, the bike going so fast it brings tears to her eyes, sometimes she blinks and thinks she sees the towers and skyscrapers of a new city in the distance. The sun’s always out, and the roar of the engine seems to fall away, and in the stillness she can believe that maybe, this time, perhaps they can create something better.

On the ninth day of Christmas

versipellis — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 17:58:49 GMT

my true love sent to me

nine burning candles

[Title] Milestone Birthday
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 343
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda’s not sure he’s happy about turning thirty.

Matsuda was trying not to think about being thirty. It sounds way too big an age to have reached. A solid number of years that should belong to a solid kind of person, who’s got their life figured out and always knows what they’re doing and is probably married.

Okay, he’s working on the special secret task force to catch the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, but (as his dad said grumpily when he called to wish him happy birthday) the secret part means none of it’s going to count towards his reputation or be a factor in getting him promoted, in fact it might even be the opposite, and he should think about where he’s looking to go in life…

And working on the task force, which is chronically understaffed, means working all the hours he can and pretty much never seeing anyone but his co-workers, so marriage is looking pretty unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Birthdays were much easier when you were a kid and you just got given presents and getting older was a good thing.

But when he gets to work Raito smiles at him warmly and says, Happy Birthday, Matsuda-san like he really means it, and Misa, in between getting ready to go out to a shoot, stands on tiptoes and gives him a kiss, and Ide, the next to arrive, hands him a white scalloped bakery box and says, slightly belligerently, Many happy returns. I got you some cake. That’s the kind of thing you like, right?

The thing about birthdays when you’re older is that the small things, like one piece of cake, like one birthday greeting, kind of mean more. Actually they mean a bit more than they should. Matsuda doesn’t want to look like an idiot, so he only says, thank you, and then, hey, but shouldn’t it have a candle in it? Aren’t you meant to sing and stuff? Ide rolls his eyes and then Matsuda can say, Seriously, thank you, that was nice of you and mean it.

[Title] Night on the Town
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 284
[Notes/Summary] Kai compares nights out before and after the cataclysm.

It’s not like Kai didn’t like going out on the town before, when the town was still standing. Okay, mostly going out on the town meant speeding down the highway on a bike you didn’t pay for trying to hit other bikers with iron bars, but sometimes it did actually mean going to a bar with loud music, drinking your weight in booze, and making out with a girl in an alleyway. And hey, it wasn’t bad, if the beer wasn’t too shit and your mood got into a virtuous circle and your friends weren’t being more than usually obnoxious. But more often than not, the beer was shit, the music was the stuff you’d heard a million times before, you’d much rather be out on a bike, and then your friends got into a completely avoidable argument or punch-up or trouble with the cops.

Now the only booze is stuff brewed in people’s cellars or stockpiled from before and sold at a premium, there’s no music, you spend every day on a bike searching for food and supplies, and most of your friends are dead. For a while, he and Kaneda and Kei don’t go out, nobody goes out, everyone’s too busy trying to survive. When they do, the windows are still boarded up, and everyone on edge like they’re expecting another cataclysm to wipe them out any second, and instead of strobe lights there are just candles, fat and half-melted, stuck to every table. But none of the three of them are dead and the booze isn’t quite bad enough to turn any of them blind and the candles keep burning and the three of them drink a toast, to absent friends.

[Title] Blackout
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 346
[Notes/Summary] The GGs wait for the Noise Tanks to put the lights back on.

Tab and Beat and Gum and Garam and Mew are eating noodles when the lights go out.

“Oh, come on, again?” Gum mutters through a mouthful.

Garam shrugs. “At least we finished the cooking.”

Tab’s already scrambled to his feet, and Mew hears him crashing about in the dark little kitchen. Then there’s the scrape of a match and the garage is filled with soft candle light.

“Hey, you guys are prepared,” Mew says. “I knew I’d joined up with the right people.”

“Of course,” Tab jazz-hands; he’s still holding the candle and the flame quivers. “I mean, the only one who didn’t grow up in Tokyo-to is our fabled leader. Gum and I spent a bunch of evenings telling ghost stories while we waited for your Noise Tank pals to put the power back on.”

“They’re not my pals,” Mew says, sticking her tongue out at him. “I did my own thing, thank you very much. Gotta say, though, it was pretty fun going skating in the blackouts.”

“Not in my neighbourhood,” Garam says. “That’s a one-way trip to murder town. Or fallin’ in the canal.”

“Yeah, I mostly stick around inside when I can’t see where I’m going,” Gum says. “Though, I dunno, Benten-cho pitch black… I can’t quite see it. I feel like you guys would have back-up party generators.”

Mew shakes her head. “It goes as dark as everywhere else. Just I know the place super-well, and, I don’t know, it’s kind of a thrill. Also, your eyes kinda get used to it. And sometimes the moon’s out. I always used to tell myself maybe it was haunted, though, you know? Really spook myself out.”

“I had Gum and her penchant for scary movies to do that,” Tab says, putting a chipped plate into the centre of their circle and sticking the candle onto it. “But, I don’t know, maybe we can give it a go sometime. Black-out skating.”

“If we don’t wipe the Noise Tanks off the map first,” says Gum. “In the meantime – anyone want to hear a ghost story?”

[Title] Light a Candle to the Dead
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 329
[Notes/Summary] Most people don’t understand why Misa dresses the way she does.

Some people think Misa only wears the gothic Lolita stuff because it’s cool. Like, well, you know, Misa wants to be a model or get into singing or be an actress, of course she’d dress to be noticed. They assume if the fashion was different, Misa would be different too. And of course, they’re not totally wrong. Misa’s got a dream and you have to look the part. She doesn’t paint her face shocking white, and she didn’t do something like pierce her lip or stretch holes in her earlobes. And she has plenty of cute things, sparkly dresses, for when they’re needed.

Why have the gothic stuff at all, then? people might ask. You don’t need it. You could go full-on lolita, with lace and ruffles and a bonnet. Oh, you’d look like a little doll!

Misa could. And will, if she has to. But in the meantime, she’s keeping the black, and the fishnets, and the silver jewellery, and the candles on every available surface that she lights whenever she’s curled up on her bed reading a magazine or looking at stuff online.

She can’t explain why, of course. If she tried, people would only say, Oh, of course, you’re still sad about your mum and dad. It’s like mourning.. Because they don’t know that it doesn’t matter what she does or doesn’t wear, she’ll always be feeling it underneath that they’re gone.

But the clothes you choose to wear are the ones you feel express some kind of truth about you, right? Some kind of truth about you or about everybody. Misa’s going to stay cute for as long as she can, but she is a girl with dead parents, a girl who nearly got stabbed to death in the dark, a girl who’s looking for Kira. Even before she found the notebook and the god of death who followed it, putting on the black clothes and lighting the candles kind of felt like coming home.

[Title] Survival Romance
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG, brief non-explicit mention of sex
[Word Count] 382
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda/Kei. After it all happens, Kaneda still isn’t much of a romantic. Kei likes it that way.

Kaneda doesn’t usually do what he refers to as the mushy stuff. When he brings stuff home, it’s food or spare batteries or bullets, practical stuff as much a gift for him as it is for Kei, seeing as they’re homeless and literally building a life out of the ruins in a currently-seceded city-state.

He regularly tells her she’s hot, and they regularly make out, and when it’s not too cold and they’ve got privacy, a power supply, condoms, and a source of heat – which doesn’t always happen, but they get lucky every so often – they actually have sex, clutching each other under a pile of blankets. They bicker if it isn’t working, or laugh about it, or he makes dirty jokes and she pretends to be too cool for them and sometimes finds them funny despite herself. She hopes he knows that if she didn’t love him, she wouldn’t do this.

On one anniversary, several years after, he puts a line of candles down the table scavenged three years ago (the leg repaired with an old floorboard) and, when she raises an eyebrow, shrugs: “Girls like romantic crap, right?”

“Are you worried I’ll get swept off my feet by some Prince Charming with roses and chocolates?” she says, smiling.

“Nah.” Then, “Now, some Prince Charming with high-grade weaponry and a folder of state secrets… so I figured, hey, make an effort.” He’s gone hunting and trading for gifts, too: a non-cracked pair of sunglasses, a bar of chocolate, a coat with longer sleeves. She hadn’t thought he’d noticed how the old one didn’t fit any more. She doesn’t mention that, though. He’ll only act like it was no big deal. She thinks she sees how he was able to lead a gang of delinquent teenagers, what feels like lifetimes ago. He’s got her back; she’s in his life and he assumes she’ll stay that way and maybe he cares enough to make an effort, just to be certain. And if something or someone ever comes for them both, if they ever have to fight again, she knows he’ll be there. She knew that before he ever bought her any gifts or before they got to any anniversaries. She takes his hand and squeezes his fingers. Smiles, and thanks him for it all.

[Title] Forty Seconds
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 380
[Notes/Summary] After it all happens, Matsuda keeps dreaming.

Matsuda keeps having the one dream.

They’re in one of the hotel rooms L stayed in, or they’re in the shiny new HQ he built for them, or they’re in Raito’s apartment, or in a hotel in Los Angeles, or any number of places Matsuda recognises as somewhere he worked. Sometimes it’s him and the rest of the task force, sometimes it’s him and old colleagues, or even his brother or his parents, or friends from elementary school, but whatever it is, they’re all at work, he’s got things he needs to be doing, and Raito is there. Raito is there and everything is normal and Matsuda walks over to him, or they’re sitting next to each other, or Raito is showing him some paperwork.

Raito is smiling at him and talking to him as if everything is normal and he is writing down names. He always does it so quickly, one name per line, sometimes glancing over to watch the news, sometimes just seeming already to know all the names to write. Matsuda is watching him do it and he never knows what to say. Sometimes he pretends he hasn’t seen, and sometimes he wants to yell stop or grab the pen out of Raito’s hand but he can’t move, and sometimes he remembers that Raito has already agreed with him that it’s okay for them to die, Matsuda, they’re criminals, they deserve it. Even if the names are ones he recognises, people he went to school with, people in his family, the names of the rest of the task force.

Even if he does do something, in the dream, it’s always too late, because each name only takes a few seconds. Sometimes, he thinks about how he’s going to do something and then he looks over and all the names have been written.

Matsuda knows it wasn’t really like this. Raito was never stupid enough to think he could get away with writing names down in the murder notebook right under their noses.

At the same time he knows it was exactly like this. Raito deciding that someone should die, and then, within a few seconds, that person being dead. Blowing out a candle flame. Nothing more than that. Matsuda always wakes up feeling like he can’t breathe.

[Title] Points of Light
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG, mention of death and grief
[Word Count] 443
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya tries to remember the dead.

Shuuya would like to light a candle for each of them. Of course, that’s not really possible. He and Noriko keep some candles in the apartment, but those are in case the power goes out (which it does, often, because they don’t always have enough cash to feed the meter). You don’t waste the stuff you’ve stockpiled for when the worst happens. And they don’t even always light them – sometimes it’s easiest just to get into bed and cuddle up to stay warm and sleep until it stops being dark, or at least until you have to go to work.

He’d like to light a candle for each of them, but even after they start managing to keep the wolf from the door, even after they move to a place where the electricity’s on contract and they start being able to pay the bill each month, it still doesn’t feel right to buy candles just for that. Partly it’s the expense, partly it feels like… like he’s turning them all into home décor or something, brightly-coloured ornaments and nothing else, wrapping each death up in wax and glass.

He spends most of his time working, and when he’s not at work he is at home with Noriko because she understands what no one else does, plus every second he spends with her is one he nearly didn’t have because they nearly didn’t survive. But there’s a church on his way home and one day he sticks his head round the door – it’s pouring with rain and he wants to catch his breath and stop remembering that rainy morning on the island, after Yukie and the others died, after he found Mimura’s body, he wants not to be hearing it in the hiss of water. He steps inside and he sees the rack of candles.

You have to pay, or they ask you to pay, if you want to light one, and he’s still in the habit of weighing up the pros and cons of every purchase no matter how small (you should save up what you have, in case you need to make a run for it). But after that, every so often, when he can remember and be sad without wanting to scream or punch something, he’ll step inside a church and pay a dollar and light a candle to one of the people who died. Maybe it’s better that way. Each of them gets to shine as one, just for a bit, to be more than just one of the mass of dead. Each one a point of light somewhere in New York. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

[Title] Birthday Cake
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 296
[Notes/Summary] Watari brought each of the task force cake.

L pretty much never shared his cake. Okay, Matsuda doesn’t mind, he’s a grown man, he didn’t join the police force to eat sugary stuff all day, but he did think it was kind of rude anyway. Of course he never said anything, because that would’ve been even ruder, and people would’ve assumed it was because he was only thinking about his appetite, and this was the famous L, after all.

But each time it was someone’s birthday, Watari brought that person a small cupcake with a tiny lit candle in it. Aizawa stares at him in bafflement in May and then ignores the cake, lets the wax melt over the top of it while noting down the results of the analysis on the tapes the Second Kira sent. The Chief, pale and sunken-faced in his cell in July, eats the cake along with the rest of the food Watari brings him, barely seeming to notice what it is or why it was brought to him. In September, Mogi nods in polite appreciation, blows out the candle, and eats the cake before he returns to checking Yotsuba employee records.

Watari never brings L one of these little birthday cakes – whether that’s because L’s birthday never comes round, or because he doesn’t want the task force to know when it is, or Watari will bring him an enormous cake covered in candles out of hours, Matsuda doesn’t know.

L and Watari are killed on 5 November.

Matsuda doesn’t think about his own December birthday much until it’s nearly over. When he does remember Watari with the little cakes, it stings. It’s not about missing out on cake, of course it’s not. It’s that it never occurred to him that Watari wouldn’t survive to do that for him.

[Title] Inside, Candlelit
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 1979
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda/Misa. Raito and Misa are getting married. Matsuda loves weddings, even if the bride seems lonely.

Like she knew it was going to end up this way

On the eighth day of Christmas

versipellis — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 11:06:32 GMT

my true love sent to me

eight lurking monsters

[Title] Taking the Darker Path
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] R for violence
[Word Count] 5024 in total
[Notes/Summary] Eight moments play out differently. Eight people choose to play the game. (AO3 link to all eight parts below.)

Just good to know what choices there are on the table

On the seventh day of Christmas

versipellis — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 20:35:45 GMT

my true love sent to me

Seven secret messages

[Title] Someone to Hold Onto
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 1129
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Matsuda. Matsuda’s always liked hugs. Sometimes you need someone to hold on to.

You’re so dumb. You’re so adorable

[Title] Second Languages
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 2388 (in total)
[Notes/Summary] Rester, Hal and Gevanni all learnt Japanese in different ways. All of them lost, too.

Rester (Listening)
Hal (Speaking)
Gevanni (Memorising)

[Title] Locked-Room Language Lessons
[Fandom] Detective Academy Q
[Rating] PG for implied miserable childhood
[Word Count] 1059
[Notes/Summary] Ryu knows a lot of languages. Kyuu finds out why.

Kyuu tries really hard not to get mad at Ryu’s grandfather. Like, Ryu doesn’t get mad about him, and Kyuu doesn’t want to become that friend I have to spent hours calming down every time I mention anything about my childhood, and Ryu hates people getting overly emotional anyway (except when he’s trying to get them to reveal a vital clue in an investigation, but not when he’s just hanging out watching cartoons with them –)

Actually they’re watching a dumb movie this time, one where the heroes are meant to be solving all these really difficult puzzles in order to find a secret temple (or something – they may have been talking over some of the dialogue) and all the puzzles are either super-easy even if you haven’t been to detective school or rely on facts that aren’t actually correct. Ryu is getting more of those ones than Kyuu is, and when he’s managed to point out the flaws in clues that rely on a working knowledge of Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese, and Finnish, Kyuu groans and throws a cushion at him: “Okay, now you’re just bluffing –”

Ryu catches the cushion, gives Kyuu a look: “Why would I want to convince you I know Finnish? At worst, the lie would be revealed right in the middle of a case when I mistranslated a key witness statement or something. Besides, it’s only written stuff and facts about the grammar that I can really figure out.”

“It is?”

“It is. If we went on holiday to Finland… or, I suppose, knowing us, if we went to solve a series of weird murders in Finland… I’d probably be as clueless as you when it comes to talking to actual Finnish people.”

Kyuu’s mind wanders onto what it would be like if they had to go solve a mystery in England or America or someplace like that, where they speak a language he has actually studied. He doesn’t fancy the idea, really. You can work out a lot from how people say things, the words they use, the things they don’t say. If he were trying to figure it out in English he’d be stuck at wait, let me check the dictionary. The only way he’d solve the mystery would be if it were like this film, with really easy clues deliberately written for him. And if someone was doing that there’d likely be a whole other set of problems going on. Distracted by that, he asks, “So how’d you learn all those languages, anyway?” without thinking that he’s not going to like the answer.

(But it seems hard if Ryu’s never asked about his life before DDS, like they’ve decided to pretend it never happened. People should get to talk about their lives if they want to.)

Ryu says, “Well… my grandfather taught me.” Glancing sideways at Kyuu a little like he knows Kyuu’s not going to like where this is going. “I learnt a lot of languages as a child. It’s the best time to learn. Your brain picks up new words really easily.” Kyuu’s nodding like this conversation is going to be totally normal, even though he knows it isn’t. Ryu’s resting his chin on his hands as he says, “He always said it was a pity that – that he hadn’t brought me up from birth. Babies can be taught two or three languages at once easily. I didn’t find it so easy but… like I said, it was mostly just about remembering words and how they fit together.”

“Like in English classes at school,” Kyuu says, feeling himself grinning too much, “just learning a bunch of vocabulary and, and doing worksheets, right?”

“Well. No. More like solving puzzles.” There it is, the blankness creeping across Ryu’s face, like he’s bored with the subject, but he carries on, “A bit like these.” Waving a hand at the movie. Kyuu can’t remember what’s going on in it any more. “Lots of locked-room mysteries. Finding escape routes. With the clues in the language under study.”

Kyuu says, knowing the answer, “Not the fun kind… right?”

“Not really,” Ryu says, still blank and bored.

Kyuu takes a deep breath and he’s trying, he’s really trying (but what can you say? You can’t just say, wow, that sucks, anyway, about this dumb movie and he’s not going to ask for more details, every time he gets more details it makes his skin crawl –)

He takes a deep breath and tries to think of something to say but what comes out is, “I hate your grandfather.”

Ryu blinks and begins, “Well, of course you would –”

“Not because of Pluto, not because of all the murder stuff – though that stuff’s awful too, but just, I just, you’re the smartest person I know. I bet you were the kind of kid who loved learning loads of facts, I bet you would’ve thought it was really cool being able to speak other languages. I think it’s really cool. We should go to Finland. Why’d he have to – to make all that stuff bad? Why’d he have to be mean to a kid who would’ve learnt it all happily anyway? And don’t say it was to make sure the lesson sticks or something. That’s – stupid and awful. And – and I know you don’t need to hear me say this and I’ll shut up about it after this but – it sucks. Okay?”

He’s really worried Ryu’s going to freeze him out. Or look even more miserable (blank, bored). He’s rubbing the back of his head and quickly turning to focus on the movie, find something goofy to remark on, when Ryu says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Kyuu looks round at him.
“Okay,” Ryu says, staring him out.
“Is… is it really? You can tell me if… I mean, I know I always blurt out stuff I shouldn’t. If it’s…”
“It’s really okay,” Ryu says. He’s actually blushing a bit. “I… I can’t really get angry about it. You know that. Sometimes – it’s helpful to hear someone say that it was… that it was an odd way to treat someone.”

Kyuu feels himself scowling but he manages to limit himself to muttering, “Yeah. Well. It is odd.”

“And you’re right,” Ryu says. “I’d like to go to Finland with you sometime. Even if there are murders involved.” And smiles, almost nervously.

[Title] Ageless
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 241
[Notes/Summary] Mogi isn’t sure what to make of Los Angeles.

It’s the first time Mogi’s been to America. Of course, he had a patched-together idea of the country from books and films and music – guns and hot dogs and eagles and high schools and surfing – but he knew that wouldn’t be much use; half-thought stereotypes rarely are.

Los Angeles doesn’t feel real to him even when he’s there, too warm in the clothes he set off in, the sky wide and light above him, the air hazy. Palm trees. Spray tans and dyed hair and people who look as though they’ve dressed to be stared at. And every road jammed with traffic: the blare of horns, the sunlight blazing off windowframes and mirrors.

No doubt it’s partly sleep deprivation, that and worry about why they’re here, which makes it all feel as if he’s in a dream. Long-haul flights and the shifts in time will make anyone feel strange. But the endless sunny weather, and the sense of sprawl, and the way that they have to watch it all from behind thick hotel windows… it starts to feel like it’s sending a message, but if it is, he can’t work it out, because this place feels as though it grew from the modern-day and if there’s any history behind it he doesn’t know what it is. It’s almost a relief to go to New York, even though he has no idea what he’s walking into. In New York, it rains.

[Title] Message Left Last Night
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 493
[Notes/Summary] Mew’s friends don’t get why she does it.

Mew’s been washing her hands over and over but there are still tiny half-circles of blue paint under her nails and smears of it ground into her cuticles. Soon as she’s in homeroom she puts her hands in her lap like she’s just so good and sweet and super-keen to be in school and learning, yay! But you can’t keep that up forever. In Maths her friend Kuniko asks to borrow her calculator and Mew’s handed it over before she can think. Kuniko’s eyes widen and at the end of class she scoots her chair close to Mew’s and whispers, “You actually did it?”

“Did what?” Mew says, trying to look innocent.

“You know what.” Kuniko glances around, lowers her voice even further, which is a great way to make someone look like they have juicy gossip but Mew tells herself she doesn’t care any more. “Graffiti-writing. Rudie stuff.”

Mew sort of shrugs and stares down at her desk. If she says No way that’ll just turn this into even more drama.

“I just… I didn’t think you were actually into it,” Kuniko says at last. She sounds kind of forlorn, like Mew’s broken a promise. “I thought you were just, like, kidding around. I mean the skating is cool but… I don’t get why you couldn’t just do that. You know, just go to the park and have fun.”

Mew doesn’t know what to say. Like, whatever she says, Kuniko will probably be like but it’s dangerous and messy and illegal, and… it is, so Mew’s not got a leg to stand on there, and… Kuniko thinks the figures they see on skates in the distance sometimes in town, she thinks they’re scary, and she said graffiti’s not real art anyway, it’s just words and weird pictures, she said Mew’s manga-style pics she does on her notebooks are way prettier.

But landing a tag on the top of a building, somewhere you absolutely shouldn’t be, is kind of saying This is me, and I’m here, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Even if only a few people will know who you are, and you’re only here for this second, and someone else can paint over your sign tomorrow. Hey, the way it’s only a few people will see or care makes it better. It’s a secret second city under the skin of the real one, and the people living there understand about pushing yourself to jump higher, dash faster, make your lines sharper and crisper or come up with some design no one can tear their eyes away from. You’ll never do it, of course, you’ll never be some big-shot legend, you’ll just be painted over tomorrow, but you keep trying anyway, just to say, This is me, and this is who I could be, one day, maybe…

No point in trying to explain any of that. She shrugs again. Kuniko sighs and moves her chair away.

On the sixth day of Christmas

versipellis — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 13:19:12 GMT

my true love sent to me

six dodged bullets

[Title] Finish Line
[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh / Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 994
[Notes/Summary] Continuation from previous fics. Kagura's never been good at sitting around and waiting.

Having nothing to do made her start to get scared

[Title] The "I" in "Team"
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 359
[Notes/Summary] Slate was never one for teamwork, but this is kind of working out for him.

Slate was never interested in the gang side of rudieism. Well, being from Kogane-cho, male, and not hot shit with computers, his only option would’ve been Poison Jam, and to be honest he doesn’t get why anyone’d go for them. Okay, you got safety in numbers and someone to watch your back, but those someones are people for whom Jason fucking Voorhees is a role model, you really trusting them to come through for you when the chips are down?

And if you aren’t, then what’s the point?

Some rudies, they’d be like fuck ‘em, I’ll start my own crew. Funny, no one ever suggested that to Slate. Probably ‘cause someone who looks like Bert from Sesame Street’s ghetto cousin and hides his lack of charisma behind sarcasm wouldn’t stand a chance. Plus, the three main gangs got the street sewn up. That’s why those kids who thought they could start their own never made it work.

Then Beat, who makes Clark Kent look like Slipknot when it comes to mild manners, comes along and not only makes it work, he ends up owning the entire fucking city.

And somehow Slate’s along for the ride.

But… the GGs are legit when it comes to watching your back. Like they really believe in the power of friendship and all that (maybe saving the city from a demon rhino gives you a new perspective on that). So, really Slate’d be an idiot not to stay and just go with it. He figures if anyone’s going to be doing any back-stabbing in this gang, it’d be him, and he ain’t about to turn down what’s a pretty sweet deal. You don’t have to wear a fucking uniform, you rule the streets, they got a pinball machine. No need to ask what’s the point? Survival’s the point, like it always has been.

Still, if he had to be stuck with teamwork, it could be worse. None of them actually piss him off more than half the time, which might sound bad, but with most people it’s like ninety per cent eye-rolling. He dodged a bullet here, basically. He’ll stick around for a while.

[Title] Three Musketeers
[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh / Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 505
[Notes/Summary] Osaka was pretty nervous about school in England, but it seems to have worked out okay.

Osaka was kind of worried ‘bout coming to England. Like, she’d been hitting the books when it came to learning the language, and she figured that at least she wouldn’t need to worry about them laughing at her accent - it’d all sound the same to them, right? And, okay, it was meant to rain here all the time, but it rained plenty in Japan, and walking in storms was one of her favourite things.

But the people, that was going to be another thing. She figured they was going to laugh at her not just for being slow and dopey, but for just being Japanese and from a whole other country. Bein’ stuck in a boarding school with everyone laughing at her didn’t sound so good.

But it was okay. It was really okay. Sure, Malory Towers was like any other school in like they wanted you to be on time and have the right books and stuff, and she wasn’t always so good at that. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter ‘cause Irene and Belinda was never on time either. Okay, so quite a lot the reason none of the three of them made it to class on time ‘cause Irene would say, Isn’t it geography next? and then Belinda would say I’m sure it’s art, like hopefully, and then she, Osaka (they all struggle to say Ayumu so she stuck with Osaka and hey, they all know the place exists now, which is nice when you’re far from home…)

… point is, she’d say, Hey, did we get any maths homework? and then they’d all get distracted trying to remember what it was and then next thing you know, Darrell or Sally or Alicia’s hurrying up to them going What are you doing, history started ten minutes ago, Miss Carson sent me to look for you…

I think we’re all doomed Alicia says, one time in the common room. I mean, Irene on her own was bad enough. Then Belinda arrived, and I thought, that will be the end of it, there can’t be more than two of them. But I was wrong. Osaka, I don’t understand how you managed to make it all the way from Japan without somehow ending up in Africa or something.

I think you should be proud of her, Belinda said, slapping Osaka on the back. It can’t have been easy. And I’d like to see you having to do all your classes in Japanese!

Actually Osaka thought Alicia’d be fine. Alicia’s plenty smart, and she’s been asking Osaka to teach her some Japanese words so she could talk about people without them knowing, like her brothers, or like that Gwendoline sometimes. Gwendoline was the kind of person Osaka had been worried about, who tossed her head and said things about how people should stay in their own countries, but that’s the thing: she’s the only one like that. Alicia said we’re all doomed, but Osaka’s pretty sure she really dodged a bullet, endin’ up here.

[Title] Back to the Wall
[Fandom] Until Dawn
[Rating] PG-13 for threat of death
[Word Count] 344
[Notes/Summary] Emily sees it every time she closes her eyes.

Emily sees it every time she closes her eyes.

You don’t think what it’d be like if someone actually pointed a gun at you. If you ever picture it – which she didn’t, as a rule, it’s not something you think about in day-to-day life, you don’t think about dying at all in day-to-day life (except when you thought about where Hannah and Beth might be, what might have happened to them, whether it’s true that dying of hypothermia feels just like going to sleep –)

If you ever picture someone holding you at gunpoint, you think of it like you’re watching a movie. Someone is holding a gun to someone else’s head, and you’re looking at it straight on. You don’t picture it like your back against a wall, and staring down the barrel and wondering if you’d see the bullet coming towards you before it blew your brains out, and your ex-boyfriend gazing at you from behind the weapon looking white and sick as if someone’s making him do this, as if this is as terrifying for him as it is for you, and you thinking he just needs to pull the trigger and that’s it, he just needs to pull the trigger and that’s it and then thinking like that can’t be real, you can’t die that quickly, it can’t be him making you die –

Every time she closes her eyes.

When they’re open, she can see the way clearly. She can see how stupid she was ever to trust him, or Matt, or anyone. How dumb to put herself in that position where someone can do that to her and she could die in a second and there’s nothing she can do about it. The others would tell her it was a mistake, he didn’t know, he didn’t understand, he was as scared as you. Bullshit. She’s not letting anyone do that to her ever again, starting with him. She tells the cops everything, and she lets them see she was scared, but not how much. She doesn’t tell anyone that.

[Title] Disproportionate Force
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 298
[Notes/Summary] Cube marvels at Onishima's approach to policing.

“You guys,” Cube said, doubling over with her hands on her knees to get her breath back, “You guys are hardcore.”

Gum leant against the wall of the halfpipe and smirks. “Mm, say that again, goth girl.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be the ones with all the guns? Isn’t Japan supposed to be this haven of order and tranquillity? How come you’re the ones who are like, oh, only had to dodge rubber bullets this time, good day?”

“I dunno, because Onishima feels the best way to maintain that order and tranquillity is to send in the dogs and the helicopters?” Gum pushed herself off the wall, rolls gently across the halfpipe. “And, I mean, it hasn’t always been this full-on. This is Rokkaku Group-sponsored policing for the twenty-first century or whatever the hell. So, I mean, if you’d stayed in Grind City you’d probably be putting up with the exact same thing. Just they seem to have started with the assassins and kidnapping with you.”

Cube nodded, pressed her lips together. She rubbed a hand across her forehead, then dusted her palms together. “Guess you’re right.”

“Hey, it means you gotta get good,” Gum said, changing direction, coming to stand in front of her. “You gotta be on point. And you and Combo knocked it out of the park from the moment you got here, so clearly you were doing something right back in Bantam Street.”

“Hey, yeah.” Cube smiled. “I like that way of looking at it.”

“Which means when we find your buddy, he’ll be fine too,” Gum says. “And, I mean, he’s been kidnapped by corporate terrorists. This’ll be a walk in the park for him.” She smiled back. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Onishima’ll probably start carpet-bombing if we stick around.”

[Title] Lies in Two Languages
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG-13 for sex
[Word Count] 1349
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Gevanni. Gevanni thinks a line has been crossed, but he's not sure where.

I don't blame you for letting people suffer the consequences of their actions

On the fifth day of Christmas

versipellis — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 15:54:37 GMT

my true love sent to me

five uncertain choices

[Title] The Choices We Made
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 601
[Notes/Summary] While they wait for the end of it all, Misa asks Mogi how it started.

I guess that is a real reason

[Title] The Ideal Woman
[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh
[Rating] PG for kissing
[Word Count] 565
[Notes/Summary] Tomo/Yomi. Tomo's got a great idea. Yomi's not convinced.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tomo says, after she’s done eating all Yomi’s snacks and snooping through the photos from first year of college pinned up on the wall.

“Have you.” Yomi doesn’t expect anything good to come from this. It’s Tomo. Come on.

“Like, you said none of these guys –” A casual handwave at the photos – “Are your boyfriend.”

“I… did say that, yeah.” Not what Yomi expected. Maybe she shouldn’t have told Tomo that? But come on, the thought of dating any of the guys on her course or in her halls just seems… dumb. Why would you want to?

“And, I mean, while my figure has only got more perfect since I went to college, if I say so myself –” Tomo smirks down at her chest, which to Yomi looks exactly the same as it did four months ago, not that she’s been looking or anything – “I’m still tragically single, mainly because none of the guys on my course are anything like as awesome and smart as my friends. Which, when you think about Osaka and Kagura, is a pretty low bar to, like, miss, but that’s not the point –”

“What is the point?”

“I think we should make out,” Tomo says, rolling onto her stomach, crawling over to Yomi on her elbows, and widening her eyes in a way which is probably meant to be seductive. “Now. For the good of our friendship.”

“Are you off your head?” Yomi yells, but she can feel she’s turned bright red and – this is typical of Tomo, the girl’s got the emotional nuance of a brick and yet every so often she manages to hit on something that’s actually true – and Yomi thought she’d been doing such a great job of pretending any – any hot and bothered was around Tomo being her usual annoying self –

Tomo, her usual annoying self, doesn’t take it back or look embarrassed or even start blustering, she just looks up into Yomi’s face and smiles sweetly, like she’s presented the perfect argument.

“We are not making out,” Yomi says sternly, even though saying the idea of it out loud makes her blush even more.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because you’re intimidated by my perfect womanly form?” Tomo says. “Because it’ll be your first kiss and you’re shy? Because you’ll think I’ll blab to everyone? I won’t, by the way. Every woman should have an air of mystery around her love life –”

“Because…”

“I just think,” Tomo says, “you’re my best friend, and maybe we should be friends who kiss. I think it’d be fun. If it’s awful, then we can just pretend it never happened.”

It’s already too late. Yomi should’ve got up and walked away. Now she’s considering the idea. She’s considering the idea and… she can’t not, because if she doesn’t do it, then every time she looks at Tomo she’ll be wondering what it might’ve been like. And Tomo is going to be in her life for a while. Tomo has a habit of elbowing her way in and not leaving. Just like she’s doing now.

So they kiss.

It’s not awful.

It’s hot, and damp, and Tomo starts giggling halfway through, which makes it annoying, but it’s definitely not awful. And when they break apart and Tomo says, “Okay, so we’re doing it again, right?”, Yomi doesn’t say, Definitely not, which basically seals it.

[Title] What We Did in the Dark
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 1288
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Ide. It would probably never have happened if they were working on a normal case.

As if his entire life had become the Kira case

[Title] Dollhouse
[Fandom] Until Dawn (with SOME SPOILERS)
[Rating] PG-13 for language, mention of death
[Word Count] 586
[Notes/Summary] Josh knows what's true and what isn't.

Sometimes you can think and think and think and you won’t come up with an answer. Sometimes it takes a shock to get things through your head.

Josh is pretty pleased with the creepy dollhouse. It was Hannah’s, the dollhouse part, and then he ordered the figures themselves online, did a bit of cut-and-dye to make sure everyone had the right hair. Then he’s set them up in the room – took a while to get a little toy video camera but he found a give-away keyring in a drawer, a film festival his dad went to, took the plastic camera off that. Now he’s messing around with fishing wire to try and get the figures to move right. Pain in the ass, he’s got to stoop and his eyes are going weird from squinting at tiny figures, tiny fixtures and fittings, but it’s okay, because he thinks this is going to work out. Earlier, trying to screw one of the cameras to a doorframe, the screws kept popping out and his hands kept shaking, he lost his temper with it, smashed it, had to take a break. He can’t afford to lose his temper, he’s got to keep the party face on until it’s go time. Just like they did with Hannah, made like everything was fine, smiled and smiled and then stabbed her in the back. They called him on that. Not them. Dr Hill called him on it. On saying things like they stabbed her in the back like he knew what had happened. Told him, Josh, that’s conjecture. Josh, you have no reason to believe it happened like that. Josh, if you were a better person, you’d have been conscious and awake when they fucking killed your sisters, but you weren’t, were you, you were passed out drunk, you useless piece of shit –

The thing is that for ages he tried to buy into the lie, that there was nothing he could do, that it was nobody’s fault, that everyone was so sorry, and it never took, you know? It never felt real.

Fishing wire round necks and wrists and foreheads. Pull the strings and turn their heads and make them look you in the eye.

They tell you, as well, that what feels real isn’t real, and he bought into that lie for ages too.

If any adults find out what he’s planning, they’ll tell him he’s delusional, that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he’s not in his right mind. He’s not an idiot. That’s why this weekend he’s visiting a friend out of town, packed a bag and bought some chips and beer and took off in one direction and then doubled back. They’ll tell him, your sisters wouldn’t want this, they’ll tell him no one knew it would happen like that, they’ll tell him some of your friends even tried to stop it, or weren’t involved at all, and that’s all true, but it’s a lie at the same time. If it was true, it would feel true, and the actual truth would feel unsafe to stand on, it’d vanish when you looked at it.

It doesn’t vanish. He can look at it head on. A bunch of dolls in a room, going through the motions. He knows what they did, he knows what they’re going to do, he knows what he’s going to do to them. A lot of decisions are difficult, but with this one, he’s never been more certain of anything in his life.

[Title] Arithmetic
[Fandom] Azumanga Daioh / Battle Royale
[Rating] PG-13 for death
[Word Count] 771
[Notes/Summary] The girls have woken up in the worst situation imaginable, and Osaka's never been that good at maths.

Only one person's gonna make it out and she's terrible at running

On the fourth day of Christmas

versipellis — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 10:29:43 GMT

my true love sent to me

Four unusual hatchings

[Title] Plans With Claws and Teeth
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG for language and very brief mention of sex
[Word Count] 514
[Notes/Summary] In Los Angeles, Mello considers his next move.

He was going to be ready

[Title] City Born from Paint Fumes
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 371
[Notes/Summary] Combo and Cube ponder the oddness of the place they ended up in.

“So, kid,” Combo says at last, when they’ve been sitting on the garage roof watching the Tokyo-to sunrise for a while. “You grew up here, yeah?”

“Wouldn’t call it growing up,” Cube says. “We moved when I was four or something, just Mom still spoke Japanese to me after we got to Grind City. Mostly to cuss me out, but still.”

“Okay, so, this place does seem weird to you, then?”

“Every place is weird. I reckon rudies always see the weird, always gettin’ into places we’re not meant to be and constantly inhaling paint fumes…”

“I guess.” Combo doesn’t look convinced.

“And Japan’s weird. Like, if you didn’t grow up here. Japan’s famous for being the home of weird. Sushi and anime and tentacles, right?”

“Nah, I ain’t talkin’ about the birdsong on the escalators or the train crew wearin’ white gloves. That’s just culture. And that ain’t our Tokyo-to, anyway. I’m talkin’ about… like, the rival gang who can speak to the crows. And the ones who paint with robotic arms attached to their backs. And the police chief who brings tanks into the pedestrian areas on a regular basis. And the way the weather always looks different dependin’ where you are, even if it’s rainin’ everywhere.”

“Yeah, okay,” Cube said, frowning. “I guess that stuff is a little… out there. I mean… it’s not bad. Except for the tanks part. Just…”

“Just this place got a… got its own style. Its own kinda whacked-out style. Like this kind of stuff just… gets born here.”

“Hey, maybe that’s what that demon-looking rhino was,” Cube says, bringing her knees up to rest her arms on them, staring out at the dark burnt-out shape of the Rokkaku Tower on the horizon. “Prof K talked shit about how the record was a hoax, and there was definitely some weird juju up on the top of that tower, so maybe Goji Rokkaku was tapping into the weird. Maybe the rhino thing was the city hatching some freaky monster, not Goji at all.” She looks round at Combo and smiles. “Or maybe I’ve been reading too much Lovecraft and breathing in too much paint.”

“Nah… off the record, I think you got a point.”

[Title] Becoming Paradise
[Fandom] Battle Royale / His Dark Materials
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 385
[Notes/Summary] Shou was actually a little concerned about what his daemon would fix as.

What you don't want is something drab

[Title] Drawing It Down
[Fandom] Portal 2
[Rating] PG, mentions of death
[Word Count] 510
[Notes/Summary] Rattmann tries to draw what he remembers, or what he knows.

For a long time he can’t draw it. Not that. Many of the things which happened, they happened afterwards, when all you could do was draw out, draw them out, all you could do was put them on the wall because you couldn’t start screaming and you couldn’t ask anyone to help you and you couldn’t even try and think yourself out of them because symptoms are exacerbated by stress which means the voices in the walls and on the intercom, the voices that aren’t Her, they get louder and louder and you can’t listen to anything and so you scrawl and scribble on the walls to stay alive.

The things which happened before. No. The thing which happened before and turned before into after. As time went on it felt further and further away. A tiny telescope-end of people vomiting blood and crying blood and clutching at their throats. He figured he should draw it down. Reality shifts enough in this place and he can’t rely on going back into memories. Perhaps one day he won’t be able to go back. So far, he can face it, and so far, he can work out what’s memory and what’s an aural hallucination trying to give its own version of events. Both of those things are far more tenuous than anything else he ever relied on, and a lot of what he relied on is now gone, or almost gone. Detachment can provide clarity. But detachment implies you’re detached, not embedded. He paints Her, a tangle of wires, and a sunny day, and a collection of neat, well-ordered figures, like he used to be, or like he used to pretend to be (never fully ordered, was he, or he wouldn’t have run, he wouldn’t have been paranoid, he would have stayed, he would have cried blood). (But not disordered enough, otherwise he would have run sooner and further, he would be somewhere else by now.) He paints the figures screaming and dying and he flicks a red paint brush at the wall. He remembers the woman, though he can’t remember her name, the voices are telling him it was Jane or Amy or Lisa but he can’t remember which is correct or whether someone here tells only lies anyway. He remembers her screaming on the other side of the door, he remembers looking into her face and seeing her seeing him and knowing he couldn’t help her. He draws her closest.

After he’s finished the piece and is watching it from the other side of the room something says to him you drew Her, you drew Her waking up and someone else chimes in, Isn’t it interesting, that he did that? and the cube, watching it all from the corner, says, Perhaps She was screaming too. He’s not inclined to waste any sympathy on Her, but the drawing could be read as a group of dying men around a woman screaming, as if her cry has destroyed them. Her name, the cube reminds him, is Caroline. Of course. That was it.

On the third day of Christmas

versipellis — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 10:09:20 GMT

my true love sent to me

three offered hands

[Title] Reassurance
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 723
[Notes/Summary] Rester only saw another side of Near on three occasions.

I'm very glad he let you survive

[Title] Go Big or Go Home
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 806
[Notes/Summary] The GGs consider what they may be getting into re: corporate terrorism.

“What are you thinking, leader man?”

Beat wasn’t actually thinking much, he was just sitting on the roof gazing out at the city and wondering how you knew when you’d bitten off more than you could chew. So he’s kind of glad of the interruption. It’s Tab, elbows on the edge of the skylight, and then Gum behind him: “Probably that he didn’t run away to the big city to battle corporate terrorism. But –” She’s elbowing Tab out of the way, clambering up onto the roof: “Seeing as he’s here, he came here to kick ass and spray paint, and he’s all out of paint.”

“More like I came to spray paint and it seems like now I have to kick ass,” Beat says, shifting over a little to make room for her. The sun’s almost set; the garage sits in shadow, lights glimmer on the city around them, the Rokkaku Tower looms on the horizon like a big black metaphor. Maybe he was staring out at it to try to make himself feel more like the hero. “And I’m not that good at kicking ass. More like skate into them, steal their paint and run away. To spray more paint. Basically, the point I’m making is, I think this is getting outside of my skills set.”

“Well, it’s not just your skills set.” Tab’s come to sit next to them. “You do have, like, four other loyal delinquent supporters. Maybe more, if shit really is getting real. I mean, rudies are territorial, but if it’s that or letting the Man divide and conquer you...”

“Plus that Combo guy looks like he’d be handy in a fight, and Cube said she pierced her own nose with a needle,” Gum says. “And it’s personal for them, if their story’s legit. Their friend got swiped. For what it’s worth, I think it is legit. Not just ‘cause she’s hot, either,” she says, prodding Tab in the arm before he could say anything. “They seem solid, both of ‘em.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything about anyone’s perceived hotness,” Tab says. “I think they’re legit, too. I mean, some weird stuff’s been going on, and if they’re screwing with us, I think they’d make up a better story. And they seemed worried for real.”

“So… what you’re saying is...” Beat turns his back on the view to look at them both. “If we see any corporate terrorism or weird-ass posters covering up our tags, we should absolutely escalate and snoop, even though the smart money’d be on us keeping a low profile?”

“I guess. Yeah.” Gum nodded, looking thoughtful. “That is what I am saying. It’s certainly what Mew and Garam are saying. They said if we’re gonna go for this, count ‘em in. What being in a gang’s all about. Let’s do our best. Etcetera.”

“It’s what I’m saying,” Tab says. He pushes his hat back, meets Beat’s eyes. “Way I see it, if they’re starting shit, it’ll hit us first, ‘cause we’re always in places we ain’t supposed to be. And no one’ll care if we get hit, because rudie scum. So I say we take the initiative. The best defense is a good offense or whatever the hell.”

Beat can tell they’re both saying what he was thinking, even though he didn’t know he was thinking it. Just, he hears it and he’s like, Yeah. That.

“We could get killed, though,” he says, testing it out, seeing if it chills him to say it out loud. It doesn’t. It sounds like he’s being over-dramatic.

“We could always get killed,” Gum says. “Like Onishima literally tried to shoot us down with actual helicopters last week. I think it’s a bit late to start playing safe, you know? And if we’re risking our lives, I say go big or go home.”

“I don’t always co-sign that sentiment,” Tab says, “but in this case, yep. Definitely. We’re the GGs. Let’s bring it.”

“Do you want to do a hands-in-the-centre team yell thing?” Gum says, sticking out her hand at him. Even in the shadows Beat can see her fingers are smeared with the usual paint. “ ‘Cause we can. If you want. If it’ll imbue you with courage. We can get the others up here –”

Beat actually really wants to just, to just grab her hand, and Tab’s, and be like Just promise me you two won’t get killed, you’re like the first proper friends I’ve ever had, I need you not to be dead, okay? He manages not to, being the leader of a bad-ass street gang and all, and just holds his hand a little over hers and says, “Woohoo. Go team,” deadpan, to cover any mushiness. Maybe she and Tab pick up on it, though, because they stay sitting up on the roof with him.

[Title] Palm to Palm
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 394
[Notes/Summary] Chell looks at the writing on the walls.

She spent longer than she should’ve in the den behind the wall. She should have got back out there, finished the test, not let on that she’d found this place. Either it’s part of the test, in which case any feelings she gets from it are dangerous, or it’s not, in which case she needs not to let them – her? – know about it.

But she stayed, looking at the pasted-on pictures, crookedly glued, with bubbles and ridges from where it had dried. At the words scribbled over and over. At someone’s handwriting. At writing which was saying, Stop watching. Which was telling her, Yeah. This is bad. Everything you were thinking? You were right. It’s pretty stupid to trust something which is telling you that you’re right. Obviously you’ll believe it. But they were right before, with the crosses on the ceiling telling her where to aim, and who’s more likely to be lying, them or the voice on the intercom?

That’s seeing patterns where there aren’t any.

But you can’t just ignore everything your eyes tell you. You have to believe that some things are true. She’s spending a lot of time disbelieving, right now. And… this isn’t hope scribbled on the walls. This is someone who was scared, and angry, and lost. That’s all they’re saying. This is bad. And that’s fair enough. She was thinking that anyway.

She sat looking – feasting on the scribble and mess and wobbly lines and paper and charcoal – and if she was kind of thinking that yeah, she could use this, she could keep this in her head and maybe it would keep them (her) out of it, then… that was okay, maybe. She’s been thinking I can use this ever since she woke up here and she’s mostly been right.

She put out her hand to one of the prints on the wall. She leans close enough, she can see the individual fingerprints (and they don’t match hers. She checked). This hand belonged to someone. Might not any more. They might not still be a someone. But it was a someone, whenever it was they pressed their hand to the wall. Her coming by and seeing it, maybe that’s a victory, a small one. She rubs soot onto her hand off of the Companion Cube’s side, leaves her own palm print on the wall too.

On the second day of Christmas

versipellis — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 14:08:46 GMT

my true love sent to me

two bigger fish

[Title] Biological Necessities
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word count] 688
[Notes/Summary] The rest of Aperture Science always looked down on the Biology Department. Doug Rattmann is reconsidering that now.

They always kind of looked down on the biology department. You know, here’s Computer Science pushing the boundaries of AI, even if said AI does try and kill everyone every time you switch it on, and here’s Particle Physics And Shower Curtains creating a device that punches holes in reality, or will do if it ever gets out of beta, and there’s Bio, doing… stuff with frogs? Rats? Dissecting cows’ hearts? When’s the last time a biologist did anything that wasn’t, ‘Hey guys, we found another type of plant’ anyway?

Doug’s not pretending he didn’t go along with the joke. After all, he pretty much flunked biology due to a combination of bad teaching, frustration at the analog nature of living organisms, and suddenly-much-less-latent schizophrenia, so it’s not like he owes it anything. And seeing as how Aperture Science’s projects tended to oscillate between terrifyingly effective and entirely useless, and the Bio team never got a write-up in the company newsletters about how well they’d done, they probably weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. He heard rumours that they’d tried to get into biomedical research but the National Institute of Health had sent round an audit team and the multiple ethical violations they recorded had got the department shut down and a large proportion of it arrested. On the other hand, multiple ethical violations had never stopped anyone else at Aperture, so perhaps it was just that the higher-ups thought curing cancer or achieving human cloning wasn’t thinking big enough.

This is all history, and if it’s not ancient (Doug stopped counting the days he’s been down here a long time ago) it sure feels it with the groundwater starting to leach into the lower chambers and the dust thick as silk on the desks.

And he’s developed a new appreciation for things like plants. Sunlight. Birds. Analog. (A new appreciation for things like breathing, and heartbeat, and medication, and not riddled with bullets from turret defence designed to target military androids, let’s be honest.)

The Bio team were at the big switch-on like everyone else, and so they breathed in the deadly neurotoxin like everyone else, just probably knew a little bit more of the science behind what happened to them next. Doug’s taken a while to get to their lab, because it takes a while to get anywhere when you have to travel within the walls. Right now, though, She’s running tests at the other end of the facility, so he’s taking the opportunity to forage. Running low on canned food. He needs to strike out for the canteen in B Building, but that’ll take a while.

The lab certainly doesn’t give the impression the team were working on anything much more exciting than plants. There are tanks full of trays of earth and dead seedlings, dried up leaves and spores, microscope slides lined up in boxes. There’s a room of wall-to-wall cages of mice, all of which are dead. It smells about as great as you’d expect and Doug chooses not to carry on that route in case he finds dogs, cats, monkeys, other test subjects, better to go back into the main lab. There’s an industrial-size fridge there. He tries not to think of embryos and hauls it open.

There aren’t embryos. What there mostly is, is fish. Shelves of tuna. Crabs like dinner plates piled on ice. Octopuses with… okay, with nine tentacles. Some of the fish have two heads. Some of them are faintly glowing.

Seeing as his own department’s directly responsible for the death of thousands and his own trapped-in-post-apocalyptic-paranoid-nightmare predicament, maybe he can’t afford to judge another team for focusing on the piscine side of things.

He takes some of the fish with him, cooks them over a wastebin campfire. She always smells the smoke, starts reading the Health and Safety section of the Employee Handbook out to him with sarcastic asides. Cooking and eating something you found in an Aperture Science laboratory is definitely against health and safety protocols, but the food is hot and tastes good and after all, maybe basic biology is the way to go.

[Title] Food Chain
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Word count] 394
[Notes/Summary] Gum, Beat and Tab consider their options after finding their hide-out filled with frogs.

“Okay,” Gum said, pacing the Garage. “So talk me through this.”

“The Poison Jam snuck onto our turf,” Beat said.

“They did.”

“They filled our base full of frogs. For some reason.”

“Yeah,” Tab said. “Where they got them is an exercise left for the viewer.”

“Way I see it, that’s a challenge.”

“Agreed,” Gum said. “I mean, it could be some freaky shit that only makes sense to them.”

“Or an homage to a really obscure horror movie,” Tab said. “Like… Frogs!! or something. But sure, we can assume it’s a challenge.”

“So,” Beat said, “I’m new to this whole gang thing, but when someone challenges you, aren’t you supposed to take it up?”

“Hmm, are you?” Gum said. “I mean, what’s the difference between challenge and trap, when all’s said and done?”

“You think they’re smart enough to set a trap?” Tab said.

“No, but if they are, you know it’ll be a Saw trap.”

Tab nodded ruefully.

“Okay, look at it this way,” Beat said. “If we act like the bigger people here, they’ll figure they can just do it again. Maybe it’ll be something else next time. Eels. Toads.”

“Goldfish,” Tab said, nodding. “No, wait, tuna, like those massive ones they sell down at Kogane-cho Market. Those things weigh a ton.”

“Let’s take the fight to them,” Beat said. “We got skates. We got paint. We got sweet tags. I’m pretty sure we’ve got superior agility. And we’ve probably got the power of friendship or something. Whereas they’ve just got… creepy blood pacts with amphibians. Let’s go on the offense with our weapons, you know?”

Gum frowned, then grabbed up a can of paint. “Yeah, okay. Seems legit. I never liked those guys, and it’d be sweet to get to try out some moves in Kogane.”

“Cool,” Beat said. “Tab? You in?”

Tab turned to look at them. “I got it. I bet it’s called They Croak or something. Like, ‘croak’ as in die, and ‘croak’ as in – come on, you know it’s gotta exist.”

“Oh my god,” Gum said, scowling at him. “Have you been thinking that up this entire time?”

“I’m sorry to say, yes. But I’m cool with the offense plan. Maybe we can rifle through their DVD collection when we find their base. No, they’d have a lair, wouldn’t they? I wanna see if I’m right.”

Waking up and getting up has never been easy

On the twelfth day of *cough* never mind

On the ninth day of Christmas, or thereabouts

On the *cough* tenth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas (again)

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of cough never mind

On the cough tenth day of Christmas