On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
nine magic moments
[Title] Air and Fire
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Avatar: The Last Airbender
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Shinji Mimura is the Avatar. Yutaka Seto is trying to teach him Airbending. It's not how he expected. Requested by rushikayu13.
Yutaka's still not sure how his life ended up like this.
That the Avatar is a really cool Firebender guy who was dreaming of bringing down the system from inside for years - yeah, okay. Shinji Mimura is pretty much exactly what you'd expect the Avatar to be (well... actually, you'd maybe expect him to be a bit more, like, zen and less interested in girls and stuff, but still).
That the Avatar is hanging out with a really scary Kyoshi Warrior (and Hirono's the only girl Yutaka's ever met who makes make-up seem frightening) and a Waterbender girl who never seems to get freaked out by anything, even when it involves the entire Fire Nation trying to capture them (and Yukie's the nicest of them, as well, she actually says stuff to him like we need you just as much and I'm really glad you're here) - yeah, that fits. Cool Avatar has cool friends.
It's where he himself fits that he's not sure about.
"C'mon, Shinji," he says. "I know you've got all the moves, but you haven't got this one yet."
Shinji grins. "You said it, not me. It's just not clicking, midget. I'm used to Bending stuff I can actually see."
"I thought this'd be the one he'd struggle with," Hirono calls loudly from where she's leaning against the nearby tree. "Subtlety isn't his strong point, after all."
"This from someone whose traditions dictate in dressing up in robes and crazy facepaint before going to confront any enemy?"
Hirono half-sits up and makes a quick and rather rude-looking hand gesture. Shinji yelps as the patch of earth under his feet shifts. Yukie giggles, then quickly hides it with her hand. "Mimura, I can't help feeling you'd get this quicker if you actually tried rather than thinking up wisecracks."
"Hey, I am trying. I've stuck with this for hours now. It's just..." He frowns. "It's just slippery." Then he's looking round at Yutaka: "You ever get that?"
"Let's not start asking Yutaka whether he's touched slippery things," Hirono says. "Some of us like our lunch where it is."
Yutaka feels himself turning red. Trying to ignore Hirono snickering, he says, "Um... not really. But I think it's... it's softer, right? Air, I mean. Fire and water and earth, you can see it. You can see where it is and where it... um, isn't. Air's all around." He doesn't say that for him, it makes it easy, that for as long as he can remember it's been like... like you run, and the ground's just there - like that. Air is just there.
"Yutaka's got a point," Yukie says. "Maybe if we wait for a foggy day? Or try early in the morning, when the dew's about? We could try Waterbending and see if you can... make the leap."
"Are you saying we should kick back and relax now?" Shinji says. "Because I'm very much behind that, as a plan. Just sayin'."
"Not necessarily." Yukie gets to her feet. "I mean, with the stream so close, you and I could practice Waterbending." She slips into a practice stance and all at once brings her arms forwards. Yutaka saw where this was going and dives out of the way as a glittering jet of water bursts from the stream and cascades over Shinji. Hirono lets out a loud snort of laughter.
"Oops," Yukie says, with the best innocent face Yutaka's ever seen.
"Yeah, no," Shinji says. "You're in control of your powers better than that, I've seen it. Looks like I'm going to have to unleash all my Avatar skill." He swings an arm round and geez, he makes it look so easy as he sends a wave of water flying at Yukie. She blocks it, turns and twists it round back at him.
"God, you three are dorks," Hirono says, and of course they both send the stream water flying at her instead. As she leaps to her feet and stamps and the ground lurches, Yutaka hastily curls a breeze around himself and spins back from the line of fire. Hirono fights dirty. Literally. Still, there are probably worse people to be hanging out with. Especially as even if they're being chased down by a huge and powerful military nation intent on stomping them, they can still goof off and have the odd water fight.
Plus, it's nice to be better than the cool guy at something.
[Title] Scatters of Sparks
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda watches fireworks. Written for rushikayu13, who requested pre-DN Matsuda fic.
It was after graduation, and a group of them went up on to the hill beyond the university to look at the stars and fireworks. Matsuda's exam results hadn't been astounding, but they'd been better than he'd sometimes feared, and good enough that his dad wasn't actually going to read him the riot act, just shake his head and mention how well his brother had done.
The ground was cold, but they'd brought blankets, and they'd also brought cheap wine, and above them the sky spread out like... like another blanket or something, one thrown over them. It was some guys Matsuda had tutorials with (well, had had now, classes were over for good) and if they weren't lifelong friends they said hi to each other and shared notes if one of them had overslept or been too hungover to stand. And it wasn't Matsuda who'd had the idea to come up here, it was one of the others, but he'd remembered to ask Matsuda as well.
It was those guys (who he never really spoke to again afterwards, 'cause he was busy trying to get his head round the new job, and then he was just coming out of that when the Kira case hit) and a few girls, one who was in the tutorial with them and someone's sister and someone who Matsuda had had lectures with in first year. None of them were interested-interested, but they'd all had a few gulps of wine and so they flirted with him like they were flirting with the others and told him he was adorable. He touched the hand of one of them, and she gently pulled it away, but then she patted him on the head and said if we were in first year, I'd totally hang out with you.
They were all going on to different things, and at least two of the others said they were freaking out about having to join the real world and wished they could wind time back and do this for another three years. Fireworks burst and spat around them and sometimes it was a bit rubbish, just a scatter of sparks, but once or twice there were really big ones that filled the sky up like giant flowers. When those were there, Matsuda thought he couldn't be happier, but even when they'd faded, things seemed okay.
[Title] Studying Muggles
[Fandom] Harry Potter/Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Harry and his friends consider their new teacher. Requested by mayfic.
"Hang on, so that weird bloke we saw is a teacher?" Ron said, squinting across the Great Hall. "I mean, he's up on the top table..."
"Oh, yes," Hermione said, pouring herself some more pumpkin juice. "He's the new Muggle Studies teacher. His name's L."
"L? L what?"
"Just L, apparently."
Harry frowned. The new member of Hogwarts staff was sitting crouched on his chair, knees visible above the table, and had somehow managed to get a steady stream of house-elves to bring him cakes and puddings despite everyone else still working their way through their main courses.
"He is dressed like a Muggle, I suppose," Ron observed. "Why's he sitting on his chair like that, though? Is that a Muggle thing?"
"No..." Hermione sighed. "He said if he doesn't sit like that, his reasoning abilities drop by forty per cent. I did try it myself, but it's actually really hard to keep your balance."
"Hermione," Harry said, "isn't the point of Muggle Studies supposed to be that it teaches Purebloods what Muggles are really like?"
"I told you, I think it's fascinating getting the chance to observe a Pureblood perspective on a culture I'm already part of -"
"Yeah, I know that, that's not why I was... it's just, he doesn't exactly look like... a normal Muggle, does he?"
"He doesn't?" Ron said.
"Well, no," Hermione said, thoughtfully, "but he did give a very interesting first lesson. It was mainly on the various motivations people have to commit murder and how it varies between Muggle and wizarding culture. He was eating Chocolate Frogs for most of it, though."
"Did he share them?" Ron asked.
"No, he didn't actually."
"It was... just about murder?" Harry said, taking another look at L, who was now pouring himself a cup of coffee with one hand and dropping sugar lumps into the cup with the other.
"Yes, pretty much. Although he also asked us random facts off the Chocolate Frog cards. He said it was to see how we reacted to unexpected questions. I only got four of them right," she said, a little shamefacedly, "but I've been revising since. You can test me later."
"Is he... um, going to do other topics next lesson?" Harry asked.
"He said he was hoping to move onto large-scale fraud soon," Hermione said. "That should be interesting, I don't know much about how fraud works in the wizarding world."
Ron and Harry glanced at each other.
"That's not what I thought you'd be doing in Muggle Studies," Ron said at last. "Wish I'd signed up now. It sounds better than Divination, at any rate."
[Title] Changes, Combined
[Fandom] Battle Royale (movie)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Keita Iijima felt left out, until now. Requested by rushikayu13.
Keita hasn't joined the class halfway through the term this time, but it still feels like he has. Everyone else has already made friends and started hanging out in little groups and he's not in any of them. Not like anyone's mean, just... it's obvious they don't expect him to be friends with them.
Until today.
It's science class and they're doing acids and alkalis, which is boring, and so he's listening to what other people are saying. Two girls in the row behind are whispering about boring girl stuff, but then the boy in front of him mutters to his friend, "I thought acid was supposed to be interesting. Like, it's the stuff that eats your face off, right?"
"That's only on TV. I think," the other boy, this little kid, says. "Acid it already, remember? Get it?"
His friend snorts but Keita thinks it's pretty funny and he's snorted with laughter before he can think. Of course everyone looks at him and the teacher asks him nastily if he's got a joke he'd like to share with the class. He just shakes his head, and tries to look like he's being serious, but inside he's still laughing. It's just one of those things which hits at a particular moment and couldn't be funnier.
But at break the two of them come up to him, and the little kid says, "It was nice of you to laugh. Mimura just always says I'm being dumb."
"Do not," the other boy, Mimura says. He's tall, though not as tall as Keita is, and he's wearing awesome trainers. "I laugh when it's funny. It just usually isn't. But you can come hang out with us if you want, even if you do think Yutaka's jokes are funny."
Keita knows sometimes people ask the new kid to hang out with them because they want to do mean things to him, so he says, warily, "What are you gonna do?"
"Do you watch Baron Gong?" Yutaka says, and Keita's nodding and going, "Yeah! Baron Gong! Change! Combine!" before he remembers maybe Mimura, at least, is too cool for something like that, but Yutaka joins in, with the hand gestures and everything, and Mimura laughs in a you're-kind-of-dumb-but-that's-okay sort of way. They spend the rest of break thinking up what would happen if Baron Gong came here, like what fights there'd be, and Yutaka says, "And Mimura's uncle would be helping. He fights crime and bad guys and stuff for real, doesn't he?" and Mimura nods, looking pleased with himself but at the same time kind of awkward, so Keita figures it's true. It wouldn't matter if it wasn't, though. They're acting like him expecting to be friends with them is okay.
[Title] Omen
[Fandom] Merlin/Torchwood
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Captain Jack has seen what's to come, even if he doesn't want Gaius to know. Slight Captain Jack/Gaius, because people kept asking for it last year ^^
Gaius has become accustomed to, on occasion, returning to his chambers and finding Jack Harkness waiting there, and if he looks forward to these strange meetings more than he cares to admit - well, that's his own business. But the man is normally relaxed, grinning, and ready with a charming comment and anecdote about other worlds.
Today he is pale and he stares around the cave of old books and soft candlelight as if he finds it threatening.
"What's wrong?" Gaius asks, and Jack turns to stare at him.
"Tell me what year it is," he says.
Gaius does so. His heart is already sinking. Jack has talked before about time being different for him, about seeing things from the far future, about doubling back on his past life. Gaius has never asked him if he knows anything about Camelot. Deep down, he never thought he needed to.
"You've come here from later, haven't you?" he says. "You've seen what's going to happen."
Jack forces a smile. "Sounds like you've been expecting some bad news for a while anyway."
Gaius avoids answering by walking over to the other side of the room to light another candle. What Jack's said is true, he realises, even if he wasn't aware of it. He and Merlin have both been waiting for the worst to happen. Jack is simply confirming that they're right.
"I'm sorry," Jack says, numbly. "I'm sorry -"
"Stop." Gaius pours him a drink, comes over to sit next to him. "It's not your fault."
Jack doesn't answer.
"Can you stay tonight?" Gaius says. "We have some time left?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we've got time."
"Then that is all right. Stay tonight... and tomorrow, you can tell me what's to come."
[Title] Trip
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG-13 for swearing, violence and drug use
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo revels in his powers.
Tetsuo is getting it now. It's slightly like looking and making something follow your gaze, and slightly like throwing something across the room only you're not using your hands, and slightly like nothing on this fucking earth. Because it's not just the making-stuff-float-without-touching-it, and it's not just the looking-at-someone-you-don't-like-and-they-literally-explode. It's the way the Clowns, these fucked-up junkies who didn't think twice before about beating him up, are terrified of him, the way when he enters a room they all sort of draw back. It's the way they're giving him all the drugs they have because he's demanded it, no matter it's a shitload of cash dissolving in his veins over the course of a few hours. It's the way the guys who called themselves his friends while laughing at him behind his back are running scared, the way he can do whatever he wants and they won't ever stop being scared because he is like a fucking god or whatever. This is magic, all those crappy fairytales and cartoons never said it felt like this.
(He still can't imagine how Kaneda's reacting to the news. It doesn't fit in, imagining Kaneda being really scared. But hell, that's magic, right? It does whatever you want it to. No point in thinking about it now. When it comes to it, the powers'll come through for him.)
[Title] The Aftermath of Saving the World From a Demon
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The GGs return home after winning against the final boss.
The Garage door flew open and bounced off the wall as the GGs staggered inside.
"Okay, so," Tab said, stumbling forward and slumping against the nearest wall. "Rhino demon. That... happened, right? I haven't just got high on fumes?"
"Nope, that... that definitely happened." Cube leant forward, resting her arms on the sound system. "There was a thirty-foot tall rhino-shaped thing trying to set us on fire. Oh, god, did anyone actually get set on fire? Are we all okay?"
"I'm not set on fire," Piranha said, brushing soot stains off her clothes. "Not sure I'm totally okay, but there's no fire here."
"It wasn't... it wasn't actually a demon, though, right?" Mew had knelt down next to Potts, was scritching his ears - now she looked up, pale under the remains of her make-up. "I mean... if it was, then like... how do we know we're not all cursed or whatever?"
"I think you feel it?" Yo-Yo had crawled across to the car, slumped down on the front seat - he waved an arm vaguely as he spoke. "There's like a Creeping Sense of Wrongness or something. I've read my sword and sorcery shit. I know how this goes."
"Dork," Gum said, hurrying over to the window. "Huh, it certainly looks okay out there now. Just... regular sky. Those freaky-ass clouds are gone."
"And besides," Yo-Yo carried on, "Goji was the one actually doin' the ritual. If anyone was gonna be cursed, it'd be him."
"Yeah, well, he's... not really in a state to worry about curses, is he?" Mew giggled, then put a hand over her mouth. "Oh, god. We sort of helped kill the guy who owns the Rokkaku Corporation. That's really kind of bad."
"He killed himself, kat," Garam said. "He should've knuckled down and kept still, not gone running round the roof. Didn't... and besides, who's gonna call us on it? No one knows what the hell just happened."
"We have to find Coin," Cube said, shaking now. "We have to find him, this was actual serious shit, what the hell he thought he was playing at..."
"We gotta wait it out." Combo had come over to her, put a large arm round her. "With Rokkaku HQ bein' levelled we ain't got no other leads right now."
"But we'll do it." Tab brandished a finger. "Because it seems we can actually sort of do anything right now. Right, Beat - hey, hang on, where's our fearless leader?"
Silence fell (except for the bleep and ping of Slate determinedly playing pinball) as they stared round the Garage.
"If he's got set on fire and not told us I am going to kill him -" Gum muttered.
Potts scrambled free of Mew's arms and ran towards the door, barking. A second later Beat skated through it, half-hidden by a pile of pizza boxes.
"So, I thought we needed food," he said, glancing round the tower of cardboard. "Because I don't know about you lot, but I'm kind of in need of the grounding influence of melted cheese right now."
"Yeah. Cheese sounds good." Gum skated over to him, carefully lifted up the top box. "I was expecting, you know, guys with machine guns. Fire. Explosives. Normal shit."
"It says something that that's become normal," Tab said.
"Well, you guys do have a lunatic police force anyway," said Cube, coming forward to grab another of the pizza boxes. "I guess you have experience."
"Yeah," said Garam. "But that doesn't mean we like it. And I reckon even, like, superheroes and shit need to kick back with some comfort pizza occasionally. We're owed this."
[Title] Modification
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] That moment when the device has been modified so that it can produce two linked portals at once.
The device buzzed in her hands and then went still again.
She turned and pulled the trigger, watched as a blue portal shimmered into existence on the wall at the other end of the conveyor-thing. Then she turned and fired again and actually heard herself gasp as an orange portal appeared on the opposite wall.
Scrambling onto the platform, she watched as the blue portal drew closer and closer. As she ducked through it, there was the faint fizz on her skin and then she was stepping out of the orange portal, just able to see the tail-end of her own foot disappearing through the blue one.
She felt a huge grin spread over her face, despite the not-knowing-anything, despite the silence, despite everything. With this, she could go anywhere.
And surely there couldn't be anything too hard to beat, not when she had this?
[Title] Not Magic But Truth
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Raito doesn't think using the notebook is anything like magic.
"Sometimes it's like magic," Misa said, writing down another name and then tapping her pen absently against her cheek. "Don't you think?"
Raito managed not to roll his eyes. Magic was for children. Magic was for anomalies, things that didn't fit the natural order, that didn't really exist. This wasn't anything like that. This felt right, as if he were only now discovering things that had always been true. How typical of Misa, to be childishly enraptured by something that really should just be accepted.
nine magic moments
[Title] Air and Fire
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Avatar: The Last Airbender
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Shinji Mimura is the Avatar. Yutaka Seto is trying to teach him Airbending. It's not how he expected. Requested by rushikayu13.
Yutaka's still not sure how his life ended up like this.
That the Avatar is a really cool Firebender guy who was dreaming of bringing down the system from inside for years - yeah, okay. Shinji Mimura is pretty much exactly what you'd expect the Avatar to be (well... actually, you'd maybe expect him to be a bit more, like, zen and less interested in girls and stuff, but still).
That the Avatar is hanging out with a really scary Kyoshi Warrior (and Hirono's the only girl Yutaka's ever met who makes make-up seem frightening) and a Waterbender girl who never seems to get freaked out by anything, even when it involves the entire Fire Nation trying to capture them (and Yukie's the nicest of them, as well, she actually says stuff to him like we need you just as much and I'm really glad you're here) - yeah, that fits. Cool Avatar has cool friends.
It's where he himself fits that he's not sure about.
"C'mon, Shinji," he says. "I know you've got all the moves, but you haven't got this one yet."
Shinji grins. "You said it, not me. It's just not clicking, midget. I'm used to Bending stuff I can actually see."
"I thought this'd be the one he'd struggle with," Hirono calls loudly from where she's leaning against the nearby tree. "Subtlety isn't his strong point, after all."
"This from someone whose traditions dictate in dressing up in robes and crazy facepaint before going to confront any enemy?"
Hirono half-sits up and makes a quick and rather rude-looking hand gesture. Shinji yelps as the patch of earth under his feet shifts. Yukie giggles, then quickly hides it with her hand. "Mimura, I can't help feeling you'd get this quicker if you actually tried rather than thinking up wisecracks."
"Hey, I am trying. I've stuck with this for hours now. It's just..." He frowns. "It's just slippery." Then he's looking round at Yutaka: "You ever get that?"
"Let's not start asking Yutaka whether he's touched slippery things," Hirono says. "Some of us like our lunch where it is."
Yutaka feels himself turning red. Trying to ignore Hirono snickering, he says, "Um... not really. But I think it's... it's softer, right? Air, I mean. Fire and water and earth, you can see it. You can see where it is and where it... um, isn't. Air's all around." He doesn't say that for him, it makes it easy, that for as long as he can remember it's been like... like you run, and the ground's just there - like that. Air is just there.
"Yutaka's got a point," Yukie says. "Maybe if we wait for a foggy day? Or try early in the morning, when the dew's about? We could try Waterbending and see if you can... make the leap."
"Are you saying we should kick back and relax now?" Shinji says. "Because I'm very much behind that, as a plan. Just sayin'."
"Not necessarily." Yukie gets to her feet. "I mean, with the stream so close, you and I could practice Waterbending." She slips into a practice stance and all at once brings her arms forwards. Yutaka saw where this was going and dives out of the way as a glittering jet of water bursts from the stream and cascades over Shinji. Hirono lets out a loud snort of laughter.
"Oops," Yukie says, with the best innocent face Yutaka's ever seen.
"Yeah, no," Shinji says. "You're in control of your powers better than that, I've seen it. Looks like I'm going to have to unleash all my Avatar skill." He swings an arm round and geez, he makes it look so easy as he sends a wave of water flying at Yukie. She blocks it, turns and twists it round back at him.
"God, you three are dorks," Hirono says, and of course they both send the stream water flying at her instead. As she leaps to her feet and stamps and the ground lurches, Yutaka hastily curls a breeze around himself and spins back from the line of fire. Hirono fights dirty. Literally. Still, there are probably worse people to be hanging out with. Especially as even if they're being chased down by a huge and powerful military nation intent on stomping them, they can still goof off and have the odd water fight.
Plus, it's nice to be better than the cool guy at something.
[Title] Scatters of Sparks
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda watches fireworks. Written for rushikayu13, who requested pre-DN Matsuda fic.
It was after graduation, and a group of them went up on to the hill beyond the university to look at the stars and fireworks. Matsuda's exam results hadn't been astounding, but they'd been better than he'd sometimes feared, and good enough that his dad wasn't actually going to read him the riot act, just shake his head and mention how well his brother had done.
The ground was cold, but they'd brought blankets, and they'd also brought cheap wine, and above them the sky spread out like... like another blanket or something, one thrown over them. It was some guys Matsuda had tutorials with (well, had had now, classes were over for good) and if they weren't lifelong friends they said hi to each other and shared notes if one of them had overslept or been too hungover to stand. And it wasn't Matsuda who'd had the idea to come up here, it was one of the others, but he'd remembered to ask Matsuda as well.
It was those guys (who he never really spoke to again afterwards, 'cause he was busy trying to get his head round the new job, and then he was just coming out of that when the Kira case hit) and a few girls, one who was in the tutorial with them and someone's sister and someone who Matsuda had had lectures with in first year. None of them were interested-interested, but they'd all had a few gulps of wine and so they flirted with him like they were flirting with the others and told him he was adorable. He touched the hand of one of them, and she gently pulled it away, but then she patted him on the head and said if we were in first year, I'd totally hang out with you.
They were all going on to different things, and at least two of the others said they were freaking out about having to join the real world and wished they could wind time back and do this for another three years. Fireworks burst and spat around them and sometimes it was a bit rubbish, just a scatter of sparks, but once or twice there were really big ones that filled the sky up like giant flowers. When those were there, Matsuda thought he couldn't be happier, but even when they'd faded, things seemed okay.
[Title] Studying Muggles
[Fandom] Harry Potter/Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Harry and his friends consider their new teacher. Requested by mayfic.
"Hang on, so that weird bloke we saw is a teacher?" Ron said, squinting across the Great Hall. "I mean, he's up on the top table..."
"Oh, yes," Hermione said, pouring herself some more pumpkin juice. "He's the new Muggle Studies teacher. His name's L."
"L? L what?"
"Just L, apparently."
Harry frowned. The new member of Hogwarts staff was sitting crouched on his chair, knees visible above the table, and had somehow managed to get a steady stream of house-elves to bring him cakes and puddings despite everyone else still working their way through their main courses.
"He is dressed like a Muggle, I suppose," Ron observed. "Why's he sitting on his chair like that, though? Is that a Muggle thing?"
"No..." Hermione sighed. "He said if he doesn't sit like that, his reasoning abilities drop by forty per cent. I did try it myself, but it's actually really hard to keep your balance."
"Hermione," Harry said, "isn't the point of Muggle Studies supposed to be that it teaches Purebloods what Muggles are really like?"
"I told you, I think it's fascinating getting the chance to observe a Pureblood perspective on a culture I'm already part of -"
"Yeah, I know that, that's not why I was... it's just, he doesn't exactly look like... a normal Muggle, does he?"
"He doesn't?" Ron said.
"Well, no," Hermione said, thoughtfully, "but he did give a very interesting first lesson. It was mainly on the various motivations people have to commit murder and how it varies between Muggle and wizarding culture. He was eating Chocolate Frogs for most of it, though."
"Did he share them?" Ron asked.
"No, he didn't actually."
"It was... just about murder?" Harry said, taking another look at L, who was now pouring himself a cup of coffee with one hand and dropping sugar lumps into the cup with the other.
"Yes, pretty much. Although he also asked us random facts off the Chocolate Frog cards. He said it was to see how we reacted to unexpected questions. I only got four of them right," she said, a little shamefacedly, "but I've been revising since. You can test me later."
"Is he... um, going to do other topics next lesson?" Harry asked.
"He said he was hoping to move onto large-scale fraud soon," Hermione said. "That should be interesting, I don't know much about how fraud works in the wizarding world."
Ron and Harry glanced at each other.
"That's not what I thought you'd be doing in Muggle Studies," Ron said at last. "Wish I'd signed up now. It sounds better than Divination, at any rate."
[Title] Changes, Combined
[Fandom] Battle Royale (movie)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Keita Iijima felt left out, until now. Requested by rushikayu13.
Keita hasn't joined the class halfway through the term this time, but it still feels like he has. Everyone else has already made friends and started hanging out in little groups and he's not in any of them. Not like anyone's mean, just... it's obvious they don't expect him to be friends with them.
Until today.
It's science class and they're doing acids and alkalis, which is boring, and so he's listening to what other people are saying. Two girls in the row behind are whispering about boring girl stuff, but then the boy in front of him mutters to his friend, "I thought acid was supposed to be interesting. Like, it's the stuff that eats your face off, right?"
"That's only on TV. I think," the other boy, this little kid, says. "Acid it already, remember? Get it?"
His friend snorts but Keita thinks it's pretty funny and he's snorted with laughter before he can think. Of course everyone looks at him and the teacher asks him nastily if he's got a joke he'd like to share with the class. He just shakes his head, and tries to look like he's being serious, but inside he's still laughing. It's just one of those things which hits at a particular moment and couldn't be funnier.
But at break the two of them come up to him, and the little kid says, "It was nice of you to laugh. Mimura just always says I'm being dumb."
"Do not," the other boy, Mimura says. He's tall, though not as tall as Keita is, and he's wearing awesome trainers. "I laugh when it's funny. It just usually isn't. But you can come hang out with us if you want, even if you do think Yutaka's jokes are funny."
Keita knows sometimes people ask the new kid to hang out with them because they want to do mean things to him, so he says, warily, "What are you gonna do?"
"Do you watch Baron Gong?" Yutaka says, and Keita's nodding and going, "Yeah! Baron Gong! Change! Combine!" before he remembers maybe Mimura, at least, is too cool for something like that, but Yutaka joins in, with the hand gestures and everything, and Mimura laughs in a you're-kind-of-dumb-but-that's-okay sort of way. They spend the rest of break thinking up what would happen if Baron Gong came here, like what fights there'd be, and Yutaka says, "And Mimura's uncle would be helping. He fights crime and bad guys and stuff for real, doesn't he?" and Mimura nods, looking pleased with himself but at the same time kind of awkward, so Keita figures it's true. It wouldn't matter if it wasn't, though. They're acting like him expecting to be friends with them is okay.
[Title] Omen
[Fandom] Merlin/Torchwood
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Captain Jack has seen what's to come, even if he doesn't want Gaius to know. Slight Captain Jack/Gaius, because people kept asking for it last year ^^
Gaius has become accustomed to, on occasion, returning to his chambers and finding Jack Harkness waiting there, and if he looks forward to these strange meetings more than he cares to admit - well, that's his own business. But the man is normally relaxed, grinning, and ready with a charming comment and anecdote about other worlds.
Today he is pale and he stares around the cave of old books and soft candlelight as if he finds it threatening.
"What's wrong?" Gaius asks, and Jack turns to stare at him.
"Tell me what year it is," he says.
Gaius does so. His heart is already sinking. Jack has talked before about time being different for him, about seeing things from the far future, about doubling back on his past life. Gaius has never asked him if he knows anything about Camelot. Deep down, he never thought he needed to.
"You've come here from later, haven't you?" he says. "You've seen what's going to happen."
Jack forces a smile. "Sounds like you've been expecting some bad news for a while anyway."
Gaius avoids answering by walking over to the other side of the room to light another candle. What Jack's said is true, he realises, even if he wasn't aware of it. He and Merlin have both been waiting for the worst to happen. Jack is simply confirming that they're right.
"I'm sorry," Jack says, numbly. "I'm sorry -"
"Stop." Gaius pours him a drink, comes over to sit next to him. "It's not your fault."
Jack doesn't answer.
"Can you stay tonight?" Gaius says. "We have some time left?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we've got time."
"Then that is all right. Stay tonight... and tomorrow, you can tell me what's to come."
[Title] Trip
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG-13 for swearing, violence and drug use
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo revels in his powers.
Tetsuo is getting it now. It's slightly like looking and making something follow your gaze, and slightly like throwing something across the room only you're not using your hands, and slightly like nothing on this fucking earth. Because it's not just the making-stuff-float-without-touching-it, and it's not just the looking-at-someone-you-don't-like-and-they-literally-explode. It's the way the Clowns, these fucked-up junkies who didn't think twice before about beating him up, are terrified of him, the way when he enters a room they all sort of draw back. It's the way they're giving him all the drugs they have because he's demanded it, no matter it's a shitload of cash dissolving in his veins over the course of a few hours. It's the way the guys who called themselves his friends while laughing at him behind his back are running scared, the way he can do whatever he wants and they won't ever stop being scared because he is like a fucking god or whatever. This is magic, all those crappy fairytales and cartoons never said it felt like this.
(He still can't imagine how Kaneda's reacting to the news. It doesn't fit in, imagining Kaneda being really scared. But hell, that's magic, right? It does whatever you want it to. No point in thinking about it now. When it comes to it, the powers'll come through for him.)
[Title] The Aftermath of Saving the World From a Demon
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The GGs return home after winning against the final boss.
The Garage door flew open and bounced off the wall as the GGs staggered inside.
"Okay, so," Tab said, stumbling forward and slumping against the nearest wall. "Rhino demon. That... happened, right? I haven't just got high on fumes?"
"Nope, that... that definitely happened." Cube leant forward, resting her arms on the sound system. "There was a thirty-foot tall rhino-shaped thing trying to set us on fire. Oh, god, did anyone actually get set on fire? Are we all okay?"
"I'm not set on fire," Piranha said, brushing soot stains off her clothes. "Not sure I'm totally okay, but there's no fire here."
"It wasn't... it wasn't actually a demon, though, right?" Mew had knelt down next to Potts, was scritching his ears - now she looked up, pale under the remains of her make-up. "I mean... if it was, then like... how do we know we're not all cursed or whatever?"
"I think you feel it?" Yo-Yo had crawled across to the car, slumped down on the front seat - he waved an arm vaguely as he spoke. "There's like a Creeping Sense of Wrongness or something. I've read my sword and sorcery shit. I know how this goes."
"Dork," Gum said, hurrying over to the window. "Huh, it certainly looks okay out there now. Just... regular sky. Those freaky-ass clouds are gone."
"And besides," Yo-Yo carried on, "Goji was the one actually doin' the ritual. If anyone was gonna be cursed, it'd be him."
"Yeah, well, he's... not really in a state to worry about curses, is he?" Mew giggled, then put a hand over her mouth. "Oh, god. We sort of helped kill the guy who owns the Rokkaku Corporation. That's really kind of bad."
"He killed himself, kat," Garam said. "He should've knuckled down and kept still, not gone running round the roof. Didn't... and besides, who's gonna call us on it? No one knows what the hell just happened."
"We have to find Coin," Cube said, shaking now. "We have to find him, this was actual serious shit, what the hell he thought he was playing at..."
"We gotta wait it out." Combo had come over to her, put a large arm round her. "With Rokkaku HQ bein' levelled we ain't got no other leads right now."
"But we'll do it." Tab brandished a finger. "Because it seems we can actually sort of do anything right now. Right, Beat - hey, hang on, where's our fearless leader?"
Silence fell (except for the bleep and ping of Slate determinedly playing pinball) as they stared round the Garage.
"If he's got set on fire and not told us I am going to kill him -" Gum muttered.
Potts scrambled free of Mew's arms and ran towards the door, barking. A second later Beat skated through it, half-hidden by a pile of pizza boxes.
"So, I thought we needed food," he said, glancing round the tower of cardboard. "Because I don't know about you lot, but I'm kind of in need of the grounding influence of melted cheese right now."
"Yeah. Cheese sounds good." Gum skated over to him, carefully lifted up the top box. "I was expecting, you know, guys with machine guns. Fire. Explosives. Normal shit."
"It says something that that's become normal," Tab said.
"Well, you guys do have a lunatic police force anyway," said Cube, coming forward to grab another of the pizza boxes. "I guess you have experience."
"Yeah," said Garam. "But that doesn't mean we like it. And I reckon even, like, superheroes and shit need to kick back with some comfort pizza occasionally. We're owed this."
[Title] Modification
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] That moment when the device has been modified so that it can produce two linked portals at once.
The device buzzed in her hands and then went still again.
She turned and pulled the trigger, watched as a blue portal shimmered into existence on the wall at the other end of the conveyor-thing. Then she turned and fired again and actually heard herself gasp as an orange portal appeared on the opposite wall.
Scrambling onto the platform, she watched as the blue portal drew closer and closer. As she ducked through it, there was the faint fizz on her skin and then she was stepping out of the orange portal, just able to see the tail-end of her own foot disappearing through the blue one.
She felt a huge grin spread over her face, despite the not-knowing-anything, despite the silence, despite everything. With this, she could go anywhere.
And surely there couldn't be anything too hard to beat, not when she had this?
[Title] Not Magic But Truth
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Raito doesn't think using the notebook is anything like magic.
"Sometimes it's like magic," Misa said, writing down another name and then tapping her pen absently against her cheek. "Don't you think?"
Raito managed not to roll his eyes. Magic was for children. Magic was for anomalies, things that didn't fit the natural order, that didn't really exist. This wasn't anything like that. This felt right, as if he were only now discovering things that had always been true. How typical of Misa, to be childishly enraptured by something that really should just be accepted.