Nine empty rooms
[Title] Killing God
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Pairings] Some implications of Raito/Takada, Takada/Mikami, and Raito/Mikami
[Notes/Summary] Continuing the DN AU in which Raito is not Kira, but someone else is and has killed Soichiro. Mikami tries to decide whose side he should be on, and Raito deals with the repercussions of his choice.
Teru has always welcomed living alone, but right now - when he can think of nothing else but the choice he has to make - he wonders what he would do for some companionship, some advice.
The flat is dark and the shadows are dull orange from the streetlights outside. Teru kneels on the floor and tries to pray. It doesn't work. He's still in his clothes he wore to work today, they're crumpled and sweaty and he would never normally seek to talk to God when he's so filthy but it feels wrong to put off the decision, to attend to his own comforts, when he knows that he's got this choice waiting for him.
Kiyomi Takada is God. God come to this world as Kira, in the body of a woman, to judge the living and the dead. And she has recognised him as one of the faithful and asked him only to aid her in her work and that's the call he's been waiting for his entire life, that's what everything's been about. She has passed on to him a list of names and faces.
One of the names is that of Raito Yagami. He was kind to Teru from the day they met at Tokyo University. He didn't laugh about God, and nor did he get angry, not even when Teru said that Kira's judgements must all be right and (although Teru didn't know it then) Raito's father had been killed by God a few months before. Anyone else would have used that as an excuse to hate, but Raito didn't, Raito was kind and intelligent and if sometimes he seemed cold or distant that was hardly surprising, it is hard when you lose a parent and know in your heart that their death was just and right -
Teru has prayed and prayed that Raito will understand, one day. He thought one day would be enough. But now it isn't. Now Teru needs Raito to understand by morning, or -
This decision should be an easy one. Teru should be able to place God above all humans. Teru should know that this is a test which he is in imminent danger of failing. But he knows a lot of things right now. He knows that Raito hates Kira only because Kira hurt him and his family, and shouldn't Raito be given the chance to accept the truth? He knows that he's never given anyone else that chance, not after the first time they failed. He knows that Kiyomi loves Raito as well, that there were tears in her voice when she gave him the command tonight to write down the names. He knows that Kiyomi told him that he and Raito were the only two men that she'd ever admired, and he knows that Kiyomi can't spare Raito because that will justify all the people who say that Kira couldn't be female because women are too soft and weak-willed to make the painful decisions. He knows that God shouldn't be swayed by human reasons like that, but he knows that God's power wouldn't have been granted to someone who was unworthy of it.
He knows that neither Raito nor Kiyomi would shirk this decision, were it them, and that no matter how much he loves both of them he has to make that choice.
The thoughts hurt and he's scared and no matter how much he cries out to God the room is empty except for him, he is talking only to himself.
In the end, it's miserable logic that he uses. Betraying Kiyomi will mean she's imprisoned for life (Raito has said there is no way now that Kira can be sentenced to death). Betraying Raito will mean that he dies. Except that it's not logic, because he knows that a perfect world should be perfect whether or not it has Raito in it, but he can't quite believe it. And now the only thing that matters is that he himself should die, because he's made his choice and he cannot live in a world without God.
Raito goes to the apartment later the next day, after Kiyomi Takada has been arrested. He finds Mikami dead, the only suicide note being a small piece of paper with the man's own name written on it.
L leans forward, gnaws on his thumb, and watches the two figures on the screen. Takada has lost weight since her imprisonment. She's been made to dress in black, and if the symbolism of Kira mourning for her victims amuses L, he sees no reason to make anyone else aware of that.
Raito is staring down at her, his face a blank, cold mask.
"I don't know what you want me to say." Takada's shrugging, an elegant movement as if the cameras on her are just for TV. "It's a little immature to come here just to lecture me, don't you think?"
"You murdered my father." Raito wrenches out the words - L wonders if he's truly having difficulty speaking them or if he simply wishes to appear that way. It seems to affect Takada, at any rate. She raises her chin a little, stares past him as she says, "That was before I knew you."
"That doesn't make it any better!"
"He was on my trail!" Takada snaps. Her fists are clenched too now. "I couldn't let him catch me. I was achieving too much!"
"Did you know?" Raito says, flatly. "Did you know who I was?"
She glances away.
"So it was all a lie," Raito says. He smiles. He sounds almost relieved. Takada smiles back at him: "Oh, Raito... please don't start trying to convince me you loved me. If anyone should be feeling bitter, it should be me." Raito turns dead white at that, and Takada stumbles out, "You're surprised I noticed you were just going through the motions? You're not as successful a liar as you'd like to believe. Or was it all planned? Did you accept my offer because you and Ryuga already suspected me?"
"Of course I didn't! How can you think I'd play with someone's affections that way? I hate Kira, but that doesn't mean I'd do something like that, not even to capture hi - her -"
Takada sighs.
"You don't hate Kira," she says.
"Kira killed -"
"You're not stupid enough to hate Kira. You're upset because of what happened to your father. I understand that, and I am... I am sorry. I would never willingly hurt you." She stares at him, her eyes wide. "But you couldn't ever disapprove of what I'm doing. Not really. You know as well as I do that people just let you down, otherwise."
"Shut up." Raito swallows again, but he doesn't move.
"The current system doesn't work," Takada says. "I put in place one which does -"
"And which had the advantage of providing you with fame and fortune as your own spokesperson," Raito says.
"I put in place," Takada says, speaking a little louder, "a system which does work. The good and hard-working live happily, the wicked and lazy die off because they contribute nothing. You know and I know and Teru knew that this was the only way."
Raito doesn't answer. L watches, scrutinising his face.
"If I hadn't killed your father," Takada says, more quietly, "don't you think you might have considered joining me?"
"I don't need to listen to this."
"All right," Takada says, sitting up a little. "What about Teru? Did you love him? I certainly never anticipated that he'd be the one to let me down. What exactly did you promise him in order to get him on your side?"
"I - I didn't promise anything!" Raito's face is red - sharp marks like scars. "He was - he was misguided. I'm grateful he realised the error of his ways but I didn't - and I certainly didn't -"
"All right, let's try a different question." Takada glances away from him. "If Teru had been Kira, would you have considered allying with him? You don't have to bother denying it. I just want you to think about it. I just want you to think that maybe you passed up the chance to really make a difference, and you're going to have to live with that for the rest of your life."
Raito stares down at her coldly. L wonders if he has remembered the cameras. It's not the kind of thing Raito usually forgets.
At last he says, evenly, "I have defeated the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, and avenged my father's death. I've got no more regrets, thank you, Kiyomi."
A small smile spreads over Takada's face. L mimics it. He suspects that the two of them are, for once, united in their belief that Raito is lying. L, however, definitely has no regrets. This suspicion will only make his new crime-solving partnership with Raito Yagami even more interesting.
[Title] Before Term Began
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] It's great to be home for the summer, but sometimes you miss school and its people in ways you didn't expect.
For the first week of the holidays Alicia revelled in the freedom: trees to climb, picnics to eat, brothers to prank and a million family arguments to be had no matter how much Mother told them all to be quiet. The sun shone and Mother had made gooseberry pie to welcome her home and she spent a lot of time barefoot.
The second week it rained, and she stayed inside. All her her books were trivial and predictable, her brothers turned every conversation into a debate or a backhanded compliments match, and her room seemed empty even with her in it.
She didn't exactly want to go back to school, but in the last week of the holidays, at the thought of familiar faces with their own amusing little reactions to her and new faces who might generate any number of conflicts, she found excitement fizzing in her veins.
"Gee, it must've been so hard stuck in England for a whole year," Lorena said, taking a delicate sip of her malted milk. "I mean, they really made you wear your hair in braids?"
"Aw, it wasn't so bad." Zerelda laughed, pretended to scrutinise the sun glinting in her nail polish. "They're quite nice when you get to know them. But it sure is nice to be home."
"I bet!" Lorena said. "And you've missed so much. You see I finally got my permanent wave done?" She pinched some curls to emphasise. "I was thinking I might go for ash blonde instead of sunshine next time, Emmie's got ash blonde and I think it looks just wunnerful. What do you think?"
Zerelda was in fact thinking about how tiresome it was going to have to be manicuring her nails and making up her face every morning again. Even braiding had her hair made life easier, no matter how plain it made her look. Even if there was no one else in her bedroom to see her cut corners, people would spot it once she stepped outside the house. You could hardly stay in your empty room forever, but sometimes she wanted to.
"They were a real nice set of girls," she said, trying to sound as if she were speaking without thinking rather than deliberately putting the record straight. "I sure am going to miss them."
Darrell was sitting in the garden, watching the sun set, when Felicity came to join her. "You've been out here for ages. Daddy said to ask you if you and your friends agreed to have a freckle-making competition over the summer."
"As a matter of fact," Darrell said, "I was thinking. Something you wouldn't know much about!"
Felicity stuck her tongue out and sat down on the warm bench. "What about?"
"School."
"Ugh. In the holidays?"
"You haven't been to boarding school yet. You wouldn't understand."
"I just don't understand why you'd want to get back to lessons and mistresses and having to share a room. I mean, I know Malory Towers is smashing, but it still can't be quite as nice as home... can it?"
"Home will always be nice," Darrell said, stretching out her legs and closing her eyes to the sun. "But there's much more outside it. I never thought, before, but there are so many people in the world and... they can be very confusing. They can be scared or... or brave, or mean, or uncaring, or... or kind. I miss Sally, of course, and Alicia and Mary-Lou and people like them, but I rather miss everyone, actually. Even though I know that once I see them again I won't be able to stand them."
"I think the sun has addled your wits," Felicity said, but she sounded sad. "Still, the house will feel awfully empty once you're back at school."
"That's why you're going to come too, as soon as you're well. You can't spend all your life in a few little rooms."
[Title] In Case of Emergency
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The realisation that all really is not well at Aperture Science.
She's furious that the empty observation chamber freaks her out.
The silence and the rusted stairways and the graffiti'd walls should have prepared her for this. Obviously there is no one left in the place but her. Obviously, along the way, something has gone badly wrong with Aperture Science's work-life balance. But still. Seeing an empty room that's still habitable, a room meant for people, lit with clear lighting, with smooth white (albeit dusty) tables and keyboards and monitors, and those chairs on wheels with mustard-coloured seats, that rubs it in her face that she really is on her own.
She takes a few steps into the room, and when nothing shoots at her she takes a few more steps. On the opposite wall is a wide glass window. Through it is a white-walled test chamber. She remembers solving the puzzle it contains, back when she was still assuming this was just a brain-training exercise with added physical exertion.
She rests her hand on the glass, stares through it and tries to see herself. She'd looked up at these windows, muttered curses at them, assumed there were faceless bastards behind them recording her terror and tiredness on their clipboards or whatever. People, who could be reasoned with or fought against or, you know, subject to a higher authority.
Instead, the only people watching her are the crazed AI, and herself through different moments in time and space. She swallows, hard - the air tastes stale and metallic - and then she grips the gun tighter and walks back to the door. It's just that things are as difficult as she thought. That's all.
[Title] Saviour
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG-13
[Pairing] Matsuda/Ide
[Notes/Summary] AU where Raito won. It seems like Ide has only Matsuda as an ally now, but can he trust anyone now Kira rules the world?
[Link] HERE
[Title] Matrix
[Fandom] Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Batou and the Major are on the trail of their quarry, but things aren't what they seem.
It's a small concrete room. From her position by the door Motoko can just see banks of computers; hear the hum of machinery.
Looks empty to me, Batou's saying to her through the comm link. He's frowning, though. They both saw the guy run in here.
Cloaking?
Why didn't he use it earlier, if he's got the technology? Motoko wants to say that she'd spot the faint disturbance in the air even if their quarry was cloaked, but hey, perhaps she wouldn't. It's not like she's got the facilities to study the room at leisure.
Ishikawa could hack into the cameras, scan for heat. If the other comms come back online -
Motoko smiles. You want to sit here and wait for that? What if he's made it in there and gone out through an air vent?
There aren't any air vents. But Batou looks at her fleetingly, and grins. Okay, okay. I know what you're like when it comes to patience. On three?
She nods.
Go!
And she's diving round the corner, gun in both hands, back to the wall, and Batou's there, and she's laughing at herself, a little, because the room's empty -
Only it's not. The man is there, suddenly, in a corner between two monitors, and he's firing at them; Motoko drops, dives for cover, looses off a shot round the edge of a table, sees it hit the wall. She needs to focus. Batou is down behind another bank of desks, his gun laid across the top of one - he fires, and she follows suit, but their target doesn't drop. She hears Batou snarl over the comms and the shots what the hell is with this place? Are the angles screwed up or something?
Lay down covering fire - I'm going in.
Hah. Don't do anything I wouldn't do - and then a shot, another shot - a computer bursts into cracked plastic and broken glass, the air is full of the smell of melted synthetics. Motoko straightens up, leaps onto the row of desks, and starts to run, leaping over keyboards. Within a second or two she's leaping down onto the floor, squeezing the trigger to shoot the guy's gun out of his hand -
And he's no longer there.
Silence for a few seconds, then Batou mutters, what the hell? He didn't cloak, did he?
"No." Motoko grins; steps so that the wall is at her back again. "Either he's picked up some technology we haven't encountered before, or... he's hacked into our cyberbrains because he wants to play a first-person shooter with us. Whichever it is, I think we ought to track him down. Don't you?"
Batou laughs. "Well, sure. I always liked the final boss battles best."
[Title] View
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Akira's perceptions of the ruins of Neo-Tokyo are not like other people's.
"It's so empty," Kaori murmurs to herself as she and Akira look out over the bay.
Akira likes Kaori, so he doesn't want to tell her that she is wrong. But she is. The view is full of light on water and leaning-over skyscrapers with frames like broken matchsticks and people tiny in the distance with little scraps of coloured cloth wrapped round their shoulders and the smell of blood and dirt and rubbish and the soup with steam spiralling up against the sun. This is not empty. Empty was where he was before, where even time wasn't.
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Pairings] Some implications of Raito/Takada, Takada/Mikami, and Raito/Mikami
[Notes/Summary] Continuing the DN AU in which Raito is not Kira, but someone else is and has killed Soichiro. Mikami tries to decide whose side he should be on, and Raito deals with the repercussions of his choice.
Teru has always welcomed living alone, but right now - when he can think of nothing else but the choice he has to make - he wonders what he would do for some companionship, some advice.
The flat is dark and the shadows are dull orange from the streetlights outside. Teru kneels on the floor and tries to pray. It doesn't work. He's still in his clothes he wore to work today, they're crumpled and sweaty and he would never normally seek to talk to God when he's so filthy but it feels wrong to put off the decision, to attend to his own comforts, when he knows that he's got this choice waiting for him.
Kiyomi Takada is God. God come to this world as Kira, in the body of a woman, to judge the living and the dead. And she has recognised him as one of the faithful and asked him only to aid her in her work and that's the call he's been waiting for his entire life, that's what everything's been about. She has passed on to him a list of names and faces.
One of the names is that of Raito Yagami. He was kind to Teru from the day they met at Tokyo University. He didn't laugh about God, and nor did he get angry, not even when Teru said that Kira's judgements must all be right and (although Teru didn't know it then) Raito's father had been killed by God a few months before. Anyone else would have used that as an excuse to hate, but Raito didn't, Raito was kind and intelligent and if sometimes he seemed cold or distant that was hardly surprising, it is hard when you lose a parent and know in your heart that their death was just and right -
Teru has prayed and prayed that Raito will understand, one day. He thought one day would be enough. But now it isn't. Now Teru needs Raito to understand by morning, or -
This decision should be an easy one. Teru should be able to place God above all humans. Teru should know that this is a test which he is in imminent danger of failing. But he knows a lot of things right now. He knows that Raito hates Kira only because Kira hurt him and his family, and shouldn't Raito be given the chance to accept the truth? He knows that he's never given anyone else that chance, not after the first time they failed. He knows that Kiyomi loves Raito as well, that there were tears in her voice when she gave him the command tonight to write down the names. He knows that Kiyomi told him that he and Raito were the only two men that she'd ever admired, and he knows that Kiyomi can't spare Raito because that will justify all the people who say that Kira couldn't be female because women are too soft and weak-willed to make the painful decisions. He knows that God shouldn't be swayed by human reasons like that, but he knows that God's power wouldn't have been granted to someone who was unworthy of it.
He knows that neither Raito nor Kiyomi would shirk this decision, were it them, and that no matter how much he loves both of them he has to make that choice.
The thoughts hurt and he's scared and no matter how much he cries out to God the room is empty except for him, he is talking only to himself.
In the end, it's miserable logic that he uses. Betraying Kiyomi will mean she's imprisoned for life (Raito has said there is no way now that Kira can be sentenced to death). Betraying Raito will mean that he dies. Except that it's not logic, because he knows that a perfect world should be perfect whether or not it has Raito in it, but he can't quite believe it. And now the only thing that matters is that he himself should die, because he's made his choice and he cannot live in a world without God.
Raito goes to the apartment later the next day, after Kiyomi Takada has been arrested. He finds Mikami dead, the only suicide note being a small piece of paper with the man's own name written on it.
L leans forward, gnaws on his thumb, and watches the two figures on the screen. Takada has lost weight since her imprisonment. She's been made to dress in black, and if the symbolism of Kira mourning for her victims amuses L, he sees no reason to make anyone else aware of that.
Raito is staring down at her, his face a blank, cold mask.
"I don't know what you want me to say." Takada's shrugging, an elegant movement as if the cameras on her are just for TV. "It's a little immature to come here just to lecture me, don't you think?"
"You murdered my father." Raito wrenches out the words - L wonders if he's truly having difficulty speaking them or if he simply wishes to appear that way. It seems to affect Takada, at any rate. She raises her chin a little, stares past him as she says, "That was before I knew you."
"That doesn't make it any better!"
"He was on my trail!" Takada snaps. Her fists are clenched too now. "I couldn't let him catch me. I was achieving too much!"
"Did you know?" Raito says, flatly. "Did you know who I was?"
She glances away.
"So it was all a lie," Raito says. He smiles. He sounds almost relieved. Takada smiles back at him: "Oh, Raito... please don't start trying to convince me you loved me. If anyone should be feeling bitter, it should be me." Raito turns dead white at that, and Takada stumbles out, "You're surprised I noticed you were just going through the motions? You're not as successful a liar as you'd like to believe. Or was it all planned? Did you accept my offer because you and Ryuga already suspected me?"
"Of course I didn't! How can you think I'd play with someone's affections that way? I hate Kira, but that doesn't mean I'd do something like that, not even to capture hi - her -"
Takada sighs.
"You don't hate Kira," she says.
"Kira killed -"
"You're not stupid enough to hate Kira. You're upset because of what happened to your father. I understand that, and I am... I am sorry. I would never willingly hurt you." She stares at him, her eyes wide. "But you couldn't ever disapprove of what I'm doing. Not really. You know as well as I do that people just let you down, otherwise."
"Shut up." Raito swallows again, but he doesn't move.
"The current system doesn't work," Takada says. "I put in place one which does -"
"And which had the advantage of providing you with fame and fortune as your own spokesperson," Raito says.
"I put in place," Takada says, speaking a little louder, "a system which does work. The good and hard-working live happily, the wicked and lazy die off because they contribute nothing. You know and I know and Teru knew that this was the only way."
Raito doesn't answer. L watches, scrutinising his face.
"If I hadn't killed your father," Takada says, more quietly, "don't you think you might have considered joining me?"
"I don't need to listen to this."
"All right," Takada says, sitting up a little. "What about Teru? Did you love him? I certainly never anticipated that he'd be the one to let me down. What exactly did you promise him in order to get him on your side?"
"I - I didn't promise anything!" Raito's face is red - sharp marks like scars. "He was - he was misguided. I'm grateful he realised the error of his ways but I didn't - and I certainly didn't -"
"All right, let's try a different question." Takada glances away from him. "If Teru had been Kira, would you have considered allying with him? You don't have to bother denying it. I just want you to think about it. I just want you to think that maybe you passed up the chance to really make a difference, and you're going to have to live with that for the rest of your life."
Raito stares down at her coldly. L wonders if he has remembered the cameras. It's not the kind of thing Raito usually forgets.
At last he says, evenly, "I have defeated the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, and avenged my father's death. I've got no more regrets, thank you, Kiyomi."
A small smile spreads over Takada's face. L mimics it. He suspects that the two of them are, for once, united in their belief that Raito is lying. L, however, definitely has no regrets. This suspicion will only make his new crime-solving partnership with Raito Yagami even more interesting.
[Title] Before Term Began
[Fandom] Malory Towers
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] It's great to be home for the summer, but sometimes you miss school and its people in ways you didn't expect.
For the first week of the holidays Alicia revelled in the freedom: trees to climb, picnics to eat, brothers to prank and a million family arguments to be had no matter how much Mother told them all to be quiet. The sun shone and Mother had made gooseberry pie to welcome her home and she spent a lot of time barefoot.
The second week it rained, and she stayed inside. All her her books were trivial and predictable, her brothers turned every conversation into a debate or a backhanded compliments match, and her room seemed empty even with her in it.
She didn't exactly want to go back to school, but in the last week of the holidays, at the thought of familiar faces with their own amusing little reactions to her and new faces who might generate any number of conflicts, she found excitement fizzing in her veins.
"Gee, it must've been so hard stuck in England for a whole year," Lorena said, taking a delicate sip of her malted milk. "I mean, they really made you wear your hair in braids?"
"Aw, it wasn't so bad." Zerelda laughed, pretended to scrutinise the sun glinting in her nail polish. "They're quite nice when you get to know them. But it sure is nice to be home."
"I bet!" Lorena said. "And you've missed so much. You see I finally got my permanent wave done?" She pinched some curls to emphasise. "I was thinking I might go for ash blonde instead of sunshine next time, Emmie's got ash blonde and I think it looks just wunnerful. What do you think?"
Zerelda was in fact thinking about how tiresome it was going to have to be manicuring her nails and making up her face every morning again. Even braiding had her hair made life easier, no matter how plain it made her look. Even if there was no one else in her bedroom to see her cut corners, people would spot it once she stepped outside the house. You could hardly stay in your empty room forever, but sometimes she wanted to.
"They were a real nice set of girls," she said, trying to sound as if she were speaking without thinking rather than deliberately putting the record straight. "I sure am going to miss them."
Darrell was sitting in the garden, watching the sun set, when Felicity came to join her. "You've been out here for ages. Daddy said to ask you if you and your friends agreed to have a freckle-making competition over the summer."
"As a matter of fact," Darrell said, "I was thinking. Something you wouldn't know much about!"
Felicity stuck her tongue out and sat down on the warm bench. "What about?"
"School."
"Ugh. In the holidays?"
"You haven't been to boarding school yet. You wouldn't understand."
"I just don't understand why you'd want to get back to lessons and mistresses and having to share a room. I mean, I know Malory Towers is smashing, but it still can't be quite as nice as home... can it?"
"Home will always be nice," Darrell said, stretching out her legs and closing her eyes to the sun. "But there's much more outside it. I never thought, before, but there are so many people in the world and... they can be very confusing. They can be scared or... or brave, or mean, or uncaring, or... or kind. I miss Sally, of course, and Alicia and Mary-Lou and people like them, but I rather miss everyone, actually. Even though I know that once I see them again I won't be able to stand them."
"I think the sun has addled your wits," Felicity said, but she sounded sad. "Still, the house will feel awfully empty once you're back at school."
"That's why you're going to come too, as soon as you're well. You can't spend all your life in a few little rooms."
[Title] In Case of Emergency
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] The realisation that all really is not well at Aperture Science.
She's furious that the empty observation chamber freaks her out.
The silence and the rusted stairways and the graffiti'd walls should have prepared her for this. Obviously there is no one left in the place but her. Obviously, along the way, something has gone badly wrong with Aperture Science's work-life balance. But still. Seeing an empty room that's still habitable, a room meant for people, lit with clear lighting, with smooth white (albeit dusty) tables and keyboards and monitors, and those chairs on wheels with mustard-coloured seats, that rubs it in her face that she really is on her own.
She takes a few steps into the room, and when nothing shoots at her she takes a few more steps. On the opposite wall is a wide glass window. Through it is a white-walled test chamber. She remembers solving the puzzle it contains, back when she was still assuming this was just a brain-training exercise with added physical exertion.
She rests her hand on the glass, stares through it and tries to see herself. She'd looked up at these windows, muttered curses at them, assumed there were faceless bastards behind them recording her terror and tiredness on their clipboards or whatever. People, who could be reasoned with or fought against or, you know, subject to a higher authority.
Instead, the only people watching her are the crazed AI, and herself through different moments in time and space. She swallows, hard - the air tastes stale and metallic - and then she grips the gun tighter and walks back to the door. It's just that things are as difficult as she thought. That's all.
[Title] Saviour
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG-13
[Pairing] Matsuda/Ide
[Notes/Summary] AU where Raito won. It seems like Ide has only Matsuda as an ally now, but can he trust anyone now Kira rules the world?
[Link] HERE
[Title] Matrix
[Fandom] Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Batou and the Major are on the trail of their quarry, but things aren't what they seem.
It's a small concrete room. From her position by the door Motoko can just see banks of computers; hear the hum of machinery.
Looks empty to me, Batou's saying to her through the comm link. He's frowning, though. They both saw the guy run in here.
Cloaking?
Why didn't he use it earlier, if he's got the technology? Motoko wants to say that she'd spot the faint disturbance in the air even if their quarry was cloaked, but hey, perhaps she wouldn't. It's not like she's got the facilities to study the room at leisure.
Ishikawa could hack into the cameras, scan for heat. If the other comms come back online -
Motoko smiles. You want to sit here and wait for that? What if he's made it in there and gone out through an air vent?
There aren't any air vents. But Batou looks at her fleetingly, and grins. Okay, okay. I know what you're like when it comes to patience. On three?
She nods.
Go!
And she's diving round the corner, gun in both hands, back to the wall, and Batou's there, and she's laughing at herself, a little, because the room's empty -
Only it's not. The man is there, suddenly, in a corner between two monitors, and he's firing at them; Motoko drops, dives for cover, looses off a shot round the edge of a table, sees it hit the wall. She needs to focus. Batou is down behind another bank of desks, his gun laid across the top of one - he fires, and she follows suit, but their target doesn't drop. She hears Batou snarl over the comms and the shots what the hell is with this place? Are the angles screwed up or something?
Lay down covering fire - I'm going in.
Hah. Don't do anything I wouldn't do - and then a shot, another shot - a computer bursts into cracked plastic and broken glass, the air is full of the smell of melted synthetics. Motoko straightens up, leaps onto the row of desks, and starts to run, leaping over keyboards. Within a second or two she's leaping down onto the floor, squeezing the trigger to shoot the guy's gun out of his hand -
And he's no longer there.
Silence for a few seconds, then Batou mutters, what the hell? He didn't cloak, did he?
"No." Motoko grins; steps so that the wall is at her back again. "Either he's picked up some technology we haven't encountered before, or... he's hacked into our cyberbrains because he wants to play a first-person shooter with us. Whichever it is, I think we ought to track him down. Don't you?"
Batou laughs. "Well, sure. I always liked the final boss battles best."
[Title] View
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Akira's perceptions of the ruins of Neo-Tokyo are not like other people's.
"It's so empty," Kaori murmurs to herself as she and Akira look out over the bay.
Akira likes Kaori, so he doesn't want to tell her that she is wrong. But she is. The view is full of light on water and leaning-over skyscrapers with frames like broken matchsticks and people tiny in the distance with little scraps of coloured cloth wrapped round their shoulders and the smell of blood and dirt and rubbish and the soup with steam spiralling up against the sun. This is not empty. Empty was where he was before, where even time wasn't.