fandoms 31-35
(the formatting was working last time...)
31.
Title: Wargliss by Moonlight
Fandom: Avalon Code
Rating: G
Word Count: 309
Summary: After forgetting that she needs to get a lock for her front door, Tia is woken up in the middle of the night once again by an inappropriate choice of romantic partner. Dangerous older guys are kinda hot though... Tia/Heath, mentions of Tia/Ur.
When he uncovered her eyes, she was in the middle of Wargliss Fortress.
At first she assumed the worst and curled her hand into a fist, ready to show him just how hard she had been training for situations like this when someone grabbed her from her home while she was sleeping and led her into the heart of enemy territory. He moved first and clasped his hands over hers. They were warm, much larger than hers, full of callouses from swordfighting.
"Are your hands cold?" he asked, his grin making her blush, "I'm sorry if I didn't give you time to put gloves on. I wanted this to be a surprise."
"Um... wh... what is this about?" she asked, desperately looking around to avoid the intensity in his eyes. At least there were no monsters around. It was oddly peaceful. Not eerily so, it just felt out of place in what had been a fierce battleground.
"You don't know? I set this all up so we could have somewhere private to talk and the atmosphere isn't working? Oh, man," he scratched the back of his head, ruffling his auburn curls. Hair like that wasn't common in Rhoan and it was certainly striking.
"I wanted to say I like you," he said, "I really like you. Um... and even though it's a difficult situation, I'm not going to give up on you, okay?"
She sighed. First Ur, now this. Couldn't she have normal people fall in love with her and not lightning elementals or enemy Generals?
"If you don't know what to say, don't worry about it. I just needed to let you know," he continued, "Want help getting back?"
She nodded, still dumbstruck, wondering what she was going to do if the two of them got jealous of each other and decided to rip the whole continent apart.
32.
Title: Trumpeter
Fandom: Earthbound
Rating: K+
Word Count: 401
Summary: Ness always knew something was going to go particularly wrong when he heard that song.
One day these melodies shall reach a far off land, the trumpet player had told Ness. Then he had lifted his instrument back to his lips and played a melody that was short, maybe only a bar, but haunted his soul in a way that the staring eyes of the zombies never had.
It was the first time during his journey that Ness truly felt unnerved. It had never been plain sailing, of course. There had always been losses, moments of sadness and absolute terror: when Buzz-Buzz had died a pointless, almost laughable death; when the entire local police force suddenly decided to try and beat him to death; when he had been trapped in an underground prison by zombies with no way out except to pray.
And when he first walked into the area known as the Horns of Time and found out where the melody had traveled to, heard its last fading three notes echoing back and forth between the rocks, trapped and ever more distorted, as time itself fell into complete chaos and then entropy death, it was the first time he really panicked, truly wanted out of it. He knew, then, in his soul, that every step he walked took him closer to a point of no return he might step over without knowing. He knew that if he stepped across that threshold, he was truly on his own, adrift in that chaos, somewhere that no child should be, maybe no living being.
And then when he realised he didn't really have a choice, not if he wanted there to be a Universe to go back to, he stepped over that line willingly anyway. That was when he returned to the Horns of Time for a third time, and still heard the last note. It wasn't even recognisable any more. Frozen in time, drawn out eternally, ebbing and flowing like the winds of chaos that Giygas now embodied, it was more like a song would be if it was playing on a computer that froze. Ness still recognised it, though.
He knew that it would take nothing less than divine intervention to save him.
The only way he could continue was the same way he always did, by humming a song of his own, one that he knew could never be obscured.
"Yes, the two who shared smiles and tears one after the other… are now far apart..."33.
Title: Unlikely Allies
Fandom: Star Ocean: The Second Evolution
Rating: K+
Word Count: 340
Summary: Creepy and Weepy have an argument. Ashton is disturbed by how much of it he understands.
It had been a while since Creepy and Weepy had argued loudly enough to wake him up. These days he was used to their usual soft growling and jostling, although it had taken him a long time to adjust to the fact that they existed at all. To have something alive on his back, heavy but sort of bearing their own weight, constantly moving in their sinuous waves, with minds that were completely alien to him as a human but that he somehow instantly understood instinctively, had not been easy at first. In fact, he was suspicious of how short a time it had taken for him to adjust.
He couldn't help but start, though, when they began to thrash around violently, roar and snap at each other, even start breathing flames, one red and the other blue. He yelled at them to calm down, that they were going to get all three of them thrown out of the inn or even set fire to the bedsheets. As they often did, they completely ignored him.
It didn't take long for the Claude and Rena to turn up, weapons drawn, ready to fight whatever monster had crept into his bedroom. When they saw the dragons arguing, Rena rolled her eyes and said 'I told you so' to Claude. They helped him soothe the dragons (they apparently liked Rena's singing) then went back to their own rooms.
But before that, he overheard a tiny snippet of their thoughts, as he always did.
We shouldn't be doing this. When did we change our essential nature so dramatically?
It is to our advantage for the Universe to be saved, though, no matter what we intend for it afterwards.
Cinna, Xinae, Lavarre... we've made enemies of all our old friends.
They were never friends, just respected rivals. And they were idiots for trusting the Wise Men.
But once this is over... what the small, magic, cat-eared one did to us...
The host is overhearing.
Once the mental connection clouded over again, the dragons had gone silent.
34
Title: Do You Still Remember
Fandom: Chrono Trigger
Rating: K+
Word Count: 326
Summary: Why Crono now has a purple cat and Magus doesn't any more.
"Don't waste your time. Alfador only likes me."
The small purple cat watched his owner leave once again, with barely more than a nod of acknowledgement and a few muttered words. He had looked very different from the last time Alfador had seen him, as a small child rather than a tall, well-muscled grown man, but it was not enough to fool a loyal, cunning cat. Not that his owner could have disguised himself to fool anyone who had even the slightest talent in sensing magic, something all cats could do. The purple-haired, white-skinned man had an almost blindingly bright magical aura, and not any of the kind that had been commonplace back when life was good and a cat could get some peace and quiet, with nothing else to do but follow his grumpy little human around.
The boy called Janus had been loyal, back then, in the days before he had been swallowed up in front of Alfador's eyes by a portal that stank of very wrong magic, not just different like his owner's, and had made him want to lick his fur clean of it. Now he kept calling himself Magus, and even when his cat followed him around, meowing and pouncing on the hem of his cloak and hissing at his enemies, the man didnt pay him any attention.
He hadnt even noticed when Alfador sneaked into the weird flying contraption that he used to disappear and reappear sometimes. Then, before he knew it, he had ended up in the house with twelve other cats and an oblivious old woman and sometimes a boy with a ridiculous spiked hairstyle who left lots of food for them all.
Living with other cats, none of whom were purple, had been an odd development but he soon got used to it. The others quickly saccepted him when he taught them all about weird portals and flying, disappearing machines and fun ways to punish disloyal owners.
35
Title: A Kitten Kitten who Kittens
Fandom: The Strange
Rating: T (substance abuse)
Word Count: 330
Summary: It turned out there really was a kitten recursion.
"Just close your eyes and think hard of the recursion you want to go to," had been the advice, "Translation will go by like a breeze. Worked every time for our old Paradox."
Yes, it did, but only because the old Paradox wasn't a fresh recruit who had the attention span of a three-year-old and was obsessed with kittens. Well, okay, so she was fairly obsessed with kittens, which was probably why the new Paradox was thinking about kittens even more when they translated to the next recursions in a list of places where the old Paradox was last sighted. To give her credit, 'Or maybe she's in the kitten recursion' wasn't actually that silly a suggestion.
It wasn't her fault there really was a kitten recursion.
'The kitten recursion' sounds like a nice place. Except that, for some reason, if you walk in without translating (we had a ship), you find out that the kittens are the size of elephants. Then when you finally manage to hide long enough to translate without being eaten, you translate into a kitten.
And realise you're constantly being filmed.
Being essentially movie divas, most of the kittens were catnip addicts and all of them did nothing but show off outrageously. The invisible Youtube commentator in the sky had set up a mock Dungeons and Dragons game in the middle of the room, and when they were on break from batting the dice around the room and falling asleep on the character sheets, the kittens all congregated for an actual game. Fortunately, one of us translated into a kitten who knew how to GM a tabletop game, so we soon managed to get them talking once the nip was passed around and the dice were rolling.
As it happened, the old Paradox had passed through the recursion, although it had been a while ago. Our detour wasn't as useless as we thought.
Okay, and the game was pretty good. The nip wasn't bad either.