fandoms 23 and 24
23.
Title: A Hunt For the Smell
Fandom: Dark Savior / THE DOG Island
Rating: T (spoilers, mention of alcohol and undead children, references to a specific Let's Play)
Word Count: 737
Summary: There are things even a budding Sniff Master shouldn't poke their nose into but Puppersnoopers is going to do it anyway.
As his final training to become a Sniff Master, Puppersnoopers had made a vow to sniff out and remember every scent in the world. He wasn't sure if this glowing green rock counted, as it certainly didn't come from this world. He had overheard the tall, miserable-looking man who smelled of metal being struck by lightning say that it had come from a meteorite that had fallen to Earth long ago. However, he also remembered learning, during his travels, that a lot of the planet's minerals originally came from meteorites and were now accepted as part of Earth's ecosystem, and they were definitely on the list of substances he had to recognise the scent of. This rock still felt different, though. There was just something about it. It smelled as if it shouldn't exist at all, except maybe in dreams, and he certainly shouldn't be going anywhere near it, never mind shoving his nose in it.
Very little on this island smelled pleasant. While there were some nice blue flowers, even these had been carelessly thrown at him by a human girl, scratching his precious snout. She had jumped into the air and disappeared without even apologising! Apart from that, the entire place mostly smelled of swamp, dead fish, bootleg alcohol and large, hairy humans who had spent all day working down a mine and getting themselves covered in sweat and rock dust. Some of the underground chambers smelled of dead things, some smelled of sewage. One of the rooms high above ground - too high, in his opinion as a dog who didn't like almost losing his lunch to vertigo - smelled unpleasantly cold, and also of particularly malicious ghosts. The whole island was crawling with ghosts, including a zombie human puppy in the place that smelled of dead things who had tried to bite him. Honestly, whoever heard of a human trying to bite a dog?
The few dogs on the island weren't that friendly either. The Vancane twins were stuffy and unfriendly, only talking about their work and mostly just to tell him that he was an intruder and then try to chase him off their territory. He didn't entirely blame them, however, as all the machine parts attached to them were clearly disrupting their brains in some way. Apart from that, the only other dog was an even more bizarre individual who walked on two legs like a human. He was also obsessed with work and kept saying that he was tracking down a dangerous escaped criminal and didn't have time to chat. The other animals he recognised were even less useful to talk to - the two bears who also had machine parts, the strange-looking elephant and the giant rat all just attacked him on sight. He had never met such cranky animals in his life.
As for the birds, he had a very bad feeling about them, so he avoided them as much as he could. Fortunately, they seemed more interested in making the spiky-haired human's life a living hell.
Even though he hated this place and vowed never to come back here again, he had still managed to collect a lot of rare scents, so at least his time hadn't been entirely wasted. The only thing left to record in his notebook was this weird green rock. He still really didn't want to go near it - he felt a little ill just looking at it - but he knew that there were very few places on the planet where he would have an opportunity to sample it again. Not only was there a particularly huge vein of it in the mountain, the humans were quite careless with it compared to the strict security they usually placed it under.
No, he couldn't back down from this challenge. The life of a Sniff Master was never meant to be easy. He had fought an undead dinosaur, had saved the entire world, and yet he was afraid of a small green rock? There were substances out there that were a worse idea to sniff and he had survived so far. He took a deep breath, primed his nostrils and strode forwards, trying to ignore the gurgling, grating, roaring noise behind him that was getting louder. It probably wasn't anything important, most likely just mining equipment. He had already heard weirder noises that turned out to be nothing. This wasn’t any different, right?
24.
Title: Inconvenient Facts
Fandom: YS Origin
Rating: K+ (spoilers)
Word Count: 1014
Summary: On a routine scouting mission, Hugo happens to run into estranged family.
Yet another of the Goddess Statues had been desecrated.
The enemy had been very thorough. The statues weren't just damaged, they had been ritually defiled in a way that reversed the flow of their divine magic, corrupting their nature into the antithesis of everything it once was. Hugo felt nauseous even going near the demonic horned visage that appeared in twisting, roiling black shadows above what had once been a statue of a beautiful winged woman. Dark magic pulsed from it, sapping his life energy and his will, putting malicious thoughts into his head. Every part of himself that he tried to hide from the world - his lust for power, his contempt for the weak, his rivalry with the rest of his family that threatened to turn into actual conflict - seemed to be magnified whenever he went near the debased shrine.
Like it or not, it was one of his many duties here in Darm Tower to purify any corrupted shrine he came across. The statues of the shrines were vital to everyone's safety and the success of their operation. The immense magic they channelled, each one connected to the others in a vast network leading up the entirety of the twenty-plus floors of the tower, allowed the priests of the seven great families to travel from statue to statue at will, to record echoes of their activities that could be used to assist in healing and even resurrection rituals should the worst happen, to commune with the Goddesses and petition for their magic to be strengthened should they earn such divine favours. In short, the statues meant pretty much everything to the mission, and even though purifying them felt like the magical equivalent of cleaning a kitchen full of dirty dishes after a particularly racuous night at a tavern, it was actually a great responsibility to be trusted with.
This was why Hugo Fact tolerated it, when he would much rather be using his prodigous magical powers to fight demons, where they would be put to better use and he would be much more likely to be noticed by someone with the authority to promote him to a more fitting rank. Still, finding the statues in the first place meant scouting the Tower, inevitably leading to the necessity of climbing to higher floors, with greater dangers and more interesting challenges for him to face and be recognised as having overcome.
"One day, I might even meet the nuisance who goes around doing this," he muttered to himself as he ran his hands over the statue, tracing the patterns of runes and focussing his mental energy on specific points in the magic's flow. As he carefully smoothed it out, the dark energy shimmered and gradually turned a silvery blue, its image morphing back into that of the winged Goddess. The success did not improve his mood, as he knew there would only be more, "And once I find that person, I have a fireball aimed right at their..."
"And it's nice to see you too, brother."
Hugo looked up sharply at the mocking voice. Someone had dropped down from the ceiling, a tall, lithe, muscular figure with unruly silver hair, wild eyes, an overconfident grin and a pair of wickedly sharp metal claws strapped to his wrists. He landed on the other side of the statue in a crouch, arms outstretched as if to prepare for a flurry of claw strikes, but he did not attack. Instead, he sneered at the mage as he continued speaking.
"If you must know, your insistence on undoing all our hard work is as irritating to us as we are to you. Why do you think we even bother doing all this? We need to use these facilities as well, and yet the Goddess cruelly rejects us, her light burning us. We must allow inside the welcoming shade of darkness."
"Go and crawl back under the rock you came out of, then," Hugo snapped.
"Oh, you don't mean that, brother. Or don't you recognise me, now I've grown so much more powerful?"
"Your hair makes you look old. You've learned how to scratch people like an animal. Is this supposed to impress me?" Hugo snapped, "I always thought of you as my strong older brother, but I guess you're so stupid, you would even be duped into serving the enemy."
"On the contrary, it's you who would benefit from changing sides. You already know you have a darkness in you. You were born to great power, a lot greater than anything the Goddesses would allow you to grasp hold of. They treat you like a wilful child to be taught obedience. You won't ever grow to your full potential like that."
"I'll become as powerful as I like, despite the Goddesses or anyone else who wishes to oppose me," Hugo replied coldly, "Don't lump me in with those other servants."
"Prove it, then. Don't throw away opportunities for more power. If you don't want to serve us, I understand. I'm only in this for my own gain myself, to be perfectly honest. But at least see what the other side can offer you. You can play both sides, for all I care. You probably already are, with an intellect like yours."
"Smart enough not to be taken in by charming words," Hugo retorted, "Will you step out of the way and let me do my job or do you want to fight over it?"
"I'm not in the mood for pointless fighting. You'll only come back later. As will one of us, when you're gone. This whole thing is stupid," he sighed, "You should think about what exactly you're trying to achieve, little brother. Don't just go along with their plans. Well, I'm out of here, my mission was only to scout the place anyway. Just as a heads up, someone else might be coming to talk to you. Please try and be polite for once."
"I can't make any promises," replied Hugo, but his brother was already gone.
He shrugged and went back to work.
Title: A Hunt For the Smell
Fandom: Dark Savior / THE DOG Island
Rating: T (spoilers, mention of alcohol and undead children, references to a specific Let's Play)
Word Count: 737
Summary: There are things even a budding Sniff Master shouldn't poke their nose into but Puppersnoopers is going to do it anyway.
As his final training to become a Sniff Master, Puppersnoopers had made a vow to sniff out and remember every scent in the world. He wasn't sure if this glowing green rock counted, as it certainly didn't come from this world. He had overheard the tall, miserable-looking man who smelled of metal being struck by lightning say that it had come from a meteorite that had fallen to Earth long ago. However, he also remembered learning, during his travels, that a lot of the planet's minerals originally came from meteorites and were now accepted as part of Earth's ecosystem, and they were definitely on the list of substances he had to recognise the scent of. This rock still felt different, though. There was just something about it. It smelled as if it shouldn't exist at all, except maybe in dreams, and he certainly shouldn't be going anywhere near it, never mind shoving his nose in it.
Very little on this island smelled pleasant. While there were some nice blue flowers, even these had been carelessly thrown at him by a human girl, scratching his precious snout. She had jumped into the air and disappeared without even apologising! Apart from that, the entire place mostly smelled of swamp, dead fish, bootleg alcohol and large, hairy humans who had spent all day working down a mine and getting themselves covered in sweat and rock dust. Some of the underground chambers smelled of dead things, some smelled of sewage. One of the rooms high above ground - too high, in his opinion as a dog who didn't like almost losing his lunch to vertigo - smelled unpleasantly cold, and also of particularly malicious ghosts. The whole island was crawling with ghosts, including a zombie human puppy in the place that smelled of dead things who had tried to bite him. Honestly, whoever heard of a human trying to bite a dog?
The few dogs on the island weren't that friendly either. The Vancane twins were stuffy and unfriendly, only talking about their work and mostly just to tell him that he was an intruder and then try to chase him off their territory. He didn't entirely blame them, however, as all the machine parts attached to them were clearly disrupting their brains in some way. Apart from that, the only other dog was an even more bizarre individual who walked on two legs like a human. He was also obsessed with work and kept saying that he was tracking down a dangerous escaped criminal and didn't have time to chat. The other animals he recognised were even less useful to talk to - the two bears who also had machine parts, the strange-looking elephant and the giant rat all just attacked him on sight. He had never met such cranky animals in his life.
As for the birds, he had a very bad feeling about them, so he avoided them as much as he could. Fortunately, they seemed more interested in making the spiky-haired human's life a living hell.
Even though he hated this place and vowed never to come back here again, he had still managed to collect a lot of rare scents, so at least his time hadn't been entirely wasted. The only thing left to record in his notebook was this weird green rock. He still really didn't want to go near it - he felt a little ill just looking at it - but he knew that there were very few places on the planet where he would have an opportunity to sample it again. Not only was there a particularly huge vein of it in the mountain, the humans were quite careless with it compared to the strict security they usually placed it under.
No, he couldn't back down from this challenge. The life of a Sniff Master was never meant to be easy. He had fought an undead dinosaur, had saved the entire world, and yet he was afraid of a small green rock? There were substances out there that were a worse idea to sniff and he had survived so far. He took a deep breath, primed his nostrils and strode forwards, trying to ignore the gurgling, grating, roaring noise behind him that was getting louder. It probably wasn't anything important, most likely just mining equipment. He had already heard weirder noises that turned out to be nothing. This wasn’t any different, right?
24.
Title: Inconvenient Facts
Fandom: YS Origin
Rating: K+ (spoilers)
Word Count: 1014
Summary: On a routine scouting mission, Hugo happens to run into estranged family.
Yet another of the Goddess Statues had been desecrated.
The enemy had been very thorough. The statues weren't just damaged, they had been ritually defiled in a way that reversed the flow of their divine magic, corrupting their nature into the antithesis of everything it once was. Hugo felt nauseous even going near the demonic horned visage that appeared in twisting, roiling black shadows above what had once been a statue of a beautiful winged woman. Dark magic pulsed from it, sapping his life energy and his will, putting malicious thoughts into his head. Every part of himself that he tried to hide from the world - his lust for power, his contempt for the weak, his rivalry with the rest of his family that threatened to turn into actual conflict - seemed to be magnified whenever he went near the debased shrine.
Like it or not, it was one of his many duties here in Darm Tower to purify any corrupted shrine he came across. The statues of the shrines were vital to everyone's safety and the success of their operation. The immense magic they channelled, each one connected to the others in a vast network leading up the entirety of the twenty-plus floors of the tower, allowed the priests of the seven great families to travel from statue to statue at will, to record echoes of their activities that could be used to assist in healing and even resurrection rituals should the worst happen, to commune with the Goddesses and petition for their magic to be strengthened should they earn such divine favours. In short, the statues meant pretty much everything to the mission, and even though purifying them felt like the magical equivalent of cleaning a kitchen full of dirty dishes after a particularly racuous night at a tavern, it was actually a great responsibility to be trusted with.
This was why Hugo Fact tolerated it, when he would much rather be using his prodigous magical powers to fight demons, where they would be put to better use and he would be much more likely to be noticed by someone with the authority to promote him to a more fitting rank. Still, finding the statues in the first place meant scouting the Tower, inevitably leading to the necessity of climbing to higher floors, with greater dangers and more interesting challenges for him to face and be recognised as having overcome.
"One day, I might even meet the nuisance who goes around doing this," he muttered to himself as he ran his hands over the statue, tracing the patterns of runes and focussing his mental energy on specific points in the magic's flow. As he carefully smoothed it out, the dark energy shimmered and gradually turned a silvery blue, its image morphing back into that of the winged Goddess. The success did not improve his mood, as he knew there would only be more, "And once I find that person, I have a fireball aimed right at their..."
"And it's nice to see you too, brother."
Hugo looked up sharply at the mocking voice. Someone had dropped down from the ceiling, a tall, lithe, muscular figure with unruly silver hair, wild eyes, an overconfident grin and a pair of wickedly sharp metal claws strapped to his wrists. He landed on the other side of the statue in a crouch, arms outstretched as if to prepare for a flurry of claw strikes, but he did not attack. Instead, he sneered at the mage as he continued speaking.
"If you must know, your insistence on undoing all our hard work is as irritating to us as we are to you. Why do you think we even bother doing all this? We need to use these facilities as well, and yet the Goddess cruelly rejects us, her light burning us. We must allow inside the welcoming shade of darkness."
"Go and crawl back under the rock you came out of, then," Hugo snapped.
"Oh, you don't mean that, brother. Or don't you recognise me, now I've grown so much more powerful?"
"Your hair makes you look old. You've learned how to scratch people like an animal. Is this supposed to impress me?" Hugo snapped, "I always thought of you as my strong older brother, but I guess you're so stupid, you would even be duped into serving the enemy."
"On the contrary, it's you who would benefit from changing sides. You already know you have a darkness in you. You were born to great power, a lot greater than anything the Goddesses would allow you to grasp hold of. They treat you like a wilful child to be taught obedience. You won't ever grow to your full potential like that."
"I'll become as powerful as I like, despite the Goddesses or anyone else who wishes to oppose me," Hugo replied coldly, "Don't lump me in with those other servants."
"Prove it, then. Don't throw away opportunities for more power. If you don't want to serve us, I understand. I'm only in this for my own gain myself, to be perfectly honest. But at least see what the other side can offer you. You can play both sides, for all I care. You probably already are, with an intellect like yours."
"Smart enough not to be taken in by charming words," Hugo retorted, "Will you step out of the way and let me do my job or do you want to fight over it?"
"I'm not in the mood for pointless fighting. You'll only come back later. As will one of us, when you're gone. This whole thing is stupid," he sighed, "You should think about what exactly you're trying to achieve, little brother. Don't just go along with their plans. Well, I'm out of here, my mission was only to scout the place anyway. Just as a heads up, someone else might be coming to talk to you. Please try and be polite for once."
"I can't make any promises," replied Hugo, but his brother was already gone.
He shrugged and went back to work.